Winter Garden (15 page)

“I’m sorry,” Meredith said.

“You and your sister are not close.”

It was a statement rather than a question, as it certainly should be, but Meredith heard something sharp in her mother’s voice, a judgment, perhaps. Her mother wasn’t looking past Meredith for once, or beside her; she was staring right at her, as if seeing her for the first time.

“No, Mom. We’re not close. We hardly ever see each other.”

“You will regret this.”

Thank you, Yoda. “It’s fine, Mom. Can I make you some tea?”

“When I am gone, you will only have each other.”

Meredith walked over to the samovar. That was the last thing she wanted to think about today—her mother’s death. “It will be hot in a moment,” she said without turning around.

After a while, she heard her mother walk away, and Meredith was alone again.

Nina planned to wear her mother down. If Meredith the martyr’s performance in the kitchen had proven anything, it was that time was of the essence. With every rip of newspaper or clang of a pot, Nina knew that another piece of her mother’s life was being wrapped up and put away. If Meredith had her way, there would soon be nothing left.

Dad had wanted something else, though, and now Nina wanted it, too. She wanted to hear the peasant girl and the prince in its entirety; in truth, she couldn’t remember ever wanting anything more.

At breakfast, she’d gone into the kitchen, stepping carefully around her ice-cold sister. Ignoring Meredith, she made Mom a cup of sweetened tea and a piece of toast and carried them upstairs. Inside her mother’s bedroom, she found Mom in bed, her gnarled hands folded primly on the blanket over her stomach, her white hair a bird’s nest that hinted at a restless night. With the door open, they could both hear Meredith packing up the kitchen.

“You could help your sister.”

“I could. If I thought you should move. I don’t.” She handed her mother the tea and toast. “You know what I realized when I made your breakfast?”

Mom sipped tea from the delicate silver-encased glass cup. “I suppose you will tell me.”

“I don’t know if you like honey or jam or cinnamon.”

“All are fine.”

“The point is, I don’t know.”

“Ah. That is the point,” Mom said, sighing.

“You’re not looking at me again.”

Mom said nothing, just took another sip of tea.

“I want to hear the fairy tale. The peasant girl and the prince. All of it. Please.”

Mom set the tea down on the bedside table and got out of bed. Moving past Nina as if she were invisible, she walked out the room, across the hall, and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

At lunch, Nina tried again. This time, Mom picked up her sandwich and carried it outside.

Nina followed her out to the winter garden and sat beside her. “I mean it, Mom.”

“Yes, Nina. I know. Please leave me.”

Nina sat there another ten minutes, just to make her point, then she got up and went inside.

In the kitchen, she found Meredith still packing pots and pans into a box. “She’ll never tell you,” she said at Nina’s entrance.

“Thanks for that,” Nina said, reaching for her camera. “Keep boxing up her life. I know how much you want everything to be neat and labeled. You’re a barrel of laughs. Honest to God, Mere, how can your kids and Jeffstand it?”

Nina came back into the house at just past six. In the last bit of copper-colored evening light, the apple blossoms glowed with a beautiful opalescence that gave the valley an otherworldly look.

The kitchen was empty except for the carefully stacked and labeled cardboard boxes that were tucked neatly into the space between the pantry and fridge.

She glanced out the window and saw that her sister’s car was still here. Meredith must be in another room, knee-deep in boxes and newsprint.

Nina opened the freezer and burrowed through the endless rows of containers. Meatball soup, chicken stew with dumplings, pierogies, lamb and vegetable moussaka, pork chops braised in apple wine, potato pancakes, red pepper paprikash, chicken Kiev, stroganoff, strudels, hamand-cheese rolls, homemade noodles, and dozens of savory breads. Out in the garage, there was another freezer, equally full, and the basement pantry was chock-full of home-canned fruit and vegetables.

Nina chose one of her favorites: a delicious slow-cooked beef pot roast stuffed with bacon and horseradish. She defrosted the roast in the microwave, with all the root vegetables and rich beef broth, then ladled it to a baking dish and put it in the oven. She set the oven for 350 degrees, figuring it couldn’t be too far wrong, and then filled a pot of water for homemade noodles. There were few things on the planet better than her mom’s noodles.

