For a year, Katherine had lived in an achromatic world. There had been nothing but black sky and white stars and gray land. Now, even though it all came with a tinge of sadness, she had at last the green sea, the blue sky, the edges of the brown reef frothing the waves white, and, of course, her little yellow plane.
Every morning, Katherine paid Inina, the retired woman who lived in the house next door to her in the coastal village, to watch baby Demetrius while she flew. She took her plane out from the small airport that the Japanese had built, which the Americans had later destroyed and then repaired. She’d hoped to be given a task, something like the crop dusting she’d once done in Nebraska. But nobody on the island needed help from any pilot, male or female. She asked if she could patrol for sharks, which were easy to spot in the crystal-clear, sparkling water, and the authorities in the little town laughed and said they’d been leaving the sharks alone for ages—no harm in letting them swim as they were. There’d been some incidents of vandalism at the old Japanese sugar mill, thought to be the work of teenagers, and she’d offered to patrol for similar shenanigans. Again the adults had said no: the teenagers were simply releasing their frustrations. Let them be, as well.
And so Katherine just flew. The awareness that her son was waiting for her on land tugged at her—she could feel it in her bones, in her aching bosom—and so she never let herself go faster than a hundred knots, never climbed past twelve thousand feet, to be cautious. She preferred staying close to land, anyway, skimming over the reefs, surveying the island’s knobby green cliffs and flat beaches, its two small towns. She loved how her bird’s-eye view of the island allowed her to see all of the shallow turquoise water surrounding it, the sapphire blue of the rest of the ocean. She loved seeing nothing but ocean beyond the island, a reminder of just how far away she was from everyone else on Earth.
Rota was not exactly what she’d had in mind when she asked to be sent to a remote island in the Pacific. Naïvely, she’d imagined herself and Demetrius alone on a deserted island, living in a straw hut, as isolated as she and Sergey had been on the moon. Instead, she and the baby occupied a tiny ranch house in a long row of cozy homes along a strip of rocky shore. Their neighbors were unbelievably friendly; everyone on the island waved at her as if they’d known her forever, as if it wasn’t strange for the United States Army to have dropped a white woman and her baby here and left. She wondered if she deserved their warm welcome. Based on the bit of Chamorro she’d been able to learn so far, she discovered she’d come to be known as “the woman with the plane.”
Her plane was an old Cessna T-50, retired after the war, freshly painted butter yellow with dark-blue wings. It had a maximum range of just a little more than a thousand miles. She’d never come close to that. The longest trip she’d taken was still the initial flight from Guam, the one she’d insisted on taking alone.
After her stay in the hospital had ended, the Americans had whisked her and the baby by night to an air-force base north of Los Angeles. Then they’d traveled by military jet—no windows—through the night and all during the next day.
“Where are we headed?” she’d finally had the nerve to ask one of the stony officers escorting them. None of them had made eye contact with her throughout the multi-hour journey. Whereas the Russians poked fun, made insulting jokes, and laughed over her head, the Americans pretended she wasn’t there.
“You’re the one who made the demands, ma’am” was all the reply she’d gotten.
She refused to believe they’d actually met her demands until they landed in Guam, greasy-haired and bleary-eyed, and she’d at last seen the T-50 on the tarmac. She’d collapsed to her knees with Demetrius in her arms, weeping. The baby was dehydrated, and so was she. It would have been safest to allow one of the soldiers to escort her to Rota. But she couldn’t go another inch with these men breathing down her neck. She couldn’t trust them as far as she could throw them, of that she felt sure. And so she’d asked for the map, for directions. Rota was only a thirty-minute flight away. She’d secured the baby in a basket behind her seat in the cabin and had flown the rest of the way by herself, her eyes red, knuckles white. When, at last, she’d seen a bit of pale water and brown land appear on the horizon, she’d let go of the yoke for only a second to raise both fists in the air.
On her solo flights, she tried only to think of the shapes of the clouds and their shadows on the water, of the pods of dolphins she sometimes caught up with in the Philippine Sea. Inevitably, she’d stop noticing the terns and her thoughts would wander to Sergey. She longed to have had a proper goodbye with him. First, so that she could punch him in the chest and call him all manner of vulgar words for having lied to her. Second, so that she could ask him what had been true. Had he loved her? Had he been able to fake all of the tender moments that passed between them?
More important, a question for herself: would she know, even now, if he was lying?
One morning, as she found herself scanning the horizon for ships, for fellow aircraft—she would never stop looking over her shoulder, for the Americans or the Russians, who she feared might snatch this peaceful existence away at any second—she noticed an unusual shape in the water. It was large and dark, like a colossal torpedo, and at first she thought it could be a whale. She’d seen them before, breaching with their long, pointed heads, their spouts of white spray, but this hulking form dwarfed even those giant creatures.
Her heart jumped into her throat as her plane buzzed closer to the mysterious seacraft. It was long and pale gray, with a blunt nose and a tail that seemed to stretch hundreds of feet. It approached the northwest corner of Rota, and it cut along at a fast clip, barely creating a ripple on the surface. If she hadn’t been above it, and if the tropical waters hadn’t been so clear, she’d have had no idea the ship was there. But now she could see the two periscopes skimming the top of the water.
She yanked her yoke to the right, toward the airport.
