Siberia by Agatha Hinman

John Vasiliev, fraud specialist in a California law firm, is unable understand why he is losing his miscreant son.

Image generated with OpenAI

Vasiliev slides his son's photo behind a law tome in the desk's far corner, hiding Nick's shadowed sleepless eyes while wondering what in hell his son loses sleep over. The child who unhinged classrooms and dissolved family dinners has morphed into a teenage closed-mouthed enigma. Probably skipping school this very morning, roaming the Bay Area with some friend or accomplice who has a car, doing God knows what. With a dismissive grunt, he lowers himself into spreadsheets of columns and sub columns - he's very good at asset tracing. The guilty pattern of moving money is emerging when he hears through his half-open door the paralegal whisper something to the receptionist. She bursts out, "Oh my God, that's horrible!" Vasiliev swears in Russian, coughs authoritatively. "What's going on out there?" Silence.

Back into the numbers again. Schecter doesn't knock when he enters the office (a privilege of partners), and Vasiliev manages to not look irritated. Schecter is gray in the face and breathes noisily as he collapses into the client chair. He sits up straighter, shakes a cigarette from the pack he's clutching, lights and inhales. The smell is sweet to Vasiliev, but he and Schecter had quit smoking to please the firm years ago. He waits.

"I'm taking time off," Schecter says. "Maybe a couple of days, maybe a week. Would you fill in?"

He nods. "Tell Herb to come in after lunch. With your calendar." Partners don't say no to partners.

Schecter puffs on. Vasiliev clears his throat. "What is it? Are you ill? Laura?"

He leans forward, cigarette low. "Somebody wrecked my house, John, everything. The rugs." The rugs were Persian, Vasiliev recalls, trying to picture such a loss.

"Paint!" A perceptible sob. "On everything. Irreplaceable. The electronics wrecked - the ones they didn't take."

"Good God! Who did it?"

"Monsters, sickos. Looking for a gang, but they don't know. Don't have a clue."

"Well, Christ. Little bastards."

He'd seen Schecter's home once, all his fine things. Reluctantly, after persistent invitations. With Maddy and Nick he finally took the "tour," Schecter stroking a Japanese marble Buddha in one room and an elegant Chinese vase in another, while Maddy admired the carpets and grand piano. Schecter's daughter took pity on the hostile and bored Nick, invited him to go to the store with her. Kind girl. Always fools for boys like Nick.

He misses what Schecter says next and hopes he conveyed enough sympathy, it's not his strong point. He's known Bob since joining the firm twenty-eight years before, but he's facing a different man than the one who bustled in when Vasiliev was still unpacking boxes.

"Just came in to get a little feedback on this Merlot I found," Schecter had said, "I'll pour you a flute."

Vasiliev knew nothing about fine wines but on his first day managed to be civil. And years later, with that same smugness and good will, Schecter convinced the two seniors that Vasiliev would be a great fourth partner. His argument - John gets the job done, absolutely meticulous, no one better in financial fraud, and where else will we get a man who speaks Russian? (A Yekaterinburg man had founded the firm, and they retained a half dozen Russian business clients.) Vasiliev, who had taken pains in high school to lose his Russian accent, now cultivates a milder version, treats his clients with the courtesy his firm demands - overdone, but that's America for you.

His own treasureless house is up a winding road in the East Bay hills. When he unlocks the door, Buka bounds through, knocking over San Francisco Chronicles from their pile in a milk crate. He pats and scratches behind her ears, takes off his good work jacket, wiggles his tight shoulders. No suit today, no court or client appointments. Although, Schecter says, his long face is so forbidding no one finds him too casual, whatever he wears. Have to keep in mind, he warned with a sideways look, your job is to defend our clients, not judge them. Vasiliev took the hints and grew a more sympathetic manner, not entirely false. Maybe by the time he retires he'll be a pleasant American fellow...

