Seeing as I had no interest in cars or competitive sports, and I wasn’t old enough to drink, TV was going to be my only viable shot at a common interest with my dad.
He didn’t watch a lot of TV, but Star Trek, in all of its various incarnations, was something he could sink his teeth into. On some level, it made perfect sense. By boldly going where no one had gone before, what were the crew of the Enterprise if not a bunch of highly organized space cowboys in matching unitards? Like my dad, I enjoyed the predictable but well-constructed plotlines and the retro-futuristic technology installed on the Enterprise. I’m also not ashamed to admit now that, at the tender age of eleven, I’d developed a rather unhealthy infatuation with everyone’s favorite Mary Sue, Wesley Crusher.
Oh, Wesley Crusher. The precocious teenage son that Captain Picard never had. The poor guy didn’t even get that much screen time, but I basked in every second of it, soaking it up like cosmic radiation. I wanted to live on the Enterprise so I could be his girlfriend. I wanted to hang out with him on the Ten-Forward deck and sip classy interplanetary cocktails as I stared into his warm, brown eyes. And I wanted an elaborate, but tasteful, holodeck wedding, perhaps with a nineteenth century garden party theme.
My dad was, of course, oblivious to my crush until Kyle pointed it out. He saw the way my face lit up every time Wesley appeared on the fifty-inch plasma screen in our living room and perpetually mocked the thoughts he imagined were flitting through my pubescent head.
“Oh, Wesley,” he’d moan breathlessly in an over-the-top falsetto. “Fly me away in your spaceship.”
“Only Star Trek fans are allowed in the living room when we’re watching Star Trek,” I’d scream as I kicked his shins and sent my skinny fists flying toward his chest.
Kyle would laugh and then ride off on his bike to hang out with his friends or engage in some form of semi-acceptable troublemaking. Even at eleven, I was well aware that good-looking boys who played sports and got decent grades could get away with murder.
I recovered from my desperate puppy-love for Wesley within a year, but not before Wil Wheaton managed to suck me into a secret obsession that I kept entirely to myself. On a lazy Sunday afternoon in my thirteenth year, while I was dusting my knickknack collection, my dad shouted up the stairs from the living room.
“Mattie! Come check out this movie on the Disney Channel. It’s got what’s his name in it. Your buddy, Wesley Crusher.”
“What movie?” I asked when I breezed into the living room, trying to look casual and failing miserably.
“Not sure what it’s called, but it’s about Harry Houdini.”
“The escape artist?”
Dad nodded and I took a seat on the couch. Even at the impressionable age of twelve, I could acknowledge that the movie, made in the mid-1980s, was kind of a hot mess. Yet it sparked an interest in me I couldn’t fully explain.
Why did this specific thing worm its way into my DNA like a virus? Maybe I stumbled on it at the right age at the right time. Maybe it was the incandescent glow of an era gone by. Maybe it was the gritty mystique of the performers.
Or maybe it was the act itself. The hubris and the palpable fear. The staggering contrast between the carefully crafted showmanship and the raw unpredictability of physically fighting your way out of a deathtrap.
Maybe it was none of these things. Or all of them at once. I can only say for certain that I got more jazzed about the art of escapology than anything else I could remember—even the first time I read The Diary of a Young Girl, after which I refused to leave my room for a week, claiming—like a misguided and pretentious ten-year-old—that I was trying to experience some level of solidarity with poor Anne.
Despite my new and unparalleled level of excitement for all things Houdini, I didn’t say, Holy willikers, Dad! That just blew my mind, and I’m going to go upstairs right now and look up everything I possibly can on Harry Houdini. Instead, I said, “That movie was wicked cheesy,” and then went upstairs and conducted extensive Houdini research in secret.
