Of all my father’s wives, my favorite (except, of course, for my mother), was Josephine. It wasn’t really anything that Josephine did when she was married to my father that made her stand out in my mind, but rather what she did when she left. You see, Josephine, in a marvel of stealth planning that the Bush administration could learn a few things from, took everything with her when she left. Everything. Somehow, between the time my father left for work in the morning and the time he came home at night, Josephine managed to remove every single item from their townhouse; unless it was something that unequivocally belonged to my father (like his socks), she took it with her.
She took the toothpaste from the bathroom. She took the ice trays from the freezer (but left the ice–the water bill must have been in his name). She took the food from the refrigerator, the light bulbs from their sockets, the toilet paper from the spindle, and the hangers from the closet. The few things she didn’t take, like his clothes and the trayless ice cubes, she left where they lie: shirts and pants in the bottom of the closet, underwear (still folded) in the spot where the dresser once stood. It was, in the words of my older sister, who visited not long after it happened, as if everything there had been beamed up by aliens, or vaporized in some kind of Josephine-erasing bomb.
We never saw Josephine again. I was only four or five at the time, but I remember that it seemed to me that Josephine had finally completed the disappearance cycle started by all the other wives: first disappearing from our sight, and then, with the help of a pair of sharp scissors and my grandmother’s determined hands, snip by snip disappearing from all the photos, until finally, because we were not to speak of them, disappearing from our collective memory altogether. In her leaving, Josephine did nothing more than the others had; she just did it in double time. And with panache.
Although it’s been over thirty years since I last saw Josephine, she is, these days, often on my mind; not because I’m thinking of pulling a stunt like hers (I think it would be much more efficient–and easier on my back–to simply throw my husband’s clothes, and his ice cubes, on the front lawn), but because, somehow, even though they bear no blood relation to her, my children have inherited Josephine’s talent with disappearance.
Or rather, they almost have. Perhaps because they are younger, and more inexperienced than Josephine was, they have not quite perfected the art of disappearing. What they now do–instead of a complete fade– is, in Harry Potter lingo, “splinch themselves”–that is, in the act of disappearing, they leave something of themselves behind.
Often what they leave is tiny, like the blueberries on the kitchen floor that were previously infesting their objectionable breakfast bagels. Other times the objects are larger, like the shoes and socks that mark their recent presence in the entryway. Sometimes, even, the objects are quite large, like the bicycles and scooters that lie in the driveway, their wheels still spinning eerily.
One thing, though: what they lack in their ability to completely disappear, they more than make up for with their speed: whereas Josephine’s disappearance took all day, Clementine and Clyde can be gone before I’ve had time to say : “Don’t forget to put away your…”
With practice, of course, I’m sure that one day they will achieve Josephine’s level of mastery, but until then I guess I’ll have to be content to gaze upon their “splinched” leavings. At least–for now–that means I don’t have to worry about naked ice cubes in the freezer.