Vanishing Acts

by Jodi Picoult

  Louise opens her hand so that the coins fall like rain. "Wouldn't you know it," she says, her mouth curving into a smile. "Now I work at a bank."

  *

  Sophie and I stand on the edge of Second Mesa, underneath the shadow of a circling hawk. "What it means," I explain, "is that Ruthann isn't here anymore."

  She looks up at me. "Is she where Grandpa is?"

  "No. Grandpa's going to come back," I say, although I don't know if this is true. "When you die, it means you go away, forever."

  "I don't want Ruthann to go away."

  "Me neither, Soph."

  Because I need to, I reach down and haul her into my arms. She wraps herself around me, her lips pressed to my ear. "Mommy," she says, "I want to go wherever you do."

  Had I said that once, to my mother?

  At the sound of footsteps behind us, I turn around. Fitz walks forward slowly, not sure whether it's all right to interrupt. "Thank you for coming," I say, and the words come out too stiff.

  "I owed you one," Fitz answers.

  I look down at the ground. He doesn't ask me what happened; he doesn't ask me why I've called him and not Eric. He knows, without me saying so, that I can't talk about that either yet. "I know I told you to go to hell," I say, "but I'm glad you ignored me."

  "Delia, that newspaper story--"

  "You know what?" I say, trying to keep my voice from breaking. "Right now, I don't need a journalist. But I sure could use a friend."

  He hunches his shoulders. "I have references."

  I offer up the smallest smile, a bridge between us. "Actually," I confess, "you're the only one who applied."

  We have just gotten into the car to drive back to Phoenix when the snow begins to fall, a freak act of nature. It starts as a few stray flurries, and then sticks to the ground. Dogs leap around, skidding trails with their paws; children come out of the houses edging the plaza to catch snowflakes on their tongues. Derek and Wilma, in the middle of the funeral preparations for Ruthann, stop what they are doing to look up at the sky. They will tell each other, and the people of Sipaulovi, that this is proof Ruthann has made it to the Spirit World.

  But I think this sign might also be for me. Because as Fitz drives away from Second Mesa toward Phoenix, the snow falls harder, blanketing the hood and the windshield and the mesas and the highway until the land is as white as the robe of a Hopi bride, as white as winter mornings in New Hampshire. As a child, I would stand at my window to see the folds of snow draped over my house and Eric's and Fitz's, like a sorcerer's scarf. It was easy to pretend that underneath, everything had disappeared--shrubs and brick paths and soccer balls, hedges and fences and property lines. It was easy to pretend that when the magician pulled away his kerchief, the world would start over from scratch.

  I don't think Fitz is at all surprised when I ask him to make a detour on our way home. He waits in the parking lot with Sophie and Greta, who are asleep in the backseat of the car. "Take your time," he says, as I walk into the jail.

  There is only one other inmate with a visitor. My father sits down on the other side of that wall of Plexiglas and picks up the phone. "Is everything all right?"

  I look at him in his stripes, with a bandage wrapped around his left hand and a healing cut on his temple, with a nervous tremor that makes him keep glancing to the side, to see if someone is coming up behind him, and I cannot believe that he is asking me that question.

  "Oh, Daddy," I say, all the tears coming at once.

  He balls his hand into a fist and then, from the core of it, pulls a plume of a Kleenex--sleight of hand. But then he remembers that he can't get the tissue to me through the barrier of the wall, or over the telephone connection. He smiles faintly. "Guess I haven't learned that trick yet."

  When we did our magic show for the seniors, my father had had to convince me to do the vanishing act. He explained the reality to me--out of sight is out of mind--but I still believed that once the black curtain came down, I'd be gone for good. I was so nervous that he cut the tiniest of holes in the curtain for me. If I could keep an eye on him, he said, then surely I wouldn't really disappear.

  I had forgotten about that hole until just now. It makes me wonder if I had remembered, even unconsciously, the way we had run away from home. If even at six years old, I had to learn to trust him to bring me back.

