Lone Star

  “You’re right, we should transfer her folder out of the current file. May I have it, please?”

  I didn’t give it back. “Can’t you call her house? Make sure? Find out?”

  “No one has a telephone.”

  “Can we go to her house?”

  “Hannah!” This was Chloe, raising her voice at me. “We are not going to somebody’s house. Geez. Give the reverend back his folder and then sit down and help me. Look at these boys. Which one, you think?”

  I didn’t want to help her anymore. I would have helped her, if she helped me. But I had come with her, and she was ungrateful. If the reverend hadn’t fed me, I would’ve starved. And now she shouted me down when I expressed the slightest interest in something that was important to me instead of fawning, as always, about something that was important to her.

  The reverend was staring at me too, so I sat down and tuned out. Uh-huh, I said. Yeah, him. And him too. I didn’t care. Zhenya was the only child I saw in front of my eyes, her squeezed-together face, her motley hair. The rest didn’t matter.

  Chloe

  How she wished Mason had come with her. Or Blake. Or even her mother! Leave it to Hannah to make Chloe wish for her mother on her first overseas trip.

  Chloe didn’t understand why Hannah would become so difficult when the smallest thing was asked of her. She was sitting and sulking because a girl whose face she glimpsed for thirty seconds and whose bio she just read was no longer at the orphanage. Thirty seconds. And Hannah couldn’t understand why Chloe didn’t just drop everything and run to this girl’s house! Yes, her story was poignant. But the ten boy stories in Chloe’s lap were no less bitter.

  Maksim, age seven. His favorite Bible story was when Jesus healed the blind.

  Reverend Kazmir said Maksim was blind.

  Erik, age nine. Looked like a cherub. Wanted to be a cook on a ship when he grew up. Liked pandas.

  Arturs, also nine, wanted to be a firefighter and loved French fries.

  Intars, age six. Didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wanted to belong and to learn to believe in God.

  Kostays, age eight. When he wished upon a star, he wished for lots of money to buy food.

  Vladimir, age ten. Liked to walk around. He hadn’t given much thought to his plans, but he knew he’d like to have some money. At school, he liked the breaks best.

  Denis, age six, asked you to pray for him to be more reliable.

  Vova, age eleven, liked salads. When he wished upon a star, he wished for his brother to get out of prison.

  Raymonds, age six. Liked cucumber soup and potato chips. An only child. Summer was his favorite season because there was no school. When he grew up he wanted to become a cop or a mechanic. When he wished upon a star he wanted to learn how to swim.

  “That’s the one,” Chloe said, handing Raymonds’s file to Reverend Kazmir. “That’s the little guy.” His last name was Fyodorov. He had a round face, an impish smile, black hair, round friendly eyes. He was the one. You know how you just know?

  “Oh, I know,” Hannah said. “That’s how I feel about Zhenya.”

  Please, please, Chloe thought, closing her eyes. Please, unlike Zhenya, let Raymonds be available for my mother and father.

  “Ah, Ray. Good choice. He is a sweet boy. He’s out playing in the back. It’s break time. Would you like to come watch him play for a few minutes before you meet him? That way you can see how he is with other children.”

  Chloe jumped up. “These things written about them in their folder, are they accurate?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I don’t need to watch him play. He’s the one. When can I meet him?” She turned to Hannah. “Are you coming?”

  Like a queen, Hannah slowly lifted herself out of her spot on the sofa. “Oh, so for your chosen child, we bolt instantly.”

  “I wouldn’t call what you’re doing bolting, but yes,” said Chloe. “Do you know why? Because mine is still here, still available, oh, and we’re not here to sponsor a child for your mother. You don’t think she’s got enough to deal with?”

  “Not for my mother, are you crazy? For me.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Tell me you wouldn’t go chasing after Raymonds all over Liepaja if you found out he wasn’t here.”

  Chloe stomped out of the reverend’s office. She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t.

  Raymonds was too shy to come near Chloe. Her visit with him was brief. He didn’t take his curious Cocker Spaniel eyes off her, but didn’t approach her, either. He spoke no English, but gave her a high-five before she left. Back at the reverend’s office, Chloe spent a long time filling out the paperwork. Did the reverend have some more photographs of him? Could her parents write letters to him? Would he be studying English? If her parents wanted to bring him to the United States, how would they go about it?

