We Disappear

  His eyes were dark, his skin pale as paper. He smelled like the spice cologne my mother had bought for me once, some long-ago birthday. I could see he wasn’t here for drugs; he only wanted sex. He leaned against one of the trees, then rubbed the fly of his jeans, daring me to put my hand there too. How rough and disarrayed must I seem to him, how desperate? I thought of myself at his age, my trips to this same secret curve of Carey Park, and I remembered how I’d loved it when older men fixed their attention on me. Back then I’d owned a similar pair of combat boots. Back then I had equally blue eyes, equally pale hands, and I’d bait all the lonesome, leering men by rubbing the front of my pants.

  The boy was waiting for my response. I placed a hand on his shoulder. I know how you feel, I wanted to say. Twenty years ago I leaned against that same tree and smiled that smile. I knew I should have been aroused; surely he expected me to unzip his jeans or dart my tongue into his mouth. But I was hollow. What I thought I’d wanted, when I parked beside the woods, was no longer possible, incapable of piercing through this husk. When the boy reached for me at last, I could only shake my head in rejection.

  “At least kiss me or something,” he said.

  I clasped the back of his neck, drawing his face closer to mine. The cologne was strong but I caught an undersmell—not from his T-shirt or coat, but deeper—perhaps from the skin beneath, musty and muddy, as though he’d spent nights lying in the earth. And I kissed him. The mouth was hard and very cold, as though I’d leaned into glass to kiss my reflection.

  The boy slid both hands down my back. I deflected, lowering my head to his neck, grazing the skin beneath his ear. We must have looked like dancers. If I squinted through the gaps in the trees, I could see the empty golf course; an isolate edge of the prison’s towers. The wind was blowing the year’s last leaves; the snow was melting to the river with a sharp, silver trickle. It was the same river that wound through Reno County, the flatlands and sandy-soiled basins, along to smaller towns like Haven; it was the same wind that flowed southeast, over the roof and house, over the bed where she lay.

  The boy persisted. He slipped his fingers under my belt, trying to get inside my jeans. But I pushed his shoulder and shuffled away. He bent his eyebrows in protest and reached for me, ripping the name tag from my shirt.

  I watched his hand crush the square of paper. Then I looked back to his face. And I realized.

  “Oh, it’s you,” I said. “It’s finally you.”

  I pictured him at the side of the road, the defiant and pugilistic boy, his scratches and flecks of blood. Yes, these were the same thin but powerful arms. These were the muscles that had hurled the tomatoes, swift, tantrumy fire, to strike our truck.

  “These past few days, I’ve been wondering if you were only a dream. Something we’d created, just because we needed you.”

  He shook his head, stuffing his hands in his coat pockets. I smelled his buried smell. I stared at the image on his shirt: his face had the same angles, the same grin, as the skull.

  “Please come home with us again,” I said. “Just one last time. She’ll be so glad to see you. And we can tell her together. Hurry now, before she’s gone.”

  The boy backed farther against the tree, clearly puzzled by my words. And then, loudly, he began to laugh. He canted his head, offering the noise to the trees and sky, the muscles taut in his throat. Now I could see he wasn’t Allen, wasn’t Otis, after all. He wasn’t Henry or Evan or Warren. He was just an anonymous teenage Hutchinson boy, lonely and frantic for love, playing the role I’d once played.

  When I realized my mistake, I stumbled backward, nearly slipping in the mud. Then I turned and ran. I shot through the frozen branches—fast, exquisite snags at my skin and clothes—but I didn’t look back, didn’t stop, until I reached the truck.

  My breathing was staggered and raw. I waited for my heartbeat to steady. The branches had cut my ear and one corner of my mouth, and I dabbed at the blood with my sleeve, watching the path and the line of trees, checking to see if the boy had followed. But there was only silence.

  Once again it began to snow. I turned the key and backed out of the lot, retracing the route past the playground and pond and welcome sign. I tried to forget the boy, his wild eyes, the melody of his laugh. I tried focusing solely on my mother, the quiet bed in the quiet room. Hopefully the designated pastor had come and gone. Hopefully he’d withdrawn his futile persuasions, his attempts at stuffing her with heaven. By now, Mary had finished her duties; Dolores would be ready for a rest.

