Vanishing Point

Friday

It was cool and a light drizzle had started falling when Jennifer, Terry, and I arrived at Laurel’s house in Klamath Falls. The overcast rendered the old tract even shabbier than it had seemed on the sunny day when I’d first visited there. Both women were tense, and their edginess had infected me on the trip up. Jennifer had insisted on sitting with me on the plane, had barely spoken to her sister. Terry acted as if she were being transported to prison. I gathered the “agreement” was more a case of the older sister exerting her influence on the younger one, and I hoped the outcome of today’s visit wouldn’t seriously rupture their relationship.

I pulled the rental car to the curb, turned off the ignition. Then we sat there in silence. After a minute, Jennifer asked, “This is what she left our home for?”

I said, “I don’t think her life turned out the way she expected.”

“No, of course not,” Terry commented from the backseat. “She probably envisioned a new, rich husband and no bratty kids to bother her.”

“Listen, Terry.” Jennifer’s voice crackled with anger. “We promised not to prejudge her.”

“You mean, you told me not to.”

“Stop that! We’ve got to go in there with open minds.”

Terry didn’t respond.

Jennifer twisted in the passenger seat and glared at her sister. “What happens in there”-she jerked her thumb at the house-“will be something we’ll have to live with for the rest of our lives. Don’t blow it.”

“As far as I’m concerned, our mother blew it the day she left us.”

I closed my eyes, drummed my fingertips on the steering wheel. Why the hell had I agreed to come with them? Oh, yes, I was supposed to be a mediator.

I said, “Look, you can do one of three things: you can sit here arguing all afternoon; you can tell me to turn the car around and drive back to the airport; or you can go in there and deal with her. But if you do go in, you have to be civil-to her, and to each other.”

They were silent. Then Terry said, “Okay, let’s get it over with.”

The two stayed well behind me as we went up the walk and I pressed the bell. Within seconds, Laurel opened the door.

She’d styled her gray-streaked hair carefully and applied makeup, including lipstick. She wore a black pantsuit that once had been elegant but now was shiny from too many dry cleanings. Her eyes were apprehensive, and worry lines stood out between her thick brows.

Another long silence. She stared at her grown-up daughters. I glanced at them: Jennifer’s eyes had begun to tear, but Terry’s were hard and cold.

After a moment Laurel swung the door widely and said, “Please, come in.”

The door opened directly into a small living room, sparsely furnished in what looked to be thrift-shop items. A small TV and VCR sat on a stand, dozens of videotapes stacked on the shelf below them. One wall was lined with bookcases whose shelves sagged under the weight of the volumes. Most of the books were in poor condition, and many of their spines bore library identification stickers, indicating Laurel had picked them up at bargain prices when they were taken out of circulation. Most if not all of Josie Smith’s money must have been gone after Laurel bought this house.

She stood very still, pressing her hands together and studying her daughters, who were similarly frozen. After a moment she motioned at a tattered plaid sofa and said, “Sit down, please. I’ve made coffee. Or perhaps you prefer tea?”

“Nothing-” Terry began.

“Coffee’s fine,” Jennifer said, gripping Terry’s arm.

“Good. Ms. McCone, will you help me?”

I followed her through a dining area and a swinging door into a tiny kitchen. As the door shut behind us, Laurel turned to me.

“You said when you called that Terry was opposed to coming up here. Which one is she?”

“You can’t tell your own daughters apart?”

“Obviously they’ve changed in twenty-two years.”

Saskia had never seen me; I’d been whisked out of the delivery room as soon as she’d given birth. Yet when I first saw her, lying in a hospital bed in a semi-coma, she’d sensed my presence and whispered words that would allow me to unlock the secrets surrounding my adoption.

I said, “Terry’s the one with the attitude and short hair.”

Laurel nodded, busied herself with putting cups and a plate of cookies on a tray. I carried it into the living room while she followed with a carafe of coffee.

Jennifer was sitting on the sofa, her posture very straight, hands clasped primly around her knees. She’d composed herself, and her eyes were no longer tearing. Terry stood by the far wall, studying a group of photographs that were arranged there. I set the tray down, went to join her.

So Laurel had taken keepsakes of her children with her. There were seven photos in all, each framed in silver: Jennifer on a pony; Terry in a wading pool; both girls in front of a Christmas tree. Jennifer mugging for the camera in a Halloween pumpkin suit; Terry hanging upside down by her knees on a jungle gym. Both girls posing in the opening of a drive-through redwood tree. And in the central photo of the arrangement, Laurel kneeling, an arm around each girl, the sea in the background.

Terry said, “She kept them all these years.” When she looked at me, I saw her expression had softened.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll hear her out.”

