The Secret of Clouds

by Alyson Richman

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

From the number one international best-selling author of The Lost Wife and The Velvet Hours comes an emotionally charged story about a mother’s love, a teacher’s promise, and a child’s heart....

Katya, a rising ballerina, and Sasha, a graduate student, are young and in love when an unexpected tragedy befalls their native Kiev. Years later, after the couple has safely emigrated to America the consequences of this incident cause their son, Yuri, to be born with a rare health condition that isolates him from other children. Maggie, a passionate and dedicated teacher agrees to tutor Yuri at his home, even though she is haunted by her own painful childhood memories. As the two forge a deep and soulful connection, Yuri's boundless curiosity and unique wisdom inspires Maggie to make difficult changes in her own life. And she'll never realize just how strong Yuri has made her — until she needs that strength the most....

A novel that will make listeners examine what it means to live life with a full heart.

Release date: February 19, 2019

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 384

Sample

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2018 Alyson Richman

 

Prologue

April 26, 1986

Kiev, Ukraine

She walks the cobblestone streets, her lithe body moving quickly. Most days, she is wrapped in layers of thin sweaters and a scarf roped loosely around her neck. But today it is unseasonably warm, the sun radiating against the pale blue sky.

Everyone in the square is celebrating the surprising heat wave. Girls are wearing cotton dresses for the first time in months. Old men are playing chess in the park, their sleeves rolled up past their elbows. Young children are at the river with their parents, knee-deep in water they normally wouldn’t be able to swim in until July.

The heat. The sun. The light. For a few hours before, she had soaked in the unexpected sunlight in the privacy of her garden. But now, Katya finds herself joyously leaping over a puddle of soapy water left by the street washer. Her leotard is hidden underneath a thin black blouse. Stretching from the hem of her skirt are the sculpted legs of a dancer.

She walks as if suspended from the ground, arms swinging, her bag tossed over her shoulder. Her face is bone white, her blond hair coiled into a tight bun.

As she approaches the theater, no one takes notice of Katya as she pulls open the heavy door and ascends the cement stairs toward the ballet studios. Inside, the blinds are lifted all the way up to bring in the light. As the dancers stretch, their shadows mimic their movements across the wooden floor. Like dark ghosts resurrected by the sun.

 

 

Chapter One

Let me tell you a secret. A unique kind of person exists in this world, one who radiates light even through a curtain of darkness.

As a teacher, I’ve seen everything in eyes staring back at me: the child who hates school and wishes to be outside; the one who aims only to please; the glassy, sleepy-eyed child; and the one who’s perpetually lost in a daydream. But there are those rare moments when a student sits before you and you immediately are certain—and you can’t know why, it’s just a feeling in your bones—that they are different.

This child is not to be confused with the student who’s the most ambitious, or the one who is naturally strong at taking tests. No, this child, the one you sense is extraordinary, is the one who returns everything you give and more. He or she becomes your beacon, as every word you utter in the classroom suddenly has a destination. It’s as if you are teaching toward their light.

In the fall of 1999, I met Yuri, a student who one day would teach me lessons I could never have learned in school. I was young, just two years out of Columbia Teachers College. I had abandoned my first job after graduation as a personal assistant at a well-respected New York City PR firm, where my days had been so demoralizing and brain-sucking that I often thought eating glass might be less painful than spending twelve hours tending to my boss’s Godzilla-like needs. Hoping to switch into something that could restore my faith in humanity and also give my life purpose, I followed my mother’s suggestion and went back to school for a degree in teaching.

To be honest, I became nearly evangelical in my passion for teaching after I switched careers. The thrill of teaching children is that they don’t edit themselves, like adults do. Truth can be found in every classroom, and I savored that purity like a refreshing glass of water. I wanted to be the teacher who read passages out loud to my students, like my own English teacher had done when I was in sixth grade, so we could all hear the music in the words. Deep down, I believed a story could change us, and that if we read it deeply enough, a good book could transform our souls.

