All the Winters After (11 page)

TWENTY-SIX

Gilly waved from behind the reception area and told Snag that Lettie was reading in her room, but by the time Snag got there, Lettie was asleep, the book lying open. Snag wanted desperately to talk to her, but ever since Lettie had revealed that she'd been going out to the homestead all these years, Snag couldn't catch her awake. She worried that her mom was slipping away, but everyone else, including Gilly and Kache, insisted that she was sharper than ever, that the dementia seemed to be fading rather than getting worse. Snag had bad timing, it seemed.

She plopped down in the chair. “I suppose I'll just sit here and wait.” She listened to her mom's breathing; she'd been breathing ninety-eight years. Snag knew she was lucky to have her mom that long, but still, she couldn't imagine life once she was gone. “What will I do without you?”

Lettie opened one eye. “Perhaps,” she said, “you will start living your
own
life.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Eleanor, why in the world would you sit here on this gorgeous day and watch an old woman sleep?”

“Because I want to talk to you. About the homestead and the Russian woman and Kache and all of it. I want to apologize for not going out there. For lying to you all these years.”

“I don't look at it like that. I'm your mother. And I'm the one who owes you an apology.”

“What on earth for?”

Lettie started to prop herself up on her thin arms, wickered with veins, and Snag fluffed the pillow and helped her get readjusted. “Well, as far as the lying goes, you might say I've been doing the same thing. I didn't put it on the table, you see. I was waiting for you to come to me and talk. It's like when you were a baby. Glenn took off walking on his own, but you just sat on your rump, happy to play with your sweet little hands or anything I would give you. You didn't have to chase after a thing. And if I'd let you sit there, you'd probably be sitting there still. But I started collecting pretty objects and holding them in front of you until they caught the light just so and then caught your eye. When I saw that you were taken by something, I set it just beyond your reach. And I kept moving it until you finally crawled on your hands and knees and, eventually, pulled yourself up on your feet.”

“So I was slow to walk. What does that have to do with anything?”

“I should have pushed you more, Eleanor.”

“What, did you want me to run for the Senate?”

“Of course not. The Senate. Pish. No, I should have pushed you toward the truth. Toward not giving a care what people think of you. You, dear, beautiful Eleanor.” Lettie reached out and ran her hand along Snag's hairline, the way she did when she was little.

Snag lied once again and said, “Mom, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“But you do. Because
I've
suspected since you were about fourteen years old and known without a doubt since you were twenty-one. I still don't understand exactly why you couldn't go out to the homestead, but I have my theories. I just want you to be happy, Eleanor.”

Snag's heart started thrumming loudly in her ears, so loudly that she had to strain to hear.

“We can't help who we love,” her mom went on, “but we can help how we live. And you've been living like you made that plane go down. And as someone who's had more time on this earth than she deserves, who's staring down the barrel, I'm here to tell you life is way, way too short for this nonsense.”

So there it was. Lettie was holding Snag's heart in her hand, tilting it this way and that until it caught the light and was reflecting a prism into Snag's eye. There it was, in all its pulsing glory—Snag's own old heart. Squeezed now, in the palm of her mother, just out of her reach. She felt as vulnerable as the fat baby she'd once been. She still didn't know how to speak the words. But she could walk, so Snag got up and, on her own two feet, walked out the door.

She bumped smack into Gilly, who was heading in with a small paper cup of Lettie's pills. The pills spilled all over the speckled linoleum. The two women crouched down on their hands and knees to pick them up, crawling here and there until they found every last one.

LAND
OF THE
MIDNIGHT SUN

2005

TWENTY-SEVEN

And so they continued, as the couple of weeks Kache had planned to stay turned into a month, and then into late June. They had agreed that he would return in the mornings after a stop by Lettie's and help Nadia around the property before leaving sometime after dinner to stay with Snag. Sometimes Nadia was warm and talkative, and other times she would grow quiet or disappear for hours at a time. If he pressed her with too many questions, she'd stop the conversation either by leaving or using her standard line: “It is difficult to talk of this.” But all in all, Kache felt that she was becoming more comfortable with having him around, and surprisingly, he liked being there.

