Alexander, Anthony, Gordon Pasha, and Harry come back inside and continue their half-time conversation in the dining room, standing like pillars against the white linen walls in their dark sweaters and dark trousers, holding their beers and discussing the latest crazy thing Anthony is doing that Harry needs to build something to protect him from, and Pasha saying, how long am I going to keep mopping up after you? Harry is in charge of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization that used to be the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. He oversees the deployment of the National Missile Defense designed to protect all fifty states from an attack. His interest in it has always been to design a robust and virtually perfect defense system to counteract a large threat, as well as counteracting with conventional weapons—which he also designs. As he keeps saying, he likes to play both defense and offense.
He researches and tests ground-based lasers, space-based lasers, and automated space vehicles while continuing to play politics with the Energy Department over the costs of nuclear power systems in space. He tells his father of the unbelievable resistance he has encountered to his proposals for certain space-based directed and kinetic energy weapons that he admits do happen to have significant power requirements attached.
“How significant?” asks Alexander.
“Well…significant,” says Harry. “But see, I build the defense systems, because that’s my job, and they’re supposed to deliver the energy system, because that’s their f*cking job. I don’t ask them about plasma arcs of metallic railguns, do I?”
“I think it’s just as well,” says Pasha.
They’re so absorbed they don’t even see they’re blocking Tatiana’s path to the dining room table, to which she is trying to deliver her own energy system—homemade butter yeast rolls.
“Hmm,” says Alexander, taking one warm roll, as she tries to squeeze past them with the tray. Stepping in front of her, he rips the roll into four chunks, gives three to his sons, takes the tray from her, puts it on the table. She moves this way and that, but they won’t let her pass, surrounding her on all sides, Alexander in front, Pasha and Harry flanking her, Anthony behind her. Periwinkling, she vanishes inside their navy chests, looking up at her husband and her sons, from one face to the other and finally saying, “What? Do you four have nothing better to do than stand idly while I run around with thirty of you to feed?”
“We’re not standing idly,” says Harry. “We’re discussing the fate of the free world.” He bends nearly in half to kiss his mother’s cheek.
“Mom, how’s your burn?” says Pasha, taking hold of her forearm and turning it over. “I see you’ve taken off my dressing.” He touches the wound.
For a moment, the five of them stand mutely together. Tatiana pats Pasha’s hand and says, “Burn is fine. Free world is fine. And you’ve been watching too much football, stop blocking me.” She turns around and lifts her eyes to her firstborn son whom she’s not touching, and who’s not touching her, but who’s watching her silently. His eyes are not peaceful. His limb twitches. He wants to communicate something. But he says nothing.
Jane comes in from the butler’s pantry with her baby in one hand and cranberry jelly in the other and says with exasperation, “Will you step out of her way, can’t you see she’s busy?” She tuts when no one listens. “Anthony, please—you at least, can you go open the door? The doorbell has been ringing for an hour.”
“So if you heard it, why didn’t you go open the door?” Anthony says to his sister.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but not only am I cooking, I’m lactating, too. What are you doing? Exactly. Go open the door, I said. You’re not a general in this house. I don’t have to salute you nineteen times like my brothers do. Now go.”
As Anthony obediently goes to answer the front door, Alexander pulls Tatiana away for a moment into the empty gallery, where he presses her against the wall, lifts her face up and kisses her in brief seclusion before Washington’s eyes peer at them from under palms and photographs.
The person outside is a pretty, very small, blonde woman in her early thirties, dressed nicely and smiling nicely for the holidays, holding a blueberry pie in her hands and a bouquet of blue irises. She introduces herself as Kerri, and says that she is Victoria’s fourth-grade teacher and a good friend of Jane’s, who apparently has invited her for dinner, since Kerri’s family is out East. “You must be Anthony,” she says, looking slightly flushed and intimidated.
Anthony wonders what Janie and Vicky have been saying about him. He lets Kerri through, taking the flowers from her hand. “Blueberry pie,” he says. “My favorite.”
“Really?” She looks pleased, relaxes.
