Disappearing Earth

by Julia Phillips

  “Oh,” Chegga said. “He left her gifts. These…She used to say he left things outside your house.” He did not seem as confident as he had when spinning tales on the campground. Alla Innokentevna had subdued them all.

  “Gifts,” Natasha repeated, quieter. “I don’t remember.” Then: “Tell me again? What does he look like?”

  “White. But built like me,” Chegga said.

  The sky was passing from gray-blue to gray, drizzly twilight to drizzly dusk, out the car windows. The river curved away to their left. Marina, watching it go, tallied the results of this last year: her girls abducted. Her home empty. Her simple job, chosen for the ease with which she could care for her family around it, now pointless, and her top desk drawer stocked with tranquilizing tablets. Some nights she dreamed of her daughters and woke up sobbing, and the pain then was as fresh and sharp and new as it had been in the sixth hour after they went missing, as horrendous as a knife stuck in her womb. And now she was chasing another fantasy. She was choosing to push the weapon back in herself.

  “What are we hoping to do?” Petya asked. “See this man? Ask him about the girls?”

  “I can ask him about my sister,” Natasha said.

  “See him, yes,” Marina said. “See his car. Take pictures to find out if our witness can identify them.”

  “Shouldn’t we go to the Esso police station?” Eva asked. Natasha clicked her tongue.

  “They’re a subsidiary of the city station,” Marina said. The voice coming out of her mouth was steady, journalistic, a leftover from an earlier time. “For any real crimes, the Esso officers turn to Petropavlovsk. Only the city can organize search and rescue teams.”

  From the front, Petya said, “Marina. What are you expecting?”

  “Nothing,” Marina said. That was almost entirely true.

  Petya laced his fingers in his wife’s ponytail. Natasha, leaning forward to look at Marina, said, “I hope my mother didn’t upset you too much.”

  “She spoke honestly,” Marina said. “I appreciate that.”

  “I suppose,” Natasha said. In the deepening evening, she was shadow and highlight, blue and bronze. “She’s had a difficult life. Not just since my sister left, but before that, too…she’s very strong.”

  “You think Alla Innokentevna is wrong, though,” Chegga said. The shadow over Natasha’s eyes shifted. “About this. You think Lilia ran away.”

  “I know she did,” Natasha said. “Life in a village is not what most eighteen-year-old girls dream of. Lilia had so many reasons to go.” She was quiet. “Maybe Yegor was one more.”

  “Could be,” Chegga said.

  “Maybe Lilia saw something in him that no one else did,” Natasha said. “Something sinister.”

  The car was quiet. Eva turned in her seat to study Marina.

  “I followed your case all year,” Natasha said. “I have two children, too, similar ages. I would’ve contacted you right away if I imagined there were some connection between us—that the person who pushed my sister out of the village could’ve hurt your girls. But I didn’t know. Lilia didn’t tell me. And Esso seemed a world away from what happened with your daughters. I never thought…”

  Marina said, “I didn’t either. Nobody did.”

  The road bumped underneath them. On either side, the flashing woods. Dark trees and summer leaves. Marina, resting her forehead against the glass, pictured her girls. How Alyona’s arms freckled in the summertime—how Sophia hooted back at the sea lions when Marina took her to the city’s rookery. Rain trickled across the window. “The next left,” Chegga said. “Are you ready?” Eva asked. Marina exhaled into her daughters’ memories.

  They crossed a bridge, went down dirt, passed a metal sign marking ten kilometers to the center of Esso. Chegga pointed out the windshield. Petya rolled to a stop on the packed ground; the road they had been traveling was empty, but he pulled over regardless, to give space for any coming car to pass. On the opposite side of the road, between birch trees, was a tended parcel of land. A narrow path made of laid planks led to the door of a two-story wooden house.

  The house was painted white. It sat fifteen meters away. Its windows were shuttered and its lights were off. A small garden plot in the yard held young plants. Parked in the unpaved driveway was a black SUV, which shone under the dimming clouds like coal.

