My dad beamed. “My three sons,” he said.
It was the first Khchanukkah gift we’d ever been given. Howard and Kenny seemed thrilled with their bathrobes, but I didn’t know what to think. Because in my mind I was wearing that T-shirt: I’M NOT WITH THEM.
And tomorrow, I thought, I won’t be. I’ll be dressed in my tux, amazing the crowd.
No more waiting around for miracles—I’ll be making magic of my own.
THE EIGHTH CANDLE: An Orange
Sunday, December 19
There are no good sounds that can come from your parents’ bedroom. Go through the list if you want—or, as Mr. DeGuerre likes to say, “You do the math.” But you may as well take my word for it.
At five o’clock this morning I heard my dad screaming in pain and then, a moment later, shouting, “Where the hell are my pills?” Then there was a lot of shuffling and moaning, which turned into arguing.
I tried to go back to sleep, but kept thinking about my show. I pictured the room full of people clapping, and lines of patter kept running through my head: “I know why you’re here! Because you believe in . . . magic!” “These aren’t just matzoh balls—they’re magic matzoh balls!” I was trying to keep track of all the changes I’d made and all the things I would have to do because Amy wasn’t there. The hardest part would be dealing with Herrmann—Maccabee—but I had a little travel cage for her, so I could manage. I had almost asked Brian to be my assistant for the day, but it would have been harder to teach him to do the tricks than to figure out how to do them myself.
I finally did fall back to sleep, and slept a long time. When I woke up and went to the kitchen, my mom looked like she hadn’t slept at all. Her hair was a mess—not a hair-in-curlers-and-then-will-be-beautiful mess, but a who-can-think-about-hair-when-your-husband-is-up-all-night-screaming-in-pain mess.
“Hey, good-lookin’,” she said, attempting to smile, “what’s cookin’?”
“Nothing much,” I said. “How’s Dad?”
“Well, he had a rough night.” That was an understatement. “But I’m sure he’ll be better today. He’s resting.”
“That’s good,” I said. “So, when do we go?”
“What?”
I thought she hadn’t heard me. I said louder, “When do we go? The show’s at two, and I should be there by one thirty to set up.”
I could tell by the blank look on her face that she had completely forgotten.
“Oh, right. Of course,” she said. “Your magic show. Today. Of course.” Then she nodded and smiled, like she’d been looking forward to the drive. She took a deep breath, wiped her hands on a towel, and looked at the clock. “Let me just finish cleaning the kitchen, shower, and get dressed,” she said. “How about we leave in an hour and a half?”
“Okay,” I said, heading off to the den to prepare. But then I turned around and saw her there, looking drained and disheveled. I heard my dad moan in the other room, and realized she had nothing left—nothing at all. And she was willing to give it to me.
But I couldn’t take it.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “You stay here, take care of Dad. I’ll take the bus.”
“Oh,” she said. “Really, it’s . . . Are you sure?”
“Of course,” I said. “No problem.” That was a lie and we both knew it. It was a big problem, especially dressed in my tux, carrying my suitcase and Herrmann’s cage.
In the kitchen, under the Phone-O-Matic, is a drawer stuffed with maps and phone books and receipts and a bunch of bus schedules. Making sense of which bus goes where and when is a really complicated puzzle. I like puzzles, and this one would have been fun if I didn’t actually have to ride the buses. I figured out that I needed to take the 259, the 57, and then the 93, which had a stop right across the street from the Jewish Home for the Elderly and Infirm. Looking at the Sunday schedules, I saw it would take three hours and fifteen minutes to get there. Working backward, to get there by 1:30, I would have to be at the bus stop on Baldwin Avenue at 9:57—in thirteen minutes.
No time to shower, no time for food. I downed a glass of orange juice, threw on my jacket and pants, clipped on my tie, put Herrmann in her travel cage, grabbed my suitcase, and dashed out the door. Sure enough, I got to Baldwin just as the bus was pulling up, dropped my quarter into the box, and collapsed into a seat near the front. There were just a few other riders, and with my suitcase and everything else, they must have thought I was running away from home. I suppose, in a sense, they were right.
