The Year She Disappeared

by Ann Harleman

  For the fourth time Nan said, quite honestly, that she didn’t know. Of course she was not believed.

  |

  That evening, after dinner, the magistrate arrived. She sailed in, a plump fiftyish woman, in a violet track suit and running shoes, attended by an extremely thin young woman carrying a computer case and the tall, frowning assistant state’s attorney in the too-big suit. Captain Abernathy brought up the rear. “Good evening, Mrs. Mulholland,” he said. His face, like his voice, was unexpectedly kind. Stroking his mustache, he performed the introductions: Judge Pertl, Miss Carcieri (a court stenographer), and Big Suit, whose name Nan once again didn’t catch.

  The skinny stenographer sat down in the visitor’s chair in the corner and opened her computer and set it on her lap. Big Suit arranged himself against the doorframe. Judge Pertl and Captain Abernathy came and stood on either side of Nan’s bed. (Conveniently, her roommate had just been wheeled out, on her way to Urodynamics.) Cranked up into a sitting position, Nan could see, through the leaves outside her window, the sun low in the sky, bleeding rose and saffron into banked purple clouds.

  She was asked to give her name, address, date of birth. The stenographer began tapping at her keyboard.

  “I understand you’ve waived the right to counsel,” Judge Pertl said. Captain Abernathy looked startled. The judge regarded Nan over the top of her glasses. “Someone from the public defender has been to see you?”

  Nan said yes, she’d dismissed a Mr. Dupee, a fat young man wearing someone else’s hair. Captain Abernathy opened his mouth to say something, then didn’t. The judge gave Nan a we-are-not-amused look, then began to read the charges. State of Rhode Island … Violation of Section 729 of the Penal Code … Fugitive from justice … The stenographer typed soundlessly in her corner. The Latinate phrases filled Nan with a sense of displacement, of looking on. As if she were a watcher, peeking in perhaps from the sunset world outside the window, the pleasant prospect to which her eyes (the eyes of the Accused) kept returning. Court order … Gabriel Atkinson Verdi, MD … State of Washington … Kidnapping … Bound over for trial … Extradition …

  There was a pause. Nan looked away from the window to find their collective gaze upon her, waiting, expectant.

  The judge said, “Those are your choices.”

  “My choices?”

  “Refuse extradition. Or waive.”

  “Wave?”

  “Waive.” Judge Pertl’s purple bosom rose and fell in an audible sigh. “That means you agree to be extradited.”

  The hospital loudspeaker clicked on. “DOCTOR WALTER PING! PLEASE REPORT TO THE O.R.!”

  “I’ll explain again,” Judge Pertl said. “You can waive—that is, accept—extradition. In that case, the State of Washington assumes jurisdiction and you’ll be tried there. Alternatively, you have the right to refuse extradition if you so choose. In that case, you’re entitled to a hearing.”

  “A hearing?” Nan said.

  The judge heaved another sigh. “To contest your extradition.”

  “Contest?”

  “Ask your attorney! Now, do you waive extradition or not?”

  Extradition, okay, that meant going back to Seattle. Gabriel was in Seattle.

  Nan pulled a voice from somewhere outside herself, from beyond the IV pole, the three pairs of waiting eyes, the sun-filled window. “I want to stay here,” she said.

  The judge looked grave. “You refuse extradition? Did you understand the question, Mrs. Mulholland?”

  “I don’t have to go back to Seattle, if I don’t want to?”

  “The State of Rhode Island got you first” Judge Pertl said dryly. “Our mayor has a thirst for justice.”

  Captain Abernathy cleared his throat. The judge frowned at him.

  “DOCTOR PING! DOCTOR PING TO THE O.R. STAT!”

  “I don’t want to be extradited,” Nan said. “I don’t want to go back to Seattle.” Ever, she added silently.

  “Another trial that’ll be run by the media,” Judge Pertl said to Captain Abernathy. “I don’t know why they don’t just put a reporter on the bench.”

  She went back to reading from the paper in her hand. The skinny stenographer tapped away. Big Suit, who so far hadn’t said a word—Did that, Nan wondered, mean things were going his way?—listened silently, his back against the doorjamb as if he were Velcro’ed to it. Only Captain Abernathy’s eyes were on Nan. His face wore an expression of—Could it be?—sympathy.

