Waiting to Vanish

by Ann Hood

  “Anything is possible,” John-Glenn said.

  Sam wanted to look back at the universe on that slide under the microscope, but he didn’t. It seemed the same as opening his mother’s door when she had it closed. That was, she had told him, an invasion of privacy.

  “Butterflies,” John-Glenn said, “are the only beautiful things we have. The most beautiful things anywhere, I bet. On any planet. And to think that they start out as ugly fuzzy caterpillars.”

  Sam looked around him, at the butterflies on the walls. They seemed, in the dim light, to be floating. It was as if they were alive, suspended in glorious flight.

  “You,” John-Glenn said softly, “are my friend.”

  Sam smiled and nodded. He turned his gaze from the eerily beautiful butterflies to John-Glenn’s soft, fleshy face. There were scattered pimples on his chin and a light fuzz on his cheeks and upper lip. Sam pointed to him, then covered his own heart with his hand.

  “Oh,” John-Glenn said. He sniffed loudly, dramatically. “We are friends.”

  He lifted Sam off of the bureau and sat him down on the bed.

  “I wish,” he said, “that you weren’t leaving tomorrow.”

  Sam thought of his own room back home. Since he’d left in the car with his aunt, he had not thought much of his house. His mother had hung pennants on one wall of his room. Colts. Orioles. Red Sox. Jets. She hung a Star Trek mobile from the ceiling and models of beautiful sports cars lined one shelf. All the things she thought little boys should have in their rooms. That’s what she said whenever she added something new. “Look,” she’d tell him, putting a GI Joe or Incredible Hulk on the shelf, “you think I don’t know what you like?” But she didn’t know.

  “Do you want to go back?” John-Glenn asked him.

  Sam shrugged. He thought of the way his mother’s eyes looked whenever she dropped him off at Miss Knight’s for his speech therapy. And the way his mother and Allison sat together whispering and giggling. He thought of the way her voice sounded when the See and Say asked him to talk. CAT. BAT. RAT. “Come on, Sam,” she’d plead, “say cat. Say bat.” It wasn’t that he didn’t like his mother. She was, after all, the prettiest mom he’d ever seen. And she always smelled good and took him for fast rides in her big pink car. But sometimes she didn’t do anything at all with him. “Can’t you see,” she’d say, “that I’m busy?” Even though she didn’t look very busy.

  He had wondered if his Aunt Mackenzie would show him his father. His father had always had something to say to him. He knew wonderful stories, about poor governesses who lived on the moors in England, and orphaned children who picked pockets, and a doctor who could talk to animals. He also knew funny songs, and riddles, and the names of trees and birds and fish. His father had never run out of things to say. Not until that day on the telephone. Sam shuddered. He shook his arms back and forth.

  “What are you doing?” John-Glenn said. “Hey. I am going to give you a born voyage gift, as they say in Paree.”

  He went to the wall, to the most magnificent butterfly, its wings streaked with vivid velvet colors, and handed it to Sam.

  “Here,” he said. “From one caterpillar to another.”

  Sam took the butterfly and imagined it on the wall in his room. In his mind, the pennants were gone and the butterfly soared upward, alone, paused on Sam Porter’s bedroom wall.

  Sam reached for his drawing pad and tore off a sheet with his trademark drawn on it. He handed it to John-Glenn. “I will frame that,” John-Glenn said, “and keep it always.”

  After the show, Mackenzie and Aunt Hope went to the State Line Diner. It was an old silver trailer with shiny countertops and yellow vinyl booths. On every table was a twirling list of songs to play. Aunt Hope selected a few and fed the machine quarters. “Used to be a dime,” she said.

  They ordered coffee and she ordered cinnamon toast too.

  “Chances Are” began to play and she smiled.

  “This one’s mine,” she said.

  Mackenzie looked at her, waiting.

  “I am alive again,” she said.

  They had stayed for the entire first set. Although the Hoochie-Coo’s had added some new numbers, like “Feelings” and “New York, New York,” they sang most of their old numbers. Aunt Hope hummed along, swaying back and forth and clapping her hands in time. When the Hoochie-Coo’s took a break, Ricardo sent two more Cuba Libres over to the table and a note on a green Lizard Lounge cocktail napkin. Aunt Hope had read the note and then tucked it into her purse.

