Vanishing Acts Read online

  "What was the prior conviction for?" Eric asks.

  "I had spent a night in jail after a fight, once."

  "Who was the person you assaulted?"

  "Victor Vasquez," I say. "The man Elise wound up marrying."

  "Can you tell the court why you fought with Victor?"

  I run my thumbnail into a groove of the wood. Now that this moment is here, it's harder than I thought to make the words come out. "I found out that he was having an affair with my wife," I say bitterly. "I beat him up pretty badly and Elise called the police."

  "In light of that incident, you were nervous about asking the authorities to revisit the custody agreement?"

  "Yes. I thought they'd look at the petition and think I was doing it to get back at Elise."

  "So." Eric faces the jury. "You'd already tried to get Elise to participate in her own rehabilitation, and it didn't work. You saw obstacles lying in front of you if you took legal action. What did you do next?"

  "I had run out of options, the way I saw it. I couldn't leave Bethany there, and I couldn't let this keep happening. I wanted my daughter to have a normal life--no, a better than normal life. And I thought that maybe if I got her as far away from all of this as I could, we could both start over. I thought maybe she was even young enough to completely forget that this was the way she'd spent the first four years of her life." I look up at you, watching me with haunted eyes from the gallery. "As it turned out, I was right."

  "What did you do next?"

  "I took Beth and drove to my condo. I packed as much stuff as I could into the car, and then I started to drive east."

  Eric guides me through a narrative of flight, a web of lies, an outline of how to reinvent oneself. I answer more of his questions--ones about life in Wexton, ones that dovetail with the spot where he began to overlap with our lives. And then he reaches the end of this act, the one we have practiced. "When you took your daughter, Andrew, did you know what you were doing was against the law?"

  I look at the jury. "Yes."

  "Can you imagine what would have happened to Delia if you hadn't taken her away?"

  It is a question Eric's not expecting to get in, and sure enough, the prosecutor objects.

  "Sustained," the judge says.

  He has told me that this will be the last question, that he wants to leave the jury thinking about the answer to the question I am not allowed to give. But as Eric heads toward the defense table again, he suddenly stops and pivots. "Andrew?" he asks, as if it is just the two of us, and something he's wanted to know all along. "If you had the chance, would you change what you did?"

  We haven't rehearsed this answer, and maybe it's the only one that really matters. I turn, so that I am staring square at you; so that you know, all my life, anything I've ever said or buried beneath silence was just for you. "If I had the chance," I reply, "I'd do it all over again."

  IX

  But what do you keep of me?

  The memory of my bones flying up into your hands.

  --Anne Sexton, "The Surgeon"

  Eric

  Maybe I'm not going to lose this case, after all.

  It's clear Andrew's broken the law--he has admitted it, as well as a lack of remorse--but he's got a few sympathetic jurors. One Hispanic woman, who started crying when he talked about Delia growing up, and one older lady with a tight silver perm, who was nodding along with pity. Two, count 'em, two--when it only takes one to hang a jury.

  But then again, Emma Wasserstein hasn't attacked yet. I sit beside Chris, my nails digging into the armrests of the chair. He leans closer to me. "Fifty bucks says she goes for rage."

  "Lying," I murmur back. "She's got that one in the bag already."

  The prosecutor walks toward Andrew; I try to will him faith and composure. Do not fuck this up, I think. I can do that myself.

  "For twenty-eight years," Emma says, "you've been lying to your daughter, haven't you."

  "Well, technically."

  "You've been lying about who you are."

  "Yes," Andrew admits.

  "You've been lying about who she is."

  "Yes."

  "You've been lying about all aspects of your former life."

  "Yes."

  "In fact, Mr. Hopkins, there's an excellent chance that you're lying to all of us right now."

  I feel Chris stuff something stiff into my hand; when I look down, it's a fifty-dollar bill.

  "I'm not," Andrew insists. "I have not lied in this courtroom."

  "Really," Emma says flatly.

  "Yes, really."

  "What if I told you I could prove otherwise?"

  Andrew shakes his head. "I'd say you're mistaken."

  "You told this court, under oath, that you came home to get a security blanket for your daughter ... and you found Elise Matthews drunk, lying amidst vomit and broken glass and dog feces. Is that correct?"

  "Yes."

  "Would it surprise anyone in this courtroom to learn that Elise Vasquez is allergic to dogs? That she never owned one, either while you were living with her or anytime afterward?"

  Oh, shit.

  Andrew stares at her. "I never said it was her dog. I'm just telling you what I saw."

  "Are you, Mr. Hopkins? Or are you telling this court what you want them to see? Are you painting this situation to be worse than it really was, to justify your own heinous actions?"

  "Objection," I mumble.

  "Withdrawn," Emma says. "Let's give you the benefit of the doubt, then; let's say your memory of the state of the house is flawless, even after almost thirty years. However, you also said that after finding your wife in this state, and feeling unfairly persecuted by the authorities, you went back to your condo and packed as much as you could into your car, and started driving east with your daughter. Do I have that right?"

  "Yes."

  "Would you classify your decision to abscond with your daughter as impulsive?"

  "Absolutely," Andrew says.

  "Then what made you close out your bank account on the previous Friday morning, a full day before you picked Bethany up for her custody visit?"

  Andrew takes a deep breath, just like I've told him to. "I was in the process of switching banks," he says. "It was a coincidence."

  "I'll bet," Emma remarks. "Let's talk about your good intentions for a moment. You said you brought your daughter to Harlem with you, to a crack house, when you purchased those identities?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "You brought a four-year-old along to watch you commit a crime?"

  "I wasn't committing a crime," Andrew says.

  "You were purchasing someone else's identity. What do you think that is, Mr. Hopkins? Or is your set of laws different from everyone else's?"

  "Objection," I interrupt.

  "Were there drug addicts at that crack house?" Emma asks.

  "I assume so."

  "Might there have been needles on the floor?"

  "It's possible, I don't really remember."

  "Were there individuals with guns or knives?"

  "Everyone was busy doing their own thing, Ms. Wasserstein," Andrew says. "I knew it wasn't Disneyland when I went in there, but I had no alternative."

  "So let me get this straight: You ran away with your daughter because you were worried about her safety ... and took her less than a week later into a crack house to become an accessory to a crime?"

  "All right," Andrew admits heavily. "I did."

  "You never called Elise to let her know that her daughter was healthy and happy, did you."

  "No. I haven't had any contact with her." He hesitates. "I didn't want her to be able to track us down."

  "You also never told your daughter that her mother was alive and well in Phoenix?"

  "No."

  "Why is that, Mr. Hopkins? Your daughter turned eighteen over a decade ago--she wouldn't have been returned to her mother's custody then, no matter what. The danger, as you perceived it, was over. If your motive for abducting Bethany wa