All Things Cease to Appear

  Of course her father hadn’t called. It doesn’t surprise her; they’d never spoken about the house in Chosen. My father’s going blind, she tells Mary, almost protectively.

  Yes, I know. That’s why I…

  She goes on but Franny isn’t listening. In her head she sees the old place, shapes of bright white and agony, the cold, watery rush of an open window. A place that is waiting.

  I’ll come, she interrupts the woman. I’d like to do that.

  They talk for a few minutes more, making their plans. Hanging up, Franny feels strangely excited, almost grateful for the excuse to return—as if nothing of importance ever happened there, as if that awful house isn’t the root of all her unhappiness.

  —

  I NEED SOME TIME, she tells Dr. Patel, head of the surgery program. I need to take a leave of absence.

  A surgeon from Pakistan with grim, impatient eyes, he folds his arms across his chest and shakes his head. I’m afraid that’s impossible.

  She suddenly begins to cry. She doesn’t know why, whether it’s for her long-dead mother or because she’s decided she can’t live like this anymore. He watches for a moment, then hands her a box of tissues and waits for her to collect herself.

  It’s a family problem. I’m sorry, it can’t be ignored.

  How long will this problem persist?

  A few weeks, she says.

  You are a fine doctor, he says, studying her carefully, stroking his goatee. A contender for chief resident when the time comes.

  She looks at him, confused by this impossible truth.

  You will be missed. He flashes a quick smile and stands up. Go, then. He flaps his hand, as if he can’t stand the sight of her, then adds, wryly, You have my blessing.

  She finds her guilty lover in the green corridor outside the OR. He has just come from surgery, his hair matted with sweat. It’s how he looks after sex, his face damp and flushed. I’m leaving, she says, relishing his surprise. Something’s come up, a family problem. I don’t want to go into it.

  Always so mysterious. He smiles, amused. Can I see you later?

  I don’t know.

  I understand, he says, taking her hand and kissing it.

  She looks at him, at his sharp little mouth. Probably not a good idea.

  But he comes anyway, to say goodbye. It is early evening, the sky soot-gray, drizzling. As they embrace, she imagines his trim, ponytailed wife doing homework with the kids in the kitchen. She thinks of his dinner going cold.

  Wickedly, she has dressed for the occasion in old scrubs and a T-shirt, her hair twisted into a messy knot. She wants to look as ugly as possible so he won’t want to make love to her. But he doesn’t seem to notice. Their work, their tolerance for unpleasantness, what they see every day, the transformation of the body in the grip of disease. Afterward, they lie on her futon in the half-dark, listening to the rain.

  What are you thinking? he says. He always asks her this, as if she’s withholding something, or he regrets he can’t see inside her head. A surgeon’s mentality, she figures, wanting to examine every part of her, every anguished organ.

  She sits up and glances at the window, the wet black sky. What am I thinking?

  How do you feel? He puts his hand on her back so tenderly that she wants to smack it off.

  I don’t know how I feel. I feel like shit, she wants to say. I feel ugly, miserable. I hate this life, this work. I feel uncertain, she tells him.

  Uncertain?

  Yes. I feel—she hesitates—tentative.

  What?

  Like I’m not really here.

  He shakes his head. I don’t know what that means.

  Vacant, she mutters.

  She has been sleeping with him for months. That’s long enough. It isn’t a smart thing to be doing. I don’t like this anymore. I don’t like you anymore.

  What?

  This. You.

  Franny.

  But she turns away and looks again at the window, at the rising moon.

  I have feelings for you, he says.

  Keep them to yourself. She gets up and pulls on her sweatshirt, her scrubs. It’s cruel, perhaps, she knows, but it’s what he likes best about her, her cruelty. You need to go, she says.

  She watches him get dressed. Doctor, husband, father. He says nothing. Then walks out the door. Back to his wife and children in the house they share. She imagines him pulling into the garage, entering the kitchen, washing his hands at the sink, his eyes going bright when he sees the woman he really loves. The kids might come down in their pajamas. He’d pick up his daughter and hug her, have a conversation with her teddy bear. It’s not that he’s a bad man, she thinks. But she’s the detour he shouldn’t have taken. Now he can’t get back.

