She's Not There

by Jennifer Finney Boylan

  Thank you for your interest in the space program.

  Cordially,

  Winfield Hooker

  Associate Administrator for Space Flight

  The Death of Houdini (Late Summer 2002)

  We headed over to the Magic Shop, the four of us, Grace, me, Luke, and Patrick. Luke was reading a book about Houdini. “Boy, I’d like to do some of these tricks,” he said from the backseat. “Do we have a trunk, Maddy?”

  “A trunk?” I said. I was looking out the window at the Boston suburbs. We were down for the weekend, visiting friends in Arlington.

  “He tied himself up, then got locked in a trunk, and they threw it into the ocean. He was free in less than one minute.”

  “Luke,” Grace said from behind the wheel, “you’re not tying yourself up, okay?”

  “It’s just a trick,” Luke said.

  “I would throw you in the ocean,” Patrick said to his brother.

  “Houdini could hold his breath for five minutes.”

  “How long can you hold your breath for, Luke?” said the six-year-old.

  Luke huffed and puffed, then held his breath.

  “Ah, peace at last,” muttered Patrick.

  We drove through Somerville, looking for the Magic Shop. I was wearing a blue skirt and a white T-shirt. Grace had on blue jeans and a turtleneck.

  I looked over at her. Grace had always been the driver on family trips; she loved driving as much as I loved playing the piano. She had a number of superpowers as a driver, too, including 1) the ability to talk her way out of any ticket, and 2) the ability to parallel park in virtually any space.

  Her face was still the face of the woman James had married in 1988, her eyes bright, her forehead crinkled with lines that seemed to come from equal measures wisdom, grief, and humor. Small star-and-moon earrings swung from her earlobes. I reached out for her and touched her elbow.

  She quickly pulled her arm away. “Don’t,” she said, irritated. “Just don’t.”

  I looked out the window, saddened.

  Luke, in the backseat, started making suffocating noises.

  Grace glanced over at me. “Remember our rule for this trip, Jenny?”

  “Which rule?”

  “No pouting.”

  “I’m not pouting.”

  She looked at me and smiled. “The hell you’re not.”

  “It’s just . . . ,” I said. “You shouldn’t snap at me when I’m trying to comfort you.”

  Grace looked back at the road. Her face darkened. She didn’t say anything for a while. “There isn’t any ‘should,’” she said.

  “Paahh!” shouted Luke, gasping for breath. “How long was that?”

  “Okay,” I said to Grace. “I know.”

  “Maddy,” said Luke, “how long was that?”

  “How long was what?”

  “How long did I hold my breath for?”

  “I don’t know, Luke,” I said softly. “Was I supposed to be timing you?”

  “Oh, man,” said the eight-year-old. “That’s the whole point? Timing me?”

  “I’ll throw you in the ocean, Luke,” Patrick said again, softly.

  “Where is this place?” Grace said, checking the street numbers. “It’s supposed to be right here.”

  “Maybe it disappeared,” said Patrick. “Get it? Disappeared? Magic Shop? Disappeared?”

  “That’s very funny, Paddy,” I said. “Both of you are very funny.”

  “You take after Maddy, Luke,” Grace said. She didn’t sound happy about it.

  I had often thought this about my boys, particularly Luke, who in so many ways struck me as Jim without tears. On some level it took some of the sting out of my sense that I had stolen James out of the world, knowing that Luke was still in it. Yet Luke will be himself, not some nether-version of myself, and any adult who looks to her children to redress the losses of her own life should probably get out of the parenting business for good.

  “Yeah,” said Luke. “I’m just not going to be a girl, that’s all.”

  I spun around. “You know that, right?” I said. “What happened to me is not going to happen to you.”

  Luke rolled his eyes. “I know,” he said, and opened his Houdini book again.

  “It’s a very rare thing,” I said. “Boys turning into girls. It can’t happen unless you want it to. You both know that?”

  Patrick looked out the window and didn’t say anything.

  “Both of you know you can always talk about this, right?” said Grace. “It’s okay to talk about. It’s a hard thing for some people to get used to.”

  “I got used to it,” said Luke.

  “Tell me something, Luke. Don’t you ever feel bad, not having a daddy like the other kids?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I know it’s not easy, having me for a parent.”

  “I don’t mind,” he said. “I like you this way.”

  He unbuckled his seat belt and climbed into my lap and hugged me. “I love you, Maddy,” he said.

  “Luke,” said Grace, “can you get back in your seat, please?”

  Then he snuggled over into Grace’s lap and hugged her. “Lukey,” she said,“I’m glad you’re such a loving boy. It’s a wonderful thing. But when we’re driving I need for you to be in your seat with the seat belt buckled.”

  “Okay,” said Luke, and climbed back into his seat. We heard the snap of the buckle clicking into place.

  “Why don’t you hold your breath again, Luke?” Patrick said.

  “You know how Houdini died, Maddy?” said Luke. “He got punched.”

  “You can’t die from punching,” said Patrick.

  “Can so,” said Luke. “Look.” He pointed to a picture in his book, in which Houdini was falling to the floor, clutching his stomach. “These guys came up to him and asked him if it was true that people could really punch him as hard as they could without it hurting him, and he said it was true, and just like that they punched him and he fell onto the floor and died a couple days after that.”

