Lost Roses Read online

  The maid rushed off and the countess lit one hand on Sofya’s shoulder. “You really must sit. Think of your miracle child and how long you’ve waited, dear. And do stop eating or Afon won’t touch you after the baby is born.”

  Sofya shook off the countess’s arm. “Please, Agnessa, you’ve asked for two soda waters already and left them untouched.”

  “Americans have ice cubes to spare, dear.”

  I was thrilled to be leaving for Russia the next day, the trip of a lifetime. Not only would I get to see Sofya’s baby born, I would finally tour St. Petersburg—the bejeweled Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, its interior covered entirely with jeweled mosaic, and the Rembrandts at the tsar’s Winter Palace. Best of all I could visit with my dearest friend every day.

  I pulled Sofya by the arm to the dining room, a room big enough to fit an enormous mahogany table loaded with platters of hors d’oeuvres and desserts and a rose damask sofa.

  “Thank you for getting me away from them. Agnessa is terrified the baby will emerge any moment.”

  “This is the heir, after all. You know how mothers are.”

  “Stepmothers. And Afon is a wreck—becoming a child himself as birth nears.”

  “I’m thrilled we’re leaving tomorrow, darling. They’ll worry less at home.”

  She reached across the table and held up one of Mother’s cookies. “What’s the name of this?”

  I loved the sound of Sofya’s soothing voice. Her Russian-accented English had few hard edges and often caused people to stop what they were doing, lean in, and listen.

  “A butterscotch crisp, a Civil War recipe.” I’d asked the kitchen to prepare Grandmother Woolsey’s family recipes. Fried apples. Teacake cookies and blackberry cordial.

  Sofya finished the crisp in three bites. “Wish I could stay here forever and live on butterscotch crisps. The trip home will be terribly long—”

  “Sail to France and train to St. Petersburg? Sounds heavenly. I love having a reason to leave New York in the summer.”

  Sofya reached for another butterscotch crisp. “How can you say that? Back home, half of Russia is on strike. You don’t appreciate what you have here. The beach and Manhattan…”

  “Either stuck out here in a wet bathing costume or holed up in a hot apartment in the city? Trips abroad are the only cure.”

  “There’s always service work.”

  “And join the society do-gooders, braying about their milk funds and church sociables? Not Mother, of course, but most of them incite little real change and certainly don’t expand their horizons.”

  “You sail…”

  “Only at gunpoint. The boats I’m interested in are steamers due east. And besides, I miss Luba.”

  “I do as well. If only Agnessa hadn’t convinced Father she needed to study for her—”

  Sofya placed one hand on her belly and winced.

  “The baby?” I asked, a bit dizzy at the thought. It was too soon.

  “It’s nothing.”

  Guests congregated about the table, inspecting the offerings. Unfazed by the battling doctors, Mother sailed past us, her strong Woolsey chin high. She left an oddly pleasant mélange of salt air, Jicky perfume, and mothballs in her wake. As usual, her way of dealing with trouble was to smile and ignore it, ride it out like a sudden squall.

  I felt the cold, velvety softness unique to sheared beaver brush my arm and turned to find our neighbor Electra Whitney leaning across the table for a canapé, her face like the weathered side of a barn. Electra lived in a grim sarcophagus of a mansion several houses down from us on Gin Lane, every door attended by liveried footmen. She was alone that day, not flanked as usual by her fellow members of the Pink and Green Garden Society.

  Electra helped herself to smoked salmon and lingered. Eavesdropping?

  Our gardener, aptly named Mr. Gardener, stepped into the room, two hands supporting a silver Revere bowl filled with his signature antique roses, from creamy white to a deep fuchsia.

  Sofya gasped, one hand to her swollen bodice.

  “We thought you’d like them,” I said. Sofya had once been on the path to becoming an accomplished botanist and still pursued the study of plants for pleasure. When not walking the dunes in search of beach roses she spent hours in Mother’s greenhouse grafting orchids.

