All the Winters After (24 page)

Her father answered in English, “He is no longer of us. He left this village soon after Nadia disappeared.”

So it was true. Nadia hung her head and willed the next set of tears to stay put. Here, her grandmother spoke up, also in English. “Nadia and her friend must to be hungry, eh? Let your questions wait. It is not to be holy day of fasting, so let us feast. Our celebration feast of gratitude for return of our Nadia. She will answer questions later. For now, you show to her our family, your children, your husbands, your wives. You tell to her what happened in these ten years she's been gone.”

In minutes, it seemed, foods piled themselves high on the table. Nadia noticed that her mother took out the mandatory outsider dishes—separate dishes in a different pattern for those who weren't Old Believers—for Kache, but also for Nadia. Her grandmother argued with her mother in Russian, but with everyone else talking, Nadia couldn't hear what the two women said. There was no prayer before the meal. Nadia knew why: the rule that Old Believers cannot pray with outsiders. But her father raised his glass and said, “I wish you all good health and the spirit of God.”

Everyone gathered to greet Nadia. Warm hugs, shy smiles. Her sister Marina said, “I have always been afraid of water. I cannot go in boats. But here you are! Maybe I'm not as afraid anymore.”

Her brother Alex introduced her to his wife and children. “This is your aunt Nadia. She is the one who taught me how to play
Lopta
and
Knaz
. No one ever beat her at
Knaz
! She was always the king.”

Her sister Natalia said, “How we have mourned you. The forty required days were only the beginning. I have never stopped crying and praying for your soul. But now I happily stop.”

There were more stories, more tears, but joking and laughing too.
Braga
flowed freely. Nadia almost forgot that she had yet to explain where she'd been. She almost felt that she had never been gone. Almost. Yet not quite. Every now and then, she looked up to see Kache, chatting with Alex, looking fairly comfortable and well-fed, as he nodded and ate from his separate dishes.

FIFTY-TWO

Kache had never been the recipient of so many sideways glances. While Nadia's return was being celebrated, his presence was definitely of the elephant-in-the-room variety. A few people addressed him in English, but the obvious question—what the hell are you doing here with Nadia?—hung unasked.

Nadia sat behind a cluster of vibrantly clothed siblings. Two of her brothers spoke quietly and urgently in the corner. They did not look happy. At one point, one actually snarled. Kache tried to appear casual as he repositioned himself between them and Nadia and her more friendly siblings. If he were the elephant in the room, the gun felt like a rhinoceros in his coat pocket.

Another brother did approach Kache just then, smiled warmly, and shook his hand. “I am Alex,” he said. “How do you know my sister?” He took a bite of food and then another.

“She has been living in my parents' home,” Kache offered, aiming for the most wholesome way to put it.

“She is married, you know,” Alex said, talking with his mouth full. He seemed like he hadn't eaten in weeks. “But we will never see him again.”

Kache wondered if Vladimir was dead. “Really? Why's that?”

“He was not truly Old Believer. He kept…uh…magazines.” He set down his fork and plate and squeezed the air as if he had big breasts. “The worst acts you can imagine. We burn them—only looked at the few.” He let out a long, low whistle. “Barbaric. He stopped coming to service. He smoked and drank the hard liquor. At first, we let him mourn Nadia, but then we realize this is not mourning. This is his life, you know? We ask him to leave, and he says, ‘Gladly.' He says we are backward, backwoods, backass. He stumbles out. Not in good condition. We assume he dies soon after.”

“Your brothers”—Kache motioned with a tilt of his head—“are not happy to see Nadia?”

“Not happy to see her stamped with the world. Me, I don't care. The world is coming more and more every day. What next? We blast out caves in mountains and hide there? Some people leave here. They don't like it. Three people last year.” He shrugged. “It happens. I have beautiful wife, four children. I like my life; it is good, yes? Live and let live. But Yuri and Josiph. They want penance.”

FIFTY-THREE

Nadia watched one of her brothers, Yuri, who even as a boy always had a dour face, clink his fork on his glass and demand quiet. He said, “It is time we let our sister speak of her absence.”

They sent the children out to play. The adults sat in silence while Nadia began from the very beginning, speaking in Russian, of the night of her wedding to Vladimir, and without going into too much detail, she was able to convey how terribly wrong things turned, the insane violence that took place within the four walls of their house and the threats to set fire to the village if she told a soul. “I believed he would. And I still believe that to this day. So I left, and I faked my own drowning. It was the only answer I could think of, but I have missed you all terribly, and I am begging you for forgiveness for this terrible lie that went on all these years. It didn't have to. Vladimir is long gone. He isn't even around here, and I've been hiding all this time.” The tragedy of this scraped the back of her throat as she tried to get the words out.

Tears ran down many of the faces of her family. But Yuri and Josiph, whose lips made a thin, straight line above his beard, whispered back and forth.

Yuri stood and spoke. “You are obviously living in sin. One look at you tells us this. For what, exactly, are you looking for forgiveness? Adultery, perhaps? You certainly do not wish to come back and live as family and worship with us?”

