Lone Star (16 page)

I said, Hannah, if we go to your stupid market, why can't we go inside my stupid church? But then they all made fun of me for wanting to go inside a stupid church. So I dropped it.

You know how Blake dealt with having to spend all day with his girlfriend? By talking to me and Chloe about
The Blue Suitcase
and looking for places to eat and mostly ignoring her. Hannah didn't want to eat, or have a beer, or be in the sun. Fair enough, it was really hot out, like HOT. Like Maine sometimes gets. Not New Hampshire. It's always cool in the White Mountains. I miss them.

Blake said that according to his guidebook, Rigensis was the best bakery in Riga, so we had to stand in line, no matter how long it was. The bakery was between the Daugava and the Riga Canal in the Old City. The line looked to be two furlongs and one zork. The last man standing told us it was an hour wait. Chloe said it must be good if people were willing to stand in the heat on a Sunday afternoon for a napoleon and a cherry strudel, but Hannah said she wasn't one of those people. Blake told me not to worry, we'd go to the bakery tomorrow when the girls were in Liepaja.

Chloe said she really wanted a cherry strudel and Hannah said, yes, but do you really
need
a cherry strudel?

Blake and I exchanged a weary glance. Let her eat what she wants, Hannah, Blake said. We're on vacation.

All the more reason to watch your figure, Hannah said. Don't you think?

Hannah is right, Chloe said, deflated. Last thing I need.

The three of us started to walk away, but Blake didn't move. Dude, we gotta go, we said. He didn't move. What are you doing? He was standing in line.

I'm getting myself a cherry strudel, Blake said. Who's with me? Chloe, you want one?

So we all waited.

Aside from Hannah whining about her shoes, the sun, the heat, the smell, the walking, the heat, how she didn't have a good enough pair of sunglasses to see the colored buildings, and how she didn't want to have warm beer, even though it's nearly impossible for us to drink back in Maine, blisters, saying she didn't like raisins so why would she eat an apple strudel with raisins, oh, and did I mention the heat, and being bored with every topic of conversation anyone brought up, making the rest of us want to scream, and I'm not a screamer, we had a good day. Was Hannah always like this? We've been hanging out a long time. She was fun once. She used to ice skate and come sledding. She used to like ice cream. But not anymore. You'd think Blake would be fed up, but no. He says, baby, come on, look at the cobbled Old City, isn't it pretty? Want to walk down to the river? Don't you love the way the Opera House and the canal divide the Old City from the new? Which do you like better, the old or the new? Want a sweet pretzel? An ice cream? He's got his hand on her back, caressing her, and she says, please, can you not touch me, I'm hot like glue, and he just smiles and pats her and says I'm glued to you, and continues talking and laughing and touching her.

I'll give one thing to Hannah—the strawberries at the dumb market she dragged us to were unbelievable. Juicy, sweet, like nothing I've ever had, even in Maine. We bought two baskets, devoured them between the four of us, and bought two more. Blake had strawberry juice all over his plaid shirt. Chloe said his shirts always looked like this, and that's why he wore them plaid: so no one could see the stains. Ignoring her, he wondered if we could work strawberries into our story. The girls groaned. I remembered Lupe telling him anything can be worked into the plot, and Blake laughing and saying, that's right, baby, because the whole world is my research.

Maybe it's not the orphanage that's dividing us.

Blake

It's like a dream. I have a constant feeling that I'm going to blink and wake up by my window at home overlooking the lake, with the zipline, which runs from the oak branch over the lake to a post on our deck, tempting me. Yet, here I am, here we are. Walking on narrow cobblestoned streets, sitting on screeching trains, the sound of metal on metal telling me I'm not asleep. I pretend I'm doing my research because I don't want them to know how bowled over I am—they'd laugh at me. Mason asked if I wanted to rent a rowboat on the big river, and I said, I row every day on our lake, why the hell would I want to row here? As if I'm some kind of rube. But Chloe pointed out that she, not I, rows on our lake. We debated this thorny issue at some length as we gaped around the ancient town, while Hannah put on her been-there, done-that air. I don't want her to think that I'm walking around Riga with my mouth open because I'm unsophisticated. So I say intellectual things like, did you know that the Dome Cathedral altar and the cross-vaulted walkways were built in ornate Romanesque style but the steeple and the eastern pediment in Baroque style? But that's not what I'm feeling. What I'm feeling is wow.

