The Year She Disappeared

by Ann Harleman

  Eight

  Scrolling through the Pee-Eye for March 7, Nan learned that Congress had given itself an exemption from the federal law against sexual harassment; that a nine-year-old Tacoma boy had backed the family car over his mother; that a whale had swum seventy-five miles up the Columbia River to linger just south of Portland, Oregon. More to the point was a small article on an inside page. A judge on the Washington State Supreme Court had overturned a conviction of child molesting on the grounds that the accused’s six-year-old niece was too young to understand the significance of an oath and so could not testify.

  When she finally found Alex’s message, Nan copied it out with a hand that shook.

  POOKIE: Gone underground for a while. More soon.

  Kiss her for me. HIPPIE

  Her breath came quickly, shallow sips of the mentholated air coughed out by the students on either side. She scanned the rest of the paper for some clue as to why Alex had gone underground. Nothing illuminating emerged, though there was plenty to horrify. A five-week-old baby in Issaquah bitten fifty times in the chest by a pet ferret; a father in Renton awarded custody of his small son three years after his ex-wife had kidnapped him and taken him back to Puerto Rico.

  Nan pushed back her chair with a harsh, refusing sound. An infuriating tear of self-pity burned in the corner of each eye. She grabbed her parka off the back of the chair and went out, almost running, through the Rock’s marble lobby.

  At home—she no longer thought of the place as Mr. Nibbrig’s, somehow the burglary had made it hers—she barely paused to take off her parka. The contents of Nibbrig’s footlocker (rifled a second time by Jane, who couldn’t believe there wasn’t something more interesting in there than income tax records) lay strewn across the living room floor. When she yanked off her parka, Alex’s Time Line fell out of the pocket. She picked it up and tore it down the middle. Pookie! Hippie! She flung the pieces on top of Nibbrig’s messy papers and strode into the kitchen. The mirror on the refrigerator showed her own headless torso in a fuchsia sweater and leggings; its gaiety mocked her. She seized the phone, punched in Alex’s number.

  Fuck our agreement. Fuck the Plan. Fuck everything.

  The continent-crossing rings seemed to drill into her breastbone. Her breath matched their rhythm, cut-off, stoppered. With her free hand she dug into her sweater pocket for the nitro, thumbed it open. The ringing paused. She waited, pill tucked under her tongue, for Alex’s voice on the message recorder. Why hadn’t she done this sooner? She could leave! Leave all this, all of it—the makeshift, the mess, the relentless daily routine—and go home.

  The number you have reached is not in service.

  But where was home?

  No further information is available at this time.

  She punched in the number for Seattle Information. A voice with a Southern accent informed her that there was no number for an Alexandra Verdi or an A. Verdi or (Nan’s inspiration) an A. Mulholland. There was a Gabriel Verdi, M.D. Would she like that number?

  She would not.

  The pill began to take effect. A pleasant dizziness invaded Nan’s despair and she leaned, light-headed, against the counter. The phone slipped from her grasp. She watched it dangle, swaying, from its curly cord while an ant-sized voice begged her to please hang up and dial again.

  |

  Nan had only an hour to indulge her anger and (Be honest!) her fear. Then she had to go pick up Jane at Mikki’s. Gradually her turmoil eased, soothed by the evening routine, the eat-at-least-three-bites, where-are-your-pajamas, only-one-bedtime-story, one-more-drink-of-water-and-that’s-it that had come to be an essential part of her day.

  But when she’d sung the last of their unconventional lullabies, and Jane was relaxing into sleep, Nan felt a sudden urgent need to get things clear, once and for all. If Alex had abandoned them, if she and Jane were on their own, she needed to know why. To know—really know—what she was dealing with. She ventured, “Your daddy always put you to bed, didn’t he?”

  Jane stiffened. Watching her face, Nan went on, softly, “I bet you miss that.”

  Two fingers came up to rub the space between her brows. Eyes on Nan, she still said nothing.

  “What did you do with him? Did he sing to you?”

  The arm clutching Bananas-in-Pajamas came up to shield Jane’s face. She began rubbing the creature across it. Beneath the blue quilt her small body shuddered lightly. Nan waited a minute, watching, then gently laid her hand on the mound of Jane’s belly. She flinched. She turned on her side, away from Nan, and pulled the quilt up over her head.

