The House of Frozen Dreams

by Seré Prince Halverson

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Lettie slept. Or at least she felt like she slept, but she wasn’t quite dreaming. It was the remembering again. Such detail, such accuracy, like watching a movie of her life, of things she hadn’t thought about in years and years. When she closed her eyes and let herself drift, she always went back to the land, and her memories played out before her with exact precision, her five senses and then some, all intact. There was no flying or being chased or forgetting to wear her underwear to school like your run-of-the-mill dreams. This was closer to time traveling. It was sleeping next to A.R. again—hearing him, smelling him, touching him—and holding Eleanor and Glenn on her lap, feeling the chubby weight of them, the feather down of their sweet heads of hair resting against her neck and chin and cheeks; living in the cabin on the land with its equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion. Lettie felt happier than she had in years. She felt like herself again. Young, strong, but with the awareness time gives you, to pay attention to the moments, the slanted gold bands of light, the surprise of a huge potato pulled up from its loamy womb, the shared long gaze of a gray wolf, the way you can smell the rain when it’s still held by the swollen clouds.

  Even the medicinal, urine and macaroni-and-cheese aromas drifting down the hall were replaced with the Sitka spruce, the coal and wood smoke, the simmering bear stew. And there she was in the twelve-by-twelve-foot cabin, the hewn logs with the moss chinking they would replace the next year with mortar. The place seemed to be decorated by the Chevron fuel company—their wooden Blazo boxes held everything from kindling to silverware. Even babies. There were the two cradles A.R. rigged up out of Blazo boxes and inside the cradles the babies both—both of them finally!—asleep. In town she saw women shepherding long lines of children and she wondered at the work involved. How did they do it? She would never know, because after the touch-and-go birth of Glenn and Eleanor, the doctor told her it was a good thing she’d had twins because she was done having children. She could conceive no more.

  Privately, she thought this a blessing of sorts. She adored the babies, adored being a mother. But the work! A.R. wished they would have more help in the future, something a slew of kids could provide. But the years between now and then with a whole litter of kids would have done Lettie under. She was a hard worker, just as tough as most men. It wasn’t the work but the type of work that scared her off. She wanted to be felling trees alongside A.R. again as soon as the twins grew old enough. She didn’t want to be pregnant six more times like most women in the area were. The laundry already took all day. Twenty-eight pails of water hauled with a yoke on her shoulders, two buckets a trip. Then the heating of the water, the washing, the two rinse cycles, the flat-ironing (though Lettie had to admit she skipped this step more than not, and much more than her contemporaries). With more than two children, she and A.R. would be outnumbered and that just didn’t seem like a good idea. Not at all. The doctor had called her uterus “uncooperative” but to Lettie, her uterus had generously obliged her by carrying two perfect children to full term and then kindly closing shop.

  This was not a land for the weak-willed. Of course, she told A.R. none of this, just reassured him that once the children were older, they would all share the workload and that he should be glad he had a wife as strong and able as two full-grown men.

  Many of the women complained. More than a few left and never set foot in Caboose again. The hill where all the homesteads were being staked out had come to be called Separation Hill. Lettie knew that if any separation between A.R. and her took place (she didn’t think it would, but if it did), A.R. would be the one to leave and Lettie would be the one to stay. She could never abandon this place. It was of her and she was of it. How to explain? She knew it when she saw that photo all those years ago; she knew it more when she stepped onto this driftwood-strewn shore. She knew it when winter raged in and knew it again when the ice and snow gave way to mud. None of it scared her away. And then summer! The glorious gift of summer, where abundance sang its arias from every nook and cranny of that amazing land and sea.

  But there was guilt involved in living your dream. Few spouses met at the altar carrying the same dream. Usually one had a passion and the other one did not, so he or she simply went along for the ride. The lucky few shared the same passion. The more commonly cursed had conflicting passions that ricocheted off each other and kept them fighting the duration of their lives.

  A.R. complied with grace and a steadfast diligence in the work laid out before him. But there were times when his ambivalence showed and Lettie understood. There he was, pausing to lean on a shovel, facing the bay, not in grateful wonder as she did, but maybe a different kind of wonder—wondering what their life might have been like if they’d stayed in Kansas with the peeling white picket fence and their modern conveniences without having to travel so far just to get to a store. Sure, Kansas had been nothing but a heap of dust during the Depression, but the Depression and the dust were long gone by then. She had asked much of him and he had been kind and sacrificial, and she was indeed grateful.

  There, the twins, older now, Glenn always out in front, taking whatever he wanted. Strong, stubborn but likeable Glenn. Tall, big-boned but pretty Eleanor who didn’t know she was pretty and lacked Glenn’s confidence when it came to working the land, but who had a delightful laugh and knew her way around a conversation. She could usually talk her way into being given what she wanted instead of just taking it. Except when it came to Bets. Lettie saw that one unfold and she knew what was happening and how it would play out before Eleanor even knew what hit her.

