Vanishing and Other Stories (16 page)

I was not prepared for what actually happened. I was not prepared when I came home from work one evening and saw Lawrence and Karen in the kitchen, drinking Slurpees.

“Holy shit,” said Karen when she saw me. “Great outfit!”

I was wearing my own denim shorts with her green velour blazer and her ankle-high boots. I was also holding two bags of groceries. Inside these bags there was enough pasta, eggs, tofu, apples, and canned cat food to last two people and two cats for exactly one week.

Karen came over and hugged me. I didn't hug her back because I was holding the groceries and because I couldn't breathe. She said, “I missed you guys so much.”

“Karen called from the ferry,” said Lawrence. “She asked if I could pick her up.”

Then he gave me a look. I don't know what that look communicated. It might have been apology. It might have been collusion. He might have been begging me to keep my mouth shut.

Then I noticed that the living room was full of wooden chairs. So he had dismantled the dining room and turned it back into a—my—bedroom. He must have taken the chairs out, pushed the bed against the wall, and thrown the tablecloth in the garbage.

“Where's
Revolution Now!
guy?” I said.

“What?” Karen tugged at the sleeves of the blazer. “This is a bit big on you.”

She was wearing a layered skirt, a tank top, and a fake red flower in her hair. She must have stepped off the ferry like that—looking like the hottest, most badass flamenco dancer in the world. Lawrence must have forgotten all about me. Karen looked so great that even I wanted to make out with her. She looked so great that I wanted to cry.

“I know.” I looked down at myself—my narrow hips, bony knees, all the evidence that I was still the old me. “Nothing fits right.”

Then I did cry. I dropped both grocery bags, not caring if I broke the eggs or bruised the apples, and Karen said, “Oh, no—your mascara.”

Lawrence obviously hadn't told her anything, and that's why she put her arms around me. She held me, pressed her cold Slurpee cup against my back, and I cried into her improbably red hair.

“It's okay,” said Karen. “It's okay, Lise.”

And the way she said that made me think that maybe Lawrence had told her. Maybe he'd told her everything. And maybe she wasn't upset about it. She saw it as something that could be fixed or painted over.
It's okay
. She'd said it with confidence—confidence in herself, in her ability to make everyone in the room feel happy and lucky, her ability to bring beauty to life.

“I'm back now,” she said.

Then Lawrence came up and put his arms around us both, and it was just like before. Except better, because Karen held me the way Lawrence never had. And I stopped crying so
ostentatiously, so passionately. Instead, my tears came out in that small, silent way. I could hear Percy, or maybe it was Beau, batting one of the fallen cans of cat food around on the floor. And when Karen said, “Everything's going to be okay,” I thought maybe she was right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHEN PENNY STUMBLES OFF THE TRAIN
, she has the drunk look of someone who's spent too long absorbed in a book. For three days she travelled from Montreal to Calgary, reading
Madame Bovary
. Not that she'll be allowed to teach nineteenth-century books, or any books at all, since Calgary's university is too small to offer those kinds of courses. She has come to teach grammar and pronunciation to students who don't speak a word of French.

She carries a green, hard-sided suitcase, the same one her mother took to Paris. She insisted on minimalism before she left, partly to impress Andrew with her socialist packing skills.

He stood in her bedroom and watched her fold cardigans into the suitcase. “Why do you have to go?”

“It's only for a year.”

“It doesn't make sense, Penny. West of Kenora, the world ends.”

“The world doesn't end.” She nudged his leg with her foot, tried to catch him on the spot that tickled. “It just gets flatter.”

Penny feels as lost as her mother must have felt during her first days in Paris. She watches the train pull away; it will continue to Vancouver, a place she never before bothered to imagine. A sign tells her she's on Ninth Avenue, in front of the Palliser Hotel. The few passengers who got off with her have been picked up by relatives or friends and are driving away along the grid of downtown roads. Under the bright sun, the cars have a dreamy quality as they cross the tracks and swerve into the quiet heart of the city. There's a thinness to the air here, a dry heat that makes Penny's skin itch and will probably give her nosebleeds. She smells dust, or maybe pollen. She sneezes twice, and no one takes any notice.

 

 

THE FIRST TIME
Penny was engaged, she and her fiancé were ten years old. His name was Adam—appropriate, she now thinks, considering the purity of their romance.

