Vanishing and Other Stories

by Deborah Willis

  “I love him,” Lev stated that Friday night. He was extremely handsome, which was maybe what gave him so much confidence in his own opinions. “I love him the way a son loves a father.”

  Nathan leaned back in his chair and shook his head, his cheeks reddened from wine. Their conversations sounded like arguments, but Nathan rarely appeared happier. He listened when Lev spoke and seemed to find everything about him—his youth, his ego—engaging. If Marlene noticed, she seemed to treat it as a necessary ill, like the arthritis in her fingers, the fluid that collected in her legs. “Now,” she said. “Would anyone like more beans?”

  “A tough, brutish father. That’s the way I love the man.”

  “He’s a drunk,” said Sofia. She seemed older than Lev. Maybe it was her rich voice, or the way she so confidently helped Marlene in the kitchen before the meal.

  “So he’s picked his poison.” Lev turned to her. “That’s his right.”

  “Of course.” Sofia placed her fork and knife on her plate with a click. “But I hardly find it charming.”

  “Sofia has little use for certain kinds of men.” Lev smiled and showed his pleasantly crooked teeth. He picked up her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Men who are wholeheartedly male.”

  “Then she’s an astute young woman.” Nathan looked Lev in the eye. He smiled the kind of smile people use to cover up anger, or simple heartache. The kind of smile that never quite succeeds. “She’s a prize.”

  IN THE 1980S, someone publishes a biography that gets it all wrong, Marlene and Bea spend half of every year in Florida, and Tabitha has become brash, too loud, a lush.

  She is well liked, though fat and poor, and she wakes one morning to find that her hair has become a brazen, phony blond. There is nothing of Sofia in her now. She has lost her grace, her ingenuousness, her youth. She treats it like a joke, a big joke, the way her old self has disappeared inside this other woman. But in private, she doesn’t find it funny. She has nightmares—sweaty, waking nightmares—that her father will find her like this. In this body, in this hair, tipsy and hysterical.

  TWO DAYS AFTER NATHAN VANISHED, Lev knocked on the door. He’d come from the office and said he didn’t have much time, was just dropping by. He sat on the couch in a dark, pressed suit. Marlene took Nathan’s leather chair and sat on the edge of it. Tabitha curled up on the couch, as far from Lev as possible.

  Without Nathan in the house, he seemed less warm, less assured. He was interested in the legalities: what the police had said, how the search was proceeding. He interrogated Marlene and she repeated what had happened, exactly as it had happened. The streetcar trip, the shopping, the empty house. She answered Lev’s questions but seemed worn by them. When she finished, he pointed to the corner of the room and said, “Is that Elvis Presley?”

  Marlene refilled his coffee cup.

  “There are only so many possibilities.” He bit into a lemon cookie. “Either your husband’s disappearance was planned or accidental. Either he’s alive or dead.” Lev seemed to find comfort in this kind of statement.

  “He’s probably just taking an extended day of rest,” said Marlene. This was a joke, but even she didn’t laugh.

  “I’m sure this will all be cleared up,” he said. “There’s probably an explanation.”

  Marlene put her cup on the table. She hadn’t touched her coffee.

  “I can see him waltzing in here tomorrow like nothing happened.” Lev smiled at Marlene, smiled at Tabitha, then laughed—a short, coughing laugh. “Wouldn’t that be so like him?”

  “Anyway, he’ll be glad to know you dropped by.” Marlene stood. “He cares so much about you.”

  Then Lev made a noise that was quieter than his laugh, and sounded even more like coughing. When he wiped his face, Tabitha realized he was crying.

  “I’m sure there’s no need for that,” Marlene said, in the same voice she used to tell Tabitha to Stop dawdling or Quit picking at your food.

  But when Lev turned away and choked out the word “Sorry,” Marlene settled herself beside him on the couch and put her arm around him. Despite the suit, he looked like a child, helpless and shaky. He rested his head on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” Marlene said, and rocked him back and forth.

