Vanishing Act

by Barbara Block

  “I was joking, man,” Raymond whined as he rubbed his shoulders. His voice cracked when he spoke. For the space of a heartbeat he sounded like the fourteen-year-old boy he was. “Don’t you do snaps?”

  George didn’t answer immediately. He was too busy taking deep breaths, trying to get himself under control.

  “Get out of here. I’ll talk to you later,” he finally ordered when he had.

  “I bet you don’t even know what snaps is,” Raymond persisted.

  But George didn’t reply. If he had, if he hadn’t ignored him, if he’d even said something like good night, I think things might have ended there. Instead, he turned around, walked inside the bedroom, and began closing the door.

  Raymond took a step forward. “I’m talking to you, man.”

  “Well, I’m not talking to you,” George told him, flinging the words over his shoulder as he shut the door.

  But that wasn’t acceptable to Raymond.

  Maybe he just had to have the last word.

  Maybe his ego insisted.

  Maybe he’d always started stuff, watched the show, and slipped away when things got out of hand.

  Or maybe he had a death wish.

  “You know what your problem is?” Raymond yelled at George from the safety of the hall.

  I could see George’s hand tightening on the doorknob. “Let it go,” I begged.

  He didn’t listen. Instead, he yanked the door open and stuck his head out of the bedroom. “I know what your problem is going to be if you don’t get in your room,” George growled.

  “Your problem,” Raymond countinued, ignoring the warning in his uncle’s voice, “is you’re tagging so much white pussy, you forgot what it’s like to be a nigger.”

  George let out a roar and ran out into the hall. The next thing I heard was the door to Raymond’s room slamming shut, followed by a kerthunk, which I took to be the sound of George hitting it. I wound the bed sheet around myself and ran down the hall. George was using his shoulder as a battering ram when I got there.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  George didn’t answer. He just kept methodically working on the wood. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. The door was trembling. I had an idea that Raymond was too.

  “George!” I screamed.

  He kept on going. I don’t think he even heard me.

  “Leave it alone,” I told him, and grabbed his left arm.

  He spun around and threw a punch with his right hand. I jumped back. But I wasn’t quite fast enough, and his knuckles grazed my shoulder. I groaned and staggered back. It felt as if I’d been clipped by a truck.

  George’s eyes widened in remorse when he realized what he’d done. His hand went to his lips. He took a step toward me. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it.” I grabbed his forearm and led him back to his bedroom. His skin was lathered with a fine coat of sweat.

  “I could have killed him,” he whispered as he sat down on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t believe the sheets were still warm. It seemed as if hours had passed since I left it. “I wanted to.”

  George’s shoulders sagged. His mouth crumpled. He looked as if he were going to cry as the implications of what he’d nearly done sunk in.

  “It’s okay.” I stroked his arm. He pulled away. I put my hand down.

  “No, it isn’t.” His voice was anguished. “I’ve never been out of control like that in my life.” He leaned his elbows on his thighs and dropped his head into his hands. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to him.”

  “Think of it this way. Tonight Raymond has definitely learned about the power of words,” I said, trying to make a joke. But even to my ears, it sounded lame.

  George lifted his head. “I can’t believe I just did what I did. Jesus, the kid’s only fourteen. How could I have let him get to me like that?”

  George didn’t expect an answer, and I didn’t give him one.

  “Family,” George moaned, and dropped his head back in his hands. “Now I remember why I’m living up here.”

  The sound of his breathing filled the room. I watched the muscles in his back bunch and release by the thin light streaming through the bedroom blinds from the streetlamp outside. I wanted to comfort him, but I didn’t know how.

  We sat separated by six inches of crumpled-up comforter for the next half hour as I watched the minutes on George’s digital clock come up and listened to the house’s creaks and groans. Finally I got up and started getting dressed. There didn’t seem to be much point in staying. George didn’t ask what I was doing as I hunted around the room for my clothes, and I didn’t tell him.

