The Language of Sisters

  I was there when the jury came back and announced the verdict. The victims’ relatives and friends stood and cheered and clapped. Victory! Justice, finally.

  The Barton family stood, too, but not to cheer. They hollered, they swore like the mean, half-cocked people they are.

  The security was already tight in that room, and the police and security officers swarmed.

  The people who were cheering stopped cheering and told the Barton family to “Shut up” and swore back at them as they struggled against the officers. Two fathers of the victims lost it but were outdone by two mothers, who took the opportunity in the middle of the mayhem to try to get to Tyler. Complete, utter yelling, hitting, chaos.

  More security officers ran down the aisle and hauled the Bartons out, pushing the victims’ loved ones who tried to attack Tyler out of the way.

  I was scared to death for Valerie. They were hungry jackals with sickening, vengeful expressions.

  I heard her in my head, clear as day.

  They’re coming for me.

  She turned toward me amidst the upheaval, the cacophony. She had two fingers on her widow’s peak, rubbing it.

  They want me dead.

  My whole body felt as if it had been dipped in ice. I’ll be with you.

  Valerie was hustled out one door, Tyler the other.

  I did not miss Tyler’s hateful expression when he smirked at Valerie or what he shouted at her. “You’re dead.”

  Valerie didn’t miss it, either.

  The snake and his family were gunning for her.

  * * *

  Kai took the kids to Hawaii to visit his family when Valerie went kayaking with Ellie, Dmitry, and me.

  The kayaking trip in the San Juans was not arduous. Valerie and Ellie hadn’t kayaked before, but the ocean sparkled, the orca jumped, the eagles soared, the seals peeked at us, and otters played nearby. We saw forests, sandy beaches, cliffs, and rocky shores.

  We went with a guided tour, as they made it easy for us. They assembled our tents, provided the food.

  “We’re not exactly roughing it,” Valerie said, glancing at the outdoor shower the crew was setting up.

  “We can’t say we’re out in the wilds,” Ellie said, eyeing the steak sandwiches

  “We are not going to be able to go home and talk about the joys of eating off the land,” Dmitry said, as the chef handed out glasses of wine.

  “But we can pretend that we’re adventurers,” I said. “Cheers.”

  We fell over in our kayaks, coming up drenched. We crashed into each other. We camped, sang, wrote funny poetry, and watched shooting stars. I cried about Marty, and Nick, Valerie cried because of the trial, Ellie cried because she was so happy she didn’t get married, and Dmitry cried because of a locket, a rocking horse, and a woman with bloody golden hair.

  I worried about Nick’s job, the danger, how he could die, too, but then I reminded myself that Marty had a safe job, so safe, and he died, and I could not hinge love on an occupation.

  We drank too much one night and had hangovers the next day. The guides jokingly threatened to have us arrested for drunken kayak driving.

  I sank into my kayak, into that ocean, as if I’d never been gone. Hello, ocean. Hello, nature. Hello, beauty that will be here forever, millions of years after I’m gone. Endless and eternal. Stunning and surprising.

  Maybe it was the simple beauty of the exquisite emerald islands. Maybe it was being outside again, finding myself, the self that I’d lost after Marty had died. Maybe it was time. Time to know that I would always love Marty, but he was gone, and I had grieved so deeply I wanted to die and I didn’t want to want to die anymore.

  I wanted to live. I wanted to be happy. I was not who I had been before. But I was still me, and I decided that I would live again.

  I would be brave and honest and I would tell Nick I loved him, and I would hope it wasn’t too late.

  I love him with everything that I am. I would love him forever, I knew that. That love did not take away from the love I had with Marty.

  My kayak flipped over, again. This time I came up laughing. I heard Marty laughing, too, then his laugh faded and I heard Nick.

  Nick.

  * * *

  At the end of our trip, on the white ferry taking us back to civilization, the islands fading in the distance, the four of us stood at the rail, our arms wrapped around each other.

