Winter Garden (18 page)

On her walk home—no trolleys for her today; she wants this journey to last—it seems as if winter is rising from the ground itself. Brittle black leaves fall from the trees and hang suspended in the chilly air. From a distance, there are so many of them it looks like a flock of crows flying too low. Beneath a leaden sky, buildings look drab and hunkered down. Even the mint-green castle looks forlorn in this weather.

By the time she gets home, the snow is accumulating on the cobblestoned street and on the bare tree limbs.

At her door, she pauses just long enough to catch her breath. In that instant, she imagines the conversation she will have and exhaustion presses down on her. Still, she straightens her spine and walks inside.

The room is crowded with furniture from their old life. Her grandmother’s bed is pushed up to the wall and stacked with quilts. Their own narrower bed abuts the closet. When they want to open the closet door, they must move the bed. A bureau that her mother has hand-painted and a pair of lamps line the wall beneath the window that won’t open. The only beautiful piece of furniture in the apartment—a gorgeous mahogany writing desk that was her father’s—is covered with jars of pickles and onions.

She finds her mother at the stove. Olga is at the table, peeling potatoes.

Her mother takes one look at her and moves the pot off the stove, then wipes her hands on the apron tied about her waist. Although her dress is baggy and old, and her hair is unkempt after a day at the food storehouse, her eyes are keen and the look in them is knowing. “It is Friday,” she says at last.

Olga rises from her chair. In a dress that is too tight, she looks like a flower sprouting from a seed shell. Vera can’t help thinking that her sister is a child at fifteen, and yet she remembers it as the age when she met Sasha. She had thought she was full-grown then. A woman standing on a bridge with the man she intended to love.

“Did you learn something?” Olga asks.

Vera can feel the color draining from her face.

“Come, Olga,” Mama says briskly. “Put on your coat and your valenki. We are going for a walk.”

“But my boots are too small for me,” Olga whines. “And it is snowing.”

“No argument,” her mother says, walking over to the big rounded wood and leather chest by their bed. “Your grandmother will be home soon from work.”

Vera stands back, saying nothing while her mother and sister dress for the cold. When everyone is ready, they go outside, into the blurry white world. The hush of the falling flakes mutes everything around them. Even the whine and clatter of the trolley sounds distant. In this whispered world, they seem isolated, separate. They are even more alone as they enter the Grand Park. By the time they arrive, streetlamps are lit throughout the square. There are no people out here on this cold early evening, only the gilded row of noble houses in the distance.

They come to the centerpiece of the park: the giant bronze statue of a winged horse. It rises up from the snow in defiance, dwarfing everyone who looks upon it.

“These are dangerous times,” Mama says when they are in front of the statue. “There are things . . . people that cannot be spoken of in the closeness of an apartment or the confines even of a friendship. We will speak of it . . .” She pauses, draws in a breath, and softens her voice. “Him . . . now and not again. Yes?”

Olga stamps her foot in the snow. “What is going on?”

Mama looks to Vera for the answer.

“I went to the Great Hall today, to ask about Papa,” she says, feeling tears sting her eyes. “He is gone.”

“What does that mean?” Olga says. “Gone? Do you think he escaped?”

It is Mama who has the strength to shake her head. “No, he has not escaped.” She glances around again and moves closer, so that the three of them are touching each other, huddled together in the shadow of the statue. “They have killed him.”

Olga makes a terrible sound like she is choking, and Vera and Mama hug her tightly. When they draw back, all are crying.

“You knew,” Vera says, not bothering to wipe her eyes, although her tears are freezing instantly, sticking her eyelashes together until she can hardly see.

Mother nods.

“When they took him away?”

She nods again.

“You let me go every Friday,” Vera says. “If I had known—”

“You had to learn in your way,” her mother says. “And I hoped . . . of course . . .”

“I do not know what to do now,” Vera says. She feels disconnected from herself, from her own life.

“I have been waiting for you to ask me this,” Mama says. “You both have been waiting. Hoping. Now you know: this is our life. Our Petya will not come back. This is who we are now.”

“What does that mean?” asks Olga.

“Live,” Mama says quietly.

And Vera understands. It is time for her to quit marking time and start doing something with it.

“I do not know what to dream about,” Vera says. “It all seems so impossible.”