  He was still sitting on the edge of his bed, staring off into space, as I left. When I said good-bye, he nodded his head to indicate he’d heard me.

  I paused in front of Raymond’s room on my way out and asked if he needed anything. But he didn’t reply either—like uncle, like nephew, I suppose—and after repeating my question I walked down the stairs and whistled for Zsa Zsa. She came trotting out from the kitchen, where she’d probably been cowering under the table. She wasn’t big on loud noises and angry words.

  “Let’s go.” I fished a dog biscuit out of my jacket pocket and gave it to her. She wagged her tail and gobbled it down. This is why I like dogs, I decided as I fed her another biscuit. They always respond.

  The wind stung my face. I watched the upper half of a skinny cedar across the street bend from side to side and automatically calculated the path it would take if it fell. It was an exercise I and a number of other people tended to indulge in since the previous year. Late last March we’d had a storm that had tipped over a fair number of tall, shallow-rooted evergreens. They had caused a great deal of damage as they crashed into roofs, through windows, and onto cars. The one across the street looked like a good candidate to behave the same way if we had another spell of bad weather. I wondered why the owner hadn’t taken the tree down already, but maybe he was like me—always giving things the benefit of the doubt well past the point when I should.

  I turned on the radio as I drove through the streets on my way home and lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into my lungs. I was surprised to find my hands were a little shaky. I tried not to think about what could have happened in George’s house, but I couldn’t help it. One good, solid punch from George and his entire life and Raymond’s could have been changed forever, but then, I suppose you could say that about crossing the street and getting hit by a car.

  I turned up the volume on the radio. The news was on. That was always good for a laugh. The announcer was saying something about the state funding a new marina on Onondaga Lake, which was pretty funny if you considered that it was one of the most polluted bodies of water in America and that in the summer, if an algae bloom started, it stank so bad that you could smell it five miles away.

  However, I thought as I switched to another station, who was I to argue with economic progress. Especially since there’d been so little of it recently in Syracuse. Or maybe I was just jealous. After all, a lot of people were going to get rich from this project. Only I wasn’t going to be one of them. Which was too bad. It would be nice to stop having to worry about money for a change.

  The streetlights reflected off the bare tree branches and the cars parked in the driveways and the lawns and the houses. Here and there people had left out old furniture or washing machines for the DPW to collect. A few people were out walking their dogs, but most everyone else was inside, either asleep or watching TV or getting ready for the next day. At night Syracuse seemed tidy and quiet, removed from the problems of places like New York City. That’s why Raymond’s mother had sent him here.

  But Syracuse wasn’t problem-free. It wasn’t the quaint small city, Cecilia thought it was. We had our murders, shootings, and robberies just like anyone else. Recently guns and drugs had become more visible as gang members had moved upstate. I shook my head as I pulled into my driveway and killed the cab’s engine. Suddenly I felt completely drained. The evening
had taken more out of me than I thought. I watched my cat jump up on the hood and walk to and fro in front of the windshield, meowing for me to come out and let him in the house and feed him. Patience isn’t James’s forte.

  But then, as George had pointed out, it’s not mine either. After I opened up a tin of tuna for him—white meat packed in oil to make up for my not having come home sooner—I listened to my answering machine.

  There were four phone calls. One was from Professor Fell, one from Melissa’s mother, one from Beth, and one was from Bryan Hayes. I didn’t care.

  Whatever they had to say would keep until morning. I was too tired to talk.

  Chapter 22

  Bryan hovered behind me as I stood in the doorway of his sister’s room. “You didn’t have to come over,” he told me again.

  He hadn’t been happy to see me when he’d answered the bell and seen me standing on his porch. Sporting a three-day stubble, bloodshot eyes, hair that needed a shampooing, and a stained flannel shirt and khakis, he looked as if he’d been on a bender.

  “Had a late night?” I’d asked.

  He’d run his hand over his chin. “Late enough. What are you doing here anyway?”

  “You called, remember?”

  He squinted. “Yeah. Right. Last night. I was just calling to find out how things were going.”

