Excerpt from Issue 303 (Spring 2025)
"Vanishing Point" by Lynn Easton
DISAPPEAR: to be forgotten, lost
1. Keys
are heavy. They weigh us down with domesticity. When I was 21, I
was given a handful of gag gifts to save me from
embarrassing myself. Magnetic metal boxes to hide inside wheel
wells, locksmith gift cards, three spare keys — shiny brass that
nobody could miss. Half-assed gag gifts to remind me of my lousy
memory and forgotten obligations. Decades later, no one laughed
when my mother was given similar gifts: high-tech plastic squares
slid into purses or hung off the casino Key fob she won in Vegas
and used every day to turn over her car, and a new leaf. “Today, I’ll
be ok,” she’d say. “Today, I’ll remember the route home.”
2. The car
is gone. “She can’t find it anywhere,” my father says when he
phones me. I see him in my mind: green recliner open, walker
behind him, TV still on. “Go get her,” he says. I find my mother
standing outside Save-On-Foods surrounded by five full plastic
grocery bags. She tries to look as if this piece of sidewalk is where
she waits for her chauffeur every Wednesday morning just before
lunch. I park and walk toward her. Her shoulders drop. She smiles and
tells me she is sorry. Tells me maybe someone has stolen her car.
She looks into my fearful eyes through tears, and we agree not to
say anymore. Instead, we hold each other in a long hug,
surrounded by five plastic grocery bags, outside of Save-On-Foods
on this Wednesday morning, just before lunch.
3. Teeth
go missing without a dental plan. She hid her dead-tooth smile for
decades and now hides her acrylic version everywhere: under
pillows, in Kleenex boxes, up her sleeve. My molars were removed
after a childhood of poor dentists and the potential of bounced
cheques. Eventually replaced with a smoothness, I will never get
used to.
— Lynn Easton writes from Maple Ridge, BC on unceded q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie) territory. Her work appears in periodicals and anthologies including Sustenance (Anvil Press), Boobs (Caitlin Press), and The Malahat Review where her essay “The Equation” received the Constance Rooke Prize. She writes about her mother to remember for them both.
You can read the rest of "Vanishing Point" in Issue 303 (Spring 2025). Order the issue now:
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