  Tabitha heard Lev’s strange sobbing and understood what her mother must have known. Marlene let him press his wet, closed eyes into her cotton shirt. “You poor thing,” she said. “You poor boy.”

  IN THE EARLY 1990S, Tabitha checks into rehab, where she meets Charlie Sheen, then meets her future husband. His name is Stanley and he is shy. He admits that he wasted his life, and Tabitha finds this very honest, very brave. There is nothing like Betty Ford sex, and the first time they make love, he cries.

  When they check out, he proposes. Two months later, they are married. One year after that, he is rebuilding his law practice and she is making a comeback, playing disturbed mothers and oversexed divorcees. They rent an apartment in Manhattan, and Tabitha learns him: his elaborate tea ritual, his fitful sleep, his splendid reading voice.

  She eases away from friends and considers teaching theatre rather than acting. She takes up cooking and purchases things for their comfort—dishes and wineglasses and soft wool blankets. She feels a dedication as simple and big-hearted as Marlene’s.

  THE YEAR BEFORE HE LEFT, Nathan had begun to say things like, “Not now, Tabitha,” or “I need to concentrate, please,” when he heard her steps on the ladder. For a month before he disappeared, she hadn’t ventured into the attic at all.

  But that Friday evening, she silently climbed the steps after dinner. What drew her there was the look on his face when he’d stood and left the table in the middle of the meal. The defeated way he’d said, “I’ve got work to see to.”

  After Lev and Sofia went home, and while Marlene changed out of the blouse and green skirt she wore for company, Tabitha opened the hatch and pulled herself up, edging along the dusty floor until she slid into the office.

  Nathan hadn’t heard her come in—or if he had, he didn’t find her presence important. He sat at his desk, facing away from her, and she stared at the back of his neck. He didn’t turn to her or clear the stack of books from the chair. There was a blank sheet of paper rolled into the typewriter, so white it glowed under the lamp. He stared out the window, not even attempting to punch the keys.

  BEA PASSES AWAY SUDDENLY, and Tabitha flies home to help Marlene with the details: obituary, casket, stone. Maybe it comes from age, or from living with a sister for decades, but Marlene has lost any sense of propriety. She rinses dishes instead of washing them with soap, and forgets to close the door when she pees.

  After sitting shiva, they give Bea’s clothes and her cribbage board to the Goodwill. Then they pack Marlene’s dishes and the canned goods she stockpiles—might as well buy lots when they’re on sale—so Marlene can move to a smaller place. As Tabitha fills a box with her mother’s old records, she finds the Elvis. He’s at the back of Marlene’s closet, looking out like a ghost. He smells of mothballs, and his slim ceramic nose has broken off. Still, there’s something about him. He’s as strange and charming as ever.

  TABITHA STRETCHED UP on the tips of her toes and her head nearly touched the attic’s ceiling. She wanted, like her father, to see out the window. When she did this, the light must have changed, or the floorboards shifted, because he turned around. His wooden chair squeaked as it swivelled. “What are you doing here, Tabitha?” He was the only one, then, who called her by her full name.

  “Nothing.”

  “Have they gone?”

  She nodded. “I’m supposed to be helping with the dishes.”

  “I shouldn’t have left the table like that. Tell your mother I’m sorry.”

  When she wasn’t reading the lines he gave her, she didn’t know how to talk to him, so she said the only thing that came into her head. “Wasn’t Lev’s fiancée pretty? Like a movie star?”

  “Prettier,” he said quietly. “Because it’s real lif
e.”

  Tabitha nodded and looked toward his desk. The typewriter, the blank sheet of paper.

  “Did you know I haven’t written anything in nearly a year?” He spoke as though it were a statistic, a fact that piqued his interest.

  She shook her head. She understood exactly what this meant: that he wouldn’t need her anymore, that there was no reason for her to be in the attic. That the chair was no longer hers.

  “But that’s a secret.” He raised one eyebrow, an exaggerated expression that reminded her of when he would read bedtime stories. When he terrified her, doing all the voices. “Can you keep a secret?”

