Vanishing and Other Stories (10 page)

 

 

HE LETS THINGS FALL APART
. The condo he shared with Kelly has become chaotic. Dishes pile up on top of the dishwasher, dust lines the electronics, the hardwood is never swept. When he needs to do a load of laundry, he drops clothes into the machine then forgets them. He finds them days later, damp and smelling of mildew.

He smokes inside now, and doesn't care if the smell gets into his clothes or the furniture or the bedsheets. He likes the craving
for nicotine that pulses in the back of his neck—a sure sign that he is alive. He smokes when he can't sleep. He smokes in front of the aquarium, and if the fish and corals didn't need fresh oxygen, he wouldn't bother to open the window.

The aquarium. For an entire week he doesn't clean the sides of the tank and the glass becomes sticky with algae. There are other problems: The lights have not been switching on at their regular intervals and he needs to repair the timer. And he hasn't replaced the water, so the salinity has gone up to 1.27.

It is late Saturday night—no, early Sunday morning—when the goby dies. Tom is on his third cigarette when it turns softly, weightlessly, on its side. It is a dark fish with a blue stripe that begins above its eye and continues the length of its body. The second before, it had been eating from the sand bed. Now it floats—the word
leisurely
comes to mind—toward the surface. Its eyes and mouth are open, and its face looks no different than it did in life. It drifts upward, and as it passes another goby, the live one tries to sink tiny, translucent teeth into its flesh.

When it reaches the surface, it bobs there until Tom scoops it out with his bare hand. He should have put the rubber glove on; not to do so is a risky manoeuvre that could contaminate the tank. He has never before behaved so rashly. But he wants to touch the aquarium's water and feel the fish's cool skin against his own.

 

 

THAT NIGHT
, he goes to the casino with flowers: two white orchids that have been dyed blue. She refuses them. She refuses even to look at him. He stands beside her, under flashing lights and surrounded
by the slots' din, with the orchids in his hands. “They're just flowers, Miranda. Take them. They'll be dead in a week anyway.”

When security arrives, she says, “I don't know this person. He keeps calling me by some other name.”

A man who has a phone piece clipped to the side of his head grips Tom's arm and says, “Come on, friend.”

So this is the kind of man Tom has become: the kind who is broke, frequents casinos, falls for cold women, and gets dragged to a parking lot by a man who calls him
friend
.

The guard speaks into Tom's ear. “What's your name?”

“Paul.”

“Listen, Paul, I'm going to remember your face.”

Tom shakes his arm loose from the guy's grip. He drops the flowers on the pavement and walks off into the rain. Is this how she felt in her last moments? This free? This frightened? This far from herself?

 

 

HE WAITS IN HIS CAR
for her shift to end. The night is cold, and after a couple of hours he has to cover himself with the emergency blanket he keeps in the trunk—a precaution he took when he believed in precautions. Finally, she walks out the casino's door and to her car. Her purse looks heavy on her shoulder, and she moves slowly despite the rain. She must be tired. She has not noticed him. He can tell by her walk that she doesn't believe she has an audience.

She gets into her car and he turns on his own ignition. When she pulls out of the lot, he follows. He doesn't keep his distance. He keeps his headlights on.

She drives for less than five minutes before pulling over onto the highway's shoulder. She cuts her engine, steps out of her car, and stands in the middle of the road. She watches him come toward her as though she doesn't care whether he runs her down or not. He keeps his speed up. His headlights hit her face, but she doesn't look away. Her age shows under those lights, and she looks nothing like a woman who once commanded a stage. He slows, then stops in front of her.

He gets out of his car without turning off the lights or the engine. “I didn't mean to frighten you.”

“You didn't. I'm old enough to know who I need to be scared of.”

“I just want to talk to you.”

“Are you a crazy person? Are you going to kill yourself and blame me for it?”

“I don't think so.”

“You're probably going broke.” She crosses her arms. “That makes people behave badly.”

“I just want to disappear. Can you do that?”

“Don't you ever sleep? Don't you have a job?”

“Please, Miranda.”

