Ned looks suddenly worried as well.

Everyone Disappears.

My Twelfth Adventure.

The Blackberries Are Ripe.

Sat.u.r.day morning Ned is gone. I notice it first. I am eating blackberries that my mother has been picking around the house, hoping to get to them before the birds do. She comes in with some more and I say, "Are you going to make blackberry jam soon?"

The pantry shelves are lined with blueberry jam jars under the raspberry under the strawberry. My mother says, "Shhh, you'll wake Ned."

"He's not here," I say. "He was gone when I got up."

My mother pulls the living room curtains then and the room is awash in morning light. All traces of Ned are gone.

"Did he tell you he was going?" I ask anxiously.

"No. Be careful and wipe up the smears on the table," says my mother because I have mistakenly put my elbow on a blackberry and it leaves a large purple streak. "Blackberries stain so. Are you going to help me clean out Mrs. Parks's house?"

"Can Ginny come too?" I ask.

"Of course," says my mother. "Hurry and get her and I'll meet you there."

"What about Maya and Hershel and Max?" I ask. "If Ned is gone."

"Oh yes," says my mother vaguely. She is bustling around with laundry baskets and berries and mops, getting the day in order. "Well, I guess we'll just have to take them along. What is Mrs. Parks's sister going to do with those geese?"

"Where did Ned go?" I ask, thinking I shouldn't ask.

"Oh, I don't know," says my mother. "Here." She hands me a cloth to clean up the smushed berry.

"Don't you want to know?" His suitcase, which always sits littering the coffee table, is gone now too.

"Well, he has a tendency to just disappear. At least he used to."

"You mean he's gone for good? Just like that?"

"Could be," says my mother, but she seems more concerned about getting Maya and Hershel and Max, who have just awoken, fed and dressed. They will have to walk to Mrs. Parks's now, I realize. Ned's car had been nice.

I run to the new development to find Ginny and bring her to Mrs. Parks's and by the time we get there my mother is already knee-deep in piles of things that they are sorting for Goodwill and the garbage. Mrs. Parks's sister is taking little back with her to California.

We come upon a whole closet of wonderful dresses and shoes from some period of Mrs. Parks's dress-up life. They are beaded and chiffony.

"Wow," says Ginny, reading a label. "Valentino."

"My sister's first husband was a movie producer," says Mrs. Parks's sister. "She was only married to him for three years." She whispers something in my mother's ear and my mother's eyes get large. Then Mrs. Parks's sister resumes her normal tones. "All she took away from that marriage were these wonderful clothes. Still, I'm surprised she kept them all these years. I wouldn't think she'd want to remember. Gee, what to do with them? They're not really Goodwill and they're certainly not garbage."

"Can I have them?" asks Ginny, and her cheeks are flushed. "Please."

"I guess they would make wonderful dress-up clothes," says Mrs. Parks's sister. "Yes, take them. I'm not carting them all the way to California, that's for sure."

"Some of these are probably worth a lot of money," says my mother, holding up something that even I can tell is just wonderful.

"Ech," says Mrs. Parks's sister. "Maybe. If I wanted to go to all that bother. But I plan to dispose of all of this before I fly back. Let the girls have them for play."

"I'm not going to play dress-up," says Ginny. "I would never use these for something like that. These are art. I'm going to study them. These are like a textbook, do you understand?"

"No," says Mrs. Parks's sister, not looking very interested either.

"Ginny wants to be a dress designer," I say.

We are examining everything and tripping on things and generally getting in the way when there is a scream from outside. A goose has bitten Hershel and he's bleeding. My mother calms him down and asks Ginny and me if we will please take him and Max and Maya to the beach.

So we take all the designer clothes and Max and Hershel and Maya and drop the clothes at Ginny's house. She grabs her sketchbook and we head with the children down to the beach, where Ginny says, "I was in such despair, Jane. All I had in my life was soccer camp. Everything I wanted to do this summer was destroyed. Now I can come home every night and know that I have these clothes to study. It makes all the difference, do you understand? I can see firsthand how they are finished, how they are tailored, how they are designed. I had almost given up but now this is a sign. You believe in signs, don't you?"

I say I don't know if there are signs but everybody seems to be looking for them.

Max and Hershel keep coming up to me and Ginny and complaining. We are not fun like Ned. He builds them forts. He makes them tunnels. We just sit there and yap together.