In the kitchen, Anthony Jr. was cornered into a wall by his sister Rebecca who said, “TO-nee, you vile beast, tell me right now what you did to Washington or I’ll tell Dad on you.” Anthony had braved a place he proclaimed he hated (“full of clucking women”) to grab a warm roll, but he hadn’t been quick enough walking back out.
Pushing Rebecca off him, he said, “Like I care. Tell away—and stop calling me Tony.” At nearly fifteen Anthony was a six-foot reed, an inch taller than his sisters. He was dark and Eurasian; all angles and bones and eyes and lips because his hair had been shaved off except for the thin Mohawk line running from his forehead to the back of his neck. He was dressed forbiddingly in black for Thanksgiving, like a Visigoth, and was grim like one, too.
“What did you do to him?” Rebecca repeated. “He’s walking around this house like an apparition, gazing at walls. He won’t even go and watch football with Dad and Grandpa. He hasn’t said one boo to Grandpa, you know how Grandpa hates that. How is he ever going to get to know them?”
“Maybe if you stopped calling me Tony, I wouldn’t have had to take matters into my own hands,” said Anthony Jr.
“Anthony, then, OK,” conceded his sister. “Now tell me what you’ve done to my Washington before I wring your neck. Did you scare him?”
“No,” said Anthony Jr. “I mean—if he got scared, that’s his problem.”
“Oh, no! What did you say?”
“Nothing.” Anthony Jr. paused. “Nothing. He is very nosy, won’t stop asking questions about Dad. He asked me to show him something from Dad’s Vietnam days.”
“Oh, no! What did you show him? His SOG knife?”
“He wouldn’t still be in this house if I showed him that. No. I showed him the most innocent thing. I’m telling you, Beck, if your slam of a boyfriend can’t take a Zippo lighter, he’s got no business in this family.”
“Which Zippo lighter?” Anthony’s old Special Forces Zippo lighters were engraved with all manner of bestial sayings and rude drawings. “What did it say?” She covered her eyes. “Please don’t let it be…”
“This Zippo read, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil,’” Goth-like Anthony Jr. said, lowering his voice only slightly in his grandmother’s children-filled Thanksgiving kitchen, not noticing Anthony standing next to Kerri in the doorway, “‘for I’m the baddest motherf*cker in the valley.’”
“ANTHONY JR.!” That was Rebecca, Tatiana, Jane, Rachel, all over him.
“Get the hell out of here, will you, and stop causing trouble like always.” That was an unsmiling and unamused Anthony. Kerri was smiling and amused.
As he was being shoved out of the kitchen, an unfazed Anthony Jr. was telling Rebecca, “Like I said, if that silly boy can’t handle a little Zippo, what the hell is he doing with you?”
“Please don’t concern yourself with that, TO-Neeee!” Rebecca taunted his departing back.
Anthony smiled politely at Kerri. “Kids these days,” he said, passing the flowers to his mother. “Jane!” he called. “Your friend is here.”
Dinner was as out of control as only a Thanksgiving dinner could be with fifteen children, all squabblingly bunched together at their own table. Two china plates were broken, five drinks were spilled, the mashed potatoes were almost cold, and someone cut himself with a butter knife. Good thing there was a doctor in the house.
Alexander carved the two birds. At the table, no one, not even the young ones, put food on their plate until Alexander helped himself to his first forkful of turkey. He poured Tatiana drink, he stood to make a toast, he even said Thanksgiving grace over their abundant table, looking at her. “All that we have is a gift that comes from You.”
And there was Washington, watching him, watching her.
The wives sat next to their husbands, all except Anthony’s wife, who wasn’t there. (“Where is Ingrid, Mom?” Jane had asked. “We don’t know and we don’t ask,” replied Tatiana. “You hear me? We don’t ask.” To which Janie, in her inimitable Dad-like style, said, “Good f*cking riddance. I hope she never comes back. I’m sorry I ever introduced them. She’s been nothing but trouble. All she does is make his life harder.”) Kerri sat next to Jane, and Anthony sat between his daughters, who mothered him, ladled food onto him, cut his turkey and poured his drink. By deliberate and careful omission, no one mentioned the absent Ingrid. Anthony’s two sons—one chafing at being lumped with “the GD babies,” one disquietingly quiet—sat away from the adults and any possible questions about their missing mother.
