The House of Frozen Dreams

A banner across the top said, Happenings from our Happy Home—Welcome to My Blog.

His mom had kept journals with the commitment of keeping a religious commandment, but why anyone wanted to display a personal diary on the Internet confounded him. Below the banner, a living room basked in natural light flowing through huge windows flanked with curtains, which resembled the ones his mother had made of burlap. Now they were in style? She would have gotten a kick out of that.

Hello Bloggers!

This weekend, Mr. Happenings has big plans to build a used-brick patio for the Luau we’re having in a few weeks. (Can you say pig roast? Leis? Even Poi?) I have no idea where he gets his energy. It’s not like his job isn’t grueling enough!

Was Janie having an affair with a married man? Mr. Happenings?

But he insists he can Do-it-Himself, so who am I to argue?

Anyhoo, we’re off to a dinner party tonight with our dear friends.

It had to be an affair. Janie was in love with this woman’s husband. Why else would she read this? This was exactly the kind of perkiness she made fun of.

Hope y’all have happy happenings this weekend. Be sure to check in on Monday for photos of our new patio project. Knowing Mr. Happenings, it will be completely finished. (And I’ll be giving him one of my Swedish massages!)

Toodleloo,

Janie

Janie? Janie Who? He had never heard Janie once say toodleloo, or anyhoo, for that matter, not to mention the fact none of this had anything to do with their life.

Along the right side of the screen, a cartoon caricature with Janie’s dark long hair and brown eyes grinned at him.

Click here to read About Me:

Hi, I’m Janie. I’m an Alternative Energy Specialist.

Well, he supposed that was one way to say she worked in Collections for the Electric Company. She had studied modern dance and wanted to be a dancer just as he had wanted to be a musician; they shared a haunting sense of failure. Though they each bore it quietly, it was always there, as constant as the indented couch.

I’m married to Mr. Happenings, an accomplished musician and CFO who is my Renaissance man. Seriously. What can’t he do? We have two darling kids, who I call The Pumpkin and The Petunia, and, honestly? Most of the happenings at our home really are happy! We work hard and we play hard. Check back regularly to see our do-it-yourself projects, recipes, parenting tips, decorating, crafts, and hints on how to keep your marriage and family positively happy!

He needed to stop reading, to turn it off if he could find—

“Kache. What the—?” Janie stood in the doorway, clasping her high heels in each hand.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” he told her, swiping the cursor toward the X, still trying to shut it down.

“Oh, it’s some work thing. I came back to turn it—Here, let me …”

“Janie.” He stood and reached out, took her shoe and held her hand, so tiny inside his mammoth one. “I’m sorry. But what is this? Some kind of alternate personality?”

Her face flushed and the pink splotch made its appearance, spreading down her neck. He felt bad, wished he had turned off the computer before she discovered what he’d discovered. “No, it’s not what you think, I’m no—I was just playing around.”

“Who’s Mr. Happenings? Is he supposed to be me? Or I guess the anti-me? My evil twin. Or I’d be the evil twin in this scenario, I guess.”

“No, no. It’s silly. I’m so embarrassed. It started out, I was … bored, you know?”

“Jesus. You had to make up an entire life? It’s that bad?”

She looked toward her toes, as if they might have an answer. “We could change that, Kache, if you’d try.”

Her shoulders slumped and a few tears hit her pearl polished toenails. He pulled her to him in a hug, Janie so short without her heels, and him so tall he had to practically fold himself in half to hold her. “I will. I’ll try harder.”

Her muffled voice, breathy against his arm, said, “You always say that but nothing changes. It’s such a lazy-ass cliché.”

He pulled back and looked at her. “Wait. You really give Swedish massages?” She didn’t smile. She didn’t even respond. He sighed. “I am a lazy ass.”

“You didn’t get all those promotions by being a lazy ass.”

“I got fired.”

“Laid off. Bought out. Restructuring. It’s different. You ran that place.”

“Hardly. I got lucky is all, but the gig’s up. No, Janie. When it comes to getting things done, I’m as competent as a clam. Hence, Mr. Happenings. My dad would love the guy.”

She stepped back. With her small tight fist, she punched him once firmly, squarely in his chest. “Your father has been dead twenty years. They all have been. Anniversaries are hard, I get that. But this has been going on forever. Kache, you didn’t die.”

She grabbed her shoe from him, pulled her heels back on. Balancing on one dancer’s leg then the other, she kept her eyes locked on his while he stood, hands in his pockets, the slight sensation of her punch already fading. Her bottom lip trembled.

