The Vanishing Expert

by David Movsesian

  He gazed out into the darkness, the moonlight playing upon the tranquil surface of Frenchman’s Bay. He could barely make out the breakwater at the head of the harbor and the Porcupine Islands lying dormant in the distance. He drew a deep, sustained breath, drawing the sea air into his lungs, and he smiled.

  “This is a great spot,” he said, sipping his wine. “Thanks for showing this to me.”

  “I’ve been coming out here since I was a kid,” Christina said. "Sometimes I’d come out here in the afternoon and just sit and read a book, but I really like it right around sunset when everything gets quiet. That’s when I usually have it to myself.” She smiled at James. “But that’s not what I wanted to show you.”

  She removed a candle from the basket, placing it upon the rocks between them. It was a sweet-scented candle set deep within a glass sphere to shield it from the ocean breezes. Even so, it took her three tries to light it, the wind snuffing out her match each time before she could poke it inside the sphere. When the wick finally began to burn, it cast a dull yellow glow on their legs.

  Christina reached into the picnic basket once again and produced a folded piece of paper. “This is what I wanted to show you,” she said, unfolding the paper.

  She handed it to James, who squinted at it, trying to make out the images upon the paper in the dim flickering light of the candle. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but when they did, he found himself confronted with the smiling face of a twenty-two year old Edward Moody. In the photograph, he was clean-shaven and smiling knowingly, trying to appear older, but there was still the untainted glimmer of youth in his eyes. It was the same innocent optimism he’d seen in Christina’s eyes in the diner after they left Del Miller’s studio. He swallowed hard, studying the unwavering gaze in the photograph, unaware that he’d yet to draw a breath since he first recognized the image.

  “I copied it from an old yearbook at school,” Christina said. She leaned closer to him, trying to get another look at the photocopy of the yearbook page James held in his trembling fingers. “I forgot I had it until I found it yesterday.”

  James betrayed no emotion, but he was immediately reminded of the hot summer day a year earlier when Joe Tibbits confronted him with the newspaper article about Edward Moody’s disappearance.

  “I couldn’t find your picture,” Christina said. “Only this one of your friend. But I thought you might like it.”

  When James finally looked at her, he could make out the reflection of the candle’s small flame flickering in her eyes, and he could see that Christina was smiling. It was an innocent smile, full of light, completely unaware of the significance of the gift she’d brought him.

  Finally, James drew a breath. “My friend?” James said uncertainly.

  “Yeah,” Christina said. “Edward Moody.” It was a name he never expected to hear passing over Christina’s lovely lips. “You said he was your friend.” She squinted at James’s face and then back at the picture. In the library, when she'd first noticed the photograph in the yearbook, she’d seen something in his eyes and in his easy smile that reminded her of James. Now, as she looked at James’s face, bearded and thin and etched with worry, she decided that it bore no resemblance at all to the boy in the picture.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn't mean to upset you with that.”

  James looked at her beautiful face. Even in the near-darkness, she maintained a glow that was at once startling and lovely, vibrant even when her expression was filled with regret. That was something James hoped he would never see upon her face. He certainly hoped never to be responsible for putting it there. He forced a smile and folded the picture. He thought about dipping the corner of it into the flame of the candle and watching it burn, ridding himself of it forever. Instead he held it up so she could see it neatly folded in his fingers.

  “Can I keep this?” he asked her.

  “Sure,” she said, obviously pleased that he wanted it after all.

  He tucked the paper neatly into his pocket. When he returned to his apartment that evening, he stepped out of the Jeep onto the gravel drive and removed the neatly folded paper from his pocket. He unfolded it and studied the youthful face staring back at him once again. Then, from another pocket he removed the book of matches he’d picked up when Christina was preoccupied. He struck a match and held it to the corner of the paper, watching as it submitted to the flame. Only when it had all turned to ash at his feet was James satisfied that this trace of Edward Moody was gone for good. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder when his old life would find him again.

  On the last weekend in August, Jean invited James to join them for a Saturday evening in Bar Harbor, hoping they could spend one more night together— like a family, Jean thought to herself— before Christina left for school the following weekend.

  Christina spent that Saturday working with her mother in the gallery. She’d hoped to see James, but he’d already explained to her that he and Peter were behind schedule with their current project and they’d be working a good part of the day. Having already left her job at the Bar Harbor Inn for the summer, she decided to help her mother mind the gallery.

  Jean noticed that her daughter seemed distracted. On more than one occasion she found herself speaking to Christina and getting no response, only to find that her daughter appeared to be deep in thought. Whenever she commented on Christina’s behavior, Christina blamed it on lack of sleep.

  “You’ve been out almost every night,” Jean remarked. “What have you been up to?”

  Christina smiled sweetly. “Just hanging out with friends.”

  “Are you seeing someone?” Jean asked. She saw Christina blush, and she laughed. “That’s it, isn’t it?” she asked playfully. “It’s a boy!”

