tomorrow only knows

Kutuzovsky is dead silent. Eight lanes of traffic stand perfectly still, waiting for the motorcade of black cars to whip past. I walk carefully across the icy sidewalk. I can hear my own thoughts, smell the diesel in the air. Foolish to say things are somehow back to normal, as normal here means nothing. Normal means every day is a complete unknown. No plans can be made, just treading water and watching the seasons pass.

She arrived late Wednesday night. Filthy, her face covered in dry snot, coughing heavily, hungry. I fed her homemade soup, cut the knots from her hair, gave her a hot bath, poured cough syrup down her throat. I held her for a long time as we watched our favorite films together  - until she fell asleep. Her legs dangling across my lap, I stared down at her face now clean, her cheeks gaining some color.

E stayed for a few days, and then we found ourselves together for Christmas Eve, just a random day in Moscow for last-minute shopping and double-dates. We spread cookies and chocolates and pink jellybeans across a plate, poured out a glass of juice and placed it by the tree. E asked me if Santa was really coming all of the way from New York just for her. I told her we had a short talk on the phone while she was at her mother's house and yes, he was indeed coming. She curled up under the covers, her tiny hands pinned to her chin. She smiled up at me, closing her eyes and relaxing into the pillow in one simple motion.

Later, I ate the cookies, savoring them. I downed the juice in one gulp, drank some cognac from the same glass without washing it. I had forgotten to buy wrapping paper in the madness of last week, so I placed the gifts as well as I could under the tree. The dark room blinked warm and quiet.

The next morning I saw her silhouette knocking on the frosted glass of my bedroom door. It was after eight. She was sleeping much better now that she had been here a few days, going to sleep with real food in her tiny belly.

"Pop." She whispered.
I struggled into some pyjamas.
"Yeah, kiddo?" I asked.
"Pop, he came for me." She said, still whispering. "Santa came for me."
"I told you he would." I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and grasping for the coffee maker.

We spent the morning opening gifts, pressing batteries into the right slots and dancing around the living room. I made french toast and E served it back to me, as if she was running her own restaurant.

"Pop?" She asked, stopping her play. "How come Santa didn't bring YOU anything?"
A laugh jumped from my mouth.
We stared at each other for a moment, cracking smiles.

Saturday night she was back at her mother's. The woman's voice on the phone sounded as if she was dying when she called to say she was downstairs. I brought her down, E squeezing my hand tighter than normal. It was just for the night, or so we had been told.

"Take me early tomorrow." She said, stretching the words out strangely.

Upstairs I looked at the mess we had made, trying to decide if I should clean up now or later. I caught myself, wondering if she would really be back tomorrow, wondering if the madness would sweep us into its messy hands one more time. I sat in the kitchen, staring out at the new snow that was falling, at sparrows flitting around the darkening sky.

the nightmare is just beginning

I am sitting in the messy living room, surrounded by E's toys, her half-made bed. I am almost catatonic at this point. Somehow, I feel N's warmth. I can taste coffee a little bit. The rest is empty. Lost. I feel like I am outside of my bones. I can't smell anything. I know it is cold outside. I see the hard little flakes flipping around. I am not hungry. I am beyond sadness. I have not seen E for four days now, and do not know when I will.

Last Friday was the most recent court trial. I walked briskly that morning, taking E to school, wrapping her ponytail with an extra bit of flip in it. We made plans for me to take her a bit early, to get an ice cream and maybe make some shrimp for dinner. She smiled at me, her giant brown eyes connected to her smile. She touched me gently on the shoulder.

"Good luck." She whispered in my ear.

She disappeared into the classroom. That is the last time I saw her.

In the street I have to walk quickly to be on time. I pass the man who has a face like it was hit with a frying pan. He nods, smiles, his single tooth jutting into the cold air. I pass a blind woman in heels, tapping her red and white cane across the slippery sidewalk. She smiles too. I feel the day kicking in, shoving my hands in my pockets and plowing down the street.

