The Tourist

Tina inhaled audibly. Simmons said, 'We thought Wilma was Milo's mother.'

'No,' he corrected, exasperated. 'Wilma took the baby-I guess he was four or five then. She and Theo couldn't have one of their own, and Ellen-Christ knows what she was up to then. She was all over the fucking map. Wilma wasn't talking to me either, but I learned from Jed Finkelstein-Wilma still deigned to talk to the Jew-that it was Ellen's idea. She was running around with some Germans by then. Mid-seventies, and the police were even after her. Guess she decided a kid would just slow her down. So she asked Wilma to take him.' A whole-body shrug, then he slapped his knees. 'Can you imagine? Just drop the baby off, and wash your hands of it!'

Simmons said, 'Mr. Finkelstein-do you know where he is now?'

'Six feet under as of 1988.'

'So, what was Ellen actually doing?'

'Reading Karl Marx. Reading Mao Zedong. Reading Joseph Goebbels, for all I know. In German.”

“German?'

He nodded. 'She was in Germany-the west one-when she gave up on motherhood. That girl always gave up on things once it got tough. I could've told her-being a parent is no walk in the park.'

'But you didn't talk to her at all during this time.'

'Now, that was her choice. Total silence for her flesh and blood while she went off with her Kraut comrades.'

'Except her sister, Wilma.'

'What?' Another moment of confusion.

'I said, Except for Wilma. She kept in touch with her sister.'

'Yes.' He sounded disappointed by this. Then he brightened as a memory hit him: 'Finkelstein-you know what he told me? He was German, you know, and he read those newspapers. He said Ellen was picked up by the police. Put in jail. Know what for?'

Both women stared at him, expectant.

'Armed robbery. That's what for. She and her merry band of commies actually sank to robbing banks! Tell me, how does that help save the workers of the world?'

'Under her name?' Simmons asked sharply.

'Her name?'

'Was her name in the newspaper?'

He considered that, then shrugged. 'Her picture was. Finkelstein didn't say-wait! Yes. It was some German name, wasn't it? Elsa? Yes, Elsa. Close to Ellen, but no cigar.'

'What year?'

'Seventy-eight? No-nine. Nineteen seventy-nine.'

'And when you learned this, did you contact anyone? The embassy? Did you try to get her out of jail?'

Silence returned like an unwelcome guest to William T. Perkins. He shook his head. 'I didn't even tell Minnie. Ellen wouldn't have wanted that. She'd cut us off completely. Didn't want us to come to her rescue.'

Tina wondered how many times in the last twenty-eight years this old man had repeated this to himself. His only justification for abandoning his daughter was weak, but it was all he had, like Tina's justifications for abandoning her husband.

When Simmons straightened, she looked to Tina like the consummate professional. Her face and tone were hard but not unbending. She was here for a reason, and she would only stay long enough to satisfy her needs. 'Let me make sure I've got this right. Ellen leaves home and falls in with a bad crowd. Drug users, then political malcontents. Communists, anarchists, whatever. She travels a lot. Germany. In 1970 she has a baby. Milo. Around seventy-four or -five, she gives Milo to her sister, Wilma, and her husband, Theodore. They raise him as their own. Last you hear of Ellen is in 1979 when she's arrested for a bank robbery in Germany. Was she released?'

With the facts laid out so concisely, William Perkins seemed shocked by the story. In pieces, perhaps, it made sense, but lined up like this it became tragic, or simply unbelievable. The story was having the same numbing effect on Tina.

When Perkins spoke, it was a whisper: 'I don't know if she was released. Never checked. And she never contacted me.'

Tina started to cry. It was embarrassing, but she had no control anymore. Everything was turning up shit.

Perkins stared at her, shocked, then turned questioningly to Simmons, who shook her head for his silence. She rubbed Tina's shaking back and whispered, 'Don't make any judgments yet, Tina. Maybe he doesn't even know this. Remember: We're just trying to get to the truth.'

Tina nodded as if those words made sense, then pulled herself together. She sniffed, wiped her nose and eyes, and took a few breaths. 'Sorry,' she told Perkins.

'Not to worry, dear,' he said and leaned forward to pat her knee, which disturbed her. 'We all need the waterworks now and then. Doesn't make anyone a sissy.'

'Thanks,' Tina said, though she didn't know what she was thanking him for.

'If we can,' said Simmons, 'let's get back to Milo.'

Perkins sat straighter to show how much energy he still had. 'Shoot.'

'Ellen disappears in seventy-nine, then six years later, in 1985, Wilma and Theo die in a car crash. Is that right?”

“Yes.' No reflection, just fact.

'And then Milo was sent to an orphanage in Oxford, North Carolina. Correct?'

He didn't answer at first. He frowned, ticking off his memories beside what he'd heard, then shook his head. 'No. His father took him.'

'Father?'

'You got it.'

Tina stifled the next wave of weeping, but that only brought on nausea. Everything- everything-she knew about Milo's life was a lie. Which made a large chunk of her own life a lie. All facts were now up for debate.

'The father,' said Simmons, as if she knew all about this-perhaps she did. 'Now, he showed up just after the funeral, I suppose? Maybe at the funeral itself?'

'Wouldn't know exactly.'

'Why not?'

'Because I didn't go to the funeral, did I?”

“Okay, so what happened?'

'I didn't want to go,' he said. 'Minnie kept at me. It was our daughter, for Christ's sake. Our daughter, who wouldn't speak to me when she was alive. So why should I talk to her when she's dead? And what about Milo? He's our grandson, she kept saying. Who's going to take care of him now? I said, Minnie, we haven't been in his life for fifteen years; why do you think he wants us now? But she didn't see things that way. And you could say she was right. Maybe.' He held up his hands. 'Okay, I can admit that now, but back then I couldn't. Back then I was stubborn,' he said with a wink that brought bile to Tina's throat. 'So she went. I stayed, and she went. Cooked for myself nearly a week before she came back. But she didn't have a kid on her arm, and she didn't even seem upset about it. I told her I didn't want to hear, but she told me anyway. That's how Minnie was.'

'What did she tell you?' asked Tina, her sick body paralyzed.

'I'm getting to that,' he said and sniffed. 'Turns out Milo's father had been watching the news, I guess, and he came to claim his son. That's according to Minnie. And get this-not only was he some absent father, but he was a Ruskie. Can you believe it?'

'No,' Tina whispered. 'I can't believe it.'

Simmons had left doubt at the door. 'What was this Russian's name?'

William T. Perkins squeezed his eyes shut and clasped his forehead, as if hit by a stroke, but it was only his way of dredging up memories that hadn't been touched in decades. He took away his hand, red-faced. 'Yevy? No. Geny-yes. Yevgeny. That's what Minnie called him. Yevgeny.'

'Last name?'

He exhaled a sigh, spittle white on his lips. 'That, I don't remember.'

Tina needed air. She stood, but the higher elevation couldn't help her get out of this cloud of sudden, brutal