THE X-MAS FILES: Freeze Frames

Tiny snowdrifts clung stubbornly to the window sill and Claudette set off a miniature avalanche as she brushed them to the ground.  Our warm breath left a dense fog on the lower pane which I quickly erased with my Winky sleeve.  Our old kitchen reappeared, and when we saw our mother’s transfixed expression we could tell that she was deeply engrossed in her favorite opera, La Boheme. (“An Eye-talian tragedy, with emphasis on the eye,” as we’re fond of slurring).  Mother painstakingly frosted a white beard on a Santa cookie and we watched her mouth move as if in conversation.  With an exaggerated Italian accent I whispered to Claudette.  “It’s the end of Act One, Paris, Christmas Eve, circa 1830.  The lovely heroine Mimi is singing the part where she drops her key in the snow, and the poet Rodolfo and she search for it, and their candles are blown out.”  I grabbed Claudette’s mittened hand and place it over my heart,  “This is where Rudolfo takes Mimi’s hand and in the frigid moonlit night sets the wheels of their fate in motion.”  We know the story well, and we’ve witnessed our mother before act out with preternatural precision her silent version of the scene.  I tugged on Claudette’s braid, “As I bring the curtain down, on cue another tear will weave a weary trail down Mimi’s, I mean mother’s, luminous cheek.”

My sister pulled my hat down over my eyes.  “Paulette, you are such a big jambon.”   I pushed up the tip of my nose to make a pig face and together we squealed with laughter.  As a purple dusk settled over the old neighborhood we returned our attention to the illuminated window.  Our mother had disappeared from sight, but we can see her enlarged shadow as it flickers past the Christmas tree.  Claudette put her arm over my shoulder and hugged me. “Can we go home now?”

I hugged her back, “Hey silly, we are home.”

My old Volvo has a great heater and it keeps us warm as I drive down the avenues away from Ocean Beach. I take a circuitous route south toward Claudette’s house trying to avoid a sea of red stop lights. She’s sleeping quietly in the passenger’s seat, her La Boheme CD sounds distant and muffled as it filters through the back speakers.  I swabbed the windshield with my forearm to remove clouds of condensation.  These motions of mine are mechanical as my mind is not on the road, but on Claudette’s recent fixated dreams of Minnesota.   I turned the music up a notch and catch the part where Mimi sings to Rodolfo about dropping her key in the snow.  The opera makes me think of our mother and how she always insisted that we “consume a little culture,” and she didn’t mean yogurt.  She gave us great freedom to do as we pleased as long as we set aside time for the Metropolitan Opera Hour on the weekend. 

On wintry Minnesota Saturdays Claudette and I played in the family room and pantomimed l’ opera du jour.  We would drag out our box of dress up clothes and in full costume, stagger and swoon dramatically in time to operatic histrionics.  Mother baked most of the day and the smells from the kitchen were divine.  This may explain why the aroma of fresh baked cookies always makes Claudette and I want to break out in song. 

I stopped in front of Claudette’s house and gave her a nudge, “Wake up Mrs. Van Winkle, you are home.”  


She unfurled herself like a waking cat, and yawning loudly looked at me with mock suspicion.  “Hasn’t Mimi passed yet? It seems like she’s been singing that part forever.  Aren’t you tired of that same old opera, Those Darned Bohemians?”  


I reach over and tug her imaginary braid.  “Act One is over and the curtain is coming down. E’ Finita!”  


As we get out of the car we both look up and see her husband staring down at us.  He leaned over the deck railing and yelled, “Hey Coquettes, where’ve you been all day, Tahoe?” I see his brows knit as he pointed.  “Paulette, is that snow on the back end of your car?” 


 My sister and I turn around at the same time and do a twin double take.  It was true.  A layer of snow mixed with evergreen needles clung to my bumper.  With a quick scoop I made a small snowball and tossed it at Claudette's head, “Sis, is this a dream?” 

Bohemians and Weather Winkys

Paulette put the old Volvo into gear and made a right onto the Great Highway, passing the surf at Ocean Beach.   At the next turn, we were on the I-35, heading into Minneapolis.

"Oh my, I didn't know we were headed this way.  What's up, sis?"

Paulette keeps her eyes on the icy road.  The air is heavy with snow that hasn't fallen yet, but we can smell it.  I lean over to crank the heat and wrap my arms around myself.

We pull up in front of our childhood home - a three bedroom bungalow.  It looks exactly as it did forty years ago, and so do we.  Paulette is wearing a pink wool cap with ear flaps, a red Weather Winky coat, flannel-lined dungarees and snow boots, and I mirror her in my attire.  Our feet aren't touching the floor boards.  "Hey, we are little!"

Paulette reaches over to pull on my braid, "Yeah, I thought it'd be fun to go home for Christmas."

