by Kate Hewitt
Nathan continued to walk towards me, clutching his daughter’s hand.
“Pogledajmo…” I murmured, trying to focus on the papers in front of me.
“Maria, isn’t it?”
I looked up, somehow still surprised to see Nathan West there even though he’d been walking straight towards me.
“Yes…” I glanced at Anahit, who was looking confused by Nathan’s presence.
“Sorry, I’m interrupting.” He ducked his head. “It’s just, I remembered you saying you knew my wife. Laura West.”
“Yes…”
“And I wondered if I could talk to you about her? For a few minutes?” He glanced at Anahit in apology. “When you’re finished here, of course.”
I hesitated, feeling as if I were about to take a step into deep, dark, swirling water. I could hardly refuse, and I realized I didn’t even want to. Some strange, small part of me had been waiting for this, although I couldn’t have even said why.
“Yes, of course. We’ll only be a few more minutes.”
He murmured his thanks and stepped back; as I bent over the papers with Anahit, I watched him wander around the room with Ruby, looking at the various photographs of events the center had held—community dinners, bingo nights, food festivals, and country dances. I hadn’t been to any of them, although I’d always been asked.
I couldn’t give Anahit much help, and we both decided to put it aside after another fifteen minutes; I was tensely aware of Nathan and his daughter for each one. After Anahit had thanked me and gone off, I stood up and made my way to Nathan. He was standing by the doors again, looking a little lost, and I could tell that Ruby was getting bored, kicking at the floor and tugging on his hand.
“Sorry to make you wait,” I said.
“No, no, I’m the one who should be sorry, for barging in here.” He shook his head ruefully. “I’m just trying to find some answers.”
And so he came to me? Surely there had been other, far more important people in Laura’s life. “I don’t know if I can give you those, Mr. West.”
“Please, call me Nathan.”
I nodded but said nothing. Talking to him felt strange, yet not in an entirely bad way. Still, I was nervous. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a conversation with someone who was essentially a stranger.
“Would you… would you mind going to get a coffee?” he asked. “I saw there’s a Starbucks around the corner. My treat, of course.” He spoke hurriedly, flushing a little.
Ruby glanced up at me curiously, her bright-eyed gaze roving over my face.
“Okay, yes,” I said, even though I didn’t usually say yes to things. “That would be good. Let me just get my coat.”
I told Cathy I was leaving a bit early, shrugging on my coat as I rejoined Nathan and Ruby. Outside, the air was breath-stealingly cold and crisp; it was early December, and the city had already gone into Christmas mode, the streets and shop windows decorated with bows and baubles and fake, glittery snow, the sense of festive jollity seeming, as it always did to me, a bit too forced. It’s December, so we have to do this.
I didn’t really celebrate Christmas anymore, although I had as a child. Even my father had enjoyed the holiday, and attended Ponocka, the midnight mass on Christmas Eve, with us. I remember skipping home through the dark, excited for all that lay ahead—meals and family, presents on New Year’s Eve, lights and parties and music. It all seemed so far away now, as if it had happened to someone else. In a way, it had.
We didn’t talk as we walked the short distance to the Starbucks down the street, and Nathan held the door open for me as I stepped into the dim, coffee-scented interior.
“What would you like?” he asked. “Anything…”
“Just a plain coffee, with milk, please.”
I stood silently behind him as he waited to order, clutching my bag to my chest. Ruby twisted around to look at me once more with the frank, unabashed curiosity of a child.
“Who are you?” she asked in a loud voice, and Nathan half-heartedly shushed her.
“My name is Maria,” I said, smiling; my face felt tight, the smile stretching my skin in a way that felt akin to old joints creaking. “And I believe your name is Ruby.”
Ruby’s mouth dropped open. “How did you know that?”
“I heard your father call you Ruby, and also your mother spoke of you to me.” I said it purposefully, knowing that this was why they had come, yet still feeling a ripple of trepidation at mentioning Laura to them, as if I were doing something dangerous or forbidden.
