Born of Illusion (11 page)

“What’s that, Mommy?” I had asked.

For a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she reached down and picked me up. I remember squirming at being held like a baby in public but her arms tightened and I stilled. “Look,
kis szerelem
,” she said softly, slipping into the old language she used less and less. “There’s your father.”

I looked around in confusion until my mother pointed at the poster. Then I made out the image of a man whose eyes seem to be staring directly into mine.

“That man is my father?” It must have been a trick of the light, because for a moment it looked as if we were standing together, the three of us. But it was just our reflection in the window. That night my mother told me for the first time how she met Houdini and how I came to be.

Now I wonder if any of it was true.

Replacing the handbill, I take out the flyer that the promoter gave me. The Hippodrome is on Sixth Avenue. It shouldn’t take me too long to get there.

After hiding my collection, I eat a quick lunch and shrug on my coat. The afternoon sun is thin in the waning October afternoon and gives little warmth. Before heading to the show, I explore the neighborhood. Some of the buildings, like ours, have been cut up into flats, while others remain stately single-family homes, with wide steps and wrought-iron railings. It isn’t a ritzy neighborhood, but it is an established one, and it wraps me in a firmly middle-class hug.

Everywhere I go, I see regular people—mothers taking their babies out for some fresh air and children playing games on the street. The young women look as if they were all cut from the same fashionable cloth, with their identical calf-length bias-cut dresses, cloche or helmet-style hats, and dangling bracelets. They stroll together with their arms linked, exchanging confidences. I feel a pang as I realize I’m the only one walking alone. But then, I’ve always been alone.

Most of the girls I’ve met have been put off by the scandalous life I lead and because my mother looks the way she does. While I’ve been picking locks, defrauding war widows, and performing onstage, other girls my age are attending high school, helping their mothers around the home, and maybe sneaking off to a dance or two on the weekends. The few friends I’ve had have been adults connected with the theater, and since we were always moving around, they never lasted long anyway.

I look right and left as I cross the street, remembering the foreboding I felt last night, but the only anxiety I feel right now is over what I will find at Houdini’s show.

I catch a streetcar going downtown, smiling at the toothless driver as I pay my fare. There are plenty of seats on this Sunday afternoon, and I take one close to the front.

Glancing around, I slip the flyer out of my purse and read the headline:

A MAGICIAN AMONG THE SPIRITS

What does that mean?

Knowing Houdini’s skepticism, I’m almost afraid to find out. Like most performers just beginning their careers, Houdini barely scratched out an existence and became adept with card tricks, the pea game, and other carnival cons in order to survive. He also claimed to talk to the dead and performed all kinds of amazing tricks to prove his authenticity. When his magic began to pay off, he left all that behind him, except the knowledge he gained from doing it.

For years he worked on his own career and never gave a thought to mediums defrauding the public of money, but all that changed when his beloved mother died. He had been desperate to get in touch with her and offered a substantial amount of money to anyone who could contact her spirit. Many tried, but Houdini exposed them all as frauds. He became bitter and increasingly convinced it could not be done. After a time, it became his mission in life to expose spiritualism as a sham.

I get off the streetcar and walk half a block to the Hippodrome. With its stately spires, flags, and ornate detailing, it looks like a castle, out of place among New York’s businesslike streets. A throng of people are already gathered outside, and I join the line.

Just one of the crowd.

It’s as one of the crowd that I pay for my ticket. It’s as one of the crowd that I buy a hot pretzel wrapped in brown paper, and it’s as one of the crowd that I take my seat in the mammoth auditorium.

But it’s as Houdini’s daughter that I pull out a notebook and pencil to take notes on what I see. The people around me are tense, excited, and I’m reminded again of just how famous he actually is.

I hold my breath as Houdini is introduced. I’ve seen him perform before, of course. I was on the pier when he jumped into the Hudson River when I was a child. I saw him hanging, eight stories up, when he escaped from a straitjacket in Chicago. But those events were attended with my mother, who took me just before the escape occurred and hurried me away soon after. This is different. This time I can study him at my leisure.

Houdini steps out onstage and I lean forward, tension coiling my stomach like a rope. He’s shorter than I remember, all compact muscles and strength. But it’s his voice that really surprises me. His persona is all masculine bravado. But his voice, high-pitched, almost effeminate—doesn’t seem to match.

“I declare that nothing has been revealed to me in my twenty-five years of research to convince me that intercommunication exists between the spirits of the departed and those still in the flesh.”

My skin crawls, remembering the Ouija board. I wonder what Houdini, the great skeptic, would make of Walter.

Houdini goes on to explain that he’s not attacking spiritualism as a religion, but only those mediums taking advantage of the grief of others to defraud them of their money.

I shift uncomfortably. He means people like my mother and me.

I struggle to remain calm and to follow the thread of his lecture. “Imagine the medium’s horror when halfway through the séance, I throw off my disguise and cry out, ‘I am Houdini and you are a fraud!’”

My blood chills.
Oh, I can imagine.

He expounds on how the mediums research their clients before they give each séance, and I remember how many small-town graveyards I visited before my mother and I set up shop. How often I would eavesdrop at the general store, blending into the background, listening for tidbits of information that could be used.

After Houdini finishes discussing the forethought and care that goes into each séance, his assistants join him onstage.

“Now, I will show you some of the more common tricks used by mediums to make you, the unsuspecting public, believe in their treachery.”

