The Vanishing Expert

by David Movsesian

  Whenever she was alone in the house, she often felt Henry’s presence. She sometimes forgot that he was gone, half expecting to see him wandering into the room with his reading glasses perched low on his nose and the morning newspaper neatly folded under his arm, the daily crossword left unfinished. He enjoyed doing the crossword— it kept his mind sharp, he said— but he always left it unfinished for Ruth to complete. It wasn’t that he was unable to finish it, but he so enjoyed the look of satisfaction on his wife’s face when she filled in the final squares that he felt that in depriving her of that simple pleasure he’d actually be depriving them both.

  It was the little things she missed the most. During their nearly fifty years together, they shared all of those significant events a couple was supposed to experience— their wedding day, their first house, the birth of two children, their children’s weddings, the arrival of four grandchildren, and Henry’s retirement— but it was the tiny fragments of her life, not the big pieces, that she pined for now that Henry was gone. There were photographs and home movies of many of those momentous occasions, but there was nothing but her gradually failing memory to preserve those more intimate moments that had brought her so much happiness. (She’d preserved that last newspaper Henry had left for her with the crossword still unfinished, but in the course of helping her tidy the house in preparation for visitors after the service, either her son or her daughter had thrown it out without realizing its importance to her.)

  Now she missed all of those unremarkable things— the way he touched her shoulder when he placed her morning coffee in front of her, how he offered his elbow for their leisurely walks to town, the gentle tone of his voice as he crooned some old lilting melody that popped randomly into his mind. The house seemed to be always filled with his joyful singing; now it was silent.

  She’d always baked for Henry on Sundays. Even after he was gone, she managed to find some comfort in maintaining that routine, although the muffins or the cookies or cakes she made often went to waste during those months she was alone before James moved into the apartment upstairs. On the morning she carried that first plate of blueberry muffins up the stairs to James’s apartment, she had no idea that it would lead to another ritual, and that she would once again have someone with whom to share her Sunday mornings. She wished she could spend just one more with her beloved Henry, but she was grateful for those Sunday mornings with James.

  She was grateful, too, that James visited her often, usually just to check in on her, but sometimes to sit with her and keep her company when he knew she’d been alone much of the day. He could always find an excuse to spend time with her, and when he couldn’t, he would sometimes leave Max so she wouldn’t be completely alone. He always asked her to care for Max as if it was a favor, but he knew she was grateful for the company.

  Her own children were far less attentive. In the year James had lived in the second floor apartment, he’d only known her son to visit once, her daughter twice. According to Ruth, they lived just far enough away that more frequent visits were difficult, but James had the feeling that their distance was measured in something other than miles. Even before their father passed away, the children— they were both in their forties by then— called infrequently, and since the funeral, their contact of any kind was sporadic at best. Ruth did her best to make excuses for them, but James could see she was wounded by it, and for that reason alone, he wasn’t as quick as Ruth to excuse their neglect.

  In James’s mind, there was nothing that could keep him from reaching out to his own mother if she were still alive. It wasn’t lost on him that he’d abandoned his father, but that was only after Bud Moody had declined to the point where he no longer appeared to know who Edward was. He never would have left if his father was still whole. He never would have intentionally hurt him. After he left, Kate had kept many of their father’s more lucid moments a secret from her brother. There was nothing to gain in Edward’s knowing that his father was aware— albeit sporadically and never for very long— that his son was gone. So James was unaware of the anguish he’d caused his father during those random flashes of clarity, those brief interludes from his otherwise cloudy and bewildered existence. If he’d known, he might have been less inclined to judge Ruth’s children so severely for their nearly complete abandonment of her.

  So their relationship was unique in that James often perceived Ruth as a kind of surrogate mother, while Ruth, for her part, found in James a companion who filled the void left by her dead husband and her absent and inattentive children.

  After they finished their breakfast, as was their ritual, Ruth and James adjourned to the living room where they sat beside each other on the big sofa that Ruth had purchased with Henry decades earlier. The springs were wearing out and Ruth always lowered herself onto it slowly, as if she half-expected it to collapse beneath her. Lifting herself out of it was even more difficult.

  There were times when James observed her running her wrinkled fingers over the fabric, wistfully watching her hand passing over it as if she were remembering all of the times she’d sat upon it over the years with her beloved husband, and wishing she could have even one of those years back. James caught her doing that now.

  “I wish you weren’t alone so much,” James said to her. “You must have friends in town you could visit. Or maybe they could visit you.”

  “I get out when I want to,” Ruth assured him. “But everyone has such busy lives these days. I don’t like to impose.” Even that— the assumption that she might be imposing on her friends who, she assumed, were too busy for her— was delivered with her typically cheerful tone.

  “I just don’t like the idea of you being all alone in this house all day,” James said.

  She glanced about the room and then returned her attention to her companion, a hint of a smile on her face, recalling some pleasant memory from long ago. “Sometimes being in this house is when I feel least alone.”

