The Illusionist

by Dinitia Smith

  “So, when are you leaving?” My voice is flat.

  “I don’t know. . . .”

  “Do it now. If you’re gonna do it, do it now.”

  * * *

  That summer, all around me the fields filled with color—purple vetch, black-eyed Susan, goldenrod. Butterflies drifted across the tall grass. I heard nothing from Eddie, from the Laskos, since I had called them and they said they didn’t know where he was. But I knew they were protecting him. They hadn’t wanted us to have the baby, and now they just pretended I didn’t exist anymore.

  At night, sometimes, after we ate, I’d take Bobby out into the fields to look at the stars. Above us was the harvest moon, almost as big as the sky itself, the tips of the long grass lit up in the moonlight, and Bobby rendered into silence with his crazy mother carrying him out there way past his bedtime under the huge sky. As we walked, he’d stare up at the sky intensely, his eyes like black jewels, I could see the moonlight pooled in them. “Look, honey,” I said. “See the stars.” I wanted to be able to tell Bobby the names of all the stars, to point out the forms they took, the Big Dipper, the Twins, all the mythological figures. But I’d stare up at the sky and I couldn’t find them. I wondered if you had to be a rich person to name the stars? In books, it seemed like only rich people knew.

  Bobby, in my arms, weighed nothing. I would have given anything to have Bobby be heavier, stronger, not to have this feeling that any moment he could die on me, fade away.

  And I was scared here in the long grass, but excited by the two of us being alone, the immensity of the sky, though my dad was ten minutes away. Only a mile away from here, a 300-pound black bear had been sighted by a farmer and the farmer took a picture of him, with the animal looking straight into the camera. The picture appeared on the front page of the Ledger-Republican.

  Standing in the middle of the field that summer and holding Bobby, I looked back at my little house on the hill. A speck of white in the moonlight, the light in the window. Just him and me now. But my dad would help us.

  I keep a diary, always have, ever since I was ten years old. My diaries have pink or blue leatherette covers, brass locks that tarnish and flake, and little keys. . . .

  August 30. He has left me but all his life what he has done will live in him. Even when he has his own family he’ll have to remember what he did and his other child he left behind and it will weaken him and poison him and that’s my only revenge.

  Now, four months after Eddie has left us, next to me here in the truck, there is this creature, this person I am afraid to look at.

  “Which way?” Dean asks.

  “Left here onto Church Road. I have to pick up my son at my dad’s. Bergen Falls, just before West Taponac.”

  We turn onto Church Road and the truck glides along the curb through the little settlement. There is a scattering of houses, the Lutheran Church, the graveyard with its soft, rainwashed headstones, wonderful names carved on them—Proper and Stockings and Hogeboom—tiny stones of buried children jutting up through the ground, their names and dates washed away.

  There is only one tiny general store, in a white clapboard building, which sells newspapers, and a thin stock of milk and bread, canned goods and lottery tickets. I always wondered who lived here, what work they did. I knew there must be a history here—perhaps once this had been a mill town, or a horse stop with an inn.

  You hardly ever saw anyone outside here, except for an occasional kid on a bicycle, or an old person walking a dog, or a woman pushing a stroller along the edge of the road, some young single mother who didn’t own a car. And yet you knew people lived here, the houses weren’t abandoned yet. The grass was cut, you could see curtains in the windows, satellite dishes in some of the yards.

  Off to the left was my dad’s apartment, above the video store, which was closed up now. My dad had gotten his own car back, and my black Toyota was parked next to his.

  “You can drop me off here,” I said. “I’m okay now if you’ve gotta get back.” I said it praying he would say no, knowing somehow he would, though not sure till he said it, knowing that we had unfinished business between us.

  He stopped the truck. “I’m making dinner,” I said. “If you want some. . . .”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said.

  He sat with the engine idling while I climbed up the outside stairs to my dad’s door.

  I could hear within the sound of Barney on the television set. “Oh ho hi, everybody! Oh ho . . .” My dad and Bobby were sitting on the couch, watching TV. “Two fellas together!” I cried.

