Vanishing

by Cai Emmons

  Martha eased up to Betsy, offered an arm. Wordlessly Betsy linked. The moment of wariness in the living room had passed. The four began to advance slowly down the driveway. Betsy was still as strong as she’d always been, but she placed each foot forward as if the ground’s solidity was not to be trusted, as if gravity itself might be in flux. This mode of attack seemed right to Martha. She, too, was stepping cautiously. The driveway was slippery in places and with sunlight popping off so many surfaces, appearing unexpectedly through branches like flashing blades, it was hard to see things clearly.

  Dan and Justin ambled ahead, side by side, occasionally pausing to look back, adjusting their pace. They were speaking of Justin’s plans. He did computer consulting work which he could access from anywhere in the world, and next week he would be going to Italy to see his girlfriend. He could come back at a moment’s notice, he told his father, he might even bring his girlfriend. “Don’t worry,” Dan assured him. “We’re fine on this hill, just fine.”

  “Gadzooks!” Betsy said out of the blue.

  Martha laughed. Gadzooks—quintessential Betsy.

  “Gadzooks!” Martha repeated.

  “Everything is cattywumpus.” Another Betsy word. Betsy stopped walking and brought her face close, so Martha could feel her moist breath. “Cattywumpus!” Betsy was triumphant.

  They both laughed, Betsy opening her mouth so wide Martha could almost see her tonsils.

  “Cats,” Betsy said, clamping her free mittened hand on Martha’s arm. “Cats!”

  “Cats, yes,” Martha said, nodding hard.

  “Blurp, blurp, blurp—not like we used to—we used to—didn’t we?—we—”

  Martha nodded uncertainly. A braying, loud and hoarse, came from the shed. “What the hell is that?”

  “Horrible, isn’t it?” Dan laughed. “It’s a donkey.”

  “You have a donkey?” Martha said. “Why? You can’t ride a donkey, can you?”

  “Betsy loves donkeys, right Bets? If it were exclusively up to her we’d have more than one.”

  “Shall we tell her?” Justin said.

  “Tell who what?” Martha said.

  “The donkey’s name is Martha.”

  “Oh, for god’s sake. Should I be insulted or flattered?”

  “Perhaps a bit of both,” Dan said. “All in good fun, right.”

  “You know our donkey story, right? Betsy’s and mine?”

  “Oh, yes,” Dan said.

  “I don’t,” said Justin. “Tell me.”

  Martha glanced at Betsy whose face had settled back into default slackness. “Later,” Martha said. “Not now.”

  Inside the dim shed Betsy unhooked her arm from Martha’s, straightened, so Martha saw her as a youth, imperious, beautiful, as yet unimpaired. The donkey, lusting for company, elongated her long neck over the gate, lifted and lowered her head as if nodding, cavernous mouth opening on ugly yellow teeth. Betsy hurled her arms around the ungainly animal, muttering and cooing. Dan caught Martha’s eye then looked away.

  The house was redolent with baking cake. What now? Martha thought. How would they fill this endless day? She admired a wall hanging in the foyer, a colorful folkloric tapestry depicting Noah’s flood. “Beautiful,” she murmured.

  “You gave us that,” Dan said. “Or you gave it to Betsy.”

  “I did?”

  “Years ago. Before we were married. We’ve always had it hanging somewhere.”

  Martha touched the cloth, fondling one of the three-dimensional elephants, trying to remember. Where would she have gotten such an item? “I think you’re thinking of someone else.”

  “I don’t think so,” Dan said. “We have all sorts of Martha detritus around here. It’s my job to remember these things.”

  “Detritus?”

  “Choose a better word—relic, memento?”

  Did he remember Yosemite? Did he remember the strip club? She’d have liked to ask, but was loathe to resurrect anything difficult. Betsy’s bare feet slapped the hard wood as she headed to the living room. Her bottom swayed under loose gray sweatpants. She wasn’t fat, but everything about her had relaxed, become loose and acquiescent to gravity.

  “Do you get lonely?” Martha asked Dan quietly.

  Dan deflected the question with a grin.

  “What should I do now?” She needed a task.

