Winter Garden (3 page)

And there she was: her eighty-something-year-old mother, bundled up in blankets, sitting on the black bench in her so-called winter garden. A light snow began to fall; tiny flakes blurred the scene into an impressionistic painting where nothing looked solid enough to touch. Sculpted bushes and a single birdbath were covered in snow, giving the garden a strange, otherworldly look. Not surprisingly, her mother sat in the middle of it all, motionless, her hands clasped in her lap.

As a child it had scared Meredith—all that solitude in her mother—but as she got older it had begun to embarrass, then irritate her. A woman of her mother’s age had no business sitting alone in the cold. Her mother claimed it was because of her ruined vision, but Meredith didn’t believe that. It was true that her mother’s eyes didn’t process color—she saw only white and black and shades of gray—but that had never struck Meredith, even as a girl, as a reason for staring at nothing.

She opened the door and went out into the cold. Her boots sank in the ankle-deep snow; here and there, crusty patches crunched underneath and more than once she almost slipped. “You shouldn’t be out here, Mom,” she said, coming up beside her. “You’ll catch pneumonia.”

“It takes more cold than this to give me pneumonia. This is barely below freezing.”

Meredith rolled her eyes. It was the sort of ridiculous comment her mother always made. “I’ve only got an hour for lunch, so you’d better come in now.” Her voice sounded sharp in the softness of the falling snow, and she winced, wishing she had rounded her vowels more, tempered her voice. What was it about her mother that brought out the worst in her? “Did you know he invited me for lunch?”

“Of course,” her mother said, but Meredith heard the lie in it.

Her mother rose from the bench in a single fluid motion, like some ancient goddess used to being revered and adored. Her face was remarkably smooth and wrinkle-free, her skin flawless and almost translucent. She had the kind of bone structure that made other women envious. But it was her eyes that defined her beauty. Deep-set and fringed by thick lashes, they were a remarkable shade of aqua flecked with bits of gold. Meredith was sure that no one who had seen those eyes ever forgot them. How ironic it was that eyes of such remarkable hue were unable to see color.

Meredith took her mother’s elbow and led her away from the bench; only then, when they were walking, did she notice that her mother’s hands were bare, and turning blue.

“Good God. Your hands are blue. You should have on gloves in this cold—”

“You do not know cold.”

“Whatever, Mom.” Meredith bustled her mother up the back steps and into the warmth of the house. “Maybe you should take a bath to warm up.”

“I do not want to be warm, thank you. It is December fourteenth.”

“Fine,” Meredith said, watching her shivering mother go to the stove to stir the soup. The ragged gray wool blanket fell to the floor in a heap around her.

Meredith set the table, and for a few precious moments there was noise in the room, an approximation of a relationship, at least.

“My girls,” Dad said, coming into the kitchen. He looked pale and slight, his once-wide shoulders whittled down to nothing by weight loss. Moving forward, he put a hand on each woman’s shoulder, bringing Meredith and Mom in close. “I love it when we’re together for lunch.”

Mom smiled tightly. “As do I,” she said in that clipped, accented voice of hers.

“And me,” Meredith said.

“Good. Good.” Dad nodded and went to the table.

Mom brought a tray of still-warm feta cheese corn bread slices, drizzled with butter, put a piece on each plate, and then brought over bowls of soup.

“I walked the orchard this morning,” Dad said.

Meredith nodded and took a seat beside him. “I guess you noticed the back of Field A?”

“Yep. That hillside’s been giving us some trouble.”

“I’ve got Ed and Amanda on it. Don’t worry about the harvest.”

“I wasn’t, actually. I was thinking of something else.”

She sipped her soup; it was rich and delicious. Homemade lamb meatballs in a savory saffron broth with silken egg noodles. If she didn’t exercise extreme caution, she’d eat it all and have to run another mile this afternoon. “Oh, yeah?”

“I want to change that field to grapes.”

Meredith slowly lowered her spoon. “Grapes?”

“The Golden Delicious are not our best apple anymore.” Before she could interrupt, he held up his hand. “I know. I know. We built this place on Golden Delicious, but things change. Hell, it’s almost 2001, Meredith; wine is the new thing. I think we could make ice wine and late harvest at the very least.”

“In these times, Dad? The Asian markets are tightening and it’s costing us a fortune to transport our fruit. Competition is increasing. Hell, our profits were down twelve percent last year and this year doesn’t look any better. We’re barely hanging on.”

“You should listen to your father,” Mom said.