It was a submarine.
The Russians. The Americans. Would it matter which had come? Her first thought was of Demetrius, at home with Inina. Would they take him? Would they kill Inina? Approaching the airport, Katherine backed off on the throttle, but not quite enough, and she came in way too fast. She lifted the nose, fearing she’d have to do a go-around, but, miraculously, she managed a long, bumpy landing. She took the runway too fast as well, and taxied to her usual spot, then leapt out of the cabin and ran for her jeep.
There was a commotion, down on the beach. The children playing there were running toward something in the waves. Katherine stopped with her hand on the jeep door and followed them, first at a walk, then at a run.
The children splashed toward a man in a black diving suit whose head had just surfaced. He swam, froglike, bobbing his head in its goggles and mouthpiece, and then his feet caught sand and he began to walk. He stepped deliberately through the water, like a spaceman fighting low gravity on the surface of some rocky planet, and then, as the water grew shallower, he moved faster and faster.
Katherine stood with the children on the beach, watching. At last, the man came all the way out of the water and took off his goggles, took the tube from his mouth, set down his oxygen tanks, peeled back the cap covering his head, and shook out his wet hair. He squinted at the children, and at Katherine, and then he smiled. He stood a few yards away from her, water dripping off his skintight black diving suit.
It was Sergey.
The children burst into applause.
“Hello, Katya,” he called to her.
She crossed her arms. He didn’t seem the least bit surprised to find her waiting here, right here where the submarine had dropped him off, as though she were still his lunar housewife, ready to help him out of his suit and give him his dinner. She was glad she had on her flight jacket, which she’d found abandoned in a locker in the airport, and not a housedress.
“You smile,” she said back to him, “as if you have nothing to explain.”
The children began to amble away, the excitement over. Sergey’s face turned serious, and he nodded. “I could tell you they had power over me, Katya.” He took a step closer, his foot sinking into the sand. “I could tell you I was just as much a pawn as you were. But that would not be entirely true, would it? And we must now tell the truth.”
She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and kiss him. She looked out at the horizon. “I assumed you were sent to Siberia.”
“No.” He hung his head a bit. The sun gleamed on his wet hair. “No, in Russia I am still a hero. You are, too. There was a parade, even. They still believe we were…” He exhaled, water dripping off his nose. “After all I went through after the war, I thought it would feel good. But it didn’t, not without you. I did not want it, Katya. I wanted to be here, with you. Here I am.”
Katherine took a deep breath. She wanted to let him stay. She wanted to open her new home to him, to let him hold Demetrius and toss him in the air on the beach in front of her house. What did he have to say in order for her to allow him in? She turned away, so that he wouldn’t see her eyes brimming with tears, and began to walk up the beach.
“You’ll have to have the sub circle around,” she called over her shoulder. “So that they can take you back to your parades in Russia.”
Sergey’s shadow caught up to hers on the sand. “Katya, please.” He reached for her hand. His felt clammy. “I have come all this way to see you. Please.” He spun her around. Reluctantly, she looked up into his eyes. His eyelashes were still wet. “Please, Katya. I want nothing on Earth but to be with you.”
“You lied to me,” she said, wiping away tears. “We were all alone there for all that time. You even found a way to turn off that thing that was recording us. And, still, you would not tell me the truth.”
“I know. I was afraid.”
“You let me fear for my life, for the baby’s life. I thought we were all alone up there. I thought I’d die.”
She still spoke as if they’d truly been on the moon. She couldn’t help it.
Sergey brought his hand to her cheek, and stroked softly. “I would never have let you die, Katya. Never. What I wanted was to give you a real life. Yet here you are, an outcast once again. Please.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Can we not be outcasts together, once more?”
She turned away, toward the sea. The sun sparkled across its surface like a million diamonds. Two frigate birds, a mating pair, coasted over the waves together. “You even lied about the stars,” she said quietly.
“Ah.” Sergey stepped back and opened a little pouch she hadn’t noticed, the strap wrapped crosswise over his chest. From inside he produced what looked to be a watertight envelope. “I swam all the way with this, see?” He handed her the envelope and let her open it with her dry hands.
Inside was a book: a guide to the stars. On the cover, Orion raised his bow.
“You see?” Sergey stepped a bit closer, cautiously this time. He reached out and placed his large hands, which felt warmer now, on her shoulders. Gently, he gave her a squeeze. He pulled her a bit closer to him. “From now on, we tell each other only the truth. You, and me, and our baby.”
She stared down at Orion gazing off into the distance. The book, a hardcover, was heavy. Sergey had swum all the way from the submarine with it strapped to his chest.
“We will learn about the constellations together,” he said softly. “What do you see here in the Mariana Islands? Are the stars the same?”
“No,” she replied. “We’re fairly close to the equator. The stars are different.”
At the word “different,” she let herself look at him, at his smooth jaw, at his mouth. Water still dripped from his diving suit, through which she could see the outlines of his pectoral muscles, his biceps.
She put the book down in the sand. It would be all right. Different felt good. Things could be different here, without anyone telling them who they were or what they could do. She wrapped her arms around Sergey’s neck, let her fingers sweep into his wet hair. A tear fell from the corner of his right eye, and he smiled. She guided his head down to hers. His lips, warm and familiar, tasted of salt water.