Vanishing Acts

by Jodi Picoult

  "Have you reached a verdict?" the judge asks.

  A woman with tight red pincurls nods. "We have, Your Honor."

  "What say you?"

  "In the case of The State of Arizona versus Andrew Hopkins, we find the defendant not guilty."

  I am aware of Eric crowing with delight, of Chris Hamilton slapping us both on the back. I try to find enough air to breathe. And then Delia is there, with her arms around me and her face pressed into my chest. I hold tight and I think of something Eric said, just after his closing statement. It's not a real defense, he murmured, but sometimes that's all you've got.

  Sometimes it even works.

  There is a commotion as the reporters vie for Eric's sound bite. Gradually, the crowd falls back to allow Emma Wasserstein passage. She shakes Eric's hand, and Chris's, and then leans forward to give Eric's briefcase back to him. But as she does, she comes close enough to whisper to me. "Mr. Hopkins," she says, a truth meant only for me, "I would have done it, too."

  Fitz

  I am trying to find a back exit that we might use to escape when Delia appears and throws herself into my arms. I'm still not used to that; immediately every conscious thought or rational plan flies out of my head while I just enjoy the feel of her. "Congratulations," I say into her hair.

  "I want to tell Sophie," she announces. "I want to tell her and then I want to drive straight to the airport and get on the first plane to New Hampshire."

  And what happens then? Delia, so happy about the verdict, hasn't even touched down close enough to ground to remember all that's been left behind. It's nice to know that the atomic bomb missed your house, but you will be cleaning up the rubble for some time before your front path is clear.

  As it turns out, I don't want to write the story of her life. I want a series.

  "Stop thinking," Delia says, the same advice I once gave to her. She sweeps forward and, jubilant, kisses me, which is just when Eric turns the corner.

  She can't see him; I'm the one facing the opposite end of the hall. But she breaks away from me when she hears his voice. "Oh," he says quietly. "It's like that." He looks at me, and then at Delia. "I was trying to find you," he murmurs. "I was ..." He shakes his head and turns around.

  "Stay here," I tell Delia, and I hurry after Eric. "Wait up."

  He stops walking, but he doesn't turn around.

  "Can I talk to you?"

  Eric hesitates, but then he slides down the wall to sit on the floor. I sit down beside him. In spite of my facility with language, I can't think of a single word to say to make this better.

  "Let me guess," Eric says. "You never meant for it to happen."

  "Hell, yes, I did. I've wanted her since you two started dating."

  Surprised, Eric blinks at me, and then even laughs a little. "I know."

  "You did?"

  "For God's sake, you're about as subtle as Hiroshima, Fitz." He sighs. "At least I didn't lose the girl and the case."

  I look down at the floor. "Incidentally, I never meant for it to happen."

  "I should beat the crap out of you."

  "You can try."

  "Yeah," Eric says quietly. "I just might do that." Then he glances up at me. "If I can't take care of her myself, there's no one else I'd want to take my place." He hesitates, and when he speaks a moment later, his voice is heavy with hope. "I'm going to clean up," he vows. "This time for good."

  "I want you to," I tell him. "I'd like that."

  Eric will be with us--maybe not as often, maybe not even in the same neighborhood, maybe not for a while. But we are three; none of us would have it any other way.

  He smiles, his hair falling over his brow. "Be careful what you wish for," Eric says. "I've learned my fair share about abduction."

  We sit for a few more moments, although there's really nothing left to say. This is new to me, too, an entire conversation that takes place in silence, because the heart has its own language. I will remember what Eric says even though he doesn't say a word. I will tell it to her.

  Delia

  There is one other person who hangs back in the courtroom, unwilling to face the storm of media that is waiting on the other side of the doors. My mother waits at the end of the aisle, her hands clasped in front of her. "Delia," she says. "I'm happy for you."

  I stand a foot away from her, wondering what I am supposed to say.

  "I guess you'll be going back home, then." She smiles a little. "I hope we can stay in touch. Maybe you'll come back for a visit. You're always welcome to stay with us."

  Us. At the mention of Victor, something shuts down inside of me. Eric says that we can try to press charges against Victor if the statute of limitations hasn't run out yet, that this would be a whole new trial. As much as I want him to pay, there is a part of me that wants to just put it behind me. But even more, I want my mother to believe me. I want her, for once, to take my side instead of her own.

  "He hurt me," I say baldly. "I did remember. But you don't ... so it couldn't have happened, right?"

  She shakes her head. "That's not--"

  "True?" I finish, the word bitter on my tongue before I swallow it. "I wanted you to be my mother. I wanted one so badly."

  "I am your mother."

  I think of what would happen if someone, anyone, touched Sophie. It wouldn't matter who it was--Victor, the man in the moon, Eric--I'd kill him. An icicle through the heart, a car filled with carbon monoxide. He would not take another breath if he touched my daughter; I'd find a way to hurt him that didn't show, just like he'd done to her.

  And if Sophie was the one who came to tell me about it, I'd listen.

  In this way, I am different from my mother. And for that, I'm incredibly grateful.

  When I look up at her, I don't feel regret or sadness or even pain inside; I just feel numb. "I wish I could tell you that I know you did the best you could," I say softly, "but I can't."

