Theyre lowly. Kache recalled Freidahis moms bridge partnerspitting the words across the kitchen table one night. His parents adamantly objected.
But his mom had her own concerns. I just worry that theyre so steeped in religious tradition that they have no awareness of equal rights. Ive heard they marry those poor little girls off when theyre thirteen.
Freidas husband, Roy, said, Ill tell you where I want equal rights. Out on that water, thats where.
His mom said, I wonder if those young girls even have a prayer.
Bets, Roy answered, they pray all damn day.
No way would an Old Believer woman step outside her village except to run an errand in town. Look at Grams afghan, those photographs, the magazines, back from 1985 and before. Even the Ranier Beer coasters. Nothing has changed. Its like sitting in 1985 with a woman from 1685if she even is an Old Believer. What if theres poison in the tea? (He set down his cup.) If the tea doesnt kill me, her husband is going to come in and shoot me.
Kache wanted to ask her many questions but the despair rose from his spinning mind, settled in his throat, and he was afraid that if he spoke too soon he too might succumb to tears. Hed fallen smack dab into that day when hed sat in this living room, a little high, playing his guitar, tired from having done his chores and Dennys as a way of apologizing, waiting for the three of them to drive up and pile in the door with stories of their weekend. His dad would be gruff at first. But once hed seen that Kache had not only finished the chores, but cleaned the awful mess from the fight, repaired his bedroom door, even gone down to the beach and emptied the fishing net, all would be forgiven.
Jesus.
The dog stayed at her feet, watching Kache. A husky and something else, maybe a malamute it didnt have a huskys icy blue eyes, but big brown loyal eyes.
Whats your dogs name?
A long silence before she whispered, Leo. Leos ear went up and rotated toward her.
Are you into astrology or literature? he asked, mostly as a joke to himself.
But she surprised him and said. Tolstoy. Almost I name him Anton.
His mom would be proud. You have good taste. So He smiled. I guess weve established the fact that were not going to kill each other. He picked up the tea and sniffed. Although Im not sure I trust your tea.
She lowered her chin. I would not poison.
He tried a smile again that still went unmet. Fair enough. I do have some questions.
Yes. She placed her hands on the knees of her jeanshis old jeans, actually. He recognized the patch his mother had sewn on the right knee. Denny and he used to tease her because sometimes she sewed patches on their patches.
How long have you been here?
She studied her hands as though shed just discovered them, let a moment pass before she held them out, fingers splayed.
Ten days?
She shook her head.
Ten months?
Again, no.
Ten years?
A nod.
How old are you?
I am twenty-eight years old. With this, her eyes filled again and she quickly wiped her face.
Do you know my Aunt Snag?
She shook her head.
You came with your folks? Wheres your family?
I have none.
Who lives with you here?
She shook her head, kept shaking it.
But you havent been here by yourself. Tell me who else has been living in my house.
Her hands went over her ears now.
Kache took a deep breath and lowered his voice. Im not angry. Im confused. She finally looked up, but not directly at him. I dont know who you are and who else might come barging through the door with a gun.
I am alone.
Im wondering if youre an Old Believer?
She nodded again, one slow dip of her head.
With an entire village? Big family? Ton of kids? But youre not wearing a long dress.
With this she stood, and the dog rose and followed her to the stairs.
Wait. Nadia, please. I need some answers here.
She turned, whispered, I cannot. She was tall, sturdy. Shed rolled up his jeans and cinched them with a belt. Her back faced him again, her gold drape of hair, which had been tied up the night before, reached past her waist. The Old Believer women hed seen shopping in town always covered their hair with scarves.
He let her and the dog go upstairs. The door to his old room clicked shut.
No signs of anyone else other than his own familyand those signs flashed loudly everywhere he turned. He went through the house, amazed again and again by how much remained exactly the same. Most of his mothers books filled the walls, as neat and full as rows of corn, although some books were upside down and others stood in small stacks here and there throughout the rooms. The photographs along the top of the piano, on the bureaus and hanging on the stairwell, each one dusted clean and placed as he remembered them. In the bathroom there were even Amway and Shaklee products. His mom had been such a supporter of Snag, his dad would complain that the products were taking over the household; stacked five rows deep in the barn, the pantry, the cupboards. Enough, apparently, to last at least twenty years.