“You knew Mommy?” Ruby asked, her voice dropping to an awed whisper, and I nodded.
“A little bit, yes. She was…” I paused, “a friend.”
Nathan ordered the coffees, as well as a large sugary donut for Ruby, and we moved to a table in the back.
“Thank you for talking with me,” he said as we all sat down. “I really do appreciate it.”
“It is no problem.” I hesitated, gazing down at the milky depths of my coffee. “But I don’t know how much I can tell you, Mr. West.”
“Nathan, please.”
“Nathan.” It was unsettling to be so familiar with him. I smiled at Ruby, who was licking the sugar off the donut without taking a bite. “And Ruby. My brother used to do that.” I nodded towards the donut.
“Make a mess of things?” Nathan asked wryly as he swiped inefficiently at the spilled sugar and crumbs on the table.
“Lick off the sweetness.” I smiled at the memory, even though it caused me a pang of loss. I didn’t usually let myself remember such things, the intimate details of a life once lived. A life that was long gone. “He liked the sugar on the krofne, which is like a donut where I come from, but with marmalade inside.”
“I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “I don’t even know what country you are from.”
“Bosnia. I grew up in Sarajevo.”
“Oh, I see. I’m sorry,” he said again, although for what exactly, I did not know. Perhaps he remembered the bombings, the devastation, the war crimes. Perhaps not. It reminded me of the first time I’d met Laura, and she’d said much the same thing. Sarajevo. I’m sorry. Was that what had become of my city?
I took a sip of my coffee.
“My mommy’s dead,” Ruby announced, watching me with wide eyes. Her lips and nose sparkled with sugar.
“Yes, I know. I am very sorry for it.” I paused, feeling my way through the words. “You must miss her.”
She nodded, gazing down at her licked-over donut, and my heart, lifeless thing that it was, gave a funny little jerk, like something had prodded it.
“Have you been in America long?” Nathan asked.
“Eighteen years.”
“And you were… friends… with Laura?” He said the words as if he were testing them out.
“Yes, we were.” I spoke firmly, because Laura had been my friend, whatever I had been to her. And yet… “But I did not know her so very well.” I felt I had to say this.
“But she talked to you about Ruby? And the girls?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“I didn’t even know she was volunteering at that center,” Nathan said. It came out like a confession. “How could I not know something like that?” He sounded so broken by it, this seemingly small detail his grief had snagged on. “The police told me she’d been coming to Global Rescue for nearly a year,” Nathan continued. “A whole year.” He looked at me almost hungrily. “Did she ever mention to you why she came? Why she decided…?”
I hesitated, thinking back over the months of mornings with Laura, the conversations which had seemed so inconsequential at the time yet now were imbued with more meaning than perhaps they ever should have had.
“She told me it was something she’d been wanting to do for some time,” I said slowly. “She said she wanted to make a difference…” A memory caught, and I spoke without thinking. “Not just to people there, but to herself. She wanted to do something more with her life…” I stopped a
s I registered the startled, hurt look on Nathan’s face.
“Something more?” he repeated sadly, like a little boy. “Is that what she said? Do you think she wasn’t happy with… with me?”
How could I possibly answer such a question? And yet more memories slid slyly in—how Laura hadn’t liked how hard Nathan had worked, how she’d felt he cared about things she didn’t think were important.
The school the girls go to… it’s ridiculous. I don’t have anything in common with the people there, Maria. A girl in Ella’s class gave iPhones as party favors and they’re only ten. I’d been speechless; I couldn’t even imagine such a thing, such a life.
“I know you can’t answer that,” Nathan mumbled. “I’m sorry. I’m just so… Did she… did she… mention me?” He ducked his head, the question making him vulnerable.
“Yes…” I began hesitantly, and he leaned forward, his eyes bright.
“What? What did she say?”
“Nothing much. That you worked hard…” I trailed off, unwilling to part with more. Laura’s comment had been accompanied by a twisted smile, a bitter tone.
Sometimes I think he doesn’t even see me.