I had a night of no sleep. I woke up a number of times, my body itchy with nerves. I did nod off at one point and dreamt up some kind of screwball comedy. I was part of some group that had to sneak an 18 ton truck onto a commuter plane. We were some sort of dream team. We had the ashes of a dead friend with us. It seemed like we could somehow pull it off.

Entering the courthouse I feel a muddy taste in the back of my throat, like I just swallowed a lot of sea water. I sit, waiting for my lawyer and translator to arrive. I look at some notes I have made. Last year, this was one of the first days when I was living in the new apartment, a freshly single father. I had taken my guitar and saxophone, balancing them precariously on E's carriage as I trundled them down the avenue. People stopped and stared.  A pretty self-explanatory story for to mull over in their glistening SUVs.

That carriage eventually broke one day, and E toppled into the snow laughing her head off. We left it right there, with cheap pink plastic flipping around in the wind, the broken wheel already freezing into the wet sidewalk. The next morning, gone.

In the courthouse the clock ticks terribly loud. The judge enters and we stand. Statements are made. E's mother tells a pack of lies. I respectfully object. I point out that perjury is a serious crime in America, and that obviously goes unpunished in Russia. The judge is young, blonde. She speaks incredibly quickly. She wears black tights and white sandals. She leaves the room for ten minutes at a time, hoping we can come to some peaceable agreement. This is impossible, as E's mother is out for blood. She is suddenly trying to erase history. She is suddenly embarrassed. But she is in Russia, and there are no laws to stop her from lying, manipulating, cheating, abusing, terrorizing or blackmailing. She can do whatever she wants to - drunk, buck naked and beating her child and the Russians will not bat an eye. This is Russia, get used to it. If you don't like it, there's the door. Foreigners and children are little bits of paper flying around in the wind. Wherever they land, whatever they need is of no importance or concern. Here they protect the mother's rights to lie, cheat and steal until she grows fat and weary of the game. Here every custody battle goes to the mother, no matter what kind of monster she is.

The clock is still insanely loud. Nothing is resolved. The judge removes all language that describes me as a wife-beater. She removes all language that puts me in a bad light. E's mother writes a document that says she has no negative comments to say about me. She signs it, with a sneer on her face, flipping the paper back at my lawyer. My translator is exhausted, a kind man who speaks English very softly.

The trial is over. In ten days the divorce will be official. Nothing about E is resolved. I pay everyone, walk out into the street. I think the worst is over now. We can all get on with our lives. I go home, check a few emails, shovel leftovers into my mouth. I take a short meeting on old Arbat. It is 4. I think to buy a star to put at the top of our tiny christmas tree with E later on. The store is close to here. But then a tiny voice inside me says, no - -go to the school now and take her.

And I am suddenly running down the icy streets. I fall once, twice - one of my knees is definitely bleeding. I am out of breath, almost there. My back is wet with sweat under many layers. I enter the school, up the dark stairwell and into E's classroom. I look at the backs of their heads, do not see her ponytail. Maybe she is in the bathroom. "Where is E?" I ask. The teacher tells me her mother took her hours ago.

There are vicious text messages on my phone from her. Threats. There is an email I will come home to. A sort of death sentence. A promise I will never see E again. That she will punish me for saying she was a liar today. I try to call, to speak to E for a minute. The phone is switched off.

No surprise that I take that half bottle of red wine and drink it in silence in the living room, in the dark. No surprise N finds me this way. Holds me, talks me through it. She makes me sit at the kitchen table. Eat something. Drink some tea.

But I feel nothing. I know what has happened.

And when I go to take E like I do every Sunday I am turned back. I am told the police will come if I try to take her. I call E on the phone. She says she does not want to see me. Her mother is whispering in her ears, and then she says maybe I can see her on Tuesday.

"But today is Sunday." I say.

"I don't want to see you." E says, her voice choking in her throat.

the little prophet

The snow had cocooned itself in filthy swirls around the streets and pathways. We trudge in the dim light, careful of the ice beneath the surface. I slide wildly, waving my arms around and E squeezes my hand tightly. I do not fall. She laughs at me, a bubble of happiness as stoic faces pass us on all sides.