Maddy, home from her nursing shift at the hospital and hours on her feet, sinks into the sofa when he brings out a bottle of on-sale wine. He reports on the Schecters over a second glass and third, and her hands fly up. "Oh, for God's sake, the poor things."

"But hardly destitute. Insurance. Laura's family's got money if it comes down -"

"- That's not the point, is it?" in her "what's-the matter-with-you" voice. "I'll call Laura tomorrow."

"Kids." He empties his glass. "Stupid and stoned."

"That sort of meanness - kids without families, you can bet on it."

He smiles at her sympathy for the pathetic of the world and pours another glass. "This wine isn't bad for the price."

"You always think so after a few glasses." She's off to the kitchen and won't want to talk until dinner is ready.

Someone knows him well! That, and the wine, is satisfying. He sits up straighter; his father could sit straight-backed in a wooden chair for hours, but himself, after a drink or two, he slumps. The front door opens into the foyer, clicks shut. He eyes the living room entrance, waits for Nick to walk in, but he must be taking off his hoodie, maybe dumping a backpack. How long since he's talked to Nick in more than grunts and a short sentence. Well then, an opportunity. Vasiliev has, when he's drinking or sometimes dreaming half-asleep, a vision of a breakthrough, where he says the right words, Nick says the right words, it softens between them. Nick's not mean, he nods to himself, not a sociopath - it's those sorry friends.

The boy edges into the living room heading directly to the stairs to the bedrooms. "Hello Nick!" How false. He isn't jovial, and certainly Nick isn't. He clears his throat. "How was school?" A question parents are supposed to ask, a stupid question. He honestly can't think of anything else.

Nick grunts something, possibly "Okay," and pauses.

"Math class good? How's the algebra?" A teacher told Vasiliev and Maddy that Nick has a knack for math.

Nick goes up a step and pauses again.

"I'm thinking you're doing pretty well in it. No one's called us!" A little laugh dies in his throat. Fuck. He shouldn't have said that, and waits for the sneer, or nowadays, the thick silence that is Nick more than any words. Nick turns to face him, and Vasiliev observes that his defiance seems a bit deflated tonight. Well, well.

"It's okay. School is okay. I'm okay. Night." Nick goes up the stairs. His bedroom door clicks shut.

The following evening, the phone rings at dinnertime. Maddy answers in her cheery way, always expecting a friend, or good news. But she's somber an hour later when a red-headed police officer, freckled and pale, escorts Vasiliev and Maddy to a windowless room at the Oakland police station. Nick sits at a table, arms wrapped tightly around his thin torso, head down. Vasiliev sits across the table, his own back straight, with a lawyer's long-honed control of the room, noting how Nick tries to hold himself still, tries for fearless defiance. Nick was never a leader of anything, you just have to look at him.

A lawyer is coming - no questions for Nick without one, Vasiliev told the officer on the phone.

Maddy peers around the room clutching the strap of her purse. She sits by her son, her face sets into a pale composure; she touches Nick's narrow shoulder with her hand like a hopeful butterfly. He unfolds his arms, but a foot begins tapping. "It's okay Nick, honey," she whispers, "one thing at a time, remember?"

Vasiliev stares at her until she looks at him. On defense, every line in her face.

The room is stuffy, smells of some antiseptic cleaner.

Nick fidgets, Vasiliev leans across the table. "So. You know what you've done?" His voice is raggedy, but he vows not to raise it. "Where I work, my - my colleagues -"

His son's eyes are blank. Teenage baby, knows nothing about work, the life it's given a solid shape to, the American plot of land among the trees that is theirs. Vasiliev can't explain, not in English, not in Russian.

"Their home! God dammit! The Schecters will never feel safe in their own home again. Never. Because of you and your fucked up friends, the violation - the violence - it's terrified them." He pauses, searching his own brain. "The way goblins used to terrify you at night."

Nick looks up.

"Except by God, you're not imaginary, are you."

Nick looks down, foot tapping faster.

