Winter Garden (29 page)

At first she hardly recognizes the sound, it is so foreign. There is no talking in Leningrad anymore, no neighbors stopping by. Not here, at least, where their whole family is together.

But there is danger. People who will kill for a gram of butter or a spoonful of sugar.

She reaches for the ax again, holds it to her chest as she goes to the door. Her heart is beating so fast and hard she feels dizzy. For the first time in months, she forgets that she is hungry. With a trembling hand, she reaches for the doorknob and turns it.

He stands there like a stranger.

Vera stares up at him and shakes her head. She has become like her mama, hungry enough and sick enough to see ghosts. The ax falls from her grasp, thunks on the floor at her feet.

“Verushka?” he says, frowning.

At the sound of his voice, she feels herself start to fall. Her legs are giving out on her. If this is dying, she wants to give in, and when his arms come around her and hold her up, she is sure she is dead. She can feel the warmth of his breath on her throat; he is holding her upright. No one has held her in so long.

“Verushka,” he says again, and she hears the question in his voice, the worry. He doesn’t know why she hasn’t spoken.

She laughs. It is a cracked, papery sound, rusty from disuse. “Sasha,” she says. “Am I dreaming you?”

“I’m here,” he says.

She clings to him, but when he goes to kiss her, she draws back in shame. Her breath is terrible; hunger has made her smell foul.

But he won’t let her pull away. He kisses her as he used to, and for a sweet, perfect moment, she is Vera again, a twenty-two-year-old girl in love with her prince. . . .

When finally she can bear to let him go, she stares up at him in awe. His hair is gone, shaved down to nothing, and his cheekbones are more pronounced, and there is something new in his eyes—a sadness, she thinks—that will now be a mark of their generation. “You didn’t write,” she says.

“I wrote. Every week. There is no one to deliver the letters.”

“Are you done? Are you back now?”

“Oh, Vera. No.” He closes the door behind him. “Christ, it’s cold in here.”

“And we’re lucky. We have a burzhuika.”

He opens his ragged coat. Hidden beneath it are half a ham, six sausage links, and a jar of honey.

Vera goes almost light-headed at the sight of meat. She cannot remember the last time she tasted it.

He sets the food down on the table. Taking her hand, he walks over to the bed, stepping around the broken furniture on the floor. At the bedside, he stares down at his sleeping children.

Vera sees the tears that come to his eyes and she understands: they do not look like his babies anymore. They look like children who are starving.

Anya rolls over in bed, bringing her baby brother with her. She smacks her lips together and chews in her sleep—dreaming—and then she slowly opens her eyes. “Papa?” she says. She looks like a little fox, with her sharp nose and pointed chin and sunken cheeks. “Papa?” she says again, elbowing Leo.

Leo rolls over and opens his eyes. He doesn’t seem to understand, or doesn’t recognize Sasha. “Quit hitting me,” he whines.

“Are these my little mushrooms?” Sasha says.

Leo sits up. “Papa?”

Sasha leans down and scoops his children into his arms as if they weigh nothing. For the first time in months, the sound of their laughter fills the apartment. They fight to get his attention, squirming like a pair of puppies in his arms. As he takes them over toward the stove, Vera can hear snippets of their conversation.

“I learned to make a fire, Papa—”

“I can cut wood—”

“Ham! You brought us ham!”

Vera sits down beside her mother, who smiles.

“He’s back,” Mama says.

“He brought food,” Vera says.

Mama struggles to sit up. Vera helps her, repositions her pillows behind her.

Once she’s upright, Mama’s foul breath taints the air between them. “Go spend the day with your family, Vera. No lines. No getting water from the Neva. No war. Just go.” She coughs into a gray handkerchief. They both pretend not to see the bloody spots.

Vera strokes her mother’s brow. “I’ll make you some sweet tea. And you will eat some ham.”

Mama nods and closes her eyes again.

Vera sits there a moment longer, listening to the strange mix of Mama’s troubled breathing and her children’s laughter and her husband’s voice. It all leaves her feeling vaguely out of place. Still she covers her mother’s frail body and stands up.

“He is so proud of you,” Mama says on a sigh.

“Sasha?”

“Your papa.”

Vera feels an unexpected tightness in her throat. Saying nothing, she walks forward, and Leo’s laughter warms her more than the burning legs of any old desk ever could. She gets out her cast-iron frying pan and fries up some of the ham in a tiny spot of sunflower oil and adds sliced onions at the last minute.