  “This arraignment is concluded,” Judge Pertl intoned. “Good evening.”

  She turned and billowed out the door. Big Suit flattened himself against the doorjamb for her to pass, then followed, still without having uttered a word. The skinny stenographer closed her computer, put it in its case, and left.

  Captain Abernathy remained at the side of Nan’s bed, stroking his mustache. He looked nervous, Nan thought, though she couldn’t imagine why.

  “What happens now?” she asked him.

  A lot of waiting, apparently. Wait to be released from the hospital. Wait for the police to escort her back to Providence. Wait for her extradition hearing. (Little Red Waitinghood, with a vengeance: Deenie would have been outraged.) Meanwhile, as of this evening, she, Nan Mulholland, Fugitive from Justice, had been handed over (Who giveth this woman?) to the State of Rhode Island.

  “Look, Mrs. Mulholland,” Captain Abernathy said. “It’s none of my business. But you should have representation.” He hesitated, stroking his mustache. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. But there’s a lot of interest in your case. Interest at the highest level. See what I mean? You need a lawyer.” Then, as Nan was silent, he sighed. “Good luck,” he said. He reached for her hand and shook it.

  Sunset light filled the room, striking off the heart monitor and gilding the TV stand and Roomie’s IV pole. Even Officer O’Farrell had gone: now that Nan had been arraigned, Captain Abernathy had decided no police guard was necessary. For the first moment since the picnic—was it really only yesterday?—Nan was alone. Soon the little night nurse with the ears that stuck out would come in with night meds, and Roomie would return from Urodynamics; but right now, there was peace. Right now, Nan could think.

  She found she didn’t want to. Couldn’t afford to. Long-forgotten lines from a poem that she and Deenie had loved came back to her:

  If the Sun & Moon should doubt

  They’d immediately go out

  She couldn’t afford doubt. Jane was with Walker; Walker was to be trusted; therefore Jane was safe. She couldn’t afford doubt, no more than she could afford a lawyer. It wasn’t a question of money; it was a question of questions. A lawyer—even a nincompoop like the one from the Public Defender—would want to know where Jane was. Right now, Nan couldn’t tell him that, because she didn’t know. But eventually, when she did know? She couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t let anyone be in a position to turn Jane over to Gabriel.

  No. She would have to go through this—jail, trial, whatever—alone.

  A quick, noiseless storm of sobs shook her. She lay there, shuddering, while the spangled light slowly departed. She felt as if someone had dropped her down a well.

  What have I done? What in the world have I done?

  |

  Mama.

  The word woke her. A word from a dream? No—real. A real sound. Whispered.

  “Mama!”

  A hand gripped her shoulder and shook it. Opening her eyes, Nan saw, against the nighttime dimness, a head close to her own. Coarse, thick hair brushed her cheek.

  “Alex?” Surely she was dreaming. The sleeping pill they’d given her—

  “Shhh!”

  In the dark Nan heard the curtain travel on its track around her bed. Then a light snapped on—the tiniest of flashlights. She struggled for consciousness. My bed; my window; my hospital room. Her visitor dragged a chair close and sat down. The flashlight turned upward, showing Nan her daughter’s face.

  Oh, God! She’s come for Jane. My daughter wants her daughter, and
I don’t know where she is.

  “Mama—you look awful! What happened to your hair? No—forget about that. Just tell me, how’s Jane?”

  Nan gazed at her daughter, whose face was still illuminated by the narrow upward beam of the flashlight. Thinner—shadows under the eyes, cheekbones more pronounced. Her brows (dark, straight, Tod’s) drawn together; her determined chin, so like Jane’s.

  I always forget how beautiful she is.

  “Mama! Is Jane okay?”

  Every whispered word felt precious, a talisman. Like listening, in the long dark Bucharest evenings, to Radio Free Europe.

  “She’s fine.” Nan tried not to let her voice waver. If the Sun & Moon should doubt.

  The flashlight beam darted around the small curtained space, then fastened on Nan. She turned her head away. On the other side of the curtain Roomie coughed in her sleep: Clio! Clio!

  Alex lowered the flashlight and leaned forward. One hand grasped Nan’s arm below the sleeve of her hospital johnny. “Don’t tell me where she is.”

