The Illusionist (27 page)

We drove on north up along the Thruway. The traffic was mostly trucks now, the beam of headlights filling my rearview window though it was finally daylight out.

A sixteen-wheeler swept past my car, washing it with snow and ice, the boom of its wind pushing my car out toward the median.

“You okay?” asked Mrs. Saluggio. “You're a good driver,” she said, encouragingly, knowing her life was in my hands.

“I'm okay.” I'd been driving since I was seventeen.

“You didn't have any breakfast,” she said to Melanie.

“No.” Melanie's teeth were clenched.

“I'd give anything for a cup of coffee,” Mrs. Saluggio said.

“They'll probably have some there, after the funeral,” I said.

“They must be just shocked at the Home,” Mrs. Saluggio said, “about Terry Kluge and her boy.”

*  *  *

North, north, past Manorville. Then Lima, West Lima, Manatock, Florence, Delos, Thrace. All those classical names. What did the people have in mind when they named these towns? The ministers who led the settlers must have had a classical education, knew their Latin and Greek, and in the New World they must have had a longing for it, so they named these towns to remember the past by, their schools, all their learning, the Old World.

Gradually the landscape changed. It was more deserted, the hills steeper, there were fewer stretches of flat land. The houses seemed sparer, with raw siding, gray with age, the light here thinner and blue.

I saw the sign for St. Pierre and I turned off onto the exit. The mountains seemed to loom closer to the road here than in the southern part of the state. We were in a narrow valley now. We came to a scattering of houses, passed a gas station, a diner. And then I saw a sign with gothic lettering, Picavet Funeral Home, and a low white wood building, the lights on inside the windows though it was late morning, the parking lot filled with cars.

*  *  *

Inside, the funeral home was packed. People were sitting on metal chairs. All dressed up and clean, the men in shirts without ties, the women wearing dresses.

As you entered, your eyes went right to the coffin, which seemed almost to fill the room.

Melanie saw it first, screamed, and ran to it, before Mrs. Saluggio or I could stop her.

Inside the open coffin was Dean, lying with his hands clasped over his chest. His cowboy hat rested across the top of his head, as if to hide the wounds there. He had been shot in the back of the head, but the bullets must have gone through and damaged the front of the skull. You could just see the full lips underneath the brim of the hat.

A silk comforter covered his body up to his waist. But then, the weird thing, Dean was wearing a girl's blouse. It was a white, silky material with a V neck and a seam along the breasts, and long sleeves. You could see the little bumps where his breasts were. A little gold cross rested on his chest.

It was if someone had twisted the lens on the camera, and brought him into a new focus and suddenly he was a girl, a thin girl who went to church. It was as if in the end they had won. They had snatched his body, made it theirs only. I closed my eyes for a moment, and imagined his tears and rage if he had known this, that they would dress him like a girl at his funeral. They had taken possession of him, made him what the little town thought he should be. In the end, he had lost the battle. Only she was wearing this weird cowboy hat. A concession, maybe, to what he had loved in life.

“Deeean!” Melanie flung herself on Dean's feet, her sobs tore the air. People were staring, Mrs. Saluggio gripped her arms, trying to pull her away. And all around, the strangers watched stiffly. To them, Melanie was just one more weird thing about Dean.

In the front row right next to the coffin, Dean's parents sat.
The father was slender, youthful looking, with a wide handlebar mustache that looked like it was waxed or something, his hair freshly slicked down. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, though it was winter. Next to him sat a tall, pale, skinny youth, the brother. Raymond. Miserable-looking and embarrassed, a beanpole of a kid. The two of them, father and son, leaned forward in their chairs, hands hanging awkwardly between their legs.

And then, next to the father, the mother, dark curly hair, full, soft body, wide breasts, shiny glasses, biting her lip, staring at the coffin. In her lap she held a photograph in a silver frame, and she kept raising it and looking from the picture to the figure in the coffin, as if comparing the two images.