  “Go with the flow. You’re the Californian now, you should know about that. Maybe Helen needs some help.”

  But Helen refused help, the cords of her neck rippling, so Martha perched on the couch, tethered again to Betsy, though Betsy had settled on the carpet, devoting herself to Albert. Dan stood by the bookcases sorting through mail. Helen bustled in and out of the kitchen looking for birthday candles. Justin went upstairs and came down again with paper and scissors.

  “Paper dolls,” he said to Martha. “I’ve discovered I have a knack and Ma loves them. So tell me the donkey story.” He began folding, fingers precise as he ironed each fold.

  “It might be upsetting.”

  “Okay, then don’t.”

  A colander, resting upside down on the floor by the picture window, toyed with the bright light. Betsy appeared to be elsewhere, communing with Albert, extending her tongue to touch his whiskers. Martha lowered her voice.

  “We were on a pack trip with Betsy’s parents. In the North Cascades. We were fourteen, Betsy and I. We rode the horses, Betsy and me and her parents and our guide Elmer. And the donkeys—well, mules really—were carrying our gear. And one day one of the mules fell while we were crossing a bridge, and he broke his leg, and Elmer had to shoot him. It shocked me. I’d never even seen a gun before. I can still picture that poor mule lying dead by the side of the trail.”

  Justin had stopped his snipping to listen. “Wow. No wonder Ma wanted a donkey.”

  Betsy leaned forward, focused as a striking rattler. Albert flew off her lap. “No. Elmer never shot the donkey.” She shook her head violently so her hair darted out, spoke-like, in all directions. “No!” She was yelling now, utterly fluent. She slapped the coffee table. “That donkey was not shot.”

  Martha froze. Justin dropped his scissors, leapt to Betsy’s side, slung an arm around her back. “Everything’s fine. No one’s shot.” His voice was low and smooth, a lullaby, a perfect anodyne. “The donkey is okay. She’s down in her shed, very happy.”

  “Elmer never shot the donkey.” Betsy clamped her teeth up and down. “Not shot.”

  “Not shot,” Justin said. “Elmer did not shoot any donkey.”

  Betsy snared Martha with an implacable look, replete with all the old diminishing power she used to use to assert her world view. Martha felt like a criminal. Of course Elmer shot the donkey. She wouldn’t have made that up. She turned away from Betsy’s savage glare.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Justin.

  “It happens. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

  Betsy scrunched her face and wiggled her torso and flapped her hands around her ears as if to fend off an onslaught of flies. Martha rose and went upstairs and shut the door to her room and lay on the bed. She had always prided herself on her memory. Art had a terrible memory. He probably did not remember how they used to lie on the bed in her New York apartment, early in their courtship, and gaze down into the apartment across from them, a floor below. That bed, too, was near the window, and once, unable to wrench their gazes away, they watched the woman who lived there making love. For months after that they would see the woman in the building’s lobby and feel ashamed. But Art wouldn’t remember that now. She closed her eyes on the mote-filled light. How easily certain things were extinguished. And other things, the very ones you wanted so desperately to erase—Art’s look of readiness and relief when she suggested they separate—were the very ones that clung so tenaciously.

  She had read an article not long
ago about a monk with a superlative memory. Over the course of a day people would bring him things—a shoe, a flower, an equation, a question—and at the end of the day he was able to remember in perfect sequence the five hundred things he’d been shown or told. His secret, he said, was meditation.

  A nap gave her the strength to go down again. Justin had made multiple strings of paper dolls, and he and Betsy were on the couch bent over the coffee table, decorating the dolls with colored pencils. Justin was giving them faces and outfits, Betsy was applying indeterminate spidery lines. She looked focused, happy.

  Martha sat at the far end of the couch. Betsy didn’t acknowledge her. It fascinated Martha, this obliviousness. She almost envied Betsy. Fixated on drawing, she was immune to her dowdy appearance, unconcerned about having yelled so recently at Martha.

  Dan stationed himself at the piano again. He played more quietly now, a Chopin piece from which he segued into familiar show tunes. The musical phrases wafted over Betsy’s face. She put down her pencil, noticed Martha, and slid closer until they were shoulder-to-shoulder.