The words fell into my head; I could hear Laura saying them—when? A few months ago? I couldn’t tell them to Nathan now. They would serve no purpose but to give pain, and perhaps I hadn’t remembered them properly, anyway.
“You’re remembering something,” Nathan said.
“No.” Without meaning to, I glanced at Ruby, and comprehension flashed across Nathan’s face, hurt entering his eyes. “She said she wanted to give back something, because she knew she hadn’t before.” The words sounded trite, but I knew Laura had meant them.
“I don’t know why she wouldn’t tell me. Did she think I wouldn’t care?” He was speaking more to himself than to me, and so I chose not to answer. What could I say that would help? “It’s so strange,” he murmured. “It feels as if she was living this double life, but I know it wasn’t like that. I mean, she was volunteering, not… well, you know.” He glanced at Ruby, who was licking her finger and dabbing it on the bits of sugar on the table before licking them off. “Ruby, don’t, that’s disgusting. Eat your donut.”
“I don’t like donuts.”
“What?” Nathan sounded shocked. “Of course you like donuts.”
“No.” Ruby shook her head, folding skinny arms across her chest. “I don’t. I never have. Mommy buys me ice cream.”
“But…” Nathan looked crushed by this information. I felt a wave of empathy for him.
“Do you know, Ruby,” I said. “I don’t like donuts, either. My mother used to make the krofne I mentioned—the ones with marmalade in them—but I never liked marmalade. I wanted chocolate inside, and she never made those.” I could picture her in the kitchen, lowering the donuts into the oil with a metal spatula, her apron around her waist, dark hair pinned up. Her tired smile. My throat grew tight, and then I pushed the memory away and it eased again.
“What’s marmalade?” Ruby asked.
“It’s like orange jelly.”
She made a face. “Yuck.”
I nodded solemnly. “Yes. Exactly.”
Ruby grinned, and I gave a small smile back, this seemingly little exchange causing a welter of emotions to rise up inside me, an unexpected tide of feeling. Sorrow, joy, pain. What if…
But, no. I could never let myself think like that.
“Are you a Mommy?” Ruby asked, as if reading my mind.
“Don’t be nosy, Ruby…” Nathan began, shooting me an apologetic look.
“No, I don’t have any children.” I spoke a little stiffly as I tried to smile at her once more. “No husband, either. I’m all alone.” Not wanting to sound self-pitying, I made a funny face. “Boohoo.”
Ruby grinned again. “You’re funny.”
“No one has called me that before,” I said. “At least, not for a long time.” As a child, I used to be something of a clown. It was so long ago, such a different life, that I could barely remember it now—the girl capering about the living room, putting on funny voices and faces, so confident in her ability to entertain. Who was she? A stranger now.
My father had always laughed indulgently at my antics, and my mother would shake her head, claiming he was spoiling me, but I think she enjoyed it too. Petar was so serious and studious compared to me, always in his books or at the piano; I thought they liked the change. I hoped they did.
“Do you have any family in this country, Maria?” Nathan asked quietly, and I shook my head.
“No, I came here alone, when I was twenty.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was better than staying.”
He hesitated, rotating his cup between his palms. “There are some reports about…about what happened to Laura… Have you read them?”
“Some,” I said cautiously.
“Saying how she was peaceful right before… it’s so strange. I mean, what do they even mean?”
What could I say?
“Daddy doesn’t think Mommy is in heaven,” Ruby announced. “He says she’s squashed like a bug.”
Nathan flinched, and then flushed. “I didn’t mean…”
“Do you believe in heaven?” Ruby asked me, with the unsettling frankness only a child possesses.
“Ruby…” Nathan began, but I shook my head.
“It’s all right. I do believe in heaven, Ruby. But I know not everyone does.”
“Daddy doesn’t believe in God.”
“No?” I glanced at Nathan, who was still looking embarrassed. “Not everyone believes in God, either. It can be quite hard to, sometimes.”
“Do you?” Ruby demanded, a bit rudely, and I smiled.
“Yes. At least, I like to think He is there.” Even if there had been too many dark days when He had seemed all too absent. I turned back to Nathan, “I’m sorry I cannot tell you more.”
