Vanishing Acts (37 page)

“So,” he says simply. “How're you doing?” It makes me smile. “I'm holding up.”

“Delia, I haven't discussed this case with you, have I?” We have rehearsed these questions; I know what he is going to say, and what I am supposed to. “No.”

“You weren't too thrilled with me because of that, were you?” I think about the fight we had, after the visit to the hospital. Of my flight to Hopiland. “No. I thought you were hiding information from me that I deserved to have.”

“But you didn't hire me to represent your father because you thought I'd discuss the case with you, did you?”

“No. I hired you because I know you love my father as much as I do.” Eric passes by me, stands in front of the jury. “What does your father do for a living?”

“He runs a senior center in Wexton, New Hampshire.”

“Did he make enough money to provide for you as a child?”

“We didn't live in luxury or anything,” I admit, “but we certainly had enough.”

“Your father provided for you emotionally, too, didn't he?” Is there a right answer to this question? Can you quantify love? “He was always there for me. No matter what I needed to talk about.”

“Did you talk about your mother with him?”

“He knew I missed her. But I knew it hurt him to talk about her, and I didn't really bring it up all that often. Nobody likes to talk about the things they've lost.”

“As it turns out, though, he'd never really lost your mother, had he?” I can still hear her voice in the restroom, telling me that she really did love my father. “She never died in a car crash,” I say slowly, “but he lost her long before that, I think.”

Eric clasps his hands behind his back. “Delia,” he asks after a moment, “why aren't we married?”

I blink at him; this is not from our script. The question surprises the prosecutor as much as it surprises me; she objects.

“Your Honor,” Eric says, “I'd like a little leeway. It's not irrelevant.” The judge frowns. “You can answer the question, Ms. Hopkins.” Suddenly I understand what Eric is trying to do, and what he wants me to say. I wait for him to face me, so that I can tell him, silently, that I am not willing to let him sacrifice himself to save my father.

Eric takes a step closer and places his hand on the rail of the witness box. “It's okay,” he whispers. “Tell them.”

So I swallow hard. “We aren't married . . . because you are an alcoholic.” The words are hinged, rusty; I have worked so hard to not say them out loud. You might tell yourself that candor is the foundation of a relationship, but even that would be untrue. You are far more likely to lie to yourself, or your loved one, if you think it will keep the pain at bay.

This is something my father understood, too.

“When I drank, I was pretty awful, wasn't I?” Eric asks. I bow my head.

“Isn't it true that I'd disappoint you, tell you I was going to be somewhere, and then completely forget to meet you; tell you I was going to run an errand for you and then not go?”

“Yes,” I say softly.

“Isn't it true that I would drink until I passed out, and you'd have to drag me to bed?”

“Yes.”

“Isn't it true that I would go off on rampages, get angry over the stupidest things, and then blame you for what went wrong?”

“Yes,” I murmur.

“Isn't it true that I could never finish something I started? And that I'd make promises that we both knew I'd never keep? Isn't it true that I'd drink to perk up, to calm down, to celebrate, to commiserate? Isn't it true that I'd drink to be sociable, or to have a private moment?”

The first tear is always the hottest. I wipe it away, and still it sears my skin.

“Isn't it true,” Eric continues, “you were afraid to be with me, because you never really knew what I would be like? You'd make excuses for me, and clean up my messes, and tell me that next time, you'd help make sure this didn't happen?” Yes.

“You enabled my drinking, by making it easier for me to get drunk without consequence . . . no pain, no shame. No matter how bad I got, you were there for me, right?”

I wipe my eyes. “I guess so.”

“But then . . . you found out that we were going to have a baby . . . and you did something pretty remarkable. What was that?”

“I left,” I whisper.

“You didn't do it to punish me, did you.”

By now, I am crying hard. “I did it because I didn't want my child to see her father like that. I did it because if she grew up knowing you that way she would have hated you, too.”

“You hated me?” Eric repeats, taken aback.

I nod. “Almost as much as I loved you.”

The jury is so focused on our exchange that all the air in the room goes still, but I notice only Eric. He offers me a Kleenex; then smooths my hair away from my face, his hand lingering on my cheek. “I don't drink anymore, do I, Dee?”

“You've been sober for more than five years. Since before Sophie was born.”

“What if I fell off the wagon tomorrow?” he asks.

“Don't say that. You wouldn't, Eric–”

“What if you knew I was drinking again, and I had Sophie with me? What if I was taking care of her?”

I close my eyes and try to forget that he has even thrown these words into the open, where they might breed and multiply and become fact.

“Would you enable me again, Dee?” Eric asks. “Would you get Sophie in on the act, so that she could make excuses for her alcoholic parent?”

“I'd take her away from you. I'd take her, and I'd run.”

“Because you love me?” Eric asks, hoarse.

“No.” I stare at him. “Because I love her.” Eric turns to the judge. “Nothing further,” he says. I start to rise from the witness stand, my legs unsteady, but Emma Wasserstein is already approaching me. “I don't understand, Ms. Hopkins,” she says. “What is it about an alcoholic's behavior that might make you worry about your daughter's safety?”

I look at her as if she's crazy. “Alcoholics are unreliable. You can't trust them. They hurt other people without even thinking about what they're doing.”

“Sounds kind of like a kidnapper, huh?” Emma turns to the judge. “The prosecution rests,” she says, and she sits back down.

