Vanishing and Other Stories

by Deborah Willis

  “Evidently,” I say. I hold April’s hand, but I don’t know how to explain my marriage to her: lying in bed and hearing the scratch of his pen in the next room, or the daytime routine of coffee, work, my long walks. “I’ll show you my books, the sketches I’ve done of him.”

  “Yes. Please.” April looks out at the purpled sky, the grey horizon. She squeezes my hand and I squeeze back. My new cat digs his claws into my T-shirt as I climb out of the car and push the door shut with my hip.

  I walk into the house with the cat nestled in one arm, and Peter sits in the living room, a mug of tea made with April’s dried mint leaves beside him. A book open on his lap. I stand in the doorway and imagine how he must see me after so many years: my leggings emphasize my bony hips, my hair hangs limp. You must think this is the time of confrontation, when the wife’s jealousy bursts out in unfinished sentences and exclamation marks. The cat licks underneath my chin.

  “Sorry I’m late. I was with April. We walked down Price Road, looking for sand dollars.” A lie so perfect and poetic I want to wrap it in a tiny blue ribbon. If the study of words has taught Peter—and therefore me—anything, it’s the ease of lying. Each word is a sham, a small, meaningless collection of sound that pretends to be what it is not: cat, house, husband. All fops at a costume ball. And everyone accepts this banter as if words, dressed in their masks and cloaks of consonants, were not pretending. We are all complicit, Peter once told me: just by saying good morning to a neighbour, one participates in the great lie. And then, of course, there’s the pun on “lying.” But maybe you know this.

  “Evidently,” he says.

  “What?” I hold the cat tight to my chest.

  “You were with April. You’re drunk.”

  I raise my hand to salute him, his statement suddenly making it true. It occurs to me that perhaps you were at this rented house while I was at yours. But everything is in its right order: the quilt Peter’s mother made as a wedding gift, folded on the couch; the empty fireplace, its blackened grate; Peter, in a corduroy chair, a book on his lap, his grey hair combed. And me, in the doorway, in my paint-stained men’s shirt. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Good night.”

  “Thank you.”

  I bring the white fluff of a cat to the bedroom with me and place him on Peter’s pillow. He circles and smells the bed, then settles next to me, lets me rest my hand on his warm rising-falling stomach.

  I drift in and out of sleep and hear Peter brush his teeth. I’ve spent too long imagining your form drifting through our rooms, and I picture you at our bathroom sink. When Peter comes to bed, I’m hardly sure if it’s his weight beside me or yours.

  He slides under the covers and I say into the dark, “I stole her cat.” As if he knew he was called, the cat crawls over me, his paws sinking into my stomach. Peter doesn’t reply, and the cat licks my temple. Then my husband does something: he wraps one arm around my shoulders and pulls me to him, his hand on the back of my head. The cat scrambles and squirms between us.

  I speak into Peter, my lips against his collarbone. “Can’t you just tell me her name? Can’t you just say what she looks like?” Over Peter’s shoulder, through our bedroom window, I see the silhouette of the garden we let go to seed, and the huge shared yard where Marilyn grazes. Beyond that, April’s lights are on, and I see her outline move outside. She is efficient and domestic even at this hour—picking blackberries. She has changed into the lace dress I first saw her in, a yellowing strap fallen off one shoulder. The white material has a faint green glow in her house lights.

  She drops berries into a metal bucket and from where I lie I hear the soft plink of each one hitting the bottom. No, of course not. I’m too far away. I imagine the sound. And I imagine April will make a pie, leave it steaming on her windowsill. I imagine, too, in that instant, that she’ll feed it to Peter, who still presses the back of my head with his palm, whose smell is familiar, whose heart is against my chest. I understand. I see.

  “I suppose it’s April.” I whisper each word, then hold my breath and watch her glowing dress move outside. The dark outline of her arm reaches for and retreats from the blackberry bushes. I imagine she might invite me over for a piece of pie, or she might not. I suppose I wouldn’t mind going, watching her—you—slice perfect triangular pieces. It would be pleasant; it would be summer. What I can’t survive is this imagining: tomorrow’s afternoon kitchen light, flour on your forearms, Peter’s smile as he licks purple from your fingertips.