Her words came loud and fast. “No. You know what? Forget it. We’re done. I hate that I wrote that creepy blog. Jesus, I need an actual life. Get the hell out and don’t come back.” She turned and slammed the door so loud the floor quaked. Her final shout came from the other side: “And WAKE THE FUCK UP!”

“You hear anything I say, my friend? Taking nap after one beer? You need me to drive you home?” Kache wasn’t sure what he’d told the man. Had he been speaking out loud? He hoped not. But the man was smiling at him again. Something about him reminded Kache of Denny. That warm familiarity. The ability to chat with anyone. Kache was so tired after staying up all night with the squatter woman, he wouldn’t mind having someone drive him home. But he needed to get over to the Old Folks’ and fill in Snag, see Lettie. He thanked the man for the beer and said he hoped to see him around.

The man called after him, “Next time I see you, your life will be better. You find beautiful woman! Not like me, you live happily ever after!”

EIGHTEEN

Instead of packing up a few things to leave as she’d planned, Nadia followed her morning routine. The chickens and goats shared in her jittery nervousness, calling their questions while she fed them. Feeding and tending to them usually cleared her head, but not this morning. She stopped before she began the milking and carried the eggs up to the house.

In the empty living room the imprint of Kache remained. She could still see him running his index finger over the bump on his nose, staring at objects around the room, lost somewhere deep in his mind. She picked up one of the photos of him on the piano and, no, just as she thought, there was no bump.

She boiled thistle and drank it to soothe. She ran a hot bath and retrieved one of the wooden chairs from the kitchen, then locked the bathroom door and jammed the doorknob with the chair. Her shirt came off first, then her jeans, until she stood in the cold room naked and gently swatted herself with the birch broom—the same calming remedy her mother had used when Nadia was young and awoke from a nightmare. Lying in the bathtub with her ears under the water, she bathed in the echoes of her mother’s soothing voice, the laughter of her sisters and brothers, her father’s chanting of the old scriptures, voice rich and dark as braga.

Her family had once belonged to the small village of Ural, about a thirty-minute drive from the road that turned off toward the Winkel homestead. She grew up with a loving if strictly religious family, a close, secluded community of equally religious friends, and a boy named Nikolaus, whom she had loved since she was eight. Everyone knew she and Niko would marry as soon as she turned thirteen.

But right before her birthday, an unforeseen rift tore the village in two. Some of the Old Believers wanted to appoint a bishop to act as a leader in the church. Not allowed, not in a church committed to no hierarchy. Instead, a Nastoyatel had always been enough, just a man in the village who volunteered to help out with church duties. Nadia’s parents were strongly against a bishop. For them and nineteen other couples, this deviated from the truest interpretation of Christianity. Many before them had died in Russia trying to protect the purity of their religion. Compromise meant contamination. So thought her parents and some of the others, though they were in the minority. They devised a plan to break off from the group and settle even deeper into the wilderness in a new village they called Altai.

Niko’s family stayed, and so did Niko. Nadia didn’t blame them. If only the division had taken place two months later she and Niko would have been married and she too could have stayed. But she still fell under her father’s rule, and he insisted she go with them. He had once treated Niko as his son but now treated him with disdain.

“I want my daughter and my future grandchildren to be of the purest faith. Otherwise your mama and I, we would have stayed in Oregon, where the world weaves in and out of one’s soul. You understand this, Nadi?”

No, she did not.

Whether or not they appointed a bishop did not concern her in the least. The truth—the truth that she’d shared with no one, not even with Niko—was that she didn’t know if she believed any of it. She did not even know if she believed in heaven or hell. She certainly did not believe that it mattered whether you crossed yourself with three fingers or two, or crossed yourself at all. She did not believe women needed to wear long skirts or scarves, or men long beards. In town she’d seen the other women in their pants with their uncovered hair and the men with their shaven faces. Lightning did not break out from the sky and strike any of them dead. It was obvious to Nadia that the world was an interesting place but the adults spoke of it with acid on their tongues.

She believed in the mountains and the water and the trees and the animals. She believed in Niko.

When all this was happening, Niko pulled her aside from picking blueberries with her sister. They ducked into the woods. He said, “We will find a way to be together.” He kissed her urgently, his green eyes held tears. “We will. I promise you, Nadi.”

The day came when the group departed, peacefully, lovingly saying goodbye despite their differences. Except for Nadia, the once-complacent child, who had to be physically dragged away by her father and brothers. She did not scream or cry or even speak as she scratched and kicked against them, her father breaking the silence, saying, “Nadi, Nadi. Nado privyknut

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