  “Aunt Hope,” Mackenzie said now, “what is going on?”

  “He’s back,” she said.

  “But—” Mackenzie said. She remembered the way Aunt Hope had sat, waiting, after Ricardo had gone back to Miami. The way she’d stopped fixing her hair, stopped going dancing.

  Aunt Hope held her hand up. “I know,” she said. “He’s a rotten two-timer.”

  “A bigamist.”

  “Do you know,” Aunt Hope said, “that if it hadn’t been for Grammie, I would have followed him all the way back to Florida. When I first laid eyes on Ricardo Havana I wasn’t even twenty years old. And, I admit, I had a history of dating the wrong boys. Grammie used to worry sick about me. Your mother had done just fine for herself. And then I start bringing home these really awful guys.”

  “First Name Initial” clicked on.

  “This one’s mine too,” Aunt Hope said.

  “What is he doing here though?” Mackenzie said.

  Aunt Hope leaned forward. “When I saw Ricardo with that wavy black hair and heard that romantic accent, I felt like I had met a movie star or something. I used to sleep with his picture under my pillow.” She ate the crust off a piece of toast. “Those are all the original Hoochie-Coo’s. Except for Pepe. He died in a plane crash. I knew all of them. We had a barrel of fun together.”

  “Where have they been all these years?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Touring.” She began to eat the center of the toast. “I’m not kidding myself this time. Ricardo’s still got a wife in Miami. And five daughters now. I almost died when he called me up. ‘Meet me for breakfast,’ he said, ‘no questions asked.’ Not that he should have any questions. I’m the one with the questions. But I said okay and I’ve been meeting him every morning this week. Mackenzie, I should have followed him down there when he left. I remember him and Bill driving off and it was like my heart was ripped right out of me.”

  Mackenzie thought of Aunt Hope’s wedding picture, of the flowers pressed in the dictionary.

  “‘Paper moon,’” Aunt Hope said. “He sings that one for me.”

  The apartment was dark when Mackenzie and Aunt Hope got home, except for the light from the mall.

  Aunt Hope opened the refrigerator.

  “Damn,” she said. “John-Glenn ate everything but the egg foo yong.”

  Mackenzie groped in the darkness for Sam on the couch.

  “Hey,” she said as she turned on the lamp, “Sam’s not here.”

  “Maybe he climbed in my bed.”

  Mackenzie began to panic. She fought back images of John-Glenn frightening him, telling him some scary story about extraterrestrials taking Sam’s voice, or killing Alexander. She practically ran into the hallway.

  “Sam!”

  “It’s about time,” John-Glenn said from his room. “Where were you two?”

  “Where is Sam?” Mackenzie said, pushing past his doorway.

  “Hold your horses,” he said. “He’s asleep.” He pointed to the top bunk.

  Mackenzie climbed the little ladder that led to the top.

  Sam was there, tangled in John-Glenn’s robe and blankets. He opened his eyes when she popped her head over the edge.

  “Hi,” she said to him.

  The tips of his fingers waved to her from inside the robe.

  “We’ve got a long day tomorrow,” she said. “Places to go. People to see.”

  But he had already fallen back to sleep.

  CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

  DAISY FUMBLED WITH HER car keys. The weather had turned bitter cold overnight. An icy wind whipped through her hair and made her eyes tear. She had forgotten to wear gloves, and in the walk from her apartment across the parking lot to her car, her hands had grown numb.

  She glanced at her watch. It was already ten A.M. and she had to pick up an order before an eleven o’clock sales meeting. Before she’d met Willie, she had felt organized and in control. At least of her business life. Now, she hated to leave him. She imagined him, warm in bed. He frowned slightly when he slept. Alexander had done that too, although since he’d died, Daisy had found it hard to separate his face in sleep from how he had looked in death. It was strange that the first dead person she’d seen had been Alexander. She had heard people, after wakes, saying things like, “He looked asleep, didn’t he?” And so she hadn’t been prepared for this false-looking Alexander, powdered cheeks and tightly sewn mouth, set as if he were thinking very hard. His eyebrows had been arched upward, like he was saying, “Oh!” Daisy had studied the face hard, leaning over, looking for a sign that this was indeed Alexander. She had seen a small black thread at the corner of his eyelid and moved to pull it off, like a person would if they saw a thread on a sweater. But she had stopped herself. No one had said Alexander looked wonderful or asleep, and she was happy for that. Yet sometimes, thinking of him asleep but alive, she confused the faces, and saw him instead curled up beside her with that startled expression instead of the wrinkled forehead and tightened brows he’d really had when he slept. She wished she’d never looked in that coffin at all.