While dinner was in the oven, she set the table for two and then poured herself a glass of wine. With this meal, the aroma would bring Mom to her.

Sure enough, at six forty-five, Mom came down the stairs.

“You made dinner?”

“I reheated it,” Nina said, leading the way into the dining room.

Mom looked around at the ravaged wallpaper, still smeared with streaks of blood that had dried black. “Let us eat at the kitchen table,” she said.

Nina hadn’t even thought about that. “Oh. Sure.” She scooped up the two place settings and put them down on the small oak table tucked into the nook in the kitchen. “There you go, Mom.”

Meredith walked in then; she noticed the two place settings and her face scrunched in irritation. Or maybe relief. With Meredith it was hard to tell.

“Do you want to eat with us?” Nina asked. “I thought you’d need to get home, but there’s plenty. You know Mom. She always cooked for an army.”

Meredith glanced through the window, up in the direction of her house. “Sure,” she finally said. “Jeff won’t be home tonight . . . until late.”

“Good,” Nina said, watching her sister closely. It was odd that she’d stay for dinner. Usually she all but ran for home when she had the chance. “Great. Here. Sit.” The minute her sister was seated, Nina quickly set another place at the table and then got the crystal decanter. “We start with a shot of vodka.”

“What?” Meredith said, looking up.

Mom took the decanter and poured three shots. “It does no good to argue with her.”

Nina sat down and picked up her glass, holding it up. Mom clinked hers to it. Reluctantly, Meredith did the same. Then they drank.

“We’re Russian,” Nina said suddenly, looking at Meredith. “How come I never thought about that before?”

Meredith shrugged, clearly disinterested. “I’ll serve,” she said, getting to her feet. She was back a few moments later with the plates.

Mom closed her eyes in prayer.

“Do you remember that?” Nina asked Meredith. “Mom praying?”

Meredith rolled her eyes this time and reached for her fork.

“Okay,” Nina said, ignoring the awkward silence at the table. “Meredith, since you’re here, you have to join in a new tradition Mom and I have come up with. It’s revolutionary, really. It’s called dinner conversation.”

“So we’re going to talk, are we?” Meredith said. “About what?”

“I’ll go first so you can see how it goes: My favorite song is ‘Born to be Wild,’ my best childhood memory is the trip to Yellowstone where Dad taught me how to fish.” She looked at her sister. “And I’m sorry if I make my sister’s life harder.”

Mom put down her fork. “My favorite song is ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ my favorite memory is a day I watched children making snow angels in a park, and I’m sorry that you two are not friends.”

“We’re friends,” Nina said.

“This is stupid,” Meredith said.

“No,” Nina said. “Staring at each other in silence is stupid. Go.”

Meredith gave a typically long-suffering sigh. “Fine. My favorite song is ‘Candle in the Wind’—the Princess Di version, not the original; my favorite childhood memory is when Dad took me ice-skating on Miller’s Pond . . . and I’m sorry I said we weren’t close, Nina. But we aren’t. So maybe I’m sorry for that, too.” She nodded, as if in saying it, she checked something off her To-Do list. “Now, let’s eat. I’m starving.”

Nina wasn’t even finished eating when Meredith got to her feet and began clearing the table. The second her sister was up, Mom followed suit.

“I guess dinner is over,” Nina said, reaching for the butter and jam before Meredith snatched it away.

Mom said, “Thank you for dinner,” and left the kitchen. Her footsteps on the stairs were quick for a woman of her age. She must have been practically running.

Nina couldn’t really blame Meredith. As soon as their little conversational jumper cables had been used—the so-called new tradition—they had fallen into their familiar silence. Only Nina had even tried to make small talk, and her amusing stories about Africa had been met with a lukewarm response from Meredith and nothing at all from Mom.

Nina left the table just long enough to get the decanter of vodka. Thumping it down on the table, she said, “Let’s get drunk.”

