The Year She Disappeared

by Ann Harleman

  “Zodiac signs’re cheesy. Let’s see … Maybe one of these tribal things from New Zealand? Maori? No? Look at these Chinese characters. I’ve been wanting to try one of these for, like, forever.”

  The characters were graceful and mysterious. Nan nodded.

  “Long life? Or happiness?” Mel asked.

  Oh, happiness, definitely. What good would the other be without it?

  Mel’s question reminded Nan of a joke, which she told while Mel xeroxed the symbol onto transfer paper, applied it to Nan’s shoulder and peeled it away, tore open packets of needles (“See? Sterile!”) and began fitting them into a pen-shaped metal holder. A joke from Bucharest days. Haso says to Mujo: Which would you rather be—beautiful, or stupid? Mujo (after thinking deeply): Stupid. Because beauty doesn’t last.

  “Just lie back, now. I think the shoulder. In front, right here. Okay? Lie back.” Mel pushed down with her foot. A noise like a dentist’s drill filled the space between them. Mel lifted her foot, and the noise stopped. “Perfect!”

  I’m going through with this, Deenie. Dare you!

  Nan lay on her back. At the far end of her body loomed her new shoes, bulbous, black, and ugly. (“Plats or kickers?” Mel had wondered aloud to the incurious saleswoman. “Better be kickers. Platforms’ll be too hard to walk in. Too bad you can’t get steel toes anymore—they’ve been declared concealed weapons.”) Mel pulled on a smoky plastic visor, then began stroking surgical gloves over her hands. This end of the loft, Mel’s end, was dominated by a large poster advertising the San Francisco Tattoo Museum (“Ancient as Time, Modern as Tomorrow”); next to it hung a laminated blowup of Mel’s business card, with “INKSLINGER… Ink-credible!” in spiny Gothic letters. There were framed certificates from the Rhode Island Department of Health and a wooden plaque that said, “Cheap Tattooing Is Not Good; Good Tattooing Is Not Cheap.”

  Mel scooted around on her stool, its wheels squeaking on the wood floor, snapped on a blinding overhead light and moved it closer to Nan. Nan closed her eyes. She felt Mel unbutton her shirt and ease it past her right shoulder. There was more scooting, then the smell of deodorant soap, a coolness spreading across her shoulder.

  “I’m gonna outline, then do a little whipshading,” Mel said.

  The pain was hot, sour, constant—a dull razor blade being drawn over and over across her skin. Nan did her Lamaze breathing, as she would have at the dentist or the gynecologist, and tried to put her mind on other things. Yesterday Mel had done her hair. It was now a bright teal blue (“Really dope with your fair skin!”) and cut in a sort of long crew cut, close to her head at the back and sides and standing up longer in front like a cockatiel’s feathers. A little dated, had been Mel’s opinion when she’d finished; but better, she thought, to go with an established look. (“’Be not the first by which the new is tried, / Nor yet the last to lay the old aside,’” Nan quoted. “Huh?” Mel said.) It had been a shock to look in the mirror this morning: she certainly was not herself. Not the all-too-recognizable Nan Mulholland who’d appeared on Channel 10 News. God has given you one face, Attila the Nun used to say, and you make yourselves another. Yes: exactly. Suppose the pulling of a car—an unhappily occupied one—out of the Providence River made the national news. The mayor was a convicted felon, after all; and besides that there was the Mafia presence in Providence. Nan had been watching TV and checking the papers, especially the New York Times (Gabriel’s favorite newspaper) in the three days since she’d appeared on Channel 10. Meanwhile she’d found a book at the Rock, Methods of Disguise, and absorbed its principles. Hairstyle (check!) and Color (check!); Weight Loss (check!); Mustache, Beard, and Assorted Facial Fuzz (n/a); Eyeglasses (never!). These were listed among “Natural Means of Disguise.” “Artificial Means”—Aging Lines (absolutely not!), Cheek Inserts, Nose Putty, Scars, Prostheses (ugh!), Voice-Altering Devices—she’d begun a careful list of, for later. But there was so much to write down that, in the end, she’d stolen the book. Afraid to risk using Victoria Uglow’s card—she now had absolutely no resemblance to the photo on it—she’d peeled the bar code sticker off the book and hidden it under her parka. Fittingly, its back cover boasted, “As Seen on America’s Most Wanted!!!”

