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The year word came of Chebrikov’s ascension to the Politburo, Philip put a white picket fence up in front of the house. It took all weekend, painting and nailing boards together out back, under the secret shade of the magnolia trees, humming songs not even the CIA would recognize. It was good work. Honest work. Elizabeth laughed and laughed when she saw it, slumping back into the car with her arms full of groceries, and he’d had to take them from her before she dropped all the cans, the glass jars, the soft orange cantaloupe.
It hadn’t seemed quite so funny, or as ironic as he’d meant it, when the war in Afghanistan came to an end and the satellite states started to protest. A cascading string of rebellion and petitions, all through the Baltic states and the Caucuses, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, that mess in Tbilisi, the riots in Azerbaijan. The Soviet Union starting to crumble. Elizabeth spent more and more time shut up in the basement doing laundry, and her body and her face closed into something hard and fragile, steel dipped in liquid nitrogen. And it had only gotten worse. Last year they lost Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to elections, which was about what Philip had expected would come out of letting whole regions vote themselves out if they wanted. Then Ukraine started making noise about wanting out, and on the news they ware calling it a dissolution, as though years of struggle and protest had been nothing more than a clean slide of chemical reaction, a slow boiling down to nothing. They talked about it like it was inevitable. But there were still people like Philip in the world. There were still people like Elizabeth. And, as of eight years ago, there were people like Paige.
But he couldn’t, realistically, be thinking about it all the time. There were still other, more mundane tasks to be done. The car needed to be washed and the trash taken out. The lawn needed to be mowed. It was Henry’s job those days, but he was only just back from summer camp and there hadn’t been time. But even Stan commented on it last weekend. “Much higher and the Homeowner's Association'll be after you," he'd said, dropping a six pack into Philip's arms. So. Definitely time to mow the lawn.
He did the whole backyard, and then the front, wrenching the mower through the corners and pushing until his arms ached a little, as though someone had slit open his skin and stuffed coals inside. Something warm, something red. It was a clear day and the sun was out and the knowledge of what was going on in the world slid from his mind under the burden of this more immediate work. Elizabeth said you should never forget, but living that way had never been feasible, for him. And besides, he liked this. Smelling the grass, feeling the sun. When he was done he pushed the lawn mower onto the driveway and then just stood there for a moment, breathing.
“Dad?”
Paige was standing in the doorway. It was nearly two in the afternoon, but she looked like she’d just gotten out of bed, in her university sweatshirt and pajama bottoms and no shoes. The portable radio lay cradled in her arms like a child. A man’s voice, low and indistinct, buzzed from it over the grass, but it was quiet and he didn’t think the sound made it past the fence.
"Paige?" Her face looked strange, uncertain. "What is it?"
She stepped out of the doorway, onto the lawn. When she was close enough she held out the radio, speakers tilted toward the silent blue roar of the sky. "Listen."
He found Elizabeth in their room, hunched beside the little bedside radio with her hair hanging over her face. She reached up when he entered, pushed it back behind her ear. It had an oddly clearing effect, as though she was literally pushing her emotions away. What was left was as cold and still as the taiga. “We should contact the Center,” she said. “They’ll need us now more than ever.”
“Yeah. Grocery run?”
Elizabeth nodded, face shuttered. Their missions had dwindled over the previous years, but it was difficult to keep track of the intricate secrets of espionage when the people of Azerbaijan were making runs for the border and riots were spreading like kerosene aflame in Kazakhstan. The myriad heads of the Soviet Union had turned to more immediately pressing matters, and their last message from the center had been another note to keep quiet, to keep still. But they still had contacts there. They still had a handler. Gabriel died two years ago, and the man after him had been sent to Siberia, but Claudia had held on through everything. Bloody fingernails in the back of the American empire. She was in Moscow last year, but they’d met a few times since then, and if anyone would know what he and Elizabeth were meant to do now, it was her.
