Ring of Truth (21 page)

“Tell me.” He handed her a fresh handkerchief. Apparently he had quite the supply on hand.

“It's a sign of respect, to my birth mother and to where I come from.” She blew her nose and wiped her face. She must look such a fright, and just when she wanted to look her best. “They didn't try to rub out my past. They embraced it.”

“That was a very generous thing for them to do.”

“It was.”

“It's also a beautiful name, Veronica. It suits you.”

She was not so distraught that she missed the compliment. She glanced at Nicholas, who—she didn't think she imagined it—was eyeing her with some appreciation. She swiped at her nose one more time. “How did your parents come to name you Nicholas?”

“Well, they didn't keep the name my birth mother gave me, which was Oleg.”

She smiled. “You don't seem like an Oleg.”

“The name means holy, which actually suits my parents pretty well.”

“They're religious?”

“They're both ardent Catholics. But once they knew they were adopting from Russia, they went into a major Nicholas and Alexandra phase. Nothing could keep them from naming me Nicholas.”

Not even that the last czar came to a pretty nasty end. “What do your parents do?” She found herself wanting to prolong the conversation, even though they were sitting in a cold car in the dark, even though the birth mother she'd long dreamed of meeting was awaiting her.

“My dad's a doctor. My mom's a potter. She makes gorgeous pieces. She's extremely talented.”

Veronica remembered her mother telling her years before that you could learn a great deal about a man from the way he treated his mother. Now, watching Nicholas's eyes shine with admiration for his mother's achievements, Veronica had the idea he treated her very well indeed.

“She did have one big disappointment in life, though,” he went on.

“Surely not
you
.” She hoped Nicholas would catch that now she was complimenting him.

“No. But she was never able to conceive. My parents took that as a sign from above, but I know it hurt them.”

“My mother conceived a few times, but she was never able to bring a baby to term.” That was an intimate revelation, but somehow in this place she'd never been, with this man she barely knew, Veronica felt comfortable making it. “But I tell you, when I was with those children today—”

“I know what you're going to say. Sometimes I think I'd feel guilty fathering a child of my own. When there are so many children out there who need homes.”

“You could always do both. Have a child and adopt a child.”

“Yes—”

“Or have a child and adopt
two
children.”

Nicholas chuckled. “That would be perfect.”

Yes. Veronica had long thought that would be perfect, too.

She and Nicholas stared at each other across the small expanse of his car. Outside a pedestrian hurried past, reminding Veronica of the rush she should be in. She forced herself to look away from Nicholas's dark eyes. “I think I'm ready now.”

“You're sure?”

She loosed a nervous chuckle. “I'm such a diva. I've been worried my birth mother would disappoint me. Now I'm worried I'll disappoint her.”

Very gently, Nicholas turned her chin toward him. “There's no chance of that, Veronica.”

If Veronica had grown up in this building, she would have lived on the eleventh floor. She took that as a good sign. Eleven was her lucky number. She was eleven when she started voice lessons and that was also the year that her father brought home her beloved orange tabby cat Pumpkin.

Good omens were what she focused on as she and Nicholas pulled open the heavy metal door of her birth mother's apartment building, a relic of the Soviet era. As they made their way through the dimly lit ground level, Veronica knew she had entered a tenement by another name. It was dank, rundown, and oppressive—the smell of urine hung in the air; a sullen huddle of men smoked cigarettes in a corner, pausing to regard her and Nicholas with suspicious eyes; yellow and rust-colored paint peeled off walls pockmarked by graffiti.

The Cold War-era elevator began grudgingly to lift her and Nicholas to their destination, protesting every foot of the climb. Nicholas spoke into the silence. “Just so you know, this building is typical. It's not unusually bad.”

“They're all like this?”

“The Soviets provided housing for their citizens, but they made a point of making all the buildings alike. So life would be the same on every block, in every city, all across the country.”

Veronica supposed that was the revolutionary way. “They're all in bad shape like this?”

“They're poorly maintained as a rule.”

“It doesn't seem like the fall of communism has helped people much.”

“It's been very uneven. Some people it's helped a lot.”

Veronica knew about the oligarchs who'd pocketed outrageous sums when Russia privatized its state-owned businesses. But it was clear her birth mother and many others like her had been left out in the cold.

The eleventh floor lacked the smell of urine but was otherwise morosely similar to the ground level. The heels of Veronica's boots echoed on the concrete floor as they walked past one metal door after the next.

She halted abruptly. “I just thought of something. I could have brothers and sisters waiting for me, too. I know they exist. I can't believe I didn't think of that.”

It was another astounding possibility.

Veronica continued on, finally locating her birth mother's unit. She paused before knocking, Nicholas a reassuring bulwark behind her. It was amazing to know that from this moment on, she would know her birth mother. She would understand what kind of people she came from. She would become like everybody else who could recite those basic facts from their life story and take them entirely for granted.