I immersed myself in the life of Erik Weisz, the mysterious immigrant whose stage name became synonymous with escapology. A few months later, I wanted to learn everything I could about Dorothy Dietrich, the girl-next-door who escaped a troubled past to become the first woman to perform a straitjacket escape while suspended hundreds of feet above an amusement park. Finally, my focus shifted to Akiko Miyake, our local hero, who emigrated from Tokyo in the ’70s and perfected a dramatic aquarium escape before her tragic death in a plane crash on December 3, 1999.
After each feverish research session, I would delete my browser history to eliminate the possibility that anyone snooping on my computer might find out what I was up to. Perhaps my newfound obsession was too much for my twelve-year-old mind.
Or perhaps I realized that anyone who encountered a twelve-year-old girl preoccupied with escapology and early twentieth century magicians would surely give her the look and feel compelled to ask Why? It was always more of an accusation than an actual question. I simply couldn’t handle that kind of scrutiny.
The travel agent gawked at me. “Just a one-way ticket? But you only have a visitor’s visa.”
“I know. I need to be back to get settled before I start at the university,” I lied through my teeth. “But I don’t want to get locked into a time-frame. I want to take this trip at my own pace.” I smiled and glanced at the framed photos on her desk. She had posed in each of them with the same man and young boy, probably her husband and son. In one of the photos, her little nuclear family had encircled someone dressed in a Mickey Mouse costume.
“The United States is a big country,” she said with a nod. “Much bigger than Japan. You could stay a year and not see it all.”
“Oh, I know. But Disneyland is at the top of my list. I’ve heard it’s wonderful.”
“It is!” she squealed.
I smiled again, knowing I had no plans to visit Disneyland or any other tourist destinations. I also had no intention of returning to Japan.
– Akiko Miyake, Tokyo, June 22, 1976
Mattie, Monologues, and Mayhem
The next two weeks flew by in a haze of gelato scooping, lock picking, sleep deprivation, and endless texts from Miyu.
>Yr time on the Westin four-pin is still unacceptable. Visualize it throughout the day.
She followed that with:
>If you can still focus on scooping gelato, yr not visualizing hard enough.
And later that day:
>Girl Scout, I won’t let you in unless you bring tacos from Tres Amigos. Corn tortillas, not flour!
My phone buzzed again a minute later.
>Pick me up a book from the library. Something smart but not too serious.
Giving her my number might have been the poorest call I’d made in my entire life, but I considered it part of paying my dues as a young escapologist in training.
Then there was the whole lying to my parents and sneaking around thing. I honestly thought it would be fun. Whenever I pictured Akiko sneaking out of her parents’ flat in Tokyo to go perform, it gave me a thrill. There’s something romantic about a young girl sneaking out in the middle of the night to fulfill a lifelong dream. Unless you’re the girl. Then it’s just a giant, anxiety-provoking pain in the ass that turns you into a lying liar-face. I’d never been a bad kid, and now I knew why.
After tiptoeing down the stairs in the dark and almost tripping over Guinan asleep in the kitchen doorway, I arrived at Miyu’s at 12:01 the night we started working on straitjacket escapes. I picked my way through every lock on the dining room table in twenty-one minutes and eighteen seconds.
“That’ll do, Girl Scout,” Miyu said. “Now stand up so I can strap your arms behind your back.”
I winced as she tightened each of the three buckles against my back, pinching my skin. “I can’t breathe in this thing.”
&n
bsp; Miyu scoffed. “You think this is bad? Wait until I try to cure you of your claustrophobia.”
“I don’t have claustrophobia.”
“That’s what you think.”
As soon as we started claustrophobia training, which involved Miyu locking me in a trunk the size of a child’s coffin, I panicked.
“My legs are going numb in here. And I can’t breathe,” I whined.
“If you can talk, you can breathe,” she barked.
“Seriously though, Miyu. I can’t stay in here.”
“You can, and you will. At first, your fear will increase. Then, it will plateau. Eventually, you’ll learn how to deal with it.”
I heard her footsteps as she walked away. “You crazy bitch,” I screamed as I slammed my fists against the lid of the trunk. My heart pounded in my ears, and I felt every scratchy piece of wood in that trunk wrapping itself around me, suffocating me.
