Right Where You Left Me Page 9

  Uncle Miguel pats my arm. “I’ve seen your mom like this before. She just needs a good night’s sleep and she’ll be better. Don’t worry.”

  “Okay,” I say. I don’t tell him that I’m concerned that my mother will become catatonic by day’s end. That people shouldn’t be capable of sitting so still for so long.

  “You doing okay?” he asks.

  “Aside from the whole video of some asshole holding a gun to my dad’s head? Sure, great!”

  “Lottie.” He stops after saying my name and pulls me into a bear hug. He must sense how lost I am without Dad. When I close my eyes, I pretend Uncle Miguel is him.

  “Are they going to save him?” I ask, my voice so quiet, I’m not sure if I said the words out loud.

  He holds me tighter. “I hope so.”

  “I need you to do something,” I say as I wipe my cheeks.

  He steps back so he can look at me. “What?”

  “You need to tell me everything. Don’t try to protect me, because I’ll find out in the end. I’m old enough to know what’s going on. I don’t want you and Mom to keep things from me.”

  He crosses his arms and nods slowly. “Okay. You’re going to hear a lot of conflicting stuff on the news—and a lot of things that are completely false. Don’t panic. I’ll make sure you know what’s really happening. Okay?”

  “Yes. Thanks,” I say. “I mean it.”

  “You know how proud of you your dad is, right? I want you to hold on to that. I know the video is hard to see, but it is a good sign. We can see that he hasn’t been harmed—”

  “He’s covered in bruises!” I say.

  “I know, Lottie, but he’s alive. He can talk. He can sit upright. These are all very good things. And now the FBI has a visual of where he’s being held. They’re analyzing it now.”

  “You sound like you think they’re doing a good job.”

  Uncle Miguel shakes his head. “I think they’re doing the best they can. I don’t think we should just sit back and wait, though.”

  “What are you going to run in the paper?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure yet. I’m not calling the shots like I usually do. The FBI is talking with the publisher, and I’m being told what I can and can’t do. Right now, we’re running stuff off the AP wire. They want us to play it safe so the rebels will stay in touch with the paper.”

  I can see the TV from the kitchen. Dad’s image flashes across the muted screen, and I realize that to everyone else, he’s just another story. One more event in an endless list of tragedies. I stare at the picture, at Dad’s empty eyes, and I wonder how long people will pay attention.

  Seventeen

  The next morning, a parade of well-meaning visitors appears at the door, old ladies from the neighborhood and youngish women from the cultural center, ones who enroll in Mom’s cooking classes in the hopes of winning men’s hearts with perfectly baked treats. All morning, and then well into the afternoon, they offer condolences and food meant to comfort the grieving. Dishes that make my stomach turn.

  I want to turn them away and explain that Dad isn’t dead. He’s captive, bruised, and maybe wounded—but alive. Instead, I invite them inside the apartment. Ask them to sit. Habitually, I offer pastries and coffee. I guess in some ways, I am my mother’s daughter. They are kind, especially after I explain that Mom is unavailable, either holed up in her room or baking downstairs. They tell me to take care of my mother. To focus on my studies. To stay strong.

  Nadine is the only one who can coax Mom out of the apartment, and then only to work.

  I leave the funeral dishes, untouched, on the counter.

  Emma, Isaac, and Josh text hourly, and I respond with three words: Can’t talk now.

  Without Dad, the apartment feels too large, almost vast. Once again, I understand Mom’s impulse to cocoon in her room. When the visitors taper off late in the afternoon, I lower the blinds in my bedroom and pull the boxes of photos from my closet, arranging stacks of prints on my bed.

  One by one, I add more photos of Dad to my collaged door, and then my already crowded wall, covering my friends with vacation snapshots. Pictures taken at the Eiffel Tower and Empire State Building and Space Needle. They’ll understand.

  Dad always smiles in photos, and he tickles and prods Mom to do the same. She’s not naturally sour and scowling, but she’s serious and poised. Perfect posture. When she’s not in the kitchen or bakery, she wears her hair down, hanging just past her shoulders. I have Dad’s curls and dark hair. Mom’s is straight and lighter, almost auburn, with streaks of gold. Her eyes are a startling pale blue, like mine. When she was little, classmates accused her of having ghost eyes. Her pale skin and unnerving quiet only contributed to her mysteriousness. Mom often says that if she lived centuries ago, she likely would have been accused of being a witch and set aflame at the stake.