  Daisy fought back an urge to forget the sales meeting and walk right back home and into bed with Willie. Sometimes he made little noises when he slept, like the chirps of a small bird. While she was away from him, she worried that she’d return and find him gone, completely. If he went out while she was there, she spent half the time getting ready for when he got back—fixing her hair and ironing clothes and rubbing herself with lotions—and the other half of the time worrying that he wouldn’t ever come back to her.

  The keys dropped from her frozen fingers.

  “Shit,” Daisy said.

  Someone called to her.

  “Daisy.”

  She looked up and saw Allison and her daughter, Brandy, walking toward her.

  Whenever Brandy visited, she liked to dress in Allison’s clothes. Today, she wore her green wool houndstooth blazer as a coat and her own earmuffs, each ear covered in a round white bunny face.

  “Where have you been hiding?” Allison said, leaning against the car.

  Daisy shrugged.

  “With that guy?” Allison said.

  Daisy looked down at her keys laying on the gravel. Sam had given her the key chain for her birthday. A plastic pot of daisies.

  “Willie,” she said.

  “I guess we both scored big at that party,” Allison said. “And you wanted to leave.”

  Daisy looked at her and noticed for the first time that Allison had had her hair cut and curled. She looked like a beauty pageant contestant.

  Allison laughed and touched her hair. Her gloves were fuzzy, bright turquoise. When she dropped her hand, tiny turquoise threads lingered in her curls.

  “Brad paid,” she said. “A perm. A manicure. The works. He wants me to look respectable.”

  “Brad.”

  “From the party. Remember?”

  Daisy nodded. “The man in the suit,” she said.

  In her mind, his face was a blank circle.

  “Where’s Sam?” Brandy asked.

  She clutched a present wrapped in red and green plaid paper. She had the face of a very old woman.

  Daisy bent down and picked up her keys. The metal was cold in her palm, like an ice cube tray right from the freezer. She thought of Mackenzie’s voice on her answering machine. “We’re on our way,” she’d said. “We’ll be there first thing tomorrow.” Daisy wished she’d let him stay in Rhode Island through the holidays.

  “I have a present for him,” Brandy said.

  “He has one for you too,” Daisy said, trying to figure out when she’d have time to pick something up for Brandy.

  “Janet helped me pick it out.”

  “Janet?”

  “Her father’s girlfriend,” Allison said. “A lawyer on the Hill. How do you like that? Brandy shows up last night dressed from head to toe in Esprit. The sweater alone runs fifty bucks. A present from Janet, she says. And her father’s sitting out front in a brand new BMW. That’s Janet’s car, she says. In fact, Janet’s about the only thing she’s talked about.”

  Daisy shook her head. Brandy and Allison knew the words to every song from the fifties and sixties and used to sit for hours singing them, until their voices grew hoarse. Sometimes, watching them, Daisy felt sad, as if by having a son she’d been deprived of some things.

  “Janet. Janet. Janet,” Brandy said. She had on long black cocktail gloves, satin ones that Allison wore on dates sometimes.

  “I’ve got to run,” Daisy said.

  The key slipped smoothly into the lock. Daisy blew on her hands.

  “Wait.” Allison touched her arm. Turquoise fuzz clung to Daisy’s coat.

  “Brad and I are having a little get-together,” she said. “Tomorrow night.”

  “A get-together?” Daisy said. The term seemed foreign coming from Allison.

  Allison blushed. Or was it the cold turning her cheeks red?

  “Brad wants me to meet his friends. And vice versa.” She leaned close to Daisy and whispered, “He says he’s never felt so close so fast. He says,” she glanced around, as if making sure no one else could hear, “he says we’re soul mates.”

  “Allison,” Daisy said.

  “He works for IBM.”

