Vanishing and Other Stories (24 page)

It is almost thirty steps, weaving between bare birch and pine, until you see him. The winter's snow melted only weeks ago, and the mud is cold and wet on the bottoms of your feet. You step over fallen logs, skip over stones and acorns that could slice your soles, and fallen leaves that are slick from last month's snow. The ravine smells the way ice tastes on your tongue, a sweet chill of melting winter.

Daniel kneels beside the creek that skids near the unused rail track. He is focused on something, his back curved, shoulders hunched. Daniel is sixteen, three years older than you and seven years younger than your sister—a lack of symmetry that annoys you. Crystal was always your babysitter, and Daniel the only friend you ever had. Your first memory—hardly that, just a blurred image nestled deep in your brain—is of watching your brother leap from his bed, flapping his arms and trying to fly.

Now, he wears his school uniform, the knees of his polyester pants pressed into the mud and his white, collared shirt untucked. Unlike other boys his age, he hasn't grown muscles, and his shoulder blades jut like wings from his back. You take three quiet breaths and walk up to him on your toes. You stretch out your finger to the bone of his neck, a marble under his skin, and watch his breath, its slow, visible rhythm. You kneel beside him and your knees sink into mulch.

“What are you doing?” You press your cheek against his shoulder, and watch as he plucks—meticulously—the feathers from a bird.

He holds the bird's slack body in both hands. “I found her against the big oak. Already dead.”

“A warbler?”

“A vireo.”

“Vireo.” You repeat the word and observe the remaining feathers, the bird's yellow sides and white throat, the slight hook of her beak. Her legs—stiff and slim as twigs—curl in on themselves.

“I can't tell how she died,” he says. The bird's empty black eyes stare open and her body fills his palm. “Maybe she froze to death, but it hasn't been that cold.”

You pull the bird's wing open to touch the soft feathers underneath.

“It could be some sort of disease.” Your brother seems to know most things. He runs one finger down the bird's bare skin, which looks like a pincushion where the feathers have been plucked. He lifts your hand and guides you to do the same. The body is cold, pitted, and reminds you of your own goosebumps.

“Maybe we should bury her.” This seems appropriate to you. “Have some sort of ceremony.”

Daniel lifts the bird to his face, as though he means to kiss her. If you weren't there, would he have done it? If he had asked you to, you might have done it.

You stare at the blank eyes of the vireo and, because you can hardly feel your toes, say, “Our mother wants you inside.”

“Maybe I should bring her to the garage, for further inspection. Maybe I can diagnose her.”

“She's suddenly become religious.”

“Who?”

“Our mother.”

Daniel laughs his rain-on-leaves laugh, puts his arm around you. “Do you need protection in there, Cassy?”

You straighten your shoulders. “No.”

Daniel smoothes the plucked feathers with his palm then tucks them into his pocket. He walks to a fallen pine and places the bird under its grey, crumbling needles, then washes his hands in the creek. When he reaches to help you up, your fingers are stiff with chill.

“You know, Cassy,” he says, “you wouldn't be so cold if you wore more clothes.”

 

 

EIGHT YEARS LATER
, your mother begins to lose things. She walks through the house holding her head with both hands, as though it might lift away from her body. “Where's my toothbrush? Where did I put my toothbrush?”

You look up from your studies, which you do in the living room, on a couch that Rebecca keeps covered with a sheet. “Did you check all the drawers, Mom?”

Later, when you get up to pour yourself some juice, you find your mother's toothbrush. It's in the freezer, its bristles like tiny, delicate icicles.

 

 

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING
, you slip through the hallway to your brother's room. Crystal stumbled out of the house hours ago for a bachelorette party, wearing hoop earrings and a silky sweater that fell like water from her shoulders. You count to ten outside your brother's room, then turn the doorknob with both hands.

Daniel lies in bed and reads from
A Field Guide to Western Birds
. The glow from his bedside lamp shows his oak desk and the detailed drawings of birds he bends over for days. A desk drawer lies ajar, as though it has burst open, too full of the feathers he collects. Sometimes, when he opens the window, they float through the room, dancing in the chilled air.

You slide between the sheets and under the wool blankets. Daniel lets you lie over his arm, your cheek on his chest.

“My room is cold. What are you doing?”

“I'm trying to memorize the warblers.” Your brother's book is open to a cluster of brown and blue birds, arrows pointing to the significant marks on their bodies: throat feathers, striped backs and crowns, white bellies, and slight lines over the eyes. “There are so many.”

