When We Disappear

by Lise Haines

  “Okay, the pocket pizzas and the hamburger buns.”

  “We can’t have hamburgers without hamburger buns,” Lola said, her lower lip starting to quiver.

  “Okay,” Mom said. “Help Lola pick out cupcakes. Two.”

  Under those spinning palm trees and beach-umbrella cutouts, we watched her load her arms with food products we would have gladly argued to keep. As she walked away, she dropped the heavy jug of orange juice—I almost called after her, and then other items began to cascade from her arms. I moved to help, but she put up a flat palm so I’d halt.

  “Lola,” I said, turning round. “Oh, wow, bunny-rabbit cupcakes, balloon cupcakes … this is going to be hard.”

  We got in the checkout line a short while later and were half unloaded when our old neighbors Beth and her father, Art, got in line one register over. We used to live down the street from them in Evanston, and Beth and I had been in the same graduating class at the high school. There were moments of artifice whenever we ran into them. “Hi, Art,” Mom said. “Beth sure has gotten tall.”

  “I keep telling her she should go out for the NBA.” He lined several six-packs of soda onto the belt.

  “Okay,” Beth said, rolling her eyes.

  “She warned me when she got into Northwestern that I’d need to keep the mini fridge stocked at all times.”

  “Such a great school. Mona’s working in a photographer’s studio.”

  Lola and I went ahead and stacked items onto our conveyor belt. This was something she loved to do, slowly, meticulously.

  Our cashier said, “That will be one ninety-eight sixty-four with your rewards card.”

  “Excuse me, Art,” Mom said, going over to where the checker waited. She pulled a new card from her wallet. It was a food-stamp card. She dropped her voice and handed this to the cashier. “This is my first time.”

  The checker said, “You slide a SNAP card, just like a debit card, in our keypad and—”

  Mom looked intimidated, so I pulled the card out of her hand and swiped it in the machine before the woman could finish.

  “Only the assignee is allowed to make purchases. And you can’t get household items on a SNAP card,” the cashier said, staring my mother down. “You’ll have to pay for those separately.”

  “Are you sure?” Mom said. “No one told me that.”

  “They didn’t give you the list of restricted items?” the woman said loudly, as if my mother was trying to run a Ponzi scheme in the A&P.

  Mom took an audible breath. “What’s on the list?”

  “Household items, cosmetics, paper goods, things from the deli … You really have to go to the website.” The checker looked at the line that had formed behind us.

  “No, they didn’t tell me anything. May I talk with the manager?”

  “Don’t, Mom,” I said touching her arm, as if I were trying to keep my mother from walking into oncoming traffic.

  “I have to get these things,” she said turning to me. “I only have fifteen dollars until I get paid.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “I have five dollars with me.” When I looked up I saw Beth, who appeared to be making a video of our transaction with her phone. I had no idea how long she had been recording us.

  I’ll get paid on Wednesday,” Mom said on the way home.

  “You didn’t tell me we’re on food stamps,” I said. With the engine noise and the pleasure of a special dessert, I hoped Lola wasn’t paying attention.

  “The manager came over and sent everyone else to another line. Thank God he recognized me. And I did buy the shampoo and the toilet paper.”

  “This is his fault,” I said.

  “No, no, he really was nice. He even finished ringing things up himself.”

  “You know who I mean.”

  We drove in silence for a while, my mother lost in thought, her brows drawn together. I wanted to see this as just another of the downward shifts, but I knew this was different. There was nothing of the rallying, the quick effort to mend. She had found a million ways to normalize for us, furniture sold but always making the environment inviting; a shift in the play-date routine but making sure Lola saw her friends; the effort to find that stable job that would bring in enough cash. I never heard her complain about not being able to sculpt, not once. But this was the first time she had been pilloried.

  I turned around. Lola, who was approaching her baked good slowly, with great care, said, “I love this cupcake.”

