Watch Me Disappear

by Janelle Brown

  I pressed Olive to my chest as people clapped. Billie, now back on the ground, just stood there watching us. A strange look crossed over her face, something hard and furious—as if Olive had betrayed her by running to me first instead of waiting obediently at the bottom of the concession stand for her mom to climb down—and then it passed. She gave a little ironic bow to the crowd and then sauntered over, nice and calm, as if she’d never been worried at all; as if the whole thing was a lark, already a story we would tell in the years to come.

  When she got to us, she rubbed Olive’s head, tangling her hair. “It’s OK, Bean. You’re going to be just fine,” she said to Olive, then looked around her, assessing the scene. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  For a moment, I almost hated my wife in all her radiant bravado. Did she really fear so little, or was she just covering it better than I did? Was it so terrible to her to show weakness? Was it possible that the feelings she felt were not ones that I understood at all?

  I don’t remember much about what we did next—whether we fought or not. Whether I felt blessed that our daughter was OK or ashamed at both of our failings as parents. But to this day I still remember the moment when I looked at Billie, up there in the sky, this intimate stranger, and thought, Who the hell are you? How did this happen? How did we end up choosing each other? How will we ever really know each other?

  Jonathan studies the words that he has just written. He never told Billie any of this. How could he? These were the thoughts that he never even admitted to himself; the inconvenient doubts that flickered through his mind before he pushed them away. He wonders now if marriage is about balancing on that fragile intersection between the said and the unsaid, sharing just enough to satisfy the need for intimacy without crossing over into dangerous territory. Shoving everything else under the rug, hoping it doesn’t accrue high enough to trip you up.

  He scrolls back up to the top of the standardized blog form and clicks Post. His latest entry goes online to join the forty-six he uploaded over the weekend. The vast majority of the memoir is now up there for Billie’s perusal, assuming she bothers to find it.

  Hi, Billie. I think you’re out there somewhere. Show me where you are. Show me why you disappeared. Explain to me how on earth you could do this to us. Show me who you really are.

  Now there is nothing to do but wait. How long? A day? A week? A month? A year? How long before Billie, wherever she is, succumbs to curiosity and does a vanity search, unintentionally setting out her trail of bread crumbs?

  He takes another slug of whiskey and then downloads the ipTracer app. He installs it on his cellphone and then checks his stats: Your page has been visited by 0 unique IP addresses.

  The phone rings as he’s holding it—CLAREMONT—and he jumps. He clicks Accept before he can think better of it. Vice Principal Gillespie’s voice is on the other end. “Jonathan?”

  “Hi,” he says, steeling himself.

  “Yes. I’m following up on my message from last week, which you haven’t returned.” Her voice drips with displeasure, as if he’s been a naughty schoolboy indeed. “Are you aware that Olive cut class last Friday afternoon? You realize that we have a no-tolerance policy for this at Claremont Prep?”

  “Really?” He remembers the call that he failed to answer last Friday when he was at the private investigator’s office. He momentarily perks up at the unlikely image of his rule-abiding daughter sneaking off in the middle of the day (to what? go to the movies with Natalie? go shopping on Telegraph Avenue?) before realizing that this is an inappropriate response. He musters up a more parentally disapproving tone of voice: “I will talk to her about that.”

  “Good. Be sure she’s aware that future infractions will mean suspension and, if they continue, expulsion,” Gillespie says. “And while I’m on the phone with you—can I expect the tuition check this week?”

  Shit. He pulls his laptop close and opens his latest bank statement: $3,123. That’s barely enough to cover the month’s mortgage, and there are property taxes and grocery bills and car payments to think about. He’ll have to pull from his 401(k) again, just for basic expenses. “Soon, I promise,” he says.

  Gillespie makes a grim noise, neither approval nor disapproval. “We can’t do this much longer, you know,” she says.

  “Believe me, I enjoy this even less than you do.”

  Gillespie laughs, a small bark of surprise. “OK. And talk to Olive about her absence, please.”

  “I will.”

