Lone Star

17

Carmen in Carnikava

Chloe

She loved the city in the distance. She loved the traffic on the roads (though she loved it less on the bridge they were failing to cross), and the vivid colors of the buildings. She even liked the unfamiliar sounds of Latvian: half-Slavic, half-guttural.

She was ashamed she was such a bad and unprepared traveler. Having no one to turn to, since neither Hannah nor Mason knew anything about Riga, Chloe turned to Blake, who walked arm in arm with his back journal, and it so happened that his journal on this particular Saturday was filled with tidbits about Latvia! He was infuriating. Why was he always the one looking things up, knowing things? What did Riga have to do with his story? “Everything,” he said. “The story keeps morphing, my dear Haiku. The chrysalis is becoming a butterfly. Did you know for example that Riga is a hotbed of spy activity? I’ll use that detail in my book.”

“What do Latvian double agents have to do with the suitcase found in a dead woman’s yard?”

“We don’t know where the suitcase was found,” he declared. “Don’t assume anything.”

“Your hero goes to Riga to find his answers?”

“Also, don’t assume he’s the hero. He may be the anti-hero. But yes, he goes to Riga. Just look at this place!”

She did. She was startled by the black church spires rising up outside the taxi windows, and she was startled by Blake. His cheerful immersion in the details of their travel and his commitment to his unformed opus were completely at odds with the Blake Chloe had grown up with. He was confounding. Hannah was no help. She accepted the new Blake the way she had accepted the old Blake, with neutral amusement.

Now, stuck in traffic on the bridge over the Daugava River, Chloe was forced to listen to Mr. Eager plan their itinerary like he was some kind of expert on all things Latvian.

“We’ll go to the Central Market. We can’t leave Riga without seeing it. And the Riga Museum. Also the Opera House. And, Chloe, I can’t wait to try the Black Balsam—how about you? No, I’m not going to tell you what it is. You’ll find out soon enough.” Leaning forward between the seats, he poked her in the arm. “There’s also a bakery that’s to die for, you know how much you like pastries, wait, I’m looking for the name of it …”

Hannah, of course, in her dry way, rained on all things, especially the bakery. “Well, it can’t be any better than the bakery in Bangor, near UMaine,” she said. “They have the most divine cream puffs. I drool when I think about them, and I don’t usually like sweets. And can the Riga Museum really compare to the Field Museum in Chicago? Same with the Opera House. It might be okay by Latvian standards, but compared to Carnegie Hall? And you know what I think? Beer is beer. Heineken, Bud, Black Balsam. It’s just beer, Blake. Plus Chloe doesn’t even like beer. Let’s not talk about it like it’s Dom Pérignon.”

Mason, looking and sounding annoyed, asked Hannah if she’d ever actually had Dom Pérignon.

“I’m just saying,” said Hannah.

“Didn’t think so,” said Mason.

Blake didn’t care. Sitting between Hannah and Mason in the back, he leafed through his notebook, his bedhead banging the roof of the cab. “Chloe,” he asked absent-mindedly, “when did you take Hannah to a Bangor bakery? You had cream puffs and didn’t tell me? Were they really that good?”

Chloe was at a loss. On the radio, the Latvian music, full of balalaikas and cymbals, syncopated through the cab.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t remember.” She stared at the outlines of the city through the window. “Moody’s aunt lives so far outside Riga. When would we even get to a bakery?”

“Don’t worry,” Blake said. “We’ll find a way. This bakery is a must-see.”

Chloe was hungry, sleepy, slightly irritated by the long ride, the slow-moving traffic. “Well, it definitely can’t be tomorrow,” she said. “We have to go to Liepaja.” The air whistled out of her balloon. Across the wide river, the Old City tempted her, its blue and pink walls, its green and yellow roofs, the colored stone, the purple domes, the pale light of the late afternoon northern sun. Riga seemed to be holding its breath before the raucous Saturday night ahead. Like Chloe was holding her breath before the next twenty days, before the rest of her life.