We stopped to pick up a few people as we rode down Baldwin, but maybe because it was Sunday we were pretty much on time. The air conditioner even worked, which was a first. But the second bus—the longer ride, all the way to the downtown L.A. bus terminal—was crowded and hot as could be. It was stinky too, as if someone had peed in the corner. Wearing my too-small tuxedo, I was already sweating. Evidently neither the windows nor the air conditioner worked on this bus, so the driver kept opening and closing the door every chance he got, trying to use it as a fan. It didn’t help.
I scrunched into my corner and ran through my patter. “Chanuukah is a choliday of miracles!” I said to myself. “Watch this!”
“Hey, man,” said a voice behind me. “Nice bunny. What’s his name?”
I turned to see the bearded face of a hippie. He had a backpack and bongos.
“Her name,” I said. “She’s a girl. And, well, it’s Herrmann.”
“Herrmann?” the hippie said. “Her name is Herrmann?”
“That’s right. But just for today I’ve changed her name. To Maccabee.”
“She’s a girl, but her name is Herrmann, and you’re calling her Maccabee?” He looked confused, but nodded. “Oh, I see. Maccabee. Like Judah, right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Far out!” he said. “So, what are you, a magician or something?”
“That’s right. I’m going to do a magic show at my grandma’s nursing home.” I realized this was a great chance to practice the patter that was running through my head. “And this,” I said in my deep magician’s voice, “is Maccabee, the dreidel-playing rabbit! He’s lucky! You know how you can tell? Because he has all four of his feet!”
The guy broke into a laugh, so I kept on going. “And I know why you’re here! Because you believe in . . . magic!” I didn’t have the feather flowers loaded in my sleeve, but had managed to dig a sponge ball out of my pocket, which I produced from thin air.
“Oh, man!” he said. “How’d you do that?”
“Magic!” I said. “And it’s a magic matzoh ball!” I made it appear and disappear a couple times, then produced it from his ear. I was pretty pleased with myself.
“Whoa!” he said. “Trippy! That’s totally amazing!”
Suddenly he looked out the window, and called to the driver, “Hey—this is my stop!” Then he said to me, “This lady I met said I could crash here.” He grabbed his stuff and ran toward the door. “Hey, you!” he called back. “You’re a magic man! Don’t you forget it! Happy Haanakah!”
He’s right, I told myself as he jumped off the bus. I am a magic man.
I was feeling pretty good when we got to the terminal in plenty of time, but the third bus was running late. Really late. I waited ten, fifteen, then twenty minutes before it came rolling up. When it finally did, the driver must have figured it was a good time to tell his life story to all the other drivers, because he stood there talking to them for another fifteen minutes. When we pulled up at the nursing home, it was already five minutes till 2:00, so I ran inside to the front desk, where a woman sat doing a crossword puzzle. I stood there, catching my breath.
“May I help you?” she asked, without looking up.
“Hey there!” I said, still breathing heavily, trying for my deepest voice. “How ya doin’? My name is Joel Edwin—and I’m here to . . . do magic!”
; She looked up at me, staring. I felt pretty stupid, but figured I’d try again. “How you doin’?” I said, suave as I could muster. “Is Esther around?”
“Esther? I’m not Esther. Esther’s not here.”
“That’s all right, Not-Esther,” I said, reminding myself that I was the magician, and in complete control. “No Esther, no problem.” I tried to sound like Mister Mystery. “As I was saying, my name is Joel Edwin, and Esther hired me to perform a magic show for today’s Chanuquah celebration. Today. At two o’clock.” I looked at the clock. “That’s in . . . three minutes.”
“Your name is Josh? And you want to do magic tricks?” she said.
“Actually . . .” I cleared my throat. “My name is Joel. And I’ve been hired to perform for the Hanika party. By Esther.”
