Shifting the gears with an ear for the same rising engine noises Yuri would attend to, Natasha eased the car into place. Her mother peered at the bumper ahead. From the back of the car, Denis said, “Yenikent.”
“One minute,” Natasha said, unbuckling her seatbelt and fully intending never to ask him to go on.
Once they were out of the car, though, she was not as convinced of silence as she had been. The children ran a few paces ahead. Her brother was subdued. He walked beside her and their mother with his back rounded. Natasha ought to ask him about the Turkish compound—she could ease him into the telling with his own words—the most significant extraterrestrial image ever caught on tape, she knew he would say—except she did not want to.
The tree branches stretching above the sidewalk were frosted white. Snow capped the iron fence that lined the skating rink. The ice today was busy with families, and young couples held hands while they glided in laps. “So crowded. I don’t know how you stand living in the city,” her mother said. She spoke in Even so the kids wouldn’t understand.
Natasha made herself busy looking for her wallet. In Even, too, she said, “I don’t know when you’ll get tired of telling me that.” Her mother snorted.
The prices above the cashier’s head were taped onto a printed sign. Natasha would like to see what was under the tape—the entrance fees were probably twice as much as they had been before last month’s devaluation. She paid for her mother’s rental skates and laced Yulka’s blades on. In his own bulky black skates, Lev stepped up to his uncle and asked, “Aren’t you going to do it?” Denis shook his head. “Why’d you come, then?”
“Don’t be rude,” Natasha said. “Denis, are you sure you don’t want to skate?” Another head shake. Her kids were already making their way onto the ice. She considered asking her brother if he wanted a hot chocolate, but he was a grown man. He could find his own refreshments. She knotted her laces and pushed off.
Flight 1628. Height 611. It went on and on and on.
The skates were snug around her ankles. She passed on one foot through a cluster of strangers, and once she had room, she surveyed the rink. There was Lev, with a couple classmates he had bumped into, and Yulka holding hands with Natasha’s mother. Denis, at the rink’s edge, caught Natasha’s eye, and she waved. Then she looked across the ice for Lilia, like always. Just in case. Imagine finding Lilia’s face in the pale city crowds, only a few kilometers from Natasha’s apartment, after more than three years. But Lilia wasn’t there.
Natasha’s limbs felt loose, liquid. She leaned to the left and glided past another group.
It was down to the two of them, then. Natasha and Denis. She knew that but somehow she forgot, searching for their sister every time she entered a crowd. It was down to them…
Making another turn, Natasha looked again for Denis’s slouched body. He had propped his elbows on the rink wall.
The afternoon air was crisp on her skin. The sun was a cold, clear circle, a hole in a white sky. On what seemed like her hundredth loop, Natasha’s husband called. His voice came through a second delayed. She waited for the connection to clear.
“Nice picture,” Yuri said.
She grinned into the phone. “Thanks.”
“I showed all the guys.”
“The first picture or the second one?”
“The second one. I’m joking,” he said before she could start. “How are the kids?”
She found them immediately. Yulka’s knit hat and Lev’s red-and-gray jacket. “Fine. Bickering, but fine.”
“Is your mom helping?”
“Sure. She’s perfect.”
“You’re perfect,” he said. She touched light fingers to her blemished forehead. He went on: “I’ve been missing you.”
“Turn the sub around, then. We’re at Spartak. I want to be skating in circles with you.”
“I want to be stuck in one warm place with you,” he said, and she laughed. After twelve years of deployments, they were good at these phone calls. Better, in fact, than they were at living in the same cramped apartment. At home, Yuri got bored, bothersome; when he was on sea duty, he was only his best, with no time to show anything more.
Everyone looked better at a distance. Everyone sounded sweetest when you did not have to hear them talk too long. After her husband hung up, Natasha skated past her brother at the wall, their mother cleaning her glasses beside him. Loving someone close-up—that was difficult.
