The Vanishing Expert

by David Movsesian

  “Did I miss anything?” Jean asked.

  James and Christina tried not to appear guilty.

  “Not a thing,” James said.

  At that instant, the chandelier mercifully dimmed, and the projector sprayed the first flickering images on the curtains as they drew slowly apart.

  As the movie played, James looked out over the seats below, at the soft, flickering light splashing over the audience, and he thought about all of the people who had occupied those seats over the years, generations of teenagers on first dates and children at Saturday matinees.

  At times, he found himself ignoring the film, choosing instead to scan the vast space before him. He looked out over the crowd and up at the chandelier, illuminated only by the light of the projector. He was enthralled by those vague shapes that lingered in the periphery of the light from the screen, those memories that were preserved in the shadows. Nothing had changed for generations, he thought, and he felt the same sensation he got when he started the Chris Craft for the first time each season, that same connection with the past.

  More than once, Jean noticed that James didn’t appear entirely interested in the film, and she touched his arm affectionately. “Don’t you like the movie?” she whispered.

  “It’s fine,” James told her. “But I love this place!”

  If Jean was showing him an unexpected amount of affection that evening, Christina was showing him none. She leaned away from him as if to avoid any contact with him, and on the few occasions when James looked over at her, she seemed to deliberately avoid his gaze. Her face appeared tense, and her hands were clenched into tight little fists. He still found her beautiful.

  For the remainder of the film, James stared vacantly at the screen, not seeing anything at all, and trying to determine where this was all going to lead. He looked over at Christina only once more, just before the movie ended, and in the dim light of the theater, he thought he could see that she’d been crying. At that moment, he was barely able to resist the urge to take her hand. He desperately wished he could hold her and console her, and reassure her that nothing had changed between them.

  What he actually did was the only thing he could do under the circumstances— he looked away.

  It was dark when they emerged from the theater, but the streetlights and the neon signs in the windows of the restaurants and pubs illuminated the street. The aroma of garlic and fried food hung in the air, mingling with the music that filtered out of the open doors of the bars along Cottage Street. All of it combined to give the entire scene the feeling of a carnival, which sharply contrasted with the dark mood that settled over James and Christina.

  They crossed the street and shared a pizza at Rosalie’s. Without knowing why, Jean noticed that Christina was suddenly sullen and distant, and James, who was usually entirely engaged when they were together, appeared distracted as well.

  “What is it with you two?” Jean finally asked them.

  Christina was startled by the question, uncertain as to what her mother might know, particularly given the encounter earlier with Claire Trumbull. James, on the other hand, regarded her calmly and smiled.

  “I’m sorry,” James said. “My mind wandered for a minute.” He leaned forward, resting his arms on the table and looked Jean directly in the eye. “You have my undivided attention. I promise.”

  Under the table, Christina pressed the heel of her shoe into the top of James’s foot, and it was all he could do not to wince from the sting of it.

  “You both seem a million miles away,” Jean said. She looked at Christina. “I was hoping we could enjoy our last night. There won’t be a lot more chances like this.”

  Christina tilted her head and eyed her mother impatiently. “You get like this every year when I leave for school,” Christina informed her.

  “Like what?” Jean wondered.

  “All weepy and nostalgic,” Christina told her. She leaned back in her chair. “Let me guess, you’ve been thinking about all the times you and dad walked through town when I was little.”

  Jean said nothing, not willing to concede the point to her.

  “Go ahead,” Christina challenged her. “Deny it.”

  Jean tried to conceal a smile. “Okay, I deny it.”

  Christina shook her head and laughed. “You’re such a liar.”

  Jean turned to James for support, but he appeared to be enjoying the playful exchange between the two women. It was certainly preferable to the awkward silences that preceded it.

  “She thinks she knows me so well,” she told James.

  “I do,” Christina insisted.

  She regarded James with an earnest expression. She wouldn’t allow Christina’s teasing to assuage her melancholy mood. “James, do you remember what I told you last fall— about the hardest part of raising children?”

  James nodded, remembering her words from the first evening he spent at Jean’s home; the evening he first met Christina. “Letting them go,” he said, quoting her.

  She enjoyed that James remembered, but her eyes were welling with tears and the hint of a smile she offered him seemed both labored and fragile. “It never gets easier,” she confessed.

  “I’m only gonna be an hour and a half away,” Christina assured her. “I’ll still come home to visit.”

  “For a weekend here or there,” Jean said. “But this summer was probably the last time you’ll live here. I always had trouble dealing with you going back to school, but this year’s the hardest because I know you won’t just be coming home when school is finished. You’ll be graduating in the spring and going off to God-knows-where. Who knows how often you’ll get back home.”

  Christina’s expression softened. “I’ll still come home,” she assured her mother again. But secretly, she knew her mother was right. She imagined graduating in the spring and finding a teaching job further south, maybe even outside of Maine altogether. Perhaps one day she’d return to Mount Desert Island, but first, she needed to experience someplace else. Wherever that might be, she knew she’d come home to visit, but not nearly as often as her mother would like.

