Vanishing Point

One day, I drove the hundred miles east to visit T at Ironwood and was denied visitation. The clerk told me there was no record of my request. Never mind that I had been visiting my son there every Saturday for five years. The man made like he'd never seen me before in his life. I am six foot three with an eyepatch and hips like holstered guns. I am hard to miss. But back on the highway in my half-dead car, I had to admit that lately my presence had failed to register. I was sixty-two and over the hill that blocks the roving eyes of men, which was fine by me, but I was disturbed by more recent developments. The week before, a car had nearly run me down in the parking lot while I was collecting carts, and a grubby teen tried to stuff a frozen dinner down his pants right in front of me while I was restocking in aisle four. I had my employee badge on and everything: Hello, I'm PATTY. How can I help you?

Outside, the sky scrolled by, clear, blue, cloudless. I tightened my hands on the wheel and watched the gas meter go down. My life was a crime with no witnesses. Who could say it had even happened? T had another twenty years. We were supposed to have watched each other, me to watch him grow, him to watch me grow old and tell me when I had food in my teeth. "Good," I'd said, when he got in for culinary arts at College of the Desert. "You can keep me in chicken dinners when my chicken is cooked."

"Goose, Ma," he'd said, but in the end, it was neither. He went to court a week before his first semester. When the verdict came, I literally cried my eye out. I have not cried since, but it is possible that sitting on the couch that evening I heaved a couple of dry sobs. Then I put on the box. It was late when I muted the TV to silence a long list of side effects and heard the front door open. It's a small house, one of those prefab jobs that arrives in two bits on the back of a truck. I stood and went to the doorway of the den to peer out into the front room. There was a man standing just inside the entrance. His face was rubbery and white in the gloom, featureless as string cheese. I saw him but he did not see me. The way he paused, I thought for a second he'd made an innocent mistake. Then the man swiped his hand in the bowl on the counter where I keep loose change and a chill unzipped my spine.

"Hey," I said. His eyes moved fast in his bald head. He looked surprised. I remembered it was street cleaning and my car was parked up the block getting crapped on by the jacaranda. From outside, it didn't look like anyone was home. My thoughts leapt to different outcomes. He's going to run, he's going to attack me, he's going to piss in all the closets and leave. Instead, he just looked at me. A long look: measuring, taking in details. It felt kind of amazing, like lost flesh growing back over my bones. Briefly, I wanted to hug him. "Get out of my house," I said. He didn't move. Everything waited: the curtains, the chipped credenza, the chairs. He smiled.

"Phone," he said. "Wallet." He took a step my way.

"Hey," I said again.

"Shut up," he said. His right hand curled at his side. "We do this quick. You got a watch?" I put my phone and my wallet on the floor in front of me, showed him my bare hands. He went from room to room. He emptied the medicine cabinet and took a bottle of scotch as well as the laundry detergent from under the sink...