The Elegant Gathering of White Snows (22 page)

She takes a step forward and is drawn again like a magnet to rows and rows of clear glass jars that are filled with tea leaves. A coffee aficionado all of her life, Janice cannot imagine that the teas could be so different in color—greens and blacks in more than a dozen shades—and so glorious in size. Then the smells flood her nose: a blend of earth and water and the way her mother's warm kitchen smelled when she baked on Friday afternoons.

Janice finally takes a step forward toward the shelves lined with glass tea jars that customers dip tiny silver spoons into when they purchase the leaves. She raises her hand to touch the labels and the words, the names of the teas sing songs to her heart.
Japanese Chrysanthemum Flowers. Rooibos Ruby Tuesday. Mist on the Gorges. Soft Jasmine Pearls. Jade in the Clouds
. These names roll off her tongue as she whispers them to herself and they are so beautiful and fine, like the tea leaves themselves, that Janice begins to cry. Her tears are just as beautiful and fine, and compelled by tea. “Tea,” she says out loud, laughing just a bit because she has never seen or thought of tea as beautiful before.

Her hand stops at a tea dictionary that has been posted every few feet along the rows of tea. Janice feels as if she is touching a bible, something holy, something remarkable. “Autumnal Tea,” she reads, “a term applied to India and Formosa teas, meaning teas touched with cool weather.” Janice learns that a garden mark is the mark put on tea chests by the estate to identify its particular product and that well-twisted tea indicates a full wither. “Wither,” she says to herself, reading that this means the tea has dried sufficiently to capture its intended flavor.

This knowledge moves her in ways that she finds intoxicating. Janice feels light-headed as she opens a tea marked “Mountain in the Clouds” and fingers the dark leaves that will open up like a woman's heart if you touch it the right way. She wants to inhale Mountain in the Clouds and let the leaves drift through her soul. “Communion,” Janice thinks. “It would be like Communion.”

The man catches her eyes and smiles at her. Janice is not embarrassed because she now sees that he is brilliant and knows about flavor and spice and the winds of the world that turn leaves ripe and make tea that can make grown women weep.

“Go ahead, sit down there for just a second while I get the water going,” the man tells her. “Oh, I've got something new here, a beautiful and very rare tea that I have been dying to try myself. Can I have a cup with you?”

“Sure,” Janice answers. “Please.”

Janice doesn't think about leaving, which surprises her. She has fallen in love with the low lights, smells at once foreign and friendly.

“This tea,” the man says, as he pours water and crinkles packages, “is an amber Oolong with a most complex flavor and I've heard it leaves a wonderful aftertaste.”

The man tells her a remarkable story about another tea called
Ceylon Silver Needles Special
. Janice cannot move when he speaks. “That tea is from Sri Lanka, and I have talked with women who have been lucky enough to pick the tea leaves,” he says. “There are but four days in spring when this tea can be picked, and the women who are selected to pick the tea are considered worthy of a great honor. The aroma of this rare tea leaves a taste that is clear, fresh, invigorating—like spring itself—and the tea can be infused at least five times, often more, which is most remarkable.”

When the man stops speaking, he closes his eyes, and Janice imagines that he is thinking of the tea as it makes its journey from a foreign country, across the ocean and to his shop in middle America. “It is all glorious,” he finally says. “It is a gift from heaven, I know it is—a rare and fine thing of beauty.” He talks with reverence of teas that Janice never knew existed.

No one that Janice knows has ever talked about tea this way. She has no idea what he is saying. A tisanes? What the hell is a tisanes? Janice knows Lipton and Folger's and she knows a bit about Jack Daniels, too. So she sits and waits and looks out the window, never wondering why no one has come into the tea store.

It takes ten minutes for the man to brew the Oolong tea, and Janice is a little curious about what he is doing. In those minutes, her mind narrows and she thinks about her babies. She doesn't want to think about them but the warm room and this man, who seems so kind, all make her think about her babies. Janice loves her children, she loved them dearly even before they came into the world and even though she had to stop taking the medicine so they wouldn't be sick when they were born. It almost killed Janice to have them. She was crazy mad, and they took her away so many times she thought she would never come back. But those babies, she is thinking now about how very much she loves them.

“Tea is like magic for the soul. You know, most people have no idea about tea—how to brew it and what it can do for your health, for every part of your body.”

“Oh,” Janice manages to say. “Really.”

“Most people pour boiling water onto the tea. The water should be not warmer than 180 degrees, and so you should let it sit for a little while after the boil. Then pour it, the tea must rest because it has just had a very tough journey, you know, for at least seven minutes.”

Janice has never heard a man talk about tea as if he is in love with it. This man could be a priest, Janice thinks, distributing Holy Communion. His voice is solemn, and when she turns she can see him standing behind the counter with his hands folded while the tea is resting. He looks as if he is praying at an altar.

The man continues to talk about tea and China and how sometimes the rain can ruin the tea crops and how he often doesn't know what exact teas he is going to get until the shipment arrives. His voice must be like the tea, Janice thinks, soft and pleasurable. Gradually she is forgetting about the train.

Janice thinks to herself she should be saying something but she can barely breathe. She thinks maybe this man is an angel.
Maybe he is trying to stop me or maybe he's just a nice but lonely guy who wants to make me some tea
.

