Vanishing Acts

by Jodi Picoult

  "Greta won't screw up. Hey, Fitz," I call out, and wait until he turns, shading his eyes. "I actually wasn't kidding about the snakes."

  As I drive off, I watch Fitz in the rearview mirror, staring down nervously at his feet. It makes me laugh out loud. Memories aren't stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, if you ask me, but in the spaces between any given two people.

  According to the Hopi, sometimes we no longer fit the world we've been given.

  In the beginning, there was only darkness and Taiowa the sun spirit. He created the First World and filled it with creatures that lived in a cave deep in the earth. But they fought among themselves, so he sent Spider Grandmother down to prepare them for a change.

  As Spider Grandmother led the creatures into the Second World, Taiowa changed them. They were no longer insects, but animals with fur, and webbed fingers, and tails. They were happy to have the space to roam free, but they didn't understand life any better than before.

  Taiowa sent Spider Grandmother back to lead the way into the Third World. By now, the animals had transformed into people. They made villages, and planted corn. But it was cold in the Third World, and mostly dark. Spider Grandmother taught them to weave blankets to keep warm; she told the women to make clay pots to store water and food. But in the cold, the pots couldn't be baked. The corn wouldn't grow.

  One day a hummingbird came to the people in the fields. He had been sent by Masauwu, Ruler of the Upper World, and Caretaker of the Place of the Dead. He brought with him fire, and he taught the people its secret.

  With this new discovery, the people could harden their pots and warm their fields and cook their food. For a while, they lived in peace. But sorcerers emerged, with medicine to hurt those they didn't like. Men gambled, instead of farming. Women grew wild, forgetting their babies, so that the fathers had to care for the children. People began to brag that there was no god, that they had created themselves.

  Spider Grandmother returned. She told the people that those of good heart would leave this place, and the evil ones, behind. They did not know where to go, but they had heard footsteps overhead in the sky. So the chiefs and the medicine men took clay and shaped a swallow out of it, wrapped it in a bride's robe, and sang it to life.

  The swallow flew toward the opening in the sky, but he was not strong enough to make it through. The medicine men decided to make a stronger bird, and they sang forth a dove. It flew through the opening and returned, saying, "On the other side, there is a land that spreads in all directions. But there is nothing alive up there."

  Still, the chiefs and the medicine men had heard footsteps. They fashioned a catbird this time, and asked him to ask the One Who Made the Footsteps for permission to enter his land.

  The catbird flew past the point where all the other birds had gone. He found sand, and mesas. He found ripe squash and blue corn and splitting melons. He found a single stone house, and its master, Masauwu. When he returned, he told the chiefs and the medicine men that Masauwu would allow them to come. They looked up, wondering how they would ever reach the hole in the sky.

  They went off to find Chipmunk, the planter. Chipmunk planted a sunflower seed in the ground, and by the power of singing, the people made it grow. But it bent over with its own weight, and could not reach the hole.

  Chipmunk planted a spruce, and then a pine, but neither grew tall enough. Finally, he planted a bamboo, and the people began to sing. Every time they stopped to catch their breath, the bamboo stopped growing and a notch formed. Finally the bamboo passed through the hole in the sky.

  Only the pure people were allowed into this Fourth World. Spider Grandmother went up the bamboo first, with her two warrior grandsons. As the people emerged, a mockingbird sorted them into Hopi and Navajo, Zuni and Pima, Ute and Supai, Sioux and Comanche and whites. The warrior grandsons took their buckskin ball and played their way across the earth, creating mountains and mesas. Spider Grandmother made a sun and a moon. Coyote tossed the leftover materials into the sky, to make the stars.

  The Hopi will tell you that evil managed to sneak in up the bamboo, anyway. That the time of this Fourth World is almost done. Any day now, they say, we might find ourselves in a new one.

  Tracking with a bloodhound takes away from the romance of scent. The smell that makes you want to bury your face in the neck of your lover, the trace of perfume that turns men's heads when a beautiful woman walks by--these are merely skin cells decomposing. For Greta and me, scent is a matter of serious business.