  We watched the rays of the sun tunnel through white, puffy clouds, to the blue waves, creating that golden staircase up to heaven.

  The staircase reminded me of Marty, the loss still there, but this time, for the first time, I also felt gratefulness and acceptance. Gratefulness for the time that I had with Marty and acceptance that he was gone. It was not my time for the golden staircase. It would be, in the future, but for now I needed to move forward and begin again.

  With Nick.

  “Thank you,” I said to them. My sisters and I put our widow’s peaks together with Dmitry’s blond curls. “I love you.”

  “We love you, too, Toni.”

  “I am never kayaking with a hangover again,” Ellie said. “That hurt.”

  * * *

  “Hi, Nick.”

  “Hi, Toni.”

  Nick was guarded. He seemed to take up most of the doorway of his houseboat. He was wearing a black tank top and jeans, and he was so sexy I could feel myself tingling. It was about nine o’clock, Friday night. I’d been home from the island for two hours. The dock was quiet, the river flowed, and the stars had their dimmers on but were becoming brighter.

  “How are you?” I took a deep, deep breath and told myself to be brave.

  “Fine.”

  “Can I come in? Please?” Please, Nick.

  He hesitated, and my stomach pitched and headed toward my feet.

  “Sure.” He stepped aside. “Have a seat.” He indicated his couch, and I sat down before my pudding knees gave out from fright. He sat down about three feet away from me.

  I had taken a shower, washed my hair, and put on my clothing armor. Thigh-length black skirt, black tights, knee-high boots, low-cut purplish silk blouse, a push-up bra, earrings, and lipstick.

  “Haven’t seen you around.”

  “Dmitry and my sisters and I went kayaking.”

  “Ah.” His eyes flickered. I could tell he understood the significance of my little journey. “How’d it go?”

  “It was what I needed to do.” I sat on my hands to hide the shaking. “It went well. Valerie rolled herself twice, which was hilarious. Ellie tripped straight into the ocean one night holding a beer. Dmitry somehow ended up going backward, often, and I ran into a rock, a log, and a downed tree, but we made it.”

  “I’m glad you went.” Nick seemed tired. He had lost weight. He was wary, evaluating why I was there.

  “Do you—” I stopped, words stuck. Too much was weighing on this one question. “Do you want to meet my family?”

  He didn’t respond at first, his elbows on his knees, those warm and magically perfect hands linked together.

  “I would like that very much.”

  “You would?” Yay!

  “Yes.” He smiled. “Yes, I would.”

  “They’re uh ... different.”

  “I like different.”

  “But none of them deals drugs.”

  “That’s a plus, or I would have to arrest them.”

  “No arrests necessary.” I smiled. I felt much better! “I was also wondering if you would like to spend the night on my tugboat.”

  Nick’s smile grew. Something flashed in those light blue eyes. Perhaps a spark of light blue hope.

  “I would like that, babe. But I have to ask, so we’re clear, would it be for only one night?”

  “I was hoping it would be for ... for many nights.” I scooted over and grabbed his warm hand in both of mine, I couldn’t help it.

  “Ah.” His smile was now full, happy.

  “Yes. Hundreds of nights. Thousands. Tens of thousands.??
?

  He picked me up, dropped me on his lap, wrapped those strong arms around me, and kissed me, long and macho manly like. “I would like to stay over for tens of thousands of nights. It’s what I want more than anything.”

  “Then you’re invited.” I kissed him, then pulled away. “I love you, Nick.”

  “I love you, too, baby.”

  “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t commit, couldn’t be with you. I am truly sorry that I hurt you.”

  “Don’t be. I understand.”

  “I’ll make it up to you.” I kissed him again, then started kissing lower.

  “I’m going to hold you to that.” Macho man wiped a hand across his face, and I grabbed it and kissed the tears away on his palm and on his cheeks. I hugged him. I hugged my Nick, a strong, courageous man who looked like a hardened criminal but who had a warm and patient heart.

  We made love on his couch, clothes flying everywhere, then we went to my houseboat for the sleepover.