For more than an hour Laurel explained to her daughters the things she’d told me on the previous Tuesday, but her demeanor was radically different. She spoke softly and with regret; occasionally she cried, and Terry looked distressed, but Jennifer had become silent, aloof. Occasionally she glanced at the picture wall, a puzzled expression on her face.

I understood the change in Terry’s attitude; the display of photographs had affected her deeply. But I couldn’t understand the change in Jennifer.

Laurel refilled our coffee cups, and Jennifer studied the carafe as she poured.

“We had one like that when I was little,” she said.

“Yes, it’s exactly the same. I found it in a thrift shop. It made me think of you.”

“Not of our father?” Jennifer’s tone was sharp, her expression unreadable.

Laurel said, “It’s hard for me to think of your father, after what he did to me. But you girls were always on my mind.”

“Really.”

“Yes-every day. Especially on your birthdays. Christmases. The Fourth of July. Halloween. Thanksgiving. I missed all those occasions, and I deeply regret it. I missed your high school and college graduations. Terry’s wedding day. Your wedding to Mark Aldin.”

Red flag. I’d told Laurel Jennifer’s married name, but not that of her husband.

Terry got up and went back to the picture wall. “This is so nice,” she said.

“What else did you miss, Mother?” Jennifer asked. Her tone was even sharper now. “The big house in Paso Robles? I mean, this”-she gestured around us-“is quite a comedown.”

Laurel compressed her lips before she spoke. “I suppose, given your two lovely homes and rich husband, you would consider it so. I admit, since I left you my life hasn’t been much.”

“And do you think it might improve, now that you’ve reconnected with Terry and me?”

“Of course it would. I’d have my girls back.”

“No, I mean in a material way.”

“I’m not asking anything of you-”

“Of course you’re not. Not directly.”

Terry turned, frowning.

Jennifer stood, went to stand beside her sister. She took down the photograph of the three of them from the wall and examined it, turned it over. “How long has this been hanging here?” she asked.

Laurel ran her tongue over her lips. “Since I moved into the house, ten years ago.”

“Really.” Jennifer continued examining it. “Odd that it’s not sun-faded like the spines of the books on the shelves. That east-facing window lets a lot of light in here, even with the blinds closed.”

She stepped back, surveying the wall. “It’s also odd that there’s a big rectangle on the wallpaper where it’s not faded-as if something much larger had hung there until recently. And there’s no smaller, unfaded place where this one was-such as there would be if it had been there for ten years.”

So that’s what made her skeptical. Trust an artist’s eye. She’s a better detective in that department than I am.

“I had the walls repapered-”

“No way, Mother. You forget, I inherited your artistic talent. My eyes don’t lie.” She held up the the frame, its back toward us, where a sticker with a bar code was affixed. “In your haste to curry favor with Terry and me, you left the price tag on. It’s from SaveMart, a store that didn’t exist ten years ago. Besides, anything that old wouldn’t peel off”-she pulled it loose, stuck it on the glass over Laurel’s face-“this easily.”

Laurel closed her eyes, sighed. “All right, I was trying to impress you. The frames I had the pictures in were from a thrift shop and very shabby-”

“You’re good at covering up, aren’t you? But I guess you would be; you’ve been living a lie all these years.”

Laurel was silent. I watched Terry’s face undergo a slow transformation from bewilderment to anger, as the harsh recognition of how their mother had attempted to manipulate them sank in.

I couldn’t keep out of the family discussion any longer. “Laurel, how did you know Jennifer was married to Mark Aldin? And that he’s rich? And that they have two lovely homes?”

“Why, you told me.”

“I only told you her last name, and that they lived in Atherton.”

“No, I’m sure you mentioned-”

“A little Internet research was all it took to find out your older daughter-separated or not-is well-off. And I imagine you also found out Terry isn’t doing badly, either.”

“That’s preposterous! Why would I care?”

“Money to buy you a good lawyer. To make the rest of your life easier.”

“No!”

“The real question is, did you ever care? Did you ever think about your daughters’ feelings at all?”

For a moment I thought Laurel would protest again, but then she lifted her head defiantly, and arrogance flashed in her eyes.

“You want the truth?” she said. “All right. The truth is, I never much cared about anyone but myself.”

And that’s what isolates you from the rest of humanity.

Jennifer reached out to Terry, who was backed up against the picture wall, eyes hard with anger. At first she pulled away, but then she took her sister’s hand. Together they walked out of the shabby house and out of Laurel Greenwood’s wrecked life, leaving her to face the consquences alone.

After again warning Laurel not to run, I did the same.