Vanishing

by Cai Emmons

  VANISHING

  Also by the Author

  Weather Woman

  The Stylist

  His Mother’s Son

  FIVE STORIES

  Cai Emmons

  VANISHING

  Leapfrog Press

  Fredonia, New York

  Vanishing © 2020 by Cai Emmons

  All rights reserved under International and

  Pan-American Copyright Conventions

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a data base or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Published in 2020 in the United States by

  Leapfrog Press LLC

  PO Box 505

  Fredonia, NY 14063

  www.leapfrogpress.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  Distributed in the United States by

  Consortium Book Sales and Distribution

  St. Paul, Minnesota 55114

  www.cbsd.com

  First Edition

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Emmons, Cai, author.

  Title: Vanishing / Cai Emmons.

  Description: First edition. | Fredonia, New York : Leapfrog Press, 2020. |

  Summary: “A new mother is bewildered when her house appears to belong to

  a stranger; a young artist must look past stereotypes to what really

  matters; a filmmaker visiting a childhood friend with dementia realizes

  how quickly shared history vanishes; an isolated young woman forms a

  manipulative friendship with a mother whose daughter has died; a

  middle-aged office manager discovers she isn’t central in the lives of

  her adoring young male employees. These women’s lives highlight the

  difficulty of honing a strong identity in a culture that consistently

  devalues women”-- Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019047606 | ISBN 9781948585088 (paperback) | ISBN

  9781948585095 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3605.M57 A6 2020 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019047606

  And most women know this, that we are supposed to disappear, but it’s something that needs to be said loudly, over and over again, so that we can resist surrendering to what is expected of us.

  —Roxane Gay, Hunger

  Contents

  The Deed

  FAT

  VANISHING

  REDHEAD

  HER BOYS

  Publication History

  The Author

  The Deed

  When I stepped into the foyer after work I expected to hear the silence of Martin’s absence, or rather I expected to hear the amplified sounds of my own actions ricocheting about the empty house, but instead I heard the grandfather clock ticking unevenly. I stood still for a moment, hushing the twins who, sensing something, grew tranquil and heavy at my hips. Yes, the ticking of the clock was distinctly uneven. Some of its beats were loud and others were light, giving it a slightly syncopated sound.

  I suppose it was about a minute that I stood there, puzzling over the clock. It was the strangest feeling, akin to what it’s like to arrive at your desk and know, from a brief or a pen that is out of alignment that someone has been there, tampering with things in your absence. The most bewildering aspect was that the clock showed the correct time, 6:53.

  I had to get on with things, of course—the girls were hungry and beginning to fuss—so I forgot about the clock, or perhaps, more precisely, I shoved the clock problem aside. It was an old clock dating back to the early 1800’s and it was natural that it should need some attention after all the years that Martin and I had ignored it. I jotted it on the list, the list I was keeping for Martin.

  I’m not one of those fanatical people who expect lists to solve all their problems; I simply think they’re useful for keeping life orderly, for fending off encroaching chaos. Like countries having borders. Anyway, the first thing on my list was: Overly bold birds? In the morning when I was leaving the house four or five blue jays had flown in a pack onto the porch steps. They had lingered there, pecking at the floorboards and cackling like voyeuristic old men, as if they didn’t intend to leave. When I shooed them away with my foot, they allowed me to make contact with their bodies and I found their solidity and boldness frightening. They weren’t aggressive like the birds in the Hitchcock film, but they seemed stronger than I was.

  The second thing on my list was: Grandfather clock, uneven ticking. Once I write something down I can usually stop thinking about it.

  I lowered Beatrice into her high chair and gave her a piece of zwieback, then went to get Gina who I’d left on the floor with some measuring spoons. Gina’s pudgy hand, fingers splayed like a starfish, reached out for me. I saw the faint red smudge on her wrist—a stork’s bite, the doctor called it. It wasn’t Gina after all, it was Beatrice, she was the one with the mark. I’d never made that mistake before, not since a few days after they were born.

  Rattled, I shoveled rice cereal into their mouths, berating myself, not daring to yearn so soon for Martin’s return. I don’t like it when Martin is away, but I’ve always prided myself on being able to manage. The secret is keeping busy, adhering to a strict routine. Before he leaves I make sure my suits are cleaned and pressed, my nails are freshly manicured, my hair is trimmed. As an attorney, it is part of my profession to remain alert to things that may go wrong, but it is also my policy not to dwell on those things in Martin’s absence. It is not helpful to articulate what I know to be true—that every moment our lives are only a hair’s breadth from spinning out of control.