“Dreams are for men like your father. They are the reason we mourn him now, in private and secretly, as if we are criminals. He planted in your head all kinds of fantasies. Let that go. Quit being his children and become women of this kingdom. There are things to do out there; I promise you this.”

Their mother pulls them into a fierce hug and kisses both their cheeks. When they are close, she whispers, “He loved you two more than his words, more than his own breath. That will never die.”

“I miss him,” Olga says, starting to cry again.

“Yes,” Mama says in a throaty voice. “Forever. That’s how long we’ll have an empty place at the table.” She draws back at last. “But we will not speak of him again. Not ever. Not even to each other.”

“But . . . you cannot just stop your feelings,” Vera says.

“Perhaps,” her mother says, “ but you can refuse to express them, and that is what we will do.” She puts her hand into the big pocket of her wool coat and pulls out a cloissoné butterfly.

Vera has never seen anything so beautiful. This is not the kind of piece their family can own—it is something from the kings or the wizards at least.

“Petyr’s father made this,” her mother says, revealing a family history they knew nothing about. “It was to be for the little princess, but the king thought it shoddy work, so your grandfather was fired and learned to make bricks of clay instead of pieces of art. He gave it to your father on our wedding day. And now it is what we have to remember someone in our family who is lost to us. Sometimes, if I close my eyes when I hold it, I can hear our Petya’s laugh.”

“It’s just a butterfly,” Vera says, thinking it is not so lovely as she’d thought; certainly it is not a substitute for her papa’s laughter.

“It is all we have,” her mother says gently.

Vera wraps herself in grief as only a teenage girl can, but as the winter wanes and spring blooms across the kingdom, she begins to feel burdened by her melancholy.

“It is not fair that I cannot go to university,” she whines to her mother one warm summer day, many months after their makeshift funeral at the park. They are kneeling in the black earth weeding their small garden. Both have already worked a full day in the city; this is their summertime routine. A day’s labor in the kingdom and then a two-hour cart ride beyond the walled city to the countryside, where they rent a small patch of ground.

“You are too old to be whining about fairness, and obviously you know better,” her mother says.

“I want to study the great writers and artists.”

Her mother sits back on her heels and looks at Vera. In the syrupy golden light that falls at ten o’clock at night, she looks almost pretty again. Only her brown eyes remain stubbornly old. “You live in the Snow Kingdom,” she says.

“I think I know this.”

“Do you? You work in the greatest library in the world—there are three million books at your fingertips each day. The royal museum is on your way home. And your sister works there. Anytime you wish you can see the masters’ paintings. Galina Ulanova is dancing this season, and do not forget the opera.” She makes a tsking sound. “Do not tell me that a young woman of this kingdom needs to go to university to learn. If you believe such a thing, you are not”—her voice lowers—“ his daughter.” It is the first time her mother has mentioned Father and it has the intended effect.

Vera slides sideways off her own heels and sits in the warm dirt, looking down at the fragile green rosette of a baby cabbage beside her.

I am Petyr Andreyevich’s daughter, she thinks, and in that reclamation, she remembers the books her father had read to her at night, and the dreams he’d encouraged her to dream,

For the remainder of that week, Vera contemplates the discussion in the garden. At work she wanders around the library, walking amid the stacks with the ghost of her father beside her. She knows that all she needs is someone to help her understand the words she reads. It is as if she is a seedling, with a tender green strand pushing up through earth that resists her movement. The sun is up there, though, if only one keeps growing upward.

And then one day she is at the counter organizing parchment rolls when a familiar face appears. It is an aged man, walking with a cane across the marble floor, his tattered brown cleric’s robes trailing along behind him. At a table near the wall, he sits down and opens a book.

Vera approaches him slowly, knowing that her mother would not approve of her plan, but a plan it suddenly is.

“Excuse me,” she says softly to the man, who looks up at her through rheumy eyes.

“Veronika?” he says after a long moment.

“Yes,” she says. This man used to come by the house, in older, better days. She does not think to mention her father, but he is here between them, as surely as the dust. “I am sorry to bother you, but I seek a tutor. I haven’t much money.”

