Vanishing and Other Stories (20 page)

And then she starts to cry, holding one of the host's napkins to her face. Gérard puts an arm around her, and no one at the party seems to notice.

“We should get married,” says Penny. “We get along.”

“Possibly.” He touches her hair. “We should at least have a dance.”

They move awkwardly to music that is said to be popular in Europe now. The tempo and rhythm are like nothing Penny has heard before, but the lyrics tell the same old story. Penny leans against this man and he presses her to him. He holds her the way he held his young fiancée during the war, as they listened to the boots and trucks outside their Paris window. The way Katherine held her daughter after that grade-school heartache, a first disappointment. As though it might change something, they hold each other and dance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PEOPLE JUST DISAPPEAR
. My wife's gone. My mom made it to a sturdy old age then faded away. And I hardly see my daughter anymore. Alicia's in Vancouver now. She lives with her boyfriend—they're both in med school, that's how they met—and she's usually too busy to call. When we do talk, the conversation is rushed. It's like she's practising her doctor's voice with me: concerned but efficient, just checking in.

So when she calls and says, “I hate this city,” she sounds like a different person.

“It never stops raining here,” she says. Her voice has the rawness of morning, but it's five o'clock at night. “It never, never stops.”

This is her first phone call in over a month, but I hadn't been worried. People are always spiralling off in other directions,
like twigs knocked around by a river current. I try to be the still point, a rock on the bank. I stay put, so that when my daughter calls to say, “I hate this city,” I'm right here to pick up the phone.

“I can't stand it here,” she says. “All the rain and the grey make me want to kick the wall in.”

Her voice echoes, and I figure she must be in the bathroom to get some privacy. She's probably in the empty tub with the shower curtain drawn. Her mom used to do that when we were married, when she was having all kinds of conversations she didn't want me to overhear.

“Gavin's always at the clinic and I'm always in the library,” Alicia says. “We don't even have time to buy groceries. We live on ginger ale and cereal.”

Out the window, I see patterns of frost on the windshields of parked cars.

“I haven't slept in weeks, Dad.” Alicia whispers this. “I can't even sit still.”

“You should come out here,” I say, and that surprises me—I never ask her to come home. I'm not one of those fathers who are always calling and sending emails, talking about how much they miss their kid. I don't wear my need on the outside. “You should stay as long as you want.”

I hear her exhale. She sounds done for. Maybe that wet Vancouver air is making her sick.

“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

And that surprises me too.

 

 

THE THING IS
, people also come back. They return just when you thought they were gone for good, when you were finished even missing them.

Take all the boyfriends my mom had. They were men who'd seen lots of the world, who were worn down by it, and they never stuck around. There was this one guy, George. He was the best of them, the one I hoped would stay. A decent, slow-moving guy. He liked caramels, the kind that come wrapped in clear plastic. When I was a kid, he taught me how to toss them in the air and catch them in my mouth. “You two are a pair of wackos,” my mom would say. She used words like “wacko” when George was around. She laughed a lot too.

Mom wasn't with George for his looks. He was balding and had a sac of skin that hung under his chin. He also had a belly that seemed to move on its own, like it was alive. I used to pretend it was a soft, furry animal that had curled up next to him and that he hadn't bothered to shoo away.

I haven't seen him in years, decades even—not since I was seven—but lately I meet him every day. Especially when I look in that little mirror at work, the one above the sink that runs only cold. The mirror is so small that I can only see one section of my face at a time, and there's a bit of George in each part. I don't have that soft, swaying stomach yet, but he's there in my face. My tired, unshaven skin—that's George. The crease along my forehead: George. The pouches under my eyes, like I've been storing my disappointments there. That's George too.

 

 

I
'
M A FINISHER
. I do handrails, boat hulls, car parts. I spray them with powder then bake them in an oven. There's some skill to it—getting the colour on evenly, and setting the temperature right so there aren't any bubbles. I like the work. The monotony is lulling, almost addictive. And I don't mind being alone. I like having time to think.

Mostly I think about Alicia. I try to picture her in Vancouver. She lives on Cambie, in an apartment. I've never seen it, but I've looked Cambie up on a map. She takes the bus to the university, I know that. She says it takes about half an hour.

I don't know what her classes are like, but I guess they sit in desks and take notes. They also carve up bodies—cadavers. She described a cut-up hand to me over the phone: the skin, bones, nerves. And last year she called and said, “Dad, guess what?” She was out of breath. “I helped deliver a baby!”