  Christina scoffed at the idea. “No,” she said. “Not a boy. I’m not about to get involved with anyone right now. I mean, I’m leaving for school next week. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

  As lies went, she decided it was an especially good one, despite the guilt she felt for having told it. It was the first time she could remember lying to her mother in some time, with the exception of all the little lies she’d told her to explain her nightly excursions to see James, and she wasn’t pleased with herself for having done it.

  “You know, you can’t always help who you fall for,” Jean confided. “Or when.”

  The remark struck Christina as being filled with irony. Surely her mother would never have offered such advice if she only knew for whom Christina had fallen. But it was particularly ironic given that, for as long as Christina could remember, her mother had obsessively analyzed and dissected her own relationships with men, which eventually resulted in the complete absence of them.

  Jean had more than her share of opportunities to get involved with men; not only the locals, who knew only too well how difficult it was to get past the walls she’d built around herself, but also with some of the wealthy men who visited Bar Harbor each summer. Over the years, there had been several who returned season after season with the sole hope of getting to know the beautiful divorcee who owned the gallery on Mount Desert Street. But Jean was never interested in the tourists or the weekend visitors, no matter how frequently they returned, or how eager or charming they might be.

  The truth was that she wanted something she felt certain they couldn’t offer her. She wanted someone she could rely on to always be there for her. She’d already had one husband leave her; she wasn’t looking for another man who was just passing through. While she did sometimes flirt with these admiring men, rarely did she share so much as a meal with any of them, and as far as Christina knew, her mother had all but sworn off men by the time James came along.

  Over the years, her mother had developed, if not a disdain, then at least a disinterest in the wealthy men that were attracted to her. Bar Harbor in the summertime was swarming with them. True, most of them were visiting with their families, but there were many who came on their
own. Some drove out in their Mercedes and their BMWs and toured about the island in the comfort of their air-conditioned cars. Others sailed their sloops up the Maine coast, arriving with their sunburned and wind-burned faces and their rumpled cotton clothes. These were the men Jean trusted least of all for what she often referred to as their ‘wandering spirit.’ They were wealthy men who were still somehow dissatisfied enough with their privileged lives that they felt the need to set out in their sailboats and bob about on the ocean for two weeks each summer. In Jean’s opinion, they were either trying to escape from something in their lives or desperately searching for something their lives were lacking. Whichever it was, Jean had met enough of them over the years that she’d long since decided that all wealthy men were simply lacking that one essential characteristic that she needed in a man— commitment. The men who breezed into town, whether by land or by sea, always seemed to Jean to be both restless and self-absorbed; a combination, she concluded that rendered them incapable of offering her the kind of unwavering devotion she required.

  “Any man who can have anything he wants will eventually want more than he has,” she often told her daughter. She’d said it often enough that Christina frequently finished the sentence for her.

  By the time James arrived, Jean appeared to have surrendered to the notion that she might just spend the rest of her days without a man in her life— not the worst fate, she supposed. After all, she’d experienced marriage once and with the exception of giving her Christina, it took far more from her than she did from it.

  Still, there were those quiet times when she had to admit to herself— if to no one else— that she missed having a man around. In another week, once Christina returned to school, she’d have the house all to herself again. The prospect of coming home each night to an empty house filled her with such melancholy that she actually found herself longing, once again, for those joyful days of her marriage when she was certain she had everything she wanted. She didn’t miss Richard— he was, as it turned out, a scoundrel— but she missed the feeling she’d known during their marriage of being part of a complete family, and she wondered if she would ever again feel as whole as she did back then.

  It was those fears with which Jean was secretly wrestling on that last weekend before Christina left her once again— quite possibly for the last time— that compelled her to include James in their plans, so that she might experience those old feelings once more, if only for one evening.

  James met Jean and Christina at the gallery so the three of them could walk through town together on their way to the Criterion. Jean always enjoyed strolling down the streets of Bar Harbor, especially in the evenings, and as they passed several of the shops and the little cafes, Jean poked her head through the open doors or tapped on the glass to greet the familiar faces inside. It was one of the things she liked most about her life— that she could walk down nearly any street in Bar Harbor and greet everyone as if they were old friends. After twenty-four years, most of them were.

  On this particular evening, as they meandered leisurely down the sidewalk— with James in the center and Jean and Christina on either side— Jean seemed almost buoyant. She was reminded of those evenings during her marriage when they walked these same streets back when Christina was a little girl. Looking back, those years may have been the happiest time of her life, and even though she walked past these same storefronts nearly every day since, it was never with that same feeling of sublime contentment she’d felt back then.

  But on this warm August evening, something was different. Something had changed.

  James sensed it, too. For the first time in his adult life, he felt as if he was part of a real family, something he hadn’t truly felt since his mother’s death. Though his father had done his best to be both father and mother to his two children, there was always a void that simply couldn’t be filled; there would always be that space where his mother had once been.

  Gloria had always insisted that they were a family, but the two of them alone never matched Edward’s idea of what a family should be.

