The Year She Disappeared

by Ann Harleman

  Nan lifted her head. “No,” she said.

  “Okay, well, forget that for now. So, here’s the deal. Don’t think of him as your son-in-law. Think of him as a hostile witness. Because that’s what he is.”

  They went over Nan’s testimony—and over, and over. Nan wouldn’t have suspected Jenny Root of such reservoirs of patience. She also seemed, for the first time, worried. Gabriel’s lawyers had done their homework, she told Nan: nude modeling, adulterous affairs, not to mention that Alex had deserted her child. And for an adulterous affair of her own.

  Following in her mother’s negligent footsteps, Nan thought.

  “The prosecution’s thinking is, what judge’ll look kindly on a woman taking off with her grandchild when she’s messed up her own kid. Unfair, maybe, but that’s how they see it. Any drugs at those modeling sessions? Wright hates druggies.”

  Nan assured her that there hadn’t been, though how did she know? The marijuana at Val and Mel’s she tried to put out of her mind completely.

  Jenny Root got angry only twice: when Nan told her about Mikki not being a licensed day-care provider—Mikki was, of course, yet another witness for the prosecution—and when she admitted to not having declared the income from modeling. Anything else she should know? Jenny Root demanded sarcastically. Embezzling? Prostitution?

  Nan’s whole life seemed nothing but a trail of errors leading to this day. Chickens coming home to roast, Walker would have said.

  “Okay,” Jenny Root said finally, running both hands through her hair and leaning back. They had, Nan realized, been nearly nose to nose for an hour. “Let’s just get through the next thirty-six hours. No Press. No Gabriel. Right? Right.”

  |

  The next day, Thursday, Nan Mulholland, Accused Felon trying not to become Convicted Felon, did everything that was expected of her. She ironed her charcoal-gray suit and practiced walking in her spectator pumps. She stayed indoors, away from the windows, leaving Nibbrig’s loft only to go upstairs and have dinner with Val and Mel. Pushing uneaten pirozhki and cabbage around on her plate, she listened to Val’s proverbs (Woman has a lit candle in her soul; If logic reigned, men would ride sidesaddle) and laughed at Mel’s jokes. About Jane they were silent, all three of them, as if a sort of collective mental breath-holding might make the pretrial hearing come out all right.

  Returning from dinner, Nan felt her feet slow of their own accord as she approached Nibbrig’s door. Gabriel’s blood on the cinder blocks beside it, already darkening into anonymous grime, reminded her of what she had seen: Gabriel unguarded, uncareful. A furious, avenging Gabriel that she had not known existed, though perhaps she should have.

  And if Alex simply saw what she wanted to see, to justify herself? If he’s innocent? Then I have done him a grave injury—and Jane, as well.

  In the moon-checkered loft Nan went from place to place, fingers grazing the furniture. Trying to recover, in the curved back of the sofa or the brittle clicking leaves of the fig tree, the presence of Jane. Where was she now? Nan’s guess was, Boston. Our Man from Savannah was there, and Logan Airport, with daily flights to almost anywhere. But maybe not: if Nan could figure that out, then (Lines of Desire) so could the police. For some reason, a vision came to her of Jane and Walker on a sunny sidewalk, of Walker bending down to help Jane with the bubblegum that had wrapped itself in long sticky pink strands around her neck. There was a trick to it—he’d shown Jane. You took the rest of the gum out of your mouth and rolled it over the stuck gum, which came away easily from the tender skin beneath.

  Without turning on the lights, Nan walked to the long windows and stood looking out, as she had so many times in the six months she and Jane had lived here. Below her the midnight city opened out, the river a dull gleam between dark clumped buildings, the streetlamps blurred with fog coming in off the sea. With her back to the room she could almost hear the sound of Jane’s breathing, that light sleep-snuffle, from the alcove behind her. If only she could have back again the long, boring nights of their early exile! Those sparrow nights of uncertainty and peevish enclosure. Now, then seemed like paradise. Nan kept her eyes on the window, streaked with runnels of silver as a soft, implacable rain began to fall.

  |

  “Fockin’ coke-sacker! What to hell!”

  Val cut off a city bus with inches to spare and pulled into the alley by the back entrance to superior court, where, according to Jenny Root, the press would not expect them to go. Quickly Mel and Nan got out. Val cried, “Console! Console!” and drove off. It was still raining, a cold unsummery rain.

