Maybe it’s not the orphanage that’s dividing us.
Blake
It’s like a dream. I have a constant feeling that I’m going to blink and wake up by my window at home overlooking the lake, with the zipline, which runs from the oak branch over the lake to a post on our deck, tempting me. Yet, here I am, here we are. Walking on narrow cobblestoned streets, sitting on screeching trains, the sound of metal on metal telling me I’m not asleep. I pretend I’m doing my research because I don’t want them to know how bowled over I am—they’d laugh at me. Mason asked if I wanted to rent a row boat on the big river, and I said, I row every day on our lake, why the hell would I want to row here? As if I’m some kind of rube. But Chloe pointed out that she, not I, rows on our lake. We debated this thorny issue at some length as we gaped around the ancient town, while Hannah put on her been there, done that air. I don’t want her to think that I’m walking around Riga with my mouth open because I’m unsophisticated. So I say intellectual things like, did you know that the Dome Cathedral altar and the cross-vaulted walkways were built in ornate Romanesque style but the steeple and the eastern pediment in Baroque style? But that’s not what I’m feeling. What I’m feeling is wow.
We sat for a few minutes in the cloister of the Dome Cathedral, the courtyard all glowing and sunlit. I thought it was a little bit like magic. But then Hannah said she wanted to go buy some clothes, and Mason said, you want to go to a mall, is that it? Like the outlet center in North Conway? I didn’t say anything, but the illusion of heaven was broken. Chloe had said she wanted to get a cherry strudel and to walk by the little river (she meant the canal), but Hannah wanted a dress from the Central Market so she said some mean thing to Chloe, which I can’t remember, but I remember thinking it wasn’t nice because Chloe looked so pretty. She wasn’t wearing six layers of shirts as she usually does. She wore one pink blouse. Her thin white arms were bare. Hannah of course looked ready to be in a photo shoot, with her bleached slick hair and snazzy miniskirt. She has so many clothes, why does she need one more of anything?
I just want to stumble around and be stunned by the whole thing. But I pretend to have a plan. To visit the museums dedicated to spies, to the barricades, to the occupation of Latvia. Really, I want nothing. Truly. Except to just be. I don’t want to think about plot, or about Latvian history. I just want to walk around and be amazed, and then maybe fall into a chair in Livu Square and have a Black Balsam ale. It’s beer but like real liquor. Strong. Besides, when I said I wanted to go to the war museum, Hannah said no. She wanted to go to some art gallery. It’s a beautiful day, said Chloe, why do we have to go inside some stuffy gallery? There’s an embankment here, and a café. Or how about the jetty over there in the middle of the Daugava? People are walking on it. Must be quite a view of the Old City from there. So beautiful. Beautiful? Hannah said. It’s hot like a sauna. It can’t be hot and beautiful? said Chloe. And Mason said, have you actually ever been to a sauna, Hannah?
On every corner someone is painting the cityscape or playing music or selling amber, which is apparently the national gem of Latvia. I almost want to start painting myself. I’ve never seen amber before. Chloe told me that amber is pine resin that stiffens at the bottom of the Baltic Sea before it’s washed ashore. How do you know, Hannah asked, and Chloe replied that Varda had told her. Varda had given Chloe an amber necklace as a gift. She’s wearing it now. It looks so pretty, the deep orange against her pink blouse. She usually never wears colorful clothes. The Latvians love amber because they worship the sun and the color of the stone reminds them of their favorite star, Chloe tells me. Maybe there’s amber in your blue suitcase, she suggests, and Hannah groans and tells her not to encourage me.
“You don’t have to encourage me,” I said. “I already know what’s in it.” But I won’t tell them.
I had wanted this day to be just my brother and me, but it’s nice to have the girls. I wish we could agree on something. Mason wanted to see inside St. Peter’s, but Hannah didn’t want to. Yes, I forgot, Mason said. You want to go to a mall.
