All the Winters After (14 page)

THIRTY-TWO

Snag stood on her front step, gripping the banister. Faint guitar music trickled from inside. These had been the strangest couple of weeks she'd ever experienced, and things were only getting stranger. She was lodged in a slingshot, pulled back, back, back. All this tension, pulling, resistance. Pretty soon, she'd have to change her name to Snap.

But there it was, and you had to love it: Kache picking up the guitar again. Playing. She pressed her ear to the door and listened. The music worked like a massage on her temples, her shoulders, her arms. Even her grip on the doorknob relaxed. What a gift that boy had. That
man
, she reminded herself once again, not
boy
. He was a grown man now. And she was an old, tired, stressed-out woman, suddenly feeling not so tired, not so stressed-out.

“If you feel the need to hide

I'll cover you and go bare.

If you can't walk another mile

On my back I'll take you there.

“If you can't cross the water

I'll lie down and be your bridge.

And if you lose all hope and vision

I'll paint the sky from edge to edge.”

When the music stopped, Snag wiped her eyes and then her feet and opened the door. Kache sat on the edge of the sofa, the guitar still on his knee. He jumped up, a little embarrassed, a little pleased too, she decided.

She untied her laces and set her shoes next to Kache's boots. “Oh, good,” she said. “I was afraid your gorgeous playing was just a forlorn memory acting up. But it was real, Kache. Real.” She hugged him and his guitar with one wrap of her arms. “It sounds like you never stopped.”

“Thanks, but no. I'm beyond rusty. Still, I've got to admit, it feels good.”

She sat in the rocking chair by the woodstove. The cat jumped onto her lap. She liked coming home to a warm house. “I don't remember that song, and it's beautiful.”

“Thanks. Something I'm working on. Where were you?”

“Oh, I left the same note sitting there from last night because I was at the same place.”

“The Spit Tune again?”

“Gilly's been playing therapist for me. She gives good advice, and all it costs me is to buy her a Sexy City or whatever-you-call-it drink. Then we listen to the band play.”

“How are they?”

“All right. They'd be a helluva lot better if you were playing with them.”

He shook his head. “I'm already spending my days in the same house I did as a teenager. If I start playing with them again, I'm liable to start breaking out in acne and having to take ridiculously long showers.”

Snag snorted. “Oh, stop it, Kache.” It was better than wonderful to have him playing again, and he seemed lighter every day. “Speaking of the house, should I plan on a trip out soon?”

He was back to picking out a tune on his guitar, just playing background to his thinking. “I guess it's about time. It's just… Nadia. I know it sounds strange, but I have to prepare her. She knows a lot, but she's experienced so little. I'm going to get us hooked up to the Internet.”

“Ugh. Does it have to take over every single corner of the world?”

“Yeah, I know. But it might help Nadia. And I just bought us both cell phones that get good reception.”

“Kache? Are you going back to Austin?”

He told her how he'd received a couple of friendly emails from Janie asking about what to do with his car and his stuff in her garage. She'd been patient, and so he needed to book a flight down there and sell his car, take care of the loose ends.

“Will Nadia be okay? Want me to check on her?”

Kache smiled. “Knowing her, she'll welcome the peace and quiet. I'll give her your phone number and ask her, but I'm guessing she'll want to be left alone. We should plan something after I get back—if she's ready. Gram asks about her and wants to go out there.”

“She doesn't ask me.” Snag set down the cat. “I guess she gave up on me taking her. Besides, I'm not sure she's really strong enough.”

“Did you ever hear back from the doctor about her pink pill? Or Gilly? Because I think she flushes the pink ones.”

“She better not. Not if she wants to live. It's the new one for her blood pressure.”

“Like I said before, she doesn't want to live if she's not right in her head, and she's convinced that those pills make her delirious. And I think she's probably right. Isn't there an alternative?”

“I asked. I haven't heard back from her doc, but I'll ask again.”

“Aunt Snag?” Kache laid the guitar next to him on the sofa. “Why didn't you ever go out to the homestead anyway?”

She chose her words carefully. “Lots of reasons, I guess. What about you? Just wanted to forget?”

“If it hadn't been for that fight my dad and I had the night before… and then the next day, he kept apologizing, and I wouldn't talk to him. If I hadn't been such a prick, I think Dad would have been able to fly the plane better, even in that cloud cover.”

Snag stared at Kache. Wait.
He'd
been feeling guilty all this time? “Oh, hon.” Her throat barely let the words out. “Hon, it's not your fault. You have to believe that.”

But he didn't say any more, just kept playing.

Snag went to change into her pajamas and robe and slippers. Alone in her room, the gravity of what she now knew pressed down on her, demanding she take a seat on the edge of the bed. Kache had felt responsible, and she had let him. Unforgivable. While he tried out different melodies, she planned how she'd tell him the story. So she was a lesbian. So what? Kache was a thoughtful, evolved person. She doubted that would shake up his world too much. It was the being in love with his mother part she'd rather continue to keep to herself. Because that led to an even bigger screwup, the stupidest thing she'd ever done, the one deed she would do anything, everything, to take back. It was the thing she hadn't told anyone—not Gilly, not Lettie—and it was what ended up ruining Kache's life. Ruined it in even more ways than she'd imagined.

