Vanishing and Other Stories

by Deborah Willis

  I kept a straight face, walked them out to the herd, and listened to her teenage whines about dew soaking through her socks. My daughter didn’t complain the whole time, so I figured she was seriously angry, seriously humiliated. But then Edith said, “I remember this from when I was a kid. It was my favourite part.”

  She pointed out the calves who were sickly, or whose mothers wouldn’t produce. Then she took the girl’s hand and showed her how to lead the calves out of the field and into the loafing pens, walking backwards and letting them suck on her fingers.

  One calf suckled the girl’s hand and slobbered down her wrist, and another pushed its head against her thigh, looking for milk. “This is the nastiest fucking thing I’ve ever done,” she said when she caught her breath from laughing.

  Edith looked at me then as if to say, “City girl.” I nodded and gave her a wink. It felt good to see my daughter like that, smiling.

  RAE CARRIED AN INHALER in one back pocket and a pack of cigarettes in the other. She saw the irony of this, but she didn’t care. Once, when she gave me a drag off her cigarette, I thought I was dying. My eyes watered and my throat felt like it had been torn.

  God, Edith, she said. You’re such a baby.

  She laughed and passed me her inhaler and I pumped the powder into my mouth. It made me feel the same way I did when I saw her walking up our driveway: light-headed and spinny.

  ONCE, SHE SNUCK IN so late that I was already at the kitchen table. The sun wasn’t up yet and the kitchen was dim. She leaned in the doorway, then sat right down across from me. I should have said some adult thing—got mad, got worried—but her clothes were wrinkled, her eyes tired, and I remembered that kind of morning. I got her a mug from the cupboard and took the milk out of the fridge.

  “Sugar?”

  “Yeah. Please.”

  When we spoke, we whispered. A little agreement to keep this quiet.

  “Don’t your parents worry about you?” I sat across from her. “Wonder where you are?”

  “No.” She stirred four heaping spoons of sugar into her cup. “Not when I tell them I’m at Edith’s. They moved me out here so I’d breathe clean air and meet wholesome people like her. So I’d join 4-H.”

  She poured milk into her cup, holding the jug high so it fell in a thin stream. I looked at her puffy eyes, her blotched skin.

  “You look like hell,” I said.

  “Well, this coffee tastes like hell.”

  “It should sober you up.”

  She looked at me, smiled. “Why aren’t you married?”

  “I am.”

  She leaned toward me. “That’s a story.”

  “There’s no story.” I passed her the sugar. “My wife wouldn’t stay, and I wouldn’t go. That’s all.”

  I sipped my coffee, still too hot, and she slurped from her spoon.

  “Nina lives in Victoria now,” I said, even though I don’t normally like to say her name aloud. “We don’t talk much anymore.”

  “No kidding.”

  The girl lifted her cup to her lips and blew at the steam. I stirred my coffee, even though it was black.

  “It was supposed to be temporary, her leaving,” I said. “Nina called from Calgary and said she just needed a couple days away. But then she kept driving.” I leaned back in my chair. “Edith really misses her.”

  The girl nodded, folded her arms on the table, rested her chin. I didn’t expect her to say much, but it was nice to sit there with someone. No matter that she was half awake, sleepy-eyed.

  LAST WEEK WE MADE CINNAMON TOAST, then tried on the clothes my mother had left behind. Neither of us could fit into the tight jeans or the small, high-wedge shoes. But Rae filled out the thin sweaters and the silky, sleeveless tops. She loved the scoop necks, and when she looked in the mirror she said, No wonder your mom left.

  She wore one of the shirts—it was pale gold, a shimmery sun-on-wheat—to the dinner table. It was nearly ten at night, but since it was summer, my father had just come in and cooked steak and sweet potatoes. He’d already folded up the cuffs of his sleeves and served himself. He was sitting; Rae was standing. And when he saw the shirt, he looked in her eyes. There was nothing she or I could say. No reason we should have been in his bedroom, rifling in his closet. And no reason we should have found my mom’s stuff. No reason he shouldn’t have gotten rid of it years ago.

