The Year She Disappeared

by Ann Harleman

  Sam shook his head. He looked like a retired professor of philosophy. Bald in the center, a monk’s tonsure surrounded by a seraphic froth of silvery hair; forehead grooved with inquiry; wire-rimmed glasses. When they came into the living room, he’d snapped off the stereo, La Bohème, cutting short Mimi’s declaration of love.

  For heaven’s sake, Nan said to herself, what did you expect? A face like a pit bull? Someone ignorant, dark, and looming?

  Sam held up one hand. “For starters, how’re you-all gonna get the little girl out of the country?” His voice, with its gentle Southern accent, suggested years of patient explanations to undergraduates.

  Walker gestured toward the table by Sam’s armchair. “With that passport, which you just made.”

  “You can’t take a child out of the country without a notarized letter from the parents. I gave all three of you the same last name, but there’s no way you two’ll pass for the parents of little Lee here”

  “Jane,” said Jane, the first word she’d uttered since they got there.

  “Not anymore, missy.”

  “Look, Sam, we’ve got to leave tomorrow.” Walker explained about the TV footage of Nan. On the way over he’d picked up a copy of USA Today, and there under National News was an item, LITTLE STATE, BIG SCANDAL.

  Sam looked grave. “Good night, nurse! You didn’t see fit to mention this?”

  “It just happened yesterday. Any rate, Nan on TV doesn’t look anything like the way she looks now. Nobody’d know her.”

  “You always were a sanguine son of a bitch. You got to watch out for that, Walker. That optimism. Everybody has one thing—Achilles heel, tragic flaw, whatever you want to call it—you know that. The human factor. Remember Kreuzberg?”

  “This isn’t your kind of gig, Sam. Good Christ! This is strategy, not crowbar stuff. Once you grab your gun” he added, to Nan, “intelligence stops.”

  “Within the problem lies the solution,” Sam said in a quoting sort of voice. “Here’s my thought.” He leaned forward, pushed his glasses farther up on his nose. “We make the child a boy. That way—”

  “No!” Jane shouted. “No boy! I’m not a boy!”

  They had to hold her down. Or rather, Walker did. The three of them filled the little bathroom, Jane screaming and thrashing, Nan terrified she would cut her granddaughter’s ear off with the scissors. In the end Jane had a crew cut shorter than Nan’s and a red scratch along the tender nape of her neck where the scissors had bitten. Emerging, they found Sam arranging pink and yellow tulips in a brass pitcher, thin scholarly fingers placing each stem just where it had to be. Watching those hands—tender, deft, inescapable—Nan felt a chill of foreboding. Silly, she chided herself. We aren’t using him to kill anybody. But the feeling stayed with her, an animal tension, a darkness.

  A new picture was taken of Jane. Sam disappeared into the back of the house to develop it.

  Jane, curled in a ball of refusal at one end of the sofa, now and then gave a violent squeeze to the Lion King, which farted sadly. Misgivings filled Nan. What they were doing was irreversible. They had no way (Walker had roundly criticized Nan and Alex’s primitive method of communication) to let Alex know, let alone ask her approval. By the date—eleven days away—of Alex’s next message, they’d be in New Zealand.

  Sam returned with Jane’s photograph and glued it into her new passport.

  “I’ve thrown in a birth certificate, just to be on the safe side. That plus the notarized letter I cooked up should do it. Had to make up names for Lee’s parents. Good night, nurse!”

  All three passport photos had the spectral look of dime-store photo-booth pictures. Nan, her teal-blue crest now faded and half grown out, resembled Andy Warhol; Jane was a scowling little boy with a snail track of tears down one cheek; Walker’s calm baldness made him look like a Buddhist monk. The documents—passports, credit cards, driver’s licenses, birth certificate, letter, plane tickets—were placed in a manila envelope and handed ceremoniously to Walker. Then Sam opened a bottle of chilled champagne and offered a toast. “Fair seas and prosperous voyage.” He and Walker clicked glasses. Noon sun lay in bright lozenges on the Persian carpet. Jane sobbed in her corner of the sofa, shorn head concealed under a crewelwork pillow. Nan lit a cigarette, not asking permission. Over the rim of his wineglass Sam regarded the three of them with, Nan realized fearfully, compassion.