Lilia had understood. She left for just that reason, Natasha knew. After all, Natasha and Yuri had moved away from the village after high school to get some distance from their relatives—Yuri’s drunken parents, Natasha’s mother’s strictures, Denis’s rambling. Lilia must have done the same, only farther, beyond Kamchatka. And with no warning.
Natasha and Yuri were already living in the city by the time it happened. Natasha would get texts from her sister filled with small-town rumors, romantic troubles, the choicest Denis quotes. Their mothership surveilled Earth from the outer atmosphere. Or Radar was tracking the pin-shaped crafts. Natasha texted back invitations for her sister to see the kids, and Lilia said later, later, that she missed them, that she would come soon.
She never came. The fall before she turned nineteen, Lilia vanished. Their mother, not grasping why a teenager might want to flee Esso, went to the police, who agreed to spend a day or two chasing Lilia’s shadow. Village officers showed her picture to the bus drivers in the area and knocked on a couple neighbors’ doors. Esso’s tiny police station was no more than an outpost of a regional branch of the force in Petropavlovsk, which in its turn responded to occasional directions from Moscow; they were not equipped for a missing-person case. Natasha’s own search efforts—canvassing Esso, questioning airport security in Petropavlovsk, messaging her sister for months, where are you, please answer—seemed more promising. Though they, too, yielded no result.
“Lilia’s eighteen, she graduated. She’s restless like a lot of girls can be,” Esso’s police captain told Natasha’s mother at the time. “She decided to go off to see the world.”
Now, of course, Natasha knew the captain was right, but back then his words enraged her. To see the world, Lilia would have needed to leave the peninsula through Petropavlovsk. Would she really have come to the city without saying goodbye? Something must have happened at home to make Lilia turn her back on Natasha. Someone—and was it Denis?—had driven Lilia away.
Three years had gone by since then. In three more, or five, or ten, or seventy, Natasha would still remember every second of those first disappearance days. On the drive from Petropavlovsk toward Esso with husband and children in tow, the morning after her mother called with the news, Natasha had pulled over to dry-heave in the dirt. Lilia gone. Natasha was sickened by fury. When she arrived, she found that their mother had sobbed so much that her face had swelled, lizard-like. Denis told them Lilia did not leave but was taken. When he pointed up, toward the roof, toward the stars, Natasha slapped him.
It had been a waking nightmare. Lilia’s things, her books, her rumpled clothes, were still scattered at that moment around the house. Natasha’s children, then only five and seven, were asleep in the living room. In the kitchen, Natasha was watching her mother struggle to blink: behind her glasses, her lashes stuck out from sore eyelids. Yuri’s hand weighed on the base of Natasha’s back—he had not stopped touching her since they got the call that Lilia was gone. When Denis said that, Natasha crouched up out of her seat and hit her brother as hard as she could. The sound of the slap was a shock. His cheek was harder than she had expected. She made contact with his jawbone and two rows of clenched teeth.
To this day, Natasha felt awful about it. Denis could not have acted differently. He honestly believed their sister had been pulled away into the stars. Yes, there were times Natasha wished he had been more attentive, in the crucial months after Lilia graduated, to wha
t Lilia was doing and who she spent time with. But Natasha had the same old regrets for herself. If she had returned to see their family more often—or insisted on Lilia’s visiting her in the city—but it was impossible now to do those things, to go back or to say what would have saved them.
Anyway, Natasha was not angry anymore.
She skated up to her mother and brother to prove that to herself. “I was just telling Denis to wrap himself up,” her mother said. “That wind off the water. Lev and Yulka must get sick all through the winter.”
“No, they’re used to it,” Natasha said. She faced half away from the conversation so she could watch her children pass. The bay beyond the rink was a silver dish. “Today’s pretty calm, anyway.”
Her mother lifted one hand to the scarf around her coat collar. “I feel the cold here, like a knife to the throat. It’s barely below freezing but the wind makes you believe you’ll die of exposure.” For years after Natasha and Yuri moved, Natasha’s mother had complained about city crime rates, but after their family’s brush with the village police, she shifted to other subjects. The weather.
