The Year She Disappeared

by Ann Harleman

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  When they were ensconced in their new quarters, Nan set herself to build a context, to make the unfamiliar familiar, a policy arrived at in the years with Tod (though she’d married him, at twenty, out of a deep longing for her own life to be foreign to her). Now, as then, she gathered the strands of herself that strained to fly apart—was this what they meant by “pull yourself together”?—that threatened to unravel into there/here, then/now, them/me. Only now she did not have HOWDY to advise her; she did not have the bottomless resources of the Foreign Service to come to her aid.

  After all, she thought, it’s only temporary. Only a week now until the twenty-first, until the first message from Alex.

  Never a list-maker, more what Pop used to call a seat-of-the-pants navigator, Nan made one now.

  (1) Make apartment habitable

  Mr. Nibbrig, the owner of Nan’s loft, was unfortunately not as anal as Mel had promised. His place was a mess. One huge high-ceilinged room, it was crammed full of plants, some of them trees taller than Nan, in pots and tubs. They were shabby, sooty, the larger ones bending and twisting to search out the light. The furniture that lurked in this jungle consisted of two lumpy overstuffed chairs, an ancient, ugly brown sofa covered with a molting zebra skin, a worktable, a bureau, a bed. There was also a large locked metal footlocker, presumably guarding Mr. Nibbrig’s private life. A grimy U-shaped kitchen area contained the bare minimum of equipment.

  Val came with a ladder and washed the tall windows. Mel took Nan and Jane to the Slater Screen Print factory in Pawtucket, where Jane chose a fabric with huge yellow bumblebees attacking poppies the size of dinner plates, which Mel stretched on four six-foot frames hinged together. This screened off a triangle of space for Jane’s bed, bought at Goodwill. Nan’s own bed she set against the one windowless wall; the worktable went across the far end of the room, where two French doors opened onto nothing. Under Val’s direction the jungle was regrouped into a room divider, a sort of arbor for the sofa. (“My shorty!” Mel said, one muscular arm around his shoulders in a hug that made him wince. “He is deep.”) The mysterious footlocker, covered with Nan’s lavender silk scarf, became a coffee table.

  For the first two days Nan, at the still center of all this magic, forgot to bemoan the fact that by now she should have been in the Fine-Tuning stage of life. In fact, she forgot to feel sorry for herself at all. When she finally got up the nerve to ask Val why he and Mel were doing all this, he said simply that Mrs. Horsfal would have wished it. Nan realized that they were adopting her and Jane as Deenie had adopted them.

  (2) Arrange essentials: food, transport, money, other (?)

  Food. The building’s nonworking elevator was a problem; Nan tried to group errands so that she had to deal with the stairs only once a day. Luckily, the Food Basket delivered. There was even a five percent discount for senior citizens on Tuesdays—but Nan couldn’t show her driver’s license, with the name on it that she no longer called herself.

  Transport. Same problem. No point in buying a car (not that she had the money), because she couldn’t get a driver’s license in her new name, and it would be just her luck, if she drove without one, to be stopped. Better a pair of, yes, sensible shoes—ones recommended by Mel called Doc Martens, heavy and black as nuns’ shoes—and a bus pass. RIPTA—Rhode Island Public Transportation Authority, known, according to Mel, as RIPTOFF—required no ID, so long as Nan relinquished the idea of a senior discount. And for emergencies there was Val’s taxi.

  Money. She was already down to about three thousand. But with the tiny rent she would pay for Mr. Nibbrig’s once and future home (see (1) above), they should be all right for two months or so. Longer than they would need, surely—Alex had said it might take six weeks. What had Nan been thinking of, agreeing to a plan that assigned her the role of what Deenie used to call Little Red Waitinghood? (The chief female activities of the fifties—dating, courtship, pregnancy—had held no charm for Deenie.) Nan could only sit and wait—at the mercy, she saw now, of Alex—for the two dates each month on which the Pee-Eye might contain a message. This was the stuff of which paranoia was made.

  Other—oh, other. Other, Nan thought (for she could not overcome a lifetime of civil-service kept-womanhood overnight), would have to take care of itself.

