Part 15 (2/2)

”Can our soldiers rescue him?” Ruby asked from the sink.

”First they have to locate him, which is harder to do while his location is s.h.i.+fting. But say they can find him. Does this mean we have your okay to go ahead?”

”No.” Ruby spun toward Clarissa, her face a knot of fury. ”Still no for now,” Clarissa repeated, working to smooth her voice. ”But we”re calling Bill next. Then we”ll get back to you. We”ll be fast.”

”Okay,” Jack said. ”I”ll wait to hear from you.”

Turning her back on the pressure of Ruby”s stare, Clarissa called Bill”s office. His secretary said he was out. ”Can you have him call me? The minute he gets in?” Clarissa replaced the receiver, her hand shaking. The phone sat on the middle of the kitchen table, a betrayal of a s.p.a.ce that should be for family and food and convivial conversation.

Ruby circled the kitchen, caged. ”I don”t want to wait.”

”We”re waiting,” Angie said, her voice cool. ”Sit down, Ruby.”

Ruby stared fiercely at Angie for a moment, then obeyed. The three of them sat in silence for a few minutes. ”I”ll make tea,” Clarissa said finally. She rose to fill the pot, set it to boil and put fruit on the table, letting these sounds of feverish domesticity stand in for conversation.

Ruby”s cellphone rang. She pulled it from her pocket, frowning. ”I”m going to take this upstairs.”

Clarissa was relieved to have her leave the room. She lifted her cup of tea and held the warm liquid against her lips, somehow not able to swallow, trying to imagine what it was like for Todd to be moved, how precisely they accomplished it, what he felt: fear, or desperation, or confidence.

”You okay?” Angie asked.

Clarissa had almost forgotten Angie. ”Oh, G.o.d, I don”t know,” she said.

”I know. I”m sorry.”

”So.” Clarissa took a deep breath. ”I hear you”ve had a ... a sense of what should be done?”

Angie tipped her head. ”I thought you didn”t believe in that stuff.”

Clarissa smiled slightly in acknowledgement. ”But I suspect your insights are as valid as any Jack is offering.”

”I get all kinds of feelings, actually, and I don”t know how to interpret them. Last week I felt Ruby”s dad was eating a bagel. An Everything Bagel, in fact. I didn”t tell Ruby. I know that”s impossible.”

”Yes, I think you”re right.”

”So I”m not accurate here. But-” She hesitated. ”I”ve had some bad dreams, to tell you the truth. And then, for the last day or two, I”ve felt better.” She looked out Clarissa”s kitchen window. ”Maybe it”s just wishful thinking.”

An ambulance pa.s.sed, its whine running between the brownstones of Brooklyn, sending a chill down Clarissa”s back that she tried to ignore. ”There”s a certain power in wishful thinking,” she said. ”I”ll take it, in absence of any real knowledge.””

Angie reached out and touched Clarissa”s hand. ”Ruby is really a much more gentle person than she”s been during this period.”

”Hmm. I admire much about Ruby, but gentle is not a word...”

”You know, she and her dad were together so long, just the two of them. When I moved in, at first Ruby was hard on me. I didn”t know why, and then I realized she did not want to share her father with me. She was in charge. And she knew she was the center of her father”s world.”

”Then I came along.”

”She wants to be the one who cares the most about her father.”

Clarissa was moved by Angie”s effort to navigate what little middle s.p.a.ce remained between her and Ruby. ”I get it, I do,” she said. ”I lost both my parents. It created a bond between my brother and me that-well, Mikey”s still single. I waited a long time to marry. I think one of the reasons I could marry Todd was that he understood how that kind of sorrow rearranges your heart. It changes and complicates the way you love.” She smoothed the wood of the kitchen table with her right hand. ”I don”t think Ruby has to be gentle. She has a certainty that, in honesty, I”ve never really had. But what I do believe is that we”ve made the right choices, up until now. And by that, I mean the choices Todd would have asked of us.”