A feast.

The whole room smells of rich, sizzling ham and sweet, caramelized onions. She even adds extra honey to their tea, and when they all sit on the old mattress to eat (there are no chairs anymore), no one says anything. Even Mama is lost in the unfamiliar sensation of eating.

“Can I have more, Mama?” Leo says, wiping his finger in the empty cup, looking for any trace of honey.

“No more,” Vera says quietly, knowing that as kingly as this breakfast is, it is not enough for any of them.

“I say we go to the park,” Sasha says.

“It’s all boarded up,” Anya tells him. “Like a prison. No one plays there anymore.”

“We do,” Sasha says, smiling as if this is an ordinary day.

Outside, the snow is falling. A veil of white obscures the city, softens it. The dragon’s teeth and trenches are just mounds of snow and hollowed-out white valleys, respectively. Every now and then a white hillock sits on a park bench or lies by the side of the road, but it is easy to miss. Vera hopes her children do not know what is beneath the cover of snow.

In the park, everything is sparkling and white. The sandbagged Bronze Horseman is only visible in pieces. The trees are frosted white and strung with icicles. It amazes Vera that not a tree has been cut down here. There are no wooden fences or benches or railings left in the city, but no tree has been cut down for firewood.

The children immediately rush forward and drop onto their backs, making snow angels and giggling.

Vera sits by Sasha on a black iron bench. A tree shivers beside them, dropping ice and snow. She takes his hand, and although she cannot feel his flesh beneath her glove, the solid feel of him is more than enough.

“They are making an ice road across Ladoga,” he says at last, and she knows it is what he has come to tell her.

“I hear trucks keep falling through the ice.”

“For now. But it will work. They will get food into the city. And people out of it.”

“Will they?”

“It’s the only evacuation route.”

“Is it?” She glances sideways, deciding not to tell him about their other evacuation, how she almost lost their children.

“I will get all of you passes as soon as it’s safe.”

She does not want to talk about any of this. It doesn’t matter. Only food matters now, and heat. She wishes he would just hold her and kiss her.

Maybe they will make love tonight, she thinks, closing her eyes. But how could she? She is too weak to sit up sometimes. . . .

“Vera,” he says, making her look at him.

She blinks. It is hard sometimes to stay concentrated, even now. “What?” She stares into his bright green eyes, sharp with both fear and worry, and suddenly she is remembering the first time they met. The poetry. He said something to her, a line about roses. And later, in the library, he said he’d waited for her to grow up.

“You stay alive,” he says.

She frowns, trying to listen carefully; then he starts to cry and she understands.

“I will,” she says, crying now, too.

“And keep them well. I’ll find you a way out. I promise. You just have to hang on a little while longer. Promise me.” He shakes her. “Promise me. The three of you will make it to the end.”

She licks her cracked, dry lips. “I will,” she says, believing it, believing in it.

He pulls her close and kisses her. He tastes like sweet summer peaches, and when he draws back they are both done with crying.

“It’s your birthday tomorrow,” she says.

“Twenty-six,” he says.

She leans against him; his arm comes around her. For a few hours, they are just a young family playing in the park. People hear the children laughing and come to see; they stand at the edges of the park like confused mental patients suddenly set free. It has been a long time since any of them heard a child laugh.

It is the best day of Vera’s life—as impossible as that sounds. The memory of it is golden, and as she walks home, holding his hand, she can feel herself protecting it. It is a light she will need in the months to come.

But when she gets home, she knows instantly that something is wrong.

The apartment is dark and freezing. She can see her breath. On the table, a pitcher of water is frozen solid. Frost shines on the metal stove. The fire has gone out.

She hears her mother coughing in bed and she runs to her, yelling at Sasha to build a fire.

Her mother’s breathing is noisy and strained. It sounds like old fruit being pushed through a sieve. Her skin is as pale as dirty snow. The flesh around her mouth is darkening, turning blue. “Verushka,” she whispers.

Or did she really speak? Vera doesn’t know. “Mama,” she says.

“I waited for Sasha,” Mama says.

Vera wants to beg with her, to plead, to say that he is not back, he is only visiting, and that she needs her mother, but she—

I can’t say anything.

All I can do is sit there, staring down at my mother, loving her so much I don’t even remember how hungry I am.

“I love you,” Mama says softly. “Never forget that.”

