Winter Garden (16 page)

“Oh, well,” she says, and turns to her sister. “How do I look?”

“Perfect.”

Vera smiles broadly. She knows it is true. She is a pretty girl, some even say beautiful.

She goes to her bedroom door and listens. No sound reaches her ear. “They are in bed,” she says. Moving cautiously, she tiptoes over to her window, which is always left open in the summer. She blows her sister a kiss and climbs out onto the tiny ironwork grate. With every careful step, she is sure that someone from the street below will look her way and point and shout out that a girl is sneaking out to meet a boy.

But the people on the street are drunk on light and mead and they barely notice her climbing down from the building’s second floor. When she jumps the last few feet and lands on the small patch of grass, she cannot contain her excitement. It spills over in a giggle, which she stifles with her hand as she runs across the cobblestoned street.

There he is. Standing by the streetlamp at this end of the Fontanka Bridge. From here, everything about him is golden: his hair, his jerkin, his skin.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he says.

She cannot seem to talk. The words, like her breath, are trapped in her chest. She looks at his handsome lips and it is a mistake. In a flash, she is closing her eyes, leaning toward him, and still it is a surprise when he kisses her. She gasps a little, feels herself start to cry, and though her tears turn into tiny stars and embarrass her, there is nothing she can do to stop them from falling.

Now he will know that she is a silly peasant girl who has fallen in love over nothing and cried at her first kiss.

She starts to make an excuse—she is not even sure what it will be, but before she can speak, Sasha pulls her down into a crouch and says, “Be quiet,” in a voice so sharp she feels stung by it. “Look.”

A shiny black carriage, drawn by six black dragons, is moving slowly down the street. Silence falls all at once. People freeze in their tracks, retreat into shadows. It is the Black Knight. . . .

The carriage moves like a hunting animal, the dragons breathing fire. When it stops, Vera feels a chill move through her. “That is where I live,” she says.

Three hulking green trolls in black capes get out of the carriage and come together on the sidewalk, talking for a moment before they go to the front door. “What are they doing?” she whispers as they go inside the building. “What do they want?”

The minutes tick by slowly until the door opens again.

Vera sees it all in some kind of slow motion. The trolls have her father. He is not fighting, not arguing, not even talking.

Her mama stumbles down the steps behind them, sobbing, pleading. Windows in the building above her are slamming shut.

“Papa!” Vera cries out.

Across the street, her father looks up and sees her. It is as if he alone heard her cry out.

He shakes his head and holds out his hand as if to say, Stay there, and then he is shoved into the carriage and he is gone.

She elbows Sasha one last time and he lets her go. Without a backward glance, she runs across the street. “Mama, where have they taken him?”

Her mother looks up slowly. For a second, she seems not to recognize her own daughter. “You should be in bed, Vera.”

“The trolls. Where are they taking Papa?”

When her mother doesn’t answer, she hears Sasha’s voice behind her. “It’s the Black Knight, Vera. They do what they want.”

“I do not understand,” Vera cries. “You are a prince—”

“My family has no power anymore. The Black Knight has imprisoned my father and my uncles. You must know that. It is dangerous to be a royal in the Snow Kingdom these days. No one can help you,” he says. “I am sorry.”

She starts to cry, and this time her tears are not starlight; they are tiny black stones that hurt when they form.

“Veronika,” her mother says. “We need to get inside. Now.” She grabs Vera’s hand and pulls her away from Sasha, who just stands there watching her. “She is fifteen years old,” Mama says to him, putting an arm around Vera, holding her close as they climb the steps to the door.

When Vera looks back out to the street, her prince is gone.

From then on, Vera’s family is changed. No one smiles anymore, no one laughs. She and her mother and her sister try to pretend that it will get better, but none believes it.

The kingdom is still beautiful, still a white, walled city filled with bridges and spires and magical rivers, but Vera sees it differently now. She sees shadows where there had been light, fear where there had been love. Before, the sound of students laughing on a warm white night could make her cry with longing. Now she knows what is worth crying over.

Days melt into weeks and Vera begins to lose all hope that her father will return. She turns sixteen without a celebration.

“I hear they are looking for workers at the castle,” her mother says one day while they are eating supper. “In the library and in the bakery.”

“Yes,” Vera says.

“I know you wanted to go to university,” her mother says.

