by Haley Tanner
She collects in her arms a bundle of clothes belonging to Ekaterina, clothes that smell of perfume and smoke. She walks through the open door of Ekaterina’s room, looking for a laundry basket. She turns on the light with one hand.
She is only looking for a laundry basket.
There is no laundry basket. She looks closer, just to be sure.
On the nightstand, next to the bare mattress, there are spoons and foil and straws but no laundry basket. There are tiny Ziploc bags but no laundry basket.
There is more of the same garbage that was in the living room, cans and bottles and trash, but no laundry basket.
There are cans of hairspray, wrappers of many kinds, but Rasia will not clean this room, no way. This room is not on Lena’s path to the kitchen to get a drink of water.
Walking home to her own house, to her own son and her own husband, Rasia thinks carefully about Lena, as she has so many times before. She thinks about the strange behavior of Lena and Vaclav; she thinks about Ekaterina.
Rasia is not an idiot; she knows what goes on in the world. She knows the story with those spoons and foil and straws.
She doesn’t know what to do. Oleg says she should mind her own business. She doesn’t know what to do.
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SARCOPHAGUS OF MYSTERY
…
At school, Lena spends all her time with her new friends and ignores Vaclav. Behind closed doors, Vaclav and Lena practice the act each day after school in stolen hours between homework and bedtime. Vaclav does Lena’s homework as fast as he can, whipping through long division, churning out paragraph after paragraph of perfectly Lena-accented English. He wants to make sure that they have time to practice over and over again. Both Vaclav and Lena think about the act all the time. They think about the act when they wake up in the morning, in the shower, while the teacher is taking attendance, during recess, during gym class, and at bedtime, when they both hear the same bedtime story told by the same mother.
In Vaclav’s room, they consult The Magician’s Almanac for directions to build a disappearing box.
“Read again,” Lena says, pacing.
“The sarcophagus is, for all outward appearances, a sealed box with a hinged door on the front. Invisible to the audience, and essential to the illusion, is a false back concealing a small compartment in which the magician secrets himself,” Vaclav reads.
“Hmm,” says Lena.
“I don’t understand,” says Vaclav, “Where do I go when I disappear?”
“You go inside, you close door, like a closet. Then you sneak behind back wall, which is not really back wall, is another door, and then open the front door and the audience will see that you are gone, but really you are behind this second door. Easy,” says Lena.
“Easy, but to build the box, look.…” Vaclav holds the book out to Lena. The instructions to build the Egyptian Sarcophagus of Mystery look wildly complicated; they are full of numbers and symbols.
“Hmm,” says Lena.
“Where will we get all this stuff?” Vaclav says. Lena thinks.
“This is a thing takes long time to build. We find this piece of wood on the sidewalk, someone is throwing away, we take. Then later we find someone has extra wood at this house, we take. Then when we have enough, we will build.” She sighs. “So this, it will not be on time. For the act.”
Vaclav knows that she is right, that it will take them a long time to collect all the material to build this sarcophagus. He folds down the corner of the page so that he will remember to look and see what they need to collect, so that they can look in the piles on the sidewalk when it is time for people to throw away their couches and their old kitchen cabinets.
He flips through the almanac, looking for a new trick to add to their act. Lena practices her shimmy for the disappearing-coin trick.
When Vaclav and Lena are apart, Vaclav is excited to tell Lena what he is thinking about the act. He likes to tell her all about the problems that he is worrying about. He knows that when he tells her about a problem, she will look at him like he is a silly turtle, because in the same way that he saw the thing immediately as a problem she will see immediately its solution. He also likes, of course, to tell her all about his new ideas for tricks that will definitely work.
When Vaclav and Lena are apart, Lena too thinks excited thoughts about the act, but she also worries that her new friends would think the act is stupid, and she knows that the act is something that the Aunt would make fun of, even more than the kids at school might make fun of it, and in a worse way.
When Vaclav thinks about the act, and about how his magic is a secret he shares just with Lena, he feels excited. Lena feels ashamed, because she keeps her secret for different reasons.
THE DAY BEFORE THE SHOW
…
The day of the show is going to be Saturday. Vaclav knows that Saturday is the day that most people go to the boardwalk at Coney Island, because it is the day that most people have no work or school. The exceptions to this are his mother and father, who must sometimes work on the weekend, and also people who work in restaurants, people who drive the subway trains, and people who work in hospitals, because those things don’t stop for the weekend. Also, of course, magicians. Magicians can do magic every day of the week. Even though it is fall, it is still warm outside, and the boardwalk will be crowded with people enjoying one last summer thing before it gets too cold.
On the day before the show, Friday, Vaclav wakes up early, and is unbearably excited. He brushes his teeth and feels that each moment is both slow and fast. There are butterflies in his stomach flapping their wings so furiously that they might burst into a puff of magical smoke.
Vaclav does not see Lena walking to school, on the sidewalk, as he usually does. He does not see Lena outside the school, talking to Marina and Kristina. Vaclav is worried that Lena might be late for school, and that she might get into trouble for being late.