THIRTY-THREE

In the two weeks Kache was gone to Texas, Nadia was surprised first by the return of the quiet and then how, after several days, it began to unsettle her. On the fourth day, he called. When they hung up, he reminded her to keep her cell phone charged, and so she plugged it in and found herself waiting beside it in the evening for his call, which came every night thereafter. She would tell him about her day—what vegetables she'd harvested and what fish she'd caught and the silly things the goats had done and how the weather had been. One day, she paced in front of the phone, hardly able to wait to tell him she'd seen two orcas leaping out of the bay. “At first, I thought they were strange birds with giant wingspan, but then I see that is only their tails,” she told him. “Then they burst forth like huge, hidden joy. ‘What a lark! What a plunge!' as Clarissa would say.” She'd been rereading
Mrs. Dalloway
once again to fill the lonely evenings.

Kache would tell her about the people he dined with and all the different kinds of food he'd had, and he complained about the thick heat and loud city noises and traffic, but she asked him to hold the phone so she could hear the honking and sirens and talking and laughter, imagining what it would be like to sit with him on a patio outside a restaurant on a warm evening.

And then, finally, he came back.

She heard the truck door slam and raced down the stairs and flung open the door. He was crouched over, taking off his boots. When he stood, she felt her smile drop.

“You came back.”

“I told you I would.”

“But…”

She saw his smile drop too. “Aren't you glad to see me?” he asked.

“Yes, but…”

“I can leave if you—”

“No, but…”

“What is it, Nadia? What's wrong?” Her hand went to her chin, and he laughed. “The beard? You don't like me embracing my inner mountain man?”

She kept her eyes locked on his feet. It was more than that. She could not bear to look at him.

“I forgot my razor at Snag's and thought I'd just go for it. Everyone in Austin liked it. They say I'm not a computer geek anymore. And speaking of computers…”

She turned and went to the kitchen, picked up a pan to scrub, and scrubbed furiously. What she thought was that her revulsion was ridiculous; they looked nothing alike. But what she knew was that she could not stand the beard another minute.

“I'll shave it tomorrow. My razor's at Snag's.”

“Come with me,” she said and led the way upstairs.

She motioned for him to sit on the closed lid of the toilet. His eyebrows arched up, but he sat. From the shelf above, she took down the old razor and mug and soap brush.

Kache grimaced. “That old thing is my great-grandfather's. At least let me look for my dad's or Denny's.” But he sat back, and his changing expression told her that although Denny and Glenn were rugged Alaskan men, both of them shaved every day, even when they went on hunting trips. Their razors were buried in plane rubble on a mountain.

“This will work,” Nadia told him. She rinsed the dust out of the mug and stuck in a small bar of soap that smelled of lemons, ran the wet brush over the soap until there was enough to lather Kache's face. She took the razor in her hand and flipped it open.

“Have you ever done this before?” he asked.

“No.”

“Let me.”

“No.” She turned the water on and, when it was warm to her touch, plugged the sink.

“Nadia?”

She looked straight into his eyes with a willfulness she hadn't before experienced. She had to do this, and he had to let her. That was all there was to it.

He must have understood, because after that, he kept his eyes straight ahead while his knee bumped up and down. She turned off the water. He held his breath while Nadia touched her hand to his forehead, tilted his head back, and assessed the planes of his face.

“Are you sure you've never—?”

“Old Believer men do not shave, and Old Believer women are not allowed even to witness haircuts of men. So yes, I am sure. But I skin animals. You know I am good with knife.”

“I would rather not be skinned.”

“Now you are quiet.”

Water dripped rhythmically into the half-full sink. The overhead light reflected in the razor as she angled it and pressed it against Kache's face, in front of his ear.

She had missed him.

She scraped overlapping trails, concentrating on the smaller space between his nose and lips and in the crevice of his chin. She dipped the razor in the sink.

There was so much she wanted to tell him, but she didn't know how.

She lifted his chin, brought the blade to his throat. Kache swallowed, and their eyes met for an instant before his retreated to the cabinet ahead and hers to the curve of his Adam's apple.

So instead, she would do this: a tenderness attempting to replace the wreckage. Was she too ruined? If only she could still the trembling of her hand.

He swallowed again, and she scraped upward until the white suds were nothing but slivered remnants.

“Kache? Thank you.” A single teardrop escaped, and she caught it with the back of her wrist.

His eyebrows drew together. He started to reach out, but she stepped back, so he dropped his hand to his knee. “You're welcome.”

She dabbed his face with a towel. She handed him the mirror. She smiled.

She said, “There you are.”

THIRTY-FOUR

“So it is like television? I know about television,” Nadia said.

Kache saw her stocking-clad feet pacing back and forth from where he lay under his mom's old desk, hooking up the modem for the laptop. Maybe he should just start with the computer itself and leave the Internet out completely. After all, that's how he—and the rest of society, now that he thought about it—had gotten accustomed to the whole thing.

