The Vanishing Expert Read online

  “I remember,” James said. “But enjoy it now, because you’re going to miss it all someday.” He sighed. “I know I do.”

  As the evening passed James shared his memories of the University with Christina and Jean, and Christina told him about the changes the school had undergone since he left. Jean was politely quiet during much of their conversation. It was the most she’d heard James openly speak about his life since she met him, and she enjoyed learning more about him. She liked, too, that he and Christina had something in common. Their conversation lasted nearly an hour after supper, and was only interrupted by the sound of the doorbell.

  “That’s Russ,” Christina announced as she jumped up and hurried for the door.

  James looked at Jean, who shrugged and shook her head. “I should have known she didn’t come running home for the weekend just to spend time with her mother,” Jean said.

  A moment later, Christina appeared in the doorway of the dining room with a tall dark-haired boy at her side. He was handsome and athletically-built, and he shook James’s hand firmly when they were introduced.

  “We’re going to Bar Harbor to see a movie,” Christina told her mother. “Then we’ll probably just hang out for a while.”

  “I won’t wait up,” Jean said.

  Christina smiled at James, and waved to him from the doorway. “It was nice meeting you, James.”

  “Same here,” James said.

  Russ, the perfect gentlemen, held the front door open for her, and he smiled and waved politely at James and Jean as he pulled it shut behind him.

  “She’s something, isn’t she?” Jean said.

  If James felt any sense of loss over Christina’s sudden departure, it was instantly dispelled by Jean Berkhardt’s smiling face. “She’s a wonderful girl,” he said. “You two seem to have a great relationship.”

  Jean sighed. “She’s just a blur to me lately,” she said. “She grew up so fast, and now she just finds a few hours for me here and there.” Her gaze was fixed on the door, as if she could still see her daughter and could will her back into the room. “It’s one of the least enjoyable parts of motherhood,” she said wistfully.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  She turned away from the door, finally abandoning her hope of Christina returning, and she looked solemnly at James. “Letting them go.”

  Somewhere in their shared sense of a life passing them by, James found a connection with Jean Berkhardt. Without meaning to, he reached out and touched her hand. It was a simple gesture, almost involuntary, and more consoling than romantic. She gazed pensively at his hand upon hers, and he was relieved when she smiled at him. She felt the connection, too.

  “I’m sorry,” Jean said softly. “You didn’t come here to listen to me rattle on about my problems.”

  “That’s okay,” James said. “I don’t mind.”

  Jean’s face brightened. She contemplated him almost dreamily, a long and thoughtful stare. From any other woman, that kind of scrutiny would have made him uneasy, but he was surprised at how comfortable he was with her, and before long, he dropped his guard, forgetting for the moment about the secrets he was keeping.

  It was nearly midnight, and having adjourned to the living room hours earlier, they were now seated before the glowing remains of what had earlier been a roaring fire. They'd long since given up the overstuffed sofa for the floor, and they sat close together, leaning back against the sofa. An empty bottle of red wine was perched on the coffee table, which they'd moved aside. James had run out of things to toast shortly after they popped the cork on the second bottle. Now, he simply sat glassy-eyed before the fire, watching it burn, his senses numbed by the wine.

  “So, you want children,” Jean said, filling her glass again.

  James nodded slowly. “More than anything,” he said. His speech was slurred, and Jean smiled.

  Jean considered it for a moment. She was forty-two years old. Her life was settled now. She was comfortable in her home, her gallery was doing well, and she had more friends than she could count. Yes, she missed Christina. There were times when she wished she could have found some way of keeping her young forever, but there were just as many times when she was grateful to have gotten beyond that period in her life when she structured every waking hour around her child. It never occurred to her to have another.

  “And that’s why you came out here?” she asked. “To find a nice girl and make babies?”

  James let out a quick laugh. He held up his glass in front of the fire, and watched the flicker of the flames through the wine. “I came up here,” he said finally, his speech heavy and slurred, “so I wouldn’t be there.” He had a faraway look in his eyes, and Jean decided to simply let him continue. “Everything just got too complicated. And I woke up one day, and I realized I was never going to have the life I really wanted. I started thinking that it was too late, that I missed my chance. I kept looking back on my life, trying to find that one point”— he pressed the tip of his finger to the side of his glass— “that one point when I went off track. I kept thinking that there was one critical moment when I made some small decision, and it sent me off in the wrong direction.” He paused, watching the fire, and he took another sip of wine.

  “So, did you ever figure it out?” she asked him.

  James nodded. “Yup,” he said. “I did.”

  Jean waited, wondering. “What was it?”

  “There were two,” James said, holding up two wobbly fingers. “First,” he said, holding up one finger, “I smiled at the wrong girl.”

  “And the second?” Jean asked.

  James let out a quick laugh, and he turned to Jean, a drunken smile on his face. He raised a second finger. “I married her.”

