Slow River

Hepple and his reflection laid the slate aside, carefully, as though his conversation with Magyar would take only a minute and he did not want to lose his place. “He was insolent. We would have had to let him go anyway when we downsized the workforce.”

Magyar was momentarily thrown. “Downsizing? When was that decided?”

“This morning, I believe. So you see, it would have happened sooner or later.”

“Wait. Just wait a minute. I thought you had grand designs to expand this plant, increase the throughput.”

“I do, I do. But I persuaded the board that we don’t need as many people to achieve that goal.”

Magyar shook her head like a dog worrying a rabbit and I watched her reflection’s hair shimmer back and forth. “This was the wrong way to do it. You tormented that boy. If nothing else, common decency should…”

Common decency. The phrase rippled back and forth like the reflection of Magyar’s hair in the glass. She and Hepple were still talking, but I wasn’t listening anymore. Common decency… I finally remembered, finally realized what it was about Paolo and the way he moved that bothered me.

All my fault…

Guilt, mine, my family’s, stopped the breath in my lungs and pulled the muscles along my arms and legs rigid. But then fear—of him, for him, what he might do, all that bitterness—snapped me out of it.

“Sorry,” I said jerkily to the air, and reached blindly for the door.

Chapter 14

Lore is fifteen. It is early March, and she is preparing to fly to Gdansk, where for the first time she will be assistant deputy project manager. An admin position, Katerine tells her, but a responsible one, nevertheless. Katerine will be taking charge personally.

Lore is up late the night before they fly, running over last-minute plans—so that she knows what is going on, so she won’t embarrass herself in front of Katerine, or Katerine in front of others—when the phone rings.

She accepts the call. “Tok!” He looks different, but at first Lore can’t pinpoint the change. Then she has it: his face has lost all trace of puppy fat. “How are you? It’s-”

“I’ve been talking to Stella,” he interrupts. “It’s true. All of it.”

“What-”

But he talks right over her. “Watch yourself. You might be next.”

Lore is glad to see him, glad to hear from him, but she remembers how he had fooled her for so many years. How he had never talked to her. How she felt betrayed when he left. And now he is being cryptic.

“I haven’t had any idea where you’ve been the last year or so, and now you…” She remembers she is fifteen; grown enough to take her first official job for the company. “It’s late,” she says, then—unable to help herself—bursts out, “Do you have any idea how badly you’ve hurt Mother”

Tok looks momentarily blank; then, incredibly, he laughs. “How much I’ve hurt her? Lore, look,” he shakes his head, “you don’t-”

But the laugh and head shake are enough. She is grown now, no longer a child to be patronized, deceived; She cuts him off midsentence. She is tired, she tells herself. She has a lot of reading to do. When he is ready to apologize, he can call again.

It is early spring in Poland. The remediation site is slippery with mud; small pockets of ice crackle under Lore’s boots when she takes samples for testing. The only wildlife she sees are worms, gray things that show a startling pink against the mud when a shovel cuts them accidentally in half.

It is a short job, but the weather and the work are brutal. Tok does not call. Lore is so busy she hardly ever sees Katerine, except one night when she is idly flipping through the net and comes across her mother, giving an interview to one of the national channels. Katerine is smiling with that expert one-eye-on-the-camera-one-eye-on-the-interviewer stance Lore knows so well.

“-efficient job at the old Gdansk shipyards,” the interviewer is saying. “How do you persuade your employees and team members to take on such difficult projects?”

“It’s not hard,” she says. “I throw myself on their mercy. People love to be asked for help.” They actually like you better if you show some vulnerability, Lore remembers her saying at a party once, if you bare your throat and say please.

Of course, Lore thinks. Everything Katerine does is for a reason.

It is April by the time everyone is satisfied the bacteria are doing their job and Katerine decides it is time to leave the shipyards in someone else’s hands.

“It’s autumn in Auckland,” her mother says. “It’ll soon be winter. I think we deserve a few days in the heat, don’t you?”