The Vanishing Half: A Novel

Kennedy gives the best performance of her career on the night that Jude and Reese come to the show. Afterward, she meets them and finds them conversing with her boyfriend, Frantz. The two couples walk to a nearby bar for a drink. While the men are placing their orders, Jude slips a photo to Kennedy:

The photograph was old, gray and faded, but still, under the fluorescent light, she could tell which of these identical girls was her mother. She looked uncomfortable, like if she could have, she would have run right out of the frame. Her mother had always hated taking pictures. She hated being nailed down in place (289).

Kennedy tentatively begins asking questions about Mallard and her family there. She is ambivalent about believing Jude’s story yet can’t bring herself to destroy the photo. The next day, she goes to the hospital where Reese is having his surgery and waits with Jude until he is released. She doesn’t see the couple again before they go home to Minneapolis.

In the years that follow, Kennedy drifts from one acting job to another. She travels, appears in films, and eventually moves back to California to work on television. By 1988, she manages to achieve minor success as a recurring character named Charity Harris on a soap opera. Stella seems moderately pleased that her daughter has received some recognition as an actress. After relocating back home, Kennedy shows the twin photograph to her mother, but Stella denies that she is the girl in the picture.

Several months after Kennedy confronts Stella with the childhood photograph of the twins, Stella decides to visit Mallard. By 1986, the village no longer exists, having been absorbed by a larger town. When Stella arrives at the Vignes home, she sees Early tending to Adele, who is now suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. While Early is stunned by the sight of a White woman approaching the house, Adele immediately recognizes Stella and treats her as if she’s still a schoolgirl.

Stella goes off in search of Desiree, who is now the manager of Lou’s Egg House, where she worked as a waitress for many years. When the twins first confront one another, Stella tearfully begs for forgiveness. Although Desiree resists, they’re soon hugging one another as if no time has passed. That night at dinner, the sisters catch up on each other’s lives. Stella asks Desiree to keep Jude away from Kennedy. She fears that if Jude persists in telling Kennedy about the Vignes family, then Kennedy will see her mother as a liar, and this knowledge will create an unbridgeable gulf between them.

The following morning, Stella sneaks out of the house before anyone is awake. Early catches her and offers her a ride to the train station. Stella explains that saying goodbye would be too difficult to bear. As she gets out of the car, she gives Early her wedding ring, asking him to pawn it and use the money to care for Adele.

A month after Stella returns to California from her visit, Kennedy calls to say she’s coming back to Los Angeles for good. When Stella picks her up at the airport, she decides to tell her daughter everything about her past.

Before the end of 1986, Adele dies. Jude is in medical school in Minneapolis when she receives the news. She then calls Kennedy in Los Angeles. The cousins discuss the situation, but Kennedy doesn’t believe her mother would want to attend the funeral. Accompanied by Reese, Jude arrives at the family home and feels overwhelmed by the memories it contains for her:

The white shotgun house appeared, looking the same as she’d remembered, which seemed wrong since her grandmother would not be sitting on the porch to greet them. Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles. You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same (336).

After the funeral, Reese and Jude try to forget the sadness of the day by swimming in the river.

Shortly after Adele’s death, Desiree decides to leave Mallard for good. She and Early settle in Houston, where Early works for an oil refinery, and Desiree takes a job at a call center. Desiree sometimes fantasizes about cold-calling Stella but never follows through. For her part, Stella never learns about Adele’s death even though Jude presses Kennedy to tell her. Kennedy decides not to, reasoning, “Secrets were the only language they spoke. Her mother showed her love by lying, and in turn, Kennedy did the same” (333).