“It's not that simple. You need props and a rigged stage and dry ice for that kind of thing.”

“I just want to know what it feels like.”

“Go home.” She speaks as though she is used to men like him. “Go home to your wife or whoever buys you those nice clothes.”

“My wife is dead.”

“Okay.” She looks up at the sky then closes her eyes. “I don't care. Do you understand? I don't care, because it's not my job to care.”

“Because you're the dealer and I'm the player?”

“Good guess.”

“Because you're the performer and I'm the audience.”

“Leave me alone, Tom.”

“I wasn't joking about the two of us running off together. I wasn't joking about taking your show on the road.”

“You want to lose it all?” She smiles the kind of smile she must once have used onstage, before juggling knives. “Some of us don't have that luxury.”

“We should escape. We should be brave. You should have seen how brave my wife was.”

“I have rent to pay. I have an ex-husband who owes me over four thousand dollars—but maybe that's nothing to you.”

“This time we might be lucky.”

“I have a son. Okay?” She runs her hands through her dark, wet hair. “And I have to be up in less than five hours to get him to school.”

He hadn't imagined a child, another life that filled her own. He looks at her exhausted face and sees, now, how poor his imagination had been.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “You should go home.” But she doesn't move. He steps closer to her and she doesn't walk away. “Just tell me one thing.”

“It's Mabel, all right? My name is Mabel.”

“Really? It's cute.”

“It's terrible.”

“I can see why you don't like it.”

She smiles, and he touches the hair that sticks to her forehead. She lets him brush it out of her eyes. He wraps his arms around her
shoulders and she allows this. She leans into him, for one second, maybe two.

 

 

WHEN HE GETS HOME
, he scrapes the algae off the glass. He distills and cools twenty gallons of water, and replenishes the tank. When he sprinkles food onto the water's surface, the convict tang, damselfish, and flamefish swim up to it. Tom presses his palm to the glass and touches the place where, on the other side, the sea star has attached itself. Then he lies on the floor, on the spot where Kelly's bed had been, as though he's beside her. He watches the fish until he falls asleep, and he sleeps until the next afternoon.

That's when he finds the seven of hearts. It's in his wallet, which had been empty before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALL I KNOW OF YOU
is in traces: the musky smell of lavender and molasses in the house, his rushed phone calls when he thinks I'm not listening, the look on his face. Maybe if we met, I could explain my situation.
Explain my situation
. As if situations can be folded into the neat boxes of words, as if the word
situation
can define this. Define
this:
you are fucking (fabulous word, perfectly shaped box!) my husband. And for four months, you have occupied my mind, a presence I can't place.

I'm not sure how I know of you so clearly. I sense you in the house, something foreign, spicy, and warm that permeates the hardwood floors, dark walls, leather furniture. And Peter is quiet, though not in the brooding way I'm used to. He is calm and distracted, as though some new, bright thing has caught his attention. The two of us are trying too hard to be ourselves. I shower, paint, take rambling walks; Peter comes home with
cheese and bread from the market. His book proceeds. He doesn't discuss it much, doesn't wrestle with it, simply writes. But he no longer watches me paint, and I paint thoughtlessly now, without concern for building a series for a show, or for what galleries might term saleable. I don't even use my oils, just dab recklessly with watercolour.

 

 

TONIGHT, APRIL AND I
sit on her cedar deck as we do most evenings, sipping her homemade wine from Mason jars. We lounge in her deck chairs, our sketchbooks resting on our crossed legs, and face her backyard. With her Baroque Red and Indian Gold pastels, I draw the sun that drops below the horizon. April plays a chaotic colour game in her sketchbook, and smudges the waxy Terra Rosa, Vermilion, and Prussian Blue with her fingers. I flip my sheet of paper, pick up my black pen, and begin to sketch the broad outlines of her features. It has been months since I attempted a face, though they're my favourite subjects. This book and many others are full of Peter: the dent of his cheeks, lines of his eyes, his slim jaw, the changes of his skin and expression recorded over twenty years. I capture April's long nose in one stroke and say: “I want to paint her.” April knows I mean you.