Something Magic This Way Comes (12 page)

I
am an old man now. I can feel it in the way my bones ache in the morning, hear it when I speak words that tremble and dance like soap bubbles in unsteady air. I can see it when I look in the mirror that sits above my small dresser or the narrow one that is positioned above the bathroom sink.

I am old and not handsome—not that I ever really was, mind you—but age is a dark, terrible magic that strips away anything that once looked decent and human and turns it into a slow growing vision from Hell. Spots, lines, wrinkles, brittle hair. I know how I would look in my grave, buried deep in the soil, so I told them to burn me. Better that, I think, than still more age, more ugliness.

But I wander in my words and thoughts. I am not a vain man, not anymore, but you must understand that my whole life was magic, and now . . . it has turned against me. Sitting here and pluck typing away on this outdated computer in the recreation room of the Shady Grove Nursing Home, I know that I am not the man I was, that the magic of my life has twisted away from me, a snake writhing, and it’s time for me to tell the story.

There aren’t many days left for me to do so.

Magic. It’s a special word, isn’t it? Even now, I can say it to myself and feel the beginnings of a smile on my dry lips. Because I still love it. I can’t do it anymore—my hands don’t have the dexterity, my eyes aren’t as sharp, and my words . . . every magical spell needs words, and mine shake with the palsy of age and fear. But I do remember.

I remember learning my first trick, what most folks call magic, and I remember learning my first magic, which has nothing to do with tricks at all.

In the autumn of the year I turned seven, my grandfather taught me my first trick. If I close my eyes, I can still see his hands laying out the cards on the top of the wet bar in his den—hands that looked then as mine do now—and hear his voice as he told me what he was going to do.

As I said, it wasn’t
real
magic. It was math, and it was simple. Here’s how it worked: Take a regular deck of playing cards and remove the jokers, then arrange them in suits, ace to king.

Then, ask the participant to cut the cards, a standard cut, any number of times. If they cut an odd number of times, you say, “Just to make sure, I’ll cut them once more.” So long as it’s an even number of cuts.

Then you tell them you’re going to lay the cards out on the table and every card will be with its matching card in each suit. You deal out the cards into thirteen piles and faster than you can say presto-chango, all the eights will be together, all the jacks, all the kings, and so on and so forth.

Magic right? But not really. In truth, it doesn’t matter how many times you cut the cards, so when they object, you do the trick again, telling them to cut the deck
any
number of times they want. I amazed a lot of people with that trick, and up until I landed in this nursing home, I used to use it to cadge the occasional free drink down at Sunday’s Bar and Grill, which was only three blocks away from my house and made for an easy walk.

I remember the trick, and from that day on, I was hooked. I learned lots of magic tricks. The floating, disappearing, and bending coin variations. A hundred different card tricks—picking a card, making a card float, making a card disappear, making a card vanish and reappear in someone’s pocket, and so many more.

I can make tiny bouncing balls levitate in the air. I can take a piece of paper, fold it into a rose, light it on fire and hold it out to a woman, and when she reaches out to take it . . . the fire disappears and a real rose is in its place. I used that last one to catch more than one young woman’s attention early in my life, before I married.

In fact, I used it to catch
her
attention.

I say “can,” but I should say “could.” The magic, like her, is gone now.

I’ve spent most of my life performing the magic you’ve seen on television, but I’ve never been satisfied because that wasn’t real magic. Those are tricks, illusions, sleight of hand, distraction techniques and minor glamors. Not real at all.

Here’s another one card trick you’ll like, a basic variation on the old “pick a card” gambit: Take an ordinary deck of playing cards and shuffle them, then spread them out in your hands, face down, and instruct the person to select a card. As you pull the stack of cards neatly together, remind them not to show it to you and ask them to memorize it. When they’ve memorized it, cut the cards in a random location—you can even ask them to do it—but be certain to look at the bottom card of the top cut, and have them put it back in the deck.

After that, it’s simple. Take the stack of cards and begin flipping through them, placing them face up in front of you, until you see the card from the bottom of the cut. The next card is, of course, theirs.

A trick, I know. Not
real
magic. So why do I tell you these things?

To illustrate that
real
magic exists. I have spent most of my life doing tricks of one sort or another and looking for real magic. I was considered old by most standards before I found it. But I did find it.

Magic is real, and there is real magic, and . . . well, anyone can find it if they know where to look.

I found mine in the mirror.

A mirror that showed a reflection of me. And of her.

But it wasn’t really us at all.

* * *

The young woman stopped outside the door to her father’s room and set down the heavy package she carried. A pause to gather courage and strength. He wasn’t well, hadn’t been for a long time. Her mother’s death a few years ago had started a process that was as inevitable as an avalanche—what began as apparent heartbreak had turned into dementia, which was followed by the official diagnosis: Alzheimer’s Disease.

Leaning her head against the door, she listened quietly for the sound of her father’s voice. The room was quiet and still. Perhaps he was sleeping, and she would be able to leave the package and just go. A wave of guilt passed over her. She loved her father, but seeing him as he was now only made her feel worse. She didn’t believe him. No one did.

He believed in magic—real magic—not the kind that he used to perform. The real thing. He was obsessed with it now more than he ever had been, and his focus on it was almost lucid enough to be frightening.

It was almost as though his talent at sleight of hand and illusion had taken on a life of its own, consuming his mind as his disease progressed. And now . . . the package she carried. For the last two months, he’d been insisting that she bring him the mirror.

From the first, it had seemed an odd request. The mirror was nothing special to look at, and other than being a very heavy antique that had been attached to the dresser he had shared with her mother for so many years, there was nothing about it that made it stand out. Initially, she had agreed, but then when she saw how heavy it was, she’d put it off. Giving her father excuse after excuse.

Until now.