  She said this last like she’d won the lottery.

  “You can bring—”

  “Willie,” Daisy said.

  “Are you whispering about me?” Brandy said.

  “Willie,” Allison said. “And Sam. He’ll be back tomorrow, right?”

  “Yes,” Brandy said in an exaggerated tone. “Do bring Sam.”

  The clock on the dashboard said ten-thirty. Daisy sighed. She would never be able to pick up the order and get to the meeting on time. But Allison still had hold of her arm.

  “Seven o’clock,” she said. “All right?”

  “All right?” Brandy said.

  Daisy twisted free and got into the car.

  “Yes, yes,” she said, slamming the door. “Yes,” she said again, although the windows were closed and she had already started to back up. She turned the heat on full blast.

  Allison had started to walk back to her apartment, but Brandy stood, clutching the Christmas present.

  Daisy pulled up beside Allison and rolled down the window. In the distance, Brandy was saying, “Seven o’clock. For cocktails.”

  “Yes,” Daisy said, “we’ll come. It’ll be great.”

  Sam slept beside Mackenzie, his head bent at an awkward angle to rest on the armrest of his seat. On a screen in front of them, an Ed Sullivan Show from 1966 flickered. Paul McCartney sat alone on a stool singing “Yesterday.” The tape dragged, Paul’s voice ground robotlike to a halt.

  “Oh, I believe, in yesterda-a-a—”

  On the white-lit screen, Jason’s head appeared in shadow.

  “What,” he said.

  A pencil tucked behind his ear stretched like a black rifle in the silhouette.

  Mackenzie and Sam had driven directly to the rehearsal of his new play when they’d left Rhode Island. Rehearsals for Still Looking for Paul McCartney were in a warehouse on Tenth Avenue, near the meat packing district. Mackenzie smelled, or imagined she smelled, blood everywhere. A draft blew through the cracks in the big wooden sliding doors.

  They had left for New York early that morning. Aunt Hope had left even earlier to meet Ricardo Havana at the Pewter Pot for breakfast. Mackenzie had watched as her aunt dabbed perfume on her wrists a
nd neck. “My pulse points,” she’d said. She’d put on a pink beaded sweater and skirt. “You know,” she’d told Mackenzie, “Jackie Kennedy had an outfit just like this one.” The beads formed the petals of flowers, delicate lines leading to a thick and shiny center.

  At the car, John-Glenn said to Mackenzie, “You can’t open any presents yet. We’re waiting for you to come back with your mother.”

  All through Rhode Island, Sam had opened and closed the electric windows in the car. He wanted to test a weather indicator he’d bought as a souvenir for Brandy. It was a card with a picture of a girl in a lavender felt bonnet. The bonnet changed color with the weather. A code at the bottom of the card explained what each color meant. Every time Sam stuck the bonnet out the window, it came back lavender. Until they reached Connecticut. Then, suddenly, it turned blue.

  “Blue,” Mackenzie had read, glancing down at the card. “Hazy. Hot. And Humid.”

  Sam frowned. He rolled the window down again and a blast of freezing air blew in.

  “Well,” Mackenzie said, “we are heading south.”

  He looked at her, confused.

  Mackenzie realized how often she forgot that he was just a little boy.

  “It’s warmer down south,” she’d said. “Like in Florida. And Mexico.”

  He’d nodded solemnly, his eyebrows scrunched up as if the information were being processed through them.

  At a McDonald’s in Connecticut, Sam ate Chicken McNuggets with the chopsticks from the Red Dragon and drew palm trees and a blazing sun on the back of his napkin. “That’s right,” Mackenzie had said. “That’s what it’s like in the South. Hot and Humid.”

  Now, in sleep, Sam lay stiff and rigid. Mackenzie wondered if he was dreaming of a sunny beach somewhere.

  The lights came on, bright, in the warehouse.

  Kyle O’Day sat in front of the screen, her legs wrapped in leg warmers and crossed yoga style. She wore a black Danskin body suit and flowing black skirt. A pink scarf draped around her neck shimmered with silver threads. Jason stood over her, a notebook opened in his hands. Mackenzie watched him as he gestured, drew circles in the air and pointed. Kyle blew a big bubble with her gum.