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.”
“I slept for a whole day? Shit. Promise me you won’t tell Meredith.”
Mom looked at her sharply. “I do not make promises to children.” At that, she went back to her knitting.
Nina left the bedroom and took a long, hot, only-in-America shower. Afterward, even though she was dressed in her crumpled, ancient khakis, she felt human.
Downstairs, she meandered around the kitchen, trying to figure out what to make for lunch.
In the freezer, she found dozens of containers of food, each one marked and dated in black ink. Her mother had always cooked for a platoon instead of a family, and nothing from the Whitson table was ever thrown away. Everything was packed up, dated, and frozen for later use. If Armageddon ever came, no one at Belye Nochi would go hungry.
Her eye went straight to the stroganoff and homemade noodles.
Comfort food. Exactly what they needed. She put some water on to boil for the noodles and popped the sauce in the microwave to thaw it. She was about to set the table when a blast of sunlight caught her attention. At the window, she looked down and saw the orchard in full bloom.
She ran for her camera bag, chose one, and went outside, where she immediately lost herself in the choices presented. She took pictures of everything, the trees, the blossoms, the smudge pots, and with every click of the shutter, she thought of her dad and how much he loved this time of year. When she finished, she covered her lens and walked idly back toward the house, passing her mother’s so-called winter garden.
On this surprisingly sunny day, the garden was a riot of white blossoms upheld by lush green stems and leaves. Something sweet-smelling was in bloom and its perfume mixed with the fecund smell of fertile soil. She sat down on the ironwork bench. She’d always thought of this garden as solely her mother’s domain, but just now, with the apple trees blooming all around her, she felt her father’s presence as keenly as if he were sitting beside her.
She picked up her camera again and began taking pictures: a pair of ants on a green leaf, a flawless, pearlescent magnolia blossom, the copper column that had always been center stage in this garden, with its blue-green patina—
Nina lowered the camera.
There were two columns now. The new one was bright, shiny copper, with an elegant scroll stamped into it.
She brought the camera to her eye again and focused on the new column. In the upper half there was an ornate etching. Scrollwork. Leaves, ivy, flowers.
And the letter E.
She turned slightly and faced the other column. Pushing the vines and flowers aside, she studied the scrollwork.
She’d seen it dozens of times in her life, but now, for the first time, she studied it closely. There were Russian letters entwined in the scrollwork. An A and what appeared to be the P symbol, a circle—which might be an O—and something that looked like a spider. There were also a few she didn’t recognize.
She was just about to reach for it when she remembered the water she’d put on to boil.
“Shit.” Nina grabbed her camera and ran for the house.
Nine
Meredith came up with a plan and stuck to it. She’d decided that two afternoons and an evening with Mom would be enough time for Nina to understand the nursing home decision. Yes, Mom had gotten better in the past few weeks, but Meredith didn’t believe for a second that she was well enough to care for herself yet.
And it was important—crucial, even—that Nina understood the situation. Meredith didn’t want to carry the burden of this decision alone any longer. Mom had been in the home for almost six weeks and her ankle was fully healed. Soon a permanent choice would have to be made, and Meredith refused to do it alone.
At four-thirty, she left the office and drove to the nursing home. Once there, she waved at Sue Ellen, the receptionist, and sailed past, her head held high, her keys in one hand, her handbag in the other. At Mom’s room, she paused just long enough to tell herself she didn’t really have a headache, and then she opened the door.
Inside, a pair of blue-coverall-clad men were cleaning: one was mopping the floor, the other was wiping down the window. All of Mom’s personal items were gone. On the bed, instead of the brand-new bedding Meredith had bought, there was a plain blue mattress.
“Where’s Mrs. Whitson?”
“She moved out,” one of the men said without looking up. “Didn’t give us much warning.”
Meredith blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Moved out.”
Meredith spun on her heel and walked back to the front desk. “Sue Ellen,” she said, pressing two fingertips to her left temple. “Where is my mother?”
“She left with Nina. Moved out, just like that. No notice or nothing.”
