by Ivy Pochoda
“Your skills, remarkable as they are, are limited to the world of magic,” I heard Theo say. “You cannot use them to pull an airplane out of the sky. You cannot use them for mundane things like cleaning your house or cooking dinner. You cannot save a life.”
I heard Toby mutter something.
“You can only do magic. And if you choose, I will make this your home.”
Still wearing the white gown, I stood up and left the dressing room. I found myself in a small hallway lined with flats and withered scrims.
Toby cleared his throat. “All I’ve ever wanted,” he began, his words full of their usual static, “is to be the best magician. If magic was going to separate me from everyone I knew, at least I wanted to be a success. It’s what I required to make sense of the craft.”
“And now?”
“Two disasters are enough.”
I examined the flat before me—a depiction of the courtyard of an Italianate villa with fountains and colonnades. One of the colonnades ended in a double door.
I heard Toby flex his fingers with a crack. “The only way I could ever perform again is if I were unable to undo what I did in Las Vegas. But I can’t. As you said, I have many skills at my command, but I cannot retrieve a life.” Toby paused, letting his words drift to the charred ceiling.
I reached out and touched the door at the end of the colonnade. I felt myself falling forward. I stumbled and was standing on the stage behind the magicians. Toby turned around.
“Sorry,” I said as I righted myself.
Theo smiled. “You are the victim of one of Piet’s trick doors. We built them to keep other magicians out. I’m surprised they still work.”
“It’s an astonishing theater,” I said.
“Your wife is right.” Theo gave me a conspiratorial smile. “I have to leave you for a moment and inspect a few details in the back of the building.”
When we heard the stage door shut, Toby looked at me. “Nice dress.”
I tied the robe properly. “It’s creepy here, but also kind of alluring. Like a ghost town.”
“It is creepy.”
I circled around him, letting the robe flutter behind me.
“Do you think Leo made that?” Toby asked.
“I have no idea. It’s so much nicer than anything they wear in Vegas shows.”
“I like Las Vegas. We understood each other. There was a kind of give and take between me, the city, and the audience. I didn’t criticize the people for their attitudes, and they didn’t look too closely at my art. We enjoyed each other despite our mutual shortcomings. Or maybe because of them. I came so close.”
Dust rose from my feet and swirled toward the lights. “But imagine if this was yours. It would be perfect for a close-up show like the one in the Castaway.”
“Do you really think this is something I should do?” Toby stared into the vacant stage lights.
“Magic is how you connect to the world. It seems a little silly to save all your tricks for me. Here is as good as anywhere as long as you make it your own.”
“And as long as I stick to the basics.”
I nodded.
Toby flattened his palms and held them out over the stage. “So that’s what it’s come to, a close-up show. I’m to be a card-and-coin man.”
“And the rest of it.” I jumped off the stage and sat in one of the banquettes.
“I suppose you are already redecorating.”
I pressed my hand into the stiff fabric, feeling the springs resist my touch. “Well, I hadn’t thought about it, but I could.” I lay my head against the top of my seat, listening for the fabric’s song or story. But all I sensed was silence. Then I reached out and ran a finger through the faded fringe on one of the small lamps.
It was silent. “Strange,” I said. “There’s no music. Not even a murmur.”
“Maybe they’re keeping their secrets,” Toby said. “This place was built by a magician.”
“Maybe.” But the fabrics in Piet’s house never hesitated to talk to me. “If you take Theo’s offer, we’ll have to do a serious exorcism on this place.”
“If.” Toby’s single word trailed into the wings.
“We could do it together,” I suggested.
“When I’m ready.”
“Of course.”
Toby sensed my disappointment. “So, tell me,” he said, joining me and putting an arm around my shoulder, “what fabrics would bring this place to life?”
“Why worry about that now?”
“I want to know. I want you to tell me.”
I hesitated.
“A saloon theme,” Toby said, prompting me.
“Not bad.”
“Ever since I arrived in Nevada, I’d always dreamed of a saloon-themed show.”
“Corny but clever.”
Toby nodded. “We’d have to make it a little classier than the Old Stand, of course.”
I laughed. “I’ve already done their fabrics.”
“And I already have the black Western shirt.”
Ten
In the days following the miraculous return of my amphibious brother, I became his watcher, his secret guardian, locked in a nightly vigil that I believed could hold him close. At least I thought that was my purpose.
Over the next few weeks of summer, I dreaded the start of school, when Max would be out of my sight. And I knew that before this separation, I had to memorize him. My study was careful and methodical. By fall, I could predict the clothes he was likely to wear the following day. I could tell whether he was about to hook his hands into the waistbands of his pants and if he would have trouble falling asleep at night. I knew the arch of his eyebrows when he encountered an unfamiliar word and the swift pucker of his lips when he was preparing to make a joke. I knew the number of wrinkles around his knuckles and the exact length of each of his toes. I knew that he preferred to cross his right leg over his left and that he held his breath when he climbed up the stairs. And I knew best of all the feeling of radiated calm that blanketed my body a split second before Max spoke to me.
