Vanishing Acts Read online

  "You let me think you were a victim," I accuse.

  "I was," my mother says. "I may not have been a perfect mother, but I was your mother, Beth. And I loved you."

  Past tense.

  "That isn't my name," I say tightly, and this time, it is my decision to leave.

  Greta and I were once called during a blizzard to find a teenage girl who had left a suicide note and disappeared, leaving her single father in an absolute state of panic. It was down in Meredith, the Lakes Region. The local police had begun to search on a footprint trail, but the snow was falling so fast that her tracks vanished almost the moment they were located.

  Locals had been warned off the roads that night; the only vehicles I passed on my way there were plows and sanding trucks. When I arrived, I was taken to the girl's father. He was rocking back and forth in an armchair, fist pressed to his mouth, as if he were afraid of the grief that might spill out. "Mr. Damato," I asked, "does Maria have a special place? A spot she goes to when she wants to be alone?"

  He shook his head. "Nowhere I know."

  "Can you show me her room?"

  He led me to the back of the house. The girl's room was typical--twin bed, milk-crate bookshelves, laptop, lava lamp. But unlike most teenagers' bedrooms, this one was spotless. The bed had been made, the papers cleared from the top of the desk. The clothes were all neatly hanging in the closet. The trash can had been dumped.

  Because Maria Damato had already done her wash, too, I scented Greta off a pair of shoes I found in her closet. Outside, the snow whistled and spun around us. Greta started out west, toward the road, and then veered into the woods. At points she had to leap snowdrifts; at other times I fell on my hands and knees in them. Every time I opened my mouth, I tasted ice.

  Two hours later Greta broke through the trees and began to tiptoe across the frozen flat of the lake. With all this snow, it did not look like a body of water, but instead a wide-open field. Snowflakes the size of quarters clotted on my lashes and lips, and gave Greta Groucho Marx eyebrows. The powder made the ice even more hazardous; we both went sprawling a few times. But finally Greta stopped and put her front paws on a mound that didn't sink. She turned a small circle; did it again.

  I saw the girl's hair first, frozen into jagged spikes. I rolled her over and immediately began to do artificial respiration, but she came up scratching like a cat. "Get off me, get off me!" she shrieked, and then she opened her eyes and started to sob.

  The EMT workers who met us at the lake said that the snow had acted as an insulator, keeping Maria alive longer than she might have been otherwise. Her father, who had been called with the good news, was waiting at the front door when we returned. Holding my arm for support, Maria took a tentative step toward her father. Suddenly, Greta stepped between them and growled low in her throat.

  "Greta," I said, calling the dog off. But in that instant, I'd felt Maria relax. As if she'd been vindicated.

  Believe me, I have seen it all: from delicate boys with the faces of sprites who run from the teasing of bullies; to teens who climb to the top of water towers, intent on dying closer to Heaven; to the willow-thin girls who hide in the night from their mother's boy-friends. My job, though, is to bring them home, not to judge the motives that made them run away. So that night, I returned Maria Damato to the custody of her grateful parent. I did what I was expected to do.

  A month later the detective on the case called to tell me that Maria had shot her father and then killed herself. I gave Greta an extra serving of Dog Chow that day, for understanding more than any human had. It just goes to show you: Sometimes knowing what's right isn't a rational decision, or even what works on paper. Sometimes leaving is the best course of action after all.

  When Sophie was two, Eric and I took her fishing. It was a lazy Sunday, and we were sitting on a dock on Goose Pond. Eric would thread a worm onto the hook and cast, then cup his hands around Sophie's on the fishing rod. She had just learned the word fish, and when we pulled a trout or a bass out of the water, she'd clap her hands and say it over and over.

  To this day, I'm not sure how it happened. Eric had let go of Sophie to bait the hook, and I was pointing to the rainbow scales of the trout that we'd just released back into the cool, dark water. There was the tiniest splash, like a rock being skipped across the surface of the pond, and we both looked up to see that Sophie was gone.

  She wasn't wearing a life jacket--she fought us like crazy when we tried to zip it up, and we'd rationalized with ourselves: With both of us watching her, what could go wrong? "Sophie?" Eric yelled, the ragged edge of panic serrating her name.

  I didn't think, just jumped into the water fully clothed and opened my eyes. It was cloudy and my shoes kicked up sand from the bottom, but there was a flash of something bright, and I lunged for it.

  Sophie, who didn't know how to swim, had sunk like a stone, and was drifting underneath the dock. I grabbed her by her shirt, yanked her over my head, handed her to Eric. He laid her out on the rough weathered boards while she sputtered and choked and I hauled myself out of the pond.

  She was too frightened to cry, and although it felt like a lifetime, the whole episode had lasted less than two minutes. The bright spot I'd seen under the water was a necklace my father had given her for her birthday--a silver star, to wish on.

  Sophie likes to hear the story of how we saved her life. She can repeat all the details, but they are trappings of a story we've seasoned to perfection over the years. She has no recollection of the incident firsthand, and Eric and I are both grateful for that. There are some things, I think, you're better off not remembering.

  The back of the trailer park wedges wide into a dry, dusty vista, which is where Eric takes me to see the sunset: a fuchsia curtain being drawn down through the pleats of the mountains.

  He's still dressed in a suit, but he's loosened his tie. We watch the sky turn every watercolor shade of orange and purple, a painting too lovely to be real, while a few feet away, Sophie throws a tennis ball for Greta to chase. "I've been thinking that if law doesn't pan out for me, I'm going to audition as a Phoenix weatherman. Look, I've got it down: Monday, 104 and sunny. Tuesday, 104 and sunny. Wednesday, a cool 102 and--"

  "Eric," I say. "Stop."

  He does, immediately. "I was only trying to cheer you up, Dee. Fitz tells me you had a hell of a day."

  "You shouldn't have let me miss the arraignment," I reply.

  "It wasn't my fault. They never even told me it was scheduled." He slides an arm around my waist. "Tell me about your mother."

  I watch a hawk spiral overhead, his talons ripping the fabric of the sky to show a star or two. The sunset reaches its death throes, an explosion of ginger and pink and night. "She's an alcoholic," I say finally.

  I can tell by the way he goes perfectly still that this is news for him. "Back then, too?" he asks.

  "Yeah." I face him. "Do you think that's why I fell in love with you?"

  "God, I hope not," Eric laughs.

  "I'm serious. What if there was a part of me that couldn't fix her, so I had to fix you?"

  Eric reaches for my shoulders. "You couldn't even remember her, Dee."

  There is no denying this. But was it because I couldn't, or because I didn't want to? Memory isn't something that stays with you at all times. It's a quantity that gets summoned or evoked or brought to mind. It gets carried to an arena for our viewing pleasure. By definition, then, there are times it must go missing.

  Or does it? When I used to complain about Eric's drinking, he told me I was being unreasonable. One beer, and I couldn't stand the smell on his breath. Now I wonder if this was some scent recollection, some unconscious understanding that a person who smelled of alcohol was bound to disappoint me.

  "I went to the jail today, too," I say.

  "How'd that go?"

  "On a scale of one to ten?" I look up at him. "Minus four."

  "Well, maybe this day wasn't an entire wash. You might have found me an affirmative defense.