Meredith, elbow-deep in soapy water, said, “Okay.”

Nina must have misheard. “Did you say—”

“Don’t make a lunar mission out of it.” Meredith walked over to the table, plucked up Nina’s plate and silverware, and went back to the sink.

“Wow,” Nina said. “We haven’t gotten drunk together since . . . Have we ever gotten drunk together?”

Meredith dried her hands on the pink towel that hung from the oven door. “You’ve gotten drunk while I was in the room, does that count?”

Nina grinned. “Hell, no, that doesn’t count. Pull up a chair.”

“I’m not drinking vodka, though.”

“Tequila it is.” Nina got up before Meredith could change her mind; she ran into the living room, grabbed a bottle of tequila from the wet bar, and then snagged salt, limes, and a knife on her way back through the kitchen.

“Aren’t you going to mix it with something?”

“No offense, Mere, but I’ve seen you drink. If I mix it with anything, you’ll just sip it all night and I’ll end up drunk and you’ll be your usual cool, competent self.” She poured two shots, sliced a lime, and pushed the glass toward her sister.

Meredith wrinkled her nose.

“It’s not heroin, Mere. Just a shot of tequila. Take a walk on the wild side.”

Meredith seemed to decide all at once. She reached out, grabbed the shot, and downed it.

When her eyes bulged, Nina handed her the lime. “Here. Bite down on this.”

Meredith made a whooshing sound and shook her head. “One more.”

Nina drank her own shot and poured them each another, which they drank together.

Afterward, Meredith sat back in her chair, pushing a hand through her perfectly smooth hair. “I don’t feel anything.”

“You will. Hey, how do you manage to keep looking so . . . neat all the time? You’ve been packing boxes all day, but you still look ready for lunch at the club. How does that happen?”

“Only you can make looking nice sound like an insult.”

“It wasn’t an insult. Honestly. I just wonder how you stay so . . . I don’t know. Forget it.”

“There’s a wall around me,” Meredith said, reaching for the tequila, pouring herself another shot.

“Yeah. Like a force field. Nothing reaches your hair.” Nina laughed at that. She was still laughing when Meredith drank her third shot, but when her sister gulped it down and glanced sideways, Nina saw something that made her stop laughing. She didn’t know what it was, a look in Meredith’s eyes, maybe, or the way her mouth kind of flitted downward.

“Is something wrong?” Nina asked.

Meredith blinked slowly. “You mean besides the fact that my father died at Christmas, my mom is going crazy, my sister is pretending to help me, and my husband . . . is gone tonight?”

Nina knew it wasn’t funny, but she couldn’t help laughing. “Yeah, besides that. And anyway, you know your life rocks. You’re one of those wonder women who do everything right. That’s why Dad always counted on you.”

“Yeah. I guess,” Meredith said.

“It’s true,” Nina said with a sigh, thinking suddenly about her dad again, and how she’d let him down. She wondered how long it would last, this sudden bobbing up of her grief. Would it ever just submerge?

“You can do everything right,” Meredith said quietly, “and still end up in the wrong. And alone.”

“I should have called Dad more from Africa,” Nina said. “I knew how much my phone calls meant to him. I always thought there was time. . . .”

“Sometimes the door just slams shut, you know? And you’re all by yourself.”

“There is something we can do now to help him,” she said.

Meredith looked startled. “Help who?”

“Dad,” Nina said impatiently. “Isn’t that who we’re talking about?”

“Oh. Is it?”

“He wanted us to get to know Mom. He said she—”

“Not the fairy tales again,” Meredith said. “Now I know why you’re so successful. You’re obsessive.”

“And you aren’t?” Nina laughed at that. “Come on. We can make her tell us the story. You heard her tonight: she said there was no point arguing with me. That means she’s going to give up fighting.”

Meredith stood up. She was a little unsteady on her feet, so she clutched the back of the chair for support. “I knew better than to try to talk to you.”

Nina frowned. “You were talking to me?”