Melanie had noticed the mother and with a moan, she broke free from Mrs. Saluggio and hurled herself across the room to where she sat. Suddenly Melanie, with her soiled sweatshirt, was on her knees at the woman's feet, her hands on the woman's lap. The mother looked down at her, not moving, bewildered.

“You're Dean's mother!” cried Melanie. “Dean and I were together!”

The woman's eyes gleaming behind her glasses. She dabbed at her cheeks with a Kleenex.

Mrs. Saluggio was standing over both of them now. “We're so sorry,” Mrs. Saluggio was saying in her melodious voice. “I can't tell you. As one mother to another . . .”

“I was his girlfriend,” Melanie said to the mother. People had stopped talking completely now and were listening.

The mother looked down at the framed photo on her lap as if for confirmation. I moved closer and looked down over her shoulder at the picture. It was a picture of a girl, eight or nine years old, a girl with a wide smile and pigtails sticking out on either side of her face and one front tooth missing. The pigtails were tied with a ribbon and the little girl was wearing a dress with a floral print and an eyelet collar.

You could see in the photograph the beginnings of Dean's face,
the shadow of emerging cheekbones, the adult bones forming in the girl's face and starting to harden, you could see the full lips, the almond-shaped eyes. A happy child.

“That's him!” Melanie cried, and she snatched the picture from the mother and stared into it while the woman watched her, as if in a daze.

“Oh my god!” Melanie cried at the picture. “That's him!” She was on her knees, clutching the photo to her breast with both hands as if it were him, then holding it out in front of her and scrutinizing it avidly. Melanie looked up at Dean's mother. “Can I have this, please?” she asked. “Please? Do you have another one?”

The mother's eyebrows creased. “You knew her?” she asked.

“Yes!” cried Melanie. “And he loved me—he loved me more than anyone!”

Winter was deep-set now. It was never full daylight anymore, the sun seemed never really to rise. You got up in the morning and it was dark out, and at the end of the workday when you came outside it was dark again. Like that story in the Greek myths of the beautiful girl who is sent underground every year to live with her husband, Hades, and the whole world darkens in mourning for her and all light vanishes until spring. In the sky beyond the river you could sometimes see a glimmer of light along the mountaintops on the horizon, as if behind the mountains there was a warm, light place where the sun whirled at the proper angle to shine upon the earth. But in our county it was mostly darkness and people huddled in coats and scarves looking downward as they passed one another in the street, and the only warmth was the light from people's homes, the golden light from windows that signified there was life continuing within.

After all the funerals, I returned to work at the Nightingale Home. I kept going to my classes at the college. My first-semester grades that year were all A's, and in February, I went to the college advisement office and looked through the brochures for four-year schools. The counselor said I would be eligible for money if my dad filled out an affidavit saying I was “emancipated”; then I could get TAP and PELL grants.

The brochure for Caledonia seemed like the best. Caledonia
was a branch of the State University, up north. The pictures on the brochure showed old red brick buildings with bell towers and columns from when it was Caledonia Normal School. There was a big new library with dark glass windows, and behind that, a hilly, wooded campus.

The college had rolling admissions, which meant you could apply year-round. I filled out the forms, and within only a couple of weeks, I heard back from them, accepting me for next fall. I'd major in English, I decided, and then I'd teach school. In some warm place, I thought, maybe in the South, where it was always warm, a location with a growing population where they needed teachers.

Meanwhile, through Student Services at the college I got a job as a summer replacement in the Caledonia library stacking books, and they said I could start right after Memorial Day, which meant I could quit the Nightingale Home in May and leave town. They also found me a room, which I rented sight unseen, from some old lady who let to students. The woman told me over the phone that the room was on the top floor of her house, which was right opposite the library where I would work.

So all winter long, I saved everything I could from my paycheck. And when Carl found out I was saving for school, he started giving me free beer at the Wooden Nickel.