  As a child, what I was missing was so much bigger to me than what I had. My mother--mythic, imaginary--was a deity and a superhero and a comfort all at once. If only I'd had her, surely, she would have been the answer to every problem; if only I'd had her, she would have been the cure for everything that ever had gone wrong in my life. It has taken me twenty-eight years to be able to admit that I'm glad I did not know my mother until now. Not because, as my father suspected, she would ruin my life, but because this way, I did not have to bear witness as she ruined hers.

  My mother's sorrow is so powerful, it cracks the clay tile beneath her feet; it makes the water in the fountain behind us overflow. "Delia," she says, as her eyes fill with tears. "I'm trying."

  "Me, too." I reach for her hand: a compromise, a good-bye. Maybe this is as good as it gets.

  Eric and I sit in the anteroom of the Madison Street Jail while we wait for my father's paperwork to be completed. I am careful to keep an inch of space between us, even when we are cramped tight by others. It shifts with us, and keeps me from brushing up against him. Once that happens, I will not be able to keep myself from falling apart.

  We watch a parade of felons: prostitutes who try to come on to the detention officers; gang members bleeding from open wounds; drunks who sleep in the corners and sometimes cry in their sleep. "You know," he says, after a few minutes, "I might just stay here for a while."

  "In jail?"

  "In Arizona. It's not so bad, really. And I've got at least one judge who likes me." He shrugs. "Chris Hamilton offered me a job."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah. Right after he chewed me out for not telling him I'm an alcoholic."

  I stare down at my hands. "That's not why I did it, you know."

  "That's exactly why you did it," he corrects. "And that's why I love you." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper with an address scrawled across it. "This is the closest AA meeting. I'm going there tonight."

  My eyes fill again. "I love you, too," I say. "But I can't carry your baggage."

  "I know, Dee."

 
"I'm not sure what I want right now."

  "I know that, too," Eric says.

  I wipe my eyes. "What am I supposed to tell Sophie?"

  "That I said this was the best thing for her mother." He takes my hand and traces his thumb across my knuckles. "For God's sake, if I learned anything during this damn trial it's that the only way someone can leave you is if you let them. And I'm not doing that, Dee. It may look like that today, or tomorrow, or even a month from now, but one day you're going to wake up and see that this whole time you've been gone, you've only been headed back to where you started. And I'll be there, waiting." He leans forward and kisses me once, feather-light, on the lips. "It's not like I'm not letting you go," he murmurs. "I'm just trusting you enough to come back."

  When he stands, he is tall enough to block the line of the sun. He is all I see, for a moment, when he walks out the door.

  *

  We leave the jail and head onto the highway. But instead of going back to Fitz and Sophie, I pull off at the first exit and veer to the side of the road in a cloud of dust. For the first time I allow myself to look at my father, really look at him, since this trial has begun.

  The bruises on his face are healing, but his nose is never going to be straight again. His hair is still tufted and spotty from the shave. He sits with his arms crossed tight, as if he doesn't quite know what to do with all the space in the front seat, and even when the grit gets unbearable, he will not roll up his window.

  "You probably have some questions for me," he says.

  I look away, over the flat of the desert. There are wild boar out there, and coyote, and snakes. There are a thousand dangers. You can trip on a garden hose and wind up in a coma; you can eat a bad mushroom and die. Safety is never absolute, no matter what precautions you take. "You should have told me about Victor."

  He is quiet for a full minute, and then he rubs his hand over his jaw. "I would have," he says. "But I honestly didn't know whether it was true."

  My mouth drops open and I cannot move, cannot breathe. "What?"

  "I didn't have any proof, just ...a feeling. I couldn't risk leaving you there with him, but I also couldn't take a hunch to the cops."

  "What about what you saw through the window?"

  He shakes his head. "I don't know if I really did see that, Delia, or if I just convinced myself I did, over the years. The more time that passed, the more I wondered if I'd jumped to the wrong conclusions. And I needed to think I hadn't, because that way I could justify running away with you." He closes his eyes. "It turns out that if you want something to be true badly enough, you can rewrite it that way, in your head. You can even start to believe it."

  "You lied on the witness stand?" I manage.

  "It just ... came out. And when it did--even when I realized that it could be the thing that saved me--I felt awful. But then I thought maybe you'd forgive me," he says. "I'd spent almost thirty years being someone I wasn't, for you. So maybe you wouldn't mind spending a week being someone you weren't, for me."

  I do not tell my father about the memories I've had of Victor; memories that were never heard in that courtroom; memories that would validate his intuition from so long ago. I don't think about what I know, and what I've painted over in my mind. There isn't one truth, there are dozens. The challenge is getting everyone to agree on one version.

  So I ask the only question, really, that's left. "Then why did you take me?"

  My father looks at me. "Because," he says simply, "you asked."

  I am sitting in the front seat of the car, with my toes up on the dashboard. I close my eyes so the ribbon road in front of us vanishes, and I pretend it would be this easy to disappear. Please Daddy, I say. Don't take me home yet.

  When I open my eyes, it has started to rain. Fingers drum on the roof, and I roll up the windows of the car. What if it turns out that a life isn't defined by who you belong to or where you came from, by what you wished for or whom you've lost, but instead by the moments you spend getting from each of these places to the next?

  I glance at my father and ask him the question he asked me exactly a lifetime ago. "Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?"

  His smile lights me. I drive east, toward Sophie, toward home. I follow a procession of telephone poles that stand with their arms outstretched, marching toward the horizon line. They keep going, you know. Even when you can't see where they're headed.