The Secret of Clouds

by Alyson Richman

  “I remember your family’s tradition of making pierogi for New Year’s Eve,” I told him. “Mine has a tradition of always giving chocolate.”

  I reached into my purse and handed him the chocolate snowflake lollipop that I had also given to all my other students. Somehow my gift and the note that just read, Happy Holidays to a great student! seemed paltry next to Yuri’s thoughtful gift to me.

  When I left his house that afternoon, I didn’t wait until I got home to read his note. I opened it in the car instead. And this time, I had no one to impress with my good manners, so I tore open the envelope. The soft off-white paper was reduced to a ragged edge.

  Dear Ms. Topper,

  I wanted to get you something special for Christmas, because you’re so kind to come to my house each week. I never enjoyed reading or writing before I had you as a teacher. You made me see that books can be fun, almost as much fun as baseball. And so I wanted you to have a nice writer’s journal. I hope you enjoy filling it up like I now enjoy writing in mine.

  From your student,

  Yuri

  P.S. Let’s go Yankees!!!!

  I placed the note back in the ripped envelope and then inside the journal. For now, my frustration at home was eased by the purity of Yuri’s gesture. I wondered for a moment what my life would be like without teaching, and I thought about how Katya had once described the size of a person’s heart as mirroring the size of a clenched fist. I loosened my grip on the journal and placed it on the car seat next to me. My heart opened, like a hand releasing a balloon up into the air.

  43

  LEAVING Yuri’s house, I felt the way Suzie had often described as “walking the line.” She said it meant when a person experienced two intense emotions at once. One could feel extremely happy and also horribly sad at the same moment.

  It was terrible to admit, but as full as my heart was after receiving Yuri’s beautiful note, I started to dread returning home. Perhaps it was because Bill and I had yet to trim our tree. Or maybe it was because every time I suggested we read together or snuggle by the fire, or I tried to share something amusing that Yuri had said, he had no interest. Maybe because it had been six months since we had begun renting the cottage, and we had yet to cook a single meal together.

  So instead of driving straight home after Yuri’s, I decided to go to my parents’ house first. My sadness over my current home life made me nostalgic for my own childhood traditions. I loved helping my mother prepare the dough for the ravioli using Grandma Valentina’s old rolling pin, or watching her as she dipped her pastry brush in olive oil and confidently glided it over sheets of pasta.

  I drove slowly to make sure I didn’t skid. The twenty-minute drive out to Strong’s Neck was scenic but often icy in the winter. Still, the ride was cathartic for me. I loved seeing the old farms of my childhood, their pitched roofs dusted in snow and set against an oyster blue sky. I felt my body soften as I drove over the narrow Strong’s Bridge, frosted over with ice.

  So much of my youth was connected to this landscape. How I loved when my mother told me bedtime stories about the heroic Revolutionary War spy Anna Strong, who had lived a stone’s jump from my own house two hundred years before. “She communicated her information for the American soldiers via the color of the clothes on her laundry line,” my mother told me as she sat on the edge of my bed, her face illuminated by a beam of white moonlight. I would fall asleep thinking about Anna standing outside her clapboard home, her cotton dress fluttering in the breeze, her hands pulling colorful clothes out of her laundry basket and pinning them on a string to form a secret code.

  Even decades later, the memory of my mother bringing Anna to life stirred something inside me.

  * * *

  • • •

  I pulled into their driveway and clutched my coat around me as I rang the doorbell. It was getting colder by the minute, so I turned the handle and pushed my way indoors.

  Once inside, I was greeted by the sound of the stereo on full volume, with one of my father’s favorite violin concertos permeating the house. I could also sense that my mother was home by the scent of her biscotti wafting in from the kitchen.

  “Mom?” I hollered over the music and walked toward the kitchen to find my mother. She had her back turned to me and was sprinkling powdered sugar over a tray of biscotti. Somehow she still managed to look elegant. Her hair was in a loose chignon, and a few stray strands dangled close to her cheeks.

  “Maggie!” She turned around. Her voice was flush with surprise. “What are you doing here? We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

  “Just feeling a little homesick.” I walked over and hugged her. “I missed seeing you in action.”

  My mother’s face softened as she wiped her hands clean on her apron. “I’m just finishing up my baking now.”

  I smiled. I knew full well all her rituals of preparation. She would do the Feast of the Seven Fishes, just as her mother and grandmother before her always had. It was one of the few things in my life that remained a constant. The freezer was filled with trays of ravioli and the stock for the shrimp risotto. When I was little, I’d count the seven fishes she intended to prepare, the calamari, the grilled scampi, the Dover sole stuffed with crabmeat, the lobster tails, the prawns for the risotto, and the baked clams. We never ate as well as we did on Christmas Eve.

  “Dad’s in the basement, working on a new violin.” She smiled. “He’s saying this one is going to be his masterpiece. Ever since he went to that workshop at Oberlin, he’s been working like a madman.”

  “Who knew you’d be married to a modern-day Stradivari?” I teased.

  I snuck one of the cookies and licked the crumbs from my fingers.

  “I’m not sure if they’re any good,” my mother said, watching my reaction.

