Winter Garden (4 page)

Unaware of Nina, the woman paused at the riverbank and looked out over the scar on the land where water should run. Her expression sharpened, turned desperate as she reached down to touch the child in her arms. It was a look Nina had seen in women all over the world, especially in times of war and destruction. A bone-deep fear for her child’s future. There was nowhere to go to find water.

Nina caught it on film and kept shooting until the woman walked on, went back to her rounded mud hut and sat down in a circle of other women. Together, talking, the women began crushing red ochre on flat rocks, collecting the sandy residue in calabash bowls.

Nina covered the lens and stood up, stretching her aching joints. She’d taken hundreds of pictures this morning, but she didn’t need to look through them to know that The One was of the woman at the riverbank.

In her mind, she cropped, framed, printed, and hung the image among the great ones she’d collected. Someday her portraits would show the world how strong and powerful women could be, as well as the personal cost of that strength.

She unloaded the film, labeled the canister, tucked it away and reloaded, then walked through the village, smiling at people, handing out the candies and ribbons and bracelets she always carried. She took another great picture of four Himba women emerging from the smoke-and-herb sauna that was their method of keeping clean in a land devoid of water. In the picture, the women were holding hands and laughing. It was an image that captured a universal feminine connection.

She heard Danny come up beside her. “Hey, you.”

She leaned against him, feeling good about her shots. “I just love how they are with their kids, even when the odds are impossible. The only time I cry is when I see their faces with their babies. Why is that, with all we’ve seen?”

“So it’s mothers you follow. I thought it was warriors.”

Nina frowned. She’d never thought of it that way, and the observation was unsettling. “Not always mothers. Women fighting for something. Triumphing over impossible odds.”

He smiled. “So you are a romantic after all.”

She laughed. “Right.”

“You ready to go?”

“I think I got what I needed, yeah.”

“Does this mean we can go lie by a pool for a week?”

“There’s nothing I’d rather do.” She put her camera equipment away and repacked their gear while Danny spoke to the village elder and thanked him for the pictures. She set up her satellite phone on the desert floor, unfolding the silver wings and positioning it until she found a signal.

As she expected, the magazine offices were closed, so she left a message for her editor and promised to call from the Chobe River Lodge in Zambia. Then she and Danny climbed back into the busted-up old Land Rover, drove through the lunar landscape of Kaokoveld, and hopped on a plane headed south. By nightfall, they were at the Chobe River Lodge, on their own private deck, watching the sun set over a herd of elephants on the opposite shore. They were being served gin and tonics while a hundred yards away lions were hunting in the tall grass.

In a bikini that had seen better days, Nina stretched out on the luxurious two-person lounge chair and closed her eyes. The night smelled of murky water and dry grass and mud baked to stone by the unforgiving sun. For the first time in weeks, her pixie-cut black hair was clean and there was no red dirt under her fingernails. Pure luxury.

She heard Danny coming through their room toward the deck. He took an almost imperceptible pause before each step, a tiny favoring of the right leg, which had taken a bullet in Angola. He pretended it didn’t bother him, told people there was no pain, but Nina knew about the pills he swallowed and the way he sometimes couldn’t find a comfortable position in which to sleep. When she massaged his body, she put extra effort into that leg, although he didn’t ask her to, and she didn’t admit that she’d done it.

“Here you go,” he said, putting two glasses onto the teak table beside her.

She tilted her face up to thank him and noticed several things at once: he hadn’t brought a gin and tonic. Instead, he’d put down a straight shot so big it was practically a tumblerful of tequila. He’d forgotten the salt, and worst of all, he wasn’t smiling.

She sat up. “What’s wrong?”

“Maybe you should take a drink first.”

When an Irishman told you to take a drink first, there was bad news coming.

He sat down beside her on the lounger. She eased sideways to make room for him.

The stars were out now, and in the pale silvery glow she could see his sharp features and hollow cheeks, his blue eyes and curly hair. She realized in that moment, when he looked so sad, how much he laughed and smiled, even when the sun was broiling or the dust was choking or the gunshots were exploding in the air. He could always smile.

Except now he wasn’t.

He handed her a smallish yellow envelope. “Telegram.”

“Did you read it?”

“Course not. But it can’t be good news, now, can it?”

Journalists and producers and photojournalists the world over knew about telegrams. It was how your family delivered bad news, even in this satellite phone and Internet age. Her hands were unsteady as she reached for the envelope. Her first thought was, Thank God, when she saw that it had come from Sylvie, but that relief died as she read on.