  “Beautiful!” Walker said. “We’re golden.”

  |

  In the dark Nan stood alone in Deenie’s tiny backyard. Above the capitol dome was a sky full of stars, a nearly full moon like a pale, pitted stone. The fragrance of resin from nearby pines and the sweeter smell of some flowering tree filled the night air. Ferns brushed Nan’s ankles; she imagined the movement of their roots in the warm earth. Wherever Alex was now, did she have anything like this? She imagined Alex alone, afraid. She’d already been in hiding for a month and a half now; so how had she found out that Gabriel knew where Jane was? Had he caught Alex, threatened her, dragged her back to Seattle? But no—she must still be free, or she couldn’t have sent that last message. Location, location, location. What did that really mean? Walker was right. Silly—their whole code had been silly, their whole system of communicating.

  I can’t do anything to save Alex now, or even help her. Now there’s only Jane.

  Inside, in the kitchen, Walker was whistling softly. He’d carried the sleeping Jane, exhausted from weeping, inside from the car and tucked her beneath a quilt on Deenie’s sofa. Now he was making a shrimp-and-cheese omelet for their dinner.

  Location location location, Nan thought, feeling the warm, sweet breeze on her bare neck. Poor Jane! Of course she doesn’t want to leave here. I don’t want to leave here either.

  Behind her the screen door sighed as it swung open. Walker’s arms wrapped around her; he kissed the back of her neck. She stood in his embrace and looked up at the night through tears of—what? Fear? Regret? Grief for the lost life of Nan Mulholland?

  But she wasn’t Nan Mulholland any longer. Would never, if their escape plan worked, be Nan Mulholland again.

  There was a rustling of wings, some night bird, in the hedge alongside them. Walker’s arms tightened and he leaned into her. His warm breath stirred in her ear. “Feathers evolved long before flight. Did you know that? Some dinosaurs had feathers, head to tail.”

  Yes, Nan thought. Yes—but they couldn’t fly.

  |

  Mel stood on the sidewalk with Zipper in her arms. She was crying silently. Her nose was running; she ignored it. Nan felt responsible for her suffering. She looked around, out of habit, to see if their little group was attracting attention. Sunlight and a soft breeze and the exhilaration of departure didn’t dispel her sense of someone, somewhere, watching.

  Jane refused Val’s hug and threw herself down on the sidewalk. Nan heard her knees hit the pavement; then her small body arched into its tent of grief. Appalled—Jane hadn’t done this for months now—Nan said, “Sweetpea! We need to go. The toy store, remember? The picnic?” She moved toward her; but Walker was quicker. He lifted her up, wincing as she kicked him, and carried her to the car.

  Nan hugged Val, who kissed her on each cheek. His face was slightly scratchy, his skin warm. Mel, arms tight around Zipper, turned her face away from Nan. Her eyes were on Jane’s huddled figure inside the car. Feeling Mel’s sadness, her anger, Nan accepted the weight of both. Her own sadness, Nan realized, was partly grief for Deenie: in losing Mel, she lost Deenie all over again. The terse cries of the gulls wheeling above Elbow Street were the sound her heart would have liked to make. She took a breath. The morning air was clear and warm and painfully sweet in her throat. She could not bring herself to say good-bye.

  Val stepped back, pulling Mel up onto the curb. “We meet again. I am knowing it.”

  Nan got into the car. Walker already had the engine running—the old Volvo looked as if its engine would knock and rattle, but it didn’t—and the inside smelled of upholstery sha
mpoo. Nan cranked down her window in time to see Val and Mel slide away. Behind her Jane wept—hopelessly, stormily. Afraid she might choke on the sobs that tore through her, Nan twisted around in her seat and stretched out one arm, clumsily. The quaking of her small shoulders underneath Nan’s hand brought a sudden, sharp memory of Gabriel in the garden in the September twilight. (So long ago, now!—though not even two years had gone by.) Of Gabriel’s whole body shuddering under Nan’s touch, as his daughter’s did now. Who saves one person saves the world. One of the many Russian proverbs that she’d always suspected Val of inventing. As the Volvo turned smoothly onto South Main Street, she wondered: does saving one person even save the person?

  |

  The new bribe, Native American Barbie—what could be less suitable for the tough little boy Jane now was?—was administered at Uncle Sig’s Toy Shop on their way to Swan Point Cemetery. Refusing both Nan’s hand and Walker’s, Jane shuffled morosely along the gravel path. They held each other’s hands instead. Walker carried the Last Picnic—sandwiches, oranges, wine, and Gatorade—in an old wicker basket of Deenie’s.