He turned on the faucet. Pipes seemed to be in working order. In the pantry, garden vegetablesrhubarb and berry jams, dried mushrooms, canned salmon and meats. Tomato sauces, soups, sauerkraut, relishes. Potted herbs along the windowsill next to the old kitchen table. He went down into the root cellar, stocked with boxes of potatoes and onions, hanging red cabbages and some dried fish and meat. Carved tally marks all over the wall. He didnt count them, but it looked like it could be enough to account for ten years. Or a lot of dead buried bodies. The familys old refrigerator held frozen fish and meats. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling.
Undoubtedly someone helped her with all of this. And who paid the electricity bill?
He climbed back up to the main floor, hesitated before heading up to the second floor. This was his house. He had every right to look around. But he paused again before he entered his mother and fathers room. The pauses came with a sense of reverence, as if he were entering a church or a museum. Everythingevery single thingin the entire house had been so well tended, so obviously respected by this Nadia.
The quilt his mother made still covered the bed. As a small boy, he would race his matchbox cars along the quilts patternsroadways, as he saw them. Until a wheel caught on a stitch, pulling a piece of fabric loose, and his mother put an end to that game. He sat on the bed, running his hand along it until he found the spot where the missing piece exposed strands of batting. Even this room was not cloaked in dust as hed expected. He opened the closet and saw their clothes hanging, his fathers heavy jackets and creased boots, his mothers red down jacket. Everyone commented on how his mother managed to look fashionable in whatever she wore, no matter how functional. He never knew much about fashion, but he knew his mom always stood out in a crowd.
Mom, he whispered. Mom. Mom. Mom. He stuck his nose in her sweater and inhaled, but it no longer smelled of her. On the dresser, though, was a bottle of her perfume, White Linen. He opened it and there it was. Once when he was Christmas shopping with Janie, he saw the perfume on display and picked up the tester and smelled it and wished he hadnt. The saleswoman took the bottle from him, sprayed it on a piece of white textured card stock, like a bookmark to hold his place, and handed it to him. He had set the paper reminder of his mom back on the glass counter and walked away. But now he pressed the gold cylinder top on the dispenser and shot the scent of his mother across the room.
Mom, he whispered. Mom. Mom. Mom. He stuck his nose in her sweater and inhaled, but it no longer smelled of her. On the dresser, though, was a bottle of her perfume, White Linen. He opened it and there it was. Once when he was Christmas shopping with Janie, he saw the perfume on display and picked up the tester and smelled it and wished he hadnt. The saleswoman took the bottle from him, sprayed it on a piece of white textured card stock, like a bookmark to hold his place, and handed it to him. He had set the paper reminder of his mom back on the glass counter and walked away. But now he pressed the gold cylinder top on the dispenser and shot the scent of his mother across the room.
Goddamn it.There is no getting around grief.
Even if you turned your back on it, diligently refused to answer its call, it would badger you, forever demanding payment. And oh, could it wait; it would not move on. Grief was a fucking collections company, and it was never fully satisfied. It would always keep showing up out of the blue, tacking on more interest.
His moms books lined the walls in the bedroom too. Hed known she loved to read, but he hadnt realized that theyd lived in what other people might classify as a library. Shed worked in the book business in New York before shed met his father. She moved here willingly, even enthusiastically, carrying her designer clothes and hundreds of books to this far edge of the world.
And there was the big old steamer trunk at the end of the bed. The one shed kept locked, with her journals inside, the one no longer locked, the brass tongues sticking out at him. He lifted the creaky top. Empty, as he expected. He remembered Snag emptying it a few days after theyd gotten the news. Kache had sat swollen-eyed in his room and watched her blurred image go back and forth from his parents room to a cardboard box in the hallway. Shed carried the notebooks in armfuls from the trunk to the box, and her knitted cardigan got caught on one of the wire rings so that after she released them, a single notebook hung from her sweater. It had an orangey red cover, and it made Kache think of a king crab clinging to her. She didnt even notice until he pointed it out. Snags own eyes were so teary that when she tried to remove it, she kept tangling the sweater and wire even more so, until Kache helped release her from the journal. He handed it to her, then gently closed his door, leaving Snag to carry out his moms one commandment that if anything ever happened to her, the journals would be burned. Snag did that much.
