The Vanishing Expert

by David Movsesian

  Ruth gently placed her hand on Christina’s shoulder and her comforting touch seemed to assure her that she could trust Ruth to keep the news to herself. Even so, Christina worried if there were any secrets that Ruth Kennedy might be withholding from her. She’d long wondered, for example, if Ruth was aware of her frequent visits to James’s apartment at the end of the summer, and whether she would quickly piece it all together, one small clue leading logically to the next.

  In the living room, James tended to the fire while Jean put Nat King Cole’s Christmas album on the turntable. Christina continued washing the dishes while Ruth dried.

  “It’s going to be a beautiful baby,” Ruth said.

  Christina smiled without looking at her as she rinsed a sauce pan.

  “When are you due?” Ruth asked.

  Christina glanced at her as she passed the sauce pan to her to dry. “May twentieth,” she said tentatively. Then she waited, observing the old woman’s expression, wondering if Ruth was doing the math, counting backward to the lazy summer afternoon’s when Christina would appear at the house and disappear into James’s small apartment, sometimes for hours. But she saw no judgment in the old woman’s eyes.

  It was at that moment that Jean wandered into the kitchen and touched her guest on the arm. “Ruth, please go sit down. I didn’t invite you over here so you could work.”

  Ruth issued another of her maternal smiles. “It’s the least I can do,” she said. “Besides, we were just having a nice chat.” She saw the mother and daughter exchange knowing glances. “I don’t get to see much of Christina anymore. It’s nice to have a chance to catch up.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Jean said. “Why don’t we all go into the living room and sit. These dishes aren’t going anywhere.”

  A short time later, when Ruth excused herself to use the bathroom, Christina shared their conversation with her mother and James. “So, she knows I’m pregnant,” Christina said. “She might as well know the rest.” She watched as the two of them exchanged nervous looks. “What’s the harm? Do you think she won’t figure it all out anyway when the two of you suddenly have a baby in a few months?”

  As they explained their plan to her, Ruth listened politely, her face showing no judgment, although her eyebrows flicked upward more than once as she was unable to completely suppress her surprise. Even so, she smiled warmly, neither approving nor disapproving, but seemingly pleased to be entrusted with the story.

  When they were finished, they anticipated a flurry of questions, but instead, Ruth smiled pleasantly, her eyes passing from one to the next, and she decided to share a secret of her own.

  Ruth Kennedy, who had been Ruth Martin before marrying Henry, grew up in the small town of Oxford, Maine believing that her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Harrison, had been adopted. As Ruth understood the story, her grandmother had been abandoned as an infant and discreetly deposited upon the front steps of the home of the Honorable Reverend Harrison, the popular minister of the town’s Congregational Church. Reverend Harrison, who lived with his wife Muriel and his then teenaged daughter, Magda, discovered the infant one morning, and, being a good Christian, decided without a moment’s hesitation to take her into their home and raise her as their own.

  What had always troubled Ruth growing up was the void in her heritage created by the mystery of her grandmother’s lineage. Ruth had always admired her friends who, when asked about their ancestry, could answer succinctly.

  “I’m French,” they might say. Or “I’m half Irish, half English,” they might answer. It was always a simple question with an equally simple answer, but not for Ruth.

  Whenever Ruth was asked about her background, she would always answer the same way. “I’m mostly English,” she would say. And when the void left by her grandmother’s mysterious heritage troubled her enough that she felt obliged to mention it, she would add: “But I don’t know the rest.”

  If anyone asked, she would happily share the remainder of the story. She would explain that her grandmother, Elizabeth, was ‘a doorstep baby’ who never knew her background. By the time Elizabeth was old enough to have expressed an interest in knowing where she came from, she was informed that the old town hall where her birth records would have been stored had burned to the ground just a few years earlier.

  That, as Ruth understood it, was the whole story.

  It wasn’t until decades later, after Elizabeth had passed away at the age of eighty-four, that Ruth came upon a letter among her grandmother’s things that aroused her curiosity. The letter was written by either an old friend or a distant relative who described her life growing up on a farm in the western part of the state in the 1920s. The woman who wrote the letter described her three siblings, all older, and remarked on the arrival of their youngest brother, Harold, who had apparently arrived when the author of the letter was ten years old, and in much the same way as Ruth’s grandmother.

  ‘My mother did not plan on having any more children,’ the woman wrote, ‘but when they found Harold in the hedges, my parents fell in love instantly and he became a part of our family.’

  The idea of finding a baby in the hedges resonated with Ruth, and she tucked the letter into her pocket. She later showed the letter to her mother, by then sixty-two years old, and remarked about how common it seemed to be in her grandmother’s day to find abandoned children on a doorstep— or in Harold’s case, tucked into a privet hedge. Her mother offered a weak smile as she read the yellowed letter from her mother’s friend.

  “It was probably more common then than it is now,” she remarked. “But it didn’t always happen that way.” Noticing the confused expression on Ruth’s face, she explained that, in some cases, the arrival of a child that might otherwise create scandal for the family could be explained away as the family having discovered the baby on a doorstep. A family taking in a helpless baby who’d been abandoned always earned the respect and admiration of the community. Life would be far easier under those circumstances than if the truth were known.

