But this time, they faced more than a problem. The familiar rituals of their days, the inability of someone driving by to distinguish Maya and Alex’s home from another Sylvan Gate town house: all this concealed the despair that had been settling on them since the evening with the deer. (That was the colorless designation by which the event came to be known: the evening with the deer.) A problem had finally spurred the Rubins to unanimity — in helplessness. Even Eugene seemed bereft of his usual enthusiasm. Over the previous three months their horizons had narrowed to a single point, and from this place optimism had gradually departed. On some day, the Rubins had begun to talk of almost nothing other than Max’s “difficulty.” As recently as a week before — before Gabriel Mishkin; before the Rubins took the law into their own hands by bribing a friend at the DMV; before, in other words, the matter gained a new kind of reality by involving forces beyond the family — it would have seemed perfectly sensible for, say, Raisa to propose some new remedy. However, her proposing the same now — no, the other Rubins would not have ridiculed her; exasperation and disagreement about the best solution was a luxury of more hopeful days. No, they would have simply stared in baffled silence, or nodded desultorily to avoid disrespecting her effort.
Dinner was nearly wordless, the adults trading responsibility for the small talk that would keep Max from sensing that something was off. They were relieved if he finished first and retreated upstairs; then they could be silent. Sometimes, they tried—
“He used to be so cheerful.”
“Well behaved is different from cheerful. You’re rewriting the facts.”
— but it refused to take. They trailed off because there was no way to speak about Max without conceding that they didn’t know their child and grandchild as they wished to, and that admission no one wished to make.
Max wandered the house sullenly, occasionally lifting his fingers to the side of his head and wincing theatrically. His wound had frightened him. Maya wondered if she was watching her son come to resemble his father — his adoptive father, who was as sensitive to illness as he was suspicious of doctors. At least this made her face fill with a bereaved amusement.
And then the information they didn’t want came from Eugene’s friend at the DMV. There were seventy-three license plates registered to Montana addresses with variations on the word rodeo. But there was only one plate that also featured the number one and the state’s abbreviation. However, the listing carried an address—2207 New Missouri Trail South, Adelaide, Montana — but no phone number. The Rubins called Information — no associated phone number. Who did not have a phone number in 2012? The printout looked too big for the miserly information it contained.
“So, let’s go there,” Maya said.
“Maya,” Alex said wearily. “Not again.”
The table sat in silence, as if admitting that its authority had been exceeded.
“You’re going to stop now?” Maya said. She rose and retreated to the kitchen counter, her fingers clutching her hair.
“Maya,” he said sharply. “It’s one thing to make a phone call. We’re not going to — to — Montana.” He let out an amazed chuckle. “We can write them a letter.” He opened his hands, offering a compromise, though it was clear he was giving up on this approach.
“A letter they’ll forward to the adoption agency,” Maya said. “There’s probably a law that says we can be sued for violating the agreement without their permission. Who knows what the penalty for that is. No, we have to get in front of them, Alex. I have to get in front of Laurel. I know I can speak to her. I just need to find her.”
“So let’s hire a private investigator,” Alex said. “He’ll look and see if they’re there. Then maybe I can fly by myself.”
“And I?” Maya said. “Do I deserve to see where my child was born? Does he?”
“Voices,” Raisa said. “Please. He’s upstairs.”
“We discussed this,” Alex answered his wife. “The parents is what we need.”
“What if they want him back?” Raisa said in a conciliatory tone. “Let’s say you find them. Have you considered that?”
“They can’t,” Alex said. “Legally, he’s no longer theirs.”
“And what, the law is everything?” Eugene piped in. “So they can’t have him back, but they can make our lives difficult. Eight years have passed, they’re living their quiet, dead lives out there wherever they are, and suddenly you call, stir things up, give them something to do. Just the excitement they need. Think about it. Think about Max finding out. Think about a difficult situation becoming difficult in a new way.”
“What do you propose, Papa?” Maya said, exploiting the endearment; she referred to Eugene paternally rarely. Eugene’s shoulders slumped in a new way and he looked out toward the backyard, simmering in the blue haze of dusk.
Maya watched Alex. She was being forced to surrender the solidarity she had felt from her husband in Gabe Mishkin’s home; it had been tactical, not strategic. Their aims had overlapped, but in the manner of allies who share an enemy rather than a purpose. Her chest filled with helplessness. She imagined water in her lungs, frothing and burbling as she tried to breathe; she felt waterlogged with misery. She wondered if, secretly, her husband wished to go, but merely feared responsibility for another error and needed her to insist on it — then dismissed the possibility as another fantasy of alliance.
“Alex, it can’t hurt for him to see it,” she said without energy. “If nothing else, he has a right to. He has a right to know where he was born.”
“But he won’t know he was born there,” Alex said. “Because we aren’t going to tell him.”
“Voices,” Raisa hissed.
Alex’s eyes narrowed at his wife. “You’ve been wanting to leave New Jersey for twenty years. It’s like a prison to you. You want to live somewhere else, go live somewhere else.”
“I want to live somewhere else with my family,” Maya said.
Eugene and Raisa sat like two Buddhas; they wished they had not been around for this part of the argument. You can’t unhear what you’ve heard.
After a long silence, Maya sat down again. Again, she wedged herself in without sliding the chair out from the table. Again, she spoke as if her parents-in-law weren’t there.
“Yes, I do want to know what it’s like out there,” she said quietly. “Twenty-five years in America — thirty-five for you — and to never have gone farther than Florida and Chicago. Aren’t you curious? Aren’t you dying of curiosity? Okay, we won’t tell Max — but you and I know. Don’t you want to see it the same way that Laurel wanted to see this?”
“I see you’ve been reading Bender’s book,” Alex said. His face was tight with embarrassment — to have been spoken to that way in front of his parents. “Okay,” he said with withering softness. He rose from his seat, walked to the stairs, and called for Max. They heard the door of a bedroom open upstairs. “Maxie?” his father called again. “Come down, please, okay?”