Stupid boy knows nothing, cares nothing, not for a god-damned thing - why doesn't the little bastard say something? Something for his mother. Something - the thoughts escape, he's empty. He pushes the chair back, a scraping tortured sound, hears himself spit out, "Useless little fucker." He leans forward. "You're a curse, a waste of life. You don't even know what you've done to me, to us."

Nick lifts his head, his eyes lock his father's eyes, and locked, Vasiliev understands that his own last words are untrue. Comprehension freezes him, erases his surroundings; he doesn't hear his own footsteps as he leaves the room. He looks for a tree, as he does when he's lost his equilibrium. Under a skinny palm, his hands rise as if to cover his face, but quickly he lowers them. Shaky legs want to sink him, but he forces himself upright, people are passing by.

"Fatherhood is a journey," Schecter had told him one Christmas Eve as they walked to their cars, meaning the office knew Nick had set a fire at a playground, a small fire quickly disposed of by gigantic trucks and deafening sirens. A journey! Schecter meant well. Vasiliev has journeyed all right - from confusion to frustration to resentment to fury. From childishly believing he and Nick were going to be like his father and himself, but better, because he drinks less, will talk more to his son who will be native to the country he lives in (but not worshipful of American ambition and ostentatious living, thank you). They will visit their cabin; he will show his son the woods.

The colleague who represents juveniles is coming up the walkway; they walk together to the holding room. A boy has talked. As questioning continues, they all talk, including Nick, face pale and drained of bravado, his foot tapping ever more quickly. After, outside the station, the lawyer confers for some time with Vasiliev and Maddy, explaining, unnecessarily, that the crime's random hatred and destructiveness will work against them.

"We have to show he's not a monster." She is tall, her hair cut close to her scalp, eyes wide with practiced sympathy. "He's an emotional and easily influenced kid who needs professional help. And has the parents to get it for him."

"I'll do whatever it takes," says Maddy. Because the father can't be trusted, thinks Vasiliev. Nick showed some rare foresight in having Maddy for a mother.

For three weeks, it's Maddy, not Nick, he watches. Nick rarely leaves his room, and never enters a room with Vasiliev in it. Deep into the night before sentencing, Maddy is awake, taut, silent. Obsessing about the punishment that today will be "handed down to us" - always "us," as if they'll all be marched to a cell together. He looks at the clock, it's three-forty. We're confused. No, we 're deluded. The sheer meanness of what he did. Yes, immature, impulsive, a pain in the ass, but not vicious, he was never vicious.

Sometimes he sees Nick from a distance, from one room to another, silence has fallen like the bay fog over the house, which no one will break. What is there to say? But Nick is more composed than he expected. In court, when the judge sentences him to the county's juvenile detention center until he's eighteen, Nick's foot is silent. When they hear that it's possible, he'll then be transferred to an adult facility, Vasiliev holds Maddy's hand, as if she were dying. In the days after, he sees how Maddy keeps to herself, but he doesn't mind.

In the fall, when the weather is warm in the sun, cold in the shade, Vasiliev waits in Schecter's office, noticing at last the fine landscape paintings of early California. Schecter comes in, hello crisply, and sits. He gestures for Vasiliev to sit also with nearly his old decisiveness. "Sorry to hear you haven't been well. These tickers - unreliable aren't they. But not too bad, I hear?" His voice is thinner, older.

"It was minor, I've recovered." He remains standing, in casual pants, an open shirt conveying his present status. The firm has accepted his resignation. "I won't sit, I'm meeting Maddy for lunch." He lays an envelope on the desk. Schecter starts to speak, closes his mouth again. He opens the envelope awkwardly, his hands tremble these days, and reads the $50,000 check.

"Not necessary, John." He looks up, eyes blinking behind his glasses. "Insurance was generous. Laura would agree with me."

Vasiliev did not answer.

"Sit, John. Sit for God's sake. I'm not going to deposit this."

"You must." He sits on the edge of the client's chair. "It's for many things, Robert."

"John, I - I know that Nick - I don't hold you responsible -"

"Laura does."

