Prima - Alta Hensley Page 0,49
had. I even took extra care with my makeup, applying it with a far more gentle hand than stage makeup required, but brushing on mascara and a bit of blush though he was totally capable of making my skin flush with nothing more than a look or a few words.
“I thought perhaps you two had snuck out the back door,” my grandmother said as we entered the room.
“And have you follow?” I asked, shaking my head as I set the vase down on the table by her side.
“Here you are, Mrs. Simyoneva,” Alek said, holding out a glass.
I noticed he didn’t let go of its stem until he was sure that she had a secure hold on it. Just that simple act had my heart filling.
This was a good man.
“You may call me Olga,” she said and then smiled. “But I’d much prefer Babka.” I smiled at hearing the address. It wasn’t as intimate as Baba but was another shortened form of babushka and showed my grandmother approved of Alek.
“It will be an honor,” Alek said, passing me a glass before lifting his. “Krepkoye zdorov’ye.”
If he hadn’t already charmed the pants off my grandmother, toasting to her good health in her native language sealed the deal. She was beaming like the spotlight I stood in on center stage. Nodding, she clinked her glass against his and took a sip and then a longer one before lowering her glass.
“Go on now,” she said as if she were the tzarina dismissing us from her court.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” I asked, suddenly a bit unsure about going out.
“I’ll be fine. I’ve got my phone right here and this rather ugly necklace you insist I wear,” she said, reaching to pull the medical alert button she wore that she could use to summon help if she needed it. When I still hesitated, she narrowed her eyes at me. “Don’t treat me like a child, Clara. It might take me longer to do things, but I am still perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“All right,” I said, giving in before I truly upset her. Setting my glass, which was still half full, down beside the vase of flowers, I bent to kiss her wrinkled cheek. “We won’t be late.”
“Don’t hurry home because of me,” she said, reaching up to pat my cheek again. “But feel free to bring me dessert.”
“Baba,” I said, shaking my head and pulling the afghan from the back of the loveseat and tucking it in around her legs.
“We’ll do that,” Alek assured her, returning from the kitchen which I hadn’t even noticed he’d ducked into. He topped off her wine, filled my discarded one as well so she wouldn’t have to lift the far heavier bottle, and said, “If there’s anything else you need us to bring you, don’t hesitate to call.”
“I won’t, young man. Oh, if you’d hand me the remote first?” she asked, nodding toward the shelf.
Alek moved to the shelf where she’d nodded but instead of picking up the remote, ran his fingers over the surface of an item next to it. “My mother collected matryoshkas,” he said, a tone in his voice of fond nostalgia and a bit of sadness. “May I?”
“Certainly,” Baba said, her face lighting.
Alek lifted the top of the doll, removing the torso of a brightly painted character to reveal another doll. I moved toward him as, one by one he pulled the next doll from its hiding place, each smaller than the previous one until he had four of the nesting dolls lined up on the shelf. He turned to look at me before glancing back toward the dolls featured in Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet, The Nutcracker.
“The Nutcracker, Drosselmeyer, the Sugar Plum Fairy, Hans-Peter, or the Mouse-King… but one is missing. The most important one,” he said, turning his gaze back to me.
“I’m afraid little Clara was lost years ago,” Baba said.
Alek looked from me to my babushka, back to the shelf and then to me again. “I think perhaps she decided to come out of her hiding place and grace the world with her presence.”
His words struck a chord within me that had my eyes welling. As a little girl, I’d cried for days when the smallest of the Russian nesting dolls had been lost. For the first time I considered how Alek might be right. I smiled as he bent forward to kiss my forehead and then slipped the dolls back into their hiding places until he settled