Once you see it—the narrow stone streets, the colorful buildings breathing down the winding alleys, the stately river that belongs in a capital city, the restaurants, the music, the beer, the people—it’s not just yours anymore. It’s ours. I didn’t mind the walk down to the Riga Canal with my bro and our girls, the cherry strudel we shared. The strudel, by the way, was completely worth the wait. My only regret is we didn’t get more of it. Hannah refused to have even a bite, but Mase, Chloe and I ravaged it like lions a zebra. Nothing was left except the cherry jam on my shirt. All that’s left is to eat your shirt, Chloe said. I told her to be my guest. In Maine, the cherry trees rain down their pink blossoms for a week in the middle of May. The ground is covered with pink mist; it’s like walking through cotton candy fog. That’s the color of Chloe’s blouse.
While we were strolling down the river, she needled me about the contents of my blue suitcase, and I said, don’t you want to find out when you read it? And she said no. I knocked into her with my shoulder, but she kept saying no. I just want you to tell me what’s in it. Where is the fun in that, I said. Who said anything about fun, she said. It’s not like trying to find a word in English that rhymes with silver or purple. Oh, I said, you’re right, that would be fun. And so we tried to find a rhyme in Riga for silver or purple, but we couldn’t do it. Some words just don’t exist, Chloe told me.
Hannah interrupted us, caught up to us to say she couldn’t walk anymore because the mosquitoes by the canal were causing blood blisters on her arms. So we left.
When we were in Central Market and out of earshot of Mase and Chloe, I asked Hannah what the matter with her was. She was acting all sore, like she was shoveling manure, not wandering around cool old hangars looking at patchwork dresses and paper flowers that looked more real than actual flowers. They were pretty spectacular. Chloe bought a flower to take back to Varda but then put it in her own hair. It was a purple hibiscus. Nothing rhymed with that. What about my blood blisters, Hannah said, and Chloe laughed and said that almost rhymed. Hannah didn’t find it funny at all. It takes a lot to impress her.
Maybe cream pastries at a Bangor bakery.
Hannah
I can’t do this for another three weeks. I can’t do this for another three minutes. They’re being awful to me. Is this my punishment for not wanting to go to the orphanage? We missed the train today, and I said, thank heavens, thinking we wouldn’t have to go at all, and they were mad at me all day.
Is Latvia my penance? Apparently one of the Letts’ favorite things to do is remember past suffering. They have six national mourning days a year, that’s what Chloe told me. Weird people, weird language, weird house, weird food. I don’t even want to talk about the food, jars of jam and bushels of peaches everywhere. The whole house reeks of cooked peaches. Like Chloe’s house after her mother decided to go into the canning business. Maybe that’s why Chloe likes it. She won’t admit it, but it reminds her of home.
The old man is weird. He keeps staring at me. I tried to tone it down dress-wise, but he keeps staring anyway. Does his wife know what a lech he is? I don’t want to wear my nice clothes around him. And where can we do laundry? The red cherry filling had dripped all over Blake’s only decent shirt. When I said this to little Carmen, she stuck out her hands to Blake. Take off your clothes and give them here she said. I wash them. Where, in the river, I asked. And she took me to the laundry room. A big, big room with two washers and two dryers! A sink, running water, counter space to fold the clothes, pins, detergent, lines for hanging anything that couldn’t be machine dried. Almost professional. I didn’t say what I was thinking which was, I was frankly surprised they had electricity in Latvia.
After we had missed the train to Liepaja, I wanted to save us a day by hurrying to Riga and seeing everything today instead of two days from now. How much could there be to see, anyway? But they all said no. Blake said we were getting a tour guide on Tuesday and allowe
d no argument. Then he asked Carmen to ask Otto if he needed help with his miter cuts. He said the man’s hands trembled so bad that his forty-five degree cuts were more like thirty-nine or fifty-one degrees. Nothing lined up. But Carmen put Blake in his place. She said, Grandfather know how to measure it, know how to saw it. He do it his whole life. But his hands shake. After you leave, his hands will still shake. He okay. He happy do it his way, even when it comes out all crooked. I loved seeing the chastised look on Blake’s face.
But instead of going straight to Riga, we first traipsed to some open market to see where Varda and Sabine sold apples and pies. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Blake more excited. Look at all this stuff they’re selling, he kept saying, earthenware, jams, dresses, fruits, look at the size of the plums, look at the tomatoes. Like he’s never seen a tomato before. I was mildly amused by a whole pig, but before I could comment, Varda bought it. She said it was for dinner tonight. I thought Mason would throw up.