“We don’t all have to go to Liepaja,” said Blake.

Hannah heartily agreed.

“Chloe, I’ll go with you if you want,” Mason said from the back seat.

“I thought we would all go,” said Chloe. “Wasn’t that the plan? To live through everything together, like always?”

“We don’t have enough time.” That was Blake. “Hannah will go with you, Haiku. Mase has to come with me. We’re going to the war museum, bro, the Powder Tower. Manly things that dainty girls aren’t interested in. We’re writing a story. This is the work part of our trip. While Chloe is in Liepaja looking for a boy, you and I have to find nefarious goings-on in Riga.”

“No!” said Hannah. “Why do I have to go to Liepaja? I’d rather go to Riga with you. But not to a bakery. What’s the point of going to a bakery if Chloe’s not coming with us? I’m not going to eat any of that cream-filled starch. I’ll be five hundred pounds before the trip is over.” Spoken like a true size 2.

Chloe couldn’t help herself. “If you don’t like the pastries, Hannah,” she said, “then why were you wolfing down so many of them at the Bangor bakery?”

“She makes a good point, turtle, why?” said Blake.

“I was much thinner then.”

As if that answered anything.

“And what do you mean you’re not coming with me?” Chloe knew she sounded petulant. “Somebody has to come with me.”

“Yeah, Hannah,” Blake said. “Chloe can’t find a boy on her own.” He pulled Chloe’s hair. “She needs help.”

“Leave me alone,” Chloe said.

“I’ll come with you, Chloe,” said Mason.

“You can’t, bro. What did I just say?”

They were finally out of the city, over the bright, freshly minted bridge. The countryside went from urban to rural in the space of two city blocks and a farm. Inside the cramped cab, their tired chatter faded.

“What’s the name of the town we’re going to again?”

“Carnikava,” Blake said. “Chloe, why do I have to tell you where you’re going?”

“Not Carnikava,” the cabbie said. “Tsarnikava.”

Blake studied the map. “Says here Carnikava.”

“Tsarnikava!” the cabbie yelled.

After five tense minutes, Chloe spoke again. “How far is … Tsarnikava from here?”

“Twenty kilometers!” the cabbie said. “Maybe … twenty … FIVE!”

“Thank you!” she shouted back. She glanced back at Mason. His eyes were closed. He hated stridency, yelling. How did one yell thank you in Latvian? You’d think Chloe would’ve thought to pack a Latvian–English dictionary. Just to learn how to say thank you, or where is …? or how much?

“Paldies,” said Blake.

Oh, great. So he knew how to say thank you. She retreated into herself, her gaze on the fields. How could her grandmother have an aunt still living? It made no sense. “Chloe, did you say your family were bee farmers?” Blake asked.

“I never said that.” Did she say that? She couldn’t remember.

“You did say that. I bet they have awesome honey. I can’t wait.”

“Did you say beer farmer?” Mason deadpanned.

“Yes, that’s right, bro. Beer farmer. You got it.” They started roughhousing over Hannah. Chloe felt better. Maybe they could leave the aunt’s house after one night, stay in a Riga hostel? She thought this, but then she checked the meter. The price was ratcheting up like a champion swine for sale at the Fryeburg Fair.

47.

She swivelled her head to stare meaningfully at her three companions but none of them could convert the number into dollars, not even the brilliant Blake. Chloe had thought about nothing but the trip for months, but now she felt unprepared. The numbers on the wretched meter kept clicking upward. 51. Her anxiety level rose with each digit.

“What’s the currency here?” she bleated.

“Latu,” the cabbie said. “One latu, almost two dollar. One, two. Easy.” He laughed, opening a big-lipped, inadequately dentured mouth.

Chloe spun around, eyes big. Blake, sitting in the middle, stared at the meter—55 now—and laughed.