We sat for a few minutes in the cloister of the Dome Cathedral, the courtyard all glowing and sunlit. I thought it was a little bit like magic. But then Hannah said she wanted to go buy some clothes, and Mason said, you want to go to a mall, is that it? Like the outlet center in North Conway? I didn't say anything, but the illusion of heaven was broken. Chloe said she wanted to get a cherry strudel and to walk by the little river (she meant the canal), but Hannah wanted a dress from the Central Market so she said some mean thing to Chloe, which I can't remember, but I remember thinking it wasn't nice because Chloe looked so pretty. She wasn't wearing six layers of shirts as she usually does. She wore one pink blouse. Her thin white arms were bare. Hannah of course looked ready to be in a photo shoot, with her bleached
slick hair and snazzy miniskirt. She has so many clothes, why does she need one more of anything?

I just want to stumble around and be stunned by the whole thing. But I pretend to have a plan. To visit the museums dedicated to spies, to the barricades, to the occupation of Latvia. Really, I want nothing. Truly. Except to just be. I don't want to think about plot, or about Latvian history. I just want to walk around and be amazed, and then maybe fall into a chair in Livu Square and have a Black Balsam ale. It's beer but like real liquor. Strong. Besides, when I said I wanted to go to the war museum, Hannah said no. She wanted to go to some art gallery. It's a beautiful day, said Chloe, why do we have to go inside some stuffy gallery? There's an embankment here, and a café. Or how about the jetty over there in the middle of the Daugava? People are walking on it. Must be quite a view of the Old City from there. So beautiful. Beautiful? Hannah said. It's hot like a sauna. It can't be hot and beautiful? said Chloe. And Mason said, have you actually ever been to a sauna, Hannah?

On every corner someone is painting the cityscape or playing music or selling amber, which is apparently the national gem of Latvia. I almost want to start painting myself. I've never seen amber before. Chloe told me that amber is pine resin that stiffens at the bottom of the Baltic Sea before it's washed ashore. How do you know, Hannah asked, and Chloe replied that Varda had told her. Varda had given Chloe an amber necklace as a gift. She's wearing it now. It looks so pretty, the deep orange against her pink blouse. She usually never wears colorful clothes. The Latvians love amber because they worship the sun and the color of the stone reminds them of their favorite star, Chloe tells me. Maybe there's amber in your blue suitcase, she suggests, and Hannah groans and tells her not to encourage me.

“You don't have to encourage me,” I said. “I already know what's in it.” But I won't tell them.

I had wanted this day to be just my brother and me, but it's nice to have the girls. I wish we could agree on something.
Mason wanted to see inside St. Peter's, but Hannah didn't want to. Yes, I forgot, Mason said. You want to go to a mall.

Once you see it—the narrow stone streets, the colorful buildings breathing down the winding alleys, the stately river that belongs in a capital city, the restaurants, the music, the beer, the people—it's not just yours anymore. It's ours. I didn't mind the walk down to the Riga Canal with my bro and our girls, the cherry strudel we shared. The strudel, by the way, was completely worth the wait. My only regret is we didn't get more of it. Hannah refused to have even a bite, but Mase, Chloe, and I ravaged it like lions a zebra. Nothing was left except the cherry jam on my shirt. All that's left is to eat your shirt, Chloe said. I told her to be my guest. In Maine, the cherry trees rain down their pink blossoms for a week in the middle of May. The ground is covered with pink mist; it's like walking through cotton candy fog. That's the color of Chloe's blouse.

While we were strolling down the river, she needled me about the contents of my blue suitcase, and I said, don't you want to find out when you read it? And she said no. I knocked into her with my shoulder, but she kept saying no. I just want you to tell me what's in it. Where is the fun in that, I said. Who said anything about fun, she said. It's not like trying to find a word in English that rhymes with
silver
or
purple
. Oh, I said, you're right, that would be fun. And so we tried to find a rhyme in Riga for
silver
or
purple,
but we couldn't do it. Some words just don't exist, Chloe told me.

Hannah interrupted us, caught up to us to say she couldn't walk anymore because the mosquitoes by the canal were causing blood blisters on her arms. So we left.