  Just before the highway exit stood the edge-of-town McDonald’s, its lights blurred and ashen through the snow. In recent weeks, Dolores and I had visited once or twice a day, routinely ordering strawberry milkshakes. My mother had loved their sweet berry bite; she’d loved the way they chilled her hand. Although I knew she could no longer drink them, no longer hold the plastic cup, I turned onto the street, I steered toward the drive-through window.

  The employee was a young girl with smudged mascara and a stained gold visor. I ordered the extra-large size, the thirty-two ounce, as though its volume could reflect my mercy or love. The girl bagged my order, walked to the window, and delivered it into my trembling hand. Without thinking, I took a drink: the chalky, puddled pink of it; the familiar clown-colored straw.

  Frowning, the girl stared into the pickup, then announced the total amount. I reached for my wallet to pay her. But my jeans were empty. I tried the pockets of John’s jacket. I tried the seat; the floor of the truck. The wallet was gone.

  Perhaps I’d lost the wallet while sprinting back through the trees. More likely, I knew, the boy from the woods had stolen it. The last remaining bills from Dolores. All my photographs and credit cards; my proofs and identifications. The girl was holding out her hand, but I could only give a pathetic shrug. I had nothing to give her. I’d finally faded away.

  TWELVE

  AND THEN THE snow turned to ice, sealing the phone lines and weathervanes, the black limbs of trees. The wind rang the church bells. In front of the phantom house, a branch had cracked and collapsed in the street.

  I came inside from the cold, waking Dolores from her nap. She’d turned on the rotating fan, but had switched off all the lamps. On the tray of the antique high chair was a half-filled tumbler of bourbon. I saw her staring uneasily at the cuts on my face, but she didn’t speak.

  “There’s so much I have to tell her,” I said.

  More blood had dried on my mother’s lips, flaked red as though she’d chewed a crayon. Her breathing had changed once again. I listened as her lungs struggled with air. Following each exhalation was a wet, gurgling sound, and then an awful, sustained silence.

  Dolores stood from the rocking chair. “If you want to be alone, I’ll leave for a while.”

  “No. I want you to hear everything, too.”

  Dolores suggested we bathe her. In the bathroom, we found the sponge Mary had brought. It was round and dimpled and pink, so thick I needed both hands to hold it. We also found a bar of sandalwood soap, a gift last Christmas from Alice, saved in the medicine cabinet but never unwrapped. “That’s such a wonderful scent,” Dolores said. “Your mother loves that scent.” I looked at her under the bathroom light, and for the first time noticed her lipstick, eye shadow, and carefully styled hair. She’d tried to make herself pretty for tonight, for my mother.

  We brushed aside the blankets. We dipped our hands into the water and washed her face, her scalp, and the back of her neck, taking extra care around the bruises, the scar from her fall. “There now,” Dolores whispered, “doesn’t that feel nice?” We tried not to spill the water or dampen the gown. We dabbed at her ankles, up to her thighs (there now, there now), the skin around the catheter tube and drainage bag. Then we finished by running the sponge along her breasts, her arms, her hands.

  Now my mother was glistening white. We were panting feverishly, as though we’d ascended a steep hill. I began moving through the house, locking doors, closing curtains. It seemed n
ecessary to cordon us off, to reject the rest of the world. When I returned, Dolores was sitting in the rocking chair. I took my seat at the end of the bed. I placed my mother’s feet in my lap, and, as always, warmed them with my hands. Softly, I began to speak.

  I don’t know the entire story. I suppose there’s no way of ever knowing all of it. Some of its parts are presumably facts, or at least the facts as reported by the Hutchinson News. Other parts came from Pammy Sporn, from all her years in Sterling. And the rest I’ve colored here and there, adding the plausible pieces, making connections, embellishing the places and names. Just as my mother and I had done before, with our tales of the missing.

  I know that on the afternoon of May 9, 1950, a tornado ripped across Rice and McPherson counties in central Kansas. A total of twenty people were killed. One of the dead was Margaret Anders of Sterling, a twenty-eight-year-old widow with two children. The older child was a nine-year-old boy named Jesse; the younger a girl of six, named Jill. The newspapers don’t say much about Mr. Anders—perhaps their father died from a farm accident or influenza; perhaps he was killed in the war—but I can safely say that Margaret was raising the boy and girl on her own.