“Next time, take train,” the cabbie said. “Without bags, easy. One latu to Riga. One latu.”

59. 60. 61. Yeah. Maybe next time they would take the train.

The trees got taller, pinier, the countryside flatter, the yards more florid. There were farms and peat bog, and swamps. There was a dusky mauve color to the long-limbed conifers. The rural roads were poorly marked. It took the cabbie a while to find the address. For a few miles he drove down a long potholed avenue lined with birches. The small houses, mostly made of stone, were set deep inside the verdant foliage. They were neatly kept, had flowers and greenhouses. The landscape was nearly indistinguishable from Maine. Except for the shadow of the rangy White Mountains and the abundance of lakes, Carnikava and Fryeburg seemed more closely related than Moody and Varda. Chloe hoped no one else would realize that. That they traveled five thousand miles only to see their own backyards.

Chloe made some ironic remark about the beaten down nature of the landscape, and Blake said, “Beaten down?” He sounded prickled for some reason, as if she’d offended his very own Latvia. “May I point out that the road here, while narrow, is paved? Can you say the same for the dirt path you live on?”

Did he say this to be funny or to make her ashamed?

“Why choose?” said Blake. “And please note the trash cans put out onto the road. Are you familiar with this custom? A garbage truck comes to your house and picks up your trash, so you don’t have to haul your week-old garbage in your mother’s Subaru to the landfill fifteen miles away.”

“All right, all right,” Chloe said.

She wasn’t sure they were at the right house because there wasn’t a number on the small stucco cottage painted in sky blue. But out on the road there was an onyx-haired woman, her arm around a skinny adolescent girl, both standing at attention near a peach tree and a wooden gate. The girl waved madly before the cab stopped. They climbed out of the narrow car onto the narrow road, grateful to stretch out and careful not to disturb the droopy branches of an apple tree draping over the hedge and fence. Mason and Blake retrieved their suitcases from the trunk and Chloe paid the fare (77 latu! Nearly $140. She tried not to think about it).

Cautiously they approached the old woman and her young charge, who were still waving but also eyeing the Americans’ abundant luggage with skeptical wonder. Chloe thought that it couldn’t be the right house. The strong, serious woman couldn’t be Moody’s aunt, couldn’t be twenty years older than Moody, who was in her mid-eighties. This woman didn’t look seventy.

“Es esmu Varda,” the woman said. “Es esmu Varda.” She hugged Chloe, muttering incomprehensible things. She banged Chloe’s chest and said “Jūsu vārds ir Chloya.” The young girl next to Varda, demure rather than desperate, despite her name—Carmen—didn’t stop hugging either, except she was hugging Blake and Mason, two young men not remotely related to her. Perhaps she was more like a Carmen than Chloya had first allowed.

“I speak English,” the girl said with an accent. “I learn in school. I translate. Grandmother says she very happy you come. She waited for you long time. She want to know your friend names. And why you bring so much suitcase?”

“It’s not so much,” said Chloe. “One suitcase each. We are traveling for three weeks.”

“Grandmother says too much suitcase,” the girl repeated.

Varda had hair blacker than any hair Chloe had ever seen. It was without a strand of gray. She had black eyes, a weathered, saddle-colored face. Her hands were gnarled claws, tanned, strong, veined, scarred with old injuries. Some of the fingers were crooked, as if they had been broken and then healed poorly. She wore a plain gray dress and old brown suede shoes that she obviously had just scrubbed, for they looked damp. She had dressed up to meet the Americans. The tween by her side, too. Carmen had put on a peasant dress, scraped half the mud off her moccasins, and braided back her long sandy hair. She stood enveloped in a sickly cloud of cheap cologne.

Varda said something to the girl, emphatic and loud.

“She says to tell you she not Mudita’s aunt,” the young Carmen said. “She says you confused.”

The old woman pounded herself in the chest, and said what sounded like “Septic dank.”