NINA.YOUR FATHER HAS HAD A HEART ATTACK.MEREDITH SAYS IT LOOKS BAD.SYLVIE.

She looked up at Danny. “It’s my dad. . . . I need to go now—”

“Impossible, love,” he said gently. “The first flight out of here is at six. I’ll get us tickets to Seattle from Johannesburg. Is it best to drive from there?”

“Us?”

“Aye. I want to be there for you, Nina. Is that so terrible?”

She didn’t know how to respond to that, what to say. Relying on people for comfort had never felt natural to her. The last thing she wanted was to give someone the power to hurt her. Self-preservation was the one thing she’d learned from her mother. So she did what she always did at times like these: she reached down for the buttons on his pants. “Take me to bed, Daniel Flynn. Get me through this night.”

Interminable was the word that came to mind to describe the wait, but that only made Meredith think terminal, which made her think death, which brought up all the emotions she was trying to suppress. Her usual coping mechanism—keeping busy—wasn’t working for her now, and she’d tried. She’d buried herself in insurance information, researched heart attacks and survival, and come up with a list of the best cardiologists in the country. The second she put her pen down or looked away from the screen, her grief came rushing back. Tears were a constant pressure behind her eyes. So far, though, she’d kept them from falling. Crying would be its own defeat and she refused to give up.

She crossed her arms tightly, staring at the multicolored fish in the waiting room tank. Sometimes, if she was lucky, one of them actually caught her attention and for a nanosecond she forgot that her father might be dying.

She felt Jeff come up behind her. Though she hadn’t heard footsteps on the carpet, she knew he was there. “Mere,” he said quietly, putting his hands on her shoulders. She knew what he wanted: for her to lean back into him, to let herself be held. There was a part of her that wanted it, too, longed for that comfort, in fact, but the larger part of her—the part that was hanging on to hope one breath at a time—didn’t dare soften. In his arms, she might fall apart, and what good would that do?

“Let me hold you,” he said into her ear.

She shook her head. How was it he didn’t understand?

She worried about her father in a way that consumed her. It felt as if a knife had plunged deep in her chest, tearing past bone and muscle; the sharp point lay poised at her heart. One wrong move and the tender organ would be punctured.

Behind her, she heard him sigh. He let go. “Did you get hold of your sister?”

“I left messages everywhere I could. You know Nina. She’ll be here when she’s here.” She looked at the clock again. “What is taking that damn doctor so long? He should be giving us a report. In ten minutes I’m calling the head of the department.”

Jeff started to say something (honestly she was barely listening; her heart was beating so fast she couldn’t hear much above it), but before he was finished, the door to the waiting room opened, and Dr. Watanabe appeared. In an instant, Meredith, Jeff, and Mom came together, walked to the doctor.

“How is he?” her mother asked in a voice that carried throughout the room. How could she possibly sound so strong at a time like this? Only the heaviness of her accent showed that she was upset. Otherwise, she looked as calm as ever.

Dr. Watanabe smiled briefly, barely, and said, “Not good. He had a second heart attack when we were taking him to surgery. We were able to resuscitate him, but he’s very weak.”

“What can you do?” Meredith asked.

“Do?” Dr. Watanable said, frowning. The compassion in his eyes was terrible. “Nothing. The damage to his heart is too extensive. Now we just wait . . . and hope he makes it through the night.”

Jeff slipped his arm around Meredith’s waist.

“You can see him if you’d like. He’s in the cardiac care unit. But one at a time, okay?” Dr. Watanabe said, taking Mom by the elbow.

Details, Meredith thought, watching her mother walk down the hallway. Focus on the details. Find a way to fix this.

But she couldn’t do it.

Memories gathered at the periphery of her vision, waiting to be invited near. She saw her dad in the stands at her high school gymnastic meets, cheering with embarrassing vigor, and at her wedding, weeping openly as he walked her down the aisle. Only last week he’d taken her aside and said, “Let’s go get a couple of beers, Meredoodle, just the two of us, like we used to.”

And she’d blown him off, told him they’d do it soon. . . .

Had it really been so important to drop off the dry cleaning?

“I guess we should call the girls,” Jeff said. “Fly them home.”

On that, Meredith felt something inside her break, and although she knew it was irrational, she hated Jeff for saying it. He’d given up already.

“Mere?” He pulled her into his arms and held her. “I love you,” he whispered.