Before I became a master of my art, I shadowed my brother from room to room, clinging to every word he said. But then I learned to dissemble—I figured out that I would learn more if he didn’t know that I was watching. I learned to peek around the corners of books and listen through walls.
I clung to every detail of my brother—the trefoil pattern of moles on his right forearm, the slight depression on his left earlobe, the way he ate cereal with water instead of milk, the number of minutes—eleven—that he spent in the shower. While I was oblivious of the latest developments in the coolest TV shows or what songs were on the charts, I was an expert in the minutiae of Max’s life—the inseam of his rented tux, the minimum SAT score it would take for him to get into a college with a good swim team, which words he missed on his French vocab quiz.
I was a devoted but powerless watcher, a lifeguard who couldn’t swim. Despite my careful vigil, Max started to sneak out of the house. After I watched him pass through the gates of sleep, I would return to my bedroom and pray for a sleep of my own. But the moment Max moved, I was jerked from a patchy slumber, attuned to the smallest disturbance in the air on the other side of our thin wall. I’d tense as I listened to him open his window, slide down the drainpipe, and alight on the soft grass below. And when I heard Max’s footsteps crunching over the gravel in our driveway, away from the river, I would exhale and wait for the stop-start sleep that came until he returned.
My twelfth birthday was a disaster. A raging storm stranded my father on a scouting trip and confined my mother to her room. Max and I spent the evening in front of the TV, devouring cake straight from the box. When I fell asleep, he carried me up to bed.
I was dreaming of a blue swimming pool covered with birthday cakes like lily pads when Max came to get me.
“It’s time to go,” my brother said, taking my arm. He put his hand over my mouth.
“Don’t you want to see your birthday
present?”
I nodded and followed him to the car.
I dressed in the dark, slipped out my bedroom window, and slid down to the wet ground in a rough imitation of my brother’s method of escape. Max was already in the driveway. We crept into the car and gently shut the doors. Max lifted the emergency brake and shifted into neutral. The car rolled quietly down the wet gravel.
“Excited?” Max asked, rolling the car out of the driveway without turning on the ignition.
I nodded.
We were heading toward the city. My heart rate quickened with the acceleration of the engine. I watched Max’s right hand move from the steering wheel to the shift, flicker around the radio, and then hover for one moment above my leg before he had to return it to the wheel.
“Your present is at work.”
“At the aquarium?”
Max turned the corner into an empty lot behind the aquarium.
“Come on,” he said, popping the door locks.
“You have the keys?” I was amazed that anyone would trust my brother with the keys to an aquarium.
“Of course,” Max said, producing a jailer-sized key ring. He selected one of the twenty and fitted it into the lock on a side entrance. I held my breath.
He took my hand and led me down an empty hallway. The daytime excitement of tourists and school groups was replaced by a dark undersea world muffled by the sleep of thousands of creatures. The glow from the emergency-exit light was not enough to guide us, but Max had developed a sonar of his own, and wove around dark corners and past unseen obstacles.
He led me back to the laboratory where he worked on the weekends, testing pH levels and the algae content of the tanks.
“First stop,” he said, switching on a small desk lamp. From underneath a pile of papers he produced a gaily wrapped box from the aquarium’s gift shop. Inside was a bathing suit—a strange present for someone who doesn’t swim. I unfolded it and held it up to the light.
“So?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Why don’t you try it on? There’s a bathroom in the hall.”
After the dark hallway, the buzzing fluorescent light that flooded the white-tiled bathroom burned my eyes. The Lycra was three gradations of blue—a light aqua at the top that melted into indigo around the stomach and finished a dark cobalt. It fit perfectly. I stood in front of the mirror and tried to imitate the diving poses I had seen Max and his team strike before they plunged into the water.
“How’s it fit?” Max called through the keyhole. I dropped my arms to my sides.
“Come in.” I tucked my hair behind my ears and snapped the straps on my shoulders.
“Perfect,” said Max. “An official racing suit, you know.”
“I know,” I replied, self-consciously wrapping my arms around my waist. I felt exposed under the bare fluorescent bulb.
“Turn around,” Max commanded.
I spun around in a graceless pirouette.
“You look like a professional.”
“A professional who can’t swim.”
In an instant, Max folded his long body in half and retrieved my clothes from the floor. “I don’t know about that.”
“Where are we going?” I asked as I tried to keep up.
“It’s better in the dark,” Max said, gesturing to the hundreds of tanks. “It’s the closest you’ll get to the center of the ocean without getting wet. In the dark, you can feel the pressure of all the animals.”
I paused and listened to the gurgle of the tanks.
“The ocean hums more than it bubbles,” Max explained. “It’s the buzz of everything inside it.”
The repetitive gurgling was teasing me.
“Come on,” Max whispered. We flew past the fish tanks. I tried to recall some of the things he’d told me about the fish, but the tanks melted into a silver swirl, a reverse floating current that allowed no time for reflection.
We headed out from the main exhibition hall and stopped at a door with orange tape and a sign that read EMPLOYEES ONLY.
“What are they building?” I asked.