”You may be right. Don”t tell Ruby I said that, though.”

”Gentle Ruby?”

Angie smiled. ”You both have backbone,” she said. ”Someday-”

Before she could finish her sentence, the phone rang. Clarissa reached to grab it, and heard Ruby moving quickly down the stairs toward the kitchen.

”Bill, hi. Thanks for calling back. We”re afraid we have a problem. You heard about the American bomb killed all those Afghans yesterday? Now Jack says they are moving Todd and we-”

”Clarissa, Clarissa. Wait,” Bill said. ”What?”

”I just got off the phone with Amin, Clarissa. I have news.”

Admiral's Row Danil, September 19th He cradled in his hand the cellphone Joni had given him. He tried to think of how he might begin the conversation. At some point, the s.p.a.ce of silence becomes its own country with barrier fences, border patrols. He hadn”t known it would be like this. In the beginning, when he”d stopped contacting his mother, he thought it would be for a week or two. By now it had turned into a wide expanse that felt dangerous to cross.

On impulse, he dove his hand into the pile, pulling out a letter from somewhere in the middle. He tore open the side of the envelope and removed the page before he could think too much about it. He read, skimming, letting his eyes leap over entire sections.

”Dear Dani, Last night for dinner I made... I saw Sasha last week. She asked about you... I love you, dear son. Piotr was a hero, and I don”t understand why you can”t accept...”

He quickly refolded the letter and replaced it. He picked up the most recent letter and held it in his hand for a moment, wavering. On the street outside the abandoned building, a fire engine pa.s.sed, honking its horn. Somewhere beyond that, a dog barked in answer. Danil felt safely contained within this crumbling room, protected from the world beyond.

He rearranged himself so that he was leaning against a solid part of the wall and opened the letter.

”Dear Dani, I wait for one of these letters to reach you. I will keep trying until I get through. I will keep repeating myself and hope one day you will get my letters, read them, and call.

”I wrote this before, but again I want to tell you that I”m thinking of selling the shop to a woman who owns a used bookstore fifty miles away. Her store is very different from mine, of course. She has what she called an online presence.” She says I could work for her half the year, so I could keep some income, but it would be a simpler, easier life. No more das.h.i.+ng after estate sales, stocking shelves, worrying about paying the store rent. Dani, I want to sell. Yvette is even starting to get used to it. But I won”t sell until I hear from you; I don”t want you to come looking and find me gone.

”I still don”t understand the ways in which time alters our perception of life and events, how what seems so completely certain at one moment can become questionable and then false later on. It”s as if we live under a constant delusion, and even what we discover to be truth is only another temporary delusion. Over and over again I get fooled; I believe in absolutes, I accept what I”m told. Perhaps this comes from a childhood in the Soviet Union. Perhaps it is simply my personal temperament.

”I know what I said was wrong and I have something to confess: part of me knew from the start that you were right, but I couldn”t acknowledge it, even to myself. Somehow I thought that accepting Piotr had died in such a pointless way was like losing him all over again. But I know how hard that viewpoint must have been for you.

”Eventually, a drop hollows out a stone. You are that drop, Dani, even in your silence. Please call me. I will keep writing for as long as I can hold a pen, waiting for a response. Our Piotr has been dead long enough, and there”s nothing I can do except make up wishes. You”ve been gone long enough too, and I”m doing all I can to fix it.”

Danil refolded the letter and replaced it in the envelope, waiting for a moment to make sure his voice wouldn”t crack when he called. He was wrong to let it get so big. That, he decided, was the first thing he would tell her.

Part Four.

For when they saw we were afraid, how knowingly they played on every fear- so conned, we scarcely saw their scorn, hardly noticed as they took our funds, our rights, and tapped our phones, turned back our clocks, and then, to quell dissent, they sent...

(but here the doc.u.ment is torn).

-Eleanor Wilner.

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