It was my second year teaching sixth grade English language arts at Franklin Intermediate School, and I was full of optimism. Everything around me seemed ripe with possibility. My boyfriend, Bill, and I had just moved in together. We had spent our first four years after graduating from the University of Michigan living a few blocks from each other on the border between the Upper East Side and Spanish Harlem, where the rent was relatively cheap and the bars were plentiful. But I had grown tired of the twentysomething scene of young professionals unwinding in front of sports bar TVs and a sea of baseball caps. And the long commute from New York City to my teaching job in Long Island was killing me. I wanted fresh air and a backyard. I imagined Sunday mornings where we could spread out the newspaper and look up at each other through steaming mugs of coffee. Perhaps we’d even get a dog.

Bill resisted at first. He enjoyed the convenience of picking up a coffee and a bagel along with his copy of the New York Post from his favorite corner deli, before hopping on the number 6 subway each morning to his Midtown office where he sold corporate insurance. He loved the fact that there were fifty delivery places he could always choose from if he wanted something to eat after midnight. He had just started making good money and was happy to have places to spend it. He bought himself a new set of golf clubs and splurged on box seats at Mets games and concerts at Madison Square Garden.

But then, over the next few months, one by one, our closest couple friends started announcing their decision to leave the city and go where there was more grass and the lines for Sunday morning brunch weren’t always an hour long. One night over Ray’s Pizza, Bill observed that the migration had started. “And who am I to be the last man standing?” He wiped his mouth with a paper towel. “Maybe you’re right, Maggie, let’s make the move out to the burbs.”

We ended up renting a small cottage in Stony Brook, a part of Long Island that felt more like New England than the fancier towns closer to Manhattan. I had found the listing for it in my parents’ local PennySaver, and circled it in bright red ink. The location was perfect. It was close to the middle school where I was teaching, and Bill was thrilled that his Manhattan employer had a satellite office not too far away. I believed I was well on my way to becoming a full-fledged adult, at the ripe old age of twenty-six.

The new place appealed to the romantic in me. A small white clapboard cottage with red shutters and a brass doorknocker, it looked as though it was lifted from the pages of a children’s book. Others might have been put off by the low ceilings and the lack of closets, but I was completely sold by what the Realtor referred to as its “old-world charm.” Who doesn’t love flower boxes filled with purple and magenta petunias underneath their windowsills? Who needs air-conditioning when you have tall linden trees shading a slate blue roof?

“Let’s try to negotiate a little on the rent,” Bill advised, the businessman in him always thrilled by the chance to get a better deal. But I ignored him. The real estate agent was pointing out the wood-burning fireplace, and I didn’t want to be distracted when she was detailing the craftsmanship in the carved molding.

“That’s all the heat you’ll need in the winter,” she laughed, pointing to the logs of cherrywood the owners had thoughtfully stacked to the side. I was sold! Already, I could imagine myself curled up underneath a blanket, reading Toni Morrison as the fire blazed on.

At the end of the tour, Bill thanked the agent and promised we’d get back to her in a few days.

I waited until he was several feet ahead of me before I pulled her aside.

“We’ll take it!” I said, squeezing her arm. I had always been a sucker for “old-world charm.” I could almost smell the burning cherrywood, even though it was days away from the start of summer.

We moved in at the end of June, just after my first year at Franklin ended, and I found myself doing most of the unpacking. I wiped down the wooden shelves in the tiny living room and lined them with all my favorite novels. Ever since I had first left home, I brought with me every one of the books I had ever loved. So even my favorite ones from eighth grade now found their way to my new shelves. My dog-eared copies of A Separate Peace and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn were lovingly placed next to more recent additions, like The God of Small Things and A Suitable Boy. Every day I worked toward making the cottage our new home, while Bill went off to work. I placed photos of the two of us in college over the mantel, and cut wild roses and arranged them in old mason jars. The fireplace hinted at all of our cozy nights to come.

In the meantime, I found a slice of heaven in the Adirondack chair under one of the trees in the garden. I knew, come September, it would be the perfect spot for me to correct my new students’ papers. I couldn’t wait to discover whose sparkling eyes were going to inspire me most in the coming school year.

