The Year She Disappeared

by Ann Harleman

  Shovelton had moved up the length of the gurney and stood behind Nan’s head, next to Val. Safety Pin sidled along the gurney toward the two men, gun raised, pulling the handcuffs off her belt. She was on Nan’s left; the flashlight, in Nan’s right hand. Slowly Nan maneuvered it free of the sheet. Her hand was shaking. She felt Val’s fingers on the top of her head, a quick approving tap. He stepped sideways as Safety Pin approached, so that she had to turn her back to the gurney. Keeping her eyes on the two men, she bent to fasten the cuffs around Val’s out-thrust wrists.

  Now.

  The flashlight came down on Safety Pin’s nape without a sound. Nan felt the impact travel up her arm as if it were she who’d received a blow. Surprise made her dizzy. She shut her eyes. Breathe; breathe. Val murmured, “Ladno! Good job.” There was a thud, a scraping. Several monthlong seconds passed. When she opened her eyes, Safety Pin was gone. The door to Nan’s room was shut.

  Bright ceiling lights pinwheeled past. Val upside down in a white lab coat, a white surgical mask slung around his neck as if he’d just come from the OR (definitely a Walker touch, thought Nan), his face a blur, because—

  “My glasses!”

  “Tishina!” They slowed for a second, then speeded up again. “We cannot. Is not time.”

  The gurney’s wheels made a purposeful sound. They moved swiftly along one corridor, down another. A woman’s voice sang out, “Evening, Doctors!” Shovelton, walking rapidly alongside Nan, took one of her hands and held it. His bearded, indistinct profile was comforting. Darkened doorways slipped past. Voices sounded ahead of them, then beside them, then behind. “Looks like dirt!” … “Why, is she pregnant?” … “I told him, I says, I don’t have a problem, I have an attitude.” … “That toe-suckin’ ho-bitch!”

  They halted beside an elevator. Val punched a button.

  Shovelton pulled his hand from Nan’s. She’d been gripping it more tightly than she realized. “I can’t go any farther,” he said in a low voice. “If you feel faint or nauseated, take this.” He put a pill into her hand and closed her fingers around it. “Good luck!”

  The elevator doors parted. Deft as any orderly, Val maneuvered the gurney into it. Two nurses and a security guard moved against one side to make room. Nan felt Val stiffen. The bunch of keys at the guard’s belt chimed in her ear. But the guard—big, young, shiny-eyed—was concerned only with standing as close as he could to the prettier of the two nurses. “I mean, he’s not anybody’s poodle,” she was saying. “But he’ll give you, like, the benefit of the doubt” “Totally!” the other one murmured.

  They got off with everyone else. Val pushed Nan around a corner, stopped for a minute, then returned to the elevator. “Basement!” he muttered.

  This time the elevator was empty. They emerged into a dim corridor, low ceiling, pipes. Nan got it: a patient being taken for tests in the middle of the night couldn’t be seen going below the second floor of the hospital. Picking up speed, they whisked along, wheels growling against the cement floor. The pipes overhead arrived and departed, untangled, re-knotted. Now and then a drop of moisture fell on Nan’s face. I want a cigarette, she thought passionately.

  Suddenly they slowed. Val whispered, “Not to move!” The cotton sheet was flung over Nan’s face.

  Several seconds of a new, stately pace. Nan stayed still. Then a young male voice said, “Jay? Hey, man, what’s goin’ down? Hey! You’re not Jay. What’re you—”

  A scuffling; a thump. Something heavy fell across Nan’s legs. Paralyzed, heart banging, she waited.

  “K chortu!”

  The weight across her legs was rearranged. Nan put a hand out from under the sheet, intending to lift it off her face so she could see what had happened, but Val said, “Not to move!”

  Then she was rolling again, fast this time. The weight across her legs made her feel oddly safe. Anchored, like the lead blanket they gave you at the dentist’s to shield you from X-rays. Beneath the sheet she could see nothing. Sounds narrowed to Val’s breathing above her, the sigh of the gurney wheels below.

  An abrupt right turn; the sound of a door shutting. They stopped. The weight was removed. There was some shuffling and a thud, followed by “Chort voz’mi!” Then the sheet was lifted. Blinking, Nan found herself looking down a yellow flashlight beam at two piles of dark fabric.

