Vanishing Acts (4 page)

Interestingly, it wasn't until I started coming to these meetings that I learned the second meaning of that word: to take a base impulse and redirect its energy to an ethically higher aim.

The truck makes a right onto an access road and I swerve around it, speeding up. I pass the deli that has changed hands three times in the last six months, the old country store that still sells penny candy I sometimes bring to Sophie, the poultry farm with its enormous shrink-wrapped hay bales stacked like giant marshmallows against the barn. Finally I swerve into the parking lot and hurry out of my car and inside.

They haven't started yet. People are still milling around the coffee and the cookies, talking in small pockets of forced kinship. There are men in business suits and women in sweatpants, elderly men and boys yet to grow a full beard. Some of them, I know, come from an hour away to be here. I approach a group of men who are talking about how the Bruins are doing their damnedest to lose a spot in the playoffs.

The lights flicker and, at the front of the room, the leader asks us to take our seats. He calls the meeting to order and gives a few opening remarks. I find myself sitting next to a woman who is trying to unwrap a roll of LifeSavers without making any noise. When she sees me watching, she blushes and offers me one. Sour apple.

I work on sucking the candy instead of biting it, but I've never been a patient man, and even as I imagine it getting thin as an O-ring I find myself crunching it between my teeth. Just then there is a pause in the flow of the meeting. I raise my hand, and the leader smiles at me.

“I'm Eric,” I say, standing. “And I'm an alcoholic.” When I graduated from law school, I had a choice of several employment options. I could have joined a prestigious Boston firm with clients who would have paid $250

an hour for my expertise; I could have taken a position with the public defender's office in a variety of counties and done the humanitarian thing; I could have clerked with a State Supreme Court justice. Instead, I chose to come back to Wexton and hang a shingle of my own. It boiled down to this: I can't stand being away from Delia.

Ask any guy, and he can tell you the moment he realized that the woman standing next to him was the one he'd be spending his life with. For me, it was a little different: Delia had been standing next to me for so long, that it was her absence I couldn't handle. We went to college five hundred miles apart, and when I'd call her dorm room and get her answering machine, I'd imagine all the other guys who were at that very second trying to steal her away. I'll admit it: For as long as I could remember, I was the object of Delia's affection, and the thought of having competition for the first time in my life put me over the edge. Going out for a beer became a way to keep myself from obsessing about her, but eventually, that one beer became six or ten.

Drinking was in my blood, so to speak. We've all read the statistics about children of alcoholics. I would have sworn up and down, when I was a kid, that I'd never turn into the person my mother had been-and maybe I wouldn't have, if I hadn't missed Delia quite so much. Without her, there was a hole inside me, and I suppose that to fill it, I did what came naturally in the Talcott family.

It's funny. I started drinking heavily because I wanted to see that expression in Delia's eyes when she looked only at me, and it's the same reason I quit drinking. She isn't just the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, she's the reason I have one.

This afternoon I am meeting a potential client who happens to be a crow. Blackie was wounded when he fell out of a nest, or so says Martin Schnurr, who rescued him. He nursed the bird back to health, and when it kept hanging around, fed it cold coffee and bits of doughnuts on his porch in Hanover. But when the crow chased a neighbor's kids, the authorities got called. Turns out, crows are a federally regulated migratory species, and Mr. Schnurr doesn't have the state and federal license to keep him.

“He escaped from the place where the Department of Environmental Services was holding him,” Schnurr says proudly. “Found his way back, ten whole miles.”

“As the crow flies, of course,” I say. “So what can I do for you, Mr. Schnurr?”

“The DES is going to come after him again. I want a restraining order,” Schnurr says. “I'm willing to go to the Supreme Court, if I have to.” The likelihood of this case going to Washington is somewhere between nil and nevermore, but before I can explain this the door to the office bursts open and there is Delia, frantic and crying. My insides seize. I am imagining the very worst; I am thinking of Sophie. Without even a glance at the client, I pull Delia into the hall and try to shake the facts out of her.