  “You don’t have to have children to be a family,” Gloria frequently offered.

  “We’re a couple, not a family,” he’d insisted in response. “It’s not the same.”

  In time, he stopped debating the issue with her, and he tried to come to terms with the idea that he would live his life without ever fathering a child, without ever knowing what it would mean to share with his son all the things his father had shared with him. He never succeeded, and it always left him with the same feeling he’d had since he lost his mother; that there was some essential piece missing from his life that not only left his family incomplete but him as well.

  As if she knew what James was thinking, Jean hooked her arm through his as they walked. Though her loss and his were very different, they shared that prolonged sense that there was something missing, something just beyond their grasp.

  As they stopped to peer into a storefront window along Main Street, James saw something different in their reflections; where he expected to see three people staring back at them, he saw instead what looked like a family. It was a completely unexpected revelation— even a bit unsettling given his relationship with Christina— but just for a moment it struck him as natural and comforting. At the same time, he couldn’t seem to shake the sensation that this feeling would disappear at any moment, that it would linger just long enough for him to find real comfort in it, and then dissipate like smoke. He couldn’t have known that Jean shared the same fear, which was why she suddenly found herself clinging to him, as if that alone might make the feeling last.

  As they continued along Main Street, James glanced over at Christina. She was walking alongside him to his right, sometimes trailing a step or two behind, and trying to appear as if she didn’t notice the attention her mother was paying him. But James could see that she was brooding.

  Whenever Christina realized he was looking at her, she turned away. James could sometimes catch her reflection in a store window as they passed. When he did, he could see the tautness of her jaw and the anguish in her eyes. He wanted to reach out to her, to comfort her, but he was unable to do it without betraying their secret to Jean.

  At Cottage Street, they turned the corner and allowed Jean to guide them into Claire Trumbull’s shop for a quick visit. Since his first meeting with Claire, when she’d demonstrated how much she already knew of him before they were even introduced, James had always been wary of Claire. She was always cheerful and friendly when their paths crossed, as he was toward her, but he was careful with every word, knowing that Claire was always alert for any new information that found its way to her keen ear. For someone with as many secrets as James Perkins, Claire Trumbull was someone to avoid.

  Even so, he found himself in her company once again as she and Jean talked over some mutual concern about their shops. Christina had drifted away from their circle, wandering slowly through the store, feigning interest in the racks of merchandise. Whenever James glanced in her direction, she seemed to be peering directly at him.

  Each time Christina noticed James watching her, it put her mind at ease. She never imagined competing with her mother for any man’s attention, and yet, here she was, looking to James for reassurance that he hadn’t chosen Jean over her. She smiled sweetly at him, and he returned the smile.

  It was Christina who first noticed Claire Trumbull’s watchful eye, and she looked quickly away, wondering if Claire had understood the exchange between them. Jean was oblivious, speaking to Claire about a painting that had just come into her possession that would be perfect for Claire’s living room. She didn’t notice Claire’s eyes passing back and forth between James and Christina. Neither did she notice when Christina quickly turned and walked out of the shop to escape Claire’s penetrating gaze.

  At the Criterion, they climbed the stairs to the balcony and took their seats in the front row of the center loge. Once again, James found himself in the middl
e, this time with Jean at his right elbow and Christina at his left. Jean was upbeat and chatty, but Christina sat quietly at his side, impatiently waiting for the movie to begin.

  Shortly before the lights dimmed, Jean excused herself, and hurried off to the ladies’ room before the film started, leaving James alone with Christina for the first time that evening. James turned and glanced at Christina, and found her nibbling on her popcorn, her eyes fixed on the curtains hanging in front of the screen as if the movie had already begun. She didn’t look at him. An awkward silence hung between them, and he turned away trying to think of something to say.

  “She knows,” Christina said. Her tone was matter-of-fact, as if she were commenting on the weather. She placed another piece of popcorn in her mouth.

  James turned to her sharply. “What?”

  “She knows about us,” Christina said. Her eyes remained fixed straight ahead.

  “Your mother?”

  “Claire,” Christina said. “She could tell.”

  James leaned back in his seat, considering this. Their shoulders were close, and their elbows touched on the armrest. James appreciated the contact, but Christina promptly withdrew her arm.

  “I can’t do this,” Christina said sadly.

  “We’re not doing anything,” James whispered. The balcony was beginning to fill up around them, and he was suddenly aware of the other people, and concerned they might hear.

  “No,” Christina said. “I mean I can’t share you with my mother. It’s too weird.”

  It was only at odd moments that James became aware of Christina’s youth; most of the time she seemed older and wiser than her years. Sometimes when they walked together, Christina’s bouncing stride seemed very playful and childlike to him. At other times, it was something in the tone of her voice or even a single word that betrayed her. At those moments, he would often smile, reminded of the difference in their ages but still finding her youth endearing. That night at the Criterion, it seemed for the first time to be creating a distance between them that hadn’t been there before.