“How could I?”

“Don’t try. That’s what I mean.” Mama struggles to lean forward and it’s terrible to watch the effort it takes, so I lean forward and take her in my arms. She’s like a stick doll now. Her head lolls back.

“I love you, Mama,” I say. It is not enough, those three little words that suddenly mean good-bye, and I am not ready for good-bye. So I keep talking. I hold her close and say, “Remember when you taught me to make borscht, Mama? And we argued about how small to cut the onions and why to cook them first? You made a pot and put the vegetables in raw so I could taste the difference? And you smiled at me then, and touched my cheek, and said, ‘Do not forget how much I know, Verushka.’ I am not done learning from you. . . .”

At that, I feel my throat tighten and I can’t say anything more.

She is gone.

I hear my son say, “Mama, what’s wrong with Baba?” and it takes all my strength not to cry. But what good will crying do?

Tears are useless now in Leningrad.

The silence that followed was so thick and gray Meredith expected to taste ash.

I can’t say anything.

She looked at her mother, still in bed, with her knees drawn up and the covers pulled to her chin, as if a bit of wool could somehow protect her.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Nina said, getting up.

“How could I be?”

Meredith got up, too. Although they said nothing, didn’t even make eye contact, Meredith felt for once as if they were in perfect agreement. She took her sister’s hand and they walked over to the bed.

“Your mother and sister knew how hard you tried, and how much you loved them,” Meredith said.

“Do not do that,” Mom said.

Meredith frowned. “Don’t do what?”

“Make excuses for me.”

“It’s not an excuse, Mom. Just an observation. They must have known how much you loved them,” Meredith said as gently as she could.

Nina nodded.

“But you didn’t,” Mom said, looking at each of them in turn.

Meredith could have lied then, could have told her eighty-one-year-old mother that yes, she’d felt loved, and even a week ago she might have done it to keep the peace. Now she said, “No. I never thought you loved me.”

She waited for her mother’s response, imagining her saying something that would change everything, change them, though she didn’t know what words those would be.

In the end, it was Nina who spoke.

“All these years we wondered what was wrong with us. Meredith and I couldn’t figure out how a woman who loved her husband could hate her own children.”

Mom flinched at the word hate and waved a hand in dismissal. “Go now.”

“It wasn’t us, was it, Mom?” Nina said. “You didn’t hate your children. You hated yourself.”

At that, Mom crumbled. There was no other word for it. “I tried not to love you girls . . . ,” she said quietly. “Now go. Leave me before you say something you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“What would that be?” Nina asked, but they all knew.

“Just go. Please. Don’t say anything to me until you’ve heard it all.”

Meredith heard the way Mom’s voice caught on please and shook, and she knew how close Mom was to falling apart. “Okay,” she said, “we’ll go.” She leaned down and kissed her mother’s soft, pleated cheek, smelling the rose-scented shampoo she used on her hair. It was something she hadn’t known: that her mother used scented shampoo. For the first time ever, she pulled her mother into an embrace and whispered, “Good night, Mom.”

All the way to the door, Meredith expected to be called back, to hear her mother say, Wait. But there was no last-minute revelation. Meredith and Nina went back to their own room. In a contemplative silence, they slipped past each other in the bathroom and brushed their teeth and put on their pajamas and climbed into their separate beds.

It was all connected; Meredith knew that now. Her life and her mother’s. They were joined, and not only by blood. By inclination, perhaps even by temperament. She was more and more sure that whatever loss had finally broken her mother—turned Vera into Anya—would have ruined Meredith, too. And she was afraid of hearing it.

“What do you think happened to Leo and Anya?” Nina asked.

Meredith wished it wasn’t a question. She would have preferred a statement she could ignore. Before this trip and all that she’d learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it. “I’m afraid to guess.”

“What will happen to her when she gets to the end?” Nina asked quietly.

That had begun to worry Meredith, too. “I don’t know.”

According to their guidebook, Sitka was one of the most charming—and certainly among the most historic—of all Alaskan towns. Two hundred years ago, when San Francisco was barely a dot on the map of California and Seattle was a hillside of ancient evergreens, this sleepy waterfront community had had theaters and music halls and well-dressed men in beaver hats drinking Russian vodka in the warm summer nights. Built and lost to fire and rebuilt again, the new Sitka was equal parts Russian and Tlingit and American.