  After buckling on her leash, I walk Greta over to the baseball cap Fitz has left behind. Lifting it up, I watch her breathe in so deeply the fabric sucks into her nostrils. "Find him," I instruct, and Greta leaps over the bent fence and heads off, nose to the ground.

  This is a world populated by birds with unlikely names: the Common Flicker, the Harris Hawk, the Mexican Jay. We see agave plants, and chain-fruit cholla, rose mallow, paintbrush, tackstem. We walk by flora that I have only seen in books--brittlebush and cheeseweed, filaree, jojoba. We pass cacti that are mutations, their arms growing inward instead of out; their heads twisted like the folds of a human brain.

  Greta moves across the flat of the land slowly. I keep my eyes on the plump arms of the saguaros and the Modigliani necks of the ocotillo, where every now and then Fitz has left me a piece of toilet paper to let me know that Greta's heading in the right direction.

  She stops at the dried-out husk of a saguaro, and sits down. Suddenly she plants all four feet firmly on the ground and bares her teeth. The hair on the line of her spine stands on end; she growls.

  The javelina is about four feet long, with a bristled gray hide. Its yellowed tusks turn down at the ends; it has a mane that runs the length of its back. It looks up from its meal of prickly pear and grunts.

  I can never remember if you are supposed to run from a bear or stay perfectly still; I have absolutely no clue if there is safety etiquette for a javelina. The pig takes a cocky step toward Greta, who skitters sideways. I pull on her leash just in time to keep her from crashing into a stubby Medusa of a cactus.

  Suddenly Greta yelps, and falls to the ground, clawing at her nose. The cactus she didn't brush into has somehow managed to hook itself into her snout. Spines cover her muzzle, a few have worked their way into the gummy black gasket of her lips.

  Greta's mournful howl sends a flock of cactus wrens to the skies. The javelina, startled, thunders off. Without a second thought I kneel down and haul Greta over my shoulders in a fireman's carry. I don't feel her seventy-five pounds as I start running. "Fitz," I yell as loud as I can, and I try to find him with the clues he's left us.

  We are bent over Greta in the back of the Explorer. I'm lying over her, to keep her from moving, and stroking her head and her ears. Fitz leans close to her snout, pulling the spines free with a pair of needlenose pliers I carry in my emergency kit. "I think they call it teddy bear cholla," he says. "Nasty stuff ... it jumps at you." When he opens Greta's mouth, gently, she snaps at him. "Almost finished, sweetheart," Fitz soothes, and he pulls the last spines out of her gums. Then he leans forward to make sure he hasn't missed any. "That's it. You may want to double check my veterinary skills with a professional, but I think she's going to be okay."

  I take one look at Greta, and then at Fitz, and burst into tears. "I hate it here," I say. "I hate how hot it is and that there are snakes and that nothing's green. I hate the smell of that stupid jail. I want to go home."

  Fitz looks at me. "Then go," he says.

  His easy answer is enough to bring me up short. "Why aren't you talking me out of it?"

  "Why should I?" Fitz says. "Your father isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and he'd be the first one to tell you to get on with your life. Sophie would do better back in New Hampshire, in an environment she's used to. It's not like you have to stick around to get to know your mother--"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "True or false: You don't care whether or not you see her again."
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  True, I want to say. Except, I can't.

  "I thought I'd come here, and it would all make sense," I say, wiping my eyes with the hem of my T-shirt. "I just wish I could remember it all."

  "Why?"

  No one has asked me that question yet.

  "Well, because I don't know who I used to be," I say.

  "I do. Eric does. Christ, Delia, you have a hundred witnesses to help you with that. If you really want something to worry about, try figuring out who you're going to be from now on." He bends his knees and rolls onto his side. "You want to know what I think?"

  "Would you stop if I said no?"

  "I think you're angry at your mother for losing you in the first place."

  Grudgingly, I nod.

  "And you're angry at your father for taking you."

  "Well ..."

