The Vanishing Point Read online

  Sunday morning their fighting woke him. They were shouting at each other in the kitchen. He got up and washed and pulled on his jeans, hearing them going back and forth, with her saying he was a selfish person, thinking only about himself, and him saying she was a cold, spoiled bitch, and if it weren’t for him, she’d be back in that shitty row house of her mother’s, not here in this fucking mansion, and at least Theo had benefited, and how dare she open her mouth to complain to him, she had no right, and who did she think she was? And then she was crying and in the voice of a tolerant fourth-grade teacher reminded him that she’d been a very good wife, and what had he given her in return, lies and deception. She said she was totally humiliated. She said she had too much self-respect to keep going. I can’t do this anymore, she said decisively, as if, unlike all the other times, there’d be no talking her out of it. She was done, she said. Just done.

  Theo descended the stairs. He took his time. He could see them in the kitchen. He could see Julian’s guilty red face. I don’t have time for this bullshit, he said, and grabbed his keys and walked out.

  That’s when she saw Theo standing there. She crumpled into the chair and put her head in her hands. Sorry, Theo.

  All good.

  He poured himself some coffee and a cup for her and set it on the table in front of her. You okay?

  She nodded. Thank you. We’re just—

  Theo held up his hand. You don’t have to—

  Having some issues, she said. She looked at him. I’m sorry we woke you.

  I was up.

  He sat there, drinking his coffee. There was a lot he wanted to say to her. He wanted to comfort her somehow. But all he could muster was I need to go soon.

  She nodded. I’ll get dressed.

  In the car, driving up to Albany, she confirmed that it was over with Julian.

  He’s cheating on me with a girl from his office.

  That’s so fucked-up, he said.

  How can you trust anything in this life, she said, if you can’t even trust the person you live with, like, on a very basic level?

  It felt like a rhetorical question. He couldn’t find a suitable answer. He didn’t really want to think about it. It was one of those things in life that made no sense but kept happening.

  Halfway there, she pulled off at a rest stop. They both used the bathroom, and she said she wanted another cup of coffee and did he want anything, and he said he’d have an iced tea.

  They found a small table near the window, and she looked at him carefully and said, Look, I need to tell you something.

  He waited.

  I wasn’t going to. I didn’t think it was important. But now I know it is. Do you know why I wanted to become a photographer?

  He shook his head.

  Because I believed in the truth. As a concept, you know. As a political right. The truth is our freedom. Do you understand?

  Sure, he said, but he didn’t think he did. Not like she wanted him to.

  But people lie all the time. Everybody does. And it finally dawned on me that it’s why we’re all trapped. All of us are.

  He watched her, her dark eyes, the face he knew best, even better than his own.

  Freedom. It’s not something you can buy. I don’t care how much money you have. You can be living in this supposed democracy with laws that protect you, and maybe you’re safe and have a good life, but that doesn’t mean you’re free.

  She sighed and wiped her tears. Now listen. I should have told you this a long time ago, but I didn’t, and I’m sorry.

  Told me what?

  I guess I was afraid. I guess because I was trying to give you the best life I could. A happy childhood and all that—

  You did, Ma, he insisted unhappily.

  I didn’t think I could do it on my own.

  Do what?

  Be a single mother. She reached out and took his hand. Julian—he’s not your father. I mean he’s not your biological—

  What? What are you saying?

  Your father is somebody else.

  Somebody else?

  Theo couldn’t say why, but he took this information personally, like a deep insult. He tried not to show it. He tried to control his face. Does Julian know? That I’m not—

  She shook her head. I wanted to tell you first.

  He sat there, sort of amazed. You lied?

  She nodded. I know. It’s unforgivable.

  She cried and said that at the time when she was carrying him, she was very young and very alone. I tried to find him, your dad, but he’d left the country. He was a photographer, she explained, and (by the way) already married to someone else.

  She put her head in her hands. I’m so sorry, Theo.

  Ma, he said.

  He wanted to say that he was the one who was sorry, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak, so he reached out and took her hand and she smiled a little. They were sitting in this vast cafeteria with tables that resembled spaceships or some ride at Disney World, white metal, round, and screwed into the floor so you couldn’t steal them, and the light coming in through the windows was dull and white.

  Please don’t hate me, she said. I did it for you.

  He went into the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror. He felt like he needed a moment to collect himself. He studied his face. There were guys stepping up to the urinals, the sinks, the sound of the hand dryers, but he was someplace else. He suddenly realized that his whole life was sort of based on a lie. And he recounted all the pain and agony of putting up with Julian’s shit, always trying to please him or make him proud, wondering how it was even possible to be related to a guy who was such a supreme asshole.

  When he came out, she was standing outside, smoking a cigarette, with her hair blowing all over the place, and it was suddenly distinctly and emphatically clear to him that he needed to start his own life apart from her, and that he never wanted to see Julian again.

  Back in the car, he stared out the window at the nothingness on Interstate 87 and tucked his head into his hoodie and tried to sleep. His mother kept glancing over at him like she wanted to make sure he was still breathing, then stared back out the windshield with glazed eyes, her jaw set, some sort of master plan grinding through her head.

