Vanishing and Other Stories

by Deborah Willis

  Crystal leans against the window, her forehead pressed to the glass. Your mother’s smile fades. And right now you are convinced that you’re smarter than your whole family—smarter than all of them combined. Except, of course, for Daniel, who is never asked to get coffee.

  Your mother picks up the button and threads the needle. “And go tell Daniel he needs to be fitted for his tuxedo.” It is as though she has read your mind. “Tell him he has no choice.”

  FOUR YEARS LATER, Crystal and Daniel have moved out, and the house seems even bigger than before. No one ever sits in the “family room,” and two of the bathrooms are never used.

  As roommates, you and your mother suit each other. She wakes you in time for your statistics classes at the university. And when she misplaces her reading glasses, you find them easily. You don’t hate her taste in music, and sometimes you even sing along to My Fair Lady and West Side Story. And your mother never gets in the way of your routine: nearly every night, you have drinks with men who cheerfully ignore your age. Sometimes you tell them your secret—you call it your “first time”—and they enjoy that kind of story. “You’re a bad girl, aren’t you?” they say, and you like this version of events. You were bad. You were in control.

  Then, when the man of the night falls into a spent sleep, you crawl from his bed, find your crumpled underwear, tiptoe out the door. You never spend the night, never leave your number. You walk home alone, no matter how cold the city wind. And when you reach your dark, Gothic house, you crawl into bed, lift the plastic receiver of your phone, and dial Daniel. He is always awake.

  “What are you doing?” you whisper sleepily when he picks up.

  Since he left home, your brother has been a serial mover. He has a need to be portable, and owns only one, duct-taped suitcase. He currently lives in a New York high-rise, with a man who cooks excessive breakfasts: hash browns, stacks of buttery pancakes, tall chilled glasses of orange juice. You visited once, picked at the food, and felt your stomach lurch with a fear of heights as you stood on their balcony.

  “Reading,” says Daniel through the phone line.

  “I met a man who writes kids’ books today. He bought me a Caesar.”

  “Maybe you should marry him.”

  You smile, and can tell from his voice that Daniel smiles too. “Maybe you should.”

  “I’m going to Boston for a while.” Daniel coughs gently. “Without Gareth. I’ll call when I get a phone.”

  A list of Daniel’s past area codes and home numbers is trapped in your mind for life. “When are you coming home?” You hold your breath, wait for the usual answer.

  “I don’t know, Cassy. Soon.”

  YOU HAPPILY LEAVE your mother’s high-windowed bedroom to find your brother, though it is not a simple operation. The house is so large—your mother calls it stately—that when you count your steps under your breath from one room to another, you often lose count. From your mother’s bedroom on the third floor to the back door on the first, it is approximately seventy steps, twenty-three down a winding, white-banistered staircase.

  On your fingers, you count twenty-eight steps through the black-and-white-tiled kitchen with the chrome fridge, the marble countertops, the spice rack. Caterers arrange crystal bowls of caviar, stack wineglasses, garnish potatoes, chop onions. Rebecca, who has dark hair that peaks low on her forehead, stands at the stove. She is making chicken soup, because she has no patience for fancy, catered food. The room is crowded, hissing, and hot. It smells of bread dough and cut dill. One counter is piled with puffed and braided challah. You pause to count: thirty-two loaves.

  It is sixteen more steps to French doors that open onto a professionally tended garden. Hired workers are laying a heavy, tiled dance floor on the close-clipped grass, and installing a tent to cover it. Tables and chairs are in piles. You don’t bother with shoes, and it is ten long strides through this garden, the grass sharp between your toes. The cool air snaps at your arms, but you hold your shoulders back for the benefit of the tent men. They are older, unshaved, and you feel sweat on your neck and behind your knees. You wear small white shorts and your gym shirt from two years ago—they must notice. Beyond the gate is a slope that tumbles down to the ravine and the overgrown forest your mother calls Sheol as a joke. Your brother will be there.

