The House of Frozen Dreams

by Seré Prince Halverson

  “But Daddy came around. He loved it here as much as you did.”

  “Your father loved me. But if I would’ve just once said ‘Let’s move back,’ he would’ve had the moving truck loaded before I finished my sentence. I feel bad about it now.”

  “But,” Gilly said, “you woudn’t change anything, would you?”

  “Well, I’m the one who got what she wanted. He’s the one to answer that question, but he’s not available at the moment. Sometimes I think he would have lived longer had he been happier.”

  Snag waved her hand. “Oh, Mom. Daddy was happy.”

  “He loved his family. But I think he would have preferred a different kind of life, in a different kind of place. I knew him like no one else did, Eleanor.”

  Nadia took this all in, and when Snag and Lettie fell silent, she turned their conversation over and over in her mind. She stared at the fire, then looked around to see the others also transfixed by the flames.

  Long ago she had begun seeing herself somehow, someway finding her way to San Francisco. More recently she’d added the idea of film school. It was what they called a long shot, followed with an ”excuse the pun”, but she dreamt about it constantly. Lately, on the movie screen in her head, images flashed of her and Kache living in one of those houses like the painted ladies, a colorful Victorian with a bay window that looked out over the street where they’d watch the passersby, the cars and buses taking people here and there.

  But Kache mentioned, increasingly, how much this place, this land meant to him. How he’d always thought Denny would take it over and keep it in the family, but that now he saw himself doing just that. How he was beginning to understand what his father and grandmother had meant when they talked about the way a place called you and staked its claim on your mind and heart, might even heal you and make you whole.

  Lettie finally spoke. “Nadia, what will you do next? Do you know?”

  Nadia hesitated, but said, “I know what I would love most to do. I would love to go to film school in San Francisco. I have filled out my application on the line, but there is problem.” She told them about the missing school transcripts and birth certificate, how they were at her mother’s house but she doubted that her mother would turn them over to her now. Nadia should have thought to ask her before she admitted she’d “gone heathen” as Kache called it, but alas, she had been overwhelmed by the vision of her family standing before her.

  Snag sat up, suddenly and said, “Nadia. Tell me. Do you know a woman named Agafia?”

  “I know of two. One is my grandmother.”

  “No, this woman would be younger than your grandmother. More along the lines of my age.”

  Nadia smiled. “But my grandmother is about your age. My mother is only forty-three. Remember, we start young in the villages. Why? Do you know my grandmother?”

  “I doubt it was her. I met an Agafia once, when I was just a girl.”

  “My Baba lived in Oregon most of her childhood.”

  Through the windows the outdoor lights illuminated plump snowflakes lolling down. Inside, the fire waltzed around in the woodstove. Nadia went to take care of the last preparations for dinner and light the candles.

  The table and the faces around it were bathed in an enchanting amber. The silver and the china and the crystal all reflected the candlelight, sparkling. Steam rose from the serving dishes, piled high with three days’ worth of preparations, and Nadia allowed herself a moment of pure pride while Kache poured wine. They raised their glasses and Lettie said the only blessing the family ever said, if you could call it a blessing. Nadia knew it from Elizabeth’s journal: “Good wine. Good meat. Good God, let’s eat.” They clinked glasses until everyone had toasted everyone and said, “Gracias, Merci, Grazie, Thank you”—and Lettie asked, “Wait, how do you say thank you in Russian?”

  And Nadia said, “Spaseba.”

  “Spaseba!” they said in union and then they took a sip and started passing the food around.

  Soon Nadia was lost within her own memories of family and celebration. This is what she missed most. She did not miss the outdated rules and regulations, the never-ending church services, the squabbles about how and when and where to worship, but she missed the rituals that came with all that. The rituals were needed. Everyone has them, even us heathens, she thought. Man must have come up with rituals to help counter all the chaos and despair.

  “Is that right, Nadia?” Gilly was asking her a question. Had she spoken her thoughts aloud? She found it difficult to stay alert in a group when everyone was conversing and you had to be ready to add your opinion when there was a lull or especially a direct question. She felt her face redden.