She stayed in his arms as long as she could bear and then eased away. Saying nothing, not even looking at him, she followed the path her mother had walked, feeling utterly, dangerously alone in the austere, busy CCU. People in blue scrubs moved in and out of her field of vision, but she had eyes only for her father.

He lay in a narrow bed, surrounded by tubes and IV lines and machines. Beside him, her mother stood vigil. Even now, as her husband lay connected to life by the most tenuous strands, she looked strangely, almost defiantly, serene. Her posture was perfect and if there was a shaking in her hands it would take a seismologist to detect it.

Meredith wiped her eyes, unaware until that moment that tears were seeping out. She stood there as long as she could. The doc had said one at a time and Meredith wasn’t one to break rules, but finally she couldn’t stand it. She went to him, stopped at the foot of his bed. The whir of machinery seemed absurdly loud. “How is he?”

Her mother sighed heavily and walked away. Meredith knew her mom would head straight for a window somewhere and stare out into the snowy night, alone.

Normally, it pissed Meredith off, how alone her mother liked to be, but just now she didn’t care, and for once, she didn’t judge her mother harshly. Everyone broke—and held themselves together—in their own way.

She reached down and touched her father’s hand. “Hey, Daddy,” she whispered, trying her best to smile. “It’s your Meredoodle. I’m here, and I love you. Talk to me, Daddy.”

The only answer was the wind, tapping on the glass while the snow flurried and danced beneath the outside light.

Nina stood in the confusing jumble that was the Johannesburg airport and looked up at Danny. She knew he wanted to go with her, but she couldn’t imagine why. She had nothing to give him right now, nothing to give anyone. She just needed to go, to be gone, to be home. “I need to do this alone.”

She could see that she’d hurt him.

“Of course you do,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

He ran a deeply tanned hand through his long, messy black hair, and stared down at her with an intensity that made her draw in a sharp breath. It got through, that look, hit her hard. He reached out slowly, pulled her into his arms as if they were alone, two lovers with all the time in the world. He claimed her with a kiss that was deep and intimate, almost primal in its power. She felt her heartbeat quicken and her cheeks heat up, although it made no sense, that reaction. She was a grown woman, not a scared virgin, and sex was the last thing on her mind.

“Remember that, love,” he said, drawing back but not looking away.

It was a kiss that almost softened her grief for a second, lessened her load. She almost said something, almost changed her mind, but before she found even the start of a word, he was pulling away, turning his back on her, and then he was gone. She stood there a minute, almost frozen; then she grabbed her backpack from the floor beside her feet and started walking.

Thirty-four hours later, she parked her rental car in the dark, snow-coated hospital parking lot and ran inside, praying—as she had for every hour of the transcontinental flight—that she wasn’t too late.

In the waiting room on the third floor, she found her sister positioned like a sentinel next to an absurdly cheery aquarium full of tropical fish. Nina skidded to a stop, afraid suddenly to say anything. They’d always handled things differently, she and Meredith. Even as girls. Nina had fallen often and picked herself back up; Meredith had moved cautiously, rarely losing her balance. Nina had broken things; Meredith held them together.

Nina needed that now, needed her sister to hold her together. “Mere?” she said quietly.

Meredith turned to her. Even with the length of the waiting room between them and bad fluorescent lighting above, Nina could see how drawn and tired her sister looked. Meredith’s chestnut-brown hair, usually so flawlessly styled, was a mess. She wore no makeup, and without it, her brown eyes looked too big for her pale face, her oversized mouth was colorless. “You’re here,” she said, moving forward, taking Nina into her arms.

When Nina drew back, she was unsteady, her breathing was a little erratic. “How is he?”

“Not good. He had a second massive heart attack. At first they were going to try to operate . . . but now they’re saying he won’t survive it. The damage is too extensive. Dr. Watanabe doesn’t think he’ll make it through the weekend. But they didn’t really think he’d make it through the first night, either.”

Nina closed her eyes at the pain of that. Thank God she had made it home in time to see him.

But how could she lose him? He was her level ground, her North Star. The one person who was always waiting for her to come home.

Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked at her sister again. “Where’s Mom?”

Meredith stepped sideways.

And there she was—a beautiful white-haired woman sitting in a cheap upholstered chair. Even from here, Nina could see how controlled her mother was, how scarily contained. She hadn’t risen to welcome her youngest child home, hadn’t even looked her way. Rather, she was staring straight ahead; those eerie blue eyes of hers seemed to glow against the pallor of her skin. As usual, she was knitting. They probably had three hundred sweaters and blankets, each neatly folded in stacks in the attic.

