My magical inheritance was of another sort, although no less necessary to the success of the Amazing Maskelynes. It began with the Dyer women.
An artful conjurer can set her own body on fire with no visible damage, can cut off her arm without pain, can eat glass or razor blades. All are tricks that must be learned and practiced. But vanishing—and its necessary counterpoint, reappearing—is an art that relies not so much on tricks as on timing. The audience’s attention is directed away from the person disappearing. Even the visible vanish is not truly visible. Except in my case. Because my gift is that I really can disappear.
We all have them, all the women in my family, extraordinary gifts. Occasionally, a boy reveals a power, but not often, and none in my generation. One of our Dyer ancestors could play any musical instrument she picked up without benefit of lessons. Another could make a feast from a bit of bread and water. Yet another could summon rain. Sometimes these gifts take years to reveal themselves, and have varying degrees of usefulness. I knew from experience the talents of my living relatives. My Nan is able to tame animals, even the wildest—has had raccoons and flying squirrels for pets. Even a bear cub once. She is a falconer, and trains others to handle birds of prey.
My mother is a healer. She discovered her ability when she was in college and her roommate had a grand mal seizure, which my mother quelled with a touch of her finger. She volunteers at the local hospital, which for many years now has had the highest recovery rate of any in New England. My aunt Gwen will let you know where any lost or misplaced object is. Aunt Viv has a compass in her head, and can tell you right off how to travel to any place at all, even places she has never been. My Caleigh, as I’ve said, can affect her surroundings with her string games. The twins’ gifts have not yet been revealed to them, and I often worry over them. Will their gifts be simple and straightforward, or difficult and sometimes dangerous, like my own?
Disappearing isn’t exactly the word for it. It’s as if I walk through a curtain, enter the passageway to another world. I sometimes feel that I could go further in, but I never do. I remain in the antechamber of that other world, while I can see, and even take part in, events around me in this world. I stay close, then I return, performing the perfect visible vanish and reappearance.
I moved to Las Vegas when I was twenty, worked as a change girl in a casino, and went to shows every night before my shift. I thought that with my gift, I could surely find a place in that world. I had no skills but my one turn, so I went to the smaller clubs and casinos, looking for someone on the rise. Someone who might be willing to hire me with no obvious experience. One evening I went to see a young magician perform. He asked for a volunteer and I was onstage before I knew it, choosing cards and cutting open lemons to reveal dollar bills with my name written on them. At the end of the show, I slipped out, too shy to approach him. But the next day I walked out the service door of the casino after my shift and there he was, sitting on the wall, making doves appear and releasing them into the bright air. He’d tracked me down.
I couldn’t believe my luck. I thought I’d have to do some fast talking to get signed on as a magician’s assistant. Not even my wildest imaginings featured a young, handsome magician with a Colin Firth accent falling in love with me. My boyfriends after Jolon had never lasted more than a few months. I wasn’t overly confident in the relationship department, but with Jeremy, everything seemed easy, right. So I quit my job and we formed the Amazing Maskelynes. In the beginning, I was relegated to the role of the Three Part Girl, the Girl Levitating. The magician’s assistant, the pretty girl in the skimpy costume.
I was still the magician’s assistant the first time I revealed my gift to Jeremy. He’d asked me to marry him, and I was stalling, uncertain how to break it to him. I felt it was wrong to conceal it from him before I accepted, and he was committed to my aberration forever.
But then it just happened, without any thought on my part at all. We were working out a trick in which I was to disappear in a sheet of flames. It was a little frightening, although perfectly safe. I was always nervous just before he lit the flame. Fire had always frightened me.
I was in a large box made from metal poles, behind a piece of non-reflective glass. When the fire was lit, a trapdoor opened beneath me and I plummeted down under the stage, jumped up and raced to the back of the house, where I “reappeared.” The audience would be distracted by the flames, and we’d worked it out so that it took me only about fifteen seconds to reappear, to walk down the center aisle and rejoin Jeremy.
That day, instead of gritting my teeth, staying put, and dropping down as we’d rehearsed, I stepped away from the flame and right out of the box. I was about to apologize, but I saw that Jeremy was watching for me, timing me. When I looked toward a mirror we used in the next trick, I couldn’t see myself. I had disappeared. Jeremy whipped around, looking for me, worry growing in his eyes. I waited, my heart pounding, then reappeared right in front of him. He stared at me with his eyes all big and wild, like a spooked horse. I couldn’t help laughing.