  The small TV blinks with poor reception. In the apartment next door, the husband and wife are celebrating. Perhaps it is someone’s birthday. The husband is playing his accordion. Franny lies there listening to it, music suited to a place of simple pleasures and modest extravagances.

  In the morning she wakes early, as usual, but instead of putting on her scrubs she wears jeans and a sweatshirt—civilian clothes, she thinks. She packs a small bag and looks around the nearly empty apartment. A strange existence, she realizes, a rented life. She locks the door and takes the slow elevator down in lieu of the stairs. Outside, it is gray and cool, early March. The day hasn’t decided what it wants to do yet, the sky pale, colorless, a fog just lifting off the interstate.

  She leaves it all behind. Soon the cluttered neighborhoods on either side of the expressway give way to brown fields. She doesn’t mind the pretty drive. It is just after noon when she finally exits the interstate and winds into Columbia County, driving through one red brick town after another with their dark storefronts. Chosen is the smallest of them all, and she feels a strange elation as she drives down Main Street, past the country store, the white church, the grassy cemetery with its sprawling trees. She crosses an old metal bridge over the creek—pronounced krik, she remembers—and rolls her window down so she can hear the rushing water, the thrumming of the bridge. The clay roads don’t exist on any map. There are horses in the fields. The air smells of manure and turned earth and it does something to her insides, something physical, because she remembers it. I’m almost home, she thinks.

  She turns into Old Farm Road, a dirt lane cutting through fields. The house waits at the end of it. It’s just a white farmhouse, but really there’s nothing just about it. A house that wants you to look, she thinks. A house that has suffered. She can compare it to some of her patients. Sometimes, even before examining people, she can estimate their status. Everything you need to know written on their faces, in the brightness of their eyes or the tension around their mouths. Not just the body but also the mind and soul, whatever that is. The idea that everyone has one and that one day it goes up to heaven or someplace. She is not preoccupied with death, though occasionally, rarely, she and the other residents discuss it. In their line of work, witnessing death is not uncommon. There is a moment during a code when you just know, even before the equipment confirms it. A kind of warmth in the room—and then it’s gone. But the soul, your essence, the thing that defines you, it’s not really anything she likes to think about. At some point she’d decided that nurturing this supposedly deep aspect of herself was pure indulgence.

  She parks in the driveway and sits a moment, looking at the old place, the long barns off to the side of it. Maybe they’re not as big as she remembers. The land seems to cradle the house. The woods behind it, all along the high ridge. The trees look black in the wind. Clouds the color of pearls. You can see history here, she thinks, everywhere you look. You can forget you’re living in the present.

  The wind thumps against her window as if urging her to move. She gets out, stiff from the drive. The paint is chipped, flakes all around. Some of the clapboards have rotted. Window shades pulled over the glass, torn and bleached with age. The few times her father succeeded in renting it, the tenants alw
ays broke the lease and moved out. It isn’t something her father discusses with her. He never talks about this place. But Franny has thought about it, trying to travel back inside her brain to that single morning. What comes to her is vague, a smear of yellowed images: a hand in a black glove taking her stuffed bunny, the pleasing grinding of its silver key, the music starting—was it “Clair de Lune”? She’s never told anyone.

  Years ago she’d considered hiring her own investigator, but then thought better of it. There seemed little point in pursuing it. When she was a child her questions were ignored, and even now, as an adult, they’ve never been answered. Nobody on her father’s side talks about her mother. When she was little, she’d visit her mother’s parents, and sometimes her grandmother would cry at meals and have to leave the table. She’d get to sleep in her mother’s old room with all of her stuffed animals. There were pictures of her from high school, one or two from college, but none after that. Her grandmother ended up in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s, and the few times she’d visited her, her grandmother didn’t even know who she was. When she got into med school her grandfather sent her a card with a billfold that held a hundred-dollar bill. She’d put the money in her bank account and saved the card in a scrapbook; it just didn’t seem right to throw it out.

