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Authors: Deborah Willis

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BOOK: Vanishing and Other Stories
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Tabitha nodded and looked toward his desk. The typewriter, the blank sheet of paper.

“Did you know I haven't written anything in nearly a year?” He spoke as though it were a statistic, a fact that piqued his interest.

She shook her head. She understood exactly what this meant: that he wouldn't need her anymore, that there was no reason for her to be in the attic. That the chair was no longer hers.

“But that's a secret.” He raised one eyebrow, an exaggerated expression that reminded her of when he would read bedtime stories. When he terrified her, doing all the voices. “Can you keep a secret?”

She heard Marlene in the kitchen, running water for the dishes. Tabitha had a few minutes before her mother needed her to dry. “Sometimes.”

“That's a truthful answer.” He leaned back in his chair. “Of course, I've written reviews and letters and things. But I haven't really written.”

There was the sound of Marlene opening and closing a cupboard. “I should go down soon,” said Tabitha. “She wouldn't want me here.”

“Your mother is a very sweet person,” he said. “I think that's why I married her. Because she seemed like the only honest person on earth.” He laughed then, and it sounded hollow in the low-ceilinged attic. “Isn't that incredible? I married the only honest person on earth.”

Tabitha stared at his shoes. They were brown leather and polished. “If it's just that you're not really writing,” she said, imitating his emphasis on
really
, “then you should tell her the truth. It would probably make her happy, because then you could come downstairs more.”

“The truth? It would break her heart,” he said. “I don't suppose you're old enough yet. I don't suppose you've had your heart broken.”

“Yes, I have.” This was a lie. But Tabitha had seen enough romances to know how to cast her eyes down and pause, breathlessly, before adding, “Once.”

“Then I'm sorry for you,” he said, and turned back to the window. His voice had a harshness that told her she hadn't fooled him. He was the only audience, she would later realize, that she hadn't been able to fool.

 

 

WITHIN A YEAR OF BEA
, Marlene dies. And after her mother's stroke, Tabitha can't think of a single thing to say to Stanley. He holds her, tries to give comfort, but everything about him seems foreign: his smell, his pilled sweaters. He is a stranger, a man she never knew. So Tabitha walks out of her own life.

She leaves her marriage and New York and moves to a more manageable city. One with glass-fronted buildings, and bridges that stretch over waterways. She doesn't know anyone there, though once she runs into Lev as she's buying groceries. “Tabby,” he says. “Is that really you?”

He looks tired, less handsome, and he wears an expensive suit that doesn't fit his soft body. He says that Sofia left him long ago, after she too became a successful lawyer. He says he visits the kids every Hanukkah.

She wants to ask him questions. “Have you heard anything about my father?” Or, “Do you still miss him?” But it seems ridiculous to say those things under fluorescent lights, beside shelves of microwaveable popcorn and freeze-dried soups. And Lev is talking about how he'd seen her picture in a magazine years
ago and couldn't believe it. “I said to myself, that can't be the same girl!”

Neither of them suggests staying in touch, and they never see each other again. Tabitha gets a job in a bookstore, where the owner finds it amusing that she was once well known on the stage. Eventually, she too finds it amusing. So she settles, for a while, into this role behind the counter. And cultivates—perfectly—the sad, knowledgeable smile that customers seem to like.

 

 

TABITHA STOOD IN THE ATTIC
surrounded by Nathan's books and the dim light, faced with her father's back. She wanted to say something—apologize for her lie, or ask why he had left the table, who had broken his heart. But he stared out the turret window as though there was something out there. So she slipped down the ladder, closed the hatch, and ran to the living room. She looked out the big window, the one Marlene washed with vinegar every week. She wanted to see whatever he'd seen. But there was nothing outside. Just the usual street lamps and lawns. Houses with drawn curtains. The everyday, falling snow.

 

 

 

t h e   w e a t h e r

 

 

 

SHE CAME HOME
with my daughter after school. The neighbour, Jerry, and the guys I hire for haying had left twenty minutes ago, half an hour. I was still in the field, and I saw the two of them walk along the highway: my daughter with her slouch and backpack, and the older girl with neither.

Edith hardly ever brought friends home, not since my wife lived here, so I stopped what I was doing—fixing a yard of fence—and went to meet them on the road. Edith's fifteen, a tough age, so this probably got on her nerves, probably embarrassed her. Her father with a loop of wire hooked on his arm and cutters in his dirty hand. This girl, her friend, obviously came from town. From a house with plastic siding and a lawn.

“Father,” Edith said. “This is Rae.”

The girl was tall, built like the spindly birch we use as windbreak. She reminded me of girls I knew when I was young,
and I didn't like the arch of her back, her cut-off shorts, her weird grey eyes. I didn't like her much at all, and I wouldn't have asked her for dinner if I hadn't noticed the way she breathed. Like she was sucking air along a sandpaper throat, holding it in clogged lungs. Like each inhale was an effort, like it was earned.

The girl offered a quick smile. Gap in her teeth, but she was probably considered pretty, and she probably knew it. “Hi,” she said.

It wasn't warm, but the sun glinted off her hair. That's what I remember most: the cool sun, the dropping pressure. Rain was coming, and it was giving me a headache.

 

 

I INTRODUCED THEM
. Father, I said, this is Rae. It was unfortunate, but I couldn't have known.

I met her on the last day of school, when the bus dropped me off near where she walked along the highway. I recognized her even though she was new to the school and two grades above me. I asked if she was lost, and she said she was lost on purpose. She said she likes to go for walks when the air is clear. She also said that her boyfriend's an asshole and when she told him so, he'd opened his car door and left her on the side of the road. She looked angry and like she might have been crying. She asked me, You're Edith, right?

I told her she could come to my place, for a snack or something. I said I was certain my father wouldn't mind. She looked irritated, like I'd ruined her plans. But then she said, Okay. Sure. Thanks.

 

 

SHE STARTED COMING OVER
nearly every day. Suddenly my daughter was sitting beside that girl in front of the TV, bowls of soggy cereal resting on their knees. Or the two of them would lie in front of the house, moving their towels around the parched grass to follow the sun. They greased themselves in oil, and the girl would wave to Jerry and the guys as they walked by. Edith started wearing her hair down and a borrowed bikini, her body too young for it. Edith, who was usually locked in her room with her books and her mother's old tapes and an attitude. What my wife called “an innate aloofness.”

That girl wasn't the kind of friend I'd expected my daughter to make. She wasn't the kind I'd hoped for.

 

 

THAT FIRST NIGHT
, she opened our screen door and strode in like she already knew her way around. This is a cool place, she said.

When we had dinner, she bounced her knees under the table and took huge helpings of potatoes and corn. She'd seen rodeo on television, so she had questions about bull riding and calf roping. At first my father answered with one or two words and he looked shy when he spoke to her. She leaned on the table and kept her eyes on his tanned face, like this was a challenge or a game. I was sure he was a joke to her, someone she'd tell stories about later: a cowboy with greying hair and the top two buttons of his shirt undone. My poor, idiotic father.

By dessert, he became less quiet and seemed to enjoy answering her questions. He told her about branding parties and moose hunting, and when she wanted to know how cattle auctions
worked, he asked me to put the kettle on for coffee. Then he told her how loud an auction was and how it smelled like someone had trucked their whole farm into town and dumped it in one building. Which a lot of guys did. He explained feedlots and weights and weaning. He told her about the spring, how busy calving was, but beautiful. He used that word:
beautiful
.

 

BOOK: Vanishing and Other Stories
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