Vanishing and Other Stories Read Free

to hear the law student’s opinions, and Marlene liked to cook and fuss. Lev came over at six because he usually shared a Scotch with Nathan before dinner. They would go to the attic to avoid the noise of the radio that Marlene and Tabitha played in the kitchen. The smell of their cigarettes slipped through the attic’s hatch and Tabitha imagined their hushed voices, the clink of ice cube to glass, and Lev in her chair. But that night, he didn’t arrive alone. That night, Lev brought a woman.
    Her name was Sofia, and she had brown hair that curled around her ears. She wore a pencil skirt, a wide red belt, and a small leather hat. She hadn’t dressed up her outfit the way Marlene would have, with makeup and pearls. She didn’t have to. Her skin had a natural blush and her navy sweater brought out her eyes. Tabitha had never seen anyone so graceful, so poised. Next to this woman, she felt ashamed of her mother, and ashamed of her own awkward body. She imitated Sofia’s posture, stretched her neck and held her shoulders straight.
    â€œThis beautiful lady,” said Lev as he stood in the doorway, “has agreed to be my wife.”
    Nathan curved the corners of his mouth into something that resembled a smile and nodded to the woman.
    Marlene held out her hand. “How lovely to meet you.” She took Sofia’s coat and gloves. “How lovely.”
    Over dinner, the men spoke of books. Lev had recently published a first collection, and though Nathan never wrote a single line of verse, poetry was the only topic seriously broached at the Sabbath table. From nearly two years of these dinners, Tabitha learned that Nathan was forever grateful for Klein and Lev found him depressing. Lev deemed Pound “robust and brilliant”; Nathan thought him a fascist, and a victim of his own poetic rules. Nathan admired Elizabeth Bishop, but Lev didn’t pay much attention to her. And they never agreed on Layton.
    â€œI love him,” Lev stated that Friday night. He was extremely handsome, which was maybe what gave him so much confidence in his own opinions. “I love him the way a son loves a father.”
    Nathan leaned back in his chair and shook his head, his cheeks reddened from wine. Their conversations sounded like arguments, but Nathan rarely appeared happier. He listened when Lev spoke and seemed to find everything about him—his youth, his ego—engaging. If Marlene noticed, she seemed to treat it as a necessary ill, like the arthritis in her fingers, the fluid that collected in her legs. “Now,” she said. “Would anyone like more beans?”
    â€œA tough, brutish father. That’s the way I love the man.”
    â€œHe’s a drunk,” said Sofia. She seemed older than Lev. Maybe it was her rich voice, or the way she so confidently helped Marlene in the kitchen before the meal.
    â€œSo he’s picked his poison.” Lev turned to her. “That’s his right.”
    â€œOf course.” Sofia placed her fork and knife on her plate with a click. “But I hardly find it charming.”
    â€œSofia has little use for certain kinds of men.” Lev smiled and showed his pleasantly crooked teeth. He picked up her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Men who are wholeheartedly male.”
    â€œThen she’s an astute young woman.” Nathan looked Lev in the eye. He smiled the kind of smile people use to cover up anger, or simple heartache. The kind of smile that never quite succeeds. “She’s a prize.”
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    IN THE 1980S , someone publishes a biography that gets it all wrong, Marlene and Bea spend half of every year in Florida, and Tabitha has become brash, too loud, a lush.
    She is well liked, though fat and poor, and she wakes one morning to find that her hair has become a brazen, phony blond. There is nothing of Sofia in her now. She has lost her grace, her ingenuousness, her youth. She treats it like