Lost Roses

by Martha Hall Kelly

  I leaned closer to hear, his voice soft and sweet.

  He looked up at me and I reached out and stroked the spot under his chin. The ridge was smoother and faded, but still there.

  “Maxwell, do you remember me?”

  He placed his hand on mine. How long had I hoped to feel that small hand again?

  Madame produced a sheaf of papers for me to sign. “I suppose Maxwell can be safely discharged into your care.”

  Warmth spread through me. I stood, signed the papers, and shook Madame’s hand. “Thank you.”

  I stepped to the chair and exchanged the dog fur coat for Mother’s sable, Varinka’s warmth still there in the silk.

  Mother.

  I held out my hand to Max. “Time to go.”

  He hesitated.

  “Come along. We are going to Aunt Eliza’s.”

  He looked up at me with his father’s smile and took my hand. “I knew you would come.”

  CHAPTER

  52

  Varinka

  1919

  It was near dark as I left Max’s school and ran along the Champs-Élysées past the Grand Palais, happy to finally end it all. I just needed to get to the closest bridge at the Seine. The swift river would help me do what had to be done. I hurried the best I could, coatless in my long sarafan, the cold air stinging my lungs.

  I replayed my goodbye to Max in my mind. How I would miss seeing his face every morning. Would he remember any of the good things? Our fun in Luxembourg Gardens? Mamka sewing him such handsome clothes?

  Surely, Sofya would tell him I was a bad person. That I took him from her.

  Tears froze on my eyelashes. I hugged my valise to my chest, which buffered the wind a bit.

  What would Radimir think when he heard what I’d done? The truth about Taras and me?

  I saw the river in the distance and picked up my pace. How would it happen? With an icy splash, years of hurt would finally end.

  Stepping onto the bridge, the wind pierced the layers of linen, I felt the cold of the stone through my woven shoes. There was not a soul out in that cold. There would be no witness to what fell into the dark waters there.

  Halfway across the bridge I stood, looking into the water, the stone railing waist high. I took a deep breath and pulled the handcuff key from my pocket. I stared at the silver glowing there in my palm. So much pain would go with it.

  I flipped the key into the air and watched it fall into the dark water. Even Taras would never find it there.

  I stood for a moment making sure the key sank and then left the bridge, valise to my chest, and walked on to meet my love.

  CHAPTER

  53

  Sofya

  1919

  Eliza started working on the visas for our trip to America right away, using every family contact and old favor she could. I mostly looked forward to the trip. After all, Varinka’s mother had predicted Max would only be safe under the torch and I assumed she meant Lady Liberty’s. But I missed Afon so terribly and couldn’t shake the feeling I was abandoning his memory by going even farther away from Russia.

  Eliza did all she could to help and served us breakfast in bed, had Madame Solange make us chocolate soufflés, and dropped everything to read Caroline’s children’s books to Max anytime he asked. Max and Luba picked up where they left off, often camping out together on his bedroom floor, her lap one of his favorite places. She helped me explain to Max what had happened, telling him his father was with his grandparents, up in the stars.

  I loved the feeling of my son’s hand in mine and held him close every chance I got, so grateful he was with me, safe.

  His first night home, as I turned out the lights, I felt his soft kiss on my cheek.

  “Good night, Maman,” he said, there in the darkness.

  It took me a moment to reply. “Good night, my darling boy.”

  * * *

  —

  AS SOON AS IT was safe I brought Max, under the cover of darkness, to the stables. I took no chances walking around in broad daylight. Washed and scrubbed and dressed in lovely borrowed clothes, I was even more at risk that Red agents in Paris would recognize me. Max as well.

  When I requested sugar, Madame Solange had reluctantly put two cubes in Max’s coat pocket, for to her mind they would be wasted on our mission. I still had money left over from the sale of my hair to pay the stable mistress. Was I too late? Had they taken good care of my dear Jarushka?

  Max and I stepped into the stables and the mistress I’d left Jarushka with met us. She eyed me with suspicion. Did she not recognize me without the dirty face and terrible dog fur coat?

  “I’ve come to talk to you about my horse Jarushka.”

  “You missed the deadline.”

  Tears filled my eyes. “But I was detained—”

  “You have no one to blame but yourself.”

  I knelt next to Max and buried my face in his shoulder.

  He stroked my hair.

  A young girl hurried out from the direction of the stalls. “Please do not take her away from me. She is the horse of my dreams and I cannot go a day without her.”

  “My daughter,” the stable mistress said. “Carmine.”

  I stood. “So, she’s alive? May we see her?”

  We followed the girl to Jarushka’s stall, to find her there munching oats from a bucket, a crown of dried lavender and herbs circling her head. We walked in, our steps soft on wood shavings, and she nuzzled my neck and then tried to munch on her crown.

  “Did you make her the pretty crown?”

  The girl nodded and wiped away tears with the back of her hand. “I brush her three times a day and she kisses me while I do it.”

  “You love her very much, I can see.”

  “I ride her in the park.”

  “Well, Carmine, I have to take a long trip. To America. Would you take care of her for me?”

