The Vanishing Act - Chapter 2 (See "A Book" for Chapter 1)

He did not return her emails.

She did not think much at first, but after four tries and no response from him, she started to feel that whatever happened, was a mistake. She began to doubt herself, she realized that perhaps what she sensed that day, the closeness that they developed over him calling her “baby”, and the kisses they exchanged, were just her figment of imagination.

The trip to Sacramento or Boston was uneventful.  Her mother stayed in intensive care unit, but the condition was stable. She returned the next day to teach and then hopped on a flight to meet John in Boston. They spend a quite weekend together and then returned on Sunday night. John took off again on Wednesday for another trip, and she continued to teach her 2nd grade students. She had not heard from him.

Life, as she knew it, was just as mundane and predictable as before the “book”, as she now referred the event as.

He had responded to her first email, when she wrote briefly in Boston, out of guilt, out of curiosity, she wanted some level of confirmation that she did not just dream this event up, she also told him that she liked the book. He wrote briskly, “I am glad that you enjoyed the book. Take pictures. I used to live there, it’s a fun city.”

She had no idea that he had lived there, but those were not the kind of information they exchanged when they used to meet up together. They talked very little, when they did meet, they sipped coffee, had small talks, and he’d always leave abruptly at the end, as if he had some place to go, people to see, she would always feel that there were something unsaid, as if he wanted to say but he caught himself and stopped midstream.

She missed that. At least they talked. At least he responded to her simple emails, now he went quiet, silent, and four emails unanswered later, she felt awful, self-conscious, intimidated and horrified.

“He regretted this.” She would tell herself.  “This was a total mistake.” She would feel completely, utterly embarrassed one minute and ashamed the next minute.

“He does not want me or care about me or even want to be with me, this was just an act of impulse.”  She would tell herself.

Finally, on Friday, she received one liner from him. “I’m so sorry to be out of touch, baby, I’m leaving town for a project, and I miss you.”

He did not tell her where he was going, how long he was going for and when he’d see her again.

She couldn’t help but feeling rejected, deflated, and somewhat cheated. The last time they met, he had said to her that they’d try to see each other once a week, he’d try to see her the next week, and it’s been a week but he had decided to leave, and did not even try to explain why he had failed short to deliver his end of bargain. She had made herself available to him.

She felt like an idiot. She sat on that email; stared at it, try to respond in different ways:
Option A: “OK baby, see you when you get back. I miss you too.” – Too intense, too intimate.
Option B: “See you soon, don’t work to hard.” – Too noncommittal, too nonchalant.
Option C: “Have a great trip. Hope to hear from you on the road.” – A hint of dependency, a hint of lingering. Too weak.

She’d decided that she couldn’t possibly come up with a good enough response, so she sat on that email and did nothing for a couple of days.

He did not send a follow up message. He did not respond to her. He did nothing of that sort.

He simply disappeared.

By the following week, she felt completely dizzy with unanswered questions.

She picked up the phone and called him. He seemed surprised to hear from you. “Oh hi, I can’t talk right now, I’m about to get into a meeting. Can I call you back? I will definitely call you back.” He said in earnest.

“Sure, call me back.” She felt encouraged.

The call never came.

Another week passed by. It was becoming clear to her that he had other things on his mind, places to be, and people to see. She realized all of that, whatever she had thought that their future was to hold, it was nothing nothing but an imagination.

She had a picture of him, the one singular picture of him, taken using her iPhone, when they met up a couple of years ago, out of random joke, when their relationship had been so completely innocent, she took a picture of him. She stared at that picture sometimes. He had worn those black architect glasses, blue eyes, he had wavy hair and he was laughing, about something. She liked his laugh, his smile and those fine wrinkles around his eyes. She liked to touch them in real life but she never did. It would appear to be too intimate, so she traced her fingers through the picture, and she looked at the picture, and wondered where he was, whom he was with, and what he was doing.

By the twentieth day, John called, he was overseas, in Düsseldorf for a sales meeting, and he had invited her to come along.

“I can’t, John. I teach elementary kids. They need me.”

“Honey, come and join me. We can fly to Paris for the weekend. Just take three days off, is all I need. But it’s completely up to you.” John could be persuasive when he needed to be, but he never imposed. He respected her too much to ever demand or request for her presence in any places. He made plans, calculated plans, and he had the emotional discipline like a soldier; he rarely ever showed affection. She liked that about John, until he came along. That burst of affection, the declaration of “I need you”, seemed to remind her of first and only serious relationship before John. Someone she had attempted to bury in her memory, for the last 18 years. Someone who she thought she’d marry. And then he came along with that sudden affectionate declaration, so sincere, so unexpected, and that level intensity awoke part of her that had gone dormant for the last eighteen years, and now with his lack of response, it all just seemed like a fluke.

He had disappeared into thin air. After promising her that they’d start to see each other once a week for coffee, after the kiss, after he had called her “baby,” he took off, just like that.

She felt a sense of betrayal, but there was nothing she could have done. He never really come close to be her lover, she and he had only friendship to go back to. She decided that John was the ultimate choice of future husband. Why risk something so concrete for something so intangible and so unpredictable?

The bag was packed. She called school, and asked for time off.

It’s time to get on with her real life.

The book, which he had given her to read, was now sitting in her bookshelf.

“Soon I’d forget about him. In about six months of time, I would probably hear from him, and we’d go and grab a cup of coffee, and that was to be the end of that. We shall not mention about the kiss.”

That evening she curled up in her bed, cried, for exactly what reason she couldn’t know. It was not a romance story, by  far stretch of imagination. It was more like a missed opportunity. She thought he came to his senses, she was unavailable, and he moved on. He had found someone else. “I was his stepping stone.”

That morning she finally decided to let him go. She would be okay. She was always a survivor.