by Laura Quimby
Jack let his canvas duffel bag, which he had picked up at an army surplus store, slip to the floor. There was a loud clank. It was the distinct, slightly muffled sound of metal hitting the wood floor through the thin canvas bag. Mildred wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes at him. Over the years, Mildred and Jack had developed a secret way of communicating with their expressions whenever they went into a new foster home. The look Mildred shot him was not the happy look. His handcuff collection had slipped to the bottom of the bag, which tended to happen since all the rest of his worldly possessions consisted of jeans, T-shirts, socks, and underwear. He grinned at her and shrugged.
The professor grabbed the duffel bag and threw it over his shoulder. “Let’s take this up to your new room, shall we? We’ll commence with a little tour.”
Mildred eyed Jack. “Sounds lovely.”
“I’ll lead the way.”
They dutifully followed the professor, his daddy longlegs taking the stairs two at a time. Mildred ran a finger over the highly polished wood banister as they walked up the staircase. He must have seen her do it, because the professor cleared his throat and said, “I won’t pretend to insult your intelligence, Ms. Crosby. I must confess that I am not the domestic type. I have a housekeeper who spoils me rotten by doing all of my chores.”
Jack beamed. No dirty toilets to scrub or stupid cat figurines to dust or ugly shag carpet to vacuum. He wagged his tongue in glee at Mildred, who rolled her eyes and pushed Jack up the stairs after the professor. The house was surprisingly sparse, almost empty, and very clean. Mildred would like that. Despite its haunted house exterior, the inside was unexpectedly normal, even nice. No wonder the guy was a little eccentric, living in this big old house by himself. It was so big Jack got his own room, and he probably could have had two rooms if he wanted.
This wasn’t the first time he got his own room, but that was only if he counted the walk-in closet he slept in for six weeks back when he was nine; that was in some creepy duplex where the father rolled out a sleeping bag and told him it would be like camping. The mother always gave him the evil eye since his being there meant she no longer had a place to line up her pointy-toed shoes. Jack slept under a burned-out, bug-filled light fixture. He pretended he was camping in the wilderness and that the darkness was alive with small creatures, he among them. Technically, this was his first real room.
“Here we are. It’s not much, I’m afraid,” the professor said, watching for their reaction. But Jack and Mildred knew better. It was quite a lot. There was a bed, a dresser, a nightstand, and a closet filled with rows of wooden hangers. There was even a desk, a chair, and one of those bendy gooseneck lamps. Navy blue curtains hung in the window and matched the blue bedspread. The professor eased the duffel onto the floor while Mildred pirouetted around the room, inspecting the glorious normalness.
Both Mildred and Jack edged themselves tentatively down on the bed as if testing cool water, still slightly uncertain the whole thing wasn’t a mirage. “Not like that,” the professor said, staring at Jack and Mildred. “You must give it a good bounce.” Suddenly, the professor whirled around like a skinny tornado, flopped down on the bed, and bounced up and down on it, sending Mildred careening over backward into the pillows. Jack got on his knees and bounced on his new bed. He tried to make eye contact with Mildred, but she just stared at the ceiling and laughed. They didn’t have a look practiced for this occasion.
After a quick tour of the rest of the house, they made their way to the parlor, which was a small room with a fireplace, a sofa, and a few chairs. Displayed on a round coffee table situated in the center of the room was an assortment of small cakes, a teapot, cups, and saucers. This guy had pulled out the big guns. Jack wasn’t sure he trusted the professor, but still, he was surprised Mildred hadn’t fainted dead away.
“Please, sit here on the settee next to me, Ms. Crosby,” the professor said.
Jack made a mental note that in fancy English, “settee” meant “sofa.” Mildred settled down next to the professor. Jack sat on the floor next to the coffee table.
The professor poured a stream of tea into three cups. Jack leaned his face down toward the hot, minty liquid and sipped at his tea without lifting the cup. Next, the professor extended a plate covered in tiny chocolate cakes with baby rosebuds on top to Mildred. “May I offer you a petit four?”
Mildred smiled and placed two of the tiny cakes on her plate. Jack had no idea what a “petty four” was, but it was working like a charm on Mildred, who stared dreamy-eyed at the professor.
