Winter Garden

Winter Garden Page 10

“On the Enchanted Bridge,” she says.

“I think you will leave me standing there alone.”

Olga comes closer, yells her name.

“No. Honestly, I won’t.” She glances at Olga, wincing at her approach. “I won’t. Go, Prince Aleksandr. I’ll see you then.”

“Call me Sasha,” he says.

And just like that, she falls in love with this smiling young man who is all wrong for her. Above her station. And dangerous to her family, as well. She looks down at her pale, slim hands, seeing calluses from washing clothes on rough stones, and she wonders: Which finger would she lose for love . . . and how many will it take to make the prince love her in return?

But these are questions that have no answers and do not matter, not to Vera, anyway, for already love has begun. She and her handsome prince sneak away and fall in love and get married, and they live happily ever after.

Mom stood up. “The end.”

“Anya,” Dad said sharply. “We agreed—”

“No more.” Mom smiled briefly at her granddaughters and then walked out of the room.

Honestly, Meredith was relieved. Against her best intentions, the fairy tale had sucked her in again. “Let’s go, girls. Your grandpa needs his rest.”

“Don’t run away,” Dad said to her.

“Run away? It’s almost ten, Dad. The girls have been traveling all day. They’re exhausted. We’ll be back early in the morning.” She went to his bedside, leaned down to kiss his stubbly cheek. “Get some sleep, okay?”

He touched her face, let his dry palm linger on her cheek as he stared up at her. “Did you listen?”

“Of course.”

“You need to listen to her. She’s your mother.”

She wanted to say she didn’t have time for fairy tales and listening to a woman who rarely spoke wasn’t easy, but instead she smiled. “Okay, Dad. I love you.”

He pulled his hand back slowly. “Love you, too, Meredoodle.”

The fairy tales had always been among Nina’s best childhood memories, and though she had not heard one in decades, she remembered them well.

But why would her father bring them back up now? Surely he knew it would end badly. Meredith and Mom hadn’t been able to leave the room fast enough.

She went to stand beside him. They were alone now. Behind her, the fire snapped and a log crashed downward, crumbling to orangey black bits.

“I love the sound of her voice,” he said.

And Nina suddenly understood. Her father had employed the only device known to actually make Mom talk. “You wanted us all to be together.”

Dad sighed. It was a sound as thin as tissue, and afterward, he seemed to grow even more pale. “You know what a man thinks about . . . now?”

She reached for his hand, held it. “What?”

“Mistakes.”

“You didn’t make many of those.”

“She tried to talk to you girls. Until that god-awful play . . . I shouldn’t have let her hide. She’s just so broken and I love her so much.”

Nina leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “It doesn’t matter, Dad. Don’t worry.”

He grabbed her hand and looked up at her through watery brown eyes. “It matters,” he said, his mouth trembling, his voice so weak she could barely hear him. “She needs you . . . and you need her. Promise me.”

“Promise you what?”

“After I’m gone. Get to know her.”

“How?” They both knew that there was no way to get close to her mother. “I’ve tried. She won’t talk to us. You know that.”

“Make her tell you the story of the peasant girl and the prince.” As he said it, he closed his eyes again, and his breathing turned wheezy. “All of it this time.”

“I know what you’re thinking, Dad. Her stories used to bring us together. For a while, I even thought . . . but I was wrong. She won’t—”

“Just try, okay? You’ve never heard it all.”

“But—”

“Promise me.”

She touched the side of his face, feeling the prickly white outcroppings of a beard that hadn’t been shaved and the wet trail of his tears. She could tell that he was almost asleep. This afternoon, and maybe this conversation, had cost him too much and he was fading into the pillows again. He’d always wanted his daughters and his wife to love each other. He wanted it so much he was trying to believe a nice story hour would make it happen. “Okay, Dad. . . .”

“Love you,” he whispered, his voice slurred. Only the familiarity of the words made them decipherable.

“I love you, too.” Leaning down, she kissed his forehead again and pulled the covers up to his chin. Turning off the bedside light, she slipped her camera around her neck and left him.

Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, she went downstairs. In the kitchen, she found her mother standing at the counter, chopping beets and yellow onions. A giant pot of borscht simmered on the stove.

Of course. In times of trouble Meredith did chores, Nina took photographs, and Mom cooked. The one thing the Whitson women never did was talk.

“Hey,” Nina said, leaning against the doorway.

Her mother turned slowly toward her. Her white hair was drawn back from her angular face and coiled in a ballerina bun at the nape of her neck. Against the pallor of her skin, those arctic-blue eyes seemed impossibly sharp for a woman of her age. And yet, there was a brittle look to her that Nina didn’t remember noticing before, and that new fragility made her bold.

“I always loved your stories,” she said.

Mom wiped her hands on her apron. “Fairy tales are for children.”

