The Art of Disappearing

by Ivy Pochoda

  Every so often, Max promised to come home. But we knew he wouldn’t. Somehow he was always buffeted by the tides before he reached our shores. We grew accustomed to his excuses and deferrals. Then Max called to say he was in Costa Rica and would arrive in Bermuda for an open-sea swimming competition the following morning. The next day, a plane ticket was waiting for me in our mailbox.

  Max’s letters had described several of these extreme swims, these Tidal Roars, as they were called. Held two or three times a year, depending on conditions, the contests summoned competitors to battle the currents of the toughest water—Hawaii, South Africa, the Philippines. In his letters, Max had mentioned huge swells, waves that loomed like houses, tunnels that could hold a city block. He described the blackout pressure of the water crashing over his body and the vacuum suck of the waves pulling him backwards.

  When I remember Bermuda, I prefer to think of its oddly tangible nighttime sky. When the sun falls away, the horizons pull in tight and seal the island beneath the dome of the approaching stars. Then the earth’s curve swells, pushing the land higher, so that it seems you could reach up and pull down one of the passing clouds or comb your fingers through the gray velvet of the darkened sky. Nighttime in Bermuda is like being trapped inside a lightless snow dome, the lapping of the water from all sides confirming your confinement. But at the first leak of light, the seal breaks, the sky recoils, and everything bursts into blue—a long call and response between turquoise water and azure sky.

  I took a taxi to the hotel and flopped on the bed, listening to the rhythmic whip of the fan blades as I willed my body to cool. Eventually, I crept into the hallway and tiptoed to Max’s room. I crouched down, my ear to the keyhole, held my breath, and listened. At first, all I could hear was the rolling of the waves in the bay outside the window Max had flung open. Short-long, short-long the waves arrived at the dock, licking the cruise ship and jostling the small boats anchored opposite the hotel.

  The door was open. Max knew I would come. Against the languid backdrop of the waves, his breath was deep and melodious. A hot wind was blowing the curtains, and there, almost floating on top of the sheets, was Max. He slept on his stomach, his face turned toward the door, his arms and legs spread like the outline of a crime scene. The wind lifted his hair. He had lost the solidity of his swim-team days. His limbs had strengthened and dried like driftwood. And like driftwood, all the unnecessary bumps and muscles were sanded away.

  When I returned to my room, I could not sleep. The dry cool of the air conditioner parched my throat, and the machine’s rattling cycle chased my sleep. Having used up all the cool spots on the pillows, I gave up and propped myself up in bed to wait for morning and for Max. I stared at the door, willing it to open, but my eyes let me down, and I slept.

  A sliver of light was trickling underneath the curtains, streaking the floor with a single stripe of sun. I flattened the pillows underneath my head and tried to recapture sleep. As I did, gathered into a dream like a fish in a fisherman’s net, my cheek met with a damp patch on the pillow. The last strains of an unfamiliar water song were echoing in my ears. Max had come and gone.

  The boat for spectators who wanted to watch the Tidal Roar left from the pier opposite the hotel. I went aboard and rode four miles out to sea, where the race began. My fellow passengers were a ragtag bunch of extreme sportsmen, reddened by the sun and roughened by the sand, and they whooped and hollered each time a wave broke over the prow of the boat. I heard Max’s name spoken several times as the likely winner.

  It took us almost an hour to navigate our way to the start boat. The water was no longer the vibrant blue and green I had seen from the airplane. Dark patches began to bubble up from the bottom of the sea and spread out like a lazy inkstain. While I examined these puddles, I sensed something cool and still hovering above the choppy water, something as placid and motionless as a fish eye. It was Max. As I watched the reflection of the start boat bobbing upside down on the white-capped waves, I saw my brother arrive on the deck—a pale blue figure among a crowd of sun-dyed surfers. A jellyfish among the dolphins. I watched him, distorted by the waves, bend and curve into impossible contortions. And I realized that I was not watching a reflection but seeing the actual ebb and flow of the underwater Max. It was his aboveground self that was the reflection—the unreal distortion.

  “Max!” I yelled, looking from the water to the boat itself. “Max!”

  My brother lifted his head and stared in my direction.

  “Max!” I cried, fighting the sound of the motors and the waves.

  Then almost without moving, he dived into the water and disappeared—a wave resettling into the sea. For an instant, his head broke the surface and I imagined that he called my name. Then he vanished.

  The swimmers entered the water after Max, and the race began. As we waited for them to return, the waves began to grow, slapping harder against the side of the boat and pulling the prow deeper into the darkening sea.

  “Swimmer! Swimmer!” someone cried, nearly dropping his binoculars.

  “Swimmer.”

  Everyone jumped up.

  “Ten bucks that’s Max,” someone behind me called.

  But as the exhausted swimmer pulled into view, cresting and crashing the waves, I could tell it wasn’t Max. Max would arrive with ease, slipping through the water without trying to subdue it. The panting swimmer was dragged on board. The winner rolled onto his back, lay still for a moment, and then pumped his fists in the air. “Some water,” he bellowed, coughing and sputtering. “You’ve got no idea where it’s taking you. Fifteen-footers. Beautiful black on the inside.” He wrapped himself in a towel. “You know,” he said quietly as he leaned against the railing of the boat, “I’ve never seen it so beautiful out there. Like a sapphire city.”