  James, too, looked around the living room he’d been in so many times, and he realized she was referring to the photographs and the mementos and even the furniture that surrounded her, like cherished souvenirs of her journey. In her solitude, he realized, these things gave her comfort. He understood, but it saddened him that they were all she had left.

  “Can I ask you something?” he finally said.

  “Of course, dear.”

  He paused as if reconsidering his question, but he asked it anyway. “Would you do it all again?”

  “Do what again, dear?”

  “All of it,” James said. “Marriage, raising a family. Would you do it all again if you knew how it would turn out?” He meant if she knew she would wind up alone.

  Ruth pondered the question. “You don’t get to be my age without having a few regrets. You’ll have a few, too, someday, I imagine.” She touched James’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “But there’s nothing I regret about my marriage, except that Henry left me too soon. And there’s nothing I regret about raising my children, except that eventually you have to let them go.”

  James recalled Jean’s observation that the hardest part about raising children is letting them go. He’d always imagined that he would raise a family who would accompany him into his twilight years, but he was beginning to realize that there was no guarantee. Ruth had had all of those things, and now her only companions in her final years were her boarder and his dog and a houseful of mementos she’d collected along the way. It was a revelation that might have caused him to question his desire for children, but it had the opposite effect— it made him want them even more. Ruth’s fate was always a possible outcome even if he pursued his dream of raising a family, but it was a certainty if he shrank from it.

  How many times during the last year had he found himself bounding up those stairs to his apartment in pursuit of a ringing phone? He first heard it as he and Max stepped out of Ruth’s front door and onto the gravel drive, and he immediately ran toward the sound, taking the steps two at a
time. Max followed close behind, thinking it was a game. At the top of the stairs, James rushed into the apartment and picked up the receiver mid-ring. His breathless hello was greeted by Jean’s tired voice.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, James,” she said. “But could you come over to the house? It seems we have something to discuss.”

  He couldn’t tell by her tone if she was tired or angry, or both. “Sure,” he said. “Are you okay?” He was hoping for some sort of a hint as to her frame of mind, but she offered none.

  “As well as could be expected, I suppose, under the circumstances.” There was a long silence, and then she said: “It’s been a long night.” And then she was gone.

  As James drove to Jean’s house he was filled with apprehension. There’d been nothing in Jean’s tone that indicated what she knew. He assumed Christina had shared her news with her mother, and he expected that resulted in a long sleepless night for both of them as they wrestled with the consequences. What he couldn’t determine from their brief exchange on the telephone was whether Jean was aware that James had already learned about Christina’s condition, that she’d come to him first. He’d only begun to consider that question when another more disturbing question occurred to him: what if Jean knew he was the baby’s father? He was confident that Christina had no intention of divulging that information, but at some point during the course of a long sleepless night, was it not possible that she’d let down her guard, just for a moment, and uttered something she hadn’t meant to?

  He drove slowly, repeatedly dissecting Jean’s brief and cryptic words on the telephone, trying to discern some clue from them that might provide him comfort, but he found more questions than answers. All of them, however, boiled down to the single question that troubled him most: What was he walking into?

  Mercifully, it was Christina who greeted him at the door, and as if she anticipated all of his questions, she used the moment to quickly bring him up to speed while her mother was still upstairs and out of earshot. Without even saying hello, she launched into her update.

  “She knows about the baby,” she whispered. “She doesn’t know who the father is. I told her it was some boy who was out of the picture.” She leaned toward him as if she was about to confide a secret. “She’s very proud,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to smile. She ushered him inside, quickly glancing over her shoulder to ensure that her mother hadn’t yet returned. “She knows I talked to you already. Not too happy about that.” She turned away from him as she led him into the living room. “James is here,” she announced loudly as they passed the bottom of the stairs.

  They were both relieved to hear Jean descending the stairs. It meant she hadn’t heard Christina’s hushed comments to James.

  When James first saw her, what struck him was that, despite what must have been an emotional and exhausting night, Jean looked tired, but lovely. He felt suddenly ashamed for thinking it, and guilty because he was smiling as she walked toward him and kissed him on the cheek. It was the same greeting she always gave him when he arrived at her house, but on that morning, it seemed different somehow. It seemed right.

  “Come on in,” Jean said. “I need to sit.”

  She turned away from Christina and James, who followed her into the living room. Jean sat on the far end of the sofa, and after some hesitation, Christina settled on the opposite end. That left James either the uncomfortable space between them— oddly ironic— or the armchair nearest to Jean, which Custer had already claimed. As always, Custer paid them little regard until James lifted the cat and placed him in his lap as he sat down. James was grateful for the brief distraction from the tension in the room; Custer appeared less so.

  In the long silence that followed, Jean sleepily watched James’s hand lightly stroking Custer’s head and neck. The cat seemed oblivious to James’s touch until his hand stopped moving, which elicited a sleepy but disapproving glance.

