The Point of Vanishing

by Maryka Biaggio

  As for the family, I managed a weekend visit with Helen and Sabra last month. I don’t have especially good news, except about Sabra, who’s quite the corker. I wish I’d had such a crowd of friends when I was sixteen. But Helen’s arthritis is bothering her, though she pretends it isn’t. Adding to her misery is the fact that Jewish booksellers in New York are boycotting Third Class Ticket to Heaven, simply because it shows the pleasant aspects of the German countryside. So, she’s struggling again, which seems a perpetual state for her. She says she’ll be taking on an office job. That’s Helen for you—managing one way or another. And my father’s money troubles continue. He and Margaret nearly lost their home when they couldn’t pay the rent for a few months. Nick’s about the only person I know with a regular job and prospects of earning a steady income. So, I think I’ll be okay if I can hang onto him, which remains to be seen. We bickered endlessly this past winter, and I’m afraid I made a mess of things, so I’m trying to patch it up with him. He’s a gentle soul, and I think he understands me, even if my ways sometimes annoy him.

  Well, I just wanted to dash off a note and let you in on the plan. I’ll write you along the way, but (if the timing works for you) expect me on August 13 or 14.

  I can hardly wait!

  Much love,

  Barbara

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  BARBARA AT TWENTY-FIVE

  Pasadena to Boston, August 1939

  “Alice, I’ve terrible news,” Barbara called from the Russells’ back door. She hurried across the lawn to Alice, who sat on a concrete bench, arranging a bouquet of dahlias. “Nick says he wants out of the marriage.”

  “My God.” Alice whisked the vase off the bench and patted the space beside her. “Why?”

  Barbara sat, ran her trembling finger down a page, and read. “‘This can’t come as a surprise. You know I’ve not been happy for some time. I hate all the fighting. I can’t seem to make peace with you. You see, we’re simply too different. We don’t want the same things out of life. I think we’d both be happier apart.’”

  “Dear Lord,” said Alice. “Can he mean it?”

  Barbara worked her clacking-dry mouth, trying to moisten it. “We had a terrible row before I left. About having children. I told him I wasn’t ready.”

  “That’s the difference he refers to?”

  “That, and he doesn’t like me wandering so much.”

  “But you said he works all the time. So is that fair?”

  “He complained about my Canada trip last summer, and this one, too.” Barbara slapped the letter down on the bench. “Only he knows I need adventure. That’s how we fell in love—tramping the Appalachian Trail. He’s the one who changed, not me.”

  “Do you still want him?”

  Barbara sighed and collapsed over her torso. “I don’t know what I’d do without him. He’s my mainstay.”

  Alice patted Barbara’s knee. “Then, you must fight for him, my dear.”

  A sickening panic washed over Barbara. She erupted into savage sobs. She gasped, “Alice, I’m scared.”

  “Go to him,” said Alice, looping an arm around her shoulder and rocking her. “Show him you love him.”

  ✭

  The next day, drained and red-eyed, Barbara boarded a Greyhound bus, wondering how she could possibly endure all the days and hours it’d take to wend her way home to Nick.

  She chafed at the bus’s slow progress over the West’s long miles: by day past bleak deserts or prosaic plains; and at night along straight roads and through towns with patches of blinking neon signs. Fear—of losing Nick, of being abandoned—dulled her hunger and numbed her body to the bump and swerve of the bus. She slunk into her seat, avoiding eye contact with the ever-changing passengers trudging on and off at each bothersome stop. Sleep, unbidden and sodden, overtook her afternoons but evaded her at night when the throb of desperation droned in her mind like an unstoppable machine.

  By the time they reached Ohio, the distances between stops had lessened, and she summoned a glimmer of hope: She’d fight for her marriage, as Alice had suggested. She’d tell Nick she’d been wrong not to give him the family he wanted. She’d vow to stay by his side.

