The Illusionist (5 page)

“She was upset.”

“Ummm.”

“She said she was looking for you. She said you'd been with her, and then you left, and you stole from her.”

He rolled over on his back, flung his arm across his face.

“Do you know who it was?” I asked.

“No . . . But I gotta go to sleep now.”

“She said she had a little daughter.”

“Cindy,” he said, his arm still flung over his eyes.

“Did you steal her money?”

“Of course not. She's just pissed, that's all, 'cause I left her.”

“Why'd you leave her?”

“Too old.”

“Too old?”

“Yeah—she was a wo-man!” he said, emphasizing the word.

I stood in my flannel nightie by the door, waiting for him to say something else. Then I said, “You wouldn't steal from me ever, would you?”

He rolled over on his side, and pulled the edges of the sleeping bag up under his chin. “Oh for heaven's sake,” he said. “You know I wouldn't do that, Chrissie! . . . Please, Chrissie, I gotta go to sleep now.”

It was deepening November now, the sky was thinning, a watery gray. The trees were all stripped of their leaves, bent in the wind; weather to pull your collar up around your neck for.

It was as if Dean could read people's minds. It was as if now, since the woman's call, Dean could sense some doubt in the air, in me. He started trying to do me favors. He bought flowers for the apartment, which I had to stick in an empty milk carton because I didn't have a vase. He even bought me a book, a paperback,
Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry,
something he'd picked up at a tag sale or something. (He, of course, never read a book himself.) I didn't tell him I already had the book for Lit-Comp II.

During the week that November, I went to work as usual at the Nightingale Home. The Home was in a brick building high up on a rise overlooking the town and the river down below. I was a nurse's aide there. I liked the job, though the smells, of urine, of dentures, of disinfectant, hung over the place constantly. And sometimes the bodies of the old people, the crinkly lizard skin of their hands with the liver spots, frightened me. But when I read to them, they would put their faces up to me like children. They would clutch my hand with theirs, and the warmth of their skin would permeate mine and would comfort me. They called me “sweetheart” and “darling” and they would tell me stories of the old days in Sparta, when people had jobs, when all the mills and
the cement plants along the river were running. When the place was a real town, with churches not abandoned, and Sunday worshipers strolling the streets on a spring morning full of hope because there was a future, with possibilities, for the young.

My supervisor at the Home was Terry Kluge. Terry was tall, a couple years ahead of me in school, gangly like a colt. Terry did nothing with herself, wore her slate brown hair straight, wore thick, froggy glasses with flesh-colored frames. Yet I found Terry beautiful, her hazel eyes, her clear skin devoid of makeup, even her big nose, which was always red from the cold. Terry had high full breasts, and she stooped a little to make herself seem less tall. She wore thick-soled shoes, and granny cardigans.

Terry fascinated me. I was in some way deeply curious about her. I found Terry beautiful because she was so pure and so straight and so honorable. But sometimes I hated her too, for being so responsible. I resented her because she could tell me what to do, give me orders, even though she was close to me in age. If I were just a couple of minutes late, Terry would reprimand me. She was always watching me, making me do my job, follow the rules. Once when I had my coworker B.J. punch in for me because I had a hangover and wanted to sleep late, Terry yelled at me and told me that next time she'd tell Mr. Hanley and we would both get fired. “That's stealing, Chrissie,” she said. “That's theft. You took money from the Home.”

“What do you mean ‘stealing'?”

“You took money that wasn't yours.” When she said the words I could feel it in the back of my head, my hair seemed to rise up. She made me so ashamed that day I felt the tears sting my eyes. I hated the rightness of her words, the truth.

*  *  *

One morning in November, Terry said, “Chrissie, I need to ask you a favor. My dad had to use my car today to take Bobby to the doctor, and I wonder if you could give me a ride home.”

I knew Terry hated to ask me for a favor because she was my
boss—Terry was very proper. But I said yes, I could help her out. I explained that my roommate Dean was picking me up because my car was in for inspection, but I thought he'd drive her home.

At noon I called Dean, and since he was in the mood for doing favors, he said yes, he would.

