Get Cozy, Josey!

by Susan May Warren

  I’ve seen many a Russian cake. This one looks like it’s grown warts. Giant, brown warts.

  Uh-oh.

  As a general rule, I love cake. But I hate Russian cake. Especially gourmet Russian prune cake. Because Russian prunes taste like they’ve been soaked in kerosene.

  Russians love prunes. They love them in vodka and cognac. They love them in candies, cookies and pies. And they love them in their cake.

  I should have known that Olya would have a Kerosene Prune Cake on her table. And this one looks like it’s garnished with extra prunes.

  I just won’t look at it.

  Vasilley is sitting at the table. He rises, and I notice he’s clean-shaven for this event. He’s wearing a brown sweater and black pants and he looks only slightly scary. He takes Chase’s hand and glances at me with a nod.

  “Sdyom Rozhdennya,” I say to Olya, giving her birthday greetings and handing her the gifts we brought—a spray of silk flowers and a can of lilac air freshener.

  Before you judge, let me ask you this: Wouldn’t you like a blast of spring during the dark days of winter?

  That’s what I thought.

  Besides, I learned long ago in Moscow, during the days when my neighbor gifted me with all manner of personal-hygiene products, that anything goes for gift-giving in Russia. Even panty hose. I kid you not.

  As all Russians are wont to do, Olya sets the gifts aside to open later, outside the view of guests. To their way of thinking, it’s not polite to pay attention to gifts when you have guests. They might actually have something there.

  “Nu Pagadee!” Justin says, and wriggles out of Chase’s grip to land on the sofa in front of the television. Chloe, however, climbs onto a chair and puts her little paws on the table.

  To my shock, Vasilley looks over at her and smiles.

  Olya gestures to me and Chase to sit, and I realize we’re the only guests.

  The only guests.

  I’m not sure what to say, think or feel. Especially when Vasilley fills a tiny shot glass in front of my plate with vodka.

  And not just any vodka. A prune-enhanced home brew. It’s roughly the color of motor oil.

  Oh, no.

  Even Chase eyes it with some fear.

  Before we sit, Vasilley raises his glass and looks at his wife. Is that a shine I see in his eyes?

  Or just the vodka?

  Oh, I’m so judgmental. I lift my glass, smile and nod as Vasilley toasts his wife. It’s something sweet, with lots of loving words. And then, he clicks my glass and downs his drink.

  Yikes! I glance at Chase, who is looking a little green, but he closes his eyes and downs his own.

  As does Olya.

  I put the vodka to my lips, intending only to pretend, when Chloe launches herself at me. “Mommy! Me some juice!”

  The vodka spills onto my lips and into my mouth. And sets it on fire.

  “Josey, are you okay?” Chase says as I cough and sputter. I’m wondering if I still have lips or if they’ve been burned off.

  Vasilley looks at me with a smile and refills my glass.

  I knew I shouldn’t trust him.

  Olya comes to the rescue with two glasses of prune juice, called sok, handing them to Chase and me. At least it isn’t spiked. Chase takes a long drink.

  “How are the traplines?” Chase asks Vasilley. I know he still longs to go out into the bush, to spend time one-on-one with each of these men, to burrow deep into their souls and discover ways to encourage, to bring light. On top of that is his slim hope that the hunting hasn’t been destroyed by the pre-Christmas deforestation.

  Vasilley gives him a long look, one I can’t interpret. And then he says (in what I consider to be a tone reminiscent of a Mafia hit man), “Why don’t you come out and see?”

  Gulp.

  “I’d like to do that,” Chase says just as Olya arrives with a plate of steaming boiled potatoes from her stove.

  “Na, zdarovaya!” Vasilley raises his glass to us, looking at Chase. It means “to your health,” although I have serious concerns about said health at the moment. Chase considers for a moment, then lifts his glass, taps it against Vasilley’s and finishes it off.

  I look at him, but he doesn’t meet my eyes. Chase doesn’t drink, thanks to the legacy of alcoholism bequeathed to him by his father. He chases the vodka with a sip of prune juice probably in an attempt to feel the inside of his mouth again.