Whenever Kache went down to the root cellar, he ran his fingers along the wall, checking for Nadia's newest carved tally. He'd bought her a 2005 calendar,
Twelve Artists Paint Alaska
. He'd hung it on the kitchen wall, but that hadn't stopped her from her markings. Each day, there was another thick line made in the wood. Ten years or so of lines: that meant around 3,650 carved lines. So much time and mystery carved in those crevices. Would she stay another ten years, and then another? And what would she do once she ran out of wall? Would she engrave her lines in the kitchen, the living room, up the stairs to the bedrooms?

And how long would he stay, now that his two weeks had long passed?
As long as she needed help
, he'd told himself early on. But it quickly became apparent Nadia was helping him and not the other way around, because she knew how to do everything herself, and he knew how to do practically nothing. It was similar to the old days working with his dad, only Nadia was much more gracious and patient about teaching him, and—Kache had to admit—he tried much harder than his teenage self ever had. He was glad to note that all those hours of watching the Do-It-Yourself Network had not been a complete waste. When he held a hammer or screwdriver, his hands no longer turned into flippers. At least, not all the time. Yes, he did have a purple thumbnail and had taken a scary-ass misstep on the roof but caught himself before he fell off. Greg Barrow had ordered parts for Kache's dad's truck, and after several tries, Kache had managed to get it and the tractor running, clear the road, and, with Nadia working alongside him, finish a half dozen other projects he'd never thought he could tackle—or, at least, had never wanted to.

The warmer weather had eradicated every last patch of old snow and dried up the mud. The days lengthened so rapidly that it was as if someone tugged on each end, stretching them like taffy. He'd forgotten the way you could step outside to wash the truck and not realize until you stepped back in and looked at the clock that it was nearing midnight. Alaska created a seasonal bipolarism he couldn't deny. Summer meant fifteen-hour workdays. Energy bounced from the sun to this part of the earth and back continuously, coursing through him as it traveled in both directions. He saw himself transforming from an Alaskan Clark Kent, wearing flannel and wool socks, wrapped in a quilt by the fire, to the other dude in tights. Kache almost felt the cape fluttering behind him as he turned the wheelbarrow up toward the garden plot. He'd forgotten the miracle of this season's transformation. Not a blessed thing went untouched. The world went into fast-motion photography mode. One day, the trees' branches shivered bare, and the next, they were blanketed with buds. If he stood still long enough, he could witness those buds growing, bursting forth, unfolding to warm their faces in the sun.

All along the bench of land above the bay, fireweed spread like its namesake, setting the slope ablaze in the most vibrant fuchsia. In this land known for everything large and majestic—mountains, eagles, glaciers, bears, even its mosquitoes, which Alaskans called the state bird—the tiny, pale state flower popped up everywhere, those delicate sky-colored forget-me-nots with their pinpointed yellow centers, as if the sun had sacrificed a part of itself in order to anoint each one with a sacred droplet of light.

The place was getting to Kache. No, the place
in the summer
was getting to him, he reminded himself, barely able to recall the gray storms that had stuck around for most of breakup and kept them shivering, ducked under rain gear for days on end.

But a good summer had set in, and now it was mostly sun splashing down. It seemed that the birds never stopped singing—at the moment, a hermit thrush and kinglet were competing for the lead solo. And Nadia never stopped moving, never stopped foraging. Bending, picking, reaching, digging, pinching, plucking. Baskets, nets, pouches, slings, bags, backpacks—all filled and emptied and filled again. She knew the names, the functions, the recipes. She was wisdom and knowledge without a hint of the bored or accustomed. Always, her sense of discovery. Finding a mushroom, she'd act as excited as if it were her first one, but then she'd rattle off enough information to fill a guidebook.