  Maybe if it hadn't been such an awful day, I would have noticed that on the ride home from the jail, Fitz has gotten quieter and quieter. But I've been thinking of Ruthann, and my father. It isn't until we pull up to the trailer and I see Eric's car outside that I panic. Two days ago, which feels more like two hundred, I had left him behind in the hospital, angry at him for doing the job I had asked him to do. "Come in," I beg Fitz, turning to him like I always do for support. "Be a buffer."

  "I can't."

  "Pretty please," I say. I glance into the backseat, where Sophie is still snoring in little puffs beside the dog. "You can carry her in."

  Fitz looks at me, his face expressionless. "No. I'm busy."

  "Doing what?"

  When he rounds on me, angry, it is so unlike the Fitz I know that I find myself shrinking back against the passenger seat. "For God's sake, Delia, I just drove six hundred miles for you, and you weren't even technically speaking to me."

  Heat rises to my cheeks. "I'm sorry. I thought ..."

  "What? That I have nothing better to do? That I don't have a life? That I might not spend all that time with you wishing I was doing this?" His hands lock on each side of my face and he pulls me forward, like gravity. When his mouth seals over mine it is brutal, bitter. The stubble of beard on his face leaves a mark on my skin, raw and shaped like regret.

  He isn't Eric, and so our lips don't move in a familiar rhythm. He isn't Eric, and so our teeth grit against each other. He holds the back of my head, as if he is afraid I will break away. My heart beats so hard I begin to feel it in forgotten places: behind my eyes, at the base of my throat, between my legs.

  "Mommy?"

  Fitz immediately releases me, and we both turn around to see Sophie watching us curiously from her car seat. "Oh, Jesus," he murmurs.

  "Sophie, honey," I say quickly, "you're having a dream." I fumble for the door latch and step out of the car, then reach into the back and haul my daughter into my arms. "Isn't it funny, the things we think we see when we're sleeping?"

  She sinks into my shoulder, boneless, as Greta bounds out of the car. By now, Fitz is standing outside, too. "Delia--"

  A light goes on in the trailer, and the door opens. Eric, bare-chested and wearing boxers, comes down the aluminum stairs. He takes Sophie out of my arms, a transaction of commerce.

  Before we can say anything to each other, the sound of Fitz's car engine slices the night in half. He peels away, leaving a cloud of dust and grit in his wake.

  "Ruthann's sister called to see if you got home," Eric says quietly, so that he doesn't wake Sophie. "She told me what happened." I follow him up the steps, wait to answer until he has laid Sophie down in our bed and pulled up the covers. He closes the door to the tiny bedroom and then puts his hands on my shoulders. "You all right?"

  I would like to tell him about the Hopi reservation, where the very ground you are standing on might crumble beneath your feet. I'd like to tell him that an owl can spell out the future. I'd like to explain what it looks like to watch someone fall twenty stories and to see, at the same time, a storm in the shape of her body begin to climb into the sky.

  I'd like to apologize.

  But instead I find myself going to pieces. Eric sits down on the floor of the trailer with me in his arms. He lets me keep all my words to myself.

  "Dee," he says after a while, "will you promise me something?"

  I draw away, wondering if he, like Sophie, saw what had happened in the car. "What?"

  He swallows hard. "That I won't wind up like your mother."

  My heart cinches. "You won't start drinking again, Eric."

  "I wasn't talking ab
out alcoholism," he says. "I was talking about losing you."

  Eric kisses me so tenderly that it unravels me. I kiss him back, trying to find the same depth of faith. I kiss him back, although I can still taste Fitz, like a stolen candy tucked high against my cheek, sweet when I least expect it.

  VII

  "I have done it," says my memory.

  "I cannot have done it," says my pride,

  refusing to budge. In the end--my

  memory yields.

  --Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil,

  "Fourth Part: Maxims and Interludes"

  Andrew

  "Drink this," Concise says, and he holds up a bottle of shampoo.

  I look at him as if he is crazy. "No way. It'll make me sick."

  "Well, sure it will, fool. Everyone wants to know where that bullet went. You ain't gonna wait for it to come out the other end."

