When We Disappear

by Lise Haines

  “‘And they’re off,’” Nitro said.

  “We watched as our horse gradually broke out from behind all the other horses, the jockey whipping her hard. She won by a nose. And so with one pale-orange ticket my father had suddenly earned $7,688. But instead of jumping up and down he sat back and smiled to himself, as if to say, It was only a matter of time. And I floated along with him, thinking everything in our world had changed.

  “We collected the money in hundred-dollar bills at a window where the cashier chewed mint gum that she snapped when she reached each thousand. Her supervisor looked on like an umpire as the cashier fanned the bills out for our inspection. My father glowed and I glowed. When the bills were tucked safely in his jacket, we went downstairs and through the turnstile. To find our car out in the lot we had to walk a long time, and I hoped the extra walking would clear his head. He was weaving quite a bit.”

  “You must have been scared.”

  “I was sure he wouldn’t drive if he was drunk, and he said we’d stop for more coffee as soon as we got to the place where we always stopped along the way. It wasn’t far. Dad and I joked and laughed while I looked for our silver sedan. Silver, it seemed, was a popular color that year, but he said, ‘You’ll find it. You’re clever like your mother. God, is she going to be happy.’ There were tickets strewn everywhere along the ground, and in a sudden gust of wind I saw a dust devil carry some of them upward, but just as quick it stopped, and I marveled as the tickets rained down on an old station wagon.”

  “That would be beautiful to film.”

  “It was. Like a movie. When I finally found our car I looked at his reflection curved around the fender, and I thought that the high gloss mirrored something sort of underneath that moment. A sense that our happy life wasn’t all that happy, or that he wasn’t. I knew that some shift had occurred that let me see a little deeper into my father.

  “We drove back through the flatlands and stopped at this place that served thick malteds out of one of those metal cylinders that hold the spillover. He had a cup or two of coffee and left a huge tip and told me to always remember how hard people work and treat everyone with dignity. And then, against the cheerful red-and-white interior with framed drawings of cows and sloping hills, we turned fat with possibilities.”

  “Fat with possibilities,” Nitro said.

  “‘I might buy one of those leaf sweepers for the lawn,’ he said.”

  “That’s what he wanted?” Nitro asked.

  “‘And I just might get you an aboveground swimming pool with a ladder and deck to go around the edge. What would you think about that?’ he asked. Pressing his hair down with his palms, he said, ‘Everything’s looking up. You get that, don’t you? Really looking up.’

  “So once we got in the car again I leaned my head against the back of the seat and I … looked up. Driving by the hedges and fences and empty swimming pools and empty toboggan runs, I began to feel the car slide back and forth over the two sides of the road. I sat up and nudged his arm so he’d stay alert. A horn now and then let us know he had gone too far. His eyelids sometimes lowered. I wanted to call my mother, but neither of us had cell phones then. I was glad to see the water tower, the halfway mark before we got home. I loved that large metal bulb at the top painted brightly, standing out in the landscape like a color television. ‘Look, there it is!’ I called.

  “‘I climbed that thing once with some of my high school buddies,’ he said, his fatigue lifting. I turned away from him for a moment and thought about what it would be like to climb up the ladder to the top of the tower. And then what it would be like to let go and drop, arms out. The tower was even more beautiful now that the sun had finished setting, and the clouds stretched out the way they do—in one long, flat view. A woman’s voice was on the radio, and the balding tires raced on the asphalt. The traffic was just a trickle as everything for miles turned blue.

  “It took me a moment to realize that the car had begun to swerve again. I turned and saw a station wagon on the other side of the road, almost the color of the sky. We hurtled straight toward it. Then the screech of tires, the sound of metal hitting metal. My head hit something, maybe the dash, maybe my father’s arm.”

  Nitro sat back and squinted at me, waiting.

  “I guess some people would say we were the fortunate ones. When we stopped and I felt brave enough to open my eyes I saw that we were on the shoulder, on the opposite side of the road from where we had started. We had hit the back of the blue station wagon with our fender, and the station wagon had careened off the road and plowed into a giant advertising pole, the kind with a sign that turns at the top. Their hood was folded into the shape of a tent, and smoke rose from it. My father was already starting our car again, and I heard metal being wrenched apart as if the noise of the accident was playing backward.

  “As we drove in reverse, I saw two people in the car, a woman in front and a little girl in the back strapped into a car seat. The woman was trying to open her door, and the girl looked stunned at first and then started to cry. I was so scared for them I couldn’t breathe. The woman kept pounding on the glass.

  “Dad backed up and quickly drove a few hundred feet ahead to the end of the shoulder. Our car made a terrible noise. All that time I didn’t say anything because I knew we were about to turn around and help the people in that car. I just wanted him to hurry because everything felt like it was in slow motion. He got out of the car and told me to stay put. There was a lot of smoke coming from the other car, and he tried all the doors. He popped our trunk and rummaged around, and I guess he didn’t find what he was looking for and slammed it shut. He shouted something to the woman in the car, then came back and quickly tied up our fender. Once he was done we did a quick U-turn right across the double yellow line and headed back toward home.”

  “Didn’t he try to flag anyone down?”

