How Quickly She Disappears Read online

  “Ta-da!” Mack called out, lifting up a canister of motor oil. He was crouched beside a workbench near the door, and now he rose to his feet. “What’s she need this for, anyway?” he said, clomping across the room. Mack swayed stiffly when he walked, hardly bending his knees at all. Car accident, he had once explained, and left it at that.

  “We’re learning about viscosity,” Elisabeth said.

  “Oh, sure.” Mack handed her the canister. “Everybody’s got to learn about viscosity.”

  “Absolutely,” Elisabeth said. She smiled a little. “Well, thank you for this. I’ll bring it back in a few days.”

  “Take your time, take your time.” Slowly, wincing, Mack lowered himself into a chair beside his stove, a cast-iron Favorite that sat in the middle of the room. “So,” he said, “I hear you got a guest.”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “Word doesn’t have far to go. Sometimes folks know what I’m doing before I’ve even done it.”

  “Is that so?” Elisabeth said, feigning an impressed frown. “Well, yes, we’ve got a guest, and what a guest he is.”

  She filled him in on all the details—the snoring, the boots on the pillow, the stones that Alfred gulped down like hors d’oeuvres. When she got to the part about spacemen, Mack just shook his head.

  “Martians,” he said. “I’ve always hated how nosy they are.”

  But his joking belied something else. The longer she spoke, the more she saw it: a pinch in Mack’s eyes, a shadow of unease. He was judging Alfred, but in that process he was also judging her. Suddenly, Elisabeth didn’t want to talk about her guest. Suddenly, she realized that Alfred wasn’t the only one being cross-examined. She was, too, and with that realization she felt an unexpected compulsion to defend Alfred’s stay—and her decision to allow it.

  “Suffice it to say he’s an eccentric,” she said, hastily coming to an end. “He’s an interesting fellow.”

  “Eccentric?” Mack said. “Is that what you’d call all that?”

  Elisabeth shrugged. “I don’t know what else to call it. Some people are just a little off-kilter, you know? Especially in the summertime.”

  “Ain’t that the truth?” Mack said, turning his head toward the window. It was eight o’clock at night, but the world outside was awash in a mustard-colored glow. “But honestly,” he said, “are you sure this guy should be staying with you?”

  “Do I have a choice in that? It’s my responsibility, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” Mack said. “Maybe. But don’t you think these are—I don’t know—exceptional circumstances?”

  “Because of his—”

  “Because of everything,” Mack said, and he chuckled briefly, though his eyes had no sense of humor in them. “John is out of town, and it’s only you and Margaret in that house with the guy. And he’s not the most . . .” He shook his head. “Well, he’s not the most normal guy, obviously, and on top of that there’s his background.”

  “His background?”

  “Yeah, you know.”

  He stared at her, waiting for a cue, her flicker of understanding, but Elisabeth gave him nothing. Mack wilted. The skin on his face was pocked with acne scars, decades-old marks that made him look older than he really was—thirty-seven, only two years older than John was.

  “Okay,” he said. “If we’re leveling with each other, I’m not sure I’d trust any of them these days.”

  “Them?”

  “Sure,” Mack said. “You said it yourself. Where he’s from, I mean. They’re fanatics, you know.”

  Ah, Elisabeth thought, that. She couldn’t help but feel stung. She leaned back on her heels, shifting the oil canister from one hand to the other.

  “And I’m not talking about you guys,” Mack said, holding up both hands. “Obviously, I’m not. But it’s something that’s been on my mind. That’s all. Especially with John out of town, I just don’t know how good this is, Else.”

  “Well, eccentricities aside, I’m not too concerned about that. Sometimes people just find themselves on the wrong side of a war. That was the case for a lot of people.” Like my entire extended family, she could have added, and John’s, too. But she decided against mentioning that. “Besides, the war was a long time ago.”

  “A long time? I’m talking about now, Else. There’s a war going on right now. Don’t you remember?”

