They were sitting next to each other on the same bed.
He had stared at their photos every day for four years. When he moved to Manhattan, he clipped their pictures from a magazine and put them into silver frames, just like the ones their parents had chosen. Sometimes, he tried to imagine how they would look if they had survived and grown older, but he wasn’t good at this feat of mental gymnastics.
He didn’t need to be.
Victoria’s feet were dangling in the air.
Elizabeth’s were just brushing the floor.
Victoria was still five and Elizabeth was still eight.
Neither girl had aged a day.
6
Mickey elbowed past Marcus and threw his hands to his head.
“It can’t be possible,” he said. “What the hell is happening?”
The girls warily stared at him and shifted closer to one another. They were barefoot, dressed identically in white. White T-shirts without logos or designs. Plain white shorts. Their clothes were streaked and spotted with reddish-brown stains. Both of them had the palest of complexions, without a tinge of pink. Their hallmark curls were gone. Both had short, pudding-basin cuts.
Mickey raised his voice. “Where is your father? Where’s your mother? Do you hear me? Say something.” Now he was shouting, “Where is my son?”
They started to cry and Marcus stepped into the room, blocking their grandfather.
“Mickey, stop, just stop. You’re scaring them.” He dropped to a knee, making his six-foot frame as small as he could. “I know you,” he said brightly, pointing at the youngest. “You’re Victoria. Am I right?”
Victoria stopped crying and nodded.
“And I know you too. You’re Elizabeth, aren’t you?”
A small, barely audible yes came out of her mouth.
“My name is Marcus. We’ve met before, a long time ago. Do you remember me?”
They both said they didn’t.
“That’s okay. You can call me Uncle Marcus. Would you like to do that?”
They nodded in unison.
Marcus tried not to stare at the stains on their clothes. He knew what dried blood looked like. “I’ve got pictures of you in America where I live,” he said. “I look at them all the time. Do you know why I look at them?”
They replied with tandem headshakes.
“Because I’ve been worried about you. You’ve been away from home for a very long time. Your grandfather Mickey’s been worried. Haven’t you, Grandpa Mickey?”
Mickey played along. “Yes, of course. I’ve been worried sick.”
“And your Grandma Leonora and Grandpa Armando downstairs have been worried. Do you remember your grandparents?”
“No,” Victoria said.
But Elizabeth said, “I do.”
“Of course, you do. You’re a big girl. Are you guys hungry?”
They said they weren’t.
“Because if you are, Noemi is in the kitchen and she’ll make anything you want. She’s a really good cook. Hey, is it okay if Uncle Marcus sits on the other bed? When I was a lot younger, I used to play baseball. I was a catcher, the guy who crouches down behind home plate. Now I get a pain when I kneel down.”
His knee popped when he got up. He sat opposite them, and to make Mickey come off as less threatening, he told him to sit by his side.
The girls’ eyes darted from one man to the other.
“So, Elizabeth and Victoria,” Marcus said. “Your Grandpa Mickey and I were having an argument. He said you walked back home. I said you flapped your arms and flew home like birds. Which one of us is right?”
“Neither!” Victoria said, animated for the first time. “You’re both wrong!”
“Really? I could have sworn you flew.”
“We just arrived,” Elizabeth said. “We were somewhere else and then we were here.”
“I see,” Marcus said. “Did you arrive on your own, or did someone come with you?”
“Gray Man said he was taking us home,” Victoria said.
Mickey emitted a loud syllable, but Marcus shut him down with an elbow. He had never interrogated children, never even spent much time around children, but the technique he had stumbled into seemed to be working.
“I had a feeling it was Gray Man, didn’t I, Grandpa Mickey? Here’s something I was confused about. Is Gray Man your father? Is Gray Man Jesper?”
“No, silly,” Victoria said. “Gray Man’s not our father.”
Marcus palmed his forehead. “Oh. Silly me! Say, where is your father? Have you seen him?”
“No,” Elizabeth said.
“Have you seen your mother?”
Another simple, emphatic no.
“When did you see them last?”
They looked at each other and both shrugged.
“Was it a long time ago?”
Elizabeth said, “We don’t remember when. I was wondering if they would be here. They aren’t here, are they?”
“Unfortunately, they’re not,” Marcus said. “Here’s another question I had about Gray Man. Did he speak English? Or did he speak Italian?”
“English,” Elizabeth said.
“Gray Woman too,” Victoria added.
Marcus said, “I see, there’s also a Gray Woman. I imagine that Gray Man would have been lonely without Gray Woman.”
Victoria agreed with a nod.
“So, they both spoke English. Did they sound just like me when I talk?”
“No, silly,” Victoria said.
“How did they sound?”
“Funny,” Elizabeth said.
“Can you show me?”
The girls giggled and poked each other. It seemed like this was a shared joke.
“Who can do the sound the best?” Marcus asked.
“I can,” Victoria said. “They sound like this.” As she said it she pinched her nose and produced a nasal, vibratory growl.
“That sounds really funny,” Marcus said. “That’s the way they sounded all the time?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you call them Gray Man and Gray Woman?”
They exchanged glances that seemed to speak volumes. Apparently, Marcus’s question was the dumbest in the history.
“Because they are gray!” Elizabeth said in exasperation.
“Their faces are gray?” Marcus said.
Yes, he was told. Their hands too.
“What color are their eyes?”
“They have giant black eyes,” Elizabeth said.
“How giant?”
Victoria balled one of her hands into a fist. “This giant.”
“Those are very big eyes,” Marcus said. “What do their clothes look like? Like mine?”
“Oh, no,” Elizabeth said. “They dress all in white.”
“Like you?”
“We’re in shorts!” Victoria said. “They don’t wear shorts.”
Mickey’s patience wore out. He whispered directly into Marcus’s ear, “Ask them where they were, for God’s sake.”
Marcus was going to get there eventually, but to keep Mickey happy he asked the question. “You’ve
