So there’s no need for the pout fest as we sit outside detski-sod, waiting for the twins to finish for the morning.
“How’s Lew?”
My party friend, turned football coach, used to be one of H’s pals, too.
“He left his wife for the secretary at the school.”
Oh.
“And Jasmine? Do you talk to her much?”
“Not since she moved to Minneapolis. She left your parents to run Berglund Acres. There’s talk of them selling.”
This news grabs me by the throat and I’m trying to breathe. Apparently H has the heart of an executioner, because she says nothing to soften that blow.
She throws her cigarette down, grinding it into the mud. Spring has arrived in the span of five days. I can even see the smallest of buds on the trees. Birds occasionally sing. And, I’ve gone back to my lace-up Italian boots.
“Sell Berglund Acres?” My voice is barely more than a whisper.
H crosses her arms over her chest, watching the kids, her face hard. “Yep. I guess you can’t count on anything lasting anymore.”
I frown at her, but at that moment, Chloe runs over. “Mommy!” She hugs my legs and I swoop her up and set her on my lap.
Oh, Chloe. “Honey, what happened?” She’s wearing her leggings and a pair of winter snow pants, but she’s soaked through.
“I go ah ah!” She covers her mouth with her hands, her eyes wide, the little drama queen. But this is not good.
“What is ‘ah ah’?” H asks, eyeing my expression.
“It’s Russian for she wet her pants.” I put her down, take her hand and walk over to Maya. Sometimes we chat long enough for me to walk her home to the community center.
Or occasionally she comes over for tea. She’s even hinted that she might be seeing someone, and by her blush, I know it’s not the man who left her bleeding three months ago.
“Chloe had an accident,” I say in Russian.
Maya nods. “She doesn’t have a change of clothes here.”
Of course not, because my daughter hasn’t wet her pants in months. “Okay, time to go home.” I turn and see H coming toward me.
She, by the way, hasn’t let Siberia stand in the way of fashion. She’s wearing her high-top boots, a leather jacket that looks like it might be from some 1960s vintage rack and has painted her lips black.
Yes, we got quite a few looks the first day out on the town.
“Can you hold on to Chloe while I get Justin?” I hand over Chloe.
H smiles down at her. “Did you make naughty in your pants?”
“H! We don’t call it ‘naughty.’ We don’t want her to get a complex. She made a mistake, an error, a misjudgment.”
“Right.” H’s smile dims. “Sorry.” But I can tell by her tone she doesn’t mean it. “Did you ‘error’ in your pants, sweetie?”
I roll my eyes, turn and scan the yard. “Do you see Justin anywhere?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
I glance at H. “Where?”
“Oh, he’s the one making a ‘misjudgment’ with his middle finger at the teacher.” She nods toward a group of kids.
Sure enough, in the center is my darling three-year-old. Giving one of the elderly teachers the bird.
Lovely.
“Now.” H turns to me, a sweet smile on her face. “Would we call that making naughty?”
“Justin!”
My voice scares every kid on the playground. Maya stares at me, wide-eyed, as I stalk over and grab Justin’s hand.
He looks up, terrified, having no idea what he did wrong. Fortunately no one else does, either, except H and me, since the Russians have different sign language. Still, I’m horrified, and wondering where he learned that. Not from me.
Perfect. I have a wet daughter, a hoodlum son and now I’m the Hulk of the play yard.
I walk past H, who regards me with a raised eyebrow.
It’s a long, quiet trek home through the mud. The streets are swamps, and the sidewalks, if you can call them that, are brown-slush trails through patches of matted grass. Every previously hidden empty vodka bottle and newspaper wrapper is now exposed by the receding dirty snow.
Chloe falls and plasters herself with mud. I haul her up by the arm with H following, and drag my two delinquents home.
Where I find Chase in the yard, just getting in from the ferry. He looks refreshed, clean-shaven, his hair soft and conditioned as if he’s just spent a week in…civilization. Without crabby children and a grumpy what’s-her-problem houseguest.
He has a life.
I have a village.
Still, despite my simmering sense of injustice, I want to cry with relief. I trudge toward him and lay my head on his chest. He throws one arm around me, still holding his satchel.
“Hey, GI.” He kisses the top of my head. I still have a firm grip on the hooligans, who are jumping up and down. “Miss me?”
Desperately. I didn’t realize just how much until this moment.
“Hey, H. How are we doing?”
H trudges by, shooting me a look. “Naughty. We’re all very naughty.”
Dear Jasmine,
Hello from Siberia! I hope you’re liking your new home in Minneapolis. H was here for a week and she caught me up on the Gull Lake happenings. Sounds like you and Milton are making quite a go at this kringle business.
I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad H is gone. She spent the whole week angry at me—and I don’t even know what I did!
Chase had a great week at Voices International. Apparently, they’re thinking of renewing our term.
Please, God, save me from Siberia.
It’s not that I don’t like it. There are times when I know, without a doubt, that I am supposed to be here. Like yesterday, when Olya came over with a plate of raspberry blini. (By the way, you’d love blini—little flat pancakes rolled up and filled with jelly, not unlike crepes, but yummier.) She sat down at the table, her brown eyes glowing. And then she fished out of her pocket…airplane tickets. Three of them—two round trips and one from Moscow to Khabarovsk.
