Notes from My Captivity(59)

He thinks about this and then shakes his head. “No. Not crazy.”

“I never told you this, Vanya, but I see your sister. Zoya. She comes to me at night. She talks to me. She’s not a dream. She’s real.”

He looks at me steadily. His eyebrows don’t move. Nothing about his face suggests surprise.

“Do you ever see Zoya? Your father?”

He looks uncomfortable, suddenly. “They are dead.”

“I know they’re dead, but do you see them?”

He takes a piece of grass and twists it idly in his hands. He seems to be weighing something in his mind.

“Tell me!” I insist. “Do you see them? Do you touch them? How did Clara know what my father looks like? Is your family magic? Are they sorcerers? Is that why your family is afraid of being discovered?”

He shakes his head at the words, and I’m not sure if he’s denying this or if he doesn’t understand the English.

“Vanya. Where is my father?”

The growl comes from behind us, distinct and human. It’s Marat, and he’s none too pleased to see us sitting together alone. He starts yelling at Vanya and waving his arms. I growl back in frustration. He really needs to chill out and maybe smoke a bong. Vanya sighs and stands up.

“I am sorry,” he tells me, and the two of them walk away together, Marat still lecturing him.

Since I haven’t run off in some time, Gospozha must be starting to trust me, because she lets me go by myself to look for flint. But I’m not looking for a glint of precious stone. I’m looking for a glint of precious father.

Straining to hear his voice. Calling his name. Looking up when there’s a shift in the breeze. The flint glimmers. My father stays hidden. Silent. But I know he’s here. There is no other explanation. My reporter’s mind is fading. Reporters don’t chase magic. They chase the truth. And to be honest with myself, I don’t care if it’s the truth or a lie, as long as my father can be as real and present as the little girl who appears at night.

When the family is off working, I sneak back to the cabin and go through their ancient books. Straining to understand the Russian. Looking for a spell or an herb or an explanation that would help me find him. And yet, I find nothing.

Two days pass. My cast is off, revealing pale skin and an arm that feels weak but serviceable. I’m not sure bones heal that fast out in the world, and I wonder if Gospozha’s potions, or her prayers, should get credit.

The canoe is finished.

And yet, I’m not ready to go. My seduction plan is still in place. But for now, the goal is not escape. I need Vanya to tell me the secret of where my father is.

I find him leaning up against a tree in the forest, reading Fifty Shades of Grey. He’s halfway through. I dread what this has done to his vocabulary and his perspective on women. He hears the sound of my footsteps and looks up wild-eyed, like I’m going to make him lash me with an elk tail or something.

“How is your book?” I ask in English because, let’s face it, he knows English much better than I know Russian.

He looks at me suspiciously, as though wondering why I’m talking to him now. “Good,” he says. He’s searching for a word. “Weird.”

“Yes, it’s not quite Cinderella,” I answer.

“Cinderella?”

“Never mind.”

He looks back down at the book. “Some words don’t understand.”

“Like what?”

He points a fingertip to the middle of the page and sounds it out carefully. “Cock ring,” he says.

“Oh, boy,” I answer.

He looks at me, “Oh, boy?”

“It’s jewelry,” I say at last. I reach around in my shirt and hold out my necklace. “Jew-will-ree. Only it’s for . . . for . . . oh God.”

“God?” His eyes brighten.

I have to redeem my culture here. I mean, I’m all for free love between consenting adults, but all love in America isn’t like this. “No. Listen, Vanya. This is not how all couples act, do you understand? A man and a woman . . . sometimes very sweet, very gentle, yes?”

“Gentle,” he repeats, nodding as I stroke the air. I come up close to him and stroke his arm. “Gentle,” I say. “No hit woman.” It’s now or never, Adrienne. I’m still stroking his arm. I move up to his face. “Gentle,” I say.

He drops the book. He touches my cheek. “Gentle,” he says. Our faces are moving closer and closer. It feels so natural, after all this time, just a sweet, gentle thing a girl and a guy do when they are standing alone in the shadows and the time is right.

My lips touch his.

Gentle.

Sweet.

I kiss Vanya again. It happens by the plank table when no one is around. It happens in the forest. It even happens one night in the darkness of the hut while the family sleeps. It’s risky, to be sure, with Marat in the same room, but also exciting. Vanya has started to give me more passionate kisses. There is some tongue action.

I ask him, again and again, about my father. At first, he won’t tell me anything. Then finally he says: “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“I want to show you something.” His grammar is getting better than my stepbrother’s. He takes my hand and leads me down to the river, and we walk up the bank, past where Dan drowned. We visit his burial site, where the cross is still standing. We pull some flowers—orange and white—and drop them on his grave, then we continue on. The rains have not come; the water is calmer and shallow enough to cross over to the other side before we get to the bank where the others lie under the branches. It’s been almost six weeks since they died, but the slight odor of death still drifts across the river, real or imagined. If I couldn’t see Dan’s grave with my own eyes or those bones scattered on the bank, I could almost think it never happened at all.