Watch Me Disappear

by Janelle Brown

  A long minute passes before Olive finally breaks the silence. “Are you seeing something?”

  Sharon looks up at Olive with a glassy expression. Her voice, when she finally speaks, is low and slurred, belonging to a different person entirely. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe there are things that are just better not to know?” she growls.

  Olive recoils. Before she can gather herself, a BMW pulls into the driveway and parks on the other side of the Subaru. There’s a young guy in a black hoodie behind the wheel, mirrored sunglasses and carefully groomed stubble. At the sound of his tires squeaking to a stop, Sharon seems to return to herself. She carefully extricates herself from the front seat and adjusts the straps of her workout top, flashing a brilliant smile at the man now climbing out of his car.

  “What did you see?” Olive persists, scrambling after her. “Look, if you’re trying to protect me, you don’t need to. I can handle it.”

  Sharon takes in Olive’s face for a beat too long. “I got nothing,” she says. “Sorry.”

  Sharon begins to walk back to her front door, trailed by the trainer with a BOSU ball in his arms. Olive watches her go in frustration, and just as Sharon is about to cross the threshold, she lurches forward and grabs the woman’s arm. “You’re lying to me. You saw something.”

  Sharon turns to face her, her face compressed into a tight knot of frustration. “I don’t know. Maybe. Honestly—I’m really sorry about your mom, but I think you should let it go. Go spend some time with your friends, kiss someone, be a normal high school kid for as long as you can. If you’re really psychic, this is only going to get harder. The grown-up world is cruel and unfair, and you don’t want to spend any more time there than you’re going to have to.”

  For a moment, Olive hates this woman and her platitudes. Doesn’t she understand that nothing is “normal,” not for Olive? That without her mom, the world is already “cruel and unfair,” and until she gets her back, she is never going to figure out how everything is supposed to work? “Just tell me this one thing,” she blurts. “My mom—she wants me to find her, right?”

  Sharon stops. A bead of sweat slips down the edge of her hairline and swerves underneath her ear. She looks at Olive for a long time, and Olive can see a familiar sympathy creep into her eyes. “Oh, honey. Of course she does,” she says softly, and then extricates herself with a little shake.

  At that moment, the trainer brushes past Olive on his way into the house, and Sharon slips in with him, tipping the door closed behind her.

  And with that, Sharon Parkins is swallowed up by Villa Valparaiso. Through the door, Olive can hear the squeak of the woman’s sneakers echoing along the Spanish tile.

  Is it a victory? Not exactly, but Olive feels like something has been achieved. My mom wants to be found. It’s a validation, at least. She jumps happily back in the Subaru and put her hands at ten and two, just where Sharon’s were. The steering wheel is still warm. Olive thinks she can feel her mother’s presence lingering there in the car before she turns the key in the ignition and prepares for the rush-hour battle back across the bay.

  —

  Dr. Albright’s office is a converted garage in the back of a Victorian painted a cheery mint green, down a path lined with wild lavender and creeping fig. Olive waits in the therapist’s anteroom underneath a series of photographs of Balinese children. She looks at the pictures, wondering how Harmony knows Dr. Albright; are they friends? Is Dr. Albright her therapist? That would be awkward.

  Olive stares at the clock on the wall, impatient for the next hour to be over. What a colossal waste of time.

  Somewhere deep in her backpack, her cellphone is ringing. She fishes it out and examines the unfamiliar number before answering it.

  The male voice on the other end sounds like it’s emerging from the spin cycle of a washing machine. “Hey, um…Olive?”

  She holds the phone gingerly. “Who is this?”

  “Yeah, this is Matt. You came to my house the other day. Asked about that woman in the photo?” Disco Biscuit, she realizes. The roar in the background resolves itself: the sound of waves and wind.

  On the other end of the line, Matt is yelling at someone, his voice muffled as if he’s pressed the phone against his shirt. “Hey! C’mere!!”

  “Right! Hi,” Olive says quickly. “What’s up?”

  Matt comes back. “Yeah, I found her. The blonde with the McTavish. She was out at Steamer Lane….” Once again the phone is muffled. She can hear him talking to someone in the background, his voice rumbling in his chest. Inside her own chest, her heart lets out a hopeful hiccup. Could it be?

