All the Winters After (25 page)

FIFTY-FIVE

Kache wanted to shake every one of Nadia's family members—shake and shake them—until they saw that they were turning their backs on their blood, their love, their history, and all the infinite possibilities that future days with their Nadia would have brought them. He hadn't needed a translator to see their initial joy wiped out by their indisputable rejection. There was even a moment he considered taking out the gun and firing it in the air, just to wake them all up.

Didn't they realize? Very few people get offered a second chance like that.

The walk back to the truck was quiet between them, the bay lying down flat for the evening, the cold piercing their eyes, cheeks, and noses. Every so often, Nadia would stop walking. Kache would turn back to her so she could lean into him. They stood, her forehead pressed against his chest, his arms tucked around her. Out on the long beach, the piles of bleached driftwood looked like prehistoric bones, as if he and Nadia had stumbled upon an archaeological dig.

She would let out a long, stuttered sigh, wipe her eyes on the inside of his jacket, and resume walking. He thought she was the bravest person he had ever known.

• • •

The truck heater blasted, and when it finally turned from icy air to warm, they held their open hands to the vents.

“Damn hell it,” Nadia said, hitting the dash. “We forgot to ask for school records and birth certification. Because I have been banished now, how will we ever get them? How do we forget this?”

There, the truth that had been dripping down the back of his neck, cold and persistent:
he
hadn't forgotten. He had remembered, but he hadn't spoken up, and he wasn't sure why. But he was sure he wasn't about to admit it to Nadia, not now—if ever. What made him more uneasy? That he'd purposely not asked for what they'd come for, or that he was determined to withhold information from the woman he loved?

“The only good things that come from this trip?” she said as he replaced the gun in the glove compartment. “We didn't need the gun. And we found out we won't. Vladimir, he is gone.”

The mood stayed pensive as they started the drive back. Then Nadia broke the silence. “One of my sisters said there is one television at the school in Altai. Some of the people have computers. Everything is different. This is painfully ironic, no? They have modern technology while I stayed living without it. They have all gone on with their lives.”

“Of course. That's what the living have to do.”

“
You
did not.
I
did not.”

He steered sharply to avoid yet another huge pothole. “Point taken. But we can agree that might not have been the best tactic.”

“I do not know what I think.”

“Some things haven't changed for them. Not at all.”

Gazing out the window, she nodded and said, “You heard them. I was only alive for few hours. Dead again to them. We accomplished nothing. We only make it worse. They did not even ask where I live. They do not even want to know this.”

“They may come around.”

“Did you hear them? My grandmother was the only one who wasn't wailing when I said I no longer am Old Believer. She was unlike her, quiet.”

“She didn't look old enough to be your grandmother. But then again, your mom is closer to my age than my mom's age.”

“You must remember, they have children when they were teenagers. My grandmother is sixty-six. My mother is…let me think…forty-three? My grandmother, she is my father's mother, and he greatly admires her. My father behaves like submissive little boy in her presence. It is quite funny to see.” Her chin trembled. “I mean, it once
was
…”

“Come here.”

She scooted over, rested her head against Kache's rib cage, and let the tears fall the rest of the way home. He should have gotten the papers for her. He should have at least done that.

• • •

The temperature dropped again that night, and snow covered everything. It had been many years since Kache had woken to the first snowfall. The spruce looked like giant, eager brides. The ground basked in its perfection, untouched even by tracks.

Inside, the house was taking on a different look too, which had begun with the hanging of the octopus-ink painting and proceeded with throw pillows they purchased in Anchorage, along with new sheets and a down comforter for his parents' room, which Nadia and Kache had moved into. They'd even ordered a new bed. Though the changes felt a bit ruthless, Kache swore he heard his mother saying, “Kache, honey, it's about time.”

That first day of snow, unable to do much outside, they began moving furniture, as if they could rearrange the previous day's events. Later, they stepped into cross-country skis and crossed over the fresh, sugary white while lazy fat flakes floated down, sticking to their knitted hats. They didn't throw snowballs. Didn't even talk much about the day before. The world was pure and silent and easily traversable, only their two pairs of ski tracks etching the snow.

Inside the cabin that evening, the world shrank. They turned on every lamp downstairs and built a fire. Kache looked out the window. Nothing out there but darkness and hidden night creatures. Perhaps they were watching Nadia and him, exposed in the house's glaring light. He felt oddly unsettled and on display by this one-way mirror. Instead of the grand vistas of the summer and fall, all he could see was his own reflection, along with the fact that he had caused Nadia pain by encouraging her to return to her family and—as if that wasn't enough—had kept quiet about her documents.