“How many times can I say it: I am not listening to her stories. I don’t care about the Black Knight or people who turn into smoke or the handsome prince. That was your promise to Dad. Mine was to take care of her, which I’m going to do right now. If you need me, I’ll be in the bathroom, packing up her things.”

Nina watched Meredith leave the kitchen. She couldn’t say she was surprised—her sister was nothing if not consistent—but she was disappointed. She was certain that this task was something Dad had wanted them to do together. That was the point, wasn’t it? Being together. What else but the fairy tales had ever accomplished that?

“I tried, Dad,” she said. “Even getting her drunk didn’t help.”

She got to her feet, not unsteady at all. Tucking the decanter of vodka under one arm, and grabbing Mom’s shot glass, she went upstairs. At the bathroom’s half-open door, she paused, listening to the clink and rattle that meant Meredith was back at work.

“I’ll leave Mom’s door open,” she said, “in case you want to listen in.”

No answer came from the bathroom, not even a pause in crinkling of newspaper.

Nina walked across the hallway to her mother’s room. She knocked on the door but didn’t wait for an invitation. She just walked in.

Mom sat up in bed, propped up on a mound of white pillows, with the white comforter drawn up to her waist. All that white—her hair, her nightgown, her bedding, her skin—contrasted sharply with the black walnut headboard and bed. Against it, she looked ethereal, otherworldly; an aged Galadriel with intense blue eyes.

“I did not invite you in,” she said.

“Nope. But here I am. It’s magic.”

“And you thought I would want vodka?”

“I know you will.”

“Why is that?”

Nina moved to the side of the bed. “I made a promise to my dying father.” She saw the effect of her words. Her mother flinched as if she’d been struck. “You loved him. I know you did. And he wanted me to hear your fairy tale about the peasant girl and the prince. All of it. On his deathbed, he asked me. He must have asked you, too.”

Her mother broke eye contact. She stared down at her blue-veined hands, coiled together atop the blankets. “You will give me no peace.”

“None.”

“It is a child’s story. Why do you care so much?”

“Why did he?”

Mom didn’t answer.

Nina stood there, waiting.

Finally Mom said, “Pour me a drink.”

Very calmly, Nina poured her mother a shot and handed it to her.

Mom drank the vodka. “I will do it my way,” she said, setting the empty glass aside. “If you interrupt me, I will stop. I will tell it in pieces and only at night. We will not speak of it during the day. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“In the dark.”

“Why always—”

The look Mom gave her was so sharp Nina stopped abruptly. “Sorry.” She went to the light switch and turned it off.

It was a moonless night, so no silver-blue glow came through the glass. The only light was from the crack of the open door.

Nina sat on the floor, waiting.

A rustling sound filled the room: her mother getting comfortable in the bed. “Where should I begin?”

“In December, you ended when Vera was going to sneak out to meet the prince.”

A sigh.

And then came her mother’s story voice, sweet and mellifluous: “After she comes home from the park, Vera spends the rest of that day in the kitchen with her mother, but her mind is not on the task at hand. She knows her mama knows this, that she is watching her carefully, but how can a girl concentrate

on straining goose fat into jars when her heart is full of love?

“Veronika, pay attention,” her mama says.

Vera sees that she has spilled a big blob of fat on the table. She wipes it up with her hand and throws it into the sink. She hates goose fat anyway. She prefers rich, homemade butter any day.

“And you throw it away? What is wrong with you?”

Her sister giggles. “Maybe she is thinking of boys. Of a boy.”

“Of course she is thinking of boys,” Mama says, wiping the moisture from her brow as she stands at the stove, stirring the simmering lingonberries. “She is fifteen.”

“Almost sixteen.”

Her mama pauses in her stirring and turns around.

They are in the kitchen, in the last days of summer, preserving food for winter. The tables are full of berries to be turned into jam; onions, mushrooms, potatoes, and garlic to be put in the cellar; cucumbers to be pickled; and beans to be canned in brine. Later, Mama has promised to teach them how to make blini with a sweet cherry filling.

“You are almost sixteen,” Mama says, as if it had not occurred to her before. “Two years younger than I was when I met Petyr.”

