Winter Garden

“Come on, Mom. You’re getting the hell out of here. I’m taking you home. ”

“You?”

“Yeah,” Nina said firmly. “Me. ”

“That bitch. How could she say those things to me? And especially in front of Mom?” Meredith was in the small, cramped office from which her husband oversaw the newspaper’s city beat. Not that there was much city, or much beat, either. A stack of paper by his computer reminded her that he’d been working hard on his novel. The one she hadn’t yet found time to read.

She continued pacing, chewing her thumbnail until it hurt.

“You should have told her the truth. I told you that. ”

“This is not the time for I-told-you-so’s. ”

“But you talked to her, what? Two or three times since you put your mom in Parkview? Of course Nina’s pissed. You would be, too. ” He leaned back in his chair. “Let Nina spend time with her. By tomorrow night, she’ll understand why you made the choice you did. Your mom will dish up a big pile of crazy and Nina will fall all over herself to apologize. ”

Meredith stopped pacing. “You think?”

“I know. You didn’t stick your mom there because it was hard on you to care for her, although it was. You put her there to keep her safe. Remember?”

“Yeah,” she said, wishing she felt stronger about it. “But she’s been better in the nursing home. Even Jim said that. No walking in the snow barefooted or peeling off wallpaper or cutting her fingers. She saved the good stuff for me. ”

“Maybe she’s ready to come home, then,” he said, but she could tell that he wasn’t really engaged in the conversation anymore. Either he had something on his mind, or he’d heard it too many times. Probably the latter; she’d spent a lot of time in the last month worrying about her mother, and Jeff had heard it all. Actually, it was the only thing she could remember talking to him about lately.

“I’ve got to run,” he said. “Interview in twenty minutes. ”

“Oh. Okay. ”

She let him walk her out of the newspaper’s grungy, crowded office and to her car. She climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

It wasn’t until she was at her desk, looking over the orchardists’ pruning report, that she realized Jeff hadn’t kissed her good-bye.

As she drove toward Belye Nochi, Nina glanced sideways at her mother, who sat in the passenger seat of the rental car, knitting.

They were in foreign terrain now, she and her mother. Their togetherness implied a kind of partnership, but such a connection had never before existed and Nina didn’t really believe that mere proximity could give rise to a new kind of relationship. “I should have stayed,” she said. “Made sure you were okay. ”

“I hardly expected that from you,” her mother said.

Nina didn’t know if it was a put-down, with the emphasis on you, or a simple statement of fact. “Still . . . ” She didn’t know what to say next. Once again, she was a kid, hovering in her mother’s orbit, waiting for something—a look, a nod, some gratitude or grief. Anything but the click click click of those needles.

At the house, she watched her mother gather up her knitting, grab the bag of icons from her Holy Corner, and open the car door. With the bearing of a queen, she walked across the grassy lawn, up the stone path, and into her home, closing the door behind her.

“Thanks for springing me, Nina,” Nina muttered, shaking her head.

By the time she made it into the house with the luggage, the Holy Corner was set up again, the candle was burning, and her mother was nowhere to be found.

Nina went upstairs, dragging the suitcase behind her. Pausing at her mother’s open bedroom door, she listened, hearing the clatter of knitting needles and a soft, singsongy voice: Mom was either talking to herself or she was on the phone.

Either way, apparently it was better than talking to her daughter. She dropped her mom’s suitcase on the floor and then put her own backpack and camera gear in her old bedroom and went downstairs again. On her dad’s favorite ottoman bed, she spread out, fluffed up the pile of pillows behind her to make a headrest, and turned on the TV.

In seconds, she was asleep. It was the best, most dreamless sleep she’d had in months, and when she awoke, she felt refreshed and ready to take on the world.

She went upstairs and knocked on the bedroom door. “Mom?”

“Come in. ”

Nina opened the door and found her mother in the wooden rocking chair by the window, knitting. “Hey, Mom. Are you hungry?”

“I was last night and again this morning, but I made sandwiches. Meredith has asked me not to use the stove. ”