Enough to build a bonfire. Would he burn the journals?
He had said mean things to Nadia, things he already regretted. But … like a brother? Add the fact she kept doing things that reminded him of his mother. There was Freud again, fingers on chin, nodding. But if you took all that away, which would happen in time once they knew each other, the real person and not just these glimpses through the ghosts. He needed to know her, her, Nadia, more. He didn’t even know her last name. Why, exactly, was she here? A fair question. A start. She had listened to his rage and hadn’t run for cover. She was getting stronger day by day, just as he was. She could handle some gentle interrogation now without running to hide under the bed. But then her answers would move into the house too, along with all the ghosts, and all the relics. Shit, the place was already way past crowded.
Even so, he wouldn’t burn those journals. He couldn’t. Nadia still needed them. Maybe he did too.
He stuck the ax into the stump and started stacking the wood.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Now Lettie and A.R. hurried to get the cabin done before winter busted in. While she split wood, aiming for the tree stump beneath the log, instead of for the log—Bill Newberry had taught her that after she’d hounded him—she lost herself in the rhythm of it. Up, back, over, crack, pull. Up, back, over, crack, pull, her feet planted out to the sides. Muddy? Hell, yes. Muddy as hell. Her feet, her trousers, her hair, even. Up, back, over, crack, pull.
The rhythm of it reminded her of the rhythm of the wooden swing her father had hung for her when she was small, intending it to amuse her for a year or two until she outgrew it. But she never outgrew the swing, not really. From the first time she got it going by herself, pumped her thick legs hard enough, she thought, Leave the adults indoors to do their washing and futsing, this is what they mean when they sing those songs, with their hopeful words and their tears, despite themselves, slipping down their cheeks: Nearer my God, to Thee. If she kept trying, maybe she might touch heaven with her toes; it certainly seemed possible from her perspective in the swing. Nearer my God to Thee. It never happened like that, exactly. But sometimes, with the sun just so on her face, sometimes she had a feeling. The breeze picked up her hair, smoothed it back from her face. As if something, or someone maybe, was telling her she was, indeed, beautiful. She knew she was not, was in fact quite plain; big-rumped, wide-faced and bespeckled as she was, though everyone agreed she had a fine nose. But that feeling. She thought that it might be the presence of God everyone talked about, though she didn’t feel compelled to define it. The presence of love? She didn’t know the answer. She didn’t have to. But it was because of that silly swing that in her own small way, she did believe in miracles, in mystery.
So it wasn’t beyond her scope of belief when, after three months in Alaska, she, Lettie Winkel, missed her first period. And then her second. At age thirty-four, she was going to be a mother. A mother. Now she watched the other women with interest: How those with babies let them suckle at their full breasts. How a woman might take her toddler’s face in her hands, kiss his forehead, then pat him on his bottom as he turned to seek out more mischief. How they were always, always tending to meals, whether it be preparing, dishing up, washing up, or putting away. And in the middle of this, Lettie stood, her hand on her belly. Amazed! The wonder!
There was the nausea, exhaustion, too. She fought the intense desire to lie down and sleep the next seven months away; to become a bear, perhaps. But her desire to finish the cabin won out. Now it had to be done. And A.R., so tickled about the baby he seemed more energetic, even sang while he fit logs, started the chinking.
They finished just before the first snow. Huddled inside, with two small windows and a door, Lettie and A.R. were as proud and giggly as two kids who’d just finished their very own blanket fort on a clothesline pole.
“I love you, Lettie,” he said to her that night. Ran his hand over and over her stomach. “You were right, you know. About coming here. It was the right thing for us.”
“Because of the baby?”
“Well, the baby, yeah. But not just the baby. It’s you. And me, too.”
The snow gave the land a singularity of purpose. During the summer, so much to do, so much to see, taste, touch, smell, hear. Now it was the silence she heard. Whiteness was what she smelled, touched, tasted, saw. A big, thick blanket tucked around her, summoning her to do nothing but rest in the womb of the cabin. And wait.