  Every now and then came a blessed pause while Mel dipped her needles in ink or sprayed Nan’s shoulder with cool water and gently wiped it off. “There’s a little blood. Don’t look.” The drill emitted a hot-metal smell, like a car engine that had been running too long. Nan had imagined Mel would confide in her while she worked, confidences that might pave the way to pumping Mel about Jane. Instead, Nan learned that Janis Joplin had had tattoos; that Bert Grimm was the greatest tattoo artist who’d ever lived; that tattooing was the first preventive medicine: tattooed warriors survived wounds better because of their revved-up immune systems. Surfing the pain, Nan let her thoughts wander.

  Yesterday afternoon Mel had taken her shopping, because of course the new hair had looked wildly wrong with what Nan thought of as her Nanniewear, all those tan and gray and brown garments. “Geriatric!” Mel dismissed them. At the Gap they bought a bright-yellow parka and black velvet leggings and two long sweaters—one white, one fuchsia— that looked baggy until you put them on. In the dressing room, happily surprised by her own reflection, Nan remembered excursions to Strawbridge and Clothier’s with Deenie, in high school, trying on things they couldn’t possibly buy. They’d been in love with their own arms and legs, with their whole bodies, striking poses in the mirror while a saleslady with large white teeth smiled grimly.

  “So Monday this old guy comes in, I mean really old, sixty at least, he wants a heart with a banner that says ‘Vinny.’ I couldn’t get him to see how lame that’d be. Geriatric dipshit! And he had a bad case of plumber’s butt.” Mel stopped to dip her needles in ink, and the haze of pain lifted.

  “How much longer?”

  “Maybe twenty minutes. Okay, you ready?”

  At Strawbridge’s, in their junior year, Deenie had shoplifted two garter belts. Satin, one for each of them, along with two pairs of the sheerest nylon stockings, still a luxury then, in 1955. No one they knew even had any. Ugly flesh-colored lisle stockings, held up by girdles, were required with their school uniforms. Oh, the delicious strappy lightness under her skirt, continuously admitting the reality of her crotch! Her thighs, when she crossed her legs, silkily greeting each other. Could people tell? Freedom—but something more. Something both light and dark. The beginning of things.

  Outside the heavy glass doors of the Gap, Nan had stood still and laughed, feeling free and light: legginged legs, fuchsia sweater, puffy yellow parka. Mel had gazed at her, squinting against the late-afternoon sun. “You look totally bad-ass! Nobody’d know you.”

  Exactly.

  Mel stopped the drill. Nan, as the sudden absence of pain made her light-headed, thought, This is my chance.

  “Mel. Has Jane ever mentioned her parents to you?”

  The drill paused in midair. “She told me her mom was home crying. And once she said her dad was on a trip to Watermelon—I think she meant Guatemala?—and that he’s coming to get her soon.” Mel brushed the damp curls off her forehead with one muscular forearm. “He isn’t, is he? You and Janey’re gonna stay here in Providence, right?”

  “How did she sound? Did she say anything else?”

  “The next time she came over, she clammed up. Stonewalled me, totally. But why are you—”

  “So here you are, talking into blue streaks,” Val said. He came in and stood leaning against the Tattoo Museum poster, a bulky black Leica hanging from one shoulder. He’d recently stopped painting in favor of photography—what Mel called “drive-by shootings,” pictures snapped holding the camera out the window with one hand while he drove. “How it goes? Okay, yes?”

  When Nan turned toward him, dislodging her shirt, which Mel had unbuttoned and pulled down from her shoulders, he turned away. Gentlemanly. But Nan thought wistfully of the old days, when a man would have moved to where he c
ould see more.

  Mel re-draped Nan’s shirt. “Take a look”

  Val stepped closer to inspect the tattoo, which Nan didn’t yet dare to look at. He smelled of cold winter air and gasoline.

  “Prekrasno!” he said; then, looking at Nan’s averted face, “Console! Console! Soon it ends and you are beautiful.” He patted her clenched hand.

  Mel, her penful of needles poised like a conductor’s baton, waited.

  “I am destructing you? Okay, I go. Good-bye, my loveds!” He vanished around the corner of the screen.

  Mel swabbed Nan’s shoulder gently, then started up the drill. “Last time.”

  Breathe. Count. Breathe.

  When Nan opened her eyes, Mel’s face was inches from hers, tongue protruding between closed lips as she inspected her work. The tiny gold stud winked in the light. At last she drew back.