  Love was like that with its victims. Where everyone saw it splayed out on a person’s face before that person even knew what was in his or her heart. Lettie blamed herself. She knew Eleanor had a penchant for women but Lettie didn’t know how to broach the subject. Oh, she had tried. But there was no one to sort it out with first. As kind a soul as A.R. was, he wouldn’t understand. He was still bugging Lettie about attending church, for God’s sake. For her own sake, Lettie stayed away. She sang praises every time she stepped foot on her land, she didn’t need a church roof over her head to feel grateful.

  But she couldn’t talk to A.R. about their daughter’s lesbianism. More correctly, her suspected lesbianism, because as far as Lettie knew, Eleanor had never had a girlfriend, not in that way. Well, maybe while she was away at college. Lettie should have talked to Eleanor, but because she didn’t know how, she watched her suffer an unnamed confusion. Lettie knew that she’d failed her daughter, that she should have helped her.

  And there was Bets, as heterosexual as a person could be, loving Eleanor almost as completely as Eleanor loved Bets, but not quite. Not in that one particular area, or—here is where Lettie grinned, despite herself—areas. Bets couldn’t have if she wanted to, and knowing what a mule Glenn often was, there were times when she probably wished she were wired to love a woman instead of a man. But alas, she was not. So she looked to Eleanor as her best friend, her sister, her closest confidante. All of those things that are delightful in a friendship, but not enough for someone in love.

  Now Lettie traveled back to before the Bets saga, and there was Glenn, enlisting to fight in Vietnam. Enlisting! All while they lived so close to the Canadian border, Lettie could have driven him over there herself. What she thought about when her nest hollowed to empty, what she obsessed over, was not all the things she’d gotten right as a mother but the few very crucial things she’d gotten wrong. A tension lay tightly coiled between Glenn and A.R. back then, with Glenn hell-bent on getting away. He wanted to see the world, but when he came back he was, of course, wounded through and through, without a scar to show for it. Lettie wanted to save him, but he wouldn’t talk to her, wouldn’t talk to anyone about any of it. Not even about what they ate for breakfast in the jungle. Bets showed up, and she saved him. Bets did what Lettie couldn’t do for both of her children: Bets helped them see who they really were.

  By then, A.R. was too sick to live out at the hom
estead, so they divided up the acreage evenly between both children, sold the cabin off for cheap to Glenn and Bets (Eleanor had gone off to college to try to forget Bets and wasn’t interested in living in the cabin anyway) and Lettie and A.R. moved into town. But a day didn’t go by that she didn’t miss living on that land. She never spoke of this to A.R; he’d spent the last twentysome-odd years letting her live her dream. He was weak now, but strong enough in spirit to find comfort in resting his head on her shoulder instead of the other way around like when they were younger. If she could have, she would have moved him back to that state he missed so he could die where he belonged.

  Now that’s what Lettie wanted for herself. She wanted to go back to the homestead at least once while she was still alive. And when her time came, she wanted to become part of the land the way the land had become part of her.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Kache wanted to shake every one of Nadia’s family members—shake and shake them—until they saw they were turning their backs on their blood, their love, their history, and all the infinite possibilities that future days with their Nadi would have brought them. There was even a moment he considered taking out the gun and firing it in the air, just to wake them all up.

  Didn’t they realize? Very few people get offered a second chance like that.

  The walk back to the truck was quiet between them, the bay lying down flat for the evening, the cold piercing their eyes, cheeks, and noses. Every so often Nadia would stop walking. Kache would turn back to her so she could lean into him. They stood, her forehead pressed against his chest, his arms tucked around her. Kache looked out on the long beach and thought the piles of bleached driftwood looked like prehistoric bones, as if he and Nadia had stumbled upon an archaeological dig.

  She would let out a long, stuttered sigh, wipe her eyes on the inside of his jacket, and resume walking. He felt that she was the bravest person he had ever known.

  The truck heater blasted and when it finally turned from icy air to warm, they held their open hands to the vents.

  “Damn hell it,” Nadia said, hitting the dash. “We forgot to ask for school records and birth certification. Because I have been banished now, how will we ever get them? How did we forget this?”

  There, the truth that had been dripping down the back of his neck, cold and persistent: He hadn’t forgotten. He had remembered but he hadn’t spoken up, and he wasn’t sure why. But he was sure he wasn’t about to admit it to Nadia, not now—if ever. What made him more uneasy? That he’d purposely not asked for what they’d come for, or that he was determined to withhold information from the woman he loved?

  “The only good things that come from this trip?” she said, as he replaced the gun in the glove compartment. “We didn’t need the gun. And we found out we won’t. Vladimir, he is gone.”

  The mood stayed pensive as they started the drive back. Then Nadia broke the silence. “One of my sisters said there is one television at the school in Altai. Some of the people have computers. Everything different. This is painfully ironic, no? They have modern technology while I stayed living without it. They have all gone on with their lives.”

  “Of course. That’s what the living have to do.”

  “You did not. I did not.”

  He steered sharply to avoid yet another huge pothole. “Point taken. But we can agree that might not have been the best tactic.”

  “I do not know what I think.”

  “Some things haven’t changed for them. Not at all.”

  Gazing out the window, she nodded and said, “You heard them. I was only alive for few hours. Dead again to them. We accomplished nothing. We only make it worse. They did not even ask where I live. They do not even want to know this.”

