All the Winters After (15 page)

THIRTY-FIVE

She asked him to pull over so she could vomit. Her nerves, the passing trees with their long shadows, the bumpy road. Afterward, while she leaned against the truck, trying to breathe in enough fresh air to make the ground stop feeling like the bottom of a boat, he handed her a bottle of water and some gray, fabric-covered elastics. “Wristbands,” he said, “for car sickness. Hold out your hands.” He started to put one band on but stopped. “Okay if I help you?” She nodded, and he showed her where to place them so the white plastic button hit between the two corded veins in her wrist. She concentrated so she wouldn't react by pulling away again when his skin touched hers. The new calluses on his fingertips felt like a cat's tongue, but his pressure was light and sure. “I bought them for you a few weeks ago and stuck them in the glove compartment and, like an idiot, forgot about them until now. I'm sorry. Did you always get sick?”

“I should have brought pickle. That's what my grandmother always gave us for car rides.”

“It's probably just because it's been so long since you've been in a moving vehicle.”

“I am better somewhat now.” She really didn't want to be standing on the side of the road, exposed to anyone from the village who might drive by, although they probably wouldn't recognize her; she wore jeans and a jacket, a baseball hat of Denny's, and Bets's old sunglasses. Her hair was tucked up into the hat. Still, she wanted the coverage of the truck's cab.

Kache was nervous too, she could tell, even though he was trying to hide it. He didn't know what to expect of her as much as she didn't know what to expect of the town. She had been here as a child, but then when her family moved deeper into the woods, their trips became more infrequent, and then Vladimir had forbidden her to go at all. But she wasn't supposed to tell her family that, so she feigned a headache or a chore she must get done whenever someone invited her along, making it even longer than ten years, more like twelve years, since she had been.

From what she could see, the town was basically the same. There were more stores and a big new building with a sign that said
The Slim Gym
. More motor homes, more people, but Caboose had not changed nearly as much as she had.

The nausea had subsided, and her head filled with the shifting colors and the laughter and the smells of food cooking and fish and cinnamon and exhaust and even perfume. Music playing from a street band and, at the same time, coming from a motor home's radio created a strange harmony. A dog barked, and another one answered, and she worried again about Leo, if he would be okay left alone in the house. He had never been without her before.

Kache turned up the hill and into an almost vacant lot and parked. “Ready?”

“No,” she said, but she opened her car door anyway.

They approached a building with big glass doors, which slid open for them. The warm air hit her, along with the aromas of bacon and coffee mixed with cleaning products and the urine smell of a bathroom that needed to be cleaned. She felt a little queasy again. Kache led the way, stopping to talk to old people sitting in wheelchairs or making their way down the hall, taking slow half steps with canes or leaning on metal contraptions.

So much to see. She tried taking off her sunglasses, but even then, she could not focus on any one thing; it seemed like an abstract painting in one of Elizabeth's art books. Kache was introducing her, which made her uncomfortable, so she replaced her glasses and nodded and stayed behind him. She did hear one man ask, “Where's your guitar, boy?” and Kache replied that he would bring it tomorrow. He'd never mentioned playing for them.

He took her to a small room, where Lettie sat in a wheelchair, looking out at the view of the bay. Kache knelt beside her and said, “Hey, Gram. I brought someone.”

Lettie turned and smiled, but then her eyes grew wide behind her glasses. “Nadia!”

Nadia's shyness disappeared, and she bent to hug her. Lettie was the only person who had held Nadia in the past decade, and their embrace felt so familiar, even now, that Nadia sighed and tried unsuccessfully to will the tears away.

“How good of you to come. How brave. You leave the homestead now?”

Nadia and Kache exchanged a look. “This is my first time.”

“Your first time ever? And you came to this old, smelly place?”

“I missed you.”

Lettie gripped her hand. “I missed
you
. Look at you. Young and beautiful and strong and full of life. Tell me what you've been up to.”

So Nadia told her about the garden expansion and how the goats and chickens were doing and about the addition of the cow, Mooze. “And Leo has grown up to be a wonderful friend to me.”

