The Vanishing Point

by Elizabeth Brundage

  He gazes down at Rye with concern. Get some rest, he says. Then he leaves.

  It is very dark, save for the firelight. Rye lies awake a long time in the quiet of this strange night, until he can no longer fight his closing lids.

  Daylight. He opens his eyes. It is very quiet. Very still.

  He has woken up inside a photograph. He fears he will never get out.

  The pain is the brightest white. Even the slightest movement. His hand throbs and it comes to him that there is a hole in it. It’s like a grenade, he thinks, knowing he should not move it, lest the whole place erupt in flames.

  Water. The constant sound of it. The river is very close.

  His skin is hot, and yet he’s shivering. It is a fever, he knows. He can smell his own sweat, the soiled sheets.

  He is going to die.

  A woman comes. She heaps on more blankets. She works the thick wool socks over his feet. The hat is her husband’s, she says, as she pulls it onto his head. Her breath smells of garlic. Her name, she tells him, is Lotus. But only a moment later he forgets. Her hair is long and dark. She wears a heavy coat and work boots with thick brown laces. As she leans and fusses, her hair sweeps down over her shoulder and he notices a tiny silver star pierced through her nose. With great care, she wipes his face with a warm cloth. We would’ve called for an ambulance, she tells him, but they wouldn’t be able to find us. We’re pretty deep in the woods out here and there aren’t any roads.

  Although he wants to, he can’t begin to ask her where they are.

  Do you have to pee?

  He shakes his head.

  Here, take these. You’re in luck, I happen to be a registered nurse. And one of our residents is a retired doctor. He came in here to take a look at you, and he’s the one who fixed up your leg. Other than the leg and a couple broken ribs that need to heal, you’ll be okay. We’ve got a truck, but it’s a good hike from here. We can figure it out, though, if you want to go—

  I don’t want to go anywhere, he muttered.

  She helps him swallow some pills, an antibiotic and something for the pain, she tells him. I’ll be back in a little bit. What happened to you? Can you remember?

  I fell, he says with difficulty.

  She nods and waits.

  Off the—

  The bridge?

  Somebody—

  She frowns, anticipating some injustice in his story.

  Somebody pushed me.

  Oh, my Lord, she says.

  Somebody pushed me, he says again, and although he wants to, he is too weak to cry.

  Should we call someone? The police?

  He doesn’t know how to answer this. He only looks at her.

  She sits beside him on the edge of his mattress and takes his hand. You’re safe, she says. You need to know that.

  And he nods.

  Rest, she says.

  She stays there with him. For a while he studies her face, the creases and lines, the curve of her lips, a face that has been loved, he decides. She sings him a ballad of promises. And he finally shuts his eyes. No matter what it takes, she tells him, you are going to live. You are going to survive.

  He wakes. He can feel the sunlight on his face, so bright under his closed lids. The sun streams in through a hole in the roof.

  He can’t feel his legs.

  Later, he hears the children. The sound of their feet trampling the snow-covered ground. Their voices like birds.

  The girl is maybe eight, the boy a few years younger. They stand there, looking at him with runny noses, dirty faces, their winter jackets zipped to their chins, their hats pulled down over their ears. A minute later they are gone.

  Time.

  It tells its own story in the light and darkness and all the colors in between.

  He sleeps. Then he is awake. It is light, and then it is dark. And then it is light again.

  He looks up and sees the clouds. The clouds move slowly, slowly, a whole herd of them. So much slower than he’s ever noticed.

  The woman is kneeling at his side. He sees the dark water of her hair. Her shoulder a pale, round stone.

  The air smells of woodsmoke.

  It rains. The raindrops fall across his face. They roll into his mouth. They roll down the side of his neck, into his ear. He can hear the rain on the river. He can hear it splattering on the steps that are made of stones.

  A dog comes, a mutt of some kind. His fur is black and soft. He is squat, barrel-chested, his whiskers gray. He is smiling. He licks Rye’s cheek, his tail wagging, wagging.

  Plato! she calls into the hut. Leave him alone! He needs to rest! Come!

  And he lumbers off to his mistress.

  He tries to count the days but forgets. He lies there a long time without moving.

  He’s pissed himself.

  He tries to remember his other life. Where is it? What did it look like?

  Who is he?

  He remembers a dark little room, the smell of chemicals. Paper in a tray of clear liquid. He is watching a picture come up, a face. A face appearing through the water, slowly becoming clear. It is a man’s face. The face of someone he knows.

  Simone

  She can’t seem to do anything. Can’t work. Can’t cook. Day after day, the dirty winter light hovers. Her life seems false, shambled with bad decisions. She trusts nothing. No one. Not even herself.

  On New Year’s Eve, she drinks a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, retrieved from the tomb of the cellar, sprinkled with the dust of a previous century. No matter, she pops the cork and pours the bubbling splendor into a crystal flute, somewhat pleased with herself for the moment, and watches the ball drop on TV, counting backward until the second hand on her watch maneuvers time like a magic wand. One year closer to death, she thinks morbidly.