A scruffy, black, dust-mop creature scurried into the room and bumped into Jack’s knee. He ran his hand through the dog’s tangled fur.
“Everyone, meet Little Miss B.” The professor motioned his hand toward the animal, whose hair was pulled back from her face and held up into a sprout on top of her head with what looked like a red twist tie taken from a loaf of bread. Her eyes were cloudy and dull.
“She loves people, but she is blind, so I must ask you to watch your feet around her.”
“Well, hello there, Little Miss B.” Mildred’s voice rose to a scratchy high pitch. Baby talk was not her forte. “What’s the ‘B’ stand for?”
“The ‘B’ stands for ‘Beatrice,’ my third wife. Rest her soul.”
“Why do you pull her hair up out of her eyes if she can’t see?” Jack asked.
“Because, Jack, a lady always likes to look nice.” The professor took a long slurp of tea. His mustache hung to either side of the cup like a walrus’s.
“Aren’t you excited?” Mildred asked Jack, then turned to the professor. “Jack always wanted a pet.”
“Yeah.” Jack shot her the are you serious look. When he said he wanted a dog, Little Miss B. was not exactly what he had in mind. She proceeded to sneeze, lick him, and bump into the coffee table. (Obviously her other senses had not been heightened by her lack of sight.) Jack scooped up her slim, black body and carried her over to a chair, resting her in his lap. With his hand around her middle, he felt her tiny heart beating rapidly under her rib cage. She was probably a little scared, too. Mildred ignored Jack’s look and went back to admiring the professor.
“What exactly do you teach, Professor?”
There was a dramatic pause. The professor inhaled deeply as if sucking in all the oxygen from the room through his gigantic nostrils. “I have many vocations. Darwinian philosophy, cranial psychology, intercontinental anthropology.”
Jack snorted. Sounded like bull to him. This guy was getting weirder and weirder by the second. Mildred shot him the stop being a brat look, and the professor continued. “But I teach organic composition.” He set his cup down and crossed his legs. “It’s a freestyle, earthy writing technique that I developed myself.”
“Fascinating,” Mildred said.
Not really, Jack thought, but he kept his mouth shut. “Can I go to the bathroom?” he asked, setting the dog down.
“Certainly, my boy. It’s right down the hall.” The professor rose from his seat and patted Jack on the back. Mildred licked the icing rose right off the top of another petit four, not noticing when Jack shot her the make him stop calling me “my boy” look as he walked out of the room.
Jack was used to the routine. The first day was always the best, which was surprising to some, but it was the day when both parties were still pretending. The thin veneer of love, family, and the good-boy routine had yet to fade.
Jack wandered down the hall until he found the bathroom. He didn’t actually have to go; he just needed to think. He tried to imagine himself living in the house with the professor, because he would have to stay; he knew that already. Mildred liked the guy, and she was right. He wasn’t so bad—a little weird, but at least he wasn’t boring. Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a black-and-white picture that he had torn out of a library book, which certainly was a stain on his character. Santa would be ticked off, so would God, but they were miles away—one in his snowy wonderland, one in his sky kingdom. Ja
ck had to have the picture, so he took it. The world owed him this tiny treasure, even if he did have to steal it.
Harry stared back at him, showing off his handcuffs. Seven metal bracelets trailed up his muscular arms. The first handcuff was the Russian manacle with its two tight-lipped looping cuffs and heavy heart-shaped lock; then there were two Darby cuffs with long cylinder locks; then the Bean Cobb; the simple, smooth-rounded Romer; and another Bean Cobb, which was attached to one of Houdini’s arms and then attached to the final cuff: the Berliner, which looked like an enormous steel ice pick had bitten his arm. The vintage cuffs encased Houdini’s wrists, but the look on his face was coy. Houdini could slide right out of the cuffs in his sleep if he had to. It only looked impossible.
