Lost Roses

by Martha Hall Kelly

  “I’m beginning to think you’re avoiding me.”

  Caroline turned back around.

  The two girls moved on to conversation with Thomas, and Mother leaned close and whispered, “You need to spend more time with Caroline, dear. Don’t you feel the rift?”

  “It will work itself out.”

  “Things of value seldom just work themselves out. You must put your shoulder to it. Henry would want you two to get on well. Plus, once I’m gone you’ll only have each other.”

  I pushed the thought of Mother dying to a dark recess. “She avoids me. Just holes up with Betty or reads all day. Theater magazines, of course.”

  “Perhaps you avoid her, too. Don’t you see, she is wounded, Eliza? You remind each other of Henry’s—”

  “She wants to become an actress just to anger me.”

  “Actresses will happen in the best regulated families, dear.”

  “And she’s desperate to be a Trail Scout and tramp the woods.”

  “Girl Scout. And I think it’s a good idea. I know you like to be in charge, but you can’t control her every move.”

  How did Mother poke only the most exquisitely tender spots?

  “Caroline needs to focus on school and college, Mother. Maybe study abroad and see the world.”

  “That’s what you never got to do, but she’s not you. Maybe she likes tramping the woods, and actresses today are well traveled. You could go with her on tour. Julia can cast her.”

  “Julia’s a bad influence. Of course, Caroline prefers her to me. Barely talks to me, her own mother.”

  “Can’t you see? Caroline isn’t like you, dear. Acquiesce on something with Caroline and you’ll see a change.”

  “I suppose, Mother.”

  “You asked my advice.”

  “I didn’t, but—”

  “She needs to be a child. Let her run free. Don’t forget she is officially half owner of that old farm.”

  Thomas pulled the car through the opening in the stone wall to The Hay’s gravel driveway and came to a stop at the side porch door. He helped us out and we stood looking up at the facade under gray skies. Any strength I’d gathered wilted as it all came rushing back. Henry’s kiss in the barn. His love of that decrepit place. Terribly busy in the city, Henry had only done a few projects around the old place and in the weeks since his death, the house had fallen into deeper disrepair. The yellow paint peeled off the clapboard like giant pencil shavings and the lawn choked on its own crabgrass and dandelions.

  “Is this the gardener’s cottage?” Betty said.

  “No, dear. It’s the main house.”

  Hornets flew in and out of a dark gash under the eave overhead, the only signs of progress being made about the place. Where was Peg to greet us? She’d come up two days before and knew I expected three things from her upon my arrival: food on the table, fresh flowers, and a fresh cocktail, none of which were to be found.

  We wandered to the back of the house, under the shade of a generous maple tree.

  Caroline pointed across the meadow. “Oh, Mother, look. Father had the little house moved.”

  Mr. Gardener walked up the steep rise of lawn toward us. “Hello, ma’am. Misses. I mowed the hayfield, last time for the season. Got the remains of a great apple orchard out there. Some Sheep’s Nose apples. Virginia Crabs. None better for pies. Great spot for a garden back here, too,” he said with a rare smile. “Course this old maple would have to come down.”

  Caroline turned to me. “Oh please, Mother. I’ve always wanted a garden. With sweet musk roses and eglantine. I could look out my window every morning and see it.”

  I swatted away a tangled tornado of gnats hanging midair. “No tree shall be cut down, Mr. Gardener. I’ll never take down what God has put here. We have bigger concerns inside the house, Lord knows.”

  Caroline and Betty ran off across the spiky, shorn hayfield toward the playhouse.

  “No running,” I called after them. “Dr. Forbes…”

  Mother and I stepped inside the house to find a leak sprung from the faucet, gushing like a geyser. With scrub brushes strapped to her feet, Peg skated across the floor, working up a lather with the pooling water. Thomas stood leaning on the stove, in animated conversation with Peg, as he sprinkled soap powder on the floor. Half of the water ran off through the open floorboards to the cellar below.

