Vanishing Acts Read online

  Eric's directions tell me to turn off at University Drive, and when I do, there is a man standing at the top of the exit ramp. He has a long gray ponytail, and wears a flannel shirt, in spite of the heat. He reminds me of some of the hardscrabble New Englanders who haunt convenience stores for refills of chewing tobacco and worship the late Dale Earn-hardt. "Hey, bro," he says to me, and I remember with a start that my window is open. He lifts up a ragged piece of corrugated cardboard on which he's written: NEED HELP.

  "Don't we all," I say, and gun the engine as the light turns.

  I pass a plethora of child-care centers--the hallmark of a town whose inhabitants have to pawn their kids off on someone else so they can be teachers and nannies and cops in upscale neighborhoods where they can't afford to live. There is shack after shack of Mexican fast-food places--Rosa's, Garcia's, Uncle Tedoro's. Many of the storefronts boast of sales in English and Spanish.

  Just past a conversion van on the side of the road that's selling leopard-print dashboard covers, I see a trailer park--stubby silver Airstreams huddled like a crash of rhinos. As I am wondering which of these Quonset huts might belong to Delia, Sophie comes running out of a door. Her red sneakers kick up dust as she races to another trailer, this one covered with Christmas lights and feathers and windcatchers. If she's sick, she sure doesn't look it.

  "Sophie," I yell, but she's already disappeared inside the second home.

  I park my car and walk up to the trailer. There is no doorbell, only the kind of triangle that ranch wives use to call cowboys to dinner. I raise the wand and ting it, just a little. The door opens, revealing a Native American woman with a scarf wrapped around her head. "I'm sorry," I say, so surprised to not see Delia that I cannot find any words for a moment. "I must have the wrong address."

  But then Sophie pokes her head out of what must be a closet. "Fitz!" she yells, and comes at me with the force of a natural disaster. "If I stand on Ruthann's toilet I can touch all the walls in the bathroom at once. Want to see?"

  The Indian woman frowns at Sophie. "I thought I hired you to work for me, not to go stand on toilets."

  Sophie beams. "Ruthann's paying me a dollar to glue the sequins on One-Night Stand Barbie's miniskirt."

  "One-Night Stand Barbie?" I repeat.

  "She's my featured item this month," Ruthann says. "Comes shrink-wrapped with Rohypnol Ken. For you, only $29.99 for the pair." She gestures to the small foldout table in the center of the tiny room, covered with beads and glitter and plastic dismembered body parts stacked like a mass grave. Sliding heavily into the bench seat, she pulls a pair of spectacles out by a cord that snakes into her shirt and starts assembling arms and legs and torsos into dolls. "Nine ninety-nine?" she bargains.

  I take a ten-dollar bill out of my pocket and slap it on the table. Ruthann slips the money into her jeans and hands over the dolls. "She's not here, you know."

  "Who?"

  She raises an eyebrow, and her fingers fly over a Barbie head, braiding the hair. I let my gaze roam the trailer, which is packed to the gills with dusty old appliances, heaps of vintage magazines, smashed toys, and bald or filthy or amputee Barbies. "I'm Fitz," I say, a belated introduction.

  "I'm busy," Ruthann replies.

  "Ruthann sells stuff that other people throw away," Sophie says.

  I have always wondered about the people who cruise the streets before the garbage trucks come, taking stained couches and broken bicycles from the rubbish piles. What some people cast off, I guess, other people would want to keep.

  Ruthann shrugs. "Some fools will buy anything made by an Indian. I could probably rearrange my own trash and say it's art, get myself a show at the Heard Museum."

  "I went to the hospital today," Sophie says. "I was sick when I woke up but Ruthann got rid of the feathers and now I'm better."

  I look at the old woman for explanation, but she just shakes her head.

  Whatever was wrong with Sophie must have passed; she's perfectly fine now. "Where's your mom, Soph?" I ask, but she shrugs. No one seems inclined to talk. I clear my throat, and fiddle with an arm. It looks like it belongs to Ken; it has a biceps muscle.

  Ruthann tosses me a torso and a head. "Knock yourself out."

  I start to put together a Ken, stopping only once to notice the lack of genitalia, and wondering why I never knew that Ken was a eunuch. Probably because the only girl I'd ever played with was Delia, and she wouldn't have been caught dead with a doll in her possession. When the body is assembled, I pick up a Sharpie marker and begin to draw dotted lines and symbols down the torso and over the extremities. I label spots: BAD LUCK. SEARING PAIN. SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION. MONETARY RUIN. Sophie cranes her chin over my arm. "What are you making, Fitz?"

  "Something for your mom. Voodoo Eric."

  Ruthann laughs, and when I look up I see her measuring me differently. "You," she decides, "may turn out better than I thought."

  Just then the door opens, and I can see Delia tying Greta's leash to the arm of a large plaster garden gnome. "Stay," she instructs. When she walks inside and sees me, her face lights up. "Thank God you're here."

  "Thank Southwest Airlines. They had more to do with it."

  "Ruthann," Delia says, presenting me, "this is my best friend in the world."

  "We've met."

  "Yes, Ruthann was kind enough to let me discover my inner artist." I lift the doll and give it to Delia. "It might come in handy. Listen, do you think we could go somewhere and ... talk?"

  I look around as I say this, but I can literally see the end of Ruthann's little trailer from where I'm standing. I can practically touch the end of Ruthann's little trailer from where I'm standing. "Go on," Ruthann says, waving us away. "Sophie and me, we're busy."

  But Delia leans over and feels Sophie's forehead with her lips, an act I've never understood. Do all mothers automatically have some kind of thermometer gauge in their mouths? She turns to me. "This morning--"

  "I heard."

  "I couldn't even reach Eric to have him meet us at the hospital--"

  "I know," I reply. "He told me he tried to call you on your cell."

  Delia looks at me sharply. "You saw Eric already? You went to the law office?"

  I shift uncomfortably. I think about the notes I have in my back pocket, about the arraignment. The ones I will write up and send in an e-mail to the New Hampshire Gazette. "I ran into him in court. Your father was arraigned about an hour ago."

  Delia shakes her head. "I don't understand. Eric would have called me."

  "I don't think Eric knew your father was going to be arraigned. He nearly missed the whole proceeding."

  She wanders outside the trailer and sits down beside Greta in the shade. "I got mad at him last night."

  "Eric?"

  "My father." She draws up her knees, rests her cheek on them. "I went to the jail to tell him I would testify or do whatever he needed me to do. I wanted to hear the truth, but when he started to tell it to me, all I could think about was how he lied. So I left." Delia glances up, near tears. "I walked out on him."

  I rest my hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure he knows how hard this is for you."

  "What if he thinks that the reason I wasn't in court was because I hate him?"

  "Do you?"

  Delia shakes her head. "It's like math that doesn't add up, you know? I mean, on the one hand, there's my mother, who's ... out there, somewhere, which is amazing ... and I can't ever get the time back with her that I lost. But on the other hand, I had the best childhood, even if it wasn't the one I started out with. My father literally gave up his life for me, and that's got to count pretty heavily." She sighs. "You can love a person and still hate the decisions they've made, can't you?"

  I stare at her for a moment longer than I should. "I guess," I say.

  "I still don't know why he did it," Delia murmurs.

  "Then maybe you ought to try asking someone else."

  She turns to me. "I was going to ask you about that. I keep hitting dead ends