Once I accepted the fact that she wasn’t going to let me out, I shut my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and tried to relax my muscles. At some point I must have fallen asleep, because I woke abruptly when Miyu threw the lid of the trunk open.
“Oh, good. When you stopped squawking and whining, I thought maybe you’d died in here. Not a mess I’d like to clean up.” With that, she locked the trunk back up, and I stewed in my own panic until I learned to push through it.
***
Once again, it’s time to talk about how I ended up locked in a trunk by a resentful stranger. Well, there was that soul sucking last day of school. But long before that there was my dad introducing me to Star Trek, and also Wil Wheaton being adorable and then introducing me to Houdini.
The final nudge that drove me right over the edge? Twelve measly Stella-less hours.
The day before I drove to Grayton for the first time, and, quite literally, put my life in the hands of a thirty-something recluse, Stella and I had a last supper at Bollywood Palace to “celebrate” her abandoning me for a whole goddamn summer. I very graciously let Stella pick the restaurant since she’d be eating cafeteria food for two months, and she chose a totally mediocre greasy spoon without actual waiters because the place was wallpapered with flatscreens playing Bollywood classics. This is what happens when you grow up without a TV. I suppose I should’ve been thankful she hadn’t dragged me to a sports bar or Chuck E. Cheese’s.
“Oh my god, I love this one,” Stella said the second we sat down. “I think I’ve seen almost the whole thing, just not in chronological order.”
I rolled my eyes and headed toward the counter where Naveen, the owner’s nephew and my favorite reluctant restaurateur, was flipping through a comic book.
“Hey, Mattie. The usual?” he asked without looking up.
“Yup. Chicken tikka masala for me and lentils for my hippie friend.”
He shouted something into the kitchen in Hindi and went back to his comic book.
I was already headed back to our table when I heard a psst.
“Huh?”
“What are you guys doing tonight?” Naveen asked.
For a brutal second or two I panicked over the possibility that he was trying to ask one of us out, and, if necessary, drag the other one along as an awkward third wheel. Naveen practically oozed with quirky, smoldering adorableness, but he was well into his twenties. More importantly, with a Stella-less summer looming before me, I couldn’t handle being a third wheel.
Naveen glanced behind his shoulder and pulled a flyer out from behind the counter. “When my uncle comes out here with your food, do not tell him I gave this to you.”
“Um, ’kay.”
“My band is playing tonight, and we really need an audience. You guys seem like you’re into, you know, weird stuff.” He handed me the flyer, which featured a little girl in Victorian clothing having a very serious tea party with an octopus wearing a top hat. A bloodied letter opener lay ominously on the table between them.
“Mollusk Brigade? Where’s . . . Say-loan Pos-tail?” I knew I’d probably butchered the pronunciation of “Salone Postale” and waited for Naveen to correct me.
“Salon-eh Post-all. It’s a semi-secret venue up in Federal Hill. Right on the border of Olneyville.”
“Oh, great,” I muttered. “I’ll be sure to get mugged while I’m there.”
He ignored my concerns. “It’s in the basement of the old post office. The bar upstairs is legit, but the salon doesn’t officially have a liquor license. That’s why they keep it on the down low.”
“If I go will I learn how this tea party plays out?” I asked, pointing at the flyer.
“You can ask the artist. She’s in my band.”
Naveen’s uncle emerged from the kitchen, and I pocketed the flyer and zipped back to my table. Yup. Playin’ it cool.
By the time our food was ready, Stella had been fully hypnotized by a Bollywood dance sequence, so we scarfed mostly in silence. It was probably for the best because, behind all my sarcasm, eyerolls, and cross-armed proclamations that Stella was going to ruin her summer by going to a snooty prep school for two months, I was terrified. I couldn’t even enjoy my mediocre masala because a grisly little knot had bound itself up at the bottom of my ribcage.