  When I saw his face, I thought he might pick up his plate, his fork and knife, his beer, and quietly leave the kitchen. But he just shook his head. And Rae smiled too. It was as though they were sharing a joke. As though they were the only two in the room.

  That was it, the only hint I got. Then Rae pulled out a chair and sat down. My father nodded toward the stovetop for us to grab some food, and I got myself a pop. I opened the fridge door and it breathed cold air on my face. Then my father said, just loud enough for us to hear, It fits all right, that’s for sure.

  I POURED MYSELF MORE COFFEE and the girl drank the sludge in her cup. The house was chilled and she curled up in the kitchen chair, held her knees.

  “When did she leave? Your wife?”

  The girl was hungover and wanted entertainment, a good story. So I took a breath and told her about the storm. How it had been nearly dinnertime and I’d wanted to head home, but the cattle were acting funny. Whining and lying down, then standing up, being strange.

  Once I started telling it, I couldn’t stop. I talked about how hot it’d been that day, and how it’d cooled so suddenly the sweat on my shirt made me shiver. Lightning shattered the grey sky every few seconds, and clouds spooled and unspooled themselves. The rain hit hard, but I didn’t move from the field. Not even when the funnel cloud dropped and skimmed my neighbour’s land. Not until it blew the hip roof off his barn.

  Then I climbed into my truck, pulled it over to a bluff of trees, sat and listened. That’s what I remember most. The colour—that grey—and the noise. Rain and hail against a metal roof. The wind shot nails and boards past me, hail cracked the front windshield and smashed the side window. Glass landed in my lap, hailstones clattered onto the floor. And then it was over.

  The quiet was as hard to take as the storm’s noise. I watched the weather spin along the prairie, leaving as fast as it had come. The only sound was water that streaked into the cab, pooling around my boots. The funnel had touched down for less than two minutes. It was nothing. It wouldn’t even make the news.

  THE TWO OF US like to imagine my mother’s new life. Rae invents episodes that remind me of television soap operas: romantic dates and exotic travel. But from the two times I visited, I know my mother lives in an apartment and works in a college library. What I like to picture are the details. I see her with shorter hair and makeup. I imagine her coming home from work and taking off her coat. Unzipping her high-heeled boots and shaking water from an umbrella.

  WHEN THE WIND CALMED, I climbed from my truck and walked to the house. The front door had been ripped off its hinges and it lay in the front yard, near the saskatoon bushes. Edith stood in the doorway, her arms crossed against the cold. When she saw me, she turned toward the kitchen. Even then, she used that cold tone. “He’s here, Mom. He’s fine.”

  In the kitchen, one of the windows was broken and shingles from the neighbour’s barn had embedded themselves in the wallpaper. My wife sat at the table and stared at two hailstones that sat like a centrepiece. Maybe she or Edith had picked them up from the yard. Maybe these were the stones that had broken the window. They were as big as my fists.

  “You’re both all right,” I said, and maybe I sounded too rough about it. Maybe I sounded like a businessman checking his stock, a cattleman counting head.

  That’s when Nina said it: “I hate this place.” She pressed her forehead against her hand. “I hate it here, Braden.”

  I figured it was shock. I figured it would blow over. “Come on now,” I said, and started to unbutton my shirt. Water glued it to my chest, and now that I knew my family was safe, my body let itself feel th
e cold.

  “I can’t stay here.” Her voice was like that moment after the storm, so quiet it spooked me.

  The hailstones were soaking into the tablecloth, and I don’t know why that made me so angry. I picked them up and threw them out the broken window. Some glass dropped into the sink and Nina flinched.

  “I’m going to check the field,” I said. My wife didn’t answer, so I turned to Edith, put my hand on her shoulder. She looked at me like she hated me. “Stay here,” I said. “Keep your mom company.”

