Vanishing Acts

  "Andrew," Eric says, and I can hear how he is embarrassed for me. But I know how much lower there is for me to sink--that's the difference between us.

  "I can't do this," I say.

  "I know. I'm going to talk to--"

  "I mean in the long run, Eric. I can't go to prison." I meet his gaze, my eyes still damp. "If I do, they'll kill me, too."

  Eric clasps my hand. "I swear to you," he vows. "I'll get you acquitted."

  Like anyone else who finds himself adrift at sea, I reach for this life-line. I believe him, and just like that, I remember how to float.

  Fitz

  If it had been easy for Romeo to get Juliet, nobody would have cared. Same goes for Cyrano and Don Quixote and Gatsby and their respective paramours. What captures the imagination is watching men throw themselves at a brick wall over and over again, and wondering if this is the time that they won't be able to get back up. For everyone who adores a happy ending, there's someone else who cannot help but rubberneck at the accident on the side of the road.

  You wonder, though, what would have happened if Juliet's best friend started flirting with Romeo. If Gatsby got drunk one night and told Daisy how he really felt. If any of those poor romantic fools would have driven hours north to the Hopi reservation and doubled back, the word sucker fizzing like acid in their bellies as they sneaked glances across the car at the woman they loved, knowing she was going home to another man.

  You wonder if any of them would have been as stupid as I was, and kissed her.

  "Listen," I say. "It was an accident."

  One look and I can tell she isn't buying it.

  "I promise it won't happen again."

  But Sophie narrows her eyes. "Liar."

  I have taken her out for ice cream, mainly because the thought of staying away from Delia, after yesterday, was both what I wanted more than anything and equally impossible; and mostly because once I arrived on her doorstep we were both so mortified that I grabbed the first excuse I could, Sophie, and ran.

  "Liar?" I repeat. "Excuse me?"

  "You kiss her all the time," Sophie says. "You hug her, too. When you come back from trips."

  Well, maybe. But they are the sideways pecks and careful embraces of a friend; one that keeps three inches of space between our bodies, so that we meet at the shoulders and then grow progressively farther away.

  "She smells good, doesn't she?" Sophie asks.

  "She smells great," I agree.

  "It's okay to kiss people when you love them."

  "I don't love your mother," I tell her. "Not like that, anyway."

  "You give her all your french fries, even when she won't give you back onion rings," Sophie says. "And when you say her name it sounds different."

  "How?"

  Sophie thinks. "Like it's covered with blankets."

  "I do not say your mother's name like it's covered in blankets. And I don't always give her my french fries, because you're right, she doesn't share."

  "But you still don't yell at her when she's not being fair," Sophie points out. "Because you don't want to hurt her feelings." She slips her hand into mine and repeats, "You love her."

  She runs toward the playground without me. It has been so long since I was Sophie's age that I've forgotten there are building blocks of love, and that the very bottom layer is comfort. When I was little, who was I most myself with? Who could I trust with my mistakes, my dreams, my history? My parents, my nursery school teacher. Delia, Eric. These were the first people I fell for.

  Could it still really be that simple? Could romantic love and platonic love and parental love all be different facets of the same diamond--brilliant, no matter which face is turned up to the sun?

  No, because I am not Sophie's age. No, because I know what it is to hear a woman sigh off the cloak of this world the moment she drifts asleep; no, because I have fallen into the meadow of her body. No, because puzzling through my sixth-grade math homework one day I realized that what Delia felt for Eric was not what Delia felt for me, and that this equation was not an equal sign, but a greater than.

  I wonder if maybe Sophie knows me better than I know myself. I do hold the word Delia balanced lightly on my tongue, as if it is made up of butterflies. I would give her every last one of my french fries. I have kissed her, whenever the opportunity was socially acceptable. And even though it isn't fair, I haven't blamed her for not loving me. But here's where Sophie is wrong: It's not because I don't want to hurt Delia's feelings.

  It's because when she is bruised, I'm the one who aches.

  I'm dragging my proverbial feet, or at least the brake of the rental car, the whole way back to Delia's trailer. It is ridiculous to think I can avoid her forever. Maybe she'll want to pretend that kiss never happened. Maybe I can just apologize and we can go on making believe.