  Dan sang now, quietly, his tenor surprisingly clear for a lawyer in his fifties. “. . . my honey lamb and I, sit alone and talk, and watch a hawk making lazy circles in the sky. . . .”

  “You don’t sing?” Martha asked Justin.

  “God no. Ma sings sometimes, but Helen and I are just spectators. We never got that gene.”

  He handed his completed paper dolls to Betsy. She flattened them on her lap, swaying, body leashed to the music. Tentatively, Martha laid a hand on Betsy’s lap. Betsy leaned in and rested her head on Martha’s shoulder, and Martha’s entire body filled like a cistern with deep animal satisfaction.

  “Maria,” Dan sang, “Maria, I just met a girl named Maria. . . .” He looked over at his audience with master-of-ceremony confidence, and nodded an invitation. “You know these words, Bets. Sing with me. Martha, come on, sing along.”

  Betsy’s body shifted, trembled. She sat erect, lit by something, about to sing. “She’s my friend. Not yours. Mine!” Her voice filled the living room, her gaze fixated on Dan.

  Dan stopped playing.

  Betsy clapped her palm on Martha’s thigh, squeezed. “You can’t do that with her. She’s mine!”

  Dan stared into his lap. Had he told her? Or had she sensed it? A single foolhardy moment years ago that no one wanted to repeat, meaningless and buried by decades, mostly forgotten. Why now?

  “No one is doing anything with anyone,” Dan said. “Right Martha?”

  Martha’s voice was not her own. Turning to Betsy she seemed to ventriloquize. “No, of course not. He wouldn’t do that. Neither would I. I’m yours Betsy, not his. Your friend.”

  “What’s going on?” Justin asked.

  Dan waved his hand. “Nothing. Believe me.”

  Martha’s face was inches from Betsy’s. She stroked Betsy’s red cheek with her forefinger. Its nerves seemed capable of receiving and transmitting everything that would ever be important. Betsy had answered a question Martha never knew she had.

  “I’m yours,” Martha said. Her hand trembled and so did her breath. “We’re best friends. Right?”

  Betsy’s agitation began to subside. A smile poked forth, sun behind rain. “Are you a good egg?” Betsy said.

  A good egg. Plucked from her gray matter’s labyrinth of tangles and plaques. “Oh, god, yes,” Martha said. “I’m a good egg. And so are you. You’re a very good egg.”

  “I’m a good egg?”

  “Yes. Of course. We’re both good eggs.”

  “We’re both good eggs.”

  Outside the sun, thinking about setting, was turning pink. A few chickadees pecked at the snow, hunting for what might be beneath. Helen had come in from the kitchen. The silence was strange, amorphous. Could anyone hold onto a self without the regard and memories of others?

  “I think it’s time for cake,” Helen said.

  “Isn’t it a bit early?” Justin said. “Don’t we usually have the cake at dinner?”

  “It’s time for cake now,” Helen insisted. She disappeared and appeared moments later with a tiered chocolate cake, its top smeared with thin layer of pink icing, a single fat candle blazing at its center. “Play,” Helen commanded.

  Dan began to play. “Happy Birthday to you. . . .”

  “Speed it up,” Helen said. “That sounds funereal.”

  He did as Helen insisted. Martha didn’t look at him, could not, kept her hand on Betsy’s thigh. They sang together—Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you—every particle of history, shared and unshared, remembered and forgotten, floating by in the afternoon light, traveling to great distance, then inexplicably returning.

  The song ended, but Betsy kept singing, “Happy Birthday, dear Betsy, Happy Birthday to you. To you. To you.” Her palm slapped Martha’s leg. “You. You.”

  Helen laid the cake on the coffee table, and Betsy stared at the flame, mesmerized, her face lit with disbelief and rapture. A moment of uncertainty billowed, filled the room. Then, as if on cue, Betsy and Martha leaned forward together and blew out the flame.

