He got paid ten dollars for the day’s work, and was scrubbing his hands with industrial-strength soap under the water spout when Jimmy came up to him. “Want to wait with me and sell these?” He pointed to the lobsters. “I’ll pay you another two dollars for the evening. After, we can go for a drink.”
“Can’t, Jimmy. But thanks. Maybe another time.”
Jimmy glanced at Tatiana, all sunny and white, and turned away.
They walked up the hill to the house.
Alexander went to take a bath, to shave, to shear his hair, while Tatiana, placing the lobsters in the refrigerator to numb them, boiled the water. Lobsters were the easiest thing to cook, 10–15 minutes in salted boiling water. They were delicious to eat, breaking the claws, taking the meat out, dipping them in melted butter. But sometimes she did think that she would rather spend two dollars on a lobster in a store once a month than have Alexander spend thirteen hours on a boat every day and get four lobsters for free. Didn’t seem so free. Before he was out of the bathroom, she stood outside the door, knocked carefully and said, “You need anything?”
There was quiet inside. She knocked louder. The door opened, and he towered in front of her, all fresh and shaved and scrubbed and dressed. He was wearing a clean green jersey and fatigues. She cleared her throat and lowered her gaze. Barefoot she stood with her lips level with his heart. “Need anything?” she repeated in a whisper, feeling so vulnerable she was having trouble breathing.
“I’m fine,” he said, walking sideways past her. “Let’s eat.”
They had the lobsters with melted butter, and carrot, onion and potato stew. Alexander ate three lobsters, most of the stew, bread, butter. Tatiana had found him emaciated in Germany. He ate for two men now, but he was still war thin. She ladled food onto his plate, filled his glass. He drank a beer, water, a Coke. They ate quietly in the little kitchen, which the landlady allowed them to use as long as they were either done by seven or made dinner for her, too. They were done by seven, and Tatiana left some stew for her.
“Alexander, does your … chest hurt?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“It felt a little pulpy last night …” She looked away, remembering touching it. “It’s not healed yet, and you’re doing all that trap hauling. I don’t want it to get reinfected. Perhaps I should put some carbolic acid on it.”
“I’m fine.”
“Maybe a new dressing?”
He didn’t say anything, just raised his eyes to her, and for a moment between them, from his bronze-colored eyes to her sea-green passed Berlin, and the room at the U.S. Embassy where they had spent what they both were certain was their last night on earth, when she stitched together his shredded pectoral and wept, and he sat like a stone and looked through her— much like now. He said to her then, “We never had a future.”
Tatiana looked away first—she always looked away first—and got up.
Alexander went outside to sit in the chair in front of the house on the hill overlooking the bay. Anthony tagged along behind him. Alexander sat mutely and motionlessly, while Anthony milled about the overgrown yard, picking up rocks, pine cones, looking for worms, for beetles, for ladybugs.
“You won’t find any ladybugs, son. Season for them’s in June,” said Alexander.
“Ah,” said Anthony. “Then what’s this?”
Tilting over to one side, Alexander looked. “I can’t see it.”
Anthony came closer.
“Still can’t see it.”
Anthony came closer, his hand out, the index finger with the ladybug extended.
Alexander’s face was inches away from the ladybug. “Hmm. Still can’t see it.”
Anthony looked at the ladybug, looked at his father and then slowly, shyly climbed into his lap and showed him again.
“Well, well,” said Alexander, both hands going around the boy. “Now I see it. I sit corrected. You were right. Ladybugs in August. Who knew?”
“Did you ever see ladybugs, Dad?”
Alexander was quiet. “A long time ago, near a city called Moscow.”
“In the … Soviet Union?”
“Yes.”
“They have ladybugs there?”
“They had ladybugs—until we ate them all.”
Anthony was wide-eyed.
“There was nothing else to eat,” said Alexander.
“Anthony, your father is just joking with you,” said Tatiana, walking out, wiping her wet hands on a tea towel. “He is trying to be funny.”
Anthony peered into Alexander’s face. “That was funny?”
“Tania,” Alexander said in a far away voice. “I can’t get up. Can you get my cigarettes for me?”
She left quickly and came out with them. Since there was only one chair and nowhere for her to sit, she placed the cigarette in Alexander’s mouth and, bending over him, her hand on his shoulder, lit it for him while Anthony placed the bug into Alexander’s palm.
“Dad, don’t eat this ladybug.” One of his little arms went around Alexander’s neck.
“I won’t, son. I’m full.”
“That’s funny,” said Anthony. “Mama and I met a man today. A colonel. Nick Moore.”
“Oh, yeah?” Alexander looked off into the distance, taking another deep drag of the cigarette from Tatiana’s hands as she was bent to him. “What was he like?”
“He was like you, Dad,” Anthony replied. “He was just like you.”
Red Nail Polish
In the middle of the night, the boy woke up and screamed. Tatiana went to comfort him. He calmed down, but would not let her leave him alone in his bed, even though it was just across the nightstand. “Alexander,” she whispered, “are you awake?”
“I am now,” he said, getting up. Moving the nightstand out of the way, he pushed the two twin beds together so Anthony could lie next to his mother. They tried to get comfortable, Alexander against the wall spooning Tatiana spooning Anthony, who instantly fell asleep in his mother’s arms. Tatiana only pretended to fall back to sleep. She knew that in a moment Alexander would get up and leave the bed.
And in a moment, he was gone. She whispered after him. Shura, darling. After a few minutes, she got up, put on a robe and walked outside. He wasn’t in the kitchen or the yard. She looked for him all the way down to the dock. Alexander was sitting on the bench where Tatiana usually sat waiting for him to come back from the sea. She saw the flare of the cigarette in his mouth. He was naked except for his skivvies, and he was shivering. His arms were crossed over himself, and his body was rocking back and forth.
She stopped walking.
She didn’t know what to do.
She never did know what to do.
Turning around, she stumbled back to their room and lay in bed blinkless, staring beyond Anthony’s sleeping head until Alexander came back, icy and shaking, and fitted in behind her. She didn’t move and he said nothing, made no noise. Just his cold arm went around her. They lay there until four when he got up to go to work. As he ground the