  When he got back to his room, he swallowed a couple of Carmine’s Oxys because he was suddenly feeling very anxious and the pills made him a little calmer and sort of distracted him, but not really. When you were doing Oxy, you were giving yourself an excuse to do nothing, stepping outside yourself for a couple hours, like you’re buying time. The whole thing about drugs was connected, he thought, to being sick when you were little, when you needed extra time to figure something out, when you needed to step out of your life for a few days so things could calm down. Back in middle school and even in high school, he would lie sometimes about being sick just to buy a little time. His mother was always extra nice to him and let him watch TV and spend the day in his pajamas, doing pretty much nothing. It was on one of those days that he noticed the bird’s nest in the pine tree outside his window. He saw the mama bird with her babies. Every day after that when he came home from school, he’d run upstairs to look out his window, and they’d still be there. But then, finally, one day, it was empty, abandoned. He still kept checking, but it seemed they were really gone, and it made him a little sad, and a few days later, the wind blew the nest down and it fell apart.

  Ferez showed up and said he needed to study, so Theo left. He went outside and walked across the parking lot to the outskirts of campus to a package store that didn’t card him, and he bought a can of Foster’s and opened it and drank half of it, and it was cold and tasted good. He was starting to feel a lot better. He took the long way back to campus, through this neighborhood of narrow streets lined with tiny houses. You could see into people’s windows, into everybody’s little life with all their stuff, their tables and chairs and couches and plates and lamps. All the trash cans were out on the curb, and he saw this one dude taking bottles out of
the recycling bins and putting them into a shopping cart. It was dark and cold, and he shuddered a little, but he was all right, he wasn’t scared, and he was almost back to the dorm. His phone rang, his mother.

  Hey, he said.

  Hey, Theo. You okay?

  Really busy. I have a lot of work. This, he realized, was true. Not that he planned on doing it, at least not tonight. How about you? You okay?

  Don’t worry about me, she said.

  He tried to picture her in the kitchen, with everything out on the countertops, whatever she’d found to eat for dinner, maybe some crackers and cheese, olives, and the bottle of wine already half empty.

  Theo?

  He waited.

  Are you worrying?

  No.

  We’re going to be fine.

  Uh-huh.

  I’m sort of regretting that I told you.

  Don’t. Like you said, the truth is always best.

  She didn’t say anything for a minute, and it occurred to him that the truth as a concept, as something to live by, wasn’t even a remote possibility for either one of them.

  Do your work, she said. That’s why you’re there.

  I know. I will.

  He wanted to tell her he knew he’d been a burden to her. He knew she’d married Julian for all the wrong reasons. And he was sorry about it. He was really fucking sorry. But the words wouldn’t come.

  Instead, he listened to the noisy quiet of his mother’s kitchen, the faucet that was always dripping, the willows scratching against the windows every time the wind blew. And the drone of the TV, reminding everyone how fucked-up the world was.

  Theo? You there?

  Yeah, Ma, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.

  Magda

  The girl was a friend from school, Theo told her. She was just stopping by; she was in the area over the break. They were going to the movies.

  It was Thanksgiving Day, already cold, the lawn covered with brown leaves. They ate their meal in the early afternoon. She’d made all her usual dishes and even baked an apple pie. She’d bought the turkey from a local farm. And it was nice, just the two of them sitting at the dining room table with her mother’s special china, one of the few possessions she’d brought over when they’d immigrated. They talked a little about Julian, and she told him how, under the circumstances, he’d elected not to come, and how she’d filed for the divorce and how Theo didn’t have to worry, they had plenty of resources, meaning money, and basically things would go on like they always had. Your father will be staying in the apartment, she said.

  He’s not my father.

  Well, Theo. As angry as I am with him, he’s still your dad. He’s still the man who raised you.

  I don’t want to talk about it.

  Everything’s going to be okay, I promise. Your life will not change.

  But sitting there, looking at her son’s troubled face, it occurred to her that it already had.

  Everything she’d done up till now—her photography, her ambiguous professional status, the outrageous lie of her marriage, and now her impending divorce—had cast a gaudy spell on his destiny.

  Roger that, Theo said.

  In the few months he’d been away at school, he’d changed. He seemed distant, indifferent. She found she couldn’t look at him. Somewhere inside his eyes was the truth she wasn’t ready to face.

  He seemed fidgety, restless, like someone about to be stung by a bee. He got up and crossed the room and sat down and got up and stood at the window and sat down and got up and opened the refrigerator and poured some milk and put it back and drank the glass and set it down and took out the ice cream and ate some out of the carton, then put it back, then walked to the table and sat a minute looking out at the birds, then got up again.

  What’s wrong with you?

  Nothing.

  You seem kind of nervous.

  I’m not. I’m just waiting for her to get here.

  What’s her name?

  True.

  That’s an unusual name.

  Well, she’s an unusual girl.