  “They’re the best, Mom. If I stand here any longer, I’ll devour the whole tray.” I kissed her on the top of her head. “So I better go see Dad instead.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE basement door was open, and I followed the steps down to find my father. I discovered him hovering over a violin, painstakingly applying the varnish in long careful strokes. I hated to interrupt him while he was this engrossed in his work, so I stood on the stairs for a few minutes, taking in a bird’s-eye view as he glossed the instrument in deep orange-amber hues.

  My midtwenties had brought a softening in my behavior toward my father. I was no longer as impatient or irritated with him as I had been as a teenager. The sight of him moving a little slower, his posture bending ever so slightly forward, his hands a bit more knobby, caused me to pause and realize I needed to slow down and appreciate the man in front of me before it was too late. I started to see him with adult eyes and could now appreciate his complexity: he was capable of being both a man dedicated to his family and one who could maintain his artistic soul. That was no easy feat in a world with so many pressures and demands.

  He had worked his whole life to support his family, and only after his retirement had he finally learned how to craft something that he had always loved. My father adored everything about the violin. The sound, the sensual shape, and the elegant F-hole designs carved into the frame. The flame-like pattern of the maple wood. He had started to play it when he was eight years old and had even been good enough to be asked to audition for Juilliard. But when he wasn’t accepted, he found himself at a local college, studying economics and accounting, while playing his violin only at night.

  “The best thing my violin ever got me was your mother,” he used to joke to my brother and me. Neither of us had taken to the instrument when he tried to give us lessons, and so for much of our childhood, my father’s passion came out in other ways. While we wanted to listen to the local pop station in the car when we were younger, the radio dial was permanently tuned to the main classical music station, WQXR. If a violin concerto came over
the radio, he’d start emulating the soloist at traffic lights. And on long family trips, he would try in vain to rally my brother and me to play a game of “guess the composer” after hearing only the first bars of the score.

  Charlie and I had always found his classical music obsession slightly annoying as children—we wanted to listen to our own music, which we could share with our friends—while our mother yearned for music she could sing along to. My father would end up compromising with all of us by putting an “oldies” channel on the radio, his face transforming as my mother’s voice floated through the car. It was a scenario that always caused Charlie and me to huff and puff and roll our eyes. But years later, everything that had once annoyed me about my father now had the opposite effect; his quirkiness and his unequivocal love for my mother charmed me.

  * * *

  • • •

  “DADDY?” He had just put his brush down to rest and turned around, wiping his hands on his smock.

  “Hey, beautiful!” His whole face lit up when he saw me, and his voice lifted. “You’re a surprise to see. Did you decide to start Christmas a day early?”

  “I just missed seeing Mom making all the preparations. For some reason, I was feeling really nostalgic today.”

  “Well, if nostalgia inspires you to come for an extra visit, I’m good with that,” he laughed, and his eyes crinkled. “Come and give your old man a hug.”

  I stepped down and walked into his arms. He smelled of varnish and turpentine, and I felt my eyes begin to water as my cheek settled against his flannel shirt.

  “What’s the matter, baby girl?” I felt his large palm on the back of my head, and then he began to smooth my hair.

  I wanted to tell him that I was merely playing house with Bill and everything just felt wrong, but I couldn’t find the words. So I just let him hug me for a little longer.

  * * *

  • • •

  I left my parents’ house after dinner, not saying a word to them about Bill. I knew tomorrow we’d arrive together, and I didn’t want to spoil everyone’s Christmas Eve. I rode back in silence, not even listening to the radio, as I did almost every other day. The sky was silky and black. The stars were radiant, and I drove home bathed in the light of a full moon.

  44

  I arrived home close to ten p.m., and when I walked in, Bill was sitting in the comfy chair by the TV, watching a basketball game.

  “I was about to send out a search crew to look for you,” he joked, without getting up from the couch.

  I pulled off my coat and dropped my bag on the chair. “I stopped off to see my parents after work.”

  “Aren’t we seeing them tomorrow? Why the need for repeat visits?”

  I shrugged and flopped down on a chair to pull off my boots. “I was feeling strange today. I guess I just wanted to see them.”

  It was clear he had already eaten. The tall pot we used to boil water for pasta was in the sink, and there was an empty jar of sauce on the counter. In the colander the spaghetti had stuck together in a big, gloppy mound. I was glad I had eaten earlier with my parents.

  “Mags,” he hollered from the living room. “My mom wants us at their house by noon on Christmas Day. Does that work for you?”

  I left the pots and spaghetti where they were. I wasn’t in the mood to clean up after his mess. I walked back into the living room and leaned against one of the plaster walls.

  “We should leave by ten, then. There’ll be traffic on the expressway.”

  “Sure. Whatever you say . . .” His eyes were still focused on the game.

  Looking at him, I finally knew why I was so incensed by his laziness. I knew Yuri would have done anything to get out of his chair and go outside to take advantage of all that life had to offer. And even with all his physical limitations, his curiosity couldn’t be stifled. But here I was with a man who seemed to have no curiosity, no desire to do anything other than flop down in front of the television during his free time, despite being perfectly healthy. I felt a rage swell inside me.