  “Now? That’s not possible.”

  “No, later. For a visit.” A long visit, Chloe thought. She wasn’t sure her parents would be able to part with him once they’d met him.

  Hannah paced, looking out the window. “What if they wanted to actually adopt Raymonds?” she asked. “What then?”

  “It’s possible,” the reverend replied. “We can arrange adoptions through our Dallas partners. They screen the sponsors for adoption eligibility. It has happened.” The way he said it indicated that it happened rarely. “Americans want little babies,” he said. “We have bigger children, unfortunately.”

  “Just the right size,” said Chloe, putting her hand out into the empty space where Ray’s little black head might’ve been. Or Jimmy’s. She glanced at her watch and gasped. It was 4:15. Their train was leaving in forty-five minutes. The reverend called for a cab and paid for it upfront, four latu, not thirty-two. After saying goodbye to him, they left in a hurry.

  In the cab, Hannah leaned toward the driver.

  “Do you speak English?”

  “Little.”

  “Can you take us here?” She showed him an address on a scrap of paper.

  “Hannah!”

  “Shh.”

  “Not for four latu,” the cabbie said.

  “How much?”

  “Another four.”

  “Okay. I’ll pay.”

  “Hannah, what are you doing?”

  “Nothing. We won’t be late for the train. I promise.”

  “You do understand that the train is at five.”

  “I just want to drive by her place. To see where she lives.”

  “Why?”

  “Because. Why did you want to see Raymonds?”

  “Because my parents are going to sponsor him,” Chloe replied slowly as if speaking with the deranged.

  “Maybe I can convince my mother to help me sponsor Zhenya.”

  A defeated Chloe fell back on her seat. “You do understand that if we miss the train, there isn’t another one until tomorrow night?”

  “We’ll make it.”

  Liepaja was flat, granite and looked abandoned. The rain had stopped, but the wind swirled the residual mist in the air like icy pollen. Chloe’s face and shirt were damp after a minute of walking down the steps to the cab. Apartment buildings rose up out of the grass, looking like the urban project tenements Chloe had seen on the evening news. Dilapidated concrete boxes, six stories high.

  Zhenya didn’t live in one of those, “Thank God,” said Hannah, when they stopped next to a small brick house with bars on the windows. On the front patch of brown grass stood a mangled, rusted but functioning see-saw and on this see-saw balanced two girls. One of them must have been Zhenya because Hannah’s face softened as if she’d encountered a long-lost sister. “There she is,” she whispered, pressing her face against the dirty glass of the cab, fanning her hand on the window. Chloe wasn’t sure if Hannah was waving hello, or wiping the dust away to see the girl better.

  There she was indeed. The girl’s hair was matted, and she wore someone else’s clothes: someone bigger, taller and maler
. She was barefoot in the icy vapor, her arms white sticks, poking out of the greasy, dirty T-shirt.

  The cabbie said something that Chloe didn’t understand, but Hannah, having suddenly acquired the gift of Latvian comprehension, said, “No, no. Drive on. I just wanted to see.” She rolled down her window. The girls on the see-saw guardedly studied the people in the cab. Hannah smiled and waved. An uncertain Zhenya waved back.

  Chloe was flummoxed. “Hannah, stranger danger, what are you doing? They’re going to call the cops. What are you seeing?”

  “Just a girl,” Hannah said. “Who asked me to pray that she wouldn’t be beaten.”

  “Not you specifically.”

  “Yes, me specifically. I was the one who heard. Therefore, me. Blake should’ve come with us. He’d understand. He could write about her. She could be his vanished girl.”

  “What does urchin Zhenya have to do with his treasure, his Latvian spies?”

  “Maybe they’re searching for the treasure but they find her instead, in that house. And they find the suitcase, too.”

  “In her house?”

  “Perfect place to hide it. Maybe Zhenya is the treasure. Did you ever think of that?”