  The girl brightened. “Oh, yes.”

  “I will write for her when the customs people say it is okay.” I handed her mother the money. “This should take care of—”

  The stable mistress waved the bills away. “No, merci.”

  I brought Max to stand near Jarushka. “Can you bring one hand, palm up, to her mouth? She’ll kiss you.”

  Max lifted his palm, Jarushka kissed it and then she dug her nose into the space between his coat collar and neck.

  “So soft.” He laughed and wiped his palm on the front of his jacket. “She remembers me.”

  Jarushka nuzzled his pocket and took a sugar cube.

  I ran one hand down her silky neck and she pawed the sawdust at her feet. Of course, she knew I was leaving. What a good friend she’d been.

  Max and I stepped out of the stall.

  “You be good for Carmine,” I told her.

  Carmine brushed Jarushka’s back with long strokes. “I will guard her with my life,” she called after us.

  Max and I hurried off, and I looked back through tears as Jarushka watched us go.

  CHAPTER

  54

  Sofya

  1920

  A few months after I found Max in Paris, in the spring of 1919, Luba and I brought him to America to live with Eliza at Gin Lane. She said it breathed new life into the old place and our arrival also pleased Eliza’s mother, who waited in the driveway with Caroline as we appeared, waving the Russian flag like a semaphore flagman on the deck of a destroyer.

  How good it was to see that house again, where Max had been born. Had Afon and my parents not just stood on that terrace five years earlier? It was good to be safe in America, but dark thoughts of Afon’s horrible death bubbled up at the most inopportune times and I missed my home. It was hard feeling connected to Russia so far away in the States. In France one could still feel close to home, but living in America the ma
il was so slow and made us feel farther still.

  But I made do on my own. I started a garden business and that summer earned almost enough money to rent a little place for Max, Luba, and me.

  Cook, living in upstate New York to get his chef’s license, had not been back to see us in the year since we’d arrived. I had many loving people in my life and put the amorous part of me away in a box.

  One fall afternoon before the benefit concert at Madison Square Garden all that changed. Caroline and Luba had helped arrange the event—for 780 orphaned Russian children who’d been torn from their homes. Threatened by invading armies of Bolsheviks and pushed into Siberia, the Red Cross sent the children on a worldwide journey via ship, through the Panama Canal and up to New York City. We gathered in the dining room as the whole household packed musical instruments and gifts into boxes to distribute to the children. Nancy and Peg helped Thomas, just back from his service in France, struggle to get boxes into Eliza’s mother’s car.

  I sat at the table checking their receipts as Caroline waved Eliza toward a cardboard box. “The guitars go there.”

  “Shouldn’t we give the poor things balalaikas instead?” Eliza asked.

  Caroline turned. What a lovely young woman she was becoming. Shy, but never timid, at seventeen so tall and slender, grown up in her dark gray suit. “They want guitars, Mother. To play American music.”

  “Twenty-seven guitars—” Luba said.

  Caroline checked her list. “And one flute.”

  Eliza’s mother smiled. “Ah, good. A nonconformist.”

  “We’ll never make it in time,” Eliza said. “The curtain’s at six and Julia’s meeting us there.”

  “Relax, Mother. Granny’s driving. She’ll have us there in record time.”

  Max, now a solid six-year-old, pedaled a little motorcar around the downstairs. As if he were a new child, he motored, the rubber tires quiet on the wood floors, out onto the veranda and around the backyard.

  Luba tossed a doll into a box. “Better be careful or Max will drive that car into Manhattan.”

  At sixteen Luba was already as tall as Father had been and rivaled Caroline in height. Still dressed in her pink-striped junior nurse uniform from the hospital, she conferred with Caroline every now and then, taking her role as co-organizer seriously.

  “No more riding, Max,” I called after him. “Wash your hands for tea.”

  “Can’t he ride a bit more?” Luba asked. “It’s such a pretty day.”

  “He needs limits, Luba. He feels safer that way.” How much more secure I felt about my parenting and my son thrived for it.

  “Mrs. Montessori would be proud,” Luba said and waved a letter from the post. “The change of name form came today.”

  I didn’t have to say what we all knew. Across the Atlantic in New York we were safer than ever, but Bolshevism had taken deeper root in Russia and the safety of émigrés of noble birth was still not guaranteed. Plus, after the Bolsheviks triumphed in Russia a fear grew in America that they too would succumb to the rising tide of Communism. As the wave of anti-Russian sentiment in America grew, changing our names gave us the anonymity I craved.

  Luba opened the envelope. “How strange you can just change your name in this country.”

  “We call it freedom,” Eliza’s mother said.

  Luba pulled a pencil from her pocket and smoothed the form onto the sideboard. “I’ve always wanted to be named Lyra. It means Greek harp. Lyra’s star Vega is the brightest in the night sky.”

  “Of course, you have to be the brightest,” I said.

  “Lyra it is,” she said, writing. “Perhaps you could take the name Hydrus, Sofya. It means water snake.”

  “Thank you, sister.”

  She poised the pencil above the paper. “So, what will Max’s new name be?”