“My father's been arrested,” she says. 'You have to go, Eric. You have to.“ I have no idea what Andrew might have done, and I do not ask. She believes I can fix this, and like always, that's enough to make me think I can. ”I'll take care of it," I say, when what I really mean is: I'll take care of you.

We didn't play inside my house. I made sure to get up early enough so that I was always the one knocking on Delia's door, or Fitz's. On the occasions that we settled at my place, I did my best to keep everyone outside, under the backyard deck or beneath the sloping saltbox roof of our garage, and that's how I managed to keep my secret until I was nine.

That was the winter Fitz started to play league hockey, which left Delia and me alone in the afternoons. She was a latchkey kid–her father was always working at the senior center–something that never bothered her until we happened to see a TV

movie about a twin who died and had his ring finger sent to his brother in a velvet box. After that, Delia didn't like being by herself. She started to come up with reasons to hang out at her house after school–something I was more than happy to do, if only to get out of my own. I always stopped off at home first, though. I had a hundred ready excuses: I wanted to drop off my backpack; I had to grab a warmer sweatshirt; I needed my mother to sign a report card. Afterward, I would head next door.

One day, as usual, Dee and I split up at the fork in the sidewalk that divided my driveway from hers. “See you in a few,” she said.

My house was quiet, which wasn't a good sign. I wandered through it, calling for my mother, until I found her passed out on the kitchen floor. She was sprawled on her side this time, and there was a puddle of vomit under her cheek. When she blinked, the insides of her eyes were the color of cut rubies. I picked up the bottle and poured the bourbon down the sink drain. I rolled my mother out of the way so I could clean up her mess with paper towels. Then I got behind her and braced myself hard, trying to lever her weight so I could drag her to the living room couch.

“What can I do?”

It wasn't until I heard Delia's quiet voice that I realized she had been standing in the kitchen for a while. When she spoke, she couldn't meet my eyes, and that was a good thing. She helped me get my mother to the couch, onto her side, where if she got sick again she wouldn't choke. I turned on the TV, a soap I knew she liked.

“Eric, baby, would you get me . . .” my mother slurred, but she didn't finish her sentence before she passed out again. When I looked around, Delia was gone. Well, it didn't surprise me. It was, in fact, the reason I'd kept this secret from my two best friends; once they saw the truth, I was sure they'd turn tail and run. I walked back to the kitchen, each foot a lead weight. Delia stood there, holding a sponge and staring down at the linoleum. “Will carpet cleaner work even if it's not used on carpet?” she asked.

“You should go,” I told her. I looked down at the floor and pretended to be fascinated with the little blue dot pattern.

Delia came closer to me, seeing the freak I truly was. With one finger, she traced an X over her chest. “I won't tell.”

One traitor tear slicked its way down my cheek; I scrubbed it away with a fist.

“You should go,” I repeated, the last thing in the world that I wanted.

“Okay,” Delia agreed. But she didn't leave.

The Wexton police station is like a hundred other small-town law enforcement agencies: a squat cement building with a flagpole planted out front like a giant tulip stalk; a dispatcher so infrequently bothered that she keeps a portable TV at her desk; a nursery school class mural spread along the wall, thanking the chief for keeping everyone safe. I walk inside and ask to speak to Andrew Hopkins. I tell the dispatcher I am his attorney.

A door buzzes, and a sergeant comes into the hallway. “He's back here,” the officer says, leading me through the pretzeled hallways into the booking room. I ask to see the warrant for Andrew's arrest, pretending, like any defense attorney, to know far more than I actually do at this minute. When I scan the paper, I have to do my best to keep a straight face. Kidnapping?

Indicting Andrew Hopkins for kidnapping is like charging Mother Teresa with heresy. As far as I know he's never even gotten a traffic ticket, much less been implicated in criminal behavior. He's been a model father-attentive, devoted-the parent I would have killed to have when I was growing up. No wonder Delia's so rattled. To have your father accused of living a secret life, when, in fact, he's been about as public a figure as humanly possible-well, it's insane. There are two lockups in Wexton, used mostly for DUIs who need to sleep off a bender; I have been in the one on the left myself. Andrew sits on the steel bench in the other. When he sees me, he gets to his feet.

