Vanishing and Other Stories (3 page)

Nathan leaned back in his chair and shook his head, his cheeks reddened from wine. Their conversations sounded like arguments, but Nathan rarely appeared happier. He listened when Lev spoke and seemed to find everything about him—his youth, his ego—engaging. If Marlene noticed, she seemed to treat it as a necessary ill, like the arthritis in her fingers, the fluid that collected in her legs. “Now,” she said. “Would anyone like more beans?”

“A tough, brutish father. That's the way I love the man.”

“He's a drunk,” said Sofia. She seemed older than Lev. Maybe it was her rich voice, or the way she so confidently helped Marlene in the kitchen before the meal.

“So he's picked his poison.” Lev turned to her. “That's his right.”

“Of course.” Sofia placed her fork and knife on her plate with a click. “But I hardly find it charming.”

“Sofia has little use for certain kinds of men.” Lev smiled and showed his pleasantly crooked teeth. He picked up her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Men who are wholeheartedly male.”

“Then she's an astute young woman.” Nathan looked Lev in the eye. He smiled the kind of smile people use to cover up anger, or simple heartache. The kind of smile that never quite succeeds. “She's a prize.”

 

 

IN THE 1980S
, someone publishes a biography that gets it all wrong, Marlene and Bea spend half of every year in Florida, and Tabitha has become brash, too loud, a lush.

She is well liked, though fat and poor, and she wakes one morning to find that her hair has become a brazen, phony blond. There is nothing of Sofia in her now. She has lost her grace, her ingenuousness, her youth. She treats it like a joke, a big joke, the way her old self has disappeared inside this other woman. But in private, she doesn't find it funny. She has nightmares—sweaty, waking nightmares—that her father will find her like this. In this body, in this hair, tipsy and hysterical.

 

 

TWO DAYS AFTER NATHAN VANISHED
, Lev knocked on the door. He'd come from the office and said he didn't have much time, was just dropping by. He sat on the couch in a dark, pressed suit. Marlene took Nathan's leather chair and sat on the edge of it. Tabitha curled up on the couch, as far from Lev as possible.

Without Nathan in the house, he seemed less warm, less assured. He was interested in the legalities: what the police had said, how the search was proceeding. He interrogated Marlene and she repeated what had happened, exactly as it had happened. The streetcar trip, the shopping, the empty house. She answered Lev's questions but seemed worn by them. When she finished, he pointed to the corner of the room and said, “Is that Elvis Presley?”

Marlene refilled his coffee cup.

“There are only so many possibilities.” He bit into a lemon cookie. “Either your husband's disappearance was planned or accidental. Either he's alive or dead.” Lev seemed to find comfort in this kind of statement.

“He's probably just taking an extended day of rest,” said Marlene. This was a joke, but even she didn't laugh.

“I'm sure this will all be cleared up,” he said. “There's probably an explanation.”

Marlene put her cup on the table. She hadn't touched her coffee.

“I can see him waltzing in here tomorrow like nothing happened.” Lev smiled at Marlene, smiled at Tabitha, then laughed—a short, coughing laugh. “Wouldn't that be so like him?”

“Anyway, he'll be glad to know you dropped by.” Marlene stood. “He cares so much about you.”

Then Lev made a noise that was quieter than his laugh, and sounded even more like coughing. When he wiped his face, Tabitha realized he was crying.

“I'm sure there's no need for that,” Marlene said, in the same voice she used to tell Tabitha to
Stop dawdling
or
Quit picking at your food
.

But when Lev turned away and choked out the word “Sorry,” Marlene settled herself beside him on the couch and put her arm around him. Despite the suit, he looked like a child, helpless and shaky. He rested his head on her shoulder. “It's okay,” Marlene said, and rocked him back and forth.

Tabitha heard Lev's strange sobbing and understood what her mother must have known. Marlene let him press his wet, closed eyes into her cotton shirt. “You poor thing,” she said. “You poor boy.”

 

 

IN THE EARLY 1990S
, Tabitha checks into rehab, where she meets Charlie Sheen, then meets her future husband. His name is Stanley and he is shy. He admits that he wasted his life, and Tabitha finds this very honest, very brave. There is nothing like Betty Ford sex, and the first time they make love, he cries.

When they check out, he proposes. Two months later, they are married. One year after that, he is rebuilding his law practice and she is making a comeback, playing disturbed mothers and oversexed divorcees. They rent an apartment in Manhattan, and Tabitha learns him: his elaborate tea ritual, his fitful sleep, his splendid reading voice.

She eases away from friends and considers teaching theatre rather than acting. She takes up cooking and purchases things for their comfort—dishes and wineglasses and soft wool blankets. She feels a dedication as simple and big-hearted as Marlene's.

 

 

THE YEAR BEFORE HE LEFT
, Nathan had begun to say things like, “Not now, Tabitha,” or “I need to concentrate, please,” when he heard her steps on the ladder. For a month before he disappeared, she hadn't ventured into the attic at all.

But that Friday evening, she silently climbed the steps after dinner. What drew her there was the look on his face when he'd stood and left the table in the middle of the meal. The defeated way he'd said, “I've got work to see to.”

After Lev and Sofia went home, and while Marlene changed out of the blouse and green skirt she wore for company, Tabitha opened the hatch and pulled herself up, edging along the dusty floor until she slid into the office.

Nathan hadn't heard her come in—or if he had, he didn't find her presence important. He sat at his desk, facing away from her, and she stared at the back of his neck. He didn't turn to her or clear the stack of books from the chair. There was a blank sheet of paper rolled into the typewriter, so white it glowed under the lamp. He stared out the window, not even attempting to punch the keys.

 

 

BEA PASSES AWAY SUDDENLY
, and Tabitha flies home to help Marlene with the details: obituary, casket, stone. Maybe it comes from age, or from living with a sister for decades, but Marlene has lost any sense of propriety. She rinses dishes instead of washing them with soap, and forgets to close the door when she pees.

After sitting shiva, they give Bea's clothes and her cribbage board to the Goodwill. Then they pack Marlene's dishes and the
canned goods she stockpiles—
might as well buy lots when they're on sale
—so Marlene can move to a smaller place. As Tabitha fills a box with her mother's old records, she finds the Elvis. He's at the back of Marlene's closet, looking out like a ghost. He smells of mothballs, and his slim ceramic nose has broken off. Still, there's something about him. He's as strange and charming as ever.

 

 

TABITHA STRETCHED UP
on the tips of her toes and her head nearly touched the attic's ceiling. She wanted, like her father, to see out the window. When she did this, the light must have changed, or the floorboards shifted, because he turned around. His wooden chair squeaked as it swivelled. “What are you doing here, Tabitha?” He was the only one, then, who called her by her full name.

“Nothing.”

“Have they gone?”

She nodded. “I'm supposed to be helping with the dishes.”

“I shouldn't have left the table like that. Tell your mother I'm sorry.”

When she wasn't reading the lines he gave her, she didn't know how to talk to him, so she said the only thing that came into her head. “Wasn't Lev's fiancée pretty? Like a movie star?”

“Prettier,” he said quietly. “Because it's real life.”