  PETER ASKED ME TO MARRY HIM while we lay on my single bed and chewed black licorice. He was explaining that he believed—truly believed—words could be accurately compared to boxes.

  “Ill-made boxes, of course.” He was within a year of completing a Ph.D. in linguistics, still entirely thrilled by ideas and their explanations. He spoke too fast through the bedroom’s pale cigarette smoke. “Boxes with holes in the bottom, squeaky hinges, a lid that won’t close. No meaning ever quite fits inside.”

  “Ornate boxes,” I agreed, partly because I loved when his quick blue eyes lit up. “Gorgeous nonetheless.”

  We had met on a particularly picturesque day (thick falling snow) in the middle of a Toronto winter of slush and crowded streetcars. Three weeks later, Peter moved into my apartment with four pairs of socks, five boxes of books, and a collection of shirts he buttoned unevenly. He wrote his thesis and I painted sad city landscapes—I was trying very hard, in those days, to be an artist. Peter would sit at a small metal desk, I would spread my canvas and paints on the kitchen floor, and we would work. In the evenings he handed me typewritten pages to proofread. His last chapter. Life was flawless.

  “Why don’t we get married? Why not now?” The licorice had blackened his teeth, and I ran my hand through his hair. I had been asked this before, by less sober and sillier men, but this time it wasn’t funny. As a boyfriend, Peter hounded me: letters in my apartment mailbox, unexpected visits to my art classes, phone calls at midnight. In the first week I knew him, he climbed in my window to leave a miniature rose on the desk, a flower that still reminds him of me. I was twenty to his thirty, and his age and education made him seem foreign, as though he had an accent I couldn’t place. He taught me wine, dictionaries; I taught him colour coordination, sparse rooms.

  I pressed my thumbs to the small lines beside his eyes and said, “Why not now?”

  I PULL MYSELF QUIETLY from Peter’s grip and take the riled-up cat with me. I slip on my leggings, my painting shirt. I don’t bother with shoes.

  “Wait.” Peter sits up in bed—I can tell, though it’s too dark in the room to see. “Mimi. I’ve lied. I’ve broken promises. At least say something.” He climbs out of the bed, finds me in the dark, and holds my wrist. “Talk to me. Let me talk.”

  I slip from his fingers, grab the keys to the cool-grey compact car we rented for our months here (it still smells of air freshener), and leave the room. I know this house well now, and stride through the cramped living room to the door without flicking on the lights. The August nights are getting cooler, and I feel rain held in the air, almost visible, waiting to drop.

  I drive back to Reynolds Road, back along the driveway that is now dark. I don’t care about the hair scratches from tree needles that Peter will find on the car tomorrow morning. I know he won’t ask where I went. He’ll forgo work for the day, drive to Stan’s to buy a small jar of wax, then spend hours rubbing the car clean.

  I drive up to the rusted-orange house, not concerned this time with staying hidden. The porch light is on, and a mosquito coil burns, letting off a blue smoke. The boy I saw earlier sits on a fraying lawn chair, one leg propped on a milk carton. Three cats sit on the porch. I turn off the engine and climb out of the car.

  I say, “This is awkward,” though I don’t feel it. “I stole your cat earlier. I thought it belonged to someone else.” I nod to the white fluff that clings to my shirt.

  “You can keep her if you want her.” The boy is smoking a pipe.

 
“It’s a her? I’ve been referring to her in the masculine.”

  The boy nods. Up close he looks older than I thought—twenty-three, twenty-four—and his eyes are calm.

  I make a last-ditch attempt at hope. “Does a young woman live here? Red hair?”

  He shakes his head no. “Just me and my dad.”

  “Whose bicycle?”

  “Mine.” The boy squints, tilts his head. His tobacco smoke smells warm. “Do you want some tea?”

  The cat claws at my shirt, nips my ear. “Yes. Please.”

  He disappears inside for a full five minutes, then emerges with a cracked pot that drips from the bottom. He has a large dish of milk in the other hand, and sets it on the wood planks of the porch. The three cats jump to the dish and bend their elegant heads over it. My white cat squirms, begs me with her eyes, then pushes herself from my arm. The boy pours weak ginger tea into a metal cup for me, none for himself.