  When her bus pulled into Boston on Wednesday at half-past five, she rushed to the telephone in the bus station lobby to call him, to tell him she was back and couldn’t wait to see him. But the phone only rang and rang, jarring as a clanging bell. Perhaps he was still at his office. Or on his way home. She took the bus to their neighborhood and plodded the two blocks to the apartment, weighed down with her suitcase and duffle bag.

  She dropped her luggage inside the door and called out for Nick. All was quiet. Two envelopes—the electricity bill and a letter from Nick’s sister—lay strewn beneath the mail slot. She walked to the kitchen and checked the counter. No note, not even any of the lists he obsessively kept. She hurried to their bedroom. The bed was neatly made, and his side of the dresser devoid of the items he donned for work—his watch and pocket pen case.

  She flung open the closet. His suitcase was missing.

  “No,” she cried. She collapsed on the bed, and the wails she’d stifled all through her excruciating journey poured out.

  She must have dozed. When she blinked back to consciousness, the apartment’s quiet stillness invaded her. Her ears hummed with the dull vibration of distress. God, she felt alone. Where was Nick?

  She telephoned his brother. Did he know where Nick was? On business in New York, he thought, until Friday. Staying where? That he didn’t know. She called a fellow worker of Nick’s at Polaroid and told him she’d returned unexpectedly and needed to get in touch with him. He might be at Hotel Breslin, he said. But when Barbara checked with the hotel, they had no record of him. She telephoned their friend Dunbar, who knew about the troubles she and Nick had been having. She told him she was sick with fear that Nick might be leaving her and begged him to come around.

  When he knocked, she rushed to the door. He stood smiling, a paper sack nestled against his pudgy torso. “Hello, my dear.”

  She waved him in. “I’m so glad you could come.”

  Dunbar was a short fellow with a chubby face and wispy blond hair, the kind of man it’s hard to take seriously, which, she supposed, was why he’d become a doctor. Nick and Dunbar had chummed around in college, though they didn’t have all that much in common. They only went to a Red Sox game or science lecture when Barbara agreed to join them. Barbara sensed Dunbar’s friendship with the two of them had more to do with his infatuation with her than any allegiance to Nick, not that Nick cared or even noticed.

  “I’ve brought some medicinals for you,” Dunbar said. “Get us some plates and glasses, and I’ll administer the doses.”

  Barbara led the way to the kitchen, and he helped her set out their meal. The late afternoon sun had overheated the west-facing kitchen. Although dusk had descended, the day’s lingering mugginess permeated the apartment, leaving it soggy and spiritless.

  “Let’s settle on the couch,” Barbara said.

  They took their plates and drinks to the living room. Barbara retrieved the small electric fan from the bedroom and set it up on the coffee table.

  “To your health,” Dunbar said, lifting his drink to hers.

  Barbara clinked his glass and took a sip. Whiskey wasn’t her drink, but Dunbar had mixed hers with lemon-lime soda and insisted that it—and the hamburgers—would calm her down.

  She bit into the squishy hamburger bun and chewed. Dunbar, sitting at the other end of the sofa, asked her to explain what had happened. As she told him about Nick’s letter, he gulped down his burger.

  “Hmm,” he said, “with only one letter to go on, it’s hard to say how serious he might be.”

  She asked him when he’d last seen Nick and what they’d talked about. Nothing of any consequence, he said, and ordered her to finish her hamburger. So she did. She even found it palatable. For the first time in days, her stomach felt pleasantly full. But dread hounded her. S
he’d yet to ask Dunbar the most important question.

  She eased her empty plate onto the coffee table and pressed her palms to her knees. “Do you know if Nick has met somebody?”

  “If he has, he hasn’t told me.”

  Barbara bit at her lip. “I want to know—and I don’t want to know.”

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t bring it up. Don’t start off accusing him of something like that.”

  “No, of course not. I only wonder what my chances are.”

  “He’s not the type to rush a decision. You know that.”

  “Yes, but we’ve had such terrible arguments lately. And he didn’t want me to go to California. Now I wish I hadn’t.”

  Dunbar patted his chest, barely stifling a belch, and threw his arm over the sofa back. “That’s in the past. You have to think about what to do now.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do if he leaves me.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. You need to talk to him about all this.”