She had collections of seeds: cabbage, kale, oak leaf lettuce, onions, potatoes, broccoli, carrots, and rhubarb. Plus flowers: pansies and marigolds, goldenrod and nasturtiums. She refused to go into town, but when Kache came back one warm early afternoon with pumpkin, acorn squash, and zucchini seeds, she smiled, the biggest smile yet.

She set down the hoe and took the packets in her hands. “To grow a giant pumpkin, I have always wanted this,” she said.

“So it could magically turn into a horse and carriage and whisk you away from here?” He began reattaching the chicken wire that had been pulled down—probably by a moose—along the top of the fence.

“No. So I could carve the scary face and light it with candles and set on the porch.”

He grinned. “For those hundreds of trick-or-treaters we get—
you
get—out in the middle of nowhere.”

She shook her head, handed the seed packets back to him. “I saw photos in your mother's magazine.
Sunrise
? No,
Sunset
magazine. Jack lanterns and trickers. They made this impression on me. I'd never before seen.”

“You know, a lot of people think Halloween is the devil's holiday. With your upbringing, do you pay attention to any of that?”

She gave him a long look. She said, “Kache, I have known the devil. Pumpkin? It does not scare me.” She turned away and resumed attacking the soil.

Despite the midday sun, a chill skittered down his back. “Okay then. We will grow an Alaskan-size jack-o'-lantern.”

“Will you still be here to help me carve it, when it grows?”

This was the first time Nadia had asked him of his plans. The truth was that he had none, other than doing more of what he was doing. He probably needed to take a trip to Austin, if just to tie up some loose ends—sell his car, pick up the rest of his stuff from Janie's. But he didn't need to stay there for a job. He had enough money to keep the homestead going and pay the taxes and, eventually, maybe build some wilderness cabins he could rent out to tourists, somewhere far enough away on the four hundred acres that the house wouldn't lose its privacy. Vague ideas, but far from a plan.

So he said, “As far as I know, yes, I'll be here. What about you?”

“I am here to stay as long as you allow me.”

He knew she probably meant the word
stay
quite literally, as in not crossing her foot over the property line. He'd kept gently offering to take her into Caboose, but she adamantly refused. “Nadia, what if you had to leave? Where would you go?”

She set her shoulders back and held the hoe straight alongside her. “To San Francisco.”

That was fast. “Wouldn't you like to give it some thought first?”
And wait. How will you get to San Francisco when you won't even talk about venturing the five miles to the main road, let alone into Caboose?
“I mean, you don't even want to go into our little town.” He knew he shouldn't have brought this up again, but he couldn't stop himself. He went on. “Don't get me wrong. You can stay here as long as you like. My family appreciates all you've done. But don't you want to peel yourself off of this particular rock?” He took a deep breath and asked, “Does this devil you refer to live in town?”

She pulled her bandana from her jeans pocket—
his
jeans pocket, actually—and wiped her forehead. “I am going to prepare for us some lunch,” she said and left.

He'd pushed too hard again. Someone had obviously scared her into staying put, like Lettie thought. Nadia showed a keen interest in the world, delighted with most of what he brought her each day: always a newspaper and a magazine, along with supplies—gasoline for his dad's old power tools, seeds, different foods to try, even a dairy cow they named Mooze, though she insisted she loved the goats' milk and had served him the delicious cheese she made from it. She'd gotten used to most of the food he bought from the store and even wrote up a list of requests. But other than the mention of San Francisco—
San Francisco? Really?
—she seemed bent on spending her entire life in isolation. All he could do was help her continue to be as self-sufficient as possible. Helping someone be
self
-sufficient. Someone who had already mastered it. Not exactly a calling.