  But when I pull up, her car is missing. Sophie gets out of the backseat and hurries up the steps to the trailer. I hesitate for a moment, but before I can make a clean getaway, Eric walks outside and holds up a hand in greeting.

  He looks like hell. His eyes are ringed with dark circles; his clothes appear to have been slept in. "Listen, Fitz," he says, "about the other day ..."

  I stand, poleaxed. Did Delia tell him?

  He sighs. "It wasn't my place to tell Delia you were writing a newspaper story about her father's trial."

  By comparison, that transgression seems a thousand light-years away, and far less damning. "I'm sorry, too," I say, speaking of a different mistake. I fumble with the latch of the car door.

  "Do you forgive me for being a dick?"

  "Already have."

  "Then why are you running out of here faster than Jesse Helms at a Gay Pride parade?"

  "It isn't you," I admit.

  "Ah." Eric walks toward the car. "Then it must have something to do with the way Delia ran out of here with Greta."

  "Faster than Jesse Helms?"

  "Faster than Trent Lott at an Ebony magazine get-together." Eric grins. "What are you two fighting about?"

  You, I think. When you think about the way the three of us have woven our lives together, Eric is the knot at the center. I'm terrified to work it free; I just might discover I've unraveled everything else.

  I can still see him looking down at me from the crest of the oak in his backyard, crowing because he'd made it to the top first. I can hear his voice over the matchstick strike of rain on the roof of our clubhouse, swearing that the homeless guy who lived in the culvert near the Wilder Dam turned into the Devil at night. I can feel the strength of him, clapping me on the back the first time we saw each other on break from college. I can see the way his eyes shine, when Delia's face is what's reflected back in them.

  I would never ask Delia to choose between Eric and me, because I could never choose between the two of them.

  "I'm just tired," I say finally. "Headache."

  Eric heads back to the trailer. "Come on in. I'll find you some aspirin."

  Sighing, I follow him into the trailer. Sophie is in the bedroom, playing ventriloquist for a batch of Barbies and Kens. The small table in the kitchen is piled high with paperwork. "I don't know how I'm going to be ready in time for tomorrow morning," Eric murmurs. "Some Wexton Farms seniors are flying in today, they're character witnesses. I'm supposed to pick them up at the airport." He looks at me. "Rock, paper, scissors?"

  With a sigh, I nod, and ball my hand into a fist. "Rock, paper, scissors, shoot," we say simultaneously, and I throw paper while Eric throws scissors.

  "You always throw scissors," I complain.

  "Then why the hell do you always throw paper?" He offers a grateful smile. "It's USAir, and it lands at three. And you're going to need six wheelchairs."

  "You owe me," I say.

  "Yeah, what's my tally up to ... seventy-five billion and six?"

  "Give or take." I walk around the table, trailing my hand over the paperwork. Words jump out at me: hostile witness, assailant, provocation. Two definitions are scrawled in
marker across a legal pad: Lie: to deceive. Lie: to be in a helpless or defenseless state.

  "Andrew's in pretty bad shape," Eric confides.

  I glance up. "So's Delia."

  "Yeah." He meets my gaze. "Did she tell you why she left for the Hopi reservation in the first place?"

  I draw in a breath. "It didn't come up."

  "She got angry, because I hadn't told her something her father told me in confidence. And the thing is, Fitz, it's just going to get worse during the trial. I'm going to have to do stuff and say things that she's not going to want to hear."

  "She'll forgive you, when it's all over," I say woodenly.

  "If Andrew's acquitted," Eric qualifies. "I've spent my whole life thinking that one of these days, my luck is going to run out. That one of these days Delia is going to open her eyes and realize that I'm not the guy she thinks, but just some loser who can't get his act together. What if today's that day?"

  I try to draw an answer out of the heart of me, but can't. "I'm going to look for that aspirin," I manage, and I walk into the bathroom.

  I close the door behind me and sit down on the lid of the toilet. If I didn't have a headache to begin with, I'm certainly developing one now. I stand up and rummage through the medicine cabinet, which is a whole different kind of pain: Here are Delia's antiperspirant, her toothbrush, her birth control pills. Here is a layer of intimacy I haven't been granted.