  “I’m glad, sweetheart,” Mom said without breaking her gaze. Lola drifted, peering out her window, content.

  Richard

  When Mona was young, maybe eight or so, we used to take our bikes to Lincoln Park and ride the paths. One time we went over to Wells Street for lunch, not far from Second City, and I told her about the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! that used to be across the street. She badgered me until I described Fish Woman. I’d seen her years ago, bright scales up and down her back. “She could breathe under water,” I said, “and swim across the ocean.”

  “Who else?” Mona asked.

  I told her about the man who could pass spears through his body without bleeding or feeling any pain. “This made it difficult to dress, you understand, when he would forget to pull them out.” She asked me to keep going and I did, at least until our hamburgers arrived, though the truth is I had never been inside the exhibition.

  Sometime after that we went miniature golfing with Liz. Mona said Alice lived beneath the golf course. Her mother was reading Alice in Wonderland with her at the time. “She fell down one of the holes,” Mona said, “when they were large enough for a girl to fall through.”

  This is what Mona and I did, competed with tall tales, when she was still her father’s daughter.

  She would show me her report card first. She dragged me to the beach when she wanted to swim. I was the one to tuck her in at night. Insisting I sit next to her at the movies, she curled into my side while Liz patiently held the popcorn. We had our home and Liz worked away at her sculptures and we had big potlucks with our friends and my daughter adored me as I did her. I was in so many ways a joyous man.

  Then Mona spent increasing amounts of time looking at art books or helping in the garden Liz was planting. She would have a sudden need to understand something about welding. A ten-year old girl who had nothing better to do in this world than to learn how to weld.

  There was one day when I offered to take Mona to the ice-cream parlor and she said she had to go down to the basement and clean out the lint trap in the dryer. She has her mother’s dry sense of humor, so I laughed and said, “Okay, after you do that we can go out and treat ourselves to hot fudge sundaes.” Liz, who was standing nearby, said she could see my thoughts travel across my face as I attempted to look upbeat, or at least accepting, when Mona turned me down.

  Liz assured me many times that this was a phase some girls go through where they gravitate more toward the mother’s side of the planet. She had read her share of books on childhood and adolescent development and told me not to worry.

  I happened to walk into the kitchen one day when she and Mona were sitting at the table outside under the umbrella, their backs to the house. They didn’t seem to realize I was standing there near an open window. I believe Mona was twelve at the time. Just that morning I had stuck my neck out again. I had offered to take her bowling with a couple of her friends that weekend.

  Liz said to Mona, “You know, it’s not unusual for girls to spend more time with their mothers when they get to a certain age, and I know you’re busy with your friends, but is everything okay with you and Daddy?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Mona said and guzzled her iced tea.

  I watched Liz watch Mona. “You used to be pretty close with your father.”

  “I’m just busy with school and stuff.”

  “I know,” Liz said.

  Then Mona took her old Nikon out of its case and changed the lens to a 50 mm to get a nice, straight image, I guess, and she started
taking pictures of Liz. And Liz didn’t change her expression or shift about to alter the moment. Where I would have tensed up or at least felt I should button a shirt button or smooth my hair down, Liz was comfortable with this kind of intrusion, even encouraged it.

  “I know he misses your company,” Liz said. “Maybe you’d like to give him another try.”

  “You’re making too much out of the bowling thing,” Mona said. “I don’t like bowling.”

  “Suggest something else,” Liz said. “I’m sure he’d be flexible.”

  “Why are you pushing this?”

  “I guess I just want you two to be close.”

  They gave their conversation a break for a while, nursing their beverages. Then Liz gave things another stab. “I’m going to go ahead and say this. And I’m not suggesting I think this is happening because if I did, I would take swift action, but if you ever get in a situation where anyone, anyone at all is ever doing anything inappropriate to you …”

  I was horrified. I didn’t know what to do. I really didn’t.

  Mona lowered her camera and said, “Jesus, Mom.”

