The Vanishing (4 page)

‘‘Fine.’’ He followed her into the dining room, where she opened a bureau drawer and withdrew a piece of paper that was wrinkled, folded and looked as though it had been rubbed in dirt. He took it from her, handling it gingerly, as though it were a priceless artifact. Dark brownish smudges that could have been bloody fingerprints were clumped in each corner and lined the right side of the page. But it was the writing itself that captured Brian’s attention. For the rows of symbols that had been written on the paper resembled no alphabet he had ever seen. Drawn with some sort of charcoal pencil, they looked like a cross between primitive hieroglyphics and a child’s random scrawls.

He looked up at his mom. ‘‘
This
is the letter?’’

She nodded.

‘‘How do you know it’s from Dad?’’

‘‘I recognize his handwriting.’’

‘‘Handwriting?’’ Brian rattled the paper. ‘‘This isn’t even . . . It’s not . . .’’ He shook his head. ‘‘It’s a bunch of scribbles.’’

‘‘It’s from your father,’’ she said firmly.

He stared at the dirty paper, trying to make sense of what he saw, trying to reconcile this incomprehensible mess with the neat, buttoned-down man he’d known as a child. On the top of the bureau, centered amid rows of framed family photographs, was a picture of his clean-cut father wearing a suit and tie—his preferred mode of dress—looking more like a businessman from the 1950s than a computer operator from the 1980s.

Brian recalled with perfect clarity the last time he had seen his dad. He’d been in junior high. It was a Wednesday afternoon in the fall, and he’d been sitting on the low block wall in front of the school office, a flat oversized box filled with page dummies for the student newspaper on his lap. His dad was late. He was supposed to have come more than an hour before to take Brian to the printer, but he hadn’t shown up, and in those pre- cell phone days there’d been no way for Brian to get ahold of his father.

So he’d waited.

And waited.

Finally, his dad’s Subaru had pulled into the parking lot. Brian jumped off the wall, holding on to the box, grabbed his backpack from the ground at his feet and walked over to where his father had stopped the car. But instead of merely unlocking the passenger door, his dad turned off the engine, got out of the vehicle and walked around to where Brian stood at the curb. ‘‘Let’s go for a walk,’’ he said.

‘‘Dad, the printer’s expecting the pages! We’re late already! If I don’t get them there in time, the paper’s not going to come out!’’

‘‘Don’t worry. We’ll make it. I’ll talk to the printer myself. Walk with me.’’

The two of them strolled past the front of the office toward the hulking domed gym. Brian was expecting some sort of lecture, or maybe another sex talk, but for a while his dad said nothing, merely walked along beside him, looking around at the school. Then they reached the gym, turned around, and out of nowhere his father said, ‘‘You’re a good kid, Brian. You’re a good boy.’’

Before he could come up with a response to this odd statement, his dad put an arm around his shoulder. Brian could not recall him ever doing such a thing before, and it felt more than a little uncomfortable. Even stranger was what his father said next: ‘‘I love you, Brian.’’

Looking back on it now, he knew that his dad had been saying good-bye, but at the time, he hadn’t known
what
was going on. Not sure how to react, at that awkward early-teen stage where he was embarrassed by the very existence of his parents, Brian had moved away self-consciously, praying that none of his friends—or, even worse, his enemies—had seen the public display of affection. They’d walked to the car in silence, drove to the printer’s and delivered the page dummies; then his father dropped him off at his friend Kenny’s house.

By the time he got home, his dad was gone.

His mom had known ahead of time that he was leaving, and for years afterward Brian and his sister had been angry with her for keeping them out of the loop, for not allowing them a proper farewell. But over time, blame had shifted back where it belonged, to their father, as they both realized that their mother had been a victim as well, that
he
was the one who had torn apart the family.

Brian stared at the dirty sheet of paper in his hand, trying to find some connection between the childishly scrawled symbols and an adult man’s handwriting. ‘‘What was it sent in?’’ he asked his mom. ‘‘Did you save the envelope?’’

‘‘The envelope was blank. There was no return address. No, I didn’t save it.’’

‘‘Did you notice the postmark?’’