  Nan looked around. No one behind them. It was still early: midmorning sun slanted along the path and down the sloping lawn. Trees newly in leaf threw tender shadows across the bright young grass. On the other side of the iron palings a peacock, pacing alone, stopped and suddenly spread its tail.

  “Look, Janey!” Walker cried. “You won’t see that everywhere.” He explained to Jane’s indifferent back how people in the Middle Ages saw in the peacock’s tail the stars and planets, the layout of the heavens.

  Nan wondered whether it was years of spy biz that enabled Walker to picnic in the midst of peril, or the reckless optimism that Sam had warned against. Granted, Jane had been nearly hysterical when they’d packed the car at Deenie’s; granted, the promise of a picnic was the only thing that calmed her. But they were on the run. Gabriel was looking for them. Nan kept remembering something Tod used to say: there is no greater misfortune than to underestimate your enemy. She’d tried, while Jane was out of earshot in the toy store, to give Walker a sense of how formidable an antagonist Gabriel was. She’d asked about Sam’s cryptic “Remember Kreuzberg.” “That was two decades ago,” Walker had evaded. “The guy’s retired now. He’s writing a book, for Chrissake. What really corks him is he’s not in the field anymore.”

  They found a spot in the tender new shade of some flowering trees—a stretch of sun-warmed grass, the domain of Susannah Oglethorpe, 18021853, presided over by a marble swan with arched neck and outstretched wings. Walker shook out the blue quilt, which he’d been carrying under one arm. The three of them sat down, Jane a little apart, with her small stiff back to Nan and Walker. Birds called in the trees overhead. White flecks of dandelion seed floated past. Nan took off her denim jacket and Walker rolled up the sleeves of his work shirt. Susannah’s headstone, which seemed at Nan’s first glance to have been erected by “Her Loving Bother William,” made a comfortable enough backrest. Walker leaned back with her and took a deep breath of the fragrant, sun-warmed air. He said, “It’s always a beautiful day when you leave town.”

  It was nice to be out, Nan had to admit. It had felt as if they were under house arrest at Deenie’s these last two days. And the promise of one last picnic did seem to have calmed Jane. Their suitcases were safely stowed in the Volvo’s trunk; as soon as they’d had lunch they would drive straight to T.F. Green Airport. Walker handed out peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches and oranges, a bottle of Gatorade for Jane. He poured wine into two plastic cups and gave one to Nan. They ate—even Jane, hunger winning out over anger, though she still refused to turn around—as if they had nothing weightier on their minds than spring. Looking around as she chewed (where on earth had Walker gotten the idea that peanut butter went with bananas?—oh, of course: Christy), Nan saw that they were not the only picnickers. On the other side of the gravel path, an elderly man in baggy trousers held up by red suspenders had set up a card table. As Nan watched, he shook out a white lace tablecloth and let it settle, then began to lay out silverware and china.

  “Hey!” Walker said. “Am I talking to myself here?”

  “What? Sorry.”

  “I was thinking about that song. Was it Johnny Mercer? You … something … and the angels sing.”

  “’You speak, and the angels sing.’”

  “Sing it for me,” Walker said, and Nan obliged, in a low voice. Jane threw a look over her shoulder, embarrassment elbowing scorn.

  “Good song for this place,” Walker observed.

  Nan watched Jane’s small straight back in the boy’s yellow T-shirt and overalls. Her silence was like her old silences, the way she’d been on the flight east and during their first few days in Providence. Nan got to her feet. Crouching down next to her, she put an arm lightly around her shoulders. Jane shrugged it loose but didn’t move away.

  “Grape Eyes—how about an orange?” She held out two neatly sliced halves.

  “Zipper’s coming with us, right?” Jane kept her back to Nan. One arm clutched the Lion King; the other, Native American Barbie.

  Nan hesitated.

  “Is he? Or not? Because I need to know right now.”

  How like her mother she sounded. Her voice held a quaver inside the harshness; it was too old a voice for a child. Too many leave-takings, thought Nan.