  The wind comes in gusts. The trees move and go still and move again. The shadows of the trees flash on the windows. One window in particular draws her attention, her parents’ old room, and all of a sudden she’s consumed with a sadness so deep and bottomless that she can hardly breathe.

  —

  A GRAY STATION WAGON COMES up the road, spitting gravel, and pulls up and parks. Hey, there, I’m Mary Lawton. She gets out of the car, wearing an outsized raincoat and mud-splattered boots, wheezing slightly. Unlike Franny, who is agile and slender and has little patience for adornment, this woman is a big woman in body and spirit, with a plate-sized face, coils of necklaces and noisy, jangling bracelets.

  Franny Clare, she says, holding out her arms for a hug. It is so good to see you, honey.

  Franny tries to relax, unaccustomed to being hugged by strangers—or anyone, for that matter. They break apart and stand there looking at each other.

  Lord our God, you are the image of your mother.

  I am?

  Right here—in the eyes.

  Franny has to repress an impulse to touch her face, as if to discover it anew. My father, he never told me that. He never liked talking about her much.

  She was a lovely girl, Mary says with an edge to her voice, like she needed to set the record straight. Here, I’ve got a picture somewhere. She digs around in her bag, retrieves a Polaroid and hands it to her. Here it is, she says.

  Franny tries not to seem too eager; there are so few pictures of her mother.

  That was the day you all moved in. A beautiful day in August, as I recall.

  It’s of the three of them, leaning up against an old station wagon. Her parents are standing together, their arms entwined, her father long-haired and professorial in a shabby corduroy jacket and wire-rimmed glasses, her mother in a white shift and kerchief. Beautiful, she thinks, too beautiful for him. She’s holding Franny on her hip at age three, in a little red dress, barefoot, squinting at the camera.

  You keep that. It’s for you.

  Carefully, she slides it into her bag. Just now she isn’t able to thank her, to say how much it means to her. She knows that if she did she’d begin to cry, which isn’t something she wants to do right now, in front of this woman. Later, maybe, when she’s alone. Sorry if I seem…

  Seem what?

  It’s just—I spend all my time in hospitals.

  Wouldn’t your mother be proud.

  I didn’t know her very well.

  Of course you didn’t. You were little.

  It’s hard being back. Harder than I thought.

  Mary nods. I never had a chance to tell you how sorry I was. I was very fond of your mother. It was a terrible thing that happened—a real tragedy, for all of us. This town hasn’t been the same since.

  The comment surprises her. It has never once occurred to her that anyone else, much less these strangers, might have been affected by what happened to her mother. Even in Connecticut, nobody ever talks about it.

  Coming back here was a mistake, she decides. Not something she really needs, all of a sudden. Not having thought about her mother so very much over the years, she doesn’t see the point in doing it now. She entertains the idea of driving straight back to Syracuse, of never coming back to this awful house that took her mother from her, but her cheerless apartment, the bare walls, the empty refrigerator, offers no comfort on the other end.

  I don’t remember anything, she finally says, and it comes out sounding like an apology.

  Of course you don’t. It doesn’t matter now anyway.

  She knows this woman’s only trying to make her feel better, but she doesn’t agree. Because it does matter, it matters a lot. They never found my mother’s killer, she says.

  Yes, I know. That’s a big disappointment for all of us.

  Who did you think it was?

  Mary looks away, uncomfortable. I wish I knew, honey.

  Somebody does.

  Yes. That’s true. There’s at least one person out there who knows.

  It’s not fair, she says.

  No, you’re right. It’s not. There’s not much that’s fair in this life, is there?

  They start up the walkway, flat stones overgrown with grass. Franny gazes up at the house. The thought of going inside is suddenly terrifying.

  Mary looks at her. Are you sure you want to do this?

  Yes. I’m okay. Really. I want to.

  All right, then.

  They climb the steps onto the front porch and Mary takes out an old-fashioned key.

  Who’s buying it?