  Elisabeth bobbed her head. “So you think he’s, what, spending his weekends at rallies in Nuremberg?”

  “I think,” Mack said, “that you should simply be careful.” He slouched back in his chair. “I’m not telling you to kick the guy out. I’m not telling you your business.”

  “I don’t want him staying with us either, you know. Believe me, I don’t.”

  “I know,” Mack said. “I understand the tough position you’re in. And again, I’m not telling you your business. I’m not telling you to do anything, really. I’m just saying my bit. I’m saying what’s on my mind, one friend to another.”

  Elisabeth was quiet for a while, thinking. She was studying the tools that lined the walls of Mack’s home. Some were rusted and warped—hammers that bent like crippled limbs, saws so tarnished that they looked like strips of bark—but, mixed among those, other tools were gleaming and new, each of their various teeth and chiseled edges still sharp and stiff and strong. No matter. They would all wear away with age. Even if Mack never used them, they would all wear away. Everything did—everything and everyone.

  “Well, I appreciate your concern,” Elisabeth said. “I appreciate your bit.”

  But I can take care of myself, she wanted to say, but didn’t.

  “Good,” Mack said. “Thank you.”

  Slowly, cupping his knees, he stood up, and together they walked to the door.

  “Tell Margaret I said hello, okay?”

  “I certainly will.”

  “And tell Delma the same,” Mack said.

  “I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.”

  Mack reached for the doorknob, but then his hand paused, and his face went slack with seriousness. “Just let me know if you need any help,” he said. “I’m not far away. Remember that, will you?”

  “I will,” Elisabeth said. “And thank you again for the oil.”

  “That’s no trouble,” Mack said, smiling as he opened the door, and his eyes were sweet and sad and deeply sincere. “No trouble at all.”

  CHAPTER 3

  It was almost real. She and Jacqueline were sitting in the middle of Mr. Stouffer’s cornfield, a rolling swatch of land that stretched for twenty acres behind their home. Facing each other, they sat on the ground in a circular clearing. The corn towered above them, stalks as thick as baseball bats, all of them swaying in the wind with the singular motion of water.

  “Drift pin,” Jacqueline said, and she held up a tool that resembled a dart. On the ground between them lay an array of other tools, smithing and machining instruments whose names and functions Elisabeth had once learned, in reality, from their father. “Drift pin,” Jacqueline repeated, speaking slowly, the way that someone teaches words to an infant.

  Elisabeth nodded. “Drift pin.”

  Jacqueline put the tool back in its row, and Elisabeth watched her sister consider her next selection. In this dream, they were wearing the same clothing: light blue dresses, knee-high socks, canvas shoes, tortoiseshell barrettes clipped in their hair. Even then, a time when they were nearly adolescents, they sometimes dressed exactly the same. They were twins, after all, and matching clothes only added to the novelty.

  Jacqueline reached for another tool. “Broach,” she said, holding up a narrow flank of metal with angled teeth carved into one side of it.

  “Broach,” Elisabeth repeated, and her sister set it down.

  Now Jacqueline raised a tool that looked like a pair of tweezers—two tapered prongs held tog
ether at their hinge by a wide pin. “Calipers,” Jacqueline said.

  But this time, when Elisabeth tried to speak, the word simply didn’t come. She felt as though she was speaking into a vacuum, her words swallowed up before they had even had a chance to form.

  “Calipers,” Jacqueline said, more insistently now. She bounced her hand, gripping the tool tighter in her fist. “Calipers.”

  But the word wouldn’t come. Elisabeth opened and closed her mouth, her lips popping speechlessly against each other. She could muster nothing more.

  Jacqueline sighed. Setting down the tool, she bowed her head. Then she held out her hands, palms down, and Elisabeth saw that they were the hands of an elderly woman: wrinkly and calloused, their veins rising up from her flesh like earthworms.

  “I hardly even recognize you now,” Jacqueline said, looking up. Though her hands had suddenly aged, her face was still young, eleven years old, always eleven years old.