She’s going to get Albena, thanks to the money she made from Secrets of Siberia. Maybe helping Olya was the reason I was sent to Russia, I don’t know. But as we sat in the kitchen and cried, something went through me, a deep whoosh of joy. I wanted to capture that feeling and hold on tight.
I love seeing lives changed.
Nathan—I know I’ve mentioned him—said that I’d be a great pastor’s wife. I can’t get the words out of my head. Sometimes I think I’d like to be a pastor’s wife. Except for the fact that Chase isn’t a pastor.
But I am hoping that at least I’m exhibiting pastor’s wife qualities—humility, gentleness, patience, peace. Even, perhaps, submission.
Chase has been different since returning from Moscow. For one, he’s keeping a journal. I think he must have started it before Moscow, because he’s already halfway through it, but still, every night I see him scribbling in it, his brow furrowed. It reminds me of when we shared study hall, and he’d scratch out his English papers. I would normally go through and fix all his spelling errors, but he won’t let me near the journal. Okay, yes, I tried. It was lying on the bed and I was just going to move it, but Chase came up behind me and snatched it out of my hand.
“Not quite ready yet,” he said. As if perhaps someday he would be?
Chloe is back to wetting her pants every day. I’m not sure why. Did Amelia ever have a relapse? I’m not even going to tell you what Justin did last week in the playground. Let me just say that it involved obscene sign language. Where he picked that up from, I have no idea.
Only three more months. Three.
Tell Mom and Dad not to sell Berglund Acres. I’m coming home.
I just hope Chase is with me.
Love, Josey
Chapter Seventeen
Matchmaker
Oh, Sophia, you’re so stupid! Don’t you see that Ken doesn’t really love you? And that woman who just h
ired you—that’s his mistress! Run, run as fast as you can, back to CC!
I’m squinting through the static, trying to translate the Russian, and barely notice the knock on my door over the noise of the washing machine churning.
Run, Sophia! Follow your heart!
The knock comes again.
Shoot, not now!
Okay, yes, I might be a little addicted to the goings-on of Santa Barbara, but it’s not my fault.
The Banya Girls started it. And a gal has to keep up her side of the conversation. Especially to get her mind off the nakedness.
I am relieved to report, also, that Ulia seems to have dropped her complaints about Anton. So I might have been overreacting. Like I said, I blame the steam.
It’s not like my to-do list is overflowing out here in Mudville. H isn’t responding to my e-mail, and we have a full stock of birchbark crafts, now catalogued and stored at the community center. Olya has gone to Moscow and Chase has commandeered my computer to write his analysis on the Nanais for Voices International.
Justin and Chloe are still attending detski-sod, but I’ve taken to sending extra clothes with Chloe.
“Dzhozhy?” Olya says, now inside and standing at my door.
“Olya!” Except…Oh, no, Sophia don’t go in there if you don’t want your heart broken. Ken is there, with—
Olya clears her throat.
I look over.
And standing behind my friend’s legs, peeking out with giant, luminous brown eyes, is a little girl. She has short brown hair and is wearing a white hand-knitted sweater and a black skirt over a pair of tights. She’s all dressed up to meet the neighbor.
“Albena?”
Olya grins and turns to sweep up her five-year-old. “Say hello, lapichka.”
The little girl turns and hides her face in her mother’s shoulder. I’m consumed with emotion, words completely gone as I take in Olya’s face.
She looks transformed. Gone, without a trace, is the woman I met six months ago, broken, afraid, despairing. This woman is full of life, full of hope.
I can do nothing else but come close and hug her. “Your daughter is beautiful,” I say, when I’m finally able.
“I know,” Olya says, pride in her eyes. “We just got back.”
I turn off the television and put on a pot of water for tea.
Tea, by the way, has become one of my specialties. I’m very, very good at pouring a cup of water and dunking in a little baggie.
We sit at my table, and my eyes are on Albena, this formerly missing chunk of Olya’s heart, as Olya tells me about her trip.
She’s never been to Moscow, but as she talks, old memories churn in me, and I miss it—the Gray Pony, a karaoke place where I sang “Stand by your Man” to Chase. And the subway, where I got my traveling legs. The bagel shop, where God continually reminded me that He cares about the little things, and my friends Sveta and Thug, who took care of me, even if I said I didn’t need it.
The tea water whistles, and I can’t believe that I’ve made a new life here in Siberia. And that, despite my desperate moments, it’s starting to feel like home.
I pour the water into cups, and Olya and I sip together. I laugh as Olya gives Albena a sugar cube dipped in tea.
“Did Chase have a good meeting in Moscow?” Olya asks.
“I think so.” I’m not sure—he’s been pretty quiet since his return. Writing in his notebook, which calls to me to read it. But I’m not going to. Even if it should, say, accidentally fall into my hands, open, while I was, perhaps, dusting. Under the bed. “He’s trying to figure out a way for the men in the village to create an economic future.”
