The Secret of Clouds

by Alyson Richman

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN I was growing up, my father spent a lot of his time on the road, traveling to places that felt far away and cold. Minnesota. Wisconsin. North Dakota. “Now, if it was Italy,” my mother would tell us over the dinner table when my father’s chair seemed glaringly unoccupied, “I’d make him take all of us!” Still, you could see how much she missed him when he was gone. When the phone rang after nine p.m., she’d leap from her chair to answer it. Her voice changed when she spoke to him. It was a softer, gentler voice than she used with my brother and me. She’d pull the cord, stretching out its rubber coils as far as it could reach, trying to find some privacy from our prying ears. All we could ever make out of their conversation was her asking whether he was okay, and her concern if the midwestern weather delayed his return. But as children, we rarely spoke to him on the phone. “I’m calling long-distance,” Dad would remind us if either Charlie or I picked up the receiver. When we’d ask our mother how he was faring, she’d always tell us the same thing: he missed us and the food in his hotel was downright awful.

  But now, with his retirement, my father finally had pockets of spare time. Nothing would stop him from doing what he loved, not even his chronic arthritis, which I knew caused him great discomfort. He had worked his whole life to be able to pursue his dreams of carving violins, and he wasn’t going to give that up.

  He relished creating his workspace. A large farmhouse table he had found at a garage sale was placed in the center of the basement, surrounded by large metal shelves where he kept his many supplies, chisels, and saws. The box of metal files and the menagerie of glass jars that stored his brushes and solvents were kept within reach.

  On the walls he had put up posters from classical music festivals from around the world and one from the violin-making workshop he’d taken at Oberlin College. There was also one of an enlarged Stradivarius violin and another of an Amati. During the course of my childhood, I had seen my own share of basements. Some had pictures of Ferraris taped to the walls. And I had seen far too many posters of Farrah Fawcett in her red bathing suit. But no one I knew had images of rare stringed instruments pinned to the painted Sheetrock like my dad did.

  “Look at this,” he said as he lifted a freshly planed sheet of spruce. He brought it up to his nose and inhaled. “I can almost smell the juniper berries.”

  I leaned over and brought my face closer. He was right. The scent was intoxicating. The wood was as smooth as marble. It was hard to believe my father’s hands could make something so beautiful.

  On the shelf rested a violin he had nearly completed. “The varnish is almost dry on this one,” he appraised, holding it gently by the scrolled neck. The back side, made from flaming maple, filled the surface with elegant, rippling lines.

  “I wish you played, honey. How I’d love to make you a violin.”

  I laughed. “Sadly, I didn’t inherit any of your or Mom’s musical talent, nor did Charlie. Don’t forget, I had one year of lessons and I was awful!”

  “I know.” He shook his head playfully. “One of life’s cruel jokes on me.”

  I patted my dad on the back. “What I find amazing is that I have an Irish American father making violins in the basement. If only mom’s ancestors came from Cremona instead of Sicily, they’d be so proud.”

  “The irony is almost poetic.” A smile crossed his lips. “I’m still waiting for your mother to perfect her corned beef and hash.”

  * * *

  • • •

  WE went upstairs and found my brother and Bill sitting by the television, watching football.

  “Come sit down, Mags.” Bill patted an empty space on the couch. “It might be good research for you and Yuri. You can show him you know about sports other than just baseball. Broaden the kid’s horizons a bit . . .”

  “I don’t think Yuri likes football,” I said. There was already an empty can of Coors on my parents’ end table. Another one was now in Bill’s left hand.

  “Don’t be so sensitive, Mags. I was only kidding. Come sit down.”

  I didn’t want to sit down.

  “You need to stop thinking about that kid twenty-four-seven,” he muttered as he pulled the can away from his lips. “It’s really not healthy.”

  My eyes grew wide. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, Mags. I just don’t think it’s normal how much you’re fixating on that kid. It’s not like he’s our son. He’s one student you’re tutoring, for God’s sake. You don’t have to talk about him every second.”

  I could feel my blood pressure rising. I wanted to scream at him, and the only thing holding me back was that I didn’t want to make a scene in front of my parents.

  Bill tried to backpedal. “C’mon, you know I was just joking.”

  “My mom needs some help in the kitchen,” I said as I excused myself. “And you’re hardly funny.”

  An hour later, we were seated around the dining room table with mounds of food on our plates, watching my father carve the turkey, but my appetite had all but left me. Instead, my mind wandered to what the Krasnys’ Thanksgiving table would be like. I doubted they’d have baked ziti alongside their roasted yams, but I knew their sense of gratitude would put ours to shame.

  16

  SEPTEMBER 1984

  KIEV, UKRAINE

  SHE had met Sasha when she was nineteen. She and her friends had just finished their examinations and were waiting to hear whether they’d be invited to dance in the Kiev ballet corps. They had all agreed to go out to a disco that night and celebrate.

  He told her later that he had noticed her as soon as she walked in, with her black-market jeans, ribbed turtleneck sweater, and silver hoop earrings. Her blond hair was pulled into a high ponytail, her blue eyes lined in kohl. From the side, her chiseled profile resembled a Russian Nefertiti.