Vera puts down the slippery pot of goose fat. “What did you feel when you first saw him?”

Mama smiles. “I have told this story many times.”

“You always say he swept you away. But how?”

Mama wipes her brow again and reaches out for the wooden chair in front of her. Pulling it back a little, she sits down.

Vera almost makes a sound; that’s how shocked she is by this. Her mother is not a woman who stops working to talk. Vera and Olga have grown up on stories of responsibility and duty. As peasants beholden to the imprisoned king, they have been taught their place. They must keep their heads down and their hands working, for the shadow of the Black Knight falls with the swiftness of a steel blade. It is best never to draw attention to oneself.

Still, her mother is sitting down now. “He was a tutor then, and so good-looking he took my breath away. When I told your baba this, she tsked and said, ‘Zoya, be careful. You will need your breath.’ ”

“Was it love at first sight?” Vera asks.

“I knew when he looked at me that I would take his hand, that I would follow him. I say it was the mead we drank, but it wasn’t. It was just . . . Petyr. My Petya. His passion for knowledge and life swept me away and before I knew it, we were married. My parents were horrified, for the kingdom was in turmoil. The king was in exile then, and we were afraid. Your father’s ambition scared them. He was a poor country tutor, but he dreamed of being a poet.”

Vera sighs at the romance of it. Now she knows she must sneak out tonight to meet the prince. She even knows that her mother will understand if she finds out.

“All right,” her mother says, sounding tired again. “Let’s get back to work, and Veronika, be careful with that goose fat. It is precious.”

As the hours pass, Vera finds her mind more and more distracted. While she prepares the beans and cucumbers, she imagines an entire love story for her and Sasha. They will walk along the edge of the magic river, where images of the future can sometimes be seen in the blue waves, and they will pause under one of the streetlamps, as she has often seen lovers do. It will not matter that he is a prince and she a poor tutor’s daughter.

“Vera.”

She hears her name being called out and the sound of it is impatient. She can tell that it is not the first time she had been spoken to. Her father is standing in the room, frowning at her.

“Papa,” she says. He looks tired, and a little nervous. His black hair, usually so neatly combed, stands out in all directions, as if he has been rubbing his head repeatedly, and his leather jerkin is buttoned crookedly. His fingers, stained blue with ink, move anxiously.

“Where is Zoya?” he asks, looking around.

“She and Olga went for more vinegar.”

“By themselves?” Her father nods distractedly and chews on his lower lip.

“Papa? Is something wrong?”

“No. No. Nothing.” Taking her in his arms, he pulls her into an embrace so tight that she has to wiggle out of it or gasp for breath.

In the years to come, Vera will replay that embrace a thousand times in her mind. She will see the jewel-tone jars in the candlelight, smell the dusty, sun-baked leather of her father’s jerkin, and feel the scratch of his stubbly jaw against her cheek. She’ll imagine herself saying, I love you, Papa.

But the truth is that she has romance and sneaking out on her mind, so she says nothing to her father and goes back to work.

That night, Vera cannot lie still.

Every nerve ending in her body seems to be dancing. Sounds float in through her open window: people talking, the distant patter of hooves on cobblestoned streets, music from the park. Someone is playing a violin on this warm, light night, probably to woo a lover, and upstairs, someone is moving around—maybe dancing. The floorboards creak with every step.

“Are you scared?” Olga asks for at least the fifth time.

Vera rolls over onto her side. Olga does the same. In their narrow bed, they are face-to-face. “When you are older, you’ll see, Olga. There is a feeling in your heart when you meet the boy you’ll love. It’s like . . . drowning and then coming up for air.”

Vera hugs her sister and plants a kiss on her plump cheek. Then she throws back the covers and springs out of bed. With a small hand mirror, she tries to check her appearance, but she can see herself only in pieces—long black hair held away from her face with leather strings, ivory skin, pink lips. She is wearing a plain blue gown with a lace collar—a girl’s costume, but it is the best she has. If only she had a beret or a pin or, best of all, some perfume.