Shallow water prohibited the arrival of big cruise ships, so Sitka waited, like a particularly beautiful woman, for visitors to arrive in small launches. As they entered Sitka Harbor, Nina took one picture after another. This was one of the most pristine places she’d ever seen. The natural beauty was staggering on this day of blue sky and golden sunlight, the water flat and sapphire-blue. All around were forested islands, rising up from the quiet sea like a necklace of jagged jade pieces. Behind it all were the mountains, still draped in snow.

On shore, Nina capped her lens and let the camera dangle around her neck.

Mom stood with a hand tented over her eyes, gazing at the town laid out before them. From here they could see a spire rising high into the sky, its top a three-tiered Russian cross.

Nina reached instinctively for her camera. Looking through the lens, she saw her mother’s sharp profile soften when she looked at the church spire. “What’s it like, Mom?” she said, moving closer. “Seeing that?”

“It’s been so long,” Mom said, not looking away. “It makes me think . . . of all of it, I guess.”

On her other side, Meredith moved closer as well. The three of them followed the small crowd who’d come from the ship. They walked up Harbor Drive and there were bits and pieces of Sitka’s Russian past everywhere—street names and store names and restaurant menus. There was even a totem pole downtown that had an emblem of Czarist Russia carved into it. The double-headed eagle.

Mom said almost nothing as they passed one reminder of her home-land after another, but when they pushed through the doors of St. Michael’s Church, she stumbled and would have fallen if both girls hadn’t reached out to steady her.

There were glittering, golden Russian icons everywhere. Some were ancient paintings on wooden boards; others were jewel-studded masterpieces on silver or gold. White arches separated the rooms, their surfaces decorated in elaborate gold scrollwork. On display were ornately beaded wedding gowns and religious vestments.

Mom looked at everything, touching what she could. Finally, she ended up at what Nina figured was the altar—a small area draped in heavy white silk adorned with Russian crosses made of gold thread. There were candles all around, and a pair of old Bibles lay open.

“Do you want us to pray with you?” Meredith asked.

“No.” Mom shook her head a little and wiped her eyes, although Nina had seen no tears. Then she walked out of the church and up a short distance. Nina could tell that her mother had studied a map of Sitka. She knew exactly where she was going. She passed a sign that advertised Russian-American history tours and turned into a cemetery. It was on a small rise, a grassy area studded with fragile-looking trees and clumps of brown bushes. A coppery dome, topped with a Russian cross, marked the hallowed ground. The grave markers were old-fashioned; many were handmade. Even the marker for Princess Matsoutoff was a simple black sign. A white picket fence delineated the princess’s final resting place. The few cement markers were overgrown with moss. It looked as if no one new had been buried here in years, and yet Mom moved over the bumpy ground, looking at every grave.

Nina took a picture of her mother, who stood in front of a mossy headstone that had been knocked askew by some long-ago storm. The late spring breeze plucked at her tightly bound white hair. She looked . . . ethereal almost, too pale and slim to be real, but the sadness in her blue eyes was as honest as any emotion Nina had ever seen. She put the camera down, let it hang, and moved in beside her mother.

“Who are you looking for?”

“No one,” Mom said, then added, “ghosts.”

They stood there a moment longer, both staring at the grave of Dmitri Petrovich Stolichnaya, who died in 1827. Then Mom straightened her shoulders and said, “I am hungry. Let us find someplace to eat.” She put her big round Jackie O–style sunglasses on and coiled a scarf around her throat.

The three of them walked back downtown, where they found a small restaurant on the water that promised SITKA’S BEST RUSSIAN FOOD.

Nina opened the door and a bell rang cheerily overhead. Inside the long, narrow room were a dozen or so tables; most were full of people. They didn’t look like tourists, either. There were big, broad-shouldered men with beards that seemed to be made of iron shavings, women in brightly colored kerchiefs and dated floral dresses, and a few men in yellow plastic fisherman’s overalls.

A woman greeted them with a bright smile. She was older than her voice sounded—maybe sixty—and pleasingly plump. Silvery curls framed an apple-cheeked face. She was the perfect portrait of a grandmother. “Hello, there. Welcome to the restaurant. I’m Stacey, and I’ll be happy to serve you today.” Reaching for three laminated menus, she led them to a little table by the window. Outside, the water was a sparkling expanse of blue. A fishing boat motored into shore, its passage marked by silvery ripples.

“What do you recommend?” Meredith asked.