Nadia continued. “It was not allowed, the television. As you understand, not much was.”

“But I've heard of some Old Believers having television. Things change. Even in this house, which seems to have a supernatural resistance to change, change is upon us as we speak. Maybe your little religious village transformed into some cool bohemian colony of forward thinkers.”

“What have you been smoking?”

Kache laughed. “Where did you get
that
line?”

She lifted her shoulders. “I do not remember. Somewhere I read it.”

“What books have you read?”

“You mean of the ones in this house only, of course? I think you ask me which have I not read. And the answer would be—zero.”

“You've read them all? Even my mom didn't claim that.”

“Because she had all of you to talk with, yes? These books, they are my friends, my teachers, my family, my everyone. They keep me alive. Every one I have read at least once. Even
How to Care for Your Pet Turtle
. If I like a book, I read it at least twice. I started out, I turn each one upside down on shelf after I finish. Then right side up when I read again. But now I lose track. Some up, some down, some I read over once, some five times, I do not know.”

Kache wondered but didn't ask how many times she'd read
The Joy of Sex
. Probably not nearly as many times as he and Denny snuck it into Denny's closet, making fun of all the cooking metaphors and trying not to show how completely enthralled they both were by the drawings, let alone all the helpful information. What a goddamn gold mine that book had been to them. Then there was the other one. What was it? The yellow paperback.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (but Were Afraid to Ask)
. No pictures in that one that he remembered though, and he would have remembered.

She was saying something about getting more books. He said, “Maybe bringing the Internet in here isn't such a good idea.”

“Why?”

“Because most people today read
fewer
books because there's so much information streaming in. You won't believe how much you can access.”

“I cannot wait. I cannot.” Her face appeared underneath the desk, sideways. “How much longer?”

Her eyelashes had become his latest fascination. She had blond hair, but her lashes were dark and long and curled at the tips. Sometimes they made shadows on her cheeks. He'd been thinking of her differently since the night she shaved his face, but it was one-sided, apparently, because she acted as if they'd never shared those intimate, almost scary moments.
It was just a shave, and she's a committed hermit
, he once again reminded himself.
Get over it and get the computer hooked up.

He said, “Give me a few more minutes.”

She sat back at the kitchen table and resumed shelling the peas. Kache couldn't remember all they'd scheduled for this week, but canning was a priority item according to Nadia. Which meant she was planning on staying for the winter. Which meant that at some point, they needed to talk, because he'd decided he wasn't going back to Austin. Even Janie had said it looked like Alaska had been good to him.

It would be much easier if he stayed at the homestead instead of driving back to Snag's every night. There were three bedrooms, and they worked until midnight anyway, and they started early in the morning. And although Snag always made him feel at home, her place was small, and he was living out of his suitcase. However, asking Nadia if he could stay crossed a very thick, high border.

He should figure out this whole soft spot for the Old Believer squatting on the family property dilemma, but still he kept showing up every morning, helping and learning and enjoying the hell out of being on his family's memory-laden land. He had one foot so rooted in 1985, Denny might drive up any moment and give Kache one of his bear hugs. He'd say something like, “Hey, Moose Legs, the kings are running. Hurry up and bring your guitar. I'll lure in the fish, and you lure in the beautiful women.”

Kache now at least played the guitar without hearing the background of his father's yelling, and that was a start. Nadia had helped him overcome his fear of playing, and he wanted to help her overcome her own fears. She wouldn't speak of her past when he'd asked, so he'd tried to stop asking. But maybe he could convince her to take a step off the property. She was an Old Believer living in his old house, among all of his family's old possessions, but maybe, if he didn't screw up, maybe he could help her get a
new
lease on life. He'd like to at least try to pay her back for helping him find music again.

“I'll tell you what,” he said as he crawled out from under the desk. “I will let you explore the whole world on this computer, but I want you to do one thing first.”

“Teach you how to make goat cheese?”

“Come into town with me.”

She dropped the pea pod and stood.

He grabbed both hands before she ran upstairs. There had been the awkward handshake at the beach, and she'd touched his face, albeit mostly with a razor, but he had never touched her like this—hands to hands, skin to skin—and he felt her flinch. He tried to make eye contact, but she kept her eyes downward, and he suddenly wanted to feel those lashes against his rib cage. “Listen,” he said, trying to keep his mind on topic. “Caboose is a good stepping-stone. Don't you want to experience things firsthand before you see them on a screen? You've been to Caboose before, right? When you were a kid?”

She pulled her hands back, shoved them in her pockets, and nodded.

“Good. It's no metropolis, and we're slow to change, so things are pretty much the same. I'll be with you. You can wear a hat and sunglasses, and you don't have to talk to anyone if you don't want to. I'll just tell them you're my cousin. What do you say?”

She stared at him, shifting her weight back and forth, left to right.

“I will go if you promise to take me one place only.”

“Where?”

“I want to go to Lettie.”

What a moron I am
, he thought. “Of course,” he said. Of course that's where she'd want to go.