That April, they had Brian Perez's trial at the courthouse, and people went just to watch the proceedings as if it were a movie or something. Some local writer was even doing a book about the murders. The trial lasted only three weeks. They gave Brian life for the murders, and Jimmy got a reduced sentence in the rape case for testifying against Brian.

At the Rape Crisis Center on Washington Street, as a response to the tragedy, they began holding regular workshops on rape and gay awareness. The antique dealers on Washington Street really supported the workshops, and there were signs all over town advertising them.

*  *  *

Gradually, winter began to recede from the county. At first it was just that the snow stopped, and the rain washed what was left away and you looked up at the trees and you saw that the buds on the branches had suddenly swelled. And while the earth waited, along the roadways you'd glimpse here and there amid the sparse branches a shad tree feathered in tiny white blossoms, life emerging while all the trees around it were still dark and bare.

And then, just as you had hope, had thought spring had finally come, there would be biting rain and cold again, followed suddenly by a day of bright sunlight, and hearty souls, men in their T-shirts as they unloaded their trucks or dug ditches by the roadside, and you'd even felt a little sticky from the heat. And then slowly, the green washed across the county, as if someone was coloring the earth with a paintbrush, and soon the days were bright and filled with promise and the evenings were warm and alive.

In springtime in Sparta, you are reminded of when it was a real city. There is life on the streets, people sitting in the shadows of their front porches watching the cars go by, kids allowed to stay up late playing on the sidewalk. You would almost think Sparta was a viable city then, instead of a place where once there had been a thread mill, and a ball bearing factory, and a cord and tassel factory, and now down by the river there were only the shells of buildings covered in ivy and bindweed. There is a sweetness in the air in Sparta then, the fragrance of new leaf flesh, the soft breath of the river rising from its banks and filling the streets of the city.

On the last Thursday in May, I drove over and said good-bye to my dad and mom. My dad gave me big hug and a check for $250, and then he turned away to play with Fletcher and Timmy, who were fighting on the floor while I was trying to talk to him. He was trying to be a real father to Liz's brats. It was as if my dad had this faint memory of what it was like to be a father to me—Chrissie—and felt guilty because he had gotten it only half right then. Now he wanted to do it really right with those two. He was even coaching the boys' Little League team. He must've always wanted a
son, I thought. And his love for Liz was so great that he was able to take on those two, even though they were not his own. If I'd been a boy, I wondered, would he have still left us?

At my mom's house, my mom was now linked tenaciously to Mason. Her eyes never left him; she watched him warily at all times, anxious and tense. And she talked less and less these days in his presence. Mason did the talking for both of them now. No matter what happened, I felt like a guest in both homes.

Friday, my final day of work at the Nightingale Home, they held a good-bye party for me. There was a big square cake with “Good Luck, Chrissie” written across it and Kool Aid and music—music for the patients, like “Good Night, Irene,” and “Tennessee Waltz.” Some of the residents actually danced, and those who were in wheelchairs joined hands and swung their arms together and clapped and tapped their feet. And even the really senile ones, the ones who were totally into themselves, like Mr. Ford, who probably didn't even understand that I was leaving, were smiling. For some of the clients, those old songs were almost the music of their youth.

Terry's murder had bewildered them, and they had sent in grief counselors to talk to the patients. My going-away party was really the first happy occasion since that bad time. At the party, Mr. Hanley stood up and said, “I'd like to offer a toast to Chrissie on her new life. And let's take a few minutes to remember our dear friend, Terry, who was taken from us far too soon.”

The residents and workers bowed their heads, though some of the residents looked a little confused. Then after thirty seconds it was over, and time for more music.

B.J. stood up and sang “My Girl,” and “Since I Lost My Baby” a capella and everybody sat there listening without moving because B.J.'s voice was so sweet and unexpected and it almost made you want to cry. Afterward, while people applauded, B.J. mopped his face with his handkerchief and said he used to have a group in the Bronx where he grew up, and they did real street-corner stuff, singing at weddings and birthday parties.