When we were in Central Market and out of earshot of Mase and Chloe, I asked Hannah what the matter with her was. She was acting all sore, like she was shoveling manure, not wandering around cool old hangars looking at patchwork dresses and paper flowers that looked more real than actual flowers. They were pretty spectacular. Chloe bought a flower to take back to Varda
but then put it in her own hair. It was a purple hibiscus. Nothing rhymed with that. What about my blood blisters, Hannah said, and Chloe laughed and said that almost rhymed. Hannah didn't find it funny at all. It takes a lot to impress her.

Maybe cream pastries at a Bangor bakery.

Hannah

I can't do this for another three weeks. I can't do this for another three minutes. They're being awful to me. Is this my punishment for not wanting to go to the orphanage? We missed the train today, and I said, thank heavens, thinking we wouldn't have to go at all, and they were mad at me all day.

Is Latvia my penance? Apparently one of the Letts' favorite things to do is remember past suffering. They have six national mourning days a year, that's what Chloe told me. Weird people, weird language, weird house, weird food. I don't even want to talk about the food, jars of jam and bushels of peaches everywhere. The whole house reeks of cooked peaches. Like Chloe's house after her mother decided to go into the canning business. Maybe that's why Chloe likes it. She won't admit it, but it reminds her of home.

The old man is weird. He keeps staring at me. I tried to tone it down dress-wise, but he keeps staring anyway. Does his wife know what a lech he is? I don't want to wear my nice clothes around him. And where can we do laundry? The red cherry filling had dripped all over Blake's only decent shirt. Later, when I said this to little Carmen, she stuck out her hands to Blake. Take off your clothes and give them here, she said. I wash them. Where, in the river? I asked. And she took me to the laundry room. A big, big room with two washers and two dryers! A sink, running water, counter space to fold the clothes, pins, detergent, lines for hanging anything that couldn't be machine dried. Almost professional. I didn't say what I was thinking, which was, I was frankly surprised they had electricity in Latvia.

After we had missed the train to Liepaja, I wanted to save us a day by hurrying to Riga and seeing everything today instead of two days from now. How much could there be to see, anyway? But they all said no. Blake said we were getting a tour guide on Tuesday and allowed no argument. Then he asked Carmen to ask Otto if he needed help with his miter cuts. He said the man's hands trembled so bad that his forty-five degree cuts were more like thirty-nine or fifty-one degrees. Nothing lined up. But Carmen put Blake in his place. She said, Grandfather know how to measure it, know how to saw it. He do it his whole life. But his hands shake. After you leave, his hands will still shake. He okay. He happy do it his way, even when it comes out all crooked. I loved seeing the chastised look on Blake's face.

But instead of going straight to Riga, we first traipsed to some open market to see where Varda and Sabine sold apples and pies. I don't know if I've ever seen Blake more excited. Look at all this stuff they're selling, he kept saying, earthenware, jams, dresses, fruits, look at the size of the plums, look at the tomatoes. Like he's never seen a tomato before. I was mildly amused by a whole pig, but before I could comment, Varda bought it. She said it was for dinner tonight. I thought Mason would throw up.

So we didn't get to Riga until the afternoon, and everyone was crabby with me. Whatever I said I wanted to do, they were like, no. It was revenge, I know it. No matter what I proposed. Art gallery, no. Take in an opera? No. We promised Varda we'd be back for dinner, Chloe said. Go get a glass of wine? No. They kept trying to foist Black Balsam on me. It was hideous. It was like bitter mud but less sweet. Of course Blake loved it. He can't believe we can drink here, that anyone will sell us alcohol. After the boys and Chloe got tipsy on this black liquid dirt, they wanted to stumble around and marvel at buildings. Like the castle or the yellow fortress. I keep telling them how beautiful Paris is; they don't want to hear it. They're walking around Riga as if it's Paris. Blake says that Riga, Vienna, and Brussels were all built in the same art nouveau style. Yes, Blake just used the
words
art nouveau
with me. The world is upside down. I said, do you even know what art nouveau is, and he said, do
you
? Then he proceeded to tell me what it was. He said in German, the word they use is
jugendstil,
which means “youth.” He said UNESCO listed Riga's collection of
jugendstil
buildings as unmatched anywhere else in the world. I refused to believe this was true. He argued with me about this through Livu Square like I was Chloe: like I cared.