The Summer Garden. Paullina Simons

that moment, his wife ran out of the house. “What are you doing to my husband?” she shrieked.

      Tatiana scooped Anthony off the man’s lap. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” she said quickly.

      “You won’t be back,” said Nick, gaping after her.

      Now they were sitting on the bench eating ice cream.

      Soon there was the distant squawk of gulls.

      “There’s Daddy,” Tatiana said breathlessly.

      The boat was a twenty-foot lobster sloop with a headsail, though most fishing boats were propelled by gas motors. It belonged to Jimmy Schuster, whose father, upon passing on, passed it on to him. Jimmy liked the boat because he could go out in it and trawl for lobsters on his own—a one-man job, he called it. Then his arm got caught in the pot hauler, the rope that pulls the heavy lobster traps out of the water. To free himself, he had to cut off his hand at the wrist, which saved his life—and him from going to war—but now, with no small irony, he needed deckhands to do the grunt work. Trouble was, all the deckhands had been in Hürtgen Forest and Iwo Jima the last four years.

      Ten days ago Jimmy had got himself a deckhand. Today, Jimmy was in the cockpit aft, and the tall silent one was standing pin straight, at attention, in orange overalls and high black rubber boots, staring intently at the shore.

      Tatiana stood from the bench in her white cotton dress, and when the boat was close enough, still a bay away, she flung her arm in a generous wave, swaying from side to side. Alexander, I’m here, I’m here, the wave said.

      When he was close enough to see her, he waved back.

      They moored the boat at the buyers’ dock and opened the catches on the live tanks. Jumping off the boat, the tall man said he would be right back to off-load and clean up and, rinsing his hands quickly in the spout on the dock, walked up from the quay, up the slope to the bench where the woman and the boy were sitting.

      The boy ran down to him. “Hey,” he said and then stood shyly.

      “Hey, bud.” The man couldn’t ruffle Anthony’s hair: his hands were mucky.

      Under his orange rubber overalls, he was wearing dark green army fatigues and a green long-sleeved army jersey, covered with sweat and fish and salt water. His black hair was in a military buzzcut, his gaunt perspiring face had black afternoon stubble over the etched bones.

      He came up to the woman in pristine white who was sitting on the bench. She raised her eyes to greet him—and raised them and raised them, for he was tall.

      “Hey,” she said. It was a breathing out. She had stopped eating her ice cream.

      “Hey,” he said. He didn’t touch her. “Your ice cream is melting.”

      “Oh, I know.” She licked all around the wafer cone, trying to stem the tide but it was no use, the vanilla had turned to condensed milk and was dripping. He watched her. “I can never seem to finish it before it melts,” she muttered, getting up. “You want the rest?”

      “No, thank you.” She took a few more mouthfuls before she threw the cone in the trash. He motioned to her mouth.

      She licked her lips to clean away the remaining vanilla milk. “Better?”

      He didn’t answer. “We’ll have lobsters again tonight?”

      “Of course,” she said. “Whatever you want.”

      “I still have to go back and finish.”

      “Yes, of course. Should we, um, come down to the dock? Wait with you?”

      “I want to help,” said Anthony.

      Tatiana vigorously shook her head. She would not be able to get the fish smell off the boy.

      “You’re so clean,” said Alexander. “Why don’t you stay here with your mother? I’ll be done soon.”

      “But I want to help you.”

      “Well, come down then, maybe we’ll find something for you to do.”

      “Yes, nothing that involves touching fish,” muttered Tatiana.

      She didn’t care much for Alexander’s job as a lobsterman. He reeked of fish when he returned. Everything he touched smelled of it. A few days ago, when she had been very slightly grumbling, almost teasing, he said, “You never complained in Lazarevo when I fished,” not teasing. Her face must have looked pretty crestfallen because he said, “There’s no other work for a man in Stonington. You want me to smell like something else, we’ll have to go somewhere else.”

      Tatiana didn’t want to go somewhere else. They just got here.

      “About the other thing …” he said. “I won’t bring it up again.”

      That’s right, don’t bring up Lazarevo, their other moment by the sea near eternity. But that was then—in the old bloodsoaked country. After all, Stonington—with warm days and cool nights and expanses of still and salty water everywhere they looked, the mackerel sky and the purple lupines reflecting off the glass bay with the white boats—it was more than they ever asked for. It was more than they ever thought they would have.

      With his one good arm, Jimmy was motioning for Alexander.

      “So how did you do today?” Tatiana asked him, trying to make conversation as they headed down to the dock. Alexander was in his big heavy rubber boots. She felt impossibly small walking by his side, being in his overwhelming presence. “Did you have a good catch?”

      “Okay today,” he replied. “Most of the lobsters were shorts, too small; we had to release them. A lot of berried females, they had to go.”

      “You don’t like berried females?” She moved closer, looking up at him.

      Blinking lightly, he moved away. “They’re good, but they have to be thrown back in the water, so their eggs can hatch. Don’t come too close, I’m messy. Anthony, we haven’t counted the lobsters. Want to help me count them?”

      Jimmy liked Anthony. “Buddy! Come here, you want to see how many lobsters your dad caught today? We probably have a hundred lobsters, his best day yet.”

      Tatiana leveled her eyes at Alexander. He shrugged. “When we get twelve lobsters in one trap and have to release ten of them, I don’t consider that a good day.”

      “Two legals in one trap is great, Alexander,” said Jimmy. “Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of this. Come here, Anthony, look into the live-well.”

      Keeping a respectful distance, Anthony peered into the tank where the lobsters, already banded and measured, were crawling on top of one another. He told his mother he didn’t care much for their claws, even bound. Especially after what his father told him about lobsters: “They’re cannibals, Ant. Their claws have to be tied up or they would eat each other right in the tank.”

      Anthony said to Jimmy, his voice trying not to crack, “You already counted them?”

      Alexander shook his head at Jimmy. “Oh, no, no,” Jimmy quickly said. “I was busy hosing down the boat. I just said approximately. Want to count?”

      “I can’t count past twenty-seven.”

      “I’ll help you,” said Alexander. Taking out the lobsters one by one, he let Anthony count them until he got to ten, and then carefully, so as not to break their claws, placed them in large blue transfer totes.

      At last Alexander said to Anthony, “One hundred and two.”

      “You see?” said Jimmy. “Four for you, Anthony. That leaves ninety-eight for me. And they’re all perfect, as big as can be, right around a five-inch carapace—which means shell, bud. We’ll get 75 cents a piece for them. Your dad is going to make me almost seventy-five dollars today. Yes,” he said, “because of your dad, I can finally make a living.” He glanced at