  Ruth considered what her mother was telling her. “So was grandma adopted or not.”

  Her mother shook her head. “Not exactly. She was a Harrison, for sure,” she said. She considered her next words carefully. “But it would have created quite a scandal if the town learned that the pastor’s fifteen year old daughter had a baby.”

  It took a moment for the revelation to register on Ruth’s face. “Magda?” she cried out. “Magda was her mother?”

  Ruth’s mother gave a confirming nod.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  Her mother’s expression was more resigned than apologetic. “I promised my mother I would never tell a soul until after she was gone.”

  “How long have you known?” Ruth asked.

  “Not until I was older,” her mother said. “Magda only told Mom when the last of her family had passed. She made Mom promise not to share it with anyone until after she was gone, and Mom kept her promise. She told me a few months after Magda died.” She looked directly at Ruth. “So now you know, too.”

  Ruth considered the irony of the family’s scandalous secret being passed along from one generation to the next like a family heirloom. “So am I supposed to keep it a secret, too?” she finally asked.

  Her mother shook her head. “No,” she said matter-of-factly. “There’s no shame in it anymore.”

  Not only was Ruth not embarrassed by the story, the secret having outlasted the shame that spawned it, she was elated that the void she’d always felt— that created by her grandmother’s mysterious origins— had finally been filled. It was like discovering a missing piece of a puzzle. Just as importantly, whenever Ruth answered the question of her heritage, she always thought of her grandmother’s story, and of the humiliation Magda carried with her since she was a young girl.

  “I’m English,” Ruth would pronounce from that point on whenever the subject came up. “With just a pinch of French for flavor.”
(The seventeen year old boy who had taken young Magda’s virginity had been, according to Magda, a handsome Canadian boy who worked on a local farm.) At times Ruth caught herself declaring her heritage a little more proudly than she meant to, as if she was somehow compensating for all the years that her great-grandmother, Magda, had kept her disgrace— and her family’s— to herself.

  From the moment Ruth learned the secret, she’d felt an unusual kinship and an overwhelming compassion for Magda. She considered the burden Magda had carried nearly her entire life, not just the secret and the shame that accompanied it, but also the great conflict Magda must have felt in watching her daughter, Elizabeth, growing to adulthood without being able to tell her who she was, and where she really came from. To protect the family’s secret she’d kept that to herself until Elizabeth was an old woman herself, with children and grandchildren of her own, none of whom would ever learn the truth of their relationship to her until after she was gone.

  Ruth considered the conflict Magda must have felt all those years as she observed Christina now. She was pleased for James and Jean who, she realized, were being offered a great gift, but it was her connection with Magda that caused her to empathize with Christina. She patted Christina’s hand in a gesture that was intended as much for the young shamed girl her great-grandmother had once been as it was for the lovely, seemingly unconflicted, girl who sat somewhat stiffly at her side. She knew Christina felt no shame— there was no reason for it— but she wondered about the rest of it, the inevitable regret that Ruth was certain would come later when Christina looked upon the child she would bring into the world knowing she could never speak of her role in it. It was something that Christina couldn’t see just yet, but Ruth knew it was waiting for her out there, as surely as it had been for Magda.

  It was no surprise, then, that Ruth Kennedy felt a unique bond with Christina from that point on. She’d always thought Christina was a dear girl, but it was only after she learned of Christina’s grand gesture that she felt that connection with her.

  During the weeks after Christmas, before Christina left for Portland, Ruth made an effort to look in on Christina often. Usually, Ruth visited her at Jean’s house, but on occasion she invited Christina to her home under the pretense of sharing some home-cooked treat she’d made. Mostly, Ruth enjoyed the time she spent alone with the girl, when she would share stories of her two pregnancies and the births of her two ungrateful and inattentive children. (Ruth never described them that way, but Christina had heard James’s opinion of them enough times that it was impossible to hear Ruth speak of them without also hearing James’s harsh condemnation of them.)

  In her spare time, which was plentiful, Ruth knitted a heavy wool sweater for Christina, something the girl could take with her to Portland, making it roomy enough that it would accommodate Christina’s growing belly and breasts for what remained of the long Maine winter.

  For obvious reasons, she never offered Christina any clothes or gifts for the baby, and she refrained from telling stories of raising her own children, limiting her tales to her experiences with pregnancy. She was careful not to say anything to the girl that might hasten the regret that Ruth felt certain would surely come later; she hoped to spare Christina that for as long as possible. She also knew how much her dear friends James and Jean were looking forward to the arrival of this baby, and she was fearful of saying something that might lead Christina to question her decision. So there was a great deal Ruth did not say, following a long tradition among the women in her family of keeping things to themselves.

  In mid-January, Jean drove Christina to Portland, delivering her daughter to her sister’s house. Once Dee had come to terms with the idea that Christina was pregnant, which she’d learned weeks earlier when Jean phoned her with the news, she was happy to help. Frankly, she was grateful for the company, since her own children had grown and moved out, and she was delighted to tend to her pregnant niece for the next few months, particularly since the notion of her own daughter giving her a grandchild seemed like a distant dream.