Her father waved his hand and said, “Yuri, you do not know this. Give Nadia time to speak and time to adjust to being back again. Ours is a unique culture and her absence, very many years. Give her time, and she will remember our loving and good life. She will remember the joy in living as pure a life as humanly possible.”

Nadia considered keeping quiet, but this is where she knew she might begin another lie that would tangle her up and keep her. “Father, Mother, Yuri is correct. I have changed greatly since I have been gone. As much as I love you, as much as I have missed you, I no longer believe as you believe.”

Her mother gasped, reached under her scarf, and pulled on one of her braids.

Her father said, “Nadi, do you know what you are saying? You are renouncing your faith?”

She couldn't speak the words, so she merely nodded, and as Kache would later say, all hell broke loose. Some of the women cried out, and many of the men groaned and shook their heads in dismay. The mood in the room went from celebratory to funereal. This was not an exaggeration. She knew that to them, she had come back to life and then was dead once again, all in a matter of hours.

She said, “I am so hoping that we can still have a relationship. That we can still be a family, and I can visit with you, and you can come and visit me. We can eat together and sing together and play games again.
Please
?
” But they stared at the ground while her father said they belonged to the family of God. Her sisters did come up and hug her good-bye. Anna and Natalia clung to her longer than the other three, who probably barely remembered her. But eventually, they all let go and left.

Her baba held her and whispered in her ear in English, “You are strong woman. You are good woman, my precious Nadia. I love you always.” Her three brothers left without even looking at her, except for Alex, who squeezed her hand and wished her peace. Nadia's father and mother pleaded with her to rethink her decision, hugged her long and hard. Then they walked her and Kache to the front door.

Her father said, “Nadi, it is your choice. We believe in this, freedom of choice. Know we receive you with arms and hearts open wide if you ever change your mind.” Her mother held her apron to her face.

As Kache and Nadia set off down the trail, her mother's wails followed them. “Nadia. Nadia!”

And later, on the beach, when a single cry sliced the air, Nadia looked back, hoping to see her mother running after her, but it was only a lone gull, pure white against the steel sky.

FIFTY-FOUR

Lettie slept. Or at least she felt like she slept, but she wasn't quite dreaming. It was the remembering again. Such detail, such accuracy, like watching a movie of her life, of things she hadn't thought about in years and years. When she closed her eyes and let herself drift, she always went back to the land, and her memories played out before her with exact precision, her five senses and then some, all intact. There was no flying or being chased or forgetting to wear her underwear to school like your run-of-the-mill dreams. This was closer to time traveling. It was sleeping next to A. R. again—hearing him, smelling him, touching him—and holding Eleanor and Glenn on her lap, feeling the chubby weight of them, the feather down of their sweet heads of hair resting against her neck and chin and cheeks. Living in the cabin on the land with its equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion. Lettie felt happier than she had in years. She felt like herself again. Young, strong, but with the awareness time gives you to pay attention to the moments—the slanted gold bands of light, the surprise of a huge potato pulled up from its loamy womb, the shared long gaze of a gray wolf, the way you can smell the rain when it's still held by the swollen clouds.

Even the medicinal, urine, and macaroni-and-cheese aromas drifting down the hall were replaced with the Sitka spruce, the coal and wood smoke, the simmering bear stew. And there she was in the twelve-by-twelve-foot cabin, the hewn logs with the moss chinking they would replace the next year with mortar. The place seemed to be decorated by the Chevron fuel company—their wooden Blazo boxes held everything from kindling to silverware, even babies. There were the two cradles A. R. rigged up out of Blazo boxes, and inside the cradles, both babies—both of them finally!—asleep. In town, she saw women shepherding long lines of children, and she wondered at the work involved. How did they do it? She would never know, because after the touch-and-go birth of Glenn and Eleanor, the doctor told her it was a good thing she'd had twins, because she was done having children. She could conceive no more.

Privately, she thought this a blessing of sorts. She adored the babies, adored being a mother. But the work! A. R. wished they would have more help in the future, something a slew of kids could provide. But the years between now and then with a whole litter of kids would have done Lettie in. She was a hard worker, just as tough as most men. It wasn't the work but the
type
of work that scared her off. She wanted to be felling trees alongside A. R. again as soon as the twins grew old enough. She didn't want to be pregnant six more times like most women in the area were. The laundry already took all day. Twenty-eight pails of water hauled with a yoke on her shoulders, two buckets a trip. Then the heating of the water, the washing, the two rinse cycles, the flatironing (though Lettie had to admit she skipped this step more often than not and much more than her contemporaries). With more than two children, she and A. R. would be outnumbered, and that just didn't seem like a good idea. Not at all. The doctor had called her uterus “uncooperative,” but to Lettie, her uterus had generously obliged her by carrying two perfect children to full term and then kindly closing shop.