“No, you’ve been amazing.” He looked at me uncertainly. “You must know what this feels like, in some way,” he said quietly, and it felt as if my heart writhed within me, prodded again, waking up even more. “I mean, if you lost people during the war…”
“Yes.” I did not offer any more. I couldn’t.
“So many people don’t. So many people haven’t experienced…” He shook his head. “Sorry, I’m not trying to compare. I don’t even know…”
“It’s okay,” I cut him off, not wanting to have to answer the question he’d been trying to ask. “Grief is grief,” I said after a moment. “It endures, just as love does. That much I know.”
“Yes.” He nodded, swallowing hard. “Yes.”
“Daddy, I’m bored.” Ruby drummed her feet against her chair.
“Are you looking forward to Santa Claus coming, Ruby?” I asked, in what was surely a vain attempt to distract her, as well as shift the conversation onto a lighter topic. “Will he come to your house, do you think?”
She looked at me suspiciously. “He comes to everyone’s house.”
“Ah, no, he doesn’t.” I smiled, shaking my head. “He does not come to houses where I grew up. There we get another visitor.”
She looked curious now, and a bit confused. “Who?”
“Grandfather Frost. We called him Djeda Mraz and he is like Santa Claus, but he wears a blue robe and he lives in Russia. He and his granddaughter Snegurochka deliver presents not on Christmas but New Year’s Eve. She is a beautiful snow maiden who wears a snowflake on her head.”
“Like Elsa!” Ruby cried, and I looked questioningly at Nathan.
“From the movie Frozen… do you know it?”
I shook my head. “Alas, no. But it sounds similar. Snegurochka was certainly cold, if not frozen.”
“I didn’t know any of that,” Nathan murmured. “It’s fascinating.”
I shrugged, smiling a bit apologetically. “It’s all somewhat new, I’m afraid. We celebrate on New Year’s Eve because Christmas was forbidden during Soviet times. That
is where the tradition comes from.”
“Even more fascinating.”
Ruby tugged on Nathan’s hand, bored again, and he grimaced.
“Sorry, I’m keeping you…”
“And I think I am keeping you.” Very lightly I touched Ruby on the nose, brushing some grains of sugar from her. “You are like Snegurochka, Ruby, with snowflakes on your nose.”
She laughed, delighted, making my heart feel like a balloon floating up inside me. When had I last made someone laugh? When had I last tried?
“I want to be Sneg-cha,” she said. “Daddy, can I dress up as her for Halloween?”
“It’s already been Halloween, Rubes, but maybe next year.” He turned back to me. “I should let you go…” He sounded almost as if he didn’t want to.
“Yes.” I rose, dignified, trying not to feel the pointless wrench of leaving. I would never see them again now. It had only been a few moments, yet somehow they had touched me in a place I’d forgotten existed, just as Laura had. How foolish, to have allowed that to happen.
“Daddy, when we will see Maria again?” Ruby asked.
Nathan looked trapped by the question. “I’m not sure, Rubes…”
“I think this is goodbye, my little Snegurochka,” I said, trying to smile. I felt far too emotional, the frozen parts of me breaking apart and floating away. “Or, as we say in my old country, Zdravo.”
“Zer-avo,” Ruby repeated, sounding proud of her new knowledge. “What does that mean?”
“It means goodbye.”
Her lower lip wobbled. “But I don’t want to say goodbye.”
I shrugged helplessly, glancing at Nathan for direction. “That is the way of things, sometimes,” I said when he seemed to not know what to say, either.
“Perhaps this doesn’t have to be goodbye,” Nathan finally said, sounding hesitant. “I’m sure my other daughters would like to meet you, and learn what you know of Laura. No one else knew about her volunteering.”
I gazed at him without replying, because I didn’t know what he was trying to say.
Ruby sidled over to me and slid her hand in mine. It was small and soft and sticky with sugar.
“Yes, Ella and Alexa should meet her,” she said. “You can come over to our apartment.”