Their plates scraped clean of food (oh, they learned, they all learned), the kids were done with dinner in twelve minutes, and a truculent Anthony Jr. was asked to watch Samson in the pool while the adults sat a little longer. He loudly protested. Harry said not to worry, Anthony said, no, he will do it. Tommy pulled at his brother, saying I’ll help you. Anthony Jr. said he didn’t want to leave the table yet like he was a child, and Anthony said he wasn’t being given a choice, to which Anthony Jr. got up with a snark, to which Anthony got up with a clench, which prompted Tatiana to jump up before Alexander got up and things got really out of hand. “Anthony Jr.” That’s all Tatiana said, and the boy fled from the table. Anthony sat back down; everything calmed down. The adults sat another hour. Never mind, said Harry. It’s that age. Ask Dad what you were like when you were fourteen. A small glance passed between Alexander and Anthony. Alexander said, “He was always a good kid. But besides, headbutting was not allowed.”
“It’s not allowed with me either,” said Anthony. “There’s still headbutting.”
To change the subject, Washington said that at fourteen he used to give his own mother a hard time when his dad was not around—which was most of the time.
To change the subject much further—because Anthony himself was not around most of the time—Janie asked Tatiana how long she should nurse the baby. The men at the table—particularly the three grown, mature men once nursed by Tatiana—groaned.
To expand on the favorably changed subject, Mary asked Tatiana if she had any complications having Janie at thirty-nine. Anthony wanted to know if it was possible for women, even doctors, to talk about things other than breasts and childbirth at the Thanksgiving table. Yes, let’s talk about quench guns instead, said Harry. No, Tatiana replied to Mary, no complications—and then stared at Pasha until he rolled his eyes, turned to Mary, and said, “What did I tell you earlier? You don’t listen, do you?” They were forced to tell everyone they were expecting a baby. The family was surprised and pleased. Alexander opened another bottle of Napa wine.
Washington was completely tongue-tied. (Perhaps it was the tongue piercing, Tatiana thought.) He could do no better than answer the family’s questions in monosyllables. Even shiny-eyed Rebecca became frustrated. They left him alone and asked questions of Kerri instead, who was a much better public speaker, was soft-spoken, laughed easily and was pleasant to look at.
After a protracted throat clearing, Washington did finally speak. “Mrs. Barrington—”
“Please. Call me Tatiana.”
An impossibility. Washington didn’t call her anything when he continued, “Rebecca, um, told me you both, you two, you and your husband, um, were from Russia. Have you, um, gone back since—all the, you know, changes there?”
Tatiana told Washington that for their fiftieth wedding anniversary gift seven years ago, the children did pitch in and buy them two white night weeks in St. Petersburg, but they ended up not going.
“You didn’t, um, want to go?” asked Washington.
Tatiana didn’t know what to say. Eto bylo, bylo i proshlo/vse proshlo/i viugoy zamelo…
It was Alexander who answered Washington. “We almost went,” he said, “but we’d already been to Leningrad, you see, and we heard about this place, right in the United States, that also had protracted nights and shining lights—but also rivers that ran through hotels, and circuses and jumping tigers, and indoor rollercoasters, and—what else, Tania?”
“I don’t know. Free drinks? Indoor smoking? Cheap food? Interesting things on television?”
“Yes, and poker.” Alexander smiled at his kids. “The thought of their mother in that cauldron of decadence was a shock to our grown children, but we thought we’d try it once, just for a lark, so we exchanged Leningrad for two weeks at the MGM-Grand.” And then he smiled at Tatiana. “Tania didn’t do too bad, did you? Beginner’s luck, they say.”
Tatiana assented. “Las Vegas is a fascinating place,” she said casually. “We’re thinking of taking a little trip back.” She glanced at Alexander. So what if they take that little trip once a month? Las Vegas makes her smile and forget the remorse and the impossibility of seeing with old weakened eyes the streets of their once life that have become diminished by time, but which their old weakened hearts still see undiminished. All they have to do is close their eyes. For it is Leningrad, the death of everything, that was also the birth of everything: every ocotillo and wolfberry they plant today was borne out of the bombed-out sunlit streets of the city yesterday that the soul can’t bury, can’t hide, can’t drive away.