“How is she?” Nina asked.

Meredith shrugged, and Nina knew what that movement meant. Who knew about Mom? She was alien to them, indecipherable, and God knew they’d tried. Meredith most of all.

Until the night of the Christmas play, all those years ago, Meredith had followed Mom like an eager puppy, begging to be noticed. After that humiliating night, her sister had drawn back, kept her distance. In the years between then and now, nothing had changed; neither had softened. If anything, the distance between them had grown. Nina had handled it differently. She’d given up on the hope of intimacy earlier and chosen to accept her mother’s solitude. In many ways they were alike, she and Mom. They didn’t need anyone except Dad.

Nodding at her sister, Nina left her and crossed the room. At her mother’s side, she sank to her knees. An unfamiliar longing caught her off guard. She wanted to be told that he would be okay.

“Hey, Mom,” she said. “I got here as quickly as I could.”

“Good.”

She heard a tiny fissure in her mother’s voice and that slim weakness connected them. She dared to touch her mother’s thin, pale wrist. The veins were blue and thick beneath the white skin, and Nina’s tanned fingers looked almost absurdly vibrant against it. Maybe for once it was Mom who needed to be comforted. “He’s a strong man with a will to live.”

Her mother looked down at her so slowly it was as if she were a robot with a dying battery. Nina was shocked by how old and weary her mother looked, yet how strong. It should have been an impossible combination, but her mother had always been a woman of contradictions. She’d worried acutely about letting her children leave the yard, but hardly looked at them when they were in the house; she’d claimed that there was no God even as she decorated her holy corner and kept its lamp lit; she ate only enough food to keep her body moving, but wanted her children to eat more than they could stand. “You think that is what matters?”

Nina was taken aback by the ferocity in her mother’s voice. “I think we have to believe he’ll get better.”

“He is in room 434. He has been asking for you.”

Nina took a deep breath and opened the door to her father’s room.

It was quiet except for the mechanical sound of machines. She moved slowly toward him, trying not to cry.

He looked small, a big man who’d been whittled down to fit in a child’s bed.

“Nina.” His voice was so soft and breathy she hardly recognized it. His skin was frighteningly pale.

She forced herself to smile, hoping it looked real. Her father was a man who valued laughter and joy. She knew it would hurt him to see her in pain.

“Hey, Daddy.” The little-girl word slipped out; she hadn’t said it in years.

He knew; he knew and he smiled. It was a faded, tired version of his smile and Nina reached down to wipe the spittle from his lip. “I love you, Daddy.”

“I want . . .” He was breathing hard now. “Go . . . home.”

She had to lean close to hear his quietly spoken words. “You can’t go home, Dad. They’re taking good care of you here.”

He reached for her hand, holding it tightly. “Die home.”

This time she couldn’t will her tears away. She felt them streak down her face and land in tiny gray petals on the white blanket. “Don’t . . .”

He stared up at her, still breathing hard; she saw the light go out of his eyes and the weakening of his will, and that hurt more than words had.

“It won’t be easy,” she said. “You know Meredith likes everything in its place. She’ll want you here.”

The smile he gave her was so sad and sloppy it broke her heart. “You . . . hate easy.”

“I do,” she said quietly, stung by the sudden thought that without him, no one would know her that well.

He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. For a second, Nina thought she’d lost him, that he’d simply fallen away from her and sunk into the darkness, but this time the machines soothed her. He was still breathing.

She sank into the chair beside him, knowing why he’d asked this favor of her. Mom could do it, of course, could force his move home, but Meredith would hate her mother for it. Dad had spent his life trying to create love where none existed—between his wife and his daughters—and he couldn’t give up even now. All he could do was hand his need to her and hope she could accomplish what he wanted. She remembered how often he’d called her his rule-breaker, his spitfire, and how proud he’d been of her courage to go into battle.

Of course she would do as he’d asked. It was perhaps the last thing he’d ask of her.

That night, after the arrangements had been made to have Dad discharged, Nina went out to her rental car. She sat there a long time, alone in the dark parking lot, trying to let go of the fight she and Meredith had had about moving Dad. Nina had won, but it hadn’t been easy. Finally, with a tired sigh, she started the engine and drove away from the hospital. Snow patterned her windshield, disappearing and reappearing with each swipe of the wiper blades. Even with limited visibility, her first view of Belye Nochi made her breath catch.

The house looked as beautiful and out of place as ever in its snowy valley, tucked as it was in a vee of land between the river and the hills. Christmas lights made it even more beautiful, almost magical.