  That was the point in the dream when Elisabeth woke up. She was lying in bed with the sheets pulled up to her chin. Her pillow was damp. Her heart was beating fast. But in spite of the sweat and her racing pulse, she felt very calm. However cryptic her dreams could be, she had come to welcome these visions of her sister. Her dreams had once been distressing; she would wake up with tears streaming down her face, and for days thereafter her teeth would ache from unconscious gnashing. But, since moving to Alaska, Elisabeth had come to appreciate whenever Jacqueline deigned to visit her. The dreams were never long, and they were often sad. But they were all she had left, and because of that she was thankful for them. They brought her back to a place—and a time—that now felt impossibly distant. Elisabeth lay flat on her back, arms outstretched, and she listened to her own breathing. She tried to picture Pennsylvania, and she tried to sleep.

  But she couldn’t. She would slip into a dream and then slip straight out of it, dreams that weren’t as much sleep as momentary visions forgotten the same second they occurred. She awoke with a start each time—twitching, jerking. One moment she was lying on her side. The next, her stomach. The next, her back.

  However she lay in bed, she couldn’t escape the glow of her window, sunlight that filled every inch of the room with a soft, fiery haze. The Alaskan summer never failed to wear her down. At first, in April and May, the nights were still long enough that she hardly noticed their shortening. Then June came, and bit by bit it pulled the energy out of her. In increments of five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen, she slept less and less, and she carried these minutes through each waking day like weights fixed to her body. By July, she felt her lack of sleep in every labored step she took. It pulsed behind her eyes, a swelling pressure that made her feel as though she might explode. In bed, time didn’t flow, but skipped. It was midnight. One o’clock. One forty-five. Sometimes, like tonight, there was no point in even trying. Elisabeth kicked the sheets away at two o’clock, and she pushed herself up.

  Even in the summertime, the house was chilly at night, so she wore a quilted dressing gown on top of her pajamas. She spent half an hour at the dining room table, reviewing Margaret’s latest work and preparing for the next day’s lesson. It was true that she and John had taught Margaret together, but it was also true that Elisabeth had long ago assumed the lion’s share of their daughter’s education. During the school year, John was busy with the Athabaskan children. Even now, when school was in recess, it seemed as if his time was always occupied with other tasks: clerical duties, repairs, seminars, interim teaching assignments elsewhere in the territory. No matter the time of year, Elisabeth was left with Margaret almost all to herself.

  And it was difficult to keep pace with her. Margaret learned her lessons quickly, and she learned them relentlessly. At Margaret’s own request, Elisabeth continued to teach her during the summer; Margaret’s education hadn’t ceased for more than two years straight. They did take it easier in the summer—fewer tests, more tasks—but it still sometimes felt like too much to manage.

  Teaching one person was more difficult than teaching entire classrooms of them. That was what Elisabeth had been trained to do. That was what she had wanted to do, and that was what she had done before moving to Alaska. For six years, she had taught eighth-grade history and English at Lititz Public School, where John taught arithmetic and biology. It was hard work, and sometimes it made her feel neglectful—they counted on John’s mother to care for Margaret during the day—but teaching gave Elisabeth a sense of satisfaction she couldn’t deny. She felt that she was doing a job she needed to do, a job she was downright obligated to do. She had graduated at the very top of her class at Franklin and Marshall College, finishing even ahead of John. Elisabeth still shared letters with some of her professors, including Dr. Mueller, who had encouraged her to continue her studies and receive a bachelor’s degree instead of just an associate’s.

  “What a privilege for your daughter to have a teacher as gifted as you,” Dr. Mueller had written after they moved to Alaska, “and what a pity it is that the child should have your teaching all to herself.”

  Elisabeth had blushed when she first read that letter, and she told herself that Dr. Mueller was simply being kind—more than kind. Hyperbolic, really. She was just a novice when it came to teaching, and Dr. Mueller had observed only a handful of her classes. But especially now, especially here, Elisabeth often found herself thinking of that letter, remembering it most often when she was struggling to devise yet another lesson for Margaret, restless little Margaret.