All day Vaclav cannot concentrate on his classes, because he keeps thinking about his show, and it feels like he is holding candy in his mouth and trying not to eat it. It feels as exciting as getting to leave school early for a doctor’s appointment, knowing the whole day that your mother will pick you up and will even bring snacks to eat in the waiting room. It feels like when it is your birthday and everything is special all day, and everyone you pass on the street and everyone in the pizza parlor and everyone in the world is part of your birthday, even if they don’t know it.
Vaclav becomes more worried when he arrives at ESL, because Lena is not there, and she is usually there before him. Vaclav watches the door carefully, watches each kid coming in to see if he or she might be Lena, and even when the kid is clearly not Lena, he thinks he or she might be Lena just for one tiny part of a second. When Colin walks through the door, Vaclav thinks for a second that Colin might be Lena, even though Colin is a boy and is from a place in Africa where they speak French called Côte D’Ivoire, which you say like koh-duh-vwah, which means Ivory Coast, and does not look like Lena at all. Also, Colin is a little bit chubby, and Lena is skinny like a grasshopper. Even so, Vaclav’s mind plays a trick and for a second Colin’s dark arm is Lena’s dark braid of hair, and then it is over and the person is Colin.
For every person who comes into the ESL classroom, Vaclav’s heart makes his brain have a little bit of hope, until Marina and Kristina come in, and class starts without Lena, and then there is no more hope.
“Okay, let’s get started. Everyone take their seats.… Who’s missing? Lena’s not here?” says Mrs. Bisbano, and then she says something that hurts Vaclav’s feelings without meaning to.
“Marina … where’s Lena?”
“She is sick, maybe,” Marina says. Vaclav feels sadness because he was not the automatic person to ask about where Lena might be. This sadness becomes happiness immediately, because Vaclav thinks of how he and Lena are secretly more friends than Marina and Kristina and Mrs. Bisbano know. Vaclav smiles because he thinks of all the secrets he and Lena
have that are secret from Marina and Kristina. Vaclav does not imagine secrets that Lena might have with Marina and Kristina, secrets that he might not know about. To Vaclav, this is impossible.
Vaclav is not worried at all about Lena, because she probably just has a cold or is just pretending to be sick and is not even sick. Sometimes Vaclav does this, he pretends to feel sick, and his mother pretends not to notice that he is faking, and she lets him stay home from school, and that is a wonderful thing.
Also, Vaclav is certain that Lena, even if she is sick, will still perform the act on the boardwalk at Coney Island, because she is his dedicated assistant and the show must go on. Even if Vaclav had one arm cut off and eaten by birds with no chance to ever sew it back on, he would still perform the act.
Probably Lena just didn’t want to go to school. Probably she will meet him at his house after school for homework, snacks, and dress rehearsal. Most likely.
MOST LIKELY NOT
…
When Vaclav gets home, Lena is not there. Vaclav picks up the telephone and dials her house, listens for one ring, and hangs up. This is a secret code that Vaclav and Lena have, to call and let the phone ring once, and it means: Call me back if you are able! This way Lena can call Vaclav without having to talk to his parents, and Vaclav can call Lena without making the Aunt angry.
Vaclav waits by the phone for several minutes. The phone does not ring.
Vaclav is worried about Lena, but he knows that the show must go on, and he knows that Lena is knowing this too, and that they are thinking of each other always a little bit. The next thing to do, according to the list called “Schedule,” is to have a dress rehearsal.
Vaclav puts on his costume, which is:
David Copperfield T-shirt from David Copperfield performance at Madison Square Garden
Old blazer that no longer fits but can be squeezed into, decorated all over with glitter and puffy paint
Regular black pants
Shoes with aluminum foil on the top to look like silver shoes
Opaque white doctor’s gloves from the company where his mother works, to imitate the white gloves of the magician
And yet to be obtained: one magician’s magical top hat
Vaclav is planning to make the magician’s magical top hat out of some materials that he has found around, including some shirt boxes from the department store and some tape and some black paint borrowed from school.
Vaclav hopes that at home, secretly, Lena is happily preparing the golden fringed bikini of Heather Holliday.
SHE IS SICK, MAYBE
…
Rasia walks into the house holding many bags from the grocery store as well as her purse, which is very heavy, and she has to pee. She drops everything on the floor, right in the entrance, and tears off her coat and runs to the bathroom. Every day she feels herself getting older, and every day she is surprised by things that leak when they used to hold tight. On her way into the bathroom, she sees that Vaclav’s door is closed. While she is peeing, she decides that after she puts dinner on the stove to reheat, she will go into Vaclav’s room and interrupt whatever is going on. She does not think that Vaclav and Lena are necessarily doing something bad, but she knows that they are doing something secret, and Rasia thinks that something secret might be on the way to something bad.
First, dinner. Rasia puts her bags from the grocery store in the kitchen and takes a stained and heavy Tupperware container from the freezer. She runs hot water over the Tupperware until the frozen borscht block is ready to slide out, and then shakes it loose until it bangs into the pot on the stove. She decides, as the icy block begins to melt and shift in the pan, and the first thawing dribbles sizzle on the hot metal, that she will knock on Vaclav’s door to inquire if Lena is staying for dinner, and then will demand that Vaclav and Lena help her put away the groceries. This plan will get Vaclav and Lena out of the bedroom and away from whatever it is they are doing, and it will get her some help with the groceries, which is a relief, because she feels so exhausted, even inside of her bones and in her stomach and in the back of her throat.