  She heard Marlene in the kitchen, running water for the dishes. Tabitha had a few minutes before her mother needed her to dry. “Sometimes.”

  “That’s a truthful answer.” He leaned back in his chair. “Of course, I’ve written reviews and letters and things. But I haven’t really written.”

  There was the sound of Marlene opening and closing a cupboard. “I should go down soon,” said Tabitha. “She wouldn’t want me here.”

  “Your mother is a very sweet person,” he said. “I think that’s why I married her. Because she seemed like the only honest person on earth.” He laughed then, and it sounded hollow in the low-ceilinged attic. “Isn’t that incredible? I married the only honest person on earth.”

  Tabitha stared at his shoes. They were brown leather and polished. “If it’s just that you’re not really writing,” she said, imitating his emphasis on really, “then you should tell her the truth. It would probably make her happy, because then you could come downstairs more.”

  “The truth? It would break her heart,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’re old enough yet. I don’t suppose you’ve had your heart broken.”

  “Yes, I have.” This was a lie. But Tabitha had seen enough romances to know how to cast her eyes down and pause, breathlessly, before adding, “Once.”

  “Then I’m sorry for you,” he said, and turned back to the window. His voice had a harshness that told her she hadn’t fooled him. He was the only audience, she would later realize, that she hadn’t been able to fool.

  WITHIN A YEAR OF BEA, Marlene dies. And after her mother’s stroke, Tabitha can’t think of a single thing to say to Stanley. He holds her, tries to give comfort, but everything about him seems foreign: his smell, his pilled sweaters. He is a stranger, a man she never knew. So Tabitha walks out of her own life.

  She leaves her marriage and New York and moves to a more manageable city. One with glass-fronted buildings, and bridges that stretch over waterways. She doesn’t know anyone there, though once she runs into Lev as she’s buying groceries. “Tabby,” he says. “Is that really you?”

  He looks tired, less handsome, and he wears an expensive suit that doesn’t fit his soft body. He says that Sofia left him long ago, after she too became a successful lawyer. He says he visits the kids every Hanukkah.

  She wants to ask him questions. “Have you heard anything about my father?” Or, “Do you still miss him?” But it seems ridiculous to say those things under fluorescent lights, beside shelves of microwaveable popcorn and freeze-dried soups. And Lev is talking about how he’d seen her picture in a magazine years ago and couldn’t believe it. “I said to myself, that can’t be the same girl!”

  Neither of them suggests staying in touch, and they never see each other again. Tabitha gets a job in a bookstore, where the owner finds it amusing that she was once well known on the stage. Eventually, she too finds it amusing. So she settles, for a while, into this role behind the counter. And cultivates—perfectly—the sad, knowledgeable smile that customers seem to like.

  TABITHA STOOD IN THE ATTIC surrounded by Nathan’s books and the dim light, faced with her father’s back. She wanted to say something—apologize for her lie, or ask why he had left the table, who had broken his heart. But he stared out the turret window as though there was something out there. So she slipped down the ladder, closed the hatch, and ran to the living room. She looked out the big window, the one Marlene washed with vinegar every week. She wanted to see whatever he’d seen. But there was nothing outside. Just the usual street lamps and lawns. Houses with drawn curtains. The everyday, falling snow.

  t h e w e a t h e r

  SHE CAME HOME with my daughter after school. The neighbour, Jerry, and the guys I hire for haying had left twenty minutes ago, half an hour. I was still in the field, and I saw the two of them walk along the highway: my daughter with her slouch and backpack, and the older girl with neither.

  Edith hardly ever brought friends home, not since my wife lived here, so I stopped what I was doing—fixing a yard of fence—and went to meet them on the road. Edith’s fifteen, a tough age, so this probably got on her nerves, probably embarrassed her. Her father with a loop of wire hooked on his arm and cutters in his dirty hand. This girl, her friend, obviously came from town. From a house with plastic siding and a lawn.