  He was smoking Kosmos cigarettes with his friend Andrei, the two of them huddled in a corner enveloped in a cloud of fumes. Modern Talking, a rock band from West Germany, was blaring from the speakers. When the song ended, he approached her at the bar and offered to buy her a drink.

  She said she drank only water. He ordered a finger of vodka and joked with her, as she sipped from her glass, that others might think she was outdrinking him.

  They danced afterward, their bodies bumping against each other, his hands encircling her tiny waist. Above them, the glitter ball sprinkled white dewdrops of light, and as the music pulsed through the room, she twirled and danced with a freedom that was so foreign to her long days of strict ballet.

  “You must be a dancer,” Sasha whispered into her ear. He thought of silvery fish that glided through the water so effortlessly. Katya was like that. She didn’t need to think about how her body moved to the music; it was innate.

  That night, after her friends piled into a taxi, she let him press her against the cement wall outside the disco and kiss her good night. After they departed, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He could still feel the weight of her body against his chest, the sensation of her warm hand in his. The scientific part of him thought of the connection between the moon and the tide. This was how Sasha felt when Katya left him, as though there was an invisible pull between them.

  He couldn’t wait for Katya to call him, even though he had written his number down and slipped it into her jeans pocket. He remembered her mentioning that the theater was in the midst of casting their next ballet performance. So the following Monday, after she and her friends lined up in the hallway to see who had made the first cuts of the tryouts, she exited the studio of the state ballet academy and discovered that Sasha was waiting outside, flowers in hand, hopeful she’d have good news to share.

  His eyes lit up as he saw her, and he took large strides to meet her. When their fingers grazed each other’s, he felt a spark traveling down the length of his body. It ricocheted across her eyes, like a fl
ash of brilliant white lightning.

  17

  OCTOBER 1984

  KIEV, UKRAINE

  SHE learns that he is finishing up his doctorate in cellular biology and that he is five years older than she. Their first year dating, he will take her to the river and tell her about the importance of the current, and its impact on the fish spawning cycles. He will speak about the rhythms of life and the secrets of nature. As much as he is used to being clinical in his research, he realizes he is no longer objective when he is in Katya’s company. When he sees her approaching, her gait is so light, she seems like she is floating, with no weight at all.

  And yet, she communicates in layers. He learns quickly that her words don’t always reveal what she is really thinking. He must watch her body language instead. When she is frightened, she pulls her arms close around herself. When she is distracted, her fingers pull at the stray hairs behind her ear. When she wants to be loved, her doe-like eyes lift to meet his gaze. Water to water, he thinks as their eyes lock. The first time he makes love to her, he feels the echo of her heartbeat against his. And when he leaves her the next morning to go to the university, he can still hear its pulse against his like a phantom memory. It is then he realizes that the rhythms of love mimic those in life. Like a song one can’t shake from one’s head, carried wherever we go.

  * * *

  • • •

  ONE Sunday, when Katya is not dancing, Sasha brings her to the city’s municipal gardens. He packs a picnic lunch of kielbasa and a loaf of black bread. He spreads a blanket down and watches how nimbly she tucks her legs underneath her skirt. Her lips are the color of beetroot, her face pale as the moon. He leans over to kiss her and feels she has the capacity to alter time for him. When he is in her company, it is as if he is moving in perpetual slow motion.

  After they eat, they stretch out on the blanket and feel the sunlight on their faces. He reaches for her hand and tells her about the butterfly effect.

  “The flapping of a butterfly’s wings in the rain forest can alter a hurricane hundreds of miles in the distance. Isn’t it amazing that something so small can change the outcome of another thing so far away?”

  She turns toward him, her hip resting against the blanket, and smiles. He kisses her again, but this time he takes his hand and holds it behind her head, smoothing the tangles of her hair with his palm.

  She thinks of all the small things that had happened weeks earlier that led her to go to that disco that night. Normally, she was not as social as the other girls in the school. She hardly ever went out dancing, as her feet were tired and sore at the end of the day. She had just finished her exams, and had she not been standing next to Elsa at the bus stop that afternoon, she would never have been invited to go.

  And yet, here she now was, with Sasha’s hand threading through her own. The warmth of his fingers penetrated her whole body.

  “I had no idea butterflies held that much power in their wings.”

  “They do,” he whispered back. And when he closed his eyes again, he envisioned Katya onstage at the national theater, her arms stretched out and her body leaping from the ground. Weightless, as if she had harnessed the wind.

  18

  WE drove home from Thanksgiving without talking to each other. Bill turned the knobs of the radio to WFAN and listened to the commentary on the Cowboys game. I gripped the steering wheel, wondering if he even cared that I was upset.

  Although the sports talk coming from the speakers filled the air, the silence between Bill and me was painful. I didn’t expect him to apologize for drinking beer and isolating himself in the TV room all night, but I at least thought he’d apologize for his callous comments about Yuri on the ride home. But he made no effort at small talk. I heard only Steve Somers talking about how great the Cowboys had played.