If he couldn't take her out into the world, how much of the world to bring in? There was the question of a computer and the Internet, now available on most of the peninsula. Cable television. (His own addiction gave him pause on that one. Perhaps just upgrade the old VCR to a DVD player for movies?) It was possible now to wire in the world. She was knowledgeable, not only about how to survive by yourself on a homestead, but also much more. She'd read their books, watched their movies, listened to their albums. She'd had plenty of time, and she'd used it well.

He took off his work gloves and headed toward the house. He'd help with lunch and wouldn't say anything more about Caboose.

The windows were open, and Neil Young's voice greeted him as he stepped onto the porch. She would often put an album on the stereo when they'd come in from work. Listening to the old albums intensified the feeling of time travel he kept dipping in and out of; the scratchy sound of the vinyl made it seem as though life spun around and around, and you could almost drop in on a specific groove and replay your favorite days.

Inside, he saw that Nadia already sat at the table, eating. He untied his boots and lined them next to hers.

As he washed his hands, hunger and fatigue simultaneously hit him. He fell into the other chair and thanked her for the lunch—a salmon sandwich bordered by a pile of homemade potato chips. Though Nadia admitted she liked the Lay's he'd brought home, she still insisted on making her own, and soon, he too was eating the homemade chips instead.

Neil Young crooning “Old Man.” His dad in one of his lighthearted moments doing his best Neil impression, which was amazingly good. Denny sat at this same worn spruce table with his head in
The Old Farmer's Almanac
, their mom curled in her red-checked chair with her feet tucked under her, writing in her journal. The fire popped and sputtered. Everyone was tired; everyone was full. It was late autumn, and they'd been working hard to get the last of the harvesting done before the freeze set in, the last of the hay bales into the barn. Even Kache had worked hard that day. Whether his dad had noticed, Kache wasn't sure. But his dad seemed to be in good spirits. He poured himself and Bets a scotch on the rocks, toasted her, and sat down in his chair in his stocking feet. Glenn Winkel was a good-looking man. Shorter and thicker than Kache, close to Denny in size and stature, with dark, mostly straight hair that fell in one wave onto his forehead. He was clean-shaven with sideburns.

“I'm a lot like you…” his dad sang along with Neil. “Hey, Kachemak. I hardly recognized you, sitting there empty-handed. Where's your guitar, Son?”

Kache shrugged. He didn't trust this unprecedented interest in his music. But his father's eyes shone, and he smiled. Then he stood in front of Kache, holding his guitar out to him. He hadn't remembered his dad ever touching it before. “Can you play me this song? Would you?”

Kache nodded, took his guitar into his hands. It was the first and last time his dad ever asked him to play, and Kache played and played for him—with all the soul and love and attention he could muster.

Kache was so entrenched in this memory that when he came back to the present, he saw, for the first time in twenty years, his old guitar, floating ghostlike in front of him. He recoiled. It was Nadia's hand on its neck, holding his guitar out to him. The guitar he'd been sure
not
to look for since he'd returned. “Will you play it? Can you play me this song?”

He grabbed the guitar and pulled it away from her.
Can you play me this song? What?

He wanted to say,
Quit fucking with me
. Instead, he said, “Is this some kind of joke?”

Her eyebrows darted up, and her hand went flat against her collarbone. “No, there is no laughing.”

“Where did you find this? Why did you ask me to play that song?” It took all his restraint to ask this without yelling.

“Kache, wait. I am apologizing.”

“Isn't it enough that you live in my house? Do you have to live in my messed-up head too?”

“I do not mean to hurt you. I—”

He didn't hear the rest, because he wedged the guitar under his arm, grabbed his boots, slammed the front door, stepped into the boots without tying them, and drove away too fast. He knew he was overreacting. Still, on the way to Snag's, he kept shaking like a birch leaf in a wind storm.

But Nadia hadn't known what those words would bring up. He already felt like an idiot for leaving her like that. There was also the ugly fear that he might be losing his mind. His guitar leaned against the passenger seat, turned slightly as if observing him, as if it might break out into its own rendition of “Hello Old Friend.”