  When they finally stepped out of the restaurant and back onto Cottage Street, it was nearly midnight, but the sidewalks were still filled with locals and summer tourists. It was a perfect summer evening, warm and clear, and they walked a circuitous route back to Jean’s car.

  Just before Jean climbed into the car, she wished James goodnight, kissing him lightly on the cheek, oblivious to how the simple gesture further aggravated her daughter’s already sour mood. James seemed to appreciate it immediately, and his body tensed slightly. Had Christina noticed, she might have appreciated James's uneasiness, even recognized it as a sign that he had not, in fact, chosen her mother over her. But she didn’t see. She was looking straight ahead into the darkness.

  On Sunday, James spent the early morning with Ruth Kennedy, and then took Max for a walk. In front of Sawyer's Market, Lucky Meeks stood in his white apron, hosing down the sidewalk. It seemed an endless undertaking for Lester; the sidewalk seemed never to be quite clean enough— or, perhaps, wet enough— to suit him.

  As they drew closer, Max slobbered and licked his chops, knowing every encounter with Lucky ended with a generous slice of bloody roast beef.

  “There’s my good friend!” Lucky called to him. He always offered that greeting in such a way that James was never quite certain if Lucky was referring to him or the dog.

  He reached out and shook Lucky’s wet hand. “Good to see you, Lucky,” James said. “How’s business?”

  “Good,” Lucky said cheerfully. “Always good.” The butcher squatted down in front of Max and rubbed him vigorously behind the ears. After a moment, he looked up at James. “I was sorry to hear about your father,” he said. “It’s a sad thing.”

  James thanked him, but he was once again reminded of how swiftly a person’s private business is circulated in such a small town. It wasn’t that he had any reason to ke
ep his father’s passing a secret, but he’d also not mentioned it to anyone but those closest to him— Jean and Christina, of course, and Peter and Ruth.

  He wondered what else the locals knew about him. Had any of them begun to gossip about his relationship with Christina? He considered for a moment how the local gossip mongers would feast upon that morsel, and it was by no means the most scandalous secret he was keeping.

  As they walked through town, he found himself looking around, hoping to see Christina walking in his direction or standing on the street corner. He spotted a few familiar faces mixing among the tourists that strolled past the storefronts, but there was no sign of Christina. Since she would be returning to school the following day, he desperately wanted the chance to talk to her, to try to understand why she seemed so angry with him. It all seemed so sudden, so unexpected.

  Summer was quickly drawing to a close, as was his brief interlude with Christina. He knew he couldn’t have her, and so he was resigned to the fact that when their time together on the island came to an end, their brief affair would end with it, if it hadn’t already. Tomorrow she would return to school and she would move on with her life. When she graduated, she would move away, eager to experience someplace other than Mount Desert Island. That was her plan. She’d made no secret of it. Still, their relationship weighed on him. He would never regret that afternoon aboard the Chris Craft— or later, in his bed— when their passionate lovemaking helped him through his grief, if only briefly. When he looked back upon that afternoon later, he would come to regard it as more of a collision than a union.

  It was the subsequent encounters, mostly in his apartment when Christina appeared out of nowhere and led him into his bedroom that troubled him more; not at the moment perhaps, but later, when he reflected on t heir time together. He should have resisted her, he knew, but he doubted that any man would be capable of resisting Christina Berkhardt.

  Suddenly, he pictured Christina’s beautiful face as she lay beneath him aboard the Chris Craft, her hair splayed out over the seat cushion, her brown eyes blinking sleepily, and her lips parted as if awaiting a kiss. A moment later, that image was replaced by her wistful expression in the soft light of the chandelier at the Criterion as she sat beside him the night before, and then by the taut set of her jaw when she last looked at him later that evening, just before Jean drove away. And even though he was resigned to the idea that he would lose her when the summer ended, he found himself wishing it wouldn’t end quite so soon, or at least that he could see her one last time before she left.

  When he arrived back at Ruth Kennedy’s house, he found her waiting for him, seated on the stairs leading up to his apartment. James smiled, thinking of all the times he’d come upon her like that, waiting for him to return home. Max ran to her, retrieving a stick on the way, and she rubbed the dog’s ears and the thick fur on his neck, all the while coolly watching James as he walked toward her.

  She was dressed in a pair of running shorts and a tee shirt, and she was still perspiring from her run, her tee shirt clinging to her skin. James set his cooler at his feet and sat down beside her on the step. They said nothing for what seemed like several minutes.

  “So you’re leaving tomorrow?” James finally asked.

  “Yup,” Christina said.

  They sat close together, staring straight ahead, their bodies close but not touching. Christina leaned forward, resting her forearms on her thighs. James looked down at her hands, resisting the urge to touch her, worried she might reel from his touch.

  “You know I’m gonna miss having you around,” he confessed.

  Christina still gazed straight ahead, watching Max entertain himself with the stick, but she appeared to be considering his comment, weighing the weight of her response.