  There are no bottles of aspirin, so I find myself kneeling down under the sink and tearing apart the cabinet beneath it. Shampoo, Sophie's rubber duck, witch hazel. Pine Sol and Vaseline and suntan lotion. A soft stacked fortress of toilet paper rolls.

  That's when I see the whiskey. I reach deep into the cabinet and pull out the half-empty bottle that has been wedged into the corner. I carry it out of the bathroom in the crook of my elbow. Eric sits at the table, his back to me. "You find it?"

  "Yeah," I say. "I did." I lean over his shoulder and set the bottle down on top of a file folder.

  Eric freezes. "It's not what you think."

  I sit down across from him. "No? Then what's it for? Lighting the barbecue? Stripping wallpaper?"

  He gets up and closes the bedroom door, where Sophie is playing. "You have no idea what trying this case is like. And when Delia left ... I just couldn't handle it anymore. I'm terrified of screwing up, Fitz." He spears the fingers of one hand through his hair. "Andrew nearly got killed while I was off on my little bender," he says. "Believe me, that was enough to sober me up fast. It was just a taste, honest. And I haven't touched it since then."

  "Just a taste?" I take the bottle off the table and walk to the sink, unscrew the cap, and pour the contents down the drain.

  As Eric watches me, his features change. It's regret, and I know, because I've seen it every single morning on my own face.

  I remember how we all loved Eric when he'd downed a few, how he was always the most charming, the smoothest, the funniest. I remember, too, what it was like when he could overturn a kitchen in three minutes flat; when Delia would show up on my doorstep, sobbing, because he'd locked himself in a room and it had been four days.

  "Been there, seen it, got the T-shirt," I say to Eric, and I throw the empty bottle at him so that he catches it. "Does she know?"

  Eric shakes his head. "Are you going to tell her?"

  I would like to, more than anything. But I have become a master at not telling Delia the things I should have.

  Without responding, I walk out the door of the trailer and then turn around. The mesh of the screen cuts Eric into a mosaic, a piecemeal Humpty Dumpty who cannot remember who he was before the fall. "You're right," I say. "You don't deserve her."

  As I drive, I pick up my cell phone. I'm going to call Delia. I'm going to get this over with, once and for all.

  I punch in her cell number and get a recording, stating that my number is not recognized by the cellular service.

  I wait a few moments, thinking maybe I need to get to a part of the city covered by another set of towers, but five miles later and then ten, I receive the same message. I pull onto the side of the road and call the customer service hotline for the cellular company.

  "Fitzwilliam MacMurray," the rep says, as she looks up my number.

  "That's me. What's the problem?"

  "According to my records, your service was turned off two days ago. Oh, but there's a note in your records. It's a message from a Marge Geraghy."

  My editor. "And?"

  The rep hesitates. "It says that next time, you should remember that your cell phone bills go directly to the company. And that you're fired." There is a beat on the line. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

  "Thanks," I say. "I think that's plenty."

  Shortly after midnight there is a knock on the door of my motel room. With the way my day has been going, I fully expect it to be the manager, telling me that my credit card has been revoked, too. But when I open it, Delia is standing on the other side. "Buy me a drink," she says, and my heart leaps.

  I stare at her for a moment, and then dig into the front pocket of my jeans and hand her three quarters. "The soda machine's at the end of the hall."

  "I was hoping for something with proof." She tilts her head. "How come it's called that, anyway?"

  "Because moonshine used to be used for barter. If you could mix equal parts of the liquid with gunpowder and light it on fire, there was evidence it was at least fifty percent alcohol."

  Her mouth drops open. "Why do you know that?"

  "I wrote a story about it once." This would be the perfect opportunity for me to mention that Eric might be a more willing drinking buddy, that in fact he might have a bottle hidden right under their bed she could borrow. But instead I say, "You don't like to drink."

  "I know. But it works for everyone else when they want to escape."

  I lean against the doorjamb. "What are you escaping from?"

  "I can't sleep," she admits. "I'm too worried about tomorrow."