In the bathroom, Kache blew his nose and splashed cold water on his eyes, pressed a towel against his face, holding it there for a good long minute. His great-grandfathers white enamel shaving mug, soap brush, and straight-edge razor still sat on the shelf. His mom always did love family heirlooms. Little did she know the whole house would one day be a museum full of them.
He knocked on his bedroom door. Im going to take off. Not sure when Ill be back but maybe youll be ready to talk by then?
The dog let out a whine but Nadia said nothing.
THIRTEEN
The front door closed again and Nadia released a sigh so long and shaky she wondered how long shed been holding her breath. From the bedroom window, she watched him taking long strides up the road. He looked more teenager than man, still gangly and long-limbed, still moving with the slightest uncertainty.
She collapsed into the desk chair, more tired than if shed chopped and hauled wood all day, a fatigue that started in her chest and wrapped itself around her head. She tried to think logically. Although she felt as if she knew him through the stories, he was not the same person whod been brought up in that house. Unlike Nadia, he had lived a life. He had gone somewhere, done some things. Most likely he had a wife, children, an occupation. He was a musician, or perhaps a teacher of music.
He seemed upset, but mostly gentle. She wanted to trust her instinct; she was older now, knew more. It was clear he had not decided what to do about her and she imagined him changing his mind again and again with each turn of the road. Would he bring back the police, have her arrested? Would he head out to the village to ask questions? Would he return with supplies? Or with Lettie, if she was still alive? But he hadnt mentioned her, and Nadia had long feared Lettie dead, had mourned her ever since her last visit, when she brought not one, but two truckloads of supplies and Leo, who was just a puppy then.
Perhaps Kache would bring his wife to talk with her. If he did go to the village what if Vladimir charmed Kache into coming back with him, the way he had so easily charmed her father and the others?
She should leave. She forced herself to stand, and Leo stood next to her, wagging his tail, waiting for her next move.
Shed tried to leave several times in the past years after Lettie stopped coming. Nadia had hiked down to the beach, loaded the Winkels faded orange canoe. Leo climbed in and sat perfectly still, although his anticipation was palpable as she climbed in, paddled. Always at some point her nerve turned to nervousnessto where was she paddling? And then what? And so she turned around and paddled back, Leos ears down, as if hed been reprimanded. For this, I am very sorry. I am such the coward, Leo.
Other times she hiked up to the road with a plan to walk into town and ask to trade animals for a new car battery and starter. She would offer chickens, a goat, whatever they wanted. But the downshift of a distant truck would send her into the bushes for cover. In her mind, Vladimir sat behind the wheel and that was enough to put another end to her plans. By the time she retraced her steps, his face had faded and she saw instead her fathers kind face, heading to buy parts for his truck; and then her mothers, her sisters, her brothers facesall so much younger than they were now. But she had no way of knowing what the years had done to their faces and the guilt pushed her back into the Winkel house, back into bed until hunger would force her out of her self-pity, out to work the garden or to set the fishing nets and traps.
She walked down the stairs into the empty living room. Even with Leo at her heels, the emptiness had spread since Kache left. She took the dogs face in her hands. I should not have shut him out like that, you say? She tugged his ear. But wasnt it so difficult? His asking these questions we do not know how to answer?
Leo harrumphed and lay down next to the wood stove. You want him to come back? Like Lettie?
Like Lettie.
All those years ago Nadia had stayed in the house through the first spring without a sign of anyone. Shed lived off fish and clams and mussels, and the plants shed foragedsea lettuce and nori from the bay, lovage, the long narrow goose tongue and yellow monkey flower greens from the land. She snared plenty of rabbits. One day, she hunted for chanterelles after a week of rain, her mouth watering as she thought of sautéing them in some of the wine shed found in the cellar, along with wild garlic and a bit of fat from the spruce hen shed shot the day before.
But she sensed, as she walked toward the house with her basket of mushrooms, that someone was there, and she slipped behind the old outhouse to hide. Her heart seemed to beat through her back, thumping the wood siding she leaned against.
A womans voice called out from the front porch. Well, whoever you are, youre trespassing on my property but Im not gonna shoot you. You might as well show your face.