WINTER TRACKS

2005–2006

FIFTY-SIX

Too much, too much, too much. Nadia needed to be alone. Away from the Internet, away from her family's judgments, away from Kache, sharing the same stifled air day after snowed-in day. She loved Kache, loved being with him, but she had no time to herself, no room to grieve the loss of her family.
Again.
It was as if her thoughts and emotions piled up on a chair and she had to sort through them to see what still fit and what only took up space. Instead, she just kept throwing one sad thought on top of the other.

She was tired. She wanted to climb under the down comforter and stay there, waiting it out like the garden under the snow. But she did not. Instead, she laughed and helped Kache move things around and plan for Lettie and Snag's visit. She cooked with him. She played Scrabble and cards with him.

It was easy between Kache and Nadia, most of the time. The talking, the laughing, the having sex. Making love. The closer she and Kache became, the further away she moved from Vladimir. He'd been gone ten years and had still managed to hold her prisoner—no,
she
had held herself prisoner. She was finished with that. She would not let fear hold her away from life.

On the third day of the snowstorm, she said to Kache, who sat on the futon checking his email, which he rarely did, “Would you be offended or worried if I go into the bedroom with door locked and only come out for food and water and to go to the bathroom?”

He watched her for a long minute. “Too much togetherness?”

She nodded. “I believe so.”

He sighed, got up, and stretched. “I need to call Clemsky and see if I can borrow his snowplow anyway. I was using you as an excuse to be lazy. Convinced myself that you didn't want to be alone after the family stuff.”

“I have never before gone so long without being alone. I love having you here. It is only that… I don't know how to say this.”

“Nadia, your family. You need space, and there's plenty I can do. The snow's stopped, so I need to start digging out.”

“But I should help.”

“Not this time.” He had already pulled on his jacket and was punching numbers into his cell phone. “I'll start with the walkway and driveway until Clemsky can get out here.”

Kache was so agreeable, but Nadia still had to fight the impulse to place both of her hands on his back and push him out the front door.

• • •

She kept a file on the computer. Into it, she dragged her favorite photographs of San Francisco from the Internet. When she felt confused or anxious, like she did now, she opened the file, and she soon felt full of something that might be called hopefulness. If they could build a city like that? If they could build a bridge like that?

She stared at the orangey-red bridge, the blue water, the white city, the blue sky. She looked out past the porch's log pillars, the blue water, the white mountains, the blue sky.

All the sadness of the visit with her family sat like a piece of steel lodged in her throat. There was always this—and that. The hope. The sorrow. Her baba. Her precious baba. Her mama. Her precious mama. Her mama's arms around her. Her mama's disbelief turning to delight before being taken over again by a new grief. Her papa's features dancing in recognition, shadowing over. Nadia understood why they could not accept her. She understood. Because there was a part of her that wished to forget everything she'd learned and go back to them.

But no. She had changed. There was no bridge back, only forward. And yet she hadn't asked for the papers she needed to apply to school.

There was something else though, Nadia knew, something she needed to pay attention to. What was it?

She went upstairs and lay under the new down comforter. She pulled it over her head and let the images of that day play on the white screen of the blanket. She viewed it all with new perspective. There was Kache, standing in a corner, ready to intervene if need be. There was her grandmother, sitting in her chair, watching her, listening to Nadia tell her story. It was as if Nadia were the center of the sea anemone, with all her siblings and her parents crowding around her like tentacles, coming in closer, backing off. But her grandmother's face stayed calm when Nadia said she no longer believed. Now, under the covers, Nadia watched her again closely, the slightest upturn at the corner of her mouth, the touch of light radiating from her eyes. And she had told Nadia she was strong, that she would always love her. Nadia was sure of it; she was not dead to her grandmother.

Yes, all of the tendrils of the anemone she found at the beach were green, but Nadia imagined there might be a red one, not swaying with the others, still attached but distinct.

• • •

With Kache gone for the day, Nadia found herself opening one of the boxes of journals. She turned to Elizabeth's last entry.

Last night was the darkest night in the history of the Winkel family, or so it felt. We are all of us extremes, living on the extreme edge of the world, where the mountains themselves were shaped by the force of colliding tectonic plates.

