Vanishing and Other Stories (29 page)

For the first time, Simmy and I talked about the future. We talked about how much money we'd have to save to buy this place. We talked about what we'd name our kids when we had them. I don't think either one of us entirely believed what we were saying—we talked the way kids talk when they're inventing stories—but we were giddy with relief, giddy with youth. I told Simmy that I hoped we'd be together for the rest of our lives. She said, “Me too,” and I don't think she knew then that she was lying. We lay on the floor and held hands. When I closed my eyes, I could feel the train's hum in my body. I could feel it pulling me, pulling me along its track. Sorrow might come, but that didn't matter. Because right then, I had a good thing going. Right then, Simmy was there, every time I opened my eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THERE
'
S MORE THAN ONE WAY IT COULD GO
. Outside the office there might be the shuffle of shoes on waxed floor: students to office hours or professors to the photocopier. Inside, light through the drapes, unvacuumed carpet, stacks of lab books. There might be a half-empty coffee cup that leaves a ring on the desk, an unbuttoned shirt. A kiss and the boy's hand where the wife's leg hinges to her hip. Then the way she can't undo his belt and the way he takes her hand, shows her. The wife's weight against the lip of the desk, and the boy's mouth on her neck. There's no knock at the door, only a turn of the knob. There's the husband.

 

 

OR MAYBE NOT
. Instead, the door is closed and there's the sound of others passing, but the wife's shirt is buttoned and the boy's
complex belt is buckled. The wife and the boy don't touch, but maybe, as a joke, they've switched seats. The boy laughs because the wife—with some grey in her hair, and those angular shoulders—is too elegant for that chair.

The boy sits straight, his hand to his chin in mock-professorial thought. “Do you walk the dog, or does he?”

“This chair is awful.” The wife presses her back into it. “Seriously. I can't imagine you in that big house. Who mows the lawn? Who does the dishes?”

“I walk the dog. I take her out before teaching.” The wife is thinking about his knees, cupping them in her hands.

“I want to picture you.” The boy leans toward her, his elbows on his thighs. “When do you wake up?”

“At six. Liam wakes me before he leaves.”

“Liam. Superman.”

“Ben and I eat cereal. Sometimes toaster waffles. He gets ready for school on his own now, so I have time to walk Tasha.”

“I don't even go to bed until two or three in the morning.”

“I wish you could meet Tash. You'd like her.”

“I bet he's handsome even at five a.m. I bet he wears a tie.”

“Is that ridiculous—that I think you would like our dog?”

So when the husband turns the knob and opens the door, this is all he sees: a young man in the wrong chair and the wife with her hands tucked under her knees. The boy's wide-set eyes and the wife turning her head. Maybe the husband stands in the doorway, car keys gripped in his fist, and says to himself: This is nothing. Or maybe he recognizes that look in his wife's eyes, that blur. And he's a smart man—he knows talking can be more intimate than kissing, kissing more intimate than fucking.
Maybe he stands in the doorway and says to himself: This could be anything.

 

 

MAYBE THE HUSBAND SPEAKS
to the boy: “I don't think we've met” or “I should introduce myself.”

“I was just leaving.” The boy stands, grabs his denim jacket, and brushes past the husband, through the doorway.

“I got off earlier than usual.” The husband leans against a filing cabinet. “What's the matter?”

“Nothing. I didn't expect you.”

“Who was that?”

“A student.” She sips the cold coffee. Lying is easier than expected. “How did you get off early? A hospital doesn't need doctors?”

“I thought we could pick Ben up together.” He takes a book off her shelf and flips it open. He squints at diagrams of a mackerel's jaw. “This stuff is so weird.”

“No weirder than humans.” They have this conversation so often it has become one of their jokes. “Imagine what fish would say if they studied our jaws, our lungs, our behaviour.”

“You tell me. What would they say, professor?” The husband winks at her. “You look nice, by the way. That's a nice shirt.”

The wife pauses, her purse over her shoulder. Would he normally say that?

“Grab your stuff.” He jingles the keys in his hand. “We're going to be late.”