  “Yes!” she said, laying down her pen, and grabbed Nan’s limp, unresisting hand to give her a high five.

  Seven

  It must have been while she was at the gym that the burglary happened.

  Mel had guided Nan through the noisy, neon-lit spaces of East Providence Fitness Plus, having provided her with a pair of black leggings and a T-shirt that said, MY OTHER CAR IS A BROOM. She took Nan through various machines garnished with black leather that looked as if they belonged in an S&M parlor, tersely stating the purpose (“Tits!” “Buns!” “Abs!”) of each. They spent half an hour on adjoining treadmills, Nan trudging along considerably more slowly than Mel. The music that issued from speakers all over the huge, many-mirrored room made conversation impossible, which suited Nan fine. In the locker room Mel had teased her about getting the bod in shape for Walker (“He’s buff—no Buddha-belly!”), making it plain she thought Nan was being less than honest with herself. The treadmill on Nan’s other side held a large biscuit-colored man in swimming goggles who ran faster and faster. The goggles gave him a sinister, basilisk look. She wondered: Was he planning to sweat that much? If so, his sweat would certainly land on her. Could you get AIDS from sweat? Don’t be an idiot.

  In the sauna Nan and Mel, wrapped in soft white towels, reclined on the wooden benches. Clouds of steam swooned around them, scented with the prosy smells of cedar and cement and their own sweat. Mel’s towel was knotted below small breasts with surprisingly dark nipples; black curly hair grew under her arms. Nan kept her own towel high, just under her collarbone. Her tattoo stung a little from the heat. She began to feel a delicious ease. Val had volunteered to pick up Jane from Mikki’s; the whole afternoon was hers. Mel closed her eyes, and Nan did too. Above them two women gossiped lazily.

  “You know, like in the movie Alien, like at the end? All those people with big eyes? She went to a Catholic priest to get herself exorcised.”

  “She should’ve gone to the gym.”

  “She told me some people’s spirits turn into mailboxes or, or ketchup bottles.”

  The warmth, the sinuous half-concealing steam, the languor of a body well used, made Nan feel happy, not in her mind (or heart, or wherever it is that happiness usually flares) so much as in her cells. Like, now that she came to think of it, sex. Good thing Mel couldn’t read her thoughts—she’d have been in for a merciless ribbing of the kind that Deenie used to provide. Something that, like the friendship it grew out of, had been missing from Nan’s West Coast life. She and Mel, she realized dreamily, were friends. Girlfriends. She could feel the blood hum through her body, radiating pleasure, until her skin tightened all over like a perfectly inflated balloon.

  One of the women on the bench above swung down a leg dotted with wiry black hairs. “The what?” she said to her friend. “The wedlock law?”

  “The gridlock law. Gridlock, not wedlock.”

  |

  The feeling held, a sort of vibrant undertow, through the cold walk from the bus stop down Weybosset to Elbow Street. There was pleasure in every movement, in the calm contraction and expansion of her lungs, in the quick obedience of her arms and legs. Nan and Mel walked with arms linked, like schoolgirls, to help each other over the corrugated surface of ice and gravel and frozen dog turds. They made fun of passersby. A pompous young man walking a Doberman (“Big dog, small dick,” murmured Mel); a fur-coated woman who tried to elbow them off the sidewalk into a pile of old snow. Mel told a joke: “What’s the definition of paranoia?” “I don’t know. What?” “Putting a condom on your vibrator.” It was something Deenie might have said. They were still laughing when Nan pushed open the door to her apartment and stood staring, key in the lock, hand frozen on the key.

  “Nan?” Mel, behind her, couldn’t see what Nan saw. Her voice rode a last ripple of laughter.

  Nan thought: Gabriel. He’s found us.

  She made herself take a step forward, then another. Plants and trees lay on their sides, pots shattered, dirt all over the floor. A shard from one of the pots rattled and broke as Nan stepped on it. The yellow chains that had held the TV hung empty. Mr. Nibbrig’s footlocker, its lid wrenched off, spewed papers and manila folders. She felt Mel grab her arm.

  “Don’t!” she whispered in Nan’s ear. She yanked her backward into the hall. “They might still be in there.”

  They moved toward the stairs, still backing up. Nan’s arm ached from Mel’s grip. Below them the outer door slammed. Jane’s voice echoed in the stairwell, to the sound of her hands clapping.