The cleric removes his glasses. It takes him a while to speak, and when he does, his voice is barely more than a whisper. “I cannot help you myself. It is the times in which we live. I should stop writing.” He sighs. “As if I could . . . but I know some students perhaps who are not so afraid as an old man. I will ask.”

“Thank you.”

“Be careful, young Veronika,” he says, putting on his glasses. “And tell no one of this conversation.”

“This secret is safe with me.”

The cleric doesn’t smile. “No secret is safe.”

It was almost midnight when Meredith finally got home. Exhausted by the length of the day and yet captivated by tonight’s story, she fed the dogs, played with them for a while, then changed into a comfortable pair of sweats. She was in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea when a car drove up.

Jeff. Who else would it be at twelve-thirty?

She stood there, her hands gripping the sink’s porcelain rim, her heartbeat going crazy as the front door opened.

Nina walked into the kitchen, looking vaguely pissed off.

Meredith felt a rush of disappointment. “It’s past midnight. What are you doing here?”

Nina walked over to the counter, grabbed a bottle of wine, found two coffee mugs in the sink, rinsed them out, and poured two glasses full. “Well, I’d like to talk about the story, which is becoming pretty damn detailed for a fairy tale, but since you’re afraid of it, I’ll say what I came for. We need to talk.”

“Tomorrow is—”

“Now. Tomorrow you’ll be armored up again and I’ll be intimidated by your competence. Come on.” Then she took Meredith by the arm and led her into the living room, where she got a fire going by pressing a button.

Whoosh went the gas flames, and on came the heat and light.

“Here,” she said, handing Meredith a cup of wine.

“Don’t you think it’s a little late for wine?”

“I’m not even going to answer that. You’re lucky it’s not tequila, the way I’m feeling.”

Nina. Always the drama.

Meredith sat on one end of the sofa, her back tilted against the armrest. Nina sat on the opposite end. In the middle, their toes brushed against each other.

“What do you want, Nina?” Meredith asked.

“My sister.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You were the one who took me trick-or-treating when Dad was working, remember? You always made my costume. And remember, when I tried out for cheerleader, you helped me with my routine for weeks, and when I made it you were happy for me, even though you hadn’t made the squad when you tried out? And when Sean Bowers asked me to the prom, you were the one who told me not to trust him. We might not have had much in common, but we were sisters.”

Meredith had forgotten all of that, or at least, she hadn’t thought of it in years. “That was a long time ago.”

“I went away and left you. I get it. And Mom is not an easy person to be left with. And we don’t know each other very well, but I’m here now, Mere.”

“I see you.”

“Do you? Because frankly, you’ve been a bitch the last few days. Or maybe not a bitch, just kind of mopey, and one woman who won’t talk to me at dinner is pretty much my quota.” Nina leaned forward. “I’m here and I miss you, Mere. It’s like you don’t want to look at me or talk to me at all, I think—”

“Jeff left me.”

Nina sat back abruptly. “What?”

Meredith couldn’t say it again. She shook her head, felt the sting of tears. “He’s living at the motel by his office.”

“That prick,” Nina said.

Meredith actually laughed. “Thanks for not assuming it was my fault.”

The look Nina gave Meredith was caring and compassionate, and Meredith knew suddenly why so many strangers opened up to her sister. It was that look, the one that promised to comfort and care, but not to judge.

“What happened?” Nina asked quietly.

“He asked me if I still love him.”

“And?”

“I didn’t answer,” Meredith said. “I didn’t answer. And I haven’t called him yet, haven’t gone after him or written him a passionate letter or even begged him to come back. No wonder he left me. He even said . . .”

“What?”

“That I was like Mom.”

“So now I think he’s a prick and an asshole.”

“He loves me,” Meredith said. “And I’ve hurt him. I could tell. That’s why he said it.”

“Who gives a shit about his feelings? That’s your problem, Mere, you care too much about everyone else. What do you want?”

She hadn’t asked herself that question in years. She’d gone to the college they could afford, not the one she’d wanted; she’d married younger than planned because she’d gotten pregnant; she’d come home to Belye Nochi because Dad needed her. When had she ever done what she wanted?

Strangely, she thought about the early days at the orchard, when she’d started the gift shop and stocked it with things she loved.

“You’ll figure it out, Mere. I promise.” Nina came over and hugged her.

