The Vanishing Year(25)

One might wonder, as I often did, what exactly could I offer Henry Whittaker?





CHAPTER 8



Lately, no matter what I am doing—going to CARE meetings, attending lunches—I find myself scanning the crowd for women who look like me: dark hair streaked naturally with mahogany and pale blue eyes the color of pool water. The sales clerk at Blush’s Boutique has a lovely sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks, youthful for her age, in a recognizable pattern, and I study her until she shifts uncomfortably, averting her eyes and self-consciously patting her short, stiff hair back into place. Maybe she always called me dear for a reason.

I repeat I am being ridiculous like a mantra as I stomp around the apartment. But I can’t help it. I’m restless and bored and can’t shake the thoughts rattling around in my brain.

A large hall closet houses stacks of crates that contain remnants of our life before each other. I once asked Henry to show me his, his memories with Tara, his circle of friends—I saw once, quickly, some photos of beautiful people in tailored clothing on the back of a yacht, a picture-perfect ad for champagne or an investment firm. He always said some other time, with a casual shrug. The pictures were squirreled away. I’ve mostly given up.

In the back of this closet is my box. Singular. Pink-and-black striped, an old humongous hatbox holds all the remnants of my old self, and even my old-old self. I’ve been so many people I can barely keep track and this singular crazy-looking container is all I have to show for it. The top is dusty and I lift it, letting the bottom fall back onto my bed in protest. Inside is paperwork, old and new, yellowed and dog-eared. There isn’t much, and most of it was kept for reasons I can’t fathom. There’s a cable bill from my old apartment with Lydia. Pictures of Lydia and me drinking martinis at clubs, hazy with smoke, laughing with men I don’t recognize or remember. It’s the spontaneity that calls me now. The idea of not knowing where my nights would take me, whose bed I would wake up in, when I would find my way home and how. That my life ever held so much easy adventure amazes me.

I have squirreled away an envelope that used to belong to Hilary. I was never supposed to keep it. I was advised to get rid of everything that could link me to my old identity by Detective Maslow, a kind but harried man with haphazard glasses and too long hair. He never looked like a violent crimes detective to me. He wasn’t grizzled; he wasn’t hard-boiled. He looked like an exhausted tax accountant.

In the beginning, his wife called once while I was in his office. I was under the impression she called often. At the time, I was terrified, living in a halfway house, no identity, no name to speak of. That murky middle time before I became Zoe. Hilary ceased to exist the moment I signed the affidavit, but deciding to become Zoe took some time. We can protect you, he said. I pressed my back against the chair—I remember it was leather, too rich for a city office, and cracked black—while Maslow sternly explained in detail all I would need to surrender, which was everything.

When he picked up the phone, he lowered his tone to a sniveling murmur with a series of yes dears. I realized Milton Maslow didn’t have the conviction to protect me. I wondered how many mes there were, how many men, women, children he had vowed to shield, sitting behind his desk, buried in the paperwork of forgotten identities. No thank you, very much. I’d manage on my own. I testified at the grand jury a mere ten days later. I packed in the middle of the night and I ran. I took the money they gave me, the money that was meant to start me off in witness protection, a mere thousand dollars. I bought a bus ticket with cash to New York, the only place I could think of where I could hide in plain sight. Plus it was as far away from California as a person could get. I left my dingy hotel room in the middle of the night and left Milton Maslow bumbling around in his office. I felt only a little bad, so I left him a note. Thanks for everything. Bright lights, big city. He could puzzle it out.

I pick up a thick manila envelope now and peel away the tape. I haven’t looked inside it in at least five years. Inside is a single picture of Hilary, hair dyed with streaks of blonde, a big wide-open smile, a happy college girl. A California girl. I wonder who she would have become, if she hadn’t become me? I can’t deny it’s complicated.

I sift through photos of Evelyn. Beautiful, nurturing, gentle. My memories of her are tinted pink and soft around the edges. Even the lean years. After she got sick and couldn’t work and I wore jeans until my ankles stuck out. She thinned down to nothing, smaller than me, a child in an adult bed, but by then I’d turned eighteen. I studied her pictures. I’d saved three. One of her holding me as an infant, my father beaming behind her, the man who died before I could remember him, a slick road, a careening car, an ill-placed tree. I think. Hard to remember, I was so young when he died. All I have is Evelyn’s voice telling whispered stories under the blankets with the lights off.

I was wanted, she said. I’ve never doubted it, which I hear is a strange thing. I’ve read articles on the psychology of adoption and never connected with any of them. Evelyn’s ovaries “dried up and plain stopped working,” she told me, a predecessor to the ovarian cancer that would later take her life. But she’d twist her wrist with a tinkling laugh, “They call infertility a curse. Was the best thing that ever happened to us. We got you.”

The second picture is Evelyn and me at the beach. I was maybe fourteen and we are hugging and smiling. I never went through that all too common phase, when teenagers hate their mothers. I could never imagine my life without her. Until, of course, I had to.