  Bobby looked up, saw me. “Mommy!” He jumped down from the couch, ran across the floor, flung his skinny frame into my arms—and bumped the top of his head on my chin. “Ouch!” I cried and I rubbed the top of his head to make the pain go away.

  My father rose from the couch, a smile on his face. He was so thin and gray, and bent, the flesh seemed to hang loose and transparent from his bones. “Hello, sweetheart.”

  Bobby was overexcited from his asthma medicine. You could tell he was tight, his eyes were too bright, his cheeks flaming.

  I bent my head down, inhaled the fragrance of his hair, the smell of shampoo, the smell of life itself. Bobby had dark, thin, silky hair like Eddie’s. I hated cutting it and it was still like a girl’s, and his cheeks were like the pulpiest fruit, made you want to bite them.

  Bobby grabbed both my cheeks. “Where Mommy go?” he asked, looking into my eyes, his voice mock ferocious.

  “You know I went to work, honey. . . . What did Dr. Vakil say?” I asked my dad.

  “Just give him the mask tonight. He thinks it’s under control. Said call him if you’re worried.”

  My father stood there stooped, smiling, a tremble in his body, I noticed, as I gathered the Pulmo-Aide machine, and packed Bobby’s things into his little backpack.

  “He’s a good guy, ain’t you, buddy?” my father said. The two of them spent their days together struggling for breath, my father with his emphysema from the cement plant, Bobby with his asthma.

  “I got a friend downstairs in his truck, waiting,” I said to my father. “Hurry up, honey,” I told Bobby. “Let’s get your jacket on.”

  “Barney!” Bobby shouted. “Barney got a headache.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Barney got a headache.”

  I carried Bobby outside, down the steps. Too light, too light, I thought.

  Down in the yard, in front of the building, I presented Bobby to Dean sitting in his truck, as if I were giving Dean a gift. “This is my son, Bobby.”

  From the truck window, Dean smiled at Bobby. “Hey there, little guy.” I was happy that he had greeted him this way.

  Bobby stared at him with those dark, steady eyes of his, his fist jammed into his mouth. I strapped Bobby into my Toyota, and we drove out, me leading the way, Dean following behind in his truck.

  It was ten minutes from Bergen Falls to my house. And as you approached it, driving along the road, inevitably, your eye was drawn to it, my little house on the hill. Way up there, a good half mile from the road, just a tiny white speck. The only building in sight.

  Behind the house the sky was darkening. For miles and miles around the fields were dipping and rising; and then on the horizon beyond, there was a harsh ridge of trees. Behind the ridge, the sun was setting, and the thin, spindly branches of the trees melted together like lace, the orange light like coins spinning between the threads.

  From the road, looking up, you might think at first my house was abandoned. If you were an outsider in the county, you might think my house was just one of those odd buildings that were scattered all over, buildings that seemed to have no actual function—neither houses nor barns. Isn’t it strange, you might think, a building so small no one lives there, so far up off the main road? But then at dusk, at night, you saw a speck of light in the window, a sign of life, and you realized someone did live there.

  At the entrance to Schermerhorn Road, I stopped my car, and left the motor
running while I opened the mailbox, number 105A, Dean waiting in his truck, at the edge of the road.

  I reached in, got the mail, and stood for a second examining it. From the big oak beyond there came the sound of screeching, the pulsing of wings. The oak had thick, gnarly old branches, circling upwards, and its limbs were bare of all leaves now.

  I peered at the black branches. The tree was infested with birds. The branches were alive with them, they seemed to move and undulate, swarming with birds, sparrows, flying in and out of the tree screeching and chattering. Beyond, in the field, a crow skimmed the surface of the ground, looking for something alive.

  No good mail in the box today. Only the electric bill and a sale flyer from City Shop. I got back in my car, and we continued up the hill, me leading the way, my little car straining against gravity as I drove.

  At the top of Schermerhorn, we pulled into the yard in front of my house. The house was just a little frame box, really, which had been painted white a hundred times over. Once, maybe, it had been a chicken coop or a storage shed. It was one story high, with a gray tin roof rusted at the joints. A wooden porch clung to the front of it, and there was a huge freezer left over from some previous tenant long ago that nearly filled the space, and the rest was cluttered with Bobby’s toys, his wagon, his plastic trike.

