Vanishing Acts (6 page)

When she looked at me, there was nothing in her eyes, as if she'd pulled free from her life the strand that was me. “I want the baby, Eric,” she said. “But I don't want you.”

Delia had complained about my drinking before, but since she hardly drank herself, it seemed impossible for her to be able to know what exactly constituted too much. She claimed she didn't like the smell of alcohol, but I thought it was loss of control she couldn't handle; and that seemed to be her hang-up, not mine. Sometimes she got angry enough to take a real stand, but it was a vicious cycle: Every time she swore she'd leave me, it would only send me spiraling down into a bottle, and eventually she'd come help me crawl back out to consciousness, swearing up one side and down another that it would never happen again, when we both knew that it would.

This time, though, she wasn't leaving on her own behalf, but someone else's. For a long time after she walked away, I sat on the lawn in her backyard, balancing the truth between my shoulders like Atlas's weight. When I finally headed home, I looked up the information for Alcoholics Anonymous, and went to a meeting that night. It took me some time, but eventually I realized why Delia said no to my proposal. I had asked her to spend the wrong life with me, but at any moment, a person might start over from scratch.

I would like to take the time to find Delia, but right now I can't. I make one phone call: to the prosecutors in Arizona. The canned voice I reach informs me that the Maricopa County Attorney's office hours are from nine a.m. to five p.m. I glance at my watch, and realize that in Arizona it's only seven in the morning. I leave a message, informing whoever needs to know that I am representing Andrew Hopkins, that he has waived extradition here in New Hampshire district court in return, we hope, for a speedy transport.

Then I head downstairs to the sheriff's office, where Andrew is temporarily occupying a six-foot-square space. “I need to see Delia,” he says.

“That's not an option right now.”

“You don't understand–”

“You know, Andrew, as the parent of a four-year-old ... I honestly don't.” This brings back yesterday's conversation, and his confession. Andrew, wisely, changes the subject. “When do we leave for Arizona?”

“It's their call. It could be tomorrow; it could be a month from now.”

“And in the meantime?”

“You get luxurious accommodations provided by the State of New Hampshire. And you get to meet with me, so we can figure out what we're going to do in Phoenix. Right now, I have no idea what evidence the prosecution has. Until I can put together the pieces, we'll just enter a not guilty plea and figure out the rest later.”

“But,” Andrew says, “what if I want to plead guilty?” In the history of my career, I have met only one defendant who didn't at least want to tell his side of the story. The man was seventy, and had served thirty years in the state penitentiary. He held up a bank fifteen minutes after his release, then explained to the teller that he'd be waiting out front on the curb for the police. All he'd wanted was to get back to an environment he understood, which is what makes Andrew's comments even stranger. For all intents and purposes, a man who once resorted to crime in order to have a life with his daughter should want to continue to spend it in her company.

“Once you enter a guilty plea, Andrew, it's over. You can always switch your plea from 'not guilty' to 'guilty,' but you can't go the other way around. And after twenty-eight years, their evidence has to be sketchy; their witnesses might not even be alive anymore–there's a good chance you'll be acquitted.” Andrew looks at me. “Eric, are you my lawyer?”

I am completely unequipped to be Andrew's attorney; I don't have the experience or the wits or the confidence. But I think of Delia, begging; believing that someone who was once a failure might still be a candidate for a hero. “Yes,” I say.

“Then don't you have to do what I ask?”

I don't answer that.

“I knew what I was doing twenty-eight years ago, Eric. And I know what I'm doing now.” He exhales heavily. “Plead guilty.”

I stare at him. “Did you bother to think how this might affect Delia?” Andrew looks over my shoulder at something for a long moment. “That's all I ever think about,” he replies.

Once, when we were seventeen, Delia cheated on me. I was supposed to meet her at a bend in the Connecticut River where we liked to go swimming-there was a swatch of cattails and reeds that hid you from the eyes of anyone on the road, should you feel like making out with your girlfriend. I rode my bike down there, a half hour late, and heard Delia talking to Fitz.

