Ring of Truth

by Ciji Ware

  Fedosia spoke. “And today is a good day,” Nicholas translated. “Of course it would be, because you are here, Veronica.”

  That called for another round of hand-squeezing, and more tears on Veronica’s part. “There are so many things to talk about.” Veronica swiped at her nose. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “I would love to hear about your mother’s life,” Nicholas said, then began a back-and-forth with Veronica’s mother that he summed up when Fedosia returned from the kitchen bearing black tea and cookies, the same repast served to guests that Veronica had enjoyed at the orphanage.

  Nicholas leaned forward with his forearms on his thighs. “Your family has lived in this town for generations, Veronica. The men have worked in construction for the most part. Your mother worked as a baker until she retired.”

  “Did you enjoy your work?” Veronica asked. “Do you like baking? I don’t get much chance but I love to bake.”

  It turned out that her mother had labored in an industrial setting and chronic injuries she sustained over the years forced her to retire early.

  Veronica was embarrassed to pose the next question but so curious to know. “I don’t suppose there are any singers in the family?”

  “No singers,” Nicholas reported a moment later. “But one of your aunts painted.”

  Veronica’s mother gestured to an oil painting hanging across the room above a small television. Veronica rose to inspect it more closely. Now here was something lovely—a blonde girl in a lacy white dress kneeling on a beach, so engrossed in building a sand castle that she was unaware she was being watched. Beyond her an orange sun sank into an ocean that stretched into forever. Finally Veronica saw something blue: the endless ocean.

  “That’s beautiful,” Veronica said. “It’s impressionistic in style, isn’t it? With those little dabs of color that disappear into the whole and the wonderful way the artist depicted the light of the sun on the sea.” She turned back around toward her mother. “I have an aunt who did this? She’s very talented.”

  Again her mother patted the spot at her side. Veronica rushed to rejoin her. “I know I have brothers and sisters. I’d love to know more about them.”

  She had three brothers and a sister, she learned, all married with children of their own. That meant, Veronica realized, she not only had siblings but nieces and nephews, too. She should have realized she was likely to be an aunt, given the ages of her siblings.

  “Yes,” Nicholas said, “your brothers are thirty-eight, thirty-six, and thirty-five, and you have a sister who’s”—he hesitated—“thirty-two.”

  Veronica looked down into her teacup, nearly empty now. She set it down.

  Veronica was thirty-four. That meant her mother had given birth to another child after her, another girl, whom she had kept. For a moment the childhood agony came back. Why me? Why was I the baby my mother gave away?

  Nicholas leaned closer. “Are you all right?”

  Beside her, her mother sat up straighter and said something. Nicholas did not immediately translate.

  “I’m all right,” she told him.

  “I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Nicholas said.

  Her mother was speaking more forcefully now.

  “She says she understands why you’re upset,” Nicholas said.

  Her mother clutched at her arm until Veronica pivoted to face her.

  “The problem was your father,” Nicholas translated. “He would come and go. After you were conceived, and when you were born, he was gone. That was why your mother was unable to raise you. She had three sons already, she had to work, and she had no one to ask for help.”

  Veronica had always known her biological father was a deadbeat. It said as much in the adoption papers. Still, here where most people didn’t stray far from where they were born, you’d think some family members could have helped.

  “Then a year or so later,” Nicholas went on, “your father came back into the picture. And for several years he stayed.”

  Which must be why her younger sister did not also land in Moscow’s Baby Home Number 36.

  Her mother’s eyes, so like her own, were pleading. “She wants you to try to understand,” Nicholas said. “Life is a struggle in Russia, not like in the United States. There, families don’t have to separate. Here sometimes they do.”

  Veronica knew she was a stranger to adversity. She didn’t understand what it meant to be beset by difficulties every day of your life, to know you would always be working a back-breaking job, living in a soul-crushing apartment building, raising children alone because the man you loved would come and go on a whim.

  Again she took her mother’s hands.

  “And when it came to your father,” Nicholas went on, “your mother says he was not a bad man. But he was unreliable. In some ways he just never grew up. But she loved him.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Her mother looked away, shook her head, and began speaking in a low voice. This time Veronica understood one of the words she uttered.

  “It’s been years since your mother has seen him.” Nicholas leaned close. “Veronica, she thinks that since he hasn’t come back again, he’s probably dead.”

  Yes, that was the word Veronica had understood. MERT-vye, the Russian word for dead.

  Since there was so little mention of her biological father in her adoption papers—and what there was, was negative—Veronica had never spent much time spinning fantasies about him. Still, there was a certain grim finality to learning he was most likely deceased.

  “May I see a picture of him? In fact, I’d love to see any pictures you could show me.”

  Nicholas said something and Fedosia bustled off to another room, returning with a couple of photos and a stack of airmail letters tied with string. “Your mother kept every letter you ever sent her,” Nicholas said.

  That Veronica could plainly see. “Yes, and Viktor’s translations, too.”

  “These are your brothers,” Nicholas said as her mother held out a faded photograph of three brown-haired boys posed stiffly in front of what looked like a school. They were all dressed alike in short-sleeved white shirts—“school uniforms,” Nicholas explained.