  When the tornado hit, the Anders children had been at school—Sterling Elementary, third grade and first—and their mother, Margaret, was across town, assistant teller at the local bank. The warning sirens began blaring, and I can picture the students filing hastily into the hall: crouching low to the floor, their hands safeguarding the backs of their bowed heads. But at the bank, Margaret and the other employees ignored the sirens and continued working. I wonder about the locomotive roar as it approached. I wonder what she saw that crippling instant when the roof tore away and she faced the erupting air.

  (It’s possible my mother already knew these details. She’d visited the library; copied photographs; researched the microfilm reels. The information was there. So it’s likely she’d learned about the storm and Margaret’s death. Likely she knew what I would say next.)

  After the funeral, the children went to stay with their mother’s parents. Adele and Raymond Crowhurst lived southwest of town, at the Triple Crown stable, in one of the ranch hands’ cabins. Adele was a housewife and seamstress, who taught Sunday school and played the organ at the Congregational church, and Raymond, a horse trainer and part-time mechanic.

  I can only imagine the family’s grief. It must have been so difficult for Adele. Over a decade had passed since she’d last had a child in the house—after Margaret, there was no one else—and now the rooms were restless with the pair of them, two youths filled with uncertainties and defiances and fears. It’s possible she fought hard to keep Raymond away from the whiskey. It’s possible she persuaded them to stay faithful to their church, saving Sunday afternoons for cemetery visits, cutting lilacs from her garden to place on Margaret’s grave.

  And poor Raymond. The storm that killed his daughter had also wrecked the Triple Crown, where he’d lived and worked for decades. It had ravaged the stables and maimed three of the Huntleys’ champion horses. Throughout that year, Raymond must have thought of his daughter as he helped rebuild, as he stoically trained the new palominos. Did he carve her name into some discreet rafter of the stable? Did he use the bridle that Margaret had used when he’d taught her to ride, all those years ago?

  But, surely, during these long months of sorrow, there were happy times, too. I imagine them hosting pony-riding parties for the children on the Huntleys’ manicured lawn. When Jill and Jesse grew restless, Adele must have searched the hall closet for Chinese checkers or one of Margaret’s old board games. Indians and Cowboys; Chutes and Ladders. They’d play the records she’d played as a teenager: Jesse’s favorite was “Jeepers, Creepers,” and Jill liked “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”

  (I’m certain my mother, too, had obsessed about these months. What additional details had she invented? How had her elaborations differed from mine? Maybe she’d decided that Raymond and Adele had bought the grandchildren a kitten; maybe a sad-eyed cocker spaniel puppy. Maybe they’d taken the kids for countryside drives in the family Imperial, or watched them ride ponies with young Rebecca Huntley. Maybe they’d enjoyed long walks through wintry Sterling Park.)

  For the first eight months of 1951, I can only guess. The newspapers don’t mention the family at all. Spring, and then summer…the loss and the resulting grief…the progression of healing. And then, September.

  The reports claim that the fire started just before midnight, while everyone was sleeping. The reports don’t, however, mention a definite cause. In fact, I found it difficult to uncover many of the necessary details; Pammy Sporn had been right when she’d claimed the papers had centered solely on the death of Mrs. Huntley. But it’s clear that Raymond tried to save her. It’s clear he didn’t see the danger to his own adjoining home until the wind shifted toward the east and the fire quickly, unexpectedly, spread. By then, it was too late.

  I don’t know why they couldn’t escape. Engulfed was the word Pammy Sporn had used. But I try not to think about the fire. I try not to hear the children’s screams.

  From the stories my mother had told about her kidnapping, I know that four years passed between the night of the Triple Crown tragedy and that afternoon she’d sat in the playground grass, calmly coloring the dinosaurs in her book. In my searches through the Hutchinson News, I could only find a single article about Adele and Raymond from that time. Five weeks after the fire, it was reported that Raymond Crowhurst, sixty-five, had finally been released from Hutchinson Hospital. The article doesn’t describe his disfiguring third-degree burns. It calls him “the valiant man who had pulled Martin Huntley and young Rebecca to safety.” It calls him “the hero who had tried in vain to save Katherine.”