  Josh, Emma, and Isaac continue to text, trying to persuade me to go out. Even with Mom’s absence, I can’t bring myself to leave. It feels too soon to invite them over, especially with the risk of Raj knocking on the door at any time. We haven’t heard anything else. The briefing was confidential. He had nothing new to report.

  They ask how I am and if I need anything. I don’t know what to say. How is it that we can be fluent in a language, in my case two, and still find ourselves at a loss for words? How can we know something so fully and disbelieve it at the same time? Tears come at random times: getting dressed or answering the door or in the shower.

  I wish I had the energy to run, but my muscles ache from tension and lack of sleep.

  I leave my camera on my desk. If Dad isn’t in the picture, I don’t want to take it.

  Josh’s cannonball rock helps, and I roll it in my hands, finding comfort in how things evolve. If a rock’s shape is impermanent, certainly our situation must be too.

  I can’t stop watching the video. Paused, the frame fills with Dad, staring straight at the camera. He looks thinner, and it’s hard to see if he’s lost any of his slight beer belly. Can’t tell. Probably not in a week’s time, but the jumpsuit they have him in is baggy. I wonder how many bruises line his skin, if they’ve punched or kicked him. If he’s in pain.

  Yes, he’s alive, but is he okay? Can he stand? Eat?

  He looks tired and scared and anxious. It’s a familiar expression. I see it in my own reflection every time I walk down the hall, passing family portraits and framed snapshots. An elaborate portrait gallery filled with Dad’s long-dead relatives in Iowa and Mom’s extensive family tree in Russia. We have a few photos of Lena up. One of my favorites is of Dad sitting with her on his lap, leaning against his stomach, her face smiling as he reads Goodnight Moon.

  I’m not sure why they put it on the wall, but there’s a photo of Mom and Dad when she’s pregnant with me. Mom would have been freshly verbal again having ended her months of silence. They look broken. There isn’t any joy in their faces. Not excitement or anticipation—just grief and fear. Dad’s face looks the same as it does in the video, in that frozen frame. Desperate and uncertain but doing whatever he needs to survive.

  I want to remove the photo from the wall. I don’t know if that would bring Mom relief or more pain.

  It took a couple of years and fertility treatment for them to have Lena. They nicknamed her Snegurochka, the name of the snow girl from Russia’s famous fairytale. Dad used to read the story on New Year’s, her celebration day, from an exquisite illustrated book that now sits on my shelf. He’d play Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Snow Maiden. It was his memorial to Lena, and Mom silently endured until she finally confessed she never wanted to hear it again.

  In the story, an older man and woman wanted a child. After years of trying unsuccessfully, they magically made a girl from snow. With hands tucked in thin gloves, they molded the snow into the shape of a young girl, forming a head, a slim torso, limbs, hands, and feet. They labored to create perfect ears, fingers, toes, and a nose. When it came to her face, they placed two bright blue beads into the
hollow eye sockets, arranged a red ribbon into a smile, and with a twig, added two dimples. After she came to life, she had deep blue eyes, twinkling with beauty, skin as pale as the snow of which she was made, and curly blond hair.

  She thrived in winter, enjoying the shivering days and frosty nights. When the seasons changed from bitter cold to mild spring to warm summer days, Snegurochka grew withdrawn and sad. In an attempt to cheer herself up, she joined her friends in the forest for an afternoon of picking wildflowers. As night fell, they built a fire and, holding hands, danced around the flames. One courageous girl leaped over the fire, twirling as she landed. The other girls copied her ballet steps. When Snegurochka’s turn came, she jumped over the burning embers and suddenly melted, transformed into a white cloud.

  Lena, too, turned into a vapor.

  Please, Dad, not you too.

  Eighteen

  The next morning, Mom finds me in my room, the video playing again on my laptop, muted. I watch Dad’s lips move and his hollow eyes. In the middle of the night, I woke and watched the video again, freezing frame after frame, looking for clues to his well-being. I searched for more bruises and cuts and scratches, but even magnified, the film is too grainy to discover much.