  "But most of all, I think you're angry at yourself for not being smart enough to figure this all out on your own," Fitz says. "So what if you lived in New Hampshire, instead of Arizona? What's important is where you'll be living five years from now. So what if you had some lemon tree growing in your backyard? I'd rather know if you want to plant one in your garden now. So what if you have some crazy fear of spiders? That's what hypnosis is for." He reaches out and pulls on one of my braids. "If you don't want someone to change your life for you again, Dee, you've got to change it yourself."

  At that moment, everything comes clear. It's like having someone walk up to a chalky window that you've been trying to see through for days, and wiping it clean. Some people have a detailed history, others don't. There are plenty of adopted children who grow up without knowing an ounce of information about their birth parents; there are criminals who walk out of jail and become pillars of the community. At any moment, a person can start over. And that's not half a life, but simply a real one.

  It is also a terrifying prospect: that the relationships we use as the cornerstones of our personalities are not given by default but are a choice; that it's all right to feel closer to a friend than we do to a parent; that someone who's betrayed us in the past might be the same person with whom we build a future. I lean back against the wall of the car, dizzy. "You make it sound so easy."

  "And you make it more complicated than it has to be," Fitz counters. "Bottom line: Do you love your father?"

  "Yes," I say quickly.

  "Do you love your mother?"

  "He wouldn't let me."

  Fitz shakes his head. "Delia," he corrects. "He couldn't stop you."

  I watch Greta's breathing even out in sleep. "Maybe I'll stay a little longer," I say.

  Fitz

  It takes only a week in Arizona to turn me into a professional liar. When my editor calls, asking me for something about the Hopkins trial, I let my voice mail pick up until my mailbox is full. When she finally wises up and calls me in the middle of the night on my hotel phone to say that I have six hours to produce a story or lose my assignment, I tell her that I'll have it on her desk. Then I e-mail her and say that motions were filed in the case that kept me in court all day, and beg an extension. When a second week goes by and I have produced absolutely nothing, Marge tells me to come back home to New Hampshire and earn my paycheck. She assigns me a piece about army engineers who have discovered a composite compound to prevent frost heaves, a topic that lets me clearly know I have been demoted in her mind. I tell her I'll be on the first flight out.

  I don't leave Phoenix.

  Instead, I sit down and fabricate a piece about the Army Corps of Engineers, and asphalt and spring thaw and water tables. I decide that since it will be buried in the middle of the paper, fudging it a bit--okay, completely--isn't awful.

  Before I know it, this lying jag of mine has spread like maple syrup into all other venues of my life, sticky and somehow impossible to clean up. I call the owners of the pizza place I live above and say there has been a death in my family, would they be kind enough to give an extension on my rent check? I phone the office and explain that I can't make the Monday meeting because I have a respiratory virus--something SARS-like and highly contagious. I let Sophie weave me a crown of Indian paintbrush, and when she asks when we are going home, I tell her soon.

  When Delia leans on me, I tell myself I'd do the same for any old friend.

  That's the crazy thing about lies. You start to fall for them, yourself.

  Every journalist wants a "death row" exclusive. You want to be the voice of truth that is heard; you want to be the megaphone through which the penitent's words are carried. You want the reader to listen to the inmate and think, Maybe we are not all that different. But not every journalist knows that his expose will break the heart of the woman he loves.

  When Andrew walks in--thinner than I remember him being, and with a badly shaved head--everything stops for me. Seeing him in his stripes is a little embarrassing, like catching your grandfather in his boxer shorts, a vision that you wish, the very moment you see it, that you never had. He seems so completely different from the man I used to know, as if this is a distant cousin, with similar features arranged in an entirely new way. I wonder which came first: this Andrew, or the other?

  I am surprised that he's agreed to see me, if you want to know the truth. In spite of the fact that I practically grew up in his living room, Andrew knows that I write for the Gazette.

  He picks up the handset, I do the same. What I want to ask Andrew, as he stares at me through this sheer wall, is why he did it. What I say instead is, "I hope you didn't have to pay a lot for the haircut."

  When he starts to laugh, I can see it for just a glimmer of a second--the man I used to know.

