The Vanishing Expert

by David Movsesian

  Walt nodded and muttered to himself, as if he now knew exactly what needed to be done, and he eased the throttle back, then he turned and smiled at his startled passengers. “First rule of boating,” he reminded them. “Don’t fall off.” He laughed and motioned for Ben to step up and take the wheel. “C’mon, Captain,” he said. “You should get the feel of her, too.”

  Ben slowly guided the boat along the northern shoreline. He smiled broadly, his eyes focused intently on the water just ahead of his bow as they made a slow easy circle, cruising among the fishing boats moored in the harbor. As they passed the last of the boats, with nothing before them but the mouth of the harbor, Ben’s exuberance was obvious. He tapped the throttle forward gently and the engine responded with a low growl, the bow inching up as they gained speed. With his hand on the throttle, he glanced at James, and they both regarded Walt, who was kneeling on the wide bench seat at the stern, preoccupied with the sound of the engine.

  James sat down and nodded to Ben, who pushed the throttle forward, with less urgency than Walt had earlier but enough so the boat surged forward, causing Walt to stumble backward and quickly search for something to hold on to in order remain in the boat. This time the boat didn’t hesitate and it surged toward the mouth of the harbor, its heavy wooden hull cutting smoothly through the swells.

  James peered back at Walt with a satisfied smile. “Second rule of boating,” he shouted over the rumble of the engine. “Payback’s a bitch!”

  James recalled when he and his father had taken the old Chris Craft out on Lake Winnipesaukee that first time after they’d spent the winter and the spring restoring her. More than two decades later, he vividly remembered his father’s joy when he first opened her up in Center Harbor, the wind and the spray hitting him in the face only making him smile wider until, unable to contain it any longer, the laughter just burst from him. He saw that same expression on Ben’s face, which was damp from the salty spray that found him as they reached the bottom of each swell. James wished he could have allowed Ben to continue all afternoon, but Walt placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder and suggested he ease it back.

  “That’s probably enough for the first time out,” Walt said.

  Ben eased the throttle back and the bow dipped lower as the boat slowed, then he turned to guide the boat back to the pier where they’d begun.

  “I’ll work on her some more this week and we’ll take her out for a good run when James and I are done,” Walt offered to appease Ben who was clearly disappointed that their maiden voyage had come to such an abrupt end.

  After many hours of tinkering with the engine in Ben’s old garage the following week, Walt proclaimed his work finished. James finished replacing all the chrome and stainless hardware, polishing it all as he went. When Ben arrived at the garage the morning they were to take the boat out for its second voyage, he nearly wept at the sight of it.

  This time, the engine roared to life with a rich growl that seemed to satisfy Walt’s trained ear, and as they put the boat through its paces, with Ben at the wheel, Walt nodded contentedly. When Ben finally pointed the boat toward the mouth of the harbor as he’d done the previous week, Walt stood between James and Ben and leaned close to Ben so he could be heard over the engine and the wind.

  “Open her up,” Walt shouted.

  Ben smiled and pushed the throttle forward, feeling the power of the boat as the engine responded to his touch. Walt reached across and placed his hand atop Ben’s and intentionally forced the throttle forward too quickly, and once again, the engine paused for a moment before surging forward.

  Walt frowned and shook his head. “Haven’t quite licked that,” he said, inching the throttle back. “But as long as you ease her forward and don’t force her, she does fine.”

  As they cruised over the waves, the winds, which were already brisk and cool to those standing on the shore, kicked up a fine mist of saltwater that stung their faces. James and Ben sat down to escape them, but Walt stood and allowed the breezes and the cold mist to strike him full in the face. Seeing the look of contentment on Walt's rugged face, James concluded that it was less an act of defiance than an expression of pure joy.

  When they neared the mouth of the harbor, they came about and cruised smoothly over the surface of the water and the long rolling swells of an incoming tide. Ben yielded the wheel to James, who seemed satisfied that the boat was performing well, and that his work on her was nearly complete. His attention drifted from the boat only once, as he peered at the rocky shoreline, his gaze drifting up the bank to Ruth Kennedy's house and the window where he’d spent so many mornings peering out at the harbor and yearning to be out there upon it, right where he was now. If he could have seen his own face, he would have recognized the same expression of contentment that he'd seen earlier on Walt Cook's weathered face.

  Back at the garage, the three men raised bottles of beer in celebration of their achievement. James enjoyed seeing Ben’s excitement, though he strained to observe it through misty eyes. That moment was the reason he’d agreed to take on the project Ben had offered him. It was the reason he’d spent those long hours in the dusty garage, working when his muscles and his joints ached and his mind was dull with fatigue. He’d done it in the hope of recapturing something of the joy he’d once shared with his father. Amid the excitement of the moment, James quietly turned and touched the smooth wood of his old Chris Craft, resting upon its trailer beside Ben’s boat, as if to include his father in the celebration. He closed his eyes and smiled, picturing his father as a younger man. When he opened them, he saw Ben watching him from a few feet away, a kind smile on his face.

