The Summer Garden

“We’re going to go broke.”

“I’ll get work.”

She cleared her throat. “We need a little privacy …”

“Ah, now you’re talking. But forget it, I won’t sell it.”

They were strolling along Bayshore Avenue, past moorings that fingered out into the water. He pointed to a houseboat.

“You want to rent a boat?”

“A houseboat.”

“A what?”

“A boat that is also a house.”

“You want us to live on a boat?” Tatiana said slowly.

Alexander called to his son. “Anthony, how would you like to live in a house that is also a boat?”

The child jumped up and down.

“Anthony,” said his mother, “how would you like to live in a snowy mountain retreat in the north of Canada?”

Anthony jumped up and down.

“Alexander, see? I really don’t think you should be making all your life decisions based on the joy of one small boy.”

Alexander lifted Anthony into his arms. “Bud,” he said, “a house that is moored like a boat and sways like a boat, but never moves from the dock, right on the ocean, doesn’t that sound great?”

Anthony put his arms around his father’s neck. “I said yes, Dad. What more do you want?”

For thirty dollars a week—the same money they didn’t want to pay Mrs. Brewster—they rented a fully furnished houseboat on Fair Isle Street, jutting out into the bay right between Memorial Park and the newly broken construction site for Mercy Hospital. The houseboat had a little kitchen with a small stove, a living room, a bathroom with a toilet—And two bedrooms!

Anthony, of course, just like at Nellie’s, refused to sleep by himself. But this time Tatiana was adamant right back. She stayed with her son for an hour, until he was asleep in his own bed. The mother wanted a room of her own.

When an utterly bare Tatiana, without even a silk nightgown, lay down in a double-size bed in front of Alexander, she thought she was a different woman making love to a different man. It was dark in the bedroom, but he was also naked, no tank tops, no shirts, no battle gear. He was naked and on top of her, and he actually murmured a bit to her, things she hadn’t heard in a very long while, he took it a little slower, slower than he had in a very long while, and for that Tatiana rewarded him with a breathless climax, and a shy plea for a little more, and he obliged, but in a way that was too much for her, holding up her legs against his upright arms and moving so intensely that small thrilling cries of pain and pleasure drowned her parchment throat, followed by a less shy plea for some more … and he even opened his eyes briefly, watching her mouth moaning for him, Oh my God, Shura. She saw his searching face; he whispered, You like that, do you? He kissed her, but Tatiana unclasped from him and began to cry. Alexander sighed and closed his eyes again, and there was no more.

Alexander got ready to go look for work, Tatiana got ready to take their clothes to the Laundromat. There was no Laundromat nearby. “Maybe we should have rented a house closer to the Laundromat.”

He stopped getting his cigarettes and his money and stared at her. “Just so we’re clear,” he said, “a houseboat on the Atlantic, dawn over the water like you saw this morning, or living by the Laundromat? Are you opting for the latter?”

“I’m not opting,” she said, chastised and blushing. “But I can’t wash your clothes in the Atlantic, can I?”

“Wait for me to come back and we’ll decide what to do.”

When he returned in the late afternoon he said, “I found work—Mel’s Marina.”

Tatiana’s face was so crestfallen, Alexander laughed. “Tania, Mel owns a marina right on the other side of Memorial Park, a ten minute walk from here down the ocean promenade.”

“Does Mel have one hand like Jimmy?” asked Anthony.

“No, bud.”

“Does Mel smell like fish like Jimmy?” asked Tatiana.

“Nope. Mel rents boats. He’s looking for someone to maintain them, and also do a tour-ride twice a day around Key Biscayne and South Miami Beach. We go around, look at the sights and then we come back. I get to drive a motor boat.”

“But Alexander,” said Tatiana, “did you tell Mel you don’t know how to drive a motor boat?”

“Of course not. I didn’t tell you I didn’t know how to drive a camper either.”

She shook her head. He was something else.

“Seven thirty to six,” he said. “And he’s paying me twenty dollars. A day.”

“Twenty dollars a day!” Tatiana exclaimed. “Double the money in Deer Isle, and you don’t have to smell like fish. How can he afford to pay you so much?”

“Apparently rich lonely ladies love to take boat rides to far away beaches while waiting for their husbands to return from the war.”

Tatiana turned away from him so he wouldn’t see her face.

From behind, his arms went around her. “And if I’m very good to the ladies,” continued Alexander, moving her braid away to kiss her neck and brushing his groin against her, “sometimes they tip the captain.”

Tatiana knew he was trying to amuse her, to be light with her, and even as a tear ran down her cheek, she said, patting his hand, “Well, if there’s one thing you know how to do, Alexander, it’s be good to the ladies.”

In the morning, at seven, as Alexander was about to leave for the marina, he said to Tatiana, “Come by to see me just before ten. That’s when we go out for our morning tour.” He picked up Anthony, who was still in his pajamas. “Bud, I’m going to take you on the boat with me. You’ll be my co-captain.”

Anthony’s face shined. “Really?” Then his face fell. “I can’t go, Dad.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know how to steer a boat.”

“Neither do I, so we’re even.”

Anthony kissed his father on the mouth.

“Am I coming, too?” Tatiana asked.

“No. You are going to walk a mile to the store and buy food, and do laundry. Or suntan.” He smiled. “Do whatever you like. But come at twelve thirty to pick him up. We can have lunch together before I have to go out again at two.”

Tatiana kissed her husband on the mouth.

He took his boy with him! What happiness, what joy for Anthony. Tatiana did laundry, bought food and a Cuban cookbook, and sandwich meat, and potato salad and rolled everything back home in a newly purchased wooden cart. She opened all the windows to smell the ocean breeze while she made lunch as strings playing the Poco Allegretto from Brahms’s Third Symphony filled her houseboat from the kitchen radio. She loved that piece. She’d heard it played on Deer Isle, too.

Then she ran through Memorial Park to bring her two men food.