Kache said, “Hey, me too.”

Lettie said, “Hey, you too have become a wonderful friend to her?”

Kache turned a shade of red. “Well, yeah, I guess so. I was talking about Leo. He's my buddy too. But Nadia and I are buddies, right, Nadia?”

She smiled, but she couldn't quite meet his eyes. Watching him interact with all the older people, and seeing his bond with Lettie… She'd never seen him with others like this, his goodness and kindness; he was the same with them as he had been with her.

“I miss those days working in the garden, going into town and chatting with the locals, even the tourists and all their wide-eyed wonder. Energy. I miss all that shared energy. Now you two get out of here and go enjoy some of it for me, will you? It goes by lickety-split.”

But they lingered and talked a bit more, until Lettie insisted she needed her nap. After they hugged good-bye, Lettie said, “Will you please help me convince my overprotective daughter and grandson that I can handle a road trip out to the homestead?” Nadia assured her she would try.

In the truck on the way back, Nadia fell quiet, thinking how all of those people who couldn't walk or see or remember their own names were stuck in one place and that, eventually, she would be too.

“Turn around this truck, please?”

Kache glanced in the rearview mirror and slowed down. “Did you forget something?”

“Yes.” She lifted her shoulders the way he always did. “I forgot to see the rest of Caboose.”

• • •

As they came back into town, Kache pointed to the glove compartment. “I bought earplugs too if you need them. I imagine Caboose might seem loud to you.”

“Haven't you heard the gulls and crows and blue jays when they're all bickering? But thank you for thinking of these things.”

“Even blue jays seem peaceful when you start hearing motorcycles and horns and fishermen shouting, so keep them in your pocket just in case.”

“I promise I will not start this tearing out of my hair and banging of my head against a post if it is loud.”

He smiled. “I'm so relieved.” He drove up and down, looking for a parking spot so they could walk along the spit. Colorful tents still lined the beach on the north side, where the Spit Rats, out of college for the summer, camped and worked at the fish processing plant. When Nadia was a little girl, she asked her mother if she could join them.

Kache said, “Maybe we should have come a different day of the week, or better, waited until fall. It's so crazy with all the tourists.”

“I like it,” she said. “Please, no worrying. I am fine.”

And she was more than fine while they browsed in shops overflowing with a kaleidoscope of bright things, things, things, and ate fish and chips and drank a beer and picked out gladiolas. (“My mother loved those,” Kache said, staring at her again, and Nadia had to stop herself from saying
I know
.) Tourists lined up for photographs alongside their enormous bear-size hanging halibuts.

A wonderland. Rows upon rows of docked boats, tourist shops, a handful of restaurants, a bar, and the still caboose, sitting at the end of the spit. And this was not San Francisco, not even close. She shut her eyes and tried to picture the Golden Gate Bridge, the Coit Tower, the pyramid—imagine a tall skinny mountain in the middle of a city!—the rivers of people, and the clanging cable cars.

“Let's go in,” Kache said, holding open the door of the caboose and motioning her inside.

It took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Old photographs and tools that the homesteaders used lined the shelves. It smelled like the inside of some of Elizabeth's oldest books. A slide show flashed onto one wall. An older woman sat behind the counter, talking on the phone. As Nadia looked around, she heard her hang up and say, “Look at you! How many years has it been?” and Nadia's heart started pumping double time. But the woman was looking at Kache, not Nadia.

“Hi there, Miss Rose.”

“I just saw your aunt a few weeks ago, and she mentioned you were in town. And who's your lovely friend?”

“This is my cousin,” Kache said without hesitation. “Gretchen. From Colorado.”

“Well, hello, Gretchen from Colorado. I taught this boy everything he knows about math and science, didn't I, Kache?”

“Yes, you did.”

Nadia managed to smile, but she didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. Kache and Miss Rose continued to talk while Nadia looked at the various exhibits until she came across an enlarged photograph with a caption that read
The Winkel family on their homestead
. A couple and a young boy and girl. She didn't recognize any of them, until she noticed the way the thick braid ran down the right shoulder of the young woman. Lettie! So the man was A. R. and the boy was Glenn and the girl was Snag. All bundled up and stiff-armed in their layers of clothes, propped up on the front porch of the home where Nadia had lived for the last ten years. The home had expanded since the photo was taken and now had another floor.

