Winter Garden

Winter Garden Page 32

Meredith turned to her. “I made dinner. And set the table. I thought . . . afterward . . .”

“Sure,” Nina said, walking over to the French doors, looking out. “How do we do this?”

Meredith came up beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “I guess we just open the urn and let the ashes fall. Maybe you could say something.”

“You’re the one who should say something, Mere. I let him down.”

“He loved you so much,” Meredith said. “And he was proud of you.”

Nina felt tears start. Outside, the sky seemed to fold across the orchard in ribbons of salmon pink and the palest lavender. “Thanks,” she said, leaning against her sister. She had no idea how long they stood there, together, saying nothing.

“It is time,” Mom finally said behind them.

Nina eased away from Meredith, steeling herself for whatever was to come. As one, she and her sister turned.

Mom stood in the doorway, holding a rosewood box inlaid with ivory. She was practically unrecognizable in a purple chiffon evening blouse and canary-yellow linen pants. A red and blue scarf was coiled around her neck.

“He liked color,” Mom said. “I should have worn more of it. . . .” She smoothed the hair from her face and glanced out the window at the setting sun. Then she drew in a deep breath and walked toward them. “Here,” she said, holding out the box to Nina.

It was just a box full of ashes, not really her dad, not even all she had left of him, and yet, when she took it from her mother, the grief she’d been suppressing rolled over her.

She heard Mom and Meredith leave the kitchen and walk out through the dining room. She followed slowly behind them.

A cool breeze came through the open French doors, brushing her cheek, bringing with it the scent of apples.

“Come on, Nina,” Meredith called from outside.

Nina repositioned the camera strap around her neck and headed for the garden.

Meredith and her mother were already there, standing stiffly by the iron bench beneath the magnolia tree. The last bit of sunlight illuminated the new copper column and turned it into a vibrant flame.

Nina hurried across the grass, noticing a second too late that it was slippery out here. It all happened in an instant: her toe caught on a rock and she started to fall and she reached out to stop it and suddenly the box was flying through the air. It crashed into one of the copper columns and shattered.

Nina hit the ground hard enough to taste blood. She lay there, dazed, hearing Meredith’s Oh, no, repeat over and over.

And then her mother was pulling her to her feet, saying something in Russian. It was the gentlest voice she’d ever heard from her mother.

“I dropped it,” Nina said, wiping her face, smearing the grit across her cheek, and at the thought of that she started to cry.

“Do not cry,” Mom said. “Just think if he were here. He would say, What the hell did you expect, Anya, waiting until dark?”

Her mother actually smiled.

“We’ll call it an ash-tossing,” Meredith said, her mouth quirking up.

“Some families scatter. We fling,” Nina said.

Mom was the first to laugh. The sound was so totally foreign that Nina gasped, and then she started to laugh, too.

They stood there, the three of them, laughing together in the middle of the winter garden, with the apple trees all around them, and it was the best tribute to him they could have made. And later, when Mom and Meredith had gone inside, Nina stood there alone, in the quiet, staring down at a velvety white magnolia blossom dressed in gray ash. “Did you hear us laughing? We’ve never done that before, not the three of us, not together. We laughed for you, Dad. . . .”

She would have sworn she felt him beside her then, heard his breathing in the wind. She knew what he would have said to her tonight. Nice trip, Neener Beaner. See you in the fall. “I love you, Dad,” she whispered as a single apple blossom floated on the breeze and landed at her feet.

Meredith took the chicken Kiev out of the oven and set the pan on the cold stove to cool.

Drying her hands on a plaid towel, she took a deep breath and went into the living room to be with her mom. “Hey,” she said, sitting down beside her on the sofa.

The look her mother gave her was staggering in its sadness.

It connected them for a moment, enough that Meredith reached out and touched her mother’s hand.

For once, her mother didn’t pull away.

Meredith wanted to say something—just the right thing to ease their pain, but of course there were no such words.

“We should eat now,” Mom said at last. “Go get your sister.” Meredith nodded and went out to the winter garden, where Nina was photographing the ash-dusted magnolia blossom.

Meredith sat down on the bench beside her. The bronze sky had darkened so that all they could really see were white flowers, which looked silver in the fading light.

“How are you doing?” Nina asked.

“Shitty. You?”

Nina recapped her lens. “I’ve been better. How’s Mom?”

Meredith shrugged. “Who knows?”

“She’s better lately, though. I think it’s the fairy tale.”

“You would think that.” Meredith sighed. “How the hell would we know? I wish we could really talk to her.”

“I don’t think she’s ever really talked to us. We don’t even know how old she is.”

“How come we didn’t think that was weird when we were kids?”