  How little Chloe understood about life. Her friend had acted like an adult at eleven, twelve, thirteen. Sometimes Hannah’s mother didn’t even look up when a car came through their dense wood to pick up her daughter and take her somewhere. Hannah could have said she was out with anybody, and often did. Hannah, already a beautiful young woman, mature, appealing, the most grown up of them all. Yet here she sat, her cheek to the Latvian glass, waving to a neglected kid on a see-saw. A thousand questions, all answers invisible to the naked eye.

  Hannah

  We arrived at the station with barely ten minutes to spare. Unlike the morning, it was mad packed with irate travelers, a crash of rhinos, all shoving and yelling their way to the one platform. Chloe and I couldn’t find two seats together. I know she blamed me because I wanted to take a look at that girl. My little Zhenya. All the compartments were full. After racing back and forth, we finally found three single empty seats in one cabin.

  The five other seats were occupied by an obese middle-aged couple, a father traveling with his small son and a professor in a tweed suit by the window, reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, in Latvian probably. There was one empty seat between the small boy and the professor, and one on each side of the lard consumers, who had wisely chosen to sit in the middle two, hoping to deter anyone from sitting next to them. It almost worked. But we were stuck. We tried to ask them to move over so that we could sit together, but they just stared at us as though we were the elephants. Just as well, because I refuse to sit next to enormous foreigners. And I know that Chloe likes the window. Besides, I wanted to sit next to the professor. He looked smart and handsome. Maybe he spoke a bit of English. I could find out.

  Chloe breathed a big sigh of relief when we made the train. But not me. I half-hoped we’d miss it, and be forced to stay in Liepaja one more day, and maybe tomorrow the weather would improve, and I could walk to Zhenya’s house and if she was there I could ask her if she wanted to go with us to the beach. I’ll buy you a lemonade, I’d say. And cotton candy if there’s a boardwalk like the one in Revere, where there’s a Ferris wheel and fireworks in the summer. I’d ask Zhenya if she wanted to see Revere Beach, maybe go on a roller coaster with me. We have a lake where I live, I’d tell her, and the water is warm in the summer, and there’s lots of fish. And in the winter, we could ice skate on it. Chloe could teach you how to speed skate when we’re back from college for Christmas break. And I swear to you, I’d never let you out at night.

  20

  Thorn Forests

  Chloe

  She squeezed in by the window near the massive woman. She felt so claustrophobically cramped. Too many strangers in one confined space. Like spending hours in a packed and broken elevator. At least there was a window. Across from her, Hannah was primping her Marilyn Monroe hair next to the professor, who did not look up from his book, not even at bleached Hannah.

  Running her hand over her tousled hair in a weak attempt to smooth it out, Chloe pressed her face to the glass and closed her eyes. She recalled wide open spaces, swimming in her lake, and Raymonds’s little round face, she recalled rocking the boat with Blake to see if they could tip it over while his father waved at them to stop from his sick chair and her mother yelled, I have ice tea, row back, you’ve been out there for hours.

  Her mother and father would be proud of her, Chloe thought. She did well today. Coming here wasn’t the waste of time she’d feared it would be. Quite the opposite, really. What had Blake and Mason been up to? How much longer? Maybe she could doze, wake up in Riga. She took a breath, her hands clutching the paperback, and opened her eyes. On the platform, people carried backpacks, suitcases, pushed trolleys and strollers. A pregnant woman was saying goodbye to a man in a suit. They were erotically making out. An old woman carried a toddler in her arms. A man in a military coat with lots of stars on its shoulder straps was shaking the hand of an obscured young man, perhaps his son. A baby was crying. A young woman comforted him. The conductors were yelling, gesticulating. There was a loud stream in Latvian of one endless announcement after another.

  Fifteen minutes behind schedule, the train engines finally spun into action, and Chloe permitted herself a small smile. Yes, it was smelly. And awfully crowded. And soon to be hot. Her shirt was still damp from the rain, and all the windows were closed and she couldn’t find her ticket to show the conductor. But at least the train was moving. Soon this would be over. What station was next, Skrunda?

