The Vanishing Expert

by David Movsesian

  When James finished shoveling, Ruth invited them both inside where Max found a cozy spot near the woodstove and James warmed himself with some chowder Ruth had made that morning. As he sat at her kitchen table, hunched over the bowl and breathing in the delectable steam rising from it, he noticed her studying him.

  “It’s been nice having you here, James,” she said after a long silence.

  Something suggested to James that they were about to have a conversation that Ruth had already rehearsed in her mind. James smiled. “Are you kicking me out?” he joked.

  “You’ve been such a great help, I don’t know how I’m going to manage after you leave.”

  James looked away from the delightful concoction before him and offered his full attention to Ruth. “You know I’ll be less than two miles away,” he reminded her. “And I’m still gonna take care of things for you. That won’t change.”

  Ruth frowned at him. “I don’t expect you to do that,” she said. “You’ll have a wife and a baby to take care of. You’ll have a family to worry about. You shouldn’t have to worry about me, too.”

  James thought about Ruth’s two ungrateful children who had left her behind and moved on with their lives, and he bristled at the damage they’d done to her. He leaned forward and looked at her severely. “You know something, Ruth, out of respect for you, I’ve done my best to hold my tongue and not tell you what I think about your two kids, but you should know that most people don’t just abandon their parents.” Even as he said it, he thought of his abrupt departure while his father was wasting away in the nursing home, and he could almost taste the hypocrisy in his words. But he pressed on. “I lost my mother when I was twelve, and I’ve always felt cheated because of it. This last year, living here with you, it feels like I got a little of it back. Unlike your kids, I appreciate that, and I’m not about to just walk away from you and not look back.”

  Ruth smiled and her chin quivered slightly. “Eat your soup before it gets cold,” she said. Although she tried her best to conceal it, her voice was fragile.

  James pushed back from the table and, stepping around behind Ruth’s chair, he leaned over and wrapped his arms around her. She gripped his forearms and tipped her head back against him.

  “You’re right about me having a family to take care of,” he said softly. “But that includes you. You’re my family, too.” He kissed her on the temple and he was going to stand up but Ruth was clinging to his forearms so tightly he had no choice but to remain where he was.

  So it was decided in Ruth’s kitchen on that wintry afternoon that James would stay on in the second floor apartment until the baby arrived. After that, he would continue to look after her as he always had, and Ruth would search for another tenant so she might somehow afford to remain in her house. What neither of them foresaw on that blustery day in February was the unexpected series of events that would change everything.

  Even after Ruth Kennedy learned of their plans, Jean was in no hurry to share the news with anyone else until the arrival of the baby seemed imminent. James desperately wanted to share their news with Peter and Annie, but Jean explained that she just wanted to keep their news private for a while longer, and James reluctantly yielded to her wish, despite some awkward conversations with Peter.

  The truth that Jean never shared with James was that she was frightened. She worried about the rumor mill on Mount Desert, and how quickly their odd little arrangement would spread once someone like Claire Trumbull got wind of it; not that they had any intention of telling Claire, but somehow she always knew. Despite having gone to great pains to conceal Christina’s role in the adoption, Jean wondered how long it would take the local gadflies to put the pieces together once they made their announcement, especially if anyone discovered that Christina hadn’t returned to the University as they’d been led to believe.

  What Jean feared most of all was that it might all dissolve to dust around her. Everything they were planning depended on Christina delivering to them a healthy baby. But what if there was a problem with the pregnancy, Jean worried? What would happen if suddenly there was no baby? Or if Christina decided at the last moment— foolishly, Jean thought— that she was unable to part with the child? What would happen then? If there was no baby, she knew, there was no marriage, not because they didn’t love each other, but because they did. So it was that nagging worry, which often became a crippling fear, that compelled Jean to try to keep their plans to themselves for now, just in case something went wrong.

  In many ways, it was that same fear that made her cautious about inviting James to move into her house. If their plan fell apart, she decided, it was best for him to have an easy out. The last thing she wanted was for James to remain with her out of some sense of obligation.

  She kept all of these troubling thoughts to herself, and despite her best efforts to convince herself that her fears were unwarranted, they were inescapable. They weighed on her during the day. They invaded her dreams each night. And she suffered them in silence and in secret.

  Even so, on a Sunday evening in February, Jean agreed to make their announcement to Peter and Annie, not only of their impending marriage, but all of it. There was no one more deserving of being the first to hear the news— ignoring Ruth Kennedy, who had surmised it on her own— and no one she trusted more to keep the information private than Peter and Annie.

  Their guests took the news of the marriage in stride.

  “We always knew you were going to be a couple,” Annie said.

  “We just didn’t know how long it was going to take you two to finally figure it out,” Peter added.

  The apparent urgency of the wedding, which Jean explained would take place in May, surprised them.

  “Sounds like a shotgun wedding,” Peter joked. He smiled at Jean. “You’re not pregnant, are you?” He winked then laughed as he said it, but he stopped laughing suddenly when he saw James and Jean exchange uncomfortable glances. “That’s not it, is it?” Peter asked.