  One of his fingernails is broken and bloody. I hope nothing else is.

  Mom cups my chin and lifts up my face until my eyes meet hers, red-rimmed and distraught. “I don’t want you watching that video over and over again. Ponimayu?” Understand? “I know you, Charlotte. You obsess. You can’t do that with your father. It’s not going to bring him home.”

  “I don’t want to go to school,” I say. “Everyone will have seen him. I can’t face it. Let me stay home another day.”

  She clucks her tongue, something she used to do when I was little, a sound of disapproval. “Work helps me. School will help you. It was fine to stay home yesterday, but you need to go back. You need to occupy yourself. Why don’t you bring Emma home after school?”

  She sounds firm but looks pleading. Tatya Nadine is resorting to old techniques to bring Mom back to the living. Yesterday, they moved from the bakery ovens to our kitchen stove, cooking cheese and meat blintzes, light and delicate, precisely the way they have been made for two hundred years. I noticed Mom didn’t sample a bite, but she didn’t isolate herself in her room until bedtime. She’s trying, and she’s asking me to do the same.

  “Okay,” I say. This time, I mean it. I’ll go. I won’t skip. Mostly because I need to see the Editorial Roundtable and Josh.

  “Go shower. I’m sending you to school with pastries.”

  I can’t stop thinking about Uncle Miguel’s promise. After Raj called back with nothing new to report, Uncle Miguel swore that the paper was doing whatever it could. He hugged Mom and me at the same time, an arm around each of us, holding on tight. “We’re going to get him back,” Uncle Miguel had said. “No matter what.”

  Of course I believe Uncle Miguel more than anything that comes out of Raj’s mouth. I have to. I can’t imagine otherwise, no matter how I wake up in the middle of the night, a little sweaty and a whole lot scared. I can’t let myself think about the fact that Dad might not come home. I keep pushing the thought away, but my fear is stubborn.

  As I leave for school, Mom loads me with a box of pastries. We have so much food that I want to walk down Geary Boulevard and distribute it to the homeless and hungry.

  I walk into class, and Emma, Isaac, and Josh are busy skimming the newspapers. As soon as they see me, they fold up the pages and place them in a single stack. Megan sweeps them into her desk drawer.

  Megan looks at me, her eyes so full of sympathy that I have to look away. I feel my body then, the blood rushing to my fingers and toes, my heart beating as though I had circled Golden Gate Park a hundred times.

  I’m torn between Emma and Josh, who moves his chair to make room for me. Emma frowns when I pick Josh, and I immediately feel bad. When I take a seat, he weaves his fingers through mine. He somehow breaks through the rattling feeling I’ve had since waking up. I drank too much coffee and reached my limit of anxiety. I didn’t sleep much again, and when Mom woke me up, I’d just fallen asleep a couple of hours before. She’s trying. Hard. Tatya Nadine must be coaching her on an hourly basis: Leave your room. Talk to your family. Work. She recited the same lines after they buried Lena.

  I place the box of pastries on the table.

  “Thank God,” Isaac says.

  Proud on Mom’s behalf, I love that they love her food. They reach for their favorites. Isaac takes two.

  If I were to assign them each a pastry, Emma would be rogaliki, small baked crescent rolls filled with fruit and cream, everyone’s favorite. Isaac would be an almond horn, sweet and straightforward, the popular pastry displayed on the top shelf behind the glass counter. Megan would be Tulskie prianiki, gingerbread, the perfect balance of spicy and sweet. Josh would be sharlotka, a round sugary cake made with apples, the dessert I crave when I need comfort food.

  “I’m not supposed to talk about my dad,” I say. “FBI orders.”

  “Come on, we already know. We’re researching like crazy. What are they telling you?” Isaac asks, a little indignant.

  Clearly, Raj Singh knows more than he’s telling—the question is, how much? I know he’s going to keep things from us for many reasons. I’m not an idiot. But what do we do until they decide they can share their information? How long are we supposed to keep this within our apartment when everyone we know will be asking about Dad and what’s being done to bring him home?

  I look at my friends, who are staring at me, waiting for my answer. Will I do this on my own, or will I let them in?

  They’re right—they already know.

  “Isaac,” I say, “have you figured out if the group has a name? The FBI guy said that they’re new but some people from other groups are in it. I don’t know why there’s a new group or anything about them.”