  “Oh, Peg, we must do something.”

  “Good to get this floor cleaned,” she said.

  “Call a plumber, for heaven’s sake,” Mother said.

  “I did, ma’am. Called yesterday and no one’s come.”

  Caroline came to the kitchen doorway, pressing one hand at her side. “You should see, Mother,” she said, taking deep breaths.

  “You were running—”

  “Father had the little house moved and had someone make curtains for the windows and set it up with Shakespeare books.”

  How wonderful of Henry, ever thoughtful. A stab of longing shot through me. How tragic I could not bring him back for her; the one always able to fix everything suddenly could do nothing.

  She held out one hand. “Come see.”

  I turned to the gushing sink. “Not right now, dear.”

  “At least come out to the hay barn. Father loved it so.”

  How could I tell her that was the last place I could visit, where Henry and I shared such tender moments? “Some other time, maybe.”

  Caroline stepped into the kitchen, a tremor in her voice. “You don’t miss him at all.”

  “Don’t cry, dear. And that’s not true.”

  “You don’t show it. Acting like all’s well won’t make it so. Betty says in Girl Scouts they talk about their—”

  I wheeled to face her. “I don’t want to hear another word about Girl Scouts.”

  “You don’t let me do a thing I want to. If Father were here he’d be on my side. If I could, I’d live with Aunt Julia.”

  “Putting on plays and pretending you’re accomplishing something worthwhile? Running around emoting all day, declaring your love to each other?”

  “You might want to try it, Mother.” Caroline rushed out of the kitchen, slammed the door behind her, and ran back out toward the playhouse.

  I turned to find Peg frozen in place, soap bubbles rising around her, as Thomas clutched the soapbox to his chest.

  Mother came to me and slid one arm across my shoulders. “Calm down, dear.”

  I shook off her arm.

  Peg shuffled toward me on brushed feet. “It’s just the grief talking. Children can’t—”

  “That’s enough, Peg.”

  Suddenly it was all too much.

  I turned to Thomas. “We will be going back to the city after all, Thomas. Right away.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Ferriday.”

  “And, Peg, have these windows shuttered up. We won’t be coming back.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  Sofya

  1916

  I dared not close my eyes the night the bandits locked us in the barn. Agnessa, Father, Luba, and I lay huddled, cold on the hay floor, and Cook kept watch near the door in case anyone returned unannounced.

  They had shoved us in there for the night without a word of explanation, blankets, or food. The others somehow slept but I barely dozed, moonlight streaming through a high window, a jumble of questions in my head. Where was my son? Safe with Varinka? Guilt gnawed at me. I’d been out enjoying a good ride as outlaws surrounded our house, ready to attack my family.

  Around midnight, male voices came from the courtyard, our captors, speaking too softly for me to hear what they said. I crawled to a crack in the barn siding and peeped at them standing there by the fountain, washing themselves.

  Cook came to kneel by my side and looked through the crack. The scent of
last night’s dinner on him, of cinnamon and sage, made my stomach growl.

  “Behold the new guardians of all Russia’s culture and art,” Cook whispered. “These are not run-of-the-mill Bolsheviks.”

  The tall one stripped off his shirt. A magnificent display of tattoos covered his powerful torso where winged angels carried a banner across his wide chest.

  “Sailors?” I asked.

  “Those are prison tattoos. The tall one is Taras, a woodsman Varinka knows. I think the other is named Vladi, a queer sort of bandit I’ve heard villagers talk about.”

  “I think I may have seen him in the city. He robbed the tram.”

  Taras turned and splashed water under his arms and onto his face. The moonlight hit his back, showing a blue Virgin Mary and child in the heavens.

  “Prisoners made those tattoos? They’re so elaborate.”

  “Some of our kitchen help have them, lesser versions. It is a sacred language of symbols that tells the story of a prisoner’s life. The more tattoos, the more status.”

