“I am saying ‘we.’ I am trying to be charitable. To hold us both responsible.”
“But that’s only what you are saying.”
“It’s impossible with you.”
“Alex, yesterday, it was you — it was only because you ran out that he got hurt!” She did not want to say it, had promised herself in the night to keep her mouth closed. He was only trying to help.
Alex’s eyes were weary and threatening. “Perhaps you should say thank you that I saved him from worse? Because you were standing at the door like a theatergoer.”
She buried her face in her hands.
He looked at her with spiteful merriment. “This is what you wanted,” he said. “You wanted to have a relationship with the parents. I was against it, yes. But changing circumstances revise facts.” He was not stubborn; he would happily acknowledge a badly made move. Alex leaned gloatingly against the back of his chair. “Tomorrow, I will call the adoption agency and demand their information. And I will threaten to sue if they decline.”
Maya took her fingers from her eyes. “Alex? Let’s go there.”
Alex’s forehead puckered. “Where?”
“To Montana. Just like they came here.”
Alex closed and opened his eyes. “Why would we do that?”
“To meet them. To spend some time with them.”
“I’ll consider us blessed if we can wrest their phone number from the agency,” Alex said. “There’s no reason to go there.”
“Yes, there is. I understand why they came here. It upset us, but I understand it.”
“So, go,” he said, aware of his cruelty, as she did not fly, could not drive far by herself. “You want to go — go.”
“I want Max to see it, too. If he can’t know where he’s from”—she lowered her voice—“at least let him see it.”
“He’s eight — it will mean nothing to him.”
“You left Minsk at eight. It meant nothing to you?”
“Yes, but I knew why I was leaving where I was leaving,” Alex said. “And going where I was going.”
“Shouldn’t our son, too?” she said, again in a decreased tone. This is the way she spoke nowadays: up, down, up, down.
“Please let’s not have this conversation again,” he said.
“What if that’s why he’s acting out?” Maya said. “He senses a lie.”
“Who’s superstitious now?” he said.
“We were told by the adoption people — when they’re confused, sometimes they run away.”
“He thought he was going to find his mother under that river? He was born to a pike? Come on, Maya.”
“Okay, I want to see it,” she said. “Isn’t that good enough? I want to see it. I want to see”—she lowered her voice—“where Max was born. And I can’t take myself. Laurel got to see where we live, I want to see where she lives.”
“Lived,” Alex said. “They’re gone. They took that money and ran. If you don’t know that, you’re a fool.”
“Then that’s what I want to see,” Maya said.
They heard Max descending the stairs and fell silent. He appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. He had gone back to pajamas — he didn’t like sleeping in briefs. “Are you fighting?” he said. He had never asked such a thing.
“Because sometimes, Mama and Papa—” Maya started to say, but Alex was speaking over her.
“Because Mama wants to make you pancakes and I want to make you eggs,” Alex said. “Tell us who wins.”
Max blinked twice, and stared at them.
“Who wins, Maxie?” his father said again.
+
For the second night in a row, Maya did not sleep. In the night, the back of Alex’s hand fell onto her belly. She was about to remove it, but changed her mind; she enjoyed its weight, as dense as a small animal. Her awareness of it made sleep impossible, but sleep was impossible without it, too. She lay in bed and felt the grooves of Alex’s skin with her white belly. His fingers trembled slightly in sleep, the cold gold of the wedding band touching her skin now and then. Other than that, it was his smooth, unworried skin on her own. She resolved that, come morning, she would approach her husband in a new way. Despite different reasons, each had come to desire the same thing: to find Laurel and Tim. They should work together, find their way back to each other, step in tandem. Maya filled with the enthusiasm of a new mission. She required only an objective; that given, she would be set free from the resolutionless murk that ate away at her spirit. In the morning, Alex found her lying as open-eyed as she had six hours before. “Maya,” he shook his head, tenderness in his reproach. “You need to sleep. Need to.” The creases of her eyes watered. With her eyes, she tried to say to him everything that she had felt in the night. Did he understand her? He must have, because he said: “I’m calling — today.”
9
“Rubins,” Gabe Mishkin said, astonished, from the other side of the screen door. “Boy, baby boy,” Mishkin said. “A little thing, but you didn’t pick him up. They showed up at your damn house.” Mishkin’s face opened in recollection. “That was one of the all-time doozies.”
Maya also could not believe she was standing across from the adoption supervisor. Alex’s call to IAS had given them the news that Mishkin had retired. The woman who replaced him wore a tunic marked by gamboling nautical objects and, in her ears, two turquoise crosses — it was to this that Maya attributed their difficulty understanding each other. No matter what Maya said — and eventually even Alex spoke up, embarrassment settling on the room after the new case worker mistook a back scratch for a reach for his wallet, that is, a forthcoming bribe — the woman returned her fingernail to the bolded text in the upper-right-hand corner of their file: CLOSED ADOPTION. Eventually, she let out a long, besieged breath and walked to the doorway to ask her secretary for a Form to Request Contact. That was when Maya’s hand reached for the penholder on the woman’s desk and swept it onto the carpeted floor. Maya apologized loudly and knelt to collect the scattered pencils and clips, but not before taking a long look at the file that remained open on the desk. She got a bit of luck — her eyes landed on an address. But luck rarely comes pure — it was the address not of the birth parents but the forwarding for Gabriel Mishkin, retired.
Mishkin had bellied out with new weight and his facial hair had taken after the woods surrounding his home: three days of messy, pebble-gray growth on his cheeks, and the stymied coiffure that he had sported as a savior of unwanted children was now out past his ears, though it managed to look elegantly disheveled instead of abandoned. Belatedly, Maya remembered that it wasn’t only Mishkin who was eight years older, and wondered what thoughts about her and Alex’s appearance passed through his mind.
“You’re on my porch,” Mishkin noted, burying his reading glasses in the copse of his hair. His other hand held a book, a wedged finger marking his spot. The three of them listened to a fluting call from the woods. An answer came, a series of taps. “At least I called you with a warning,” Mishkin said. He smiled without opening his mouth.
“Mr. Mishkin,” Maya said. She had practiced the simple line with Alex on their way up the Thruway, a sour fog blanketing the starting gold and red of the trees. They had decided that it would be more persuasive coming from Maya. “We need your help.”
“They gave you my forwarding?” Mishkin said, startled.
“Not exactly,” Maya said.
“I see,” he said. “I’m not being very hospitable.” He unlatched and swung open the screen door. Maya thrust at him a box of cellophaned chocolates.