Until this moment, I haven't really considered him to be an old man. But Andrew is almost sixty, and looks every year of it in the shallow gray light of the holding cell. His hands curl around the bars. “Where's Delia?”

“She's fine. She's the one who came to get me.” I take a step forward and angle my shoulder, blocking our conversation until the sergeant leaves the room. “Listen, Andrew, you have nothing to worry about. Obviously this is a case of mistaken identity. We'll contest it, set everything straight, and then maybe even get you some money for emotional damages. Now, I–”

Vanishing Acts

“It's not a mistake,” he says softly.

I stare at him, speechless. He starts to repeat his confession, but I stop him before I have to hear it again. “Don't tell me,” I interrupt. “Don't say anything else, all right?”

Part of me has shifted into automatic defense attorney mode. If your client confesses–and they almost always want to–you put in earplugs and go about doing your job. Whatever the vice–felony or misdemeanor, murder or, Jesus Christ, kidnapping–you can still find a way to make a jury see the shades of gray involved. But part of me is not an attorney, just Delia's fiance. A man who needs to hear the truth, so that he can tell it to her. What kind of person steals a child? What would I do to the son of a bitch who took Sophie?

I look down at the arrest warrant again. “Bethany Matthews,” I read out loud.

“That... used to be her name.”

He doesn't have to explain the rest; I know in that instant we're talking about Delia. That she is the little girl who was stolen a lifetime ago. I know better than most people that a criminal isn't always a thug in a black leather jacket with a big brand on his forehead to warn us away. Criminals sit next to us on the bus. They pack our groceries and cash our paychecks for us and teach our children. They look no different from you or me. And that's why they get away with it.

The lawyer in me urges caution, remembers that there are mitigating circumstances I don't yet know. The rest of me wonders if Delia cried when he took her. If she was scared. If her mother spent years searching for her. If she still is.

“Eric, listen ...”

“You'll be arraigned tomorrow in New Hampshire on the fugitive charges,” I interrupt. “But you've been indicted by an Arizona grand jury. We'll have to go there to enter a plea.”

“Eric”

“Andrew”–I turn my back on him–“I can't I just can't, right now.” I am about to exit the lockup, but at the last moment, I walk back toward the cell. “Is she yours?”

“Of course she's mine!”

“Of course?” I snap. “For God's sake, Andrew, I just found out that you're a kidnapper. I have to tell Delia you're a kidnapper. I don't exactly think it's an unreasonable question.” I take a deep breath. “How old was she?”

“Four.”

“And in twenty-eight years you never told her?”

“She loves me.” Andrew looks down at the floor. “Would you risk losing that?” Without answering, I turn and walk away.

When I was eleven, I realized that Delia Hopkins was female. She wasn't like ordinary girls: she didn't have the dreamy, loopy handwriting that reminded us of soap bubbles lined up in a row; she didn't giggle behind her hand in a way that made us wonder what we'd done wrong; she didn't come to school with neat braids twisted like French crullers. Instead, she spoke to frogs. She could make a slap shot from the blue line. She was the first one to cut her palm with Fitz's Swiss army knife when we three made a blood vow, and she didn't even flinch. The summer after fifth grade, everything changed. Without even trying, I smelled Delia's hair when she sat near me. I noticed how her brown summer skin stretched tight over the muscles of her shoulders. I watched her tilt her face to the sun and felt an answer in my own body.

I kept these thoughts a secret through the first half of sixth grade, until Valentine's Day. It was the first time in school that we weren't forced to bring in a card for everyone in the class, including the kid who picked his nose and the Missing Link, who had so much hair on her arms and back you could practically braid it. Girls flitted around the cafeteria like butterflies, alighting long enough to plant kisses on the bright cheeks of boys they liked. When it happened, you'd pretend to be disgusted, but there would be a coal burning inside you.

Fitz got a card from Abigail Lewis, who had just gotten glow-in-the-dark braces and, it was rumored, invited select boys into the custodian's closet to watch them light up. In my own back pocket was a folded pink heart that I'd glued to a square of red construction paper. When I'm with you, bells go off in my head, I had written, and then added: Like a moving truck that's backing up.