That's why I work six, seven days a week—to hear Alicia happy. To help her pay her tuition and go off and live her life. She appreciates it. She told me so last time I saw her. That was over a year ago, because she didn't come home this past Christmas. She spent the holidays in Puerto Vallarta with her boyfriend and his family. The boyfriend's mother had called me up a couple of months before, to see if Alicia could go with them. They rented a house and the whole family went every year. Grandparents, uncles, kids.

“We'd love it if Alicia could join us.” The mother had a sunny voice, the voice of someone who's never had to earn a living. Her husband is a radiologist, and Gavin plans to be one too. “It's always such a fun time.”

I wanted to tell this woman that Christmas is my only holiday. Christmas Day, Alicia and I go for a skate, make a simple dinner.
We take it easy. With Alicia in Mexico, I knew I'd spend the day in bed with a bottle of champagne and a pizza I'd order from any open restaurant I could find.

The mother—Diane is her name—said they'd pay for the ticket. “Airfare is next to nothing these days,” she said, and I almost hung up on her.

That was over five months ago, and now Alicia's coming in for three days, maybe even four. I'm leaving work early to pick her up from the depot. I wash my hands and face in the sink, the one that only runs cold. I've been spraying Matte Blue, and the powder sticks to my eyebrows, my hair, the insides of my ears. I leave this stuff everywhere—on my clothes, furniture, the soap in my shower. I usually don't think about it, but with Alicia coming I see things differently. During the drive to the bus depot I notice it under my nails, on the dash of my car, embedded in the plastic of the wheel.

 

 

GEORGE USED TO GIVE
all kinds of hugs. Bear hugs, alligator hugs, elephant hugs. If he was being an elephant, he'd swing his arm like a trunk and pick me up. The bear hugs were my favourite. He'd pick me up, squeeze me to his chest, and growl in my ear. His breath was warm and cavernous, coming from deep inside that body.

That's how I want to hug Alicia. I see her before she sees me. She hops off the bus and picks up a half-empty backpack. She wears a flimsy raincoat and jeans. She's thin and jumpy, and her movements remind me of the magpies that skip around on my
balcony. I want to pick her up and hold her, but she's an adult, a woman, and maybe too old for that sort of thing.

She sees me, waves, and walks over. “Dad.” She laughs. “You're blue.”

She rubs her hand through my hair the way she liked to do when she was a kid. Blue powder sprays from my head and floats between us. “Snow,” she says, which is what she used to call it. I notice her skin: it has a grey tinge, the same colour as the slush piled at the curbs. I give her a quick hug, pat her shoulder, and she smells like she needs a shower.

“I didn't have time to get many things together.” Her eyes are glassy, like scraps of ice. “I didn't know what to bring.”

Her coat is unzipped and she wears a T-shirt underneath. On her feet she has blue canvas shoes, bad for this weather. “You'll need a better coat,” I say.

“No, I'm fine.” To prove herself right she takes my hand and presses it to her forehead. “See?”

Her skin is hot and damp, and it reminds me of when George held me so tight that I couldn't breathe and I'd start to sweat. Sometimes it felt like my ribs were cracking. When he put me down, I'd wobble foot to foot, catching my breath. I'd be dizzy, light-headed, and I'd look up at him and he'd seem different—bigger, almost dangerous.

Alicia sees my car and walks toward it, ahead of me. She nearly slips on the ice, then regains her balance. And I remember how, when I steadied myself, caught my breath, George would go back to being George—that sweet, soft-spoken guy. And I'd grab his sweater. “Again,” I'd say, and pull his sleeve. “Again.”

 

 

WHEN WE GET TO MY PLACE
, Alicia kicks open the door as though she still lives here. “It's exactly the same,” she says.

We used to live as a family in this place, a two-bedroom off Memorial. I didn't move after Claire left because I didn't want to upset Alicia even more. She was only seven years old, and I thought too many changes would confuse her. Anyway, it took me years to believe that Claire wasn't coming back. By the time I understood that, I'd lived this way so long it didn't seem worth changing.

Now that Alicia's here, the first thing I want to do is feed her. Then sit her down and ask her questions. Why she's so thin. Why she's so wrecked. But she throws herself onto the couch and adjusts one of the green, craggy cushions under her head. The stuffing is worn down, which I didn't notice until now. Alicia used to trampoline all over that couch.