He begins with the slate-writing trick, during which the spirit writes a message to one of the clients from “beyond the grave.” Houdini shows the small ring on his finger that contains a piece of chalk. He demonstrates how the slate is held by both the medium and the client and how the medium can write on the bottom side without the client’s knowledge. One diversion later (usually created by an accomplice) the slate is momentarily pulled from the client’s fingers and flipped over, without the client even knowing.

My heart sinks. One of my mother’s better tricks is now worthless. We’ll have to come up with a whole new variety of Houdini-proof tricks.

My pencil flies as he goes through a repertoire of techniques—many of which my mother and I have utilized on countless occasions. The eating of burning coals, which in reality are merely cotton balls set in burning alcohol; the mysterious rapping, which is done with a cleverly designed mechanism in the heel of one of my shoes; and table levitation, which is merely the medium’s or her accomplice’s foot.

My horror grows with every sentence he utters, every trick he exposes. Our livelihood is being destroyed—by the same man my mother tells me is my father.

My legs twitch from wanting to run and hide. I put the notebook in my bag and clench the velveteen armrests. I came to meet Houdini and meet him I will.

He concludes the show with some of his most beloved escapes. This is what people are clamoring for, and I occupy my mind by running through the steps to each trick as they occur. I note the dramatic inflection of his voice and his striking gestures as he works the crowd.

At the final curtain, it’s announced that Houdini’s book,
A Magician Among the Spirits
, will be for sale in the atrium and that Houdini will be autographing them.

This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for, and I slip from my seat so I can beat the rush.

No such luck. By the time I purchase the book, I’m stuck in a line that stretches almost out the front door. The mingled scent of body odor and perfume wrinkles my nose. Everyone wants to tell Houdini his or her story. He cocks his head and makes the right noises, but I know he’s barely paying attention. No doubt his quick mind has already jumped to the next scheduled event in his incredibly busy life.

Then it’s my turn.

I look into his face, holding my breath, waiting for something to happen. Perhaps a sense of confusion or unconscious recognition. But his expression is the same as it was for the person ahead of me—polite, pleasant, public.

I wonder how his expression would change if he knew what I do for a living.

The book feels lethal in my hands as I give it to him, as if the covers could swallow me whole.

“Would you like me to inscribe it?”

I avoid his eyes, as if he can read my guilt. “Yes, please.”

He waits, impatience crossing his face. “The name?”

I clear my throat. “Anna.”

“Just Anna?”

I nod. Words fail me.

He signs it as I watch,
Best wishes, Harry Houdini.

Best wishes.

Resentment and anger flare up inside as a small brunette woman moves to his side and whispers in his ear. His wife. He pats her hand and hands me the book with a distracted smile.

I’m expected to move now, but I don’t. My feet remain firmly planted.

He looks up at me, his brows raised. “Yes?”

I hold up the book. “You should have titled the book
What Not to Do
.”

Houdini cocks his head to one side. “And why is that?”

“Because no medium will ever use these tricks again . . . but we both know they’ll just devise new ones, won’t they?” I give him a cold little smile and walk away.

“Wait a moment,” he calls, but I keep moving and lose myself in the crowd heading for the door.

Once outside, I pull in a couple of deep breaths of the frigid air.

My father, a man I have only known through newsreels, movies, and clippings, is now all too real to me. And he’s my enemy.

Ten

K
eep moving. Keep moving.

I hurry past my streetcar stop, clutching Houdini’s book in my hand.

Knowing that he’d been working with the American Scientific Society to debunk mediums and writing long diatribes in the newspapers didn’t prepare me for this level of exposure.

Everything my mother and I have worked so hard for is at risk because of Harry Houdini. While I hate doing the séances and yearn for a time we can stop, they’ve always been an important part of our survival. Sometimes a successful séance means the difference between having a roof over our heads or not, between going to bed with a full stomach or an empty one.

Harry Houdini is out to expose mediums, but I wonder what he would say if he met a real one. Someone who had really communicated with the dead or saw the future in terrifying visions or felt the emotions of others coming off them in waves.

Someone like me.

I bump into somebody on the busy sidewalk and cut across the street to avoid the crowd. I don’t need to feel anyone else’s emotions right now. My own thoughts are racing, one after another, each more alarming than the one before. My mother and I are so close to putting our nomadic life behind us. I shudder, wondering how many zealous skeptics this latest attack is going to inspire. What if they go after our show? Part of me wants to toss the book in the gutter, but I can’t. I need to see what tricks he’s ruined for us. I slip it into my bag and keep walking down one dimly lit street after another.

“Excuse me, miss, can you spare an old man some change?”

Startled, I glance up at the wizened beggar in front of me. The filthy rags he wears attests to his circumstances, and I automatically reach for my purse. I press a bill into his hand and ignore his muttered thank-you as I glance around, frowning.

Nothing looks familiar.

Did I walk east or west? I’m no longer in the theater district, that’s for sure. Gone are the beckoning restaurants and busy shops. The buildings here are rough, ramshackle. Families taking leisurely Sunday strolls have been replaced by coarse men slipping into unmarked buildings. A few of them give me sidelong, curious looks and I realize how out of place I look in my blue woolen surplice coat and black Mary Janes. The few women on the street are wearing shabby, shapeless dresses that reach their ankles and heavy shawls that are their only protection against the weather.

I hurry for the nearest corner to see if the street name will give me some clue as to which direction I should go. The salty, tar-drenched stink of the river is stronger here and the streets are narrower. I must be near the docks. Chewing on my lip, I clutch my purse closer and try to look more confident than I feel.