She searched for more photographs of the family and then noticed a sign at another display:

“Only one thing was certain. We weren't in Kansas anymore.” —A. R. Winkel, Caboose homesteader

“It was hard work, but it was worth every sore muscle. No regrets. I never wanted to live anywhere else.” —Lettie Winkel, Caboose homesteader

Nadia tried to imagine what it would be like to never want to live anywhere else, when she constantly obsessed about living somewhere else. She remembered Lettie telling her that she'd moved here from Kansas. Maybe if Lettie had lived in San Francisco, she would have never moved here; she would have been so happy to be in the hilly city with all its beautiful architecture and views of the bay and the bridges and museums twenty or more times the size of this one.

“Ready?” Kache stood next to her. She pointed to the sign with his grandparents' words, and he nodded. “Yep. That land was always imprinted on her heart.”

“Was this true for him?”

Kache shrugged. “He died when I was pretty young.”

• • •

Back in the truck, sitting at a stop sign, Nadia asked Kache to pull the truck over again.

“You sick?”

She shook her head and pointed to Salon & Saloon.

“That's the women's version. The guy's is called Beer & Barber. A wife and husband own them. You can drink while you get your hair done.”

“I want to.”

“We can get a drink down at the Spit Tune. Want to go there? Here, it's more about the haircut.”

“I want to get that, my hair cut.”

“I thought you Old Believer women don't cut your hair.”

“They do not. That is why I want to cut mine. Plus, it will be less recognizable.”

“Don't you want to think about it for a few days first?”

“I have been thinking for many years about it. Once, myself, I cut it, but I did not do this good, so I only now trim the ends. I want it short and how did the magazine say it? Sassy? Like boy.”

“You can try all you want, but you will never look like a boy.”

“No, I want only this short hair like boy. Not to look like boy. Like girls in magazines. Your mother, she had this shorter hair, yes?”

“Yes, she did. Short with curls.”

“I like this short hair. I want to have it now.”

By then, Kache had found a parking place and turned off the truck. “Okay then. A haircut it is.”

But as they approached the shop, Nadia remembered that it would cost money to have her hair cut, and she slowed down.

“Maybe not. Never mind.” She turned away.

“You don't want to cut it?”

“No, I do it myself. This way is too much money.”

“Nadia, I have money. I owe you for taking such good care of the place. Come on.” He stepped toward the door and opened it, waiting for her. She paused, people veering around her, the wind blowing the bells on the door. “Hurry,” he said. “My treat.”

Kache sat and read a newspaper while a woman about Nadia's age, with pink-and-orange hair shaved on one side and longer on the other, looked at the photographs Nadia pointed out in the magazines. She said Nadia would look awesome with her hair short. “You definitely have the cheekbones for it.” She led Nadia to the back of the salon where there were large brown sinks. Nadia sat in a black chair that leaned back so that her neck rested on the cool rim. The woman ran warm water over her head and commented on how long Nadia's hair was. She washed her hair with something that smelled like honey and flowers Nadia couldn't name, rubbing her scalp and her temples, the back of her neck. Her fingers were strong and careful, and Nadia felt herself relaxing her head into the woman's hands. She remembered her mother washing her hair when she was a child, but her mother never rubbed her head and neck like this. No one ever had, and the gentleness made Nadia's throat ache a little.

The woman walked Nadia back to her chair in front of the mirror and began snipping off long sheaths to Nadia's shoulders. “You've got so much hair I'm going to dry it before I cut anymore.” The hair dryer thrummed warm and loud, and the woman, whose name was Katy, continued to rub Nadia's head and run her fingers up through the hair closest to her scalp. She shouted over the hair dryer that she just wanted to get some of the moisture out before she started cutting. While she picked out scissors from her drawer, she talked loudly of her boyfriend, how they were renting an apartment in Caboose, that she was from Seattle.