Rust and Bone (27 page)

“I'll be here tomorrow morning at nine,” she said. “You walk out the front door and I'll drive wherever you want.”

“Can't you give me a few days?”

“How serious are you about this? The article's dated yesterday.”

Herbert followed his sister to the front door. Hazy autumn sunshine streamed through a bank of saw-edged clouds; after the sepulcher that was her brother's house, Jess had to squint. Opening the Jeep door, she cast a brief glance over her shoulder: Herbert stood in the hall, face broken into shadowed squares by the screen door's mesh.

THAT EVENING
she sat on the porch with her husband, his hand holding hers under a blanket. Since being promoted off the factory floor his hands had softened, become more careful and defensive, as though, numbed from years on the line, feeling had returned to them.

An early twilight hung suspended over the downtown skyline, patches of pewter burning between the high rises.

“So, you're sure it's your dad in the photo?”

“It's him.”

Ted's father was an insurance agent, his mother a nurse. His family history was marked by the characteristic dullness resulting in well-adjusted offspring: no extramarital affairs or crushing debts or manic, right-brain-oriented parents. Having never known people like them, he could conceive of Jess's father and brother only as vague abstractions, over-the-top comic book characters brought discordantly to life.

“Think Herb will leave that house?”

“Depends how important it is to him.” Jess touched her top lip to her nose, inhaling. “I think so. Unfinished business.”

“And you?”

“With Dad? We're through.”

Later, lying in bed, she watched Ted's reflected image brush its teeth in the bathroom mirror. His body was that of a retired athlete gone slightly to seed. A newly acquired paunch overhung the waistband of his boxers, though he carried it well, as some men had the ability to. He brushed with swift, raking strokes, as though scouring a crusty pot. White foam ran down his fingers and wrist.

It really is true, she thought to herself. Men are almost always more attractive when they think nobody's watching.

Fakery #22:
The Bleeding Wall
. Invented by Robert-Houdin, grandfather of modern magic, it is best performed in a public square. The magician draws a pistol, aims at a wall, and fires. Whitewash and plaster chips fly, and where the bullet strikes, blood drips down the masonry. The deceit: earlier that day, the magician drilled into the wall's opposite side, filling it with a solution of ferric chloride. When the bullet—coated in a solution of sodium sulfo-cyanide—punctures the wall, a chemical reaction occurs, causing a thick crimson substance to spill from the hole. Interesting note: Houdin initially used his own blood, but, following a stretch of daily performances that left him wan and depleted, opted for this chemical substitute.

[4]

It was a fine, crisp morning. After last night's rainfall the sun was blanketed by a layer of wrung-out clouds; they streamed down the sky, misty and tattered, a frozen waterfall. Jess unrolled the window to let cool, creosote-infused air rush in. It was the sort of day she wished she could freeze-frame and repeat indefinitely—she'd take this day the rest of her life.

She pulled into Herbert's driveway. Her brother sat on a trunk behind the screen door.

“Coming?”

“I'm debating.” Herbert's voice was thin as a communion wafer.

She glanced at her watch: 9:03. “Do I have to hogtie you and drag you out?”

“For god's sake—a minute, Jess, alright?”

Her brother performed a series of rapid in- and exhalations, a powerlifter pumping himself up for a record-breaking clean-and-jerk. He pushed the screen door open with the toe of his loafer and made a timid half-step from darkness into daylight. He wore a six-button double-breasted wool gabardine suit, creases sharp as a soldier's dress uniform. His face bore the squint-eyed, faintly horrified expression of an infant forced prematurely from the womb. He stepped down onto the driveway. To the best of Jess's knowledge, it was the furthest he'd ventured in years.

“Hard part's over now.”

“I've been out once or twice,” he said defensively.

“Oh?”

“Just last spring, in fact. A hobo took up residence in the gazebo.” He tilted his face to meet the sun. “I rousted him with a stick.”

The next obstacle Jess faced was her brother's luggage. She'd packed a small knapsack with a change of clothes. Herbert's luggage consisted of a trunk, a footlocker, two suitcases, and a duffle bag of sufficient bulk to smuggle a pair of contortionists.

“We're going on an eight-hour car ride, not around the world in eighty days.”

He looked wounded. “I need these.”

“Quit being a prima donna. Why?”