  The phone abruptly changes hands, and a woman’s voice comes over the line. “Hello?”

  It doesn’t sound like her mom’s voice, not at all. Her mom’s voice was low and spiky, and this woman’s sounds more nasal. And yet she hasn’t heard her mom speak in a year; memory could be deceiving her. “Mom?” she asks, testing.

  The woman on the other end of the line sounds puzzled. “God, I hope not? What’s this about?”

  Olive’s eyes sting, hope dashed. The voice, it is definitely wrong: all drawling uptalk, a question mark in the words. Billie always talked like she knew exactly what she was talking about, no question about it. Olive clears her throat. “Sorry, I’m looking for my mom, and Matt thought you might be her.”

  “No,” the woman says. “I think I’d know if I had a kid? Good luck, though.”

  Matt comes back on the line. “Dude, sorry,” he says. “Now that I’m looking at her, yeah, she’s probably not old enough to be your mom.”

  “Are you high? I’m twenty-five.” Olive can hear the woman in the background. “I would have had to give birth when I was, like, in grammar school.”

  “Whatever. Sorry.” Olive isn’t sure if he is apologizing to her or to the blond surfer. “Well, I tried. OK, bye!”

  He hangs up. Olive looks at the cellphone in her hand with chagrin. What now? All is quiet in Dr. Albright’s office.

  She punches out a quick text to Natalie:

  Disco Biscuit called with blond surfer. She is DEF not mom.

  Her phone vibrates with Natalie’s response. 

  Maybe mom wasn’t at that beach at all. Maybe I interpreted vision wrong.

  What about the name on railing?

  ??? FIIK. Coincidence?

  Olive thinks and types again. Or she IS there but this was the wrong way 2 find her.

  There is a long pause.

  Maybe she wrote her name B4. When ur family had ur picnic there last yr.

  Olive hadn’t considered that possibility. She ponders this dispiriting idea, feeling her paltry leads wink out one by one.

  Her cellphone vibrates once more: So now what?

  Good question. Out of ideas.

  The door to the therapist’s office swings inward, revealing a woman about Olive’s mom’s age. She has wild, curling black hair and wears an off-white cardigan that hangs to her knees over loose linen pants. Olive jumps to her feet, shoving the phone deep into her backpack.

  “Olive Flanagan?” Dr. Albright says brightly, reaching out to shake Olive’s hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Harmony. Let’s go into my office. What’s on your mind?”

  My wife wasn’t exactly an easy person—I knew that from the very beginning—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t fun to be around. In fact, it was exactly the opposite; she always knew when she’d gone a bit too far and it was time to swing back in the other direction and do something thoughtful or spontaneous. And in those whirlwind moments, the high moments, I couldn’t have been happier or more in love.

  We’d get in a fight, and then next morning I’d wake up to an elaborate breakfast in bed, the final course being an unsolicited blow job. She’d be moody and selfish and irritable all week, but then on Friday she’d show up at my office with Olive in tow and whisk us away for an impromptu weekend trip to a mountain town where she’d heard we could get the world’s best apple pie. She’d b
e cold and thoughtless to me as I was leaving for work, and when I opened my laptop an hour later I’d find a sticky note taped to my screen: Don’t be mad. I love you. I never could stay mad. I always forgave her. I always loved her back.

  When I think of Billie now, I often imagine her behind the wheel of her car, taking Olive and me on some unanticipated adventure. She drove with her seat tilted back, loud music blasting over the radio, the windows rolled down as far as they would go. Living life in the minute. That was the kind of person she was at heart, and for me, that made it easy to gloss over the rest.

  But lately, I’ve also been thinking of an observation that a friend of Billie’s made to me: Billie liked to be surprised.

  For all the spontaneity that Billie liked to surround our lives with, after sixteen years together, was there really anything surprising about us anymore? Is it even possible, after all those years of marriage, to truly surprise someone? At that point, they are already intimate with everything that is you: the smell of your shoes, the way you drink your coffee, the sound you make when you sneeze. The way you are impatient with your elderly parents on the phone and the way you repeat ad nauseam the same handful of injustices that they have inflicted upon you. The quotes you recycle. The cherry-picked memories from your childhood repeated so many times that your spouse can now recite your best anecdotes on your behalf at dinner parties.