  Neither of us is very talkative. I sit on the chair and he takes the milk crate, places his now-unlit pipe beside him. His face is already becoming leathered from sun, like the hat he wore earlier. The hairs of his arms are more fair than his skin. His eyes are green, the same glassy shade as my cat’s.

  “I saw you earlier today, picking beans.” For years Peter studied small talk, the words people use when they’re thinking very hard about the words they’re using, or when they’re hardly thinking at all. Peter’s informal conclusion, the philosophy this work built into his life, was that all talk is unfinished, inexpressive, small.

  “I saw you too. Your wine bottle.” The boy smiles, wider and more openly than before. He leans toward me, his elbows on his knees. Other cats have moved quietly onto the deck, and they brush up against his calves, leave fur on his jeans. I can see why they like him. “Did you name her?”

  “Who? The cat? No.”

  Again the smile. His forearms’ long muscles move under his skin and his hands are callused and scraped. I sip the tea, still too hot, then lean toward the boy and kiss his smile, his lips, a kiss that takes only seconds. He doesn’t move, doesn’t reach to touch me, just kisses back, adept and slow. I imagine the summer he’s had, the work and the romances. My cat paws my bare ankles. This kiss surprises me. It doesn’t feel like revenge.

  The boy flips hair from his eyes, and I know I’ll never tell Peter of this moment. And he will never tell me of his time with you. I imagine waking tomorrow morning beside my husband—no cappuccinos. I’ll curl up in the kitchen and flip through my sketchbook to see page after page of Peter, and, on the final sheet, you in ink. The last summer sun will stream into the kitchen, and I’ll sit in a pool of it on the floor, my canvas in front of me. I’ll open my tubes of oil, dip my liner brush.

  And Peter will sit at the kitchen table, mesmerized by brush strokes. When he stands and slips out the door, he won’t have to tell me he’s gone to see you. To say goodbye to you. He’ll come back bewildered, as if he never imagined consequence. I too will visit you and listen to your brief, nervous chatter. Then hand you an unfinished, unflattering sketch in ink. At night, Peter won’t talk. He’ll reach across the cold bedsheets and hold my tired hand.

  The boy fingers a wisp of my hair and tucks it behind my ear. After a few quiet minutes, I hand him the hot metal cup and stand. He walks me to my car, opens the door, and the cat follows, leaps in. Tomorrow I will paint this: the boy’s tan, mouth, tangled hair. Before leaving, I ask his name.

  t h i s o t h e r u s

  THE THREE OF US lived together for six years, in a two-bedroom suite on the bottom floor of an old house. We had a deck, a compost bin, and a herb garden we neglected. Like most young people in that coastal town, we rode our bikes everywhere, ate tofu, and went to bed early. We had two cats, many shared appliances, and we’d forgotten whose dishes were whose. We never kept track of who paid the biggest share of the hydro bill—it all evened out in the end, we decided—or who had cleaned the bathroom last. In fact, we hardly cleaned at all. We were used to each other’s unruliness.

  We also had routines that we shared. On Thursdays, Lawrence would bring home a Polanski or a Kubrick and we’d have a movie night with popcorn and vodka sevens. Karen had travelled for a year in India, so sometimes she’d get dressed up in a sari and cook curry in a big pot on the stove. She used whatever was in the fridge and every spice in the cupboard. It didn’t always taste great, but Lawrence and I loved her so much that we ate it anyway. For days we’d eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so the three of us even shared digestion problems.

  Sometimes we’d have friends over, or Karen and Lawrence would try to set me up with a boyfriend. But for most of those six years, it was just the three of us. It was as though we were all married to one another. Except that only two of us slept together. One of us—that one was me—slept alone.

  WE’D MET BECAUSE we’d all studied impractical things at the small university that was just outside of town. Karen had studied conceptual art, Lawrence political science, and I’d studied comparative lit. We continued to live together after we graduated, and into our mid-twenties—a time of anxiety and self-indulgence and poverty. Karen worked at the M•A•C makeup counter in the mall, Lawrence worked for Blockbuster, and I got casual hours at the library. None of us knew what we wanted to do with our lives. We only knew that we didn’t want to return to the big eastern cities where we’d been raised—places where the air was not as clean and the weather not as warm. We considered our little suite home, and we considered one another family.

