The pharmacist, with her honeyed voice and attentive eyes, knew exactly how to slide away from uncomfortable questions. She said she was only a middleman and could not be held responsible for the quality of the products she stocked. Ludmila hinted that she knew there were shady dealings behind some of the cosmetics and walked out of the stuffy store.
The conversation with the pharmacist had been slippery and unpleasant, like trying to hold onto a wet bar of soap. After lunch Ludmila drove to Vera’s and repeated the whole exchange in detail. Vera listened in silence, looking out the window at last year’s dead stalks swaying in the wind.
Alena’s phone was lying faceup on the kitchen table when Mike came in for a glass of water. A message from a neurologist named Roman glowed on the screen. The doctor wrote about the results of an audiology test and suggested they come into his city clinic.
Mike read the message several times, set his glass down, and stepped out onto the cold porch. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and stood there for nearly ten minutes, trying to absorb what he had just read. He was angry that his wife had consulted a city specialist without telling him.
The next morning Alena came to him herself with a mug of coffee and admitted she had been corresponding with the neurologist. She explained that the doctor suspected sensorineural hearing loss and that she had been afraid to alarm Mike before they knew more. Mike said evenly that he understood, then went outside to split firewood.
The blows of the maul cracked the stubborn logs neatly in half. Mike took out his anger on the wood—anger at his wife, at the situation, and at his own dark thoughts. The rough physical work was the only thing in his life at that moment that still felt straightforward and predictable.
Meanwhile, little Arsen had been sleeping peacefully for two hours in Vera’s house. He breathed evenly and did not startle in his sleep the way he often did at home. Vera quietly pulled the nursery door nearly shut and went into the next room, where a handyman named Grisha was working.
Grisha sat on a low stool carving a wooden horse from pine. Vera took a bundle of dried St. John’s wort from the shelf and turned it thoughtfully in her fingers. She told him she was convinced the child’s illness was not genetic but caused by some outside toxin.
Vera was sure the sticky chemical residue was reaching the boy every day through his mother’s touch. The handyman stopped carving and quietly asked whether Alena knew that herself. Vera said with bitterness that the mother had no idea she was poisoning her own son.
The healer went out into the garden and laid her palm against the rough bark of an old apple tree. Painful memories rose in her mind from when she had been twenty-six. Back then she had worked as a lab technician at a chemical plant and brought toxic residue home on her clothes…
