Winter Garden (20 page)

She does as they have planned: she walks her bike down the path, trying to look calm, as if this is an ordinary early evening stroll through a place where peasants rarely go. But her pulse is racing and her nerve endings feel electrified.

And then he is there, standing beside a lime tree, smiling at her.

She misses a step and stumbles, hitting her bike. He is beside her in an instant, holding her arm.

“This way,” he says, leading her to a spot deep in the trees, where she sees he has laid out a blanket and a basket.

At first they sit cross-legged on the warm plaid wool, their shoulders touching. Through the green bower, she can see sunlight dappling the water and gilding a marble statue. Soon, she knows, the paths will be full of lords and ladies and lovers eager to walk outside in the warm light of a June night.

“What have you been doing since . . . I last saw you?” she asks, not daring to look at him. He has been in her heart for so long it is as if she knows him already, but she doesn’t. She does not know what to say or how to say it, and suddenly she is afraid that there is a wrong way to move forward, a mistake that once made cannot be undone.

“I am at the cleric’s college, studying to be a poet.”

“But you are a prince. And poetry is forbidden.”

“Do not be afraid, Vera. I am not like your father. I am careful.”

“He said the same thing to my mother.”

“Look at me,” Sasha says quietly, and Vera turns to him.

It is a kiss that, once begun, never really ends. Interrupted, yes. Paused, certainly. But from that very moment onward, Vera sees the whole of her life as only a breath away from kissing him again. On that night in the park, they begin the delicate task of binding their souls together, creating a whole comprising their separate halves.

Vera tells him everything there is to know about her and listens rapturously to his own life story—how it was to be born in the northern wilds and left in an orphanage and found later by his royal parents. His tale of deprivation and loneliness makes her hold him more tightly and kiss him more desperately and promise to love him forever.

At this, he turns a little, until he is lying alongside her, their faces close. “I will love you that long, Vera,” he says.

After that there is nothing more to be said.

They walk hand in hand through the pale purple glow of early morning. The alabaster statues look pink in the light. Out in the city, they are among people again, strangers who feel like friends on this white night when the wind blowing up from the river rustles through the leaves. Northern lights dance across the sky in impossible hues.

At the end of the bridge, beneath the streetlamp, they pause and look at each other.

“Come tomorrow night. For dinner,” she says. “I want you to meet my family.”

“What if they do not like me?”

There is no cracking in his voice, no physical betrayal of his emotions, but Vera sees his heart as clearly as if it were beating in the pale white cup of her hands. She hears in him the pain of a boy who’d been abandoned and claimed so late that damage was done. “They will love you, Sasha,” she says, feeling for once as if she is the older of the two. “Trust me.”

“Give me one more day,” he says. “Do not tell anyone about us. Please.”

“But I love you.”

“One more day,” he says again.

She supposes it is little enough to agree to, although he is being foolish. And yet, she smiles at the thought of another magical night like this, where there is nothing but the two of them. She can certainly feign illness one more time.

“I’ll meet you tomorrow at one o’clock. But do not come inside the library. I need my job.”

“I’ll be waiting on the bridge over the castle moat. I want to show you something special.”

Vera lets go of him at last and walks across the street, with her bike clattering along beside her. Heaving it up the stairs, she tries to be quiet as she goes up to the second floor and opens the door. The old hinges squeak; the bike rattles.

The first thing she notices is the smell of smoke. Then she sees her mother, sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette. An over-flowing ashtray is near her elbow.

“Mama!” Vera cries. The bicycle clangs into the wall.

“Hush,” her mother says sharply, glancing over at the bed where Grandmother lies snoring.

Vera puts the bicycle away and moves toward the table. There are no lights on, but a pale glow illuminates the window anyway, giving every hard surface in the room a softer edge; this is especially true of her mother’s face, which is clamped tight with anger. “And where are your vegetables from the garden?”

“Oh. I hit a bench with my bike and fell into the street. Everything was lost.” As the lie spills out, she grabs on to it. “And I was hurt. Oh, my side is killing me. That is why I am so late. I had to walk all the way home.”

Her mother looks at her without smiling. “Seventeen is very young, Vera. You are not so ready for life . . . and love . . . as you believe. And these are dangerous times.”

“You were seventeen when you fell in love with Papa.”

“Yes,” her mother says, sighing. It is a sound of defeat, as if she already knows everything that has happened.

“You would do it again, wouldn’t you? Love Papa, I mean.”