  He hangs up the phone and immediately dials a New York number. His agent answers the phone with booming cheer: “Jonathan! How’s the writing going?”

  “Oh, great,” he says. “Look, Jeff, I’m wondering—I know I’m not supposed to get my next advance payment until I turn in the book, but do you think the publisher might possibly pay out some of it to me now? I’m really strapped for cash.”

  Jeff laughs. “Sure,” he says. “It’s possible. But only if we can show them the progress you’ve been making. You getting close? Got anything I can see?”

  Jonathan glances at the last chapter, open on his desktop: his wife standing at the top of the concession stand as a younger Jonathan questions the very nature of their marriage. Not exactly a real-life Love Story. “Not yet,” he says. “Still tinkering with tone.”

  “It’s gonna be great,” Jeff says. “Now get off the phone and get back to writing. That’s the fastest way to get us all paid.”

  Jonathan laughs drily, thinking, Jerk, and hangs up. He takes another slug of his bourbon, mulling his options. Then, with increasingly clumsy fingers, he dials Marcus.

  Marcus sounds like he’s speaking from the far end of a tunnel. Jonathan can hear traffic noises in the background, the rush of wind through an open window. “Jonathan, can’t really talk. I’m late to an investor meeting in Palo Alto.”

  “Two questions?” he begs. “I’ll be quick.”

  “Shoot,” his friend says.

  “First: You crack Billie’s password yet?”

  A moment of silence. “Shit. Forgot all about that. I’ll get to it soon, sorry. It’s been nuts.”

  “I get it, I get it. No pressure.” He clears his throat. “Second: Can I borrow a little money from you?”

  Marcus coughs. “How much are we talking?”

  Thirty thousand dollars, Jonathan thinks, but he doesn’t have the guts to say it. How did he get to this place in his life? Forty-three years old and having to borrow rent money, worrying about the price of toothpaste. (What’s the worst that’s going to happen? Billie asked him last year. This, he thinks now, humiliated.)

  “Ten grand,” he says, equivocating. Maybe Claremont will settle for a partial payment.

  “Whoa. Jonathan—I had no idea you were struggling.”

  “It’s just to cover expenses for a little, until I get my next book payment or the life insurance settlement. Whichever comes first.” As he says this, it hits him: If I prove that Billie isn’t dead after all, then there is no life insurance. And, for that matter, no book. Christ.

  “OK, I can swing that,” Marcus says.

  “I’ll pay you back as soon as I can,” Jonathan says, feeling himself choke up. The bourbon is making him feel emotionally diffuse; it’s all too much to take in.

  “I know you’re good for it.”

  After they hang up, Jonathan finishes off his drink and stares forlornly at his computer, knowing that the fastest way to dig himself out of this hole is to finish the goddamn book. But how can he do that when his head is swimming with apocalyptic visions of his wife with her faceless lover in various exotic locales? A man’s arm wrapped around her waist on a sunny beach; pornographic positions in a darkened motel room; mai tais at breakfast. Jaunting around California, visiting her incoherent mother in between spa visits. Living the high life on stolen money while he sits here and tries to keep everything together, his whole world slowly slipping underwater.

  Oh, the irony: He quit his job in order to somehow please his
dead wife, only to end up broke and desperate and unsure whether his wife is dead at all.

  How could you do this to me, Billie? He lets the fury in, feels it rush through him like a drug coming on, all the anger he has spent his life pushing away. Anger at his wife, at all the ways she’d failed him during their marriage, at the way she’s hurting him even now. There’s other anger in there, too, anger at the way his life choices have betrayed him; and, going back even further, buried anger at Jenny, for dragging him to the swimming pool that day and making him complicit in her death. Anger has always made him anxious, but in this moment, it’s not frightening anymore: It’s freeing.

  He hears footsteps on the front porch and then a soft knock on the door. UPS, he assumes; but then there’s the sound of a key in the front latch, and he jumps up from his chair.

