Winter Garden (17 page)

“I’m going to hear more of the story tonight,” Nina said to Meredith, who was drying the silverware.

Her sister didn’t turn around, neither did she answer.

“You could—”

“I need to go through Dad’s study,” Meredith said. “I need some of his files at the office.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I’ve been putting it off.”

There were places in every home that belonged to a single individual. No matter how many family members might use a space, or come and go through it, there was one in the group to whom it truly belonged. In Meredith’s home, the porch was hers. Jeff and the girls used it on occasion, but rarely: summertime parties and such. Meredith loved that porch and sat in the wicker rocker throughout the year.

In Belye Nochi, almost every room belonged to her mom. Her damaged eyesight was reflected in all the decorations and furniture, from the kitchen with its pale walls and white tile counters to its antique wooden table and chairs. Where there was color in this house, it came in splashes—the nesting dolls in the windowsill, the gilded icons in the Holy Corner, the painting of the troika.

Of all the rooms in Belye Nochi, only one could truly be called her father’s, and it was this room, his study.

Meredith stood in the doorway. She didn’t have to close her eyes to imagine him at this desk, laughing, talking to the two little girls at play on the floor at his feet.

The echo of his voice was strong in here. She could almost smell the sweet tang of his pipe smoke.

Don’t tell your mom, now, you know she hates it when I smoke.

She went to the center of the room and knelt on the thick forest-green carpet. A pair of blackwatch-plaid club chairs stood cocked toward each other, facing the giant mahogany desk that dominated the room. The walls were a rich cobalt blue with black trim, and everywhere she looked was a family photograph, framed in forest-green leather.

She sat back on her heels, overcome for a moment at the idea of what she was to do in here. Only his clothes would be more difficult to go through.

But it had to be done and she was the one to do it. She and Mom would both need documents from this room in the coming months and years. Insurance information, bill records, tax records, and banking information, just to name a few.

So Meredith took a deep breath and opened his file drawer. For the next hour, as night fell outside, she carefully picked through the paper trail of her parents’ lives, sorting everything into three piles: Keep, Maybe, and Burn.

She was grateful for the concentration it took to do the sorting. Only rarely did she find her mind wandering into the swamp of her own broken marriage.

Like now, as she stared down at a picture that had somehow fallen into the property tax file. In the photograph, Dad, Nina, Jeff, Jillian, and Maddy were playing catch in the front yard. The girls were small—barely taller than the mailbox—and dressed in matching pink snowsuits. Christmas lights and evergreen boughs decorated the fences, and everyone was laughing.

But where was she? She’d probably been in the dining room, setting the table with Martha Stewart–level obsessiveness, or wrapping gifts or rearranging the decorations.

She hadn’t been where it mattered, making memories with her husband and children. Maybe she’d thought time was more elastic, or love more forgiving. She set the picture on the file and opened another drawer. As she reached inside she heard footsteps, the thump of the front door, and the sound of Nina’s voice in the living room.

Of course. Night had fallen and driven Nina back into the house, where her sister would undoubtedly exchange one obsession—her camera—for another. The fairy tale.

Meredith grabbed a file and pulled it out, seeing that the label had been partially ripped. The part she could make out read: BepaΠeTpoBHa. She was pretty sure that the letters were Russian.

Inside, she found a single letter, postmarked twenty years ago from Anchorage, Alaska, and addressed to Mrs. Evan Whitson.

Dear Mrs. Whitson,Thank you for your recent reply to my query. While I am certain that you could provide invaluable insight into my Leningrad study, I certainly understand your decision. If, however, you ever change your mind, I would welcome your participation.Sincerely,Vasily AdamovichProfessor of Russian StudiesUniversity of Alaska

Behind her, and through the open door, she heard Nina say something to Mom; then there was a long, drawn-out silence. Finally her mother said something, and Nina answered, and her mother began to speak again.

The fairy tale. There was no mistaking the sound of it.

Meredith hesitated, telling herself to stay where she was, that none of this mattered to her, that it couldn’t matter, that Mom wouldn’t let it, but when she heard Vera, she folded the strange letter, put it back in its envelope, and dropped it onto the Keep pile.