  “What was that? I am sorry, I was thinking …”

  “What were you thinking about, dear?” Lettie asked while she dug into her rabbit stew. She’d passed on the turkey, saying the Old Folks’ served it every Sunday and she was sick and tired of it.

  “I was thinking of my family,” Nadia admitted. As they ate and helped themselves to seconds and thirds, Kache and Nadia filled them in on their trip to the village, which required the back story of why Nadia had fled in the first place. Nadia suggested they wait for another time for her to talk about it, but they insisted that now was as good a time as any.

  When Nadia finished her story, Snag set her glass down, wiped her eyes with one of the cloth napkins she had once given to Bets and Glenn for Christmas, leaned her forearms on the table and said, “You faked your own death?”

  Nadia nodded, red again she was sure.

  “That takes some cojones.”

  Nadia wondered what cojones were while Lettie said, “You are miles beyond smart and brave, Nadia.”

  “But now I have no family.”

  “We will be your family,” Lettie said with a nod. “We’re not perfect, but we’ll do.”

  “Far from perfect,” Snag said. “I’m so far from perfect, you’d be better off leaving me out of it. In fact, Kache would have had an entirely different, much better life if—”

  Lettie said, “Eleanor … No one blames you.”

  “Blames you for what?” Kache asked.

  Gilly sat back in her chair, shaking her head but Snag kept on talking. Now she was the one confessing. She confessed a whole story about how she met Kache’s mom before his dad did, how she fell in love with her and never stopped loving her, even after Glenn and Bets got married and had kids.

  “But I kept my mouth shut until that night before the plane crash. You remember, Kache? How I came over and we were all celebrating some silly sales award I’d received? We got to drinking. I got hammered like I’ve never been before or since.” She took a deep breath and placed her hand on her heart. “Not that I’m trying to make excuses. There was a weird moment with your mom in the root cellar and I …” She looked around the room. “I kissed her.”

  “You what?” Lettie’s wrinkled lids lifted away from her pale, magnified eyes behind her glasses.

  Gilly reached out and took Snag’s hand, and Snag seemed to summon the words again. “I kissed her.”

  “Good Lord. Did she kiss you back?”

  “No, no. But Glenn walked in before Bets even realized what was going on. And you can imagine how pissed off he was.”

  “Yes, I can.” Lettie nodded.

  “He took it out on you, Kache. Your dad could be a bully, but I’d never seen him like that. I had to pull him off you. So you see, Glenn wasn’t in his right mind when they took off the next morning.”

  Kache stared, open-mouthed, silent.

  A long, quiet-filled moment ticked by before Lettie said, “Eleanor, your brother flew in the war. He was an exceptional pilot. I’m sure Bets explained the context. A drunken mistake. He would have never knowingly put his family in jeopardy. He had a temper; he was bulldog stubborn—but that man loved his family. So stop this now.”

  Snag bit her lip and shook her head. The room fell quiet again. “You want to know the worst thing? You felt guilty, Kach
emak Winkel. I didn’t know that you carried the burden of guilt over that fight you and your dad had the night before. Not until you told me this summer. And I’ve been trying ever since to find a way to tell you the fight wasn’t what did it. The reason your dad was drunk and angry in the first place was because of me stepping so ridiculously far out of line. I am beyond sorry.” Snag cried so heavily now, her napkin was soaked. Gilly handed over hers and Lettie’s too.

  Gilly said, “Neither one of you are taking into account that 22 percent of all US plane crashes occur in Alaska. And that’s not because of a family quarrel.”

  Lettie added, “Or that they were flying through that horrible Rainy Pass, and you all know it’s one of the worst blind corridors in the state. On a day when there was a 3,000-foot ceiling with poor visibility. And that cloud cover comes out of nowhere.”

  Kache kept staring at his aunt, not speaking.

  Pushing her chair back from the table, Nadia said, “Elizabeth didn’t blame either of you for anything.”