  The yard in front was rutted, frozen mud. We climbed out of our cars and we both paused a moment, instinctively listening to the wind dipping and sighing through the fields all round us.

  I unlocked the front door and we went inside. The house was low-ceilinged, the floor covered with worn blue linoleum, patches of wood plank showing through. There was a big woodstove.

  It was furnished with the stuff I got from the Salvation Army and leftovers from previous tenants over the years, a round oak table, chairs with broken braces, the windows had little white cottage curtains, the fabric worn and torn. To the side of the living room were two tiny bedrooms, one for me, the other Bobby’s.

  As soon as we got inside, Bobby cried, “I’m hungry!”

  “Just a minute!” I said. “Gimme a minute.”

  I pulled off Bobby’s jacket. “I’m going to make his dinner,” I told Dean. “Fish sticks. Want some?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  While I put the cookie tray with the fish sticks into the oven, Dean sat on the floor and played with Bobby. “Let me show you a magic trick,” he said.

  He reached behind Bobby’s ear, pulled out a quarter. Bobby smiled up at him, but he didn’t get the magic of it. Too young to understand the trick, and Dean didn’t understand that Bobby was too young.

  “How’d you do that?” I asked from the stove.

  Dean smiled. “I’ll never tell.”

  “You could be a professional.”

  “That’s what I want to be. I’m not working at the Laundercenter selling soap my whole life. . . . I want to have like a traveling show. Go from place to place. Maybe do it out of the back of the truck. People’ll pay money. Once I really get it perfect, I’ll be able to charge.”

  “I’ll bet you will.”

  He started pushing Bobby’s big yellow dump truck across the floor. Then he made a road with Bobby’s blocks, giving Bobby his close attention, concentrating on the game, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, making his eye squint. I wished he wouldn’t smoke, because of Bobby’s asthma. But I was afraid to say anything. I already knew I wanted Dean to be happy here. I wanted him to stay.

  And Bobby, sitting on the floor in his denim overalls, legs spread out, was gaping up at him, fascinated by this new person.

  * * *

  After dinner, I gave Bobby his bath. As I knelt beside the tub, I was so tired there was a buzzing inside my skull. It was if all the blood had drained from it. Only a half hour more, I thought, and then he’d be in bed. As I washed Bobby’s thin, white body, I could hear Dean in the kitchen, clearing the table, stacking the dishes in the sink. I was grateful for his help.

  Outside the bathroom window, a velvety wind rose over the fields, then, after a few moments, subsided like a breath. Not a summer wind with all its fullness and sweetness, but a damp, November wind, brushing the surface of the hills, promising worse.

  Bobby was chattering up at me. “This the submarine . . . this the boat . . .”

  “Yeah, honey.”

  I lifted him from the tub, and he ran naked into the living room, a tiny white body on skinny legs, and I ran after him. This chase was part of his bedtime ritual.

  In the big room, Dean caught Bobby in his arms, and I swept him up and carried him back into the bathroom.

  I dried Bobby off, and put my ear to his chest. “Sshh. Stand still. Let Mommy listen.” Coming from deep within his chest was a sound like the whistle of a train, a sound far away in the distance. It was the asthma. But there was no retraction, no struggle for breath. Dr. Vakil had taught me how to detect the danger signs. “Trust yourself,” Dr. Vakil said. “Always listen to the mother, that’s the first thing they taught us in medical school. The mother knows.”

  When I’d pulled Bobby’s blue feet pajamas on him, I sat him down in front of the TV to watch Jeopardy! and hooked up his Pulmo-Aide machine.

  “What’s that?” Dean asked.

  “His medicine. Gets there quicker with this.”

  With the eyedropper, I mixed the medicine into a little container, fitted the transparent mask over Bobby’s face, and switched on the console. Air hissed through the tube that led from the console to the mask and Bobby sat there breathing it in like a good boy. With the plastic mask over his face, he looked like a little spaceman.

  After only a few minutes, the hissing stopped. It was all used up.