Washington whistled. “You know, I’ve never met anyone who’s been, um, you know, married fifty-seven years,” he said. “I’m quite…impressed. My mother has been married for twenty-five years.” He paused. “But to three different husbands, with several boyfriends and some breaks in between.”
“I told Washington, Grammy,” Rebecca said with a giggle, “that it was love at first sight with you two, and he said he didn’t believe it because he doesn’t believe in love in first sight.”
“I didn’t say that,” said Washington. “I think it’s something at first sight, just not necessarily love—” And broke off suddenly, turning deep red. The table went quiet. The grown children glanced at their parents uncomfortably; Tatiana and Alexander glanced at each other with amusement; Anthony glared at Rebecca who glared at Washington.
Tommy came back and asked Washington if he wanted to go—and Washington jumped up and flew out—“…swimming,” finished Tommy.
Rebecca apologized and said she didn’t know what was wrong with him. “He is so twitchy tonight. He is usually very sweet.”
Alexander coughed fakely. Under the table Tatiana kicked him. To her daughter, she said, “Janie, your friend Kerri must know quite a bit about us because she’s not asking us any of the usual questions.” Where did you meet? How did you escape? What happened in Vietnam? And she didn’t peer into their faces as though looking for traces of things that could not be politely asked for, which is what Washington had been doing all day. Kerri didn’t do any of that.
Kerri, rosy and pretty, blushed and chuckled. “Both Jane and Vicky have told me a bit,” she admitted. “The lore is quite intimidating. I mean, I’m just a schoolteacher. I know Little League dads and librarians.”
“Little League dads can be very intimidating,” said Tatiana. “You’ve never met our friend, Sam Gulotta.”
“How is he feeling? Perhaps, he’ll fly up for Christmas?” asked Jane. “Kerri can meet him then.”
“I don’t know generals, or presidential advisors, or POWs,” Kerri continued, clearing her throat, looking slightly faint of heart. “But for what it’s worth,” she said, “not being a Harvard alum and all, I’m not a cynic yet. I believe in love at first sight.”
This made everyone fall in a pause, but not for long because Jane exclaimed happily, “And Kerri plays a fantastic guitar!”
Even Anthony laughed. “Does she indeed?” he said, with great amusement staring at a befuddled and embarrassed Kerri.
Rachel and Rebecca studied Kerri. “Does she indeed?” they said.
Before Anthony’s open smile was analyzed further—or God forbid returned—by Kerri, Tatiana stood from the table signaling the end of dinner, and to her daughter whispered, “Child, you have absolutely no shame.”
“That’s right, Holy Mother,” said Janie. “None whatsoever.”
The men were dispatched to play pool, or poker, or watch TV, and Rachel and Rebecca, reluctantly trying to be adults, went into the kitchen with the women to clean up. Tatiana wasn’t cleaning. No one would let her lift even her own plate. They sat her down, gave her a cup of tea, and she directed the Tupperware and the plastic wrap over the leftovers. The kids were all wildly in the pool, all except for Samson, who was in the kitchen climbing wet into Amy’s arms, and for Washington—who was now dressed and sitting damply at the table next to Tatiana.
Rebecca, already bored with cleaning up after five minutes, threw herself over the table and said, “Grammy, Washington really likes your photographs.”
Washington, who was sitting two feet away from Tatiana, said nothing.
“Well,” said Tatiana, “tell Washington thank you.”
“He is very observant, and he pointed out you had all kinds of photos but no wedding ones of you and Grandpa. He wanted to know why that was.”
“Washington wanted to know this, did he?” Tatiana said, her bemused eyes on Washington. “Has Washington been to every wall in my house? And if so, ask him what he was doing in my bedroom.”
Washington, as red as the spring barrel cactus, stuttered and said, “No—that’s right—perhaps—I’m just saying—yes, perhaps there.”
“They’re not there either,” said Rebecca. “I know. I told him it was because the camera technology didn’t come to Russia in the eighteenth century when you got married.”
“You know so much,” said Tatiana.
“But do you know what he told me?” With a big mischievous smile, Rebecca lowered her voice. “He thinks it’s because you and Grandpa never actually got married.”