The Friday before Labor Day, I arrived early at Franklin Intermediate, eager to set up my classroom. I had filled my silver Toyota with boxes of supplies: folders, paper, and marking pens. My friend Suzie Price, the art teacher, was in the hallway stapling colored paper to the bulletin board when I walked inside. I knew it would be a full-blown art gallery of student works on display in less than two weeks’ time.

“Hey, beauty,” she said. In truth, Suzie was the real beauty. With bright red lips and perfect skin, and all her scarves and mix-matched separates, she had that artistic way of styling herself I so envied. Come winter, when I’d be bundled up in a practical wool cardigan, she’d be wearing one in chenille with buttons made of sea glass.

“Good summer?”

“The best! No more reverse commute from the city. Bill and I found a great new place . . . a cottage out in Stony Brook.”

“That’s amazing news, Maggie. I need to move out of my place one of these days. Living in a basement isn’t good for the artist’s soul.”

“Check the PennySaver,” I hollered over my shoulder as I carried my box down toward my classroom.

Room number 203, my classroom, was smack in the middle of Franklin’s west wing. Like the majority of Long Island’s public schools, Franklin’s interior was devoid of any charm or architectural detail. The ceilings were low, the cement-block walls were painted a drab shade of putty, and the floors were a checkerboard of linoleum tile. But nearly all my fellow teachers relished the opportunity to defy the 1960s functional architecture and transform their surroundings into something inspiring for their students once they stepped through the threshold of their classroom.

We all prided ourselves in the various themes we used to decorate our rooms. That summer, I had deliberated over mine for weeks before finally deciding on “The mind is a powerful tool.” I spent hours creating a template for a squiggly shaped brain with all its infinite coils. I then color-coded each section with an array of neon magic markers to highlight the two parts. I made the left side of my template orange to show the children “the logical brain,” where language and analysis were generated, and then I highlighted the right side in pink for “the creative brain,” the area that sparked daydreaming and imagination. I also made a miniature brain for each of my twenty-four students, and wrote their names in the center with a thick black Sharpie. I hurried to my classroom, eager to begin working on setting up my bulletin board.

When I entered my classroom, much to my surprise, I found a yellow Post-it note from the principal already taped to my desk.

Ms. Topper: Need to speak with you when you get a chance. I’ll be in my office all day. Stop by whenever it’s convenient.

Thank you,

T. Nelson

I wondered what he could possibly want to discuss on my first day back. I checked myself in the mirror, took a deep breath to calm my nerves, and prepared to go see him.

Principal Nelson was standing over his metal filing case when I walked into his office. A desk fan was circulating warm air in the corner.

“Glad to see you, Maggie.” He gestured for me to sit down. “Did you have a good summer?”

“Yes, thank you. But I’m happy to be getting back to school.”

“Good to hear.” He smiled as he walked over to his desk and settled into his chair. “I have an unusual request for you . . .” He leaned in closer to me.

“Maggie, I was pleased with your work here last year. You bring an enviable enthusiasm to the classroom.”

I blushed and was about to deflect the praise when Mr. Nelson lifted his hand to stop me.

“No need to say anything more on that subject. I just wanted you to know that I’m looking forward to a great second year with you here at Franklin.”

He cleared his throat. “And, in fact, I was so pleased, I thought of you right away when I got this special assignment from the superintendent.”

“Sounds intriguing . . .” I felt a surge of nervous energy pass through me.

“There’s a child entering the sixth grade this year who just moved into the district. He was actually slotted to be in your class, but from what I gather of the details, he was born with a heart defect that has really weakened him.”

I felt my stomach tighten.

“Since he’s too weak to be at school right now, the administration has agreed to send tutors to his house for him, so he doesn’t fall behind. And I was hoping you’d be his English language arts tutor.”

He tapped his desk with two fingers as he awaited my response.

“We’re obviously hoping he’ll get his strength back and be able to join your class later on in the year. But in the meantime, the district will pay for you to visit him after your classes end here each day. We were thinking two days a week to start. The administration will be arranging another tutor to help him with math and science, but I don’t believe he or she will be from Franklin.” He folded his hands on the desk.