  I gave the twins their baths and read them a story, and thankfully they went to sleep without much fussing. I listened for Beatrice who is usually the one to squawk after the lights go out, but even she went down easily. That made me feel good. I distinctly remember descending the staircase feeling a sheen of accomplishment, thinking I did have control of things and would get through Martin’s absence just fine after all.

  Downstairs in the kitchen I decided I was entitled to a drink. I know it’s usually con­sidered a sign of unhappiness to drink alone, but at that moment I was not unhappy. I wanted a drink because I felt satisfied and thought I should celebrate the feeling. I opened a bottle of Chardonnay. I’m not knowledgeable about wines—that’s Martin’s department—but I couldn’t help noticing that this bottle, a California wine, was probably good, as it cost almost twenty dollars. I hoped Martin wasn’t saving it for some special occasion.

  As soon as the glass was poured and the corked bottle was restored to the fridge, I heard the TV pop on. For a minute I froze. It flew through my mind that it might be the neighbors’ TV I was hearing but, though our neighbors on one side can sometimes be loud, I’d never heard their TV sounding as if it was right in our house. I considered that a burglar could be responsible for the sound, but I didn’t hear any rifling about and of course why would a burglar (unless he was completely psychotic) enter a house and turn on the TV? It didn’t make sense. A mechanical problem then? A short circuit? The TV had tripped on like a car alarm responding to a bolt of thunder? Perhaps the popping of the wine cork had done it.

  So, after a period of time—undoubtedl
y less than a minute—when my mind was sorting these possibilities, I headed for the living room, still holding onto this (in retrospect) somewhat far-fetched thought about the TV having been tripped on by the audible popping of the wine cork.

  When I got to the hallway, I noticed the living room light was on. It had not been on when we arrived home—that I knew—and I was certain I hadn’t turned it on since. I am very thrifty and try hard not to waste electricity. So the fear I had so successfully laid aside a moment earlier rose again, and (I am ashamed to say) my first impulse was to cry out for Martin. But I restrained myself and instead hugged the wall of the foyer. That was when I first heard the sound of a person moving. How instinctively programmed we are to recognize the sounds of human movement. Someone was rising from the couch and walking to the door. Someone was in the house with me.

  I thought of screaming, but for what? It would only scare the girls. And, terrified as I was, I felt foolish raising my voice, so I pressed my face against the wall as if it would hide me. Then, into the stretch of floor included in my vision stepped a pair of sneakered feet.

  “Can I help you?” asked a male voice.

  I’m sure I looked ridiculous, clutching the wall and gaping at this man as I did. But what was I to think when a perfect stranger addressed me that way in my own house?

  As men go, he was rather harmless-looking. He was possibly thirty years old (a little younger than I). Neither tall nor short, he had the densely muscled body of a weight lifter. He wore khaki trousers, old-fashioned white sneakers, and a maroon V-necked sweater that looked as if it might be cashmere. Neat but casual clothes, the clothes of a relaxing professional, not a criminal. He stood watching me patiently, no observable alarm marring the symmetry of his features. Embarrassed, I stood up straight. In the living room I heard the sudden rise in the TV’s volume as the ads took over from the program.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “Cute.” He took my upper arm in a forceful grip and led me to the door. “Don’t worry, I won’t press charges.”

  “Press charges?” I shook off his hand and faced him. He seemed taller than he had at first and his body blocked off my view of the rest of the house.

  “I’m curious, though, how did you get in?” he asked.

  A terrible helplessness came over me, reducing my voice to a whimper.

  “My purse is upstairs, take what you want. But please get out.” I panted. A pulse in my neck jittered. His gaze scanned my body before he began chuckling. Then he stepped back from me and held out his arm, extending it to the stairway.

  “All right, we’ll find that purse of yours.”

  I didn’t move. “My husband will be home soon you know.”

  He nodded. “The purse?”

  I knew it was always the best policy to give these people whatever they wanted, but I hesitated, thinking of the girls asleep upstairs. I did not want to leave him downstairs alone, nor did I want to allow him into the bedroom with me. He was not unsavory and he had curiously good manners, but there was a businessman’s callousness about him, and it did not take much imagination to picture him hurling me onto the bed and having his way with me.

  I went because I saw no choice. I plodded up the stairs sideways, keeping my eye on him. He returned my look calmly. I prayed that the twins would not awaken.

  He stood courteously outside the bedroom while I searched for my purse. What caught my attention instead was a man’s suit lying over the easy chair on Martin’s side of the room. It was not Martin’s suit. Martin never wore gray suits so I knew it wasn’t his. Could it really belong to this man?

  So distracted was I by the suit that I couldn’t find my purse, and then I remembered that I’d left it downstairs. I told him this and he smiled an irritating power smile as if he didn’t care where it was since he knew he’d get it even­tually. We paraded back down to the kitchen. There was my purse on the telephone table. I found the wallet and handed it to him.