  Veronica peered at the photo, then pointed to one of the boys. “He kind of looks like me.” As with her mother, there was something in the shape of the face.

  “And here is your sister.” Her mother held out the other photograph. It depicted a bride, beaming as she strolled through a summertime park arm in arm with a strapping young man, holding up her voluminous skirt to keep it from sweeping the grass.

  “She’s wearing the kind of gown she would wear in the United States,” Veronica observed.

  Her mother said something. “You’re not married, right?” Nicholas asked.

  “That’s right.”

  Nicholas chuckled at her mother’s next remark. “She wants to know what you’re waiting for.”

  Veronica raised her eyes from the photograph to Nicholas’s face. “You may tell her I haven’t found the right man yet. And my career doesn’t make it easy.”

  “Why not?” Nicholas wanted to know. “What is it about being an opera singer that would make it tough to be married?”

  “I don’t hear you translating, Nicholas.”

  “Sorry.” He cleared his throat and said something to her mother. Then followed an extensive conversation, involving Fedosia, which Nicholas didn’t bother to translate. Finally he spoke again to Veronica. “I asked if there were more photos you could see, but apparently there aren’t.”

  “Really? Not even one of my father?”

  “Your mother says they have almost no good photos and she’s embarrassed to show you poor ones.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “She says photos are a luxury this family can’t afford.”

  Veronica quashed her disappointment. “That’s a shame.” Though she shouldn’t be surprised. The family might live hand to mouth. Again she regretted that
she hadn’t brought something. “Do my sister or any of my brothers live close by?”

  “Your sister and two of your brothers do,” Nicholas reported. “One of your brothers moved to Moscow.”

  “Is it rude to say that I had hoped at least one of them might be here today?”

  There was another barrage of conversation among Veronica’s mother, Nicholas, and Fedosia. Finally Nicholas spoke again to Veronica. “Your mother says she couldn’t be sure you would come today. You and Viktor were supposed to arrive in the afternoon but then you were delayed. And your siblings all have jobs, they have families—”

  “But when you called earlier, Nicholas, didn’t you say for sure I’d be coming today?”

  “I did.” He met her gaze. “I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe something got lost in translation.”

  Chapter Seven

  Again Veronica’s mother grabbed her arm. Veronica twisted to face her and give her hands another squeeze.

  Though they exchanged smiles, and Veronica’s mother freed one of her hands to smooth back a lock of Veronica’s hair, Veronica couldn’t deny a certain sinking of the heart. Though she tried very hard to fight the feeling, she found this, all of this, a bit of a letdown.

  She hadn’t known what to expect from meeting her birth mother, not really, but it wasn’t this. There was a tepid quality to the evening that flew in the face of all her fevered imaginings. She had expected these moments of first acquaintance to be more epic, more momentous. She had anticipated a warm connection, if not immediately, then in short order. She had longed for a meeting of the minds with her birth mother, a resonance in both hearts—and fully expected both. After all, she and this woman shared the profoundest of bonds. But try though she might, she couldn’t shake a certain awkwardness. She sensed a distance between herself and her birth mother she didn’t know how to bridge.

  It was exactly what adoptees warned of. It was why so many did not try to find their birth parents. Parents and children who spent all their lives together sometimes failed to find a deep connection; why should parents and children who’d been separated be spared that fate?

  Veronica, ever the diva, had been sure she’d be one of the lucky ones. Even when she knew her birth mother was dying, she’d still been convinced that she would enjoy the rapturous, tear-filled, Hollywood-perfect reunion of mother and child. She would be a mini me of her mother: the same in look, build, and style. They would share many of the same gestures. They would laugh at the same silly things—even though they spoke different languages. They would like the same foods—even though they lived in different culinary cultures. The fact that this scenario played out for no mother and daughter pairing that Veronica had ever known did not impinge on her fantasy.

  Her mother raised Veronica’s right hand to examine the ring, then motioned to Fedosia to come closer to scrutinize it as well. Far from the lamp’s glow, the emerald gemstone appeared almost black. Veronica was surprised: She had expected it to gleam with pearliness here in her mother’s presence. The two women twisted the ring this way and that, cooing with an admiration that embarrassed Veronica. She couldn’t take credit for the ring’s magnificence; she was its keeper for a short time only; but though she couldn’t pinpoint why, she had the idea her mother wouldn’t believe that. She considered regaling everyone with how it had come into her possession but bit back the impulse.

  “Your mother says your ring is very beautiful,” Nicholas said.

  “Please thank her. It was a gift.” From whom, she would never know.

  “Nevertheless, your mother says, you’re a fortunate woman because you could afford to buy a ring like this for yourself.”

  Veronica didn’t know what to say to that. Her mother went on speaking.

  “Your mother wants to know if you sing all over the world?” Nicholas said.

  “Europe and the U.S., mostly.”

  “San Francisco,” her mother said, her accent making the words hard to understand.

  “I live in San Francisco, yes.”

  “In Victorian,” her mother added.

  “Not in a whole Victorian. I live on just one floor, in a flat.” She almost added: Sharing with two other women so I can pay the rent.

