When We Disappear

by Lise Haines

  I went over and stood by the door, looking out, and watched crates of oranges being loaded onto a flatbed. Maybe she would offer me a chance to pick oranges if my hand healed right. Or make me a watchman or teach me the business of selling oranges. Maybe she’d stock the place with bedding and towels and even line me up with something to drive so I could get into town. I was not unaware of how remarkable it was that not one but two people had offered me shelter in the last few months. I could make something of this dwelling, get some insulation in, throw up some drywall. But I was also aware that in doing this I would be no closer to home.

  When I took stock, I had a little over sixty dollars, a coupon for a free donut and coffee in Atlantic City, and an hour of phone time left on a prepaid card. I sat at her computer to check employment sites yet again. I was used to moving through the endless screens, but then I realized I might have seen something and clicked back to the last page, and there it was: Experienced Insurance Salesman. Of all things the contact number was in Chicago. I wondered if the contact, Matt Finnegan, was the same Matt Finnegan I had met at a Toastmasters luncheon a few years back.

  There was his picture on the company site.

  I called my former boss in New Jersey, pretending to be a new client so I could reach him. Before he could hang up on me I told him I would no longer pursue my commissions if he would send one hell of a recommendation letter to Matt Finnegan before ten a.m. the next day, stating that I had filled in until his brother returned to work. He agreed to give my true sales figures if Matt called, but he wouldn’t put them in writing. I just had to keep my fingers crossed he’d do one decent thing here.

  By eleven a.m. I had attached an updated résumé and sent it off to the firm in Chicago. I made a good accounting of what I had done in the time between the two companies, noting my heavy involvement at the senior center in Evanston. I had put in three days a week for months when I lost my first job, at Liz’s prompting, and I said in my cover letter that this had given me an understanding and appreciation for seniors’ needs and wants, something essential in working with baby boomers—the primary group Matt Finnegan was after. Rather than list the dollar store, I stated that I had been helping a close aunt and uncle on their ranch until they got on their feet in difficult times. It’s all a matter of how you tell the story.

  I got a call back the next day from Matt’s personal secretary, who wanted to set up a Skype meeting. Phil had come through. I put on my suit, knotted my tie, and set my talking points down on the blotter next to me. I kept my injured hand out of the camera’s reach and pulled my hair back into a ponytail, hoping I wouldn’t need to turn my head. I should have gone to the barber. When the signal came through, I gave away some of the best ideas for capturing this market, reserving enough to deliver in a second meeting if I got one.

  Matt told me frankly that he was very impressed but warned me that since he was in a start-up phase, the pay would disappoint.

  I did not say, Compared to the dollar store?

  We scheduled a lunch in Chicago in four days to discuss terms. Honey loaned me plane fare and a little extra and drove me to the airport the next day. She told me to come back anytime. Once I reached O’Hare I planned to take the Kiss-n-Fly bus and surprise Liz and the girls. It was time to get my house in order.

  When the steward came by I purchased a Johnny Walker to toast Uncle Sor from the clouds. I don’t know what it was exactly. Even before I had a sip I noticed that colors appeared more intense. The sky brighter, the lakes and farmlands more vivid, even the boy next to me who watched a movie while his mother flipped through a glossy magazine—the way the light touched his hair from the uncovered window—he seemed to glow.

  His mother placed an arm around his shoulders. I sat back and took a sip, and everything Honey said to me about Sor the day I was injured hit my mind like saturated light. I had been a foolish man. I would never let this happen again.

  “How old?” I asked the mother.

  “Five.”

  “I have a five-year-old,” I said. I was aware that my eyes were starting to fill. Looking away, I studied my ticket.

  By the time I got to Evanston Lola would still be in aftercare. They wouldn’t know me at her school—it had been a lifetime since Mona had gone there, and people move around, administrators change. I doubted Liz would have filled out a form saying I could sign Lola out. Why would she?

  Liz would still be at work. My thoughts moved from court to court, wondering which side she’d land on when I appeared.

  It’s possible I could catch Mona at her job, where I might begin to make some repairs. The bus ride was long, but it gave me time to think. Snow began to fall in large flakes.

  Once I got to Davis I walked the ten blocks or so over to Church. By then the snow was coming down steadily. I had second thoughts about showing up at Geary’s. The worst thing I could do to Mona was crowd her.

  I was close enough to the L, and that would practically take me to their door. I stood for a minute by the alleyway next to the bakery, where we used to get fresh bread and cookies and often a coffee cake on Sundays. The bright neon sign and fogged-up windows. I watched the steam roll out of the kitchen vents, pumping out the smells of baked goods, and decided to get everyone a treat. That’s when I spotted Mona. She was right there, about to walk past me.

  I called out. She had her earbuds in, and I meant only to touch her arm as I called to her again, but I misgauged her reaction, the slick surfaces. I began to lose my footing. Mona was jerked backward along with me.

  “What the fuck!” she shouted as she swung round like a door flying off its hinges. Wet snow clumped on her cap, forcing it down over her eyes. Her earbuds came loose, and the sound of tinny music hit the air.