“Does that sound like something you’d be interested in doing, Ms. Topper?”

The excitement I felt only seconds before was now replaced by dread. The memory of a sick little girl from my childhood flashed through my mind, her eyes pressed to the window as the school bus passed by her house.

I could feel the color draining from my face, and my mind froze. I wanted to say something professional and well-meaning, like how wonderful it would be to teach a student one-on-one, or how it would be a privilege to tutor a child who was in need, but my words failed me. I could only feel myself fidgeting nervously in my chair.

Mr. Nelson leaned forward again. “So, can I count on you, Maggie?”

I swallowed hard, desperate to do something that would at least enable me to respond, but I could not stop thinking about my childhood neighbor, Ellie.

“What’s the student’s name?” I pushed myself to ask.

Principal Nelson lifted a sheet of paper from his desk and squinted.

“Yuri Krasny.” He read the name quickly. “I have no idea if I’m pronouncing that right . . .”

“Yuri?” I said the name again. It sounded exotic and interesting. Not like all the Michaels and Jonathans who were so plentiful at Franklin Intermediate.

I felt a whirlwind of emotions rush through me—thoughts of wanting to help a child in need, and fear of the emotional baggage that I’d been carrying around for fifteen years.

“I know it would be a very special opportunity to tutor him. But would you mind if I took the long weekend to think about it? I just want to make sure I’m not spread too thin in the afternoons.”

Mr. Nelson looked surprised.

“Well, sure, Maggie.” He tucked his pencil behind his ear and pushed himself away from his desk, the wheels of his chair squeaking across the tile floor. “Take a look at your schedule and get back to me Tuesday. But I’ll have to decide on another teacher if you’re not up to it, so please don’t take any longer than that.”

“Of course, and I’m sorry for needing the extra time.”

“But I do hope you’ll see the importance of this assignment,” he added. “It’s unique, and I think you’d be well suited for it.”

I nodded. I knew it was a vote of confidence for Mr. Nelson to have asked me, but deep down I worried if I was up to tutoring a sick child in their home. My mind kept returning to Ellie. That is the thing about memory. As hard as we try to will ourselves to forget certain events, our histories remain. I thought of those serpentine coils on the miniature brains I had made for my students. Every one of us had stories locked away in the intricate mazes of our minds. But, like most things, our stories can remain buried for only so long.

I was thirteen years old the summer that Ellie Auerbach got out of bed one morning and felt her legs go weak beneath her. She was five years old. That summer she had gotten her first bicycle, a bright pink one with a straw basket and a metal bell fastened to the handlebars. We heard her going up and down the street for hours each day, her training wheels dragging behind her, the bell ringing in the air.

I remember Mrs. Auerbach telling my mother that she thought maybe Ellie had slept in a funny position and her legs had fallen asleep. But there had also been the inexplicable fevers that plagued her the month before, and the persistent virus that her mother thought might be a late-season flu. These were all clues that perhaps Ellie’s mother had overlooked, because they interfered with her refusal to waste her energy on worrying too much about things she thought would eventually pass. Yet, eventually, these events glared in a painful, telling light.

Mrs. Auerbach had always believed in the goodness of the world, and that the sky changed color every sunset for a reason. “The universe doesn’t want us to grow complacent in its beauty,” she told me one hazy afternoon on her large white porch as she handed me a tall glass of lemonade. The condensation was cold against my fingers as I took it in hand and sipped from a paper straw. She was pregnant with Ellie then. Her abdomen was large and full against the linen of her white dress, her cheeks rosy, and her dark auburn hair in a long, single braid. She put her hands on her belly and cried “Oh, Maggie, I felt a kick! Do you want to feel the baby?” Before I could tell her I was too squeamish, Mrs. Auerbach had put my hand over her middle. And that bright summer day, I felt a little heel or a clenched fist—round and impatient—making its needs well-known from within the confines of its womb.