Already that dream is losing substance. It is something her father had dreamed for her, that one day she, too, would be a poet. Finally, she is the grown-up she’d longed to be, and she has no choices now. Not a peasant girl like her. She understands this at last.

Her future has been changed by this arrest; fixed. There will be no schooling for her, no handsome boys carrying her school-books or kissing her under streetlamps. No Sasha. “I do not want to smell like bread all day.”

She feels her mother’s nod. They are connected like that now, the three of them. When one moves, they all feel it. Ripples in a pond.

“I will go to the royal library tomorrow,” Vera says.

She is sixteen. How can she possibly understand the mistake she has just made? Who could have known that people she loved would die because of it?

What do you mean, people will die? What’s her mistake?” Nina said when her mother fell silent. “We’ve never heard that part of the story before.”

“Yes, you have. It scared Meredith, so I sometimes skipped it.”

Nina got up and went to the bed, turning on the lamp. In the soft light, her mother looked like a ghost, unmoving, her eyes closed.

“I am tired. You will leave me now.”

Nina wanted to argue. She could sit in the dark and listen to her mother’s voice for hours. About that, her father had been right. The fairy tale connected them somehow. And her mother might be feeling it, too; Nina was certain Mom was elaborating, going deeper into the story than ever before. Did she, like Nina, want to keep it going? Had Dad asked that of her?

“Can I bring you anything before I go?” Nina asked.

“My knitting.”

Nina looked around, saw the bulging bag stuffed alongside the rocking chair. Retrieving it, she went back to the bed. In no time, Mom’s hands were moving over the coil of blue-green mohair yarn. Nina left the room, hearing the click click click of the needles as she closed the door.

She stopped by the bathroom and pushed the door open. The room was empty.

Alone, she went downstairs and put a log on the dwindling fire. She poured herself a glass of wine and sat down on the hearth.

“Wow,” she said. “Wow.”

It was a hell of a story, worth listening to, if for no other reason than to hear her mother speak with such passion and power. The woman who told that story was someone else entirely, not the cold, distant Anya Whitson of Nina’s youth.

Was that the secret her father wanted her to glimpse? That somewhere, buried beneath the silent exterior, lay a different woman? Was that her father’s gift? A glimpse—finally—at the woman with whom he had fallen in love?

Or was there more to it? The story was so much richer and more detailed than she remembered. Or maybe she hadn’t really listened before. The story had always been something she’d taken for granted; like a picture you saw so often you never wondered who it was that had taken it, or who that was standing in the background. But once you’d noticed the oddity, it threw everything else into question.

Meredith hadn’t intended to listen to her mother’s fairy tale, but as she sat in the ridiculously overstocked bathroom, going through drawers full of over-the-counter and prescription medications dating back to 1980, she heard The Voice.

That was how she’d always thought of it, even as a girl.

Without making a conscious decision, she finished packing the box, marked it BATHROOM, and dragged it into the hallway. There she heard the words from her childhood float through the open door.

Maybe she is thinking of boys. Of a boy. . . .

Meredith felt a shiver. She recognized her own longing; it was familiar to her, that feeling of wanting something from her mother. She had known it all of her life.

She knew she should leave the bathroom and walk down the hallway and out of the house, but she couldn’t do it. The lure of Mom’s voice, as sweet and honeyed as any fairy-tale witch’s, snared her as it always had, and before she really thought about it, she found herself crossing the hallway, standing at the partially open door, listening.

It wasn’t until she heard Nina’s sharp voice say, “What do you mean, people will die?” that the spell broke. Meredith backed away from the door quickly—she definitely did not want to be caught eavesdropping; Nina would take it as interest and pounce.

Hurrying down the stairs, she was home in no time.

The dogs greeted her with dizzying enthusiasm. She was so relieved to have been missed that when she let them inside, she dropped to her knees on the mudroom floor and hugged them both, letting their nuzzling and face-licking substitute for the sound of her husband’s voice.

“Good puppies,” she murmured, scratching the soft hair behind their ears. Getting tiredly to her feet, she went to the closet beside the washer and dryer and got the giant bag of dog food—

Jeff’s job

—and poured some into their silver bowls. After a quick check that they had plenty of fresh water, she went into the kitchen.

The room was empty, quiet, with no lingering scents. She stood there in the darkness, paralyzed by the thought of the night to come. No wonder she’d stayed for the story. Anything was better than facing her empty bed.