“Oh, please, Mom. You haven’t even been inside the warehouse since we updated the cooling system. And when was the last time you even looked at one of the year-end statements?”

“Enough,” Dad said with a sigh. “I didn’t want to start an argument.”

Meredith stood up. “I need to get back to work.”

Meredith carried her bowl over to the sink, where she washed it. Then she put the left over soup in a Tupperware container, stored it in the impossibly full refrigerator, and washed the pot. It hit the strainer with a clang that seemed loud in the quiet room. “That was delicious, Mom. Thanks.” She said a quick good-bye and left the kitchen. In the entryway, she put her coat back on. She was out on the porch, breathing in the sharp, frigid air, when her dad came up behind her.

“You know how she gets in December and January. Winters are hard for her.”

“I know.”

He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. “You two need to try harder.”

Meredith couldn’t help being hurt by that. She’d heard it from him all her life; just once she wanted to hear him say that Mom should try harder. “I will,” she said, completing their little fairy tale as she always did. And she would try. She always did, but she and her mother would never be close. There was just too much water under that bridge. “I love you, Dad,” she said, kissing his cheek.

“I love you, too, Meredoodle.” He grinned. “And think about grapes. Maybe I can still be a vintner before I die.”

She hated jokes like that. “Very funny.” Turning away, she went to her car and started the engine. Putting the SUV in reverse, she swung around. Through the lacy snow on the windshield, she saw her parents through the living room window. Dad pulled her mother into his arms and kissed her. They began to dance haltingly, although there was probably no music in the house. Her dad didn’t need any; he always said he carried love songs in his heart.

Meredith drove away from the intimate scene, but the memory of what she’d seen stayed with her. All the rest of the workday, while she analyzed different facets of the operation, looking for ways to maximize profit, and as she sat through endless management and scheduling meetings, she found herself remembering how in love her parents had looked.

The truth was, she had never been able to understand how a woman could be capable of passionately adoring her husband while simultaneously despising her children. No, that wasn’t right. Mom didn’t despise Meredith and Nina. She just didn’t care about them.

“Meredith?”

She looked up sharply. For a moment there, she’d been so lost in her own life that she’d forgotten where she was. At her desk. Reading an insect report. “Oh. Daisy. I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t hear you knock.”

“I’m going home.”

“Is it that late already?” Meredith glanced at the clock. It was 6:37. “Shit. I mean, dang it. I’m late.”

Daisy laughed. “You’re always staying late.”

Meredith began organizing her paperwork into neat piles. “Drive safely, Miss Daisy”—it was an old joke but they both smiled—“and remember Josh from the Apple Commission will be here at nine for a meeting. We’ll need donuts and coffee.”

“You got it. Good night.”

Meredith got her desk ready for tomorrow and then headed out.

Snow was falling in earnest now, blurring the view through her windshield. The wipers were moving as fast as they could, but it was still difficult to see. Every pair of oncoming headlights momentarily blinded her. Even though she knew this road like the back of her hand, she slowed down and hugged the shoulder. It reminded her of the one and only time she’d tried to teach Maddy to drive in the snow. The memory made her smile. It’s snow, Mom. Not black ice. I don’t have to drive this slow. I could walk home faster.

That was Maddy. Always in a hurry.

At home, Meredith slammed the door shut behind her and hurried into the kitchen. A quick glance at the clock told her she was late. Again.

She put her purse on the counter. “Jeff?”

“I’m in here.”

She followed his voice into the living room. He was at the wet bar they’d installed in the late eighties, making himself a drink. “Sorry I’m late. The snow—”

“Yeah,” he said. They both knew she’d left late. “Do you want a drink?”

“Sure. White wine.” She looked at him, not knowing what she even felt. He was as handsome as ever, with dark blond hair that was only now beginning to gray at the temples, a strong, square jaw, and steel-gray eyes that always seemed to be smiling. He didn’t work out and ate like a horse, but he still had one of those wiry, rawhide bodies that never seemed to age. He was dressed in his usual style—faded Levi’s jeans and an old Pearl Jam T-shirt.

He handed her a glass of wine. “How was your day?”

“Dad wants to plant grapes. And Mom was in the winter garden again. She’s going to catch pneumonia.”

“Your mom is colder than any snowfield.”

For a moment, she felt the years that bound them, all the connections that time had created. He’d formed an opinion of her mother more than two decades ago, and nothing had happened to change it. “Amen to that.” She leaned back against the wall. All at once the crazy/hectic/hurried pattern of her day—her week, her month—caught up with her and she closed her eyes.