  (3) (Most imp’t & hardest) Make peace with Jane

  A neat little kitten, black with a tuxedo front, alleged by Val to be Clio’s offspring and therefore death to rats, helped. More, really, than the Serious Talk the day after the spanking, in which Nan said stupid things about how someone can love you but still hurt you, about how sometimes the lies you have to tell people can be truer than truth (pronouncements met by Jane’s justifiably disdainful gaze). The secondhand television that Mel hung from the loft ceiling on long iron chains helped, too. The sound of kids’ TV programs—cheerful, cheering, inane—now accompanied Nan’s every move. Jane mostly hung around Val and Mel, “helping” as they scrubbed and hammered and moved furniture, but she wouldn’t let Nan turn off the TV. It did seem to offer some comfort. Nan could see her growing more animated, less watchful, her sharp little chin less evident, her face rosy. Even so, she refused to name the kitten.

  On their third night in the new place Nan awakened to find Jane stretched out at the bottom of the bed as if to make sure Nan could not get up and leave her. Faint ruffly snores told Nan she was asleep. Oh, sweetie, she thought, you’ll catch cold. Shifting carefully, she slid her legs out from under Jane’s weight. Jane stirred but did not wake. Nan got out of bed, the cold floor shocking her soles, and half lifted, half dragged Jane’s sleep-heavy body upward toward the pillows. Then she climbed back in bed and pulled the down comforter over the two of them and wrapped her arms around Jane. She smelled like sleep and stale milk and the Teddy Bear soap Mel had given her that afternoon. Nan’s feet prickled with pain—they’d fallen asleep under Jane’s weight. Tomorrow, was her last waking thought. Tomorrow I’ll talk to her. It’s high time.

  Morning was gray, cold, a leaden sky promising more snow. The new kitten, already constructing its own rituals, curled in Jane’s lap at the kitchen table. Over two bowls of Honey Nut Cheerios Nan opened the hardest conversation of her life so far.

  “Jane, honey,” she began; but Jane’s eyes were fixed on the TV that hung in the center of the loft, where Mister Rogers was interrogating a large blue kangaroo. Nan seized the remote, and the television, winking, went blank.

  “Hey!” Jane protested.

  Nan tried to recall what tactics Alex used to get Jane to listen. Finally, she just plunged in. “Sweetpea, do you know why we came here, to Providence? Did your mama tell you?”

  “I want Mister Rogers.”

  How on earth does Alex do this?

  “Sweetpea. I need you to listen. It’s important.”

  Jane’s spoon clattered onto the table. She put her hands over her ears and began chanting, “Mister Rogers! Mister Rogers!”

  “Stop that right now.” Nan surprised herself. Where had this calm mother-voice come from? She reached over and gently pried Jane’s hands from her ears. Jane stared down at her cereal, her face red with fury.

  “Listen! You can have Mister Rogers back as soon as you listen.”

  Jane bent her head until the ends of her hair fell into her bowl.

  “Your daddy … your daddy had to go to Guatemala. To the clinic for sick kids, you know, like he did last summer. He had an Emergency.” A doctor’s daughter, Jane already understood the preemptive nature of Emergencies. “And your mama … your mama went with him this time, because he needs her help. She hates to be away from you, but she has to help your daddy.”

  Jane lifted her head.

  “Your mama loves you dearly. Dearly. That’s why she sent you here with me. So you’d be safe.” How lame the carefully rehearsed words sounded now that Jane’s eyes were on her. Nan, who until now had prided herself on never lying to her granddaughter, went on. “She’ll come and get you as soon as she can. I
promise.”

  Jane’s eyes stayed on hers. Nan reached out to hug her, this angry granddaughter whose care she had not asked for. Jane didn’t hug her back; but she endured it. Nan saw in the bronzy-green eyes the wish to believe. Gently she tucked Jane’s hair behind her ears: the ends were wet with milk.

  “How will Santa Claus know where to find me?”

  “Your mama will tell him exactly where you are, Grape Eyes,” Nan said in her new calm mother-voice. She flicked the remote, and Mister Rogers’s loony optimism filled the loft once more.

