Winter Garden

“A toast,” her mother said quietly, raising her shot glass.

There was a moment of awkward silence as they looked at one another. Meredith knew that each of them was thinking about what to say, how to honor him without either making it hurt more or sound sad. He wouldn’t have wanted that.

“To our Evan,” Mom said at last, clinking her glass against the others. She downed the alcohol in one swallow. “Your father loved it when I drank. ”

“It’s a good night for alcohol,” Meredith said. She drank her vodka and held her empty glass out for more. The second shot burned down her throat. “I miss hearing his voice when I come into the house,” she said.

Mom immediately poured herself another shot. “I miss the way he kissed me every morning. ”

“I got used to missing him,” Nina said quietly. “Pour me another. ”

By the time she finished her third shot of vodka, Meredith felt a buzzing in her blood.

“He would not want us speaking about him in this way,” Mom said. “He would want . . . ”

In the silence that followed, they all looked at each other. Meredith knew they were thinking the same thing: how did you just go on?

You just do, she thought, and so she said, “My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. I love everything about it—how my kids look forward to it, the decorations, hearing the first Christmas album, the food. And I’ll say it now: I hated those damn family road trips we used to take. Eastern Oregon was the worst. Remember the time we stayed in teepees? It was one hundred degrees and Nina sang ‘I think I Love You’ for four hundred miles. ”

Nina laughed. “I loved those camping trips because we never knew where we were going. Christmas is my favorite holiday because I can remember the date. And the thing I miss most about Dad is that he was always waiting for me. ”

Meredith had never known that sometimes Nina felt alone, that for all her gallivanting about the globe, she liked to know that someone was waiting for her.

“I loved your father’s adventurous spirit,” Mom said. “Although those camping trips were hell. Nina, you should never sing in front of people if they cannot leave. ”

“Ha!” Meredith said. “I knew I wasn’t crazy. Your singing was like listening to a dental drill. ”

“Yeah? Well, David Cassidy wrote me a letter. ”

“His signature was stamped. ” Meredith smiled at the coup de grâce.

Across the table, Mom sighed as if she were hardly listening to them. “He always promised to take me to Alaska. Did you know that? To see again the Belye Nochi and the northern lights. That is the thing I remember most about Evan. He saved me. ”

She looked up suddenly, as if realizing all at once that she’d shown something of herself. She pushed back from the table and stood up.

“I always wanted to go to Alaska, too,” Meredith said. She didn’t want her mother to leave the table, not now.

“I am going to my room,” Mom said.

Meredith rushed forward to take her arm. “Here, Mom—”

Mom pulled away. “I am not an invalid. ”

Meredith stood there, watching Mom walk out of the kitchen and disappear. “She confuses the hell out of me. ”

“You said a mouthful there, sister. ”

That night, Meredith and Nina stayed up late, talking about Dad and trading childhood memories. Both were trying in their way to hold on to the day, to really celebrate his birthday, and afterward, when Meredith lay in her lonely bed, she began what she knew would be a new life habit: talking to her dad in the quiet times. She couldn’t get advice from him, perhaps, but somehow just saying the words aloud helped. She told him about Jeff and her confusion and her inability to say what her husband wanted to hear. And she knew what her dad would have asked her. It was the same question Nina had posed.

What do you want?

It was something she hadn’t thought seriously about in years. She’d spent the last decade considering what she would make for dinner, where the girls should go to school, how to package apples for the foreign markets. She’d thought fruit production and college entrance essays, house repairs and how to save for tuition and taxes.

The minutiae had consumed the whole.

But all the next day, as she tried to concentrate on work, the question came back to her, until finally she had an answer of sorts.

She didn’t know exactly what she wanted, but she knew suddenly what she didn’t want. She was tired of running too fast and hiding behind a busy schedule, tired of pretending problems didn’t exist.