Of course, she told A. R. none of this, just reassured him that once the children were older, they would all share the workload and that he should be glad he had a wife as strong and able as two full-grown men.

This was not a land for the weak-willed. Many of the women complained. More than a few left and never set foot in Caboose again. The hill where all the homesteads were being staked out had come to be called Separation Hill. Lettie knew that if any separation between A. R. and her took place (she didn't think it would, but if it did), A. R. would be the one to leave and Lettie would be the one to stay. She could never abandon this place. It was of her, and she was of it. How to explain? She knew it when she saw that photo all those years ago; she knew it more when she stepped onto this driftwood-strewn shore. She knew it when winter raged in and knew it again when the ice and snow gave way to mud. None of it scared her away. And then summer! The glorious gift of summer, where abundance sang its arias from every nook and cranny of that amazing land and sea.

But there was guilt involved in living your dream. Few spouses met at the altar carrying the same dream. Usually, one had a passion and the other did not, so he or she simply went along for the ride. The lucky few shared the same passion. The more commonly cursed had conflicting passions that ricocheted off one another and kept them fighting the duration of their lives.

A. R. complied with grace and a steadfast diligence in the work laid out before him. But there were times when his ambivalence showed, and Lettie understood. There he was, pausing to lean on a shovel, facing the bay, not in grateful wonder as she did, but maybe a different kind of wonder—wondering what their life might have been like if they'd stayed in Kansas with the peeling white picket fence and their modern conveniences, without having to travel so far just to get to a store. Sure, Kansas had been nothing but a heap of dust during the Depression, but the Depression and the dust were long gone by then. She had asked much of him, and he had been kind and sacrificial, and she was indeed grateful.

There, the twins, older, Glenn always out in front, taking whatever he wanted. Strong, stubborn, but likable Glenn. Tall, big-boned, but pretty Eleanor who didn't know she was pretty and lacked Glenn's confidence when it came to working the land, but who had a delightful laugh and knew her way around a conversation. She could usually talk her way into being given what she wanted instead of just taking it. Except when it came to Bets. Lettie saw that one unfold, and she knew what was happening and how it would play out before Eleanor even knew what hit her.

Love was like that with its victims. How everyone saw it splayed out on a person's face before that person even knew what was in his or her heart. Lettie blamed herself. She knew Eleanor had a penchant for women, but Lettie didn't know how to broach the subject. Oh, she had tried. But there was no one to sort it out with first. As kind of a soul as A. R. was, he wouldn't understand. He was still bugging Lettie about attending church, for God's sake. For her own sake, Lettie stayed away. She sang praises every time she stepped foot on her land; she didn't need a church roof over her head to feel grateful.

But she couldn't talk to A. R. about their daughter's lesbianism. More correctly, her
suspected
lesbianism, because as far as Lettie knew, Eleanor had never had a girlfriend, not in that way. Well, maybe while she was away at college. Lettie should have talked to Eleanor, but because she didn't know how, she watched her suffer an unnamed confusion. She knew that she'd failed her daughter, that she should have helped her.

And there was Bets, as heterosexual as a person could be, loving Eleanor almost as completely as Eleanor loved Bets, but not quite. Not in that one particular area or—here is where Lettie grinned, despite herself—
areas
. Bets couldn't have if she wanted to, and knowing what a mule Glenn often was, there were times when she probably wished she were wired to love a woman instead of a man. But alas, she was not. So she looked to Eleanor as her best friend, her sister, her closest confidante. All of those things that are delightful in a friendship, but not enough for someone in love.

Lettie traveled back to before the Bets saga, and there was Glenn, enlisting to fight in Vietnam. Enlisting! All while they lived so close to the Canadian border, Lettie could have driven him over there herself. What she thought about when her nest hollowed to empty, what she obsessed over, was not all the things she'd gotten right as a mother but the few very crucial things she'd gotten wrong. A tension lay tightly coiled between Glenn and A. R. back then, with Glenn hell-bent on getting away. He wanted to see the world, but when he came back, he was, of course, wounded through and through, without a scar to show for it. Lettie wanted to save him, but he wouldn't talk to her, wouldn't talk to anyone about any of it. Not even about what they ate for breakfast in the jungle. Bets showed up, and she saved him. Bets did what Lettie couldn't do for both of her children: she helped them see who they really were.

By then, A. R. was too sick to live out at the homestead, so they divided up the acreage evenly between both children, sold the cabin off for cheap to Glenn and Bets (Eleanor had gone off to college to try to forget Bets and wasn't interested in living in the cabin anyway), and moved into town. But a day didn't go by that she didn't miss living on that land. She never spoke of this to A. R.; he'd spent the last twenty-odd years letting her live her dream. He was weak but strong enough in spirit to find comfort in resting his head on her shoulder instead of the other way around like when they were younger. If she could have, she would have moved him back to that state he missed so he could die where he belonged.

That's what Lettie wanted for herself. She wanted to go back to the homestead at least once while she was still alive. And when her time came, she wanted to become part of the land the way the land had become part of her.