I was going to give it to Delia, but a thousand times that day, the moment hadn't been right–Fitz was with us, or she was too busy rummaging in her locker, or the teacher came by before I could pass it across the aisle. I slipped it out of my pocket just in time to have Fitz grab it out of my hand. “You got a card, too, didn't you?” He read it aloud, and he and Delia started to laugh.

Angry, I snatched it back. “I didn't get it from someone, you jerk. I'm giving it.” And because Delia was still sort of laughing, I marched right past her and up to the first girl I saw, Itzy Fisher, carrying a hot lunch tray. “Here,” I said, and I shoved the card between her napkin and her slab of pizza.

There was absolutely nothing special about Itzy Fisher. She had long frizzy hair that nearly touched her behind, and she wore gold-rimmed glasses that sometimes caught the light in class and made little reflections dance on the blackboard. I had barely said three words to her all year.

“Itzy Fisher?” Delia accused when I sat back down. “You like her?” And then she got up and ran out of the cafeteria.

Groaning, I flopped my head down on my arms. “I didn't make that card for Itzy. It was for Delia.”

“Delia?” Fitz said.

“You wouldn't understand.”

Fitz stared right at me. “What makes you think that?” In the thousands of times I have replayed this moment over the years, I realize that what happened next could have gone a different way. That had Fitz been less of a best friend, or more competitive, or even more honest with himself, my life might have turned out very different. But instead, he asked me for a dollar.

“Why?”

“Because she's pissed at you,” he said, as I fished into my lunch money. “And I can fix that.”

He took a Sharpie from his binder and wrote something across George Washington's face. Then he creased the bill the long way. He brought up the bottom edge and then the halves, turned it over, and tucked in both sides. A few more maneuvers and then he handed me a dollar folded into the shape of a heart. When I found Delia, she was sitting underneath the water fountain near the gym. I handed her Fitz's heart. I watched her open it, read the message along with her: If all I could ever have is you, I'd be a billionaire.

“Itzy might get jealous,” Delia said.

“Itzy and I broke up.”

She burst out laughing. 'That's the shortest relationship in history.“ I glanced over at her. ”You're not still mad at me, are you?"

“That depends. Did you write this?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“Can I keep the dollar?”

I blinked. “I guess.”

“Then no,” she said. “I'm not mad.”

I waited for years to see Delia spend that dollar on something-every time she pulled out money to buy candy or ice cream or a Coke, I'd scan it for Fitz's words. But as far as I know she never spent it. As far as I know, she has it, still. When I go into Andrew's house, it's quiet. I call for Delia, but there's no answer. Wandering around, I check the bathroom and the living room and the kitchen, and then I hear noise coming from upstairs. The door to Sophie's room is closed; when I open it she is on the floor, playing with the Crime Scene Dollhouse. Delia and I got to calling it that when Sophie would leave the rooms with the contents overturned, a Barbie or two spread-eagled on the floor of the kitchen or bathroom. “Daddy,” she says, “did you bring Grandpa home?”

“I'm working on it,” I tell her, ruffling her hair. “Where's Mommy?”

“Out back with Greta.” Sophie holds a Ken doll up to the front door. “Open up. It's the police,” she says.

When I look at Sophie, I see Delia. Not just in the physical features-Delia's dark hair and rosy cheeks are duplicated in our daughter–but their expressions are identical. Like how a smile unfurls across both their faces, a sail caught in a rip of wind. And the habit they have of separating the food on their plates into similar colors. Or the way, when they look at me, I so badly want to be who they see. I watch Sophie for another moment, thinking about what I would do if someone took her away from me, how I'd upend the earth to find her. And then I hesitate, and wonder what might make me be the one to run away with her in tow. Downstairs, I find Delia deep in thought on the outside deck. Her legs are propped up on Greta, a lightly snoring ottoman. When she sees me she startles.

“Did you–”

“I can't get him out until the arraignment tomorrow.”

“He has to spend the night at the police station?” I weigh the cost of admitting that, actually, her father will spend the night in the Grafton County Jail, and decide against it. “First thing in the morning, we can go to the courthouse.”