  Snag blew her nose. “With all due respect, how would you know?”

  Nadia said she’d be right back and went to retrieve Elizabeth’s last journal. She returned, sat down, and opened the pages. This made Snag drop her head in her hands in more shame. “I told Kache I burned them like I was supposed to. I didn’t even manage to do that right.”

  “You will be glad you did not burn them when I read you this,” Nadia said. But Snag reached across and grabbed the notebook from Nadia’s hands, cranked open the woodstove, and tossed the whole thing in the fire.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” Kache yelled. He lunged for the fire poker and pulled the journal out. He grabbed a boot and hit the burning edges until the flames died, then held the smoldering cover by the corner.

  “She didn’t want us to read them!” Snag tried to snatch it from him but he lifted it far above his head.

  “It’s a little too late for that, isn’t it? Do you really think she cares now?”

  Lettie turned to Nadia. “Go ahead and read what you were going to read, dear.”

  Without saying a word, Kache handed it over to Nadia. The pages felt warm on her fingertips. She began Elizabeth’s account of their last night together as a family, reading aloud the part about Alaska not forgiving mistakes and stopped to ask what it meant.

  Snag said, “Oh, you know. It’s because the weather and conditions are so extreme. If you make the smallest mistake—like not dress warm enough, or fly a plane when you’re angry—you might end up dead.”

  “Or,” Lettie added, “You could do everything right, and fly a plane when the weather looks fine but a storm comes up out of nowhere. These things happen, and too many times.”

  Nadia nodded, then continued reading out loud. She was at the part she really wanted them to hear:

  “We drank too much last night and we’ll be paying for it for years, if not forever. I cannot believe that Glenn went after Kache like he did—out of control. It was always words, never physical until now. The saying of it is bad enough and all of it needs to stop. I am ashamed I haven’t put an end to it by now, and I swear it will not happen again in this household.

  As for dear, kind Snag. I must talk with her. She thinks that the kiss was some kind of horrible revelation to Glenn and me—as if her feelings were something we weren’t aware of. I think Glenn was just shocked and angry that she acted on it. But she was drunk. We all drank too much. I must tell her that if it were anywhere in me to love a woman fully—physically as well as emotionally—she would be that woman. That she will someday make a woman astonishingly happy. And that somehow, call me psychic if you must, I know this to be true.

  We are all flying to Gunneysack for the hunting trip as planned. Ha! Lord help us, if we don’t all kill each other first.

  But for now, I will gather these men together and we will fly away from here for a few days. We will look down on this house, this land—free from it—and the perspective will do us good.”

  When Nadia got to the last line, which ended with do us good, she added, “I don’t think all this blaming yourselves over and over is doing them good, or you good. Twenty years is too long. Living in the past, like we are all of us Old Believers.”

  Snag’s arms were folded on the table and held her buried head. The candles had burned down to nothing but lighted wicks floating in their holders, the wine glasses were empty except for puddled stains, the leftover food turning hard and cold.

  Snag finally stood. She let out a long sigh, looked at Kache through her swollen eyes and said, “I’m not going to ask for your forgiveness. Not yet.” Her voice squeaked but she continued. “I know you need some time.”

  Kache looked up at his aunt.

  Snag said, “I can take it.”

  “Honestly? I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just know how sorry I am about the whole awful mess.”

  “Awful mess?” He shook his head. “That’s a euphemism if I ever heard one.”

  He excused himself, silently pulled on his boots and went outside. Nadia rose and cupped her hands around her eyes, the window cool against her fingers. His silhouette stood black against the snow, as if someone had cut a Kache-sized hole out of the meadow.

  She felt a pat on her leg and looked down at Lettie in her chair, who whispered, “This is how our family is, you see. Awfully messy. You still want in?”

  Nadia said yes, she did.

  SIXTY

  After Thanksgiving, Gilly told Snag she needed to have a talk, which sent Snag into another cleaning frenzy. By the time Gilly arrived, the house sparkled but the mood between them felt dark and heavy.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re moving on,” Snag spilled before Gilly opened her mouth.