Staring at the picture calmed Jack down, made him feel less lonely. He could handle this, and like Mildred said, it would probably only last four weeks. Jack folded up the photo and slipped it back into his pocket. He flushed the toilet, turned the faucet on, and let the water run for a few seconds. Before leaving the bathroom, Jack casually pulled out the spare pair of handcuffs he kept in his back pocket and attached them to the leather strap of his belt. The cuffs jangled by his side. Mildred was going to be furious, but Jack thought it was only fair the professor knew up front what he was getting into. No secrets.
Mildred immediately spotted the handcuffs when Jack walked back into the room. She cleared her throat and said, “Tell the professor a little bit about yourself, Jack.”
Jack eased back down into the chair. A deafening silence filled the room—a clock-ticking, throat-clearing, ringing-in-the-ears silence. He hated it when Mildred made him do this. What was he supposed to tell people? He sucked at school. He sucked harder at sports. Or worst of all: He was an orphan. Should he tell the professor his sob story: that he had been left, bundled in a blanket, on the steps of Saint Michael’s Episcopal Church when he was a baby? His father left before he was born, and his mother was just a girl—that’s what the priest’s lilac-smelling wife would whisper into his ear. Jack was lucky to be alive, she would say, widening her eyes so that the white part made the blue part look like a small planet. Lucky to be going on a journey. And for a long time, that’s where Jack thought he was going, on a journey to another world, a small and perfect planet.
Sharing was not his thing. Jack stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed one black sneaker over the other. Silence ensued. Mildred sucked in her cheeks but didn’t look at him. Jack unhooked the handcuffs and started opening and closing them.
Mildred was not above playing a little hardball. “Jack just loves Houdini. He has read all about him, his life and his magic. I don’t know what it is about boys and magic. But he just loves Houdini.” She picked a morsel of cake off of her plate and placed it on her tongue.
Jack clenched his jaw. Why did she have to tell people that he loved Houdini? (But he knew why: It was a safe subject, and Jack had very few safe subjects to talk about.) He spun the handcuffs around on his finger, and the professor pretended not to notice.
“Ah.” A spark of interest flared in the professor’s eyes. “Magic, yes, illusions. I myself love magic and have cultivated quite an interest in the occult.”
“Ooooh,” Mildred cooed. “Spooky. I went to a séance once when I was a young girl. The spirits never did come that night, but it was exciting just the same. I fell asleep and my girlfriends inked a mustache on my face. Isn’t that funny?” Mildred nibbled on a tiny cake.
Bafflement filled Jack’s face. Was she serious? Didn’t she just hear the guy say he was interested in the occult? He probably had voodoo dolls and shrunken heads stashed in a closet. Four weeks—he wasn’t going to last four days in this place.
“You know, Houdini was called the greatest escape artist.” The professor had a way of raising and lowering his voice as if talking to a crowd, announcing some great feat and holding their fragile attention with a word or a whisper. He rubbed his chin and continued. “Technically, the term is ‘escapology’: the study and craft of escape, an undervalued art form, my boy. It’s nice to see we are academic brethren.”
Mildred let out a loud hack as she choked on her petit four. Jack had been called many things, but “academic” was never one of them. She took a swig of tea and cleared her throat while the professor continued.
“Houdini was a master escapologist. No chains or locks could hold him. But I prefer his other moniker. Do you know it?” For the first time, the professor looked down at Jack’s handcuffs, the twinkle flaring in his green eyes.
Jack smirked, not answering. Houdini was his idol. The professor didn’t have a clue, and Jack had nothing to prove.
“During his show, Houdini challenged anyone to bring in handcuffs, and he would escape from them,” the professor continued. “Sometimes it took him seconds, sometimes it took much longer, agonizingly longer, but he always got out. That is how he took the name the Handcuff King.”
“Jack knows a little too much about handcuffs.” Mildred smoothed her skirt.
“Really?” the professor said. “Well, how much can a boy like you know?”
Mildred pursed her lips and begged Jack with her eyes to say something nice. A hooked smile pierced Jack’s cheek. “I can get out of any handcuffs you’ve got.”
“That’s a tall order, my boy.”
“Anything,” Jack said, overstating his abilities, but he sure wasn’t about to back down from this guy.
“You know, Houdini was famous for something else, too.”
“What?” Jack asked, waiting to hear what this guy thought.
“His belief in his own destiny, his own greatness. Do you believe in destiny, Jack?”
