Vanishing and Other Stories (13 page)

“I suppose it's April.” I whisper each word, then hold my breath and watch her glowing dress move outside. The dark outline of her arm reaches for and retreats from the blackberry bushes. I imagine she might invite me over for a piece of pie, or she might not. I suppose I wouldn't mind going, watching her—you—slice perfect triangular pieces. It would be pleasant; it would be summer. What I can't survive is this imagining: tomorrow's afternoon kitchen light, flour on your forearms, Peter's smile as he licks purple from your fingertips.

 

 

PETER ASKED ME TO MARRY HIM
while we lay on my single bed and chewed black licorice. He was explaining that he believed—truly believed—words could be accurately compared to boxes.

“Ill-made boxes, of course.” He was within a year of completing a Ph.D. in linguistics, still entirely thrilled by ideas and their explanations. He spoke too fast through the bedroom's pale cigarette smoke. “Boxes with holes in the bottom, squeaky hinges, a lid that won't close. No meaning ever quite fits inside.”

“Ornate boxes,” I agreed, partly because I loved when his quick blue eyes lit up. “Gorgeous nonetheless.”

We had met on a particularly picturesque day (thick falling snow) in the middle of a Toronto winter of slush and crowded
streetcars. Three weeks later, Peter moved into my apartment with four pairs of socks, five boxes of books, and a collection of shirts he buttoned unevenly. He wrote his thesis and I painted sad city landscapes—I was trying very hard, in those days, to be an artist. Peter would sit at a small metal desk, I would spread my canvas and paints on the kitchen floor, and we would work. In the evenings he handed me typewritten pages to proofread. His last chapter. Life was flawless.

“Why don't we get married? Why not now?” The licorice had blackened his teeth, and I ran my hand through his hair. I had been asked this before, by less sober and sillier men, but this time it wasn't funny. As a boyfriend, Peter hounded me: letters in my apartment mailbox, unexpected visits to my art classes, phone calls at midnight. In the first week I knew him, he climbed in my window to leave a miniature rose on the desk, a flower that still reminds him of me. I was twenty to his thirty, and his age and education made him seem foreign, as though he had an accent I couldn't place. He taught me wine, dictionaries; I taught him colour coordination, sparse rooms.

I pressed my thumbs to the small lines beside his eyes and said, “Why not now?”

 

 

I PULL MYSELF QUIETLY
from Peter's grip and take the riled-up cat with me. I slip on my leggings, my painting shirt. I don't bother with shoes.

“Wait.” Peter sits up in bed—I can tell, though it's too dark in the room to see. “Mimi. I've lied. I've broken promises. At least say
something.” He climbs out of the bed, finds me in the dark, and holds my wrist. “Talk to me. Let me talk.”

I slip from his fingers, grab the keys to the cool-grey compact car we rented for our months here (it still smells of air freshener), and leave the room. I know this house well now, and stride through the cramped living room to the door without flicking on the lights. The August nights are getting cooler, and I feel rain held in the air, almost visible, waiting to drop.

I drive back to Reynolds Road, back along the driveway that is now dark. I don't care about the hair scratches from tree needles that Peter will find on the car tomorrow morning. I know he won't ask where I went. He'll forgo work for the day, drive to Stan's to buy a small jar of wax, then spend hours rubbing the car clean.

I drive up to the rusted-orange house, not concerned this time with staying hidden. The porch light is on, and a mosquito coil burns, letting off a blue smoke. The boy I saw earlier sits on a fraying lawn chair, one leg propped on a milk carton. Three cats sit on the porch. I turn off the engine and climb out of the car.

I say, “This is awkward,” though I don't feel it. “I stole your cat earlier. I thought it belonged to someone else.” I nod to the white fluff that clings to my shirt.

“You can keep her if you want her.” The boy is smoking a pipe.

“It's a her? I've been referring to her in the masculine.”

The boy nods. Up close he looks older than I thought—twenty-three, twenty-four—and his eyes are calm.

I make a last-ditch attempt at hope. “Does a young woman live here? Red hair?”

He shakes his head no. “Just me and my dad.”

“Whose bicycle?”

“Mine.” The boy squints, tilts his head. His tobacco smoke smells warm. “Do you want some tea?”

The cat claws at my shirt, nips my ear. “Yes. Please.”

He disappears inside for a full five minutes, then emerges with a cracked pot that drips from the bottom. He has a large dish of milk in the other hand, and sets it on the wood planks of the porch. The three cats jump to the dish and bend their elegant heads over it. My white cat squirms, begs me with her eyes, then pushes herself from my arm. The boy pours weak ginger tea into a metal cup for me, none for himself.

Neither of us is very talkative. I sit on the chair and he takes the milk crate, places his now-unlit pipe beside him. His face is already becoming leathered from sun, like the hat he wore earlier. The hairs of his arms are more fair than his skin. His eyes are green, the same glassy shade as my cat's.

