“I will think about it,” I write. I log off the computer, as if that will make what she said disappear too, and turn to face Tristan. And then, feeling the overwhelming need to get it off my chest, I tell him everything.
FEBRUARY 2008
MASHA
________________
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I scroll to the end of Anna’s and Zoya’s conversation, then back up to where I left off, pre-Skype call, and reread the initial conversations. I wish I knew what they spoke about on that call, because everything that follows is so out of context. First Anna sends her address; then Zoya is checking in about something almost daily; then Zoya sends her address in Ukraine for a second time. After that, they never speak again. Not on Facebook anyway. When I check the Skype history, it shows seven calls, two of them missed, and three of them less than two minutes’ long. Two calls, however, were nearly an hour each. They could have talked about anything in that amount of time. They could have become friends, or enemies, or both.
I sit back and think about things for a long time. I have so many questions. Why had Anna engaged with this woman for as long as she did? Did she have information that I don’t? Why didn’t she reach out to me about it? And is Zoya involved in her disappearance? Anna was so excited when Zoya said she could come visit her in Chernovtsy. Combined with the fact that I can’t find her, it makes me wonder if she hadn’t up and gone to Ukraine to meet Zoya and take the DNA test herself. Why else had she sent her address so many times? Maybe that’s why Anna needed money so badly she decided to steal it from people. If I didn’t know from years of unanswered entreaties how much Anna had always needed to see Chernovtsy again, this could be considered a huge leap. But she’d wanted to go back there since the day she learned that it was the place from which we’d come, like a moon forever orbiting a planet that could never really be hers. I tried to tell her to forget about it; I’d been there, I’d lived it, and it wasn’t worth the bother. Why waste so much energy wanting something that never wanted you? But I should have known better; the more you tell someone not to feel a certain way, the more they are going to feel it. The older she became, the more Anna’s nostalgia grew on her like a tumor. There’s a word in German that explains it perfectly: Fernwah, which means homesick for a place you’ve never been. Despite what I imagined when I’d left—that she had replaced her desire for Ukraine with a desire to make art—maybe I was wrong. Maybe I only thought that because it was easier than asking her about it.
What if she’d actually gotten on a plane, without telling any of us, and gone there? If she had the means now, I doubt anything would stop her. We don’t know anything about this Zoya woman. I definitely don’t trust her to take care of my sister.
If she did go to Ukraine, there has to be a way for my dad to find out. Ticket receipts, bank account statements, something. He’d know better than I would. Even though I am still slightly furious with him I immediately search the house to track him down. I find him drinking espresso in the kitchen while attempting to make a frozen burrito on the stovetop. The sight of it temporarily distracts me from the entire ordeal I’d read about and my new hypothesis.
“Papa, no. Just… oh my god.” I take the burrito and pop it into the microwave. My dad watches me take the frozen sack away from him, and he doesn’t fight. “You have to defrost it. Then it goes in the oven. Unless you want to eat a frozen bean icicle?”
“Your mom did all the cooking,” is his only response. The peach-colored walls—also my mother’s doing, I imagine—make his face appear even paler than it was before. I notice, for the first time, that he has dark bags under his eyes too. Papa has had insomnia on and off his whole life, and it is suddenly clear to me that he has not slept much, if at all, over the last few weeks.
My previous anger at him begins to shift into pity. “Well it is 2008,” I say, softly. “You could learn to cook too. It would probably take you the same amount of time to make a burrito from scratch.” The microwave beeps and I place the burrito in the toaster oven on high, with a timer on so he can’t screw it up. “It’s beans and rice, Papa.”
“Sure,” my dad shrugs, blankly.
This despondent look makes me remember why I’m there in the first place. I should probably tell him where I think Anna disappeared to, but surprisingly, what comes out of my mouth is this: “Why did Anna stop painting?”
Papa narrows his eyebrows at me, confused. “I didn’t know she had. Why?” He leans against the shiny granite countertop, his hands looking for space to rest, but not finding any, because it’s so cluttered with kitchenware and old, dirty glasses. How long had my mom been gone, anyway?
“Well, did you see anything new at her apartment? Were her arms ever covered in paint?” I pry.
“I do not notice these things, Masha, you know this. I busy man.”
“But she’s not majoring in art, correct?”
“I not throw my money in toilet.”
My blood starts boiling again, replacing pity with frustration. The same frustration I’ve always had when it comes to my parents, but twofold, because I’m supposed to be the one protecting my sister and I’ve clearly done a terrible job. “Anna needs painting, Papa,” I explain. “She needs it like we need…” I wave towards the toaster oven. “Like we need to eat food. She’s not herself without it.”
My dad doesn’t roll his eyes at me, but I still have the impression of him doing so. Perhaps he is thinking so intensely in his mind how ridiculous I am that I can feel it. Or maybe I am imagining it because I know him too well. We’d had some similar arguments when I’d decided to make Aliyah, but in the end, he couldn’t really say no. When you’re a Jewish refugee, there’s a special place in your heart for Israel, knowing that you can always go there if you ever have to flee. Plus, I was twenty years old and Israel paid for my ticket. It didn’t matter, in the end, what he thought. Maybe that’s what Anna is learning too. “It just hobby, Maria. So what, she doesn’t paint a few months? School more important.”
I shake my head. “Not for Anastasia. You weren’t around when she was in middle school. She was so unhappy. She used to eat lunch in the bathroom, do you know that?”
My dad looks stricken. “This is gross.” He crosses his arms over his chest, as if he can protect himself from this information; or maybe he is trying to look tougher than he is. It doesn’t work, either way; his outfit, a loose white tank top with America written across it and plaid pajama pants, keeps the impression of toughness far at bay.
“People are cruel to kids who are smart and sensitive. You didn’t grow up here, so you don’t know what it’s like.” Here he frowns again, and I know he’s about to say something like It’s all the same everywhere with kids, but I don’t let him speak. Because it’s not. Not exactly. And even if it was, my dad was always popular in school. He wouldn’t get it. “Without painting, she’s just that girl eating lunch alone again. She’ll attach herself to any distraction not to be that girl again.”
I expect my dad to wave this off, but he surprises me by taking it in, absorbing it. “I did not know this,” he says, almost sadly. I find him staring at a framed childhood photo of us hanging on the wall near a light switch; in it, we are both wearing bright red snowsuits and are standing outside our old apartment building in Chernovtsy. It’s one of only a few pictures of my childhood that are in color, which probably makes it that more difficult to look at for him. Like he is remembering exactly how it used to be back then, at that house, in those difficult but rewarding years. Or maybe he is thinking about how much easier it was, even in the Soviet Union, to raise little kids, as opposed to grown women. With him, it could go either way.