Julia Phillips - Disappearing Earth

“It’s going to be warm,” Artyom said.

She looked up from her plate. “Is that right?”

“Almost zero.”

“I’m not surprised,” she said. “You only give yourself the best shifts. You’ll probably spend all day picnicking.”

“Having ice cream in the snow. Sure. More like we’ll be called at noon on the dot for some novice getting sunburned off-piste.”

“Just be careful,” she said. He kept watching her.

“With weather like this, it could be a short winter,” he said. “Lieutenant Ryakhovsky texted this morning. They want our boats to search for the sisters in the bay once it thaws.”

The bread was dry in Revmira’s mouth. “He never got back to me.”

“I asked again about that. He didn’t respond.”

“He’s a jackass,” she said.

Artyom smiled at her from across the table. That look deepened the lines on his face.

“You told him about Alla’s daughter?”

“I told him everything,” Artyom said. “He’s all business: the major general wants approval from the ministry for another round of water searches.”

Revmira put her bread down. For months, Petropavlovsk’s rescue team had been helping the police organize search efforts for the Golosovskaya sisters. Artyom’s rescue work usually came in bursts—hikers unable to descend from volcanoes, snowmobilers cracking through thin lake ice, fishermen getting turned around at sea—but this case would not end. In the fall, Artyom had led civilians through the city to search for the missing girls; once the weather turned, he brought home occasional updates from officers.

How tidy of the police to throw all their efforts into looking for two small white bodies. That served as a good excuse to ignore the city’s other corruptions, its injustice, its drunk drivers or petty arsonists. Why should Ryakhovsky answer Artyom’s text messages about some northern teen? Preparing boats to drag a bay that was frozen must occupy all the lieutenant’s valuable time.

Over the winter holidays, Revmira’s second cousin, Alla, visiting from Esso, had said that her younger daughter was still missing. Alla had brought the subject up at the cross-country ski base’s café after what was supposed to be a pleasant morning together spent gliding over snow. Listening, Revmira cut a cottage-cheese pastry into three portions, while Alla rubbed her temple and talked, and Alla’s grown son watched those entering the base stomp their boots clean.

Revmira had never met this missing daughter. Alla came to the city only once a year, to see her grandchildren, and contacted Revmira with the same sadness each time. Their meetings came out of mutual obligation. After Revmira’s parents passed, Revmira had stopped visiting the village. There was nothing for her there. Her cousin’s gloomy annual updates were enough to confirm that choice.

“The authorities still have nothing to say about your girl?” Revmira had asked. Her cousin only shook her head. “Here the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Emergency Situations have been looking for these Russian sisters tirelessly.”

“It wasn’t that way with us.”

“I imagine not.”

“Natasha told me in the fall that the sisters were taken by someone,” Alla said. “When Lilia disappeared, I begged authorities to look for the person responsible. All Esso’s officers did then was spread rumors about Lilia’s boyfriends. She wasn’t…she had admirers, but that was exactly why…” Behind her glasses, Alla’s eyelids lowered. Her nostrils flared.

Revmira sat in quiet with her for a few moments. Meanwhile Alla’s son picked up his portion of their divided pastry. “Artyom could speak to the city police for you,” Revmira said eventually. “He knows people. They might open a case for her, at least. Keep a description on file.” Her cousin did not look hopeful.

Still, Revmira had collected a few details to pass forward. Lilia was small, too, and young, though not as young as the Golosovskaya sisters. Artyom had given Revmira the lieutenant’s number, then himself messaged the lieutenant with a graduation photo of the teen, but they heard nothing back. No great surprise. Lilia was three years missing, Even, the child of a nobody.

Revmira should never have suggested a city investigation to Alla. This was how it went: no end to grief. Her cousin’s cheeks had been hollowed out by absence. Revmira knew that expression too well.

“No shock Ryakhovsky didn’t respond,” Revmira said at the breakfast table. “Given the chance to assist an old native woman, our police would rather—” She stopped, turned her face from Artyom.

Rather die, she’d almost said. She had almost let herself forget what day it was.

“Well, he ought to try,” Artyom said. She shook her head. He went on: “He’s touchy these days about taking tips from civilians. He was reprimanded for it by the major general in the fall. But that’s their job. These officers are too young to understand what duty is.”

Revmira sipped the coffee. It tasted good. Sweet. She did not deserve it. Distracting herself, talking casually…even after all this time, it made no sense that she got to wake up and chatter and drink fresh coffee while Gleb could not.

She stood from the table. “Late, isn’t it?” she said. Artyom glanced at the clock on the stove.

She went to brush her teeth. In the mirror, she saw herself dressed for work.

Had she ever been as young as she was when she met Gleb? All her days back then felt bright. When, at seventeen, she moved to Petropavlovsk, the city was filled with scaffolding, soldiers, polished monuments. She came to her first day of university and saw Gleb. She was thinner then, tanner, an emissary from Esso’s Young Communist League, and he was as fair and glorious as a figure on a propaganda poster. His eyebrows furrowed under the classroom lights as he looked back.

What a lucky, stupid girl she had been in those years. Even the most difficult times she remembered from that age were nothing now. A month into her first semester, she received a package at her dormitory. The box was so light she thought at first it must be empty. She opened it to find dozens of dried pinecones; her father had gathered them to mail three hundred kilometers south to her. The box smelled like home. The forest, dirt, her parents’ scratchy clothes. She shook out the seeds, chewed them, and cried. At seventeen years old, that was her most desolate moment: missing the people who sent her packages.

And that same afternoon she was able to bring a pinecone to class and pass it across the aisle into Gleb’s hand. They were married before graduation. She had the whole world then, but she was only a child.

She applied her eyeliner. Revmira always took this date to repeat to herself Gleb’s qualities: his patience, his charm. He waited by her desk after class and she prolonged collecting her books to keep him there above her. Once, in the park with friends, he knelt down to tie her shoes. He was that indulgent. That surprising. His fingers a little longer and thinner than hers. The weekend she, finally his wife, moved in with him and his mother, he brought home a two-liter tub of red caviar to celebrate. They ate out of the tub with spoons. The saline pop of those eggs on their teeth. She would never forget.

In the other room, Artyom was clearing the dishes. They rang against the sink. Each year, Revmira’s recollections stayed the same—the tied shoe, the tub of caviar—while everything else, against her will, deepened, strengthened, grew. Gleb’s letters and records were in a suitcase on the floor of her closet. She wore a white uniform, and kept a tidy house he would not see, and had been married again for so long that people said to her, “Your husband,” without bothering to specify who.