“If I told you, it would spoil the fun,” Max replied, slipping underneath the plastic curtain. He fumbled with his key in the lock. I began to count the seconds. When I reached thirty-seven, Max opened the door and we stepped into a pitch-black room. I could tell by the delayed echoes of our breath and footsteps that the room was enormous.
“Wait here,” Max said, abandoning me in the darkness. Soon a low hum began to hover at the corners of the room, and a few soft lights rose from the floor, illuminating a huge tank. “I could put on the overheads, but its much nicer this way,” he said, reappearing at my side. He was wearing his swim trunks.
I looked from my brother to the monstrous tank, “Max, that doesn’t have a shallow end.”
“I’ve thought of everything.” He unfurled a small inflatable rubber raft that he’d been hiding somewhere.
“A raft?”
“I’ll be right there. You can hold on to me.”
“All right.”
A ladder led to the top of the tank, and we began to climb. The twisted iron rungs were cold and dug into the soles of my feet. As I approached the end of the twenty-foot climb, my arms ached. Max, who took no time at all to reach the top, extended one arm and hauled me up.
“It’s deep,” I said, staring at the water.
“Over twenty feet. But I’m going to be there the whole time. You can even hold on to the side of the tank, if you want.”
My eyes traveled over Max’s skin. I could imagine settling into the 110-degree crook in my brother’s elbow as he rescued me from a watery plunge. But as I looked from Max to the water, not even the promise of my brother’s water-smooth grip could calm the panic that jumped at me from the tank. “I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore,” I said, retreating from the edge.
“Come on.” He led me back to the water and pulled me down on the cold platform. Max began to inflate the raft. I gripped the edge of the tank until my hands went numb. I looked deep into the tank, to the place where the lights faded away. As the little raft took shape from Max’s lips, the water appeared to heave and sigh with sleep, resettling in its tank like a house in the night.
Max set the raft in the tank. It looked as insignificant as a handkerchief floating in the ocean.
“Now?” I asked, my voice rising and falling like the swaying raft.
“Not yet,” Max replied. “There’s one more thing.” He got down on his knees and fanned his fingers underneath the surface of the water. He fluttered his hands, scattering droplets over the platform and causing the raft to scratch against the side of the tank.
“Max?”
But my brother couldn’t hear me. He had dipped his face into the tank and begun to blow bubbles. And now a strange clicking noise, an underwater static, rose from his head—the same noise that leaked through the keyhole of his bathroom door when he was supposed to be washing his face.
“Max?” I repeated.
After two minutes, he withdrew his head from the water. Without even the slightest gasp for air, he said, “Don’t worry.” He puckered his lips and began to chirp. The chirp became a series of squeaks. Max lowered his face to the tank and plunged his head back into the water. I leaned in to peer at the watery shadows dancing on his white face. As I watched, the white opal of Max’s face was eclipsed, overshadowed by a darkness that rose from the center of the tank. I stood up and retreated from the edge of the platform. The tank trembled as if a volcano of water were preparing to rise from its interior. I covered my eyes, squeezing them tight until I could hear the blood rush through my ears.
Then the water sighed. It gasped for breath and heaved itself over the tank, splashing my toes. I peeked through a gap between my fingers.
“Mel,” my brother whispered, “come here. She won’t bite.”
I pried my fingers from my face. Max came into focus—his face intact and above water. At his feet bobbed a gigantic creatur
e, full-moon white.
“This is Sophie,” Max said. “She’s the first trained white whale in America.” Max uttered another series of clicks. The whale bobbed her head and replied with a staticky whistle.
I stared at the whale. She was the same white as my brother, a white that glowed, a white that sang, a white that was marbled with silver crests and valleys.
“She won’t bite.”
I tiptoed closer. Max drew me to his side and twined his fingers with mine. Together we reached out over the water. I closed my eyes, relishing the slipperiness of his touch. Our hands collided with the warm water and dipped several inches below the surface. Max pressed down harder on my fingers, driving them into the pool. And just when I began to fear the unreachable bottom of the tank, my hand hit something solid but smooth. I opened my eyes. Max had released my fingers, and the titanium white skin of the whale pressed into my palm. Her body had the texture of washed silk, smooth and chalky. Against the whale’s massive body, my palm’s diameter seemed to shrink—a pebble thrown at the moon.
“She’s so white,” I whispered to Max. “How can something be this white?” I shook my head.
The whale drew closer, sending small waves onto the platform as she rose. When her head broke the surface, I could see depressions and scars carved into her alabaster skin, like inside-out scrimshaw. I put my hands on either side of her head, absorbing her texture, which was both hard and slippery, firm but melting. A strange song, like a flute being played over a crackly radio, rose from deep within the whale—a purer version of Max’s call.
I tried to read Sophie’s head with my fingers. I wanted to memorize her curves, contours, and scars, so I could conjure her in my empty hands later on and summon the sensation of her bumps and depressions. I was so consumed by my exploration that I didn’t object when Max slid me onto the raft and brought me eye to eye with a creature bigger than our family car. I had plunged into a waking dream where scale and measure had become deformed. It was a dream in which my only choice was to accept the marriage of the real and the impossible.
“You’re swimming,” Max said.
“What?” I answered, fingering the ridges on Sophie’s forked tail.