Their engagement lasted an afternoon, when they folded wedding invitations out of paper torn from their spellers. Penny's best friend, Donna, performed the ceremony behind the school. It was winter in Montreal, and snow soaked through the leather of their shoes. The bride and groom exchanged mittens instead of rings.

But the next day, Penny went to hold Adam's hand and he skipped away from her.

“I've enlisted,” he said. This was during the last year of the Second World War, and the schoolyard games centred on imagined battles and deaths. “You'll never see me again.”

Penny ran home, burst through the door, and threw herself against her mother's legs. Katherine was reading on the couch, the unfolded laundry in a pile beside her. She bent the corner of her page down. “What are you crying for?”

When Penny explained, her mother said, “Is that all?” Then Katherine lifted Penny into her thin, ballet-trained arms. “Hush, now.” She held her daughter, stroked her hair, and Penny smelled cigarettes and lilac soap on her skin. “You'll meet plenty of Adams. The choosing will be the hard part.”

 

 

PENNY STAYS AT THE EXPEDITION MOTOR HOTEL
, and her room is directly above the motel's sign. It advertises
Great Monthly Rates!
under a picture of a camel with lewd-looking humps. In the distance are snow-capped mountains and the river she can barely glimpse from her window. All around her is dust and desert heat that rises from the pavement.

The motel's other guests are young men from places with incredible names like Carstairs and Medicine Hat. Some are in town on business, some for rodeo, and none can comprehend that she is a woman travelling on her own.

“So you came here by yourself?” they ask over and over. “Where're you from again?” They strain like they can't quite hear her, or as though she speaks with a difficult accent.

Only one of them says, “Montreal. I've been there. Nice
place.” He is as young as the others, tall, and with the broad, innocent face of someone raised in the country. He wears a suit, carries a briefcase, and looks like a boy wearing his father's clothing. They stand in the hotel lobby and he leans against a wall covered with photos of men on horses, the brims of their hats throwing shadow over their eyes.

“You know Montreal?” Penny craves a memory of home, hers or someone else's. “When were you there? For how long?”

“A few days.” He has an accent Penny can't place: British, but with a rollicking, rhythmical quality she's never heard before. “Enough to see it was a fine old place. Which isn't my kind of place.”

He smiles, and this is the first time in days someone has looked at Penny warmly, not in the guarded way of strangers. He invites her to join him at Phil's Pancake House. “It's terrible. But you're welcome to dine with me.”

“Pancakes for dinner?” Penny has been living off sweet-and-sour pork from the Silver Dragon, the only decent restaurant she's found in the city. “I can't.”

“You have stomach problems?”

“I'm engaged.”

“Good for you.” He holds out his hand. “I'm David.”

 

 

A MONTH BEFORE LEAVING MONTREAL
, Penny stood with Andrew in an empty apartment on Craig Street. They were looking for a place to rent, a place that would be their own once they married. Without meaning to, they seemed only to consider apartments in
their neighbourhood. This place—part of a crumbling Victorian row, with a bay window and two dim bedrooms—had exactly the same layout as the one Andrew grew up in.

“This could be the study,” he said. “We could set up two desks, side by side.”

Penny smiled, because fiancées were supposed to be happy. She was supposed to look forward to her quiet, studious life with Andrew. She would write her thesis and he would finish his studies. They would listen to classical music; he likes Shostakovich, she Berlioz. They would read to each other in bed.

“We can paint the walls any colour we want,” Andrew said. “Or hang pictures.”

But Penny was thinking of Andrew's mother—her anxious voice, wool skirts, the cuffs of her blouses that she scrubbed each evening so they stayed white. And her own mother, who still wore her old silk dresses and sweaters with pearl buttons. Penny and Donna had laughed mercilessly at their mothers, had believed their own lives would be different.

“I've been offered a job,” she said. “As a French teacher—a professor.”

“Our own kitchen, Penny.” Andrew gestured grandly at the grimy counters and oil-splattered walls.

“The pay is good. But I'd have to move away. To Alberta.”

“The windows face south, so we'll get good light.”

“It's a year-long contract. It would only be for a year.”

“And look at this.” Andrew turned the sink's faucets—first the hot, then the cold. “A kitchen sink, Penny. Our own kitchen sink.”

 

 

PHIL
'
S SERVES BREAKFAST ALL DAY
, so she orders the Cowboy Two-Step: two pancakes, two slices of bacon, two eggs any style. When the plate arrives, she says, “My mother would disown me if she saw me eating like this.”