“How will he know I've been successful?”

“What, did you pack awards and plaques? I'm sure he reads the paper.”

Jess bartered him down to the duffel bag and a suitcase. She hefted the latter, so heavy it may have contained gold bullion, and dragged it to the Jeep.

“I refuse to ride in that bog stomper,” Herbert said. “We'll take my car.”

Jess's body soaked into the Jag's tanned leather upholstery as water into a dry sponge. The sleek European dials and gauges were ringed by bands of polished teak. The odometer read 7.2 kilometers, which she suspected was the distance separating the dealership from Herbert's hermitage.

She caught the on-ramp at Lake Street and swung onto the QEW. They passed the Henley Regatta, where a solitary sculler plied the calm brown water, and the slopes of St. David's Bench, where vineyard laborers plucked late-harvest Riesling off the vines. At the city limits they passed a flaking sign that read:
Thank You for Visiting St. Catharines, home of Herbert T. Mallory, Jr., The World's Greatest Magician!,
with an illustration of a disembodied hand yanking a rabbit from a top hat.

Herbert said, “Wish someone would burn that damn thing.”

He rummaged through his suitcase, retrieving the pipe Jess had seen jammed in his face during countless media appearances. It was a calabash of a style favored by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective.

“Why do you smoke that thing?”

“Because I am a sophisticate.” Herbert's tone suggested Jess wouldn't recognize sophistication if it crept up and nibbled her bottom.

“It's a silly affected habit. Not at all you.”

“You have your vices,” Herbert said, “and I mine.”

On the north side of the Hamilton Skyway, Lake Ontario lay flat and emerald against the sun; on the south side, Stelco smokestacks rose in silvery pillars against the blue canvas of sky. Traffic was surprisingly light and they made good time. The Jag whispered along at 110 kph, Jess resting a couple of fingers on the wheel to keep it steady. After navigating through Toronto, Jess unrolled the window an inch or two, breathing the dung-scented air blowing in over the pastures. Herbert's pipe smelled like a pan of scorched cherries jubilee.

She remembered driving this highway with her father and brother, traveling to a birthday party or bar mitzvah or cottage-country fair. The men sat in the front, her father lecturing Herbert on various tricks and illusions, pointing out the deceptions. She sat in the back. Every so often her dad would reach over the seat, squeeze her knee, and say, “Paying attention, dear?” At those times Jess wished her mother was still alive, or that she had a sister, any buffer between her and the men in the front seat. Her father made no allowance for the possibility she might not
want
to dedicate her life to magic; his mania was so all-consuming, and he'd found such a willing acolyte in his son, that he found it inconceivable she
wouldn't
share his obsession. But even at her tender age, Jess knew a dead-end opportunity when she saw one: what role did women play in magic? Sequin-topped diversions. Eye candy. Her father used her no differently:
Just stand off to the side and smile, dear. Let those darling dimples do all the work
. Looking back, Jess realized her major life choices were influenced by a desire to surround herself with individuals and institutions the opposite of everything— whimsy, fickleness, fantasy—that magic, and her family, represented.

The highway wound along the eastern shore of Georgian Bay. Glimpsed through clusters of silver maple and Douglas fir stippling the shoreline, the water stretched like a dark curved mirror, interrupted only by a chain of dimensionless islands.

“So,” Jess said, “ever think about getting back into it?”

“What's that?”

“Magic. The life.”

“Well, if you mean the sort of tricks I made a living off, no.” He opened a window and scattered pipe ashes to the breeze. “I'm interested in real magic.”

“Dad's book should've convinced you there's no such thing.”

“Not true. Dad believed in true magic. Why do you think he went to such lengths debunking the frauds?”

A sudden trapdoor feeling opened in Jess's stomach. Here was something else her father had kept hidden away from her. She stared out the window, where a flock of migrating geese kept such perfect pace with the car as to appear frozen in place, pinned like moths to the backdrop of sky.

“There
is
real magic,” Herbert continued. “A Bedouin mystic sealed in a vault for two years emerges alive and in good health. A Navajo shaman changes into a timber wolf before a gathering of missionaries. A Hindu holy man climbs a rope into the clouds and vanishes. These things happened. Recorded fact. Transformation, telepathy, invisibility—it can be done.”

“Get out of here.”