I would never tell Stella this, but I needed her more than she needed me. Back in middle school, she’d needed someone to clue her in on all the strange little rituals and arbitrary rules of public school. Why she picked me, with all my weirdo red flags blazing like the freaking sun, I’ll never understand. Seriously, the Star Trek PowerPoint alone should have sent her running for the hills, but there was also me dragging her to a gazillion antique stores and estate sales, me forcing her to listen to hours of Gilberto & Getz, me yapping incessantly about the key differences between The Gilded Age and La Belle Époque.
I might’ve survived until sixth grade with just a few come-and-go associates, but now that I had a true compadre, I didn’t know if I could go back. Stella, on the other hand, no longer needed me to point out that a handshake is a greeting best reserved for school principals and your parents’ co-workers. She was fine on her own, and two months with a bunch of other smartypants overachievers would probably help her figure that out. Even if we survived a summer apart, I knew what was going to happen without my tether to the outside world. I’d hole up in my room and emerge only for shifts at the café and occasional bear poking.
“I have something for you,” Stella said as we neared the end of our meal.
I scowled at her. “Please don’t make this awkward.”
She laughed. “Oh, Ginge. I mean Mattie. Okay, it took a little while for me to talk my parents into this, but it’s just silly to let my car sit in my mom’s driveway for two months.” She jingled her keys with a bright-eyed smile, like she was about to give a yippy little dog a treat.
I had not seen this coming. “Wow. Um . . . Wow.”
She laughed again. “Yes, you’re welcome. You’ll take good care of her, right?”
I nodded, though I honestly had no idea how to take good care of a car other than to avoid speeding and driving head-on into big, stationary things. Like trees.
We headed to Red’s Cream Hut after that for scoops of Hangover Helper (coffee ice cream embedded with massive Oreo-chunks), and then Stella called it a night.
“Sorry, Ginge. I need a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day, and I’m trying not to be nervous, but you know me. Now get out of the car so I can hug you. It’ll make me feel better.”
We hugged in the driveway with the driver’s side door of the Bug still open and the ignition going ding-ding ding-ding.
Another thing I’d never tell Stella—even with what are possibly the world’s scrawniest arms, she gives really great hugs. More than anyone I’ve ever known, Stella hugs like she means it.
I drove home after that because where else was I going to go? It wasn’t until I reached into
the pocket of my hoodie for my house keys that I remembered the flyer for Salone Postale. Being hastily shoved into my pocket had crumpled the poor thing, but the little girl and the octopus with the top hat still made me giggle.
And then something weird happened.
You look troubled, child, I imagined the octopus saying as he adjusted his monocle.
Of course she’s troubled, the little girl said. It’s Friday night and she’s got a car, but she’s about to go bug her stupid brother and his stupid friends and then hide in her room.
Where would I go? I asked them.
The little girl huffed and stomped her tiny foot and pointed to the letters spelling out Salone Postale. Here, obviously!
I don’t go to places like that.
The octopus steepled two of his tentacles under his chin. That’s no reason not to start now.
What if I run into someone from school?
He squinted at me with his monocled eye. The likelihood that any of your cohorts will make an appearance at a secret playhouse in Federal Hill is . . . He rubbed his tentacles together, presumably calculating the odds. Well, I don’t have the exact figure, but it’s very, very slim. Infinitesimally slim.
Start. The. Car. the little girl growled.
Ugh. Fine.
Half an hour later, I parked Stella’s Bug in some sketchy alley, ducked through a dark, narrow bar, and found myself face to face with a purplish-red door, like an ornate slab of cough syrup, at the bottom of a stairwell.
I took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and made my way into a windowless little theater full of café tables. The primary source of light appeared to be a gazillion flickering votive candles, so I figured that even if I ran into someone from school, it’d be fine because we’d surely both die in a theater fire.
“Can I get you something?” the woman behind the bar at the back asked. Tattoos dotted her bare arms, and her lipstick matched her cherry-red hair.
The Art of Escaping Page 5