  Mr. Gardener placed the bowl on the polished dining room table, the felted bottom quiet on the mahogany, smoothed his hands down the front of his white coveralls and turned to leave. Mr. Gardener’s people had known Mother’s for two generations. He was infinitely kind and a fine-looking young gentleman: tall, with a plowman’s physique, and dark as the loamy earth he worked.

  Sofya caught him by the elbow. “You are just a genius with roses, Mr. Gardener.”

  Electra edged closer to the table and looked Mr. Gardener up and down. Her gaze slid to the roses.

  Each blossom was lovelier than the next: a William Lobb moss rose in ballet pink, with spiky, mosslike growth on her sepals, a deliciously scented, flesh-colored Madame Bosanquet.

  Sofya breathed in their essence. “I’ve never seen anything like these. The fragrance is remarkable. Just in from China?”

  “No, ma’am. These are antiques. Some of the finest old roses just grow wild nowadays.”

  “He finds them in the most unlikely places,” I said. “The cemetery, the lumberyard.”

  “I imagine they’re disease resistant, too,” Sofya said. “You’re a magician, Mr. Gardener. The creamy white one with a tangle of golden threads at her heart—”

  “Mrs. Mitchell’s favorite, and mine, too,” he said with a smile. “Katharina Zeimet—such a hardy repeat bloomer. All she needs is water and a little fertilizer.”

  “He’d be happy to crate some for you, wouldn’t you, Mr. Gardener?” I asked. “To take home to your hothouse.”

  Electra stepped closer. “It’s illegal to propagate a plant still under patent without paying a royalty. Some might call it stealing.”

  Mr. Gardener stood taller and directed his gaze at the floor.

  I turned to her. “Taking a cutting from a wild plant is not stealing and is no worse than eavesdropping, Electra Whitney.”

  “You never used to see such a thing in Southampton,” she said.

  “You never used to see people speaking unkindly, either.”

  Electra drifted off as Mother led a crush of guests from the terrace, waving them into the dining room, and Mr. Gardener took his leave with a bow.

  When would Electra Whitney learn to mind her own business?

  “Come now,” Mother called.

  Guests milled around us as maids bearing silver trays topped with flutes of bubbling amber fanned out into the crowd.

  Afon came to stand near Sofya. In civilian clothes Afon was simply a standard, good-looking young man, but in his navy blue uniform he became unquestionably Russian, with his thick-lashed brown eyes and shock of blue-black hair.

  “Your mother’s been looking for you, Sofya,” Afon said. “And Eliza, Dr. Abushkin just pushed your doctor into the tea cart.”

  “Oh no,” Sofya said, her brow creased.

  Mother mounted a footstool, her posture still ramrod straight, from years of standing with a broom handle threaded across her back between her bent elbows. She hooked the wires of her spectacles behind her ears as her suffragette friends gathered around us, their silk dresses rustling.

  “Thank you all for coming!” Mother shouted, arms spread wide.

  “Hear, hear!” some in the crowd called out.

  I tapped a spoon to my glass and the room quieted.

  Mother cleared her throat. “It isn’t every day that we host such—”

  The French doors from the living room banged open and the doctors emerged, the countess not far behind.

  “Would someone call the auth
orities about this man?” Dr. Forbes called to Mother. “He’s intoxicated and may have broken my wrist.”

  Mother turned. “Gentlemen. Doctors. We are celebrating here—”

  “Oh no,” Sofya called out from the sofa and cradled her belly. “Eliza—”

  I rushed to her as Afon knelt at her feet.

  The countess paced the room, fanning herself with her hands. “Dieu, sauve-nous! She’s in labor.”

  Mother rushed toward us, folding back her sleeves.

  “Get my bag,” Mother called out, and our housemaid, Peg, ran for the black medical bag.

  Sofya reached for my hand. “Don’t leave me, Eliza.”

  I held her hand and prayed the baby would be fine, with a sinking feeling I would never see St. Petersburg.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Sofya

  1914

  Once my overly prompt baby boy Maxwell Streshnayva Afonovich arrived in the middle of Eliza’s party, we spent a fortnight at the hospital. Soon, due to Father’s pressing Ministry business we set off for St. Petersburg, Eliza by my side. She said tearful goodbyes to Henry and Caroline and promised to be home by August.