  “Father,” Edith said. “This is Rae.”

  The girl was tall, built like the spindly birch we use as windbreak. She reminded me of girls I knew when I was young, and I didn’t like the arch of her back, her cut-off shorts, her weird grey eyes. I didn’t like her much at all, and I wouldn’t have asked her for dinner if I hadn’t noticed the way she breathed. Like she was sucking air along a sandpaper throat, holding it in clogged lungs. Like each inhale was an effort, like it was earned.

  The girl offered a quick smile. Gap in her teeth, but she was probably considered pretty, and she probably knew it. “Hi,” she said.

  It wasn’t warm, but the sun glinted off her hair. That’s what I remember most: the cool sun, the dropping pressure. Rain was coming, and it was giving me a headache.

  I INTRODUCED THEM. Father, I said, this is Rae. It was unfortunate, but I couldn’t have known.

  I met her on the last day of school, when the bus dropped me off near where she walked along the highway. I recognized her even though she was new to the school and two grades above me. I asked if she was lost, and she said she was lost on purpose. She said she likes to go for walks when the air is clear. She also said that her boyfriend’s an asshole and when she told him so, he’d opened his car door and left her on the side of the road. She looked angry and like she might have been crying. She asked me, You’re Edith, right?

  I told her she could come to my place, for a snack or something. I said I was certain my father wouldn’t mind. She looked irritated, like I’d ruined her plans. But then she said, Okay. Sure. Thanks.

  SHE STARTED COMING OVER nearly every day. Suddenly my daughter was sitting beside that girl in front of the TV, bowls of soggy cereal resting on their knees. Or the two of them would lie in front of the house, moving their towels around the parched grass to follow the sun. They greased themselves in oil, and the girl would wave to Jerry and the guys as they walked by. Edith started wearing her hair down and a borrowed bikini, her body too young for it. Edith, who was usually locked in her room with her books and her mother’s old tapes and an attitude. What my wife called “an innate aloofness.”

  That girl wasn’t the kind of friend I’d expected my daughter to make. She wasn’t the kind I’d hoped for.

  THAT FIRST NIGHT, she opened our screen door and strode in like she already knew her way around. This is a cool place, she said.

  When we had dinner, she bounced her knees under the table and took huge helpings of potatoes and corn. She’d seen rodeo on television, so she had questions about bull riding and calf roping. At first my father answered with one or two words and he looked shy when he spoke to her. She leaned on the table and kept her eyes on his tanned face, like this was a challenge or a game. I was sure he was a joke to her, someone she’d tell stories about later: a cowboy with greying hair and the top two buttons of his shirt undone. My poor, idiotic father.

  By dessert, he became less quiet and seemed to enjoy answering her questions. He told her about branding parties and moose hunting, and when she wanted to know how cattle aucti
ons worked, he asked me to put the kettle on for coffee. Then he told her how loud an auction was and how it smelled like someone had trucked their whole farm into town and dumped it in one building. Which a lot of guys did. He explained feedlots and weights and weaning. He told her about the spring, how busy calving was, but beautiful. He used that word: beautiful.

  I EVEN CAUGHT THAT GIRL sneaking into our house after Edith had gone to bed. She’d party with other friends—her boyfriends, as far as I could tell, changed with the weather. Then she’d get them to drop her off at our place so her parents didn’t meet the guys she was with, didn’t smell the beer on her breath. If she saw that I was still up—looking out the window, trying to find something decent on the radio—it never bothered her. She just passed me on her way to Edith’s room doing an exaggerated tiptoe, her finger to her lips, as though this was our secret. Which I guess it was, since I never called her mother, though I meant to.

  To teach a lesson, a couple of weeks ago, I woke both girls up one morning and forced them to watch the sun rise above the tall grass. Edith came out of her bedroom pissed off, exhausted.

  The girl had slept in a pair of my daughter’s old pyjamas, and the material was creased, thin as water. “Are you kidding me?” she said.