  They flew so high, high, high

  That they touched the sky, sky, sky

  And they never came back, back, back—

  “Val!” Mel shouted. Her voice bounced off the cinder-block walls. “Val! Get up here, quick!”

  The beat of boots on the stairs, like gunfire; Jane’s voice, plaintive. “Hey! Wait for me!”

  Val appeared. “The mollies is terrible today! Everywhere is tickets—” At the sight of their faces, he stopped.

  Mel put a hand on his arm. “Nan’s place. Somebody broke in.”

  Val pushed past them. They followed his long strides down the hall. Over Mel’s protests, he pushed the apartment door wide. “K chortu!” he muttered.

  Mel wanted to wait for the police. Nan burst out, before she could stop herself, “No! No police!” Val did not seem to find this strange. He pulled his arm from Mel’s grip and went inside. Nan and Mel watched from the doorway while he looked behind Jane’s screen and then disappeared, checking the little bathroom.

  Jane, panting, crashed into Mel. “What happened?” she cried in an aggrieved voice. “Hey—where’s the TV?”

  Before Nan could stop her, she ducked under Mel’s arm and ran into the apartment. “Zipper!” she shouted. “Zipper-Kitty! Here, kitty, kitty.”

  Mel ran in after her. Nan followed.

  Inside, Jane darted around, long horsetail hair flying, behind her screen, into the kitchen area, into the bathroom (colliding with Val, coming out), shouting, “Zipper-Kitty! Here, kitty! It’s oh-kay.”

  Val held out his hands, palms up, to signify that whoever had been there was gone. Nan stepped into the room, pot shards crunching underfoot, the smell of spilled earth oddly springlike. The light, without the filtering green of the plants, was hard and white. Geraniums lay scattered, bright as blood, across the floor. This had happened once in Warsaw—a break-in, their belongings rifled, broken, strewn, they never knew by whom. Only personal things, luckily. (Never, under any circumstances, keep official State Department documents, whether restricted or not, in your place of residence, HOWDY had warned. But everyone did, of course—even Tod.)

  Nan trembled with the same helpless fury she’d felt then, the same sense of having been violated. Stepping over the debris, she picked her way across the room. Her hands shook as she slid out the top drawer of Nibbrig’s dresser. She felt underneath the top until she found the envelope, pulled it loose, opened it. The money, half her remaining cash—thank you, God—was inside. Still trembling, she sat down on the bed (sheets yanked off, mattress slit open and spewing gray cotton stuffing)— and there, in a jumbl
e of other underwear, lay her Hidden Assets.

  She fingered one of the half-slip’s pockets, torn so that it hung down empty. There had been nearly a thousand dollars in it, for the rent (due tomorrow) and Mikki (ditto) and the Russian émigré dentist who’d agreed to make Jane a new spacer. Her money had been dwindling at an alarming rate: there was enough in the envelope to replace the thousand, but not much more. Nan felt the other pockets. Her passport was there, and the vial of nitroglycerin.

  An ordinary thief, then. Not someone sent by Gabriel. It was only money he’d been after. Relief poured through her.

  Val, coming from the kitchen with a tumbler of water, looked surprised to find her smiling. He held out the glass, and she took it and drank. She noticed the coppery taste of blood, realized she’d bitten the inside of her cheek.

  “Is like house of Ukrainians,” Val said, gazing around the room. “Or Uzbeki.” He saw the torn slip in Nan’s hands. “This vor—this robber—he is perhaps pervert?”

  “Perhaps.” Impossible to explain to Val why she sat with her hands full of underwear.

  “Americans don’t be comprehended. You are fearfree, isn’t it?”

  Jane came in. She climbed up on the bed and thrust her head into Nan’s lap. “I can’t find Zipper,” she said, and began to cry.

  Nan stroked her head helplessly. “He’ll turn up,” she said, not believing her own inadequate words. “He’s just hiding.” Jane scrambled away and sat up. She stuck her finger into a slit in the mattress and began pulling out stuffing and flinging it in Nan’s direction.

  Nan drank the rest of the water, wishing it were bourbon. “I’m as cowardly as the next person,” she told Val. “More.” Stuffing flew in all directions. “Jane!” she said warningly.

  “Then it must to be that you are brave. Console! Brave is opposite of fearfree. Brave is far more to admire.”

  Mel came in then. “Janey—what’re you doing?”

  Nan said, “Stop that.”

  “Bullshit!” Jane shouted. “You’re not my mother! I don’t have any mother!” She got down off the bed and ran out of the room.