  “He said we’d both be happier apart. Only that’s not true for me.”

  “Then tell him that. He’s a kind man. Maybe you two can still work this out.”

  “Yes, yes, he is kind.”

  Dunbar picked up her glass and handed it to her. “Now, take your medicine.”

  She took a big gulp, and the refreshing carbonation tingled all the way down. Relaxing into the nook of the sofa, she said, “I’ve hardly slept since I got his letter.”

  “Just as I suspected,” said Dunbar, getting up and walking to the kitchen. He returned with the sack he’d brought, reached into it, and pulled out a palm-sized bottle. “I brought you some sleeping pills. If you can’t sleep tonight, just take one or two of these. That and the whiskey ought to do the trick.”

  ✭

  The whiskey helped Barbara fall asleep, but she bolted awake at one in the morning and thrashed about for an hour. She took one of the pills and succumbed to sleep.

  When she woke, a little before ten, she felt odd, quivery and ponderous at the same time—and starving, as if her stomach was hollow. She checked the refrigerator and scanned the cupboards, but nothing appealed to her.

  She plopped down at the kitchen table and collapsed onto her forearms. She couldn’t go on like this, racked with fear and desperation. She’d turned into a bundle of jangling nerves. She needed to summon calm—and a shred of confidence—so she could talk to Nick in a reasonable way.

  She bathed, dressed in a lightweight cotton dress, and took herself out to the Kent Street Diner for a lunch of fried eggs, potatoes, and toast. After smothering everything with butter, she managed to force down half her breakfast. Then she walked home and picked up a book—Sense and Sensibility. She’d read it years before and thought she could manage it now: She’d always enjoyed Jane Austen’s clever works. For nearly an hour, her gaze wove over the pages, but her mind wandered. She repeatedly caught herself and circled back through the paragraphs. Finally, she gave up and slumped down on the sofa.

  She looked around the living room: at Nick’s photographs of quaint Spanish villages and the rolling German countryside; at her bookshelf packed with novels, mostly the works of her favorite writers, Conrad, Dickens, Kipling, and Wells; at Nick’s tidy arrangement of their sofa, two easy chairs, and modest drop-leaf coffee table; at the Philco tabletop radio they huddled around Sunday evenings for the “Chase and Sanborn” and “Ford Sunday Evening” hours. This was where she and Nick lived. This was their home. This was what she wanted.

  Nick would be home tomorrow. She must get herself under control. A plan, that’s what she needed.

  She’d walk to the harbor and back to tire herself out. She’d buy some groceries—a can of Campbell’s tomato soup for her dinner and some chicken to fry for Friday’s dinner. Nick liked fried chicken, and she’d learned to cook it passably well. She’d take two of those pills tonight so she could get a good night’s sleep. In the morning, she’d launder the sheets and dirty clothes and hang them out to dry, and she’d spend the rest of the day cleaning the apartment, top to bottom. When Nick returned, she’d apologize to him, tell him she’d been all wrong, that she hadn’t understood how much he wanted a family. She’d promise to make a home for him, a real home with all the children he desired.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  BARBARA AT TWENTY-FIVE

  Boston, November 1939

  November 4, 1939

  My dear Alice,

  Many thanks for your consoling letter. What would I do without you? You’re the staunchest friend I have, and I need your guiding hand now more than ever.

  Yes, I’m relieved Nick is giving me another chance. But I can’t say the situation is getting better. I’m so weary. I slouch around all day as if I have a boulder strapped to my back. At work, I try to distract myself with my duties, but I only manage that in dribs. And to find a bit of oblivion at night, I take sleeping dope.

  The worst thing is, I’ve discovered there’s someone else. I don’t ask Nick about her. I don’t know who she is, how serious it got, or if he’s still seeing her. I only know that we’re chillingly courteous to each other and that under the surface, things are horribly, terribly wrong. He’s not his usual serene self around me. He’s as stiff as a palace guard. I suppose it’s all my fault. I didn’t understand how much having children meant to him. I only hope it’s not too late to save our marriage.