  The journey home lasted more than two weeks but flew by, for Eliza and I talked about everything—Paris, art, politics—well into every night, stopping only to eat, sleep, and tend to baby dear.

  Once back in St. Petersburg at our townhouse on Rue Tchaikovsky, my sister Luba and I showed Eliza every literary café and museum, stepping on and off our excellent system of electric trams, which crisscrossed the city like patient beetles, fed by a web of wires above the streets. Luba hosted a star night on our roof to show off her new telescope, a gift from Father, and Eliza bought us lovely old copies of Walden: Or, Life in the Woods for the three of us to read together, stopping every few chapters to discuss.

  Though our home was not far from the tsar’s Winter Palace and the fashionable shopping street Nevsky Prospekt, much to Agnessa’s chagrin, we lived in the second-best part of town, near the embassies. At night, we heard increasing unrest in the streets but thought little of it.

  One afternoon we gathered in Agnessa’s personal rooms, dressing for a Persian costume ball at Anichkov Palace, home of the tsar’s mother. Rain fell outside the open window as I sat on the satin-covered love seat, infant Max sleeping warm in my arms, his breathing labored from a head cold.

  How I longed to stay at home with him, but Eliza looked forward to the ball. Plus, it was one of the last events of the season, before the St. Petersburg society that was left would decamp to vacation spots like Crimea and Finland and the city left to janitors and scullery maids.

  Russian society seemed more eager than ever to escape the city and tense talk of war. Archduke Ferdinand of Austria had been assassinated by a Serbian, which caused Austria to sever diplomatic ties with Serbia, Russia’s ally, and Austria mobilized for war. This led to endless, nervous speculation about Russia being drawn in as well.

  The royal ball invitation requested guests wear Persian dress and my stepmother, Agnessa, called in Nadezhda Lamanova, a former theater costumer and dressmaker to the tsarina. Madame Lamanova, a buxom, dark-haired woman with a permanently bored expression on her doughy face, produced two trunks of exquisite Persian costumes.

  Eliza stepped about the dressing room admiring Agnessa’s furnishings. Once Mother’s, it was the largest room in Agnessa’s bedroom suite, with high ceilings, floral wallpaper, and, on the mantel, a Limoges vase sprouting pink gladioli. The blossoms fluttered in the soft breeze and a shudder went through me.

  Gladioli. That dreadful flower.

  It was yellow gladioli the woman was delivering when the terrible thing happened. Soon after Agnessa married Father she ordered flower deliveries from Paris even in the dead of winter. I opened the front door of the townhouse one January morning after a violent snowstorm, to find a young peasant girl half dead on the doorstep, bamboo basket of gladioli in her arms, snow drifted around her. She lay there, eyes half closed, the flowers in the basket encased in glittering ice.

  I helped the pantry boys pull her into the vestibule and pumped her chest until the ambulance came, but it was too late. I arranged her funeral and then kept to my room, unable to shake the thought of her frozen face. How unfair it was, to die so young, just so a spoiled woman from Moscow could have her flowers.

  Soon after, Father and I opened Fena’s House for impoverished women and named it after my mother, Agrafena. Her name meant “born feet first,” a perfect name for her, always on the run doing things nonstop.

  Madame Lamanova unlatched one trunk, the sound wrenching me out of my thoughts. She pulled with two hands on one side while Eliza took the other, and they pried it open like an oyster shell. The two huddled around the trunk, sorting through the racks of gold brocades and fur-trimmed cloaks.

  Madame Lamanova drew out an ivory-colored, sable-trimmed, brocade coat. “For Mrs. Ferriday?”

  Eliza slid off her robe, slipped her arms into the coat. “What will you wear, Sofya?”

  “I’m going like this.” I had simply augmented my white evening dress with a cashmere shawl from my closet.

  Agnessa walked to me. “You must at least try, my dear. People judge you first by how you look and second by what you say.”

  How I hated that, her favorite expression. “Please, Agnessa—”

  Madame Lamanova offered me a feathered turban and I waved it away.

