The Secret of Clouds

by Alyson Richman

  “You bet your life . . . Expect Paganini in between courses.”

  “Can’t wait, Mags. And let me know how the kid likes the book.”

  * * *

  • • •

  A few days later, I found myself standing in front of the door to the Krasnys’ house with two copies of Shoeless Joe from the school library tucked inside my bag.

  I had had a tiring day at Franklin. One of my students had inadvertently hit a girl in the back of her head with his backpack when he swung himself around. It was clearly an accident, but the girl who was hit complained about feeling nauseated, and the nurse had to call her parents and warn them to watch out for a concussion.

  Needing a little fortitude before I tutored Yuri that afternoon, I searched through every corner of my handbag for a piece of chocolate or candy. I found a half-melted green-apple Jolly Rancher and popped it into my mouth.

  * * *

  • • •

  KATYA answered the door. Today, her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a long, nubby turtleneck sweater and jeans. Her eyes revealed a lack of sleep. And she again was clutching her elbows as if she were perpetually cold, even though the house felt warm and cozy to me.

  “Thank you for coming, Ms. Topper.” She stepped back into the vestibule.

  “Oh, just call me Maggie. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

  As I stood next to Katya, I couldn’t help but feel like a mammoth compared to her. I was five foot ten in socks, and today I was wearing boots. I seemed a foot taller than Katya. She was so slight and fragile looking, it was hard to squash the sound of my mother’s voice in my head, insisting that Katya sit down and eat something. I wasn’t ever going to be slender. My build was a bit more on the athletic side, despite the fact that I was never good at sports. Katya was too thin. Underneath her porcelain white skin, you could see the fine webbing of blue veins.

  I knew it had to be enormously stressful taking care of a sick child. I still had my own memories of seeing Mrs. Auerbach transform from a robust maternal figure to a wiry and gaunt one, consumed by Ellie’s illness. Knowing there was little I could do to put some more meat on Katya’s bones, I offered her what I could, a sympathetic smile.

  Katya didn’t return the smile but chose instead to inch a little closer to me.

  “You must have done something right with my Yuri the last time you were here . . .” She nibbled slightly on her bottom lip. Its skin was dry and ragged. “His spirits were so much better after you visited.”

  “I’m so happy we hit it off, but I think we are going to have a little Yankees-Mets rivalry going on.” I laughed.

  “Yes, he loves baseball above everything else,” she said softly. “He’s never had the stamina to be able to play it himself . . . His heart is not strong enough . . . But when he’s watching it on TV, I can see he likes to pretend he’s part of the team.”

  I soaked in her words. Underneath her charming Ukrainian accent, there was a doleful gravity. Katya looked away from me. A single ray of sunlight streamed in from one of the windows, illuminating only the right side of her face. For a moment, the sight of her took me back to my one art history class in college and the faces of the saints with their golden halos.

  “It has not been easy for him . . . for us.” I could see a faint film of tears forming on her wide blue eyes.

  She shifted to her left side, and I saw her long white fingers clutch harder against the wool sleeves of her sweater.

  “He was born with a heart defect called Ebstein’s anomaly. I was lucky my husband and I had already emigrated from Ukraine before I became pregnant and that I gave birth to him here. If we were still in Kiev, he would probably no longer be with us . . .” Her voice cracked. “But we were fortunate that the head of the molecular biology department at Stony Brook University had chosen to sponsor my husband, Sasha.”

  “That was fortunate,” I agreed.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “But Yuri’s heart defect obviously was not.”

  * * *

  • • •

  TODAY, when I walked into the living room, Yuri was propped up in a reclining chair with a blanket over his lap. His blond hair was combed neatly, and he was wearing a striped rugby shirt that made him look a lot more cheerful than during our first meeting.

  “Hey, champ.” The nickname just came out. It’s what my dad used to call my brother when we were growing up, and Charlie always seemed to like it. I forced my voice to be an octave higher than it normally was, in order to sound upbeat. “How are you feeling today?”

  His eyes followed me as I pulled a chair closer to him and sat down.

  “I’m okay.” He brushed his bangs away with the back of his hand.

  Yuri’s eyes seem to flicker at me as I fumbled to retrieve my folder and the book from my bag.

  “You look good. I like your shirt.”

  He patted his chest and smiled.

  “Did you catch the Mets game last night?” He was eager to redirect the conversation immediately toward baseball.

  I stammered for a second. I hadn’t even known there was one. I had gone to bed while Bill was downstairs, probably watching the very game Yuri was speaking about.

  “Piazza hit another home run. I think the Mets might actually have a chance at the playoffs this year . . . It’s about time.”

  I laughed. “They just might, right?” I felt a jolt of fear rush through me. I liked baseball, but it was clear I wasn’t on the same level of knowledge as Yuri.

  “I’ll give you a pass this time for not being on top of yesterday’s game,” he teased.

  “I’ll be better prepared next time,” I promised. I pulled out the schoolwork that we had to cover and the copies of Shoeless Joe, and put them on the coffee table between us.

  “So . . . I’ve got a few more things with me today for you. An outline of what we’ll be doing in class over the next four weeks and, also, a little surprise.”