  I fix plates for the kids. Justin barely looks up from his cartoon as I hand him his.

  Chase is piling his plate high with potatoes, cutlets and salad. Olya is smiling and it turns into a full-wattage beam when he starts to make his food noises. Chase is an interactive eater—when he loves something, he “mmms” and “ahhs.”

  Almost makes a girl want to cook something. Almost.

  “To Olya’s potatoes!” Vasilley says, grabbing the Nectar of Kerosene and pouring more into Chase’s glass, topping off Olya’s as well. Mine is still full. He scoops up his glass and raises it high.

  Oh, boy.

  Chase clinks glasses, winks at me and downs it.

  I give him a weak smile, choosing the prune sok instead.

  Olya finally sits, and I listen to Chase and Vasilley talk about politics, the people in the village and America. Olya keeps glancing at Chloe and smiling.

  “Olya tells me that Josey wants to sell her boxes,” Vasilley says, filling up Chase’s glass for what might be the eighth time. Chase must hold his liquor well, because although he seems to be keeping up with Vasilley, he doesn’t have even a hint of Vasilley’s shiny eyes or slurred speech. “To Josey!”

  To Josey, indeed. Olya has long stopped keeping up and now just gives me a sad smile. Chase downs another drink.

  I think I’m going to be ill. Not from Olya’s delicious food (aside from the prune cake), but from the change I see in Chase before my very eyes. Has he forgotten the nights he snuck out of the house, having narrowly escaped his father’s drunken rampages? Or worse, the days when he didn’t escape and showed up on my doorstep a little broken?

  Chase always promised me he’d never touch alcohol. And I counted on that, especially during my own high-school rampages.

  Now I need that promise even more. He reaches over for my sok, takes a drink and moves my glass next to his plate. I don’t know why—he has plenty left. But after that last sip, I didn’t want mine, anyway.

  “Justin and Chloe, I think it’s time to go home.” I touch Olya’s hand. “Thank you for the meal. Happy Birthday.”

  “I think I’ll stay,” Chase says, pulling me down and kissing me on the cheek. “Don’t worry,” he whispers. But I’m past worry and well on my way to an all-out panic attack.

  Chloe and Justin are tucked into their beds, the house is warm and quiet, and I’m in my jammies and wool socks under the covers trying to read when Chase steals in. I hear him load the coal stove, stoking it for the night. Then he pumps water and fills up the overhead water storage above the sink.

  Finally he locks the door and appears in the doorway to the bedroom. Against the darkness of the rest of the house, the bedroom light illuminates him, showing lines on his face I haven’t seen before. I expect his eyes to be bloodshot, but they’re remarkably clear. He crosses his arms and leans against the door. Stares at me a long moment.

  “Do you trust me?”

  I put my hand over the page in my book. I’m not even sure what it’s about, having read the same line for roughly the last hour. My heartbeat repeats his question. Do I trust him?

  I trust him to love me and the kids to the best of his ability. I trust him to take care of us. I trust him to play with his children and do his best to parent them. I trust him to want to help.

  But I don’t trust the Chase I saw tonight.

  I don’t answer. His smile falls and he sighs.

  “Vasilley asked me to go hunting with him,” he says finally, pulling off his clothes and climbing in beside me. “He says that he wants to show me how they hunt. I th
ink they’re not as angry with me about the pine trees as I thought.”

  Or maybe it’s just that in his current woozy perspective, everybody’s a friend.

  Please, God, don’t let Chase get hurt.

  He turns his back to me as I turn off the light and lie there in the darkness.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Little Bit of Sunshine

  “Maybe we can fix up the playground?”

  “Or the fountain in the center of the square?”

  The conversation is lively and not unlike that of a potluck dinner I might find at the Gull Lake church. The women bring in their supplies, lay them out and go to work. We are in what I’m dubbing the community center, located next door to the detski-sod. Old wooden and metal chairs are shoved up against painted propaganda signs and faded pictures of long-gone leaders. A red curtain, worn and ripped, hangs from the ceiling above a small stage.

