“I’ll shave it tomorrow. My razor’s at Snag’s.”
“Come with me,” she said and led the way upstairs.
She motioned for him to sit on the closed lid of the toilet. His eyebrows arched up but he sat. From the shelf above she took down the old razor and mug and soap brush.
Kache grimaced. “That old thing is my great-grandfather’s. At least let me look for my dad’s or Denny’s.” But he sat back and his changing expression told her that although Denny and Glenn were rugged Alaskan men, both of them shaved every day, even when they went on hunting trips. Their razors were buried in plane rubble on a mountain.
“This will work,” Nadia told him. She rinsed the dust out of the mug and stuck in a small bar of soap that smelled of lemons, ran the wet brush over the soap until there was enough to lather Kache’s face. She took the razor in her hand and flipped it open.
“Have you ever done this before?”
“No.”
“Let me.”
“No.” She turned the water on and when it was warm to her touch, plugged the sink.
“Nadia?” She looked straight into his eyes with a willfulness she hadn’t before experienced.
She had to do this and he had to let her. That was all there was to it.
He must have understood because after that he kept his eyes straight ahead while his knee bumped up and down. She turned off the water. He held his breath while Nadia touched her hand to his forehead, tilted his head back and assessed the planes of his face.
“Are you sure you’ve never—?”
“Old Believer men do not shave and Old Believer women are not allowed even to witness haircuts of men. So yes, I am sure. But I skin animals. You know I am good with knife.”
“I would rather not be skinned.”
“Now you are quiet.”
Water dripped rhythmically into the half-full sink. The overhead light reflected in the razor as she angled it and pressed it against Kache’s face, in front of his ear.
She had missed him.
She scraped overlapping trails, concentrating on the smaller space between his nose and lips, and in the crevice of his chin. She dipped the razor in the sink.
There was too much she wanted to tell him but didn’t know how.
She lifted his chin, brought the blade to his throat. Kache swallowed and their eyes met for an instant before his retreated to the cabinet ahead and hers to the curve of his Adam’s apple.
So instead she would do this, a tenderness attempting to replace the wreckage. Was she too ruined? If only she could still the trembling of her hand.
He swallowed and she scraped upward until the white suds were nothing but slivered remnants.
“Kache? Thank you.” A single teardrop escaped and she caught it with the back of her wrist.
His eyebrows drew together. He started to reach out but she stepped back, so he dropped his hand to his knee. “You’re welcome.”
She dabbed his face with a towel. She handed him the mirror. She smiled.
She said, “There you are.”
THIRTY-FOUR
“So it is like television? I know about television,” Nadia said. Kache saw her stocking-clad feet pacing back and forth from where he lay under his mom’s old desk, hooking up the modem. Maybe he should just start with the computer itself and leave the Internet out completely. After all, that’s how he—and the rest of society, now that he thought about it—had gotten accustomed to the whole thing. “It was not allowed. As you understand, not much was.”
“But you’ve been gone a long time. I’ve heard of some Old Believers having television. Things change. Even in this house, which seems to have a supernatural resistance to change, change is upon us as we speak. Maybe your little religious village transformed into some cool bohemian colony of forward thinkers.”
“What have you been smoking?”
Kache laughed. “Where did you get that line?”
She lifted her shoulders. “I do not remember. Somewhere I read it.”
“What books have you read?”
“You mean of the ones in this house only, of course? I think you ask me which have I not read? And the answer would be—zero.”
“You’ve read them all? Even my mom didn’t claim that.”
“Because she had all of you to talk with, yes? These books, they are my friends, my teachers, my family, my everyone. They keep me alive. Every one I have read at least once. Even How to Care for Your Pet Turtle. If I like a book, I read it at least twice. I started out, I turn each one upside down on shelf after I finish? Then right side up when I read again. But now I lose track. Some up, some down, some I read over once, some five times, I do not know.”
