Read Online Vanishing and Other Stories by Deborah Willis - Free Book Online Page A

mind, a presence I can’t place.
    I’m not sure how I know of you so clearly. I sense you in the house, something foreign, spicy, and warm that permeates the hardwood floors, dark walls, leather furniture. And Peter is quiet, though not in the brooding way I’m used to. He is calm and distracted, as though some new, bright thing has caught his attention. The two of us are trying too hard to be ourselves. I shower, paint, take rambling walks; Peter comes home withcheese and bread from the market. His book proceeds. He doesn’t discuss it much, doesn’t wrestle with it, simply writes. But he no longer watches me paint, and I paint thoughtlessly now, without concern for building a series for a show, or for what galleries might term saleable. I don’t even use my oils, just dab recklessly with watercolour.
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    TONIGHT, APRIL AND I sit on her cedar deck as we do most evenings, sipping her homemade wine from Mason jars. We lounge in her deck chairs, our sketchbooks resting on our crossed legs, and face her backyard. With her Baroque Red and Indian Gold pastels, I draw the sun that drops below the horizon. April plays a chaotic colour game in her sketchbook, and smudges the waxy Terra Rosa, Vermilion, and Prussian Blue with her fingers. I flip my sheet of paper, pick up my black pen, and begin to sketch the broad outlines of her features. It has been months since I attempted a face, though they’re my favourite subjects. This book and many others are full of Peter: the dent of his cheeks, lines of his eyes, his slim jaw, the changes of his skin and expression recorded over twenty years. I capture April’s long nose in one stroke and say: “I want to paint her.” April knows I mean you.
    She’s the only one with enough balls to talk to me about you. She gathers information, a big friendly dog digging for bones, then runs back to me out of breath, excited, proud. But April knows only certain details. She once saw Peter with a young woman in the Roasting Company—we assume it was you—but she was unable to describe her to any satisfaction. Long red hair, but she couldn’ttell if it was thick or thin. A body that was not fat or skinny. A white sweater. April saw you from behind, she said, so she doesn’t know your smile, doesn’t know your eyes. I have a canvas that sits blank against my kitchen wall, waiting for you. It will be a dark piece, I’m sure, but I can’t even begin, because—surprisingly—I can’t picture you. I can’t see you whole, so I try something simpler (imagine: an ankle, a freckle) and can almost get you in focus. But the images scamper away like the rats that harvest our compost box. Like everyone else, I content myself with rumours.
    April stares at my sketch, her hazel eyes following my pen. I stop and flip the page. My hand has fallen back into its abstract college days, and she might be insulted by the harsh black lines.
    â€œI’m not sure if I should tell you this.” April leans over the varnished arm of her chair. She gulps wine. “I found out where she lives. I saw her hitchhiking last week in Fulford and I followed, saw where she got dropped off.”
    I raise my eyebrows, and April takes this as a pat on the head (“What’s that you got there, girl? An address? Good girl”), gains confidence, grabs my hand, and pulls me from my chair. My sketchbook falls and I trip down the deck’s three steps.
    â€œWhat if she’s home? What if she sees us on her lawn? What if she calls the police?” I pull on April’s sleeve as she drags me around her bungalow, toward her matte yellow Tercel. I feel pressure in my chest—the same as when, at thirteen, I stole a sweater from Woolco (lilac, acrylic)—and then we’re in the car. “April, this is a bad idea.”
    â€œHave some fun,
p’tite
.” She backs out of her crooked park job and we swerve onto Vesuvius