“I'm serious. Tell me this: have you ever heard of Swami Vindii Lagahoo?”

“We play croquet together on Wednesdays.”

“Aren't you clever. Lagahoo lived many years ago in Persia, where he was a spiritual counselor of sorts to the prince. Lagahoo was known as a great sorcerer—he lived for 127 years, according to the records of the day—and was credited with many miracles: producing sacred ash from his long sleeves, pulling cancerous tumors through the skin of sick men, levitation, transubstantiation. It's written that once, at a palace gathering, he sliced open the gut of a suckling pig that had been roasting on a spit in full view of the guests—a dozen doves flew out of the slit! Astounding!”

Jess emitted a low sarcastic whistle.

“His most impressive feat, the one that I've been practicing, is making oneself invisible to the naked eye.”

“Come on, Herbert.”

“I'm serious. It's no trick, just a purely mental skill. A basic matter of will. Lagahoo trained for years and was eventually able to maintain invisibility for hours at a stretch. The whole undertaking drove him crazier than a bedbug.”

“Did you ever consider he was crazy to begin with?”

Jess listened with mounting disbelief as Herbert described how, for the past six months, he'd passed each day in a room of his house, sitting in a cross-legged yoga position on the bare floorboards, teaching himself to become invisible.

“… first, you must block all outside distractions. The basic human sensations of sight, sound, smell, touch—block them out. One must feel nothing in order to experience everything. Focus the mind. Set aside all material thoughts. Concentrate. See nothing— no, see
white
. Perfect, unending whiteness. Center yourself upon it.”

He nodded to himself. “Yes, it's possible. I'm living proof.” He added, “Totally self-taught!”

“If you're doing this by yourself, how can you tell you've become invisible?”

Herbert sighed the way a teacher might when faced with a particularly dim-witted student. “I just
know,
Jess. I can feel it. A disconnection, I guess you'd call it.”

“All I can say is, if some guy walked into the station raving about aged swamis and invisibility, I'd ring up the men with butterfly nets.”

“Shut up.”

“Off to the loony bin he'd go. For his own good.”

“Think I'm nuts, do you? Pull in.” Herbert jabbed his finger at an approaching convenience store. “I'll goddamn well show you.”

Jess eased off the highway into the lot of Gibson's Groceteria, parking beneath a sign reading:
Utility Turkey—59¢/lb
. Herbert shrugged off his jacket and rolled his shirt sleeves to the elbow. “Shut the engine off and be quiet,” he said, unbuttoning the shirt to his navel. “This takes incredible concentration.”

Jess made a motion as though zippering her lips shut.

“All right.” Herbert rolled his neck and popped his knuckles. “Now, then.
Watch
.”

He closed his eyes. Soon his body was trembling, fingers twitching through a series of paroxysms as though tuning in stations on a finicky radio. His eyelids quivered like a man deep in REM sleep. His lips moved silently, a string of unintelligible syllables. Jess was reminded of a 911 call she'd answered a few years ago, some burnout who'd smuggled a narcotic toad back from Borneo; his girlfriend reported he'd been licking the poor creature's backside all night. Jess found the guy sprawled on the kitchen floor in his boxers. The toad's head poked from under the fridge, appraising its molester with bugged-out eyes. The guy's body shook faintly, as though undergoing mild electroshock therapy. Herbert's body was shaking much the same way.

This went on for five minutes. At no time did he disappear.

“Can you still see me?”

“Afraid so.”

“Damn!” His eyes snapped open. “Nothing? Didn't my skin turn opaque?”

“Maybe a little smoky,” she lied.

“Hah—I told you!” Watching Herbert smile was like watching a match head burst into flame. “Just needs more practice.”

Jess pulled back onto the highway. The highway hooked sharply westward coming through Sudbury. They drove directly into the sun, which, sinking gently into the hills, threw long embers over the landscape. Here or there they passed a motel or trading post or bait shop, but otherwise the land unfolded in great sweeps of pine and maple and poplar. Herbert rummaged through his suitcase and slotted a CD into the player. “Edith Piaf,” he said. “The Little Sparrow. One of Dad's favorites.” Jess listened to French lyrics sung in a gravelly contralto, trying hard not to hate Piaf just because her father liked her. It was nearly five o'clock by the time they hit Sault Ste. Marie.