  Jane turned to look at her. Her eyes—green, so green—were her mother’s eyes, full of reproach. Without her long, abundant brown hair, her face looked thinner, her chin more determined than ever. With difficulty, Nan kept her own gaze steady.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Intake of breath from Walker. He’d explained New Zealand quarantine laws to Nan the evening before. Not to mention the risk: it was much harder to travel discreetly with an animal in tow.

  Nan waited, heart high in her chest; but Walker said nothing. Her arm tightened around Jane, and Jane, though her thin shoulders hunched grudgingly, let it stay. Screw the risk, Nan thought. She watched Jane stick her tongue into the heart of the orange. One thing was clear to her, sitting with her granddaughter’s warm flesh under her fingers, the sky beginning to fill with milky clouds, an unseen bird calling in the tree above them: there were other kinds of safety besides physical.

  The man in the red suspenders set a large cake with chocolate frosting in the middle of his table and began sticking candles into the top. A birthday cake, Nan realized. In a cemetery.

  Walker left the quilt and went to sit with his back against a tree. Jane curled on her side and slept. The sun went in; the dappled shade around them deepened to a uniform blue-green dimness. A breeze lifted Nan’s collar against her neck.

  “Pardon me, ma’am?”

  Here was Red Suspenders standing at the edge of their quilt. “Can I trouble you for some water? Forgot it completely. Imagine that!”

  Walker spoke curtly from his tree trunk. “We don’t have any.”

  Nan opened her mouth to protest his rudeness, then realized. Of course: even a harmless-looking, picnic-possessing old man could be a Tail. Must get into a more Iron Curtain frame of mind. She glanced down at Jane, who slept on, cropped head pillowed on Lion King: a little boy, except for— Discreetly (she hoped), Nan maneuvered Native American Barbie under her outspread skirt.

  Red Suspenders had taken in Nan’s hair, her tattoo, visible where her scoop-necked dress had slid down one shoulder. “You from RISD?”

  She shook her head.

  “I seen you someplace before.”

  Nan froze. The TV clip, she thought.

  He sat down cross-legged on the grass, oblivious to Walker’s “Hey!” of protest. “You mighta seen me, too. I been on TV. Imagine that! ’Count of my grandson. You know?”

  If he’d remembered seeing her on TV, he would have said, too. I’ve been on TV, too. Relieved, she smiled at him. Slightly crazy people had always been drawn to her, usually on means of transport. On planes, especially, with their feel of the confessional, t
he confinement and invisibility of those high-backed seats, she’d listened to many a wintry monologue.

  “Your grandson?” she said.

  “My boy’s boy. Billy. Little boy in a swing? You’d’a seen him on the commercials for Drunk Drivin’. He was killed by a drunk driver in 1994. That’s him over there.” He gestured toward his lace-covered picnic table.

  “I’m so sorry,” Nan said. One suspender, she saw now, bore a button that said, M.A.D.D.

  “Billy’s face. They show you his face real close, him swinging toward you. Feels like he’s gonna pop right outta your TV. My boy took that movie at Billy’s last birthday party. Five. He was five. You seen him?”

  “I—I think— Yes, I have.”

  Walker snorted. Two lies in half an hour. Nan threw him a quelling look.

  “He’s a beautiful boy,” she told Suspenders. Oh, shit. “Was.”

  Suspenders sighed, looked down at the ground, looked up above Nan’s head. “I work with animals now. No people. I’m the night man down at the animal shelter on Bassett. That your boy?” His head nodded at the sleeping Jane.

  “My … grandson.” Did he notice her hesitation?

  “What’s his name?”

  Did he look at her suspiciously?

  “Uh, Lee. His name is Lee.”

  “Looks about Billy’s age. You raising him, are you? Lotta folks doin’ that, these days—bringin’ up their kids’ kids. What happened to his mama?”

  “She died.” Nan didn’t dare look at Walker.

  “This here’s a good spot to sit and reminisce, ain’t it? That’s a redbud tree, the one your husband’s sitting under. Some call it ironwood. No idea why.”

  He said this as if giving Nan a gift. Then he bowed and turned away. Nan watched him walk back across the grass to his little laden table. He struck a match and a ring of light bloomed on the cake.

  “You shouldn’t talk to strangers, Nan.” Walker left his spot under the redbud tree and came to sit beside her. “No matter how harmless they look. Promise me, from now on.”