  A few days later, she hears Constance pulling into the driveway. Simone throws on one of Rye’s T-shirts over her oldest pair of yoga pants. The shirt smells just like him, and as she descends the stairs, she fights a desire to run back up and crawl into bed, to stay there forever.

  He’s not here, she says when she opens the door.

  Constance stares at her. Happy New Year to you too.

  Sorry. It’s been a weird time.

  Do tell.

  But Simone only looks at her helplessly.

  You look horrible. What’s happened to you?

  I don’t know where he is, she says, and begins to cry.

  Coffee, Constance determines, and walks directly into the kitchen and fills up the kettle and sets it on the burner, then dumps a few scoops of Guatemalan into the French press. She inspects the refrigerator, scowling at the sight of it. What have you been eating?

  Simone holds up her last tangerine. We can share this.

  In the beginning, she had mixed feelings about her husband’s assistant, a working-class girl from the Bronx whose parents scraped to send her to Riverdale, then on to Vassar, where she acquired the assured hip-speak of her affluent schoolmates. Constance—never Connie—wants to be a photographer, and Rye is one of her idols. It is a particularly intense adoration that sometimes annoys Simone, mainly because she follows her husband around like a stray pup. At first with Simone, she was overly polite, her flattery like costume jewelry, a bit too obvious. By now, though, she has proven herself to be entirely indispensable, and Simone considers her a friend.

  Ah, caffeine, Constance says. Remedy for most ailments. She pours out the coffee into two cups. Now drink.

  Thank you.

  Simone offers her half of the tangerine and Constance takes a few sections and sits. She puts a bowl of pistachios between them. Breakfast is served, she says.

  How was your break?

  Good, until it wasn’t. My parents—it’s a very small apartment. Let’s just say I’m glad to be back—sort of.

  Simone concedes, I’m sorry about all this. It’s really very strange.

  She tells Constance everything she knows, including the stuff about Rye and Magda at the hotel. It’s been nearl
y three weeks, she says. Maybe they’ve run off together.

  No. That’s not his MO. He would tell you.

  What, then?

  Maybe something happened to him.

  Hard to believe, given his experience.

  Have you tried tracking his phone?

  How do I do that?

  I’m guessing you don’t have the find-your-family app?

  She shakes her head. You know I’m technologically impaired.

  Simone calls Verizon, but since her name isn’t listed on the account, they won’t tell her anything. You’ll need a subpoena to see his texts, they advise, if it comes to that.

  If it comes to what exactly, she wonders, all of a sudden feeling very worried. I think we should go to the police.

  Constance nods. We’re taking the Honda. You’re in no condition to drive.

  They hurry out to Constance’s ratty old Civic.

  This is surreal, Simone says.

  Constance starts the engine and turns the heat on high. It reminds me of that quote by Cartier-Bresson, she says.

  Which one?

  About how photographers are always dealing with things that are continually vanishing.

  Only in this case, he’s the one who’s vanished. Why is he doing this to me?

  Constance shakes her head. Only Rye can tell you that.

  The police station is in Chatham, a good twenty-minute drive, and there’s nobody there save for one cop behind the desk. She tells him her husband hasn’t come home for over two weeks. I think he’s missing, she says. I think something’s wrong.

  He hands her a form to fill out, and she tries to answer all the questions. They ask for a photo. She searches her phone for the one she took of Rye sitting at the kitchen table in the old Windsor chair. Here, she says to the cop. Maybe you can print this.

  She’d caught him reading the paper one Sunday, his eyes brightening with surprise and amusement, for she was rarely the one taking pictures. It was her favorite shot of him. The old Rye. The man she would always love.

  She hands in the form, and the cop reads it over, checking to make sure everything’s filled in. Then he looks at her curiously and asks her to tell him about the last time she saw him. For some reason she starts to cry. Because she can see that morning so vividly. The shy winter sunlight. His face as he climbed into the truck. How he’d waved to her out his window just before he turned, a gesture that, now, in retrospect, feels like a final goodbye.

  Rye

  Magda.

  The taste of her, like the rain.

  He is dreaming, walking in the city. He can hear footsteps, his own. He sees no color. The edges of the buildings are sharp, as though drawn with a very thin pencil. The shadows are deep. The sky is a perfect banner of gray.

  The city is a carney. The people and the smells. The streets soaked with rain.

  The buildings seem to be waiting. Vast apartments full of empty rooms, sloping camelback couches in raw silk, elaborate drapery, the secretary desk from before the Civil War, a half-written letter on the desk stopped in mid-sentence, an unfinished thought…and just beyond the window, the rain, a sky like hammered tin.

  He is looking for someone.

  The faces come at him, all the people he’d photographed, a whole lifetime’s worth, a throng coming toward him. What do they want? What do you want?

  He grabs the man in the long black coat and the man turns. He has no face.

  You have a fever, she says, her hand on his forehead. She sets down her lantern and feeds him more pills. She holds the jar of cold water to his lips, and he drinks.

  Sleep, she says.

  He is better in the morning. His fever has broken.