“He thinks this, does he?”
“Isn’t that simply delicious?” Rebecca exclaimed.
“Becky,” said Washington, “do you always have to tell everybody absolutely everything you’re thinking?”
“Yes!” said Rebecca.
“So let me understand,” said Tatiana, “not only does Washington think my husband didn’t love me when he met me, but that he also didn’t marry me. Is that right?”
“That’s right!” Rebecca said joyously. “Well, why should he have married you? He didn’t love you!” She pinched Tatiana, poked her, tickled her. “Come on, Grammy, save your family’s honor. Prove to Washington Grandpa loved you and married you. Or give us something to really gossip about.”
“Yes,” said Tatiana, “because usually you have absolutely nothing to say.” She was infinitely amused by the delectable Rebecca.
Alexander and Anthony walked into the kitchen, smelling of cigarette smoke. “Mayday, Mayday!” Jane said. “Men in the kitchen during clean-up.”
“I just wanted to make sure you haven’t moved from the table,” Alexander said to Tatiana, patting her shoulder as he walked past. “I know you.” He picked up Jane’s sleeping baby from the infant seat and sat next to her.
Rachel turned to Anthony. “Daddy, did you hear? Beck’s new boyfriend thinks you were an illegitimate child.”
“Oh, isn’t he a prize,” said Anthony.
Alexander twinkled at Tatiana, and everybody hooted it up, except for Washington, who now looked mortified and terrified, sinking into the chair.
Rachel and Rebecca were egging Tatiana on. Amy, Mary, and Jane were cleaning up and egging Tatiana on. Kerri was helping get the dessert out and saying nothing.
Alexander said lightly, “Anthony, go restore your mother’s good name. Go get the pictures for the girls if you want.” He glanced at Tatiana. “What? Do you want them all to think I didn’t make an honest woman out of you?”
Rachel and Rebecca yelped with excitement. “I can’t believe it, we’re going to see your wedding photos!” squealed Rachel. “I take everything back, Becks. Washington is brilliant. It’s all because of him and his insinuating provocations. No one has ever seen the wedding photos. We didn’t even know for sure they existed!”
Now the infant was awake, and crying.
“I just want you to know, Grammy,” Rebecca said mock-solemnly, “I defended you; I told Washington you and Grandpa had a crazy love once. Isn’t that right?”
“If you say so, dear.”
Rebecca threw her arms around Alexander. “Grandpa, tell me, isn’t that right?”
“What are you, writing a book?”
“Yes!” She laughed. “Yes, I am. A book about you and Grammy for my senior thesis.” She smothered Alexander’s head. “I’m going to fill it up with things you think we’re too young to know,” she whispered, then smothering Tatiana, practically sitting on her lap. “If you’re very good, Grammy,” she murmured affectionately, kissing Tatiana’s face, “and show this aspiring novelist the nice wedding photo to fire up my fervid imagination, I’m going to tell you what Washington really said about you and Grandpa, and he is going to help me write my book of love.”
“A book of love?” said Tatiana. “Well, I for one, can’t wait.”
After loud overtures from his daughters, Anthony finally left the house and went up the winding path to the “museum,” to the mobile home where he and his parents had lived from 1949 to 1958.
It has been left untouched. The furniture, tables, the paint on the walls, the ’50s cabinets, the dressers, the closets, are all unchanged, remaining as they once were.
And in her closet in the bedroom, past the nurse’s uniform, far away in the right-hand corner on the top shelf, lies the black backpack that contains Tatiana’s soul.
Every once in a while when she can stand it—or when she can’t stand it—she looks through it. Alexander never looks through it. Tatiana knows what Anthony is about to see. Two cans of Spam in the pack. A bottle of vodka. The nurse’s uniform she escaped from the Soviet Union in that hangs in plastic in the museum closet, next to the PMH nurse’s uniform she nearly lost her marriage in. The Hero of the Soviet Union medal in the pack, in a hidden pocket. The letters she received from Alexander—including the last one from Kontum, which, when she heard about his injuries, she thought would be the last one. That plane ride to Saigon in December 1970 was the longest twelve hours of Tatiana’s life. Francesca and her daughter Emily took care of Tatiana’s kids. Vikki, her good and forgiven friend, came with her, to bring back the body of Tom Richter, to bring back Anthony.
