Mind of Winter by Laura Kasischke

when you could wait at the gate for your loved ones to disembark from the plane and the snowplows roared out into the roads at the first few flakes. Holly knew that she could be given all the time in the world, and despite this conviction that she had something to write and no time to write it, there would be nothing. How many beginnings had she jotted down in the last eighteen years, and how many of those jottings had led to anything but frustration and an ill-temper that lasted for days? Hundreds of beginnings, resulting in nothing. What could possibly have been the point of trying to break her writer’s block, and, no less, on Christmas day?
    And still she felt the need to push her daughter (gently) away from her. Holding her, asking her what was the matter—it was just more futility, more fruitlessness. Her daughter, even if she knew what was wrong, wasn’t going to answer, would never offer any explanation for her tears or her moping or moodiness. If pushed, she would simply start up the argument about Holly oversleeping again, or the plastic bag. It would be a waste of both their time.
    Holly loosened her grip on her daughter, and Tatiana, who’d remained stiff through the embrace, straightened up, stepped away, and headed silently back to her bedroom. Holly heard the door close with an efficient little click, and then (surely not) could she have heard Tatiana slip the hook into the lock’s eye? That hook and eye she had refused even to acknowledge since Holly had installed it for her? Was that the kind of day this was going to end up being? Was Holly never going to be forgiven for having overslept?
    She shook her head at the place where her beautiful, impossible, impossibly beautiful daughter had vanished from the hallway, and continued to stand and stare at that emptiness until the oven behind her beeped that it was preheated sufficiently to slip the roast into it. Holly picked up the mushroom carton, ripped the plastic off of it, ran cold water over the fleshy nubs, and dumped them into the pan with the meat. She still had at least, she wagered, an hour to deal with potatoes and onions, and almost everything else—the mashed sweet potatoes and fruit salad and the dinner rolls—had been purchased premade at the store. This was not going to be one of her more impressive Christmas feasts. But what difference did it make? She couldn’t care less what the Coxes thought of her, and Eric’s family—well, how many impressive Christmas feasts was she really obligated to prepare for them in a single lifetime?—and Thuy and Pearl and Patty would have been pleased with nothing but a couple of beers (Thuy), sweet potatoes (Pearl), and fruit salad (Patty).
    Holly turned her back on the kitchen and went to the window to assess the snowfall. As she’d expected from the snowplow action, the accumulation since she’d last looked outside was truly surprising. The wind was blowing the flakes sideways as they fell, yet there was still a kind of organization to the mass of it on the ground, as if someone were taking great pains to distribute the snowfall evenly over the lawn. The birdbath—which was a cement angel bearing a water dish in her hands—was completely cloaked. Holly realized that the snow must be sticky and damp, because it clung to every bit of the angel, even the bottom of her wings, and her whole face was swathed as if in bandages. Because that angel was only slightly smaller than life-sized, she looked, disguised like this, as if she could have been a child or a little adult, frozen out there in the backyard, still holding out that plate imploringly, as if begging for something from the picture window and the cozy comfortable interior beyond it. Please?
     
    WHEN THEY’D ARRIVED in Siberia on their first trip there, Eric and Holly were picked up by a driver at the airport for a three-hour trip to the hostel run by this orphanage—this, after having traveled by plane and train and bus and again by plane for