“I guess I’d have to say the meatballs. And we make our noodles from scratch. Although the borscht is to die for, too.”

“How about vodka?” Mom said.

“Is that a Russian accent?” Stacey asked.

“I have not lived there for a long time,” Mom said.

“Well, you’re our special guest. Don’t you even look at the menu. I’ll bring you something.” She bustled away, whistling as she walked. Pausing briefly at a few other tables, she disappeared behind a bead-fringed curtain.

A few moments later she was back with three shot glasses, a frosted bottle of vodka, and a tray of black caviar with toast points. “Don’t you dare say it’s too expensive,” Stacey said. “We get too many tourists and too few Russians. This is my treat. Vashe zdorovie.”

Mom looked up in surprise. Nina wondered how long it had been since she had heard her native language.

“Vashe zdorovie,” Mom said, reaching for her glass.

The three of them clinked glasses, drank down their shots, and reached immediately for the caviar.

“My daughters are becoming good Russians,” Mom said. There was a softening in her voice as she said it; Nina wished she could see her mother’s eyes, but the sunglasses created the perfect camouflage.

“With one drink?” Stacey scoffed. “How can that be?”

For the next twenty minutes or so, they talked about ordinary things, but when the waitress returned with the food, no one could talk about anything else. From tiny, succulent meatballs swimming in saffron broth, to mushroom soup with a bubbly gruyère crust, to a moist salmon-stuffed veal roast with caviar sauce. By the time the apple and walnut strudel showed up, everyone said they were too full. Stacey smiled at that and walked away.

Nina was the first to cut off a piece. “Oh, my God,” she said, tasting the buttery walnut-filled pastry.

Mom took a bite of the strudel. “It is like my mama used to make.”

“Really?” Meredith said.

“She always said the secret was to slap the dough against the pastry board. When I was a girl, we often fought about this. I said it was unnecessary. I was wrong, of course.” Mom shook her head. “Later, I could never make that dough without thinking of my mother. Once, when I served it to your father, he said the strudel was too salty. This was from my tears, so I put the recipe away and tried to forget it.”

“And did you?”

Mom glanced out the window. “I forgot nothing.”

“You didn’t want to forget,” Meredith said.

“Why do you say this?” Mom asked.

“The fairy tale. It was the only way you could tell us who you were.”

“Until the play,” Mom said. “I am sorry for that, Meredith.”

Meredith sat back in her seat. “I’ve waited for that apology all my life, and now that I have it, it doesn’t matter. I care about you, Mom. I just want us all to keep talking.”

“Why?” Mom said quietly. “How can you care? Either one of you?”

“We tried not to love you, too,” Nina said.

“I would say I made it easy,” Mom said.

“No,” Meredith said, “never easy.”

Mom reached out and poured three more vodkas. Lifting her glass, she looked at her daughters. “What shall we drink to?”

“How about family?” Stacey said, showing up just in time to pour a fourth shot. “To those who are here, those who are gone, and those who are lost.” She clinked her glass against Mom’s.

“Is that an old Russian toast?” Nina asked after she’d downed her vodka.

“I’ve never heard it before,” Mom said.

“It’s what we say in my house,” Stacey said. “It’s good, don’t you think?”

“Da,” Mom said, actually smiling. “It is very good.”

On the walk back through town, Mom seemed to be standing taller. She was quick to smile or to point out a trinket in a store window.

Meredith couldn’t help staring. It was like seeing a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis. And somehow, seeing her new mother, or her mother in this new light, made Meredith feel differently about herself. Like her mom, she smiled easier, laughed more oft en. Not once had she worried about the office, or her girls, or missing the ship. She’d been happy just to be, to flow on this journey with her mom and sister. For once, they felt as intertwined as strands of a rope; where one went, the other belonged.

“Look,” Mom said as they came to the end of the street.

At first all Meredith saw were the quaint blue wooden shops and the distant snowy peak of Mount Edgecumbe. “What?”

“There.”

Meredith followed the invisible line from her mother’s pointing finger.

In a park across the street, standing beneath a streetlamp twined in bright pink flowers, there was a family, laughing together, posing for silly pictures. There was a woman with long brown hair, dressed in crisply pressed jeans and a turtleneck; a blond man whose handsome face seemed hardly able to contain the breadth of his smile; and two towheaded little girls, giggling as they pushed each other out of the picture.

“That is how you and Jeff used to be,” Mom said quietly.