Vanishing Acts Read online

  Eric clasps his hands behind his back. "Delia," he asks after a moment, "why aren't we married?"

  I blink at him; this is not from our script. The question surprises the prosecutor as much as it surprises me; she objects.

  "Your Honor," Eric says, "I'd like a little leeway. It's not irrelevant."

  The judge frowns. "You can answer the question, Ms. Hopkins."

  Suddenly I understand what Eric is trying to do, and what he wants me to say. I wait for him to face me, so that I can tell him, silently, that I am not willing to let him sacrifice himself to save my father.

  Eric takes a step closer and places his hand on the rail of the witness box. "It's okay," he whispers. "Tell them."

  So I swallow hard. "We aren't married ... because you are an alcoholic."

  The words are hinged, rusty; I have worked so hard to not say them out loud. You might tell yourself that candor is the foundation of a relationship, but even that would be untrue. You are far more likely to lie to yourself, or your loved one, if you think it will keep the pain at bay.

  This is something my father understood, too.

  "When I drank, I was pretty awful, wasn't I?" Eric asks.

  I bow my head.

  "Isn't it true that I'd disappoint you, tell you I was going to be somewhere, and then completely forget to meet you; tell you I was going to run an errand for you and then not go?"

  "Yes," I say softly.

  "Isn't it true that I would drink until I passed out, and you'd have to drag me to bed?"

  "Yes."

  "Isn't it true that I would go off on rampages, get angry over the stupidest things, and then blame you for what went wrong?"

  "Yes," I murmur.

  "Isn't it true that I could never finish something I started? And that I'd make promises that we both knew I'd never keep? Isn't it true that I'd drink to perk up, to calm down, to celebrate, to commiserate? Isn't it true that I'd drink to be sociable, or to have a private moment?"

  The first tear is always the hottest. I wipe it away, and still it sears my skin.

  "Isn't it true," Eric continues, "you were afraid to be with me, because you never really knew what I would be like? You'd make excuses for me, and clean up my messes, and tell me that next time, you'd help make sure this didn't happen?"

  Yes.

  "You enabled my drinking, by making it easier for me to get drunk without consequence ... no pain, no shame. No matter how bad I got, you were there for me, right?"

  I wipe my eyes. "I guess so."

  "But then ... you found out that we were going to have a baby ... and you did something pretty remarkable. What was that?"

  "I left," I whisper.

  "You didn't do it to punish me, did you."

  By now, I am crying hard. "I did it because I didn't want my child to see her father like that. I did it because if she grew up knowing you that way she would have hated you, too."

  "You hated me?" Eric repeats, taken aback.

  I nod. "Almost as much as I loved you."

  The jury is so focused on our exchange that all the air in the room goes still, but I notice only Eric. He offers me a Kleenex; then smooths my hair away from my face, his hand lingering on my cheek. "I don't drink anymore, do I, Dee?"

  "You've been sober for more than five years. Since before Sophie was born."

  "What if I fell off the wagon tomorrow?" he asks.

  "Don't say that. You wouldn't, Eric--"

  "What if you knew I was drinking again, and I had Sophie with me? What if I was taking care of her?"

  I close my eyes and try to forget that he has even thrown these words into the open, where they might breed and multiply and become fact.

  "Would you enable me again, Dee?" Eric asks. "Would you get Sophie in on the act, so that she could make excuses for her alcoholic parent?"

  "I'd take her away from you. I'd take her, and I'd run."

  "Because you love me?" Eric asks, hoarse.

  "No." I stare at him. "Because I love her."

  Eric turns to the judge. "Nothing further," he says.

  I start to rise from the witness stand, my legs unsteady, but Emma Wasserstein is already approaching me. "I don't understand, Ms. Hopkins," she says. "What is it about an alcoholic's behavior that might make you worry about your daughter's safety?"

  I look at her as if she's crazy. "Alcoholics are unreliable. You can't trust them. They hurt other people without even thinking about what they're doing."

  "Sounds kind of like a kidnapper, huh?" Emma turns to the judge. "The prosecution rests," she says, and she sits back down.

  On the last good day, my father got up before me. He was downstairs making pancakes for Sophie's breakfast by the time I came downstairs. On the last good day, we ran out of coffee and my father wrote it on a list we kept stuck to the fridge. I did a wash.

  On the last good day, I yelled at my father because he forgot to feed Greta. I folded his clean socks. I laughed at a joke he told me, something about an asparagus that went into a bar, which I no longer remember.

  On the last good day he went to work for three hours and then came home and put on the History Channel. The program was about the Airstream RV. When it first came out, no one quite knew what to make of the silver bullet, so the company sent a caravan of them on a promotional tour across Africa and Egypt. The native tribes came up to the RVs and poked at them with spears. They prayed for the beasts to leave.

  On the last good day, my father didn't fall asleep while he was watching this show. He turned to me and said words that at the time were only words, not the life lessons they've since exploded into. "It just goes to show you," my father told me, on the last good day, "the world's only as big as what you know."

  Andrew

  During the long drive east, the states all bled into one another and leagues of insects committed suicide against the front grille of the car. We would stop at gas stations and load up on Hostess cherry pies and Coca-Cola. We'd listen to the blur of words on the Spanish-speaking radio stations.

  Every now and then, I would reach behind me blindly into the backseat where you were sitting, just to let you know I was there. "High-five," I'd say. But you never slapped my palm in response. Instead, you'd slip your fine-boned, fairy hand into mine; as if you were trying to say Yes, I accept your invitation to this dance.

  It takes Irving Baumschnagel seven minutes to walk from the front row of the gallery to the witness stand, mostly because he is too stubborn to accept the help of a bailiff to steady him. Eric leans toward me, watching his unsteady progress. "You're sure he can do this for us?"

  Irving is one of the seniors from Wexton Farms that Eric's putting on the stand as a character witness. "He's much sharper than he looks."

  Eric sighs. "Mr. Baumschnagel," he says, rising to his feet. "How long have you known Mr. Hopkins?"

  "Almost thirty years," Irving says proudly. "We were on the planning committee together in Wexton. He got the senior center up and running just about the time I was ready to start using it."

  "How does he contribute to the community?"

  "He always puts other people first. He sticks up for causes that most people would rather forget," Irving says. "Like old people. Or poor families--we have our share in Wexton. Where most folks in town would prefer to pretend they don't exist, Andrew will run food and clothing drives."

  "Do you know Delia Hopkins?" Eric asks.

  "Sure."

  "In your opinion, what lessons did Delia learn from her father?"

  "Well, that's easy," Irving says. "Just look at what she chose to do for a living: search and rescue. I doubt she would have picked that if she hadn't seen her father putting other people first his whole life."

  "Thank you, Mr. Baumschnagel," Eric says, and he sits back down beside me.

  Rising, the prosecutor crosses her arms. "You said that the defendant spent his life putting other people first?"

  "That's right."

  "Would it be fair to say that he