  Making love with Nick is my favorite thing to do.

  The next morning I had no trouble finding an outfit to wear to work. What color? That was easy: red.

  Living on a Tugboat, Talking About Homes

  BY TONI KOZLOVSKY

  My father brought home a present on my parents’ fourteenth wedding anniversary. He had a huge smile on his face. It was a long box, and it was heavy.

  “What’s in the box, Papa?” I asked, but he wouldn’t tell my sisters, my brother, and me. He told us to sit on the couch with him and wait for my mother to come out of their bedroom.

  My sisters, my brother, my mother, and I had made a five-layer peppermint cake together that day to celebrate their anniversary. We had also made our parents cards, pictures with the two of them on the front, drawn from a photo we had of their wedding day.

  I had accidentally drawn my mother far taller than my father; my sister Valerie had trouble drawing their faces, so there was some resemblance to pigs; Ellie, my youngest sister, had drawn them each holding oversized dogs, as she wanted my parents to buy her two dogs; and my brother, Dmitry, drew a picture of my father upside-down, we don’t know why.

  “Alexei!” my mother said. “You are home early. What is that?”

  “Happy anniversary, Svetlana.”

  “What is this?” My mother carefully removed the wrapping paper so she could save it.

  Inside the box were cast-iron pans. Heavy. Strong. Top of the line. The type a cook craves. My mother burst into tears. So did, surprisingly, my father. Together they held hands across that box, their tears streaming down their faces. My sisters and brother and I were baffled. They were only pans!

  I asked my mother, when she was done kissing my father, why they were crying over pans, and she told us a story, in Russian, as if we were back in our cramped, tiny apartment on the snowy streets of Moscow.

  During a hard time, after my father was arrested and jailed for his political views and for his fervent, outspoken belief that we, as Christians, should be able to worship openly, we were dead poor. My mother sold the pans that had been her mother’s so that she and my sisters and I could eat. I remember watching her walk out the door with those pans.

  She didn’t have a choice. We didn’t have enough money for food at the shops. We had no extra money for the black market. I knew selling the pans broke my mother’s heart. They weren’t just pans, they were her mother’s pans. They were part of her history, part of her family.

  “When your papa returned from prison,” she told us, “he asked where the pans were, and I told him. He told me that he would buy me the best pans in the world as soon as he could to make up for the loss.

  “This is about losing everything, then coming here to America and starting over. It’s about having nothing, not even a dollar, and building something together. It’s about love. It’s about you children and the sacrifices we all made. It’s about your papa and me and our marriage. Mostly, it is about how your papa kept his word to me.”

  She leaned over and kissed my father over the box of pans again. We said, “Ew!”

  They laughed and put their cheeks together so their tears blended into one. “Thank you, Alexei,” she said.

  “You are welcome, Svetlana.”

  My mother still uses the pans my father bought her, every day.

  “Because what I make in those pans,” my mother told me, “is filled with love.”

  We ran the column with a picture of my parents and their pans, in their kitchen. They had both dressed up—my father in a blue suit, my mother in a burgundy dress and heels, regal and elegant. We also printed their wedding photo.

  “I famous now,” my mother told me over the phone. “I wear my wine color dress. I think I still have the, what you call it? The va va voom? Your papa, he thinks I do. Last night he—”

  “Mama!”

  “Ack. You prune, Antonia. I know what I call special tonight at restaurant. I call it ‘I Am Va Va Voom.’ ”

  I tried not to groan, thinking of the calls I would get tomorrow.

  My father got on the phone, too. “Antonia! I like the article. Your mama and me. She look pretty in that wine dress, no? Yes. I think so. I not talk to you since Monday. Start with Tuesday. What you do? Who you talk to... .”

  * * *

  Daisy sang that night on the dock, every note dipping and soaring, catching the natural serenity of the river, then flowing toward the tips of the trees, the twinkling lights of Portland. “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” by Neil Diamond. “America the Beautiful.” “Here You Come Again” by Dolly Parton. “I Say a Little Prayer” by Dionne Warwick.