  In the wake of the fight in the rec yard, Sticks has been sent to the hospital for ophthalmological surgery, the blow dart embedded deep in his eye. He'll be sequestered for a disciplinary stint, but eventually he'll be back, and we will pick up where we left off.

  Taking the shampoo bottle out of Concise's hand, I swallow half the contents. A moment later I charge for the toilet in the cell, bracing my hands on the bowl.

  "No, it'll go down the sewer!" Concise grabs my shoulders and pivots me so that I vomit into the stainless-steel bowl of the sink. The bullet hits the drain with a ping.

  "That," Concise says, grinning, "is fuh sheezy." He reaches under the bunks and tosses me a towel.

  It is when I turn around to catch it that I notice Fetch lurking outside our cell. A gangly stickbug of a kid, with White Pride tattoos curled around his biceps like asps, he's one of Sticks's posse. And he's been watching every move we've made.

  "Yo, cracker," Concise calls out. "You want to squeal to Sticks, we got a message for him." He points his finger at Fetch, a makeshift gun. "Bang," he says.

  *

  In this jail, the whites control the inflow of hard drugs, and in our pod, the contact for goods is Sticks. Concise and his hooch are small-time runners by comparison. The drugs get smuggled in off the streets. They're offered to the members of the Aryan Brotherhood upstairs in close custody first, then whites in general populations, and finally to other races. Money is exchanged by acquaintances on the outside--any massive transfer of funds in jail accounts would immediately trigger suspicion from the DOs.

  Sticks, now wearing a patch over his left eye, has just come in from an AA meeting, a prime place to make deals. It has been two weeks since the incident in the rec yard, but that might as well be yesterday in jail. He walks toward my stool and kicks it. "You're in my way," he says.

  "I'm not in your way."

  Sticks shoves me three feet forward. "You're in my way," he repeats.

  Concise and Blue Loc are a sudden, implacable wall. They stand with their arms crossed, their muscles dark and flexed. Outnumbered, Sticks backs off.

  Concise and I walk up the stairs side by side. We don't speak until we have turned the corner on the landing. "What he say to you?" Concise asks.

  "Nothing."

  We both stop dead in the entryway to our cell. The entire space has been tossed--towels flung into the toilet, food stores emptied, bottles of Concise's hooch opened and spilled in puddles across the floor. One of our mattresses has been ripped in half, small tumbleweeds of yellowed foam are all over the floor.

  "Sticks and his peckerwood buddies did this," Concise says. "You know what they were lookin' for," he adds, and it isn't a question.

  For the first time that day, I stop doubting Concise--who has insisted that the bullet cannot be left hidden in our cell, who would not listen to my protests when I told him I absolutely, positively, was not going to do what he suggested I do. For the first time that day I am fully aware of the small metal missile I pushed deep inside of me that morning, a suppository full of vengeance.

  To become a member of a prison gang, you might as well start in jail. Prospective members of the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mau Mau, and the Mexican Mafia--or EME, as they call themselves--are recommended by made members. A yes vote, taken among other members, lets you in on probation. Probates are subject to a background check--no crimes against children, no being a source for anyone in law enforcement--and you are given a sponsor, a member who takes you under his wing.

  For the Aryan Brotherhood, a probate has to prove himself for two years. You will be expected to keep weapons hidden with you. You will be asked to fight. You will be expected to ferry drugs from one place to another. If you have drug connections, you will be expected to supply the members. If you make money from any of this, you have to share it with everyone.

  At the end of two years, you will be assigned a hit--a murder sanctioned by the governing force of your gang. For the Aryan Brotherhood, that's three particular inmates in the Special Management Unit of the Arizona State Prison.

  You will be given a weapon and told how to commit the murder. Your sponsor will come with you, when it's time. After all, if there is an eyewitness to a murder you've committed, you most likely won't squeal ... and since there was an eyewitness to a murder he committed, he isn't squealing, either. It is one big pyramid scheme.

  Once you've done your job, you will be allowed to put on a wet patch--a tattoo. Gothic letters--AB--scraped into the skin of your arm or chest or neck or back. You must be in prison to be inked, so some time may pass between your hit and when you officially become a gang member.