  “You’re the sun and the moon to me, sweetheart. That’s all.”

  “You really need to chill, Mom. I’m just … Dad and I are different. You’re in the arts. He’s …we don’t have a lot to talk about, and I’m too old to do the daddy-daughter crap like miniature golf and go-carts. Now, can we change the subject?”

  Why wasn’t Liz defending me? She wasn’t speaking up at all. And why in God’s name was she letting Mona get away with that kind of language? I wanted to run out there and say, Hey, this nice house, this nice neighborhood, the camera around your neck and the four others in your bedroom, they’re all paid for by my ability to sell insurance. But I didn’t.

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” Liz said. “I’m sorry. That was a completely idiotic way of saying you can come talk with me about anything, anytime.”

  “What I want to talk with you about is my new shots. I did a triptych. …”

  Twelve and she was talking about triptychs. Honestly, sometimes I think that’s the day I lost her. Right there.

  “I really want to take a photo class with Mr. Geary, Mom. I’m under the age limit, so he wants to see what I’ve been doing before he’ll admit me. Can you take a look?”

  “I think we can arrange that,” Liz said, scraping her chair back. I moved slowly, noiselessly, back to the living room so they wouldn’t know I had ever been there.

  Mona came through the door first, grocery bags in hand. I was on the phone, checking in with Honey, pausing long enough for the elevated train to pass, when I heard the keys in the locks. I had waited two days to show my face again. Honey was convinced that giving things another try was the right thing.

  When Mona saw me she dropped one of the bags, and something shattered inside.

  Standing there with a deep scowl, she noted the coffee maker with its red, glowing light and the box of sugar where I had left a spoon stuck in the top—her look saying I had no right to use their coffee, their water, their granules. I told Honey I’d call her back and scrambled to stand and turn off the phone.

  Liz came through the opening to the kitchen next with Lola in tow. My arms dropped to my sides, my hands open, but everyone was frozen on the spot, and I felt this well of confusion.

  “It’s really good to see you,” I said, looking first to Liz and then to Lola.

  Liz looked as if she weren’t able to release her grocery bags from her hands, and Lola got right up behind Mona, hiding. I couldn’t believe how big she’d gotten, how much she resembled her sister. I had photos, but those were a few months old, and it’s different in person. I understood she didn’t recognize me.

  “Let me help you with those,” I said. But in that quick moment Liz let me know she had it covered.

  She hoisted the bags onto the counter and said, “I’m just a little breathless from the stairs.”

  I went over and touched her arm and said, “One of your neighbors took pity on me and found the super down in the laundry room. He let me in. I’m glad you weren’t away.”

  “The super let you in?” Liz said, clearly trying to keep up.

  “I showed him my license, explained everything.”

  “What’s everything?” Mona asked.

  The room got still and Liz gave Mona a harsh look and maybe I hoped my expression said something about forgiveness—the kind that might move between Mona and me with a little effort.

  “Mona, put the rest of the groceries away,” Liz said, “and then play a game of Chutes and Ladders or something with Lola. I’ll be back in a while.”

  “You sure you don’t want me to call someone?” Mona said.

  Maybe she meant the police, the Halyards, Liz’s brother. Who knew? I felt criminalized by my own daughter, and to make matters worse no one was cueing Lola in to the fact that her father was standing right there at arm’s length.

  “Do as I ask, love,” Liz said.

  I got on my coat and followed in Liz’s wake.

  “Are you coming back?” Lola called.

  Liz circled around and hugged her and kissed her the way I wanted to. “Of course I’m coming back, goose. No more than an hour or two. Mona’s in charge.”

  As we walked through the neighborhood over to Howard, Liz warned me about the park and showed me the mace she kept in her purse. She assured me Mona also carried a can.

  “You should have told me how bad things were,” I said, shaking my head.

  “And you’ve lost too much weight,” she said. “What happened to your hand?”