What Natasha’s mother did not talk about was worse than what Natasha’s brother did. Her mother harbored her own bitter theories. After the Golosovskaya girls were taken, Natasha brought them up on a phone call to Esso, and her mother said, “So now you’re interested?”
“What does that mean?” Natasha asked. Though she knew. On the other end of the line, her mother stayed silent. After a long minute, Natasha said, “You’ve heard the news, then. It’s frightening. Isn’t it?”
“Now you’re frightened,” her mother said. “Yes. It’s terrible. Their pictures are in our post office. But you are aware by now that these things happen.”
“What things, Mama?” Her mother would rather despise the police, suspect their neighbors, picture her youngest child grabbed and murdered than admit Lilia had run away from them. “These are children. The older girl is only a year above Lev in school. They were abducted,” Natasha said. “They aren’t Lilia.”
Her mother sighed. The sound crackled through the phone. “Tell me what Yulka and Lev need to prepare before school starts,” she said. Then: “They were killed, I’m sure. Their posters here don’t mention any abduction. But, Tasha, it’s better not to speak of such things. What can we do about it all? Nothing.”
After that, Natasha left the headlines out of their conversations. She did not ask how the village captain spoke to her mother, even now, years later, or what the neighbors whispered about their family while standing in line at the grocery store. Lev and Yulka swooped past her and bent on their blades for another turn. Her mother started to say, “Those gloves—”
Natasha raised her hand in greeting to someone coming over. “Sorry, Mama,” she said in quick Even, and then in Russian introduction: “Happy New Year! It’s so good to see you. My mother, Alla Innokentevna, and brother, Denis. They’re visiting—”
“From the north, from Esso,” Natasha’s mother said.
“And this is Anfisa. Her son and Lev are in the same class.” Natasha only knew the neighbor, a feline blonde, from chatting at the bus stop or the odd school concert. Denis, thank God, did not embarrass them. He made eye contact, said hello, stopped there.
“I’m thrilled you’re here,” said Anfisa. Under her winter cap, her eyebrows were arched and penciled to perfection. “We’ve spent the last few days stuck in the apartment. Look, they found each other.” She lifted her chin toward the ice.
Natasha turned to see their boys skating in a cluster of year-six classmates. Yulka, cheeks red with effort, trailed behind. Natasha called her daughter’s name, but Yulka didn’t hear, or pretended not to.
“Is Yuri home?” Anfisa asked.
“Not until March.”
“Excellent to have your family visit, then.” Anfisa smiled at Natasha’s mother. “Although Natasha’s very strong—she handles everything—I’m sure she appreciates the company. Do you come down often?”
“Only for the winter holidays. They visit us in the summer,” Natasha’s mother said. “But once a year here is enough. Work keeps me busy—I run our cultural center at home. And Petropavlovsk overwhelms.”
“I understand, I do,” Anfisa said. “I was raised in the north myself.”
Natasha looked in surprise at her neighbor. Anfisa’s white skin and toneless accent. “I didn’t know that.”
“I was. In Palana. I only moved here after I had Misha.”
“It’s actually better to be away from the city,” Denis said. “It’s safest in a small town. At the London Olympics, the ships surveilled everyone. There’s photographic evidence. Three lights in a row in the sky.”
Natasha shut her eyes. She concentrated on the laced tightness around her ankles, the thermal leggings constricting her thighs. Low-level frustration sat trapped in her chest. But not anger.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw Anfisa. The neighbor reached out and gripped Natasha’s elbow. “Come over this week,” Anfisa said. “The boys can distract each other while we take an hour or two to ourselves.” In her cat’s smile, there was something small, recognizable, and secret, speaking to Natasha, saying: You are not alone.
* * *
·
Anfisa’s apartment was in the same row of buildings as theirs, only a few entrances away. Two days after the skating trip, Lev tramped across their parking lot toward that door. “Slow down,” Natasha called after him. She had Yulka by the hand to guide the girl over hills of unplowed snow. Under her arm, Natasha carried a box of chocolates, swirled dark and milk and white, each in the shape of a different seashell.
