Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(107)

Tatiana took a step back. "I'm sorry," she said. "You're right. I just wanted you to--"

"I know what you wanted! You're bringing me your bastard child. What? That's going to make it all better?"

"Make what better?" said Vikki.

Esther didn't reply to Vikki as she continued to raise her voice. "Do you know what your father-in-law said to me as he left my house for the last time fourteen years ago? He said,My son is none of your business, cunt . That's what he said to me! My flesh-and-blood nephew, my Alexander none of my business. I wanted to help them, I said I would keep the boy while he and his wife went to train-wreck their lives in the Soviet Union, but he spat on my offer. He didn't want any part of me, of our family. He never wrote to me, never telegraphed. I never heard from him." She paused, panting. "What's the bastard doing now, anyway?"

"He is dead," Tatiana said faintly.

Esther couldn't even mouth an "Oh." Her hands clutching the door-knob, she staggered back, and said, "Well, fine. Don't you, whoever you are, come to me now and tell me your stranger son ismy damned business." With her trembling hand Esther slammed the door as loudly as she could and the girls were left standing on the porch.

"Hmm," said Vikki. "How did you expect that to go?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Trying hard not to cry, Tatiana turned around and walked back down the steps. "Better than that, I think."

What had she expected? She didn't know the relations between Alexander's father and aunt before the Barringtons left the United States, but she was sure of one thing from Esther's reaction: Esther knew nothing--not about her brother, not about her sister-in-law and not about Alexander. And really, that was the only thing Tatiana had come to find out--whether Esther had any information that might help Tatiana. She didn't. Tatiana was done. The promise of distant family, of perhaps a familial bond for her son, was too much of an intellectual intangible for Tatiana at a time when she was single-mindedly set on just one thing--finding out the truth about what happened to Alexander.

She placed Anthony back in the carriage, and they walked down the path to the street. "Fourteen years," Vikki said. "You'd think she'd get over it. Some people have such long memories."

Slowly they made their way back to town. "Hey, what was that word?" Tatiana asked. "What did Alexander's father call her when he left?"

"Never mind. Ladies don't use that kind of language. Our Esther has a bit of the soldier in her. Someday I'll teach you the bawdy words in English."

Tatiana said, "I know bawdy words in English." Quietly. "Just not that one."

"How would you know anything? Dictionaries don't have them. Phrase-books don't have them." Vikki prodded her. "Not any phrase-books I've ever seen."

"I once," said Tatiana, "had very good teacher."

They were on Main Street when a car pulled up to the sidewalk and Esther jumped out, her makeup long gone, her eyes red, her gray coiffed hair disheveled. She went in front of Tatiana.

"I'm sorry," Esther said. "It was a shock to see you. And we had never heard a word from my brother since he left America. I didn't know what happened to them. No one in the State Department would tell us a thing."

Back at the house, the girls were fed to bursting with ham and bread and ham soup, and were given coffee, and Anthony was put upstairs into a bed, barricaded on all sides, and allowed to nap.

For someone who had harbored a grudge for over a decade, Esther cried like the wife of the hanged when Tatiana told her about her brother and his wife, and Alexander.

She insisted that the girls stay until Sunday, and the girls did. Esther was a decent woman. She herself had no children, was sixty-one, a year younger than Harold, and the only surviving Barrington. Her own husband had died five years earlier, and Esther now lived alone with Rosa, her housekeeper.

"Was this where Alexander lived?" Tatiana kept her eyes on Esther, afraid to look around, afraid she might see a vestige of a child Alexander.

Esther shook her head. "His house is about a mile away from here. I don't speak to the people who live in it now, they're right snobs, but if you want I could drive you past there so you can take a look."

"They had woods behind their house?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Not anymore," Esther replied. "All houses there now. The woods were nice. Alexander had a friend--"

"Teddy? Or Belinda?"

"Is there any part of his life you don't know?"

"Yes," said Tatiana. "The present part."

"Well, Teddy died in '42, in the Battle of Midway. And Belinda became a frontline nurse and is now in North Africa. Or Italy. Or wherever those troops are now. Poor Alexander. Poor Teddy. Poor Harold." Esther shook her head. "Stupid Harold. His whole family ruined, and that boy--that golden, unbelievable boy--do you have a picture?"

Tatiana shook her head. "He remained what he was, Esther. You haven't heard from him, then?"

"Of course not."

"Or anything about him?"

"Not a word. Why?"

Tatiana struggled up. "We really must be going."