  “No, he didn’t do that. There weren’t a ton of cars, though.”

  “So he just drove away?”

  “He drove a short way and turned until our car was heading east. I yanked on his arm as if it were a lever to move the wheels and said, ‘Are they going to be all right?’ He said, ‘Quiet down, Mona.’ I wanted to say, You have to save them! Instead, in my panic, I said, ‘You have to save me!’ I did what I could to correct myself, urgently, but he said, ‘Police cars patrol that strip all the time. They’ll be along any second now. We’re looking for a pay phone to make sure they know, just in case.’ When I couldn’t settle down, when I started to hyperventilate, he put his hand on my knee and said, ‘The sooner you get quiet, the sooner I’ll be talking to the police.’ I was nine, and maybe I stopped because I thought it was the only way to save anyone at all.

  “He pulled into a 7-Eleven and used a pay phone while I sat in the car looking at the window advertisements that made me feel dizzy. I had a terrible headache. When he got back in the car, he told me he had talked with the police and they had already arrived on the scene and the mother and daughter were just fine. I felt as if I could finally take a full breath.

  “We drove to a long commercial strip next, where we pulled in by a couple of Quonset huts. One of the huts had a sign over the door, Dave’s Body Shop. A man came out of the door, and he talked with my father for a while, and I saw my dad peel off some of the winnings from the track, or all of them, and hand this bundle to the man, who gave my dad some keys. I took my purse, and we got in another car and went home. But before we got there he talked to me about Mom, reminding me that the baby was due in a couple of months and that it would be best not to get Mom upset. If she heard we were in an accident, it would be hard for her. ‘Best not to tell anyone, Kitten,’ he said. ‘Because someone might tell her, and with your new little brother or sister on the way … I gave the man who’s fixing our car enough to fix the other car and help the people. Everything will be all right now.’

  “Before I went to bed that night I took off the dress my mother had laid out for me that morning as if I had been
on my way to church. And then I wasn’t sure why, but I wrote down the date and the name of the garage on a slip of paper, and the color of the car we hit. I tucked this inside a locket that had been my grandmother’s, and that went into the jewelry box I kept on my dresser, with the key taped to the bottom of my bed frame. And this act with the jewelry box became a ritual I performed whenever I wanted to keep things hidden.”

  “Leaving the scene without providing information, the payoff at the body shop, babe, that’s a classic hit-and-run.”

  “He had to get to a phone to call the police.”

  “But he didn’t say he gave them his name.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “There’s no statute of limitations on hit-and-runs, Mona.”

  “What?”

  “Your father could still be nailed on a felony.”

  I got up from the couch. I began to unlock his complicated industrial door with its many latches and pins. “I don’t need you,” I said and ran down the stairs and out into the street.

  He called out to me from the fire escape, but I kept going.

  Lola was playing with a wooden dollhouse when I got in. It had hand-carved cupolas, balconies, porticoes. I knew Mom had hauled it out of one of those houses and cleaned it up for my sister. It was seven thirty, and they had eaten dinner. Mom was lying on top of her covers, asleep. I watched as she sat straight up and said, “God, I must have dozed off.”

  When she was certain both Lola and I were all right, she watched for a while as I cleared the table, wrapped up the leftovers, wiped the kitchen counters down, and loaded the sink. Mom always thanked me for doing my share as if she didn’t quite trust that I’d do it again. Before long she went off to fall asleep in the small tub. When I was done with the kitchen I helped Lola look for furniture and a mix of different-sized people from her toy box. Not a family, exactly. More of a mash-up, the baby the biggest one of all, the father quite small with patched jeans and a sullen look, the mother’s hair white. We couldn’t find me yet.

  Before long Lola’s growing pains took over. She got in her PJs and brushed her teeth without my asking. I rubbed her legs.

  She said, “Dad’s going to like the little house.”

  “You’ve been thinking about him again,” I said.

  “He’s going to come home soon,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I feel it in my bones,” she said.

  Our grandmother on our mother’s side often said she felt things in her bones, so I tried not to make too much of this. Soon I tucked Lola in and kissed her and told her to get right to sleep. Mom pulled herself together enough to drain the tub, dry off, and get into her nightgown, and she too came over for Lola’s affection.

  Richard

  I’m going to ask you a favor,” Honey said when she picked me up at the bus station. “Go to see my second cousin, Jimmy Starr, the funeral director—I’ll loan you a car—and arrange to have Sor’s body sent to Alma. He can find out the funeral home she plans to use. Tell Jimmy to fill another casket with anything he’s got lying around that will seem like the weight of a body. When the girls get here we’ll sit and pray over a closed casket and get it buried on the property.”

  A minister would come out to the house on Monday, and the eulogy would be as quick as the sudden downpours that happened each afternoon.

  My three female cousins and their spouses, who had flown in in succession like cranes landing on a spit of land, sat around the living room, mostly silent except to ask me an occasional question about my family. I got overheated even in the chilled air conditioning. When we received a call that the minister would be an hour late I removed my jacket, unbuttoned the top button of my shirt, and rolled up my sleeves. Honey tied up her hair with a scarf and asked me to take a walk with her. Cousin Sarah volunteered to rustle up something in the kitchen for after the service, though we had all just eaten lunch.