  From their many conversations in that dusty garage, Ben had come to understand the bond that the old Chris Craft represented between James and his father. He knew immediately when he saw James step away from the celebration and lay his hand upon the old boat that James was thinking of his father, and he decided not to impose. If anyone was capable of understanding that James felt his father’s presence in the sleek wood of that old boat, it would have to be Ben Jordan, who listened for his wife’s voice whenever the breeze rustled his rose hedge.

  28

  An Unexpected Gift

  As she did every year on Christmas Eve, Jean closed the gallery to spend the day with Christina, who had returned home from school a few days earlier. Together, they meandered through Bar Harbor, visiting with her fellow shopkeepers and with old friends while Christina picked up a few last-minute gifts for William.

  James enjoyed a peaceful afternoon at home with William and Max, which they spent huddled together in the living room in front of a crackling fire. For most of the afternoon, William was either nestled at James’s side or in his lap; Max curled up on the rug in his favorite spot, closest to the hearth.

  When he wasn’t preoccupied with his two companions, James continued his Christmas Eve tradition of reading the copy of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol he’d purchased two years earlier at Sherman’s Bookstore. He’d been reading it during that first Christmas Eve in Southwest Harbor when Jean and Christina arrived unexpectedly and presented him with Max, still a chubby, squirming nine-week-old pup. He found himself smiling at his vivid memory of it.

  Just a year later, he’d spent Christmas Eve with the same book; though he was so filled with anticipation of the arrival of his child, Scrooge’s exploits barely held his attention.

  Now, on his third Christmas Eve on the island, he decided to continue the tradition, this time with his new son beside him and Max curled up and dozing at his feet.

  According to James’s father, the story had always been one of his mother’s favorites, though James had no recollection of seeing his mother reading the book. He did remember how she loved the old movie, and how each year, he and Kate would sit on either side of her on the sofa, nibbling on fresh-baked cookies and watching as Ebenezer Scrooge learned the meaning of Christmas from the three ghosts who visited him. He thought he remembered— though it may have
been his imagination— how his mother seemed to be both laughing and crying at the same time at the end of the movie. It was one of his most cherished images of her, and after all these years, he decided that it didn’t matter whether it was entirely true or not; it was a memory of his mother he’d long ago decided that he would keep.

  After his mother died, he never found the same pleasure in the movie. When the ghost of Christmas Future guided Scrooge to the graveyard to peer at his own headstone, James couldn’t help but think of his own loss, knowing that there was nothing he could do— no second chances, no grand acts of redemption— that could bring his mother back. And each time, as he watched the end of the film, as Scrooge, hat in hand, went to visit Bob Cratchet and his family on Christmas morning, he always found himself looking at the empty space beside him on the sofa, as if he half expected to see his mother laughing at herself as she dabbed at her tears. Confronted with the absence of her year after year, he finally stopped watching the movie altogether.

  It wasn’t until that first winter in his tiny apartment in Southwest Harbor that he finally felt inclined to return to the story that had once meant so much to him, and he once again found in it the joy he’d known as a boy.

  There were moments as he read the book that he found himself pausing to consider his life. He needed no spirit to offer him evidence of his good fortune; it was all around him. He could see it in William, who lay in James’s lap futilely resisting sleep, and in Max who dozed by the hearth, his snoring mingling with the hiss and crackle of the fire.

  It was there, too, in the framed photographs that rested on the mantel— the picture of Jean and James on their wedding day, smiling joyfully in the bit of shade the birch tree offered, and in the family portrait of the two of them with Christina and William.

  He turned to look at the portraits of Jean and Christina from two years earlier, and he vividly recalled the afternoon he’d spent with Christina in Ellsworth when they first visited Del Miller’s studio. He remembered the photograph she’d given him that first Christmas Eve and the affect it had on him then; the power it had over him. It was packed safely away in a box somewhere in the attic now, but he could still envision her smoldering eyes and her wickedly alluring smile. When he looked at William now, he imagined he could see a hint of Christina’s features. (For so many reasons, one of them known only to Christina and to him, he desperately hoped William would resemble his mother.)

  It was nearly four o’clock when he finished reading the book. The gray sky had been threatening snow for most of the day, and the dim light that filtered in through the big picture window behind the sofa was fading quickly.

  He regarded Max, his nearly-constant companion and an unwavering friend for these last two eventful years, and as if Max knew James was thinking about him, the dog raised his head from his slumber and looked up at him. James carefully positioned his sleeping son between two pillows, then slid down off the sofa and onto the floor beside his friend. As he sat rubbing the dog behind the ears, Max rolled over onto his back, and James stroked the thick fur on the dog’s chest.

  It was then, as he was on the floor with Max, that James noticed the odd package under the Christmas tree. Unlike the other gifts that were neatly wrapped in festive colors— greens and reds and golds and dressed with decorative ribbons and bows— this package was wrapped in a heavy brown paper and was tied with a thick twine. He inspected the package more closely, and he noticed it was addressed to him, but when he looked for the identity of the sender, he found that there was no return address. He thought for a moment that it must be from Kate or Tracy until he saw the postmark: Rockland, Maine.