At four-ten promptly, Terry was waiting for me outside on the white-columned porch. There was a raw, wet wind sweeping in from the river. She was all bundled up in her navy wool coat, the sleeves too short for her long arms, and her gray scarf tied around her head as if she didn't care whether she looked old-fashioned or not, or like somebody's grandmother.

Terry was raising her child by herself. The father was Eddie Lasko, Coach Lasko's son. Eddie was a big football star when we were in high school and Terry and Eddie'd been together since ninth grade. They never married.

Then, last summer, when the baby was only two years old, Eddie left her. Couldn't take the responsibility, he said. The boy had asthma, and Terry's dad took care of him during the day while she worked. They lived way out in the countryside, in West Taponac.

Now, in the shelter of the porch, Terry and I waited side by side for Dean, Terry sniffing in the cold, her prominent nose bright red, both of us stomping our feet to keep warm, not talking because it was too freezing. Because she was my boss, she was holding herself a little away from me.

The Nightingale Home looked out across the river, and you could see on the other shore the tall towers of the cement plant spewing thin columns of steam, which thickened into a permanent cloud in the sky. It was the last working cement plant in the region. And the sound of it was with you always, wherever you went in the town, a low rumble, a steady, clanking beat of machinery echoing through the river valley. If you grew up in Sparta, the sound of the cement plant was part of your consciousness, it was like your breathing, you ceased, after a while, to even notice it. And if the sound had stopped, it would have been like the
cessation of a heartbeat. It would have been as if there was suddenly no more life left in the river valley.

Then I saw Dean's red Dodge truck pull in and curve around the elliptical driveway. He stopped in front of the porch, reached over, rolled his window down. Looked from me to Terry with a smile, a question in his eyes, and I made the introductions. “Terry,” I said. “Dean.”

Terry, serious at all times, in a hurry, stepped toward the car. And then she stopped and met Dean's eyes.

Funny, seeing Terry's coolness disappear. I saw her eyes lock on him, in spite of herself. The curiosity at first, I thought—yes, what
was
he? And then—something else . . . and I smiled inside myself.

Dean shot her that quick smile, that flirtatious look you couldn't resist. I saw Terry catch herself, then she looked away.

“Dean,” he said, and he held out his hand.

It was curiosity, I thought, that always drew them to him.

As we climbed in the truck, he swept his hand across the floor, and moved aside all the junk, the empty cans of Mountain Dew, the Skittles bags.

I sat in the seat next to Dean, between him and Terry. Terry, by the window, folded herself practically in half, bending her long thin legs up close to her body so she could fit inside the front of the truck. Terry's awkwardness was sweet.

“My dad had to use my car to take my son to the doctor,” Terry said, nervously, though no one had asked, and I had already explained this to Dean.

Seeing Terry nervous made me happy.

He drove the truck down the driveway that curved around the home. We passed the hospital, and the beige stucco house on Noland with the big willow tree and the plaque in front of it saying the Queen of Greece had visited there once in 1959 on her American tour. Actually, they said, the queen had really stopped at the house just to go to the bathroom.

We passed the Fireman's Home, and the park and the Kiwanis
Olympic Torch Memorial. In the park, the Christmas Village was set up permanently, the little wooden houses on the green that only a child could enter, a train that went 'round and 'round. My mom and dad both said the town had had the Christmas Village when they were little kids.

Terry was huddled against the door of the truck, gripping the dashboard so she wouldn't fall against us. Every now and then, I'd catch her glancing at Dean. Couldn't help herself, I thought—they never could. It was so funny, I thought, to see Terry unhinged because of Dean.

Aug. 23. Eddie has gone and we are all alone now in the middle of nowhere xxxx there is this silence xxx nothing, no way to eat my body shocked. When you have seen the worst and you have survived and you realize that you are still alive . . . I called Dad and he came right over and he's going to help us. . . . I feel like I am getting flu or sick after the crying.