“Do you think we'll ever see Crystal again? Do you think she'll visit?”

“She'll be too busy being a wife.” Your brother shrugs, and you feel it in your own body. “But she'll remember us at family holidays. Family tragedies.”

The idea strikes your mind like a gust of wind: future celebrations, future sadnesses. You haven't yet begun to imagine further years or separate lives. “Do you think she's in love?”

“She probably believes in love.” It is in the darkness of this room that Daniel speaks most. He seems to save his voice, its jumpy rhythm, for your visits. And it is here, feeling the cadence of it against your cheek, that you feel calm and warm.

“What was the bird we saw today?”

“Flip to 228.” Daniel holds the book's spine in his left hand and you thumb through it with your right. The thick pages are
bent and have bled from rain. You run your eyes over the shiny pictures in the faint lamplight, and your brother's wrist and hand arc shadows over the print. You eliminate the white-eyed and black-capped birds right away, but recognize the yellow feathers of Bell's Vireo.

“No, think back, Cassy. It had a grey cap.” Daniel points to the delicate drawing of the Solitary Vireo, and the movement of his arm pulls you toward his neck. He smells as bracing as outside. In the picture, the bird is perched on a branch, ready to hop into the air. The earliest spring vireo.

“‘Blue-grey head, olive back, and snow-white throat,'” your brother reads.

You slow your breathing to match his, your eyelids heavy. “‘Similar to Red-Eyed Vireo's song. But more deliberate. Higher, sweeter.'”

“Are you going to leave, Daniel?” The question slips from you quietly, and it's hard to say if you dream the mouthing of it. “Are you going to get married?”

Daniel doesn't answer, and his breath lifts and drops you, lifts and drops you to sleep.

 

 

TWELVE YEARS LATER
, your mother's mind begins to slip so much that it requires all her charm and your help to keep it a secret. When a guest arrives—the family lawyer, maybe—she holds out her hand. “You look so handsome I don't recognize you. What's your name again?”

The lawyer only laughs, so you jump in with, “Maybe Mr. Meier
wants some coffee, Mom. He must have had a long day at his law office.”

“Of course.” Your mother takes his arm. “Get Mommy and the handsome Mr. Meier some coffee.”

Crystal and Evan are too busy raising kids to visit. And Daniel hasn't been home in years. So Rebecca ensures that your mother eats three meals each day. And every night, you write a note.

 

Mom, today is Thursday.

—call Mary Pettleson re: garden party

—hydro bill is due

—also: anniversary of Dad's death in two weeks. Buy Yahrzeit candle?

 

She reads these notes the next morning, while you sleep off the drinks you had and the man you met, trying to forget them.

 

 

YOU HARDLY LISTEN
during the evening's wedding ceremony, but watch the rabbi's wide, bearded mouth open and shut as he sings in a language you hardly know; in Hebrew school you focused only on counting the times your teacher stuttered. Daniel reads Leviticus throughout the ceremony, and you count the candles under your breath until your mother smacks your leg with the back of her hand. The sound cracks through the stone synagogue. Your sister stands straight-backed and plump beside her fiancé. He recently converted but still doesn't seem at ease in this place.

After the glass is stepped on and smashed, your sister and mother hold each other and cry while the rest of your family—all 262 of them—eat bagels spread with cream cheese and cedar-smoked lox. This is the appetizer, and you all climb into black cars and are driven to your house. Who knows where these cars came from—this whole business is disorienting. You swear never to marry.

Your backyard has been transformed. Candle flame reflects off the dance floor, and a band with a permed singer plays as guests arrive. Tables are set with heavy cutlery and tall-stemmed glasses, and the caterers have folded the napkins into shapes that look intricate and vaguely threatening. Your mother herds you through crowds of touchy-feely relatives to your family's table.

When everyone is seated, the rabbi bows his head and recites the blessing, then slices a loaf of challah into cubes. Everybody under the open-sided tent eats bread and gefilte fish, and you watch a sea of chewing faces. Evan and your mother sit on either side of you, and Daniel is three seats away, beside someone else. Your mother says his name is Stephen.

“Who is he?” You already drank a glass of wine when your mother wasn't looking. “I didn't see that guy at the ceremony. Did we even invite him?”

The stranger wears a dress shirt, no jacket, and has three safety pins slipped through his earlobes. His hair falls into his eyes, and a blue tattoo swirls around his wrist like a heavy bracelet.