I couldn't see them through the grasses, but they were arguing about the origin of the O. Henry bar. “It's named after Hank Aaron,” she insisted. 'That's what everyone used to say when he hit another home run."

“Wrong. It's the writer,” Fitz said.

“No one names a candy bar after a writer. They're all baseball players. O. Henry, Baby Ruth . . .”

“That was named after Grover Cleveland's daughter.” I heard a shriek. “Fitz, don't... don't you dare ...” A splash, as he tossed her into the river and fell in himself. I pushed through the screen of reeds to jump in along with them. But when I had almost reached the bank, I saw Fitz and Delia in the water, wrapped around each other and kissing.

I don't know who started it, but I do know that Delia was the one who stopped. She pushed Fitz away and ran out to grab her towel, then stood shivering three feet away from my hiding spot. “Delia,” Fitz said, coming out of the river, too. “Wait.” I didn't want to stay and listen to what she had to say; I was afraid to hear it. So I retreated in silence, and then ran back to my bike. I rode home in record time, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in my room with the lights off, lying on my bed and pretending that I hadn't spotted what I had.

Delia never confessed to kissing Fitz, and I didn't bring it up. In fact, I never mentioned it to anyone. But a witness is defined through what he sees, not what he says. And just because you keep something a secret doesn't mean it never happened, no matter how much you want that to be true.

I find Delia watching a flock of kids alighting on a jungle gym. “You know how I hate to swing?” she says.

'Yeah," I say, wondering where this is going.

“Do you know why?”

Delia broke her arm once on a swing set when she was eight; I always figured it had something to do with that. But when I tell her so, she shakes her head. “It's that moment when you've gone too high, and the chains go slack for a half-second,” Delia says. “I was always afraid I was going to fall.”

“And then you did,” I point out.

“My father promised he'd catch me if that happened,” she says. “And because I was a kid, I actually believed him. But he couldn't be there all the time, no matter what he'd said.” She watches a little girl hide under the long silver tongue of the sliding pond. “You didn't tell me he was in jail.”

“It's going to get worse before it gets better, Dee.” She pushes away from the fence. “Can I go talk to him, now?”

“No,” I say gently. “You can't.”

She is unraveling before me. “Eric, I don't know who I am,” she says through tears. “All I know is that I'm not the person I was yesterday. I don't know if I've got a mother somewhere. I don't know if I was being hurt in some way I don't even want to think about. I don't know why he thought that what he did would hurt me any less. Why would he lie to me, unless he wasn't so sure I'd forgive him?” She shakes her head. “I don't know if I can trust him now. I don't know if I ever will, again. But I also don't... I don't know who else I'm supposed to ask for the answers.”

“Sweetheart-”

“Nobody just steals a child,” she interrupts. “So what godawful thing happened that I can't remember?”

I settle my hands on her shoulders; I can feel everything inside her spinning like a top. “I can't tell you that yet,” I say, “but neither can your father. Legally, I'm the only one who's allowed to talk to him.”

Delia lifts her face, fierce. “Then you go ask him what happened.” Although it's unseasonably warm for March, she's shivering. I take off my jacket and drape it over her. “I can't. I'm his attorney,” I say. 'This is exactly why I think someone else should-"

“Should represent him?” Delia asks. “Someone who only knows my father because he's a name on a manila folder? Someone who could care less whether he gets convicted or acquitted, because it's all just in a day's work?” On the playground, a teacher calls out to the class. She unravels a white rope with little interval loops for each child to grab hold of, a miniature chain gang taking the safest measures back to their school. “He intends to plead guilty,” I say uncomfortably.

“What will that do?”

“Get him sent directly to jail.”

Delia looks up, stunned. “Why would you want that?”

“I wouldn't. I told him to take a chance on a trial, but it's not what he wants.”

“What about what I want?”

