The Vanishing Half: A Novel (27 page)

“Is it serious?” she asked. “I mean, is he okay?”

“It’s not like he’s dying,” Jude said. “But it’s serious. Yes, I’d say it’s serious.”

“Then why’d you come all the way out here? There aren’t any more surgeons in Los Angeles?”

Jude paused. “We’re not in Los Angeles anymore,” she said. “And it’s a special sort of surgery. You have to find a certain type of doctor who’ll do it.”

She was being vague, which, of course, only made Kennedy want to know more. But she couldn’t ask outright. It was none of her business, Reese’s life or Jude’s. This time, it seemed, their meeting was just an accident.

“Where do you live, then?” she said.

“Minneapolis.”

“What the hell are you doing out there?”

“I’m in medical school.”

In spite of herself, she felt a little proud. Jude was living the life she said she wanted, years ago. Still loved by the same man, on her way to becoming a doctor. And what did Kennedy have to show for all that time? A basement apartment with a man she barely understood, no college degree, a job serving coffee so that she could belt out songs in a half-empty theater each night.

“I’m glad you called,” Jude said. “I didn’t think you would.”

“Yeah, well, can you blame me?”

“Look, I know things ended sort of strangely—”

Kennedy laughed. “Well, that’s a goddamn understatement.”

“But if you’d just meet me for ten minutes, I have something to show you.”

Her mother had called Jude crazy. Maybe she was. But she was already reeling Kennedy back in. She could have hung up. She could have hung up right then and never spoken to her again. She could have tried to forget about her. But Jude was offering her a key to understanding her mother. How could she say no to that so easily?

“I can’t right now,” she said. “I’m at work.”

“After, then.”

“I have a show after.”

“Where?” Jude said. “Reese and I will come. It’s not sold out already, is it?”

The company hadn’t sold out a single show yet, but still, Kennedy paused, as if she were thinking.

“Maybe not,” she said. “Usually there are a few tickets left.”

“Great,” Jude said. “We’ll come tonight. We’ve been wanting to see a real show while we’re in New York City and all.”

She sounded unbearably innocent, not like the steely, guarded girl Kennedy knew. She was almost charmed by it, but mostly, she felt like she’d found her sure footing again. She gave Jude the name of the theater and told her that she had to go.

“All right,” Jude said. “We’ll see you tonight. And Kennedy?”

“Seriously, I’ve got to go—”

“All right, I’m sorry. I just—well, I’m looking forward to it. Seeing you act again, I mean. I loved your last show.”

She hated how good that made her feel. She hung up without saying good-bye.

In
Pacific Cove
, Charity Harris was the girl next door, meaning half the fans loved her and the other half found her a total bore. When she disappeared on a cruise ship during her final appearance, Kennedy even received fan letters rejoicing in her misfortune. At the time, it hadn’t bothered her. She didn’t care if fans loved or hated her, it was attention all the same, and nobody had ever felt strongly enough about a character she’d played to write her about it. Still, she’d hoped, driving off the studio lot, that this wouldn’t be Charity’s last scene.

“This is the soaps,” the director told her. “Nothing’s final but a cancellation.”

Charity deserved a better end, she would drunkenly tell friends at bars, well into her forties, far beyond when it was appropriate for her to still care so much. Even if she couldn’t hope for Charity’s miraculous return—a fate that every actor killed off a soap dreamt about—she at least wanted Charity’s story wrapped up neatly, some bullshit chyron about the girl leaving Pacific Cove, moving to Peru to raise llamas, she really didn’t care what.

“But just disappearing?” she said once. “Into the ocean? And that’s it? I mean, what the fuck.”

“
Deserve
is a bullshit term,” her yoga instructor boyfriend said. “None of us deserves anything. We get what we get.”

Maybe she felt Charity was robbed because she’d been such a nice girl. A better girl than Kennedy, certainly, who had made her share of mistakes. She’d slept with two married directors, stolen money from her parents when she was too proud to ask for more loans, lied to friends about audition times so she would have a leg up. But Charity was sweet. She’d met the love of her life, show hunk Lance Garrison, when she was rescuing a drowning dog, for God’s sake. Yet when she disappeared, Lance only waited half a season before he was making eyes at the detective’s sultry daughter. Five years later, the two had a big wedding that broke a
Pacific Cove
ratings record—twenty million viewers, according to
TV Guide
, which included the wedding in its fifty top soap-opera moments of all time. The episode was even nominated for an Emmy! And in all the glowing reviews, no one even mentioned Charity, or the fact that the happy couple would have never found each other if Charity hadn’t stepped onto that cruise ship, waving gleefully from the deck as she floated out into daytime television heaven.

Perhaps, even more than the lost job, she was peeved that she hadn’t starred in a big soap-opera wedding. She was more upset about that than the fact that she never married in real life.

“I never play the girl next door,” a black guest star told her once. “I guess no one wants to live next door to me.”

Pam Reed smiled wryly at the craft-service table, popping a cherry tomato between her lips. She was a real actor, Kennedy overheard two grips saying. In the 1970s, she’d played a policewoman in a popular action movie franchise until the villain shot her in the third film. Then she’d been a judge on a network legal drama. She would play judges throughout the rest of her career, and sometimes Kennedy
flipped on the television and saw Pam Reed on the bench, leaning forward sternly, her hand under her chin.

