Vanishing Acts

by Jodi Picoult

  I park in front of the trailer and let myself inside quietly. It is barely six in the morning; Eric and Sophie will still be asleep. I reach into the cabinet above the sink and take out the coffee grounds, start a fresh pot, and suddenly feel hands on my shoulders and a kiss on my cheek.

  A kiss.

  "You're up early," Eric says.

  He is dressed to the nines in a dark gray suit and a crimson tie, so striking with his dark hair and light eyes that it takes my breath away. "I was ... having trouble sleeping," I say. "I went out." Is it lying if I do not tell him I've been gone the whole night, and he doesn't ask?

  He sits down at the table, and I bring him some orange juice. But instead of taking a sip of it, he traces the yawning mouth of the glass. "Delia," he says. "I'm going to do the best I can today."

  "I know that."

  "But I also wanted to say I'm sorry."

  My mind swirls with sentences I read last night in Fitz's writing. "For what?"

  Eric looks at me with so much unsaid that I expect the moment to crystallize, fall to the table like a marble. But he lifts his glass, breaking the spell. "Just in case," he says.

  Eric understands that the world is rarely the way it is supposed to be. And he knows that, given the chance, we don't have to wait for someone to make messes of our lives. We do a good enough job, ourselves.

  Sophie thumps down the hallway, dragging one of her stuffed animals by its arm. "You woke me up," she accuses, but she crawls into Eric's lap, trusting one of the very people she's just blamed. She rubs her nose with the sleeve of her nightgown and leans against his lapel, still half-asleep.

  We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right.

  The challenge is figuring out which is which.

  There is a playroom staffed by volunteers at the courthouse, a place where Sophie can crawl through tunnels and twist pipe cleaners while, upstairs, her grandfather stands trial for kidnapping. I drop her off with a promise to come back soon, and then head into the courtroom to take my seat.

  I am waylaid by reporters, who corner me with their microphones: Have you reconciled with your mother, Delia? Have you maintained contact with your father? I shove past the hooks and claws of their questions and duck into the courtroom. Eric is already at the defense table, organizing files with Chris Hamilton, his second chair. There are more reporters queuing in the rear, artists with sketch pads. And leaning against the far wall is Fitz, his eyes locked on me.

  A side door opens and two bailiffs escort my father inside. He is wearing a suit again, but his face is pillowed and bruised, as if he has recently been in a fight. He is freshly shaved.

  I used to love to watch my father shave. I had no mother to show me the wonders of blush and mascara; to me the mystery was watching the cream rise like a meringue in my father's palm, and then using it to paint the curve of his jaw. I'd make him put it on my cheeks, too. I'd pretend to shave beside him with a toothbrush. Then we would lean into the mirror together--my father checking for spots he had missed; and me, glancing from his eyes and jaw and lips to mine, trying to find all the matches.

  As a child, all I ever wanted was to grow up to be just like him.

  It's really hard to hate a pregnant woman. Emma Wasserstein stands up and walks heavily toward the jury box, bellying up to the polished railing. "Imagine that you are four years old, ladies and gentlemen, living in Scottsdale with your mother. You have a pink bedspread and a swing set in your backyard and you go to nursery school. You see your father on weekends, like you have ever since your parents divorced. And you are happy.

  "But then one day, your father tells you you aren't Bethany anymore. You don't understand this, not any more than you've understood the fast flight from town, the motels, the new clothes, the dyed hair. When he introduces you to strangers, he calls you 'Delia.' You say you want to go back home, and he tells you you can't. He says that your mother is dead."

  She begins to walk back to the prosecutor's table. "Because he's your father, because you love him and trust him, you believe him. You believe your mother really is gone. You believe you aren't Bethany anymore--you believe you never have been.

  "You move to New Hampshire and watch your father, now calling himself Andrew Hopkins, being hailed as a model citizen. You live the story he creates for you. And you forget, for twenty-eight years, that you were ever once a victim."

  She faces the jury again. "But there was a second victim here, who never forgot. Elise Matthews woke up every morning wondering if this was the day her baby would be returned to her. Elise Matthews spent a quarter of a century not knowing if Bethany was still alive, not knowing where she might be, not even knowing what she might look like anymore."

  Emma folds her hands around her prodigious belly. "The relationship between an adult and a child is not an equal one. We are bigger and stronger and wiser, and because of that, we enter into an unwritten contract that grants us the responsibility to put a child's interests before our own. Charles Matthews, ladies and gentlemen, violated that contract. He took a little girl with no regard for her emotional well-being and forced her into an unfamiliar, frightening life, three thousand miles away from her real home. He'll try to tell you he was being a hero. He'll try to get you to buy his lies, too. But here is the truth, ladies and gentlemen: Charles Matthews decided he was not happy with the custody arrangement worked out between himself and his ex-wife, Elise, and so he took what he wanted and ran."

  She turns to the jury again. "Two thousand children vanish every single day in this country. The most recent report of the National Incident Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children Report found that 797,500 children went missing in 1999. Of those, only 58,200 were nonfamily abductions. Which means that every day in the United States, thousands of parents kidnap their own children, just like Charles Matthews did--because they can. But sooner or later, if we're lucky, we catch up to them." Turning, Emma points to my father. "For twenty-eight years, that man got away with breaking a mother's heart. For twenty-eight years, he got away with breaking his daughter's trust. For twenty-eight years, he got away with breaking the law. Don't let him get away with it for another minute."