So Ginny decides we will build them a boat. She gets some driftwood and goes to her house for nails and a hammer from her garage. She and I nail together a raft. It is quite respectable-looking. Then she gets a piece of kelp and hands one end to Hershel. The big, bulbous end she buries under a rock on the sh.o.r.e. The sea is calm today with practically no waves.

"My mom doesn't let them in the water without an adult," I say worriedly.

"They aren't in the water, they're on a raft," she says. "Besides, look. I have it anch.o.r.ed with that rock and as long as Hershel doesn't let go of his end they won't go anywhere. And Hershel, you're not going to let go of your end, are you?" she asks with such a scary face that he just shakes his head, his eyes large with worry.

"Good boy. Now you can pretend you are sailing to China."

She and I go back to sketching dresses. She sketches some of Mrs. Parks's dresses and then shows how she could design something similar based on them. Maya has her own little game going with some gull feathers and beads that Ginny has given her. She is talking quietly to herself.

We grow tired and lie on our towels soaking up sun and I think Ginny is sketching but when I look up later she has fallen asleep.

I hear, "Whale! Whale!" now and then but I am so used to Max saying this that I pay no attention. Then through my sun-soaked fog I realize it is not Max but Maya. And Maya never calls "Whales!"

I turn. The boys' raft is no longer floating attached to the sh.o.r.e. Hershel has forgotten to hang on to the kelp, and the raft is out to sea. And they are not alone. There is a whale. I see just the tip of the tail as it goes under. It is too close to the raft but the boys don't notice it because they are facing the wrong way. Beyond them further out is a rowboat and in it, what I am sure is the clothes hanger man, still in his too-big suit. Even in my panic it occurs to me that it is an odd thing to wear rowing. He is making his way to the boys.

I do not even bother to wake Ginny. I make not a sound because there is no time or spit for it but run into the water and start to swim toward the raft. The boys see me coming and smile and point. They don't seem to care that they are drifting out to sea. They are idiots. I am suddenly furious at them but know I cannot say anything to panic them. I am glad they are idiots. They will stay calm. I do not know who will get to them first, the whale, the clothes hanger man or me.

Just as I grab the edge of the raft and start to signal with one hand to the clothes hanger man that I have it, a huge crest of water arises behind the rowboat. The rowboat lifts with the powerful wake as the whale surfaces and I hear the clothes hanger man cry, "Maaaaaaaaaax!" Then the boat, the whale and the man all go under together.

I watch only a second before swimming as hard as I can to sh.o.r.e, towing the raft. Max and Hershel still have not seen what I have seen. Maya is standing on the sh.o.r.e looking stunned.

I get the boys to sh.o.r.e and shout for Ginny, who has just woken and turns reluctantly to view me dripping in the shallows and then leaps to her feet.

I scan the ocean but there is nothing. "We have to get the sheriff," I yell to her, explaining and panting as she runs to me.

I stay with the children and Ginny goes to town.

After a bit the sheriff's car appears with Ginny and my mother, who they picked up at Mrs. Parks's. My mother puts her arms around me immediately. I am shaking and crying and I tell them what I saw. Ginny has already told the sheriff, who has called out the coast guard. He says there is nothing else to be done and for us to go home, he will let us know when he hears something.

We all go back to our house and sit on the steps and my mother keeps asking me if I am sure I saw a man in a boat. If I am sure it was the clothes hanger man. I tell her how he cried "Max" right before the boat went under and my mother drops her face into her hands and says nothing.

There are helicopters and boats but later the sheriff comes over and tells us they have found no traces of anything. Not a boat or a man or a whale. Was I sure I saw those things? Maya saw the whale but she doesn't remember the boat. "How could you not see the boat?" I ask her over and over. The sheriff repeats, a little more skeptically, that they found nothing. But the sea is so large it can swallow anything: your stories, your dreams, your past, your father.

Ginny is shivering and we walk her home. My mother tells Ginny's mother what has happened and Ginny's mother rolls her eyes. She definitely doesn't believe us. She sees the pile of old clothes in the front hall and her lips become very tight but she just tells Ginny to quickly run a bath, she's getting sand on the carpet.

We go home and make dinner and go to bed, same as always. We say nothing to Max or Hershel, who are very pleased with themselves and their big adventure. Maya is not bothered by any of it. She takes her feathers and beads to bed.

In the middle of the night I wake up to hear a strange noise. At first it is nose blowing as if someone has a terrible cold, and then I realize it is the sound of my mother crying. It goes on and on and I hear my mother's feet pacing, as if she is scurrying down a trail into the night, and I wonder who my mother is looking for there, H.K. or Ned or the clothes hanger man.