“TV loves a black woman judge,” Pam told her. “It’s funny—can you imagine what this world would look like if we decided what’s fair?”

She’d played a judge on
Pacific Cove
that afternoon. Even between takes, she was intimidating in her long black robe, which was why Kennedy, reaching for a cluster of grapes, said the first stupid thing that came to her mind.

“I lived next door to a black family,” she said. “Well, across the street. The daughter’s name was Cindy—she was my first friend, really.”

She didn’t tell Pam that their friendship had ended when, in a fit of childish rage, she’d called Cindy a nigger. She still cringed when she remembered Cindy bursting into tears. She had, ridiculously, started crying too and her mother had slapped her—the first and only time she’d ever struck her. The slap confused her less than the kiss after, her mother’s anger and love colliding together so violently. At the time, she’d thought saying
nigger
was as bad as repeating any swear word; her mother would have been just as upset and embarrassed had she hollered
fuck
in that cul-de-sac. But after Jude, Kennedy remembered the look on her mother’s face when she’d dragged her into the house. She was angry, yes, but more than that, she looked terrified. Frightened by her own emotion or, more disturbingly, by her daughter, who had revealed herself to be something so ugly.

She never said the word again, not in passing, not repeating jokes, not until Frantz asked her to in bed. It was like a game, he’d told her, stroking her back, because he knew she didn’t mean it. She didn’t know why she was thinking of Frantz now. Saying that word to him was different than saying it to Cindy. Wasn’t it?

Pam Reed just laughed a little, dabbing her mouth with a cocktail napkin.

“Lucky her,” she said.

T
HE NIGHT
J
UDE
W
INSTON CAME
to her show, Kennedy left her body onstage.

Any actor could tell you this had happened to him before—better actors had experienced it much earlier in their careers, she was sure. That winter night was the first time she truly knew what it felt like to step outside of herself. Singing felt like breathing, dancing as natural as walking. When she sang her duet with Randy the Farmhand—a lanky drama student at NYU—she felt, almost, as if she were falling in love with him. After the curtain call, the cast surrounded her with cheers, and part of her knew, even then, that it was the greatest performance she would ever give. And she’d only managed it because she knew that somewhere, in the darkened theater, Jude was watching.

In the dressing room, she changed slowly, the magic from the stage disappearing. Frantz would be waiting for her in the lobby. On Thursday nights, he came by after his office hours. He would tell her that she’d been good tonight, great even. He would notice a difference in her, might even wonder what had caused it. And there, waiting also in the lobby, would be Jude and Reese. What she hadn’t expected was to find all three waiting together, Frantz grinning as he waved her over.

“You didn’t tell me you had friends visiting,” he said. “Come on, let’s all get a drink.”

“I don’t want to keep everyone out,” she said.

“Nonsense. They came all this way. Just one drink.”

She barely remembered that numb walk to 8 Ball. She’d only chosen that bar because she knew it would make Jude uncomfortable.
And sure enough, as soon as they walked in, Jude glanced around the dim bar, overwhelmed by the punk music screaming out of the speakers. She gazed at the obscenities scribbled on the tabletops in permanent marker, the bikers crowding the bar, and looked as if she’d rather be anyplace else. Good, then no one would be tempted to stay longer. Stupidly, she hadn’t anticipated these two parts of her life collapsing. She would see Jude after the show for a minute, the girl would show her whatever she planned to. She’d never imagined that Jude and Frantz might end up talking and discover that they both knew her. A friend from school, Jude must’ve told him, because Frantz kept asking what Kennedy was like in college.

“Baby,” she said, “stop bugging them. Let’s just drink.”

“I’m not bugging,” Frantz said. He turned to Jude. “Am I bugging?”

She smiled. “No, it’s fine. It’s just a little overwhelming, being here.”

“We’re not really big city people,” Reese said. It was so folksy and charming, Kennedy could puke.

“I wasn’t either,” Frantz said. “I moved here when I was a boy. The city still does something to me, you know. Say, how long are you two in town? I’m sure Ken would love to show you around—”

“Let’s get drinks first,” she said. “Before we start planning tours.”

Frantz laughed. “All right, already.” He pushed out of the booth, nodding to Reese. “Give me a hand?”

The two men headed to the bar. Now Kennedy was alone with Jude for the first time in years. She’d never wanted a drink more.

“Your boyfriend’s nice,” Jude said.

“Look, I’m sorry for what I said, at that cast party,” Kennedy said. “About you and Reese. I was drunk. I didn’t mean it.”

“You meant it,” Jude said. “And you were drunk. Both things can be true.”

“Fine, but is that why you’re here? Is that why you’re messing with me? I’m tired of all this.”

“All what?”

“Whatever you’re doing. This game or whatever this is.”

Jude stared at her a moment, then reached for her purse.

“I had a feeling I’d see you again,” she said.