  Two more splashes broke through the surface. Neither was Max. Nor was Max with the pair who had to be rescued by a Jet Ski. The penultimate swimmer arrived on the horizon. When he was pulled on board, he fell in a heap. His eyes were panicked. He panted and heaved, expelling water from his lungs. After five minutes, he was able to speak. “That was rough. Beautiful, though. I took a beating, but it was worth it.” He let his head drop back against the deck. Five seconds later, he bolted upright and looked around him. “Hey, where’s Max?”

  “Not in yet. Probably taking one of his long routes,” one of the rescued swimmers suggested.

  The other swimmers laughed.

  “I saw him out there,” the final swimmer said. “We both got pulled way off course by this monster. Swallowed us whole right near the turn. It was sort of strange. Max stopped swimming and started treading water, looking out at another monster building in the distance.”

  His words flowed away, and I felt a spark of fear. If the other swimmers had seen an indescribable beauty at the water’s surface, Max would have certainly known about caves and pockets of wonder deeper inside it. The water’s call was so loud that day, even those who didn’t speak its language had heard its voice. But such enticements were lost on me, and all I heard was the victorious laugh of the ocean.

  This was the event I had been waiting for—an oceanic swallow, not a simple disappearance into a rainstorm. Max had been practicing for ages, seeking the combination of current and comfort that had borne him downriver, asleep and unharmed. And all the nights of water whispers, the drowned dreams, had prepared me for his final swim. He had painted a picture for me of his future—a home he knew I would never visit.

  I should have told the captain to turn back, that it was pointless to try to reel my brother in. Instead I remained silent, staring into the storm. The CB crackled. Our driver informed the start boat that Max was missing. The coast guard was alerted. Two hours passed. A tour boat radioed to report that Max had passed it five miles farther out, a solitary swimmer cresting the waves. A search party was dispatched. But I knew that by now Max would be looking for his underwater dinner, his mermaid kiss of oysters, his salad of kelp and seaweed. Later, he would b
ed down on his massive water bed and be rocked to sleep. Night fell. A fisherman’s voice crackled over the CB. Max had slipped past him in the dark water. He said the moon had broken through the clouds as my brother passed, a solitary swimmer centered in its reflection. I felt the ocean rise up over the edge of the boat, and I reached out to accept it—a good-bye kiss.

  Fifteen

  The chill from falling through the ice remained with me for days. I stayed in bed, shivering despite the tea and medicine Toby brought me. While he tended to me, a collection of objects from his past appeared, refuse from his explorations of the Dissolving World. I would wake to find his children’s editon of Gray’s Anatomy or the nesting dolls from his bedroom next to my pillow. His high school yearbook materialized between the sheet and duvet. Other objects that I did not recognize formed a trail from the bed to the door. The eerie overflow from Toby’s other world amplified the cold that filled me from the inside out. When it became unbearable, I would slip downstairs, where Piet would build a roaring fire.

  Toby often sat with me there. He’d hold me in his arms until I stopped shivering. As he did so, I noticed small changes in his appearance. Toby’s edges seemed to have blurred, and the sharp contrasts between his hair and skin had faded. I looked down at the hands wrapped around my body. Moons had appeared in his thumbnails, and pale suns set across the screens of his fingernails. From the jagged tree roots that I loved, a smooth pair of alabaster hands had emerged. I took one of his hands in mine. “Do you miss the way your hands used to look, all dry and desert tough?”

  “Miss?” Toby replied, holding me tighter.

  “You lost them somewhere between Nevada and Amsterdam.”

  Toby fluttered his fingers. “I could find them, I guess.”

  I shook my head. “Leave it.” I ran my fingers over his, reminded of how Max’s new body had broken though his childhood shell.

  Toby squeezed me tightly, and for a moment his strength subdued my shivering. “I summoned this cold. I should be able to banish it.”

  “Some of your tricks are one-way streets,” I said. “You still won’t accept that.”

  Toby shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be that way now.” He turned my head so we were eye to eye. “Let’s go somewhere warm.”

  “It’s winter.”

  “Not everywhere.”

  “No, Toby. I’m not going back in there.”

  Sometimes, I slept in the living room while Piet passed through during the night, keeping the fire alive for me. On one such night, Theo and Lucio arrived and settled in the kitchen to wait for Toby. I fell back asleep, waking later at the sound of my husband’s voice.

  “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “It’s been a while,” Lucio said. “We’re wondering if you’re ready to show some of your incomprehensible magic.”

  “That depends on what you want to see.”

  “There is one thing we are particularly anxious to see,” Theo said. “Piet says the Dissolving World is keeping you busy.”

  Toby was silent.

  “You make it work?” Lucio asked.

  “That depends what you mean,” Toby replied. “It takes me many places. But there are still some that are forbidden.”

  “Ah,” the mentalist replied. “In time, it will all work out.”

  “I don’t know,” Toby said. “No matter what I accomplish there, when I emerge, it is as if I’ve done nothing.”