  “Well? Is that it?” Chegga asked.

  Petya said, “We don’t know.”

  Beside Marina, Chegga raised his camera, snapped a picture, put it back down in his lap. No one else moved. “Is he home?” Eva said to break the silence.

  “The house is dark,” Natasha said.

  In the front, Petya said, “Marina, you should stay in the car. Until we know more.”

  Chegga blew air between his lips. He lifted the camera over his neck and handed it to Petya. Then he nudged Natasha. “Let me out,” he said. “I’ll find out if anyone’s there.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Natasha said.

  Chegga shook his head. “Just wait. If he’s there, we were classmates, we’re familiar with each other, I’ll come up with something to talk with him about. And you all can see what he looks like.”

  The car door opened, they both climbed out, Natasha came back, the car door shut again. Chegga was crossing the road. He followed the wooden path up to the house. Petya had his eye to the viewfinder of the camera. Eva muttered something—do you know how to—and he shushed her. At the house’s door, Chegga pressed a buzzer, knocked. If this was him, Marina thought. If this was him. After her long struggle to breathe. How could she survive knowledge?

  Chegga knocked again. No one in the car spoke. Chegga, waiting, tilted his head, considered the house. Finally, he turned, shrugged at them, and started walking back.

  Marina was swinging her legs out of the car. “Please be careful,” said Eva. But then she, Petya, and Natasha were getting out, following. The four of them crossed the road together. The woods and fields around them were green and brown and black. No other buildings were visible. Far away, a dog barked.

  The smell in the air was smoke, diesel, wild grass, mud. Chegga met them at the edge of the property, where the plank pathway touched the road, and took his camera back. Empty-handed, Petya said, “What now?”

  Natasha was looking up at the house with her brows knit. She walked a few meters onto the pathway, its boards creaking, before stopping. Eva trailed after with her hands in her jacket pockets. The six shuttered windows on the house’s second story looked like eyes squeezed shut. Chegga took a picture of the building. The parked vehicle. The surrounding woods.

  Marina stepped into the wet green yard. She felt the rest of them watching her. Not looking back for their confirmation, she walked across the grass. Toward the black car. She could hear the swish of Petya’s feet behind her.

  It was big. And it did gleam. Close up, Marina could see spatters of mud on the bottom of the trunk door, caked earth in the tread of the tires, but as a whole the car looked well maintained. She tried to picture the man who lived here washing it. A white man, Chegga had said; Marina got that far, to the skin, and no further. In her mind, his face was a smudge, a bleach mark. She took a picture of his license plate with her cell phone, then backed up to get the whole vehicle in frame—back, side, front, side. A scratch, perhaps ten centimeters long, rose from one wheel well. Marina traced one hand along the paint. She continued looking.

  Petya peered into the car’s trunk while Marina studied the seat belts, the footwells, trying to focus on what the car contained. The seats were leather. An icon glued to the glove compartment showed the Virgin Mary outlined in painted gold. Between the dashboard vents and the front windshield was a curled plastic wrapper off a cigarette pack. An auxiliary cord trailed across the center console.

  She jabbed at a window. Pressed one flat hand there, like she could push through it, sh
e could push in. “That’s hers,” she said.

  “What?” Petya said.

  “That’s from her phone.” Marina was rapping on the glass. “There. There. It’s Alyona’s.” Hanging from the rearview mirror, a strip in the shadows, was the tiny yellowed bird charm that Alyona had had fixed to her cell phone. But no. No, it could not be. Marina tried to put both palms to the glass, but her own cell, clutched in her right hand, got in the way. She pulled back and scrabbled for her speed dial, for her daughter’s number, pressed call for the millionth time this year, but nothing, obviously, no fucking service out here, and even if there were there would be no ringing. Alyona’s phone had stopped ringing that first day. Marina’s eyes burned. She slammed on the window so hard she heard cracking and she did not know whether it was her cell or her hands or the glass or her heart that made the noise. Was this really happening? But there it was. Petya was right behind her now and she hit again at the window—should she break it? A rock?—should she take a picture?—because there it was, Alyona’s phone charm, that trinket, a carved ivory crow hanging from a black cord. There it was.