  “They may come around.”

  “Did you hear them? My grandmother was the only one who wasn’t wailing when I said I no longer am Old Believer. She was unlike her, quiet.”

  “She didn’t look old enough to be your grandmother. But then again, your mom is closer to my age then my mom’s age.”

  “You must remember, they have children when they were teenagers. My grandmother is sixty-six. My mother is, let me think, forty-three? My grandmother, she is my father’s mother, and he greatly admires her. My father behaves like a submissive little boy in her presence. It is quite funny to see.” Her chin trembled. “I mean, it was …”

  “Come here.”

  She scooted over, rested her head against Kache’s ribcage, let the tears fall the rest of the way home. He should have gotten the papers for her. He should have at least done that.

  The temperature dropped again that night and snow covered everything. It had been many years since Kache had woken to the first snowfall. The spruce looked like giant, eager brides. The ground basked in its perfection, untouched even by tracks.

  Inside, the house was taking on a different look too, which had begun with the hanging of the octopus-ink painting and proceeded with throw pillows they purchased in Anchorage along with new sheets and a down comforter for his parents’ room, which Nadia and Kache had moved into. They’d even ordered a new bed. Though the changes felt a bit ruthless, Kache swore he heard his mother saying, “Kache, honey, it’s about time.”

  That first day of snow, unable to do much outside, they began moving furniture, as if they could rearrange the previous day’s events. Later, they stepped into cross-country skis and crossed over the fresh, sugary white while lazy fat flakes floated down, sticking to their knitted hats. They didn’t throw snowballs or even talk much about the day before. For now, the world was pure and silent and easily traversable, only their two pairs of ski tracks etching the snow.

  Inside the cabin that evening, the world shrank. They turned on every light downstairs and built a fire. Kache looked out the window. Nothing but darkness, and instead of the grand vistas of the summer and fall, all he saw was his own reflection, along with the fact that he had caused Nadia pain by encouraging her to return to her family and—as if that weren’t enough—that he had kept quiet about her documents.

  PART FOUR

  Winter Tracks

  2005–2006

  FIFTY-SIX

  Too much, too much, too much. Nadia needed to be alone. Away from the Internet, away from her family’s judgments, away from Kache, sharing the same stifled air day after snowed-in day. She loved Kache, loved being with him, but she had no time to herself, no room to grieve the loss of her family. Again. It was as if her thoughts and emotions piled up on a chair and she had to sort through them to see what still fit and what only took up space. Instead, she just kept throwing one sad thought on top of the other, on top of the other.

  She was tired. She wanted to climb under the down comforter and stay there, waiting it out like the garden under the snow. But she did not. Instead, she laughed and helped Kache move things around and plan for Lettie and Snag’s visit. She cooked with him. She played Scrabble and cards with him.

  It was easy between Kache and Nadia, most of the time. The talking, the laughing, the having sex. Making love. The closer she and Kache became, the further away she moved from Vladimir. He’d been gone ten years and had still managed to hold her prisoner—no, she had held herself prisoner. She was finished with that. She would not let fear hold her away from life.

  On the third day of the snowstorm she said to Kache, who sat on the futon checking his email, which he rarely did, “Would you be offended or worried if I go into the bedroom with door locked and only come out for food and water and to go to the bathroom?”

  He watched her for a long minute. “Too much togetherness?”

  She nodded. “I believe so.”

  He sighed, got up and stretched. “I need to call Clemsky and see if I can borrow his snowplow, anyway. I was using you as an excuse to be lazy, convincing myself that you didn’t want to be alone after the family stuff.”

  “I have never before gone so long without being alone. I love having you here, it is only that … I don’t know how to say thi
s.”

  “Nadia, your family. You need space—and there’s plenty I can do. The snow’s stopped so I need to start digging out.”

  “But I should help.”

  “Not this time.” He had already pulled on his jacket and was punching numbers into his cellphone. “I’ll start with the walkway and driveway until Clemsky can get out here.”

  Kache was so agreeable, but Nadia still had to fight the impulse to place both her hands on his back and push him out the front door.

  She kept a file on the computer. Into it she dragged her favorite photographs of San Francisco from the Internet. When she felt confused or anxious, like she did now, she opened the file and soon she felt full of something that might be called hopefulness. If they could build a city like that? If they could build a bridge like that?

  She stared at the photograph, at the orangy-red bridge, the blue water, the white city, the blue sky. She looked out past the porch log pillars, the blue water, the white mountains, the blue sky.

  All the sadness of the visit with her family sat like a piece of steel lodged in her throat. There was always this—and that. The hope … the sorrow. Her Baba. Her precious Baba. Her Mama. Her precious Mama. Her Mama’s arms around her, her Mama’s disbelief turning to delight mixed with grief, then taken over again by a new grief. Her Papa’s features dancing in recognition, then shadowing over. She understood why they could not accept her. She understood. Because there was a part of her that wished to forget everything she’d learned and go back to them.

  But no. She had changed. There was no bridge back, only forward. And yet. She hadn’t asked for the papers she needed to apply to school.

  There was something else, though, Nadia knew, something she needed to pay attention to. What was it?