She called each of her daughters, left I-love-you messages, and then made herself a cup of tea. Grabbing a heavy blanket, she went outside to sit on the porch.

At least the quiet out here felt natural.

She could lose herself in the endless starlit sky, in the smell of rich black earth, in the sweet scent of new growth. In this month that was a pause between spring and summer, the first tiny apples were out on the trees. In no time, the orchards would be full of fruit and workmen and pickers. . . .

It was her dad’s favorite time of year, this moment when everything was possible and he could still hope for the best crop ever. She had tried to love Belye Nochi as her father had. She loved him, so she tried to love what he had loved, and what she’d ended up with was a facsimile of his life, lacking the passion he had brought to it.

She closed her eyes and leaned back. The wicker swing back bit into her neck, but she didn’t care. The rusty old chains on either side squeaked as she pushed off with her feet.

You’re like her.

That was what Jeff had said.

Wrapping the blanket more tightly around her, she finished her tea and went upstairs, letting the dogs come up the stairs behind her. In her room, she took a sleeping pill and crawled into bed, pulling the covers up past her chin. Curling into a fetal position, she tried to focus on the chuffing sound of the dogs’ breathing.

Finally, somewhere past midnight, she fell into a troubled, fitful sleep, until her alarm went off at 5:47.

Batting the off button, she tried to go back to sleep, but it was a wasted effort, so she got up, dressed in her running clothes, and ran for six miles. When she got home she was exhausted enough to climb back into bed, but she didn’t dare take that route.

Work was the key. Keeping busy.

She thought about going in to work, although on the beautiful sunny Sunday, someone was liable to see her car, and if Daisy found out that Meredith had come in on a Sunday, the inquisition would begin.

She decided to go to Belye Nochi and make sure Nina was taking good care of Mom. There was still plenty of packing to be done.

An hour later, dressed in an old pair of jeans and a navy-blue sweatshirt, she showed up at Mom’s house, calling out, “Hello,” as she came into the kitchen.

Nina was at the kitchen table, wearing the same clothes she’d been in yesterday, with her short black hair spiked out in all directions. There were several books open on the table and pieces of paper lay scattered about, with Nina’s bold scrawl covering most of the sheets.

“You look like the Unabomber,” Meredith said.

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Have you slept at all?”

“Some.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I know you don’t care, but it’s the fairy tale. I can’t get it out of my head.” Nina looked up. “She mentioned the Fontanka Bridge last night. It was always the Enchanted Bridge before, wasn’t it? Does that seem odd to you?”

“The fairy tale,” Meredith said. “I should have known.”

“Listen to this: ‘The Fontanka is a branch of the River Neva, which flows through the city of Leningrad.’ ”

Meredith poured herself a cup of coffee. “She’s Russian. The story takes place in Russia. Stop the presses.”

“You should have been there, Mere. It was amazing. Last night was all new.”

No, it wasn’t. “Maybe you were just too young to remember. I am not getting sucked into this.”

“How can you not be interested? We’ve never heard the end of it.”

Meredith turned around slowly, looking at her sister. “I’m tired, Neens. I don’t know if you know how that feels, really. You’re always so in love with everything you do. But I’ve spent most of my life on this piece of property, and I’ve tried to get to know Mom. She won’t let it happen. That’s the answer, the end. She’ll lure you in, make you think there’s something more—you’ll see sadness in her eyes sometimes or a soft ening in her mouth, and you’ll seize on it and believe in it because you want to so much. But it’s all a lie. She just doesn’t . . . love us. And frankly, I’ve got problems of my own right now, so I’ll have to say a polite no, thank you, on your fairy-tale quest.”

“What problems?”

Meredith looked down at her coffee. She’d forgotten for a split second that it was Nina to whom she was speaking. Nina, with her journalist’s knack for getting to the heart of a thing instantly and her fearlessness in asking questions. “Nothing. It was just an expression.”

“You’re lying.”

Meredith gave a tired smile and went to the table, sitting down across from her sister. “I don’t want to fight with you, Neens.”

“So talk to me.”

“You’d be the last person who would understand, and I’m not being a bitch. It’s just the truth.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Danny Flynn. You’ve been with him for more than four years, but none of us ever even heard of him. I know about the places you’ve been and the photographs you’ve taken, even the beaches you like, but I don’t know anything about the man you love.”

