University of Northern Iowa

Disappearing ActAuthor(s): Alison MooreSource: The North American Review, Vol. 273, No. 3 (Sep., 1988), pp. 51-53Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25125003 .

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N A R

A Story by Alison Moore

^anta Anas. Devil winds, explains the cab driver after

Sally's blue skirt nearly comes up around her waist and the ten-dollar bill she extends to him is almost torn from her fingers. "Happens this time of year. Comes out of nowhere and blows for days. Then one day it just stops." His face is barely visible in the pre-dawn light as he lifts her suitcase from the trunk. He offers this almost as an

apology, as if she were a stranger and unaccustomed to

L.A.'s weather, as if she didn't already know about the

wind.

It tears the silk from around her neck and before she can catch it the white scarf is gone, snaking through the air as weightless and supple as a ribbon. The red taillights of the cab move away from her and disappear. For a moment she stands right where she is on the curb, feeling strangely exposed. She lifts the heavy suitcase and enters

the nearly empty, brightly-lit terminal. She has never been to Zurich. Her passport is crowded

with stamps and seals, signatures of authority in Greek, Arabic, Italian, Thai. These places have all been destina

tions to meet the same person. Two years of travel, of

arrivals and departures, the confirming phonecalls coming in the middle of the night due to the time difference in the part of the world where he lives.

Last week his voice had been full of echo and delay as it traveled through cold, empty space. She pictured a glint ing satellite vibrating like an eardrum from the impact of

his words, words nearly lost in the static of asteroids and solar wind, diffused on the way down to earth until they

were little more than a shivered sound in her ear. "I'm

arriving flight 430 from Jeddah, British Airways at 7:30. You're due in at nine. I'll wait for you outside the customs hall. OK?" "Yes"! she shouted back, startled at her own

echo. "I've got so much to tell you?my new job at the

magazine?I finally got promoted!" "I can't hear you, Sally. Wait until next week. Love you." The high pitched whine when he hung up was like no dial-tone on earth. She felt cut off, disconnected from him once again.

Sally stuffs her coat into the overhead bin and takes her seat next to the window. Her heart pounds from the

tension she always feels at takeoff. She knows all the sounds so well?the deafening roar of the engine acceler

ating, the thud of retracting wheels. She worries about some crucial piece of metal failing in midair. Her fear is that one of them will not make it, that the other will arrive

y /

in some foreign country alone, listening to announce

ments over loudspeakers in an unfamiliar language. She imagines David, asleep. He often slept into the

early afternoon, a habit that has always frustrated her. She wakes early, curls up on the sofa with a cup of coffee and a

book. The sun comes through the open window and dries her hair; the scent of lilac rises from the garden below. David sleeps, shielded from this part of her day, shades drawn tight, covers wrapped close around him. When he does wake it is a gradual, reluctant return from some

private place, like being born all over again into a strange room.

The sun rises, filling the cabin with reddish light. Memory surfaces like something alive that has been held

underwater, struggling for light and air. An image breaks

through: last year in Spain?their first meeting after six months of separation. She relives it all over again: she arrives first and stands outside the customs hall to meet him. A glass wall separates the arrivals from the waiting families. She spots him immediately in a crowd of people standing around the baggage carousel. She watches him for a while before he sees her and feels a strange excite

ment. He doesn't look like David. His skin is tanned. He looks taller, leaner and his hair is cut differently than she remembers. He has changed without her, doesn't look like anyone who would walk up and kiss her. The luggage is held up. She stands close to the glass, her palms press

against it. He turns around and sees her, then walks over

and stands directly in front of her on the other side. He raises his hand and presses his palm on the opposite side of the glass, matching hers. He smiles. She smiles back. He presses his lips against the window and she rises on

tiptoe to meet him there. For a second she closes her

eyes. The glass is cool against her lips, her fingers. She can't feel him through the clear, hard wall. She wants to

pound it with her fist or her voice, break it and reach

through, feel him pressed against her for as long as it takes until she feels him unquestionably there. When she

opens her eyes, she realizes with embarrassment that he's

already turned away.

Arrival. Each time she's filled with the anticipation of

seeing him again, of standing on her toes to look over a

crowd to find him. She always feels certain of love at these times. He's a moving point in the world she always returns to, belongs with.

September 1988 51

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N A R _

Unlike Madrid, there is no glass wall separating customs from the arrivals area. A windowless, swinging

door marks the border. She opens the door and steps into a small clearing in a pressing crowd. She holds her breath,

waiting to be recognized, claimed, embraced. She waits

for what seems like an interminable length of time and then the crowd pushes past her. Necks crane to inspect the next arrival. She checks the arrivals board and his

flight is listed as having already landed. She makes her

way to the information telephone to see if he's left a

message. A voice speaks from the receiver in a heavy Swiss-German accent. It disappears, looking for some

thing with her name on it. "No message," the voice says.