In the backpack lies an old yellowed book, The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems. The pages are so old, they splinter if you turn them. You cannot leaf, you can only lift. And between the fracturing pages, photographs are slotted like fragile parchment leaves. Anthony is supposed to find two of these photographs and bring them back. It should take him only a few minutes.
Cracked leaves of Tania before she was Alexander’s. Here she is at a few months old, held by her mother, Tania in one arm, Pasha in the other. Here she is, a toddler in the River Luga, bobbing with Pasha. And here a few years older, lying in the hammock with Dasha. A beaming, pretty, dark-haired Dasha is about fourteen. Here is Tania, around ten, with two dangling little braids, doing a fantastic one-armed handstand on top of a tree stump. Here are Tania and Pasha in the boat together, Pasha threateningly raising the oar over her head. Here is the whole family. The parents, side by side, unsmiling, Deda holding Tania’s hand. Babushka holding Pasha’s, Dasha smiling merrily in front.
Someday Tatiana must tell Alexander how glad she is that her sister Dasha did not die without once feeling what it was like to love.
Alexander. Here he is, before he was Tatiana’s, at the age of twenty, getting his medal of valor for bringing back Yuri Stepanov during the 1940 Winter War. Alexander is in his dress Soviet uniform, snug against his body, his stance at-ease and his hand up to his temple in teasing salute. There is a gleaming smile on his face, his eyes are carefree, his whole man-self full of breathtaking, aching youth. And yet, the war was on, and his men had already died and frozen and starved…and his mother and father were gone…and he was far away from home, and getting farther and farther, and every day was his last—one way or another, every day was his last. And yet, he smiles, he shines, he is happy.
Anthony is gone so long that his daughters say something must have happened to him. But then he appears. Like his father, he has learned well the poker face and outwardly remains imperturbable. Just as a man should be, thinks Tatiana. A man doesn’t get to be on the President’s National Security Council without steeling himself to some of life’s little adversities. A man doesn’t go through what Anthony went through without steeling himself to some of life’s little adversities.
In this hand Anthony carries two faded photographs, flattened by the pages of the book, grayed by the passing years.
The kitchen falls quiet, even Rachel and Rebecca are breathless in anticipation. “Let’s see…” they murmur, gingerly picking up the fragile, sepia pictures with their long fingers. Tatiana is far away from them. “Do you want to see them with us, Grammy? Grandpa?”
“We know them well,” Tatiana says, her voice catching on something. “You kids go ahead.”
The grandchildren, the daughter, the son, the guests circle their heads, gaping. “Washington, look! Just look at them! What did we tell you?”
Shura and Tania, 23 and 18, just married. In full bloom, on the steps of the church near Lazarevo, he in his Red Army dress uniform, she in her white dress with red roses, roses that are black in the monochrome photo. She is standing next to him, holding his arm. He is looking into the camera, a wide grin on his face. She is gazing up at him, her small body pressed into him, her light hair at her shoulders, her arms bare, her mouth slightly parted.
“Grammy!” Rebecca exclaims. “I’m positively blushing. Look at the way you’re coming the spoon on Grandpa!” She turns to Alexander from the island. “Grandpa, did you catch the way she is looking at you?”
“Once or twice,” replies Alexander.
The other colorless photo. Tania and Shura, 18 and 23. He lifts her in the air, his arms wrapped around her body, her arms wrapped around his neck, their fresh faces tilted, their enraptured lips in a breathless open kiss. Her feet are off the ground.
“Wow, Grammy,” murmurs Rebecca. “Wow, Grandpa.”
Tatiana is busily wiping the granite island.
“You want to know what my Washington said about you two?” Rebecca says, not looking away from the photograph. “He called you an adjacent Fibonacci pair!” She giggles. “Isn’t that sexy?”
Tatiana shakes her head, despite herself glancing at Washington with reluctant affection. “Just what we need, another math expert. I don’t know what you all think math will give you.”