  She brings him breakfast, strawberry yogurt thick with berries that she feeds to him off a spoon, out of a small glass jar. She is gentle, precise, and while under any other circumstances he’d be embarrassed, with her he is not. She is procedural in her actions. A mother, he surmises. A wife. Her outsize wool sweater is gray as the sky.

  Lotus, he remembers her name.

  How are you? she says softly. Better?

  Yes, a little.

  She pulls the blanket under his chin. Warm enough?

  He nods. He wants to ask her where he is. This hut, this place. But it is too much to put together. Too many words.

  She starts to rise, and he catches her hand, and for a moment she is startled. Thank you, he says.

  Her gaze softens. You’re welcome. You’re going to be okay.

  She stokes the fire. The rain has stopped, she tells him. He can hear the rainwater plinking in a barrel.

  Sleep, she tells him. You need to rest.

  She stands there a minute, looking at him.

  Rest now, she says. Then she leaves.

  He tries to sit up, but he is too weak. He leans back on his elbows and looks around. The hut is small, the size of the king-size bed he shares with his wife. Simone, he remembers now. Simone is his wife.

  He lies back down and shuts his eyes. Slowly he is healing. He is like a plant uncurling its leaves in the night, diligently repairing itself. His body is working very hard, and he is tired, with a sort of exhaustion you cannot imagine when you are well, like you are buried in sand. The dark drifts down, slow as paint. It covers the world.

  Simone

  A week of nothing; she can hardly bear the silence of her house. She can feel herself beginning to disappear. And then, on Sunday, a police cruiser pulls into her driveway. Two cops get out, a man and a woman. They stand there on her doormat. His name is Johnson; the woman is Sanchez. We found your husband’s truck, Johnson tells her.

  What? Where?

  In a parking lot in Albany.

  We were set to tow it, Sanchez explains, but when we ran the plates, your husband’s name came up in our database of missing persons. Can we come in and sit down a minute?

  Of course.

  Simone leads them into the kitchen, and they sit at the table. Johnson studies her face, her already bereft expression, as if he’ll find something there, some resistant truth.

  Have you ever heard of Mohawk Island? It’s a nature preserve.

  She shrugs. Maybe. I’m not sure.

  That’s where he was parked, in the lot near the bridge. It’s closed for winter, so the truck was immediately suspicious. Every year we get a few jumpers.

  Simone just looks at them. Sorry, I’m not following you.

  Off the bridge, Sanchez says. People who want to—

  Johnson cuts her off. Your husband left the keys in the ignition.

  He did?

  And these items. He sets down Rye’s wallet and his gold wedding band.

  Simone sits there a moment, staring at Rye’s things with disbelief. She reaches for the wallet. It is almost as if they have handed her an organ, her husband’s beating heart. The wallet appears to be untouched, everything in place, his credit cards, two twenty-dollar bills neatly tucked into the fold. She sets it down and picks up the ring. It feels surprisingly heavy and cold in her palm. It is no ordinary ring. They’d had them made by a jeweler in the city.

  We also found this note. Johnson presents a plastic evidence bag. Under the shiny plastic is a white scrap of paper. There are just the two words, written in pencil. Forgive me.

  Is that his handwriting? Sanchez asks.

  I guess it could be. His handwriting isn’t—

  She stops for a moment, her head pounding. We mostly text.

  They sit there, looking at her. Then Sanchez asks, Was he at all depressed?

  Not that I know of.

  But now that she thinks of it, maybe he was. In truth, there were plenty of things troubling Rye in recent months. One night, after they’d had too much wine, he admitted to feeling disenchanted with his work. Soul-crushing was the word he used. The celebrities with their mansions and jets, the money, the lingering sycophants—he couldn’t stand it. Things had gotten out of hand, he said, the disparity between rich and poor. For the past several years, he’d phot
ographed an assortment of billionaires—movie stars, athletes, celebrities, industrialists, entrepreneurs, politicians—quite in contrast to his early days, when it was ordinary people who interested him, the ones so easily overlooked.

  They take her to see the truck. Like a criminal, she rides in the back of the cruiser behind the metal grate. Distantly she wonders if they suspect her of something. Even in her heavy coat she is shaking to the core.

  This weather, Sanchez says, and turns to look at her. They’re saying a nor’easter is coming.

  We got some time yet, Johnson says. Before it hits.

  Nearly an hour later, they are driving through an industrial area near the river, past dreary row houses, curtains tugged over windows, pulled shades. No people anywhere—the street desolate, bleak, as if this part of the city has been erased. We’ve been hit pretty hard down here by opioids, Sanchez explains.

  After a while, they come to a large, empty parking lot, a deserted fairground. Rye’s old red truck is sitting there all by itself.

  They get out and stand there a minute in the wind, gathering their bearings. Flurries of snow fill the air like the petals of cherry blossoms.

  The truck seems to be waiting for them.

  They walk over to it and Johnson opens the driver’s-side door.

  Keys were just sitting right there in the ignition, he says.

  Odd, Simone says, almost convinced, now that she’s here, that Rye is really gone. Still, she refuses to believe he’d jump off a bridge. It’s not who he is. And she refuses to talk about him in the past tense. He always has equipment in here, she explains, valuable stuff. He always locks his door.