  It occurred to her that he’d broken off from the mother ship. They were no longer on the same course. He’d chosen his own direction, navigating some obscure region of independence. She didn’t want to be one of those helicopter parents. It was appropriate for him to be his own person, making his own choices and decisions. But her motherly intuition told her something wasn’t right, and she suspected the girl, whoever she was, had something to do with it.

  Is she a student?

  What? No. She was going to be a nurse.

  What happened?

  He shrugged. Something. I don’t know.

  How’d you meet her?

  We met at a party.

  By then the car was pulling into the driveway.

  We’ll be back in a couple hours. It’s not her car, so—

  Don’t you want to—

  But he was out the door. She watched from the window as the girl got out of a dented blue Honda and gave him a hug. It was a hug of understanding, a hug that said, I’m here now. She was as tall as Theo and very thin, and her long black hair whipped across her face. They seemed in a hurry as they scrambled into the car and pulled out.

  It would have been nice of him to introduce her, she thought, trying not to feel insulted. She stood there at the window, half thinking of jotting down her license plate number—just in case. In case of what? she wondered.

  They were gone a few hours. It was almost dark when the car pulled up. Magda had heated up all the leftovers in case they wanted something to eat. She went to the door and opened it and stood there behind the screen, waiting for them. The girl got out first. Even from far away Magda could see her beauty. She waited for Theo to get out. Slowly, he stood and stretched to his full height, holding on to the car as if for balance. Immediately Magda could tell something wasn’t right. Like his attendant, the girl held his arm as they started up the walk. He was taking slow, cautious steps, like someone with an infirmity, his posture slightly hunched, his face peaked. Then he staggered onto the lawn and threw up in the grass. The girl just stood there, watching impassively, her hands on her hips.

  Magda hurried out the door. Theo, honey, what’s wrong?

  I’m a little sick, he muttered.

  What is it?

  A bug, I guess.

  He stepped inside and ducked into the powder room to throw up again.

  The girl followed Magda into the foyer, and they stood there together, listening to the awful sound of Theo getting sick. The girl crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the ground, avoiding Magda’s fury, complicit, Magda decided, in whatever it was that had made him ill.

  Oh, you poor thing, Magda said when he came out. Let’s get you into bed.

  She helped him upstairs to his room and into bed and pulled up the covers, aware of the girl’s presence downstairs in the foyer.

  Look at me, she said. And when he did, she knew.

  His eyes were strangely translucent, as if they were made of glass. His pupils constricted. What have you been doing, Theo? What’s going on?

  Nothing.

  You don’t look right.

  I’m just a little sick, he said. Calm down.

  You’re on something. I can tell.

  He closed his eyes and turned away.

  Try to rest, she said, and shut the door behind him.

  The girl was waiting downstairs.

  He’s sick, Magda told her.

  Yeah. She kind of shrugged. She was around Theo’s age but looked older, sunken cheeks, dark, bitter eyes thickly outlined in pencil. She smelled like dead flowers. I’ll go.

  Listen, Magda said quietly. Is he doing drugs?

  The girl looked her in the eye, with practiced intention. Not that I know of.

  But Magda wasn’t satisfied. Are you?

  She jerked her head back, indignant. I don’t do drugs.

  Magda withdrew. She felt bad, like maybe she’d insulted he
r. Would you like something to eat?

  That’s all right. Her phone chimed. I should go.

  Where do you—

  But she had already stepped outside and was talking to whoever was on her cell phone. She walked unhurriedly to her car and got behind the wheel and sat there for at least five minutes before starting the engine.

  Magda stood at the window, watching, infuriated. She wanted to run out there and tell her to leave and leave now. The girl’s passivity seemed deliberate, like she wanted to let Magda know she’d go whenever she damn well felt like it.

  Later, when she went to check on Theo, he was lying there in the dark with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. He seemed possessed, altered. The thought occurred to her that he was gone forever, that she’d never get him back.

  You need to drink some water, she told him.

  He picked up the glass and took a sip, then set it down again. He wouldn’t look at her. He settled back on the pillow, and she saw in his face the boy that he was. I’ll be all right, he said.

  He slept through the night, and in the morning he was up, walking around a little restlessly, like nothing had happened. Now his pupils were the size of peas.

  Something’s not right here, she said.

  What are you talking about?

  What have you been doing, Theo?

  Nothing.

  You don’t seem like yourself.

  Mom, you’re so paranoid. I’m not doing drugs.

  In the car, driving him back to school, she said, Tell me about this girl.

  She’s just someone I met.

  Where?

  She came to the Halloween party.

  She’s not your usual type.

  What do you mean?

  I’m your mother, I can tell.

  That’s what I like about her. She’s a good person, Ma.

  Is she?

  To this, Theo said nothing. He pulled up his hoodie and closed his eyes, and they didn’t speak for the rest of the drive.

  She took the Fuller Road exit and pulled onto campus. He’d gotten into other schools with nicer campuses far from home, but SUNY had given him the most money. Theo was good at math, it’s why they’d taken him into the honors college, but she knew he secretly wanted to be a writer. In high school, he’d had an English teacher who’d encouraged him and made him believe he had talent. A voice, Theo explained. I’m trying to find mine.