“Great, you’re a psychic.” Kennedy could see the boys ordering at the bar, and it dawned on her that she hadn’t even told Frantz what she wanted. A small intimacy but still remarkable, Frantz knowing what she wanted before she even asked for it.

“I didn’t want to tell you,” Jude said. “At the cast party. I didn’t think you’d want to know. I only said something because I was mad. You said that thing to me and I wanted to hurt you. It wasn’t fair.” She pulled something white out of her wallet. “You shouldn’t tell people the truth because you want to hurt them. You should tell them because they want to know it. And I think you want to know now.”

She handed Kennedy a white square of paper. A photograph. Kennedy knew, before even looking, that it would be a picture of her mother.

“Christ, that took forever,” Frantz said, sliding back into the booth with the drinks. “Hey, what’s that?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Scoot out, I have to hit the can.”

“Ah Ken, I just sat down,” he groaned, but slid over nonetheless, and she climbed out of the booth, clutching the photograph. She did go to the ladies’ room, but only because she needed better light. Jude could have handed her a photo of anyone, for all she knew. For a second, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, holding the picture against her stomach.

She didn’t have to look at it. She could rip it up, and at the end of the night, she’d never have to speak to Jude again. Soon Reese would
have his surgery, then they would leave the city for good. She wouldn’t have to know. She could do that, couldn’t she?

Well, you know what happened next. She knew too, even before she flipped the picture over. Memory works that way—like seeing forward and backward at the same time. In that moment, she could see in both directions. She saw herself as a little girl—eager, pestering, clambering to be close to a mother who never wanted her to be. A mother whom she’d never actually known. Then she saw herself showing the photograph to her, the proof that she’d spent her whole life lying. When Kennedy flipped the picture over, she could make out the figures of twin girls in black dresses, another woman standing between them. The photograph was old, gray and faded, but still, under the fluorescent light, she could tell which of these identical girls was her mother. She looked uncomfortable, like if she could have, she would have run right out of the frame.

Her mother had always hated taking pictures. She hated being nailed down in place.

“Y
OUR FRIENDS ARE NICE
,” Frantz said later that night, crawling into bed.

She’d barely spoken on the subway ride home. She wasn’t feeling well, she’d told everyone after one drink, she’d better call it a night. In the bathroom, she’d slipped the photograph inside her waistband like when she was little, trying to sneak treats out of the kitchen. Except instead of a chocolate bar melting under the shirt, she felt the sharp corners poking at her the whole walk to the station. Part of her wanted Jude to think that she’d gotten rid of it. Flushed it down the toilet or something. Jude had looked disappointed as they’d said good-bye. Well, good. Let her feel disappointed. Who did she think she was,
anyway? Disrupting her life a second time, and for all she knew, Jude could still be lying. She looked nothing like either girl in the picture or the woman standing between them, darker but still fair, a hand on each girl’s shoulder. The three looked like a set, like they all belonged to each other. But Jude belonged to no one. And what about Kennedy? Who the hell did she belong to?

“We’re not friends,” she said. “Not really. I mean, they’re just people I used to know.”

“Oh. Well.” He shrugged, then rolled over, kissing her neck. She squirmed away.

“Jesus, stop,” she said.

“What’s the matter?”

“What do you mean? I told you already, I’m not feeling well.”

“Well, Christ, you don’t have to bite my head off.”

He rolled away from her glumly and turned off the light.

“I knew they weren’t your friends,” he said.

“What?”

“You don’t have black friends,” he said. “You don’t like anybody black but me and we’re not really friends, are we?”

I
N
THE MORNING
, she called Hotel Castor again, but nobody answered.

She lay alone in bed, studying that faded photograph until she had to get to work. The twins, side by side in those somber black dresses. Her mother and not-her-mother, her grandmother between them. A whole family where her mother said there’d been none, and Jude, somehow, knowing all of this. Once, when she was thirteen, her mother had brought her to the mall to buy a new dress for her birthday. Kennedy was beginning to pull away by then, wishing she could
have gone to Bloomingdale’s with her girlfriends instead. But her mother was barely focusing on her. She paused in the middle of the shop floor, fingering the lacy sleeves of a black gown.

“I love shopping,” she’d said, almost to herself. “It’s like trying on all the other people you could be.”

D
URING
HER LUNCH BREAK
, Kennedy called the hotel room again. Still no answer. This time, she tried the front desk.

“The girl said they’d be at the hospital all day,” the receptionist told her. “In case anyone called.”

“Which hospital?”

“Sorry, miss, she didn’t say.”

Of course, what did she expect from some country girl who’d found herself in New York City for the first time? Of course she’d never considered how many hospitals were in Manhattan alone. She was irritated but flipped through the phone book to find the closest hospital to the hotel. The receptionist told her that she couldn’t release the name of any patients, and Kennedy, hanging up, realized that she didn’t know Reese’s full name anyway. Still, she left work early and rode the bus to the hospital. At the nurse’s station, she asked a tiny redhead to page a Jude Winston. She waited five minutes, the phone book page crinkling in her pocket, wondering if she’d have to work her way uptown until she found them. Then the elevator doors opened. Jude stepped out, frazzled at first then relieved once she saw it was only Kennedy.