So we didn’t get to Riga until the afternoon, and everyone was crabby with me. Whatever I said I wanted to do, they were like, no. It was revenge, I know it. No matter what I proposed. Art gallery, no. Take in an opera? No. We promised Varda we’d be back for dinner, Chloe said. Go get a glass of wine? No. They kept trying to foist Black Balsam on me. It was hideous. It was like bitter mud but less sweet. Of course Blake loved it. He can’t believe we can drink here, that anyone will sell us alcohol. After the boys and Chloe got tipsy on this black liquid dirt, they wanted to stumble around and marvel at buildings. Like the castle or the yellow fortress. I keep telling them how beautiful Paris is; they don’t want to hear it. They’re walking around Riga as if it’s Paris. Blake says that Riga, Vienna, and Brussels were all built in the same art nouveau style. Yes, Blake just used the words art nouveau to me. The world is upside down. I said, do you even know what art nouveau is, and he said, do you? Then he proceeded to tell me what it was. He said in German, the word they use is jugendstil, which means youth. He said UNESCO listed Riga’s collection of jugendstil buildings as unmatched anywhere else in the world. I refused to believe this was true. He argued with me about this through Livu Square like I was Chloe: like I cared.
Why another church, I asked Mason. We just went to the Dome Cathedral. He had no answer. He said there were forty-two churches in Riga center, and shouldn’t we try at least one more? They also sell kaftans, around here, I said to him. Do you want to try one of those too? He had no response. Blake told me to stop arguing. What about Mason, I said. And what about you and Chloe? He’s got some nerve.
Mason and Chloe held hands the whole day, but Blake held his Frommer’s guide and his journal, and had no hands for me. When I asked him to put it down for just one goddamn minute, he said it was time to catch the train back, that we promised we’d be back by seven.
I don’t understand why Chloe is acting the way she is. She never wanted to come here. She’s been beautifully miserable for two months, ever since Moody proposed this crazy idea. I thought she and I would see eye to eye on the whole Eastern Europe thing, bond over our dissatisfaction, but for some reason she’s pretending to like it. She’s got to be mad at me. Why else would she be acting all happy, skipping, tugging on everybody’s sleeve, wanting ice cream and Napoleons and strudels. It’s an act. Chloe, who can’t be persuaded to pinch even one of her dad’s Miller Lites, is drinking Black Balsam and smacking her lips about how delicious it is! And also, I mention this in passing, she is wearing a pink blouse. Yes it’s over jeans, but on her feet are thong sandals, and she has painted her toenails red. Chloe. Toenails. Painted. Red. What’s happening to the world? She has put on a little makeup, as if she’s trying to look pretty for Latvia. It’s weird, frankly.
Whatever, I don’t care. I told her she shouldn’t be eating those strudels anyway. I was being constructive. I was trying to help. Of course she took it the wrong way. And the boys took her side! Blake said, we’re on a Roman Holiday. We eat what we want, drink what we want, do what we want. Eat the Napoleon, Chloe, he said. Eat two strudels. We stood in line an hour to buy a stupid pastry! Can you imagine? On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, to stand in line, like we’re in Russia or something, like the Berlin Wall never fell, to get a Napoleon. To eat an eight-hundred calorie dessert and get fat, and for this we wait an hour.
With the baked goods in hand, we walked forever to the canal because Chloe wanted to, and strolled excruciatingly slowly under the trees by the water, eating pastries. All the insects were out, and again I’m the bad guy.
Blake is driving everyone crazy with his story research. I could scream. I’ve been quiet about it, letting Chloe express our mutual skepticism, but now she’s suddenly pretending she’s on board. Suddenly I have to be the voice of reason. He’s never going to win it because there’ll be a thousand entries, including a hundred from the Academy, and no matter how good his story is—someone else’s will be better. I wish somebody would remind him of this. Chloe used to, back in Maine, but here, she’s asking him questions, discussing things, fake-listening. Tell me about these spies, she says. Why are there so many secret agents, double agents in Riga? What do they want with a blue suitcase?