  “Put on these!” Val swung the flashlight toward the smaller pile. He held out a hand, Nan took it, and then, a little dizzy, she was on her feet. Val held the flashlight steady on the heap of clothing. Nan turned her back, looking away from the larger pile, which moved a little, then groaned. What am I doing? she thought, shivering as the cold cement floor met her bare feet. What in the world have I done? She slid out of the hospital johnny and began pulling on garments one by one. Too late now, bra, two bodies, underpants, sweatshirt, that shock when the flashlight, sweatpants, socks. Fanny pack, which she strapped on fum-blingly. Her fingers discerned the square bulge of a pack of cigarettes. Bless him!

  Val laid the flashlight on the floor and began dragging the larger pile into the corner. Nan looked away. Not dead; don’t be silly. Shoes. She looked around the floor in the oblique glow of the flashlight, but could see none. He’d forgotten shoes.

  Val’s arm was across her shoulders. He hugged her, hard. “I will miss!”

  Then he was guiding her toward the door. The flashlight snapped off, there was a moment of utter darkness, and then they emerged into the corridor. Val inserted a key into a metal door marked NO EXIT.

  The bright, still hush, after rain. Remembering how, as a child, the brightness and the hush were what woke you. Without her glasses the sky was a blur, but Nan could feel it, a starry night. Val’s arm urged her forward. They stepped together into the humid air. Smells surrounded her, outdoor smells, non-hospital smells: earth, cinders, some flowering shrub. Bands of color lay before her: the gassy pink of overhead floodlights, the blue darkness of a small courtyard, the deeper darkness beyond. A drumroll of fear traveled up her spine.

  Val bent down and wedged the flashlight to keep the door from closing. Straightening up, he must have felt her trembling, because his calm voice denied everything—the gurney ride, the soundless contact with the back of Safety Pin’s head, the bundle left behind in a dark corner. Escaping, jailbreak—surely it couldn’t be this easy? Surely something would happen, some obstacle, something to stop them? Turning, she pressed against Val’s enclosing arm and stared back into the hospital darkness almost hopefully.

  “Nan! This way! Is gate straight ahead. You see?”

  I don’t. I can’t see anything.

  “Fine, ladno. Gate is open. You land up in street. Taxi is waiting—my taxi. Mel is driving.”

  I can’t.

  “Ladno. You have only to walk, perhaps fifteen meters. Mel is driving you …” His voice began to fade. “… Boston … aeroport … Milan …”

  Her legs trembled; her knees seemed to disappear. She felt the familiar coldness, nausea but not quite, buckle itself across her belly. Spirals of pain uncoiled behind her breastbone, along her left arm.

  Val shook her, hard. “Nan!” He pried at her clenched fingers, his nails cutting into the soft flesh, hurting. He forced her hand open. The pill was pushed into her mouth. Automatically her tongue arched, curled, swept it under.

  Val waited, both arms under her armpits, holding her up. Slowly the world stilled, her knees jelled, the clamor in her chest began to ease.

  “Nan. I must go.”

  Her head felt light. No restraints. Must she do this?

  “Nan! Think. Think to Jane.”

  And then Val was pushing her Jane and she was stepping out onto the pavement Jane and the cinders were biting through her wet socks and when she looked down Jane there were hollows where rain had gathered, cupfuls of starry darkness, and she followed them Jane through the pink light through the blue dark into the deep shadows under the trees.

  Eighteen

  Sulfur-colored sky; remnants of night; a fe
w disheveled wandering stars. Looking up past the lighted sign for Alitalia, Nan Mulholland had to guess at these as much as see them, squinting, missing (had she ever before, in her vanity-driven life?) her glasses. She watched the taillights of Val’s taxi disappear. Then, clutching ticket folder, passport (yet another false name!), driver’s license, towing the wheeled suitcase Mel had provided, she entered the haze of Logan Airport’s International Terminal.

  She nearly asked directions from a life-sized replica of Peter Lynch, standing beside a huge, lighted sign that advised, KNOW WHAT YOU OWN. KNOW WHY YOU OWN IT. “You’ll be met,” was all Mel had been able to tell her. By Walker and Jane, Nan assumed she meant. In Milan, she hoped; though it could be all the way at the end of this blurred and desperate journey, in Genoa. Not until they were speeding north on I-95 had she asked Mel where they were going. Of course Walker had seen Alex’s message next to his in the Pee-Eye, had understood where she must be. Of course Walker had a Plan. Like New Zealand (Mel informed her), Italy didn’t extradite for child custody cases.

