Vanishing and Other Stories

by Deborah Willis

  Syl believed in destiny, and she would say things like, “Ryan and I will probably meet again when we’re, like, twenty-eight. And he won’t remember where he knows my face from, but he’ll have this sense that we met before, like maybe he knew me in a past life or something. He’ll feel like he’s finally come home.”

  I was less trusting of fate, so sometimes I’d say, “What if he’s bald when he’s twenty-eight? Or a crack addict? Or you’re already in love with someone else who’s really awesome?”

  But usually I let her fantasies stand. I understood them. Syl and I were devoted to boys who didn’t know our names, boys we’d practically invented. We wanted them to notice us and recognize our worth. And this was just part of the larger fantasy: that one day the whole world would see our worth. We dreamed—as all ordinary, despairing teenagers do—of distinction.

  THAT YEAR, IN GRADE ELEVEN, I got a boyfriend. His name was Jay, and he was nice and almost cute. He had knotty, pubescent muscles along his arms, and brown hair that he kept short. He worked part-time at Dairy Queen and he knew how to skateboard. We didn’t have much to talk about, but that was okay. All we wanted to do was make out.

  Our parents always seemed to be home, so we had to be inventive to find privacy. The gym equipment room at school was pretty good. So was the parking lot behind the Dairy Queen. Movie theatres. Empty parks. The best place was the Planetarium. We’d been there for a field trip, and had discovered its manifold advantages. It was only a bus ride away and it cost less than the five-buck admission if you were under eighteen. And there was the Sky Theatre, a dark room where images of the night sky were projected on a domed screen above us. We went there on Friday afternoons, when school got out early and the Planetarium was nearly empty. On Fridays, I chose my outfits strategically. I wore shirts with buttons, the only bra I owned, and sometimes—when feeling brave—a skirt.

  Jay and I always pretended to the man at admissions, and to each other, that we were at the Planetarium for proper educational reasons. We’d waste precious minutes wandering through the exhibit rooms, reading about dark matter and supernovas, and neither of us dared make suggestive jokes about the Little Dipper or the Big Bang.

  This was before a telecommunications company sponsored the Planetarium, so its exhibits had not yet lost their charm to technological innovation. The place smelled of cleaning products and plastics, and the walls were covered in graphs and posters and telescopic photographs. After a few visits, the informative panels became like well-loved poems. The sun and planets were formed approximately five billion years ago, from a cloud of gas and dust left by dying stars.

  My favourite part was the model of the solar system. The planets looked rickety and seemed to be made of papier mâché. One of Saturn’s rings—which I’d always imagined as a brilliant halo—had cracked. Some of Jupiter’s gassy surface had been chipped away. The solar system, in this incarnation, was small and flawed. Maybe that’s why I liked it.

  Jay and I held hands and made our pilgrimage from one planet to the next. We started at Pluto, as this was before it was demoted.

  “If you were a planet,” said Jay one afternoon, “which planet would you be?”

  This was the kind of shy conversation we made while we waited for the appropriate amount of time to elapse before we could go into the Sky Theatre.

  “I’d want to be the sun. It’s so bright and beautiful.”

  I wanted Jay to tell me that I was the sun. That I was bright and beautiful. But he replied in the sweet and patronizing way he must have thought guys were supposed to talk to their girlfriends. “The sun’s not a planet, baby. It’s a star.”

  “Yeah, I know that. Fine. Then I would be Mercury, since it’s closest to the sun.”

  “I think you’re the Earth.” He put his arms around me. “You’re familiar and comfortable.”

  I nudged him away. “What about you, then? What would you be?”

  “I’d want to be Jupiter.” Jay took my hand and led me toward the Sky Theatre, toward its darkness and mystery. “It’d be nice to have all those moons around. That way you’d never be lonely.”

  So there was that too, that held us together. A fear of being alone.

