Vanishing Acts Read online

  We are both thinking this, and it reminds us that this is not just any reunion. Victor clears his throat. "Why don't you two sit down inside?"

  Her house is decorated with bright Talavera pottery and wrought iron. As we walk into the living room, I look for clues that will tell me more: toys that speak of other children or grandchildren; the titles of music CDs on the shelves; framed photos on the walls. One catches my eye--it is a snapshot of my mother and me, wearing matching embroidered dresses. I'd seen a similar photo, maybe taken the minute before, or after this one, in my father's secret stash.

  "I'll get some iced tea," Victor says, and he leaves my mother and me alone. You would think, when there is so much to say, that it comes easily. But instead we sit in an uncomfortable silence. "I don't know where to start," my mother says finally. She looks down into her lap, suddenly shy. "I don't even know what you do."

  "Search and rescue. I work with a bloodhound, and we look for missing people," I say. "It's crazy, given the circumstances."

  "Or maybe it's because of them," my mother suggests. She folds her hands in her lap, and we look at each other for another moment. "You live in New Hampshire ...?"

  "Yes. My whole life--" I say, before I realize that isn't true. "Most of it, anyway." I dig in my pocket for the photo I've brought along of Sophie, and pass it to her. "This is your granddaughter."

  She takes the picture from me and pores over it. "A granddaughter," my mother repeats.

  "Sophie."

  "She looks like you."

  "And Eric. My fiance."

  I'd hoped that by seeing my mother some floodgate would open, and all the gaps in my mind would be filled with memory. I'd hoped that some reflex recollection would take over, so that when I heard her laugh or saw her smile or felt her touch, it would be familiar, instead of new. But after that initial embrace, we've gone back to what we really are: two people who have just met. We can't rebuild our past, because we haven't even leveled common ground.

  For years, I'd sketched my mother out in my mind by stealing bits and pieces of other people's lives: a woman who stood in the town pool, coaxing her tiny daughter to jump off the side into her arms; a fairy-tale character who died tragically young; Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice. Any of those women, I would have known in an instant; I would have been able to fall into easy conversation. Any of those women would have known what I have been doing all my life. In none of my imaginings was my mother Spanish-speaking, or remarried, or awkward. In none of my imaginings was she a total stranger.

  When your mother is made out of dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.

  "When is the wedding?" she asks politely.

  "September." At least, that was when it was supposed to be. I expected my father to give me away--before I learned he might be going to prison for not being able to do that in the first place.

  "Victor and I are celebrating our silver anniversary this year," my mother says.

  "Did you have children?"

  She shakes her head. "I wasn't able to." My mother looks down at her hands. "Your father ... did he remarry?"

  "No."

  She lifts her gaze to mine. "How is Charles?"

  It is strange to hear him referred to by that other name. "He's in jail," I say bluntly.

  "I never asked for that. I'm not going to lie--there was a time I was so angry at him for taking you I would have willingly sent him to prison for life--but it's been so long. The only thing I cared about, when the prosecutor called to tell me they'd found him, was you."

  I picture her standing in the driveway of this house, even though I know it isn't where I grew up. I imagine her expression at the moment she realizes I am not coming back. I see her face, but it has all of my own features.

  My mother looks at me, hard. "Do you ... do you remember anything?" she asks. "From before?"

  "Sometimes I have dreams," I say. "There's one about a lemon tree. And one where I come into a kitchen with broken glass all over it."

  My mother nods. "You were three," she says. "That wasn't a dream."

  It is the first time someone has been able to confirm a memory that I couldn't make sense of, and I feel my arms and legs go weak.

  "Your father and I, we had a fight that night," my mother says. "We woke you up."

  "Was I the reason you got divorced?"

  "You?" She seems surprised. "You were the best part of our marriage."

  The question, now, is burning a path up my throat; the words come out like fire. "Is that why he took me?"

  Just then Victor enters the living room, carrying a tray. There is a pitcher of iced tea, and cookies the size of a baby's palm, covered in powdered sugar. Under his arm is a shoebox. "I thought you might want this, too," he says, and he hands it to her.

  She is embarrassed by it. "I thought it might not be the right time," she tells him.

  "Why don't you let Bethany decide that?"

  "It's just some things I kept," my mother explains, pulling the rubber band free. "I knew that one day I'd find you. But somehow, I always expected you to still be four years old."

  There is a lacy christening cap, and the placard from the hospital bassinet with my name--my other name--written by a nurse in red ink, along with my weight: 6 lbs, 6 oz. A tiny china teacup with a chip in the handle. A square of paper with the carefully printed pencil letters of a child: I LV U.

  Proof, that once I did.

  The only other item in the box is a miniature patchwork quilt, made of triangles of red silk and orange shag and paisley print and sheer voile.

  My mother shakes this out over her lap. "I made this for you, when you were a baby, out of every bit of comfort I could find." She touches the red silk. "This came from a slip that once was my grandmother's. The orange was the throw rug from your father's dorm room. The paisley, a maternity dress of mine. And the voile, that came from my wedding veil. You ate with it and slept with it and I had to force you not to bathe with it. You used to hide underneath it when you were afraid ... like you thought it might make you disappear."

  I had forgotten my blanket. I want to go home, I'd told him.

  We can't, he said, but he didn't tell me why.

  "I remember," I say softly.

  I am four again: reaching up as she lifts me out of the bath; holding tight to cross a street; clutching this blanket with my fist. In a half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past.

  I reach across my mother's lap to touch the blanket, wishing it still had the same magic powers that it used to, that I might press it to my cheek and rub the corner of it against my eyelids and know that everything is going to be all right by the time the sun comes up. "Mami," I say, because that is what I used to call her.

  I may not know my mother yet, but we have this much in common: Neither of us, it turns out, has been the only one who lost someone she loved.

  It is strange, suddenly having a memory come back out of nowhere. You think you're going crazy; you wonder where this recollection has been hiding all your life. You try to push it away, because you think you've hammered out the whole timeline of your life, but then you see that one extra moment, and suddenly you are breaking apart what you thought was a solid segment, and seeing it for what it is: just a string of events, shoulder to shoulder, and a gap where there is room for one more.

  There is so much I want to ask her; there are still so many questions.

  When I get back to the trailer, Fitz is fanning himself with the phone book and Sophie is asleep on the couch. "How did it go?" he asks.

  I have been thinking about what I should tell him--and Eric, for that matter. It's not that I have anything to hide, but there's something about talking about the fragile bridge my mother and I just built that in some way would diminish it. "She wasn't who I wanted her to be," I say carefully, "but that didn't turn out as bad as I expected."

  "What's she like?"

  "She's younger than my father. And she's Mexican," I tell him. "She grew up