‘‘I’m not an idiot. Of course I looked. But there wasn’t any, only some smudged lines, and I couldn’t make out any of it. To tell you the truth, it looked almost as crazy as his letter.’’

‘‘But you’re sure it’s from Dad?’’

She nodded. ‘‘It’s from your father.’’

None of this made any sense. Still holding the piece of paper, Brian went out to the family room and immediately called his sister. He told her what their mother had said, then described the letter itself, down to the fingerprints that could have been blood. Jillian demanded that he put their mom on the phone, and there ensued a heated discussion that ended with his mother crying and throwing the phone at him before rushing back to her bedroom.

‘‘What did you say to her?’’ Brian asked his sister.

‘‘The truth.’’ Jillian took a deep breath. ‘‘So do you really think it’s from Dad?’’

He sighed. ‘‘I don’t know
what
it is. I’m telling you, it’s the strangest damn thing I’ve ever seen. If it
is
from Dad . . .’’ He trailed off, not sure where he was going with this, not sure he wanted to go anywhere.

They hung up soon after, Brian promising to FedEx a copy to her in the morning.

He walked back into the dining room and stood before the bureau, looking back and forth from the filthy piece of paper in his hand to the smiling, suited man in the photograph, trying to reconcile the two. The house was silent. He wondered if his mom was still crying, thought of going to her room and asking if she was all right, but then decided against it. She might know more than she was telling, and if he left her alone for a while, maybe she’d open up a bit more. Returning to the family room, he sat down, picked up the remote and flipped on the TV.

His mother did come out later, but she didn’t want to talk about either the letter or his father, and when Brian started gently prying, she cut him off and ordered him to mind his own business.

This
is
my business,
he wanted to say.
He’s my dad.
But he let it slide. He was going to be here for several more days, he reasoned. There’d be time for this discussion later.

He kept the letter, putting it in his briefcase with the books and other papers he’d brought.

He slept that night in his old bed, in his old room.

And dreamed.

In the nightmare, he was walking down a winding yellow brick road, like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz.
On his left side was Los Angeles, on his right side was Bakersfield, but he couldn’t go to either of them because the yellow brick road was encased in some type of glass, and the only thing he could do was continue forward. He walked for what seemed like hours. At the finish, he knew, was his father. But as the countryside flattened out ahead of him and he could see where the road ended, he stopped. Ahead was not the emerald city but a black mountain crawling with huge albino slugs.

From somewhere deep within the mountain, he heard a low, dull grunting.

And the piercing sound of his father’s screams.

Three

Arlene was so jet-lagged that even though she’d dozed for more than half the flight from Paris, she still nodded off in the limo on the trip home. The driver had to stir her from sleep when they reached the front of the building, gently repeating her name over the intercom until she opened her eyes and informed him that she was awake.

Stephen, as usual, was gone, at work even on a Saturday, and she came home to an empty, silent apartment. It was just as well. The mere thought of meeting up with her husband, and all of the detailed discussion that would inevitably ensue, made her feel tired. James left her bags in the entryway, as instructed, and she closed and locked the door behind him, standing there for a few moments to depressurize. She needed a drink, Arlene decided finally, and she left her luggage in the middle of the floor, made her way to the bar and poured herself some gin. Stephen called a few minutes later, promising to be home by dinnertime, but she knew that ‘‘dinnertime’’ could mean anything between six and nine o’clock. She wondered idly if he was having an affair— then wondered if she cared.

She didn’t want to unpack, but she did it anyway. If Stephen had had his way, she wouldn’t have had to. A servant or housemaid would have unpacked for her. The whole idea of live-in help made her uncomfortable, though. Most of their friends had domestics, and they all told her how freeing it was, how liberating, how, unburdened by chores, they now had the time to do what they wanted to do. But this was her home, and the idea of sharing it with strangers made her feel ill at ease.

She unpacked, had another drink.

Afternoon became dusk, dusk became night. Arlene stood at the east window of the penthouse, looking over the lighted skyline of New York, the buildings like rectangular Christmas trees stretching in rows before her, the continuous line of cars on Park Avenue like little glowing ants between the trees.

