Vanishing Acts Read online

  "And you didn't tell me?"

  "I couldn't tell you, Delia."

  "What else are you holding back?"

  A hundred answers run through my mind, from details of conversations I have had with Andrew in jail to the deposition I took from Delia's former nursery school teacher, things that she is better off not hearing, although she would never believe me if I told her so. "You're the one who wanted me to represent your father," I argue. "If I tell you the things he tells me, I get tossed off the case, or disbarred. So, you pick, Delia. Do you want me to put you first ... or him?"

  Too late I realize I never should have asked that question. She shoves past me without saying a word, and strides down the hallway.

  "Delia, wait," I say, as she steps into the elevator. I put my hand between the doors to keep it from closing. "Stop. I promise; I'll tell you everything I know."

  The last thing I see before the doors close are her eyes: the soft, bruised brown of disappointment. "Why start now," she says.

  The taxi drops me off at Hamilton, Hamilton, but instead of going into the office building I take a left and start walking the streets of Phoenix. I walk far enough that the tony stucco storefronts disappear and I find myself in places where kids in low-riding pants hang out on the corner, watching traffic without flicking their yellow eyes. I pass a boarded-up drugstore, a wig shop, and a kiosk that reads CHECKS CASHED in multiple languages.

  Delia is right. If I managed to figure out a way to keep her from knowing what her father told me, surely I would have been able to figure out a way to keep the Bar Association from knowing what I might have told her. It doesn't matter that, in terms of legal ethics, I shouldn't have disclosed to her any information about her father's case, or her own absent history. It doesn't matter that I promised as much to Judge Noble, and to Chris Hamilton, my sponsor in this state. The bottom line is that ethics are a lofty standard, but affection ranks higher. What is the point of being an exemplary attorney in the long run? You never see that on anyone's tombstone. You see who loved them; you see who they loved back.

  I duck into the next store and let the air-conditioning wash over me. There is the unmistakable yeasty smell of cardboard cartons; the ching of a cash register. One wall is covered with the emerald green bottles of foreign wines; the entire back shelf is a transparent panorama of gins and vodka and vermouth. The full-bellied brandies sit side by side like Buddhas.

  I head to the corner of whiskeys. The cashier puts the Maker's Mark into a brown bag for me and hands me back my change. When I leave the store I twist off the cap of the whiskey bottle. I lift the bottle to my lips and tilt back my head and savor that first, blessed, anesthetic mouthful.

  And, like I expect, that's all I need for the fog in my head to clear, leaving one honest admission: Even if I had been free to tell Delia anything and everything, I still wouldn't have done it. As Andrew has been trying to explain for weeks: It was easier to hide the truth than to hurt her.

  So does that make me guilty ... or admirable?

  What is right, in the end, is not always what it seems to be, and some rules are better broken. But what about when those rules happen to be laws?

  Tipping the whiskey bottle, I spill the entire contents down a sewer grate.

  It is a longshot, but I think I've just found a way out for Andrew Hopkins.

  Delia

  By the time I reach my mother's house, my emotions are hanging by a thread. I've been lied to by Fitz and by Eric; I've been lied to by my father. I have come here because, ironically, my mother is my last resort. I need someone to tell me the things I want to hear: that she loved my father; that I have jumped to the wrong conclusion; that the truth is not always what you think it is.

  When my mother doesn't answer the doorbell, I let myself into her unlocked house. I follow her voice down a hallway. "How does that feel?" she asks.

  "Much better," a man answers.

  I peer through a doorway to find my mother gently tying a knot in a silk cord around a younger man's neck. Seeing me, he startles, nearly falling off his stool.

  "Delia!" she says.

  The man's face turns bright red; he seems incredibly embarrassed to have been caught, even fully clothed, with my mother. "Stay," she says. "Henry and I are finishing up."

  He digs in his pants for his wallet. "Gracias, Dona Elise," he mutters, shoving a ten-dollar bill into her hands.

  He's paying her?

  "You have to keep wearing your red socks, and your red underwear for me. Understand?"

  "Yes, ma'am," he replies, and he backs out of the room in a hurry.

  I stare at her, speechless for a moment. "Does Victor know?"

  "I try to keep it a secret." My mother blushes. "To be honest, I wasn't sure how you'd react, either." Her eyes suddenly brighten. "If you're interested, though, I'd love to teach you."

  It is then that I notice the rows of jars behind her, filled with leaves and roots and buds and soil, and I realize we are talking about very different things. "What ... is all this?"

  "It's part of the business," she says. "I'm a curandera, a healer. Sort of a doctor for the people doctors can't help. Henry, for example, has been here three times already."

  "You're not sleeping with him?"

  She looks at me as if I'm crazy. "Henry? Of course not. He's been hospitalized twice because his throat keeps swelling shut, but no medical professional can find anything wrong with him. The minute he walked in here, I knew it was one of his neighbors hexing him--and I'm working with him to break the spell."

  My own business involves things that cannot be seen, but it's rooted in the basics of science: human cells, attacked by bacteria, which create vapor trails. Once again, I look at this woman and think she is an utter stranger. "Do you honestly believe that?"

  "What I believe doesn't matter. It's what he believes. People come to me because they get to help with their cure. The client knots the special cord, or buries the sealed matchbox, or rubs the candle. Who doesn't want to have a hand in controlling their own future?"

  It was what I had thought I wanted. But now that I am starting to remember, I am not so sure. I touch my hand to the scar at my throat; the discovery that brought me here. "If you're a healer, why couldn't you save me?"

  Her eyes fall to the small hollow. "Because back then," she admits, "I couldn't even save myself."

  Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength--and the honesty--to break them down.

  "Then do it now," I demand. "Pretend I'm some client."

  "There's nothing wrong with you."

  "Yes, there is," I say. "I hurt. I hurt all the time." Tears pierce the back of my throat. "You've got to have some magic that makes things disappear. Some potion or spell or cord I can tie around my wrist that'll make me forget how you drank ... and how you cheated on my father."

  She steps back, as if she's been slapped.

  "What could you give me," I ask, my voice shaking, "to make me forget ... that you forgot about me?"

  My mother hesitates for a moment, and then walks stiffly to her shelves. She pulls down three containers and a glass mixing bowl. She opens the seals. I smell nutmeg, summertime, a distillation of hope.

  But she does not mix me a poultice or make a roux for me to swallow. She doesn't wrap my wrists with green silk or tell me to blow out three squat candles. Instead, she comes hesitantly around her workbench. She folds me into her arms, even as I try to break free. She refuses to let go, the whole time that I cry.

  It seems as if we have been driving forever. Ruthann and I take turns during the night, while Sophie and Greta sleep in the backseat. We head north on Interstate 17, passing places with names like Bloody Basin Road and Horsethief Basin, Jackass Acres, Little Squaw Creek. We pass the skeletons of saguaros, inside which birds have made their homes; and the smashed amber glass from beer bottles, which line the side of the road like glitter.

  Gradually, the cacti vanish, and deciduous tr