Is this the wrong country? The wrong day? Has some

thing happened to him? She goes through the list of

standard questions, the ones with possible explanations. She sits in a hard, plastic seat for over an hour. The

hall fills and empties over and over like a tidepool. Tired ness seeps into her, a new drug replacing the adrenalin.

She waits. She reaches the point where waiting seems

absurd and then she waits a little longer. Nothing has

prepared her for this.

They had never missed connecting before, so they didn't make contingency plans. In one of David's recent

letters he had mentioned a small town to the north of

Zurich called Shaffhausen and a hotel that a friend had

recommended. It's a long shot, but the only thing she has to go on.

She transfers a change of clothes from her suitcase to

her carry-on bag and leaves the suitcase in a locker.

Energy comes back to her. She has a destination again, a

journey that requires skill, intuition, all her senses to find him. Then an eerie feeling comes over her that lasts for

only a minute, a feeling of being watched, as if David had

arranged this?for a torn piece of treasure map to be given to her as he sits back, arms folded, intently following her

every move, testing her. And if she ever succeeds, there's

the reward, the coming face to face, the moment when he

opens the sealed door inside himself and lets her through.

She takes a taxi to the train, then the train to another taxi.

After several hours of traveling through bleak terrain and the gray of a Swiss February the taxi pulls up in front of a

stone building set back from the street. She stands for a

moment looking up at the windows of the hotel. She wonders which room he is in, sleeping undisturbed by the

concierge's wakeup call.

She opens the heavy wooden door. The lobby is dark,

protected by thick, dusty drapes pulled across arched windows. A rose-colored sofa crouches on clawed feet above a worn oriental carpet. A woman pushes a vacuum

at one end of the room. She shuts off the machine and makes her way slowly behind the counter.

"Is there a David Gifford staying here?" Sally asks

with such tentativeness that she is surprised at her voice, how small it sounds. His name sounds like a destination, a

place she should know how to get to instead of asking directions from a stranger.

"Gifford, Gifford." The woman intones the name

slowly. She turns around and looks behind her at the bank of cubbyholes, each containing a single key. "Gifford,"

she says again, shaking her head. She looks in the regis ter, running a pale, unpainted fingernail down the page of names. It stops next to a signature that even upside down

Sally recognizes. She leans closer to see. The woman

looks up, shaking her head again. Her eyes are hugely magnified, the irises a faded blue behind thick glasses. She points to a date entered in a column by the name, taps her fingernail next to the numbers, emphasizing their

indisputable truth. "Where is he?" Sally's voice has an edge to it now, an

impatience that this woman will obviously not tolerate. With effort, Sally tries to sound reasonable. "Please, can

you tell me where he is?" "He has left! I do not know where he is! And there is

nothing here about a forwarding address." Their eyes meet and they hold each other's gaze. For a time neither moves.

"But I'm his wife!" Sally cries.

Shrugging, the woman takes a key from the box

marked "12" and hands it to Sally, pointing to the stair

way. Then she says, hissing "See for yourself, miss."

Sally climbs the thickly carpeted stairs. Her boots make a dull thudding sound with each step. She stops outside the door to number 12. She's not sure what she

expects to hear?maybe the sound of water running in the bath or his familiar, hollow cough or the laughter of more

than one person coming from the bed. She puts the key into the lock and turns it. A bolt slides back and the door

opens slightly. She pushes it open the rest of the way. She enters the room like a sleepwalker, knowing it, vividly aware of each thing in it and where it's placed. Light cuts

into the room through a small window. Outside, a leafless branch scrapes against the pane, making a tapping sound

like someone trying to get in. She looks around: a table with circles of water stains from countless glasses, includ

ing his. A chair with its back to the table, deep furrows in the rug where it was dragged from its place and turned around to face the window. An ashtray crowded with

cigarettes burned down to various lengths, flecks of ash

nearby where he'd missed. In the trashcan, an empty

wine bottle and a paperback book: Ridley Walker, by Russell Hoban. She picks it up and tries to read but the sentences seem backwards, the words nearly familiar but

incomprehensible. The bed is a tangle of sheets and

blankets, evidence of a long and difficult sleep. The door to the bathroom is closed. Suddenly she is afraid that he

might be in there. She kicks the door open and it bangs against the tiled wall. A faucet drips into the rust-stained

porcelain tub with the dull rhythm of a ticking clock. She leans down to tighten the faucet. She turns it. The noise

stops. She begins shaking from the tension that has taken hold of her and braces herself against the tub before

turning again into the room.