  “Where?” Petya asked. He was crowding close. Marina pointed. “On the mirror,” she said. “There.”

  He peered in. They had lost too much light since leaving the campground, so it was hard to see—why didn’t they come earlier? But the charm was visible all the same. That little bird, bone-colored, that Alyona had hooked to one corner of her slim black phone. Alyona’s mouth had turned down in concentration while her fingers worked over the lanyard loop.

  “That gold thing?” Petya said. “That’s hers?”

  “The one hanging down from the mirror,” Marina said. Her voice was loud. She did not recognize the sound of it.

  The others were at the car, too, now, though Marina had not noticed when they crossed the yard. Eva was wiggling in next to Petya to look. Chegga was straining, camera in his hands, to see for himself, and saying to Natasha, “Can you find anything of Lilia’s? Can you see?”

  Natasha’s forehead was pressed to a window. Chegga pushed forward. Natasha said quietly, “I don’t know what to look for.”

  Marina’s hands were fists. She had to get closer. She unwound her fingers and hoisted herself onto the hood, the car’s body rocking on tires underneath her. She pulled her legs up—Petya’s anxious hands boosting her—and then she was kneeling on the top of the hood, staring down now, directly through the windshield. Around the neck of the mirror was wound a thin gold chain, and looped around the mirror itself was a sliver, a charm, a nothing, a piece of tourist trash. But Alyona’s. Marina said, “It’s hers.” She knew the thing perfectly.

  She remembered when they got it. Alyona had picked it off a table of identical animal carvings last spring. At the outdoor market on the city’s sixth kilometer. The three of them were there that day to find Sophia new sneakers, and Sophia was dragging her feet past the stalls, complaining, because she, too, wanted a cell phone, and also some trinket to hook on to it—that one, Mama, please! When you get a little older, Marina had told her younger daughter, I’ll get you your own phone that you can make look however you like, but for right now, you’ll share your sister’s…After August, that argument undid Marina. She could hardly bear to tell the police what she had said, let alone what she’d been thinking. She had given her children a single device between them, an object easily destroyed, with nothing more than a chunk of fake ivory on a cord to defend themselves.

  Chegga’s camera was clicking. Inside the car was dark. Airless. The charm did not swing.

  “Why did he take it off her phone?” Marina said. “Where is her phone?”

  Eva was wide-eyed. Natasha kept her face to the window.

  Alyona’s phone had been off, Marina knew, since the afternoon the girls disappeared. But the desire to call her daughters was flooding her. She had to hear them. “Where are they?” Marina said. So loud. “Where are they?”

  The hood was hard under her knees. “Take a minute, Marina,” Petya said. “Look again. A thousand souvenirs like this one are sold on the streets every tourist season. This one is hers? Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she said. Even as she said it, she thought, Am I? Am I? A thing like this, generic. But I know it. Except why would he save it? Display it? If this is true, if this is actually happening, where is Alyona? Her phone dismantled—where is Sophia? With him? Yegor? Who is that? Where is he? Did they go into this house? Are they buried in this garden? In the forest? Are they on the side of the road between here and Petropavlovsk? He might have. He. How am I still breathing? How? This charm.

  * * *

  ·

  Painted cottages lined freshly paved streets in Esso proper, where Petya, at Chegga’s direction, had driven them. As soon as a lone bar of service appeared on Marina’s screen, Petya pulled over, and Marina dialed the major general’s cell number. It rang without answer, so she hung up and dialed the station. A woman picked up, took Marina’s name, and asked her to hold for a transfer. A young man’s voice came over the line.

  “Marina Alexandrovna? It’s Lieutenant Ryakhovsky.”

  “I need to speak to Yevgeny Pavlovich.”

  Ryakhovsky paused. “The major general is on a case away from his desk.”

  “It’s urgent. You have to find him immediately.”