If I show up in court in Arizona at Andrew's side, the judge will ask me how we plead, not Andrew. To say “not guilty” means subverting my client's request. It means Andrew could fire me and wind up with a lawyer who'd gladly enter a guilty plea, because it is the path of least resistance.

To say “not guilty” means a big, difficult trial, in which Delia will serve as a material witness.

As the only other person who was with Andrew at the time of the kidnapping, she will be courted by the prosecution as well as the defense. And in spite of the fact that she is my fiancee, I can be sent to jail for telling her any details about her father's case. It is a felony to consciously or unconsciously influence what a witness says in court.

But is it a crime for her to influence what I say?

I smooth my hand over her hair. “Okay,” I promise. “Not guilty.” Andrew

Does it really matter why I did it?

By now you've already formed your own impression. You believe that an act committed a lifetime ago defines a man, or you believe that a person's past has nothing to do with his future. You think I am either a hero, or a monster. Maybe knowing more about the circumstances will make you think differently about me, but it won't change what happened twenty-eight years ago.

There have been nightmares. Sometimes I have picked up the phone and heard Elise's voice in the pause before the telemarketer's brain kicks in. Whenever I pass a police car, I sweat. I was thrown into a panic when one of the seniors submitted my name for election to the Wexton Town Council, until I realized that the easiest place to take cover is in plain sight; no one ever looks twice at someone who acts like he has nothing to hide.

Believe what you want, but be prepared to answer this question: In my shoes, how do you know you wouldn't have done the same thing?

Believe it or not, there is a relief to finally getting caught. The moment I gave up my clothes for a baggy orange jumpsuit I also peeled off the skin of the person I've pretended to be. In a strange way, I belong here more than I did out there. Like me, everyone in jail has been living a lie.

For twenty-three hours a day, I stay in my cell. That last hour, I am granted a shower and a turn around the exercise yard, where I do my best to breathe in deep and get the smell of jail out of my nostrils.

I have asked twice now to call you; I thought that everyone was given a phone call upon arrival, but it turns out that's only true on television. I wait for Eric, but he hasn't come yet either. I imagine there are all sorts of knots made out of red tape he has to untangle before we are shipped off to Arizona.

The last time I was there, it was a state unlike anything in the Northeast. A place where the soil was the color of blood, where snow was a fantasy, where the plants had skeletons. Just falling off the abrupt edge of Scottsdale could land you in towns that consisted of a handful of people and a gas station; back then the West was still a haven for lawless rebels. I hear those towns are now the enclaves of the rich, who have built multimillion-dollar houses into the inhospitable red cliffs, but I imagine the part of Phoenix I will be seeing is still peopled with lawless rebels, the ones who have been arrested.

It never gets dark in jail, and it never gets quiet. The sound is a symphony: the wheezing snore of the guy one block down; the creak of a door being opened. Rain on the roof and the viper hiss of the radiator. The ping-ping-ping-ping of metal on metal as a corrections officer walks down the corridor side by side with his attitude, hitting his keys against the bars of a cell to wake up all the nearby occupants. The only way I am able to stand it is to think about you. This time, the memory that spreads across my mind is of the autumn weekend we drove to Killington and took a chairlift up to the top. It was October, and you were only five. When we got to the peak, the ring of Killing-ton's mountains rose to our left and right; the valley below was a lavish tapestry of reds and golds and emeralds, studded with church spires that looked like fallen stars caught in the folds of the landscape. The Ottauquechee River scalloped a blue seam down the center, and the air already smelled of snow.

It looked just about as different from Arizona as humanly possible. And I began to understand what New Englanders say, what I had learned long before I took refuge in New Hampshire: You never forget your first fall. When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a piece of yourself inside her, because sometimes that is what it takes to stake a claim. I remember watching you making muddy mixtures in the sandbox, and wondering if a love of chemistry was something you might be born with. I remember listening to your tearful recollection of the monster in your nightmare, trying to see whether it resembled me.