Vanishing Acts Read online

  "Fitzwilliam," Marge repeated. "I want to talk to you about this kidnapping case."

  On her desk she has the paper spread open to my article--page A2, because yesterday there was also a murder-suicide down in Nashua. "What about it?" I asked.

  "Your piece was missing something."

  I raised a brow. "It's all there. The facts, the history to date, and the plea. If you're looking to make an arraignment more sexy, you'll have to watch The Practice."

  "I'm not criticizing your technique, Fitzwilliam, just your effort." She blew a smoke ring into my face. "Did you ever wonder why I pulled you off the Strange But True story to cover this instead?"

  "Sheer human mercy?"

  "No, because of what you could bring to the piece. You grew up in Wexton. Maybe you even crossed paths with this family--at church, at a school graduation, whatever. You can make this personal ... even if you have to make it all up. I don't want the legal crap. I want the family drama."

  I wondered what Marge would say if she knew that not only did I grow up in Wexton, I grew up next door to Andrew Hopkins. That, all drama aside, Delia is my family. I wondered if she would understand that sometimes being close to an issue is not a good thing for a writer. That sometimes it means you can't see clearly.

  But then Marge lifted up an envelope. "An open e-ticket," she announced. "I want you to follow this guy to Arizona and get the exclusive."

  And that, really, was what made me agree. After all, I am a man who has never gotten very far from Delia Hopkins, no matter how I've tried. You can widen the feet of a compass, but they are still attached at the top; you can spin them away from each other, but you always wind up where you started. If Andrew is extradited to Arizona, and Delia follows, I am going to wind up there sooner or later. The New Hampshire Gazette might as well foot the bill.

  I plucked the envelope out of Marge's hand. I would figure out, later, how to explain to Delia that I was writing an expose on her heartache. I would figure out, later, how to explain to my boss that, for me, Delia will never be a story, but a happy ending.

  Delia and I walk Sophie into the classroom because she's late, and because the teacher is brand new, having just taken over for Sophie's regular teacher while she's on maternity leave. I hang Sophie's coat on a little hook near her cubby and take her lunchbox out of her knapsack. A teacher who seems small enough, and nearly young enough, to be a student gets up and approaches Sophie, squatting down to her level. "Sophie! I'm glad you could join us."

  "There's television people in my driveway," Sophie announces.

  Amazingly, the teacher's smile never wavers. "Isn't that interesting!" she says. "Why don't you join Mikayla and Ryan's group?"

  As Sophie runs off, already focused on what's next, the teacher draws us aside. "Ms. Hopkins, we read about your father's arraignment in the paper. All of us here want you to know that if there's anything we can do to help ..."

  "I'd just like Sophie to stay busy," Delia replies woodenly. "She doesn't really know what's going on with my father."

  "Of course," the teacher agrees, and she glances at me. "She's lucky to have two supportive parents right now."

  Too late, she realizes this is probably not the smartest comment, given the circumstances. She blushes a deep red, then an even deeper hue when both Delia and I hasten to explain that I'm not Sophie's father.

  There have been times, I'll admit, that I wished I was. Like when Delia put my hand on her belly so that I could feel Sophie kicking inside, and I thought: I should have been the one to make that happen. But for all the nights I lay in bed as a teenager, imagining what it would be like to be Eric, with the freedom to touch her whenever I wanted, or breathing in the smell of my pillow after she'd sprawled on my bed studying for a test on Hamlet, or even feeling my pulse jump when we were both patting Greta after a find and our hands brushed--for all those times, there were a thousand others that did not belong to me.

  By now, the teacher is so tangled up in the kite strings of her embarrassment that she couldn't fly straight if she wanted to. "We have to go," I say to Delia, and I drag her out of the classroom. "I thought I'd save the poor woman before she put both of her feet in her mouth at once," I explain. "How old is she? Eleven? Twelve?"

  "I didn't get to say good-bye to Sophie."

  We stop for a moment at the plate-glass window, watching Sophie make a block pattern out of colored circles and squares.

  "She'll never know."

  "I bet the teacher noticed. She'll probably tell the school guidance counselor that I just picked up and left. They're all waiting to see how far the apple falls from the tree, you know."

  "Since when do you care what anyone thinks about you?" I ask. "That's the kind of crap I'd expect to hear from Bethany Matthews, not Delia Hopkins."

  I hear Delia suck in her breath at the sound of that forbidden name.

  "Bethany Matthews," I continue blithely, "is always the first one parked at the curb to pick up her daughter. Bethany Matthews thinks that the pinnacle of personal success is being president of the PTA for four consecutive years. Bethany Matthews never serves frozen pizza for dinner because she's forgotten to defrost."

  "Bethany Matthews would not have gotten pregnant before she was married," Delia says. "Bethany Matthews wouldn't even let her daughter play with a child who was the product of that kind of broken household."

  "Bethany Matthews still wears velvet headbands," I laugh. "And baggy granny underwear."

  "Bethany Matthews throws like a girl."

  "Bethany Matthews," I say, "is no fun to be around."

  "Thank God I'm nothing like her," Delia replies, and then she turns to me and smiles.

  I dated Delia first. We were in middle school and it didn't mean anything at all--if you said you were going out with a girl, it basically meant that you walked her to her bus at the end of the school day. I did it because everyone else seemed to be asking girls out, and Delia was the only one I really talked to. I broke up with her because as cool as it had been to have a girlfriend the week before, it was uncool to have one the following week. I told her that maybe we should spend a little time hanging out with other people.

  I realized too late that the look on Delia's face when I did it was one I had never seen before--and with good reason: It was the first time in our lives that any of us three wanted to ration the amount of time we spent in one another's company. In a fit of conscience, I went to find Delia in the gym. I was going to tell her that I didn't mean it, that words without thought behind them were like deflated balloons, unable to go anywhere, but instead I spied her dancing with Eric. He had his arms around her, with an easy confidence I didn't have. He touched her as if parts of her belonged to him, and maybe, after all these years, they did.

  On Eric's face I saw my own mistake. It brightened his eyes and narrowed his focus so much that I thought of yelling Fire to see if he'd even hear. He looked the way I felt around Delia: as if a second sun was growing underneath my breastbone, a secret I could barely conceal. The difference, though, was how Delia was looking back at him. Unlike the hours we'd spent as an alleged couple--when we'd argue who would be the starting pitcher for the Sox, or whether Spider-Man could kick Batman's ass in an arm-wrestling competition--Delia had nothing to say when she was staring up at Eric. He took away all her words, and I had never been able to do that.

  There were times, when we were getting older, that I thought of telling her how I really felt. I convinced myself that even if I lost Eric's friendship forever as a result, I'd still have Delia to make up for it. But then I'd remember that moment when she and Eric were swaying in the middle school gym, with streamers caught on the bottoms of their shoes and a DJ playing REO Speedwagon; and I'd realize that even if all three of us had grown up, Delia and Eric still looked at each other as if the rest of the world had fallen away, myself included. I could lose one of them, but I didn't think I could stand to lose both.

  Once, I slipped--I kissed her when we were horsing around on