“Yeah. I’ve got one of those.”
“But you’re too young to be a king. No, that wouldn’t do at all. Let me think.” He tapped at his temple with one of his long fingers. The professor stood up in one swift motion, threw his arms in the air in an act of grand bravado, and yelled, “Jack Carr, the Handcuff Kid!”
The petits fours were devoured. The teacups were drained. Mildred clapped furiously, a genuine smile spread across her face. Jack and his handcuffs had found a home.
Jack had almost two entire weeks of living in the professor’s house under his belt when a strange feeling started to creep in. He’d just returned to McDovall Academy after his brief suspension, and at first he suspected that he was having a heart attack. Either that or a bad case of indigestion. It was spaghetti day in the cafeteria, and he had wolfed down his lunch, including two slices of garlic bread, in, like, five seconds. He considered asking his geometry teacher, Ms. Turner, to call the paramedics, but then he pictured her giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Grooming was an extracurricular activity Ms. Turner didn’t participate in, as her she-stache proved. After a minute he reminded himself that he was only twelve, and probably not having a heart attack. He realized he was feeling excitement—a feeling he had never before associated with going home. No wonder he mistook it for a heart attack.
As soon as he got home, Jack ran into the kitchen to help Concheta cook dinner. Concheta was more than a housekeeper; she was the professor’s caretaker, who came to the house every day. Jack suspected that the professor liked having other people around, and so Concheta kept coming and cleaning the already clean house. She was such a tiny woman that Jack thought he could pick her up and twirl her in a circle—she was that small.
Donning his apron, the professor joined Jack and Concheta in the kitchen, where he pulled fresh vegetables and meat from the refrigerator. Dinnertime was an event in the Hawthorne household. None of the food came out of a box, not even the mashed potatoes.
More than once in his life, Jack had gone to bed hungry. He used to dream of Chinese takeout in those cool little white fold-up boxes, or steak cooked just right, not too bloody or too burned. And he loved birthday cake with his name written on it in squiggly icing. He never dreamed of neon orange powdery cheese and macaroni, which he had eaten so many times in his life t
hat the instructions on the box were ingrained in his memory. The professor was a risk-taker in the kitchen, giving the recipe a quick glance and shutting the book. Recipes aren’t written in stone, he’d say, someone made them up, and the best recipes are created when the chef adds his own signature. Jack liked the idea of adding his own signature to things.
“It is very important that you learn how to cook,” the professor said, opening the oven. A wave of hot air drifted over Jack’s skin. He closed the oven and placed a hand on Jack’s arm. “Fate dealt me a terrible blow, my boy. None of my three stunningly beautiful wives—Matilda, Claudia, or Beatrice—knew how to cook.” He shook his head and brandished a stalk of celery in the air. “It was as if their beauty had exhausted any and all domestic skills.”
Jack laughed. “At least they were beautiful.”
“Ah, the view, my boy. The view was intoxicating.”
Jack stirred the milk with scallions floating in it so it didn’t scald. Then the hot cubes of cooked potato went in and the whole mess got mixed up with beaters. Jack pulled out the beaters prior to slowing the speed, sending hunks of potatoes splattering all over the stove, his face, and his shirt. Concheta howled with laughter from where she sat at the kitchen island shucking the last of the fresh peas. She hopped down off of her stool, walked over, and wiped a blob of potato from Jack’s cheek. Then she licked it right off her finger and said, “Mi chico tastes delicious.”
Jack beamed. He was a mess, and he had never been happier. He didn’t mind it that much anymore when the professor called him “my boy,” and he really liked it when Concheta called him “my boy” in Spanish, “mi chico.” It wasn’t so much the chico part, but the mi part. No one had ever thought of him as theirs before.
As the professor spooned heaping piles of mashed potatoes onto the plates, Jack saw a flash of dark blue on the professor’s wrist. He squinted, focused on the color, and leaned over the professor to get a better look, but the professor’s gigantic gold watch blocked his view. Poking the professor with the end of the potato spoon, Jack casually tried to nudge the watch back, causing the platter of steaming potatoes to teeter in the professor’s grasp.