Free All That Is Solid Melts into Air by Darragh McKeon Page B

medicine?”
    “An endocrinologist and a cardiothoracic surgeon, it’s not a bad place to start.”
    “I mean, they surely have a team of experts for these situations.”
    “For what situations, Grigory? When does something like this ever happen?”
    “But surely they have plans in place.”
    “Well, it looks like we’re part of them.”
    They both take this in.
    “You have children, you can get out of it. I’m sure there’s someone you can plead to.”
    “It’s a full-scale disaster. If I don’t go I couldn’t even apply for a box of pencils. My kids need to move schools next year, and Margarita’s parents will retire in a few months. I can’t turn this down. And, anyway, I’d prefer to be involved than to leave it to some backslapping academic. At least we can be useful.”
    “You hope.”
    “Of course we can. We’ll make sure whatever needs to be done is done.”
    Grigory picks a sprouting tuber from the ground, shifting it from hand to hand.
    “What else did they say?”
    “That’s it. They’ll send a car for us at five. They’ll give us the details at the airfield.”
    Grigory throws the tuber into the next plot and gently sidefoots one of the ridges he’s created, watching the soil collapse upon itself. So much for the work he’s put in.
    “Tell Margarita to come down here in a month or so. There’ll be a plot of new potatoes waiting for her.”
    “I will.”
     
    In his bedroom, Grigory stuffs shirts into a sleek brown suitcase. An expensive purchase from two years ago, although apart from a couple of weekend conferences it has lain unused under his bed. He has no idea what to pack. What should one wear to a reactor meltdown? Socks lie scattered at random in his drawer and he selects several, balling them into pairs before firing them into the case.
    A thought causes him to pause. A nuclear disaster. He could die in such a place.
    Grigory looks at the striped socks in his drawer. He’s walking into a poisonous lair and is packing shirts and socks. He sits on the bed and stares into the possibilities.
     
    There were Saturdays, in his other life, when Maria would appear in the doorway carrying a bag of bread and a jar of chicken stock. Saturday lunches were a ritual for them, the time of the week when Grigory was at his most relaxed and they would relay news to each other, the small occurrences of the past days.
     
    GRIGORY IMAGINES the scene if she were here, seeing it as she would. Walking through the door to find her husband sitting frozen on their bed with a hastily packed suitcase. Of course she would think he was leaving her. So often she had asked him the question, usually after their lovemaking, when they were wrapped in each other, glistening from each other, “You’ll never leave me, will you?,” and he would smile and reassure her, amused and astonished that this question could still be asked after all their time together, the infinite doubts in this woman’s mind.
    She would stand in the doorway, cradling a bag of bread, her mouth slightly open, framing itself in a question, waiting for voice and breath to complete the process. Her face with that lost look it could take on, like that of a child when it encounters something utterly beyond its experience, when it eats a fistful of sand or crashes into a pane of glass, that momentary suspension before the weeping begins in earnest.
    Grigory would approach her, place his hands on her cheeks, and kiss her, leaning in over the shopping.
    “There’s been an accident. A plant in the Ukraine. I have to leave in a couple of minutes.”
    “How long will you be gone?”
    “I don’t know. A few days. No more than a week.”
    He would underestimate their time apart, attemping reassurance, but his voice would give him away, a vulnerabilty that only she could detect.
    “It’s serious?”
    “Yes. But I’ll be careful.”
    She would step back and immerse herself in practicalities. She would instantly think through the clothes he