  That afternoon Jane forgot not to laugh at Nan’s jokes. (“Me Tarzan, you Jane,” when they watered the jungle of plants, pinched dead leaves off the devil’s ivy, dusted the long fingers of the scheffleras.) That afternoon she named the kitten Zipper Cupcake Zipper.

  Not peace, but a truce. Enough to go on with.

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  By the end of the first week, the new place no longer so scaldingly new, Nan’s nights had assumed a pattern. Jane in her cozy alcove, sleeping; the faint chime of the radiators; Nan reading Mel’s Complete Works of Chekhov and chewing nicotine gum. (She couldn’t smoke, she’d decided, with Jane in the same room, however large that room was.) By the end of the week, she felt calm enough, strong enough, to turn on her cell phone. Sure enough, there was the little MESSAGE icon pulsing urgently.

  She hesitated. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free, said Dorothea’s long-ago voice in her head. She pushed “1” and tapped out her password, and there was Gabriel.

  “Nan. Gabe here. Where are you? Is Jane with you? Please call me.” And a second message, more imperative, in Gabe’s forceful doctor voice: “Nan! Please call me. I don’t know what Alex told you, but I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.” The third message was pure anguish: “Nan, please. I’m going out of my mind here. Just let me know she’s all right. Please.”

  Delete.

  Delete.

  Delete.

  Nan punched the OFF button and let the phone fall to the floor. When she looked up, she saw her own face painted blurrily onto the dark window by the light from her lamp. Her own frightened, pitying face.

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  A little over a year before, on the terrace of the Queen Anne house, on a cobalt autumn evening, Nan and Gabriel had sat in companionable silence. It was the end of September, but the long, lovely day had been so beguiling, the mountains printed so clearly on the cloudless sky, that they’d forgotten the true season. High above their heads, under the eaves of the gracious old house, Jane lay wrapped in a blurry down comforter. At three and a half she still wouldn’t go to sleep without one of her parents lying beside her. So here, without Alex, were Nan and Gabriel. Fireflies; the scent of wisteria and sweet woodruff; Gabriel’s fingers tapping on the metal arm of his chair. Nan wondered if he was thinking of yesterday, of the Vietnamese boy who’d died during surgery.

  Men are much more vulnerable, physiologically, than women, Gabriel said. He sat with his back to the darkened house, across a wide teakwood table from Nan. His voice was low, tentative. He added, Right from conception. Did you know that?

  Yes, lied Nan. She didn’t feel like talking. Warm, fed, a little drowsy, she wanted to savor all these things. She lifted her face to the mild, moonless night.

  At every age, men are more likely to be defective, Gabriel went on. Heart. Lungs. After middle age, if they make it that far, they start shrinking. They get smaller and more fragile every year. Old men are more like women than old women are.

  Physiologically, murmured Nan.

  She looked up at the night sky, thickly salted with stars. A romantic sky, a sky for lovers, if only she still had one. All those old songs. Stars Fell on Alabama. Stairway to the Stars. Stardust. Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely nights / Dreaming of a song. Stardust, she thought: the dust of stars. It would burn, it would annihilate, surely?

  … died, said Gabriel.

  What? Sorry—I didn’t hear you.

  My mother died. Last week.

  I’m so sorry, Nan said automatically.

  So it wasn’t the Vietnamese boy, after all. For God’s sake, she thought, why didn’t Alex say something? How stupid I must seem.

  She heard Gabriel take a breath. Her face must be, to him, as his was to her, a milky blur in the starlight, like the priest’s three-quarter profile through the dark grille. She didn’t want to hear whatever her son-in-law had to confess: guilt, anger, lack of grief. Women complained that their husbands never talked about their feelings; this deficiency, in Nan’s view, was one of the many wonderful things about men. It would never have occurred to Tod to “share” his feelings with her. (She had forgotten, for the moment, his many eloquent varieties of silence.)

  She was sixty-one, Gabriel said.

  A pause. Then a violent movement. His glass shattered on the flagstones over by the cedar fence.

  Startled, Nan shrank back into her chair, gripped its metal arms, though the glass hadn’t been thrown in her direction.

  She must have been very young when you were born, she ventured.

  Sixteen. My father was seventeen. He took off when I was two. I never saw him again.

  It’s hard when the last parent dies. I remember. That feeling of being, I don’t know, promoted. Sent to the front lines.