  Mel guided Nan through the metal detector, its line of people all wearing the traveler’s air of suppressed excitement, the lawyers distinguishable by their briefcases. The guard waved them past a man in stocking feet holding out his shoes for inspection.

  They sat down on a bench in the vast vaulted hall to wait for Jenny Root. People milled back and forth. The walls and floor, all marble, threw back their voices. Cops duck-walked by, keys and handcuffs chiming at their belts. At a pay phone a man in a surgical collar stood shouting into the receiver. “Quante televisioni? Okay. I dunno. Ancora vivo. Okay? Awright!” A small dark woman in a sari sat down next to Nan and began reading a book she pulled out of her bag. The Theory of Poker, its bright yellow cover said.

  “I’d really like a cigarette,” Nan murmured to Mel.

  Mel glanced around the hall: no one was smoking. “Better not,” she said. “You’ll get in trouble.”

  Nan looked at her. They both burst out laughing.

  “You better be Da Bomb in there,” Mel said. “I blew off a Prince Albert so I could come here this morning.” A Prince Albert—piercing a customer’s penis—was Mel’s most lucrative gig. “That reminds me. What did the elephant say to the naked man?”

  “I don’t know. What?”

  “How do you breathe through that thing?”

  And so it was that Jenny Root, approaching, found her client dissolved in laughter. This was a new slowed-down Jenny Root, exuding sureness and dignity. Even her hair seemed calmer, tamed into a shiny close-fitting cap not unlike Nan’s. She and Mel had met two weeks before, when Jenny Root interviewed her as a possible character witness; afterward, each woman had told Nan that the other was, like, wanky. Now Jenny Root stood holding a black leather briefcase plump with papers and taking in the sight of Mel. Eyebrows pierced with little gold barbells; earrings in the shape of crayons, one red, one yellow, which Nan found inexplicably cheering; grass-green T-shirt that said, GROW YOUR OWN DOPE …

  “Thanks for bringing Nan here,” she said smoothly. “I’ll phone you when it’s over. It could take all day, depends how soon we’re called.”

  “I’m coming with Nan,” Mel said.

  “No one but the defendant is allowed in the courtroom.”

  “Crap sandwich! Okay, I’ll wait out here.”

  They were fighting over her, vying for her. “Mel,” Nan said. “Go home. Please. I don’t want you sitting here all day. Call Prince Albert, maybe you can reinstate him.”

  Mel looked at Nan, saw that she meant it, then hugged her, hard. “Be Da Bomb!” she murmured into Nan’s ear.

  Nan watched her go through the heavy glass doors into the rain. The back of her grass-green T-shirt said, … PLANT A MAN!

  Courtroom No. 9 was flooded with blue-gray morning light from half a dozen tall arched windows, through which Nan could see the dripping trees and ivy-covered bricks of Benefit Street. An unexpectedly beautiful room, with its plaster garlands and gold leaf, its burnished wood paneling and high, high ceiling. Nan, gazing upward, half expected to see a cherub or two floating there.

  They sat down on one of the pewlike oak benches. The smell of furniture wax assailed Nan. Wood-and-brass railings separated them from sideways rows of empty seats (spectators? jury?) to the left and right. At the front of the room was a long polished table with a stenographer and a clerk beside it, and beyond that, on its raised dais, the judge’s bench (like an altar, t
hought Nan) with its flags, U.S. and Rhode Island, hanging limp. Ahead of them Nan could just make out the state’s attorney, Jamison Leer, a small, pink man with Coke-bottle glasses. Was that Gabriel with him? She opened her purse to fish for her glasses. Her hand met something hard and pointed, and she pulled it out. Miami Getaway Barbie. Beside her, Jenny Root drew a sudden breath. Glancing sideways, Nan saw her frown. She thrust the doll to the bottom of her purse, found her glasses, put them on. Thank God!—the man next to Jamison Leer wasn’t Gabriel.

  But they were early. The room began to fill up. Nan found herself one of a crowd, standing room only, in the midst of a Dickensian scene: a man carrying an armful of two-by-fours; another, an empty birdcage. Once she was sure she saw the Boy Father in his blue windbreaker with Bug on his hip; but when she looked again, he was gone. Clearly Jenny Root had lied about people not being allowed in the courtroom: everyone seemed to have friends and relations in tow. People were talking, walking around, standing up and sitting down again.

