The Vanished Man

theTV off? I’d rather visit with you. There’s that control. I can never get it to work. Sometimes, I almost think, somebody sneaks in and changes the buttons.”
    “I’m glad I got here before you went to bed.”
    “I would’ve stayed up to visit with you.”
    Kara gave her a smile. Her mother then said, “I was just thinking about your uncle, honey. My brother.”
    Kara nodded. Her mother’s late brother was the black sheep of the family. He’d gone out west when Kara was young and never kept in touch with the family. Kara’s mother and grandparents had refused to talk about him and his name was verboten at family gatherings. But, of course, the rumors flew: he was gay, he was straight and married but he’d had an affair with a Roma gypsy, he’d shot a man over another woman, he’d never married and was an alcoholic jazz musician. . . .
    Kara’d always wanted to learn the truth about him. “What about him, Mum?”
    “You want to hear?”
    “Oh, you bet—tell me some stories,” she now asked, leaning forward and resting her hand on the woman’s arm.
    “Well, let’s see, when would it’ve been? I’d guess May of seventy, maybe seventy-one. Not sure of the year—that’s my mind for you—but I know it was May. Your uncle and some of his army buddies had come back from Vietnam.”
    “He was a soldier? I never knew that.”
    “Oh, he looked very handsome in his uniform. Well, they had a terrible time over there.” Her voice grew serious. “Your uncle’s best friend was killed rightnext to him. Died in his arms. A big black fellow. Well, Tom and another soldier got it into their heads that they’d like to start a business to help their dead friend’s family. So what they did was they went down south and bought a boat. Can you imagine your uncle on a boat? I thought it was the strangest thing ever. They started a shrimp business. Tom made a fortune.”
    “Mum,” Kara said softly.
    Her mother smiled at some memory and shook her head. “A boat. . . . Well, the company was very successful. And people were surprised because, well, Tom never seemed too bright.” Her mother’s eyes sparkled. “But you know what he used to say to them?”
    “What, Mum?”
    “ ‘Stupid is as stupid does.’ ”
    “That’s a good expression,” Kara whispered.
    “Oh, you would’ve loved that man, Jenny. Did you know he met the president of the United States once. And played Ping-Pong in China.”
    Not noticing her daughter’s quiet crying, the old woman continued to tell Kara the rest of the story of Forrest Gump, the movie that she’d been watching on TV a few moments before. Kara’s uncle’s name was Gil but in her mother’s fantasy he was Tom—presumably after the film’s star, Tom Hanks. Kara herself had become Jenny, Forrest’s girlfriend.
    No, no, no, Kara thought in despair, I didn’t make it in time after all.
    Her mother’s soul had come and gone, leaving in its place only illusion.
    The woman’s narrative became a garbled stream that moved from the shrimp boat in the Gulf to aswordfish boat in the North Atlantic caught in something called a “perfect storm” to an ocean liner sinking while her brother, in tuxedo, played the violin on deck. Thoughts, memories and images from a dozen other movies or books joined real memories. Soon Kara’s “uncle,” as well as all semblance of coherence, vanished completely.
    “It’s somewhere outside,” the old woman said with finality. “I know it’s outside.” She closed her eyes.
    Kara sat forward in her chair, gently resting her hand on her mother’s smooth arm until the old woman was asleep. Thinking: But she had been in her right mind earlier. Jaynene wouldn’t’ve paged her if she hadn’t.
    And if it happened once, she thought defiantly, it could happen again.
    Finally Kara rose and walked out into the dark corridor, reflecting that, as talented a performer as she might be, she lacked the one skill she so desperately wanted: to magically transport her mother to that place where hearts stoked with the fuel of affection burn warmly for all the years God assigned them. Where minds retain perfectly every chapter in the rich histories of families. Where the apparent gulfs between loved ones turn out to be, in the end, nothing more than effects —temporary illusions.

Chapter Forty-nine
    Gerald Marlow, a man with thick, Vitalis-crisp hair, was head of the NYPD’s Patrol Services Division. His deliberate manner had been