  “No,” Jean assured them. “I’m not pregnant.” She looked again at James for assurance. “But there’s more.”

  Jean hesitated, suddenly unsure of just how to go about sharing the rest of their story without it sounding sordid. It would only sound sordid, James decided, if they truly knew all of it— not just that Christina was the mother, but also the identity of the father. Excluding that information, he was certain that Peter and Annie would not only reserve judgment, but that their friends would be genuinely happy for them. So it was James who finally spoke.

  “We’re adopting a baby,” he said watching their surprised expressions. “It’s due in May. That’s why this is all happening so quickly.”

  It seemed like a long time before anyone spoke. Where their guests had been jovial and joking a moment earlier, they were suddenly dumbstruck.

  “That’s big news!” Annie finally said.

  “There’s more,” James told them.

  “How can there be more?” Peter asked. “When we sat down, you two were just friends. We haven’t even had dessert and you’re engaged and in a few months you’ll be married with a kid!” It was a lot to take in.

  Jean suddenly reconsidered the wisdom of sharing the rest, but it was too late. Even James seemed to be waiting for Jean to speak; in his opinion, this last announcement was hers to share.

  That was when Jean told them everything. She told them about her wish to be with James, and his desire to have a child, and the stalemate that had produced; at least until Christina came to them with her predicament, and her proposal. “The baby we’ll be adopting is Christina’s baby,” Jean finally announced, although the way her story was unfolding, that pronouncement was unnecessary.

  “I thought Christina was at school,” Annie said.

  “I know,” Jean said. “We thought it was better if people assumed that. She’s actually staying in Portland with my sister until the baby comes.”

  “I’m guessing that part of the st
ory is supposed to stay a secret,” Peter said.

  “You know how people can be,” Jean said.

  Both Peter and Annie nodded knowingly.

  “Staying in Portland is really more for Christina than for us,” Jean said. “I don’t want anyone judging her. They can say what they want about me.”

  “It means a lot to us that you shared all this with us,” Annie said. “We’ll never say a word.”

  “We know,” Jean said.

  The four of them raised their wine glasses and Peter toasted their hosts.

  “And to Christina,” Annie added, and they drank again.

  After the brief celebration, Jean noticed a curious expression crossing Peter’s face, as if he’d suddenly lost something important to him. “Are you okay?” Jean asked him.

  “Me?” he asked. “Sure.” He craned his neck trying to peer into the kitchen. “But I thought for sure I heard someone mention dessert.”

  Annie patted his large mitt of a hand. “That was you, dear.”

  When James shared the news with Kate the following weekend, he was unsure what to expect. Kate was surprised about the wedding but she tried to be supportive; she was very fond of Jean, but she withheld her enthusiasm because, the last she’d heard, Jean wasn’t interested in having more children, and she knew that was something her brother desperately wanted— enough to have taken such drastic actions as faking his own death to escape a life that held no prospects of it. Kate couldn’t imagine her brother compromising on that point, and yet, here he was entering into another marriage with a woman who, as far as she knew, wasn’t likely to give him the child he so desperately wanted. Once he told Kate the rest, she understood, but unlike Peter and Annie — or Jean for that matter— she was quick to ask what seemed to her like an obvious question.

  “Are you the father?” she asked.

  He should have been ready for the question, but he wasn’t. He hesitated a moment too long.

  “Oh, Edward,” Kate groaned.

  “No one knows that but Christina and me,” James said. “And now you. So you can’t ever say anything to anyone.”

  “Who would I tell?” Kate said.

  It was true, he supposed. The only other contact they shared was Tracy, and she’d wandered out of their lives a few months earlier, departing with barely a word. In late November, Kate received a hastily scrawled note in a Hallmark card offering Kate her thanks for all she’d done, but she included no forwarding address. Kate thought it was odd at the time, but a part of her was relieved when Tracy left since with her went the burden of caring for her and the anxiety that Tracy might one day let something slip in front of Gloria or Kenny or someone else altogether that would ruin everything. Tracy would never intentionally hurt Edward, Kate knew, but she was irresponsible and often spoke without thinking. It could be endearing at times, even funny, but it could also be dangerous, particularly when she was an accomplice in a secret as big as this one. As far as Kate was concerned, it was better for everyone that she was gone.

  Edward agreed, though he’d found it odd that Tracy had left without even saying goodbye. She’d followed him around like a puppy dog since they met in college, even pleaded with him to let her be a part of his new life once she’d discovered he was alive, and then, in a moment, she was gone without any explanation. He’d received a similar card from her in November with no forwarding address, and then a few weeks later, a Christmas card with a Clearwater, Florida postmark. There was no explanation; there was no note at all except for her brief inscription:

  Merry Christmas!

  Love you always,

  Tracy

  He felt a twinge of guilt that his first impulse was a sense of relief that she was gone.

  “Was this a one-time thing?” Kate asked. “With Christina, I mean?”

  Again, he hesitated.

  “Jesus Christ, Edward!” Christina said. “Please tell me you’re not still messing with the daughter when you’re marrying the mother.”

  “No,” he assured her. “There were just a few times at the end of the summer, but it ended before she went back to school in September. It was just a brief thing.”