  You grow predictable, your quirks no longer interesting but expected. Like a board game that you’ve played too many times to truly enjoy, a favorite movie that you don’t feel compelled to watch all the way through anymore. You’re comforted by your spouse’s presence; yes, you still love them; but you are no longer thrilled by them, not in the way you once were. You are no longer surprised.

  Of course I didn’t surprise Billie anymore.

  Because—let’s be honest—I wasn’t particularly surprised by her anymore, either. Her unpredictability had become…predictable. Annoying, even. But that was OK. It was OK, because I’d always believed that the cornerstone of a strong marriage was a lifelong commitment to putting up with your partner’s faults—the ability to move past those things that tickled at your distaste. Even when you grew weary with your wife’s inexplicable moodiness, or her too-cold judgment, or the way she assumed that you were always there to pick up after her: You took a deep breath, smiled with forbearance, and did something generous to sweep the negative feelings away. Instead of rejecting your partner’s flaws as imperfections, you were supposed to cover them with understanding layers of nacre, build a protective pearl around them. Love wasn’t supposed to be simple; it was supposed to be something you did regardless: I love you anyway.

  Besides, wasn’t everyone flawed? I believed that divorce was for cowards who used their partner’s failings as an excuse to avoid looking too closely in the mirror.

  I always assumed that Billie felt the same way, that she was fine with things the way they were—the inevitable, unavoidable progression of marriage—but maybe she wasn’t.

  So what happens if you and your spouse are striving for two totally different marriages? One built on a belief in forbearance and another on surprise? What if the ideal that one of you thinks is keeping you together is actually something that is driving the other one away?

  What happens then?

  THE OFFICE OF LIM & PARTNERS Research Services is on the eighth floor of an aging building in a Tenderloin-adjacent neighborhood, at the far end of a hallway whose doors otherwise advertise accountants and tax advisers and cryptically titled consulting services. The building is dead empty—the sound of Jonathan’s footsteps echoing dully across the stained marble lobby, the elevator ascending directly to his floor—as if Jonathan has entered some anachronistic ghost town, far from the bustling new economy.

  Behind the Lim & Partners burnt-orange door, Jonathan finds a large square room with windows looking out toward downtown. A bank of brushed-steel filing cabinets flanks one wall and a mostly empty bookshelf lines the other. In one corner a portable water fountain burbles, not quite masking the honking horns and the jangle of streetcars eight floors below. A schoolroom clock above the fountain silently jerks away the passing seconds.

  Exactly in the center of all this sits Calvin Lim, slim and neat, his hair freshly shorn around exposed pink ears, his button-down shirt tucked snugly into pale trousers. He sits perfectly upright on a backless ergonomic stool, which closely resembles a bicycle saddle on wheels. The glass-topped desk before him is bare except for a closed laptop, a cellphone, and a perfectly aligned stack of printouts.

  Lim stands to shake Jonathan’s hand, directing him to another of the saddle stools positioned directly before his desk. “Happy to meet you,” he says, his words clipped and careful. “What can I help you with?”

  Jonathan settles himself gingerly on the stool. “It’s not about me, actually. It’s about my wife. I think she might have talked to you at some point last year,” he begins. “I found your website bookmarked on her browser. Her name was Billie Flanagan. Ring a bell?”

  Lim’s left eye twitches. “I can’t confirm or deny that. I’m sorry.”

  Jonathan expected this. “If it makes a difference, she’s dead.”

  Lim blinks. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Yes, well, thank you,” Jonathan continues. “I’m dealing with some estate issues. And I was hoping that you could tell me what she hired you for.”

  Lim folds his hands together, carefully positioning each finger an exact distance from the next, and studies them. “My company confidentiality policy is very strict. I have to maintain the privacy of my clients. Or else I won’t have any clients.”