  Taras slid his shirt back on and the two wandered back toward the house together.

  I turned from the crack in the wall and sat cross-legged next to Cook, his hair white in the moonlight, face in shadow. “How did this happen?” One tear fell onto the back of my hand in my lap. “I’m sorry to cry.”

  Cook wiped the tear off my hand with one finger. “Never apologize for feeling. That is what makes us Russian. Besides, crying only makes women more beautiful.”

  “I’m afraid for Max,” I whispered.

  He brushed his fingers along my chin. “We won’t let anything happen to him.”

  “We should have left—”

  Cook slid one arm around my waist and drew me to him. He hesitated a moment and then leaned in and his lips met mine. We lingered there and he kissed me harder, his mouth a lovely mélange of bread and tobacco and my own tears.

  After some time, we pulled away from each other and I pressed the back of my hand against my lips. I seldom kissed Afon so vigorously.

  I sat back, breath coming hard. “No one needs to know this happened.”

  Cook pulled farther away. “Of course.”

  What was his expression in the half darkness? A mixture of sadness and joy that stabbed at me.

  What a wicked way to repay my good husband, at that moment probably risking his life in battle.

  Cook returned to his place by the door. “Try to sleep, Sofya. We must keep our wits about us for tomorrow.”

  “If he lets us out, I can try and run,” I said.

  “Just distract him. I’ll go for help.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  Varinka

  1916

  The next day I woke at the izba with Taras’s words in my head: Get rid of that child, Inka. I would do no such thing, of course. I would protect Max with my life.

  I had slept the night with Mamka and Max, one eye open keeping watch on Vladi asleep on a haystack in the corner.

  I slipped from the warm bed, waking Mamka, who sat up and gathered sleepy Max closer, and stepped to watch Vladi as he slept. How could a person become so cruel? Was he born that way, ripping his big head through his mother, cursed at birth for killing her? Vladi would do anything for Taras, their friendship forged by years of protecting each other in prison.

  Vladi slept with his face in the hay, the back of his balding head like an abandoned robin’s nest with a giant, fleshy egg in the center. He turned onto his back, surprisingly innocent in sleep, the shiny scar on his cheek facing up at me, the peaked shape of the iron’s tip burned there in his flesh.

  How terrible to be burned on the face. At least that scar was better than what Taras told me had been tattooed there. The image forced on him in prison, the man’s private parts tattooed in blue next to his mouth, that terrible badge that told the world of his relationship with another man.

  Taras had started the fire so I heated water to make Max’s favorite hot cereal while Taras chopped wood. Images of what I imagined the Streshnayvas were going through bubbled up in front of me. All of them bound and gagged. Had Taras and Vladi mistreated young Luba? The countess would not be enjoying her tea this morning.

  I clanked the lid onto the pot.

  Vladi roused, running his hand across the top of his fleshy egg. “Good morning.”

  “You should go sleep at the estate.”

  “Good to see you, too, Varinka.” He stood and scratched his chest, suspenders looped down at his sides. As he lifted his arms to the roof and arched his back, his shirt lifted to reveal a blessedly quick view of his hairy belly. “I’m taking over the linen factory, you know.”

  “On whose orders?”

  “Orders?” Vladi adjusted the red cloth tied about his upper sleeve. “This is all I need now.”

  “You know Mr. Streshnayva works for the Ministry. What if the tsar sends Cossacks?”

  “How is anyone to know things are amiss? We’re having the old man write letters to Petrograd as usual. Plus, the tsar’s probably off sailing on the royal yacht. But if any of those imperial idiots send troops, we’re ready to defend ourselves.”

  I poured the groats into the pot and watched them roil in the bubbling water. “What will happen to His Excellency and the Streshnayvas?”

  Mamka turned to listen.

  “Stop calling him that. That old pig means nothing now. They’re just another group we need to eliminate.”

  Mamka sat up straighter in the bed. “They’re good people.”