  Eric stands. "What Ms. Wasserstein hasn't told you, ladies and gentlemen," he says, "is that Elise Matthews was damaged long before that broken heart. An alcoholic, lying in her own vomit, unconscious--that was the mother Bethany Matthews inherited. That was the woman entrusted to care for her, the woman who was too drunk to even realize that her daughter was there. Did Andrew Hopkins take his daughter? Absolutely. But it wasn't an act of vengeance, it was an act of mercy."

  Walking around behind my father, Eric puts his hand on one shoulder. "Mrs. Wasserstein would like you to believe that this man plotted and planned, intending to ruin his daughter's life during a routine custody visit, but that's not the case. The truth is, Andrew did bring his child home that day. And he found the television blaring, the house wrecked ... and Elise Matthews passed out and reeking of alcohol. Maybe at that moment, Andrew Hopkins remembered the image of his daughter, lying still in an ICU bed just months before, after her mother's neglect led to a near-fatal scorpion sting. Maybe he even tried to keep his child from having to witness her mother in that state. Only one thing is certain: He knew, unequivocally, that he couldn't bring his child back to that. Not then, and not for another second.

  "Why didn't he go to the authorities then? Because, ladies and gentlemen, the courts were biased against Andrew already, for reasons you'll learn. Because in our legal system in the late seventies, custody almost always went to the mother following a divorce, even a mother who wasn't capable even of caring for herself, much less a child."

  Eric heads back to his seat, hesitating midway. "You all know what you would have wanted to do, if you'd come home to find your ex-spouse too drunk--again--to safely care for your child. Andrew Hopkins is guilty of one thing, ladies and gentlemen: loving his daughter enough to keep
her safe." He faces the jury. "Can you honestly blame him for that?"

  My mother is wearing a conservative blouse and skirt, but her hair is wild around her face and her hands are covered with turquoise and garnet rings. She looks nervously over the head of the prosecutor to where Victor sits, encouraging her with a smile.

  The judge, a heavy man shaped like a wedding cake, signals Emma Wasserstein to begin. "Can you state your name for the record?"

  "Elise," my mother says. She clears her throat. "Elise Vasquez."

  "Thank you, Ms. Vasquez. Are you remarried?"

  "Yes, to Victor Vasquez."

  Emma nods. "Would you please tell the jury where you live?"

  "Scottsdale, Arizona."

  "How long have you lived there?" Emma asks.

  "Since I was two."

  "And how old are you now, Mrs. Vasquez?"

  "I'm forty-seven."

  "How many children do you have?"

  "One."

  "What's her name?"

  My mother's eyes find mine. "It used to be Bethany," she says. "Now it's Delia."

  "Did you know Bethany when she became Delia?"

  "No, I didn't," my mother murmurs. "Because her father stole her from me."

  This wakes up the jury, interest passing through them like lightning. "Can you explain what you mean by that?" Emma asks.

  "We were divorced, and we had joint custody of Bethany. Charles--that used to be his name--was supposed to bring her back on a Sunday, after spending the weekend with her. He never did."

  "Do you see your ex-husband in the room today?"

  My mother nods, and points at my father. "That's him."

  "Let the record reflect that Mrs. Vasquez has identified the defendant," Emma says. "What did you do when he never returned with your child?"

  "I called and left messages at his apartment, but there was no answer and he didn't call me back. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I thought maybe the car had broken down, or he'd taken her somewhere for the weekend and they'd gotten hung up, you know. I waited until the next day, and when no one contacted me, I drove to his apartment. I convinced the superintendent to unlock the door and that's when I realized something was wrong."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "All his clothes were gone. Not just enough for an overnight, but the entire closet. And the things that were important to him--like his research books and a photo of his parents before they died and this baseball he'd caught at a Dodgers game as a kid--they were all missing, too." She looks at Emma. "So I called the police."

  "What did they do?"

  "Set up roadblocks and went to the Mexican border and put Bethany's picture on the news. They asked me to give a press conference, to get public support. There were hotlines set up, and posters and flyers."

  "Did you get any responses?"

  "Hundreds," my mother says. "But none of them led to my baby."

  Emma Wasserstein turns toward my mother again. "Mrs. Vasquez, when was the last time you saw your daughter, prior to her kidnapping?"

  "The morning of June 18. Charlie was supposed to bring her back on June 19. Father's Day."

  "And how long did you have to wait to see your daughter again?"

  My mother's eyes find mine, unerringly fast. "Twenty-eight years," she says.

  "How did you feel during that time?"

  "I was devastated. There was a part of me that never gave up hope that she'd come back." My mother hesitates. "But there was a part of me that wondered if I was being punished."

  "Punished? Why?"