“It isn’t funny,” he scolded me.
I quenched the still-burning flames with my cape, then sat down on the edge of the stage. Jeremy paced beside me.
“I was right here, and you know, I could swear you … well, vanished. How? Have you been practicing a bit without telling me?”
I reached for him. “It’s no bit, sweetheart. Just come here, and I’ll try to explain.”
He sat next to me and gazed into my eyes. “This should be interesting.”
“Well. I’ve always been able to do it.” And I did it again. He got the spooked horse look, and I reappeared.
“Bloody hell … Where did you go?”
“I don’t really go anywhere. It’s just that you can’t see me.”
“But how … I don’t … arrghh!” He slammed his forehead with the flat of his hand, then pointed an accusing finger at me. “Okay, wait just one minute, miss. Can you start at the beginning, please?”
I took his hand again and stroked it, to settle him. “I know I should have told you before, but I was waiting for the right time. It’s kind of hard to understand if you don’t see it. It’s just that in my family, all the women have these … gifts. Mine is that I can disappear.”
“You can disappear.”
“You saw it.”
“I did. I think I did. But … you can’t be serious, can you? It’s a prank, right? Maybe I deserve it. I can be a wanker, I know.”
“Jeremy. Stand up.” He did, a little shakily. “Now look at me, and keep looking.” I disappeared again, and he startled. I reached for his hand.
He jumped back at my touch. “Bugger and blast!”
“Oh, come on, just walk around me.” I took his arm, guided him around. “See, no smoke and mirrors.” And I reappeared. He startled again, but was silent, his muscles tensed.
“Jeremy?” I was afraid I’d gone too far.
His eyes softened then. “Well, I would say you gave me a fright, just at first. But do you suppose you could do that again? Any time you like?”
“I know I can.”
“So you have a spectacular visible vanish, and we don’t need all the claptrap. Darling, why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I was afraid you’d think I was … I don’t know, some kind of monster. Do you still want to marry me, even if I’m a freak of nature?”
“I especially want to marry you, Revelation Dyer, if you’re a freak of nature with a perfect visible vanish. Oh, what a posh wife I’ll have. How rich we’ll be! It will be … magic!”
At midsummer, my dad walked me down the aisle of Exeter Cathedral, and I was married to my golden, shining Jeremy. On the same day I became a Maskelyne, I avoided some of the more dismal Maskelyne cousins by disappearing, big pouffy gown and all, in the middle of the garden party at the manor house that John Nevil built from the proceeds of the Original Levitating Girl. I found Jeremy talking to some old school friends, threaded my fingers through his.
I led him to an unused guest room, shut the door, and reappeared. He took me in his arms and pulled me onto the bed. “This little trick of yours is useful in many circumstances.”
“You don’t know the half of it, buddy.” I laughed, while he tried to slip his hand into or under that dress, find skin.
“Now I know why they make these huge satin confections. It’s so the groom can’t get at the bride until they’ve actually tied the knot,” he grumbled.
His hands inched under the bones of the bodice, nearing my nipple, then just brushing it, teasing it until it was hard. I felt feverish under his fingers. “Mmm … that’s a lovely kind of torture,” I told him.
His eyes were so blue, I felt I was falling into the sea of them. He kissed me then, our first real married kiss, not in public, just ourselves alone, breathing together.
“If you don’t take off that alien life-form that calls itself a dress this minute, Mrs. Maskelyne, I swear I’ll do something drastic. I’m in a fair way to bursting.”
I reached down to feel his burstingness, laughed again. “Well, Mr. Maskelyne, you’ll just have to wait. I can’t take it off without help. I can’t even pee without help.”
“I’ll help you, then.”
“You’d just rip it.”
“So?”
“So I want to save it for our daughter.”
That sobered him. He sat up, stared at me. “You can’t mean it?”
“I might. I think so.”
He just sat for a moment, with that startled horse look he had. Then he leapt up, took my hands, pulled me to my feet, and hurried me outside again.