  Weekenders. From the city. Horse people.

  Do they know?

  No, she says. No, they do not. And I don’t plan to tell them. I think it’s about time we cut this old place a break.

  Isn’t there some kind of a law?

  You know something, honey? I’ve been following the rules my whole life. I’ll tell you what: it hasn’t gotten me far. Mary pats her arm. You got to trust me, please. I’m doing this for you. For your mother, too. Can you do that? Can you trust me?

  Franny nods.

  Good. That’s my girl.

  They step into the foyer and stand there a moment, taking it in. It’s not so bad, she thinks, relieved. The floors are pretty. The light.

  They want to redo the whole place, of course. Nobody’s ever satisfied, but don’t get me started. Anyway, they’ve got real money, so we’re not complaining and they got a very good deal. It’s fair and square all the way around.

  Franny shudders. It’s cold in here.

  That dampness is to be expected. We’ll get the oil company in. There’s this woodstove, which helps. And the fireplace. I’ll have some wood delivered this afternoon.

  All right. Thank you.

  She follows Mary into the living room, which fills with sunlight like it’s saying hello.

  I never could understand why your father didn’t take this piano.

  Franny runs her hand over the keys. I think my mother played.

  Yes, she did. Sometimes I’d pull up and hear it, Chopin, I think. It happens to be a very nice piano.

  It is nice. Franny decides to keep it, but have it moved where? Not her apartment, obviously. She looks around the room. The air is damp and smells of woodsmoke and ash. There’s an old couch with a busted cushion that’s become home to some mice. With difficulty, she opens a closet, the door stuttering on the uneven floor, and a marble rolls out and comes to a stop at her feet. She picks it up and holds it out for Mary to see, a glass marble with swirls of yellow and copper running through it. It’s pretty, isn’t it?

  Finders, keepers, Mary says.

  She puts it in her pocket. Somehow she knows it’s hers. She rememb
ers a boy, crouching on the floor and shooting marbles across the room. She remembers his legs mostly, and other sets, too—all boys’ legs. She almost recalls they’d made her laugh and wonders if she has ever laughed at all since. Of course she has, she tells herself. She had a perfectly happy childhood.

  As you can see, you’ve got your work cut out for you. I was going to suggest a dumpster.

  Okay, she says, suddenly angry that her father never bothered to do it himself. Good idea.

  Mary takes a small pad of paper out of her bag and starts making a list. If I don’t write it down, it’s gone.

  No kidding, Franny says, but in fact it was her exacting memory that got her through medical school. And it’s why not remembering that day, here with her mother, is all the more frustrating. She and the killer were both right in this house.

  Her brain must have registered at least an image. It’s in there, she knows, it’s in her head, she just can’t get to it. In college, a girl she’d confided in suggested a hypnotist. Franny refused and, for reasons she couldn’t articulate at the time, never spoke to the girl again.

  Your mother had great parties in here, Mary says. This room would be jammed with people. They had all kinds of interesting friends. And in that room there—it was your father’s study—people would be up all night, talking art, politics, solving the problems of the world, until they staggered out in the morning. Mary shakes her head. People knew how to drink in those days.

  The walls of her father’s study are a chalky green, lined with empty bookshelves that once, she knew, would’ve been full of art books. He was teaching then, and writing a book on the Hudson River painters that he never finished.

  Once, when she was about five, he took her to the city, to an exhibit at the MoMA. He stood in front of a Rothko for what seemed like forever while she tried to amuse herself. She remembers tugging on his jacket, and when he looked down at her his face was wet with tears.

  She doesn’t want to think about her father. And certainly not about the room just overhead, where her mother was killed with an ax. She isn’t the type to psychoanalyze herself—even during her psych rotation in medical school she’d stuck to the hard evidence rather than succumb to the culture’s obsession with subtext—but for the first time it seems obvious that her decision to study medicine and choose the most grueling, alienating specialty was a direct reaction to the fact that she hadn’t been able to save her mother, and that the most powerful motivating factor in making those choices was guilt.