Her mother flinches at that word—love.

“No,” her mother says softly. “I would not love him again, not a poet who cared more for his precious words than his family’s safety. Not if I had known how it would feel to live with a broken heart.” She puts out her cigarette. “No. That is my answer.”

“But—”

“I know you don’t understand,” her mother says, turning away. “I hope you never do. Now come to bed, Vera. Allow me to pretend you are still my innocent girl.”

“I am,” Vera protests.

Her mother looks at her one last time and says, “Not for long, though, I think. For you want to be in love.”

“You make it sound as if falling in love is like catching some disease.”

Her mother says nothing, just climbs into the narrow bed with Olga, who makes a snoring sound and flings an arm across her.

Vera wants to ask more questions, explain how she feels, but she sees that her mother isn’t interested. Is this the reason Sasha asked for one more day? Did he know that Mama would resist?

She brushes her teeth and dresses for bed, plaiting her long hair. Climbing in next to her mother, she eases close, finds warmth in her mother’s arms.

“Be careful,” her mother whispers into Vera’s ear. “And do not lie to me again.”

The next morning, Vera wakes early enough to wash her hair in the kitchen sink and painstakingly brushes it dry. “Where are you going?” Olga says sleepily from the bed. Vera presses a finger to her lips and makes a shushing sound. Her mother angles up on one elbow in the bed. “There is no need to shush your sister, Veronika. I can smell the rosewater you used in your hair.”

Vera considers lying to her mother, perhaps saying that someone important is expected in the library today, but in the end she simply says nothing.

Her mother throws back the flimsy covers and gets out of the narrow bed. She and Olga peel sideways like synchronized swimmers and stand together in their ragged white nightgowns.

“Bring your young man here on Sunday,” Mama says. “Your grandmother will be out.”

Vera throws her arms around her and hugs her tightly. Then as they have done each day for more than a year, the three of them eat breakfast and then leave together.

When Mama turns toward the warehouse and walks away, Olga sidles up to Vera. “Tell me.”

Vera links arms with her sister. “It is Prince Aleksandr. Sasha. He has been waiting for me to grow up and now that I have, he is in love with me.”

“The prince,” Olga says in awe.

“I am seeing him again tonight. So tell Mama I am fine and I will be home when I can. I don’t want her to worry.”

“She’ll be mad.”

“I know,” Vera says. “But what can I do? I love him, Olga.”

At the corner, Olga stops. “You will be home, though?”

“I promise.”

“Okay, then.” Olga gives her a kiss on each cheek and heads down the street toward her own job at the museum.

Vera catches a trolley on the next street and rides it for several blocks. She is busy thinking of ways to sneak out of work early when she enters the library.

The librarian is standing in the magnificent foyer, with her arms crossed and her right foot tapping on the marble floor impatiently.

Vera skids to a stop. “Madam Plotkin. I am sorry to be late.”

The librarian looks at the clock on the wall. “Seven minutes, to be precise.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Vera tries to appear contrite.

“You were seen yesterday in the park.”

“Oh, no. Madam Plotkin, please—”

“Do you value this employment?”

“Yes, ma’am. Very much. And I need it. For my family.”

“If I were the child of a criminal of the kingdom, I would be careful.”

“Yes, ma’am. Of course.”

The librarian brushes her hands together, as if they’d gathered dirt somehow during this conversation and now she wants to be clean. “Good. Now go to the storeroom and unpack the boxes there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I trust you will not be sick again.”

Trapped all day in the dark, dusty storage room, Vera feels like a bird banging against a glass window. She imagines Sasha on the bridge, waiting first with a smile and then with a frown.

She is desperate to run out of this oppressive quiet, but her fear is greater than her love, it seems, and that shames her even more. She is the daughter of a criminal of the kingdom, and she cannot draw attention to herself. Her family is barely making it as things are. The loss of this employment would ruin them. And so she stays, moving so erratically sometimes that her fellow workers snap at her to be careful and pay attention.

Hour after hour she stares at the clock, willing the black hand to move . . . to move . . . to click forward, and when her shift is finally over, she drops what she is doing and races for the door, emerging into the bright light of the stairwell. She hurries down the wide marble steps. In the lobby, she forces herself to slow down and moves as casually as she can across the marble floor.

Outside, she runs: down the steps, across the street to the trolley stop. When the car jangles to a halt in front of her, she squeezes into the crowd; there are so many people on board, she doesn’t need to hold on to the brass pole.