  When Christina arrived home just before two o’clock in the morning, she found James asleep on the living room floor. Jean sat at the dining room table gazing sleepily into the darkness, her hands folded neatly under her chin. Christina took off her coat and draped it over the back of one of the dining room chairs, a confused expression on her face.

  “Why is James asleep in our living room?” she asked. It was the first time she’d ever arrived home to find a man in her house with her mother, but the scene wasn’t even compromising enough to be interesting.

  “He had a little too much wine,” Jean said. “He needed to sleep it off.”

  “On the floor?” Christina asked.

  Jean let out a weary laugh. “He was heavy.”

  “So why are you sitting here staring at him?” Christina asked.

  Jean returned her attention to the sleeping figure in her living room. “I don’t know,” she said pensively. “I guess I just wanted to make sure he was okay.”

  Christina frowned at her. “Mom,” she said. “He’s passed out. How much trouble can he get into?”

  Jean was too tired to laugh. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”

  Before she went upstairs, she placed a pillow under James’s head, and gently laid a blanket over him. James didn’t stir.

  “So, how did it go?” Christina asked her as she followed her mother up the stairs.

  Jean shrugged. “He’s a nice man,” she said. “I like him. But there’s still so much I don’t know about him.”

  “The fatal flaw,” Christina said knowingly.

  Jean stopped on the stairs and peered down at her daughter incredulously. “The what?” she asked.

  “The fatal flaw,” Christina repeated. “You’ll find it. You always do.”

  When Jean awoke the next morning, she went downstairs to find that James was gone, and the blanket she’d covered him with was neatly folded and placed on the arm of the sofa. Christina came downstairs a short time later, and peered into the living room as she sat down beside her mother with her coffee.

  “Is he gone?” Christina asked.

  Jean nodded as she took a sip from her coffee mug, and she pushed a napkin over to Christin
a. She was about to slip it under her coffee mug when she noticed the scribbled writing upon it.

  Jean,

  Thanks for the company (and the pillow). I’ll call you later.

  —James

  PS: Good morning, Christina.

  Christina smiled and slid the note back to her mother.

  “How’s Russ?” Jean asked, changing the subject.

  “He’s the same.” Christina shrugged. “He’s always the same.”

  “Well, that’s good, right?” Jean asked uncertainly. For a woman whose husband left her after ten years of marriage, a man who doesn’t change seemed the best of all things.

  “I don’t know,” Christina said. “I used to think so. But I have changed.” She frowned at her mother. “I don’t mean to be snotty, but sometimes I feel like maybe I’ve— I don’t know— outgrown him.”

  “Well, you know, Hon, that does happen.”

  “I suppose,” Christina sighed, the disappointment obvious in her voice. She’d rushed home from college to see Russ, but her evening with him left her feeling empty. But she suddenly brightened at the prospect of discussing her mother’s evening. “So how about James?” she asked. “What did you think of him?” She listened eagerly. It was rare that she had the opportunity to ask her mother about a new man in her life.

  “He’s very nice,” Jean said. “But there’s something about him I’m just not sure about.”

  “You have to lighten up, Mom,” Christina told her. “You’re too hard on men. You think you can’t trust any of them just because of Dad.”

  It was partially true, Jean thought. While she wanted to believe that the wounds of her divorce had long since healed, it was obvious there were still scars. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t trust men, as much as she tended to get frightened whenever she found herself getting too close. Christina had seen it all. Over the years, she'd witnessed many of her mother’s failed relationships, and the simple, yet fatal flaws Jean always assigned to the men who seemed at first to hold such promise. They were often petty things that most women overlooked, or hoped to change, but not Jean; she always found a reason to end the relationship before it ever really got started. Christina assumed she was about to do the same with James.

  “It’s not about your father,” Jean lied.

  “What then?” Christina asked.

  “Well,” Jean said. “For starters, there’s the whole age thing.”

  Christina looked at her in disbelief. “You’re not that much older than him,” she said.

  “Like hell,” Jean said. “I’m old enough to be his—” She paused, reconsidering her thought. “— slightly... older... friend.” She smiled and pointed a threatening finger at her daughter, warning her not to comment.

  Christina shook her head. “Once you hit thirty, age doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Trust me,” Jean said. “Once you hit forty, it matters.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he wants kids.”

  Christina gasped in mock disgust. “That bastard!”

  Jean smiled. “Go ahead. Make fun.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t I make fun?” Christina asked. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  Jean shook her head. “You don’t get it,” she said. “I’m too old for kids.”

  “You are not. You can still have kids.” Christina told her. “It would be really creepy and strange, but you could still do it.”

  “I’m not saying I can’t have them. I’m just saying I don’t think I want to. And he really does.”

  “He could change his mind,” Christina said.

  Jean shook her head. “No,” she said. “He just left his first wife because she wouldn’t have children with him. It wouldn’t be fair to him if we started something when I know going in that I can’t give him what he wants.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What about what’s fair to you?” Christina wondered.

  “It wouldn’t be fair to me either,” Jean said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it wouldn’t last.”