  Agnessa stepped to her jewelry cabinet and returned with a necklace draped across her palm. As she drew closer the emeralds glowed under the electric lights.

  “You must wear this tonight.”

  Growing up, I’d seen my mother wear that emerald necklace on the most formal occasions. Luba and I would sneak to her jewel box and run our fingers over the humps of cabochon emeralds and two rows of round diamonds. The tsar’s mother had given it to Father for performing some financial wizardry and he’d given it to Mother on their honeymoon in Biarritz. Now Agnessa wore it on occasion.

  “Father’s wedding gift to Mother?”

  Agnessa’s mouth tightened, as it always did upon mention of Mother.

  “What if it falls off?” I asked. At a similar costume ball the tsar’s younger brother had once famously lost one of the crown jewels, a diamond the size of a duck’s egg, never found.

  Agnessa fastened it about my neck. “If you won’t wear a Persian costume, this is all you need. The sultans loved their emeralds.”

  I touched the heavy platinum and cool stones at my neck. I was no great fan of jewelry, but there was something empowering about that necklace.

  Agnessa turned her attention back to the trunks, and then Eliza insisted on making up my face in her version of the Persian way, with kohl-rimmed eyes and scarlet lips.

  The rain continued that night and Agnessa allowed Father, down with the cold as well, to stay home with Luba and Max. Father seemed relieved he would miss his least favorite activity, dancing, for guests were all to perform a Persian-style ballet, an audience-participation event. I shared Father’s feelings about dancing but looked forward to presenting Eliza to the tsar’s wife, Tsarina Alexandra, who would be in attendance.

  Eliza and I set off from our townhouse, side by side in Father’s carriage, driven by our coachman Peter, who, in his city uniform of high fur hat and scarlet jacket, made quite a show of it, whipping the horses.

  How good it was to have Eliza all to myself. Agnessa and Afon took a separate carriage so she could come home early to check on Father. I wanted to arrive at the palace relatively dry, introduce Eliza to Tsarina Alexandra, and return home to curl up with infant Max in my arms.

  We made good time down Nevsky Prospekt, the fine shops shuttered for the night. Halfway to the palace we passed a group of ruffians near a liquor shop confronting a well-dressed young gentleman, clearly pressing him for money.

&n
bsp; “Criminals?” Eliza asked. “On the best street in the city?”

  “They call them ‘hooligans.’ Nothing new.” Hooliganism was an established practice heralded by the newspapers, where unemployed, drunken men used petty violence to intimidate the wealthy—often women. Rogue gangs bumped and badgered, robbed and mugged, let loose wasps’ nests on the trams, and, from tea shop doorways, threw hot tea on passersby for sport.

  Eliza craned her neck as we rode by. “Should we alert the police?”

  “They rarely come.”

  “It seems to be getting worse just in the time I’ve been here. How is the tsar helping?”

  I shrugged. “He believes if he supports the rich, prosperity will trickle down to the people. Private individuals pick up the slack. Like the women’s home Father and I opened. Father funds it himself.”

  “The tsar hasn’t helped the others still living in the slums.”

  “New York has no slums? Here, it’s the Bolsheviks’ fault—stirring up discontent. They called for another factory strike.”

  “I’m afraid for you, Sofya. The people are getting desperate. The tsar’s solution seems to be to kill all protestors.”

  “What of your Mr. Rockefeller’s guards just machine-gunning striking coal miners to death? Eleven children died there.”

  Eliza looked out the window at the dark streets, silent, the reflection in the window showing her pained expression. Had I been too harsh? She was right, of course. Perhaps it was better if we had a successful revolution, installed a more modern form of government. Half of St. Petersburg seemed ready to sweep out the tsar.

  The carriage approached Anichkov Palace, the four-story white facade aglow, even more beautiful than usual, washed with rain.

  “We’re almost there, Eliza. I’ll make sure you meet the tsarina.”

  “Will she expect an expert curtsey? Mine’s a bit rusty.”

  “Yes. And she speaks English and French. Prefers English but you’ll impress her with your French. Ask her about her son, Alexei, the heir. You’ll get extra time.”