Kache wondered, but didn’t ask, how many times she’d read The Joy of Sex. Probably not nearly as many times as he and Denny snuck it into Denny’s closet, making fun of all the cooking metaphors and trying not to show how completely enthralled they both were by the drawings—let alone all the helpful information. What a goddamn goldmine that book had been to them. Then there was the other one, what was it? The yellow paperback. Everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask. No pictures in that one, though, that he remembered, and he would have remembered.
She was saying something about getting more books. He said, “Maybe bringing the Internet in here isn’t such a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Because most people today read fewer books because there’s so much information streaming in. You won’t believe how much you can access.”
“I cannot wait. I cannot.” Her face appeared underneath the desk, sideways. “How much longer?” Her eyelashes had become his latest fascination. She had blonde hair but her lashes were dark and long and curled at the tips. Sometimes they made shadows on her cheeks. He’d been thinking of her differently since the night she shaved his face, but apparently it was one-sided because she acted as if they’d never shared those intimate, almost scary moments. It was just a shave, and she’s a committed hermit, he once again reminded himself. Get over it and get the computer hooked up.
He said, “Give me a few more minutes.”
She sat back at the kitchen table, resumed shelling the peas. Kache couldn’t remember all they’d scheduled for this week, but canning was a priority item, according to Nadia. Which meant she was planning on staying for the winter. Which meant that at some point they needed to talk because he’d decided he wasn’t going back to Austin. Even Janie had said it looked like Alaska had been good to him.
It would be much easier if he stayed at the homestead instead of driving back to Snag’s every night. There were three bedrooms and they worked until midnight anyway, and started early in the morning. And although Snag always made him feel at home, her place was small and he was living out of his suitcase. However, asking Nadia if he could stay crossed a very thick, high border.
He should figure out this whole soft spot for the Old Believer squatting on the family property dilemma, but still he just kept showing up every morning, helping and learning and enjoying the hell out of being on his family’s memory-laden land—something he never expected. He had one foot so rooted in 1985, Denny might drive up any moment and give Kache one of his bear hugs. He’d say something like, “Hey, Moose Legs, the Kings are running. Hurry up, and bring your guitar. I’ll lure in the fish and you lure in the beautiful women.”
Kache now at least played the guitar without hearing the background of his father’s yelling, and that was something. That was a start. Nadia had helped him overcome his fear of playing, and he wanted to help her overcome her own fears. She wouldn’t speak of her past when he’d asked, so he’d tried to stop asking. But maybe he could convince her to take a step off the property. She was an Old Believer living in his old house, among all of his family’s old possessions, but maybe, if he didn’t screw up, maybe he could help her get a new lease on life. He’d like to at least try to pay her back for helping him find music again.
“I’
ll tell you what,” he said as he crawled out from the desk. “I will let you explore the whole world on this computer, but I want you to do one thing first.”
“Teach you how to make goat cheese?”
“Come into town with me.”
She dropped the pea pod and stood.
He grabbed both hands before she ran upstairs. There had been the awkward handshake at the beach, and she’d touched his face, albeit mostly with a razor, but he had never touched her like this, hands to hands, skin to skin, and he felt her flinch. He tried to make eye contact but she kept her eyes downward and he suddenly wanted to feel those lashes against his ribcage. “Listen,” he said, trying to keep his mind on topic. “Caboose is a good steppingstone. Don’t you want to experience things firsthand before you see them on a screen? You’ve been to Caboose before, right? When you were a kid?”
She pulled back her hands, shoved them in her pockets and nodded.
“Good. It’s no metropolis and we’re slow to change, so things are pretty much the same. I’ll be with you. You can wear a hat and sunglasses, and you don’t have to talk to anyone if you don’t want to. I’ll just say you’re my cousin. What do you say?”
She stared at him, shifting her weight back and forth, left to right.
“I will go if you promise to take me one place only.”
“Where?”
“I want to go to Lettie.”
