The Summer Garden by Paullina Simons Read Free Book Online Page A

of whiskey, and another. “No,” he finally said. “My wife and I have the opposite problem. She carried weapons and shot at men who came to kill her. She was in hospitals, on battlefields, on frontlines. She was in DP camps and concentration camps. She starved through a frozen, blockaded city. She lost everyone she ever loved.” Alexander took half a glass of sour mash into his throat and still couldn’t keep himself from groaning. “She knows, sees, and understands everything. Perhaps less now, but that’s my fault. I haven’t been much of a—” he broke off. “Much of anything. Our problem isn’t that we don’t understand each other. Our problem is that we do. We can’t look at each other, can’t speak one innocent word, can’t touch each other without touching the cross on our backs. There is simply never any peace.” Another stiff drink went into Alexander’s throat.
    Suddenly Tatiana appeared in the dark corner. “Alexander,” she whispered, “it’s eleven o’clock. You have to be up at four.”
    He looked up at her bleakly.
    She glanced at Nick, who was staring at her with a knowing, full expression. “What have you been telling him?”
    “We’ve just been reminiscing,” said the colonel. “About the good old days that brought us here.”
    Slightly slurred, Alexander said he would be right back and stood up, knocking over his chair and swaying away. Tatiana was left alone with Nick.
    “He tells me you’re a nurse,” Nick said.
    “I was.”
    He fell silent.
    “What do you need?” She placed her hand on him. “What is it?”
    His moist eyes were pleading. “Do you have morphine?”
    Tatiana straightened up. “What’s hurting?”
    “Every single fucking thing that’s left of me,” he said. “Got enough morphine for that?”
    “Nick…”
    “Please. Please. Enough morphine so that I never feel again.”
    “Nick, dear God…”
    “When it gets unbearable for your husband, he’s got the weapons he cleans, he can just blow his brains out. But what about me?”
    Nick couldn’t grab her, but he threw his body forward to her. “Who is going to blow my brains out, Tania?” he whispered.
    “Nick, please!” Her hands were propping him up, but he’d had too much to drink and was listing.
    Alexander came back, unsteady on his feet. Nick stopped speaking.
    Tatiana had to wheel Nick up the steep hill herself because Alexander kept releasing the handlebars and Nick kept rolling back down. It took her a long time to get him to his house. Nick’s wife and daughter were purple with ire. The shrieking would have been sweeter for Tatiana had the colonel not spoken to her, but since he had, and since Alexander himself was too drunk to react to the histrionics of the two women, and since Nick Moore was also in a stupor, the punchline of the joke—a quadruple amputee in a wheelchair vanishing from the front lawn—went unappreciated by all parties, except for Anthony the following day.
    The next morning Alexander had three cups of black coffee, staggered to work hung over, could put down only three traps at a time instead of the usual twelve, and came back with barely seventy lobsters, all of them chickens or one-pounders. He refused his pay, fell asleep right after dinner and never woke up until Anthony screamed in the middle of the night.
    In the evening after supper, Tatiana went outside with a cup of tea, and Alexander wasn’t there. He and Anthony were with Nick in the next yard. Alexander had even taken his chair. Anthony was looking for bugs, and the two men were talking. Tatiana watched them for a few minutes and then went back inside. She sat down at the empty kitchen table and, surprising herself, burst into tears.
    And the next night, and the next. Alexander didn’t even say anything to her. He just went, and he and Nick sat together, while Anthony played nearby. He started leaving his chair on Nick’s front lawn.
    After a few days of not being able to stand it, Tatiana made a