“Esther doesn’t work on Sundays,” said Not-Esther. “And she didn’t tell me anything about a magic show. Then again, nobody ever tells me anything.” She picked up a clipboard, flipping through several pages. “All it says here is, ‘Menorah lighting in social room. Two o’clock.’ But as long as they’re just sitting around, you may as well do some magic tricks. It’s not like they have anything else going on.”
“Great,” I said. “Also, my grandmother, Anna, is a resident here. Would you happen to know where she is? I know she was looking forward to it.”
“What’s her name?”
“Anna.”
“Last name?”
It’s the same as mine, and I didn’t want to say it out loud. Luckily, I spotted a list of residents’ names on the counter and pointed to my grandmother’s.
“Oh, her.” She frowned. “She doesn’t usually come to activities, but I’ll ask the orderlies if they can bring her in.” She pointed to a doorway. “The social room is at the end of that hall.”
I rushed with Herrmann’s cage and my suitcase down the hall, opened the doors, and stepped into a room filled with noise and cigar smoke. My dad had said they didn’t let people smoke on Saturday, because it’s forbidden on Shabbat, but apparently they make up for it on Sunday.
There was a stage at one end of the room, with a big TV on a metal stand, set to a soap opera. On-screen I could see a woman talking to a doctor, but couldn’t hear what they were saying, because there were a dozen people in the room talking loudly, some in Yiddish, some in English, all of it kvetching.
“Attendant, it’s too hot in here! I’m shvitzing!” That means to sweat—a lot. “Why don’t they turn on an air conditioner?”
“I’ll tell you why—they’re too cheap to buy one!”
“Nurse! Nurse! Light my cigar!”
“Yeah!” someone else said. “And then light my cigar!”
I figured they didn’t let the residents have matches, and that’s why, on a table next to the TV, there stood a big electronic menorah with a cord and nine pointy screw-in lightbulbs instead of candles.
I climbed the steps to the stage. There was no backstage, so I went into a corner and knelt down to set up the tricks as quickly as possible. I loaded the feather flowers up my sleeve and prepared the Twentieth-Century Silks—or Escape from Antiochus, as I was calling it—where a multicolored handkerchief vanishes from one place and appears in another. I pocketed the Magic Matzoh Balls, and set up the deck for the Menorah Card, making sure the nine of diamonds was on the bottom, and that the banner was tucked into my hat. I prepped the Miracle Rope, put the linking rings—Eight Rings of Chanukkkkah—in order. I found a drinking fountain and filled the Bottomless Oil Jar. Finally I loaded the coins for Miser’s Dream, which I was calling Magic Gelt Trip. I had a coffee can to toss the coins in, though it wouldn’t be as cool as the bedpan in the hospital on Friday. They probably had bedpans there, but I didn’t want to ask.
Normally I do all my setup in secret, but no one seemed to be watching me, except for an old man who was chewing on something. When I was almost finished, he said, “What are you doing here?”
“Hey there!” I said, turning toward him. “Funny you should ask. I’m doing a magic show for Khanuka!”
“What?”
“A magic show! For Khanukah.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone loves magic!” I said, just like Mister Mystery.
He didn’t answer, just shrugged and kept staring and chewing. I finished setting up my tricks—except for Herrmann, who needed to go in at the last minute. It was already 2:15 when the attendants, who were big guys dressed in white, began wheeling in the rest of the residents. Soon there was a good-sized audience, but the attendants didn’t seem to care which way their chairs faced, and neither did the patients. A few more wandered in, some on walkers, some with canes.
But there was no sign of my grandmother. I waited, running through bits of patter in my mind. “The oil never runs out! It’s a miracle!” “Eight rings—for eight nights of Kchaanukkah! Each more magical than the last!”
A white-haired lady near the front said, “Are you going to do a show?”
“Yes, indeed!” I said. “A magic show!”
“Do you sing?”
“No, I don’t sing. I’m doing a magic show!”
“Can’t you sing instead? I like singing better.”
Finally, at 2:30, a couple of orderlies entered the room, escorting my grandmother by her elbows. She was wearing her favorite dress, brown with white polka dots. I waved at her, but she didn’t respond. They sat her in a chair in the back. She didn’t look like she was having a good day. “Now just sit here and be quiet,” they said. “All right?”