  Christina leaned back in her chair and gazed at her mother, shaking her head disapprovingly. “So there it is, then,” she said.

  “What?” Jean asked.

  “The fatal flaw.”

  When James arrived at Jean’s home just before noon, he noticed her car was already gone. He decided to simply drive past her house and continue on to Bar Harbor, where he assumed she would be working at the gallery, but he noticed Christina on the front porch, sitting alone in one of the Adirondack chairs. It was a cold Sunday afternoon in early November, though perhaps not quite so painfully cold for someone who had been raised on the Maine coast. She sat with a heavy wool coat wrapped around her like a blanket and a steaming cup of hot chocolate cradled in her hands. She smiled as James approached.

  “Nice to see you up and about,” she said cheerfully.

  James smiled, getting the joke.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked with a wicked smile.

  James stood on the brick walk, one foot perched on the bottom step of the porch. “The sleeping was fine,” he offered. “The waking was unpleasant.” He rubbed his neck, which ached from his night spent on Jean’s hardwood floor.

  Christina smiled. “If you’re looking for my mother, she’s at the gallery.”

  “She’s an early riser.”

  “It’s noon, James,” Christina offered.

  James looked at his watch. “So it is.” He mounted the steps, and leaned his shoulder against the post, eager to make conversation. “Why are you sitting out here?” he asked her. “You must be freezing.”

  Christina took a sip from her steaming mug. “I’m just waiting for my ride back to school,” she said. “Besides, I like it out here. I can smell the ocean.”

  James looked around at the view from the porch, at the quiet tree-lined street, and the modest but well-kept homes already closed up tight against the approaching winter. It was a peaceful setting. “It’s nice,” James admitted. He looked at the chair beside her, and he noticed the big tomcat reclining in his usual spot, eyeing James warily. “Mind if I join you for a bit?” James asked her. He wanted to be near her, and he was pleased when she motioned to the chair beside her, currently occupied by the cat.

  “Sure,” she said. “If you can convince Custer to give up his seat.”

  He picked up the cat as he sat down, and then placed him on his lap. “So this is the man of the house,” James said. He rubbed the cat behind his ears, and Custer tilted his head and closed his eyes, purring loudly.

  Christina took another sip from her mug and smiled at James from behind the steam swirling up before her. “Looks like you’ve already won him over.”

  James wondered by her tone what Jean might have told her about their evening together. He already knew that Christina was aware of how the evening ended. He was anxious to learn what else she knew, but he was ashamed to ask.

  “I’m a little embarrassed about last night,” he finally said.

  “What for?” Christina asked, teasing him.

  James smiled as Custer turned over on his back. He rubbed the cat beneath his chin, and his purring increased. “It wasn’t exactly my finest hour,” he said. “I guess I had a little too much wine.”

  Christina raised the cup to her lips in an effort to hide her amusement. “A little?” she asked.

  James smiled. “Maybe a little more than a little,” he conceded.

  “You were smashed, James.”

  Even as she mocked him, he once again enjoyed the sound of his name upon her lips. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, but she seemed to be otherwise immune to it. He wondered if the girls he’d known in college had looked like that, if he’d taken their beauty for granted when he was young, appreciating it only now when they were unattainable. But he doubted he’d ever come across a girl who possessed a beauty as
flawless as Christina Berkhardt’s.

  She appeared very small, sitting with her knees drawn up close to her chest, her long coat wrapped snugly around her so that all that was visible were her perfect face and her delicate fingers, which were wrapped around her coffee mug to draw from its warmth.

  James’s hands were resting motionless on Custer’s thick fur, and the cat appeared to be growing impatient with the sudden lack of attention.

  “Can I give you a little advice?” Christina asked.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Take it slow,” she told him. “Most guys are in too big a hurry, and that scares her.”

  “Okay,” James said. “Thanks.” He smiled appreciatively, though he wondered if, in his expression, Christina suddenly recognized his longing for her. If she had, she was as unfazed by it at as she was by the cold. Perhaps she was simply so used to seeing that longing in all men that she’d become immune to it. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah,” she said, suppressing a smile. “Maybe go easy on the wine.”

  James laughed self-consciously. He thought at that moment that he could spend the entire afternoon there, shivering on the porch and gazing at this beautiful girl.

  An old white Chevy Impala pulled up in front of the house, and the driver, a dark-haired girl, tapped her horn.

  “That’s my ride,” Christina said, lifting herself quickly out of the chair. She disappeared inside for a moment, and she reappeared with a knapsack slung over one shoulder. They exchanged quick goodbyes as she bounded past him on the steps.

  “Have fun at school,” he said to her.

  “Thanks,” she called cheerfully over her shoulder.

  He watched the playful swing of her hips as she walked swiftly toward the waiting car. As she reached for the door handle, she suddenly stopped and turned to him.

  “James,” she called out to him. “I just thought of one more thing.”

  “Okay.”

  “Be straight with her,” she said. “No secrets. She doesn’t like secrets.”

  “Thanks,” James said.