Inside her, too, the baby rested. Waited. Moved about. The baby was all she thought about, it seemed. She touched her belly, closed her eyes. Tried to imagine the unseen face, the unheard cry. Tried to feel the knob of the baby’s head inside her, imagine it curled into the nape of her neck, where she stroked its tiny hairs with her own strong and able fingers.
One of the younger women commented on Lettie’s age. She hadn’t meant to be unkind, but it stung. Certainly, Lettie wasn’t young, but women older than her became mothers. She looked out and felt as cragged and ancient as the mountains. But the jolt inside her, a romp like a bear cub, and then another, said something else. There was one window of opportunity for Lettie to be a mother (perhaps it was more like the tiny porthole on that slamming ship), and this was it.
She was embarking on change as deep and quick as the Alaskan tides. She knew then she wasn’t having a baby. She was having two babies. She knew it in the marrow of those tired bones, where earned wisdom flowed. And if she could survive the birth, Oh please let me survive it, she would be the best damn mother any of those younger women had ever laid their clear wide eyes on.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Snag sat, watching her mother breathe. The in, the out, the up, the down, of Lettie’s breath filled Snag’s own chest with a sweet sadness—gratitude for what had been, dread of what was to come.
She started singing her mom’s favorite song. “The water is wide. I can’t cross over. And neither have I wings to fly …”
Gilly stuck her head through the doorway. “I just love that song. You are one sweet daughter, Snag Winkel. Sweet voice, too.” And then she was gone down the hall in a flurry of nurse busyness.
Snag felt her cheeks go red and turned back to her mom. “Build me a boat, that can carry two …” Theirs had been an easy mother-daughter relationship, as far as mother-daughter relationships went. Snag grew up worshipping the ground Lettie walked on, which also happened to be the ground Lettie worshipped. Because Lettie’s religion, if you chose to call it that, was steeped in those four hundred acres overlooking the Kachemak Bay. Lettie told Snag she’d only been half alive before she and A.R. moved to Alaska from Kansas. She was even convinced whatever had caused her infertility had died on the boat trip up; Lettie arrived on this shore, suddenly Mrs. Fertile Myrtle. As a token of her gratitude for Snag and Glenn, she’d offered up herself—with years and years of hard work and dedication to their land.
But Alaska was the same land that had taken away not only Glenn, but Bets and dear Denny too. When Snag had brought that up once after the accident, Lettie said she didn’t see it that way. They’d loved their lives here in Alaska, doing what they enjoyed. Sure, they might not have gotten in a plane crash if they’d lived in LA or Tallahassee, but who was to say? Lettie didn’t blame Alaska for the accident. But she might blame her daughter, once she heard the whole story.
When Lettie woke, Snag didn’t waste any time. “Mom, I really need to talk with you.”
Lettie rubbed her eyes and reached for her glasses. “Last time I tried to have a heart-to-heart with you, you ran out of the room. Or crawled, was more like it.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking of everything you said. Thinking and thinking. All this time, I didn’t know you had a clue about me and I wonder why we didn’t talk about this back when it would have been helpful—back when I was a young woman instead of an old lady.”
“You’ve still got time to get it right.” Lettie sighed. “But that’s no excuse for me. I thought I was being a good mom to keep quiet and let you
find your way. But we didn’t live in an area where you got much guidance. It wasn’t like we had a Gay Pride parade on the Spit. You could have used some straight talk about being a lesbian. There, I said it.” Snag’s ears felt hot. The heat spread down her chest and she took off her cardigan. “But I felt ill-equipped back then. Honey, I didn’t even know what a lesbian was when I was growing up.”
“I didn’t either. I thought I had a horrible affliction.”
“That’s my fault. Because by then I knew better and should’ve helped.” Lettie leaned in and lowered her voice. “And then the whole thing with Bets.”
Snag stared at her mom, her ears pounding. “Wait. You knew?”
“It was obvious you always had feelings for her. It wasn’t a big secret.”
“It wasn’t?” Snag felt the blush wash over her from forehead to toes. They kept the place so warm.