  It’s curious. If he only said he’d come back to me, I wouldn’t care about this other woman. Jealousy pales compared to my need for him and his steadying love. That’s how important he is to me.

  I’m trying as hard as I can. I don’t pry or beg him to talk about our chances. I keep my agonies to myself and try to show him nothing but good cheer. I cook his favorite foods and keep the apartment neat and sparkling, just the way he likes it. He even thanked me for a tasty dinner last night, which gives me a scrap of hope. And this morning, he patted me on the head, the first time he’s touched me in ever so long.

  I’ve got to think it’ll be all right. Last week, he told me he doubts a leopard can change its spots, but I intend to prove I can be a good wife to him. I’d always rebelled against the confines of a tame domestic life, and now it’s all I want. If I can convince him I really will give him children, I believe I can win him over. I only want us to get back to honestly and easily loving each other instead of acting like we’re delicate china that’ll shatter at the least nudge.

  This is turning into the shortest letter ever because I don’t want to go on burdening you with talk of how dreadful my life is just now. I must believe Nick will come back to me, for I don’t know how I can go on without him.

  So I’ll imagine you urging me on and telling me I’m doing the right thing and that all will soon be well.

  All my love,

  Barbara

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  BARBARA AT TWENTY-FIVE

  Boston, December 1939

  Though they lasted only two or three days, Nick's business trips invariably set off waves of ambivalence in her. At first, she’d think, ah, a break from the stifling, contrived accord, a chance to write letters without fearing he’ll walk by and spy a few words. But after that initial blush of relief, she descended into panic.

  For some reason, it’d been much worse this time. She’d paced, written a long letter to Alice, even emptied, scrubbed, and reorganized the cupboards and closet. Not that that kept her from worrying. Why did he claim he was too busy to telephone her? He knew she’d be home evenings after work. Surely he didn’t have business around the clock. Might he be seeing that girl? No, he wouldn’t do such a thing—not while he was still giving her a chance.

  He was due home from his New York business trip in a matter of hours. And he’d not travel again until mid-January. For the rest of December and on through the New Year, she’d have him to herself.

  She so hoped it’d be a joyous time. Or at least peaceful. Anything but the suffocating and tortured existence she’d endured these l
ast four months. If he didn’t freely offer a decision tonight, maybe she’d just ask him. Hadn’t she done everything she could think of? She was running out of ideas—and endurance. This shaky standoff drained her more and more every day. She couldn’t bear this veneer of cold cordiality much longer.

  She played out scenarios for his return. He’d notice how neat the apartment was; he’d comment on the scent of Bon Ami; he’d congratulate her on a meal well done. She’d hug him—that wouldn’t be too bold—and he’d assure her that yes, he loved and cherished her.

  Only she hoped he’d decide soon. Maybe he was waiting for the most auspicious moment, perhaps at the beginning of a weekend. He’d take her in his arms, tell her he’d missed her, and say he wanted to make love to her, just like before, and whisk her off to a romantic retreat at her favorite ski lodge.

  But what if he didn’t?

  She steeled herself against pressing him for a decision. Still, if forced to bide her time much longer, she’d collapse under the weight of the dread and hope warring in her. How long could she bear this brittle limbo?

  She couldn’t imagine he’d be so cruel as to end the marriage over the holiday season. They’d always gone skating on Christmas eve, just the two of them. On Christmas day, she’d bake an apple pie exactly as Grandma Ding had taught her and bring it to dinner at his mother’s house. Although he typically balked at the tradition of visiting Helen in New York after Christmas, he’d certainly not want to ruin it for her. Not this year. Sabra would be there, and they’d all take the subway to Times Square and watch the ball drop. No, it wouldn’t be like him to upset everybody over the holidays, not after five lovely Christmases together. And she’d have four whole weeks to prove what a good wife she could be.

  ✭

  The doorknob rattled. Nick, suitcase in hand, squeezed in. It was a game he played, opening the door no farther than necessary to keep out the cold.