"Time, John. These things take time." His briskness fades. "She wants to sell, start over..." He gathers himself. "It was a shock."

"It was a crime." He catches Schecter's eye - aren't they lawyers for Christ's sake? "He was a minor. I'm his father."

Schecter sits up, drooping face animated. "How did it get to that point, John. How? Didn't you see?"

Vasiliev stands quickly, knowing he has nothing for that conversation. "Sorry," he whispers, and leaves, confident that the check will be deposited. He walks slowly past the green flowerless foliage of the magnolia tree to the car and pauses by his car. He isn't having lunch with Maddy.

He drives to Redwood Park and walks. Schecter is a business friend, if such a contradictory thing exists, not a real loss. He was right to keep his distance from them all, though it's hard to think clearly while perspiring in the late September sun, huffing his way up a trail. He rests, leaning against a pine tree, recalls the moment of surprise, not when he got the partnership, but when he knew Schecter was recommending him, taking a chance on him, liked him.

Around him everything from the dust underfoot to the sky over his head is merely itself, asks nothing, stands or floats in peaceful equanimity. After an hour, his body absorbs a lesser peace.

He has to apologize to Maddy, it's easy to see out here. He hates difficult conversations, relies on Maddy to see his regrets without painful words. He isn't usually the optimistic one, but he'll remind her gently there's more to life than Nick. Haven't they together produced a quite acceptable version of job, marriage, home?

"Acceptable version?" Maddy says. She's loading the dishwasher and closes its door with a nasty bang. With her back to him, she opens the refrigerator, takes out the makings of a work sandwich - ham, pickles, mayo, tomato, high fiber bread.

"I never wanted to be an acceptable version of anything." She stares at the assembled sandwich makings, lined up on the counter. "We go through life once." She picks up a tomato and a knife, sets them down again and slightly bows her head. "You always said I only see what I want to see." Tears in her voice but her eyes are dry. "I see better than you think, I can see you."

Her words are pieces that lock onto other pieces - the switch to swing shift, the skipping of Friday night wine, how she doesn't look at him, her hands busy with straightening, putting away groceries, surfing the internet, turning the pages of a book. For her a shoe has dropped, a bell has rung, a light has switched on - or off.

She slices the tomato. He says he'll move to the cabin.

"Off to Siberia? Is that it?" She wipes her hand on her apron, a man's shirt. She's alluding to his story of visiting his father's uncle in Siberia on a train, a ride he remembered as taking days and days without end. But how dazzling the snow was, how magical the frozen spacious fields and woods to his eight-year-old eyes.

He scoffs. "It's only three hours away. We've never used that cabin enough to be worth the cost." As if it were a bookkeeping issue. He studies Maddy for a word, an iota of consent. "It's the place for me now," he adds. Catastrophe clarifies life if you let it.

She slaps the second bread slice on her sandwich. "And Nick?" Her two words tremble in fury and anguish.

"I won't see him in jail. That's done."

Leaving is a passion. In the morning, he gathers clothes and household items, determined to take no clutter. He packs the old SUV. Last minute he unplugs the second coffeemaker and sets it on the passenger seat - fast strong coffee in the morning he can't live without. He calls Buka - he's always been Vasiliev's dog, though wisely accepting of Maddie. He pauses before inviting her into the car, all at once tired through and through, and considers waiting until afternoon. But that suggests doubt, and he has none.

The cabin sits at the end of a gravel road in the Sierra foothills, and they've only visited it in spring and summer. They aren't winter sports fans, and, despite luminous memories of Russian winters, he's lost his taste for cold, taking clothes on and off. In Oakland, he tiptoes (so as to not wake Maddy) to the bathroom on a thick wool rug, with a floor vent blowing warm air while he steps into a steaming shower. Here at the cabin, when his toes touch the plank floor by his bed, they curl from the cold.

