Stranger Things Happen

VANISHING ACT

The three of them were sitting in a boat. When she closed her eyes, she could almost picture it. A man and a woman and a girl, in a green boat on the green water. Her mother had written that the water was an impossible color; she imagined the mint color of the Harmons' Tupperware. But what did the boat look like? Was it green? How she wished her mother had described the boat!

The boat refused to settle upon the water. It was too buoyant, sliding along the mint surface like a raindrop on a pane of glass. It had no keel, no sail, no oars. And if they fell in, no lifejackets (at least she knew of none). The man and the woman, unaware, smiled at each other over the head of the girl. And the girl was holding on to both sides of the boat for dear life, holding it intact and upright on the tilting Tupperware-colored water.

She realized that not only had the boat been left out of the letter; after so long she could hardly trust her parents to resemble her memories of them. That was the great tragedy, the inconvenient unseaworthiness of memories and boats and letters, that events never remained themselves long enough for you to insert yourself into them… The girl fell out of the boat into the green water.

Was it cold? She didn't know.

Hildegard and Myron are spying on Hildy's cousin, Je

Myron says, "I think she's dead," and Hildy snorts.

"I can see her breathing," she says, handing him the binoculars.

"Is she asleep, then?"

"I don't think so," Hildy says, considering. "I think she just turns herself off, like a TV or something."

They are sitting in the gazebo that Hildy's older brother James made in woodworking the year before. The gazebo is homely and ramshackle. The white paint has peeled away in strips, and bees float in the warm air above their heads. With the aid of a borrowed set of binoculars, Hildy and Myron can spy privately upon Je

The three of them sat in the boat on the water. They weren't necessarily people, and it wasn't necessarily a boat either. It could be three knots tied in her shoelace; three tubes of lipstick hidden in Hildy's dresser; three pieces of fruit, three oranges in the blue bowl beside her bed.

What was important, what she yearned for, was the trinity, the triangle completed and without lack. She lay on the bed, imagining this: the three of them in the boat upon the water, oh! sweet to taste.

Je

The Reverend Molly Harmon's brother and sister-in-law have been missionaries in the Pacific since before Hildy and Je

During the 1965 coup in Indonesia, Hildy's aunt and uncle and Je

Je

Hildy hugged Je

"Give her time," Hildy's mother advised, putting the sheets into the washer. "She's homesick."

"How can she be homesick?" Hildy said. "She's never lived in a single place for longer than a year."

"You know what I mean," said the Reverend Molly Harmon. "She misses her parents. She's never been away from them before. How would you like it if I sent you to live on the other side of the world?"

"It wouldn't turn me into a mute, stunted turnip-person," Hildy said. But she thinks she understands. She read the library book. Who wouldn't prefer the emerald jungles of Bali to the suburbs of Houston, the intricate glide and shadow jerk of wayang kulit puppets on a horn screen to the dollar matinee, nasi goreng to a McDonald's hamburger?

Hildy and Myron come inside to make hot chocolate and play Ping-Pong. They go to Hildy and Je

"Nothing."

He tries again. "Would you like to play Ping-Pong with us?"

"No." Her eyes don't even open as she speaks.

There is a bowl of oranges on the night table. Myron picks one up and begins to peel it with his thumbnail.

Je

"Hey!" Myron says, backing up and cradling the orange in his palm. He is afraid of Je

I'm hungry, I didn't mean anything."

Hildy intervenes. "There are more in the refrigerator," she says diplomatically. "You can replace that one – if it's such a big deal."

"I wanted that one," Je

"What's so special about that orange?" Myron says. Je

Myron's mother, Mercy Orzibal, is a professor of English and a close friend of the Harmons. She is divorced, and teaches night classes. Myron spends a lot of time at the Harmons under the harried attention of Hildy's mother, known as the Reverend Mother.

This afternoon was a wedding, and the Reverend Mother is still in the white robes of a divine: the R.M. and Mercy Orzibal, in her sleeveless white dress, look like geese, or angels.