  Looking at Christina, James thought he saw on her tired face the faintest trace of a smile, which he returned. When he turned his eyes to Jean, her gaze lifted from his hands to his face. When she did, he was struck not by the emotion on her face, but rather by the complete absence of it. He was certain she was wrestling with so many conflicting emotions, all of which were just beneath her seemingly placid façade; he wondered which would rise to the surface first.

  To his great relief, her blank expression appeared to be equally free of judgment. She appeared, at that moment, to simply be considering him, neither warmly nor coolly, but rather as if she was calmly contemplating a decision. That was when James realized that Jean was aware not only of Christina’s predicament, but also of her daughter’s unusual proposition.

  He smiled tentatively at her and although she tried to return it, she just blinked slowly and sighed.

  “Okay,” Christina finally said, shattering the silence. “Someone needs to say something.”

  Jean and James both turned quickly to her. Custer lifted his head and eyed Christina coolly and then looked up at James whose hand had once again become still.

  “Sorry,” Christina said. “But we need to talk through this.”

  Jean frowned at her daughter. “You’ve had a little more time to think about all this than we have. You have to give me a little time to process everything.” She turned once again to James. “I’m assuming you know the situation since she came to you first.” From the way she jabbed at her daughter with a quick angry glance when she said the word first, it was clear that Christina’s decision to visit him before seeking out her mother had not only wounded Jean, but it had been the subject of considerable discussion during the night.

  James nodded cautiously, still not certain exactly what Jean knew, and not wanting to let something slip that might come as a surprise to her.

  “I think so,” he said. “But can I ask a question?”

  Both women turned and looked at him as if grateful for the sound of someone else’s voice in the room.

  “Can one of you just fill me in on the last twelve hours?” he asked.

  Jean drew a long breath. “So you know that my daughter has managed to get herself pregnant.”

  “I didn’t get myself pregnant,” Christina objected (perhaps at the wrong moment, James thought).

  “Oh, that’s right,” Jean said. “There was — what was the term you used?— ‘some random boy’ involved.” It was obviously the unfortunate phrase Christina had chosen when Jean had pressed her for the identity of the father. Jean regarded James. “As you can imagine, I’m very proud,” she said sarcastically.

  Christina issued him an I-told-you-so look.

  In the year that James had known the two of them, it was the first time he’d ever heard a hurtful remark pass between them. He glanced up at the portrait that Del Miller had taken of the two of them, noting the joy in their expressions, the obvious love they had for each other. The two women sitting across from him at opposite ends of the sofa bore little resemblance to the two loving women in the photograph. He couldn’t escape the feeling that he’d been responsible for the change he saw.

  “She did tell me that, yes,” James said.

  “And did she tell you about her little proposition?”

  James looked at Christina, hoping to see something in her face that would tell him whether he was supposed to know this part of the story or not, but Christina’s face was cast downward, bracing herself for what she knew was coming next. Before James could respond to Jean’s question, she continued.

  “She’s got this crazy notion in her head that she’s going to have this baby and hand it off to us so the two of us can raise it as our own while she just goes on with her life.”

  Christina sat suddenly upright. “Of course it sounds crazy when you say it like that!” she complained.

  “I’m sorry,” Jean said. Her tone was thick with sarcasm. “You say it then. Say it in a way that doesn’t sound crazy.”

  Christina set her jaw and turned her face
away, trying to brace herself for the tears she knew were coming. James wished he could console her, but he knew it wasn’t allowed.

  “Did she happen to share that with you?” Jean asked him again.

  James nodded.

  “And what did you think of her little idea?”

  James glanced once again at Christina, who was still avoiding his gaze as she tried to hold back a torrent of tears, and then he returned his attention to Jean. “I don’t know if you’re gonna like my answer,” he said.

  He heard Christina draw a quick breath and then appear to hold it. Jean frowned at him.

  “I think it’s completely crazy,” he said. Before either of the women could react, he added: “I also happen to think it’s a wonderful idea." He watched Jean’s expression change to disbelief and then slowly soften into something else. He heard Christina slowly let out her breath, but he wouldn’t look at her. He kept his eyes on Jean’s face. “I’ll admit I had the same reaction you did at first, but after she left, I had some time to think about it, and I realized that this could be a good thing.”

  Jean shook her head. “You’re both crazy.”

  James smiled again. “Probably,” he conceded. He turned to Christina. “Could you give us a few minutes?” he asked her. “I want to talk to your mom.”

  Christina nodded and stood up. She kissed her mother on the cheek and left the room.

  James moved over to the sofa and sat close to Jean, and she leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. She was tired, and more than anything, she wanted to lie down and sleep and hope that everything that had happened in the last twelve hours had been nothing more than an unpleasant dream.

  They sat together in silence for some time as James considered what he wanted to say. Finally, he took her hand and held it lightly, focusing his attention on her long fingers, and on the comforting sensation of her body leaning against his.