She sits on the edge of the bed in a room full of clues. There is no envelope propped up with her name on it,

nothing so definite. But the message is scrawled every where: across the arrivals board at the airport, down the

length of track to this town: everything points to this room

at the end of the hall. She catches a movement out of the corner of her eye?

her own reflection in a mirror above the dresser. There's a

52 September 1988

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ALISON MOORE

hairbrush on the lace cover. She goes to pick it up and with long, deliberate strokes begins to brush her hair. She waits for his reflection to join her, for his hand to take the brush from hers, to pull the robe from her shoulders.

They turn and push the two beds together. They make love with the intensity of two people fighting for their lives as the room grows dark. Afterwards, they lie close, staring up at nothing in particular in the dark above the bed. He might say "Sometimes I'm afraid of how much I need you." She listens and feels his fear like something alive and very patient, waiting beneath the bed. His hand reaches out to touch her, but the dark shape pulls it back. She wakes to the sound of the door closing softly behind them.

For a time she sits still, feeling his absence in a place where he had once been. She sinks down to her knees in front of the chair and leans back on her heels. Her voice is

very soft. "Listen to me. You used to tell me I had the

magic. Remember the night on the beach when you were so far inside yourself you couldn't speak a living word and I pulled you until you were running? And from the run

ning came breathing and from breathing, laughter. You

laughed with joy and you said 'You did it!' And I believed

you. And I always believed I could do it again. But most of the time it didn't work and it got so I was too scared to try.

"So what is it?" Her voice begins to rise. "What were

you thinking about this morning as you sat here in this chair? What did you figure out? What kept you here when I touched down on the runway of a country we finally have in common? Why is my coming closer to you something to be contended with? Listen to me!"

She leans forward. Her hands grip the worn armrests.

Her voice is almost a whisper. "Did I miss the moment?" She buries her face in the cushion. In the sudden

darkness she sees a picture: she is eight years old. She is

waving to her father who is driving away. He's left her alone for the summer with strangers. The people show her to her room in the guest cottage. They close the door.

She raises her head. "David? Can you see me?" The room is suffocatingly hot. She stands up and

reaches for the closest thing to her. Her fingers tighten around a heavy glass, half-full of dark red wine. She hurls the glass across the room and the red wine spills out in a

long arc onto the gray carpet. There is an explosion of

glass as it hits the window and breaks through. Cold air rushes in through the opening, parting the steamy air of the room. She feels the sorrow begin like a single, ener

getic cell that pulses, divides and divides again, a leaf

unfurling from a small, green knot into a long plume that fills her. She leans closer to the jagged opening to let the coolness touch her.

Downstairs she stops at the desk, leaving a pile of deut schemarks on the counter. "For the damages," she says,

although the woman is nowhere to be seen. She strides across the dim lobby and pushes the door open. She steps out into the light and noise and motion, and moves

quickly to join it.

When the captain announces that they're coming up over

the shores of Greenland she raises the windowshade and

looks down on the unbroken blue of the North Atlantic. Then she notices a few white flecks, like a trail of scat tered crumbs and as the plane moves forward the flecks increase in size and number. The sea is crowded with

icebergs. Suddenly they're over the edge. The icy conti nent looms from its ragged shoreline into sharp moun

tains and vast, blank plains unwritten on by any road. Greenland: she remembers?the name given by the

Vikings to lure explorers away from the prize of Iceland. She sees the wooden ships and ragged sails, the tired sailors crowding the decks for the first look at the sighted landfall. And she feels clearly before they do the astonishment of coming ashore to an empty place, scan

ning the blank horizon again and again for something living, the reluctant turning from a vivid dream. D

PI.IR?TY Stephen Corey

The sleeping child's neck in moonlight, the silent swell and drop of his pulse

showing like a molten bubble straining from hotter depth toward surface.

The mother suspends her hand a fraction above his clean-scrubbed skin, feels his soft throat lifting to thrum her drying fingers. She hears her husband's hips

shifting in a chair beyond the door.

She thinks of the letters

day after day through the air, the other man her son has never seen?

the man she'll never touch again.

He writes of his hands floating out from his body, day and night,

converting all things to her

skin, her smoothness and damp.

She lifts away, then lowers her hand

to clasp, with tender fury, the throbbing neck.

She thinks of peeling her fingers, the pink and bloody layer beneath

displaying the same whorlings. The U-shaped vise of her hand

massages up and down.

She is stunned again by the pure absence of guilt.

September 1988 53

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