  We regained balance, and I gently let her go. She yanked the cap from her eyes, snow easing down her face and neck, and I thought for a moment she was prepared to shove someone’s nose up into his skull before she realized it was me.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Am I all right?” she said, shaking and pulling snow from her collar.

  “I’m sorry, dear. I slipped. I was calling your name.”

  She straightened out her jacket. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  Both of us realigned our packs. “Let’s get out of the cold,” I said. “Deli all right? I was thinking of catching you at Geary’s, and suddenly you were there.”

  “Okay,” she said sternly.

  I wanted to put an arm around her, but I waited.

  We waded through the slush, and once we were inside the deli I hung my coat up on a hook. It was the same wool coat I had when I left, but it had frayed at the cuffs and was in bad need of cleaning. I chose the booth we used to sit in on Saturdays. “You used to love this one,” I said.

  She shrugged and sat down.

  I placed my pack so that it blocked my side of the booth and I could grab it easily, as if someone might steal my stuff if I set it down for more than a second. Brushing the snow off the top, I dug my phone out of my pocket and placed it on the table.

  Nothing had changed in the deli, and I found that comforting. On the back ledge and along the wall a number of items were glued into place: a cluster of plastic calla lilies; a wooden decoy duck that had once been a working phone; a ceramic ballerina with a scratchy pink skirt and two green rhinestone eyes, one gouged out with a pen or knife; a photo of Einstein speckled with a coating of resin; two broken 45s. When Mona was little, these were fascinating objects. I wondered if they now looked to her like junk the owner had hauled down from his attic.

  Where some fathers play Hanged Man or Tic-Tac-Toe with their children to get them through restaurant waits, I used to tell stories. Liz liked to say that some of them were odd, even a little sinister, but when I’d tone them down, Mona said they were dull. Sometimes I made up a quick tale about each person in the restaurant, and it was her job to match the tale with a face. I remember her being disappointed at times when the food arrived. She
loved to win at this game.

  I was a little stunned when she took her wool cap off and blue hair tumbled out, as I kept trying to adjust my thinking about the daughter I had left two years earlier and the one I had returned to. Even her eyes scared me a little with the piercing through one brow. I don’t mean she looked scary but that I was scared for her, not sure what these things meant yet not wanting to grill her.

  She opened her pack, and I watched her unwrap an old camera case she had buried in a winter scarf. Pulling the camera out, she placed it on the table and popped it open.

  “That’s a beauty,” I said.

  “Geary’s Hasselblad.”

  “I’m sorry you had to put college on hold. I hope I’ll be able to fix that soon.”

  She sputtered, almost laughing, and said, “It’s a waste of time to go to art school to be a photographer.”

  I think that was a show, that she was sparing me a conversation over rudimentary economics. When I looked away for a moment to grab the attention of the waitress, Mona took a shot of me, and then another when I turned around. I didn’t say anything, though I might have looked troubled. She cranked the film into position again. I recalled Liz telling me a story about Geary, that he had taken photos of his father in his final illness and then moments after his death and at the burial. Liz said this was how Geary got through it. His sister and brother wouldn’t speak to him for a couple of years after he shot the open casket.

  “I can’t believe I’m sitting across from you. I’ve missed you so much.”

  As a large extended family came through the door Mona turned to watch them. There were the ones who seemed to belong together by features and body type, and the ones who didn’t. Neither of my girls had my features, though we did share good dental health and hearing. And all three of us had cowlicks at the hairline. Everything else was Liz.

  When the waitress looked over I raised an empty cup. Mona cocked her head to one side as if she understood me better at a tilt. She took two more shots as our coffees were poured.

  “I like it,” I said. “Your hair.”

  “You stand alone,” she said. “How long are you here for?”

  The waitress was tall and stooped at the shoulders with a round belly half covered by an apron. She poured the coffee and pulled her pad from one of its pockets. “What can I get you folks?”

  I poured cream and sugar almost to the brim, as if I were trying to make a meal out of it, a habit I had picked up in New Jersey.

  “We’d be grateful if you’d keep the coffee flowing. We’re chilled to the bone,” I said. Then I brushed at something on the front of my shirt as if a stain would fly off at my insistence.

  “You need a few minutes to decide?”

  I asked Mona if she’d like something, but she said she’d eaten a late lunch.

  “I think,” I said, looking to Mona for agreement, “that coffee should do it today.”

  “We have a minimum at the booths,” the waitress said and pointed to a small sign taped to the register.

  I felt myself flush, used to this business of being kicked out of places whenever I was trying to catch a little rest and get warm. “There are quite a few empty tables,” I said.

  “I’ll bring you a menu,” she said, turning away. “Or you can sit at the counter if you’d like. I don’t make the rules.”

  While the waitress was still in earshot I said, “She just enforces them.”

  But I realized right away that I had made Mona uncomfortable.

  I looked for conversation. “So I imagine you have a boyfriend by now,” I said, but again I was instantly aware that this was a stupid thing to bring up.

  “The postcards …” she said, changing subjects. “Lola collects all of them in a scrapbook. The picture of a boat moving through the Everglades. Sun out, water shimmering, cranes in motion. She loved that one. We loved knowing how comfortable your life had become.”