  The article makes no mention of Jesse or Jill.

  There’s so much I still want to know. What happened to Adele and Raymond Crowhurst during those intervening four years? In what small, unassuming house did the elderly couple choose to rebuild their lives? Did they stay close to Sterling? Did they find a peaceful acre of land near a peach orchard?

  Did Adele resume her duties as organist for the church, and did she take solace in the countless Christian hymns? Did Raymond eventually return to work at the stables, even after the Lockridges purchased the land and began to rebuild?

  I can almost hear her soprano, raised toward her greedy god, trying to bless their little souls. Her prayers, her hymns. Strange songs, my mother had called them, with strange, sad melodies. And she’d watch us like she was going to cry.

  I can almost see the gloves on his hands, and his scarlet, puckered scars. He always wore something over his face, like a scarf or sometimes some kind of mask.

  At what point did their despair grow insurmountable? Did they speak of their plan in whispers; did they speak of it at all?

  Was it her idea? His?

  How long before they bought replacements for the lost games and records, before they stockpiled boxes of candy bars, before they began preparing the basement?

  And when did they start taking the Imperial for secret, wordless drives? How many miles did they have to travel until they found a boy who looked like Jesse? Until they found their surrogate Jill?

  Dolores listened closely as I spoke, at first rocking slowly in the chair, and then hardly moving at all. My mother remained motionless, her breaths now sudden and wet, like hiccups. We could hear the telltale rattling and we knew that it was really happening, that this was the night. After I stopped speaking, I was silent for a long time. I had no awareness of my withdrawal or sickness. My only focus was my mother. Foolishly, I wanted her to wake, to open her eyes one last time, to look into my face and see me. Not Otis, not Warren, but me. But of course she couldn’t wake. After a while, I stood from the end of the bed, and Dolores brought the bottle of morphine.

  We moved closer and dropped the liquid on her tongue. Her mouth did nothing with it, and we had to wipe her wounded lips. From outside we heard the indiffere
nt snow against the house. Dolores took my mother’s left hand, and I took the right. I told her I was sorry we couldn’t give her more answers. I was sorry we hadn’t found Warren. And I told her that I understood. I knew why she’d kept silent, all those years, about the Crowhursts, about her disappearance. They’d loved you so much. But in the end, it was a misplaced love. You weren’t their Jill, and they had to take you home.

  Beside me, Dolores was saying beautiful things in a beautiful voice. It’ll be more peaceful soon. We’re here with you, just let it go. My mother’s hand was small and cold. She was very clean, almost glowing. We’d shut the lamps in the room, but I could sense a halo from her, a light. We hovered over it, waiting.

  Then the rattle in her throat became too much and I could fight no longer. In a rush, I moved myself onto the bed, lifting my leg over the rickety slats, fitting my body next to hers. I put my head on her shoulder. I wrapped an arm around her, like a shield. I could feel her belly and the striate edge of the port in her chest. Her legs and arms were so cold, but I could still feel some heat, some final warmth within her. There, below my ear, where her heart made its tired plod. I could still hear it, my mother’s heart. I tried to wrap her in my arms. I wondered how we must have looked, all those years ago, our positions reversed, my mother holding the infant Scott.

  Dimly I sensed Dolores leaving the room, shuffling toward the kitchen. I’ll let you have this time alone, she said. I heard her empty the water and sponge in the sink, and then I heard the back door, the hinges creaking as she stepped outside.

  Now our world had narrowed; there was only mother and son. I ran my hands along her face, touching the remaining hairs on her head, the stubble around the scar. I would remember all of it, every bony angle of her shoulders, the loose flesh of her upper arms. Her elbows, her elegant hands, the ridges and whorls of her fingerprints. Had a stranger entered the darkening room, he might have thought my mother was telling a precious secret, and I was straining to hear. He might have thought us soundly sleeping, or that both of us, not just the mother but also the son, had slipped forever, that together we’d entered that nothingness.