  DURING THE STORM, my mother pushed me against the kitchen door jamb and held my hands. I could feel the house shake against me, and I remember thinking this must be hard on her. I have my father’s bones, my father’s flesh, and even at thirteen I was taller than her. She could be wild: she was always dancing to the Rolling Stones in the kitchen, or speeding along the highway. But right then she reminded me of the sick calves my father nursed, the ones he kept in pens and bottle-fed warm, glutinous milk.

  I felt the house creak against the wind, and my mother’s sweaty hands. Then there was a crack and the front door blew off its hinges. I watched it float and waver in the air, then drop to the grass. My mother squeezed my hands until her knuckles went white. Her face was empty. It was like something my father once described, a blankness he’d seen on some animals. An injured horse determined to stand and survive, or a calf too scared to wail before slaughter.

  AFTER SHE FINISHED her first cup, the girl didn’t even bother with coffee. Just spooned sugar into her mug, poured milk on top, and ate it like soup. The sun was rising, and Edith was still asleep.

  “I should take you home,” I said. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”

  “I feel fine.”

  I didn’t want to sound fatherly, because I didn’t feel it. Whispering like this, ignoring work and the radio, I didn’t feel like me at all.

  She reached across the table and tapped my hand. “Show me where you were,” she said. “When it hit.”

  So we left the kitchen. Midsummer, but the grass was crisp with frost, and you could still see the moon through the clouds. I pointed out the silvery birch that blocked some of the wind. Then I took her to the pond where geese land every spring and she picked some water-parsley. I showed her the three hundred head of cattle, the morning air rising out of their big soft nostrils. All the things that charmed my wife, at first. The things Edith used to love too.

  When we got to the fence that’s separated my property from Jerry’s for nearly thirty years, I said, “That’s all she wrote. Might as well turn back.”

  But she squinted and walked forward. She’d seen the lush place where we throw the bones, and the white glint of them.

  “It’s just the yard,” I called out. My wife had always hated it there. The high grass, the smell.

  She stopped a few feet away from a bull’s rib cage and I stood behind her, back a ways. I watched her neck, her shoulders. Tried to imagine the look on her face. “It’s not much to see.”

  The girl nudged a piece of the bull’s torso with her toe.

  “I throw them here for the coyotes,” I said. “Feed them so they don’t bother the herd.”

  She stepped forward again, her sandalled feet disappearing in the green and yellow grass. She knelt, almost facing me, full of bravery. Then she lifted a cow’s skull that was old enough to be picked clean. So heavy it strained her arms.

  “I don’t take people out here, normally.”

  She slid her pinkie finger through the bullet hole I’d had to make, can’t remember when. Must have been a few years ago, maybe a calving that went wrong.

  “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

  She ran her hand along the forehead. Feeling the rough bone, I guess, against her palm. This is when I figured out she was beautiful. Something about how calm her face was, how curious. She held up the enormous head, looked it right in the hollow eyes.

  SHE NEVER INTRODUCED ME, but I’m sure that every one of her boyfriends was an idiot. I called them all by the same name: Kyle. That was the one she was with when I first met her. The one who dropped her off outside my door, some miracle working through him.

  How’s Kyle? I’d say, and she’d reply, His name is Joel and he’s not my boyfriend.

  Bullshit.

  You’re bullshit.

  Then she’d smile in a distant way and I’d know her life was made up of endless possibilities, her life was complex and golden. This was while we were flipping through one of her magazines, or while I braided her hair so it would be wavy the next day. I adored her tangled, complicated hair, so many shades of blond and brown all at once.

  I OFFERED TO TAKE HER HOME. “You need some sleep and a shower,” I said, and we walked to my truck. We climbed in, and the bench was already warm from the sun. There was still a web of cracks through the windshield, and light splintered through it.

  From what I can tell, most city people think it’s boring to talk about the weather. But here, it’s important. Every morning, Nina and I used to look out the kitchen window to see what was coming: heat, sudden cold, or the possibility of worse. Talking about the weather, you talk about everything that matters—what you want, what you’re scared of.