  WE THE STUDENT BODY—that reluctant community, that dysfunctional family—got used to seeing Mary Louise in her wheelchair. After a while we didn’t stare at her, though we did talk about the fact that she and Jordan had broken up. We assumed he’d dumped her because she could no longer use her legs, and he was unanimously viewed as selfish, superficial, a total dick. How else could we explain that when Mary Louise could walk, he had proudly paraded through the halls with her? And that now, she wheeled herself to her classes alone?

  But—said some of us, daring to rise to Jordan’s defence—Mary Louise was perhaps not handling her situation well. Months passed, and she did not live out the narrative we hoped she would. We had been raised on Oprah and adolescent self-esteem classes, and we expected her to prove her resilience. But she hardly smiled. She lost too much weight, maybe from stress, and her features became sharp and hard. And the worst was that she wasn’t any friendlier to us ordinary people. In fact, where she had been aloof before, she was now anti-social. Some of her friends still talked to her, but she acted like she was in exile, and spent most lunch hours alone. She sat in a corner on the third floor, doing her homework, slowly eating a sandwich, and drinking from a juice box. Perhaps this was the difficult thing for Jordan: she was simply and always sad.

  MAYBE BECAUSE THE SKY THEATRE and everywhere else that Jay and I went was semi-public, I never felt alone with him. As we kissed, I could hear Syl’s voice. It was like she was sitting next to me, dissecting the pros and cons, the shoulds and shouldn’ts, of sleeping with Jay. “Maybe you shouldn’t because you don’t even like him.”

  “Sometimes I think I do like him.”

  “Really?”

  “No. I don’t know. I can’t tell. What do you think? Do you think he’s cute?”

  “I think you should be able to tell. I think that every time you see him, it should feel like you’ve died and gone to some way better place.”

  “I never feel like I’m dead.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  I wondered, constantly, what other people saw when they saw us together. And what it said about me if I made out with a boy who was not particularly smart or handsome. I wondered, too, what it said about me if I liked it. And, of course, I wondered how I compared to the other girls that Jay had made out with, or had thought about making out with. I didn’t know any techniques, so I asked Syl for practical advice. But she’d never been practical about anything, and had very little. So I fumbled with him and wished that I were as competent in those matters as Mary Louise must have been. I imagined that her hand jobs were legendary among the boys, mythic in their reputation.

  As these kinds of thoughts whirled around in my brain, Jay and I pressed our lips together, opened our mouths, touched tongues, sometimes accidentally banged teeth. We kissed until our lips became swollen and raw. We kissed until we physically couldn’t kiss anymore. Then we straightened our clothes, breathed, leaned back in our seats, and looked at the stars. We held hands, our palms sweating against each other, as Andromeda sparkled or asteroids flew toward us. The Sky Theatre had a different show each week, but each was accompanied by a voice-over done by the same man. He had an accent that I couldn’t place but that I adored. The pattern of our days occurs because we live on a constantly spinning Earth. Because of this motion, day turns into night, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and summer turns into fall.

  In my mind, the man who owned this gruff but gentle voice was named something foreign, like Pavel or Armand. I settled on Armand, and once I’d named him, I fell in love with him. I imagined that he was dashing and elegant and better-looking than Jay. I imagined that he was romantic and confident. I watched the complex movement of the heavens—there was a swirling nebula, there Orion’s belt—and everything Armand
said seemed to be intended only for me.

  From our earthbound view, stars appear to make a connected shape. But in fact the stars are not so connected, except in mythology and human imagination.

  Once, I forgot myself and said, “I love his voice. I would marry someone who talks like that.”

  “That guy?” said Jay, with his Western Canadian accent—a form of speech so neutral that telemarketers in Delhi are encouraged to adopt it. “I think he sounds like an asshole.”

  THE PLANET CONTINUED TO SPIN on its axis, and fall turned into winter. By then I had been to the Planetarium so many times that two things had happened. One: I’d decided that I might as well have sex with Jay. And two: I was quite knowledgeable when it came to astronomy. For instance, I knew that the Earth was tilted at a 23.5-degree angle, and it was this happy accident that allowed us to experience seasons.