  It is almost thirty steps, weaving between bare birch and pine, until you see him. The winter’s snow melted only weeks ago, and the mud is cold and wet on the bottoms of your feet. You step over fallen logs, skip over stones and acorns that could slice your soles, and fallen leaves that are slick from last month’s snow. The ravine smells the way ice tastes on your tongue, a sweet chill of melting winter.

  Daniel kneels beside the creek that skids near the unused rail track. He is focused on something, his back curved, shoulders hunched. Daniel is sixteen, three years older than you and seven years younger than your sister—a lack of symmetry that annoys you. Crystal was always your babysitter, and Daniel the only friend you ever had. Your first memory—hardly that, just a blurred image nestled deep in your brain—is of watching your brother leap from his bed, flapping his arms and trying to fly.

  Now, he wears his school uniform, the knees of his polyester pants pressed into the mud and his white, collared shirt untucked. Unlike other boys his age, he hasn’t grown muscles, and his shoulder blades jut like wings from his back. You take three quiet breaths and walk up to him on your toes. You stretch out your finger to the bone of his neck, a marble under his skin, and watch his breath, its slow, visible rhythm. You kneel beside him and your knees sink into mulch.

  “What are you doing?” You press your cheek against his shoulder, and watch as he plucks—meticulously—the feathers from a bird.

  He holds the bird’s slack body in both hands. “I found her against the big oak. Already dead.”

  “A warbler?”

  “A vireo.”

  “Vireo.” You repeat the word and observe the remaining feathers, the bird’s yellow sides and white throat, the slight hook of her beak. Her legs—stiff and slim as twigs—curl in on themselves.

  “I can’t tell how she died,” he says. The bird’s empty black eyes stare open and her body fills his palm. “Maybe she froze to death, but it hasn’t been that cold.”

  You pull the bird’s wing open to touch the soft feathers underneath.

  “It could be some sort of disease.” Your brother seems to know most things. He runs one finger down the bird’s bare skin, which looks like a pincushion where the feathers have been plucked. He lifts your hand and guides you to do the same. The body is cold, pitted, and reminds you of your own goosebumps.

  “Maybe we should bury her.” This seems appropriate to you. “Have some sort of ceremony.”

  Daniel lifts the bird to his face, as though he means to kiss her. If you weren’t there, would he have done it? If he had asked you to, you might have done it.

  You stare at the blank eyes of the vireo and, because you can hardly feel your toes, say, “Our mother wants you inside.”

  “Maybe I should bring her to the garage, for further inspection. Maybe I can diagnose her.”

  “She’s suddenly become religious.”

  “Who?”

  “Our mother.”

  Daniel laughs his rain-on-leaves laugh, puts his arm around you. “Do you need protection in there, Cassy?”

  You straighten your shoulders. “No.”

  Daniel smoothes the plucked feathers with his palm then tucks them into his pocket. He walks to a fallen pine and places the bird under its grey, crumbling needles, then washes his hands in the creek. When he reaches to help you up, your fingers are stiff with chill.

  “You know, Cassy,” he says, “you wouldn’t be so cold if you wore more clothes.”

  EIGHT YEARS LATER, your mother begins to lose things. She walks through the house holding her head with both hands, as though it might lift away from her body. “Where’s my toothbrush? Where did I put my toothbrush?”

  You
look up from your studies, which you do in the living room, on a couch that Rebecca keeps covered with a sheet. “Did you check all the drawers, Mom?”

  Later, when you get up to pour yourself some juice, you find your mother’s toothbrush. It’s in the freezer, its bristles like tiny, delicate icicles.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING, you slip through the hallway to your brother’s room. Crystal stumbled out of the house hours ago for a bachelorette party, wearing hoop earrings and a silky sweater that fell like water from her shoulders. You count to ten outside your brother’s room, then turn the doorknob with both hands.

  Daniel lies in bed and reads from A Field Guide to Western Birds. The glow from his bedside lamp shows his oak desk and the detailed drawings of birds he bends over for days. A desk drawer lies ajar, as though it has burst open, too full of the feathers he collects. Sometimes, when he opens the window, they float through the room, dancing in the chilled air.