At the grocery store they picked up Henry’s favorite cereal, and milk, and a package of chicken breasts for stew on Friday, if they were home. If they weren’t, they also bought a couple of frozen pizzas. Paige might be back at university by then but Henry was old enough to know how the oven worked.
Afterward they drove by the bench, Elizabeth slipping out to toss something in the trash and leave a note pressed between the iron slats, same as always.
And then they drove away.
On the radio the announcer was still talking about the end of the Communist Party in Russia, about Gorbechev, about freedom and democracy and market capitalism like it was going to save the world. Elizabeth turned the radio off. But she didn’t say anything, and Philip looked over at the passenger seat to see her mouth opening around something she couldn’t quite get out. He didn’t press. When he looked over next her mouth was closed, eyes fixed resolutely on the road ahead.
They spent three days making circuits of the house, worrying, telling Paige again and again, no, we haven’t heard anything, no, we don’t know what’s going to happen. She watched the news and Philip watched the news and Elizabeth watched the news and Henry complained about missing his shows, and Philip looked at him and remembered how the Center had wanted to recruit him too, once, and wondered if that was ever going to happen. Gorbachev wouldn’t last long, at this rate. And there was no way of knowing who would take over after him, or how, or what would happen when things settled. But Philip was no longer averse to the idea. Now that Paige had gotten older, he worried less, and had begun to allow himself to imagine what their family could be if all of its members were working together. Russia needed people like Henry, and more people like Paige.
“Come on,” Henry said, “At least during commercials.”
Paige, curled into an anxious ball on the other end of the couch, sneered at him across the cushions. “They don’t have commercials during news programs, Henry.”
“They do too.”
“Not when there’s something big going on.”
“This isn’t big,” Henry said, “this is just the same boring stuff that’s been going on for the past few months.”
Paige tilted her chin up, then turned back toward the television. Her arms had come up over her knees and she looked vulnerable there, worried, but also indignant. Once he thought that was adolescence but it was actually her mother’s. “Well you’d better pay attention,” she said. “This boring stuff is the most important stuff of your life.”
Henry cast a disbelieving look at Philip, who sighed. “During commercials, Paige. Henry, no channel surfing. Pick something and stick with it.”
“But—“ Paige started.
“Three minutes. Then you can change it back. We won’t miss anything.” There wasn’t anything to wait for, though, except more bad news; any orders they got would come from the Center, and this wasn’t the sort of thing that would resolve itself overnight. The coup attempt last week was just the beginning, Yeltsin atop the tank, turning the tide in a Russian that was difficult to make out under the newscaster’s calm, serious voice. The idiots hadn’t even jammed foreign news broadcasts, so the whole world had seen everything unfold on tv. Even Gorbechev, on holiday in Foros, had gotten BBC’s coverage on a little transistor radio. How could people like that expect to run a government?
Paige, in her turn, gaped at him. “Dad, you—“
“Paige. Please.”
Henry ended up choosing a rerun, an episode of the Simpsons that ended with Bart and the neighbor kid in dresses. It was a decent episode, and as the news stagnated Paige eventually forgot to have him change the channel back, and they ended up giggling into the credits. Paige’s smile was thoughtless and pleased, hair in her eyes where it had come loose from her scrunchie, and Henry was howling at something she’d said and this, this is what he wanted them to be like, this together, this strong.
They were still laughing when Elizabeth came up from the basement. She shot him a significant, inquiring look, but Philip shook his head. Nothing had happened. There had been no news. Apparently she'd actually been down there doing laundry. “Come sit down,” he said, but she hadn’t quite gotten to it when the phone rang.
The Center wanted them to meet with Claudia in person. Which had been common in the old days, but they hadn’t seen her personally for months, and the rarity of it put Philip on edge. It had been him who ended up taking the call. The woman’s voice, familiar by now, hadn’t been backed by the usual office noises; no clatter of keyboards, no other voices in the room. It had sounded as though she’d been calling from another planet, except her voice had been tight and rushed, with a low, scraping edge like she’d been awake a lot longer than she should have been.