  His two blond eyebrows lifted in curiosity. “What kind of surprise?”

  I pointed at the book to show him. “This year we’re going to be having book clubs in class. So you and I are going to have our own right here.”

  I handed him the book and let him soak in the cover. On the front was a black-and-white photograph of Shoeless Joe Jackson in his old-fashioned White Sox uniform. The image was set against a colorful background of a cornfield.

  “Have you ever seen Field of Dreams?”

  “Are you kidding? That’s one of my favorite movies! I saw it with my dad.”

  “Well, this is the novel that inspired that film.”

  Yuri made a puzzled face. “You mean it was based on a book?”

  “Yep, I was surprised myself when I heard that.”

  “There were a lot of crazy things that happened in that movie . . . hard to believe they could happen in real life. Like all those ghosts of the original White Sox appearing out of nowhere . . .”

  I laughed. “That’s the magic of writing. Anything is possible.”

  He turned the paperback over and studied the excerpted praise from the reviews.

  “So here’s your copy, Yuri,” I instructed. “You read the first two chapters by Thursday, and I will, too. Then we can start discussing it . . . We’ll have our own literacy circle, just like I do with my other students at Franklin.” I pushed myself back into my chair. “And I want you to read the book this time, not avoid it like you did with Where the Red Fern Grows.”

  Yuri laughed drily. “It’s about baseball, Ms. Topper, how could I not?”

  “Do you remember that line in the movie when Kevin Costner hears, ‘If you build it, he will come . . .’?”

  “Yeah, of course . . .”

  I tapped the book. The melancholy I had felt when I first entered the Krasny home was now fading.

  “It�
�s all in there.” I smiled. “You’ll see.”

  6

  APRIL 27, 1986

  KIEV, UKRAINE

  THERE is no dance class today, Sunday, so Katya rises late. Sasha’s mug of black tea is still on the kitchen table; his coat is on the couch. Another unusually warm day, she says to herself as she opens the window and lets the morning light filter through their apartment. Outside, the garden seems eerily quiet. Not a single bird. Not a glimpse of a squirrel or a chipmunk.

  As she changes into her clothes, she catches herself in the mirror. The muscles of her legs look like tightly pulled ropes. Across her back are the thin, angry red lines from Madame Vaskaya’s nails scratching into her flesh. In her ears, she can still hear her teacher reprimanding her. “Shoulders back! Shoulders back!”

  Satisfaction is an impossible emotion for Madame Vaskaya. When the girls do not lift their legs high enough, she inches closer to them and hisses into their ears, “Higher! Your arabesque should pierce the sky.”

  In the ribbon waist of her skirt, she keeps a lighter. If the dancer’s foot is still not to her liking, she pulls out her lighter and flips the switch underneath their leg. Katya can still see her friend Olga’s leg wavering as she struggled to keep it away from the flame.

  In her drawer, Katya finds her bra and underpants and pulls them on. Then her tights. And, finally, a dress her mother gave her for her birthday, with flowers printed on the fabric.

  She has promised her mother she will come over later that day and start making Easter bread with her. Her mother strove to keep God in their home, even though the Soviet government and its schools aspired to have a population of atheists. She could easily recall the afternoons of her youth when Katya and her sister were dragged along to church, where the pews were filled with little old ladies and hardly another child in sight.

  But now the traditions warm Katya. She looks forward to seeing her sister, and the two of them will braid the dough into decorative shapes. Roses and crosses. Then, later on, they will boil eggs in onion skin to deepen their color before arranging them in a straw basket with the kielbasa, horseradish, butter, and cheese. She will stay until dinnertime, and then they will all go to liturgy together, carrying the ceremonial basket to be blessed by the priest. Sasha will stay at home with his books. Her mother was so upset when she learned Katya was marrying a Jew. She couldn’t break her mother’s heart and let her know the real truth, that Sasha considered himself only a man of science and did not share their belief in God.

  * * *

  • • •

  “IT’S still so hot today, Katya!” her mother complains as she opens the door. A note of bewilderment tinges her voice. She has a scarf tied around her head and her hair tucked beneath it. Her large blue eyes welcome Katya like a prescient owl. Her apron, tied around her thick waist, is dusted with flour. “Such strange weather for April.” She ushers her daughter inside. “It feels like July.”

  Katya walks into the kitchen. On the stove, there is a pot filled with warm milk and sugar. Another loaf is already in the oven, filling the house with its sweet, yeasty scent.

  “Have you already started making the Paska?” Katya asks, naming the Easter bread.

  On the counter, a large metal bowl is filled with flour, butter, and eggs.

  “Yes. Yulia is in the garden, already braiding some of the dough.”

  Katya washes her hands and then reaches for a glass, filling it with water from the faucet.

  “I’m so thirsty from the walk over,” she remarks as she quickly refills her glass. She ties a spare apron around her, doubling the sash around her narrow waist. “I’ll go help Yulia.”

  The garden glimmers in the sunlight. Yulia sits at the wooden table with a tray and a bowl full of dough. She is making long ropes and then arranging them into rosettes and crosses.

  Katya sits down beside her and begins to help.