  It’s hard to explain what a perfect match we were, just like it’s hard to explain what makes you love your boyfriend or your girlfriend. We were so different that people often said they couldn’t believe we managed to get along at all. Karen wore fake eyelashes that made her green eyes look as perfect as the kind of doll’s eyes that roll shut when you tip the toy backwards. She accentuated her nose with a gold ring, and her heart-shaped mouth with perfectly applied lipstick. She had red hair that she dyed even redder, and she looked improbable. Her skin was improbably pale and her hair was improbably red and she was improbably tall. She was the kind of person you never forget and you never get over.

  Lawrence was one of those slouchy urban guys who wears tight jeans and witty, used T-shirts. He was skinny in an intellectual way, his 140-pound body a protest against conventional forms of masculinity like manual labour, going to the gym, and eating steak. His hair hung in his eyes, his jeans were frayed, and his sneakers were falling apart. He liked to watch cult movies and read the newspaper and take long naps in the afternoon. He was a hipster who was probably meant to become an instructor in a small-town college somewhere. If I were to imagine his future—though I’ve learned not to make predictions anymore—I would guess that he’d eventually trade the ironic T-shirts for sweaters and corduroys and unkempt, receding hair.

  If you were in a room with the three of us, I would be the last person you’d notice. You might notice our cats, Percy and Beau, before you noticed me. I was almost a foot shorter than Karen, and I had dull brown hair. It brushed the tops of my ears in a style someone’s kid sister might have. I wore flowing skirts and blouses because I was not proud of my body. It was—it is—scrawny and flat-chested. Sometimes generous people would say that I had a dancer’s body, but I’d never been able to dance. And I didn’t like to look in the mirror because, when I did, it seemed that all my features—my eyes, nose, mouth—were of one nondescript colour.

  But somehow, we were all happy together. At least, two of us were.

  I HAD PREPARED MYSELF for something bad to happen, because I’m the kind of person who thinks ahead. I’d imagined that, one day, Lawrence and Karen would sit me down and tell me that they were engaged or they were pregnant, and they wanted to live alone, as adults, as two people in love. I had never been in love, so I didn’t know much about love’s progression. I thought it might increase, grow until it got so big that there wasn’t room for it and me in one house.

  I was not prepa
red for what actually happened. I was not prepared to come home from work one afternoon and see, parked in front of the house, a pickup truck with the words Revolution Now! spray-painted across the back. I was not prepared to find Karen and Lawrence and the owner of the truck—a big guy with a goatee and a polite smile—in Karen and Lawrence’s bedroom. I was certainly not prepared to see Karen shoving clothes into a backpack as Lawrence watched, and as the Revolution Now! guy scratched Percy behind the ear.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”

  Karen looked at me. “Oh god. Oh god, Lise, I’m sorry.”

  I picked up Beau. He was fat and cross-eyed and the best thing to hold on to when there was a crisis. The cat and I stood in the bedroom doorway and watched Karen grab things from the closet—a pair of flip-flops, a handful of underwear—and stuff them into the backpack. I held Beau so tight that he started to squirm and dig his claws into my arm, but I didn’t let him go.

  Karen also took her pillow and her sketchbook, and she held up a T-shirt that said I am a sports fan. “This is mine, right?” She was asking Lawrence, because sometimes they shared clothes. I guess sometimes they forgot whose was whose.

  “I don’t know.” Lawrence said this so quietly that I hardly heard him. “I don’t remember.”

  Karen looked at him and blinked. “I’m pretty sure it is.” Then she put the T-shirt in the backpack and said, “Okay, babe, let’s go.” This time she was not talking to Lawrence. She was talking to the other guy, the Revolution Now! guy.

  The two of them walked out of the house while Lawrence and I stared after them. We heard Karen kick the door shut with her boot, and we heard their steps on the deck. Then we didn’t hear their steps anymore. We didn’t hear anything. Then it was just me, Lawrence, Percy, and Beau, who had scratched me so deep that I was bleeding.