  Another happy accident was that one of the girls on my field-hockey team threw a party when her parents were out of town, and I was invited. I’m not sure what transpired in the universe for this to come about, but someone, somewhere, had decided that I was cool. The party was held in a seven-bedroom house that was just outside the city limits. Syl and I had never even thought of riding our bikes that far, so I’d never seen houses so big. The roads weren’t plowed and there were no street lights. It had taken me days to convince my parents that the winter roads were safe and that the party wouldn’t be too wild. I got a ride with a girl on my team, and when I arrived I had to sneak into one of the bedrooms to call and assure my parents that I was okay.

  Neither Syl nor Jay had been invited, so I was left to mingle with people who frightened me. I was an explorer among aliens, and I wished I had a notebook to record their habits and report back to Syl. Ryan Watkins and Dan Houston played video games and drank a heroic amount of beer. The girls—people like Nicole McPhee and Julia Vincent—drank a purple mixture that they’d made in a bucket and scooped out with their cups. Nicole actually talked to me. “Do you want some? It tastes like Kool-Aid, but it’ll get you totally hammered.”

  “Sure.” I watched her dip a Styrofoam cup as well as her entire hand into the bucket. “Thanks.”

  “Do you play field hockey?”

  It was finally happening. I was finally being recognized. “Yeah.” I nodded my head vigorously. “I am. I mean, I do.”

  “That’s so great.” Nicole took my hand and laced her fingers through mine, the way Jay sometimes did. “You know those skirts you guys wear? Could I borrow yours sometime?”

  “I guess. I don’t know. I sort of need it for practice.”

  “I think it would look cute with one of my sweaters.”

  After about an hour, most people were so drunk that they seemed to be handicapped. Ryan Watkins was unable to stand up from the couch. He kept calling people over to help him, and any girl who tried ended up on his lap.

  Two other girls—Ashley and Bronwyn—sat beside him on the couch and made out with each other. Ryan and some of the other guys cheered them on, and every few minutes the girls stopped kissing and shrieked, “We’re not lesbians! We’re not!” I doubt anyone thought they were. They just wanted attention, and weren’t pretty or interesting enough to get it in any other manner. They kissed in a way that I’d never seen before, with their tongues outside of their mouths. Watching it made me sad, and for the first time, I missed Jay. I was at a party with Ryan Watkins and other demigods, and yet I missed my unremarkable boyfriend and his ordinary way of kissing.

  IT WASN’T A BIG PARTY—I counted only twenty-four people—which I suppose meant that each person who’d been invited had been carefully chosen. But still, through some unlucky accident or cruel purposefulness, Jordan and Mary Louise were both present. They didn’t speak to each other all night. Jordan mostly hung out with other guys, and didn’t drink much. He wore jeans and a blue shirt that made his eyes sparkle. He reminded me of a doll with rhinestones glued to its face. Mary Louise spent most of her time on the periphery of the room. She drank beer, not the purple stuff.

  I stuck to the Kool-Aid. I drank as much of it as I could, but it didn’t help. Back then, alcohol didn’t affect me until it was too late to do any good. I had first noticed this when Syl and I were on the phone one night and she said, “We should get drunk.”

  “Okay. When?”

  “Right now. Over the phone.”

  “My parents are home, you freak. They’re upstairs watching TV.”

  “My parents are home too. That’s why it’ll be funny.”

  So Syl and I each grabbed what we could find in our parents’ cupboards and—counting to three into the phone—shot back whiskey and vodka respectively. We went shot for shot for about half an hour, about as long as the news program my mom and dad were watching. Syl’s voice started slurring through the phone line and she dropped the receiver twice, but I didn’t feel anything.

  After we hung up, I topped the vodka bottle up with water, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and took the dog out for a walk. It wasn’t until I went to bed that I became drunk. Then the room and everything in it—my desk and books and poster of Brad Pitt with long hair—spun above my head. When I closed my eyes, the whole universe seemed to swirl around me. I crawled from my room to the bathroom and threw up quietly, so my parents wouldn’t hear.