—Excerpt from the diary of Terry Kluge

As we drove along in Dean's truck, he sat at the wheel, staring out at the road ahead, slender and slight. I noticed the soft flesh of his neck above the rim of his collar, so vulnerable there, the tender curve of his flesh, made me want to put my tongue on it. I noticed he had high cheekbones, delicate bones. The little smile on his face, like he knew he was cute, and was in charge of the situation.

I wondered about where Chrissie found him. Something so clean and perfect about the curve of his full lips. His features so fine, different from the other guys around here, like he was an aristocrat or something.

I couldn't help myself, kept looking at him, hoping he wouldn't catch me. I couldn't wait for Chrissie to leave. I knew he and Chrissie couldn't be lovers. Chrissie just wasn't the type somehow. She held herself in, away from that. Chrissie always had guys
as friends. He was waiting for her to leave too, I could tell. I knew it from that sly little smile of his.

When we got to Chrissie's place she looked quickly from one to the other of us, and then couldn't get out of the truck fast enough, climbing over me to reach the door. Like she had set us up, and could sense it had taken. She ran across the sidewalk to the front door of her building, not even looking back at us. It's funny how people cooperate when it comes to love and sex, I thought.

As we pulled way from the curb, I sat as far away from Dean as I could, next to the passenger door of the truck, so that I was leaning against it, almost falling out. We bumped along saying nothing. The truck needed new shocks, and I gripped the door handle to stop myself from sliding toward him.

Dean said nothing. He reached forward and put a tape in the deck to fill the silence.
This wild heart, it beats for you, baby, my heart in a storm, beats for you, babe-e. . . .
And he bumped his body up and down to the music, tapping his fingertips on the steering wheel.

It was cold in the truck. Heater must be broken too. I dug my nails into the palms of my hands, like knives, until my flesh hurt. Always did that when I was nervous—a secret way of being terrified so no one could see you.

We passed through the outskirts of Sparta. Up on the hill was the prison warden's white mansion. Below the big house were the outlying buildings of the prison, board and batten with gingerbread trim, a black wrought iron fence running along the perimeter of the prison farm. The little gray clapboard houses for the guards and their families. The prison itself was hidden down below in the valley, at the end of a long drive.

Behind a chain link fence were the abandoned cement factory, the lifeless silos, big asphalt yard filled with weeds poking up through the cracks. Next, the old stone tollhouse with the windows bricked up. Some local artist had painted scenes in the
windows, to make it look as if there were life there—an old woman knitting in a rocking chair in front of a glowing fire.

Across from the tollhouse, the Sparta Utility plant, fuel tanks and giant transformers enclosed by a high wire fence. Right under the fuel tanks, that strange blue house, too vivid a blue for the usual color of a house, and peeling all over, the white showing underneath. The occupants must have bought the paint cheap somewhere, then painted it themselves.

Down below, to our right, was the river, a ribbon of water running through the valley between high cliffs.

We were on Old 27 now. There were wooden farmhouses, red barns. The abandoned Carvel's, Minter's vegetable stand, closed up for winter. Gradually, the town gave way to fields, dried stalks of harvested corn sticking up from the gray earth. This was when the county was ugliest, I thought, when the ground was waiting for the first snow. It was as if the ground were pregnant, like a woman is when she's first pregnant, when she is ugly and exhausted, and has morning sickness, before she becomes beautiful. I always thought in terms of pregnancy then, because of Bobby.

It had been a long time since I'd had sex. Months, since that night last summer when Eddie had lain on me, our bodies dripping wet from the heat, sticking together, Bobby asleep in the other room, his little body covered with sweat too, all of us too hot. It was so hot, the windows were all sealed up because Mr. Jukowsky painted them shut, there was no air. This was Eddie's last desperate, passionate encounter. Outside, in the fields, the cornstalks were stippled with moonlight. He was on top of me, plowing away at me, working working as if, with every movement, he's trying—trying—one last time to love me. I hope it will be over soon and it's like I'm outside us both, across the room watching. And I'm dry and no amount of his plowing can make me wet. I know I'm getting raw there and will probably get an infection or something. But still I love him, feel this tenderness toward him, and as he goes at it I stroke his silky hair like he's my child.