Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(130)

"Yes," Tatiana said. But I didn't want to come alone.

"Isn't it better here than your Soviet Union?"

They're in two rowboats and they're racing across Lake Ilmen, seeing who gets to the middle of the lake first--a kilometer of flat-out rowing. Tatiana, barely smiling, is methodical and unflappable. Pasha is crazed by his inability to beat his sister. And back on shore, their sister Dasha and their cousin Marina are jumping up and down rooting for Tania, and the grown-ups behind them are waving left and right and rooting for Pasha. It's summer and the air smells of fresh water.

But they're not there anymore. Not on Lake Ilmen, not in Luga, not in Leningrad, not in Lazarevo. Yet they never leave her.

Andhe doesn't leave her.

Tatiana blinked away her life as she drank her tea. "Tell me about your first love," she said.

"His name was Tommy. He was a lead singer in a band. God, he was cute. Blond and small and--"

"But you tall."

"I know. I smothered him as if he were my son. It was perfect. He was seventeen and so talented. I used to sneak down the fire escape to go watch him perform at Sid's at the Bowery. I was awed by him."

"What happened to you two?" Tatiana asked, looking into her cup.

"Oh, I found out what musician boys did after they finished playing their sets."

"I thought you went to watch him."

"I had to be back home. He would tell me he'd be by to see melater . And then I found out that between the end of set andlater , he would have a number of girls in the back room of the bar. He would have them, and then come up the fire escape into my bedroom at five in the morning, and be with me."

"Oh, no."

"I cried for three weeks straight. And then I met Jude."

"Who's Jude?"

"The second boy."

Tatiana laughed.

Vikki placed her hand on Tatiana's back and caressed her hair softly. "Tania." Her voice was soothing. "Thereis a second love. And a third love. And if you're lucky, a fourth and a fifth, too."

"That feels nice," Tatiana said, holding her cup tighter and closing her eyes.

"I think you're only supposed to wear black for a year, mourn for a year. And I'll tell you--Jude was Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

better than Tommy. I felt more for him. He was a better--" Vikki paused. "He was a better person. Better at everything."

Tatiana nodded.

"Tania, you've forgotten what a great man feels like."

"If only I forgotten."

Vikki pressed Tatiana to her. "Ah, Tania," she said. "We'll get you there. I promise. We'll get you forgetting yet."

Once upon a time, young girls met young boys when the moon was full and the nights were dark, when there was a fire and singing and joking, when there was wine and taffeta and dancing, when the music was loud and the laughing, too, when one pair of eyes stared at another, and the girl's chest swelled and the boy came up close, and suddenly she looked up, he looked down and...

Once there was first love.

Vikki had one. Edward had one. Isabella and Travis had one.

First love, first kiss, first everything.

Once when they were so young.

And then they got older.

Time passed with the cycles of the moon, and the music stopped, and the girl took off her dress, and the fire went out, and they stopped laughing. But eventually, as surely as the sunrise, another man stood in front of the girl in the taffeta dress and smiled, and she looked up at him, and he gazed down at her.

It wasn't first love.

It wasn't a first kiss.

But it was love nonetheless.

And the kiss was sweet.

And the heart still pounded.

And the girl went on. She went on because she wanted to live, and she wanted to be happy. She wanted to love again. She didn't want to sit by the window looking out onto the sea. She didn't want to remember. She wanted to forget the first man. All she wanted was to remember the first feeling.

She wanted to take that feeling and place it on another man, and smile again, because the heart was too full and too bright not to love again. Because the heart needed to feel and needed to soar.

And because life was long. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

She went on and stopped grieving, and she smiled and put on another dress and stood close to another man. She sang again, and joked again, after all, she did not die, she was still on this earth and she was still the same person, the person who needed to laugh every once in a while, to laugh with the roses, even if she knew that she would never again in all those many days ahead love as she loved when her heart was seventeen.

To protect herself she walked through life favoring the bleeding half of her body. She was careful not to step too harshly, she was careful to shield it from other eyes, from other cries. Her greatest asset became her greatest liability. And what time allowed her to do was to become an expert at hiding her deformity from the world. What time allowed her to do was say, as she walked hunched uphill carrying the cross on her back, that everyone had one, and this was hers.

She was so lucky to have her baby boy, to not be alone, to have love, to havelife . And yesterday when she was young, she had been given more than she deserved.