  A similar thing happened at that party. No matter how much I drank of that purple shit-mix, I didn’t feel anything. I knew I’d feel it later—probably once I got home and saw that my parents had waited up for me. But right then I was as sober as a stone. I was so sober that I even came up with a theory. I figured it was my Superego, which was more muscled than vodka could ever be. It had such a tight grip on me that I couldn’t get drunk. In fact, alcohol seemed to increase my inhibitions.

  And that’s probably why I ended up outside and alone. It was December and it was cold, but I put on my coat and went out onto the porch. I don’t think anyone noticed that I was gone. I could hear music coming from inside—some band that everyone was supposed to like but that I always got confused with about three other bands. People’s conversations sounded distant and sorrowful.

  The house was far enough from the city that I could see the stars almost as clearly as in the Sky Theatre. I tried to pick out some of the constellations that I’d learned about, but in real life the night looked jumbled and chaotic. All I could recognize was Venus, the brightest thing up there. At the Planetarium, the model of Venus was accompanied by a panel that called it Earth’s sister, and said that the planet might once have been covered in salty oceans. It was the most hopeful panel of all: Someday, Venus might again be hospitable to life. Hundreds of millions of years from now, it may become Earth’s true twin. I watched it shine as bright as Jordan Burke’s eyes. I wished I had my bike so I could ride home.

  Then I did what I always did—what I still sometimes do—when I felt lonely: I fantasized about Armand. I imagined him showing up at this party on a motorcycle and declaring his love for me in front of everybody. Actually, I didn’t care what he said, as long as he said it in that beautiful voice. He could lecture about black holes for all I cared. Imagine a place where time stands still. Where the universal order breaks down. Where the unimaginable becomes reality.

  I was so deep in thoughts of Armand—I pictured him with a craggy, dark face and a beat-up leather jacket—that I almost didn’t notice when Mary Louise opened the door. She didn’t notice me, and I watched as she tried to hold the door, keep her bottle of Molson from spilling, and manoeuvre herself outside. When I moved to help, she was startled by me. “It’s okay,” she said. “I got it.”

  I saw that she’d taken one of the blankets that had been thrown over the leather couch and draped it over her shoulders. She adjusted it to cover herself, and took a sip of beer. Without looking at me, she said, “It smells bad in there.”

  “It does? I didn’t notice.”

  “I thought that’s why you were out here too.”

  “I’m out here because I can�
�t get drunk. It’s this problem I have. There’s something wrong with my body.”

  “It’s probably your liver.” Her eyes looked glazed over, so I could tell she didn’t have the same trouble I did. “You’re Christin, right?”

  “Caitlin.”

  Mary Louise tipped the last of her beer into her mouth, then put the empty bottle on the porch’s wooden rail. I could hear the snow crunch under her wheels as she rolled forward. Then she stopped moving and we were both quiet. We looked up at the Milky Way, that shimmering backbone of the night.

  “There’s supposed to be a meteor shower in Gemini this time of year,” I said.

  “What do you mean? Like falling stars?” Mary Louise shrugged, the gesture so subtle that it was hardly perceptible under the blanket. Since she’d lost movement in her legs, it seemed the rest of her body had become less expressive too. “I’ve never seen one. I have bad luck with that kind of thing.”

  If I had been an astrologer, I could have told Mary Louise her future. I could have cheered her up. I could have told her that in a few months she would join a wheelchair-basketball team and she would start smiling again. And that a couple of years after graduation she’d marry Jordan, and eventually she’d become a successful radio broadcaster. I could have told her that years from now, long after she’d forgotten meeting me at this party, her voice would wake me up in the mornings.

  But I couldn’t predict the future, so I said, “If you were a planet, which planet would you be?”

  “What? Which planet?”

  “Yeah, you know, like, which one suits your personality? I can see you as Venus.”

  “No. Not Venus. I’d be Pluto.” She looked at me. “Caitlin, what do people say about me?”

  “About you? Nothing. I don’t know.” I was a terrible liar. I shrugged dramatically. “I’m only in grade eleven.”