Watch Me Disappear

by Janelle Brown

  Marcus sits at a table directly under the TV, his bulk precariously balanced on a stool, with an empty pint glass in front of him. He has half-moons of exhaustion under his eyes; a nascent beard creeps across his chin and cheeks. He’s determinedly working his way through a bowl of french fries.

  “Sit,” Marcus says as Jonathan approaches, and points at an empty stool.

  Jonathan sits, and Marcus immediately slides a check across the table. “Ten grand. Pay me back when you can, but don’t stress about it, OK? There’s no rush.”

  “Honestly, I can’t thank you enough,” Jonathan says thickly, as he slips the check into his pocket. He notices Billie’s laptop sitting on the table next to Marcus, and this cuts through his buzz, momentarily sobering him up. “Wait—you cracked the password?”

  Marcus nods, picks another fry out of the bowl. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”

  A waitress veers over to their table, dropping two more beers in front of them. She smiles brightly at Jonathan and then spins around to the tables behind them. He waits until she’s out of earshot before he responds. “A lot,” he admits. “Where do you want me to start?”

  Marcus points to the laptop. “How about with this.”

  Jonathan takes a sip of his beer, slowly licks the foam off his lips. He can’t see the point in being coy anymore. “What if I told you I thought that Billie might still be alive,” he says.

  Marcus absorbs this with surprising aplomb, gazing thoughtfully into the depths of his drink. Jonathan waits for the inevitable expression of concern—You’re crazy, man; you’re imagining things. But after a second, Marcus shakes his head, slumping in his stool as if all that weight is too much to keep upright. “Shit,” he says softly. “You think she took off. Faked her own death.”

  “Yes,” says Jonathan.

  “You have proof that she did that?”

  “Nothing conclusive. Missing money. A possible sighting. A lot of lies. She cheated on me, at least once that I know of. She was definitely sneaking around behind my back that last year of her life. And it turns out she had a criminal past that she completely failed to mention to me.”

  Marcus exhales a long puff of beer-scented breath. “That’s messed up.”

  Jonathan’s drink is somehow already gone. “You don’t seem surprised,” he observes. “Which makes me think you found something on the computer that confirms my suspicions.”

  Marcus slides the computer closer. He boots it up, presses a few keys, and then spins it around so it’s facing Jonathan. “Maybe, depending on how you want to parse this.”

  The television overhead explodes with sound as the bartender turns the volume on. The low happy-hour clamor in the room turns into a dull roar of protest. Startled, Jonathan looks up and sees the entire bar staring at him; and then he realizes that they are riveted by the activity on the TV just over Jonathan’s shoulder. Someone has made a goal.

  Jonathan turns back to the laptop, studying the document on the screen before him. It’s a letter.

  Dear Ryan—

  I’ve waited a long time to write you this letter: too long, I know. I’m so sorry I didn’t want to see you before, but you have to understand that I just wasn’t ready yet. Not a day has gone by when I didn’t wonder if I’d made a mistake, though. Walking away from you was the hardest decision I’ve ever made.

  I hope you haven’t been angry at me. I hope you can see that I did what I did for you, too. My life was complicated, and I knew that you’d be better off without me.

  Have you been?

  I think about you all the time. I wonder where you might be, who you’re with, what you’re thinking and doing and feeling. I close my eyes and I can see your face looking back at me. Do you think about me, too?

  I want another chance, but it’s up to you to decide. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.

  I’ve always loved you.

  Sybilla

  The soccer-fan screams on the TV above him reach a fevered pitch, a crowd of thousands with their hearts torn from their chests, their hopes dashed on blood-splattered Astroturf. Something inside Jonathan turns to stone. Of course. She left me for someone else, he thinks. Occam’s razor, the simplest explanation. I knew it from the very start.

  He realizes that Marcus is asking him a question. He looks up, still disoriented, and Marcus repeats himself: “So. Who’s this Ryan guy?”

  Jonathan looks back at the letter. “Hell if I know,” he says.