Olya kisses the top of Albena’s head. “Maybe it’s not from the outside that change will happen.” Her eyes are shining. “But from the inside. Vasilley hunts for me, not for money. And now, Albena.”
She presses her hand over mine. “You gave us our future, Dzhozhy.”
Her words inflate my ego too much, but they warm me all the same. “I’m really going to miss you when I leave.”
She withdraws her hand. Her expression turns hollow. “You’re leaving?”
Uh, well…“Our project is over at the end of May. I think we’re going back to America.”
She swallows, a panicked expression on her face.
Albena spills tea down her sweater and starts to cry. Olya grabs a napkin and tries to dab it. But it’s too late, there’s already a growing stain on the shirt.
Olya gets up, tears in her eyes. “I should have expected that.”
I am not sure if she’s referring to Albena and the tea…or me.
Suddenly my eyes are filling, too. “I don’t want to leave,” I hear myself saying.
Before I can qualify those words, however, I hear the front door open and heavy feet coming inside.
I get up just as Chase opens the kitchen door and stands on the threshold. His expression is dark, and for a second, I’m scared something terrible has happened.
“What?”
He glances at Olya and opts to speak English. “Ulia left Anton.” Then he lowers his voice and says, “And Anton is saying it’s all your fault.”
Does anyone think that’s fair? Just because a woman leaves her neglectful, sullen husband, I don’t think it’s right to blame it on the first forward-thinking foreigner that happens by.
Even if said foreigner did somehow manage, inadvertently, to arm the woman with her own supply of cash with which to leave.
But that’s not Chase’s biggest issue at the moment. As he ushers Olya and Albena from the house and closes the door behind them, I see something darker in his eyes.
“Ulia said, and I quote Anton, ‘If Josey can leave her husband for someone else, I can too.’”
There’s more than anger in his eyes. There’s hurt. As if he believes her?
“What on earth are you talking about?”
Chase shucks his jacket and hangs it on the chair, then runs a hand through his hair. His jaw is tight. He turns his back to me.
“Please tell me it’s not true.”
What’s not true? I’m on my feet and I touch his back, but he shrugs me off and stalks away from me.
“Chase, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Besides, I thought he already knew about Ulia after overhearing my conversation with Nathan. Or…maybe not.
He rounds on me. “You and Nathan. Apparently he spent most of his time here when I was in Moscow.”
“H was here—”
His stricken look, as if he’s seen into another realm and is horrified by his vision, cuts off my words.
“Naughty. That’s what H meant—”
“She was talking about the fact that our son made a rude gesture to the teacher at detski-sod!”
“Really, Josey? And why would he do that? Maybe because he’s stressed out? Maybe because he’s thinking his mother and father are going to split up?”
“He’s three, Chase! He didn’t even know what he was doing.” But his words have broadsided me. Split up?
I press my hand to my stomach and reach out for a chair. “There is nothing going on between Nathan and me.”
“I heard you talking on International Women’s Day. I thought, no, it can’t be me. They aren’t talking about me—”
“What? What?” I’m thinking back to the event, trying to figure out…Uh-oh. I remember my stage-whispered, panicked words to Nathan. Wait until we know for sure, and then we’ll talk to him. Maybe he had heard our conversation. But not enough.
“I was talking about Ulia. And Anton.”
But Chase isn’t listening. He’s got his hands over his face, shaking his head. “I’m so blind. I’m so stupid.”
“Stop it, Chase. Nathan and I are just friends.”
But he’s beyond listening. In fact, I’m not even a part of the conversation anymore. “I let it happen. I invited him into my house. I saw the way he talked to you, listened to you and paid attention to you.”
I’m startin
g to see his point. Nathan did pay attention to me. Like bringing a turkey for New Year’s. And flowers on Women’s Day.
Making soup on a regular basis.
The increasingly frequent visits.
You’d make the perfect pastor’s wife.
My mouth feels as if a hedgehog has climbed inside, all muddy and thick.
“Chase, I—”
He turns, his eyes red-rimmed. “I can’t trust you, can I?”
“That’s not fair, Chase.”
“Apparently, I’ve done exactly what the elders warned me against. Here I was, fighting for your business, telling the elders to let the women have their hobby—”
“Hobby? You’re calling it a hobby? I’d say that the several thousand dollars we’ve brought into this community is more than a hobby.”
“But Anton is right. It’s more than that. Maybe you are exactly what he says—a bad influence on this community. And thanks a lot for proving to everyone that I’m an idiot. So much for them ever listening to my ideas.”
I’m speechless, every thought wiped clean out of my mind as I watch him snatch up his jacket and throw it on. He breathes hard and I’m still trying to conjure up a coherent thought in response to his tirade when he rounds on me one last time.
“I’ll tell you one thing, Josey. Your little home business stops. Today.”
He’s out the door before I finally find the right words.
Not on your life, pal.
I live in Santa Barbara.
So maybe we don’t have swimming pools and breathtaking vistas of the Pacific Ocean, but the river is free-flowing, the lilac trees are budding and the Banya Girls know how to blow off steam.
Get Cozy, Josey! Page 20