And so it is for this family. What will be the shape of us after last night? An impassable range of great height between us? Time will tell. The lemony morning sky already casts new light, healing light.

I wish I could shine that light into Glenn's heart and reveal the dark corners. Lord knows we all have our blind spots, but sometimes I think Glenn's has become a full eclipse. He is a stubborn bull of a man, and I don't imagine he could have gleaned a life from this land were he not. But he rules over the boys like the military he despised—giving them little freedom to make decisions, let alone mistakes. He is stifling them. And while Denny seems to everyone else the stronger of the two, I know this is not the case. Denny is a pleaser. Plus, he loves this land as much as his grandmother and father do. It's natural for him to pick up a rifle, to use his back more than his brain. He is agile and strong, and he wears this yoke without complaint because it's been tailor-made to fit him.

But Kache. Strong-willed, independent Kache, who was given a gift none of us could ever begin to master. The gift of music. And yet you would think the guitar was a machete raised over his father's head.

Jealousy is part of it. It's painful to watch a parent jealous of his own child. But there it is. It may as well be spelled out in the tread of the man's boot, the word with a capital J left wherever he walks.

The other part of it is fear. Glenn ran off to Vietnam, intent on seeing the world, and then came back to duck and cover from it for the rest of his life. Deep down, he is afraid that the world out there will kill his boys just like it killed his friends. But Alaska is just as dangerous, if not more so, than any city in the Lower 48. Alaska does not forgive mistakes. We all say it because it's true.

Nadia always wondered what Elizabeth meant by the phrase
Alaska does not forgive mistakes
. That you could not be forgiven when you lived here? She needed to ask Kache about it. She would wait until the time was right. She skipped to the last lines, for these had become a totem to her.

But for now, I will gather these men together, and we will fly away from here for a few days. We will look down on this house, this land—free from it—and the perspective will do us good.

Nadia had never failed to notice that Elizabeth's last written words were
Do us good
. She often thought of them as a new type of commandment for her to follow, and she thought of it often when she was tending the house in the years before Kache returned. But now that she knew him, now that Snag and Lettie were coming out to the homestead for Thanksgiving, the commandment felt more weighted—and broader. It wasn't just about tending the house and land. There were many ways to do good—and not to do good—by someone. To do good to the people you loved and still be truthful to yourself. That was the narrowest of bridges.

FIFTY-SEVEN

It was life's obsessions that Snag found herself obsessing over as she sat in her robe, drinking her coffee, looking over her calendar, and realizing she'd missed the last two Caboose chamber meetings. Without her there to argue her point, the chamber most likely had voted 33–0 in favor of leaving the red caboose in its most likely final resting spot at the end of the tracks, at the end of the Caboose Spit, where it housed memorabilia of days of yore and looked complacently out over one of the prettiest views on the planet. What Snag found most bewildering was that she didn't give a hoot. Not even a snort. She simply no longer cared.

And yet, and yet. She had raised her voice at countless meetings, handed out flyers, even carried a sign in protest. And why?
Why?
It had felt necessary. And now it did not.
Hmph
, she thought. She looked at her watch and realized she had to get moving if she was going to get all her deliveries made before she went to see her mom—and Gilly, of course. Now that there was so much snow, she wasn't delivering by foot and wagon. But she did schedule in a stop at the gym. She'd even ordered herself a bathing suit from Lands' End and had taken up swimming laps.

Her body hadn't experienced stuffing itself into a bathing suit in nearly forty years. But there she was, in all her glory. She loved the lukewarm water, even the smell of the chlorine. She loved the kickboards and the linked plastic lane dividers and the old people (even older than her) swimming (even more slowly than she was) with such good intentions. It made her feel happily tolerant—no, way beyond tolerant, even proud. Here they all were, putting forth such effort for the strength of their bodies, for the strength of humankind.

Easing herself into the water, she thought of Nadia, of how they would all be celebrating Thanksgiving together. She thought of the young girl she first kissed at the beach. Agafia. How one sweet, brief encounter set her on the path to Gilly. She wondered if Nadia knew Agafia. She thought of the strange way her actions—and
non
actions—had led Kache to Nadia. And as Snag swam, she felt herself linked to each person, if only briefly, like the chain of buoys that floated beside her in the pool, creating a lane, keeping her going in a single direction so she didn't spin in circles, one linked to the other to the other, this way, this way, this way, and then back again.