  You slide between the sheets and under the wool blankets. Daniel lets you lie over his arm, your cheek on his chest.

  “My room is cold. What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to memorize the warblers.” Your brother’s book is open to a cluster of brown and blue birds, arrows pointing to the significant marks on their bodies: throat feathers, striped backs and crowns, white bellies, and slight lines over the eyes. “There are so many.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever see Crystal again? Do you think she’ll visit?”

  “She’ll be too busy being a wife.” Your brother shrugs, and you feel it in your own body. “But she’ll remember us at family holidays. Family tragedies.”

  The idea strikes your mind like a gust of wind: future celebrations, future sadnesses. You haven’t yet begun to imagine further years or separate lives. “Do you think she’s in love?”

  “She probably believes in love.” It is in the darkness of this room that Daniel speaks most. He seems to save his voice, its jumpy rhythm, for your visits. And it is here, feeling the cadence of it against your cheek, that you feel calm and warm.

  “What was the bird we saw today?”

  “Flip to 228.” Daniel holds the book’s spine in his left hand and you thumb through it with your right. The thick pages are bent and have bled from rain. You run your eyes over the shiny pictures in the faint lamplight, and your brother’s wrist and hand arc shadows over the print. You eliminate the white-eyed and black-capped birds right away, but recognize the yellow feathers of Bell’s Vireo.

  “No, think back, Cassy. It had a grey cap.” Daniel points to the delicate drawing of the Solitary Vireo, and the movement of his arm pulls you toward his neck. He smells as bracing as outside. In the picture, the bird is perched on a branch, ready to hop into the air. The earliest spring vireo.

  “‘Blue-grey head, olive back, and snow-white throat,’” your brother reads.

  You slow your breathing to match his, your eyelids heavy. “‘Similar to Red-Eyed Vireo’s song. But more deliberate. Higher, sweeter.’”

  “Are you going to leave, Daniel?” The question slips from you quietly, and it’s hard to say if you dream the mouthing of it. “Are you going to get married?”

  Daniel doesn’t answer, and his breath lifts and drops you, lifts and drops you to sleep.

  TWELVE YEARS LATER, your mother’s mind begins to slip so much that it requires all her charm and your help to keep it a secret. When a guest arrives—the family lawyer, maybe—she holds out her hand. “You look so handsome I don’t recognize you. What’s your name again?”

  The lawyer only laughs, so you jump in with, “Maybe Mr. Meier wants some coffee, Mom. He must have had a long day at his law office.”

  “Of course.” Your mother takes his arm. “Get Mommy and the handsome Mr. Meier some coffee.”

  Crystal and Evan are too busy raising kids to visit. And Daniel hasn’t been home in years. So Rebecca ensures that your mother eats three meals each day. And every night, you write a note.

  Mom, today is Thursday.

  —call Mary Pettleson re: garden party

  —hydro bill is due

  —also: anniversary of Dad’s death in two weeks. Buy Yahrzeit candle?

  She reads these notes the next morning, while you sleep off the drinks you had and the man you met, trying to forget them.

  YOU HARDLY LISTEN during the evening’s wedding ceremony, but watch the rabbi’s wide, bearded mouth open and shut as he sings in a language you hardly know; in Hebrew school you focused only on counting the times your teacher stuttered. Daniel reads Leviticus throughout the ceremony, and you count the candles under your breath until your mother smacks your leg with the back of her hand. The sound cracks through the stone synagogue. Your sister stands straight-backed and plump beside her fiancé. He recently converted but still doesn’t seem at ease in this place.

  After the glass is stepped on and smashed, your sister and mother hold each other and cry while the rest of your family—all 262 of them—eat bagels spread with cream cheese and cedar-smoked lox. This is the appetizer, and you all climb into black cars and are driven to your house. Who knows where these cars came from—this whole business is disorienting. You swear never to marry.