  “Just like old times,” Katya muses as she pinches her younger sister.

  “The garden is so quiet today,” Yulia murmurs. “I haven’t seen a single bird. And not a sound from the beehive, either.”

  It was the same as Katya’s garden, as if all of Mother Nature were asleep.

  7

  APRIL 27, 1986

  KIEV, UKRAINE

  WHEN she returns from her mother’s house, Sasha convinces Katya to go down to the river before sunset. The second day of such unusual warm weather has put everyone in a good mood.

  “My friend Vadim told me the water feels as warm as it does in August,” he tells her as he rifles through their dresser drawer to find his swim trunks.

  “How can that be?” Katya asks skeptically. “It should still be ice cold from the winter!”

  He shakes his head. “Maybe we didn’t have as much snow this year?” He laughs and pulls her close.

  He inhales the scent of her shampoo, the smell of chamomile and honey that he now considers to be Katya’s distinct perfume.

  “Go get your bathing suit and take a swim with me. Think of how lucky we are to be able to do this when it’s not even May yet!”

  She goes and retrieves her black one-piece from the bedroom and changes in front of him. He watches as she wiggles into the nylon maillot, and he feels the desire to kiss her, to unfasten the ties of the halter top and let it all come down again to the floor. He almost wants to tell her to forget about the swimming, that he’d rather she wrap her sinewy legs around him so they can spend the afternoon drowning in each other’s embrace. But then she turns around, and he can see in her eyes that he has whetted her appetite to go take a dip in the water.

  “Are you ready?” She pulls two towels down from where they were drying over the shower door.

  They put on T-shirts and jeans over their suits and head outside.

  “I’ve never seen such a beautiful sky.” Katya beams as the horizon is lit with deep orange and gold. The sun resembles a fireball. The clouds are apricot-colored plumes.

  “Yes,” Sasha agrees. “It almost seems unreal.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE Dnieper River flows through the center of Kiev, its pearly gray waters the same color as the inside of a mussel shell. Katya and Sasha hurry down the steps of the embankment, anxious to swim before the sun sets.

  The river is full of fellow bathers. Old women, with their hair tied back behind babushkas, revealing saggy arms and dimpled thighs, wade knee-deep into the water. Young men flirt with their girlfriends by playfully splashing water at them. A lone man floats on his back, soaking in the last rays of the late afternoon light.

  “Come!” Sasha yells as he barrels into the water. “They’re right! It’s so warm!”

  Katya pulls off her T-shirt and jeans and wades into the river.

  Sasha is already waist-deep. He extends his arms to her, beckoning Katya to come closer.

  “Isn’t this wonderful?” he says in a burst of uncontrolled happiness. Everything about today seems like magic to him. She is in his arms now, and their skin is slippery as they twist into each other.

  The water is warmer than Katya had expected, and she delights in the sheer weightlessness of her limbs. Her leg glides effortlessly behind her in an arabesque, and the contrast between doing that movement in the water and silt instead of on the hard wooden dance floor is elating.

  She arches her back and extends her arms onto the glimmering surface of the river, allowing the ends of her long hair to dip into the water.

  “My little white swan,” he whispers to her as he reaches to grasp her around the waist.

  Her eyelids are closed and fluttering, and Sasha watches them with wonder before kissing her, a perfect smile curled at her lips.

  8

  AUTUMN had arrived. The trees were ablaze in scarlet and amber. A rain of acorns fell on the roof of the cottage in the mornings, so much that Bill wondered aloud whether
there was a sniper in the trees with a pellet gun. We would always drink our coffee in a hurry and leave the newspaper in an ever-growing pile to be read later. We would kiss each other absently as we headed out to our cars.

  At school, I had five different book clubs going within each of my three classes, one for each level of reading. I had one boy, Finn, a natural athlete who was also a very strong reader, and I also assigned him Shoeless Joe. I had spotted him early on as a Yankees fan, because he often wore a Yankees jersey to school and I sometimes had to remind him to take off his baseball cap in class. If Yuri ever became strong enough to join the class, it would be good for him to have a peer who not only was a good student but also loved sports as much as he did.

  As we got deeper into our writers’ workshop, I would start assigning roles to each student so they could lead the discussion. Each student would get a title like “Literary Luminary” or “the Word Wizard” and would be responsible for finding a passage with beautiful or descriptive writing, or for picking out the new vocabulary. The children would soon become more active participants in the classroom, beginning to take charge.

  In the meantime, the landscape outside had begun to shift from the last days of Indian summer into full-blown autumn. Wicks Farm on Route 25A was already in full decorative mode for Halloween. A huge black papier-mâché witch that had been in existence since I was a child towered over the pumpkin tent, and fake cobwebs were strewn over the storage sheds. I had stopped by to pick up a small pumpkin for Yuri. During the night, I had the idea that I would paint Yankee pinstripes on a pumpkin and write in Magic Marker the number of his favorite player. At the checkout, I saw they were selling apple cider, and I picked up a gallon jug to bring as a gift for Katya.

  Pulling up to the Krasny house, I noticed a wreath made of corn husks and cranberries had been placed on the front door. It added a bit of well-needed cheer to the facade.