“By the look on your face, I better take this,” he said.
The home had two stories, the chimney of a rust-edged woodstove rising through a clumsily hacked opening in the ceiling. Upstairs, Mishkin must have slept. Downstairs, he was deep in written work of some kind. The oval dining room table was covered with notebooks and books in plastic library covers. An aluminum can of turkey chili nested among the hardbacks, a spoon planted in its muck like a flag. On the kitchen counter, a dozen similar cans waited around. No woman would permit this, Maya thought. Was the adoption supervisor, who had filled out so many families, unmarried himself?
“It’s a bachelor lifestyle,” Mishkin said, watching Maya’s gaze wheel across his possessions. “You’re supposed to heat it up. Won’t you sit?” He indicated a torn leather sectional that spanned two of the walls in the living room. Maya and Alex fell into it like a final resting place, their knees higher than their waists. It would be impossible to make a formidable argument from this position, Maya thought, and tried to wedge herself out, unsuccessfully. “What can I offer you?” Mishkin said.
“Coffee?” Alex said.
“Actually, something stronger for me,” Maya said, “if that’s not impolite.”
Mishkin bowed his head admiringly. “That’s the very opposite of impolite, Mrs. Rubin,” he said. “The very opposite.” He retreated to the kitchen, where the Rubins heard the kettle filling with water and the rattling of cupboards.
“You remembered us right away,” Maya called out to him.
“Do you know how many families and children I helped bring together?” Mishkin called back. “Guess.”
“Twenty-five?” Maya yelled.
“Ha!” Mishkin cried. They heard the dull seat of a bottle land on the tile of the cooking counter, then fumbling with glasses. “Try a hundred and fifty, Mrs. Rubin.” Glasses were fondled and they heard ice cracking. “I bet you’re wondering what are all those things on the dining room table. I’m writing my memoirs. And I guess it’s some kind of serendipity — do you know what serendipity means? — to have you show up on my doorstep, because if you think about it”—Mishkin leaned out of the kitchen doorway—“it started with you. Those family explorations I started in earnest after we dealt with each other.” He returned to the kitchen and yelled again. “I took retirement early. I went to Belarus. Poland! My great-grandfather’s village is the size of your palm. And look, look—” Mishkin stepped out of the kitchen and directed the Rubins to gaze through the living room window at a small construction on the edge of the backyard painted the burnt-red of the house. It was flanked by a hammock and a portable shower. “A sauna!” Mishkin said. “Just like they had in the old country. But you folks know all about it.”
He returned with a cuffed tray bearing a weak cup of coffee for Alex and two glasses with amber-colored liquid for Maya and himself. Unlike the coffee, the drinks were made expertly, and Maya extended her glass toward Mishkin. She did not want alcohol at two P.M. on a Sunday but she needed Mishkin off guard. However, just as she extended, Mishkin emptied his glass in one tumble. They shared an awkward laugh. “Looks like I’ll have to get another,” he said, though he remained in his chair, as if he needed Maya’s approval. Maya took a greedy gulp and stared at Alex. He looked displeased, perhaps because he had ended up with coffee when he could have used amber-colored liquid of his own. He cleared his throat.
“I am actually from Belarus, not Russia,” Alex said. “I don’t know if I ever clarified that.”
“Aha!” Mishkin said.
“Many things connect us,” Alex offered feebly, trying to help.
“They sure do,” Gabe Mishkin said, and rose. “I’ll freshen you up,” he said to Maya.
“I still have some—” Maya said.
“Don’t be silly,” Gabe Mishkin said. “Bottoms up.”
Maya obeyed, the liquid scorching her tongue, and handed Mishkin her glass. He was back in a minute with refills, his glass iceless. Maya racked her brain for other ways to set Mishkin rhapsodizing on the ancestral subject, but nothing came. She exchanged glances with Alex. He closed and opened his eyes at her. She wanted to extract the necessary information from Mishkin also so that she and Alex could continue on the mutual course they’d so recently found.
“All this time. .” Maya said now to Mishkin. She would start open-endedly and leave it to the adoption supervisor pick up the thread.
“How’s the boy?” Mishkin said. “It’s like the secret service, the adoption agency. After you retire, you’re not entitled to ask. I am putting that in the book. The adoption system in this country needs a reform. I’m laying out—”
“That’s actually why we’re here,” Maya interrupted. “We need to find the parents.”
She cursed herself. The drink that she had intended to weaken Mishkin had instead weakened her. This was not the way to bring it up! She had worked out the plan in the car with Alex: charming stories about the boy to arouse Mishkin’s sympathy; a reassertion of what a blessing Mishkin had helped bring into their lives; a laugh about that crazy visit by the birth parents. But that was it, you see, Maya would say casually, the parents had known something, the mother had made that odd comment before leaving. .
It was too late now. Mishkin’s wooded face, which had relaxed since their greeting, became dark with anticipation. Maya wanted to take some kind of gardening shear to it, to set free the man underneath.
“The boy is wild,” Maya said, giving up.
“The boy is savage,” Alex added.
“Excuse me?” Mishkin said.
“He runs away—”
“All the time,” Alex said, animated.
“They find him—”
“Sitting in a river,” Alex finished.
“He eats grass,” Maya declared; if such a detail was not going to get Mishkin’s attention, she didn’t know what would.
“Are you joking?” Mishkin said.
“We need to find the parents,” Alex said, taking over. “They know something. The young man, Tim, he was limping — you remember. And the strange thing the mother said before leaving. About rodeo. I’m not sure that was the truth. We just want the truth, so we can help our boy. We don’t want from them anything else. Or the agency — if something was missed, something was missed, let us find out about it now.” Maya was aware that Alex had tried to speak carefully, cautiously — he was trying to use her language because he was aware that his was antagonistic. “We’re not going to sue,” Alex attempted to be reassuring, but the very invocation of legal matters had the opposite effect.
“Mr. Rubin,” Mishkin said as he tried to sit up in his rocking chair. “How long ago did this—” He stopped himself. “I don’t know where to begin.” He fell back into his chair and rocked silently. “I don’t see what it has to do with the birth parents.”
“We want to have one conversation,” Alex said. “Is that so much to ask?”
“You want to converse with the parents?” Mishkin said. “If I remember correctly, Mr. Rubin, you were pretty firm about a closed adoption.”
Maya held out her glass toward Mishkin. If he had another as well, perhaps it would make him more charitable. But when he returned a moment later, he held only her glass, refilled.
“Mr. Rubin, you know you can have the agency send them a letter,” he said.
“No!” Alex said. “No more agency.”
“The agency called the number they have,” Maya lied, glancing at Alex. “Someone else answered. They don’t live there anymore.”
“So what can I do?” Mishkin said, defending his chest with his hands.
“You can tell us the town,” Maya said.
“Mrs. Rubin, those kids can be in Shanghai by now.”