  I hated her, Gabriel said softly. She never gave me one second of affection that didn’t come with a hundred hours of pain.

  Then you will never stop missing her, Nan thought. But she said only, I’m so sorry, Gabe.

  Perhaps he imagined Nan resisting, because he continued, in a chillingly matter-of-fact voice: She used to walk around the house with this long leather belt looped around her neck, so that the strap hung down. Handy for discipline. Ice on the sore spots, afterwards. Then she’d cry. Drunk, of course.

  Nan could hardly breathe. It dawned on her that Gabriel hadn’t told Alex about this death. She took a sip of watery scotch.

  The next afternoon I’d be waiting at the edge of the road for her to come home from the cannery, he said. I’d jump on the running board of the pickup and she’d pull me in through the window and hug me.

  Nan thought of her son-in-law’s tenderness with Jane, his refusal ever to punish her, leaving Alex (she complained) to be the Bad Cop. Repair for the damage done to the little boy clinging to the running board? Repossession, in a way, of what was taken from him?

  There was an odd sound, a soft rhythmic creaking, which she identified after a second as the sound of Gabriel’s chair. He was weeping, soundlessly. She could just make out the shuddering of his shoulders. Instinctively, feeling only that she must not stay, Nan got to her feet. She moved around the table toward his chair—she had to pass it to go inside.

  I’m cold, she said. I think I’ll—

  Gabriel’s arm shot out, his hand gripped her bare arm above the elbow. She was forced to stand next to his chair, facing away from him, off balance, her weight on her right foot, the left raised in a step toward the house. He held on, rocking with those soundless sobs; he leaned his hot forehead against her upper arm. His grief, like the night shadows, widened to embrace them both, filled the dark garden. Awkwardly Nan set her foot down and twisted around to find her balance, the edge of Gabriel’s chair pressing into her side. How long since anyone had needed her? Surprised, she felt the itch of tears under her eyelids. How long since she had cried?

  She laid her free hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. His grip on her arm loosened a little. His other hand found her wrist, his fingers followed its curve. Tears dropped off her chin into his hair and were trapped in its wiry curls, whole and glinting. The smell of leaves, of earth—of autumn—filled her nostrils.

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  Wishing devoutly for a cigarette, Nan rose and opened the window. Her reflection slid away as cold night air struck her face.

  Remember the Plan. Alex would leave—would already by now have left?—Gabe. She would file—would already by now have filed?—for custody of Jane. Possessory rights. O
nce she got them, Nan and Jane would be safe.

  Would Gabe wait till then? He’d try first to pacify Alex, then to persuade her. When he tired of that, would whatever Alex had on him be enough to prevent him from taking action?

  Nan took a deep breath of head-clearing winter air, then stood looking into the darkness. Outside were clouds and sea-smelling wind and the first real snow. Inside, the yellow light from the desk lamp held the two of them, Nan and Jane, in a warm suspension, and the shadows in the room beat softly, keeping time with the pulse of their own blood. Sparrow nights, Chekhov called them. This broody peace: the world outside and she and Jane safe within. Nan’s eyes rested on the single locust in the courtyard three stories below, which held on to a few flickering leaves. Looking down, she could just make out its hopeful shape against the shine of the freshly fallen snow.

  Five

  “I think we’re related.”

  The voice on the other end of the phone felt too close to Nan’s ear, as if its force had somehow widened the holes in the earpiece. An instant of heart-bending horror; then: Don’t panic, Nan told herself. Tice—he asked for Mrs. Tice. It’s not you he thinks he’s talking to.

  She glanced at Jane, who sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor looking up at the television, absorbed in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, both arms around the struggling kitten. It looked like the two of them would spend another day marooned together: snow had begun to fill the loft’s long windows. The morning smell of burned toast hung in the room.

  “I’m sorry,” Nan said. “You have the wrong—”

  “Wait! Please. Geraldine Tice Horsfal was my cousin.”

  Ah! The Aged Cousin.

  “I’m sorry—”

  The voice barreled on. “Thing is, I’m her executor. I have to find the people she left bequests to, or else the lawyers do, and you know what they charge. The Peshkovs gave me your number. You could help.”