There is a long time now as summer drifts on. No one has said anything else about the clothes hanger man. My mother is afraid, I think, to believe I was right and she will not simply believe I was wrong, but she can believe I may have been mistaken. The sheriff cannot trace him because he was a vagrant. If that was his car we saw, there doesn't seem to be a registration in his name. I don't think the sheriff believes me anyhow, he is just doing his job. I wonder what kind of life the clothes hanger man has had that he can disappear so easily from the earth. There is something about the freedom of this that I like as well. As if he lived his life like a dandelion seed floating in the wind. That for all the fuss and funerals, the truth is we all slip in and out exactly this way.

If he was my father, I alone saw him die. If he was Maya's or Hershel's or Max's, I witnessed this for them, but they will probably never believe me either. I cannot do anything about this and I did not know him well enough to mourn.

I bring Willie Mae to Nellie for faith healing even though I am doubtful about the outcome. Surely, though, if Nellie can heal, this will solve everything. But knowing exactly what Nellie does, it seems a little wrong to give her a baby to practice on. Suppose she cannot, after all, do what she says? Suppose Dr. Callahan was right and there never was a thrombosis?

I ask Nellie if she is sure she can heal people and she says I have to have faith and I think I do, but not necessarily in Nellie. Nellie sees me hest.i.tating and grabs the baby carrier. Willie Mae's purple bruise and b.u.mp have long since disappeared but Nellie moves her hands around over him. After a bit she says she can feel the part of the brain that was damaged and she has healed it.

Maybe she has and maybe she hasn't. We have no proof. I want to tell Mrs. Gourd that there will be no long-term effects of the injury, that Nellie averted any problems in this area. Maybe I just want so desperately to find proof of something that I will believe anything at all.

Nellie has been twice to the lake to find the transporting poodle without luck. Also, not as many people have come to her for miraculous healing as she thought would. I tell her not to worry, that word will spread and they will come. I am trying to be supportive. She talks all the time now about who is evolved and who is not and where she thinks they are in terms of some kind of hierarchy of goodness. It makes me nervous. It seems to me that she doesn't think it takes much to slip up.

Church seems sad and empty and hatless. Mrs. Nasters is on a slow decline again and back in the hospital. I ask Nellie about this and she says healing doesn't come with a warranty. Sometimes it only lasts so long.

Ginny says she has hidden the dresses from her mother. Her mother thinks they are filthy things and wanted Ginny to throw them away so Ginny told her she had and hid them under her bed. Her mother never vacuums there, she says; they are safe.

We do not hear from Ned. H.K. comes over now and then. I think my mother may be thinking romantically of him after all. They take walks. She is not happy around him as she was around Ned. There is no party atmosphere. But Ned is gone.

Most importantly, my mother never finds out what I have done. Mrs. Gourd has kept her word as we have kept ours and no one knows how I have almost ruined a life. So for now the house is still ours. But there is no joy. The house is no longer a sanctuary. It may not always be a member of our family. It may be taken from us as no family member could be, so what is it, then? Just a house. I cannot afford to love it anymore.

Summer is sliding to an end. There are only a few weeks left. The blackberries are really ripening now, the bushes heavy with them. It is hard to tell with blackberries which are truly ripe. They can appear dark and plump but when you pop one in your mouth, you feel the little buds' resistance and a sourness shocks your tongue. Another equally dark berry can instead burst into a sweet, mysterious, complicated flavor. It is better to wait until you are sure they are all ripe or past ripeness but we cannot wait. We pick them. My mother makes a pie and some jam but there is not enough for a lot of jam yet. It is the last shelf of summer to fill. The strawberry, raspberry and blueberry shelves are replete. Their time is done.

I begin to worry how I will babysit when school starts and what will happen if I cannot. Will Mrs. Gourd go to my mother after all? Will all this loss of summer's freedom be for nothing? I wake up in the middle of the night now and watch the moon and twist in my bed with worry. Maya breathes deeply, warmly, in the bed on the opposite wall. In her innocence she glides into dreams. She has not asked for adventures. She has not had the chance to ruin her life. Or ours. I do not know if I envy her her state. It would be good to be without this knowledge of what I have done. But to give up the adventures for it? To not have driven into the night with Mrs. Parks and a heart buzzing with excitement?