“I guess you get used to what you’re raised with. Like those feral kids who actually think they’re dogs.”

“Only you could find a way to work feral children into a conversation like this. Come on,” Meredith said.

They went back into the house and found Mom at the table, with dinner served. Chicken Kiev with au gratin potatoes and a green salad. There was a decanter of vodka and three shot glasses in the center of the table.

“That’s my kind of centerpiece,” Nina said, taking a seat while Mom poured three shots of vodka.

Meredith sat down beside her sister.

“A toast,” her mother said quietly, raising her shot glass.

There was a moment of awkward silence as they looked at one another. Meredith knew that each of them was thinking about what to say, how to honor him without either making it hurt more or sound sad. He wouldn’t have wanted that.

“To our Evan,” Mom said at last, clinking her glass against the others. She downed the alcohol in one swallow. “Your father loved it when I drank.”

“It’s a good night for alcohol,” Meredith said. She drank her vodka and held her empty glass out for more. The second shot burned down her throat. “I miss hearing his voice when I come into the house,” she said.

Mom immediately poured herself another shot. “I miss the way he kissed me every morning.”

“I got used to missing him,” Nina said quietly. “Pour me another.”

By the time she finished her third shot of vodka, Meredith felt a buzzing in her blood.

“He would not want us speaking about him in this way,” Mom said. “He would want . . .”

In the silence that followed, they all looked at each other. Meredith knew they were thinking the same thing: how did you just go on?

You just do, she thought, and so she said, “My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. I love everything about it—how my kids look forward to it, the decorations, hearing the first Christmas album, the food. And I’ll say it now: I hated those damn family road trips we used to take. Eastern Oregon was the worst. Remember the time we stayed in teepees? It was one hundred degrees and Nina sang ‘I think I Love You’ for four hundred miles.”

Nina laughed. “I loved those camping trips because we never knew where we were going. Christmas is my favorite holiday because I can remember the date. And the thing I miss most about Dad is that he was always waiting for me.”

Meredith had never known that sometimes Nina felt alone, that for all her gallivanting about the globe, she liked to know that someone was waiting for her.

“I loved your father’s adventurous spirit,” Mom said. “Although those camping trips were hell. Nina, you should never sing in front of people if they cannot leave.”

“Ha!” Meredith said. “I knew I wasn’t crazy. Your singing was like listening to a dental drill.”

“Yeah? Well, David Cassidy wrote me a letter.”

“His signature was stamped.” Meredith smiled at the coup de grâce.

Across the table, Mom sighed as if she were hardly listening to them. “He always promised to take me to Alaska. Did you know that? To see again the Belye Nochi and the northern lights. That is the thing I remember most about Evan. He saved me.”

She looked up suddenly, as if realizing all at once that she’d shown something of herself. She pushed back from the table and stood up.

“I always wanted to go to Alaska, too,” Meredith said. She didn’t want her mother to leave the table, not now.

“I am going to my room,” Mom said.

Meredith rushed forward to take her arm. “Here, Mom—”

Mom pulled away. “I am not an invalid.”

Meredith stood there, watching Mom walk out of the kitchen and disappear. “She confuses the hell out of me.”

“You said a mouthful there, sister.”

That night, Meredith and Nina stayed up late, talking about Dad and trading childhood memories. Both were trying in their way to hold on to the day, to really celebrate his birthday, and afterward, when Meredith lay in her lonely bed, she began what she knew would be a new life habit: talking to her dad in the quiet times. She couldn’t get advice from him, perhaps, but somehow just saying the words aloud helped. She told him about Jeff and her confusion and her inability to say what her husband wanted to hear. And she knew what her dad would have asked her. It was the same question Nina had posed.

What do you want?

It was something she hadn’t thought seriously about in years. She’d spent the last decade considering what she would make for dinner, where the girls should go to school, how to package apples for the foreign markets. She’d thought fruit production and college entrance essays, house repairs and how to save for tuition and taxes.

The minutiae had consumed the whole.

But all the next day, as she tried to concentrate on work, the question came back to her, until finally she had an answer of sorts.

She didn’t know exactly what she wanted, but she knew suddenly what she didn’t want. She was tired of running too fast and hiding behind a busy schedule, tired of pretending problems didn’t exist.

After work, she drove across town to the Wenatchee World building.

“Hey,” she said from the doorway of Jeff’s office.

He looked up from the paperwork on his desk. She could tell that he hadn’t been sleeping well, and his shirt was in need of washing. His unshaven jaw made him look different, younger, hipper; someone she didn’t know.

He ran a hand through his sandy blond hair. “Meredith.”

“I should have come sooner.”

“I expected you to.”