  Nan walked, as directed by the genial fat man behind the Alitalia ticket counter, toward Security. Luckily, the bag Mel gave her had contained a pair of brand-new black sneakers, which she’d put on in the car. She walked fast, expecting every minute to be stopped. The drive to Boston had used her up—Mel speeding, chattering to cover her fear, We’ll visit you, you and Janey, you’ll see, it’ll be diesel, it’ll totally rock—and she had no energy left for optimism. No energy to resist the fear that coursed through her. Now—sneakers squeaking slightly as she strode, she hoped confidently, forward—it was a blessing not to see too far ahead. Even so, there were terrors. Blue uniforms that turned out to be business suits. A jingling that turned out to be the bells on a child’s toy. A heart-stopping moment when the woman at the security checkpoint paused over her false passport, looked up, then down again. Just get there. Just get to the gate.

  Her seat was in the bulkhead, no one in front of her. The plane, at this unpopular hour between night and morning, on a holiday weekend, was barely half full. Nan sat, quietly terrified, among her fellow passengers. If any of them watched her, if anyone regarded her with suspicion, she couldn’t see it. Another blessing. Because now that she was on the plane, obediently belted into her seat, far from feeling safer, she felt utterly alone. Abandoned. Fear percolated up into her throat from the bottom of her stomach. The vial of nitro she’d found in her fanny pack lay curled in one fist.

  But it’s not my physical heart (that lump of glistening meat) that I need now.

  All the years of State Department travel—of constant accommodation to new places and people and events—what were they worth to her now? She no longer knew that Nan—if indeed she ever had. In any case, for what would be asked of her now—to make a life for Jane, to make a childhood, to heal her—those years had given her no practice whatsoever.

  Can we—can I—do this?

  But here was the sky beginning to crack open: a band of pale green at the horizon shone like glass. Nearly sunrise. Look, Nana!—Jane had said, one winter morning—the sun is rinsing out the dark. They were in Jane’s bedroom at the top of the beautiful big house on Queen Anne, in that other life. The life before that other plane trip, half a year ago.

  The weight of all that had happened in the months between that trip and this suddenly descended on Nan. It was as if something terribly heavy had made contact with every part of her body. Feeling bruised all over, she leaned her forehead against the window glass. Cool, like the memory of a palm (Pop’s? Dorothea’s? her mother’s?) on feverish skin.

  Other passengers filed by: a turbaned Sikh; a fat man whose midsection, in a Hawaiian shirt, wavered from side to side like a waterbed; a woman carrying a brass lamp on one shoulder, refusing to yield it to the flight attendant, holding up a line of passengers behind her. Nan only half saw them. Then, in the seat to her left, a large blackness settled itself. Turning her head, she saw a nun and, in the aisle seat beyond, a black leather cello case. Momentarily she wondered, Do any nuns still wear the habit, these days? Oh, of course: must be Italian. This is Alitalia, after all.

  Nan turned back to the window. The heady smell of mothballs drifted over her, emanating from the voluminous black folds of her seatmate’s garments. It made Nan think of church, the priest swinging the censor high above the heads of the faithful, the odor of incense. Fainting. She opened her fingers and took a quick look at the vial of pills. She mustn’t faint now—not now. The nun shifted restlessly in her seat, annexed the armrest between herself and Nan. Perhaps she too was getting a whiff of her neighbor: in Nan’s case, the smell of stale tobacco from the cigarettes she’d smoked in the car with Mel, one after another. And sweat. And fear. Nan longed to take off the new sneakers, which bit into the backs of her heels; but she couldn’t afford to draw her seatmate’s attention. Glancing sideways, she saw the nun extract from her pleated bosom a bag of bright-colored candy. NEON WORMS, the label said. The nun tore the package open with her teeth and took out a chartreuse jelly cylinder. She must have felt Nan’s look, because she said, in an oddly deep voice, “Takeoff’s the most frightening, don’t you find? It always reminds me that the world would continue without me,” and held out the bag invitingly.

  Nan found herself reaching for one of the bright-colored worms. Then she saw what, before, she hadn’t noticed, what none of them—Shovelton, Val, Mel—had noticed. On the back of her left hand was an X of white surgical tape, from which protruded the plastic receiver for the IV needle. Quickly she withdrew her hand.