There's no way for Janice to know that this tea store is one of the most popular places in the Chicago area. She doesn't know that people from around the world order tea from this man, and that chefs from Paris have called him to ask about recipes for cooking with tea or serving the perfect tea with a buttery croissant. She doesn't know that this man's father escaped from China, from all those fields where the tea grows, and that he could only take one child. He took this man when he was a little boy, the same age as her oldest child is now.

The man is finally finished brewing the tea, and now Janice sits with her hands folded like she does in church.

The tea is in a small glass cup that has a tiny handle. The man tells Janice that tea needs to be sipped like fine wine and kept warm in a pot. “That is why the cups, the best cups, are usually no bigger than the fist of a young child.” The man places the cup on a saucer that cradles it not unlike a mother who brushes the crumbs off her daughter's beautiful face. Janice thinks it's beautiful to see the clear glass and the amber shade of smoky tea floating within it. When she touches the handle of the glass, she is surprised that the little handle is not warm. The man, who is watching her, smiles and says, “That's why I like these glasses.”

She waits then for the man to say something else. There are little drops of water along the rim of the glass, and she wants to touch one and hold it to her lips but she waits. Finally the man tells her it is fine now to take a sip, but she waits and lets him move his hands to his glass first.

Janice doesn't use the handle, instead she places her hands around the glass and lifts it very slowly off the saucer. The glass is warm, and she can feel the heat move pleasantly into her hands and up toward her wrists. Then she moves the glass higher and higher until it touches her lips, and she looks down into the glass and sees out the bottom of the amber tea onto the wooden table, a kaleidoscope of grains and dark curves.

The temperature of the tea is so perfect that Janice wants to savor it in her mouth. She tastes a sensation of fruit and a lighter flavor, something musky like the earth and the rivers and trees.

Janice closes her eyes while these feelings cascade through her mouth and wake up all her senses. It is hard for her to know if the tea is real or if it's the voices, but she thinks it's the tea and that the entire world is talking to her. When she swallows, the tea moves down her throat yet doesn't seem to leave her mouth. She whisks her tongue across her teeth, to the side of her cheeks, to the roof of her mouth and everything is warm and soft and she is flooded with happiness. Janice begins to cry as she raises the glass to her lips again. The tears are unlike anything Janice can remember. Deliberate and warm, the tears seem to caress her face in a way that feels like the hands of the tiniest woman in the world. They fall slowly, and she thinks there are about sixteen tears, one for every year that she has been so ill.

The man continues smiling at Janice. He says, “Magnificent,” and then continues to watch her as he sips his own tea.

In the quiet of that tea shop, Janice thinks she can hear the beating hearts of her own children, then Paul's footsteps, the wind outside of her living room. She closes her eyes, and she can see what her children will look like when they are grown, how her hair will grow gray and curl behind her ears, and how the trees behind the garage will grow to cover the entire backyard.

“Oh, my God,” she finally says. “Oh, my God.”

“You like it?”

“Oh, yes, I like it very much. You are so kind to share this tea with me.”

“Tea is happiness, you know.”

Janice is so happy that she feels as if she could cry forever, but she is only able to smile and to lift the glass again and again. She then asks for another glass of the amber tea, a tea she can only describe as amazing.

When she has finished the second glass, the man rises and takes her glass away and moves back behind the counter. Janice can't seem to move. She waits for whatever is going to happen next. The man comes back with a small glass bottle filled with tea leaves.

“This is for you,” he tells her, smiling, touching her hand for a second.

“What is this?”

The man smiles. He bows before he tells her, folding his hands, moving like an apostle.

“The tea we have just had is called
The Elegant Gathering of White Snows.
”

When Janice finishes her story and looks around again, she sees that Chris, Gail, Alice, J.J., Susan and Sandy are weeping. Their blankets have fallen to the floor, and they are sitting with empty glasses on the edges of their seats.

“Oh my good God in heaven,” Gail manages to say. “That is the most beautiful story I have ever heard. Janice, my God, how could you keep that to yourself all these years?”

“I'm pissed,” says Susan without rancor. “I've known you longer than anyone, Janice, I had no idea.”

“Well, the killing myself part is really no big deal because for years I thought about it all the time, although I can tell you that I never came quite as close as that day. But that wasn't why I wanted to share this with you.”

By now the moon has risen, just a speck of bold white, beginning-of-the-month moon. Behind the moon, there is a sea of darkness, surrounding everything. Jack and Audrey are in their bedroom, reading with little lights that are hooked above their beds, and there is only the sound of the women's voices.

“That was a wonderful story,” J.J. says. “Did you ever go back to the tea shop?”

“Oh, no I couldn't, I was afraid I had made the whole thing up and I couldn't ever think about that possibility. But I saved the tea. I still have it. It's in my jewelry box. Paul thinks it's dope.”

Sandy slips her arm around Janice's shoulder, rests her head on Janice's neck. This touch makes Janice think of the tea and what she really, really wants to tell the women.

“I've waited all these years, since that day, to feel as I did in the tea store. Now, here, this evening and yesterday and all the days since we left Susan's house, I have been feeling it. This, and every moment that we are together and loving each other and sharing and just being here, this is that same feeling.”

Each woman said it then, the words moving from their throats, across their tongues and lips, into the chilly night air. “The Elegant Gathering of White Snows.” The words were heavenly and sweet and as rich with truth as the deep and ever darkening sky.

WALKERS SURGE INTO NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

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