She glances up at me. “But they'll let him go, won't they? They're looking for someone named Bethany Matthews. That's not me. That was never me. And I wasn't kidnapped. Don't you think I'd remember something like that?” Taking a deep breath, I ask, “Do you remember your mother dying?”

“Eric, I was practically a baby-”

“Do you remember it?”

She shakes her head.

“Your father told you your mother was dead, Delia,” I say bluntly. “And then he brought you to New Hampshire.”

Her chin comes up. “You're lying.”

“No, Dee. He was.”

Just then Fitz bursts onto the deck. “Why aren't you answering the phone? I've been trying to get in touch with you for an hour!”

“I've been a little busy trying to get my father out of police custody.”

“You found out,” Fitz says, his jaw dropping. “About the kidnapping.”

“How the hell do you know about it?” I ask.

Fitz sits down across from Delia. “That's why I've been trying to call you. You remember how we were talking about past lives the other day? Well, I started to think about how people reinvent themselves all the time. And that maybe there was a more logical explanation to the whole lemon tree memory than the fact that you used to be a citrus farmer in eighteenth-century Tuscany. So I jumped online and Googled your name. Come on inside; I'll show you.”

We follow Fitz to Delia's computer, buried under topographical maps of New Hampshire and Vermont and catalogs from K-9 supply companies. Fitz starts to type, and a minute later, a screen is filled with stripes of search results. The first few links are Gazette stories about Delia and Greta, making a missing-person rescue. But Fitz clicks on a different link, and a page from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch fills the screen. “CORDELIA LYNN HOPKINS,” it reads. “Daughter of Margaret Ketcham Hopkins and the late Andrew Hopkins, was born in Maryland Heights on March 16, 1973...”

“That's my birthday,” Delia says.

“... in Clarkton and died March 8, 1977, at the age of four as a result of complications from an automobile accident that also claimed the life of her father. Survivors include her mother; her grandparents, Joe and Aleda Ketcham; and a brother, Lloyd. Funeral services will be conducted at 11 AM on Saturday, at the Maiden Baptist Church with Reverend Thomas Monroe officiating. Interment will follow at Memorial Park Cemetery in Maiden.”

“She had the same name, the same birthday. Her father died in the same car crash. And the accident happened the same year that you showed up with your father in Wexton.”

“Type in Bethany Matthews,” I tell Fitz.

The screen glows green with a new list of articles, all from the Arizona Republic.

"CHILD ABDUCTED DURING CUSTODY VISIT. MOTHER VOWS TO FIND

MISSING DAUGHTER. NO NEW LEADS IN SCOTTSDALE KIDNAPPING CASE." Fitz clicks on one link.

June 20, 1977–Investigators continue to search for clues in the disappearance of Bethany Matthews, 4, of Scottsdale, who was last seen in the company of her father, Charles Matthews, 33, during a routine custody visit. Police in Albuquerque, acting on a tip, raided a hotel room that had been paid for with Mr. Matthews's credit card, but turned up no positive results. Meanwhile, the girl's mother, Elise Matthews, has not given up hope that her daughter will be found and returned safely. “There is nothing in this world,” Mrs. Matthews vowed yesterday at a televised press conference, “that can keep me away from her.” Mr. and Mrs. Matthews divorced in March, and shared custody. Matthews was last seen picking up his daughter from the home of his ex-wife at 9 AM on Saturday, where he indicated that he would return before 6 PM on Sunday. When he didn't bring Bethany back, and Mrs. Matthews was unable to reach him via telephone, she involved the police. An initial search of Mr Matthews's apartment suggested that the subject had permanently vacated the premises. Volunteers who would like to contribute time or materials to the search effort should report to the Saguaro High School gymnasium. Any tips regarding the whereabouts of Bethany Matthews or Charles Matthews should be directed to the Scottsdale police, at 555-3333.

Delia puts her hand over Fitz's, where it rests on the mouse. She clicks a single word at the end of the article: photo. Twin head shots fill the computer screen-one of a little girl who looks frighteningly like Sophie; the other of a younger, grinning Andrew Hopkins.