“Dad loves them. He told me once that you told him a story every Christmas Eve. Maybe you could tell me one tomorrow. I’d love to hear the rest of the peasant girl and the prince.”

“He is dying,” Mom said. “It is a little late for fairy tales, I would say.”

Nina knew then: her promise couldn’t be kept, no matter how hard she tried. There was simply no way to get to know her mother. There never had been.

Five

Meredith threw back the covers and got out of bed. Reaching for the robe on her bathroom door, she was careful to brush her teeth without looking in the mirror. Reflective surfaces would not be her friend today.

The minute she left her room, she heard noise: the dogs were jumping downstairs, barking, and a television was on somewhere. Meredith smiled. For the first time in months, it felt like home again.

Downstairs, she found Jillian in the kitchen, setting the table. The dogs were positioned beside her, waiting for breakfast scraps.

“Dad told me to let you sleep,” Jillian said.

“Thanks,” Meredith said. “Where’s your sister?”

“Still in bed.”

Jeff handed Meredith a cup of coffee. “You okay?” he asked quietly.

“Rough night,” she said, looking at him above the rim of her cup. The fairy tale had stirred up a lot of old emotions, and that, combined with her worry about her dad’s weakness, had caused a restless night. “Did I keep you awake?”

“No.”

She remembered how entwined they used to sleep. Lately, they slept far enough apart that one’s restless night didn’t affect the other.

“Mom?” Jillian said, putting down napkins. “Can we go see Grandpa and Baba again this morning?”

Meredith reached past Jeff to the stack of buttered toast on the counter. Tearing off a tiny piece, she said, “I’m going to go now. Why don’t you all come after breakfast?”

Jeff nodded. “We’ll take the dogs for a walk and be right down.”

She nodded and took her coffee upstairs, where she exchanged her robe and pajamas for a pair of comfortable jeans and a cable-knit turtleneck sweater. Saying a last quick good-bye, she hurried out of the house.

It was a surprisingly sunny day. Her breath was visible as she walked the quarter mile downhill to her parents’ house. All night she’d dreamed about her dad. Maybe she’d been awake, really, and it had been memories that spiraled through her mind. Or maybe a combination of the two. All she really knew for sure was that she needed to sit beside him, let him tell her some stories from his life so she could hold that knowledge close and pass it on someday. They’d forgotten to do that—pass along family stories, put photographs in scrapbooks; that kind of thing. They knew a little about Dad’s relatives in Oklahoma and how the Great Depression had ruined them. They knew he’d joined the army and met Mom while on active duty, but that was pretty much it. Most of their family stories dated from the start of Belye Nochi, and Meredith, like many kids, had been more concerned with her own life than his.

Now she needed to rectify that mistake. And she wanted to apologize for running out after the fairy tale. She knew it had hurt his feelings and she hated that. This morning she’d give him a kiss and tell him how much she loved him and how sorry she was. If it mattered to him, she’d listen to every damn stupid story her mother had to tell.

At the front door, she knocked once and went inside.

“Mom?” She called out, closing the door behind her. She could tell immediately that coffee hadn’t been made.

“Nice, Nina,” she muttered.

She put the coffee on and went upstairs. At her parents’ closed bedroom door, she knocked. “Hey, guys. I’m here. Are you in there?” There was no answer, so she opened the door and found her parents cuddled together in bed.

“Morning. I’ve got coffee going downstairs, and I started the samovar.” She went to the windows and threw open the heavy curtains. “The doctor said Dad should try to eat. How do poached eggs and toast sound?”

Sunlight shone through the huge bowed windows, illuminating the honeyed oak floors and landing on the ornate Eastern European bed that dominated the room. As with most of the house, there were few splashes of color in here. Just white bedding and dark wood. Even the chair and ottoman in the corner were upholstered in snowy white damask. Mom had done the decorating, and since she didn’t see color, she tended not to use it. The only art on the walls were Nina’s more famous photographs, all in black and white, framed in black walnut.

Turning, she looked at her parents again. They lay spooned together, with Dad on his left side, facing the dresser, and Mom tucked up against his back with her arms around him. She was whispering to him; it took Meredith a second to realize that Mom was speaking Russian.

“Mom?” Meredith said, frowning. For all of her mother’s Russianness, she never spoke that language in the house.

“I am trying to warm him up. He is so cold.” Mom rubbed her hands vigorously along Dad’s arms, his sides. “So cold.”

Meredith couldn’t make herself move. She thought she’d known pain before, but she hadn’t; not until this moment.

Her father lay too still in bed, his hair a mess, his mouth slack, his eyes closed. He looked peaceful, as if he were simply sleeping late, but a pale blue cast rimmed his lips; it was just barely there, but she, who had looked at this face so often, saw that the man she loved wasn’t there anymore. His skin was a terrible gray color. He’d never reach for her again and pull her into a bear hug and whisper, I love you, Meredoodle. At that, her knees buckled. She remained standing only by force of will.