  The detective sighed and lowered his voice. “Marina Alexandrovna, may I speak honestly? It’s Saturday night. The major general left work hours ago. You don’t want to call him at this point. He won’t be sober enough to assist you.”

  Eva reached for the phone to take over the conversation. Marina held up a hand to stop her. The black car, Marina told the detective. The rearview mirror. Alyona’s phone charm. Yegor Gusakov. His private trips to the city and his house shuttered. Out of Marina’s mouth, the journalist was speaking. She listed the facts.

  “Tell him about Lilia,” Chegga whispered.

  Also Lilia, Marina repeated. Lilia…Marina looked over Chegga’s shoulders at the shadow of Natasha. “Solodikova,” Natasha said. “Lilia Konstantinovna.”

  Solodikova, Lilia Konstantinovna, Marina said. Missing four years. And Yegor Gusakov. Alyona. Sophia. The Toyota, Marina said. The color of the Toyota, the size. An SUV.

  “You saw this car yourself?” the detective said, voice sharp. She said yes. “Was Yegor Gusakov there? Did you see him? Did he see you?”

  The darkened windows. The car in the driveway. Had he been in the house after all? Watching them? But— No, she said. She didn’t think so. No.

  “Where are you right now? This very instant?”

  The village streetlights flickered on above. In Esso, Marina said.

  “You’re alone?”

  She met Eva’s eyes. I’m with my friends, Marina said.

  “How many friends?” Four. “They know? Have you told anyone else?”

  Yes. No.

  “Good. Don’t.” The detective was silent. “Marina Alexandrovna,” he finally said, “you’re sure about all this?”

  She nodded. He kept waiting for her answer. Yes, she said out loud.

  “Give us two hours to call back,” he said. “Maybe three. I’ll—we’ll track down the major general. We’ll send a team north by helicopter. You said this man wasn’t home when you were there?” No, she said. “We don’t want him to know we are coming.” Marina inhaled. “I can reach you on this number? So for now—do you understand me?—for now, you will need to stay out of his way. Stay away from his house. Do not go there. Tell your friends the same. Wait somewhere and expect to hear from me.”

  In two hours?

  “I’ve got to find him first. We’ll start organizing the flight. Then up to Esso…” The other end of the line was quiet as he calculated. He said, “In three.”

  But you’ll come.

  “We’re coming.”

  And I’ll
wait, she said. She was always waiting. When Eva reached again for the phone, Marina gave it over, so her friends could hear the plan from the detective’s own mouth. Beside Marina, under the new yellow light, Chegga scrolled through the photos on his camera. Natasha stared ahead stunned.

  * * *

  ·

  They had decided. To the campground, to collect their things, then back to Esso where there was cell service to wait for Ryakhovsky’s call. Chegga told Marina, Eva, and Petya that they should stay at his house, with his wife and daughter. Marina listened to Eva and Petya agree. As helpful as Chegga had been, he had the same quality as everyone else over this year: he wanted to put himself inside the story. As if on instinct, Natasha roused, then— “No,” she said to the group. “Come to ours.”

  “Which is closer to Yegor’s?” Petya asked.

  Chegga glanced at Natasha. “They’re the same, practically. The village isn’t big. We’re two streets apart.”

  “But your mother,” Eva said to Natasha. “She won’t mind?”

  “She stays at the camp during the festival.” Eva nodded. “You can meet the rest of my family,” Natasha said.

  Out of Esso, the houses drew farther apart, the ground under their tires grew rougher. The river alongside the road returned. Marina looked into the blackened woods. In two or three hours, just after midnight, she would hear a helicopter.

  When they pulled into the rows of parked cars at the campground fence, the music coming from the clearing beyond was contemporary, electronic-sounding. “Will you come with us to pack up or would you rather wait in the car?” Eva asked.

  Marina could not feel her lungs, or her throat, or the pulse in her chest or her back on the seat or her hands where they had hit the car’s glass. Nothing hurt. This was a new, not unwelcome, way of existing. “You can do it,” Marina said. “Please.”