  “Not brief enough,” Kate chastised.

  If Christina was right and she conceived the baby on that warm August afternoon aboard the boat behind Ruth Kennedy’s house, he could hardly fault himself. He might have some regrets about the liaisons that followed, but that afternoon was less about an attraction (which was clearly always there) and more about a collision. It was less about choice than it was about impulse; more about need than desire (although he clearly desired her, too).

  While his life would surely have been simpler had he resisted that impulse, had they not come crashing together on that day, there would be no baby, and there would be no marriage. The plain truth was that every choice he’d made along the way, even those that Kate (or others if they knew of them) might find reprehensible, had led him to exactly where he was on this day. And on this day, he was profoundly happy.

  23

  The Portland Lawyer

  On the last Friday in February, James accompanied Jean to Portland to visit with Christina and Jean’s sister, Dee, and to meet with a Portland attorney named Eugene Sisk to discuss the terms of the adoption. Jean decided it would be far more discreet to engage a lawyer as far away from Mount Desert Island as possible, but she needed an attorney in Maine, and she wasn’t interested in a bumpkin.

  Eugene Sisk operated out of a small, second-floor office over a bakery on Exchange Street in Portland. Jean had found his name in the phone book during her previous visit, and after a lengthy phone call to determine his qualifications in the matter of adoption law, she scheduled an appointment for all of them to sit down to discuss their unique arrangement.

  Over the phone, Eugene Sisk gave the impression of being confident but kind; intelligent but not condescending. Jean, having been married to a lawyer, immediately pictured a man resembling Richard— tall and athletic, handsome and well-groomed. Richard’s hair was always neatly trimmed as if he’d always just come from the barber shop, and even in the depth of the long gray Maine winters, he always managed (miraculously) to have just the hint of a tan. Richard was as charming as he was distinguished, which obviously didn’t escape the attention of the young paralegal in Boston who lured him into her bed during his trips to the city, and who, without much provocation, gleefully dropped to her knees right there in the office and peered playfully up at him as she unzipped his expensive trousers. (The first image Jean knew to be true; the second she only imagined, albeit correctly.)

  As they entered the attorney’s office, they were immediately greeted by the scent of pastries that filtered up from the bakery below, and then by a large serious-looking woman who raised herself up from behind her desk with some degree of effort. She was roughly fifty years old, and as she lumbered toward them, bulging in her business dress like an overinflated tire, it was obvious that she was no stranger to the buttery delicacies just one floor below. She was cordial but businesslike as she accepted their coats and directed them to three chairs in the waiting area before hanging their coats on a nearby coat rack and returning to her seat behind her desk with a great expulsion of air.

  Later, they would learn that this woman was the attorney’s wife, a piece of information that Jean found encouraging. She considered that Eugene Sisk having not abandoned his wife for a younger, happier woman at first suggested that he was of a somewhat higher character than her lecherous ex-husband. Of course, it could have been his wife’s constant and substantial presence that ensured there wasn’t a young and willing paralegal anywhere to be found.

  From the moment the office door opened and the portly attorney emerged, Jean realized that Eugene Sisk was none of the things she’d imagined.

  To Jean’s surprise, the man who greeted them was shorter than she was by at least two inches. He bowed slightly at the waist as he shook her hand, affording Jean an excelle
nt view of the long, thin strands of dark hair that were deliberately raked across his otherwise bald pate. The hair at his collar and around his ears was just a bit too long, and his charcoal gray suit fit oddly enough for Jean to notice— just a bit too snug in some places, too loose in others. It gave him a slightly disheveled appearance despite the fact that the suit appeared to be neatly pressed, leading Jean to wonder if it weren’t the clothes but the man himself who was rumpled.

  He exuded a softness that extended from his doughy middle to the chubby hand he extended as he ushered them into his office and directed them to three upholstered chairs that faced his desk. As he sat down across from them, he released the over-burdened button of his suit jacket. His eyes were dark, but Jean could discern in them a sincerity and a compassion that put her immediately at ease.

  That Eugene Sisk bore absolutely no resemblance to her unfaithful ex-husband only improved Jean’s initial opinion of him.

  Jean was surprised to learn that their arrangement wasn’t all that unique, at least not to this lawyer, who had personally administered numerous private domestic adoptions, a good number of which involved the adoption of a child by a grandparent who was simply better-equipped to raise a child than the (usually) teenaged girl who carried the child. Had Sisk heard the story of Ruth Kennedy’s grandmother, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised, and he could have countered it with several stories of his own; though he’d never heard the term ‘finding a baby in the hedges,’ the practice itself was more common than most people realized.

  What was different about this case was that Christina was considerably older than most of the unhappy mothers-to-be who found their way to his office. As a rule, those young girls who were surrendering their babies for a relative to raise on their behalf were in their mid-teens, high school girls who made the unfortunate and all-too-common mistake of allowing some horny teenaged boy to talk them into something for which they were unprepared and without considering the consequences. It was because teenagers were often so blind to the consequences of their adolescent urges that Eugene Sisk had become so familiar with them.