  REDHEAD

  On the morning of the celebration for Thomas’s dead wife Isabel a chilly rain fell, unseasonal for late May, though these days who could bank on seasonal. Seeing the umbrellas and raincoats, the quick dashes for cover as the clan gathered, Morna was glad to be in her apartment, warm and snug, settling in for her first nicotine fix of the day. She scanned the crowd, wondering which one of them would be the next to die, casting her vote with a woman who stood at the edge of a small group, skittish and curiously alone. They might be genuinely sad down there, but from Morna’s vantage point their appropriate little faces looked like bereavement emojis. Morna hadn’t really been part of this clan since graduation, and she didn’t wish to be part of it. They were sons and daughters of toney-brained parents: neurosurgeons and novelists, economists and astronauts, eco-entrepreneurs and bishops. “My dad’s an insurance adjuster,” Morna used to say when people asked in the early days of her freshman year. “And my mom’s in HR.” They gave her uncomfortable, vaguely scandalized looks, and the conversation would grind to a halt. By second semester she had a new story. Her mom was leading HIV education programs all over Africa. Her dad was a neuroscientist who delivered regular reports on the state of the post-millennial brain.

  The rain began a new tirade, pelting the sidewalk, clearing the small crowd that had stopped to exchange condolences. Emptied of people, the courtyard berated her. She should have made alternative plans for the day, something to distract from the unfurling drama across the street which, though it held no more emotional juice for Morna than a back page news story, was impossible not to watch. It had been one of the gossip items circulating for the past few weeks among her former college classmates. Married before graduation, dead by twenty-five from a stage four something-or-other.

  A person in a black trench coat darted across the courtyard, exited through the iron gate, and crossed the street. He went into the newsstand and a minute later retraced his path back to the church. Inside the gate he stopped. It was Thomas, standing in the downpour with his face to the sky, his famous ringlets soaked and punished into lifeless strands. He remained there for what seemed like a long time under the circumstances, knees bent as if he might collapse, trench coat no longer repellent under the sheer volume of rain.

  She dressed in thirty seconds, grabbing the most available clothes—black skirt, black sweater, knee-high zippered black boots, her own black trench coat. In the elevator she swiped her lips with mauve lipstick. By the time she reached the churchyard, taking the short cut, splashing through puddles, Thomas was gone.

  She entered the church tentatively. Would Thomas have chosen this church if he’d known she lived across the street? She’d only been here twice before, both times for dance concerts, both times thinking of it as
a place both hip and historical more than religious, though it was true they held Sunday services every week. She stood at the back, behind a packed house, standing room only. For an event that had been billed as a celebration, the atmosphere was forbiddingly solemn. A male cellist seated on the stage in a pocket of celestial blue light played an adagio solo. Morna vaguely recognized the guy from college though she couldn’t have said his name. He rocked back and forth with each stroke of his bow. Behind him a harpist awaited her turn in the shadows, head bowed. The Facebook announcement had encouraged people to bring offerings—artworks, poems, songs—it was so like Thomas to want to dress an event like this in the gauzy garb of art. He was a painter with flirtatious blue eyes that sometimes turned inexplicably inward, a low center of gravity, swarthy skin from his mother’s Italian-American family, and hair that, when dry, fell past his jaw in Little Lord Fauntleroy ringlets. His congenial manner drew people in and hid his artistic ambition. Morna had gone out with Thomas herself at the beginning of junior year, but broke up with him after spring break in a preemptive strike, sensing he was about to break up with her. He’d been an intense lover, but spacey and inattentive, and after a while Morna had lost track of who she was with him.

  She scanned the crowd, looking for a place to settle, trying to match the backs of necks and cant of shoulders with classmates she expected would be there. Christopher Johnston, Sarah Bernstein, Hope Finley.

  Only a few feet from her Thomas leaned against the wall. He had shed his soggy trench coat in a heap on the floor, but his black shirt and pressed black pants were also drenched, and locks of his wet hair shed drops like leaky spigots. His body shocked Morna; it was so much scrawnier than when she’d known him, and his once-swarthy skin now exuded an unhealthy pallor. His torso quaked, and a filament of mucus hung from his nose, swinging like a broken spider web. She had never seen him cry before, and if she’d ever tried to imagine it she would have pictured eloquent, high-minded grief, a behavior abstract as dance, not this ghastly, snotty, quivery display.