Winter Garden

“Today you will hear the terrible things I did,” Mom said.

“We all do terrible things, Mom,” Meredith said. “You don’t have to worry. ”

“Do we? Do we all do terrible things?” Mom made a sound of disgust. “This is the talk-show babble of your generation. Here is what I want to say now, before we go in. I love both of you. ” Her voice cracked, turned harsh, but her gaze softened. “My Ninotchka . . . my Merushka. ”

Before either could even respond to the sweetness of their Russian nicknames, Mom turned on her heel and walked into the nursing home.

Nina rushed to keep up with her eighty-one-year-old mother.

At the desk, she smiled at the receptionist, a round-faced, black-haired woman in a beaded red sweater.

“We are the Whitson family,” Nina said. “I wrote ahead to Dr. Adamovich and told him we’d be stopping by to see him today. ”

The receptionist frowned, flipping through a calendar. “Oh. Yes. His son, Max, is going to be here at noon to meet you. Would you like to have some coffee while you wait?”

“Sure,” Nina said.

They followed the receptionist’s directions to a waiting room filled with black and white images of Juneau’s colorful past.

Nina took a place by the window in a surprisingly comfortable chair. Behind her, a large picture window looked out over a green forest threaded by falling rain.

The minutes ticked past. People came and went, some walking, others in wheelchairs, their voices floating in and out with their presence.

“I wonder what the belye nochi is like here,” Mom said quietly, gazing out the window.

“It’s better the farther north you go,” Nina said. “According to my research anyway. But if you’re lucky, sometimes you can see the northern lights from here. ”

“The northern lights,” Mom said, leaning back in her orange chair. “My papa used to take me outside in the middle of the night sometimes, when everyone else was asleep. He’d whisper, ‘Verushka, my little writer,’ and take my hand and wrap me in a blanket and out we would go, into the streets of Leningrad, to stand and stare up at the sky. It was so beautiful. God’s light show, my papa said, although he said it softly. Everything he said was dangerous then. We just didn’t know it. ” She sighed. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever just talked about him. Just remembered something ordinary. ”

“Does it hurt?” Meredith asked.

Mom thought about that for a moment and then said, “In a good way. We were always so scared to mention him. This is what Stalin did to us. When I first came to the United States, I could not believe how free everyone was, how quick to say what was on their minds. And in the sixties and seventies . . . ” She shook her head, smiling. “My father would have loved to see a sit-in or the college kids demonstrating. He was like them, like . . . Sasha and your father. Dreamers. ”

“Vera was a dreamer,” Nina said gently.

Mom nodded. “For a time. ”

A man dressed in a flannel shirt and faded jeans walked into the room. With a thick black beard that covered half of his angular face, it was hard to make out his age. “Mrs. Whitson?” he said.

Mom slowly stood.

The man moved forward, his hand outstretched. “I am Maksim. My father, Vasily Adamovich, is the man you have come so far to see. ”

Nina and Meredith rose as one.

“It is many years since your father wrote to me,” Mom said.

Maksim nodded. “And I’m sorry to say that he has suffered a stroke in the years between. He can barely speak and can’t move his left side at all. ”

“So we are wasting your time,” Mom said.

“No. Not at all. I have taken up a few of my father’s projects and the siege of Leningrad is one of them. It’s such important work, gathering these survivor stories. It’s only in the last twenty years or so that the truth is coming to light. The Soviets were good at keeping secrets. ”

“Indeed,” Mom said.

“So if you’d like to come into my father’s room, I’ll record your account for his study. He may not appear to react, but I can assure you that he is happy to finally include your story. It will be the fifty-third first-person account he has collected. Later this year I am going to St. Petersburg to petition for more records. Your story will make a difference, Mrs. Whitson. I assure you. ”

Mom simply nodded, and Nina couldn’t help wondering what she was thinking, now that they were coming to the time when the story would end.