But he settles into the new life. Looking through the kitchen-living room window in January, he sees a floor of bright snow, a new world of white light under blue sky and rising sun. The rim of window frost frames the newly elegant black oak branches limned in snow, as if in a delicate Japanese painting. A painting he'd never buy, never "collect." Why was that? He pokes his head out, smells cold air. His father used to talk about winter's first snow in Russia, where, he said, heavily, with regret, they have winters.

The pipes haven't frozen, and the hot water is running, so he shaves with quick strokes at the bathroom sink, runs a comb twice through his thinning hair, half gray, half a faded brown, still surprised not to see thick waves of it. He carries in from the porch a load of wood, lights a fire in the Franklin stove, feeds Buka, fries two eggs and toasts the last slice of bread. He whistles for Buka, unnecessarily, given she'd never let him leave without her, and starts walking to town, before people are out, because people feel entitled to stop and talk in a small place. He'll keep his head down until he gets to the store.

A green awning stretches along the front of the market, and he leaves Buka sitting by a supporting post, about ten feet from the entrance, away from customers and moving cars. He orders her to wait - she always does, but it's their ritual. The B & I Market, transitioning from general store to supermarket, has mailboxes in a backroom, which the Postal Service plans to close at year's end. He fiddles with the cranky combination to his box. Typical mail, not worth the box rent - two boxholder ads for Value Hardware Store. Underneath is a hand-addressed envelope. Maddy won't be writing to chat. More likely it's the plumbing or the roof leaking; he should have replaced the last two sections of old shingles.

He slits the envelope top with his finger, seeing that it's postmarked ten days previous. He'd told Maddy he'd check his mail every couple of days, but over a week has slipped by; he doesn't come to town unless it's a fine day for walking the two and a half miles. Enclosed is a letter from the county's juvenile detention center "to inform parents and guardians of incarcerated juveniles that visiting hours and rules have changed as of January 1." A note is also enclosed: Nick discharged next week. Visit your son. He stiffens, stuffs the note in his jacket pocket, drops everything else into the waste basket. It would be a fine gesture of defiance if he dropped the note as well, but he doesn't - a marriage never leaves you.

His mood turns dark, he can't stop it. Looking for products (he's never liked stores), deciding which to buy, talking to people - all disagreeable. He craves the cabin, a fire in the stove, coffee with good Gouda cheese, the smell of burning oak. Bread can wait, apples and a pork chop don't matter. He pauses. The hatchet - that he wants. A chainsaw and ax he thought would be enough, but a hatchet can better chop kindling, strip off a dead branch. He locates one on a far wall, picks up rye bread, the cheese, a half dozen apples, a thermos, and a pork chop after all. He has an excellent memory for lists.

At the end of an aisle, on his way to the cashier, a box of disposable diapers glows with a picture of a smiling chubby baby. Clever photography, what baby ever looks like that? Not Nick. They changed a few thousand diapers with Nick. He'd been hard to toilet train, hard to put to sleep, to console, to get a smile from, or any other desirable behavior. Defying the confident words of the pediatrician and his mother, Nick didn't change in toddlerhood, in elementary school, or his teens. Where would he go now? Children are risky. Vasiliev doesn't give a damn about passing on his genes. At the checkout counter, he arranges his purchases in his canvas backpack, the one from Russia his father used, and pushes out the front door.

As he steps onto the gravel walk, he notices a seven- or eight-year-old girl less than five feet from Buka throwing pebbles at the awning post. She picks up a bigger stone. She weighs it in her hands and turns it over as if liking the feel of it. As her arm goes up, he calls to Buka urgently and walks swiftly toward her. The girl cocks her arm and throws, the stone strikes Buka in the head almost soundlessly. With a yelp, she bares her teeth, and leaps, her paws strike the girl's chest, sixty pounds of ferocity. They fall to the ground together. Vasiliev yells with rusty authority, reaching the girl in a few long steps, while a woman comes running from someplace in the parking lot, yelling. "Get that fucking dog away, get him off!" The woman shoves Buka away with her own body, scoops up the girl, her cell phone tumbling down. He has a hurried impression of a twenty-something with choppy brown hair, a streak of purple on one side.