We push hard to open the doors of the old Volvo, which now looks brand new.  Paulette grabs my hand as we trudge through the foot of snow.  We press our faces to the kitchen window to see our mother making cookies.  She is painting each snowflake, each crescent and Santa, but pauses to look out the window.  We wonder if she sees us, but she is looking past us.  She pushes a blond strand away from her forehead with the back of her hand.  Her shoulders lift slightly and then we see a tear slide down her cheek.  We can hear strains from Puccini's La Boheme.  It must be Saturday, the day the weekly radio broadcast of the Texaco Metropolitan Opera Hour airs.

The Bells of St. Georges

I patted Sloan’s shoulder sympathetically.  If I recall, 1933 wasn’t exactly a banner year for Russia or the US.  You gained your freedom and escaped the Soviet famine, but how depressing to get caught in the Depression.   


Sloan laughed at my irony.  “Ha, the joke was on my Comrades as we weren’t thrown to the wolves like they’d hoped.  My mother’s brother, Uncle George, lived in San Francisco and he’d made arrangements for us to live with him.  My uncle was a very generous man and financially stable compared to most.  He owned a three story building on Ashbury Street across from All Saint’s Episcopal Church.  He ran a bakery on the first floor, and it fared quite well, bread lines and all.  The three of us made a home on the third floor and life was very comfortable and safe.  I worked in his shop when I wasn’t in school and it was the warmest place in town.  I can assure you it was a far cry from those frosty Mother Russia mornings.”  Sloan put her hand to one ear, and said,  “I’ll tell you what’s funny, to this day every time I hear the sound of church bells ringing the smell of fresh baked bread wafts through my head. How Pavlovian is that?”   Before I could respond, she had cleared her throat, “Of course, I found out later that my Uncle George had other sources of income, but his private business on the second floor wasn’t my concern.”  

I moved the barstool and casually stretched my legs.   Sloan stifled a yawn and was fading fast, vodka and spicy memories make a wicked cocktail.  Claudette had turned her face slightly and was looking out the window, lost at sea.  She caught my glance, and gave her phantom braids a quick tug. I knew instantly that my sister and I had an identical image in mind.  As children the gesture had been our secret code for “retreat troops,” our father’s favorite command in Swedish.   He’d grab us by our long braids and order “reträtt trupper, move along my blond little reindeer.”  The memory flashed past and in the next second the three of us stood up all at once.  We both hugged Sloan, exchanged numerous numbers, and promised to meet again.  

Once outside Claudette and I walked down the sidewalk towards my car.  She jumped into the passenger’s seat and I slid in behind the wheel.  I looked over at her and tapped her hand.  You disappeared back there.  Where did you go?  


Claudette's expression turned contemplative.  “I keep thinking about the recent dream I had about Minnesota.  I dreamed we were chasing fireflies in the dark and following dad around an icy lake. Maybe it was all that talk about Kremlin graves and frozen tundras.  Strangely enough, it made me think of the snow globe he brought back for us from Stockholm.  Weird, huh?”  I nodded my head in agreement.  “I shook the thing over and over again so I could watch the snowflakes bury the little village.”  


I started the car and turned towards her before backing out.  "Claudette, do you remember the story I made up about the snow globe?  I told you the snowflakes had suddenly turned into fireflies, and if you squinted your eyes you could see the tiny villagers gathering in the twilight to celebrate their first summer. Winter was over for good.  I looked at my twin’s face and saw myself slowly smile.

Firefly Ocean

My attention drifts out to the ocean for a bit.  The Cliff House sits on a cliff - surprise! - overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  Large rocks, seagulls, and surfers hold steady in a tumble of blue.  I am still on the barstool, next to Paulette who is deep in conversation with Sloan, "...and so finally we received our paperwork to get back into the United States, but that was 1933, the very worst year of the Depression...."

I hear the waiter clear the plates from a table behind me; I take a sip of beer, while still watching the twinkling of the water.  Like the twinkling fireflies Paulette and I chased with Mason jars back home in Minnesota.  Daddy called out to us, "Dottrar, dottrar!  Now let the fireflies free - out of the jar with them."  He reached out to tug on our braids.  We protested, "Dad!"  But we unscrewed our jars.  What if our father had stayed in Sweden? He wouldn't have met our mom.  Would we have still been twins if we'd been born in Stockholm?  I can't imagine not having Paulette - my mirror, my guide, my firefly.

Stone Cold Sober

Sloan drained her Bloody Mary and bit the remaining juice from a quarter moon lemon wedge.  Delicately she patted a soft white napkin to her lips and moved her barstool conspiratorially closer.   She had spun a convoluted yarn and we were anxious for her to unravel more of her Russian past. The bartender eyed us suspiciously while removing plates, ever protective of his favorite little comrade customer.  I ordered another round of drinks and smiled,  hoping to nip any further mistrust in the bud. 