  Nan wasn’t thinking clearly, she knew that, the sleeping pill made everything smoky and vague, but surely—

  Alex said, “If I don’t know, I can’t tell anyone. No matter what they do to me.”

  “But you— Haven’t you come for her? For Jane?”

  The narrow beam of light trembled between them. Alex snapped it off. After a pause, she said, “I want you to keep her.”

  “Keep her?”

  “I’m no good for her now. I haven’t been, for a long time.” Her whispered voice faltered. “A long time.”

  Wake up, Nan told herself. Think. Without the flashlight she couldn’t see Alex’s face. Did she mean it? In the dark there was only her voice, her smell—the way animals apprehended each other—to go by. Her desperation, her sadness—those were real; but there was something off. Something false.

  Clio! Clio! Roomie coughed again.

  “Alex. Sweetpea. Jane can’t stay with me. I’m going to jail.”

  “You’ll get out on bail. Then you can take her somewhere far away. Somewhere he’ll never find her.”

  “Sweetie, Jane needs you. She misses you.”

  “She’s better off without me.”

  The sadness in her daughter’s voice ran so deep Nan felt as though she herself might drown in it. Nevertheless: “Alex—for God’s sake. I can’t.”

  “You have to. There isn’t anybody else.” And you owe me, her tone added.

  Obstacles had always strengthened her resolve; pleas had only made her hold tighter. In that, too, she was like Tod. Yet her voice held something else, a wavering-then-hardening, the way she used to sound as a child, a teenager, when she lied.

  Alex moved restlessly. Nan smelled the odor of clothes worn too long and unwashed hair and sweat. She reached out and laid her hand lightly on her daughter’s blue-jeaned knee. Oh! she thought, I’ve missed— I want—

  “I’m waiting,” Alex said.

  “How did you find us?”

  “I hired a detective. Mama, promise me you’ll take Jane away.”

  Red Suspenders! Hired not by Gabriel, but by Alex? Astonishment cleared Nan’s head like a whiff of ammonia. Questions came rushing in. “And Gabriel? How did he find us? How did he know Jane was with me?”

  Clio! Clio!

  She felt Alex fold her arms across her chest. “He had detectives, too. They followed me.”

  “Followed you here?”

  “Of course, here. Now listen, Mama! Gabriel is on his way east right now. He’d’ve been here already, only he had an emergency. He’s got a court order. Promise me you’ll take Jane. Promise me you’ll get her away from here.”

  “How long have you been here? In Providence?”

  A quick, dismissive movement. “A couple of weeks. Mama—”

  “But you, where have you, you’ve been following us? Watching us?”

  “For God’s sake, Mama! I had to see Jane. I had to be sure she was all right. Now, listen. Are you listening? Take her out of the country.”

  “Out of the country?”

  “Mama! Get her away from here. Away from Gabe.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever you want. As long as Gabe can’t get the authorities there to send her back.”

  “For how long?” Nan heard the stinginess of her own question, but not until it was already out of her mouth, already asked. She felt Alex draw back. Her hand fell away from her daughter’s knee into empty air.

  Alex rose, a darker blur against the window’s blue darkness. “You’ve never really loved anybody, have you, Mother? Daddy was right.”

  Clio! Clio!

  “Kiss her for me. Tell her I—” Alex’s voice broke. The canvas curtain rustled. “This time, hide her better.” And she was gone.

  |

  Pop used to say, The first child is for the father; the second is the mother’s. Only there’d never been a second. Yes: Tod had loved Alex, and not only because they were so alike. Was it because she did not ask for love that Tod had loved her? Alex, always so judging, so severe, beginning on that long-ago afternoon in Genoa. Alex, whose steady brown eyes ceaselessly communicated the shortfall between what she wanted from Nan and what she got. Alex had survived. But, Nan asked, gazing into the darkness, at what cost? And to whom?

  |

  This wedding—what was the hurry? More to the point, whose?

  A hundred times in the two months after her first dinner with Gabriel, Nan wondered why Alex—practical, sensible, methodical Alex—wanted to wed in such haste. Of course her daughter stonewalled Nan’s delicately tendered questions.

  Talk to her, for God’s sake, tell her straight up, Deenie advised in their weekly heart-to-heart. Tell her the guy’s an adirondack.

  A what? Nan said.

  An adirondack. You know—high on himself.