  Your backyard has been transformed. Candle flame reflects off the dance floor, and a band with a permed singer plays as guests arrive. Tables are set with heavy cutlery and tall-stemmed glasses, and the caterers have folded the napkins into shapes that look intricate and vaguely threatening. Your mother herds you through crowds of touchy-feely relatives to your family’s table.

  When everyone is seated, the rabbi bows his head and recites the blessing, then slices a loaf of challah into cubes. Everybody under the open-sided tent eats bread and gefilte fish, and you watch a sea of chewing faces. Evan and your mother sit on either side of you, and Daniel is three seats away, beside someone else. Your mother says his name is Stephen.

  “Who is he?” You already drank a glass of wine when your mother wasn’t looking. “I didn’t see that guy at the ceremony. Did we even invite him?”

  The stranger wears a dress shirt, no jacket, and has three safety pins slipped through his earlobes. His hair falls into his eyes, and a blue tattoo swirls around his wrist like a heavy bracelet.

  “I told you, his name is Stephen.”

  “How is that spelled? Six or seven letters?” As far as you knew, your brother didn’t have friends at that private school of rowers and debate captains. Not friends he would invite to sit at the head table.

  “I believe it’s seven, with a ph,” your mother whispers. “He’s a musician.”

  “Of course he is.”

  “Now hush up.” Your mother’s gloved fingers pinch your leg. “Drop your head, hands in your lap.”

  When the prayer is over, the caterers—so many of them, and they seem to multiply—bring out plates the size of platters for each guest, though all the food is in miniature: baby potatoes, asparagus tops drizzled with white wine, and a Cornish hen.

  “Hello, Cassandra.” Your sister’s now-husband sits beside you, looking young and confident in his tuxedo. He is blond, with a pink tone to his skin. The last time you saw him was at a family dinner, much smaller than this one. When you left the table early, he followed you to the basement. The two of you watched reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show without speaking.

  He glances at your shaved legs and whispers, “You look nice.”

  You wear a suit your mother chose. It is muted green, with a jacket, knee-length skirt, and tiny black belt. But you tore out the shoulder pads and hiked the skirt higher when your mother wasn’t looking. You spread your napkin over your lap. “So,” you begin, though you are bad at conversation. “We’re related now.”

  “You say that without enthusiasm.” Evan has the smooth voice of a business executive, which he will eventually become. “I saw you yesterday leaving the yard.” He speaks the way girls at school talk to you, as though they are laughing in the backs of their throats. “What is it you do at that ravine
?”

  You don’t tell him that you pick up fallen feathers for Daniel, or that you count the branches of trees. You blush, and hate yourself for it.

  Evan smiles, showing the dimple on his right cheek. “It’s nice to talk with you, Cassandra.”

  “Nobody calls me that.”

  Then the prayer is over and Crystal leans across Evan, pokes food off his plate, and laughs at you. “Don’t drink all the wine, Cassy.”

  Your mother whispers to the rabbi, her hand resting on his sleeve, then bursts into laughter at one of her own jokes. She stabs a fork into her hen, managing to make even this look elegant.

  And down the table, muffled by the din of cutlery, small talk, and the music of the band, Daniel tilts toward Stephen. His slim fingers rest on his friend’s inked wrist. Daniel smiles. Daniel laughs. Their foreheads touch.

  “You don’t like to eat, Cassandra?” Evan elbows you, and you turn to his smile, his cologne. This time, you don’t blush. You meet his eyes.

  SIXTEEN YEARS LATER, you have managed the unthinkable: you have slept with so many men that you’ve lost count.

  You decide to change your life. You start coming home early, right after work and before dinner. Even at this hour, the curtains are drawn and inside the house is dim. You hear Rebecca in the kitchen, the slice of knife on cutting board. You know the house’s layout of rooms, angles of walls, and skirted furniture well enough to stride to the kitchen without switching on a lamp. Rebecca cuts potatoes, a pot of split pea soup on the stove.

  “Is she here?” you ask, as though your mother had parties to attend or lovers to entertain.