Sloan spoke haltingly at first, then her story burst forth like a warm summer rain.  She spoke quite wistfully.   "After my father passed, my mother, Marion, and I were "persuaded" to stay in Russia, and we did until I was thirteen.  The government knew of my mother's suffragette leanings, but none of the Kremlinite brass cared. All women were chattel as far as they were concerned.  Journalism was mother’s forte, but they were far more interested in her skills as a multi-linguist.   She had an ear for languages and could easily interchange Russian, French, German, or English with a quick twist of the tongue. Interpreting recordings of phone conversations made by unsuspecting foreigners  was her assigned service, and she excelled at the task. Later, some would call it spying, but others, more kind,  called it survival.”  Sloan continued, “and not so coincidently, our passports disappeared shortly after my father was buried at the Kremlin. We were caught in the thick of bureaucratic Red tape for twelve years." 

Claudette slapped her hand on the bar top.  "Where where did you live?  Did you go to school and were you alone a lot? What about your father?”

Sloan looked at us thoughtfully.  “Let me wax philosophical for a moment." She put her hand on top of her head and made a twisting gesture.  "My life is like a matryoshka doll, keep unscrewing its head, and a set of smaller dolls appear, one nested inside the other, much like an onion, so many layers, so many stories to tell.”  When she closed her eyes I thought she was finished talking, but with much more passion in her voice she continued.  “I distinctly remember Russia’s bitter cold mornings.  When I was little and half asleep my mother wrapped me up like a woolen mummy but I still shivered well into the afternoons.  The days we took the train to visit my father’s grave at the Kremlin are my coldest memories.  I was very frightened of the guards who looked like gargoyles, stone-faced and scowling.”  

Reds, Revisited

Septuagenerian?  More like an octogenarian!  But however old Sloan was, she told a tale that Paulette and I would recall for many years to come....

As Sloan sipped her Bloody Mary and leaned in to take bites of her omelette, she told us fragments of her life.  "Well, I was born here, of course, but my parents were journalists.  And they were very interested in the workers' cause.  They decided to go to Russia to write about the Bolsheviks.  This was in 1920, I think.  I was just a baby."

"What?  You went to Russia as a baby?  Wasn't it dangerous?" I exclaimed.  I swung around to see the amazed expression on Paulette's face, before looking back at Sloan to hear her answer.

"Yes, yes.  It was extremely dangerous."  Sloan sat up a little straighter and had another sip, before continuing.  "But my parents were very much of the time.  Or at least, that is what I gathered.   Mother had been a suffragette and Dad was truly concerned about the plight of the worker - you know, things were very different then.  There was no insurance, no pensions, none of that.  So anyway, we went to Russia, and they both got a number of pieces published.  I believe they were the only American journalists in Russia and they had to sneak over the border from Finland to get there."

"Wow - really?  With you?  A baby?"  Paulette looked startled.  "How did they ever sneak you in?"

"Mother said they treated me like a puppy.  They just put me in a bag - like that girl, Prague? or whatever her name is. You know, that girl who is rich and is known for doing nothing, but be pretty."

"Paris Hilton?"

"Yes, her.  She puts a little dog in her bag.  And I was that pooch."  Sloan looked down to tug at her starched cuff.  When she looked up again she was smiling.  She took a small breath.  "But then Dad became ill.  I'm not sure what it was.  Black lung?  And he died.  Mother said she was holding his hand and he just went to sleep.  He was buried at the Kremlin - the only American buried there."

I choked a little on my beer.  "He was buried at the Kremlin?  Oh my God!  Did you stay in Russia?  What happened to you and your mother?"

Old Haunts

     I didn’t tell Claudette that I desperately needed a beer to chase away my excruciating hangover, but somehow she intuited my pain as twins often do.  While driving along Highway 1 we decided to stop at a famous San Francisco landmark, the Cliff House.  Before stepping through the entryway we read a plaque that spelled out the Cliff Houses' rather ill fated history and tempestuous struggle for survival. From what I could gather we were walking into its third incarnation.  Between 1863 and 1909, the two prior Cliff Houses' were constructed, deconstructed (razed by fires), and reconstructed again. The present building has had many facade lifts over the years, but its basic structure has held on the longest. Third time's a charm, as they say, or maybe a long line of arsonists died out.   What ever the case may be, I sensed that the entire property including the skeletal remains of the Sutro Baths is as haunted as Halloween, but I put a lid on that thought until later.   Gratefully, Claudette and I passed through its front doors and happily seated ourselves at the bar inside.   Shortly after our first sips of Stella, a voguish septuagenarian sat down and we struck up a conversation.  Her name was Sloan.