Vanishing and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

television soap operas: romantic dates and exotic travel. But from the two times I visited, I know my mother lives in an apartment and works in a college library. What I like to picture are the details. I see her with shorter hair and makeup. I imagine her coming home from work and taking off her coat. Unzipping her high-heeled boots and shaking water from an umbrella.
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    WHEN THE WIND CALMED , I climbed from my truck and walked to the house. The front door had been ripped off its hinges and it lay in the front yard, near the saskatoon bushes. Edith stood in the doorway, her arms crossed against the cold. When she saw me, sheturned toward the kitchen. Even then, she used that cold tone. “He’s here, Mom. He’s fine.”
    In the kitchen, one of the windows was broken and shingles from the neighbour’s barn had embedded themselves in the wallpaper. My wife sat at the table and stared at two hailstones that sat like a centrepiece. Maybe she or Edith had picked them up from the yard. Maybe these were the stones that had broken the window. They were as big as my fists.
    â€œYou’re both all right,” I said, and maybe I sounded too rough about it. Maybe I sounded like a businessman checking his stock, a cattleman counting head.
    That’s when Nina said it: “I hate this place.” She pressed her forehead against her hand. “I hate it here, Braden.”
    I figured it was shock. I figured it would blow over. “Come on now,” I said, and started to unbutton my shirt. Water glued it to my chest, and now that I knew my family was safe, my body let itself feel the cold.
    â€œI can’t stay here.” Her voice was like that moment after the storm, so quiet it spooked me.
    The hailstones were soaking into the tablecloth, and I don’t know why that made me so angry. I picked them up and threw them out the broken window. Some glass dropped into the sink and Nina flinched.
    â€œI’m going to check the field,” I said. My wife didn’t answer, so I turned to Edith, put my hand on her shoulder. She looked at me like she hated me. “Stay here,” I said. “Keep your mom company.”
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    DURING THE STORM , my mother pushed me against the kitchen door jamb and held my hands. I could feel the house shake against me, and I remember thinking this must be hard on her. I have my father’s bones, my father’s flesh, and even at thirteen I was taller than her. She could be wild: she was always dancing to the Rolling Stones in the kitchen, or speeding along the highway. But right then she reminded me of the sick calves my father nursed, the ones he kept in pens and bottle-fed warm, glutinous milk.
    I felt the house creak against the wind, and my mother’s sweaty hands. Then there was a crack and the front door blew off its hinges. I watched it float and waver in the air, then drop to the grass. My mother squeezed my hands until her knuckles went white. Her face was empty. It was like something my father once described, a blankness he’d seen on some animals. An injured horse determined to stand and survive, or a calf too scared to wail before slaughter.
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    AFTER SHE FINISHED her first cup, the girl didn’t even bother with coffee. Just spooned sugar into her mug, poured milk on top, and ate it like soup. The sun was rising, and Edith was still asleep.
    â€œI should take you home,” I said. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”
    â€œI feel fine.”
    I didn’t want to sound fatherly, because I didn’t feel it. Whispering like this, ignoring work and the radio, I didn’t feel like me at all.
    She reached across the table and tapped my hand. “Show me where you were,” she said. “When it hit.”
    So we left the kitchen. Midsummer, but the grass was crisp with frost, and you could still see the moon through the clouds. I pointed out the silvery birch that blocked some