  The wind rattles the windows, and a layer of snow and ice slides in under the door and through the cracks in the windowsill. Everyone still wears their winter coats, although mittens have been discarded for work purposes. I no longer think it odd to see women wearing mink coats with homemade knitted mittens. I tried wearing my leather gloves once and lost all feeling in my pinkies instantly.

  I’m still holding out on the Cossack boots, however. There was a vow made about footwear long ago in Moscow, and a girl can only sacrifice so much before she loses herself. I found cute, wide-heel boots lined with fur that lace up the front like something from the sixties. I can mostly feel my toes.

  I now wear at least two layers at all times. Turtleneck and sweater, plus jacket. Wool tights, plus jeans. Knitted gloves, plus the mittens Olya gave me.

  Olya has finally decided we are friends. Since the birthday dinner, she’s been a regular on my doorstep, armed with a hot pot of corn kasha or better yet, shi, a cabbage stew made from sauerkraut.

  She even showed me a picture of her daughter, Albena, in Moscow on one of these visits. Everything inside me hurt, especially when Chloe came running up and launched herself at Olya. The day we first met Olya and Lydia came back to me, and for a moment, I had a full and vivid understanding of how painful it must have been for her to see my kids.

  But to Olya’s credit, she picked up Chloe and even gave her a little pat when my daughter purred and made kitty paws. Hey, it’s more than I would do. Good thing cats have nine lives.

  At the moment, I’m hoping Chase has nine—or even two—lives. I can’t bear to think about his upcoming trip with Vasilley. What if it’s a ploy to get Chase into the woods alone, with no witnesses, and exact revenge for the years of the Cold War? Or for two months of cold, fruitless trapping? What if Vasilley gets sopping drunk and shoots Chase?

  What if they freeze to death?

  Do you trust me? I hate that he had to ask me. And that I didn’t know how to answer.

  I used to trust Chase enough to follow him to the ends of the earth (read: Siberia). Can a girl submit when the one she is “obeying” betrays her?

  I’m not ready to answer that.

  Instead, I’ve focused the past three weeks on setting up our eBay account, taking inventory of the gifts, snapping digital pictures and creating descriptions. I’ve even decided to send Justin and Chloe to preschool for a full day two days a week.

  I’m not a bad mom. I’m not a bad mom.

  The payoff is that I’ve learned more about the village and women of Bursk than Chase could ever put in a report.

  Like, for example, the women often feel alone and forgotten.

  Or, if they had it their way, they might even return to the life they had years ago—a close-knit, subsistence society. With their television sets, of course. And fur coats.

  Boy, do I want a fur coat. I admit it, I’m jealous. Not that I’d give up my washing machine, mind you, but imagine all that fur, all that warmth.

  And fur coats don’t make noise when you walk. Seriously. Have you ever listened to a person in a puffy parka? She can’t go anywhere without making it clear that she’s on the way. And that she’s fat. I don’t care if you’re a size two—in a parka, you are never thin.

  Just once I’d like to glide into a room in a fancy mink coat.

  I don’t think, by the way, that the women of Bursk would really like to return to cooking dinner over open fires and sleeping in yurts. But I do think they’d like to feel as if they are contributing.

  Hence, the full house at the community center, the excitement, the tentative smiles sent in my direction. See? I knew God sent me here for a reason.

  Just as I predicted, we already have orders for products. With Olya’s help, we commandeered cardboard from the vendors at the market and have fashioned small boxes. We also have homemade wrapping paper printed with a design one of the ladies whittled into a chunk of wood.

  They are a creative bunch, these Siberians.

  I’m getting ready to send out our first batch of orders when I feel a change in the room. The conversation quiets and a few women look up, past me.

  I turn, expecting to see Chase. Instead, it’s Nathan, standing at the door, thumping his boots and clapping his hands together. His cheeks are red, and he hasn’t shaved for a day at least. Frost clings to his eyelashes. He smiles wide. “Hey, Jose. I just came by to see how you’re doing.”

  I hold up a package. “We already have at least ten orders! They’re going out today.” I motion him over to the table full of packing supplies. “Help me package these.”