  “Boys?” said Grace. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to go to this Magic Store. It’s not where it’s supposed to be.” She looked at me. “The street numbers around here make no sense.”

  “Then you know what, Maddy?”

  “I see a digger,” said Patrick.

  “What number are we looking for?”

  “Maddy, you know what?”

  “Eighty-seven. But it goes straight from seventy-two to ninety.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Maddy.”

  “What is it, Luke, what?”

  “You know what Houdini said to his wife, to Mrs. Houdini?”

  “What, honey?”

  “He said that if there was such a thing as life after death, that he’d come back from the dead as a ghost and talk to her.”

  Patrick began to speak like Dracula. “I am the haunted voice!” he said.

  “What should we do?” I said to Grace. “Should we just go home?”

  She looked at me, her jaw set. “You know I don’t give up easy,” she said, and I knew she wasn’t talking about the Magic Shop anymore.

  I nodded. “I know that, Grace.”

  She drove around the block again.

  “So Maddy, guess what. They all had this thing, a seense—”

  “A say-ance,” I said. “It’s pronounced séance.”

  “A say-onns. And they like, waited for Houdini to come back? And they waited, and waited, but he never showed up?”

  “I am the haunted voice!”

  “But then, a little bit later, his wife claimed that she got this one word from him. It came to her in a secret code.”

  “There it is, across the street,” Grace said triumphantly. “I get it. The numbers switch from odd to even here.”

  “What was the word, Luke?”

  Grace parallel parked the minivan effortlessly, wedging us between two rental trucks.
/>   “The word was believe,” said Luke.

  “Believe what?” said Grace, shutting off the engine.

  “I don’t know,” said Luke. “Just believe.”

  “I am the haunted voice!” said Patrick.

  “Come on, haunted voices,” said Grace, opening the door. “Let’s check this place out.”

  We walked into the Magic Shop, which felt like a movie set. There were posters from the 1930s on the walls, framed autographed photos of famous magicians. Expensive kits for various tricks lay in glass display cases. Every square inch of the store was covered with tricks, top hats, hand-painted vaudeville signs. A young man in a muscle T-shirt stood behind the counter.

  “Good morning,” he said. He was a strong young thing; he looked like Sylvester Stallone in the first Rocky movie. Not exactly the magician type. “And what do we have here?”

  “Two young magicians,” I said.

  “Luke’s reading about Houdini,” said Grace.

  The magician looked reverential. “The greatest escape artist of all time.”

  “He came back from the dead,” Luke commented.

  The magician looked concerned. “Well, no one knows about that, do they?”

  I cleared my throat. “We’re looking for some simple tricks the boys can learn.”

  “Excellent,” said the magician. He pulled out a deck of cards, fanned them before our eyes. “Pick a card,” he said. “Any card.”

  Luke picked out the six of diamonds.

  “Don’t show me the card,” said the magician. “Put it back in the deck.” Luke slid it into the middle of the pile. Then the magician shuffled the cards. He had Patrick cut the deck. Then he pulled the six of diamonds off the top. “Was this your card?”

  Luke smiled. “Wow. How’d you do that?”

  “It’s a special deck,” the magician said. He turned the cards over. They were all sixes of diamonds.

  “That’s nine ninety-five,” he said. “Then we have the levitating rope.” He put a length of rope in a small vase. He had Luke pull on it to show it could move freely. Then he waved his hands over the vase.

  “Presto change-o,” he said.

  Grace looked over at me.

  He turned the vase upside down. The rope hung there, suspended in space.

  Luke smiled. Patrick had already lost interest and was now exploring the rest of the store. He was gazing down a corridor at the back of the shop. Voices echoed from down the hall.

  “There’s a small ball in the bottom of the vase,” explained Rocky. “When you turn the vase upside down, it traps the rope.” He put this on the counter next to the trick card deck. “That’s six ninety-five.”

  “Luke,” Patrick whispered. He looked frightened by the thing he saw. He ushered Luke toward him with his hand. “C’mere.”

  Luke walked toward his brother. The two of them looked down the long hallway toward the distant voices in the next room. I caught snatches of conversation. It sounded like two old magicians talking, a man and a woman.

  “Boys,” Grace said. “Come here.” They didn’t.

  “Now this one is very popular,” said the magician. He stuffed a violet silk handkerchief into one hand. He waved his hand over his fist, then opened it. The handkerchief was gone. Then he closed his fist again, waved his hand. The handkerchief reappeared.

  “Wow,” I said. “I like that one.”

  Grace went over to where the boys were standing. The magician looked after her. “You two sisters?” he said to me. It took a moment for me to realize what he was talking about.

  “Yes,” I said. “We’re sisters.” I looked at Grace and the boys. The three of them stared down the hallway. A look of surprise crossed Grace’s face, as if she were seeing something she had neither expected, nor desired, to see. She took a step forward, holding the children’s hands, and vanished down the corridor.

  “I thought you was sisters,” said Rocky. He looked at the wedding ring on my finger, the ring given to me by my mother.