  There was a pause—after I turned the key in the ignition, before the diesel engine turned over. The girl and I stared straight ahead, through the cracked glass.

  “Beautiful day,” she said, and I knew exactly what she meant.

  ONCE, I ASKED HER to tell me what it was like.

  No way, she said.

  Please? Since you’ve done it uncountable times?

  She slapped my face then, but not hard.

  Okay, listen. She pressed her forehead against mine and I smelled the nicotine on her breath. It’s different every time, she said. Sometimes it’s passionate, and sometimes it’s sweet, and sometimes it’s just sad.

  I tried to imagine having direct contact with those: passion and sweetness and sadness.

  But I’ll tell you one thing, she said. It’s not like it is on TV. People don’t actually scream like that.

  I ALWAYS KNEW what that girl felt about me, even if I didn’t get it. I’ve known since she came into my kitchen wearing my wife’s shirt, and that gold material caught the light from the fixture above the table.

  It took me a few seconds to recognize it, to understand what she’d done. To understand that the girl had been in my closet, handling my shirts and pants and belts. Clattering the hangers as she searched through my stuff for the one thing that would catch my eye. The one thing that would make me look at her, look at her different. Then she put it on, knowing exactly what I would feel, exactly how it would hurt. To see that shirt filled out, to see a body move and breathe inside it.

  And then one night, so late it was almost morning, she came into my house. She walked up the stairs, through the hall, then opened my door. She stepped into my room.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  She sat beside me on the bed and I smelled rain on her, exhaust.

  I didn’t look at her, just asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “I walked over from my place.” She whispered. Aware, too, of Edith sleeping down the hall. “I’ve been thinking about the story you told.”

  I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. “You should go home. I’ll take you home.”

  “My parents talk a lot about right and wrong. But I don’t believe in that.”

  And I thought of all of it—my wife, my daughter, the sky’s frosts and floods. I looked at her, and she touched my arm. Her hand was cold from the air outside, and I said, “Me neither.”

  She nodded like she already knew that, and pulled out her ponytail. Her hair hung damp and knotted down her back. Then she unlaced her muddy boots and placed them beside the bed. She unbuttoned her shirt, folded it. Paused, as if thinking it through, then unzipped her dirt-hemmed jeans and slid them from her legs. She stretched herself out and lay beside me. Touched, carefully,
the hair on my chest.

  She was nervous too. I heard it in her breathing.

  MOST NIGHTS, she came into my room, then peeled off her T-shirt and jeans. I sat up and watched her do this, squinting through the dark. Then she’d climb into bed, put her arm around me, and say, Shh. Go back to sleep.

  Not that night. That night, they thought I was warm in my bed, deaf and dumb. They didn’t think the rain woke me. But I heard it. I heard her walk through the house and then I heard her open the wrong door—his, not mine. A mistake, a funny mistake. I expected her to burst into my room, gasping and laughing holy-shit-guess-what-I-just-did.

  That night, my bed felt as big and cold as the sky. And if there was one thing I knew, it was that this wouldn’t get easier. It would ache for years. That’s what I’ve learned. That’s what my father taught me.

  AFTER, WE DIDN’T KNOW how to talk to each other. She lay on her back and breathed, air scraping along her throat. I picked up some of her hair, felt its weight, but she wouldn’t look at me. The moon shone through the window, and I could see her pale lashes and the pale hair between her legs. She looked skinny. She looked seventeen.

  I took a breath, as pained as hers. “Rae—”

  “Don’t say anything.” She stared at the ceiling. She must have been used to these kinds of things being quick and rough—at a party, in the back of a truck. She’d probably never done that before. Been in a bed, beside a man.

  She sat up and turned her back to me—embarrassed, now, to be naked. “I should go.” She tied up her hair.

  “You don’t have to.” I knew she’d never be in this house again. “You can stay awhile.”

  She put on her shirt and buttoned it. Then zipped her jeans, buckled her belt. I wanted to touch her arm, take her hand. But she pulled on her socks, laced her boots.