  Isaac grins. “On it.”

  Josh leans closer. “I want to show you something,” he says.

  “You sound like the FBI.”

  “Come on.”

  I follow him into the computer closet. Josh turns around a giant monitor so nobody can see the screen from the door. He’s wearing the same jacket, the one with the eagle buttons. He takes it off before sitting down, revealing a blue T-shirt with a giant picture of a masked, mustachioed man’s face. Josh’s arms are irresistible, and all I can think of is being at his house, in his room. I shove my hands into my pockets to stop myself from touching him.

  “What’s on your shirt?” I ask.

  “Guy Fawkes. He’s kind of an antiestablishment hero.”

  I roll my eyes. “Strange choice, don’t you think, considering my dad was taken by rebels?”

  “Guy Fawkes would have rescued your dad by now.” He types faster than anyone I’ve ever seen, opening several pages in rapid succession.

  “Check it out,” he says as he presses play.

  We watch a video of some family pleading for the release of their son. He plays a couple more. One of the parents of an abducted aid worker in Sudan. Another of a journalist in Syria. Another of a missionary in Colombia.

  “Listen,” he says, leaning close. “You don’t have to be quiet because the FBI tells you to. You know that your dad won’t be in the news a week from now.” He points to the aid worker’s parents. “She’s been missing for over a year.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Make a video. Release it now. A video for a video. I’ll film you. I can do any editing you need. Whatever you want.”

  My mind flashes back to the video of Dad, to his bruises.

  “I really want to help,” he says. “You know we need to keep your dad in the news. Sometimes you have to break some rules to make something good happen.”

  “Josh, you don’t understand. They said that they’ll take away our passports. That if we do anything, it’s treason.”

  “They’re saying that because they want t
o control you. They want to do everything their way on their terms. They’re not just thinking about bringing your dad home. They’re thinking about politics, too.”

  I straighten my spine, like Mom, and try to conjure the stoicism that she displayed with Raj. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

  Josh stares at me. That never helps. I look at the floor, blinking back tears. He tucks a stray curl behind my ear, and it takes everything I have, every ounce of willpower, to not fall into him.

  What would Dad do if Mom went missing? If I did? Everything he possibly could. Rules wouldn’t matter. Politics wouldn’t matter. Only we’d matter. Family. That’s when I make a decision: We’ll do whatever we can to bring Dad home.

  I take a breath and meet Josh’s eyes. “Let me think about it, but maybe. Probably. Just give me a little time, okay?”

  Megan steps into the room and puts a hand on my shoulder. “I hate to say this, but we still have a paper to put out. Charlotte, your photos are in, but they want us to make a display of the ones from the winter formal. Can you make prints? I checked and the darkroom is open.”

  She knows that I wish we were old-school, developing prints weekly rather than producing them digitally. Nothing feels better than being in the darkroom. Except cross-country. Maybe except Josh.

  I rummage through my backpack in search of film. At dances and big school events, I always bring both cameras, digital and regular, so I have the option to make prints.

  Before heading to the darkroom, I stop to talk to Emma. I can see a flash of hurt in her eyes. It’s better if I don’t bring it up, especially if there’s any hope of her ever accepting Josh, much less liking him. I hug her instead. When I ask her about coming over after school, she says, “Finally.”

  I pull out two canisters of film, but I’m not sure which one contains the dance photos. I’d forgotten to label them. Guess I’ll develop both.

  The first roll contains shots from runs and hanging out with the Editorial Roundtable, a week or two before spring break. A lifetime ago. When I rinse a print and hang it to dry, I relive taking the shot. The more I look, the more my other senses surface: the smell of the garden, the taste of the saltwater air, the foggy wind touching my exposed skin. A few weeks ago, I’d taken pictures of the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden in the park. The young tulips blaze in the photos, and the color alone grabs my attention. The stems sway in the breeze and pull the eye along the flowers’ curves, the arc of the petals, in an unexpected, almost sensual way. I’m making a life-cycle triptych, hoping to evoke the emotion of birth, full bloom, and the inevitable shedding of petals, of life, only to bloom again the following spring. The three tulip photos were meant to be a gift for Dad’s birthday. Now they feel morbid.