  “How about Cepheus?” Caroline asked. “It means king.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He already thinks he rules us all.”

  Eliza walked by carrying a saxophone in each hand. “How about John?”

  I laughed. “We need something Russian but friendly, pronounceable for Americans.”

  We were silent for a moment, the wild cry of gulls and terns the only sound.

  “Was his grandfather’s name not Serge?” Eliza asked.

  Luba fiddled with her pencil. “A bit boring, don’t you think?”

  “I like it,” I said.

  Luba wrote the name on the form. “Serge it is.”

  * * *

  —

  IT TOOK AN HOUR to load everyone up and by late afternoon Max and I waved them off to the concert. We enjoyed a lovely supper of cod straight from the Atlantic and Mr. Gardener’s late summer peas. Once I read him a storybook in Russian, after his long day of motoring, Max fell asleep quickly and I walked about the house turning lights on here and there, as Mother had always loved doing. It was her favorite ritual, almost a holy one, lighting a candle here, a kerosene lamp there, as night fell.

  I left the living room dark, sat on the smooth sofa, and listened to the waves crash upon the sand at regular intervals, a cool breeze from the open window playing about my bare arms. That time of night was always hardest, when thoughts of Afon crept out to haunt me. My rose sat on the sideboard perfuming the air, petals lifting gently in the light wind. Thanks to a new china pot it seemed happy to be back in its original home. What a trip that little plant had taken.

  A flash of headlights panned across the living room wall and I felt the distant thud of a car door closing. I stood. Mr. Gardener? Had Eliza’s group forgotten something?

  I stepped toward the front of the house as the front door banged shut.

  He entered the front hallway, the lamp on the table sending a pool of light on the floor.

  “It’s been a long time,” I said. “Good to see you.”

  “And you, Sofya.” Cook removed his hat, tossed it on the front table, and set down an enormous, framed certificate he carried.

  “I’m now officially certified to cook in the state of New York.”

  I smiled. “Apparently if you survive carrying the diploma home you’re free to prepare whatever you like.”

  “I received an A in chopping vegetables and now know ten ways to stretch a pot roast.”

  How nice it was to see him. What was that look on his face? Happiness? Ambivalence? Suddenly self-conscious, I looked anywhere but at him.

  “I’m sorry about Afon,” he said.

  I folded my arms across my chest and nodded, afraid more words would bring tears.

  “And about leaving you in Malinov. I couldn’t get back—”

  “Eliza told me.”

  “Your parents…”

  “I still can’t believe it’s true.”

  Cook stepped toward me. “You cut your hair.”

  I nodded.

  “It suits you.”

  I smoothed one hand down my short cut. “I won’t be Sofya much longer. We’re thinking about changing our names. Luba is now Lyra. I’ve decided on Vivian. What do you think?”

  “Do what you want, but I think you’re overreacting. No Reds will care about you here. I can’t call you all by other names.”

  “You will if you care about us.”

  He stepped to me, took my hand, and kissed the palm.

  “You’re shaking,” he said.

  His left hand was bare, his famous ring gone. Lost? Sold or stolen along the way?

  “Your ring—”

  “We had to part ways. But now I have enough money to open my own place. I know how many restaurants fail, but I’m taking the chance.”

  “Where?”

  “Here in town. I could use a partner.”

  “I’ve started a business myself. Just flowers but it—”

  “I think you kno
w what kind of partner I mean, Sofya. Maybe once you feel better. I know losing him cuts deep.”

  “I’m trying,” I said, drying my eyes on my bare wrist.

  He wrapped his arms around me. “Just try and love your life, Sofya. I think he would have wanted that.”

  I lay my cheek against his white shirt, and took in his scent, of men’s talc and bay rum. How lucky I was to have someone so generous. But why could I not throw my arms about his neck and kiss him?

  “Be patient with me,” I said.

  “Forever, Vivian.”

  CHAPTER

  55

  Eliza

  1920

  How wonderful it was to have Sofya and her family safely settled in at Gin Lane that autumn. After a few weeks Caroline asked if we could visit The Hay up in Bethlehem. I agreed, knowing she would be surprised by all the long-distance renovations I’d organized. Peg was in on the surprise and had kept the good bit of carpentry I’d arranged a secret. I sent her and Mr. Gardener ahead to prepare for our arrival.

  Thomas drove us up to The Hay, Caroline in the front seat with him discussing politics. It was one of those first crisp autumn days that felt like fall, the leaves just starting to turn.

  When we pulled into the crushed-stone driveway I almost didn’t recognize the house, since local craftsmen had carried out all of my renovation directives. A cow brought in from Woodbury grazed on the front lawn and The Hay wore a fresh coat of white paint, the shutters glossy black, and a new cedar shingle roof that was still caramel brown, not yet weathered gray. The three barns to the right of the property had been painted as well and stood ready to host any number of animals.

  Caroline ran to the front of the house across the long sweep of lawn that swept down to Bird Tavern. Now an upper-schooler, Caroline was especially proud to wear her Chapin School uniform, a more grown-up white blouse, dark green tie and skirt, and a belted jacket.