  Her voice becomes a broken road. "Beautiful little girls should have mothers who don't forget to send them to school with a toilet paper roll for Craft Day. Or who know all the hand signs for Itsy Bitsy Spider. Beautiful little girls should have mothers who are waiting with a Band-Aid even before they fall off the tricycle. But instead, Bethany got me." She takes a ragged breath. "I was young, and I ... would forget things ... and get angry at myself--so I'd have a drink or two to feel less guilty. But that drink turned into six or seven or a whole bottle, and then I'd miss the Christmas concert or fall asleep when I was supposed to be making dinner ... and I'd feel so awful about it that I'd have to have another drink just to forget how I'd screwed up again."

  "You drank when your daughter was present, in the house?"

  My mother nods. "I drank when I was upset. I drank when I wasn't upset, to keep myself from getting that way. I drank because I thought it was the one thing I had control of. I didn't, of course. But when you pass out, distinctions like that stop mattering."

  "Did your drinking affect your relationship with your daughter?"

  "I'd like to think that she knew how much I loved her. In all the memories I've got of her, she's happy."

  "Mrs. Vasquez, are you an alcoholic?"

  "Yes." My mother looks up at the jury. "I always will be. But I've been sober for twenty-five years now."

  Sometimes Eric's mother would go away, for weeks. He told us that she was visiting her sister; years later, I learned she didn't have one. Once when we were kids, he admitted to me that it was easier when she was gone. I thought he was crazy: As someone who believed her mother was dead, I would gladly have taken one with faults over none at all.

  And just like that, I remember that before I left my mother, she left me.

  There is a commotion in the aisle of the gallery, and I realize that Fitz is standing at the edge of my row, heatedly whispering with the man beside me in an effort to have him give up his seat. Fitz pulls a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and the man gets up so that Fitz can slide into place beside me. "Stop thinking," he commands, and he squeezes my hand.

  Eric gets up for the cross-examination and approaches my mother. I wonder what he sees when he looks at her. Me, maybe. Or his own mother.

  "Mrs. Vasquez," he says, "you said that in all the memories you have of Delia, she's happy."

  He is calling me Delia, I realize, to remind everyone of who I really am.

  "Yes."

  "But you don't have a lot of those memories, do you?"

  "Not enough," my mother says. "I didn't get to watch her grow up."

  "You didn't seem to watch her much when she was a baby, either," Eric counters. "Isn't it true that in 1972 you received a felony conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol?"

  "Objection, Your Honor!" Emma calls out. She and Eric approach the bench, talking in whispers that are picked up by the judge's microphone. "Your Honor, that conviction is so old it's got wrinkles. It happened before Bethany Matthews was even born, and has absolutely no relevance."

  "Under Article 609 of the Rules of Evidence, I'm impeaching the witness's credibility with a prior conviction. And technically, Judge, Bethany Matthews was present at the time of the crime. She was a two-month-old fetus."

  "Mr. Talcott, you certainly couldn't be planning to start a debate about the rights of the preborn," Judge Noble warns. "The objection's sustained." He turns to the jury. "Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to disregard what you just heard."

  But once you throw a stone, there are ripples in the pond, even if you remove the rock. Were there other times I was in the car when my mother was drunk; times she hadn't gotten caught?

  "Mrs. Vasquez," Eric says, "your daughter was stung by a scorpion once while you were home alone with her, wasn't she?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you tell us how that happened?"

  "She was about three years old, and she put her hand in the mailbox. The scorpion was inside it."

  "You asked a three-year-old to get the mail?"

  "I didn't ask her; she chose to go out there herself," my mother clarifies.

  "Maybe you didn't ask her because you were unconscious at the time. Drunk."

  "I really don't remember if that was the case."

  "No?" Eric says. "This might refresh your memory. May I approach the witness?" He hands my mother a manila folder marked Defendant's Exhibit A. "Do you recognize this documen
t, Mrs. Vasquez?"

  "It's a medical record from Scottsdale Osborn Hospital."

  Eric points to the bottom of the page. "Would you read this sentence to the jury, please?"

  She purses her lips together. "Mother presented as intoxicated."

  "Medical professionals write these records," Eric says. "Wouldn't you say they're trained to judge whether someone is intoxicated or not?"

  "Nobody examined me that night," my mother replies. "They were there to take care of Bethany."

  "How fortunate, given that she was brought in not breathing."

  "She had a reaction to the scorpion venom that was very severe."

  "So severe, in fact, that she was treated in the emergency room for four and a half hours?"

  "Yes."

  "So severe that she needed a tracheostomy--a hole cut into her windpipe--to assist her breathing?"

  "Yes."

  "So severe that she was kept for three days following that in the pediatric ICU; three days that doctors told you repeatedly that she might not live?"

  My mother's head is bowed toward her lap. "Yes."

  "On the night that Delia was due to come home from her weekend visit with her father, had you been drinking?"

  "Yes."

  "What time of day did you start?"

  She shakes her head. "I'm not sure."

  "Was Victor living with you, then?"

  "Yes, but he wasn't there," she says. "I think he was at work."

  "What time was he expected home?"

  "It was a long time ago," my mother says.

  "Do you remember if he was supposed to come back before or after your daughter was dropped home?"

  "After," she says. "He worked a second shift."

  "Did you continue to drink through the entire afternoon?"