“Who said I loved him?”

“Exactly. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in love. It’s stories that matter to you. Like this thing with Mom. Of course you’re hooked.” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand, indicating the books spread out on the table. “Just don’t expect all of this to mean anything, because it doesn’t. She won’t let it, and please, please quit trying to make me care. I can’t. Not like that, about her. Not again. Okay?”

Nina stared at her; the pity in her eyes was almost unbearable. “Okay.”

Meredith nodded and got to her feet. “Good. Now I’m going to run to the grocery store and then I’ll come back and do some more packing.”

“You need to keep busy,” Nina said.

Meredith ignored the knowing tone in her sister’s voice. “It doesn’t look like I’m the only one. I’ll see you in a few hours. Make sure Mom eats a good meal.” Smiling tightly, she headed for her car.

Nina spent the rest of the day alternately taking pictures of the orchard and surfing the Internet. Unfortunately, the dial-up connection at Belye Nochi was impossibly slow, so it took forever to look things up. Not that there was much to find. What she’d learned was that Russia had a rich fairy-tale tradition that was different in many ways from the Grimms’ type of stories that were more familiar to Americans. There were literally dozens of peasant girl and prince stories, and often they ended unhappily to teach a lesson.

None of it illuminated the story Nina was being told.

Finally, as night fell outside, Meredith opened the study door and said, “Dinner’s ready.”

Nina winced. She’d meant to quit earlier and help with dinner. But as usual, once she started researching something, time fell away from her. “Thanks,” she said, and closed down the computer. Then she went into the kitchen, where she found Mom seated at the table. There were three place settings.

Nina looked at her sister. “You’re staying for dinner again? Should we call Jeff down and invite him?”

“He’s working late,” Meredith said, taking a casserole out of the oven.

“Again?”

“You know news. The stories happen at all hours.”

Nina got the decanter of vodka and three shot glasses and brought them to the table. She sat down next to Mom, poured.

Her hands in puffy, insulated gloves, Meredith carried the hot casserole dish to the table and set it down on a pair of trivets.

“Chanakhi,” Nina said, leaning close, breathing in the savory aroma of the lamb and vegetable casserole. It had come out of Mom’s freezer, so it would taste exquisite, even reheated. The vegetables would be perfectly tender, their flavors merged into a silken tangle of tomatoes, sweet peppers, string beans, and Walla Walla sweet onions; all of it swimming in a rich garlic-and-lemon-tinged lamb broth with big chunks of succulent meat. It was one of Nina’s favorites. “Great choice, Meredith.”

Meredith pulled up a chair and sat down between them.

Nina handed her a straight shot of vodka.

“Again?” Meredith said, frowning. “Wasn’t last night enough?”

“It’s a new tradition.”

“It smells like pine needles,” Meredith said, wrinkling her nose as she smelled it.

“The taste is quite different,” Mom said.

Nina laughed at that and raised her shot glass. They dutifully clinked the glasses together and drank. Then Nina reached for the serving spoon. “I’ll dish up. Meredith, why don’t you start?”

“The three things again?”

“You can do as many as you want. We’ll follow your lead.”

Mom said nothing, just shook her head.

“Fine,” Meredith said as Nina ladled the casserole into her sister’s white china bowl. “My favorite time of day is dawn. I love sitting on my porch in the summer, and Jeff . . . thinks I run too much.”

While Nina was figuring out her response to that, Mom surprised her by saying, “My favorite time of day is night. Belye nochi. I love cooking. And your father thinks I should learn to play the piano.”

Nina heard the word thinks and it made her look up. For a moment they all looked at each other.

Mom was the first to glance away. “He thought this. Do not rush me to the doctor’s, Meredith,” she said. “I know he is not here.”

Meredith nodded but said nothing.

Nina filled in the awkward silence. “My favorite time of day is sunset. Preferably in Botswana. In the dry season. I love answers. And I think there’s a reason Mom hardly ever looks at us.”

“It is meaning you want?” Mom said. “You will be disappointed. Now eat. I hate this dish when it is cold.”

Nina recognized her mother’s tone. It meant that the frivolity of their little tradition had come to an end. The rest of the meal proceeded in silence; the only sounds were spoons scraping on fine china and wineglasses being set down on the wooden table, and when dinner was over, Meredith rose to her feet and went to the sink. Mom walked gracefully away.