Page 25 of Winter Garden

Twenty-three

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 often. 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.

Meredith felt a kind of sadness. It wasn’t what she’d felt before: not disappointment that her kids didn’t call, or fear that Jeff didn’t love her, or even worry that she had lost too much of herself. This new feeling was the realization that she wasn’t young anymore. The days of frolicking with her little girls were gone. Her children were on their own now, and Meredith needed to accept that. They would always be a family, but if she’d learned anything in the past few weeks it was that a family wasn’t a static thing. There were always changes going on. Like with continents, sometimes the changes were invisible and underground, and sometimes they were explosive and deadly. The trick was to keep your balance. You couldn’t control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shelf from breaking apart. All you could do was hold on for the ride.

As she stood there, staring at strangers, she saw her marriage in moments. She and Jeff at the prom, dancing under a mirrored ball to “Stairway to Heaven” and French-kissing ... her in labor, screaming at him to stay the fuck away from her with those ice chips ... him handing her the first pages of his first novel and asking her opinion ... and him standing beside her when Dad was dying, saying, Who takes care of you, Mere? and trying to hold her.

“I’ve been an idiot,” she said to no one except herself, forgetting for a moment that she was standing in the middle of a busy sidewalk, flanked by eavesdroppers.

“It’s about time,” Nina said, smiling. “I’m tired of being the only screw-up in this family.”

“I love Jeff,” Meredith said, feeling both miserable and elated.

“Of course you do,” Mom said.

Meredith turned to them. “What if it’s too late?”

Mom smiled, and Meredith was struck by both the beauty and the newness of the face she’d studied for decades. “I am eighty-one years old, telling my life story to my daughters. Every year, I thought it was too late to start, that I’d waited too long. But Nina here won’t take no for an answer.”

“Finally. Being a selfish bitch pays off.” Nina reached into her camera bag and pulled out a clunky cell phone, flipping it open. “Call him.”

“Oh. We’re having fun. It can wait. ”

“No,” Mom said sharply. “Never wait.”

“What if—”

Mom laid a hand on her forearm. “Look at me, Meredith. I am what fear makes of a woman. Do you want to end up like me?”

Meredith slowly reached out and removed her mother’s sunglasses. Staring into the aqua-blue eyes that had always mesmerized her, Meredith smiled. “You know what, Mom? I’d be proud to have your strength. What you’ve been through—and we don’t know the worst of it, I think—it would have killed an ordinary woman. Only someone extraordinary could have survived. So, yeah, I do want to end up like you.”

Mom swallowed hard.

“But I don’t want to be afraid. You’re right about that. So give me that damn cell phone, Neener Beaner. I’ve got an overdue call to make.”

“We’ll meet you on the boat,” Nina said.

“Where?”

Mom actually laughed. “The bar, of course. The one with the view.”

Meredith watched her sister and mother walk down the sidewalk, away from her. Although the wind was blowing slightly, tapping a seashell chime in the eaves beside her, and somewhere a boat honked its horn, she couldn’t hear anything except the lingering echo of her mother’s laughter. It was a sound she’d keep forever, and pull out whenever she stopped believing in miracles.

She crossed the street, stopping traffic with a smile and an outheld palm. Passing the family still taking pictures of each other, she went to a small wooden bench that read: IN MEMORY OF MYRNA, WHO LOVED THIS VIEW .

She sat down on Myrna’s bench and stared out at the gaggle of fishing and pleasure boats in the marina below. Masts cocked and swayed with every invisible movement of the water. Seabirds cawed out to tourists and dove for golden fries.

She glanced at her watch, calculated Jeff’s schedule, and dialed his number.

It rang so many times she almost gave up.

Then, finally, he answered, sounding out of breath. “Hello? ”

“Jeff?” she said, feeling tears rise up. It was all she could do to hold them back. “It’s me.”

“Meredith . . .”

She couldn’t quite pinpoint the emotion in his voice, and that bothered her. Once, she’d known every nuance. “I’m in Sitka,” she said, stalling.

“Is it as beautiful as they say?”

“No,” she decided. She wasn’t going to be afraid and she wasn’t going to waste time on the kind of facile conversations that had gotten her into this mess. “I mean yes, it is beautiful here, but I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to talk about our daughters, either, or our jobs, or my mom. I want to say I’m sorry, Jeff. You asked me if I loved you, and I hit the brakes. I’m still not sure why. But I was wrong and stupid. I do love you. I love you and I miss you and I hope to hell I’m not too late because I want to grow old with the man I was young with. With you.” She drew in a sharp breath. It felt as if she’d been talking forever, spewing really, and now it was up to him. Had she hurt him too much? Waited too long? When the silence went on—she could hear a squeaky spring as he sat down on a bad sofa, and then his sigh—she said, “Say something.”

“December 1974.”

“What?”

“I was in line at the CUB. Karie Dovre elbowed me and when I looked over, I saw you standing by the tetherball. You’d been avoiding me, remember? After the Christmas play? You wouldn’t even look at me for two years. I tried lots of times to walk up to you, but I always lost my nerve at the last second. Until that day in December. It was snowing, and you were standing there, all by yourself, shivering. And before I could talk myself out of it, I walked over to you. Karie was yelling that I’d lose my place in the food line, but I didn’t care. When you looked up at me, I remember how hard it was to breathe. I thought you’d run away, but you didn’t, and I said, ‘Do you like banana splits?’ ” He laughed. “What an idiot. It was probably twenty-five degrees outside and I ask about ice cream. But you said yes. ”

“I remember,” she said quietly.

“We have a thousand memories like that.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve tried to fall out of love with you, Mere. I couldn’t do it, but I thought sure as hell you had.”

“I didn’t fall out of love with you, either. I just ... fell. Can we start over?”

“Hell, no. I don’t want to start over. I like the middle.”

Meredith laughed at that. She didn’t want to go back and be young again, either, not with all the uncertainties and angst. She just wanted to feel young again. And she wanted to change. “I’ll be naked more. I promise.”

“And I’ll make you laugh more. God, I’ve missed you, Mere. Can you come home right now? I’ll warm up the bed.”

“Almost.” She leaned back into the sun-baked wooden bench.

For the next half hour, they talked like they used to, about anything and everything. Jeff told her he’d almost finished his novel and Meredith told him part of her mother’s story. He listened in obvious awe, offering memories that suddenly made sense, times when Mom’s behavior had seemed inexplicable. All that food, he said, and the stuff she said ...

They talked about the girls and how they were doing in school and what the summer would be like with the house full again.

“Have you figured out what you want?” Jeff finally said. “Besides me, that is?”

“I’m working on it. I think I want to expand the gift shop. Maybe let Daisy run Belye Nochi. Or even sell it.” She was surprised by her own words. She didn’t remember ever really thinking that before, but suddenly it made sense. “And I want to go to Russia. Leningrad.”

“You mean St. Petersburg, but—”

“It will always be Leningrad to me. I want to see the Summer Garden and the Neva River and the Fontanka Bridge. We never really went on a honeymoon.... ”

He laughed. “Are you sure this is Meredith Cooper?”

“Meredith Ivanovna Cooper. That’s what my name would be in Russia. And yeah. It’s me. Can we go?”

She could hear the laughter in Jeff’s voice, and the love, when he said, “Baby, our kids are gone. We can go anywhere.”