That’s the question, he says. The old lady dies, and the innocuous blue suitcase in her bedroom vanishes. Who took it?
Riga spies? says Chloe.
We’re ambling down the river promenade, the others eating cherry strudel and listening to Blake tell us about the size of the engine in the truck he’s going to buy with the prize money. The lunatics have left the asylum.
“Blake,” I say, as gently as I can, “don’t you think there will be so many other story entries? I mean, don’t you think you should … I don’t know. Not divvy up the bear until the bear is dead? The chances of winning are minuscule. There’s bound to be one better than yours, no?”
And he says, “Lupe told me never to compare myself with other people because, she said, there would always be someone worse and someone better than me, and I would become either vain or bitter. Just keep your eye on the prize, she said.”
Who in the flipping world is Lupe?
I smile, elegantly, politely. I walk next to him, gaze at my gait, my ballet flats, my legs in my miniskirt. I’m hot, I’m trying not to sweat, and I don’t listen to a word he says anymore.
I’m thinking about Martyn. I wonder how much he misses me.
It’s brutally hot out. And humid like Houston. So unpleasant to walk around. We should be at a beach in Barcelona, not here. At least I look good. I caught my reflection in the shop windows; a thin wan girl stared back, a slender profile. Cheekbones. Tiny denim skirt, green T-shirt, lavender belt. Chloe caught me looking at myself, smiled, and said, “The question the philosophers ask is, when you walk past a shop window, do you a. look to see what’s inside, b. look to see what’s in the window, or c. look at yourself? We know what your answer is.”
Why did this annoy me? “Oh, and I suppose you never look at yourself?”
“No, my answer is all three,” she replied.
On the way back we had no one on our train, and it still stunk like a skunk. I can only imagine how fun it’s going to be tomorrow.
Back at Varda’s they fed us well. Pienācis mans Kungs, Varda said again with open hands. We ate half a pig tonight. I have to admit it was delicious. Sabine was there, with her husband Guntis. He was also making eyes at me when no one was looking. They all got dressed up. Guntis wore a tie! Sabine wore a red jacket over her peasant dress.
You ask if I have a future with Blake.
Exhibit number one: By the canal under a tree on a bench I’m studying the schedule for the Opera House, piano recitals, cello concertos. And Blake, Mason, and Chloe are barefoot on the grass, hopping on one foot to see who can do it the longest. With cherry strudel all over their faces. And then they run over to the bench where I am sitting and paw me with their sticky hands, yanking me up and trying to make me skip as well. I’m a young woman, I said to them. And you are children. I do not skip
.
Exhibit number two: He never stops eating. He eats at every place we stop. No, that’s not correct. He seeks out places to stop so that he can eat. Leave it to me, he says. I know where I’m going. And it’s always to a café. He had cold beet soup with chopped egg in it. He had a potato pudding with bacon, and fried rye bread with garlic, and then tried to kiss me! He drank that Black Balsam. And at Varda’s, he ate the pig and sardines, and sour porridge, and dried pork in a bun. He had blood sausage! And mushrooms with onions. That man has an iron stomach. Nothing fazes him. A few years ago, he actually ate some webcaps. He thought they were white mushrooms. He was in the woods with some of his dirtbag friends after a rain, getting up to no good, I’m sure, drinking, maybe even smoking, looking for some other kind of mushrooms, I bet, though Blake would never admit it. But he was clearly impaired because he’d been picking mushrooms since he could suck his thumb and never before mistook fatal for edible. His friends nearly died. Three of them were in the hospital for months. Major kidney damage. One of them is still on dialysis. One got lucky and had a transplant.
But Blake? I’m not saying he didn’t throw up, and for weeks had a reduced appetite, and even a headache once, he swore. What I’m saying is, the man ate fool’s webcap, the most poisonous toadstool in the world, and walked away with a stomachache.
He should write about that. He’s got a lot he can write about. He doesn’t need hidden treasure in an old lady’s suitcase. He has a poisoning, a fateful accident, a sick dog, a critically injured father. But who listens to me? That’s why I say nothing, even when he asks. Because he thinks he knows everything.
Lone Star Page 17