And Janie comes over to her father who is sitting at the kitchen table, holding her baby son, bends over Alexander, leans over him, kisses him, her arm around him, and murmurs into his ear, “Daddy, I’ve figured out what I’m going to call my baby. It’s so simple.”
“Fibonacci?”
She laughs. “Why, Shannon, of course. Shannon.”
The fire is on. It’s dark outside and still. They’ve had dessert; Kerri’s blueberry pie was so good that Anthony asked for seconds, and not only did he ask for seconds but he asked what other kind of pie she made and if she played acoustic or electric guitar, and whether she knew how to play his favorite: “Carol of the Bells.” Amy and Mary wanted to know where she bought the pie crust because it was delicious, and Kerri turning red said she made the crust herself. “You made the pie crust yourself?” asked an incredulous Amy. “Who does that?”
The family settled in to louder pockets of familiarity. From the other rooms of the house came noise, of smaller children fighting, a pinball machine, of a pool cue being thrown as a javelin, of tickling, of baseball card trading, of glasses falling on the floor, of older girls maternally screaming, “If you don’t stop it this instant, I swear, I’ll…”
Finally the fifteen long-haired young collect in the gallery around a karaoke machine and while their parents and grandparents and guests sit in captivity and cheer, they belt out song after song with glee, indifferently out of tune, ecstatically out of time. Rachel and Rebecca put on quite a show shouting at the top of their voices they want to be young the rest of their life, how good it feels to be alive, and they want to be eighteen till they die.
Everybody loves the karaoke; Alexander and Tatiana used to delight the grandkids—and their own children—by together singing “I Walk the Line” and “Groovy Kind of Love” (everyone’s favorite), and Alexander alone singing to loud howls, à la Leonard Cohen, that if Tatiana wanted another kind of love, he’d wear a mask for her, and all three brothers, like the Animals, boisterously singing the naughty, chest-tugging “When I Was Young.” But now the machine belongs firmly to those twenty and under.
And then Anthony Jr. picks up the microphone, his black eyes on his father, and without music, without a beat, without any accompaniment, puts away the Goth and the snark for three minutes of an astonishing a cappella rendition of “The Summer of ’69" that fills the house, shows his extraordinary but deeply hidden gifts, leaves them all speechless—even the ten-year-olds—and after the final those were the best days of my life, forces Anthony to leave the room, with Tommy trailing him, asking, “What’s the matter, Dad? He was so good, what’s the matter?”
Alexander sits in the corner of the small sofa by the window watching them all, slightly away from the hullaballoo, though two of Janie’s youngest girls, Vicky and Nicky, are nestled around him.
Tatiana comes and stands behind him, leaning over. “You okay?” she whispers. “Loud in here? Go inside, lie down. You’re tired.”
She can’t have a whisper with him without her children, who are watching, pipe up with, “Dad, really, go lie down, you’re exhausted.” “It’s been such a long day, how are you feeling?” “Daddy, go ahead, don’t stay up for our sake, you know what night owls we are.”
He laughs. “Stop mothering me. I’m fine,” he says. “But can you see Pasha and Harry are getting that home movies look about them? Now is a very good time for me to take a long walk.” He turns to Tatiana. “You coming?”
His is a rhetorical question. He knows she likes to skulk nearby while they dissect the seconds of time past. Not him; not anymore. Taking the baby from Janie, Alexander goes for a stroll in the lit-up agaves with the newly named monarch, Shannon Clay III, while Tatiana hides inside.
The kids do this every Thanksgiving after karaoke—the custom of the holiday. The lights go out in the den and a crowd gathers, the teenage girls, the Harvard girls, this year even the aloof boyfriend, and the petite and curious fourth-grade teacher. With Tommy by his side but Anthony Jr. nowhere to be seen, Anthony cranks out an old 8mm projector, and soon choppy black- and-white images appear on the cream wall capturing a few snapshots from the canyon of their life—that tell nothing, and yet somehow everything. They watch old movies, from 1963, 1952, 1948, 1947—the older, the more raucous the children and parents becoming.