“Do you think they’re pulling out?” Philip asked as they walked. They were meeting Claudia in the park, the same path they used to walk with Gabriel in the winter, in the snow, but now there was grass on either side, and families on weekend picnics.
Elizabeth pushed her hands into her pockets. “We’ll find out in a few minutes, won’t we.”
When they met Claudia, waiting just where the Center said she would be, she didn’t say anything for a long, long time. From where they stood they could see the picnicking families, the dogs. They could hear the faint echoing laughter. It was nearly sunset though and people were beginning to pack up, gathering their things in the long yellow light, joking together and thinking of the ride home. He and Elizabeth had come here several times with the kids, on their more adventurous days, when the park nearer home seemed too familiar. Once, they’d been one of these families.
“Officially,” Claudia said eventually, not looking at them, “you’re to continue living as your cover identities, and be ready should the new government decide to call on your services. Practically speaking, though, you’ve been cut loose.” She sounded tired. “The KGB is being shut down. Yeltsin won’t ever publicly acknowledge your existence, but, well frankly we just don’t have the money to pull all our sleeper agents out.”
“You mean you’re just going to abandon us?” Elizabeth’s voice was harsh and raw, hope running out over the incredulous lines of her face. “After everything we’ve done, you’re just going to leave us here?”
The look Claudia gave her was sympathetic, but practical. “Honey, the Russia you left is not the Russia you’d be going back to. It’s a different place, now. Things have changed. Things are changing. And it’s no place to raise children. Maybe once things settle, you can request a recall, but for now it’s better you say here.”
Elizabeth’s mouth twisted, and Philip put a hand on her arm. “We understand,” he said. And then, “Are you staying too?”
“No. I’m going back to Moscow in a couple of weeks. And for the last time, I expect; I’m not as young as I was and this nonsense about the CPSU will take years to sort out, just you watch.” She sighed, turning toward the hillside, the green, wrinkled grass. “I read in the newspaper—this was years ago—about a teacher out in Los Angeles who refused to answer that ridiculous question they were posing to so many people back then, about being a member of the Communist Party. What he said was: You never know what you will do until the time arrives for you to do it. I suppose the opposite is true too, isn’t it. Or maybe it’s just a matter of ability. I feel old. I’ve been feeling old for years.”
A cool wind scraped toward them across the grass. It was only the end of August but the air already smelled like fall, the chill, the clouds grey and cool as they rolled across the sky.
“Well,” Claudia said.
Phillip looked at Elizabeth. She looked back at him. “Well.”
Elizabeth was quiet the whole ride home. The radio was on but not turned to news, just music, some new song that cut off in the middle when they pulled into the driveway, and Philip shut the engine off. During the drive a cold slick of shock had settled in his chest, and now it was creeping up his throat, keeping him silent.
He couldn’t have gone to the Embassy, even then, but he imagined what must be happening there, the beginnings of anger, the confusion. They must be destroying the documents, the computer files. Emptying the infinite bureaucracy of its minute preoccupations with sexual preferences and partners, children, information that could be levied. Philip had something similar in his own mind, the way to move his fingers to make a certain woman gasp and cry out; the precise tilt of his head required to make him look like someone else. Other people’s ticks and nervous expressions. Other people’s lives. What was he meant to do with all that now?
Looking over at Elizabeth, he knew she was thinking the same thing. Her face was blank and still but he knew—he’d lived with this woman for over twenty years. When she spoke, her voice was full of such desperate certainty that his heart broke a little.
“There’s nothing left,” she said.
He reached out on instinct, pulling her hands toward him, into the space between their knees. “That’s not true,” he said. “We don’t have nothing.” And as he said it he knew he was right. She looked at their hands, and then he watched as something in her face shifted; tectonic plates moving and settling, the landscape changed. They still had each other. They still had the kids.
The last of the sunlight slanting through her window was long and golden, catching in her hair, on the side of her face. “No,” she said at last, squeezing his hand. Her grip was sure and strong, her smile warm. “You’re right."