  He gets to the entry just as Harmony lets herself in with her new house key. She stands in the doorway, holding a coffee cup and a bag of pastries, a startled expression on her face. “Hi! I was at Market Hall and thought I’d stop by with some sustenance for you.” She thrusts the cup at him. “Is it terrible of me to just let myself in like this? You can kick me out if you’re busy writing.”

  He takes the coffee, reeling backward so she can come in. He realizes that it’s not even noon and he’s already fairly drunk. “I’m not really writing,” he says.

  She follows him into the house. She’s wearing some kind of snug cottony dress that drapes across her hips and chest. If you look close—even if you don’t look that close—you can see the line of her underwear. It’s most definitely a thong. Her nostrils flare as she smells the bourbon wafting off him. “Missing Billie a lot today?” she asks. She peers past him into the study, where the laptop glows in the dark like a beacon.

  “What makes you say that?” The words tear violently out of him.

  She tilts her head, a confused expression on her face. “Oh. You were saying the other day, about hitting the bottle…maybe you want to talk?”

  “I’m tired of talking about Billie,” he says thickly, interrupting her. “Shouldn’t we talk about something else?”

  “Like what?” She smiles faintly.

  “Like…” He can’t think of what he wants to talk about at all. And he realizes that talking is exactly what he doesn’t want to do. He doesn’t want to think at all anymore; he doesn’t want to assess the risk factors, or worry about what anyone else needs from him, or analyze the overall trajectory of his life. He just wants to do what he wants to do.

  And what he wants to do right now, very badly, is to kiss Harmony.

  So he does.

  Her mouth is hot and yielding. It’s strange how familiar it feels, as if his fascia has somehow retained the memory of her flesh despite the intervening year. Kissing her is like sinking into a warm bath; his whole body sighs with relief.

  Harmony puts one hand on the back of his neck and grips it tightly; her other hand goes to the buckle of his jeans. He kicks the front door closed with his foot and stumbles a little, then pulls her in closer, pressing his body to hers so hard that it feels like he’s about to push himself straight through to the other side. His hand slides up until it encounters her breast and then stays there, riveted by its fullness. It’s all so decadent and unexpected that he thinks he should stop, give himself a minute to process, except that what he’s really doing is tearing the dress off her shoulders as he pushes her toward the staircase. He feels like he’s losing himself, like he’s let go of the string of a balloon and is watching some old version of himself disappear off into the atmosphere.

  He pulls back once to take a breath and looks at her face, flushed and heavy-lidded: “This is OK with you?” he asks her, suddenly concerned.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, and she grabs his hand and drags him up the stairs to the bedroom.

  —

  He swims back to himself an indeterminate amount of time later and finds that he’s tangled in sodden, oceanic sheets. His heart still rattling in his chest, a naked woman beside him who is not his wife. His body smug with pleasure. What just happened? Was that infidelity? A betrayal of his wife’s memory? A revenge fuck? Or simply a well-deserved rediscovery of his sexuality after an appropriately mournful interval? He feels quite sober now, but no less disoriented.

  He rolls over and looks at Harmony, prostrate and panting, on the side of the bed where his wife used to sleep. She reaches out and presses a finger between his eyebrows. “Stop looking so worried,” she says. “You just got laid.”

  “You make us sound like rutting teenagers,” he says, sliding an arm across her naked waist.

  “I don’t know about you, but I didn’t have sex like that in high school.” She smiles contentedly, long blond strands of hair stuck in her bruised mouth. The skin of her belly is a revelation, creamy and endless. He can’t stop running his hand across it.

  “This was somewhat unexpected—” he starts to explain.

  She cuts him off, tugging his arm tighter across her body. “If you’re feeling guilty, don’t. Billie’s been dead a year. You’re not doing anything wrong.”

  “I know,” he says.

  He can feel her eyes, searching his face. “I need to tell you something,” she says.

  He smiles. “What?”

  “You asked the other day if Billie was having an affair.” Jonathan’s smile freezes. Oh God. “Well, she slept with Sean. That’s why he and I broke up.”

  He jerks upright. “What?”

