Vanishing Acts (43 page)

“I am your mother.”

I think of what would happen if someone, anyone, touched Sophie. It wouldn't matter who it was–Victor, the man in the moon, Eric–I'd kill him. An icicle through the heart, a car filled with carbon monoxide. He would not take another breath if he touched my daughter; I'd find a way to hurt him that didn't show, just like he'd done to her.

And if Sophie was the one who came to tell me about it, I'd listen. In this way, I am different from my mother. And for that, I'm incredibly grateful. When I look up at her, I don't feel regret or sadness or even pain inside; I just feel numb. “I wish I could tell you that I know you did the best you could,” I say softly,

“but I can't.”

As a child, what I was missing was so much bigger to me than what I had. My mother–mythic, imaginary–was a deity and a superhero and a comfort all at once. If only I'd had her, surely, she would have been the answer to every problem; if only I'd had her, she would have been the cure for everything that ever had gone wrong in my life. It has taken me twenty-eight years to be able to admit that I'm glad I did not know my mother until now. Not because, as my father suspected, she would ruin my life, but because this way, I did not have to bear witness as she ruined hers.

My mother's sorrow is so powerful, it cracks the clay tile beneath her feet; it makes the water in the fountain behind us overflow. “Delia,” she says, as her eyes fill with tears. “I'm trying.”

“Me, too.” I reach for her hand: a compromise, a good-bye. Maybe this is as good as it gets.

Eric and I sit in the anteroom of the Madison Street Jail while we wait for my father's paperwork to be completed. I am careful to keep an inch of space between us, even when we are cramped tight by others. It shifts with us, and keeps me from brushing up against him. Once that happens, I will not be able to keep myself from falling apart.

We watch a parade of felons: prostitutes who try to come on to the detention officers; gang members bleeding from open wounds; drunks who sleep in the corners and sometimes cry in their sleep. “You know,” he says, after a few minutes,

“I might just stay here for a while.”

“In jail?”

“In Arizona. It's not so bad, really. And I've got at least one judge who likes me.” He shrugs. “Chris Hamilton offered me a job.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Right after he chewed me out for not telling him I'm an alcoholic.” I stare down at my hands. “That's not why I did it, you know.”

“That's exactly why you did it,” he corrects. “And that's why I love you.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper with an address scrawled across it. “This is the closest AA meeting. I'm going there tonight.” My eyes fill again. “I love you, too,” I say. “But I can't carry your baggage.”

“I know, Dee.”

“I'm not sure what I want right now.”

“I know that, too,” Eric says.

I wipe my eyes. “What am I supposed to tell Sophie?”

“That I said this was the best thing for her mother.” He takes my hand and traces his thumb across my knuckles. “For God's sake, if I learned anything during this damn trial it's that the only way someone can leave you is if you let them. And I'm not doing that, Dee. It may look like that today, or tomorrow, or even a month from now, but one day you're going to wake up and see that this whole time you've been gone, you've only been headed back to where you started. And I'll be there, waiting.” He leans forward and kisses me once, feather-light, on the lips. “It's not like I'm not letting you go,” he murmurs. “I'm just trusting you enough to come back.”

When he stands, he is tall enough to block the line of the sun. He is all I see, for a moment, when he walks out the door.

We leave the jail and head onto the highway. But instead of going back to Fitz and Sophie, I pull off at the first exit and veer to the side of the road in a cloud of dust. For the first time I allow myself to look at my father, really look at him, since this trial has begun.

The bruises on his face are healing, but his nose is never going to be straight again. His hair is still tufted and spotty from the shave. He sits with his arms crossed tight, as if he doesn't quite know what to do with all the space in the front seat, and even when the grit gets unbearable, he will not roll up his window.

“You probably have some questions for me,” he says. I look away, over the flat of the desert. There are wild boar out there, and coyote, and snakes. There are a thousand dangers. You can trip on a garden hose and wind up in a coma; you can eat a bad mushroom and die. Safety is never absolute, no matter what precautions you take. “You should have told me about Victor.” He is quiet for a full minute, and then he rubs his hand over his jaw. “I would have,” he says. “But I honestly didn't know whether it was true.” My mouth drops open and I cannot move, cannot breathe. “What?”

“I didn't have any proof, just... a feeling. I couldn't risk leaving you there with him, but I also couldn't take a hunch to the cops.”

“What about what you saw through the window?”

He shakes his head. “I don't know if I really did see that, Delia, or if I just convinced myself I did, over the years. The more time that passed, the more I wondered if I'd jumped to the wrong conclusions. And I needed to think I hadn't, because that way I could justify running away with you.” He closes his eyes. “It turns out that if you want something to be true badly enough, you can rewrite it that way, in your head. You can even start to believe it.”

“You lied on the witness stand?” I manage.

“It just . . . came out. And when it did–even when I realized that it could be the thing that saved me–I felt awful. But then I thought maybe you'd forgive me,” he says. “I'd spent almost thirty years being someone I wasn't, for you. So maybe you wouldn't mind spending a week being someone you weren't, for me.” I do not tell my father about the memories I've had of Victor; memories that were never heard in that courtroom; memories that would validate his intuition from so long ago. I don't think about what I know, and what I've painted over in my mind. There isn't one truth, there are dozens. The challenge is getting everyone to agree on one version.

So I ask the only question, really, that's left. “Then why did you take me?” My father looks at me. “Because,” he says simply, “you asked.” I am sitting in the front seat of the car, with my toes up on the dashboard. I close my eyes so the ribbon road in front of us vanishes, and I pretend it would be this easy to disappear. Please Daddy, I say. Don't take me home yet. When I open my eyes, it has started to rain. Fingers drum on the roof, and I roll up the windows of the car. What if it turns out that a life isn't defined by who you belong to or where you came from, by what you wished for or whom you've lost, but instead by the moments you spend getting from each of these places to the next?

I glance at my father and ask him the question he asked me exactly a lifetime ago. “Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?” His smile lights me. I drive east, toward Sophie, toward home. I follow a procession of telephone poles that stand with their arms outstretched, marching toward the horizon line. They keep going, you know. Even when you can't see where they're headed.

The End

Table of Contents

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Part 14