“I got a chapter written today. It’s short. Only about seven pages, but I think it’s good. I made you a copy. Meredith? Mere?”

She opened her eyes and found him looking at her. A small frown creased the skin between his eyes, made her wonder if he’d said something important. She tried to recall but couldn’t. “Sorry. Long day.”

“You’re having a lot of those lately.”

She couldn’t tell if there was a hint of accusation in his voice or just a simple honesty. “You know what winter is like.”

“And spring. And summer.”

There was her answer: accusation. Even last year she would have asked him what was wrong with them. She would have told him how lost she felt in the gray minutiae of her everyday life, and how much she missed the girls. But lately that kind of intimacy felt impossible. She wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, or when, but distance seemed to be spreading between them like spilled ink, staining everything. “Yeah, I guess.”

“I’m going to the office,” he said suddenly, reaching for the jacket he’d draped over the back of the chair.

“Now?”

“Why not?”

She wondered if it was really a question. Did he want her to stop him, to give him a reason to stay, or did he want to leave? She wasn’t sure, and really, she didn’t care right now. It would be nice to take a hot bath and have a glass of wine and not have to try to think of what to say over dinner. Even better not to have to cook dinner at all. “No reason.”

“Yeah,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Th at’s what I thought.”

It had taken two weeks hiking through the jungle to find the kill.

Bugs had alerted them; and the smell of death.

Nina stood beside the guide who had led her here. For a terrible instant, she experienced it all: the flies buzzing in the clearing, the maggots that turned the bloody carcass almost white in places, the stillness of the African jungle that meant predators and scavengers were nearby, watching.

Then she began to compartmentalize the scene, to see it as a photographer. She pulled out her light meter and ran a quick check. When that was done, she chose one of the three cameras hanging from around her neck and focused on the ruined, bloodied body of the mountain gorilla.

Click.

She stepped around, kept focusing and snapping shots. Changing cameras, adjusting lenses, checking the light. Her adrenaline kicked in. It was the only time she ever really felt alive, when she was taking pictures. Her eye was her great gift; that and her ability to separate from what was going on around her. You couldn’t have one without the other. To be a great photographer you had to see first and feel later.

She paused long enough to put a little more Vicks under her nose and then squatted down closer to focus on the severed neck. From somewhere, she heard the sound of vomiting; it was probably the young journalist who had accompanied Nina. She could hardly worry about that now.

Click. Click.

The poachers wanted only the head, hands, and feet. The money items. There were places in the world where a gorilla’s hand was an ashtray in some rich asshole’s library.

Click. Click.

For the next hour, Nina framed and shot, changing cameras and lenses as often as she needed to, putting used film into canisters and labeling them before tucking them into her pocketed vest. When dusk finally fell, they began the long, hot, slippery trek back down through the jungle. The air was electric with sounds—bugs, birds, monkeys—and the sky was the color of fresh blood. A tangerine sun played hide-and-seek through the trees. Though they’d all chatted on the way up, the descent was quiet, solemn. The immediate aftermath was always worst for Nina. It was difficult sometimes to forget what she’d seen. Often, in the middle of the night, the images would return as nightmares and waken her from a dead sleep. More often than she liked to admit, she woke with tears on her cheeks.

At the bottom of the mountain, the group came to the small outpost that served as a town in this remote part of Rwanda. There, they climbed into the jeep and drove several hours to the conservation center, where they asked more questions and she took more photos.

“Mrs. Nina?”

She was standing by the center’s door, cleaning a lens, when she heard someone say her name. Putting the camera away, she looked up and saw the center’s head guide beside her. She smiled as brightly as she could, given how tired she was. “Hello, Mr. Dimonsu.”

“I am sorry to bother you when busy things are happening, but we forgot to give you most important phone message. It from Mrs. Sylvie. She say to tell you to call her.”

“Thank you.”

Nina took the bulky satellite phone out of her bag and carried all the gear to a clearing in the center of the camp. A quick compass check identified the satellite’s direction. She unfolded the dish part of the sat phone, set it on the ground, and pointed it at sixty degrees northeast. Then she hooked the phone up to the dish and turned it on. An LCD panel blinked to orange life, giving her the signal strength. When it looked good, she made the call.

“Hey, Sylvie,” she said when her editor answered. “I got the poacher photos today. Sick bastards. Give me, what, ten days to get them to you?”

“You’ve got six days. We’re thinking of the cover.”