  It was like listening to an angel with a daisy hat.

  It was tremendously sad.

  What to do as Daisy’s mind slipped, as if it were tumbling down a cranium chute? Skippy and Georgie continued to check on their mother daily. Georgie called me the other day and told me his mother had shown him and his brother the whale hat she was working on.

  “She always wears daisies on her hats, not whales. What the f-word is going on? The other day, Skippy and I had to write a huge check to a charity that studies whales. She insisted. Don’t tell anyone, Toni, it’s embarrassin’ because of our ... uh ... business.”

  What was the solution? Trap her in a nursing home, or let her live her life out here until there was absolutely no room for any wriggling and for her own safety she had to be moved. She was clean, safe, eating.

  I voted for the latter.

  It’s what I would want for myself.

  * * *

  I drove by the white house with the red door on Thursday afternoon. The garage doors were up, but the family was sitting on the porch, one kid each in a parent’s lap.

  I could see the kayak. It had been repainted red. Well done. Looked new now. There were four people in the family, though. They needed two kayaks, not one. I wondered if they were planning on buying a second one.

  * * *

  Nick and I went out on Sanchez One. He bought a pizza. I made a salad. We anchored down in a quiet area of the river, the city lights way off in the distance.

  “Do you want to tell me more about your childhood in Russia?”

  I tried to make it a short story. “I lived with my mother and father, Valerie and Ellie. They were called Valeria and Elvira then. I was Antonia. There were uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents. We wanted to live in America, so we immigrated.”

  “Nice short version. Let’s hear the rest.”

  “It’s grim.”

  “I can take it, and I’d like to know. Your childhood affects your life now. I know there were problems in Russia, because you won’t talk about it.”

  I told him about the deprivations in Moscow.

  I told him about Uncle Leonid.

  I told him what they did to my father and grandfather and why.

  I told him about the pickpocketing.

  I told him the story about my mother, her secret.

  I told him about my parents and that last n
ight at home, the blood.

  I told him about Dmitry.

  I told him what I hadn’t told Dmitry, and how the secret—Never tell, Antonia, never, ever tell—had followed me, like a Russian scythe wrapped in guilt.

  I told him how I didn’t feel that I fit in for so many years in America, why I dress the way I do, and how lonely I had been here as a kid, speaking no English.

  He listened. He didn’t interrupt. He held my hand. He asked questions. I knew my secrets were safe with him. It was like talking to a vault. He was sympathetic, compassionate.

  “Babe, I’m so sorry for what you went through. I have never met a woman like you, Toni, or any people like your family. You lost everything, came here, worked hard, stayed sane, and here you are. All great people.”

  “I don’t know about the sane part.”

  “You’re the most sane person I know.” He kissed me, and I kissed him back.

  The sun was down when we parked his boat at his house and cleaned it up.

  Making love that night with Nick was more mind blasting than usual.

  * * *

  We had a family dinner at Svetlana’s the next night to celebrate my parents’ anniversary. The Kozlovsky gang was out in full force, as were longtime friends and neighbors, the staff, Ralph, and Charlie. My father said a long, long prayer thanking God for my mother, how wonderful she was, until my mother interrupted and said, “Amen, Alexei.”

  Our family then officially welcomed Nick, my father introducing him. “Welcome to the family, Nick Sanchez. We are ...” He swept his hand out. “We are American Russians. We say American first, then Russian. Some of us more crazy than others. It’s a large family. We fight. We love. We laugh. We drink vodka. I think you fit in to us good.”

  My mother stood next, and smiled, so sweet, black hair in a ball, the white streak from her widow’s peak striking. She wore a sleek white lace dress. “Nick. Our daughter, Antonia, is very special. I love her. Her father loves her. We all love her.” Her face turned stern. “You take care of her, or I kill you, okay?”

  “I’ll do that,” he said, in all seriousness, as everyone laughed. “I promise.”