What a moron I am, he thought. “Of course,” he said. Of course that’s where she’d want to go.
THIRTY-FIVE
She asked him to pull over so she could vomit. Her nerves, the passing trees with their long shadows, the bumpy road. Afterward, while she leaned against the truck trying to breathe in enough fresh air to make the ground stop feeling like the bottom of a boat, he handed her a bottle of water and some gray fabric-covered elastics. “Wristbands,” he said, “for carsickness. Hold out your hands.” He started to put one band on but stopped. “Okay if I help you?” She nodded, and he showed her where to place them so the white plastic button hit between the two corded veins in her wrist. She concentrated so she wouldn’t react by pulling away again when his skin touched hers. The new calluses on his fingertips felt like a cat’s tongue, but his pressure was light and sure. “I bought them for you a few weeks ago and stuck them in the glove compartment and, like an idiot, forgot about them until now. I’m sorry. Did you always get sick?”
“I should have brought pickle. That’s what my grandmother always gave us for car rides.”
“It’s probably just because it’s been so long since you’ve been in a moving vehicle.”
“I am better somewhat now.” She really didn’t want to be standing on the side of the road exposed to anyone from the village who might drive by, although they probably wouldn’t recognize her; she wore jeans and a jacket, a baseball hat of Denny’s and Bets’ old sunglasses. Her hair was tucked up into the hat. Still, she wanted the coverage of the truck’s cab.
Kache was nervous too, she could tell, even though he was trying to hide it. He didn’t know what to expect of her as much as she didn’t know what to expect of the town. She had been here as a child, but then when her family moved deeper into the woods, their trips became more infrequent, and then Vladimir had forbidden her to go at all. But she wasn’t supposed to tell her family that, so she feigned a headache or a chore she must get done whenever someone invited her along, making it even longer than ten years, more like twelve years, since she had been.
From what she could see, the town was basically the same. There were more stores and a big new building with a sign that said The Slim Gym. More motorhomes, more people, but Caboose had not changed nearly as much as she had. She was not the timid, unknowledgeable, long-skirted and head-scarf-wearing girl she had once been. She had read hundreds of books, she had read Bets’ journals, she had watched movies, she was a woman in love with the world, and now she was meeting a tiny corner of it. The nausea had subsided and her head filled with the shifting colors and the laughter and the smells of food cooking and fish and cinnamon and exhaust and even perfume. Music playing from a street band and, at the same time, coming from a motorhome’s radio, created a strange harmony. A dog barked and another one answered, and she worried again about Leo, if he would be okay left alone in the house. He had never before been without her.
Kache turned up the hill and into an almost vacant lot and parked. “Ready?”
“No,” she said but opened her car door anyway.
They approached a building with big glass doors, which slid open for them. The warm air hit her, along with the aromas of bacon and coffee mixed with cleaning products and the urine smell of a bathroom that needed to be cleaned. She felt a little queasy again. Kache led the way, stopping to talk to old people sitting in wheelchairs or making their way down the hall, taking slow half steps with canes or leaning on metal contraptions.
So much to see. She tried taking off her sunglasses, but even then she could not focus on any one thing; it seemed like an abstract painting in one of Elizabeth’s art books. Kache was introducing her, which made her uncomfortable, so she replaced her glasses, and nodded and stayed behind him. She did hear one man ask, “Where’s your guitar, boy?” and Kache replied that he would bring it tomorrow. He’d never mentioned playing for them.
He took her to a small room, where Lettie sat in a wheelchair looking out at the view of the bay. Kache knelt beside her and said, “Hey, Gram.” He took her hand and said, “I brought someone.”
She turned and smiled, but then her eyes grew wide behind her glasses. “Nadia!”
Nadia’s shyness disappeared and she bent to hug her. Lettie was the only person who had held Nadia in the past decade, and their embrace felt so familiar, even now, that Nadia sighed and tried unsuccessfully to will the tears away.