At her stop, she jumps off and runs for the corner.

The street is empty.

Then she sees the black carriages. Two of them, parked in front of the moat bridge.

Vera does not move. It is as if her knees have forgotten how to bend, and it takes all her courage just to breathe. They know she is a peasant girl, sneaking out to meet a royal, and they have come for her. Or maybe they came for him. Even a prince is not safe from the Black Knight’s reach.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

She hears the words as if from far away, and then someone is grabbing her, forcing her to turn.

A man is beside her. “They’ve taken him away. You shouldn’t be here.”

“But—”

“No buts. Whoever he was to you, you should forget him and go home.”

“But I love him.”

The man’s fleshy face softens in sympathy. “Forget about your young man,” he says. “And go.”

He pushes her with a firmness that makes her stumble sideways. In the old days perhaps such a shove would be rude, but now it is a kindness, a reminder that this is no place to stand and cry. “Thank you, sir,” she says quietly as she moves away from him.

Tears sting her eyes and she wipes them away reluctantly. Her eyes are burning when she looks up and sees a wavery image of a young man standing beneath a darkened streetlamp.

From here, it looks like Sasha, with his unruly hair and broad smile and strong jawline. Even as she picks up her pace, she tells herself she is being a fool, that he is gone and from now on all handsome blond-haired young men will remind her of Sasha; still, within a meter or so she is running. A split second before he begins to move toward her, she knows this is no mistake. It is her Sasha, now running toward her.

“Vera,” he says, pulling her into his arms, kissing her so deeply she has to push him away to breathe.

“You waited all day?”

“A day? You think that is all I would wait?” He pulls her close.

Together they cross the street. The Royal Theater rises up from the concrete like a green and white spun-sugar confection, its roof adorned with a lyre and crown. A queue is beginning to form along the sidewalk. Vera notices how beautifully the people are dressed—in furs and jewels and white gloves.

Sasha takes her around to a door in the back of the theater. She follows him into a dark hallway and up a flight of stairs.

They skirt the main hall and slip into a private box.

Vera stares across the darkened hall in awe, seeing the gilt decor and crystal chandeliers. In this box—obviously being repaired—even the tools and disarray can’t hide the exquisite detail. Plush mohair seats line the box’s front; in the back, tucked in the shadows, is an ottoman bed draped in dusty velvet. As she is standing alongside it, she hears the doors open below her, and well-dressed patrons stream into the theater. The buzz of conversation rises to the rafters.

She turns to Sasha. “We have to leave. I do not belong here.”

He pulls her into the shadows. Blue velvet curtains cushion their bodies as they lean against the wall. “This box won’t be used tonight. If someone comes in, we’ll say we are cleaners. There are our brooms.”

The lights flicker and a hush falls over the audience. On stage, gold and blue velvet curtains part.

Music begins with a high, pure note and then sweeps into a symphony of radiant sound. Vera has never heard anything as beautiful as this music, and then Galina Ulanova—the great ballerina—leaps across the stage like a ray of light.

Vera leans forward, as close to the velvet curtains of the box as she dares.

For more than two hours, she doesn’t move as the romantic story of a princess kidnapped by an evil wizard plays out across the intricately staged set. And when the wizard is brought to his knees by love, Vera finds herself crying for him, for her, for all of it. . . .

“My papa would have loved this,” she says to Sasha.

He kisses her tears away and leads her to the ottoman bed. She knows what is going to happen now; she can feel passion coming to life between them, uncoiling.

She wants him, there’s no doubt about that; she wants him the way a woman wants a man, but she doesn’t know much more than that. He lies down on the soft cushion, pulling her down on top of him, and when he slides his hand under her dress, she starts to shake a little. It is as if her body is taking charge of itself.

“Are you sure of this, Verushka?” he whispers, and the endearment makes her smile, reminds her that this is Sasha beneath her. She will be safe.

“I am sure.”

By Sunday Vera is an entirely different girl. Or perhaps she is a woman. She and Sasha have met secretly after work every day since the ballet, and Vera has fallen so deeply in love with him that she knows there will never be a way out of it. He is the other half of her.

“Are you sure about this, Verushka?” he asks her now, as they climb the steps to her front door.

She takes his hand. She is sure enough for the both of them. “Yes.” But when she reaches for the door, he grabs her hand. “Marry me,” he says, and she laughs up at him. “Of course I will.”

Then she kisses him and tells him to come inside.