  But Nan’s worries were more complicated. Men like Gabriel didn’t make good husbands. He knew that, or he wouldn’t have stayed single. Why marry now? There was, of course, Alex’s beauty, which none of her previous suitors had seemed up to, or at least, hadn’t wanted enough. (But didn’t men like Gabriel, if they married at all, usually choose a wren, a mate of lesser plumage?) And there was Alex’s self-reliance, her deep reserve, which made her mysterious and hard to win. Oh, the dangers Nan longed to mention. Better not have children, she wanted to say. This man will take all the energy, care, vigilance—all the wiles—you can muster; and anyway, children and mystery don’t mix. But the weeks went by, and she said nothing. Reasoning: since Alex turned thirteen, Nan’s advice had unfailingly been enough to send her in the opposite direction. Reasoning: if Alex told Gabriel that Nan opposed the marriage, it would just make him want her more. Reasoning: when the wedding did go through, battle lines would have been drawn. Nan would have made things harden.

  On Alex’s wedding day, the fifth day of a mid-August heat wave almost unknown in the Northwest, Nan awoke at dawn to a ringing telephone. Beside her Tod stirred, groaned, then returned to his morphine dreams. She uncoiled the long, cool tube of his oxygen tank, which had somehow wrapped itself around her wrist as she slept, and picked up the phone.

  Mama! Can you come? I need to talk to you.

  The wedding was at noon. She’d pack her makeup in the bag with her dress and put it on later. That way there would still be time to come back and get Tod, feed him, help him dress, get the wheelchair out to the kneeling van she’d rented for the occasion.

  The door to Alex’s apartment was slightly ajar, something Nan had repeatedly begged her not to do, not even for five minutes. Nan locked it behind her and followed an uncharacteristic trail of underwear down the little hall to the bathroom. Alex, in hot rollers and a pistachio-colored mud mask, sat on the edge of the bathtub. She looked like a Martian. A beautiful, vulnerable Martian: the thick scarlet towel wrapped like a sarong left her slender arms and shoulders bare.

  Nan closed the toilet and sat down on the lid. Her Hi, Sweetpea! sounded inane. But what,
under the circumstances, should she say? Or, for that matter, do? Mother of the Bride: yet another role for which motherless Nan had no model.

  Alex looked at her, opened her mouth to speak. Her green-coated face broke in a web of fine cracks like the skin of the very old, and she began to cry. Nan reached out and took both her hands. They squirmed in hers like small, moist, bony fish.

  Tod is the one who should be here; Tod is the one she wants. Do what he would do.

  So she sat and listened to her daughter’s—what? Fear? Apprehension? Simple wedding jitters? Sobs echoed off the porcelain. From the bedroom across the hall an air-conditioner hurled streamers of chill air.

  Finally Nan had to speak. What is it, Sweetpea? she said. What’s the matter?

  Alex stiffened, withdrew her hands. She hiked the scarlet towel higher.

  Alex? Honey?

  Gulping, no longer sobbing, Alex rubbed the back of her wrist across her nose. Tears had cut vertical channels through the green mud. She did not look at Nan.

  Speak? Don’t speak? Nan took a deep breath of almond-scented steam. She said, Alex—sweetie—why not wait? You can always get married.

  The wedding, at Gabriel’s insistence, was to be a city-clerk, immediate-family-only affair. And not Gabriel’s family, either. He was an only child, his father long dead, his mother never mentioned. Not hard to call off such a wedding, Nan unwisely pointed out.

  Suddenly (Alex’s anger had always been sudden) she leaned away from Nan, shouting, That’s what you’d like, isn’t it? That’s what you really want. What you came for! Just because you can’t hang on to a man—

  The towel slipped, revealing one shining breast, one rose-pink nipple. Grabbing at the edge of the towel, furiously trying to yank it up, Alex toppled backward. She fell with a resounding thud into the bathtub. For a shocked instant she was stuck there, glaring at Nan as if she had pushed her. Nan looked down at her green-faced daughter, sprawled across the chipped porcelain, legs waving like an overturned beetle, and out of sheer helplessness she did the one unforgivable thing.

  She laughed.

  |

  That was, Nan realized now, the only other time, besides the December morning nearly six months ago, that her daughter had asked for help. Had let Nan see her need. Two dawn phone calls; in a whole lifetime, only two pleas (okay, demands) for help.