The doctor had told her that she
should
bring it.

For a man with Alzheimer’s, he was lucid enough to keep asking for it, day after day. He remembered the mirror. They didn’t know why he remembered that and only that, but it didn’t matter
why
. It mattered that he did.

So, with her husband’s help, she had carefully removed the mirror from the dresser, wrapped it in a blanket, and loaded it into the car. Today, she would give it him and perhaps it would . . .

Would what?
she asked herself.
Make him better?

Make him the man she knew, instead of this stranger
who saw her only as . . .
She shook her head. It wouldn’t help him, she decided. Not really.

But if it pleased him, that would be a good thing.

Magic or no magic, he was her father. Even as he slipped further into the disease, she kept reminding herself of that one fact: No matter what, he was her father.

She turned the knob on the door, bent down and lifted the mirror, then used her hip to push open the door as she entered his small room.

* * *

I watch as my daughter enters the tiny room I live in, struggling to carry a large object that is wrapped in a blanket and obviously heavy. Were I younger and less frail, I would stand to help her, but as it is, I can only watch her and remember the man I once was.

Stronger and more able.

As she sets it down near the foot of my single bed, a piece of the blanket slips away, revealing a wooden corner. I wonder what she has brought me.

“Hello, Daddy,” she says, stretching her back. She leans down and kisses me on the cheek. “How are you feeling today?”

“I’m doing good,” I tell her. “They served peaches at lunch. And cottage cheese. Do you remember your mother always eating that when you were little?” I laugh at the memory. “That woman ate more strange salads and fruits than anyone I ever knew. What’s wrong with a big steak?”

She laughs lightly, and her voice is like music.

“Daddy, you know that you aren’t supposed to be eating steak! That’s why they served you peaches and cottage cheese. It’s good for you!”

“Steak would be good for me, too!” I tell her. “And maybe a baked potato.”

We laugh together for a moment, then her face turns serious. “I brought you the mirror,” she says, pointing. “The one you’ve been asking for.”

“The mirror?” I say. I do not remember asking for a mirror, but I know that my memory isn’t very good these days. “I asked for a mirror?”

She sighs and her music is sadness. “Yes, Daddy,” she says. “The one that was kept above the dresser in yours and mom’s room. You’ve been asking for me to bring it to you for months.”

“Then why didn’t you bring it sooner?” I ask.

“Then I’d have remembered why I wanted it in the first place!”

She wants to be angry with me—I can tell by looking at her expression—but she just shakes her head.

“Well, Daddy, it’s here if you want it.” She leans down and removes the blanket covering the mirror, and for a moment, something sparkles in my memory.

Something sharp and shiny. There is something special about the mirror . . . I know it, but now must remember it.

She leans down to kiss me again, and her lips are soft and warm on my cheek. I remember when she was born. We named her Taika, Tai for short. Her name meant magic. Magic was important.

I remember that I used to do magic.

“I’ve got to go now,” she says. “The kids still need dinner.”

“Yes,” I say, making a shooing gesture. “Go and feed the kids. Maybe we’ll have steak here tonight.”

Her laugh comes again and she says, “Maybe so, Daddy. I love you.”

Ahh . . . those are magic words. I know them by heart. Even with my illness—and I know I am somehow ill—I know that the words “I love you” are magic.

“I love you, too, Tai,” I tell her. “Come back soon.”

“I will, Daddy,” she says, then slips quietly out the door.

I turn my gaze back to the mirror.

Did it have something to do with magic?

The flash of memory comes again, but it is gone before I can grasp it. I will have to be patient.

* * *

Sitting in the recreation room of the Shady Grove Nursing Home is boring. There is a television, but the shows are filled with mindless violence and gratuitous sex. They are shows without heart, seeking only to entertain long enough to cut to a commercial for a product no one needs.

There are books, many of them, and I’ve read them all. Then forgotten them, of course. But reading them again is like walking on a treadmill—I go nowhere— and so I ignore them. And the magazines, too.

There are other activities available, but the only thing that interests me is the computer. It is a magical box that can take me anywhere in the world. It is also where I type my story. I save it to a disc, and one day, when I am gone, my daughter will find it, and she will know the truth.

I read what I wrote yesterday, and it comes rushing back to me. The same way it does every day when I sit down in the rickety chair and turn on the computer.

I cannot explain
why
reading what I’ve written the day before helps, but it does. It is some of the hidden magic of technology, I think.

This thought triggers another. The mirror! The mirror is in my room. My daughter thinks of it only as the mirror that my wife and I kept over our dresser for many long years, but I know the truth.

The mirror belonged to a very famous magician, Harry Houdini. My grandfather gave it to me, though where he got it from I do not know—but I can remember him showing me the initials carved into the wood on the back of the frame: “H.H.”

And he told me that the mirror was magic—real magic—if I could only find the key to unlocking its secrets, which had died with the master magician himself.

It took me nearly forty years to unlock the magic of the mirror. Forty years . . . and now I had the mirror once again. I could use its powers and leave this illness behind me. I remember its secrets, and it undoubtedly knows all of mine.

The problem, I realize, is that once I shut off this computer and begin the long, slow walk to my room, it is likely I will forget. I will forget asking for the mirror. I will forget why it is there. I will forget how to unlock its magic.

It is unlikely that the staff here will allow me to have the mirror here in the recreation room. Why would they? I know that the staff and doctors who have spoken to me while I am sitting here know that I wanted the mirror, but I couldn’t tell them the truth.

Could I?

Could I tell them how the mirror had belonged to Houdini?

Could I tell them that it was magic—real magic?

That when I unlocked its powers, it would transport my soul away from this place and into another world?

That in that other world my wife was waiting for me?

No. No one would believe.

The magic of this day and age is technological, not fantastical.