  I can’t, Nan thought. I can’t do this to her.

  The realization swept through her that the reason she’d been questioning Jane—interrogating her, really—these last few weeks was so that they could go home. If Jane said the right thing—the thing, whatever that was, that would convince Nan no sexual abuse had occurred—then Nan could take her home. Could go home herself. Could be free.

  She sat on the edge of Jane’s bed, trembling.

  After several minutes Jane murmured, “Nana?”

  “I’m here.”

  Very gently Nan laid a hand on Jane’s shoulder underneath the quilt. Her head stayed covered, but her small body seemed to relax. Nan sat on, afraid to move or speak. She thought of those long-ago nights in Italy, when she’d sat by Alex’s bed, one hand on her shoulder, the other on the rough, cool plaster of her cast. After a while the sound of Jane’s breathing deepened and slowed. The little alcove filled with Jane’s sleep-smell, like strawberries. Nan folded the quilt back from her face. She put her lips to one small damp ear, flushed with rosy heat, turned off the lamp, and left.

  |

  “Gone underground”—what did that mean? How long would “for a while” last? Suppose it was months.

  Nan sat on Nibbrig’s sofa in the dark, smoking. Moonlight fell in skewed diamonds across the floor and cast soft shadows over her through the leaves of Nibbrig’s trees. It looked warm but felt cold. She blew smoke into the chill air, trying for the smoke rings Pop had taught her to make. (Sharing a cigar with a child! What had he been thinking?)

  Mothers give up their children, Pop used to say; that’s how that love affair has to end. But he hadn’t meant give them up the way Nan’s mother had, by dying before her only child turned five; or the way (Be honest!) Nan herself had, by keeping her distance, by letting other hands perform the hundred daily tasks that would have bound her to Alex. And he certainly hadn’t meant what Alex was doing now.

  Nan watched another failed smoke ring unravel upward into a patch of moonlight. Her brain felt buttery from the two glasses of brandy she’d needed in order to go back through her child abuse research. She looked for a passage she’d copied out at the Rock during the morning’s research.

  Frequently the non-abusive parent—usually, but not always, the mother—resists awareness that abuse has occurred. When she does acknowledge it, overwhelming feelings of shame and guilt may come flooding in. However unwittingly, she has allowed the abuse to occur.

  Nan stopped. She thought of Alex sitting on her sofa on that mild December morning, heard Alex’s voice, cramped with sadness: Somehow I let this happen.

  She stubbed out her cigarette, lit another. Alex had always struck people as steady, calm, and rational, like her father. The least histrionic of women. But there was another side to her, a side that Nan had glimpsed from time to time. A side that called up vivid flashes of Dorothea. Alex as a baby, almost frightening in her determination, striving in Nan’s arms. Alex at six, hurling Poetry Frisbees—paper plates inscribed with rhymes she’d made up, all by herself—into the blue air above Zakopane. Alex at twelve, hobbling around Washington on unneeded crutches, accepting the homage paid by kneeling buses. That Alex had stayed alive inside responsible-organized-CPA Alex all these years. Nan splashed more brandy into her glass. She made herself read the rest of the passage.

  The guilt feelings of the non-abusive parent cannot be underestimated. She
has failed, on the most elementary level, to protect her child. Shame and horror may lead the non-abusive parent to feel unfit to care for the child, or may even lead her to view herself as a danger to the child.

  If Alex believed that—really believed it—if she felt that whatever Gabriel had done was something that she, Alex, was responsible for—

  What if Alex abandoned Jane for good?

  Nan took a large swallow of brandy and let it burn its way down her throat. The gift is always larger than you mean to give—Tod was right, saying that, all those years ago. Moonlight then, too (the moon a small bright button above the snowy peaks of the Tatras). Cold, then, too.

  I can’t raise her. I’m too old; I might not even live long enough to see a four-year-old to adulthood; I want my life. (Here the thought of Walker surfaced briefly, uninvited.) I deserve my life.