  Not a minute after the conductor left, the door opened again and into their stuffy, overcrowded cabin stepped in the dreaded eighth passenger, a young dude. No! It was impossible! There was no room here; couldn’t he see that? It was as clear as the scowl on her face. A sharply inhaling Chloe despised him from the moment he slid open the door, smiling widely, and stepped inside to look for a seat. He was not only tall and had to bend his head to fit through the glass door, but he carried with him a crapload of stuff, enough shit to warrant his own cabin. Besides the oversized green duffel and a backpack, he wore a bulky leather jacket and a pretentious black beret. And on his back, to top it all off, was a guitar. Chloe nearly groaned. A guitar!

  The luggage shelf above their heads was full. Fat people needed big suitcases. Father and son had a suitcase each, the professor a carry-on. There was no room for a man-sized duffel, no room for a man-sized guitar, no room for a man. The guitar looked old and beat-up, and had no case. Nice way to take care of an instrument, Chloe thought. But when he spun around, she saw that the strings were brand new. She didn’t know which detail made her most hostile. All of it.

  This interloper, at whom Chloe was too upset to look at directly, assessed the situation in the cabin. “Hello there,” he said in a low easy melodic American voice. Cool and casual and friendly. Like a sing-song. A fed-up Chloe stared out the window, ignoring him. Undeterred, the insolent intruder continued to speak. But now he was speaking in what might have been Latvian to the bulky pair next to Chloe. He sounded falsely polite.

  And then, just when Chloe thought things couldn’t get any worse, things got worse. Because after the trespasser had finished speaking, the chunky Lett chuckled. Chloe couldn’t believe the woman didn’t see right through him. The lady heaved herself up and, pulling her husband with her, slid over one seat! The eighth seat, right next to Chloe, became available!

  Chloe glared in his direction, hoping her internal screaming might dissuade him.

  Nope. Just the opposite. Grinning at her with his mouthful of teeth like a simpleton, he took one long gallop through the compartment and was by her side, his duffel, backpack, guitar, jacket, pompous beret, everything. Was his black hair short or was it slicked back in a ponytail? He would have a ponytail, wouldn’t he? Oh yes. There it was.

  “Hi,” he said to her, dropping the duffel t
o the floor. “Sorry about all my stuff. Would you mind?”

  “Mind what?” Chloe barked. Her mother wouldn’t be pleased with her manners. How did he know she spoke English? She could be a bosomy Lett herself.

  “Um, scooting over just a wee bit?” he said. His large eyes were twinkling. He probably thought they were dark chocolate in color. “You’re in my seat. Maybe you could move a smidge, and then I’d fit right in.” He grinned. “I’m good at fitting into tight spaces.” He didn’t just say that! “I’m skinny, you see,” he went on.

  She didn’t see. She didn’t see anything. Chloe flung herself at the window. She wanted to fling herself through the window like a waxwing slain. Hannah, who a moment ago had been unsuccessfully trying to engage the professor in conversation, had forgotten all about physics and was avidly gesturing to Chloe, in a back and forth pattern through the air, as if to say, let’s switch seats!

  Chloe wanted nothing more than to switch: cabins, cars, countries. But why should Hannah get what she wanted? Chloe wasn’t getting what she wanted. Peace. Quiet. No personal space invaders next to her. Imperceptibly she shook her head.

  “Wow, it’s crowded,” the guy said. No shit, Sherlock. “This may be the last available seat on the whole train. Believe me, I looked and looked.”

  “It wasn’t crowded this morning,” said Hannah, suddenly the queen of small talk! Having struck out with the professor, she was appealing to the marauder from across the aisle. His skinny denim-clad legs stretched out to Hannah’s ballet flats. Chloe tucked in her own feet, feeling exposed in the strappy sandals. She didn’t want him to spot her red painted toenails. But there was no way around some other things—like her khaki thigh touching his denim thigh. The grossness of the whole thing. She wished her hair wasn’t such a dire mess. Oh, who cared.

  He didn’t smell like the fat foreigners, but he looked as though he might. He stood the body of his guitar on top of the duffel, holding it by the neck like a cello. Every few seconds he would strum it. At first Chloe thought it was accidental, but no. He was strumming it. Spreading wide his net to catch his prey with his little perfect fourths and his stretched-out legs and his evenly trimmed black stubble. How Chloe wished she hadn’t taken music theory her senior year. All the useless information she had learned in that class still fresh. What did Mr. Lecese know about strumming stubbled ponytailed bandits on Latvian trains?