  He looked around the room, at William who still slept soundly, and at Max who watched him expectantly, and he slowly opened the package. What he found was a scrapbook, bound in simulated leather, worn from years of being handled by less-than-delicate hands. Even before he opened it, James was certain what he would find on its pages. He slowly opened the front cover, and on the first page he was confronted with a yellowed newspaper clipping, familiar, though long forgotten. The headline, over a picture of a smiling Edward Moody, read: “Rhode Island Man Missing, Feared Drown.”

  Joe Tibbits hadn’t lied. When Joe first came to Bar Harbor and presented a carefully-preserved newspaper clipping as evidence that he knew James’s secret, he told James that he had a scrapbook filled with similar clippings. James had assumed at the time that it was a figure of speech, an exaggeration, but he knew now that Joe Tibbits wasn’t someone likely to embellish the facts. Whatever else James felt about the man, Joe Tibbits had been telling the truth.

  It was obvious that Joe Tibbits had known James’s true identity from the beginning, that even as they were working side-by-side in Gardiner, Joe was compiling these clippings, perhaps unaware at the time how he would eventually use them, but certain that they would one day prove valuable. James expected to find a note, but after searching the torn brown paper on the floor beside him, he found nothing. Joe must have assumed the book would speak for itself; James’s tormentor was handing over his evidence, a gesture that James optimistically took to mean that he was rid of the man for good.

  The article on the first page, yellowed with age but otherwise intact, seemed fresh to him, as if only weeks had passed, not years. He was certain he must have read this same article when he was in the dingy one-room apartment in Waterville just after he left Rhode Island. Reading it now, with the benefit of time, the details of Edward Moody’s disappearance left him feeling strangely disconnected from it, as if he were reading about an acquaintance he’d once known and had long ago left behind.

  The book contained page after page of these clippings, some of which he vaguely remembered, some he’d never seen before. All of them left him with the same odd feeling of disassociation— until he came to the last page.

  On that final page, he was surprised to find a black-and-white photograph he hadn’t seen in years. He wondered how Joe had come to be in possession of it, since it had been tucked into a photo album amid a stack of similar photo albums in the house he’d shared with Gloria. In the months since Joe Tibbits took possession of it, Gloria had never noticed that the photograph was missing.

  In the photograph, a twelve-year-old Edward Moody stood shirtless aboard the sun-bleached Chris Craft. His father, stood at his side, one hand resting on Edward’s narrow shoulder, the other lightly gripping a long dark rag that dangled from his fingers and fluttered in the breeze. As James studied the picture, he remembered the moment when his mother had taken it. He remembered the pride that he and his father had both felt as they stood aboard the boat that day, posing for the picture.

  Restoring the boat had consumed them both that spring. James recalled those cool afternoons when he rushed home from school to take up a sanding block, dragging it back and forth over the hull, exactly as his father had shown him. He stopped only when his mother called him for dinner, and he sometimes hurried through his meal and his homework just so he could spend more time in the garage with his father and the boat. He knew his father often worked in the garage until late into the night, long after Edward had gone to bed. Edward would open his bedroom window just enough so that, lying in his bed in the darkness, he could listen to his father toiling in the garage. It was those sounds that often lulled him to sleep on those cool spring nights, and his dreams were often filled with images of the two of them skimming across the surface of the lake on a bright, clear summer afternoon.

  The photograph was taken on that last day when his father proudly declared that they were finished. It was taken from a low angle, the boat resting upon its trailer on the driveway, so their downturned faces were shaded from the harsh sun that beat down upon their bare shoulders. Still, their pride was evident in their broad smiles and in the arch in Edward’s back as he puffed out his bare chest for the camera.

  Looking back, that was also the last truly happy summer they spent together as a family. His mother was already sick
when she took that photograph, though no one knew; they were all blissfully ignorant of it. They had no way of knowing on that happy afternoon as they planned out their summer on the lake, that she would fall ill before it was over, and she would be taken from them before the leaves began to fall.

  James was so entranced with the photograph, and so lost in his own thoughts, that he never heard Jean and Christina returning. He wasn’t aware until it was too late that Christina was standing directly behind him, peering over his shoulder at the open scrapbook in his hands.

  “Is that you?” Christina asked, pointing at the boy in the photograph.

  James was so startled by the sound of her voice that he slammed the book shut, dropping it by his side amid the shreds of brown paper it had been wrapped in.

  Christina gasped and jumped back. In an instant, she witnessed his startled expression changing to guilt before melting quickly into something close to fear.

  James looked down to make certain the scrapbook was closed on the floor beside him. When he turned back to Christina, he noticed she was smiling.

  “I caught you, didn’t I?” she said.

  “What?” James asked. He wasn’t certain what she’d seen in the scrapbook, or how long she’d been peering over his shoulder in silence before she spoke. He only knew that she’d seen something. His face went pale.

  “You opened one of your Christmas presents, didn’t you?” she said, waving an accusing finger at him. “You’ve been a very bad boy.”