Standing outside of the closed door to her son’s room, Rasia hears tiny voices in a perfect rhythm, in a tiny little call and response, his voice high and scratchy, Lena’s voice with its deep Russian full-mouthed color. Without knocking, Rasia opens her son’s door and is very surprised at what she sees.
Vaclav is kneeling on the ground, completely absorbed in his project, surrounded by scraps of black electrical tape and cardboard. He does not notice that his mother has entered the room, and he continues to talk to himself, carrying on a conversation with an imaginary Lena. Rasia is so sure that she has heard Lena’s voice from outside of the room that it takes her a moment to really accept that he is playing both parts.
“Where is Lena?” she asks, breaking the spell of her son’s concentration. Vaclav looks up, startled, and tries to hide behind his back the secret project he has been working on, wondering if his mother heard him practicing the act with invisible Lena.
“She is sick, maybe,” Vaclav says.
“She was in school?”
“No,” says Vaclav.
“No?” asks Rasia.
“Probably she is sick,” says Vaclav.
“Probably she is sick,” says Rasia, and she thinks for a moment. “I am going to go to check on her at her house. I’ll be right back,” she says, then she grabs her purse and rushes out the front door before she even puts on her coat.
Vaclav is relieved that his mother is going to check on Lena. He wishes for a second that he could go with her, but there is so much to do for the act.
Vaclav gets back to work on his top hat. His mother seemed not to have noticed at all the top-secret preparations for the act, which is lucky. He thought, for a moment, when she came in, that she would know what he was planning, and then the show would be ruined.
Half an hour later, when Vaclav investigates a terrible smell coming from the kitchen and finds the borscht burning on the stove, he realizes that his mother is still not home.
Oleg comes home, which means it is nearly time for dinner, but still Rasia is not home.
Vaclav calls Lena’s house, but there is no answer.
Vaclav and his father wait an hour. Vaclav calls Lena’s house again; still no answer. He is very worried.
“Where is Mom?” Vaclav asks.
“I don’t know,” Oleg says. “What did she say when she left?”
“She said she was going to check on Lena,” Vaclav says.
“So she is going to check on Lena,” Oleg says.
Later, Oleg brings matching mugs of cold burned borscht into the living room, and they eat dinner together while they watch Russian television.
It is dark outside, and nothing is the way it should be, and Vaclav is starting to feel that something is terribly wrong. Oleg does not tell Vaclav that he must go to bed. Maybe this means that Oleg cares a lot about him, and maybe this means that Oleg has forgotten about him. Either way, Vaclav feels that he could not possibly go to bed, with the circumstances being what they are, which is missing Lena, missing Mother, and the big day of the show on the Coney Island boardwalk only hours away.
The night before the big show, the young magician falls asleep very late, next to his father. His face, which is pressed to the black leather of the couch, is illuminated by the Russian sitcoms his father watches on satellite television, beamed in from across the world.
SECRETLY HE IS AWAKE
…
At a time late in the night, so late as to actually be the morning, Oleg wakes up, still on the couch, and knows because the TV is still on, and because he and his young son are both sleeping on the sofa, that his wife has still not returned home. If she had returned home, she would have clucked at him and taken their son to bed and turned off the TV, and he would have acted annoyed as he stumbled down the hallway to resume his snoring in bed. If she had returned home, he would have acted as if he minded the interruption, but re
ally he would not have minded at all. He feels so lonely waking up on the couch to the TV and no wife clucking at him.
First he turns off the television, and then he does something he has not been able to do for several years, something he has not realized he has been missing.
He scoops his son into his arms and carries him, still sleeping, to his bedroom and tucks him in.
Secretly, Vaclav is awake. But he too has missed being carried to his bedroom, and so he pretends.
THE DAY OF THE SHOW
…
Rasia comes home from the police station at five in the morning, just as her husband is rushing off to work.
“Where have you been?” he asks. “I worried.”
“You would not believe,” she says.
“I am late already; we talk about it later.” He kisses her once on the forehead and is about to head for the door, but then he stops and kisses her again.
“Everything will be okay,” he says, and then he goes.
She checks on her sleeping son, just to remind herself that her family is okay. Later, when he wakes up, she will have to tell him about what has happened to Lena, and she doesn’t know what she will say, what bad parts to take out, what good parts to put in. When Vaclav wakes up, she will make him pancakes and they will talk.
Rasia goes into her bedroom, takes off her shoes, and falls asleep on top of the covers in an instant.
When she wakes up, it is eleven o’clock, the latest she has slept in years. She expects to find Vaclav eating a bowl of cereal in front of the TV, or in his room, working on his tricks. But when she sits up in her bed, everything is quiet. Quickly she gets out of bed and runs through the house. Vaclav is not in the kitchen, not in the living room. She checks the bathroom, pulling back the shower curtain, and finally Vaclav’s room, his closet, and under the bed, but he is gone.