They brought Ellie home in a straw Moses basket a few weeks later. Pink and wrinkled beneath a crocheted bonnet, her five little fingers clenched at her mouth. Mr. Auerbach stood outside in pressed cotton khakis, sunlight striking his face. “A little girl,” my father had congratulated him. “There’s nothing quite like having one of your own.”

I remember my mother telling me not to get too close to the baby, but Mrs. Auerbach had only raised her hand and laughed. “If Maggie’s washed her hands, it’s okay for her to peer in and see the little bug,” she told me as she nestled into a large comfortable chair, her body still full beneath her dress. I felt so happy at that moment as I leaned in and my finger grazed Ellie’s cheek. Her eyelids lifted open and I saw the soft haze of her newborn gaze, her little fist now unclenching. As Ellie’s small finger reached out to touch my own, she became the baby sister I never had.

Eight years between us, I was always ahead in my milestones, but Ellie was never far from my family’s house. She loved to putter in my mother’s garden, where she wore my old rubber boots and used my little watering can with the painted daisy on the side. So that summer, when the pain in her legs first appeared, we held our breath as Mrs. Auerbach took Ellie from doctor to doctor, until a specialist in New York City finally told the Auerbachs that Ellie had a rare form of cancer.

She didn’t get to go to kindergarten that year as planned. Those first few days of school, the yellow school bus still slowed outside her house, as though it was waiting for the little girl to hop outside.

“They told me to cut her hair short,” Mrs. Auerbach confided to my mother, her voice low in a whisper. “So when it falls out, it’s not too upsetting,” she explained as the tears rolled down her face. The next time I saw Ellie and her mom, neither of them had their braids. Mrs. Auerbach had also cut her hair short, the moment the hairdresser had finished cutting Ellie’s.

Their house transformed from a home where the planters were always filled with bright red geranium flowers and the windows were wide open, to one that was suddenly shuttered and impenetrable. The curtains all drawn closed. Flowerpots filled with shriveled stalks and leaves.

My mother and I would still visit, but Mrs. Auerbach was no longer the mother with a carefree sprit and hopeful gaze. She looked gaunt and tired, her eyes rimmed in dark circles, her smile erased to a thin, drawn line. The air in the house was stale; the orange medicine vials lined the counter. And most painful was little Ellie on the sofa, her scalp fuzzy like a newborn, but her eyes far older than her five years.

Ellie remained in the back of my mind for most of my adult life. I might hear wind chimes sounding in the breeze, and the image of a pregnant Mrs. Auerbach on her porch would flash through my mind. And every time I heard the sharp, metallic sound of a bicycle bell ringing in the air, it didn’t make me feel cheerful but had the opposite effect. A painful reminder of the unfairness of life, and the incomprehensibility that a child could be taken from this world far too soon.

So much of Ellie’s death remained unprocessed for me, buried underneath layers of suppressed grief. The Auerbachs moved away less than a year after Ellie died. Their house was now occupied by an older couple from Boston, who had moved to be closer to their son in New York City. Yet there were times I would see a little girl who looked like Ellie, the moon-shaped face and hazel eyes, the golden braids tied with white ribbon, and thoughts of her would come flooding back to me. After all this time, Ellie remained six years old in my mind, even though I was now a grown woman teaching students of my own.

On Sunday, Bill and I went to visit friends in Westchester for a barbecue and we spent the day on lawn chairs, eating hot dogs and wedges of watermelon, savoring the last weekend in summer. On Monday, the day before school began, Bill went to play golf with a college buddy, so I took a drive out to visit my parents.

My family lived even farther east on Long Island than I did, two towns over in a remote area called Strong’s Neck. This was a place where people enjoyed their solitude. In the spring, the air was laced with the smell of honeysuckle and hyacinth. In the autumn, it was the rich scent of sugar maple and oak. Long stretches of land with tall grass and ancient trees bordered the winding roads, and many of the old houses dated back to the early settlers of Long Island. My own family’s house was far from historic. It was a modest ranch with cedarwood shingles and shutters that my father had purposefully painted hunter green to match the pine trees surrounding the house.