  “The same as before. Which is why I decided I wanted to take another look at Melissa’s room.”

  “You already went through it.”

  “I wasn’t very thorough though. I’m hoping I missed something the first time around.” Coming here had been a spur-of-the-moment decision made with the help of a doughnut, a second cup of coffee, and the sinking feeling I wasn’t getting anywhere.

  “Like what?” Bryan demanded.

  “If I knew, I would tell you.”

  “I see.” Bryan had stepped aside and let me in the house reluctantly. Then he’d followed me up the steps to his sister’s room.

  “I don’t like people pawing through her things,” he’d announced when we’d reached the doorway.

  “Really.” I’d half turned. “You didn’t seem to mind the first time.”

  “I didn’t like it then either. I just didn’t say anything.” Bryan pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. They stayed there for a minute before sliding back down. “Melissa is a very private person. She’d be angry if she knew people were going over her belongings.”

  “Given the circumstances, I’m sure she won’t mind.”

  “Yes, she would,” he insisted. “You don’t know her like I do.”

  “And therein lies the problem.” I took a couple of steps into her room.

  Bryan followed me. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean I don’t know her. I don’t have a sense of her. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to do this alone.”

  “Why?” Unconsciously he ran the tips of his fingers over a small stuffed lion sitting on top of one of Melissa’s dressers. “I can help.”

  “I’m sure you can, but I really would prefer to go through her things by myself.” Everything else being equal, I couldn’t concentrate with Bryan crowding me.

  He scowled, reminding me of nothing so much as a Doberman who’d been told to stand down. “All right.” He took a hesitant step back. “But if you need me, I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll call you if I do,” I assured him.

  He walked to the door and stayed there, anxiously watching me in what I was willing to bet had become for him a shrine. Either that or he was afraid that this time I was going to find something I shouldn’t.

  “Go,” I ordered, and waved him away.

  Finally, when it became clear I wasn’t going to do anything until he left, Bryan turned and walked down the stairs. A moment later, after I heard the opening of a cabinet door, the clink of cutlery, and the scrape of a chair being dragged across the floor, I went and sat down on Melissa’s bed. The mattress was surprisingly soft and I sank down into it. I sighed, reached in my backpack for a cigarette, and studied Melissa’s room. Nothing had changed. It still looked the same way it had the first time I was here. Her desk was still piled high with books, notebooks, miscellaneous sheets of paper, and a variety of pens and pencils. The duffel-sized laundry bags still lay on their sides on the beige carpeting, next to the four cartons crammed with stuff from her dorm room.

  I sighed again, took another two puffs of my Camel, and flicked the ash into a glass that was sitting by the nightstand. I tried to block everything I’d been told about Melissa out of my mind, and just think about what her room was telling me.

  But I guess it wasn’t feeling conversationally inclined.

  Because it wasn’t telling me a thing.

  Of course, if the room had spoken to me, I would have headed straight for the hospital. Which shows you what happens when you get old. In the days when I was dropping acid on a regular basis, the room could not only have said “hi” but metamorphosed into the frigging Australian outback, and the only thing I would have said was “cool.”

  Now I’d be dialing 911.

  That’s progress for you.

  Oh, well. I stubbed my cigarette out, stood up, and got to work. I skipped the cartons—I’d already inventoried their contents pretty thoroughly—and began with the laundry bags. I dumped the first one out. A musty odor filled the room as Melissa’s sheets and towels fell onto the carpet. The only thing they told me was that she liked purple and green. The second bag contained variously colored T-shirts, shorts, jeans, cotton sweaters, sweats, men’s shirts from the Gap, and a variety of underwear from Victoria’s Secret.

  I put everything back and started on the closet. I went through her blouses, mostly man-tailored, and skirts, mostly straight. I looked in the pockets of her jeans and slacks and jackets, but outside of the odd movie ticket stub, I didn’t find anything of interest, after which I eyeballed a couple of pairs of inexpensive jogging pants and jackets. Those, along with the sweats I’d found in her laundry bag, made me remember that Chris had told me that Melissa jogged.

