Winter Garden

She wished he’d asked her that an hour ago, or yesterday, or last week. Anytime except now, when even the ground beneath her felt unreliable. She’d thought his love was a bulkhead that could hold back any storm, but like everything else in her life, his love was conditional. All at once she was that ten-year-old girl again, being dragged out of the garden, wondering how she’d gone so wrong.

He let go of her and started for the door.

Meredith almost called out for him, almost said, Of course I love you. Do you love me? but she couldn’t make her mouth open. She knew she should grab the suitcase from him or throw her arms around him. Something. But she just stood there, dry-eyed and uncomprehending, staring at his back.

At the last minute, he turned to look at her. “You’re like her, you know that, don’t you?”

“Don’t say that. ”

He stared at her a moment longer, and she knew it was an opening, a chance he was giving her, but she couldn’t take it, couldn’t make herself move or reach out or even cry.

“Good-bye, Mere,” he finally said.

She stood there a long time, was still there, at her sink, staring out at the dark nothingness of her yard, long after he’d driven away.

You’re like her, he’d said.

It hurt so much she couldn’t stand it, as he must have known it would.

“He’ll be back,” she said to no one except herself. “Couples take breaks sometimes. It will all be okay. ” She had to figure out how to fix it, what needed to be done. She went to the closet and grabbed the vacuum and dragged it into the living room and turned it on. The sound drowned out the voices in her head and the erratic beating of her heart.

Ten

When Nina finished showering and unpacking, she went downstairs. In the kitchen, she found her mother already seated at the table, where a cut-crystal decanter waited. “I thought we’d have a drink. Vodka,” her mother said.

Nina stared at her. It was one of those moments when you glimpsed something unexpected, like a face in the shadows. In all her thirty-seven years, Nina had never been offered a drink by her mother. She hesitated.

“If you’d rather not . . . ”

“No. I mean yes,” Nina said, watching as her mother poured two shot glasses full of vodka.

She tried to see something in her mother’s beautiful face, a frown, a smile; something. But the blue eyes revealed nothing.

“The kitchen smells of smoke,” Mom said.

“I burned the first dinner. Too bad you never taught me to cook,” Nina said.

“It is reheating, not cooking. ”

“Did your mother teach you to cook?”

“The water is boiling. Put in the noodles. ”

Nina went to the stove and poured some of her mother’s homemade noodles into the boiling water. Beside them, a saucepan bubbled with stroganoff sauce. “Hey, I’m cooking,” she said, reaching for a wooden spoon. “Danny would laugh his ass off right now. He’d say, Watch it, love. People’re goin’ t’ eat that. ” She waited for her mom to ask who Danny was, but all that rebounded was silence, and then a slow tapping.

She looked back, saw her mother tapping a fork on the table.

Nina returned to the table, took a place opposite her mother. “Cheers,” she said, lifting her glass.

Mom lifted the small heavy glass, clinked it against Nina’s, and downed the vodka in a swallow.

Nina did the same. Minutes passed in silence. “So what do we do now?”

“Noodles,” was Mom’s reply.

Nina rushed back to the stove. “They’re floating,” she said.

“They’re done. ”