On the last good day, my father got up before me. He was downstairs making pancakes for Sophie's breakfast by the time I came downstairs. On the last good day, we ran out of coffee and my father wrote it on a list we kept stuck to the fridge. I did a wash.

On the last good day, I yelled at my father because he forgot to feed Greta. I folded his clean socks. I laughed at a joke he told me, something about an asparagus that went into a bar, which I no longer remember.

On the last good day he went to work for three hours and then came home and put on the History Channel. The program was about the Airstream RV. When it first came out, no one quite knew what to make of the silver bullet, so the company sent a caravan of them on a promotional tour across Africa and Egypt. The native tribes came up to the RVs and poked at them with spears. They prayed for the beasts to leave.

On the last good day, my father didn't fall asleep while he was watching this show. He turned to me and said words that at the time were only words, not the life lessons they've since exploded into. “It just goes to show you,” my father told me, on the last good day, “the world's only as big as what you know.” Andrew

During the long drive east, the states all bled into one another and leagues of insects committed suicide against the front grille of the car. We would stop at gas stations and load up on Hostess cherry pies and Coca-Cola. We'd listen to the blur of words on the Spanish-speaking radio stations.

Every now and then, I would reach behind me blindly into the backseat where you were sitting, just to let you know I was there. “High-five,” I'd say. But you never slapped my palm in response. Instead, you'd slip your fine-boned, fairy hand into mine; as if you were trying to say Yes, I accept your invitation to this dance. It takes Irving Baumschnagel seven minutes to walk from the front row of the gallery to the witness stand, mostly because he is too stubborn to accept the help of a bailiff to steady him. Eric leans toward me, watching his unsteady progress.

“You're sure he can do this for us?”

Irving is one of the seniors from Wexton Farms that Eric's putting on the stand as a character witness. “He's much sharper than he looks.” Eric sighs. “Mr. Baumschnagel,” he says, rising to his feet. “How long have you known Mr. Hopkins?”

“Almost thirty years,” Irving says proudly. “We were on the planning committee together in Wexton. He got the senior center up and running just about the time I was ready to start using it.”

“How does he contribute to the community?”

“He always puts other people first. He sticks up for causes that most people would rather forget,” Irving says. “Like old people. Or poor families–we have our share in Wexton. Where most folks in town would prefer to pretend they don't exist, Andrew will run food and clothing drives.”

“Do you know Delia Hopkins?” Eric asks.

“Sure.”

“In your opinion, what lessons did Delia learn from her father?”

“Well, that's easy,” Irving says. “Just look at what she chose to do for a living: search and rescue. I doubt she would have picked that if she hadn't seen her father putting other people first his whole life.”

“Thank you, Mr. Baumschnagel,” Eric says, and he sits back down beside me. Rising, the prosecutor crosses her arms. “You said that the defendant spent his life putting other people first?”

“That's right.”

“Would it be fair to say that he considered other people's feelings?”

“Absolutely,” says Irving.

“That he was capable of figuring out who needed help?”

“Yes.”

“Who needed a break?”

“Sure.”

“Who needed an opportunity to change his or her life?”

“He'd find that opportunity for you, if you needed it,” Irving insists.

“Would it be fair to say, Mr. Baumschnagel, that the defendant was willing to give a person a second chance?”

“No question about it.”

“Well then,” the prosecutor muses. “I guess he really had become a different man.”

Daddy, you would say, look at my braids. Look at the worst bug bite ever. Look at my handstand, my eggroll dive, my finger painting. Look at my splinter, my spelling list, my somersault, the toad I found. Look at the present I made you, the grade I got, the acceptance letter. Look at the diploma, the ultrasound, your granddaughter. I couldn't possibly remember all the things you've asked me to look at. I just remember that you asked.

The amazing thing about Abigail Nguyen is that she doesn't look more than a few years older than she did when Bethany was part of her nursery school class. She is tiny and composed, and sits on the witness stand with her hands folded neatly in her lap as she answers Eric's questions. “She was a bright, sweet kid. But after her parents separated, there were times she'd come in and I just knew she hadn't had breakfast. She'd wear the same clothes to school three days in a row. Or her hair would be in knots, because no one had bothered to brush it.”

“Did you talk to Bethany about this?”

“Yes,” she says. “She usually told me that Mommy was sleeping, so she made herself breakfast or did her own hair.”

“How did Bethany get to school?”

“Her mother drove her.”

“Did anything about Elise Matthews ever strike you as disturbing?”

“Sometimes she looked ... a little worse for the wear. And often she smelled like she'd been drinking.”

“Mrs. Nguyen,” Eric says, “did you speak to Bethany's father about this?”

“Yes. I distinctly remember one occasion when Elise Matthews didn't come to pick Bethany up after school–we let her stay for the afternoon session, too, and then we called her father at work.”

“What was his reaction?”

She glances at me. “He was extremely upset and angry with his wife's behavior. He said he'd take care of it.”

“What happened after that?” Eric asks.

“Bethany attended class for three more months. And then one day,” the teacher says, “she disappeared.”

I would carry you on my shoulders so you could see better. I used to think to myself, I will do whatever it takes to be able to carry you forever. I will join a gym. I will lift weights. I will never let on that you've grown too big for this, that you've gotten too heavy.

It never occurred to me that one day you might ask to walk on your own.

“So,” the prosecutor says. “She just up and vanished?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Nguyen says.

“It's not in the child's best interests to have their education interrupted, is it?”