The cover. Her two favorite words. Some women liked diamonds; she liked the cover of Time magazine. Or National Geographic. She wasn’t picky. She actually hoped someday to get the cover and about sixteen pages for her photographic essay titled “Women Warriors Around the World.” Her pet project. As soon as she was done—whenever the hell that might be—she’d submit freelance. “You’ll have it. And then I’m meeting Danny in Namibia.”

“Lucky girl. Have sex for me. But be ready to be back to work next Friday. The violence in Sierra Leone is escalating again. The peace talks are going to fall apart. I want you there before Christmas.”

“You know me,” Nina said. “Ready to fly at a moment’s notice.”

“I won’t call unless a new war breaks out. I promise,” Sylvie said. “Now go get laid while I try to remember what it’s like.”

A few days later, Nina was in Namibia, in a rented Land Rover, with Danny at the wheel.

It was only seven in the morning and already the December sun was bright and warm. By one o’clock, the temperature would be somewhere around 115 degrees, and it could well be hotter. The road—if you could call it that—was really a river of thick reddish gray sand that sucked at the car’s tires and sent them careening one way and then the other. Nina held on to the door handle and sat up straight, trying to make her body work like a shock absorber, rolling with the motion.

She used her other hand to steady the camera that hung around her neck so that the strap didn’t bite into her flesh. A T-shirt was wrapped around the camera and lens—not a very professional way to battle dust, but in all her years in Africa, it had proven to be the best compromise between protection and use. Here, sometimes you had only an instant to grab your camera and take the shot. No time to fumble with straps and cases.

She stared out at the desolate, blistering landscape. As the hours passed, taking them farther and farther from any semblance of civilization and deeper into one of the last true wildernesses of southern Africa, she noticed more herds of starving animals standing by dry riverbeds. In this summer heat, they were dropping to their knees, dying where they stood as they waited for the rains to come. Bleaching bones lay everywhere.

“You sure you want to find the Himba?” Danny asked, flashing her a grin as they slammed sideways and almost found themselves stuck in the sand. The dirt on his face made his white teeth and blue eyes look startlingly bright. Dust powdered his collar-length black hair and shirt. “We haven’t had a week to ourselves in months.”

The so-called road became passable again, and she brought up her camera, studying him through the viewfinder. Focusing on him, widening the shot just a little, she saw him as clearly as if he’d been a stranger: a handsome thirty-nine-year-old Irishman with pronounced cheekbones and a nose that had been broken more than once. Pub fights as a lad, he always said, and just now, when he was looking ahead, concentrating on the road, she could see the tiny frown lines around his mouth. He was worried that he’d followed bad advice on the wrong road, though he’d never say such a thing. He was a war correspondent and used to being “in the shit,” as he liked to say, used to following a story to hell and back. Even if it wasn’t his story.

She took the shot.

He flashed her a smile and she took another. “Next time you want to photograph women, I suggest waitresses at a poolside bar.”

She laughed and put the camera in her lap again, covering the lens with its cap. “I owe you one.”

“Indeed you do, love, and I’ll be collecting, you c’n be sure.”

Nina leaned back into the torn, uncomfortable seat and tried not to close her eyes, but she was exhausted. After two weeks tracking poachers through the jungle and four weeks before that in Angola watching people kill each other, she was tired to the bone.

And still, she loved it. There was nowhere in the world she’d rather be and nothing she’d rather be doing. Finding “the shot” was an adrenaline-fueled fun ride, and one she never tired of, no matter what sacrifices she had to make along the way. She’d known that sixteen years ago, when at twenty-one, with a journalism degree under her belt and a used camera in her backpack, she’d gone in search of her destiny.

For a while she’d taken any job that required a photographer, but in 1985 she’d gotten her big break. At Live Aid, the concert for famine relief, she’d met Sylvie Porter, then a newbie editor at Time, and Sylvie introduced Nina to a different world. The next thing Nina knew, she was on her way to Ethiopia. What she saw there changed everything.

Almost immediately her pictures stopped being only images and began to tell stories. In 1989, when Typhoon Gay smashed into Thailand, leaving more than one hundred thousand people homeless, it was Nina’s photograph of a single woman, up to her chest in dirty water, carrying her crying baby above her head, that graced the cover of Time magazine. Two years ago, she’d won the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the famine in Sudan.

Not that it came easily, this career of hers.

Like the Himba tribe of this region, she’d had to become a nomad. Soft mattresses and clean sheets and running water were luxuries she’d learned to live without.

“Look. There,” Danny said, pointing.

At first all she saw was an orange and red sky, full of dust. The world felt scorched and smelled of smoke. Gradually, the silhouettes on the ridge materialized into thin people, standing tall, gazing down at the dirty Land Rover and its even dirtier occupants.