  —

  His equilibrium is precarious. He has a hard time getting the key in the hole of his front door, what with the way his body keeps tipping sideways. The house is dark; Olive is already asleep. His grasp on time grew tenuous around when Marcus ordered a third round of tequila shots. But he looks at his phone and it’s only eleven.

  Jonathan bumps into the house, his throat raw from the tequila, and his feet get tangled in Olive’s hoodie, abandoned on the floor of the entry. He stumbles; rights himself. The walls of his house slip underneath his hands as he makes his way to the kitchen. Leftover pizza from Olive’s dinner, congealing in a box on the counter. He devours a slice, then forages in the fridge, finds some leftover lasagna that Harmony brought over, eats that cold straight from the Tupperware.

  Harmony. He thinks of texting her. A booty call. When was the last time he did that? He remembers those days back in college: the buzzy late-night fumblings, a scented candle fugging the air by the bed, mascara smears on the pillows in the morning. Hair of the dog with a michelada. That sense of life as an endless cornucopia, yours for the taking. All the time in the world.

  He pulls out his phone and starts to compose a text with slippery fingers before thinking better of it. You can’t act like a teenager, he thinks, putting the phone away again. You have a teenager. The thought sticks to him; is sticky; so he scrawls it on a sticky note that he finds on the counter and sticks it to the front of his shirt.

  He tiptoes up the stairs and stands outside Olive’s darkened room. “Olive,” he whispers in a raspy voice, tapping softly at the door with his naked ring finger. There’s no response. He remembers how his wife used to just let herself into Olive’s room as if it belonged to her; crawl right into bed with her without asking permission. Why is he always so careful?

  He pushes the door open a crack and peers in. Olive is sprawled facedown on her bed, one hand dangling off the side, the sheets wadded around her feet. He tiptoes closer, swearing when he trips over the books lying in a jumble on the floor. She doesn’t wake up. The room smells sweet and gamey, the way an unwashed baby smells behind the ears. He kneels on the floor next to her bed.

  Looking at his supine daughter, the limp looseness of her limbs, the sugary innocence of her sleeping face, he is filled with a sharp, hot fury at his wife. How could an affair with Some Guy Named Ryan possibly be more important than this? He thinks of his daughter’s helpless yearning for her mother, the echoes of grief muddling Olive’s head. A bitter thought: Billie doesn’t deserve our daughter’s devotion.

  Catsby-the-cat slips around the open bedroom door and leaps up onto the bed next to Olive, curling herself into the pillow behind Olive’s hair. The cat gazes steadily at Jonathan, marking her territory in a way that reminds him unpleasantly of his wife.

  Fuck this, he thinks, standing up. I’m done looking for Billie. Let her be dead if she wants to be dead.

  He pulls the sheets up over Olive before he leaves the room.

  —

  “…hopefully Your Honor has had the opportunity to review the documents that we filed last month. To review, these include affidavits from both police detectives and search-and-rescue experts, interviews with relatives and friends conducted over the last year, and phone and computer records that we believe conclusively demonstrate that Sybilla Flanagan died while hiking in Desolation Wilderness on November seventh of last year. Additionally, we filed public notice about our petition for death in absentia in several national newspapers, per Code 12406(b)(1), and have had
no response. Mr. Flanagan and his daughter have already experienced undue distress due to the nature of Mrs. Flanagan’s death, and we hope that you will expedite the death certificate process so that they are not forced to wait six additional years before they can properly move on with their lives.”

  Jonathan sits next to Jean, his attorney, his head throbbing, his throat parched. He’s been on a bender since Sunday night, and even with a handful of aspirin in his system he can still feel last night’s bourbon poisoning his bloodstream. His eyeballs feel like they’ve been seared with a blowtorch. He somehow managed to shower and shave, he’s wearing his most expensive suit, and yet he feels like a fraud: as if the mess that he is inside has somehow manifested itself in his appearance.

  The courtroom is cold, modern, and noisy: His case is just one number on a busy docket today. Behind Jonathan, strangers shift noisily in their seats, waiting their turn, blatantly ignoring the NO FOOD OR CHEWING ALLOWED IN THE COURTROOM and NO READING WHILE COURT IS IN SESSION signs. People constantly come and go, their movements relayed to the room at large by a faulty hinge on the courtroom door. Squeeeeeak SLAM. The sound is putting Jonathan on edge.