Then she got to her feet.

Nina put her camera on the coffee table and walked over to her mother, who sat in Dad’s favorite chair, knitting. Even on this warm May evening, a chill hung in the living room, so Nina built a fire.

“Are you ready?” she asked her mother.

Mom looked up. Her face was pale, her cheeks a little drawn, but her eyes were as bright and clear as ever. “Where did we leave off?”

“Come on, Mom. You remember.”

Mom stared at her for a long time, and then said, “Thelights.”

Nina turned off all the lights in the living room and entryway. The fire gave the darkness a blazing heart, and she sat on the floor in front of the sofa. For a moment the house was almost preternaturally silent, as if it, too, were waiting. Then the fire crackled and somewhere a floorboard creaked; the house settled in for the story.

Her mother began slowly. “In the year following her father’s imprisonment in the Red Tower, Vera becomes somebody, and in the Snow Kingdom, in these dark times, that is a dangerous thing to be. She is no longer just an ordinary

peasant girl, the daughter of a poor country tutor. She is the eldest daughter of a banned poet, a relative of an enemy of the realm. She must be careful. Always.

The first weeks without Papa are strange. Their neighbors will no longer make eye contact with Vera. When she comes up the stairs at night, doors clap shut in a sound like falling cards.

The black carriages are everywhere these days, as are the whispered stories of arrest, of people being turned to smoke and lost forever. By the time she is seventeen, Vera can recognize other families of criminals. They move like victims, with their shoulders hunched and their eyes cast downward, trying to make themselves smaller, unremarkable. Unnoticeable.

This is how Vera moves now. No more does she spend time in front of a mirror, trying to be pretty for boys.

She just tries to get by. She wakens early every morning and dresses in a black, shapeless dress. Clothes do not matter to her anymore; neither does it matter that her shoes are ugly and her socks do not match. Like this, she makes kasha in the morning for her sister, who has become a pale shadow of Vera, and for her mother, who rarely speaks anymore. The sound of her crying can be heard most nights. For months, Vera tried to comfort her mother, but it was a wasted effort. Her mother cannot be comforted. None of them can.

So they go on, doing what they must to survive. Vera works long days at the castle library. In rooms scented by dust, leather, and stone, she turns in the last of her father’s dreams for her—that she will become a writer—she hands it in like an overdue book and takes joy in the words of others. Whenever she has time, she disappears into a corner and pores through stories and poems, but she cannot do this often or for long. Vera can never forget that she is being watched, always. Lately, even children are being arrested. In this way are parents made to confess. Vera is terrified that one day the black carriages with the three trolls will arrive at her building again and that they will have come for her. Or worse—for Olga or Mama. It is only when she is truly alone—in her bed at night with Olga snoring gently beside her—that she allows herself to even remember the girl she’d once imagined herself to be.

It is then, in the quiet darkness, with cold winter air sweeping through the thin glass of her closed window, that she thinks of Sasha and how his kiss made her cry.

She tries to forget about him, but even as months pass with no word from him, she cannot forget.

“Vera?” her sister whispers in the dark.

“I’m awake,” she answers.

Olga immediately snuggles closer to her. “I’m cold.”

Vera puts her arms around her younger sister and holds her close. She knows she should say something comforting. As the older sister it is her job to lift Olga’s spirits and it is an obligation she takes seriously, but she is so tired. She hasn’t enough of herself left to share.

Finally Vera gets out of bed and dresses quickly. Hiding her long hair beneath a kerchief, she goes into the cold kitchen, where a pot of water-thinned kasha sits on the stove.

Mama is gone already. Earlier than usual, even. She leaves every morning well before dawn for her job at the royal food warehouse; when she finally comes home at night, she is too tired to do more than kiss her girls and go to bed.

Vera reheats the kasha for her sister, sweetening it with a big dollop of honey, and takes it to her. Sitting together on the bed, they eat breakfast in silence.

“Today, again?” Olga finally says, scraping the bowl for the last speck of food.

