“I’m sure. ”
“Okay. I’ll be back over early to get the place ready for Dad. He’ll be home at one, remember?”
“I remember,” Nina said, walking Meredith to the door. As soon as her sister was gone, she grabbed her backpack and camera bags off the kitchen table and headed up the steep, narrow stairway to the second floor. Passing her parents’ room, she went into the bedroom she and Meredith had shared. Although it appeared symmetrical—two twin beds, a pair of matching desks, and two white dressers—a closer look revealed the two very different girls who’d lived here and the separate paths their lives would take. Even as girls, they’d had little in common. The last thing Nina really remembered them doing together was the play.
Mom had changed that day and so had Meredith. True to her word, her sister had never listened to another of Mom’s fairy tales, but it had been an easy promise to keep, as Mom never told them a story again. That was what Nina had missed the most. She’d loved those fairy tales. The White Tree, the Snow Maiden, the enchanted waterfall, the peasant girl, and the prince. At bedtime, on the rare nights Mom could be coaxed into telling them a story, Nina remembered being entranced by her mother’s voice, and comforted by the familiarity of the words. All the stories were memorized and were the same every time, even without a book from which to read. Mom had told them that it was a Russian tradition, the ability to tell stories.
After the play, Nina had tried to repair the breach caused by Mom’s anger and Meredith’s hurt feelings, as had her dad. It hadn’t worked, of course, and by the time Nina was eleven, she understood. By then, Nina’s own feelings had been so hurt so often she’d pulled back, too.
She left the room and shut the door.
At her parents’ bedroom, she paused and knocked. “Mom? Are you hungry?”
There was no answer.
She knocked again. “Mom?”
More silence.
She opened the door and went inside. The room was neat as a pin, and spartan in decor. A big king-sized bed, an antique dresser, one of those ancient Russian trunks, and a bookcase overflowing with small hardcover novels from the club her mother belonged to.
The only thing missing was her mother.
Frowning, Nina went downstairs again, calling out for her mother. She was just beginning to panic when she happened to glance outside.
There she was, sitting on her bench in the winter garden, looking down at her own hands. Tiny white Christmas lights entwined the wrought-iron fence, made the garden look like a magical box in the middle of all that night. Snow fell softly around her, making the substantial look illusory. Nina went to the entryway and grabbed some snow boots and a coat. Dressing quickly, she went outside, trying to ignore the tiny burn-like landings of snowflakes on her cheeks and lips. This was exactly why she worked near the equator.
“Mom?” she said, coming up beside her. “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s cold. ”
“It is not cold. ”
Nina heard the exhaustion in her mother’s voice and it reminded her of how tired she was, and how terrible this day had been, and the awful day that was coming, and so Nina sat down beside her mother.
For what seemed like an eternity, neither one of them spoke. Finally, Mom said, “Your father thinks I cannot handle his death. ”
“Can you?” Nina asked simply.
“You would be amazed at what the human heart can endure. ”
Nina had seen the truth of that all over the world. Ironically, it was what her warrior women photographs were all about. “That doesn’t mean the pain isn’t unbearable. In Kosovo, during the fighting, I talked to—”
“Do not tell me about your work. These are discussions you have with your father. War does not interest me. ”
Nina wasn’t hurt by that; at least that was what she told herself. She knew better than to reach out to her mother. “Sorry. Just making conversation. ”
“Do not. ” Mom reached down to touch the copper column that stood amid a messy coil of dead brown vines. Here and there red holly berries peeked through the snow, framed by glossy green leaves. Not that her mother could see these colors, of course. Her birth defect precluded her seeing the true beauty in her garden. Meredith had never understood why a woman who saw the world in black and white would care so much about flowers, but Nina knew the power of black and white images. Sometimes a thing was its truest self when the colors were stripped away.
“Come on, Mom,” Nina said. “I’ll make us some dinner. ”
“You do not cook. ”
“And whose fault is that?” Nina said automatically. “A mother is supposed to teach her daughter how to cook. ”
“I know, I know. It is my fault. All of it. ” Mom stood up, grabbed her knitting needles, and walked away.
Four
The dogs greeted Meredith as if she’d been gone for a decade. She scratched their ears without any real enthusiasm and went into the house, turning on the lights as she made her way from the kitchen to the living room.