On Sat.u.r.day I meet Ginny on the steps of Russel's drugstore. Her grandmother has sent her a hundred dollars as she does from time to time. Ginny is supposed to put it in the bank for her college education but sometimes she spends part of it. We buy a bottle of bubbles, two bottles of pop and some string licorice. We sit on the steps and blow bubbles until a man tells us to move along, we are blocking his pa.s.sage, and then we go to the grocery store's steps. They are much wider. People can easily go around us. We watch people walk by and notice a dog that is tied to a mailbox. I would like to have a dog, I say to Ginny. She says she likes dogs but her mother will never allow it. Too messy.

I tell Ginny everything I have thought about in the night. She is silent and blows bubbles.

"If your mother marries H.K. then she doesn't have to worry about losing the house. If Mrs. Gourd sues, H.K. can pay her off," says Ginny finally.

"My mother cannot marry H.K.," I say. "It would be too terrible. He would never live at the beach house."

"Why not? Everyone wants a house on the beach if they can afford it."

"I don't think he likes sand and besides, what about Caroline?"

"He should ditch Caroline. Or better yet, he should put her in a proper mental inst.i.tution. Everyone knows she's completely crazy. She has been making H.K.'s life a trial for years. I'm sure if your mother were to marry H.K., the first thing they would do is put Caroline in a mental inst.i.tution."

"My mother would never tell H.K. to do that."

"Well, you should. You should sit him down and tell him that if he wants a chance with your mother he will have to get rid of Caroline first."

"I couldn't," I say. I don't want to even entertain the idea that things have gone that far, let alone encourage them.

"Well, I could and I think I just might," says Ginny in her reckless way, and then a lemon falls on her head.

We look up and gasp. Towering silently behind us, two paper bags loaded with groceries in her arms, is crazy Caroline. We do not know how long she has been standing there. Long enough, apparently. Her breath is coming in short, sharp bursts, like a bull's. Her eyes are huge and full of hatred. She seems hardly aware of the groceries, she is so upset, and things spill from the bags and down the steps.

Ginny doesn't even think, she gets up, drops and spills the bubbles all over the pavement and races for the beach. I follow. We have left the drinks and licorice behind. We run until our legs give out and we fall in the sand. When we turn we are relieved to see that Caroline has not pursued us.

"Oh my G.o.d," says Ginny, panting. "Did you see her face? Oh my G.o.d."

We are so fl.u.s.tered we do not even go back for the drinks and licorice or to clean up the bubbles. We walk rapidly to my house and close both doors because Caroline knows where I live. Then we sit and watch my mother making jam. Stirring berries. Singing to herself. She wants to know why we closed the outside door. It hasn't been closed all summer. We say we don't know.

After that we go with her to the marsh, where we spot birds and breathe in the mucky smell and feel our feet sink deeply into the welcoming, warm mud.

At dinnertime Ginny goes home.

The next morning we are getting out of church when Mrs. Cavenaugh comes racing up to us on the church steps.

"Where is she?" she says to me. She is panting even though she has driven over.

"Who?" I ask.

"Ginny. Where is she? Did she go to church with you?"

"No," I say.

My mother frowns and pulls Mrs. Cavenaugh and me away from everyone else. Maya is hanging on her hand. "What has happened?" my mother asks Mrs. Cavenaugh. "Can't you find Ginny?"

"No, I can't," says Mrs. Cavenaugh. "She never came out of her room this morning. I thought she was tired. I thought she was sleeping so I didn't even look in on her. Then when she wasn't up by eleven I got worried so I poked my head in the door and her bed was made and she wasn't there. I hadn't even heard her come downstairs and I was up by eight. What would she be doing leaving the house so early in the morning if she wasn't going to see you? I was SURE she was with you."

"We haven't seen her at all," says my mother.

"I suppose you think I'm making a big fuss over nothing," says Mrs. Cavenaugh in fury.

"Oh no," says my mother. "If I woke up and Jane was missing, I would be beside myself with worry. I would be frantic."

"I must tell Mr. Cavenaugh you don't know where Ginny is. We must, we must call the police!" says Mrs. Cavenaugh. "Where else could she be? She's a completely reliable, sensible child. She wouldn't just run off. She may have been kidnapped! We must call the sheriff immediately!"

My mother's eyes grow big at this. Kidnapping has never occurred to either of us. My mother turns to me solemnly.

"Did Ginny say anything to you yesterday? Anything about going anyplace? Was she upset about anything?" she asks me. "Were there any strange skulking characters hanging out around the two of you when you were out together? THINK, JANE!"