It had always reminded her of the fairy tales they’d once been told, full of dangerous magic and handsome princes and dragons. In short, it reminded her of her mother.

On the porch, she stomped the snow off her leather hiking boots and opened the door. The entry was cluttered with coats and boots. The kitchen counters were a graveyard of coffee cups and empty plates. Her mother’s precious brass samovar glinted in the light from an overhead fixture.

She found Meredith in the living room, all alone, staring at the fireplace.

Nina could see how fragile her sister was right now. Her photographer’s eye noticed every tiny detail: the trembling hands, the tired eyes, the stiff back.

She reached out and pulled her sister into a hug.

“What will we be without him?” Meredith whispered, clinging to her.

“Less,” was all Nina could think of to say.

Meredith wiped her eyes, straightening suddenly, pulling away as if she’d just realized that she’d gone weak for a moment. “I’ll stay the night. Just in case Mom needs something.”

“I’ll take care of her.”

“You?”

“Yes. We’ll be fine. Go make wild, crazy love to that sexy man of yours.”

Meredith frowned at that, as if perhaps the idea of pleasure were impossible to contemplate. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay. I’ll be back over early to get the place ready for Dad. He’ll be home at one, remember?”

“I remember,” Nina said, walking Meredith to the door. As soon as her sister was gone, she grabbed her backpack and camera bags off the kitchen table and headed up the steep, narrow stairway to the second floor. Passing her parents’ room, she went into the bedroom she and Meredith had shared. Although it appeared symmetrical—two twin beds, a pair of matching desks, and two white dressers—a closer look revealed the two very different girls who’d lived here and the separate paths their lives would take. Even as girls, they’d had little in common. The last thing Nina really remembered them doing together was the play.

Mom had changed that day and so had Meredith. True to her word, her sister had never listened to another of Mom’s fairy tales, but it had been an easy promise to keep, as Mom never told them a story again. That was what Nina had missed the most. She’d loved those fairy tales. The White Tree, the Snow Maiden, the enchanted waterfall, the peasant girl, and the prince. At bedtime, on the rare nights Mom could be coaxed into telling them a story, Nina remembered being entranced by her mother’s voice, and comforted by the familiarity of the words. All the stories were memorized and were the same every time, even without a book from which to read. Mom had told them that it was a Russian tradition, the ability to tell stories.

After the play, Nina had tried to repair the breach caused by Mom’s anger and Meredith’s hurt feelings, as had her dad. It hadn’t worked, of course, and by the time Nina was eleven, she understood. By then, Nina’s own feelings had been so hurt so often she’d pulled back, too.

She left the room and shut the door.

At her parents’ bedroom, she paused and knocked. “Mom? Are you hungry?”

There was no answer.

She knocked again. “Mom?”

More silence.

She opened the door and went inside. The room was neat as a pin, and spartan in decor. A big king-sized bed, an antique dresser, one of those ancient Russian trunks, and a bookcase overflowing with small hardcover novels from the club her mother belonged to.

The only thing missing was her mother.

Frowning, Nina went downstairs again, calling out for her mother. She was just beginning to panic when she happened to glance outside.

There she was, sitting on her bench in the winter garden, looking down at her own hands. Tiny white Christmas lights entwined the wrought-iron fence, made the garden look like a magical box in the middle of all that night. Snow fell softly around her, making the substantial look illusory. Nina went to the entryway and grabbed some snow boots and a coat. Dressing quickly, she went outside, trying to ignore the tiny burn-like landings of snowflakes on her cheeks and lips. This was exactly why she worked near the equator.

“Mom?” she said, coming up beside her. “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s cold.”

“It is not cold.”

Nina heard the exhaustion in her mother’s voice and it reminded her of how tired she was, and how terrible this day had been, and the awful day that was coming, and so Nina sat down beside her mother.

For what seemed like an eternity, neither one of them spoke. Finally, Mom said, “Your father thinks I cannot handle his death.”

“Can you?” Nina asked simply.

“You would be amazed at what the human heart can endure.”

Nina had seen the truth of that all over the world. Ironically, it was what her warrior women photographs were all about. “That doesn’t mean the pain isn’t unbearable. In Kosovo, during the fighting, I talked to—”

“Do not tell me about your work. These are discussions you have with your father. War does not interest me.”

Nina wasn’t hurt by that; at least that was what she told herself. She knew better than to reach out to her mother. “Sorry. Just making conversation.”