  “Didn’t you notice that Billie and I didn’t talk for, like, six months, that year before she died? That’s why. She slept with Sean. I found her bra in our bed.” She sits up so that she’s at his eye level, and he can see that her face has flushed a valentine red. “When I confronted her, she said Sean had been hitting on her for years, and eventually he caught her in a weak moment on a day that you guys had gotten in a big fight; she was angry at you for some reason and just made an impulsive decision.” She puts a consoling hand on his chest. “She begged me not to tell you. And then told me I was better off getting rid of Sean before I wasted any more of my life with him because he wasn’t good for me.” She gives a light little laugh, but he senses something darker festering underneath. “I was so angry for so long, until I went off and meditated on compassion in Sedona. The night I came over here last year, the night you and I kissed, I was going to tell her that I forgave her, but then—” She runs her hand meaningfully across Jonathan’s chest. “You know what? I think she did me a favor. If I was still with Sean, I wouldn’t be here with you right now, would I?”

  The sensation of her hand on his skin is suddenly unbearable. He removes her hand from his body and holds it tightly in his own. A big fight? he thinks dumbly. What did I do to her? And then—Sean. Of course. That motherfucker. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” he manages.

  She tugs on her upper lip with her free hand. “I almost told you that night we kissed, but, well. And then she died, and after that I didn’t think there was any point in dredging it up. It would just hurt you. I can’t bear to hurt you.”

  His stomach gurgles unhappily, sour with alcohol. Sean. He tries to put Sean’s arrogant face on the head of the stranger he’s been imagining with Billie. “So that’s where she was, those missing weekends I was telling you about. She was with him.”

  “Oh! No.” She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. She said it only happened once. And once Sean and I broke up, he found some new girlfriend within the month. I ran into him with her a few weeks ago, down on Telegraph. She’s pregnant. He always told me he didn’t want kids.”

  His head is fogged and throbbing, his mouth dry. If Sean wasn’t with Billie those weekends, was it possible that there was yet another man? Christ, at this point, anything seems possible. He leans over to retrieve the glass of water by the side of the bed, at which point he notices the clock. “It’s almost three. I have to go pick up Olive from school.”

  Harmony frowns. “I thought she was driving h
erself these days.”

  “Subaru needed an oil change. Shit. I’m going to be late.” He extricates himself and climbs out of bed. His shirt is inside out on the floor, and his underwear is underneath an armchair overflowing with dirty laundry. He can’t locate his sweater, and then he remembers that it is on the staircase, along with Harmony’s bra and dress. He grabs a dirty sweatshirt from the pile on the chair and pulls it on.

  Harmony draws the sheet up over her chest, watching him. “Should I be here when you get back?”

  He freezes. “Not today, no. Olive will be with me.”

  She nods glumly. “I shouldn’t have told you about Sean and Billie. I should have just kept my mouth shut. I knew it was a bad idea.”

  “Not at all,” he lies. “I’m glad you told me.”

  She tucks her knees up under her chin like a schoolgirl. “Just tell me this, please, and be honest. Was this a onetime thing or something we’ll do again?”

  He sits down on the edge of the bed and puts a hand to her cheek. “I’m not a jerk, I promise,” he says. The sideways light through the bedroom window illuminates her face, warming her skin under his hand. Her eyes are still heavy-lidded with sex. She looks like a depraved angel. “I’ll see you soon,” he says, and kisses her one last time before racing down to his car.

  —

  He speeds through Berkeley in a daze, taking wrong turns. He feels disassembled, as if his entire life is tearing apart at the seams. The loss of control makes him giddy, sick to his stomach with dread but also a strange kind of exhilaration. He wonders darkly if this was what Billie felt when she was sleeping with Sean, those weekends when she wasn’t actually hiking Shasta and Yosemite, when she was leading her secret double existence: The reckless freedom in knowing that the direction of your life has veered off course and might be headed straight off a cliff.

  She screwed Sean. Right under my nose. And I never even noticed. He thinks bitterly of the condom in her purse. How long had his wife kept it there in anticipation? Were there others?