  The judge is an older woman, hair slicked back in a bun, drugstore bifocals perched on the end of her nose. She waits for Jean to finish speaking and then begins shuffling through the papers on her podium. “Thank you, counselor. I have had a chance to review Mr. Flanagan’s case and am satisfied with the documentation you’ve provided.” She turns over a page in front of her, scanning it, and then looks back up at Jonathan. “Mr. Flanagan, you have had no contact with your wife since November seventh of last year?”

  He jerks out of his chair before his lawyer has the opportunity to nudge him upright. “No, Your Honor,” he says, grateful for a question he can easily answer. Maybe this will be easier than I thought.

  The judge peers over her glasses at him. “And you have no reason to believe that she might still be alive.”

  Oh. His mouth tastes like glue; the alcohol from the night before is making its presence known in his esophagus. He swallows, opens his mouth to speak, and his parched tongue ties itself up, making him cough painfully. His burning eyes grow watery.

  Next to him, Jean magically produces a bottled water from her tote bag. She hands it to him, and then—to his surprise—puts her palm sympathetically on his back. She thinks I’m crying with grief, he realizes with some chagrin. He sips slowly, peering over the lip of the water bottle at the judge, and sees on her face the same lenient expression, her eyebrows tugging together in a dutiful show of empathy. I’m the bereaved widower. That’s all they expect to see here, he understands.

  “I’m sure this isn’t easy for you,” the judge says. “Take your time.”

  He wipes his eyes dry. He thinks of all the reasons he does have to believe that Billie is alive. Of his wife hiking out of Desolation Wilderness and straight into Some Guy Named Ryan’s arms. And then he thinks of Olive. Of the things she stands to lose if this insurance settlement doesn’t come through. Of the pain she’s going to feel if she learns that her mom left her because she loved someone more.

  Squeeeeeak SLAM.

  “No,” he lies. “There’s no possibility that my wife is still alive.”

  Behind him, he hears a familiar mew of distress. He turns quickly and sees Olive sitting three rows back, in her school uniform with her backpack in her lap. Cutting class again; she must have bailed on third and fourth periods. She’s staring straight at him. Oh hell, he thinks. Their eyes meet and she shakes her head. She mouths something at him, and he’s pretty sure he knows what she’s saying: How could you? She looks like she might cry, probably the most honest emotion in the room right now.

  But the judge is talking again, and he’s forced to turn back to her. “Thank you, Mr. Flanagan, you may be seated,” she says. She presses the bifocals up her nose with the side of a knuckle. “OK. I am satisfied with the evidence provided. This court rules in favor of a judgment of death in the case of Sybilla Flanagan. We will be issuing a death certificate immediately so that your family can begin probate proceedings.”

  And there it is. He waits for some symbolic act of finality—a gavel pounding, the onlookers in their seats jumping respectfully to their feet—but the judge simply taps the pile of documents into a stack and then slides them to the far end of her bench. The room grows louder, people shuffling into position for the next case on the docket. He’s dimly aware of Jean’s arm around his shoulder, her voice whispering congratulatory words in his ear.

  A death certificate, a life insurance settlement, permission to move beyond the torpid limbo of his life: He feels relief wash warm across him. (Is it relief? Or is it vindictive glee? He doesn’t want to examine this emotion too hard.) It’s done, he tells himself, and it feels like every muscle in his body is relaxing all at once, releasing a vise grip it’s held far too long. You wanted to be dead, Billie? Well, now you really are. Go be with Some Guy Named Ryan. We don’t need you.

  Jean bends down and begins collecting her things, shoving folders in her tote. Remembering, Jonathan pivots sharply, looking for Olive in the seats behind him. In the momentary lull between cases, the crowd in the benches has shifted; a crumpled old man with mustard in his mustache is now sitting where Olive was moments before. Jonathan stands and cranes his neck, scanning faces, but she’s gone.