Before I could say hello, Not-Esther came to the front of the room with her clipboard. She put on her glasses and said, “All right now, everyone, pay attention. This is the eighth night of Hanuukkaahh so we’ll be lighting all eight candles.”
That was my cue to load Herrmann—Maccabee—into her hiding place, along with the dreidels, so she would be ready for her first appearance. As I did, Not-Esther twisted the shammes to light it, then each of the eight other bulbs, and read the blessing from her clipboard. “Baruch atah Adonai elohaynu melech ha-olam . . .”
“Why aren’t you singing?” asked the woman who likes singing. She started clapping her hands and singing the blessing all over again. “Baruch atah . . .”
“Doris,” said Not-Esther, “we’re not singing. And I don’t want any trouble from you. Or you’re out.”
“Yeah, Doris! We don’t want to hear you singing,” said the man next to her.
“I like singing,” someone called from the back.
“Shush!” Not-Esther finally shouted. “Or I’ll unscrew the candles!” That quieted them down, though the TV was still really loud. “Today as a special Hanuka treat we have a young man who will do a magic presentation. His name is Josh—”
“Joel,” I corrected.
She gave me a look and went on. “His grandmother is a resident here. You know Anna.” Not-Esther looked around the room, spotting her. “There she is. In the back. Wave at everyone, Anna.”
She raised her arm, looking confused.
“Now, I know you’ll all welcome our guest, and behave, not like the last time. So everyone, please, welcome Josh the Magician.”
There was some applause and a lot of blank stares, some at me and some in whatever directions people had been pointed. Not-Esther left the room and I leapt up, put on my best Mister Mystery smile, and said, “Hey, everybody—I know why you’re here—because you believe in . . .” Then I took the pause, just as I’d planned, pulled out the feather flowers, and said, “. . . magic!”
The woman who liked singing applauded.
“Of course, I can’t do magic by myself, even today, the most magical of days—the eighth night of Khanukkah! So I brought a helper along with me—Maccabee the rabbit!” I held up the box. They were supposed to call out “It’s empty!” but no one said anything. I pretended to frown. “Of
course, being a magic rabbit, Maccabee’s invisible. What do you think—would you like to see him?”
Usually, when I do this for kids, they call out “Yes!” But everyone just stared at me. I figured that maybe they hadn’t heard, so I said it louder, and slower, enunciating like I do for my mother.
“I said, would you like to meet Maccabee the magical rabbit?”
They still didn’t respond and I wasn’t going to try a third time. I plowed on. “To make Maccabee appear, we’ll need to say the magic words, ‘Nes Gadol Haya Sham!’ which means, as you all know, ‘A Great Miracle Happened There!’” Still silence, except for the TV, where the woman who had been talking to the doctor was now crying about something. “Let’s all say it together, shall we? Nes Gadol . . .”
The box was dripping. A puddle was forming on the stage.
“Attendant!” called Doris, in the front row. “Someone had an accident—you’d better clean it up!”
I pulled the lever and Herrmann appeared, sopping wet, looking none too happy as I lifted her up. “No problem—I’ve got it,” I said, looking for something to wipe my hands on, and ended up using the Twentieth-Century Silks. So much for that trick.
But does a great magician get thrown off when there’s a problem? No way. I thought of Mister Mystery—and Houdini. What would they do? Improvise. Like the time Houdini was chained up inside a trunk, then lowered into a hole cut into the ice of a frozen Lake Michigan. He managed to escape from the trunk, no problem, but the current was so strong that he drifted, and couldn’t find the opening. Did he panic? No. He floated up to the surface and found a pocket of air between the water and ice, which let him breathe until he finally found the hole.
“Well, that’s too bad—but we’re not going to let Maccabee’s little accident put out the Hanukah lights, are we? Of course not! Especially when we have . . . the Bottomless Oil Jug!”
Dreidels on the Brain Page 19