Buka backs off a foot, growling. "Buka! Here! Sit!" He grabs her collar; Buka sits, muscles tensed.

"Asshole! Get it away! He's not even on a leash! If he bit my baby -"

The screams pierce and panic him. He feels pain in his chest, while he curls his fingers, wanting fists, then consciously opens them.

The girl is gasping, almost Nick-like, with her whole body.

"Is she all right? Was she bitten?" The matter-of-fact, almost gentle voice to a witness.

"He should be on a leash! He's vicious. I'll report him."

The girl hasn't been bitten that he can see, but she has a splash of red on her right elbow and lower arm, mixed with gravel.

Holding Buka's head, he kneels and touches the blood in her fur, inspects the cut. Without turning around, he says in a voice that once projected across rooms, "Your daughter threw a stone, and it hit her half an inch from her eye. What do you expect?"

"Fucker! I don't care if she threw a bomb! He's out of control!"

Vasiliev gets to his feet, lets the silence hang over them. She hugs her daughter tightly. He is nearly six feet, big-boned, a courtroom presence, yet striking the pose feels foreign.

The mother retreats a couple of feet. "The police will put him down, just wait."

He thinks she's leaving, but she stands there repeating, "The police will put him down, you'll see. He's fucking dangerous. You're an irresponsible asshole."

Irresponsible. Two women come closer to see the fracas. He should fuss over the frightened girl, mention, mildly, Buka's wound, that the girl isn't injured, except for a scrape. But it's not his job anymore to soothe people's overwrought worries, he isn't anyone's lawyer. He clutches Buka's collar, let's go, we must go. His legs are electrified, want to run, but his mind is laden, heavy, so in anguish he walks. Never sweat, never raise your voice, never rush - more of Schecter's advice. Not in a courtroom, not representing us. That's authority, John.

The snow is thinning around him, and he fancies himself thinning with it, the inner scaffolding collapsing. Buka whimpers; he stops to ruffle her neck fur and is tired. A real Russian, he knew from his father's stories, would hear the voice of God right now. Papa was an atheist mostly, but in extreme circumstances had discussions with God, which he alluded to but never explained. The year after Siberia, he'd walked with his father in the Izmailovsky Park forest; Papa explained the meaning of changing seasons (long discourse), and that they were going away to live in America soon (a couple of sentences).

Irresponsible. The unleashed Buka was a stray adopted by Vasiliev years before who only obeyed Vasiliev and Maddy. Would they come for her? He'll never give her up. Still, he pictures Buka leaping with bared teeth, the bloody scrape on the girl's arm as deep ragged tooth marks, maybe down to the bone, the mother howling like a she-wolf from Russia, the howl echoing inside him.

Old Russian words boil up, words he's never translated, words he's left behind. He'd never seen a single wolf in Russia, but his father's Siberian uncle loved to tell stories about hungry wolf packs and disappearing children; surely nonsense but not to an eight-year-old, crouching behind his father's chair. The uncle, half-asleep around the cast iron wood stove, once drifted into a story about a boy, older than a toddler, who wandered along a dark trail into the forest, not noticing he was alone, or not caring. He'd never been seen again, his uncle said; "The wolf tracks told the tale."

"Silly boy," said Vasiliev's father. "So foolish, wouldn't have lived long anyway."

Uncle nodded, winked at Vasiliev. "See how it is."

And he did, he would never have ventured into the forest. But maybe Nick would have, maybe the forest dark called to him. Years ago, he and Nick labored over a go-kart - from a kit, Vasiliev didn't have his father's carpentry skills. They sawed wood, hammered nails all afternoon. Hard to tell whether he or Nick was more amazed the cart worked when Nick, breathless with excitement, free of past and future, sailed, and sailed again, down the hill.

He continues to the cabin on heavy legs. A low hum of wind sweeps in, he thinks from the east, and close by is the papery sound of tickled leaves; the last of the snow is melted, baring the yellowed grass.