  As nine thirty approached, Jenny Root gave Nan a last-minute briefing. Judge Wright (suddenly shorn of his nicknames) was a stickler for order; he’d once had a guy jailed for contempt because he blew a bubble with his gum. She reminded Nan of her Foreign Service past, her “tact and diplomacy,” her “good social control.” Nan recalled endless receiving lines, her own graciously patronizing handshakes, standing, in graceful gowns, beside this or that smiling, nodding ambassador. How quickly, once Tod retired, she’d sloughed that glossy skin of politesse. How little it could help her now.

  “Just act natural,” Jenny Root ended. “You know, to thine own self be true, yadda yadda yadda.”

  Nan looked down at her charcoal-gray suit, her spectator pumps. Own? Self?

  “All rise!”

  Here he came, majestic, black-gowned, black, his long balding head very like an eggplant. “Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen!”

  Amid the thunder of obedient rising, the chorus of “Good morning, Your Honor,” Nan, on her feet like the rest, found herself giving a little curtsy. It was so like mornings in homeroom, the nun entering, the girls scrambling to their feet. Jenny Root frowned a warning at her as they all sat down.

  One by one the clerk called the cases scheduled for that day. The attorneys either responded “Ready, Your Honor!” (all this your-honoring made Nan feel like a peasant in a Chekhov story) or asked to postpone, offering various explanations for their unreadiness. The postponers left, and the room began to feel less crowded. There was a lot of restless moving around and talking among those waiting to be called, and periodically a policeman standing at the front of the room shouted, “Quiet! Quiet down!” The pretty, long-haired stenographer tossed her head as she typed, hennaed curls alive on her shoulders like some small animal. Bored, nervous, apprehensive, Nan studied Jamison Leer. His hair, too long and stiffened into curved wings on either side of his head, made him look rather like a stingray. She remembered the fake hair of the lawyer in the hospital (what was his name?) and glanced sideways at Jenny Root’s. Am I doomed to run into lawyers who belong to the League for the Tonsorially Impaired? The clerk droned on. Nan began to tell herself all the lawyer jokes she could remember. What do you call a criminal lawyer? Redundant. What do you have when a lawyer is buried up to his neck in wet cement? Not enough cement. What’s the difference between a lawyer and a bucket of cow manure? The bucket.

  At last only the Readies were left—Wise Virgins who’d brought oil for their lamps, to illuminate the murky reaches of the Law. Plenty of empty seats now. Turning around, Nan saw a couple of reporters she recognized from encounters on Elbow Street, notepads poised.

  And Gabriel.

  She faced front again, the blood banging in her ears, but not before she’d noted his stance (that violent humility), his gaze (straight at her). She leaned close to Jenny Root, forgetting to whisper. “Gabriel— My son-in-law—”

  “Quiet!” the policeman standing below the judge’s dais intoned.

  Jenny Root whispered, “It’s okay. Just chill.”

  Mercifully, they hadn’t long to wait. Theirs was the first case called. Jenny Root gathered her papers and disappeared, with Leer and Judge Wright, behind a door in back of the judge’s dais.

  Through the tall arched windows Nan watched the rain, slow and heavy. The streaming glass gave the world outside the courtroom a surreal quality, buildings runny, trees wavering. Half turning, she snatched another glimpse of Gabriel. He too gazed out at the falling rain. She had the sudden understanding that he was making himself look haggard. She remembered, now, that he’d sometimes been an expert witness in the Seattle courts. He’d know how to present himself, what a judge would look for.

  Jenny Root came back and motioned Nan to follow her out of the room. She trembled, approaching Gabriel. He did not look at her until she was almost past; then he turned on her a glance so malevolent it traveled through her like a jolt of electricity.

  They sat down on a bench in the rotunda, under the collective gaze of a dozen larger-than-life framed portraits of Judges Past. All men, all stern, all silver-haired.

  “… an offer I’d like you to consider, Nan.”

  Not a compassionate face among them. Not a glimmer of humor.

  “Nan—are you listening?”

  Not a face that looked remotely capable of the pain and longing she’d just seen on Gabriel’s. She took off her glasses and put them in the pocket of her jacket.

  “I need a cigarette.”

  Jenny Root led her around the corner, past a sign that said CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC, through a door marked both LADIES and WOMEN. Awkwardly, because of their skirts and high-heeled shoes, they sat down on the floor beneath a sign that at first glance seemed to say NO SMIRKING. Nan lit up. Heaven! She leaned back against the tiled wall and contemplated two sets of feet in black pumps below the stall doors. There was the hollow roar of two toilets flushing in unison, and two women in identical dark suits emerged.