  The checkered swath of moonlight had narrowed and was receding down the room. The bell in some far-off church tower began tolling faintly. One … two … How late it was! She’d be useless in the morning, the three-more-spoonfuls, where-are-your-snow-boots, yes-all-right-bring-Squirrel morning.

  I can’t raise her.

  Nan put a hand on either side and pushed herself up off the sofa. Her ankles wobbled from sitting so long.

  I can’t. I won’t.

  |

  Once the wall of security has been breached, it is only a matter of time before it falls. (HOWDY)

  Contrary to her promise on the day of the burglary, Mel told Val what she’d guessed. Val knocked on Nan’s door with the offer of a fake Social Security card. “A created card,” was his term. Nan didn’t ask where such a thing might come from; nor, in the demoralized state that followed her attempt to reach Alex, could she deny her need for it—or for any other help, legal or illegal, that might be offered. Mel made it easy. Matching Nan confession for confession, crime for crime, she said that Deenie had asked Val to get morphine for her. He’d done so through a Russian acquaintance who’d since been deported. She should have guessed, Nan thought: the box on top of Deenie’s wardrobe. Why had they been willing to take such a risk, she wondered aloud, especially when Val wasn’t yet a citizen? Because Mrs. Horsfal had been so kind to them. She’d paid for Val’s taxi medallion. Then, when Nan had suddenly appeared, they had to find out how much she knew. That was why they’d befriended her at first; but only at first. Now, it was because Nan and Jane— Because Jane— At this point Mel, tough, cocky Mel, began to cry.

  Nan touched her hand, then put an arm around her. Making reparation was something she understood.

  So it was that Nan found herself, the next evening, in a strategy session with Val and Mel. Mel’s revelation about Deenie had created a new sense of ease among the three of them. They were fellow miscreants now. “Think!” Mel commanded. “Start braining!” The three of them scanned the Providence Journal’s Help Wanted section, sipping vodka from tiny painted cups while Jane sat cross-legged on the floor and doled out lumps of sour-smelling Russian cheese to Clio. Quite a few of the jobs advertised were ruled out by Nan’s New Look. Val was for entering the Ms. Senior America contest—Mrs. Horsfal had won, why shouldn’t Nan?—until Mel pointed out the publicity that that would entail. In her corner Jane admonished Clio, “Nyet—not yet.” They settled, finally, on four jobs that seemed either weird enough or boring enough for the employers not to be too choosy.

  Neither Val nor Mel had asked why Nan and Jane were on the run. Though Mel, while Jane was in the bathroom, did murmur, “Beatings?” Val made a shooing motion. “Melochka! Is not our affair.”

  Putting off Walker, who sounded hurt at the abrupt cessation of their daily walks, Nan got herself in gear, as Mel put it. The first ad she answered was for the Food Basket (part-time, flexible, no experience necessary), where Claire, the seventyish owner, interviewed her right there at the checkout, in a baby-blue pinafore with SHEILA stitched across the breast pocket.

  “Where you from?” was the first thing she wanted to know. Chicago, Nan lied, brushing snow from her stiff new hair.

  “I’m from Hackensack, myself,” Claire confided. “How I ended up in this place, I have no idea. I’m a head person, you know? No good with my hands at all.”

  She rang up the purchases of a tottering, sweet-faced old man whose scalp gleamed through dandelion hair: four quart bottles of cooking sherry, a carton of eggs, a grapefruit. “You got any experience, hon?”

  “Yes.” What a fluent liar she’d become. “But your ad said no experience necessary.”

  “Naturally. But nobody means that. It’s just, we don’t want these empowered types in here, know what I mean? Won’t dirty their hands sweeping up after closing, or give the restroom a quick once-over.” Leaning closer (the sherry man was still counting his change), Claire whispered, “We gotta have a restroom. All these old folks comin’ in. Some of ‘em, their aim ain’t what it used to be.”

  Ugh, Nan thought, and said brightly, “I’m willing to dirty my hands. Happy to dirty them. Really.”

  At the pay phone in the corner beside the glass doors, a man began loudly haranguing someone in Spanish.

  Claire said, “Plus, these feminists. They’re always on the edge of the ledge, know what I mean? Customer lays a little hand on ‘em, a little old fart’s pat, they’re yelling for the cops.”