  When we pulled into the gravel driveway, the house was pitch dark. We had left without turning the outside lights on, and now we fumbled over the uneven path to the front door.

  Once inside, I switched on the hall light and hung up my coat. “I’ll be up in a minute,” Bill muttered as he draped his coat on the couch. “I want to check on the game.” His striped tie was loose around his neck, his shirt half-untucked. An image of Bill at our senior-year formal flashed through my mind. He had made my heart swoon that night when he arrived at my dorm in his tux, a bouquet of roses in his hand. The person before me now seemed as if he were from another planet.

  “It’s ten o’clock, Bill.” Even I knew the last football game that day had been over for several hours.

  “Not in California,” he said as he sank into one of the upholstered chairs. “I’ll come upstairs soon.”

  I turned my back and headed up to our bedroom. The night air had seeped inside, making the house as cold as an icebox. I had grown up with a father who insisted we not turn on the heat until after Thanksgiving. “A sweater is the best insulation,” he’d tell my brother and me before handing us woolly cardigans from the closet.

  Now, as if performing a familial Thanksgiving ritual, I went over to the thermostat and raised the heat to 70 degrees for the first time that season. I changed into my pajamas and pulled the covers down, sliding into the bed before turning on my reading lamp.

  The week before, I had bought the paperback of Toni Morrison’s latest novel, Paradise, and had placed it on top of my copy of Shoeless Joe. Bill’s side of the bed was a fluffy mound of pillows. I pulled one over to my side and propped myself up like a princess. As much as I wanted to begin Morrison’s new book, I reached over for Shoeless Joe instead.

  I wanted to end the day with something that would lift my spirits, and I knew there was more magic in those pages than just a baseball field constructed in the middle of a farm in Iowa. There was the magic of a little boy reading with his night-light turned on and his mind ablaze with possibility. I wanted to believe that even if Yuri’s weak heart prevented him from ever playing baseball, his mind had no limits. It could still be filled with dreams.

  * * *

  • • •

  I returned to school the Monday after Thanksgiving, curious to see how my students had enjoyed their mini-vacation. I had given them one assignment over the break to write a short essay on one of their family’s traditions. I told them about my father’s refusal to turn the heat on until Thanksgiving and about my mother’s ritual of sun-drying her tomato harvest every September.

  “So it doesn’t have to be a Thanksgiving tradition?” Jennifer asked.

  “No. It just has to be one that is unique to your family,” I clarified.

  They all had their writing journals on their desks. The covers colored the room from afar.

  Just as I was about to ask Finn to read from his journal, Oscar got up to sharpen his pencil.

  “Really, Oscar?” I strained to put humor into my words. “Do you really need to sharpen your pencil right when we’re about to start reading from our notebooks?”

  The class giggled.

  “No, Ms. Topper. It’s just . . .”

  “It’s just that it seemed like a good idea at the moment?” I gave a playful roll of my eyes. “Let’s save the sharpening until we need our pencils, okay?”

  “Yes, Ms. Topper.” He sat back down at his desk and slumped a little in his chair.

  I smiled to myself. I was improving. Last year, I would have lost my cool with Oscar and probably disciplined him too harshly. I was slowly learning and getting better at using a little humor to get kids to correct their mistakes.

  I turned back to the class. “Who wants to read first? How about you, Finn?”

  Finn blushed slightly and opened up his notebook, then lowered his head. After a few seconds of hesitation, he began to read:

  My family has a tradition of eating Mallomars the first week in September. That’s when they first hit the shelves at Waldbaum’s. Most people don’t realize that Malloma
rs are not sold in summer. They’re a cold-weather treat and are only available September through March because the chocolate melts easily. My mom buys my sister and me our own box every September 1st. And when I unwrap the yellow foil of the box, it almost feels like Christmas.

  Who didn’t love a good Mallomar to initiate the winter months? There was something very special about the thin coating of chocolate that encapsuled the soft, pillow-like marshmallow. It had the slightest bit of saltiness that made it difficult to eat just one. Finn’s journal entry made me want to get in my car and get a box or two for myself right away.

  “You’ve made me downright hungry,” I told him. I walked closer to his desk and smiled. “Well done.”

  “My mom packed some in my lunch box. Do you want one?”

  I smiled. I loved how kids took everything so literally.

  He reached down to get his backpack from under the desk.

  “No, you should save it for yourself, Finn.”

  He suddenly reminded me of Yuri. It was more than their mutual love of baseball or their intelligence. It was that they had each retained their own sense of boyish sweetness at a time when it was vanishing from so many of their peers.

  “This in-between state of boyhood at the cusp of young manhood . . . it’s such a beautiful but fleeting time. I don’t know. I wish I could capture it in words,” I told Suzie that afternoon.

  “It’s just . . . we’re at our wit’s end with so many of these kids,” I said. “But there’s still a kind of translucence to them now. They’re like these eggshells, and if you look closely, you can see the young adult emerging beneath the skin.”

  Suzie nodded. “I know . . . I see it in their bodies and faces. They’re becoming more chiseled; the baby fat is falling away.”