“I saw you earlier today, picking beans.” For years Peter studied small talk, the words people use when they're thinking very hard about the words they're using, or when they're hardly thinking at all. Peter's informal conclusion, the philosophy this work built into his life, was that all talk is unfinished, inexpressive, small.

“I saw you too. Your wine bottle.” The boy smiles, wider and more openly than before. He leans toward me, his elbows on his knees. Other cats have moved quietly onto the deck, and they brush up against his calves, leave fur on his jeans. I can see why they like him. “Did you name her?”

“Who? The cat? No.”

Again the smile. His forearms' long muscles move under his skin and his hands are callused and scraped. I sip the tea, still too hot, then lean toward the boy and kiss his smile, his lips, a kiss that
takes only seconds. He doesn't move, doesn't reach to touch me, just kisses back, adept and slow. I imagine the summer he's had, the work and the romances. My cat paws my bare ankles. This kiss surprises me. It doesn't feel like revenge.

The boy flips hair from his eyes, and I know I'll never tell Peter of this moment. And he will never tell me of his time with you. I imagine waking tomorrow morning beside my husband—no cappuccinos. I'll curl up in the kitchen and flip through my sketchbook to see page after page of Peter, and, on the final sheet, you in ink. The last summer sun will stream into the kitchen, and I'll sit in a pool of it on the floor, my canvas in front of me. I'll open my tubes of oil, dip my liner brush.

And Peter will sit at the kitchen table, mesmerized by brush strokes. When he stands and slips out the door, he won't have to tell me he's gone to see you. To say goodbye to you. He'll come back bewildered, as if he never imagined consequence. I too will visit you and listen to your brief, nervous chatter. Then hand you an unfinished, unflattering sketch in ink. At night, Peter won't talk. He'll reach across the cold bedsheets and hold my tired hand.

The boy fingers a wisp of my hair and tucks it behind my ear. After a few quiet minutes, I hand him the hot metal cup and stand. He walks me to my car, opens the door, and the cat follows, leaps in. Tomorrow I will paint this: the boy's tan, mouth, tangled hair. Before leaving, I ask his name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE THREE OF US
lived together for six years, in a two-bedroom suite on the bottom floor of an old house. We had a deck, a compost bin, and a herb garden we neglected. Like most young people in that coastal town, we rode our bikes everywhere, ate tofu, and went to bed early. We had two cats, many shared appliances, and we'd forgotten whose dishes were whose. We never kept track of who paid the biggest share of the hydro bill—it all evened out in the end, we decided—or who had cleaned the bathroom last. In fact, we hardly cleaned at all. We were used to each other's unruliness.

We also had routines that we shared. On Thursdays, Lawrence would bring home a Polanski or a Kubrick and we'd have a movie night with popcorn and vodka sevens. Karen had travelled for a year in India, so sometimes she'd get dressed up in a sari and cook curry in a big pot on the stove. She used whatever was in the fridge and every spice in the cupboard. It didn't always taste great, but
Lawrence and I loved her so much that we ate it anyway. For days we'd eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so the three of us even shared digestion problems.

Sometimes we'd have friends over, or Karen and Lawrence would try to set me up with a boyfriend. But for most of those six years, it was just the three of us. It was as though we were all married to one another. Except that only two of us slept together. One of us—that one was me—slept alone.

 

 

WE
'
D MET BECAUSE
we'd all studied impractical things at the small university that was just outside of town. Karen had studied conceptual art, Lawrence political science, and I'd studied comparative lit. We continued to live together after we graduated, and into our mid-twenties—a time of anxiety and self-indulgence and poverty. Karen worked at the M•A•C makeup counter in the mall, Lawrence worked for Blockbuster, and I got casual hours at the library. None of us knew what we wanted to do with our lives. We only knew that we didn't want to return to the big eastern cities where we'd been raised—places where the air was not as clean and the weather not as warm. We considered our little suite home, and we considered one another family.

It's hard to explain what a perfect match we were, just like it's hard to explain what makes you love your boyfriend or your girlfriend. We were so different that people often said they couldn't believe we managed to get along at all. Karen wore fake eyelashes that made her green eyes look as perfect as the kind of doll's eyes that roll shut when you tip the toy backwards. She accentuated her
nose with a gold ring, and her heart-shaped mouth with perfectly applied lipstick. She had red hair that she dyed even redder, and she looked improbable. Her skin was improbably pale and her hair was improbably red and she was improbably tall. She was the kind of person you never forget and you never get over.

Lawrence was one of those slouchy urban guys who wears tight jeans and witty, used T-shirts. He was skinny in an intellectual way, his 140-pound body a protest against conventional forms of masculinity like manual labour, going to the gym, and eating steak. His hair hung in his eyes, his jeans were frayed, and his sneakers were falling apart. He liked to watch cult movies and read the newspaper and take long naps in the afternoon. He was a hipster who was probably meant to become an instructor in a small-town college somewhere. If I were to imagine his future—though I've learned not to make predictions anymore—I would guess that he'd eventually trade the ironic T-shirts for sweaters and corduroys and unkempt, receding hair.