  “She’s dead.” Jonathan repeats the words slowly. Underneath his rear, the stool rolls gently back and forth in agreement. “She’s dead, and you still can’t confirm that she came to see you?” Lim shakes his head. “Look, I understand—and appreciate!—your commitment to discretion. But it’s not like she’s going to come in here and be angry with you.”

  Lim frowns slightly. “Well, anyone can come in here and say that their spouse died, you see. Do you have a death certificate you can show me?”

  Jonathan almost laughs. “Not yet; there are some legal loopholes we’re trying to address. That’s part of why I’m here.”

  Lim nods as if this isn’t unusual in the least. “Without proof, I can’t help you. Sorry, but the policy stands. Anything else I can assist you with?”

  Jonathan spins wordlessly on his stool, thinking, and finds himself facing the filing cabinets. He scans for a drawer marked F, half inclined to make a mad dash and tear through it until he finds Billie’s file; and then he realizes that the cabinets aren’t even marked. In fact, judging by a drawer that’s slightly ajar, they are all empty. Just for show? He rotates further and finds himself staring at his own reflection in a narrow mirror adjacent to the office door, looking unshaven and rumpled in third-day khakis and an old zip-up that reads, in faded lettering, DECODE THE FUTURE! And then spins further to regard the near-empty bookshelves containing a handful of software manuals and some abstract black-and-white photographs that look suspiciously like IKEA prints.

  He spins back to face Lim. “Where’s all your surveillance equipment? Isn’t that what private investigators do, mostly? Follow around cheating husbands and wives, catch them in the act?”

  Calvin Lim smiles tightly, revealing crooked incisors. “That is an antiquated idea of the services I provide, Mr. Flanagan. My business is rather more modern. I do almost all of my work online.” He rests a hand on his laptop. “I do a lot of work with records investigation, missing persons, real estate transactions, database searching, personnel histories. I don’t spend my time”—he laughs drily—“sitting in automobiles eating doughnuts.”

  “Interesting. Then my wife didn’t hire you to, say, follow someone.” Who would she have wanted to follow? Him? The putative mystery lover?

  “Again, I cannot confirm or deny that she hired me.”

  “OK,
I get it.” Jonathan stands up, and the stool rolls silently toward the wall of bookshelves. His cellphone is ringing in his pocket, and he pulls it out: CLAREMONT. He mutes it; it’s probably Gillespie, after her tuition. “Well, thank you for your time.”

  “Not at all.” Lim stands politely. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more assistance.”

  Jonathan walks to the door and then pauses as he looks at the detective reflected in the mirror, a pucker between his eyebrows as he frowns down at his laptop. Something that Lim said lingers on the periphery of Jonathan’s consciousness, nagging at him.

  He whirls around. “You investigate missing persons.”

  “Yes,” Lim says. He closes his laptop again.

  A rabbit hole is opening up before Jonathan—Do you really want to do this?—but he opens his mouth anyway and asks. “How hard would it be to disappear?”

  Lim cocks his head. “Elaborate, please?”

  Jonathan rolls the stool back to the desk and sits down. “Let’s say I wanted to vanish off the face of the earth. No trace of my existence. Everyone thinks I’m dead. What would it take? Would it even be possible?”

  Lim stares at him, the muscles around his jaw clenching and unclenching almost imperceptibly. “Would you like to hire me to locate a missing person?”

  “What do you charge?”

  “A hundred an hour,” Lim says.

  Jonathan winces. “What if I gave you twenty-five dollars for fifteen minutes of your time? Just a quick bit of consultation?”

  Calvin Lim shrugs and glances at the clock. “Sure. We start now.”

  “So?”

  “So, it’s not terribly hard to disappear if you really want to. There are online markets—probably you’ve heard of the Darknet?—where you can buy entire identities, stolen Social Security numbers and fake passports and driver’s licenses and the like. Piece of cake to find if you know where to look, and it’s not even that expensive. Eight hundred dollars, maybe a thousand, to become a whole different person. And planning it—it’s easy to mask your trail these days if you’re careful, with prepaid phones and anonymous email accounts. Slip over the border into Mexico, and you’ve disappeared off the grid. The tricky part, though, is staying disappeared.”