“Well. This is a mistake. My mother will be back—”
“There’s no room now, Meredith. Mrs. McGutcheon is taking her place. We never know for sure, of course, but we don’t expect to have a room available again until after July.”
Meredith was too mad to be polite. Saying nothing, she marched out of the building and got in her car. For the first time in her life, she didn’t give a shit about the posted speed limit, and in twelve minutes she was at Belye Nochi and out of her car.
Inside, the whole house reeked of smoke. In the kitchen, she found dirty plates piled in the sink and an open pizza box on the counter. More than half of the pizza was left in the box.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
A misshapen pot sat slumped over the front burner. Meredith didn’t need to reach for it to know that it had melted to the burner.
She was about to charge up the stairs when she glanced out at the side yard. Through the wood-paned French doors, she saw them: Mom and Nina were sitting together on the iron bench.
Meredith opened one of the French doors so hard it clattered against the wall.
As she crossed the yard, she heard her mother’s familiar story voice, and knew immediately that the bouts of confusion weren’t over.
“. . . she mourns the loss of her father, who is imprisoned in the red tower by the Black Knight, but life goes on. This is a terrible, terrible lesson that every girl must learn. There are still swans to be fed in the ponds of the castle garden, and white summer nights when the lords and ladies meet at two in the morning to stroll the riverbanks. She doesn’t know how hard one winter can be, how roses can freeze in an instant and fall to the ground, how girls can learn to hold fire in their pale white hands—”
“That’s enough of the story, Mom,” Meredith said, trying not to sound as pissed off as she was. “Let’s go inside.”
“Don’t stop her—” Nina said.
“You’re an idiot,” Meredith said to Nina, helping Mom to her feet, leading her into the house and up the stairs, where she got her settled in the rocker with her knitting.
Back downstairs, she found Nina in the kitchen. “What in the hell were you thinking?”
“Did you hear the story?”
“What?”
“The story. Was that the peasant girl and the prince? Do you remem—”
Meredith took her sister by the wrist and pulled her into the dining room, switching on the lights.
It looked exactly as it had on the day Mom fell off the chair. Strips of wallpaper were gone; the blank valleys looked like old wounds next to the vibrant color of what remained. Here and there, reddish black smears stained both the wallpaper and the vacant strips.
Outside, somewhere in the fields, a truck backfired.
Meredith turned to Nina, but before she could say anything, she heard footsteps thundering down the stairs.
Mom ran into the kitchen, carrying a huge coat. “Did you hear the guns? Downstairs! Now!”
Meredith took her mother by the arm, hoping her touch would help. “That was just a truck backfiring, Mom. Everything is fine.”
“My lion is crying,” Mom said, her eyes glassy and unfocused. “He’s hungry.”
“There’s no hungry lion here, Mom,” Meredith said in an even, soothing voice. “Do you want some soup?” she asked quietly.
Mom looked at her. “We have soup?”
“Lots of it. And bread and butter and kasha. No one is hungry here.” Meredith gently took the coat from her mother. Tucked inside the pocket, she found four bottles of glue.
The confusion left as quickly as it had come. Mom straightened, looked at her daughters, and then walked out of the kitchen.
Nina turned to Meredith. “What the fuck?”
“You see?” Meredith said. “She goes . . . crazy sometimes. That’s why she needs to be someplace safe.”
“You’re wrong,” Nina said, still staring at the doorway through which Mom had just passed.
“You’re so much smarter than I am, Nina. So tell me, what am I wrong about?”
“That wasn’t nuts.”
“Oh, really? And just what was it?”
Nina finally faced her. “Fear.”
Nina was hardly surprised when Meredith started cleaning the kitchen, and with a martyr’s zeal. She knew her sister was pissed. She should have cared about that, but she couldn’t.
Instead, she thought about the promise she’d made to her father.
Make her tell you the story of the peasant girl and the prince.
At the time it had seemed pointless, really; impossible. A dying man’s last desperate hope to make three women sit down together.
But Mom was falling apart without him. He’d been right about that. And he’d thought the fairy tale could help her.
Meredith banged a pot down on one of the remaining burners and then swore. “We can’t use the damn stove until we can get rid of this pot you melted.”