  If a made member has the chance to take care of a sanctioned hit and misses the opportunity, it's a mistake punishable by death at the hands of his own kind.

  A few days later, we are in the pod watching the news when a local update comes on. At these, everyone perks up--if there's a report of crime, there's an excellent chance someone in the pod knows who committed it. Today, there is word of a raging fire in the Phoenix area.

  The reporter is a tiny woman with hair the same color as the flames. "Police say a meth lab may be to blame for this morning's fatal fire, which destroyed a home in the North Phoenix area on Deer Valley Road last night. Firefighters were called in after an explosion took the life of Wilton Reynolds. At this hour ..."

  There is a mighty roar behind me, and the sound of a garbage can being overturned. When I look over my shoulder, I see Concise standing over the mess. The DOs immediately rise to attention, so I turn to the control booth. "It was an accident," I say, righting the can. I grab Concise by the arm and pull him upstairs to our cell. "What are you doing?"

  He sits down. "Sinbad's my brother."

  "Sinbad?"

  "That homey they were talking about on the news."

  It takes me a moment to understand that Concise is referring to the victim in the fire. "You mean the meth cook?"

  "He told me he knew what he was doin'," Concise mutters.

  "You said you had two sisters."

  "He's my brother," Concise repeats, stressing the metaphor. "I grew up with him on the streets. This was gonna be our big thing."

  "You were in business making meth? Do you have any idea what that drug does to people?"

  "We weren't givin' it away," Concise snaps. "If someone was fool enough to mess himself up, that was his problem."

  I shake my head, disgusted. "If you build it, they will come."

  "If you build it," Concise says, "you cover your rent. If you build it, you pay off the loan sharks. If you build it, you put shoes on your kid's feet and food in his belly and maybe even show up every now and then with a toy that every other goddamn kid in the school already has." He looks up at me. "If you build it, maybe your son don't have to, when he grow up."

  It is amazing--the secrets you can keep, even when you are living in close quarters. "You didn't tell me."

  Concise gets up and braces his hands against the upper bunk. "His mama OD'd. He lives with her sister, who can't always be bothered to take care of him. I try to send money so that I k
now he's eatin' breakfast and gettin' school lunch tickets. I got a little bank account for him, too. Jus' in case he don't want to be part of a street gang, you know? Jus' in case he want to be an astronaut or a football player or somethin'." He digs out a small notebook from his bunk. "I'm writin' him. A diary, like. So he know who his daddy is, by the time he learn to read."

  It is always easier to judge someone than to figure out what might have pushed him to the point where he might do something illegal or morally reprehensible, because he honestly believes he'll be better off. The police will dismiss Wilton Reynolds as a drug dealer and celebrate one more criminal permanently removed from society. A middle-class father who meets Concise on the street, with his tough talk and his shaved head, will steer clear of him, never guessing that he, too, has a little boy waiting for him at home. The people who read about me in the paper, stealing my daughter during a custody visit, will assume I am the worst sort of nightmare.

  I run my hands over my scalp--fuzzy, now that the hair is growing in again. "It's the phosgene gas," I tell him.

  "What?"

  "That's what killed your friend. The chemical reaction necessary to make meth produces a lethal gas. If you disconnect your tubes the wrong way, you die."

  Concise blinks at me. "You a meth cook, too?"

  "No. But I've got advanced degrees in chemistry." I sit down and motion for the notebook Concise is still holding. I rip a page out of the back and then rummage underneath my pillow for a pencil--sharp enough, it makes a good weapon to sleep with in your hand.

  It takes me a few minutes and several corrections, but when I have the reactions down right, I hand the recipe to Concise. "Find another friend. This'll work."

  "No way. You ain't gettin' involved. This ain't who you are." He crumples up the paper and tosses it on the floor of the cell.

  Who I am, and what I am capable of doing, has always managed to surprise me. I think about the day I ran away with you; how I took you to a diner and let you order every single dessert on the menu, so that you would think the best of me before you could begin to think the worst.

  I reach for the paper. "Your son," I say. "What's his name?"