  Panic prickles up his spine.

  But he feels Jean’s gentle hand at the small of his back, pressing him forward.

  “We’re done here,” she says.

  —

  The first thing he does when he gets back to the house is fire off a text to Olive: Call me. We need to talk. Then he opens his laptop and pulls up the folder that contains the manuscript of Where the Mountain Meets the Sky. He scans the Word documents, his eyes catching on the most sentimental and sappy lines—there was something magical about my immediate connection with Billie…someone finally understood the texture of my heart. The syrupy words feel foreign, as if they were written by a stranger about a stranger.

  He drags the manuscript to his laptop’s trash can; and then—why not?—the entire research folder. Then he empties the trash, just to make it stick. Let his publisher come after him for the advance; once December rolls around, he’ll have plenty of money to pay it back.

  Giddy with his recklessness, he pulls up the blog page where he was posting the book as his ipTracer lure. He dismantles this, too, deleting the entire account. Cleaning house, he tells himself. No: taking it down to the studs.

  What next? He remembers Billie’s laptop. Where did he put it when he got home from the tapas bar the other night? He retraces the steps he can recall and finally finds it underneath an empty pizza box in the kitchen. He walks the computer out to the garbage cans by the front curb and unceremoniously dumps it in, atop a pile of coffee grounds and curdled Thai take-out containers.

  Back inside, he stands in the empty living room. Now what? Start a whole new life. Leave all vestiges of Billie behind. Oh, just that. He squints at the photograph of their family in its place of honor on the mantel. Then he turns it facedown so that he doesn’t have to look at it anymore.

  The house echoes around him. He can hear the groan of the freezer as it regurgitates another round of asymmetrical ice cubes from its innards. The ticking heater in the hallway, recovering from its latest heroic effort to heat this drafty house. And from somewhere outside, a vague rumbling sound, the urban white noise generated by tens of thousands of people churning constantly forward, battling inertia in an attempt to stave off their own inevitable death.

  Christ, stop being so grim, he thinks. But his house is unbearably empty. Four hours until Olive gets home from school. No writing to do; no deadlines; no legal documents to fill out; nothing urgent that needs to be dealt with. He’s released from the past now, but he’s never felt so aimless in his life.

  His cellphone vibrates in his pocket. It’s Harmony: How’d the hearing go?

  He types back
quickly: As well as it could.

  He waits for her response, feeling the solitude of his home settling over him like a particularly stifling blanket. Then he picks up his phone again: Come over?

  You mean now?

  Yes.

  Fifteen minutes later, he hears her key in the front door. By that time, he’s dug up a dusty bottle of expensive-looking wine from the basement and put some only-slightly-mangy cheese on the coffee table, along with a bowl of crackers and some dried apricots.

  Harmony appears in the doorway of the living room, wearing leggings and a soft-looking oversize sweater. He feels a little surge of happiness at the sight of her, a warm blast of life in this cold house. When she sees the wineglasses on the table, her eyes go wide. “What’s this for?”

  “I felt the need to mark the occasion.” He pours the wine and slides a glass toward her. “I think it’s really good wine. Maybe a gift I got from Decode upper management? Can’t think of any other reason we would have stashed it in the basement.”

  She slips down onto the couch next to him, her thigh close to his, her long lashes obscuring her expression. “I take it this means the judge issued a death certificate?”

  “Yes,” he says. “It’s official.”

  “Does that…hurt?” She doesn’t take the glass but instead squeezes closer to him, as if the substance of her body might be capable of absorbing his pain.

  “A little,” he says. Saying this, he does feel some kind of grief that he didn’t acknowledge before, a dark knot of loss, though he’s unsure whether it’s the loss of the woman he once loved or the loss of his belief in her existence at all. Maybe it doesn’t matter. “But the death certificate, it marks an end, right? So—what’s that saying you see in fortune cookies? ‘New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings’?” He frowns, the aphorism familiar but not quite right. “Or wait, maybe it’s ‘Everything that has a beginning has an end.’ No, I think that’s from The Matrix. Forget it.”