“How good of you to come. How brave. You leave the homestead now?”
Nadia and Kache exchanged a look. “This is my first time.”
“Your first time ever? And you came to this old smelly place?”
“I missed you.”
Lettie gripped her hand now. “I missed you. Look at you. Young and beautiful and strong and full of life. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
So Nadia told her about the garden expansion and how the goats and chickens were doing and about the new addition of the cow, Mooze. “And Leo has grown up to be a wonderful friend to me.”
Kache said, “Hey, me too.”
Lettie said, “Hey, you too have become a wonderful friend to her?”
Kache turned a shade of red. “Well, yeah, I guess so. I was talking about Leo. He’s my buddy too. But Nadia and I are buddies, right, Nadia?”
She smiled, nodded, but she couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Watching him interact with all the older people, and seeing his bond with Lettie … She’d never seen him with others like this, his goodness and kindness; he was the same with them as he had been with her.
“I miss those days working in the garden, going into town and chatting with the locals, even the tourists and all their wide-eyed wonder. Energy. I miss all that shared energy. Now you two get out of here and go enjoy some of it for me, will you? It goes by lickety-split.”
But they lingered, talked a bit more, until Lettie insisted she needed her nap. After they hugged goodbye, Lettie said, “Will you please help me convince my over-protective daughter and grandson that I can handle a road trip out to the homestead?” Nadia assured her she would try.
In the truck, on the way back, Nadia fell quiet, thinking how all of those people who couldn’t walk or see or remember their own names were stuck in one place and eventually she would be too.
“Turn around this truck please?”
Kache glanced in the rearview mirror, slowed down. “Did you forget something?”
“Yes.” She lifted her shoulders the way he always did. “I forgot to see the rest of Caboose.”
As they came back into town, Kache pointed to the glove compartment. “I bought
earplugs too if you need them. I imagine Caboose might seem loud to you.”
“Haven’t you heard the gulls and crows and blue jays when they’re all bickering? But thank you for thinking of these things.”
“Even blue jays seem peaceful when you start hearing motorcycles and horns and fishermen shouting, so keep them in your pocket just in case.”
“I promise I will not start this tearing out of my hair and banging of my head against a post if it is loud.”
He smiled. “I’m so relieved.” He drove up and down, looking for a parking spot so they could walk along the Spit. Colorful tents still lined the beach on the north side, where the Spit Rats, out of college for the summer, camped and worked at the fish processing plant. When Nadia was a little girl she asked her mother if she could join them.
Kache said, “Maybe we should have come a different day of the week, or better, waited until fall. It’s so crazy with all the tourists.”
“I like it,” she said. “Please no worrying. I am fine.”
And she was more than fine while they browsed in shops overflowing with a kaleidoscope of bright things, things, things, and ate fish and chips and drank a beer and picked out gladiolas (“My mother loved those,” Kache said, staring at her again, and Nadia had to stop herself from saying I know.) Tourists lined up for photographs alongside their enormous bear-sized hanging halibuts.
A wonderland. And this was not San Francisco, not even close. She shut her eyes and tried to imagine the Golden Gate Bridge, the Coit Tower, the pyramid—imagine a tall skinny mountain in the middle of a city—the rivers of people and the clanging cable cars. Here, there were just the rows upon rows of docked boats, tourist shops and the handful of restaurants, a bar, and the still caboose, sitting at the end of the spit.
“Let’s go in,” Kache said, holding open the door of the caboose and motioning her inside.
It took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Old photographs and tools that the homesteaders used lined the shelves. It smelled like the insides of some of Elizabeth’s oldest books. A slide show flashed onto one wall. An older woman sat behind the counter talking on the phone. As Nadia looked around she heard her hang up and say, “Look at you! How many years has it been?” and Nadia’s heart started pumping double time. But the woman was looking at Kache, not at Nadia.
The House of Frozen Dreams Page 14