  “Good? Working their fellow Russians to death for low wages? We can only be free once all those belaya kost bloodlines are purged. White-boned, ha. They’re already running like rats to Paris and Shanghai.”

  I tucked Max’s blanket around him. “Just curious what’s to become of them.”

  “They won’t die, if that’s what you’re asking. Not right away anyway. Need the old man to tell us how to run the factory and to keep that Ministry money coming. They’ll stay in the barn closest to the house for now.”

  “You think you know it all, don’t you?”

  He ran a dirty finger down my hand. “One word from me and you’ll be gutting fish in a work camp, so be nice to me, Inka.”

  He stepped closer, his cheek scar shining in the morning light. “Watch yourself, girl. Taras may throw you out and then you’re left with me. There are worse things, you know.” He pulled my hand to his crotch, the fabric hard and damp.

  I snatched my hand away.

  He glanced in Mamka’s direction and kept his voice low. “And by the way, don’t think I don’t know about you and Taras. He told me all about your arrangement….”

  “Quiet, Vladi.”

  “I was surprised a nice girl like you would do that with him. Even dogs know better, don’t you think? But I have to say I like the sound of it.” His shiny red tongue darted to the side of his mouth. “I’ll keep it to myself for now, but what would people think if they knew you two were—”

  Max cried and startled us both. He sat up next to Mamka and took in his surroundings, his curls flattened down one side of his head from sleep.

  Vladi stood. “Whose kid?”

  I smoothed one hand down Max’s cheek. “The gamekeeper’s son.”

  “Gamekeeper was at least eighty years old with a pecker soft as those groats.”

  “His grandson maybe. Everything’s in such a mess now over at the estate.”

  Vladi snapped his suspenders onto his shoulders. “You want freedom, you have to crack some eggs.”

  Taras rushed in the door, his linen shirt stuck to his chest with sweat. He grabbed his canvas bag and waved Vladi to him. “Hurry.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  Taras stopped at the door, turned, and fixed upon Max with a hard stare. “I meant what I sa
id, Varinka. Get rid of the child or I will.”

  The two rushed out and Mamka and I stepped to the window and watched them ride off.

  Mamka turned to me. “It’s not safe here for the boy.”

  “Taras is all talk.”

  “He is unstable, Varinka, and when Vladi finds out who the child really is—”

  I sat next to Max on the bed and smoothed one finger under his chin. “Who would touch a sweet child?”

  CHAPTER

  21

  Eliza

  1916

  Soon after our disastrous trip up to The Hay, I visited Julia Marlowe and her husband E. H. Southern at their lovely home called Wildacres, in the better part of the Catskills. Still feeling Caroline’s chill and barred from most public gatherings due to deep mourning, I was at my wits’ end in the city and accepted the invitation at once. I’d already persuaded the Grand Hotel up in the Catskills near Julia to take six Russian women and hoped Julia would employ three more.

  I rode the West Shore Railroad north along the Hudson River. Parties at Julia’s Manhattan townhouse were always gay and brimming with exotic types. Would the country be equally festive? The gray hustle of the city gave way to unparalleled autumn scenery of the Hudson River Valley, the trees along the river splashed with scarlet and gold. Perhaps it was for the best that Caroline refused to come along. Maybe we needed time apart.

  I unfolded The New York Sun from my bag and scanned the news. With the help of their new tanks the British had swept Germany, and German morale was flagging. Perhaps the war was turning in the Allies’ favor? With any luck passenger ships would be sailing again soon and I could go abroad in search of Sofya.

  Once I disembarked at Highmount Station, Julia’s driver motored me up a steep mountain to a most attractive, grand cottage, painted top to toe in white. It was an extreme sort of bungalow, constructed half in wood, half in stone, with a pleasant confusion of roof lines and a spacious veranda facing a broad lawn. We pulled under the porte cochere and soon a multitude of servants emerged and pulled my luggage from the car.