“Thanks. I mean it. You helped.”

Nina sat back. “Remember that the next time I burn the hell out of the stove or leave a mess in the kitchen.”

“I’ll try,” Meredith said, leaning forward to clink her glass against Nina’s. “To new beginnings.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Nina said.

“You’ll drink to anything.”

“Indeed I will. It’s one of my best traits.”

For the next two days, Mom shut down, turned from quiet into stone-like, even refusing to come down for dinner. Nina would have been upset by it, and maybe even done something about it, but the reason was obvious. All of them were feeling the same way. As the days turned tonight and moved forward, Nina found herself unable even to think about the fairy tale.

Dad’s birthday was approaching.

The day of it dawned bright and sunny, with a cloudless blue sky.

Nina pushed the covers back and got out of bed. Today was the day she’d come home for. None of them had mentioned it, of course, they being the kind of women who didn’t talk about their pain, but it had been between them always, in the air.

She went to her bedroom window and looked out. The apple trees seemed to be dancing; millions of green leaves and white blossoms shimmied in the light.

She grabbed her clothes from a heap on the floor, dressed quickly, and left the bedroom. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d say to her mother on this tenderest of days; she just knew that she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts. Her memories.

Across the hall, she knocked on Mom’s door. “Are you up?”

“Sunset,” Mom said. “I’ll see you and Meredith then.”

Disappointed, Nina went down to the kitchen. After a quick breakfast, she set off up the driveway to Meredith’s house, but all she found there were the huskies, sleeping in sunny patches on the porch. Of course, Meredith had gone to work.

“Shit.”

Since the last thing she wanted to do was roam through this quiet house on Dad’s birthday, she returned to Belye Nochi, plucked her car keys from the bowl on the entry table, and set off for town, looking for anything to occupy her time until sunset. Along the way she stopped now and then to take photographs, and at noon she ate greasy American food at the diner on Main Street.

Before the day ended, though, she was back at Belye Nochi. She slung her camera bag over her shoulder and went inside, where she found Meredith in the kitchen, putting something into the oven.

“Hey,” Nina said.

Meredith turned to her. “I made dinner. And set the table. I thought . . . afterward . . .”

“Sure,” Nina said, walking over to the French doors, looking out. “How do we do this?”

Meredith came up beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “I guess we just open the urn and let the ashes fall. Maybe you could say something.”

“You’re the one who should say something, Mere. I let him down.”

“He loved you so much,” Meredith said. “And he was proud of you.”

Nina felt tears start. Outside, the sky seemed to fold across the orchard in ribbons of salmon pink and the palest lavender. “Thanks,” she said, leaning against her sister. She had no idea how long they stood there, together, saying nothing.

“It is time,” Mom finally said behind them.

Nina eased away from Meredith, steeling herself for whatever was to come. As one, she and her sister turned.

Mom stood in the doorway, holding a rosewood box inlaid with ivory. She was practically unrecognizable in a purple chiffon evening blouse and canary-yellow linen pants. A red and blue scarf was coiled around her neck.

“He liked color,” Mom said. “I should have worn more of it. . . .” She smoothed the hair from her face and glanced out the window at the setting sun. Then she drew in a deep breath and walked toward them. “Here,” she said, holding out the box to Nina.

It was just a box full of ashes, not really her dad, not even all she had left of him, and yet, when she took it from her mother, the grief she’d been suppressing rolled over her.

She heard Mom and Meredith leave the kitchen and walk out through the dining room. She followed slowly behind them.

A cool breeze came through the open French doors, brushing her cheek, bringing with it the scent of apples.

“Come on, Nina,” Meredith called from outside.

Nina repositioned the camera strap around her neck and headed for the garden.

Meredith and her mother were already there, standing stiffly by the iron bench beneath the magnolia tree. The last bit of sunlight illuminated the new copper column and turned it into a vibrant flame.

Nina hurried across the grass, noticing a second too late that it was slippery out here. It all happened in an instant: her toe caught on a rock and she started to fall and she reached out to stop it and suddenly the box was flying through the air. It crashed into one of the copper columns and shattered.

Nina hit the ground hard enough to taste blood. She lay there, dazed, hearing Meredith’s Oh, no, repeat over and over.