He stopped to talk to the glitter-rock cover band, and in moments they began the first familiar chords to “Golden Years,” and we danced, until long past the late English twilight descended. Jeremy, me, and the first glimmers of the twins inside me, we all danced. He bent his shining blond head down and kissed me, mussing my hair, then smoothing it down again. “What a perfectly disappearing darling you are, what a Revelation.”
So I became the Great Revelation, the disappearing half of the Amazing Maskelynes, and gave up the Dyer name.
Every feat of magic tells a story. Often it’s the story of resurrection. Of death and rebirth. We went through it countless times, Jeremy and I. Jeremy, my Maskelyne, my love. He was always there to take my hand, to hold me in his arms when I reappeared, resurrected, while the audience gasped, then cheered. He’d hold out his hand and there I’d be, back from the lobby of that other world. Until the day he died in my arms, and I became a Dyer for the second time, and probably forever.
4
The girls were beguiled by the town.
“Mmm … spooky. This place looks like it belongs in a Shirley Jackson story,” Grace said.
“Well, I like it. It’s cool.” Fai popped a car door open.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it, you dweeb. And stop saying cool,” Grace commanded. “Nobody says cool anymore.”
“Are Grand and Gramps and Nan coming?” Caleigh asked.
“You never know about Nan, but Grand and Gramps will be here tomorrow. I thought we’d be too tired to be much fun tonight.”
“I’m not tired,” Fai informed me. “Hey, is that the barn, behind the house?” She scanned the lawn, the green paddocks, a breach in the woods that surrounded us. “The horses will love all the grass.”
“All you think about are horses.” Caleigh kicked her door open and jumped out.
“At least I’m not obsessed with string.”
“Stop, now. Who’s going to help me with the bags?” Nathan had the back hatch open, hefting suitcases and Caleigh’s stuffed animal trunk.
“I’ll help, let me.” Caleigh started pulling things from the back, while Grace and Fai slumped to the house, trying not to be seen and called back to help. I let them go. I lifted the heaviest of the suitcases out of the car, began wheeling it behind me. The twins left the front door open. Caleigh, hauling a heavy duffel bag, staggered then dropped her load, ran back to me. There was a woman standing in the doorway. Gaunt and stiff, she wore a dark housedress, her hair ratcheted behind her head in an unforgiving bun. Grace may have been thinking of Shirley Jackson, but this woman put me in mind instantly of Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca.
Caleigh clung to me. “Mommy, there’s a lady!”
“Honey, it’s just Mrs. Pike. She’s going to be our housekeeper. Like Marisol back home.”
“But she’s nothing like Marisol. She’s old. And really wrinkly.”
“You’ll get used to her.” I kissed the top of her head, took her hand. It wasn’t often I still got to feel like the mother of a young child. Children grow up so fast; even ten-year-olds rarely want to be seen holding their mother’s hand. But Caleigh didn’t pull away.
“Come on. I’ll introduce you.”
We trudged up the walk, the stones slanted and uneven, grass growing between them. The suitcase thunked behind me, threatening to topple over.
Mrs. Pike didn’t rush out to help us. She raised an arm in greeting, that Yankee wave that I remembered from childhood, the hand unbending, unmoving, as if warning us to stop right there.
“You must be Mrs. Pike.” I smiled, held out my hand. She nodded curtly. I’d never actually clapped eyes on her before that moment. She came by way of a recommendation from Carl Streeter, who’d sent me her business card. GOOD HOUSEKEEPER, COOK. REASONABLE RATES. RELIABLE. The essence of brevity. When I called she’d been agreeable enough, except for one strange moment.
“Yut, could do for you weekday mornings.”
I told her the date we’d be arriving, that we would want dinner that night, and the address of the house.
“That’s at Hawley Five Corners,” she told me, as if I didn’t know where my own house was. I said that yes, it was, and a long pause hung between us, so long I thought the line had gone dead.
“Mrs. Pike?”
“Hang on, will you?” I heard a mumbled conversation, then Mrs. Pike was back. “I’ll have to charge more. Fifty an hour.” It was twice her usual rate.
“May I ask why? It’s not far from the village.”
“Well, the roads are one thing. Dirt roads, wear and tear on the car.” But I could sense that there was something else, the other thing that Mrs. Pike wasn’t saying, nor would she.
