Vanishing Girls(5)

Funny how things can stay the same forever and then change so quickly.

Dad’s Suburban is now for sale. He’s looking to trade it in for a smaller model, like he traded his big house and four-person family for a downsized condo and a perky, pint-size blonde named Cheryl. And we’ll never drive up to number 37 as a family again.

Dara’s car is in the driveway, boxed in between the garage and Mom’s: the pair of fuzzy dice I bought her at a Walmart still hanging from the rearview, so dirty I can make out handprints near the gas tank. It makes me feel a little better that she hasn’t thrown them away. I wonder if she’s started driving again yet.

I wonder if she’ll be home, sitting in the kitchen alcove, wearing a too-big T-shirt and barely-there shorts, picking her toenails like she always does when she wants to drive me crazy. Whether she’ll look up when I come in, blow the bangs out of her eyes, and say, “Hey, Ninpin,” as if nothing has happened, as if she hasn’t spent the past three months avoiding me completely.

Only once we’re parked does Dad seem sorry for off-loading me.

“You gonna be okay?” he asks.

“What do you think?” I say.

He stops me from getting out of the car. “This will be good for you,” he repeats. “For both of you. Even Dr. Lichme said—”

“Dr. Lichme’s a hack,” I say, and climb out of the car before he can argue. After the accident, Mom and Dad insisted I ramp up my sessions with Dr. Lichme to once a week, like they were worried I’d crashed the car deliberately or maybe that the concussion had permanently screwed up my brain. But they finally stopped insisting I go after I spent a full four sessions at $250 an hour sitting in complete and total silence. I have no idea whether Dara’s still going.

I rap once on the trunk before Dad pops it. He doesn’t even bother getting out of the car to give me a hug, not that I want one—just rolls down his window and lifts his arm to wave, like I’m a passenger on a ship about to set sail.

“I love you,” he says. “I’ll call you tonight.”


“Sure. Me too.” I sling my duffel over one shoulder and start traipsing toward the front door. The grass is overgrown and clings wetly to my ankles. The front door needs painting and the whole house looks deflated, like something integral inside has collapsed.

A few years ago my mom became convinced that the kitchen was slanted. She would line up frozen peas and show Dara and me how they rolled from one end of the counter to the other. Dad thought she was crazy. They got in a big fight about it, especially since he kept stepping on peas whenever he went barefoot to the kitchen for water at night.

It turned out Mom was right. Finally she had someone take a look at the foundation. Because of the way the ground had settled, it turned out our house leaned a half inch to the left—not enough to see, but enough to feel.

But today the house looks more lopsided than ever.

Mom hasn’t yet bothered to switch out the storm door for the screen. I have to lean on the handle before it will open. The hallway is dark and smells faintly sour. Several FedEx boxes are stacked underneath the hall table, and there’s a pair of rubber gardening boots I don’t recognize, soles caked with mud, abandoned in the middle of the floor. Perkins, our sixteen-year-old tabby, lets out a plaintive meow and trots down the hall, twining himself around my ankles. At least someone is happy to see me.

“Hello?” I call out, embarrassed that I suddenly feel so awkward and disoriented, as if I’m a stranger.

“In here, Nick!” Mom’s voice sounds faint through the walls, as if it’s trapped there.

I dump my bags in the hall, careful to avoid the mud splatter, and make my way toward the kitchen, the whole time imagining Dara: Dara on the phone, Dara with knees up in the windowsill, Dara with new streaks of color in her hair. Dara’s eyes, clear as pool water, and the small upturned knob of her nose, the kind of nose people pay for. Dara waiting for me, ready to forgive.

But in the kitchen, I find Mom alone. So. Either Dara’s not home, or she has decided not to grace me with her presence.

“Nick.” Mom seems startled when she sees me, though of course she heard me come in and has been expecting me all morning. “You’re too thin,” she says when she hugs me. Then: “I’m very disappointed in you.”

“Yeah.” I take a seat at the table, which is piled high with old newspapers. There are two mugs, both half-filled with coffee now showing a milk-white sheen, and a plate with a piece of half-eaten toast on it. “Dad said.”

“Really, Nick. Skinny-dipping?” She’s trying to pull the disapproving-parent act, but she isn’t as convincing as Dad was, as if she’s an actress and already the lines are boring her. “We’re all dealing with enough as it is. I don’t want to have to worry about you, too.”

There she is, shimmering between us like a mirage: Dara in short-shorts and high heels, lashes thick with mascara, leaving dust on her cheeks; Dara laughing, always laughing, telling us not to worry, she’ll be safe, she never drinks, even as her breath smells like vanilla vodka; Dara the beautiful one, the popular one, the problem child everyone loves—my baby sister.

“So don’t,” I say bluntly.

Mom sighs and takes a seat across from me. She looks like she’s aged a hundred years since the accident. Her skin is chalky and dry, and the bags under her eyes are a bruise-y yellow color. The roots are showing at her scalp. For a second I have the worst, most vicious thought: No wonder Dad left.