  Her mother continued speaking. “You stay in hotels all over the world when you sing,” Nicholas translated. “Like Pavarotti.”

  At that, Veronica had to laugh. “Not at all like Pavarotti!” It had been decades since the world-famous tenor had stayed in a fourth-floor walk-up guesthouse, if he ever had. “I was lucky enough to work with him once, though.”

  Nicholas leaned forward. “That must’ve been an amazing experience.”

  “It was. I did an apprentice program with the Santa Fe Opera, and Luciano Pavarotti taught a master class.” She smiled at the memory. “He helped me learn to pronounce the ‘O’ sound in Italian, which can be tricky for non-native speakers. I think if it hadn’t been for him I never would’ve gotten my current role.” Which she dearly hoped she still had. “Leonora in Il Trovatore. In Florence.”

  “One of my all-time favorite cities. Where are you staying?”

  “In a guesthouse behind the Palazzo Vecchio.”

  “I envy you.” They smiled at each other until Nicholas switched to Russian to translate what Veronica had said. He stopped, though, when her mother spoke over him. “Your mother says you must have had very expensive training to become an opera singer. Your parents must be wealthy people, otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible.”

  Veronica shook her head vigorously. “No. It wasn’t like that at all. My parents had to struggle to make my training possible. A lot of the time my father had two jobs.”

  Nicholas translated, but Veronica could see that her mother wasn’t listening. Instead she was resettling herself on her pillows, grimacing slightly.

  When her mother uttered a low moan, Veronica flushed from shame. Here she was jabbering on about Italy while her mother was in obvious distress. She rose to plump the pillows herself, a lump growing in her throat. She had feared the specter of death would hang over this reunion, and though it had not, now she was reminded that her time with her birth mother would be precious and short. “Nicholas,” she murmured, “my mother may not want to talk about it, but I have to ask again about her health.”

  Nicholas began to speak but Veronica’s mother shushed him with a wave of the hand. “She says we can talk about that tomorrow.” His voice registered the surprise Veronica herself felt. “She apologizes,” he went on, “but she’s very tired.”

  “I can certainly understand that but”—Veronica struggled for what to say—“I would love to see her again tomorrow, but I can’t impose on you like that, Nicholas.”

  “It wouldn’t be an imposition if I offer.” He regarded her steadily. “And so I hereby offer.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely.” He rose to his feet. “If you’re sure you’d like to come again, then I’ll bring you.”

  “Of course I’m sure.” This time Veronica hugged her mother, and kissed her cheek. The older woman managed a feeble smile.

  Veronica and Nicholas stood in the tiny entry to make what turned out to be prolonged arrangements with Fedosia, who referred to a morning visit by a doctor.

  Nicholas’s expression was thoughtful. “Fedosia says there’s a slim chance there may be a special treatment for your mother. Her doctor will come here in the morning to discuss it with her.”

  “Really?” Veronica grasped Fedosia’s arm. “Is that why my mother didn’t want to discuss her health, because she didn’t want to raise my hopes? If that were true, that would change everything.”

  If it weren’t hopeless for her birth mother, Veronica might be able to develop a relationship with her. That’s what they needed to dispel this stiffness between them: time. They could write letters and, when she was working in Europe, Veronica could visit. Eventually mother and daughter would find their natural familiarity.

  Nicholas and Fedos
ia spoke at length. Finally: “I asked if we might be here for the doctor visit,” Nicholas said. “Fedosia keeps saying she’s not sure exactly when it’s going to happen, but now she’s named a time.”

  Veronica frowned. “I would like to be here but don’t you think it’s kind of presumptuous? I am her daughter but we’ve just met.”

  “If I knew more about her condition, I might be able to help. Fedosia hasn’t even been able to tell me what your mother is suffering from.”

  No doubt Nicholas had connections and so could help. “We could hover in the background,” she said, “and you could talk to the doctor before he or she leaves.”

  A plan was set. Beneath a night sky obscured by a forbidding mantle of clouds, Veronica and Nicholas walked back to his Renault. “It’ll snow tonight,” he said as he held open the car door while Veronica settled in.

  “That may make it harder to get back here tomorrow, if there’s a big storm.”

  They didn’t speak again until they were once more on the nearly empty highway leading to Moscow. “You’re being so generous with your time, Nicholas,” she said into the silence. “Really, I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you.”

  “I just want you to be careful, Veronica.”

  It was a different man in a different car on a different highway, but he was speaking almost exactly the same words Dominik had spoken three nights before. “What are you talking about?” she asked, though of course she knew.

  Nicholas appeared to choose his words carefully. “I’m a little concerned about all this.”

  So am I. She banished the thought. “I’m concerned about my mother’s health, absolutely.”

  “How do you feel now that you’ve met her?”

  It was hard to put into words. “I think I’m in shock. I know for most people it’s totally normal, but it’s the first time in my life I’ve been around someone who’s blood.”

  “Is that how she feels to you?”

  “I feel a connection to her,” Veronica lied.

  Nicholas said nothing. A snazzy German car rocketed past on their left, maybe driven by an oligarch hastening back to Moscow.