And then her mother was pulling her to her feet, saying something in Russian. It was the gentlest voice she’d ever heard from her mother.

“I dropped it,” Nina said, wiping her face, smearing the grit across her cheek, and at the thought of that she started to cry.

“Do not cry,” Mom said. “Just think if he were here. He would say, What the hell did you expect, Anya, waiting until dark?”

Her mother actually smiled.

“We’ll call it an ash-tossing,” Meredith said, her mouth quirking up.

“Some families scatter. We fling,” Nina said.

Mom was the first to laugh. The sound was so totally foreign that Nina gasped, and then she started to laugh, too.

They stood there, the three of them, laughing together in the middle of the winter garden, with the apple trees all around them, and it was the best tribute to him they could have made. And later, when Mom and Meredith had gone inside, Nina stood there alone, in the quiet, staring down at a velvety white magnolia blossom dressed in gray ash. “Did you hear us laughing? We’ve never done that before, not the three of us, not together. We laughed for you, Dad. . . .”

She would have sworn she felt him beside her then, heard his breathing in the wind. She knew what he would have said to her tonight. Nice trip, Neener Beaner. See you in the fall. “I love you, Dad,” she whispered as a single apple blossom floated on the breeze and landed at her feet.

Meredith took the chicken Kiev out of the oven and set the pan on the cold stove to cool.

Drying her hands on a plaid towel, she took a deep breath and went into the living room to be with her mom. “Hey,” she said, sitting down beside her on the sofa.

The look her mother gave her was staggering in its sadness.

It connected them for a moment, enough that Meredith reached out and touched her mother’s hand.

For once, her mother didn’t pull away.

Meredith wanted to say something—just the right thing to ease their pain, but of course there were no such words.

“We should eat now,” Mom said at last. “Go get your sister.” Meredith nodded and went out to the winter garden, where Nina was photographing the ash-dusted magnolia blossom.

Meredith sat down on the bench beside her. The bronze sky had darkened so that all they could really see were white flowers, which looked silver in the fading light.

“How are you doing?” Nina asked.

“Shitty. You?”

Nina recapped her lens. “I’ve been better. How’s Mom?”

Meredith shrugged. “Who knows?”

“She’s better lately, though. I think it’s the fairy tale.”

“You would think that.” Meredith sighed. “How the hell would we know? I wish we could really talk to her.”

“I don’t think she’s ever really talked to us. We don’t even know how old she is.”

“How come we didn’t think that was weird when we were kids?”

“I guess you get used to what you’re raised with. Like those feral kids who actually think they’re dogs.”

“Only you could find a way to work feral children into a conversation like this. Come on,” Meredith said.

They went back into the house and found Mom at the table, with dinner served. Chicken Kiev with au gratin potatoes and a green salad. There was a decanter of vodka and three shot glasses in the center of the table.

“That’s my kind of centerpiece,” Nina said, taking a seat while Mom poured three shots of vodka.

Meredith sat down beside her sister.

“A toast,” her mother said quietly, raising her shot glass.

There was a moment of awkward silence as they looked at one another. Meredith knew that each of them was thinking about what to say, how to honor him without either making it hurt more or sound sad. He wouldn’t have wanted that.

“To our Evan,” Mom said at last, clinking her glass against the others. She downed the alcohol in one swallow. “Your father loved it when I drank.”

“It’s a good night for alcohol,” Meredith said. She drank her vodka and held her empty glass out for more. The second shot burned down her throat. “I miss hearing his voice when I come into the house,” she said.

Mom immediately poured herself another shot. “I miss the way he kissed me every morning.”

“I got used to missing him,” Nina said quietly. “Pour me another.”

By the time she finished her third shot of vodka, Meredith felt a buzzing in her blood.

“He would not want us speaking about him in this way,” Mom said. “He would want . . .”

In the silence that followed, they all looked at each other. Meredith knew they were thinking the same thing: how did you just go on?

You just do, she thought, and so she said, “My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. I love everything about it—how my kids look forward to it, the decorations, hearing the first Christmas album, the food. And I’ll say it now: I hated those damn family road trips we used to take. Eastern Oregon was the worst. Remember the time we stayed in teepees? It was one hundred degrees and Nina sang ‘I think I Love You’ for four hundred miles.”