  "What about Eric?"

  "He can sleep." She pushes her way into my room and sits down in the middle of the bed, whose covers haven't been disturbed.

  The conversation comes so easily, I begin to wonder if I am the only one who was present during that devastating, magnificent kiss last night. Then I realize that Delia has come to give me a way out. Maybe if we both pretend it never happened, it will be true. There are plenty of people--rape victims and Holocaust survivors, widows and, God, kidnapping victims--whose worlds crack and splinter, who still manage to look back at the level horizon of their lives without seeing the break.

  But there's another part of me that knows no matter how Delia and I go forward from this point, it won't be the same. Because when she smiles, I will look away before it is contagious. When we sit beside each other, I will make sure that our shoulders do not brush. When we speak, there will be spaces between our words just the shape and size of that damn kiss.

  I step away from her--one giant, mother-may-I step--toward the plastic expanse of the motel desk. It is covered with stacks of paper, a Bic pen that has exploded like the Red Sea, a chain of gum wrappers. Tonight's dinner: a half-eaten Ring Ding. "Actually, I'm busy," I say. "I was working."

  "Oh," she says, deflated. "Your Gazette piece."

  "The Gazette fired me."

  She turns. "You said you were writing a piece on my father's trial."

  "No," I correct, "I said I was supposed to."

  Delia crawls off the bed and walks toward the desk. She lets her fingers trail over the pages I have written all these weeks when I could not write anything else; pages that amassed in such quantity I never realized what I was producing. "Then what's this?"

  I take a deep breath. "The story of you."

  She picks up the manuscript. "I was six years old the first time I disappeared," she reads, the words coming alive for the first time. "Is that me, talking?"

  I nod. "That's the way I heard you, in my head."

  Delia leafs th
rough the first few pages, and then pushes it into my arms. "Read it to me," she demands.

  So I clear my throat. "I was six years old the first time I disappeared," I repeat. "My father was working on a magic act." I read as Delia, as Eric, as Andrew, as myself. I read for hours. I read until my voice goes raw. I read until Delia falls asleep and I wake up in one of her dreams. I read until she takes over. And just as the sky starts blushing, she runs out of words.

  "Why didn't you tell me?" she whispers.

  "You had someone else."

  "The person you fall for when you're twelve might not be the same one you fall for when you're thirty-two."

  "Then again," I say, "sometimes it is."

  We are curled in concentric circles, the polyester cover of the queen bed pooled around us. It reminds me of the divot a whale leaves on the smooth surface of the water after it breaches. A footprint, that's what it's called, because every one is different.

  Delia would say it's just another piece of useless information I'm storing. Maybe, but I also know that she reads the last page of a book before she decides to read the first. I know that she likes the smell of new crayons. That she can whistle through her fingers and detests curry and has never had a cavity. Life is not a plot; it's in the details.

  I reach out to touch Delia's face. "We're not going to talk about what happened yesterday, are we," I ask softly.

  She shakes her head. "We're not going to talk about this either," she says, and she leans forward by degrees, giving me the chance to back away before the kiss settles.

  When we break apart, I feel like I'm on a window ledge, dizzy and certain that every move I make will be the wrong one. I can't find a single word that won't feel like glass in my mouth. "You have to go," I tell her.

  Just before Delia reaches the door, she turns. In her arms she still clutches the last batch of pages I've written. "I want to know how it ends," she says.

  VIII

  A liar should have a good memory.

  --Quintilian, Institutions Oratoriae, iv. 2, 91

  Delia

  I remember walking the gray halls of Wexton High: Eric and I pretzeled with our hands in each other's back jean pockets, Fitz spouting off beside us about everything from what words had been admitted to the Webster's Dictionary to why even a blue lobster, if you boil it, turns red. I would nod at all the right places but I didn't really listen to Fitz; I was more concerned with the notes Eric would slide through the breathing holes of my locker and what it felt like when his fingers slipped underneath the hem of my T-shirt to ride on the knots of my spine. And yet it turns out that I actually remember most of what Fitz said. I was paying attention even when I told myself I wasn't. If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice it until it's missing.