Her son overshot the entrance and had to double back when Natasha shouted. Since exchanging numbers on Sunday, she and Anfisa had been texting: first little things, hellos and how are you holding ups, and then jokes, memes, a picture Anfisa took of herself frowning next to a bottle of Soviet champagne. You and Lev should come over, Anfisa had written this afternoon. Misha needs someone to play with and so do I. When, fifteen minutes later, Natasha sent an apology—we’re trying to get out the door but my daughter—Anfisa said to bring Yulka, too, just come already.
A buzz, and the building’s door unlocked for them. Lev ran up the stairs. Natasha, climbing after, heard voices echo. By the time Natasha and Yulka reached the right landing, Anfisa stood alone, wearing a cream-colored sweater and leggings patterned with swirling galaxies. “They’re in Misha’s bedroom,” Anfisa said to Yulka. “Down the hall, second door.” The girl pulled off her boots, dropped her jacket, and dashed inside. Once Anfisa and Natasha were alone, Anfisa said, “Finally.”
While the kettle heated, they sat at the kitchen table. The gift box lay between them. Anfisa held a white-chocolate nautilus; with one leg propped up on the chair, she looked like a teenager. Her eyes were outlined in gunmetal powder. “Tell me how long they’re visiting,” she said.
“Until the eleventh. Not that long.”
“Long enough.”
“It feels like forever,” Natasha said. “When I got your invitation, I threw Lev’s jacket on him so quickly I probably ripped a sleeve.”
Water chugged in the kettle. Down the hall, the boys shouted what sounded like military commands. Anfisa popped the chocolate in her mouth and unfolded herself to get two mugs. “I get it, believe me. Last New Year’s was the first we didn’t spend at my parents’ place.”
“What excuse did you use?”
“Misha’s music school. I can give you its name.” Anfisa stirred their tea at the counter. The spoon chimed against the side of a mug. Below the hem of her sweater, her legs emerged narrow and dark. “It won’t help you, though. Your family’s already in the habit of coming down.”
Natasha buried her head in her arms on the place mat. She only lifted her face when Anfisa put the teas down. “I slipped some whiskey in there,” Anfisa
said.
A lemon slice floated alongside the needles of tea leaves in each drink. “Thanks. Listen, I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of ungrateful monster,” Natasha said. “I’m just having an off week.” She thought. “An off past few years.”
“Don’t worry about what I think. I’m a monster born and bred.” Anfisa inhaled the steam off her mug. “Have you had lunch? Do you want something?”
While Anfisa microwaved two plates of rice and fish cutlets, while she spooned out salad from a bowl kept in the fridge, Natasha told family anecdotes. They came surprisingly easily. That morning, for example, Lev had interrupted one of his uncle’s recitations to ask, “Why do you act like that?” And when Denis fell silent, mournful, Lev said, “See? There. Like that.”
Anfisa shut the refrigerator door. “What was your brother trying to talk about?”
“You heard him.”
“Only for a minute.”
Natasha rounded her shoulders and widened her eyes. “Photographic evidence from London shows three unidentified ships. Three lights in a row in the sky.” Thin guilt rippled through her. But she was having too good a time to stop.
“Oh, you’re excellent,” her neighbor said. “Keep going. What’d Denis say back?”
“He pretended it wasn’t happening, I think.”
Anfisa put their plates down. She fetched paper napkins and utensils. “Too bad, because it’s a good question.”
“It’s rude. I made Lev apologize,” Natasha said. The room smelled like dill, butter, warm salmon. “But yes, obviously, yes. It’s not like I haven’t wanted to say that to him myself.”
“Invite me over before the eleventh. I’ll ask him.” Anfisa scooted her chair in, turned her chin up, and did a little playacting of her own. “Why are you the way you are? And can’t you stop?” Natasha laughed, surprised, at the face across the table. Anfisa looked very young and very lovely. Very, for one instant, like Lilia.
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