“Today,” Vera confirms. It is the same thing she has said to her sister every Friday since their papa was taken away. She has no words to add to it; Olga knows this. Hope is a fragile thing, easily broken if handled too much. So, saying no more, they dress for work and leave the building together.

Outside, winter is gnashing its teeth.

Vera lifts her collar upward and walks briskly forward, her body angled into the wind. Snowflakes scald her cheeks. On the frozen river, she sees scores of fishermen hunched around holes in the ice. At the corner, she and Olga go their separate ways.

Moments later, Vera hears the distant roar of a dragon and sees a black carriage turning onto this street, its color vivid amid the falling snow and the white stone of their walled kingdom. She dives into the shadowy snowbank beneath a crystal tree.

Someone is being arrested; someone’s family is being ruined, and all Vera can think is, Thank God it is not my family this time. She waits until the carriage is gone and gets back to her feet. In the slicing snow, she takes the trolley across town to a place that has become as familiar to her as her own arm.

At the entrance to the Great Hall of Justice, she pauses just long enough to square her shoulders. She opens the huge stone door and goes inside. The first thing she sees is a queue of woolen-clad women wearing felt boots and clapping their mittened hands together to keep warm. They move forward, always forward; people in line, waiting for their turn.

The next two hours pass in a gray blur, until at last Vera is at the front of the line. She gathers her courage and straightens as she walks up to the gleaming marble desk where a goblin sits in a tall chair, his face as pale and shapeless as melting wax, his golden eyes opening and closing like those of a serpent.

“Name,” he says.

She answers in as even a voice as she can.

“Your husband?” he says, his voice a hiss in the quiet.

“Father.”

“Give me your papers.”

She slides her papers across the cold desk, watching his slim, hairy hand close over them. It takes courage to stand there while he studies her paperwork. What if he has her name on a list? Or if they’ve been waiting for her? It is dangerous to keep coming here, or so her mother tells her. But Vera cannot stop. Coming here is the only hope she has now.

He hands her papers back to her. “The case is being studied,” he says, and then yells, “Next.”

She stumbles away from the window quickly, hearing an old woman come up beside her and ask about her husband.

It is good news. Her father is alive. He has not been sentenced and sent to the Barrens . . . or worse. Soon, the Black Knight will realize his error. He will learn that her father is no traitor.

She flips her collar up and goes back out into the cold. If she hurries, she can be to work by noon.

Friday after Friday, Vera goes to see the goblin. Each time the answer is the same. “The case is being studied. Next.”

And then her mother tells her they must move.

“There is nothing to be done about it, Vera,” her mother says, sitting slumped in a chair at the kitchen table. The past year has taken a toll on her, left its mark in wrinkles. She smokes a cheap cigarette and seems hardly to care that ashes flutter to the wood floor. “My wages at the storehouse have been cut. We cannot pay the bills here anymore.”

Vera would like to argue with her mother as she used to, but there is not enough money for firewood at night and they are cold.

“Where will we go?” Vera asks. Beside her she hears Olga whine.

“My mother offered.”

Vera is actually surprised by this. Even Olga looks up.

“We don’t even know her,” Vera says.

Her mother takes another long drag on the cigarette and exhales the thin blue smoke. “My parents did not approve of your father. Now that he is gone . . .”

“He’s not gone,” Vera says, deciding right then that she will never like this grandmother, let alone love her.

Though her mother says nothing, the look in her dark eyes is easy to read: he is gone.

Olga touches Vera, whether for support or in comfort, Vera is unsure. “When do we move?”

“Tonight. Before the landlord comes to collect the rent.”

Once, Vera would have talked back or argued. Now she sighs quietly and goes into her room. There is little enough to pack up. A few clothes, some blankets, a hairbrush, and her old felt boots, which she has almost outgrown.

In no time, they are outside, dressed in layers that represent almost all of their clothing; they trudge through the snow toward their new home.

At last they arrive. The building is small and it looks unkempt. A stone façade on the stoop is crumbling away. Cheap fabric curtains hang at odd angles in several of the windows.

Up the stairs they go, to the last apartment on the second floor.