“That them?” he asked. “Must be.”

Nodding, he closed the last distance between them and the ridge, and at the bend in a dry riverbed he parked the vehicle and got out.

The Himba tribe stood back, watching.

Danny walked slowly forward, knowing the chief would present himself. Nina followed his lead.

At the elder’s hut, they paused. The sacred fire burned in front of it, sending a stream of smoke into the now-purple sky. They both bent down, moved carefully, making sure not to pass in front of the fire. That would be seen as disrespectful.

The chief approached them and, in halting Swahili, Nina sought permission to take pictures, while Danny showed the tribe the fifteen gallons of water he had brought as a gift. For a people that walked miles for a handful of water, it was an overwhelming gift, and suddenly Nina and Danny were welcomed like old friends. Children surged at them, surrounded Nina in a giggling, jumping pack. The Himbas swept her and Danny into the village, where they were fed a traditional meal of maize porridge and sour milk and were entertained by the tribe. Later, when the night was blue with moonlight, they were led to a rounded mud hut, called a rondoval, where they lay together on a mat of woven grass and leaves. The air smelled sweet, of roasted corn and dry earth.

Nina rolled onto her side to face Danny. In the shadowy blue light, his face looked young, although, like her, he had old eyes. It was a hazard of the trade. They’d seen too many terrible things. But it was what had brought them together. What they had in common. The yearning to see everything, no matter how terrible, to know everything.

They’d met in an abandoned hut in the Congo, during the first war, both of them taking cover from the worst of the fighting; she to reload her camera, him to bandage a wound in his shoulder.

That looks bad, she’d said. Can I wrap it for you?

He’d looked up at her. All that prayin’ must have worked. God has sent me my own angel.

From then on, they’d been together all over the world. In the Sudan, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Congo, Rwanda, Nepal, Bosnia. They’d both become specialists on Africa, but wherever the big news was happening, they were likely to be there. Both had London apartments that did little more than collect junk mail, messages, and dust. Often their interests took them to separate hot spots—him to civil wars, her to humanitarian tragedies—and they spent months without seeing each other, which was just fine with Nina. It only made the sex better.

“I’m going to be forty next month,” he said quietly.

She loved his accent. The simplest sentence sounded edgy and sexy when he said it. Ah’m goin’ t’ be farhty next moonth.

“Don’t worry, twenty-five-year-olds still swoon when they see you. It’s the I-used-to-be-in-a-rock-band look of you.”

“It was a punk rock band, love.”

She snuggled closer to him, kissed his neck while her hand slid down his bare chest. His body responded as quickly as she expected, and within moments he had her undressed and they were doing what they’d always done best.

Afterward, Danny pulled her close. “How come we can talk about anything but us?”

“Who was talking about us?”

“I said I was almost forty.”

“And I’m supposed to see that as a conversation starter? I’m thirty-seven.”

“What if I miss you when you’re gone?”

“You know who I am, Danny. I told you at the very beginning.”

“That was more than four years ago, for God’s sake. Everything in the world changes except you, I guess.”

“Exactly.” She rolled over, spooning her body against his. She’d always felt safe in his arms, even when gunfire was exploding all around them and the night was full of screaming. Tonight, though, there was only the sound of a fire crackling outside, and of bugs buzzing and chirping in the dark.

She moved the tiniest bit away from him, but his arms closed around her, held her in place.

“I didn’t ask for anything,” he whispered into her ear.

You did, she thought, closing her eyes. An unfamiliar anxiety settled in the pit of her stomach. You just don’t know it yet.

On a ridge high above the makeshift village, Nina squatted on the crumbling edge of a riverbed. Her thighs burned from the effort it took to remain motionless. It was six in the morning, and the sky was a gorgeous blend of aqua and orange; already the sun was gaining strength.

Below her, a Himba woman walked through the village with a heavy pot balanced on her head and a baby positioned in a colorful sling at her breast. Nina raised the camera to her eye and zoomed in the telephoto lens until she could see perfectly. Like all the women of this nomadic African tribe, the young woman was bare-breasted and wore a furry goatskin skirt. A large conch-shell necklace—handed down from mother to daughter through the generations, a valued possession—showed the world that she was married, as did the style of her hair. Covered from head to toe in red ochre dust and butterfat to protect her skin from the terrorizing sun, the young mother’s skin was the color of old bricks. Her ankles, considered her most private part, were hidden beneath a row of thin metal bands that made a tinkling sound when she walked.