  Jean wasn’t eager to part with her daughter, even though she was leaving Christina in her sister’s capable hands. She would rather that Christina had stayed with her in Southwest Harbor, but they all agreed that it was best if the locals all assumed Christina had simply returned to college at the start of the new semester. Her college friends believed she was taking a semester off. Also hastening Christina’s departure was the fact that it was getting more difficult to conceal her condition, even beneath Ruth Kennedy’s generous creation.

  What Dee wanted to know was why her sister had yet to introduce her to the mysterious James Perkins. In a matter of a few months, this man she’d heard about had gone from a good friend to Jean’s future husband who would be raising a child with her. It seemed to have happened so quickly, particularly given Jean’s normally guarded nature toward men since Richard had abruptly and unceremoniously left her for the young paralegal.

  “You’ll meet him,” Jean assured her sister. “But I wanted to stay a few days and he has to work.”

  Dee was skeptical. “And you’re sure about all this?” she asked.

  Jean sighed. “It’s still a lot to take in,” she confessed. “When Christina went back to school in September, I was dealing with the idea that we’d just spent our last summer together, and I was going to be alone.” She looked her sister in the eye, a long penetrating gaze. “I don’t care for being alone. I thought I’d get used to it, but I never did.”

  Dee laughed. “Well, enjoy it while it lasts, because in a few months, you won’t have to worry about that for a long time!” She watched Jean’s expression as it transformed from pensive to pleased, a broad smile emerging as if by the sweep of an artist’s brush. If she was troubled by it all, even for a moment, that moment had quickly passed, and she now seemed almost giddy.

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” Jean asked, seeming to enjoy the moment.

  Dee shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, as long as you’re happy. And you look pretty happy.”

  “I didn’t expect my life would play out this way. She thought for a moment. “I’m nervous, but life has a way of working itself out.”

  James agreed to look in on Custer while Jean visited her sister in Portland. As James stood in the living room of Jean’s home, surveying his surroundings, Custer circled his feet, purring and rubbing against his legs. He scooped up the cat and held him as he looked again at Del Miller’s portrait of Jean and Christina, noting, with some wonder, that barely a year had passed since it was taken.

  James and Jean had both agreed that James would move into Jean’s home once the baby arrived. It was a logical choice. It was a modest home with three bedrooms— one for them, one that would be set up as a nursery for the baby, and one for Christina when she visited. Even more appealing was that the mortgage had been paid years earlier— one of the consolations of an adulterous husband, as Jean was fond of saying.

  What James had yet to decide was how he would explain the living arrangements to Ruth Kennedy, knowing she relied on his meager rent to help her pay the upkeep on her home. James was unsure how to break the news to her.

  He’d done a good deal of work on the small apartment, and with the exception of the distinctly noticeable canine funk to which he’d grown accustomed— an aroma he fully expected would be discarded along with the braided rug and the old sofa— he’d kept it clean. He was certain it would be easy to find a new tenant, probably one who would pay more rent than he had now that the apartment was finished.

  Still, he agonized over the thought of leaving Ruth, even if he was moving less than two miles away. If she couldn’t find a new tenant, or if she chose not to, he questioned whether she could afford to remain in the house, and he wondered if she’d finally decide to sell it and move south to live with (or at least, near) one of her ungrateful children, neither of which had ever encouraged
such an arrangement. In his enthusiasm to begin his new life as a husband and father, he hadn’t paused to consider what might become of Ruth.

  His love of the old woman was one of the reasons he chose to remain in the small apartment on the second floor of her home through the winter. He felt better knowing she wasn’t alone and he looked in on her often. Each day, he tended to her needs, cleaning her walk and her gravel driveway whenever it snowed and bringing in firewood for the woodstove so she wouldn’t feel compelled to trek outside in the cold. Privately, both James and Jean had come to the decision that it was best to leave their living arrangements as they were for as long as possible. While most of the changes were welcome, some of them were just going to require some adjustment.

  For Jean, who hadn’t shared her home with a man for a little more than a decade, it would take some time to get used to having one living there again. For now, she was satisfied having James spend the night, sometimes consecutive nights, to help her through that adjustment, knowing that if it became too taxing on either of them, he could retreat to his small apartment for a night or two. She was surprised (though James was not) at how comfortable they both seemed to be living under the same roof. She’d had similar times with Richard, when they moved easily in the same space and thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company, but those memories had long been overshadowed by what came next: the cheating, the lying, the arguing, and ultimately his complete abandonment of her. It was understandable that she was exercising some caution before plunging into this next phase of her life.

  It was Ruth who first raised the subject one Saturday afternoon in February. The night before, a winter storm had deposited about four inches of wet snow on the island. James had spent the morning shoveling the driveway and clearing Ruth’s walk, stopping frequently to toss snowballs for Max and watching with amusement as the dog eagerly gave chase. Most of the time, Max lay on the front porch, where he was protected from the stiff breeze blowing in off the water but could still keep a watchful eye on James. When James tried to put the dog inside where it was warm, Max whimpered and pawed at the door and then barked until James let him out once again.