  “So he says to Judge Beckel, ‘The pedestrian hit me and went under my car.’”

  “Yeah, right. My guy claimed an invisible car came out of nowhere, struck him, and vanished.”

  The two women finished drying their hands, tweaked their identical hair, and left without a glance at Nan and Jenny Root. Their voices trailed back through the closing door. “So, get this, my client is habeas’ed in from the ACI…”

  Jenny Root leaned close to Nan. “Okay, here’s the deal. Just like I said. Leer will drop the charges if you tell him where your granddaughter is.”

  Smoke from Nan’s cigarette twirled upward between them, aromatic, cheering. It failed to obscure the vision of Gabriel’s face.

  “You can walk out of here and never come back. Go where you want. Do what you want.”

  “No.”

  “Nan. Think a minute. If you refuse this offer, Leer’ll really go after us. He’s a mean mother, I told you that, and he’s smart. Remember Claus von Bulow? Leer helped get him off. And whatever judge we get for the actual trial’ll be prejudiced against us. Because we wasted the court’s time, that’s how they’ll see it, if we refuse a reasonable settlement now.”

  We?

  “Okay, look, say we go to trial. Say we win. The judge gives Jane to you. With a trial, he’ll’ve had to order a psychiatric examination. Jane’ll have to go through that. People will suggest things to her. Make accusations. There’ll be publicity, stuff other kids might taunt her with, stuff she could maybe read later on, when she’s older. And if Gabriel appeals—and I bet you he would—the whole thing could drag on for years. Years, Nan.”

  A young black policewoman pushed open the door, saw them, withdrew with a clanking of keys. The Thought hovered, closer now.

  “Say we lose. And we could, Nan, we really could. If we turn down this offer everything’ll be against us. Say the judge gives Jane to Gabriel. What’s your plan?”

  “I—I just won’t turn her over. I won’t say where she is.”

  “Then you’ll go
to jail. Up to ten years. Jane will spend those years—grade school, junior high, she’ll be starting high school by the time you get out—with whoever she’s with now. Someone she’s not even related to. She won’t be able to visit you. And she won’t see her mother or her father, ever again.”

  Nan leaned her head back against the cold tile. There was a single small window high on the wall opposite. From her angle she saw only sky—wet, gray, empty. The emptiness pleased her. The world had narrowed to this.

  “Nan—how’ll you keep track of Jane if you’re in prison? You could totally lose touch with her. You might never see her again.”

  Never see Jane again? Not see her?

  “And what about your heart? You could die in prison. One day, all of a sudden, you’re archives—what happens to Jane then? Think, Nan!”

  Nan lit another cigarette from the burning stub of the first. Her fingers trembled. Of course she should have thought of these possible outcomes herself. But she hadn’t.

  Jenny Root stopped talking and put one hand over Nan’s. Across the room a faucet dripped. The sound grew in the silence until it was a drumbeat. Jane. Jane. Jane.

  Nan closed her eyes and let smoke stream from her nostrils. So this was they meant by the lesser of two evils. She’d believed that she’d encountered it in the past; she had not. The logistics of such a choice were bleaker than she’d ever realized. Either way, she deprived Jane: whether she gave her up—gave her back to Gabriel—or kept her whereabouts a secret.

  “Would they let her see me? Could I visit her?”

  “I can try to make that a condition.”

  A small stab of joy, quick as a pinprick. Nan opened her eyes. She looked down at the hard, grimy floor where they sat, then up at the blank gray square of sky in the wall across from them.

  At last she said, her voice someone else’s voice, “All right.”

  |

  “All rise!”

  Here was the judge again, and a lot of good-afternooning (lunchtime having come and gone) and your-honoring, and then the two lawyers once again disappeared with Wright into the room behind the dais. Nan pulled her glasses out of her jacket pocket and put them on. Gabriel had moved down to the front pew, with Leer. He sat with his back to Nan, head bent, shoulders slumped theatrically under the fine wool blazer. Nan opened her purse and felt around inside until her fingers found Miami Getaway Barbie and closed around it. Outside the tall arched windows it was still raining. Heavy, wet, weighing, it bent the juniper bushes to the ground in supplicant postures.