  “Yo te amo!” the man shouted into the phone. “Te amo!”

  It was ten in the morning and the Food Basket was filling up with customers. Claire took the rest of Nan’s particulars and said she didn’t know, she’d see. The man slammed down the receiver. He began punching the wall next to the phone. Claire locked her register and went off to deal with him.

  Next stop: a gun shop on Atwells Avenue. Its sign, in Gothic lettering, at first glance appeared to say ARQUEBUS DUNG & AMMO. Inside, guns of every shape and size hung behind locked glass doors, and boxes of cartridges waited in demure rows beneath the spotless glass counter. Bob Swinehart turned Nan down right away—“People don’t buy guns from broads”—then spent ten minutes explaining the peculiar hardships of the job. Illiterates, for instance: they always claimed to have forgotten their glasses (one had had them sticking up out of his shirt pocket at the time) and said, Will you fill out the paperwork for me? Then, where it said “Signature,” they drew their names.

  A middle-aged black man in overalls came in and bought a .357 Magnum. Bob Swinehart laid his change on the counter next to the ordinary brown paper bag containing the gun. The man said, “You give me my money in my hand, like I gave it to you.”

  Complying, with the slightest roll of his eyes, Bob Swinehart said to the departing Nan, “Hang in there! You know how many guns I cleaned before I cleaned one right?”

  At Rent-to-Kill Plant Service a heavy girl with a face like restaurant china told Nan the job was filled.

  The woman behind the cash register at Ray’s Touchless Car Wash took her information down carefully. “Will vacume,” Nan read, upside down. “Strickley day time.” Through the long windows Nan watched the hoses, the leaping sparkling spray, the huge round brushes.

  “This is the best job I ever had,” the woman said. “I look out those windows and wish I could run through, just once.” She looked at Nan more closely. “You live in the neighborhood?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Nothing. Just, I feel like I seen you somewheres before. Only maybe your hair was different?”

  And that was how Nan found out that the car pulled from the river had been in the news again. The body had finally been identified. It was the governor’s niece.

  March 21 came and went without a message from Alex. Instead of getting angry, Nan found herself oddly relieved. She went outside and sat down on the wooden bench in front of the Rock, to think. The branches surrounding it had sprouted tiny green buds since she’d been here two weeks before. By the time she came back again, two weeks from now, they’d be exploding into exuberant yellow rockets of forsythia.

  Will I still be here?

&nbs
p; Gone underground, Alex’s last message, a month ago now, had said. All right, then: Nan had to believe that that was where her daughter remained. With friends? But Alex didn’t seem to have any; her friends from the HMO had drifted away after she’d quit working, replaced by mothers with preschool children, none of whom seemed to appeal to her. Somewhere anonymous, then. But sheltered, hidden, safe. And Gabe had taken no action, apparently. That might mean that he was guilty of abusing Jane; or it might simply be that whatever Alex had on him was strong enough to keep him at bay. Strong enough to buy her time—time in which she would come to see that, no matter what had happened, her place was with Jane.

  If we can just stay hidden, everything will be all right.

  Nan started buying the New York Times every morning, scanning for the small item that might report new developments in the case, praying for no photographs of the car’s resurrection and the surrounding crowd. She should be doing more than watching and praying, she knew that. But what? She considered asking Val for advice—he undoubtedly knew quite a bit about disguise and evasion—but she feared his hotheaded Slavic impulsiveness. He would have no qualms about acting outside the law. Or she could ask Walker. But that would mean confiding in him—entrusting him not only with her safety but with Jane’s—and she thought, I just don’t know him well enough.

  She’d have to wait and see. One thing: it was no longer the kindness of strangers that Nan had to rely on. The kindness of strangers had turned, in the past three months, into the kindness of friends.

  Meanwhile, no job. She would level with Nan, Claire of the Food Basket said over the phone. They wanted someone over sixty-five—a lot of employers did, these days—it saved on health insurance if you already had Medicare. Oh, crap sandwich! Nan, who’d shaved six years off her age on Val’s forged Social Security card in order to look more employable, hung up from this, the last rejection, utterly disheartened.