 

 

MAYBE THE WIFE
and the husband walk down the hallway, along the waxed floor, without talking. They cut through the campus gardens to the parking lot and the wife thinks of the boy, how she met him on a warm, blinding day like this one. Salmon were spawning in Goldstream, and she was there with three graduate students and her son, who had a day off school. She noticed the boy because he was alone. He snapped photographs of fish slipping through water, gulls and dippers lunging at them. He wore a hooded sweatshirt with fraying sleeves, corduroys that dragged in the mud, scuffed boots. The wife watched him wander along the side of the stream, jump from rock to rock, and she couldn't keep her eyes off him. His casual walk, his focus.

The boy caught her staring a few times. This woman in hiking boots and a waterproof jacket. This woman who, he had overheard, knew the Latin names of fish, plants, birds. This woman who must be fifteen, twenty years older than him: small lines around her eyes, her mouth. He could see her straight shoulders through the jacket and he imagined she'd spent much of her life outside. Her dark hair reflected the sun, and the boy would have liked a shot of that.

The wife wandered away from where her students did counts. Would her son grow up to be like that boy, clear-eyed and quiet? Probably not. He might grow to be calmer, become as reasonable as his father, but he'd always be chatty.

Where was her son, anyway? The wife looked to her students, who knelt over the water's bank. Not there. And he wasn't farther
downstream. Or in the cabin they used for maps and equipment. She'd only turned away for a second.

Then the boy aimed his camera upriver, past her, and she followed the lens's gaze over her shoulder. There. Her son's pants were wet to his knees and he balanced on a rock in the middle of the river. A salmon had died on that rock, or been pushed there by the current, and the son smacked a stick against the fish's body. He raised it over his head, smashed it down, and watched the huge, limp muscle shake.

“Ben!” The wife ran toward him. “Ben, what are you doing?”

The son stared at her, the stick in his hand. “It's dead anyway.”

“Get off there. Right now.”

He jumped into the water and splashed to the bank. “It's dead anyway, Mom.”

“I said if you came to work with me, you had to behave.” The wife gripped his shoulders. “The water could have been deep there. You have to be careful.”

“I had my eye on him. He was fine.”

The wife turned and saw the boy, who crouched and snapped a picture of the rock.

“Thanks.” She squeezed water from her son's jeans. “He's going through a bit of a stage right now.”

“It'll make a good photo.” The boy took another picture of the broken skin along the fish's side. “Do you work here?”

“No, at the university. The biology department.” The wife pointed to the three students with their clipboards and rubber boots. “My research is on coho salmon, so we're out here observing most days.”

The boy brushed hair from his eyes. “Coho?”

“They're the ones with green heads and red sides,” said the son, tearing his arm from his mother's hand. “Bright red, like apples.”

“What's this one?” The boy pointed to the fish on the rock.

“That's a chum salmon,” said the son, and kicked water at it. “You can tell because it's green.”

The boy smiled at him. “He's been paying attention.”

“It's less common to see coho up here—Ben, stop that. Part of my job is to figure out why they stay away.” Was she using her professor voice? The boy looked into the clear water, and it was hard to tell if he was listening. “I think there are simply too many fish in this river. Coho tend to spawn beneath logs or under overhanging banks. They're shy and secretive.”

“As soon as they spawn, they die,” said the son, his eyes wide. This detail had made him want to spend the day at Goldstream in the first place.

“A death wish,” said the boy.

“Not really.” The wife waved her hand to indicate the fish, insects, water—the whole system. “It's just the way the cycle works. It's perfectly natural.”

The boy smiled, but not at the son this time. At her. “Seems reasonable, I guess.” Then he turned away and held his camera to his face. Across the narrow river, an eagle lifted a mangled fish into the air. He shot, caught it.

 

 

MAYBE IT
'
S AN ORDINARY EVENING:
the husband and wife prepare dinner, tuck their son into bed, wash and dry the dinner plates. The wife sits cross-legged at the kitchen table, as she does every
night. And the husband pours the wine, as he does every night—half a glass each. Maybe the husband is calm about it, cool.

“So, this boy. How long have you known him?”

“What boy?”

“Come on, Wendy.” The husband swirls the red around in his glass. “Just tell me why.”

“Why what?”

“Please don't treat me like an idiot.” His voice remains even. “You have a husband, a son. How can you justify this?”

The wife lifts her glass, tilts too much wine into her mouth, swallows. She shifts in her chair. “The Indo-Pacific wrasse.”

“Fish? For God's sake, Wendy.”

“They're gorgeous, with swirls of blue in the scales. And they're polygynous.”