This was about as far away from Marfa as it was possible to get.

She’d been thinking about that a lot lately, contrasting where she’d come from with where she was now. She wasn’t quite sure why. It was something she’d have to bring up with Anna on her next appointment. The therapist was always saying that she was too disconnected from her past, that she lived only in the present, as though her life had begun the moment she’d met Stephen. In reality, the distance she’d traveled—socially, economically and emotionally—was probably the most interesting and important thing about her, was the reason why she was the person she was. Her grandmother had had a bit part in
Giant
, had been one of the background guests at the barbecue welcoming Elizabeth Taylor to Texas. That wasn’t such a big deal in Marfa, where half the town had a
Giant
connection, but for years her family had lived off this fleeting brush with fame, and she lived today with a similarly superficial sense of self, allowing herself to be defined by her relationship to Stephen.

Stephen.

He’d been acting very odd lately, and Arlene supposedthat was why she’d been examining her life, thinking about the past, wondering about the future. Even before her trip to Paris, he’d been behaving in a way that she could think of only as suspicious. And not suspicious in an ordinary way but in a weird way. A scary way. Not like someone who had committed adultery but like someone who had committed . . . murder.

Just thinking the thought, allowing it to breathe the air of her conscious mind, made Arlene feel lighter, less emotionally oppressed.

She was not sure where that idea had come from or why it felt so right, but assigning a name to her suspicions, even one so horrible, made things seem more manageable somehow, made her feel almost relieved.

Because she’d been thinking it was something worse, hadn’t she?

Arlene shivered, turned away from the window, faced the shadows of the darkened apartment. What could be worse than murder? She didn’t know and she didn’t want to know, but she had to admit that more than once when she was alone with her husband, she’d felt the presence of something she did not—and could not— understand.

She wondered now if it was why she’d gone to Paris in the first place, why she’d been so thankful that Stephen had not been here to greet her upon her return.

She’d have to tell Anna about that, too. The therapist would have a
lot
to say on that subject.

Stephen came home much earlier than Arlene expected, shortly before eight. She hadn’t even started making dinner yet. Stephen suggested that they go out, maybe call up Kirk and have their son meet them at a restaurant, but Arlene begged off. She was tired from the trip, she said. And she was sick of eating out every meal.

‘‘Me, too,’’ Stephen said, laughing.

So he plopped himself on one of the chairs in the breakfast nook, and she described her trip to him as she chopped vegetables and readied dinner. She soon grew weary of talking, of answering endlessly detailed questions that for some bizarre reason seemed designed to trip her up and catch her in a lie (did he suspect
her
of having an affair?), and while they ate, she turned on the television. ‘‘I missed seeing American news,’’ she explained. ‘‘I want to find out what’s going on.’’

After eating, they did dishes together, just like in the old days, she rinsing them off while he put them in the dishwasher, CNN still on in the background.

Stephen snaked an arm around her waist, pulled her close to him, whispering in her ear. ‘‘Let’s have a golden shower,’’ he suggested.

She shook her head, tried to pull away.

‘‘Come on.’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘Come on.’’

‘‘I’m tired. . . . I’m not in the mood. . . .’’

‘‘Please?’’

Arlene gave in, as she always did, and she drank water until she had to pee, then stood above him in the sunken tub, bending over and spraying until he was completely soaked and his cock was as hard as a rock. She was aroused in spite of herself, and when he shoved his face between her legs and began licking her dripping crotch, she came. ‘‘Now,’’ he ordered. She sat down on his erection to finish him off, and after a few quick, hard thrusts, they both climaxed together.

Afterward, in bed, she let her fingers trace the hard scales that ran down the center of his back and covered his spine. She rubbed the thick, coarse fur that grew on the sides of his stomach. He was embarrassed by these abnormalities—it was why he never swam or sunbathed in public—but she’d always loved the uniqueness of his body. Make no mistake, she was glad Kirk hadn’t inherited his father’s genetic anomalies, but for herself, the sight of that body was a complete turn-on. Even now, when everything else about him seemed so wrong, this still seemed right.