One of the strays trots next to us, a German Shepherd mix. It noses our feet. E grows scared. I tell her to put her other hand in her pocket. The dog is glued to the sides of our knees, bumping against us. Her fear grows. I stop for a moment and it disappears into the crowd.

"I have an invisible doctor." E announces as we walk home from school.
"Oh really." I say, wondering if we are almost out of milk.
"He protects me." E continues. "And only I can see him. When I was born in one minute he was there and he never leaves me."
"OK." I say, fascinated by the way her mind works.
"And he only protects YOU?" I ask.
"Yes." She explains. "And only my people know about him."
"Your people?" I ask.
"Yes. Vika and you and my friends from school." She says.
"And N?" I ask.
She twists her mouth around. She nods a big yes.
"But not Mom." She says, defiantly. "She is not my people."
She breathes in deeply.
"If I clap three times he will fly down to me." She says. "And he is the one who put the computer in my brain and gave me robot bones."
We walk in silence for a bit.
"Do other people have their own invisible doctors?" I ask.
"NO." She says quickly. "Only me."
"Ah." I say, guiding us past the crowd in front of the railway station. We walk in the gutter now.
"And if you don't believe me, you are not my people." She said.

That night I watch her sleeping as I work late, the computer an unblinking eye on the other side of the room. The place smells of empty coffee cups and half-sucked lollipops. She has nightmares. She turns in her sleep. Last week she told me the secret name she calls her mother - Lepit - the maker of sculptures from plastilene - a moldable, temporary clay that never keeps its shape.

I sit next to her, holding her tiny hand as it instinctually grabs mine. I sing to her, the same melody I sang to her when she was one minute old, washing her tiny body in that blue plastic basin as the nurses gave me some space.

agrodolce

Lost in the fairy tale of familiar streets, we zigzagged across the city. Magnificent plates of pasta, secret views, the floral smell of dim sum steaming the windows, of sewer gas, of tiny cups of perfect coffee. We ate like Kings every night - rolling into bed, our stomachs swollen, the taste of almonds on our lips. I slept next to her in a strange yet delicious bed.

I took early morning walks, alone in the cool air, my hands shoved into my pockets like someone in a Cassavetes film. Coffees knocked from my hands by the wind, I buy a second round, carefully toting them back to her, naked, asleep. I crack the lids open, shrug my pants to the floor and crawl in with her.

This is a vacation.

And in the rain, we walked through Central Park. Me desperate to see those polar bears flop into the dirty water. She talked to the squirrels and gathered a handful of leaves.

We ate lunch in an Italian restaurant. She had the tortellini, I had the duck special - agrodolce. I ate the whole thing like I was going to fight in a war the next day, slugging down cold white wine, mopping things up with fresh focaccia. She stared at me with giant eyes.

I showed her my old block, where they called me Mayor.

It was a week that let me forget my troubles. I called E every morning, explaining how each day I was buying one more toy for her. She chirped into the phone like a little bird, asking me a series of odd questions. We counted the days out together.

I dreamt things I could remember when I woke up. Something about a cup of tea, with the bag left in it. Bitter, brewed for too long, a slick of oil on its surface. They call it "prison tea" in Russia. Even the wardens drink it that way, from what I am told.

And today we returned. Moscow stood before us, sparkling, frosty and clear. The air hung in giant clouds around our mouths as we waited for the taxi. E began calling me, asking what hour I would take her. The traffic consumed us, stinking of diesel and cigarettes. She called every ten minutes, asking me to make the traffic go faster. And then somehow home, dropping the bags and N makes a cup of tea for herself. I steal two gulps, burning my mouth and set off into the street. All too familiar, and I feel like I never left, that those perfect cups of coffee, those surprise fish tacos and sushi plates for two are evaporating into the dark sky above me. They are selling flowers, even at this hour in the frozen air. I will buy some tomorrow.

Now, I will cook pasta for E.