  “I’m gonna miss the dog,” she finally offered. The hint of a smile slowly emerged, despite her attempt to conceal it.

  James grinned. He understood what she meant by the remark; her smile betrayed her. He leaned back, propping himself up on his elbows, and he discretely touched his fingers to her back. He never knew when Ruth might appear around the corner or peer out a window. Christina leaned against him, but she still didn’t turn to look at him.

  “Do you want to come inside,” James finally asked her.

  “I’m not gonna sleep with you, James,” she insisted.

  “That’s okay,” he conceded. “I’m not gonna sleep with you either.”

  Their lovemaking that afternoon wasn’t unlike their first encounter two weeks earlier aboard the Chris Craft. It was effortless and inescapable, filled with passion, but with an underlying feeling of melancholy, albeit for an altogether different reason this time. When they first came crashing together that evening aboard the boat, James’s grief over the loss of his father’s passing was still fresh and raw and heavy on his mind. Now, what weighed on both of them was Christina’s imminent departure. They realized that this wasn’t simply the last time this summer that they would lie together like this; when Christina left his bed this time, it would be for good. They both sensed it, and for that reason, when it was over, neither of them wanted to let go, because doing so meant letting go of something more.

  When they finally walked together into the living room, Christina happened to cast a glance over to the shelf where the framed portrait she’d given James the previous Christmas still rested. She smiled as she remembered the afternoon they spent together in Ellsworth, and even more when she thought about that moment when Del Miller captured that final image. She remembered James’s long wistful gaze, wondering at the time what he was thinking. It wasn’t the usual lust-filled leer she was more accustomed to seeing on boys her age, and while she couldn’t have known at the time where their relationship would eventually lead, she knew even then that she felt a connection with him.

  She walked over to the picture and lifted it from its perch, noticing that it was free of dust and seemingly well cared for. “Do you remember this?” she said. She smiled as she held it up to him.

  “The picture?” James asked. “Of course.”

  “The moment,” Christina said. “I remember it perfectly.” She saw the same loving smile appear on his face that she’d seen then, and she knew for certain she hadn’t imagined it; not then, and certainly not now. “You were flirting with me, weren’t you?”

  James looked again at the picture, trying to remember what was going through his mind at the instant it was taken. He recalled the moment perfectly as well. He might have confessed to being mesmerized by her, but he was fairly certain he hadn’t flirted with her. Not that day. James offered a knowing smile. “You’re the one who gave me the picture,” he said.

  “So?”

  “So who was flirting with who?”

  Christina giggled. It was another of those moments when her irrepressible youth shone through. She looked at the photograph again. “Has my mother ever asked about this picture?”

  “Like what?” James wondered.

  “Like why you have it,” Christina offered.

  “Not a word.”

  Christina frowned. “She’s never said anything about it?” she asked again.

  “You sound disappointed,” James suggested. The truth was that Jean had asked about it on more than one occasion. Shortly after he’d put it out, she inquired about it, and James told her that Christina had given it to him as a Christmas gift, and something of a thank you gift for suggesting the portrait sitting as a gift for Jean. That had satisfied her at the time, but later, as she studied the photograph more closely, she couldn’t help but notice the gleam in her daughter’s eye, and she wondered what had caught her attention at that moment when the photograph was taken.

  “Where were you when these pictures were taken?” Jean had asked him once as she studied the photograph.

  “I was off to the side, trying to stay out of the way,” James said.

  Jean never mentioned it again, but she later gave him the three photogr
aphs of them together which was now hanging on his wall. He was never sure if she expected him to replace the picture of Christina with the new pictures of the two of them, but since she’d never come out and suggested it, he decided not to concern himself with it.

  As James and Christina stood facing each other in the doorway, Christina placed her hands on James’s chest and nervously smoothed his tee shirt. With the open door behind her, James thought of all the other times that Christina had stood in his doorway, silhouetted by the bright light streaming in around her. He was always grateful for those moments when she appeared there, but now that she was leaving, the vision of her in his doorway left him feeling very alone. The darkness of that summer night served as an appropriate backdrop for her departure.

  Orono was less than two hours from Southwest Harbor. They could easily find ways to be together on the weekends. But it wasn’t the miles that would come between them now, but the unspoken understanding that what they shared was always fleeting and temporary, and that it had come to its inevitable end.

  They stood in silence for some time, trying to find the right words to say goodbye, but nothing came. James wanted to tell her how much he cared for her, and how grateful he was for having her in his life during the last few weeks when his world seemed such a lonely place.

  Christina wished she could find the words to tell him what these last few weeks had meant to her, and how she enjoyed coming to his apartment for those long evenings, sometimes just to sit together in silence, as if the chance to simply breathe the same air drew them closer. She wanted to tell him that their time together had changed her, even if she didn’t yet know how. There was so much she wished she could say to him, but the words eluded her. Instead, she gripped his tee shirt in her tight fists and pulled him closer, smiling up at him.