  “No, thank you, Sister.”

  She turned back to the window. Don’t talk to anybody, Mel had warned as they hurtled through the Callahan Tunnel, the dark weight of the Charles River pressing (Nan imagined) on their heads. Through the scratched glass of the plane’s windows sunrise was progressing. The sky, above a margin of live coals, had lightened to a pure, translucent kingfisher blue.

  The nun leaned toward Nan to look out the window. She said, in that peculiarly deep voice, “It’s always a beautiful day when you leave town.”

  Nan stiffened.

  “Don’t you find?”

  Nan’s fingers tightened around the nitro. Trembling, she forced herself to turn, to look.

  The starched white coif hid the wattle; black serge veiled the bald, perfectly shaped head. But it was Walker who looked back at her, his eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles shining. Joy rushed through Nan. She breathed in, trying for the smell of him—apples and pencil shavings—beneath the scent of mothballs. Questions crowded her throat. Where’s Jane? Where have you two been hiding? Is she okay?

  Before she could speak, Walker shook his head. In an absurd falsetto, he said, “A closed mouth gathers no feet.”

  The plane gave a preliminary shudder. Nan tensed, feeling all her organs leap into position. They began to move backward, then slowly turned. Melodious announcements, equally incomprehensible in English and Italian, offered the usual advice and warnings, but the voice was a smiling voice. Italy! thought Nan. No lugubrious, iron-faced attendants on this flight. Outside the window the airport no-man’s-land began gliding past. Walker pulled a pair of glasses from his ample bosom and handed them to Nan. Did the man think of everything? She put them on and strict, dark trees sprang up along the far edge of the tarmac.

  She turned to Walker. She said, careful to keep her voice low, “Just tell me she’s all right.”

  “Look behind you.”

  She turned toward the window, then twisted around until she could look back through the space between her seat and the curving wall of the plane. In the seat behind her was a small boy with bright red hair cut close to his skull, in denim overalls. He clutched a stuffed doll of indeterminate species wearing black-and-yellow-striped pajamas. Gazing down at it, he raised a hand to his forehead and rubbed it with the two middle fingers. Alex’s gesture.

  Nan breathed, Oh!

  Eyes the color of tarnished grapes met hers. Jane’s whole face bri
ghtened. She leaned forward, rising in her seat, then, obeying a murmured command, sat still. A large adult hand closed over her small one. A woman’s hand, lavishly beringed. Alex! Nan thought. But no—the skin was olive. Relinquishing all dignity, Nan put her eye to the crack. The ringed fingers curled around Jane’s, which seemed to curl back. A pang of purest jealousy shot through Nan.

  That hand should be mine.

  She put her lips to the crack. “A runcible cat!” she whispered. No answer. She tried again, louder. “A runcible cat!” Silence. She waited, her heart beating fast. Then:

  “With crimson whiskers!” Jane’s voice sang.

  “Shhh!” from her invisible companion.

  She felt Walker nudge her and turned around. “Friend of Sam’s,” he said in a low voice, referring to The Hand. He held out a neon worm, a bright-red one. Nan took it. When she returned to the crack, Jane’s eyes met hers, as if she’d simply kept on looking at the spot where her grandmother had been. Nan pushed the neon worm through the gap, and Jane took it. A small but unmistakable smile nudged the corners of her mouth before it opened and the worm dropped in.

  The plane slowed, then stopped. Nan looked out the window. They were somewhere in the middle of a runway alongside a sparkling ribbon of ocean. Minutes passed. Farther back in the plane a man’s voice groaned, “My Karma!” Nan felt her seat being kicked from behind, heard Jane’s voice rising in familiar tones of protest—“I’m not!” —and from her companion a stern “Hush!” A pretty flight attendant with a face like a borzoi came down the aisle with cups of water. Nan fought the desire to get up and free Jane, drag her guardian from her seat and occupy it herself, an urge so fierce, so savage, that it scared her.

  What if we don’t make it? What if we fail?

  She remembered the pause on the runway in Seattle, all those months ago—eerily parallel. Now, as then, Nan held herself rigid, so as not to disturb the precarious balance of the universe; now, as then, she felt afraid. Only this time, she realized with widening gratitude, I’m not alone.