  “That is one of the rules of the Dissolving World,” Theo said. I heard him uncork a bottle and fill three glasses. “Piet built the trick as a sideshow piece, something we could bring on tour with us. We planned to set it up outside the theater to lure people into our shows by giving them a glimpse of another world.” He paused for a moment. “Of course, this is the most pedestrian use of the contraption. What the Dissolving World can really do is make that other world a reality.” I heard him sip his drink. “There are limitations. Once the magician who has conjured this other world, whether from imagination or from memory, leaves it, that world is shattered and everything returns to the way it was before he stepped into the box.”

  “All magic has its limitations,” Toby murmured.

  “Or it wouldn’t be magic. It would be sorcery,” Theo replied. “You can save that girl over and over inside the box. But once you return, it’s as if you never went back.”

  “Of course,” Lucio said, “there are other small consequences of going back and meddling with the past. None of them is important at first. But the more you go and return, the greater these will be.”

  I thought of the detritus from Toby’s explorations of the Dissolving World that was filling our attic room.

  “The thing is,” Toby began, “I can’t even get close enough to save the girl. That memory is shut off to me. I can go almost everywhere else but there.”

  “But why save the girl?” Theo asked. “Saving the girl will mean remaining in Las Vegas. And that is no place for your magic.”

  “There are so many better places for you to go,” Lucio added.

  Toby cleared his throat. His words emerged, devoid of their usual static. “I need to see whether I can save the girl before I can decide whether or not I want to go back there or anywhere else. I will keep trying until I save her.”

  His visitors said nothing.

  “I will keep trying,” Toby repeated.

  I shivered and wondered if Toby would ever consider the charm of the present. “If that is what it takes for you to move on, then perhaps I can help you,” Lucio said.

  “How?” Toby replied.

  “Did you ever wonder where you sent your assistant?” Theo asked.

  “Of course.” Toby sounded tired.

  “I would think it’s a world not unlike the one you find inside that box. A world sprung from your imagination,” the elegant magician continued.

  “Maybe you will not believe me,” Lucio began, “but you have always been able to conjure a world of your imagining. You are probably not aware of it.”

  “Clearly not,” my magician said.

  “Now,” the Italian said, lowering his voice, “have you ever conjured the perfect person to your side at the perfect moment?”

  “I’m better at sending them away.”

  “No, no,” Lucio said, his voice slipping into a smooth stage patter. “Think.”

  “I can’t think of anything.”

  “How did you and your wife meet?” Theo asked.

  “Mel?”

  “Yes.”

  “We met in a small town in the middle of nowhere. A couple of hours outside Las Vegas.”

  “And you got married that night?” Theo asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You must have been lonely,” Lucio wondered.

  “Life on the road is lonely, and then—poof—there she is,” Theo said with a laugh.

  I didn’t stay for the rest of the conversation. I forgot the cold and rushed to the attic, where I lay under several blankets feigning sleep until Toby arrived.

  In the morning, Olivia picked up the phone on the first ring. Despite the hour, she was cheerful. I closed my eyes, imagining her standing in Leo’s world.

  “He conjured me,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Toby conjured me.”

  “When, just now?”

  I took a breath, trying to suppress my panic. “No, from the beginning. It’s all an illusion.”

  “Mel,” Olivia’s voice was sweet and soothing, “That can’t be true. First of all, you’re giving him too much credit. If he conjured you, which I’m fairly sure he didn’t, it was your choice to stay with him, right?”

  I nodded in invisible assent.

  “And there’s no way he keeps conjuring you morning after morning.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Anyway, Toby clearly loves you. Maybe it’s hard to tell sometimes behind all that magic. I mean he is a little strange, so he probably has strange ways of expressing himself.”

&nbs
p; Despite myself, I wanted to laugh.

  “It probably makes Toby feel better to think he’s conjured you. If you left, then he’d have a way to get you back. His greatest worry right now is that he’s going to lose you on top of everything else.”

  “I wonder. But if he’s worried I’m going to leave, why doesn’t he ask me?”

  “And why don’t you simply ask him if he conjured you?” Olivia didn’t wait for my response. “It would be too easy, right?”

  “I guess. But sometimes I can’t shake this feeling that something in our relationship is just a game to him.”

  “Magic is a game, isn’t it?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Look, these magicians are overgrown boys who are used to getting what they want. But there are many things their magic can’t do. One of them is making you stay somewhere you don’t want to be.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “Well,” Olivia said brightly, “if you really think he conjured you, let’s conjure him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your quilt,” Olivia said. “It’s magic, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “We’ll conjure him with your quilt and see what he has to say.” Olivia waited. I said nothing, and she continued, “I’ll pick you up at the station. Bring something that reminds you of Toby.”

  I passed through Leo’s gate and felt warm again. It was winter, and the villa’s gardens were washed out, but somehow they revived me. Olivia I went to the studio, where she’d arranged a lunch of small sandwiches and salads.

  “What did you bring?” she asked.

  I pulled the Navajo marriage blanket from my bag. I also took out my old quilt, the one I’d started during my time in the West.