  Dean asked, “Can I give him a kiss good night?” That pleased me, and I held him down to Dean so he could kiss him.

  Then I put Bobby into bed in his own room, tucking the covers around his tiny frame. As I reached the door, his voice came to me. “Sing!” He sensed I was in a hurry to get to Dean. He wasn’t going to let me get away without giving him his rightful due, without the ritual of my nighttime departure being complete. So I went back, and I sat on his bed. “Go to sleep—go to sleep,” I sang. “Go to sleep, little bi-ird. . . .” Our own special words for the song.

  He lay on his back, sucking on his thumb, listening intently to make sure I sang the words exactly the way I always did, exactly as I had a hundred times before.

  * * *

  After Bobby had fallen asleep, I went back in to Dean in the living room. I washed the dishes Dean had stacked for me in the sink, and Dean dried them. Above the kitchen sink, there was a small window that looked out across the fields behind the house. Beyond the house were fields, the grass brown and matted, waiting for the snow.

  As Dean reached next to me into the drainer for the dishes to dry, I could smell him, the fresh, washed flannel of his shirts, the scent of wind and air on his skin. His green eyes shone, his cheeks were flushed red, there were soft golden hairs on them. He had this little smile, his teeth resting on his lower lip, as if he was aware of being watched, would burst out laughing at any moment.

  A sudden energy seemed to knit my flesh. I was wide awake. Dean looked at me, a teasing smile on his face. He reached out his hand, touched my cheek, and under his fingertips, the pores of my skin rose. It was as if an electrical current were somehow magnetizing my skin, drawing it up, toward him.

  He leaned over, touched his lips to mine. He was shorter than me by an inch or so, and I had to bend my knees slightly to receive the kiss. His lips were full, unexpectedly soft, his mouth fresh and moist, though not too moist. His breath was sweet, like spring or dawn.

  I stepped closer to him and reached to put my arms around his neck. But he backed away, as if he didn’t want me to touch him, danced a little shuffle step away from me, and smiled. Then he stepped forward again, leaned over, kissed me, but he held himself away so our bodies didn’t touch.

  At first his kisses were dry, subtle, feathery,
his full lips barely touching mine. Then he’d pull away. Making me want more. Eddie’s kisses were always too wet, his tongue too big, filling my mouth. When Eddie kissed me sometimes I felt I had no room to breathe.

  Dean’s tongue was making darting motions in and out of my mouth, entering, then withdrawing. Each little kiss made my body seem to swell more. And every time, he pulled back so that it almost hurt me physically. It was like he was torturing me, teasing me, making me want it more and more.

  He wouldn’t let me catch his tongue with mine—he’d pull it away just in time. It was like a dance he had designed, all the moves planned out.

  Then, finally, he gave me his full mouth, all ripe and healthy, tasting sweet like fresh fruit.

  “Take your glasses off,” he ordered.

  I said, “I can’t see without them.”

  “You don’t need to see.”

  I removed my glasses, and he peered into my eyes. “Your eyes are kind of hazel—greenish. Then, there’s like these brown specks in them. . . .”

  I knew I had permanent red marks on the bridge of my nose from my glasses. I rubbed at the marks now, knowing they were there. But the marks never went away, they were like scars on my face.

  He led me by the hand into my bedroom. The wrought iron bed, with its chipped coat of white paint, took up nearly the whole space. There was a quilt, faded and torn, that had been left behind by some other tenant, and the old mattress sagged in the middle. In the corner, jammed up against the bed practically, was a little bureau.

  Outside, the wind rose, the window rattled in its frame. For a moment, the house trembled. It was dark in the tiny room, except for a shaft of light coming through the door from the main room.

  Dean lay down on the bed beside me, the springs squeaked. But he still held his body away from me so that we didn’t touch. Then he curved his body toward me, but it wasn’t touching mine, and kissed me so nothing touched but our lips.

  All these months, I thought, all these months . . .

  His hand moved to my breast, and when he cupped it in his hand it was as if all my body were centered there. He lifted my blouse, pushed up my bra, reached behind, and unhooked it like he was practiced at this. But again when I reached out to touch him, he shrank away.