  Nathan pulls off his gloves and shoves them into his jacket pocket. He, too, wears a parka, a black one that makes him look like a puffy mobster, especially with his knitted black stocking cap. He unzips the jacket, and I see the brown scarf that Chase and I gave him for Christmas.

  “Ten orders already? That’s amazing.”

  “It’s fantastic,” I say, looking proudly at the women. “I can hardly believe I’m getting this much participation. I expected maybe two or three women. But the entire town?”

  He picks up a wooden box and begins wrapping it in paper. “They’re looking beyond their lives, seeing potential. Frankly, I think it’s one of the greatest gifts Westerners—and especially Americans—have given to the Russians. A vision of what could be.”

  I smile at that. Josey Anderson, purveyor of hope. “There’s even been talk of redoing the central square and updating the playground.”

  “If anyone can do it, you can.” He looks up and grins at me. “I told you that you’d make a terrific pastor’s wife.”

  Except a pastor’s wife has to be married to a pastor.

  And last time I checked, pastors didn’t drink vodka.

  “Nathan, can I ask you a favor?” The request has been tumbling through my mind for the past three weeks. I think it’s the only logical answer to my current Chase dilemma. I spot my open door.

  I never thought in my wildest imaginations (and I’ve had many—after all, Chase has always lived with one foot in adventure and the other in reality) that I’d have to worry about him turning into his father.

  I wrap a birchbark box in paper, folding the edges down to wedge it into the cardboard container. I can’t look at Nathan. “Chase and Vasilley are going hunting next week. Will you…” I look up at him and swallow, aware that my voice has thinned. “Will you finagle a way to go with them?”

  He is watching me, and something enters his eyes, something that makes me want to cry. Mistrust of my sweet Chase. “Why?”

  “I just…I don’t trust…Vasilley.” And that’s true. “He drinks. And I’m worried about Chase.”

  Nathan puts down the box and lowers his voice. “Is Chase drinking?”

  “I don’t…We went to a birthday party. There was vodka.” I lift a shoulder, but again I can’t look at Nathan. I feel as though I’ve just plunged a knife between my husband’s shoulder blades. “It’s not like he even got…” I can’t say the word drunk, but it’s there, hanging, ugly.

  Raw. “It’s just not like Chase
at all. He’s a good man. I don’t want anything to happen to him.” I close the cardboard box, my hand trembling.

  Nathan’s hand covers mine. It’s cold, but when he squeezes my hand, the kindness sends warmth to my heart. “I’ll take care of it, Josey. Don’t worry.”

  THE SECRETS OF SIBERIA IN YOUR HOME!

  That’s right! Straight from Siberia, the land of ice and cold, come handcrafted gifts for the nature lover! Birchbark vases, jewelry boxes and kitchen containers are great for keeping herbs, grain and even milk fresh, longer! The Nanais people are among the few Siberian craftspeople who have preserved the art of carving and pressing birchbark into intricate shapes, designs and unique items for the home. Each piece is handcrafted. Find the perfect gift and take a piece of Siberia home today!

  I’m going to have to start paying rent at the government office. I’m also going to have to get a pillow for my backside. I look outside and see that the afternoon has slunk into dusk. If this picture doesn’t finish loading, I’m going to be late picking up Justin and Chloe.

  We’ve completely sold out of our initial stock, and I have the ladies working every day at the community center, stockpiling bread boxes and jewelry containers, and making place mats, coffee cups, napkin rings, hairclips and even necklaces.

  I wake in the middle of the night with designs in my head.

  I am the queen of my empire.

  Or at least, I’m frantically trying to keep up with my rapidly expanding empire. At least all this business keeps me from thinking about Chase. Who left yesterday for parts unknown in the middle of Siberia, with Vasilley. And, thank the Lord, Nathan.

  C’mon, photo, load. I spy Anton leaning against the door frame. He’s frowning. He hasn’t asked about my health for a while now. I’m not sure why.

  Everything’s going to be fine, really. Chase dug out a backpack and packed it full of warm clothes, socks and even a first-aid kit.

  I sat on the bed petting Chloe and tried to hold my tongue.

  But it wasn’t until Nathan showed up with his own stuffed backpack—not until he gave me a smile and the smallest of winks—that I began to breathe.