  “You want to know the secret?” Rocky said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I want to know the secret.” I wasn’t sure what we were talking about now. Rocky leaned in very close to me. It felt like a strangely intimate moment.

  “Plastic thumb,” the magician said, placing a skin-colored fake thumb on the counter. “You stuff the handkerchief in here, then when you pull your thumb out of your fist, no one sees the thumb, they just see that the handkerchief is gone.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I like that one. I think that’s great! A fake thumb!”

  “Four ninety-five,” said the magician. “A classic. The hanky’s not included.” He got out a box from behind the counter. “Then there’s the disappearing egg.” The magician put the egg cup on the countertop, put a small ovoid sphere into it.

  “Whoa,” I said. “I remember this one! The disappearing egg! I used to have this when I was a kid! I could never get it to work, though.” I thought about Gammie and Hilda Watson and Aunt Nora, about the day I had stood below the boardwalk and looked at the rising sea and prayed that my life would be changed by the redeeming powers of love. I thought about Houdini, sending his wife a coded message from the place he had gone to. Believe.

  “Hey, Grace,” I said. “Look at this! The disappearing egg! I had this when I was a kid!” I looked over in the direction where Grace had been.

  But my wife wasn’t there anymore.

  The New Equator

  Trudy killed herself on Thanksgiving. She’d spent the day eating turkey and stuffing and sweet potato puff with her family, told her parents that she loved them, then went back to her apartment and threw a noose over one of the rafters. Apparently this was more efficient, when the time came, than helium.

  She never got Gonzo’s Wild Ride, either.

  I don’t know. Maybe they have vending machines where she is now.

  I knew a guy at Wesleyan named Huang who manufactured his own LSD in the chemistry laboratory. It was sad. Chemistry wasn’t his major.

  Things went from bad to worse. One day he showed up at my dorm room pulling a little red wagon. My guess was he’d stolen it from a child.

  The wagon was packed full of books. A change of clothes. “The new ice age is coming, man,” he told me in a thin, wavering voice. “The poles have come off center. All the magnetism is out of control.”

  Huang leaned forward. “I wanted to tell you in advance, man. I’m only letting a couple people in on it. The people who deserve to survive. Before the new ice caps start forming.”

  “Well, thanks, Huang,” I said. “You’re nice to include me.”

  “Of course I’m including you, Boylan,” he said. “I mean, the eyes I’ve got now—I can see into people.”

  Then, as if to demonstrate, he looked into me with his X-ray vision. It was a little bit frightening for both of us. “Whoa,” he said as he riffled through my interior.

  “What?” I said nervously. “What do you see?”

  “Boylan,” he said pityingly, “I never knew.”

  “What?” I said. “What?”

  He reached out for my hand. “It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry. It’s not the worst thing in the world. Having secrets.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I asked him if he was all right.

  Huang looked at me as if I were insane. “Of course I’m all right, man. Aren’t you listening? I’m giving you a chance.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Get everything you want to last. Go up in the graveyard. It’ll be all right there.”

  “The graveyard?” I said. There was this big eighteenth-century graveyard near the college. “What’s going on there?”

  “Well, you’ll be fine there, man,” he said as if I were an idiot. “That’s going to be the new equator.”

  From: “Jenny Boylan”

  To: “Russo”

  Dear Russo:

  I was thinking earlier today abo
ut how you have had to prove your love for me, or some such damn thing, in this last year or two. I am, of course, inexpressibly grateful.

  The thing is, though, that you know that if our positions were reversed, somehow—that I would be there, just as you were, when you needed me.

  I guess what I’m observing is that of the two of us, only you have had to actually answer the summons. That you did, under such tough circumstances, is something I will be considering the rest of my life. But that I have not had the opportunity to do the same for you leaves me, in equal measures, both thankful and restless— deprived, on some weird level, of the opportunity to show you I wasn’t goddamn kidding, either, when I said I was your friend.

  I am also aware that since you were on MacNeil/Lehrer tonight, this e-mail will be buried along with about eight million other good wishes, and people asking for a piece of you. Which is as it should be, I guess.

  I love ya, big dummy.

  J

  From: “Russo”

  To: “Jenny Boylan”

  Boylan—

  I have always known, and never doubted, that if I called you’d be right there. I had no idea you’d show up in heels, but that’s hardly the point, is it? Remember that early scene in The Godfather? “The day may come when I will require a service, but until that day . . .”

  Yours is the first message about Lehrer, actually. I’d heard it was going to be on, but I’m far too squeamish.

  Anxious to see you and Grace on Friday.

  R

  One morning toward the end of transition, I was in a pickup truck, driving toward Ithaca, New York, with Grace’s brother,Tex. We drove past a graveyard, an old one. That cemetery got me thinking. I remembered the night I’d walked through the pitch dark with Russo, the sound of the ocean coming all muffled through the trees. Then I told Tex the story of seeing my father’s ghost, when he’d stood by my bedside and spoken my name for the first time.

  “Wait a minute,” said Tex. “What was that your daddy said to you, in this dream you had?”

  “My father said he wasn’t going to look out for me anymore. If I became a woman, that is. I was so annoyed with him.”