  The three pairs of old running shoes I found on her top shelf confirmed his statement. I wondered why no one other than Chris had mentioned it to me as I dragged a chair over so I could get a better look at the other shoes sitting on the shelf. But maybe Melissa had been just a casual runner, someone who jogged once or twice a week, when the mood took her. I sighed. So far I hadn’t turned up anything surprising. Melissa’s clothes, sober, middle-of-the-road, confirmed the picture I’d built of her. If she was leading a double life, it had nothing to do with her wardrobe.

  Ditto that for her shoes. Theywere boring, functional pumps, sandals, loafers, and boots, all in black and brown. No high-heeled red slingbacks, purple suede clogs, or black stilettos for her. Somehow, Melissa seemed awfully old for her age, I decided as I started in on her pocketbooks. There were four of them altogether, also in black and brown. The only things they contained were loose change, pens, more ticket stubs—the kid had been a moviegoer—and crumpled-up tissue.

  I checked the back of the shelf. I found two empty shoe boxes, a sewing kit, eight wadded-up pairs of paint-stained sweat pants and shirts, some old socks, a couple of stained blouses, and a black plastic bag. The smell of mildew hit me when I opened it. Well, that was better than some of the other things I could be smelling, I reflected as I stepped off the chair and dumped the contents onto the carpet. A pair of jeans, a once-white T-shirt, a pair of socks, and sneakers tumbled out.

  Everything was splotched with gray and lavender patches of mold. Melissa must have been out for a quick run and gotten caught in the rain, changed, thrown the stuff in a bag, and then forgotten about it. I’d done that kind of thing myself. Several times. I put the clothes back in the bag and set it where I’d remember to bring it down to Bryan. He could throw them out. Next I looked through Melissa’s drawers again. The same wadded-up T-shirts, the same sweaters, the same nightgowns were still in
there. I took out the collection of birthday cards tied up in a neat blue ribbon and went through them again.

  All of them were from her mother and brother. Evidently, Melissa had saved everything they’d sent her since she was six years old. The thought that they might never see her again depressed me, and I tried to shove it out of my mind as I took the drawers out of the dresser and checked along the sides and the bottoms. I found three old sales slips, a jogging bra, and a pair of earrings. Not exactly earth-shattering finds.

  I put everything back where it belonged, sat down on Melissa’s bed, and began going through her nightstands. The last time I’d done that, I hadn’t paid much attention, just opened and closed the drawers. This time I did more. The nightstand drawer on the left yielded a box of tissues, a bag of cough drops, and a tweezers. I moved on to the one on the right. I turned on the clock radio. It was still set to the campus station. I paged through the stack of Glamour magazines piled next to the radio.

  Then I opened the nightstand drawer. I wasn’t hoping for much, but in the back, underneath the paperback copy of Carrie, another box of tissues, and the bottle of prescription antihistamines, I found a manila envelope. I opened it. Inside was the first article on Jill Evans’s death. On the border, above the headline, someone, Melissa, I assumed, had written, “Our responsibility to the dead informs our lives.” At the bottom, in the same handwriting, were three lines of poetry.

  She fell,

  a butterfly,

  wings plucked, unable to fly.

  I reread the poem.

  It reminded me of the one written in Melissa’s philosophy textbook on moral responsibility.

  I spread the sides of the envelope and shook it.

  A laminated rose petal fell out.

  I picked it up and held it to the light.

  Chapter 23

  I took in the Hayes kitchen as I walked toward Bryan. Because the room was in the back, I hadn’t seen it the first time I’d been in the house. It had been done colonial style with knotty-pine wooden cabinets, wrought iron hinges, and curved moldings. Given the look of the appliances and the style of the cabinets, I’d say the kitchen had been remodeled about twenty years earlier. Aside from a few burn marks on the white Formica counter and some areas near the door where the linoleum was curling around the edges, the place showed evidence of having been lovingly cared for up until recently.