She steeled herself for whatever might follow and rapped on the door.

It was pulled open by a woman of Masha's age, with curly hair, dyed copper red, and small dark eyes. She was plump and wore a no-nonsense gray skirt and sweater. She looked Veronica over with frank curiosity then gave a small smile and ushered the arrivals inside.

Veronica understood this woman was not her birth mother. As hushed words passed between the woman and Nicholas, Veronica took in the apartment.
This is where my mother has lived her life. This is where I would have grown up.

It was clean but—she had to admit—bleak. The floor was brown linoleum; the walls were covered with faded floral wallpaper. At least it was intact. Yellow draperies hung at the windows, which were cheery, and area rugs did add warmth, as did a quietly whistling radiator. The furnishings were basic and the worse for wear. Veronica told herself it was madness to be disappointed that she saw nothing in her favorite color of blue.

Beyond, in a room she couldn't quite see, she heard a cough. Her heart skipped a beat or two.
That must be my mother.

Nicholas spoke in her ear. “This is your mother's friend Fedosia.”

“Is anyone else here?”

“I don't think so. Fedosia wants to make tea.”

“That's fine. But I want to meet my mother.”

Fedosia might not speak English, but she understood that. She gestured to Veronica to move deeper into the apartment. Her heart now galloping a crazy rhythm, Veronica led the way into one of the two main rooms. And there, beneath a thin blanket on a pull-out bed, propped up against a stack of pillows, lay her mother.

Tears filled Veronica's eyes. She scuttled forward, dropping her handbag en route, and clasped her mother's hands in her own. She stared into the older woman's eyes—a greenish blue, like her own—and struggled with what to say in this moment. Somehow she couldn't find it within herself to say “mother” so she choked out an almost unintelligible
SDRAS-vui-tye
—a rather formal way to say “hello” in Russian.

Her mother smiled, nodded, and said hello more informally, then patted the blanket by her side to signal Veronica to sit. Veronica threw off her coat and obliged, twisting her body so again she could hold her mother's hands in her own.

“Veronika,” her mother said, pronouncing the name in the Russian style.

“Yes. It's really me.”
And this is really her. This is really her.

Her mother squeezed Veronica's hands. She remained dry-eyed, but again she smiled.

They stared into each other's eyes, Veronica blinking back tears and succeeding only to a point. Of course Nicholas stepped forward to produce a handkerchief. Her mother glanced at him and said something, to which Nicholas replied. Veronica looked at him with a question in her eyes.

“She wants to thank me for bringing you here,” he explained.

Veronica nodded mutely. No language contained the words to thank Nicholas sufficiently for that. She studied her mother's face. “I do see myself in you.” That was a phrase she'd never before been able to say, and never would again until she had a child of her own. “Especially,” she added, “in your eyes.” Their shape was the same, as was their distinctive aqua hue.

Sitting on a folding chair that Fedosia brought into the room, Nicholas translated. Her mother nodded, smiled. Fedosia piped up with something. “Fedosia says the shape of your faces is the same as well,” Nicholas said, “and that it's clear you're mother and daughter.”

Again her mother squeezed her hands. Veronica could only shake her head in wonderment. She had never before seen her features mirrored in another human being. It was surreal to know that this woman's blood flowed in her veins; this woman's DNA was a match with her own.

She did note, with dismay, that her mother looked shockingly older than would a 60-year-old American woman, and not just because she was ill. That was the unfortunate byproduct of a hard life in a harsh location.

Still, gray-haired and lined as she was, and even as again she turned her head away to cough, Veronica's mother did not look to be on her deathbed. Her frame was far from skeletal and her skin, while pale, was healthy in tone.

Veronica kept her voice gentle. “How are you feeling?”

Her mother shook her head as if that were a topic she didn't care to delve into. And indeed Nicholas translated that she did not feel well but did not want to discuss it. “She says there will be time to talk about that later,” Nicholas finished.

Fedosia spoke. “And today is a good day,” Nicholas translated. “Of course it would be, because you are here, Veronica.”

That called for another round of hand-squeezing, and more tears on Veronica's part. “There are so many things to talk about.” Veronica swiped at her nose. “I don't know where to start.”

“I would love to hear about your mother's life,” Nicholas said, then began a back-and-forth with Veronica's mother that he summed up when Fedosia returned from the kitchen bearing black tea and cookies, the same repast served to guests that Veronica had enjoyed at the orphanage.

Nicholas leaned forward with his forearms on his thighs. “Your family has lived in this town for generations, Veronica. The men have worked in construction for the most part. Your mother worked as a baker until she retired.”

“Did you enjoy your work?” Veronica asked. “Do you like baking? I don't get much chance but I love to bake.”