  My defining memory of Andrew involves communicating. Delia and Eric and I had been poking around an old dump site in the woods for pottery shards and Indian arrowheads and elixir bottles when we stumbled upon an ancient suitcase. Opening it, we discovered what seemed to be spy equipment--headphones and a switchboard and a frequency meter--with the wires torn out of the back and the speakers falling off the seams. It was too big for us to carry home, but we desperately wanted it, and a fast vote decided that of all of our parents, the only one who seemed remotely likely to help us with it was Andrew. "That's a ham radio," he told us, when he cracked open the suitcase. "Let's see if we can get it to work."

  Andrew asked around at the senior center--some of the old-timers remembered that particular brand, and what knobs and buttons controlled volume and frequency. He took us with him to the library to get electronics books, to the hardware store to get wire and clamps, and to the basement while he tinkered.

  One day, with the three of us clustered beside him, he turned on the radio. A high, dizzy whine came out of the speakers while he fiddled and spoke into the microphone. He had to repeat his message twice, but then, to our shock and delight, someone answered. Someone in England. The thing about a ham radio, he told us, is that you could always find someone to talk to. But you had to be careful, he warned, about giving away too much information about yourself. People were not always who they seemed to be.

  "Andrew," I say to him now, "did you really think you'd get away with it?"

  He rubs his palms over the knees of his pants. "Is this on or off the record?"

  "You tell me," I say.

  Andrew bows his head. "Fitz," he confesses, "I wasn't thinking at all."

  While I am trapped in the desert, waiting for Delia and her wonderdog to find me underneath a paloverde tree, I look at the parched throat of this cracked earth and imagine all the ways a man might die.

  Naturally, the first one to come to mind is thirst. Having finished my token bottle of water an hour ago, and finding myself in the beating heat of this dry desert, I imagine dehydrating to the point of delirium. The tongue would swell like cotton batting, the lids of the eyes would stick. More preferable--now, anyway--would be drowning. Must be a nasty fight at first, all that fluid going where it shouldn't. But at present, the thought of water--extra water--is really just too enticing. I wonder what it would
be like at the end; if mermaids come to string your neck with shells and give you openmouthed kisses. If you just lie down on the sand and watch the sun shimmy a million leagues away.

  Suffocation, hanging, a gunshot wound--all of these are too damn painful. But cold ... I've heard that's sort of a nice way to go. To lie down in snow and go numb, at this moment, would be nothing short of a miracle. And then, of course, there is martyrdom, which I'm approaching at a damn fast rate. I'm burning, after all, even if it's not for my convictions. Does flesh charring off at the bone hurt less when you know you are right, even though everyone thinks you are wrong?

  That line of reasoning leads me right to Andrew.

  And then it's a fast beeline to thinking of Delia.

  I don't think anyone has ever died of unrequited love. I wonder if I'll be the first.

  After we ring the doorbell, I squeeze Delia's hand. "Are you sure you're ready for this?" I ask.

  "No," she says. Delia smooths Sophie's hair and adjusts the collar on her shirt until she twists around, shrugging off her mother's touch. "Does this lady have kids?" Sophie asks.

  Delia hesitates. "No," she says.

  Elise Vasquez opens the door and drinks in Delia, there's really no other way to describe it. I have a sudden recollection of Delia in the hospital bed after she delivered Sophie, when the world had shrunk small enough to only hold the two of them. I guess it is like this for every mother and child.

  Someone who doesn't know Delia as well as I do would not notice the little flicky thing she is doing with her left hand, a nervous habit. "Hi," she says. "I thought maybe we could try this again."

  But Elise is staring at Sophie as if she's seen a ghost--and of course, that's exactly what Sophie is: a little girl who looks considerably like the one Elise Vasquez lost. "This is Sophie," Delia introduces. "And Soph, this is ..." When she gets to the spot where she should fill in the blank, her cheeks burn and she says nothing at all.

  "Call me Elise," Delia's mother says, and she squats down to smile into her granddaughter's eyes.