  “You know what I’d really like?” I said, my voice rising. “It’s for you to pick up those logs of cherrywood that have been sitting in the corner of the living room since June and make me a damn fire!” I pulled the remote from his hand and shut off the TV.

  “I want to wrap my Christmas presents tonight with that fireplace going in full blaze. That’s what I want for Christmas!” I was nearly hyperventilating from my rage. “Can you do that for me, Bill? Can you?”

  He looked at me like I had been snatched up by Martians. I had never exploded at him like this before. He just sat there, stunned.

  I watched as he got up, his eyes searching to find the old me somewhere behind the angry red face and glare. He reached the corner of the room where the logs were piled in a basket, and began to transfer them to the hearth. Bill had been an Eagle Scout in his younger days and knew quite well how to build a fire. He layered the logs into a makeshift pyramid. Then he went to the kitchen and took yesterday’s newspaper and tore it into large strips, which he then crumpled into balls and placed underneath the rack. He worked swiftly, his body bent over the hearth. When he was finished, he went back to the kitchen and retrieved a box of matches, then lit each of his balls of paper to ignite the fire.

  I watched as the flames began to rise. Bill closed the screen, brushed off his knees, and stood up.

  The smell of burning cherrywood permeated the room. Finally, I could feel myself softening, the rage dissipating from my body.

  I sat down on the couch and curled my feet underneath me. Bill sat down next to me and admired his own handiwork.

  “Merry Christmas, Mags,” he said quietly. I pulled the wool throw over my legs and searched underneath the folds of the blanket to find his hand.

  45

  BILL and I arrived at my parents’ early the next evening, carrying boxes of presents and a nice bottle of Chianti Riserva. Their house was draped with twinkling lights, and my father had wrapped the front door with a large red satin ribbon.

  It had begun to snow that morning, and as Bill and I teetered up the front steps, I felt like a child again, giddy with anticipation of my mother’s food and the house full of good cheer. My brother had arrived earlier that afternoon with his wife, and I was eager for him to unwrap the grilling tools I had gotten him from Brookstone. I was sure he was going to love them. I had also thrown in a new cookbook from Bobby Flay to make it extra festive.

  My dad answered the door and gave Bill and me huge, hearty hugs. I had been home only twenty-four hours earlier, but the house had since been completely transformed. Bing Crosby was singing Christmas carols on the stereo. Dad had draped garlands of holly over the banister and had even gone so far as to dangle mistletoe above the threshold to the living room.

  Charlie came over with his wife, Annie, and slapped Bill on the back. “Good to see you, bro,” he said before coming over and planting a kiss on my cheek.

  “Are you ready to dive into the seven fishes? Annie’s been counting the minutes until Mom serves her calamari.”

  I laughed. Mom always infused her cornmeal with lots of dried oregano and pepper before she flash fried it. Charlie and I used to fight over who got to finish the last pieces.

  “Watch out,” I warned Annie. “The calamari wars are intense in the Topper house.”

  “Consider yourself forewarned,” Bill added. “Maggie was honing her feisty skills last night with me.”

  “Really? I would have liked to see that.” Charlie raised an eyebrow at me.

  “I just wanted a fire,” I defended myself. I gestured toward the roaring one my father had made. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”

  Dad came over and threw an arm over my shoulder, squeezing me toward him. “Nothing’s wrong with that. Bill should cherish a girl who knows what she wants.”

  I forced a
smile. “You have to see our little house, Annie. It’s all New England charm, right here on Long Island!”

  “The way your mom described the place, it sounds like it’s lifted straight from the pages of a Jane Austen novel.”

  I laughed. “It’s far more modest than that, but you know I’m a sucker for old-world charm. I think the real estate agent had never seen someone become so starry-eyed at the sight of low ceilings, no closets, and uneven floorboards.” I threw a glance at Bill. “But reading by a fire or taking a soak in an old claw-foot tub goes a long way with me.”

  “You like the place, too, Bill?” Charlie looked over at him.

  Bill shrugged. “My needs are simple. What can I say? My comfy chair fits in the living room. My TV works. And my commute is now fifteen minutes shorter, and I’m making more money. So yeah, I’m good with it.”

  I could see my brother was about to make a joke when my mom suddenly appeared in her bright red apron, carrying a tray of calamari.

  “Let the festivities begin,” my father cheered. We all fell upon the food like a swarm of buzzing bees.

  46

  I drove home with Bill nodding off against the car’s windowpane. We fell asleep that night like tired children, not brushing our teeth or taking off our clothes. The next morning, I turned the shower on extra-hot, running the water over my face and body as I tried to wake up. When I was finished, I wrapped the towel around me and twisted my hair into a turban.

  “Bill,” I said as I sat at the corner of the bed. “We should leave in an hour if we want to be on time for your folks.”

  He raised a groggy hand to his eyes and rubbed his lids. “Geez. What did your dad put in that spiced wine? I can hardly move.”

  I ignored him. It wasn’t the wine that had given him the hangover, but all the other alcohol he had consumed along with it.