The woman who answers is heavy and sad-looking, wearing a floral housecoat that has seen better days. Her gray hair is covered by a pale green kerchief. She is smoking a cigarette, and her fingers are discolored where it rests between them.

“Zoya,” the woman says. “And these are my grandchildren. Veronika and Olga. Which is which?”

“I am Vera,” she says, standing tall beneath her new grandmother’s scrutiny.

The woman nods. “There will be no problem with you, yes? We do not need the trouble you have had.”

“There will be no trouble,” Mama says quietly, and they are shown inside.

Vera stops dead. Olga bumps into her and giggles. But her laughter stops abruptly.

The apartment is a single room with a small wood-burning stove and a sink, a wooden table with four mismatched chairs, and a narrow bed pushed against the wall. A curtainless window stares out at the brick wall across the alley. In the corner, a half-open door reveals an empty closet. There is no bathroom; it must be a communal one for the building.

How can they all live here, crammed together like rats in a shoe box?

“Come,” her grandmother says, grinding out the butt of her cigarette in a saucer overflowing with ashes. “I will show you where to put your things.”

Hours later, on this first night in their new home, in the room that smells of boiled cabbage and too many people, Vera makes a bed of blankets on the floor and snuggles close to her sister.

“A man from work will bring our furniture over tomorrow,” Mama says tiredly. Olga begins to cry. They all know that furniture will not matter much.

Vera takes hold of her sister’s hand. Outside, a cart crashes into something, a man yells out a curse, and Vera can’t help thinking that they are the sounds of a dying dream.

After that, Vera is angry all of the time, and although she tries to hide her displeasure with life, she knows she fails to do so. She is sharp-tempered and quick to criticize. She and her mother and Olga sleep together in their narrow bed, crammed so close that they must turn in unison or not at all.

She works from dawn until dark, and when she gets back to the apartment it is more of the same. She cooks dinner with her mother and grandmother, then carries firewood to the stove for the night and washes the dishes. Working, working, working. Only on Fridays is it different.

“You should quit going there,” her mother says as they leave the apartment. It is five in the morning and dark as jet in the streets.

As they pass a café, a group of drunken young noblemen stumble out, laughing and hugging one another, and Vera feels an ache in her chest at the sight of them. They are so young, so free, and yet they are older than she, who trudges along beside her mother and sister going to work at dawn instead of drinking coffee and arguing politics and writing important words.

Her mother reaches out and takes Vera’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

Rarely do they touch on the truth of their lives or the loss. Vera squeezes her mother’s hand. She wants to say, I know, or It’s okay, but she is afraid she’ll cry, so she just nods.

“Well. Good-bye, then,” her mother finally says, turning toward her trolley stop.

“See you tonight.”

The three of them go their separate ways to work.

Alone, Vera walks the last few blocks to the Great Hall of Justice. She enters the long queue and waits her turn.

“Name,” says the goblin at the desk when it is her turn.

At her answer, he takes her papers and reads them. Abruptly, he gets up from his chair and leaves. Down the hall, in a great glassed chamber, she can see him talking to other goblins and then to a man in long black robes.

Finally, the goblin returns, takes his seat, and pushes the papers back to her. “There is no one of that name in our kingdom. You are mistaken. Next.”

“But you do have him, my lord. I have been coming here for more than a year. Please check again.”

“No one of that name is known here.”

“But—”

“He’s not here,” the goblin says, sneering. “Gone. Get it? Now move on.” He cranes his head to look around her. “Next.”

Vera wants to sink to her knees and cry out, but it is not good to draw attention to oneself, so she wipes the tears from her eyes and straightens her shoulders and heads for work.

Her father is gone.

There one moment and disappeared the next. The truth is that he is dead, that they have killed him; whoever they are. The trolls in their shiny black carriages and the Black Knight, for whom they work. Questions cannot be asked, though, not even the ordinary questions of a grieving family. They cannot beg to bury him or visit his grave site or dress his body for burial. All of that would draw attention to them and to this execution that the Black Knight wants to deny. In the library, she goes about her work and says nothing about her father.