  We headed out in the bright sun. Honey began to talk about her growing concern with greening, a disease spreading through the citrus belt. “I’ve been lucky so far,” she said. I could see how she grieved, that it was important to distract herself.

  When a car started down the long drive we moved to the far right side of the road. In the sun’s glare we couldn’t see who it was, but she said the minister must have broken away from his other obligations earlier than expected. The passenger had to be her cousin Jimmy Starr. “Now we can get this charade over with,” Honey said.

  But without warning the car picked up speed. It began to pull from one side of the road to the other. I grabbed Honey around the waist and pulled her to the shoulder behind an orange tree. Dust kicked into the air as the car came to an abrupt stop a few feet from us.

  Alma emerged from the passenger seat in a shirtwaist black dress. She glared at Honey, who had righted herself. I recognized Alma’s daughter Tina from a photograph as she got out of the driver’s side and stood timidly by her door. She looked as if she had been warned not to interfere. I could only imagine how they had fought for control of the wheel.

  “Can we help you?” Honey asked in a guarded way.

  “So this is the whore?” Alma said, coming right up to my face.

  “Hold on,” Honey said. “You’re on my property.”

  “And this one,” she said, “he’s just here for your money … the way Sorohan was.”

  “Don’t you have someone to bury now?” Honey said.

  What happened next came so fast there was no time to think. Alma was suddenly holding her paring knife. Maybe it dropped from her sleeve into her hand. She rushed Honey, and I stepped in front of her. Alma cut me across my left palm.

  Everyone stopped. The blood pooled and began to spatter on the gravel.

  “Now she can read your miserable fate instead of mine,” Alma said. I could see she was shaking from her own boldness.

  A muffled sound flew from my throat. Tina said, “Oh, God,” as if she hadn’t known her mother would let things go this far.

  “Get back in the car,” Alma said to her daughter. Tina did as she was told and fired up the engine. Alma joined her on the passenger side.

  Honey removed her scarf and wrapped it around my hand, telling me to keep pressure on it. Tina angled and turned the car as if she were doing this maneuver for the first time. After they drove off Honey said, “Don’t move.” She fell into a light jog in the direction of the house.

  At the hospital I said I’d had an accident slicing a bagel. The doctor who created the nineteen stitches across my palm commented on the precision of the cut, and I said nothing.

  If a hand is a map of your life, mine was now divided from the base of my palm right up my middle finger. It was what I had become, a man split from himself, the present unhinged from the past. But it was when I was driving back to the house with Honey that she offered her own interpretation. “You’re probably wondering what this does to your future.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it, to tell you the truth.” I hoped she’d realize I didn’t want to hear any more forecasts.

  “Given the direction of the line,” she said, pausing as we came to a stop at an intersection of two rural roads, “I think it’s the big fuck you to everything.”

  It felt good to break down and laugh.

  “Seriously, though. There’s something to be said about having the sins cut right out of you. Sor showed me something about that. He had a sense of freedom I did everything I could to emulate. If there’s something holding you down, you might just start living your life, he’d say. And that’s whether you head home or run off somewhere.”

  “But he came and went as he pleased, leaving you with the child rearing, the household, the ranch to manage. …”

  “I signed up for that, and he worked awfully hard around here when he was home. You spent a summer with him, so you know. Up early in the orchards so he could keep up with things. He knew every ranch hand on the property, their wives’ names, their ki
ds’ names, their medical conditions. … He rebuilt the cabinets in the kitchen, started restoring the outbuildings … took the girls to their athletic events, their plays. And, you know, I kind of liked having things my own way—calling the shots—making the big decisions on the business, the family. He had a heart larger than his circumstances. That’s what I think. I’m going to miss the hell out of that guy till the day I’m gone.”

  The cousins stalled the minister at the house until we returned from the hospital, and a false casket filled with blankets and phone books was lowered into the ground on ropes. It did occur to me that the funeral director, who drove out with the minister, might have switched things around and that we were actually burying Sor. But I didn’t ask.

  Honey made up some injury for me. By the end of Thursday everyone had flown off to their respective homes in various states of mourning and reluctance. I knew there wouldn’t be another reason to delay pushing on. I just didn’t know where I was going yet or how.

  For months I had checked the online job sites daily, and I had continued to do so while I was at Honey’s. The Sunday after my cousins left, she and I lingered over lunch and took a long walk late in the day, going in the opposite direction from the gravesite. We stopped near one of the outlying buildings. Pushing the door open, she said Sor had been remodeling this one. There were no outside steps yet, just a couple of crates. I gave her a hand up, not thinking she was used to getting in the door on her own steam.

  “It’s a usable studio if you want to stick around,” she said and showed me that the shower and toilet worked. Only the interior framing was in place and some of the countertops but no drywall. There was running water in the kitchen sink as well but no appliances. A plywood floor was in with Saltillo tiles in stacks and a couple of tubs of grout. She marked where she could supply a bed and chest of drawers. “Come to think of it, I have a refrigerator down in my cellar.”