  Gilly took Snag’s hand in hers and looked deep into her eyes. “You know how much I love you. But I can’t stand by and keep watching you beat yourself up. There’s so much more we could be doing with ourselves, with our love. Either you forgive yourself, Eleanor, in a put-it-out-to-pasture type of way, or I think—no, I know—we should go our separate ways. Which would break my heart.”

  “But now Kache is mad at me.”

  Gilly let out an exasperated sigh and Snag shut up. Gilly’s voice was soft but sure. “So let him be mad. He just found out and he’ll work through it. But you’ve known for two decades. You need to sing a different song.”

  Gilly left without kissing her, without even a hug, determined, it seemed, to mean business. Snag knew Gilly was right. Hell, Snag was sick and tired of herself too, and now sufficiently scared that she might lose the best person that had ever happened to her.

  So late that night, after watching too many numbers on her alarm clock slide by, Snag devised a plan of penance. If she were Catholic, she’d go to confession and say a boatload of prayers afterward. But she wasn’t Catholic, and so she thought that because she had hurt someone—a lot of someones, most of them dead—she should now set out to do something difficult in order to help another someone. She didn’t for a second think it was enough to make up for her transgression. But it was a symbol she might stamp in her mind, a single gold star she could turn to.

  It took her about a week to prepare, to talk over the details with Nadia and pick up her letter.

  And now Snag reached the end of the snow-plowed road, climbed down the snow-packed trail to the beach, where the low tide she’d been promised by the tide book awaited her, the sand, rocks, and long ropes of kelp glistening with hoar frost. She trudged along the beach until she spotted the next trailhead. She would work her way to the end of this second trail and soon step foot in Nadia’s village. In her pocket, Nadia’s letter to her grandmother.

  Snag Eleanor Winkel. Embarking on a mission. And grateful she had been getting in better shape. She almost felt like running.

  No one but Nadia knew that Snag had set off for the village. Both Kache and Gilly would have insisted on joining her, and that would get complicated. Well, Kache might not, considerin
g he hadn’t talked to her for the two weeks since Thanksgiving. And Gilly was about to cut her loose, so she might not have been quick to come along. A verbal protest from both of them then, at least. Snag was, after all, a sixty-five-year-old woman traipsing through some pretty rugged country in the snow, on her way to confront a band of outsiders who would not likely be thrilled to see her. But the trail was firmly packed and she had finally purchased several good, comfortable pairs of boots—the ones she wore now made to tackle snow—so all good so far. She fantasized that there might be a shot or two of decent vodka served up for her, but she wasn’t counting on it. Hot coffee, maybe. Wait. She’d heard coffee and hard liquor were off limits for Old Believers. Water then. She could use some water. Sweat trickled under her layers of clothes and her mouth was dry. But as far as a penance went, this journey didn’t land all that high on the difficulty scale.

  Here is how it played out in Snag’s mind: for so many years she had seen the time she kissed Bets as the most destructive kiss in history since the kiss of Judas. So then maybe the time she kissed Agafia might end up being a positive, something Snag planned to use for good. She liked the symmetry of this thinking.

  And yes, it was true that Snag was officially done—done!—beating herself up about kissing Bets. Nadia had helped Snag by reading Bets’ journal to her that night. The poor young woman had been living alone for ten years, squandering the best years of her life. Snag related on some level. Time now for all of them to step forward. She saw that Nadia and Kache cared a lot about each other. She also believed that Nadia needed to fulfill her dreams, to experience the world outside the homestead. Even Snag herself had gone away to college for her business degree.

  The woods opened into the village with its colorful homes, and a couple of boys who looked about thirteen greeted Snag. When she asked for Agafia, she told them she was an old friend and they took her directly to her front door, painted bright green. Agafia shooed away the boys with some Russian scolding—at least it sounded like scolding—and asked Snag, with a guarded tone, “Who are you and what will you want with me?”