  I didn’t bring up the postcards she had sent me, as much as they continued to trouble me. “There hasn’t been a day when I didn’t miss all of you,” I said.

  She took two more shots.

  “Maybe we could give the camera a rest for a while?”

  She left the Hasselblad open, sitting on the table, and sipped her coffee.

  “If you really want a picture of me I should freshen up, comb my hair at least.”

  “I’m just taking a test roll. I’ll junk it when I’m done.”

  But I knew there was no such thing as a junk roll with Mona.

  “How’s our little girl?” I asked.

  “My sister loves school.”

  “I can’t wait to see her.”

  The waitress came by again, but Mona really didn’t want anything, so I ordered eggs. Then, given a choice of fresh fruit or potatoes, I said to the waitress, “You decide.”

  She eyed me as she topped off our cups. Mona picked up her camera and recorded this exchange as well. I watched the waitress walk over to the grill and talk with the other waitress and the short-order cook on duty. All of them looked our way.

  “I should clean up a little anyway before we head over to the house. Maybe we’ll get the eggs to go.”

  “Apartment,” she said. “Head over to the apartment.”

  “Of course. I guess you’re pretty close to the lake.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “I’d like to surprise your mom. I have some good news to share. With all of you.” I put my pack on the seat next to me and dug around, getting out a comb and a toothbrush and toothpaste. I should have spruced up at the airport.

  Mona

  There were times, after he left, when I would see my father go by on the street or look at me from a car window—in fleeting seconds. Then I would realize the trick my mind had played. When I was younger and my cat died, for weeks afterward, out of the corner of one eye, I saw him run through the kitchen or dart under a table, making ghost images.

  I hadn’t expected him to return, and certainly not in an alley in the middle of a snowstorm to give me a fucking heart attack. Then to see him standing there like a scarecrow. He was so thin, his hair scraggly and almost bald on top, his coat stained. He had this serious bandage on one hand. I thought he was sick or had gotten into a brawl or both. But then he said he had good news, and that didn’t sound like cancer or a bar fight to me.

  I saw how sorry he was about things. He even told me he liked my hair. I recorded that lie with the Hasselblad and the way he flinched—he could be pretty straight-laced. The minute he wanted to go over to the deli I knew that if I sat down and heard the whole miserable story of the last two years, I’d feel sorry for him. I’d feel so sorry I’d do whatever I could to drop the hard days he had handed us like a collection of broken tools we could neither fix nor throw out until he got home. But then, as we were sitting in that booth, I thought about it again. And I imagined as soon as he’d walk through the door Mom and Lola would flutter with nerves while I looked on, wondering what he was up to. I didn’t want to see them get hurt a second time.

  “I brought everyone a little present,” he said. “Just something from the airport. I didn’t have time to plan ahead.”

  It occurred to me that his pack contained everything he owned now. He had left the furniture when he went to New Jersey. He had left his share of the wedding china and the silver set, the linen and rugs, the framed art and the lamps, the appliances—all the items we had to sell. He went away light of possessions. He came back thin and empty. We didn’t need empty. We had enough of our own.

  When Dad got up from the table and went off to the bathroom to make himself presentable, I knew this was about Mom. And in that moment I honestly didn’t care who he was if he was going to show up out of the blue and make things harder for her. I felt jumpy and picked up his phone.

  He didn’t have any pictures or music or much in the way of apps. He always said he was all thumbs, that it was easier to sit down and write a letter or talk by phone. He didn’t have a password, and t
he number code was the one he always used: 5050. I started to scroll through, saw the name Edie, and had no idea who that was. I heard the door to the men’s bathroom open. I saw him pay the check at the register and make arrangements with the waitress to wrap the food. Sliding back into the booth, he placed his things in his pack, held it up, and then seemed to realize how damp it was on the bottom. He wiped the seat and rested the pack on the floor again.

  As he stirred his coffee, I had this picture in my mind of cutting the ropes to the bottom of his feet and watching him drift off, getting smaller and smaller.

  “I assume Mom and Lola won’t be home for a while,” he said. “Do you want to go by the house on the way? Just to look at the old place again? I’m curious to see if the new owners made any changes.”

  “I’m not … I’m sorry you didn’t call first. Mom’s just …”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “She told you she has a boyfriend, right?”

  He shifted his head like there might be a spot where he had better hearing.

  “They took off with Lola and his kids to Michigan to get some skiing in. I would have joined them, but I’m drowning in work.”

  He began to clear his throat as if something was lodged there. “You’re not serious,” he said, waiting for me to let him up.

  “He’s nice enough, I don’t know, maybe a little dull. He’s a lawyer and his father is a federal judge, so David is thinking he might take that route in time. His kids are okay. We get along.”

  “David,” he said and sat back in the booth, his face drained of color.

  I took a photograph of his sorrow and then one of his effort to recalibrate. I set the camera down when the waitress brought the food wrapped to go. She topped off our coffees once more and told us to have a good day the way someone wishes you a little poison with your sweet. I watched my father stir his coffee again and throw the spoon down. I don’t think he meant for it to skid across the table. He tried to grab it back while I pulled the camera out of its path.