PRAISE FOR
THE SECRET OF CLOUDS
“Long renowned as a master of historical fiction, Alyson Richman spreads her wings and soars with this contemporary story. . . . The Secret of Clouds is an unforgettable gift.”
—Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan’s Tale
“A story of family bonds, heartbreak, healing, and hope—one that reminds us it is not how long we live but how well we live that matters most. The tenderly written ending will bring you to tears, but in the best possible way.”
—Lisa Wingate, New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours
“A tender, captivating, and ultimately satisfying story about the emotional gifts exchanged between a caring teacher and a student in need. Thank you, Alyson Richman, for another heartrending tale.”
—Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Exquisite and haunting. Richman writes with the soul of a poet, and her captivating new novel enchants while tugging ever so gently at the heart. Her story stands as a reminder to never take any day for granted.”
—Fiona Davis, national bestselling author of The Masterpiece
“Alyson Richman weaves an emotionally rich story of love, loss, and the resilience of the human spirit. The Secret of Clouds will soar off the page and into your heart.”
—Jamie Brenner, national bestselling author of The Husband Hour
“The Secret of Clouds immersed me in the world of a teacher’s caring, an immigrant family’s heroism, and a child’s courage. Richman writes like a dream.”
—Randy Susan Meyers, international bestselling author of The Widow of Wall Street
“Alyson Richman weaves storytelling magic with an extraordinary cast of characters: a compassionate young teacher, a precocious but ailing student, and an immigrant couple with a uniquely tragic past. . . . I was thoroughly captivated by this deeply personal tale of perseverance, acceptance, and the heart’s capacity for love.”
—Lynda Cohen Loigman, author of The Two-Family House
MORE PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF ALYSON RICHMAN
“Alyson Richman’s writing sings. . . . A beautiful and compelling portrait of two women facing their unknown past and an unimaginable future as their world begins to crumble. Heartfelt and romantic.”
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah
“Alyson Richman deftly weaves fact and fiction to create an enthralling tale of love and sacrifice in The Velvet Hours. . . . A carefully wrought story of love, of what the heart chooses to give up, and what it chooses to keep. Highly recommended to readers who enjoyed Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale.”
—New York Times bestselling author Karen White
“A book as full of treasures as the Paris apartment that inspired it. . . . A masterful mix of the glamour of the Belle Epoque and the shadows of impending war as the stories of two generations twist and twine together in delightful, heart-wrenching, and sometimes unexpected ways.”
—New York Times bestselling author Lauren Willig
“Staggeringly evocative . . . and beautifully written.”
—New York Times bestselling author John Lescroart
“Moving, unforgettable, and so expertly told—this is storytelling at its very best.”
—New York Times bestselling author Sarah Jio
“If you love graceful, mellifluous writing, you should read this book.”
—New York Times bestselling author Jenna Blum
“A meticulous profile of a man struggling against his native culture, his family, and his own sense of responsibility.”
—The New York Times Book Review
BOOKS BY ALYSON RICHMAN
The Mask Carver’s Son
The Rhythm of Memory
The Last Van Gogh
The Lost Wife
The Garden of Letters
The Velvet Hours
The Secret of Clouds
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
Copyright © 2019 by Alyson Richman
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Richman, Alyson, author.
Title: The secret of clouds / Alyson Richman.
Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018016371 | ISBN 9780451490773 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780451490780 (ebk.)
Subjects: LCSH: English teachers—Fiction. | Life change events—Fiction. | Self-realization—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3568.I3447 S43 2019 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016371
First Edition: February 2019
Cover art: painted marble by oxygen / Getty Images
Cover design by Olga Grlic
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.
Version_1
For Zachary Wyatt
and Christina Tudisco
Contents
Praise for Alyson Richman
Books by Alyson Richman
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Readers GuideQuestions for Discussion
Interview with Alyson Richman
Recipe
About the Author
Nobody has ever measured, not even poets,
how much the heart can hold.
—attributed to Zelda Fitzgerald
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 with 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.
1
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 door knocker, it looked as though it were 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 real estate agent 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 had 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.