It turned out that her mother had labored in an industrial setting and chronic injuries she sustained over the years forced her to retire early.

Veronica was embarrassed to pose the next question but so curious to know. “I don't suppose there are any singers in the family?”

“No singers,” Nicholas reported a moment later. “But one of your aunts painted.”

Veronica's mother gestured to an oil painting hanging across the room above a small television. Veronica rose to inspect it more closely. Now here was something lovely—a blonde girl in a lacy white dress kneeling on a beach, so engrossed in building a sand castle that she was unaware she was being watched. Beyond her an orange sun sank into an ocean that stretched into forever. Finally Veronica saw something blue: the endless ocean.

“That's beautiful,” Veronica said. “It's impressionistic in style, isn't it? With those little dabs of color that disappear into the whole and the wonderful way the artist depicted the light of the sun on the sea.” She turned back around toward her mother. “I have an aunt who did this? She's very talented.”

Again her mother patted the spot at her side. Veronica rushed to rejoin her. “I know I have brothers and sisters. I'd love to know more about them.”

She had three brothers and a sister, she learned, all married with children of their own. That meant, Veronica realized, she not only had siblings but nieces and nephews, too. She should have realized she was likely to be an aunt, given the ages of her siblings.

“Yes,” Nicholas said, “your brothers are thirty-eight, thirty-six, and thirty-five, and you have a sister who's”—he hesitated—“thirty-two.”

Veronica looked down into her teacup, nearly empty now. She set it down.

Veronica was thirty-four. That meant her mother had given birth to another child after her, another girl, whom she had kept. For a moment the childhood agony came back.
Why me? Why was I the baby my mother gave away?

Nicholas leaned closer. “Are you all right?”

Beside her, her mother sat up straighter and said something. Nicholas did not immediately translate.

“I'm all right,” she told him.

“I'm sure there's an explanation,” Nicholas said.

Her mother was speaking more forcefully now.

“She says she understands why you're upset,” Nicholas said.

Her mother clutched at her arm until Veronica pivoted to face her.

“The problem was your father,” Nicholas translated. “He would come and go. After you were conceived, and when you were born, he was gone. That was why your mother was unable to raise you. She had three sons already, she had to work, and she had no one to ask for help.”

Veronica had always known her biological father was a deadbeat. It said as much in the adoption papers. Still, here where most people didn't stray far from where they were born, you'd think some family members could have helped.

“Then a year or so later,” Nicholas went on, “your father came back into the picture. And for several years he stayed.”

Which must be why her younger sister did not also land in Moscow's Baby Home Number 36.

Her mother's eyes, so like her own, were pleading. “She wants you to try to understand,” Nicholas said. “Life is a struggle in Russia, not like in the United States. There, families don't have to separate. Here sometimes they do.”

Veronica knew she was a stranger to adversity. She didn't understand what it meant to be beset by difficulties every day of your life, to know you would always be working a back-breaking job, living in a soul-crushing apartment building, raising children alone because the man you loved would come and go on a whim.

Again she took her mother's hands.

“And when it came to your father,” Nicholas went on, “your mother says he was not a bad man. But he was unreliable. In some ways he just never grew up. But she loved him.”

“Where is he now?”

Her mother looked away, shook her head, and began speaking in a low voice. This time Veronica understood one of the words she uttered.

“It's been years since your mother has seen him.” Nicholas leaned close. “Veronica, she thinks that since he hasn't come back again, he's probably dead.”

Yes, that was the word Veronica had understood.
MERT-vye
, the Russian word for dead.

Since there was so little mention of her biological father in her adoption papers—and what there was, was negative—Veronica had never spent much time spinning fantasies about him. Still, there was a certain grim finality to learning he was most likely deceased.

“May I see a picture of him? In fact, I'd love to see any pictures you could show me.”

Nicholas said something and Fedosia bustled off to another room, returning with a couple of photos and a stack of airmail letters tied with string. “Your mother kept every letter you ever sent her,” Nicholas said.

That Veronica could plainly see. “Yes, and Viktor's translations, too.”

“These are your brothers,” Nicholas said as her mother held out a faded photograph of three brown-haired boys posed stiffly in front of what looked like a school. They were all dressed alike in short-sleeved white shirts—“school uniforms,” Nicholas explained.

Veronica peered at the photo, then pointed to one of the boys. “He kind of looks like me.” As with her mother, there was something in the shape of the face.

“And here is your sister.” Her mother held out the other photograph. It depicted a bride, beaming as she strolled through a summertime park arm in arm with a strapping young man, holding up her voluminous skirt to keep it from sweeping the grass.

“She's wearing the kind of gown she would wear in the United States,” Veronica observed.

Her mother said something. “You're not married, right?” Nicholas asked.

“That's right.”