“What’s the other thing? You said the roads were one reason.”
“Did I? The roads is all I meant. It’s only that.”
I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere. “Okay. Fifty is fine.”
I could tell by her silence that Mrs. Pike wasn’t expecting agreement. She thought I would balk, try someone else. I wanted to be done with the housekeeping question. I could find someone else if she didn’t work out, or maybe wouldn’t need anyone after the initial clean and spruce-up. “I’ll see you, then. October tenth. We’ll be there before dark, but I’d like you to wait for us, so the house is open. It will be more pleasant for my girls if someone’s there when we arrive.”
“Oh, someone will be there, don’t you worry.” Mrs. Pike laughed tinnily, a sound like a rusty hinge. It made me uncomfortable, a little shivery. Like she knew something I would have to find out on my own, like she had one up on me.
She seemed normal enough, however, standing in the doorway, greeting us with her thready smile. Just an elderly woman having to make ends meet. Maybe she’d heard about the work being done at the Five Corners, figured I could afford her doubled rate. Nothing strange in that.
“This is my daughter Caleigh.” Who had become unaccountably shy, turning her face away and pressing against me. “Grace and Faith were just here. My twins. Maybe you saw them?”
“I saw two others run upstairs. Why I came out.” The tinny laugh again. “Thought maybe they didn’t belong here.”
“I’m sorry if they startled you. They can be oblivious sometimes.”
“No, that’s all right, then. Just thought …” But she didn’t say what she thought.
“And this is Nathan Landry
. Nathan is the girls’ cousin. He tutors them, as well, so they won’t be going to school in town.”
“Very pleased to meet you, Miz Pike,” he said, dropping the bags and taking her hand gently, as if it might break. “I’m sure you have a lovely dinner ready for us.” Always the charming southern gentleman, yet moving things along all the same. Nathan, the Renaissance man. I suddenly thought how his many talents would be wasted here, felt a stab of guilt that he’d left his life in the city for us. I hoped it wouldn’t have to be for long.
Either not noticing or not caring that Nathan was gay as well as charming, Mrs. Pike smoothed her hair, patted down her dress. “Supper’s keeping warm in the oven,” she told him. “Pot roast, potatoes, string beans. And there’s a white cake for dessert.”
“That sure does sound splendid, and we’re all famished.”
“Guess I’ll get along then, leave you to your supper and settling in.” She gave Nathan a smile, which faded as she looked back to me. “I’ll be by tomorrow morning, missus. Nine sharp.” She turned and marched out the door.
“Please call me Reve,” I petitioned her retreating back. She kept walking to her car, a Buick so ancient and decrepit I thought it surely had been abandoned in the forest. But the rusted, piebald car started right up, and Mrs. Pike rattled off, the car’s taillights glowing in the shadows beneath the many trees.
“Not exactly the Welcome Wagon,” Nathan remarked.
“No, but I think I like her. I guess I’m still a Yankee at heart.” And she seemed too taciturn to be much of a gossip. We hoisted our bags again, and the house claimed us.
5
No one in town knew anymore when the original part of the house was built, Carl Streeter had told me. But in 1775, when it was owned by the Sears family, a large extension was added. Urbane and his wife, Bethia (née Dyer: She figured in some of Nan’s stories), lived there for many years, a well-to-do couple with eight children. Urbane was the first merchant of Hawley, and the progenitor of the Sears clan that populated all corners of these Berkshire hill towns. Urbane Sears came from Gloucester to open the Hawley General Store, now home to the hardware store and Pizza by Earl in the village. Then he married Bethia, and nine years later renovated the house at Hawley Five Corners for his growing family. He opened a second store there near the tavern. Neither building—store nor tavern—exists now. Just old cellar holes a quarter mile down Hunt Road. That was the thumbnail historical sketch Carl gave me, unbidden. He probably had no idea the town’s history involved my family. As far as I knew, Nan never made an appearance here, never kept up the houses, just paid the taxes and left them benignly neglected. Carl didn’t seem to know that the Five Corners had been in our family one way or another for more than two hundred years. I didn’t enlighten him. Our family stories stayed in the family.
The Hawley Book of the Dead Page 5