This year, because Ingrid isn’t here, Anthony shows them something new. It’s from 1963. A birthday party, this one with happy sound, cake, unlit candles. Anthony is turning twenty. Tatiana is very pregnant with Janie. (“Mommy, look, that’s you in Grammy’s belly!” exclaims Vicky.) Harry toddling around, pursued loudly and relentlessly by Pasha—oh, how in 1999 six children love to see their fathers wild like them, how Mary and Amy love to see their precious husbands small. The delight in the den is abundant. Anthony sits on the patio, bare chested, in swimshorts, one leg draped over the other, playing his guitar, “playing Happy Birthday to myself,” he says now, except it’s not “Happy Birthday.” The joy dims slightly at the sight of their brother, their father so beautiful and whole he hurts their united hearts—and suddenly into the frame, in a mini-dress, walks a tall dark striking woman with endless legs and comes to stand close to Anthony. The camera remains on him because Anthony is singing, while she flicks on her lighter and ignites the candles on his cake; one by one she lights them as he strums his guitar and sings the number one hit of the day, falling into a burning “Ring of Fire…” The woman doesn’t look at Anthony, he doesn’t look at her, but in the frame you can see her bare thigh flush against the sole of his bare foot the whole time she lights his twenty candles plus one to grow on. And it burns, burns, burns…And when she is done, the camera—which never lies—catches just one microsecond of an exchanged glance before she walks away, just one gram of neutral matter exploding into an equivalent of 20,000 pounds of TNT.
The reel ends. Next. The budding novelist Rebecca says, “Dad, who was that? Was that Grammy’s friend Vikki?”
“Yes,” says Anthony. “That was Grammy’s friend Vikki.”
Tak zhivya, bez radosti/bez muki/pomniu ya ushedshiye goda/i tvoi sere-bryannyiye ruki/v troike yeletevshey navsegda…
So I live—remembering with sadness all the happy years now gone by, remembering your long and silver arms, forever in the troika that flew by…
Back even further, to 1947 he takes them. “Look at how funny Grammy is!” the grandchildren peal. “Is she arm wrestling with Grandpa?” All you can see through the unsteady camera are her two thin white arms over a man’s strong dark forearm upright and motionless on the picnic table. “She was always running around chasing you, Ant.” “What a knock-out she was.” “Still is,” says Rebecca. “Daddy, look at you, sitting on her lap, being kissed by her. It’s so weird! How old were you here?”
“Um—four.”
“Where is Grandpa? You’ve been showing us all these reels for years, and we’ve never seen anything of him.”
“Well, he was the one holding the camera, wasn’t he? You saw his forearm. What more do you want? It’s just for him. She was always performing for him,” says Anthony.
“Come on, you don’t have a single reel with him?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on, Dad. You must have something! Come on, show us something. Show us Grandpa, Dad, Ant. Please.”
Reluctantly Anthony rummages in the cabinet where the reels are kept. Unwillingly he spools one on, impossibly adept with his one arm, and in a moment, to a collective inhale, flickering on the cream wall, as if by ghostly magic, a young dark man appears near the swimming pool, putting on a tank top to cover his scarred back when he sees the camera on him. He hops up on the diving board, arms out, body straight, about to dive in. The blonde woman is in the water. Click click click, the projector whirrs. His white teeth, his wet black hair, his long-legged, muscular frame fill the wall. The vague shapes of his dark tattoos are visible. He’s been roofing, his chest is broad, his arms enormous. He dives in, far and strong, in an arc, and pulls the woman by her treading feet under the water. When they come up for air, she is trying to get away, but he won’t let her. Only when they’re in the frame together can you really see how large he is and how tiny she is. Soundless, whirr, whirr, just the two of them flinging their bodies against each other, kicking, splashing, and then she jumps into his hands and he lifts her above his head as she straightens up, in a little bikini, arms out, and sways, sways to balance, and for a moment they stand straight, she in the palms of his hands, with her own arms outstretched, right above him. And then he flicks her, sending her falling wildly back, the camera is shaking from laughter, and he is shaking from laughter, and when she comes out of the water she jumps on his back and covers his neck and head with kisses as he turns to the camera and bows and waves, a smile on his face. Click click, whirr whirr, the spool unspools, the wall goes white, and the only sound in the room is the vibration of the projector.
“They were so young,” whispers Rebecca.
“Like us,” says Washington.