  “I’ll explain later. Right now I want to hear about you and the girls. I don’t think Lola even recognized me.”

  “She’ll take a while.”

  “She’s getting so tall.”

  “Her pediatrician thinks she’ll tower over Mona and me.”

  “I almost didn’t come after I talked with Mona. She explained about your having a boyfriend.”

  “What? When did you talk to her?”

  “Two days ago, when I got in. She said there’s a lawyer on his way to becoming a federal judge, with a vacation home in Michigan?”

  Liz stopped and said, “Wow. No, there’s no one like that.”

  “I came by to drop off a letter to say I understand. Your neighbor Mr. Kapur, he was so insistent I get out of the cold entryway. I didn’t want to start into the whole business about why I’ve been away. I thought I’d just go ahead, make some coffee and gather my wits before taking off again. I thought you were away.”

  “It’s all right. Tell me about this talk with Mona.”

  After I filled her in Liz said, “You’ll have to be patient, Richard.”

  “Maybe she’s involved with someone?” I thought that might explain the attitude.

  “I suspect a photographer, but she’s not ready to talk about that yet. Look, just tell me if you’re ill.”

  “I haven’t been eating right. That’s all.”

  Liz brought up Sor, and I told her about his two families.

  She told me about the trashouts. “Someone pulled the copper pipe out of the last one, but that’s for the repair crew to worry about.” She talked about the homeless men up in Detroit and other cities who spent their days hunting for any metal they could pull out of anything that wasn’t moving. Whole houses stripped clean. One of the top U.S. imports to China scrap metal. “Scavengers spend their winter nights trying to keep warm around fires built in metal drums, just making enough to get a decent meal here and there.”

  I didn’t know if I would ever be able to tell her where I had been. “I have some good news,” I said, and talked about the lunch interview coming up.

  Liz was the organized one. I remember going up to the attic one day to look for an old putting mat and finding an endless number of plastic bins she had purchased and filled, each clearly labeled with its contents.

  She said she had a few of my better shirts and ties still, and the two best s
uits were hanging in the closet. There was a tailor she liked. Maybe if we explained how important this was, he’d be able to make the alterations in time—at least on one of the suits—and see if he could do anything with the coat. Otherwise she had a consignment shop in mind that sold men’s office attire.

  “I’m going to get us out of this neighborhood, Liz, and see that Mona makes it to college.” I wanted her to know I meant business.

  “That’s what I’ve been attempting to do all along,” she said.

  “I know. I didn’t mean …” I put my hand on her back and noticed her hair. She had told me about the stove incident.

  “I’m trying to talk my boss into moving into North Shore foreclosures and putting me in charge. If he won’t, well, we’ll see. I might find a way to branch out on my own. There’s something ghoulish about it, but there it is.”

  As we trudged upstairs, she must have sensed I would do anything in the world to make love with her that night, like a man let out of prison

  “Why don’t you head into the kitchen and make us some coffee,” she said, “while I talk to Mona. I’ll let you know when we’re done.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  I began to wonder, as she snapped the locks open with her vast set of keys, if I was being welcomed in or locked out. I thought of the times when she had leaned her head against my shoulder after our date nights, right when we got to the door, signaling to me as if to say, Tonight. The things I’ll do to you tonight.

  “Lola,” she said as she stepped into the living room, “I’ve decided to let you use my extra-special, Moms-only bubble bath for being the world’s best grocery shopper today.”

  “Yay!” Lola said.

  I ducked into the kitchen. There was no door between this room and the rest of the apartment, just a large arched doorway, but I moved out of view, tucking myself into a back corner, wishing I could disappear into the walls. I told myself things would change. I just needed to hang on. I got busy filling the coffee pot.

  “However,” Liz continued, “the only way I can get the cap off that bottle is for you to get undressed and in the tub in one minute flat.” The water started, and I heard Lola kick off her boots.