  “Now you can go,” I said.

  His smile, or I should say sneer, wouldn’t go away now. He opened my wallet and looked through it, scrutinizing each credit card approvingly before he looked for the cash. When he got to the compartment for bills he spread it open and held it up to my view. Nothing.

  “How generous of you,” he said.

  “I meant to stop at the cash machine. We can go there now if you want.”

  “I see we’ve been sampling the goods,” he said, nodding to my untouched glass of wine on the counter. He slipped the wallet back into my handbag, laid the handbag on the table, and handed me the glass of wine.

  “Finish the wine and go. I have some people coming. This episode will amuse them.”

  I drank the wine because I did not know what else to do. I was thinking about the word episode.

  “We all have our stories, don’t we,” he said. “Tell me, you look well enough off, what motivates a woman like you to do something like this?”

  I told him I wasn’t going to dignify his question with an answer, and then the telephone rang. What a relief; it was Martin, I knew. He often called at just this hour. But, when I reached for the phone the man took it from my hand, not aggres­sively, but firmly.

  “Vern Hallohan speaking.” He answered with casual indifference.

  I could hear the buzz of the voice on the other end, and I knew it was not Martin—it was someone who fully expected this Vern Hallohan to answer.

  “Yes, whenever you can is fine, I’ll be here. Good, looking forward to it. . . . No, Mergers and Acquisitions. Right, bye.”

  “That was for you?” I said when he had hung up.

  “You thought it was who? Your husband?” He chuckled softly.

  I knew I had to take charge. The wine had braced me. “If you don’t leave the house by the count of five, I’m calling the police.”

  “Oh, please.”

  I abhorred his tone of voice. It was the disdainful tone that mothers use with intractable children, that some of my male colleagues have used with me from time to time. “I mean it,” I said. “One . . . two . . .”

  “What will you say to the police?”

  “That you’re here, that you broke in, that you won’t leave.”

  He shook his head as if I were truly pathetic. “What a sorry fellow—he won’t leave his own house.”

  At that moment I came as close as I’ve ever come to hitting someone, but of course I didn’t. “I’m going to reiterate the obvious—this isn’t your house,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s my house.”

  “I’m happy to go through this charade with you if it will make you happy, but let’s see who the police are likely to believe. Prima facie. Who found who sneaking around? Do you even have a key for this house?”

  “Of course I have a key.” I pawed around in my bag but my keys were snuggled somewhere out of reach. I heard a click as he laid something on the counter.

  “That could be any key,” I said.

  “Yes, but it isn’t, is it?” He went to the front door and slid his key smoothly into the lock.

  I felt myself sinking beneath the quicksand of our misunderstandings. “My babies are upstairs.”

  “Your babies are upstairs?”

  “Why would I break in here with children?”

  He trailed me up there and, to my great relief, Beatrice and Gina were still there, sleeping soundly. I put my ear down into each of their cribs to confirm that they were still breathing.

  “See?” I said.

  “See what? This proves nothing. You brought your babies here, that’s all. I give you credit for ingenuity. Not that that will hold any water with the police.”

  “With cribs,” I pointed out, feeling more and more confused. I was still wondering what I could have done with my keys.
/>   “These cribs have always been here. For my girlfriend’s children. I take it somehow you knew that?”

  He picked up a blanket that had fallen off the edge of Gina’s crib. He folded it and put it in the bottom drawer of the dresser right alongside the rest of the blankets! It could, of course, have been a lucky accident, but it disturbed me because it coincided with something else I’d noticed. He did not move about the house as if he were a stranger to it; he negotiated the sharp angles and creaky floorboards as if he knew them, as if he’d been moving around here for years.

  It sounds absurd, but I could see he really believed this house was his. I could see it in the unyielding opacity of his eyes, in his immutable body, and in his sneering but decorous manner. He was being tolerant of me because he believed himself. It was now up to me to demonstrate the fallacy of his case.

  He must have spotted a change in me because quite suddenly he suggested we go downstairs to the living room to talk. I followed him down. He swung through the kitchen and took the wine bottle and two glasses. He knew exactly which cupboard held the glassware.

  In the living room he set the bottle and glasses on the coffee table next to a bowl of popcorn; then he used the remote control to turn off the TV which was playing a baseball game.

  “If it’s your house, where were you this morning?” I said.

  “Here.”

  “And last night?”

  “Here.”

  Clearly a pointless line of questioning, but I was rattled and my logic had gone haywire. I watched him pick stray kernels of popcorn from the cracks between the couch cushions, his fingers scratching around like a pecking chicken. A precise, almost finicky person, I could tell. This action both fascinated and irritated me, but most of all it called up a strange flicker of recognition.