  That was the case now. Seated at the dining room table, her books and papers lit by a Coleman gas lantern, Elisabeth was at a loss. She paged through one of her handbooks, then paged through it again, forward and back. She knew that she should devise a lesson of her own, but she just didn’t have the energy. Fast asleep, Delma was lying beside her chair, inches from her feet. Every now and then, Delma would shift or sigh, but other than this, the house was quiet. Outside, the world held its breath. The wind didn’t blow. The trees didn’t rustle. As she had so many times since coming to Alaska, Elisabeth felt the uncanny sensation that she was alone—completely alone, the last person on a desolate earth.

  She set to work on Margaret’s next spelling test. In the past Elisabeth had always used her own dictionary, but tonight she used Margaret’s encyclopedia, her daughter having left the tome at her place at the table. Braille, she wrote in her notebook, flipping through pages at random. Crevasse. Cittern. Maybe, she thought, they would do a unit on words with two of the same letter side by side, tricky words to spell, even for a child as clever as Margaret.

  But soon Elisabeth was just reading the encyclopedia’s entries. She couldn’t help it. The illustrations caught her tired eyes, and she found herself reading about baize, calcium, Marcus Aurelius. She turned page after page, her eyes drifting from entry to entry the way someone scans a newspaper, the act of learning and the loss of forgetting only half a second separated. She was almost at the end of the encyclopedia when one illustration made her pause—a picture of a pair of calipers—and, in a rush, Elisabeth remembered her dream.

  Calipers, Jacqueline had said, teaching her the word. Calipers. Repeat after me. But she couldn’t, could she? Elisabeth could only move her lips, silent, speechless.

  How vivid Jacqueline had looked in that dream—how present, how real. To this day, she could picture her sister with absolute clarity, though she supposed that wasn’t surprising. She had only to imagine herself, or someone quite like her, more alike than any other person could ever be.

  To the month, twenty years had passed since her sister disappeared. Twenty years a missing child. A stolen child. Twenty years since that summer, that evening in the yard when Jacqueline told her, I’ll come right back, and never did.

  But was she dead? No. Taken, abused, enslaved—Elisabeth could only guess—but not dead. She was certain of it. For a while, her certainty had been unexplainable. It was something that she felt in her bones�
��her sister was alive, alive, alive—a fact that she felt like heat in a room, something she knew not by a single source but with every inch of her body and every breath that she inhaled.

  Then the dreams started, and at once she understood that these were more than merely fantasies. They were proof that she was right. She and Jacqueline were identical twins, and their connection went deeper than appearance or voice. These weren’t dreams. They were contact. They were moments in which her sister was reaching out to her, perhaps not literally but at the very least spiritually. Elisabeth was not a religious person; this wasn’t an act of God. It was an act of sisterhood, a bond that they had held since birth and held to this day. Her sister was alive, and no one could tell her otherwise. Reaching out, Elisabeth touched the calipers on the page, feeling the tiny ridges of ink on paper, lines so subtle that they were nearly imperceptible. Then, slowly, she closed her eyes.

  “Mrs. Pfautz?”

  Alfred’s voice made her jolt. Elisabeth sat straight, pivoting in her chair and pulling her hand away from the encyclopedia. Alfred was across the room, standing in the hallway near his open bedroom door.

  “Alfred,” Elisabeth said, and it was all she could do to stop herself from standing up and running from him, strictly on an impulse. “You startled me,” she said. “Jesus. You startled me.”

  But Alfred only hushed her. Walking quickly forward, he hissed—“Shh! shh!”—holding up one hand and pinching his fingers together as if squeezing her lips shut. “Did you hear that?” he said, approaching the table. “Just seconds ago. Did you hear those sounds?”

  Alfred was dressed in an undershirt and denim overalls. His hair was disheveled and his eyes were bulging and white, as large as billiard balls. Within the dusky light of the room, Alfred seemed to glow.