Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

Author:Jodi Picoult
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Fathers and daughters, Arizona, Divorced fathers, Parental kidnapping, Family Life, Fiction, Psychological, New Hampshire, Young women, Adult children of divorced parents
ISBN: 9781416549345
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2007-07-01T18:06:53.068000+00:00

Vanishing Acts

I don't tell him how she would decorate the inside of my car with rose petals for me to find when I came out of class. That she would call me up to ask me what color I would be, if I were a color, because she was so completely purple and she wanted to know if we'd match. That she was like no one I'd ever met, that when I moved inside the kaleidoscope heart of her, I saw how dreary my life had been. I don't tell Eric this, because it's all I have left of that girl. “What happened?” he asks.

“She drove me home from the bar,” I say simply. “A month later I found out she was pregnant.” She'd used words like should and too soon and career and abortion. I had looked right at her and asked her if she wanted to get married instead.

“What made you get divorced?”

There were a whole string of things, if I want to be honest about it. And yes, there was a trigger. But I should have known that someone who was such a child herself would not feel comfortable taking care of one. I should have been more supportive after our son was stillborn, instead of clutching Beth like a shield to ward off the grief. But most of all, I should have admitted to myself far earlier that the things I loved about Elise, the impulsiveness and the craziness and the spur-of-the-moment outlook, were not really part of her personality, but a product of the alcohol. That when she didn't drink, she was so insecure that nothing I said or did was enough to convince her that I loved her.

Eric nods; he has been there himself–on both ends of the equation. You cannot depend on an alcoholic, so you learn to live for the moments when they are present. You tell yourself you'll leave, but then they do something wonderful that reels you back: host a picnic on the living room floor in January; find the face of Jesus in a pancake; celebrate the cat's birthday by inviting all the other neighborhood cats for tuna. You use all the good times to paint over the bad, and pretend you can no longer see the grain of the wood that she's made of. You watch her wade through sobriety and secretly wish she would drink, because that is when she turns into the person you love; and then you cannot figure out who you hate more: yourself for thinking this, or her for reading your mind. Eric stares at me, putting together everything I've said so far. “You loved her. You still love her.”

“I never stopped,” I admit.

“Then you didn't take Delia because you hated Elise,” Eric says slowly.

“No,” I sigh. “I took Dee so that she wouldn't.” Broadway Gangsters, West Side City Crips, Duppa Villa, Wedgewood Chicanos, 40 Ounce Posse. Wetback Power Second Avenue, Eastside Phoeniquera, Hispanics Causing Panic, Hoover 59. Brown Pride, Vista King Trojans, Grape Street 103, Dope Man Association.

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