Debra Dean: The Madonnas Of Leningrad

At the edge of the fray, Mike Lundgren has unfolded a couple of canvas chairs for Helen and her father, but Dmitri seems determined to prove that he is fit enough to join the search. Periodically, he gets up and drifts around the cafeteria, offering to help volunteers who are unloading donations: cases of pop and bottled water, boxes of sandwiches and chips and trail mix, even sunscreen and bug spray. He gathers up every rumor or bit of news as it filters in and then reports back to Helen. His latest mission was to check out the arrival of a dozen or so military-looking types, conspicuously outfitted in bright orange caps and vests and shouldering fifty-pound packs, who strode into the courtyard outside the windows about a half hour ago. When he returns, he is escorted by Mike Lundgren.

“They are a professional search and rescue unit,” Dmitri tells Helen. “They came on the noon ferry.”

“I wonder, do you happen to have your dad’s room key?” Mike asks her.

Helen picks up her purse and starts rifling through it.

“The dogs need something with her smell on it,” Dmitri says, pointing out a pack of hounds milling excitedly near the door. “They give them something with her smell on it, and the dogs find her.”

Helen finds her own key but not her parents’. She can’t recall if she ever had it, or if she left their door unlocked. Her brain feels sodden.

“It doesn’t matter,” Mike says. “We can get one from the desk clerk. Mr. Buriakov, are you sure I can’t talk you into going back to your room and getting a little rest? You’re looking a little wobbly.”

Mike would probably like to get Dmitri out from underfoot, but it’s also true that, if possible, Dmitri looks even more disheveled than he did this morning. He’s still wearing his pajama top under a windbreaker, and his face is alarmingly ashen.

“I’m okay here,” Dmitri says, and sits down to make his point.

“But maybe your daughter would like to freshen up.” Mike looks directly at Helen as he speaks, appealing to her as a co-conspirator.

“Actually, that sounds like a good idea, Papa,” she says. Dmitri may be past caring, but she is suddenly uncomfortably aware of what she must look like-those victims you see on the evening news who have been rousted from their beds by disaster, a tornado or fire or flood. She runs her tongue self-consciously over her fuzzy teeth.

“I should stay here,” Dmitri says, “but Elena, you can go. She can help you choose something of Marina ’s for the dogs.”

Mike, beaten at his game, suppresses a smile. He thinks for a minute. “Well, how about this,” he counters. “There’s a couch in the school counselor’s office. Would you at least lie down there?”

Dmitri agrees, but only after extracting a promise that he will be informed if anything, anything at all, develops. Mike waves down a volunteer.

“Can you find someone to unlock Ginger Cantor’s office for Mr. Buriakov? He’d like to lie down for a while.”

He turns to Helen and offers his arm as though they are at a dance.

“Ma’am?”

“Please. Helen.”

“Helen.”

“You know, you don’t need to go with me,” she protests, foolishly flustered.

“Happy to,” he says, and he seems genuinely to mean it.

In the cab of Mike’s truck, Helen feels safely out of her father’s earshot for the first time today. She asks Mike about the dogs.

“Is it that serious? I mean, they just look so ominous.”

Mike nods but doesn’t speak right away. “Usually,” he begins, “we get a call like this, and the missing person turns up pretty quick, no harm done.” He studies the road as though he may find the rest of his words on the pavement. She has noticed that he seems to weigh everything he says, and she wonders if this is his typical demeanor or a caution specially adapted to the situation.

“When it goes on more than an hour or so, you gotta take all the precautions.”

“This happens a lot?”

“It happens. We’ve got a guy takes off every couple of months. He used to be a runner, so he’s pretty easy to find. Sticks to the roads mostly.”

Mike swings the truck in the fire lane in front of the Arbutus and shuts off the engine. “I wouldn’t worry too much just yet,” he offers. “Some of them hide like children. Last year, we looked for this one lady for almost eight hours and then we found her under her own house. She was squeezed in a gap behind some shrubbery.”

She has heard this story already, from the deputy. Helen does a quick calculation. Marina has been missing longer than eight hours already. She wonders if there are other stories, ones without happy endings.

Upstairs, they retrieve a clean shirt for Dmitri and a pair of Marina ’s knee-highs, which Mike drops into an evidence bag. He says he’ll come back for her later, if she wants to rest or clean up. They’re standing in the hallway between the two rooms, and Helen looks at the door to her room.

“I think I’m past sleep,” she decides. She’s shaky and buzzing on too many cups of coffee, but more to the point, the prospect of being alone with her thoughts is too unsettling. “Can you wait, though, for just a minute or two, just long enough for me to brush my teeth? I don’t want to hold things up.” She gestures to the evidence bag.

“You do whatever you need to do,” he says, and leans back against the wall. His eyes are steady and warm. “I’ll be here.”

A flush of gratitude nearly undoes her, and she turns away quickly and fumbles with her door key. Inside, she hurriedly brushes her teeth and washes her face. She fluffs up her hair, dabs some concealer under her eyes, and avoids studying her reflection. She chastises herself for her ridiculous vanity. It’s not as though he’s waiting to take her on a date.

When they get back to the high school, the search and rescue team has already headed out, and Mike needs to take the evidence bag to them. He points out to Helen where the counselor’s office is located, across the courtyard, and promises to check back periodically and keep them briefed.

Dmitri is lying on a couch, but when she peeks into the room, his eyes click open like a china doll’s.

“What is it? Did they find her?”

“We were only gone a few minutes, Papa,” Helen says. “Were you asleep?”

He shakes his head no and sits up. “Where could she go, Elena?” He has asked this question or some variation of it at least twenty times today.

“I don’t know, Papa.”

“It’s not so big an island.”

“Mike says they hide sometimes.”

She settles into a deep chair with sprung cushions and flips absently through an old, dog-eared copy of the Smithsonian magazine. She tells Dmitri about a glass harmonica invented by Benjamin Franklin. She reads him an article about the great blue heron. He asks her again how come it is taking them so long to find Marina. She repeats the more upbeat theories he has heard already, that she may have found a warm place to curl up and sleep-a toolshed, an unlocked car. There are vacation homes empty all over the island, even in high season. Periodically, Helen gets up and takes another stroll around the courtyard outside.

And so the warm afternoon ticks away into evening. As promised, Mike comes in every hour or so to brief them, even though there’s nothing to report. He brings offerings of coffee, sandwiches, bags of potato chips, and fruit and candy, all of which she sets aside but then ends up eating. This is how she marks the slow passage of time, in one-hour increments, each separated into smaller units of Fritos or grapes or Kit-Kat bars. Andrei calls twice to see how they are doing, and Helen tells him that they are doing fine. Later, there is dinner in the cafeteria, trays of lasagna and bowls of three-bean salad and coleslaw provided by the women of Drake Presbyterian.