The hallway is dark and cluttered with boxes. They climb the narrow wooden stairs to the second floor. At the door to the apartment she pauses just long enough to kiss him and then she opens the door with a flourish.

The small apartment is shabby but spotlessly clean. Her mother has been cooking all day and the sweet, savory scent of boar stew fills the room.

“This is my prince, Mama.”

Her mother and Olga stand on the other side of the table, pressed together, their hands on the chairs in front of them. Both are dressed in pretty floral blouses with plain cotton skirts. Mama has put on a pair of worn, sagging stockings and heels for this meeting; Olga is in her stockinged feet.

Vera sees them through Sasha’s eyes: her tired, once-beautiful mother, and Olga, who is ready to burst into womanhood. Her sister is smiling so brightly her big, crooked teeth seem ordinary-sized.

Her mother comes around the table. “We have heard much about you, Your Highness. Welcome to our home.”

Olga giggles. “I’ve really heard a lot about you. She can’t shut up.”

Sasha smiles. “She talks to me of you also.”

“That is our Veronika,” Mama says. “She is a talker.” She shakes Sasha’s hand firmly, gazing up at him. When she seems satisfied, she lets go and moves toward the samovar. “Would you like some tea?”

“Yes. Thank you,” he says.

“You attend the cleric’s college, I hear,” Mama says to him. “This must be exciting.”

“Yes. I’m a good student, too. I will make a good husband.”

Her mother flinches a little but pours the tea. “And what are you studying?”

“I hope to be a poet someday like your husband.”

Vera sees it all as if in slow motion: her mother hears the terrible words together—poet and husband—and she stumbles. The fragile glass cup in her hand falls slowly, crashes to the ground. Hot tea sprays Vera’s bare ankles and she cries out in pain.

“A poet?” her mother says quietly, as if none of it has happened, as if a treasured family heirloom does not lie broken at her feet. “I thought a prince was dangerous enough, but this . . .”

Vera cannot believe that she forgot to warn Sasha of this. “Don’t worry, Mama. You needn’t—”

“You say you love her,” Mama says, ignoring Vera, “and I can see in your eyes that you do, but you will do this to her anyway, this dangerous thing that has been done to our family already.”

“I wouldn’t endanger Vera for anything,” he says solemnly.

“Her father promised me the same thing,” Mama says bitterly. Simply the use of the word—father —underscores how angry her mother is.

“You can’t stop us from marrying,” Vera says.

This time her mother looks at her, and in those eyes she loves is a nearly unbearable disappointment.

Vera feels her confidence ebbing. Ten minutes ago it would have been inconceivable that she should have to choose between Sasha and her family . . . yet wasn’t that exactly what her mother had done? Mama had chosen her poet and run away with him, only to come back home in shame. And now, though her mother accepts her, there is little love left between them.

Vera places a hand on her stomach, rubbing it absently. In the months to come, she will remember this moment and understand that already his child is growing inside of her, but all she knows then is that she is afraid of

“Stop.” Meredith pushed the closet door open and stepped out of her hiding place. The bedroom was blue with moonlight and in it, Mom looked exhausted. Her shoulders had begun to round, and her long, pale fingers had started to tremble. Worse than all of that, though, was the sudden pallor of her skin. Meredith walked over to the bed. “Are you okay?”

“You were listening,” Mom said.

“I was listening,” she admitted.

“Why?” Mom asked.

Meredith shrugged. Honestly, she had no answer for that.

“Well. You are right,” Mom said, leaning back into the pillows. “I am tired.”

It was the first time Mom had ever said she was right about something. “Nina and I will take care of you. Don’t worry.” She almost reached out to stroke her mother’s hair, as she would have done to a child who looked as worn out as Mom did. Almost.

Nina came up to the bedside and stood beside Meredith.

“But who will take care of you two?” Mom asked.

Meredith started to answer and stopped. It dawned on her both that this was the most caring thing Mom had ever said to them, and that she was right to ask it.

Mom would be gone someday, and only they would be left. Would they take care of each other?

“So,” Nina said when they went out into the hallway, “how much of the story have you secretly been listening to?”

Meredith kept moving. “All of it.”

Nina followed her down the stairs. “Then why in the hell did you stop her?”

In the kitchen, Meredith put water on to boil. “I don’t get you,” she said to her sister. “When you look through a piece of glass the size of my thumbnail, you see everything.”

“Yeah. So?”

“Tonight you sat in the room with Mom for all that time and didn’t notice that she was fading right in front of you.”