My father had the veneer of a sturdy Irishman, but the soul of an old Italian craftsman. He had taken up making violins for his post-retirement hobby, a strange and exotic passion for a man who had been in sales his entire adult life. My childhood basement, where my friends and I used to play Twister or conduct séances during sleepovers, was now a workshop with wood shavings on the floor and glass jars filled with glue and varnish. Even the smells of my family home had changed. It used to have the unmistakable scent of simmering garlic and tomatoes. Now, the fragrance of freshly planed spruce filled the air.

When I rang the doorbell, my father answered. It always still amazed me to see him so transformed. My schoolgirl memories were of him wearing a navy blue suit and striped tie, gripping a saddle-colored briefcase. Now, my eyes had to readjust. Dad was wearing a vinyl smock, a pencil tucked behind his silver-flecked hair, and when he hugged me, I could feel the calluses on his fingertips.

“Hey, Mags!” His cheeks lifted with a smile as he kissed me hello.

“To what do we owe this surprise visit? You must’ve missed your old man, right?”

“I missed mom’s lasagna.”

“I’ll happily take second place to that.” He grinned.

My father had won the prize when he married my mother, a first-generation Italian American. There was no greater cook in the world than she, as she could take anything and make it into something delicious. But my father always insisted it wasn’t Mom’s cooking that had made him fall in love with her, but rather her beautiful singing voice, which he believed to be more perfect than any instrument he could ever craft by hand.

“And you’re in luck . . . she made manicotti last night. Help yourself to whatever leftovers are in the fridge.”

“How are your hands today?” My father’s arthritis had become especially painful over the past year and a half.

He lifted his hands up, the knobby knuckles and sunspotted skin betrayed his sixty-three years.

“Nothing a little ibuprofen and an ice bath can’t fix.” He came over to me and hugged me. “Your dad’s no wimp.”

I rolled my eyes. “But are those violins really worth all the agony?”

“Well, to me they are.”

I smiled. I knew that after a life in pharmaceutical sales, my father finally had the chance to devote himself to what he had always wanted to do, and no amount of pain or discomfort was going to stop him.

I slid my bag down and went to wash up.

By the time I got out of the bathroom, my mom had come in from the garden. Her green clogs were by the side door, and she was standing barefoot by the kitchen sink washing sprigs of freshly cut arugula that she had just collected in a straw basket. My mother looked artful even when she had been on her knees in dirt all day. Her chestnut brown hair was threaded in silver and pulled back in a loose chignon, and around her neck she had tied a red kerchief. Her old-world elegance never escaped her.

“Maggie!” Her eyes lit up when she saw me. She shook her wet hands in the air, and little raindrops of moisture fell onto the linoleum floor. “What a nice surprise. Are you hungry, honey?”

“Have I ever not been?”

You could see her perk up immediately at the thought of feeding me. She gestured toward the kitchen table. I followed without protest as she began to heat up the food.

My parents had one of those classic love affairs. The Irish boy from the Bronx fell in love with the dark-haired Italian girl down the street whom his parents had warned him about. My father always told my brother and me that like the Sirens of ancient Greece, he had become entranced with our mother’s voice even before he saw her beauty. One day, when he was onstage rehearsing with his high school orchestra, he heard a girl singing behind the curtain. Notes floated toward him that sounded so perfect and clear. Family legend has it that he put down his violin and went off to search for her. And when he realized the tall girl with the long hair and dark eyes was the one with the voice of an angel, he fell head over heels in love.

And although my father’s family initially resisted my mother, she eventually won over her future mother-in-law, not through her angelic voice or her cooking but rather through what the Irish call the gift of story.

My favorite was about my grandmother, Valentina. Her American cousins had received a photograph of a petite Sicilian girl who looked malnourished and in need of a good home. When she finally arrived at Ellis Island, no one could make sense of the rotund girl who claimed to be their cousin. All the relatives whispered as they took the girl, who seemed to be bursting out of her clothes, back home to the tenement apartment near Arthur Avenue. They showed Valentina a room with a large metal tub where she could take a bath and change her clothes. The other women were rendered speechless as the fat little girl began to take off her coat, then her dress, then another d