“Not to me, anyway. It was all over you every day.”
“Oh. That’s great, Mom. Thanks.”
“Honey. You can’t hide what you can’t hide.” Lettie took Snag’s hand in her own even more brown-spotted, vein-mapped hand. They sat in the silence for a while, Lettie drawing her thumb back and forth over Snag’s knuckles, the way she had since Snag was a little girl, as if each knuckle were a large, treasured pearl.
Snag finally spoke. “Since we’re confessing all today,” (though Snag was decidedly not confessing all) “I have a question for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re not taking your pink pill are you?”
“Hell no.”
“And you know you will probably die without it?”
“I know I’ll die with it or without it, and I know I’m ninety-eight. I’m sufficiently aware of the consequences.”
Snag bent over Lettie and cradled her in her arms, and her mother grabbed onto her shoulders. They held each other while the squeak of a cart went past the room. Snag was sixty-five years old and she wanted to stay right there, forever and a day, finally fully exposed, but still tight in this nook of arms where she’d always felt safe.
THIRTY-NINE
Kache lay on the bed in Aunt Snag’s guestroom and turned to the place in his mother’s journal that Nadia had marked with a cloudberry leaf. This is what he read:
Fight in Winter
We woke to the aluminum morning
Our fight hanging low over us
Like smoke in the cold.
Outside the smoke from our chimney fails
To rise, carves an ugly road that runs
Parallel to earth but goes nowhere.
On a warmer day, the smoke could sail.
In a warmer place, it would lift easily as a sigh
Instead of lie here a scar.
He closed the notebook. He had a decision to make. He knew Bets Winkel one way, as a boy knows his mother. She’d made it clear these notebooks were for her eyes only and he had always honored that. Truth be told, he hadn’t had the slightest hint of interest as a kid. But now. Those few lines revealed a side to her he’d never even glimpsed. Was he meant to? After all these years he missed her, at times even desperately. But now he realized he missed his idea of her, because he never got the chance to know her fully. He only knew her in relation to him. She was the one who had fed him, taught him, stuck up for him, encouraged him. Who was Bets Winkel when she wasn’t mothering him? And did he have a right to know … all the things that Nadia already knew?
He buried the notebook in the bottom of the suitcase and drove to the homestead with a plan to sit Nadia down and ask her to tell him her life story, or at least her last name. Instead, when he pulled up in the truck, she jumped in and pulled the door shut.
“I’m ready for another trip to town.”
“That’s a change. Wristbands?”
She lifted her sleeves to show him.
“Check. Okay then,” Kache said. Nadia looked like she was ready for a fight, both her arms up, fists clenched above the gray wristbands. But she was smiling. “I guess my back needs a rest from gardening and roof repair.”
She made it the whole way without getting sick, nibbling on what she called her “Russian stomach medicine”—a homemade dill pickle. In town, they ordered some feed for the animals. When they approached the airport, Nadia asked him to turn in. “Does it bother you to see the planes?” she asked.
“No, not really. I’ve flown a lot since then, mostly for work.”
“I have never flown. I would love to get on one of those and have it take me far, far away.” He followed her gaze to the blue sky, where clouds lay here and there like exotic, uncharted countries.
He turned to face her. “That’s pretty bold for someone who wouldn’t get in a truck a few weeks ago.”
“It’s because of your help. And the Internet. There is so much to see, so much to do. But this is just talk.” She held her hands out, palms-up. “I will live and die here without knowing other places.”
Kache fixed his eyes on the mountains. “I have an idea.” He pulled the truck onto the road, then onto the spit, then pulled into the parking lot of the Spit Tune. “First, a bathroom break,” he said as he parked. Inside the alcove, before it opened up to the main bar, he pointed out the women’s room. “Go ahead, I’ll meet you back here.” The men’s room was locked. Kache waited a minute before the door popped open.
“Hey, my friend,” the man who’d bought him the beer that day said. “I wonder if I see you here again. I forgot to get your name.”
Kache told him, and when the man questioned its origin, he explained.
“I see. A man truly of this place. I am Tol. You find yourself beautiful woman now?”
“I’m working on it.” Kache couldn’t believe he’d admitted that, and fervently hoped Nadia couldn’t hear them through the women’s room door.
“Excellent. Good for you! You have beer with me again?”
When Kache told him that he was just making a pit stop, Tol laughed and said he’d see him next time. Kache used the bathroom and was still done before Nadia. He waited a few more minutes before he knocked on the door. He had a plan and didn’t want to miss the boat—as in literally miss the Danny J.
“Nadia?”
No answer.
“Nadia?” He tried the knob. Locked. He went around the corner and scanned the bar but there was just the Tol guy watching the droning TV with the same bartender. In the old days, Rex would never have let another soul tend that bar.
He heard a door open and turned back. She said, “Sorry I take long. So many things to read on the wall. Why people giving their good heads away? Is this like writing or teaching?”
“Not exactly.” Kache laughed as she exited in front of him. He heard a “Good day, Kachemak Winkel,” from the bar, ducked and waved goodbye to Tol.
They walked past boat after boat, some of the charters and private yachts gleaming in their showcase perfection, but most of the fishing boats—gillnetters, long-liners, combinations—rusty with history and livelihood, their decks piled with glistening, blank-eyed salmon, cod, and halibut. Kache took Nadia’s elbow for a moment to steer her, and they boarded the old fishing boat that served as a ferry, the Danny J, bound for Halibut Cove, the tiny artist community across the bay.
The wind pulled their hair back, teared up their eyes, reddened their cheeks. “Have you ever been to the other side?”
She shook her head. “Never. Sometimes I dream there was a bridge here, like the Golden Gate.”
One of the few splurges his dad had made: taking the whole family over to the Saltry, then Halibut Cove’s new and only restaurant, which the owner had floated in a barge during high tide. His mom had said the food was as good as any she’d had in New York. She’d worn a black dress and a long string of pearls under her red parka. Kache and Denny wore their best Sears’ catalog sweaters. While part of him wished there was somewhere to escape the memories, a better part of him was beginning to welcome these old slide shows in his head.
“Look,” Nadi
a said, pointing to the wide natural arch in the rock, which marked the beginning of the cove. “It is in the cliff, a doorway!”
It had been twenty years, but the cove looked very similar to how it had the last time he’d visited. Many of the buildings sat perched on stilted docks, with others dotting the hills. No cars; people got by with a boat and a pair of hiking boots. Less than fifty people lived there in the winter, with the population growing as fast as an Alaskan cabbage to over a hundred in the summer. Now the boat held about two dozen tourists. When he’d gone with his family they’d been the only passengers.
Kache leaned down so his mouth was almost touching her gold-studded earlobe. “I’m sorry I got so mad about the journals.”
“I am sorry I read them.”
“Don’t be. I’m glad they were here for you.” And part of him was. But it still felt odd that she knew so many details about him, knew things his mom thought and felt that he didn’t know.
“What I gave to you? Did you read?”
He shook his head. “I tried. Not ready. But I kept the two you gave me. And I put the box back in the closet. So you’ll have them.”
She nodded, kept her eyes on the approaching mountains.
He said, “Let’s leave all that behind for a while, okay? Today you’ll be farther away than you’ve ever been.”
FORTY
The boat motor chugged and the bay flurried along the hull’s waterline. A pink-nosed sea otter floated on its back, entertaining the tourists as if it were a paid employee. Downshifting into a purr, the captain steered the boat around a jut of land, and there, as miraculous as the fact that she had finally made her way across the water—a passageway through the rock! Then the cove opened up to share its treasured secret. The water glistened and sparkled like the inside of Elizabeth’s jewelry box, but nothing dazzled on the shore, which was pure and lovely in its simplicity: Docked boats, small wooden homes on pilings, tree-covered mountains plunging behind. All the years Nadia had lived on the other side of the vast bay, looking across and seeing none of this, seeing only impassable mountains.
The House of Frozen Dreams Page 16