Masters of Illusions

by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

  “Right.”

  “But she didn’t see him set it. The boy.”

  “No.”

  “So we don’t know if a child set the fire.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Charlie, we don’t know anything, do we?”

  Charlie said, “Lie down, Margie. We do know something. About bravery. It may not sound like much what Dixie did, hosing down the leopards. But she was standing in a furnace.”

  “I know that, sweetheart, but where does that get us?”

  “The more we understand about what was going on, the more we’ll see.”

  “But was that worth a thousand dollars?”

  “It was, Margie. Because now I can ask everyone who’s been here—send out postcards—ask if they saw a little boy standing and watching, not looking for his mother, and then running away. Maybe one of them will say, ‘Yeah. I knew him.’ Or, ‘Yeah. I was that little boy’ And if that boy comes here to confess to us, I’ve done my job.”

  Charlie pulled Margie down to him and smiled at her in the dark. Charlie’s smiles had never reflected happiness. He was a driven man, and Margie came to know that he wouldn’t be happy until he got to where he was driving toward. So when he smiled a smile of affection for Margie, she decided it was more a smile of relief—remembering how he had her in his life. When Martha was being adorable, his smile was more like amazement—amazement that he also had someone as precious as his baby in his life, too.

  Margie said, “Charlie, will you be happy once you find out who set the fire?”

  He said, “I’m happy now, Margie.” Then he said, “I want justice done. For your mother. For Dixie. And for these.” He ran his hands over and across the ropes of scars covering Margie’s back. She shuddered.

  Chapter Seven

  When Charlie was at work, and Martha at school, and Margie was home reading, or housecleaning, or chatting on the phone with the mothers of Martha’s friends, sometimes she’d hear a siren. Once in a while that meant Charlie would come home from work with black fingernails, the only physical evidence that he’d fought a fire. Firemen work hard to wash themselves and their brains after a fire.

  Charlie would walk in the door, sit at the kitchen table, and tell Margie there’d been a fatality, or that people had suffered terrible injuries. She’d bring him cough syrup. What helped him more than anything was sharing Martha, so Margie would tell him what she was up to and he’d eventually begin to relax. It was still the same as telling him “The Fox and the Grapes” on the raft at Chalker Beach. He loved to listen. Then he’d go unwind. He’d go to the war room, alone. That had always been okay with Margie. But she found she was glad and relieved that Martha did not inherit their need to be alone—Charlie when troubled, Margie because solitude just seemed nice. Margie found it so nice to squirrel away with a book. Viewing herself and her husband through Martha’s eyes, Margie came to wonder at the amount of time Charlie continued to put into his search.

  Even when Charlie went on field trips with Martha, always the only dad, he was still thinking about fires. Both Margie and Charlie went on the field trip to Farmington Avenue to visit Mark Twain’s house. Martha was intrigued by the printing press Mark Twain had sunk his money into, money that was lost on the dinosaur of a machine that was not cost effective. Margie couldn’t drag herself away from his desk where he’d written the books she so treasured. But Charlie the fireman was appalled at the writer’s fireplace. Mark Twain, the dreamer, fantasized about a hearth blazing in the dead of winter with snow falling onto the flames. So he designed a fireplace with a soaring window over it, with two flues rising on either side of the glass. The children were all admiring, but Charlie told them about the dangers of a bent flue. “Creosote builds up in the elbow” He touched the angle in one of the flues. “Lucky he didn’t kill himself and his whole family.”

  For a long time, between the ages of eight and twelve, Martha got all involved in his war-room work. The two would put their heads together once a week or so, and he’d go over everything with her; they’d peruse his reports and listen to the latest tapes. But when she got to be twelve, not only did she take on new adolescent interests, she also closed the door on her father’s interests. His sole interest. At the dinner table one night, she said, “Well, Dad, I guess there’s no conclusion to be drawn except that maybe there was an arsonist. But there’s no way we’re ever going to find out who he was, right?”

  Martha smiled at her father. She was the captain of the junior high school debating team, the only seventh-grader, and the older kids had voted her captain. But whenever Charlie discussed the circus fire, there was no room for debate, so he said to her, “Oh there was one, Martha, and I’ll find him.”

  She shrugged and dashed off. The mouths of babes, Margie thought. And, she thought, she and Charlie had a real smart babe who from then on began to see that what her dad was doing was weird. Martha started to break away, and it seemed that her goal was to take her mother with her. For her thirteenth birthday she asked for a trip to Boston, and it wasn’t baseball season. She wanted to see the historical sights she was learning about in school and she wanted to do it with her mother. Martha enjoyed being needed. To her shock and disappointment, she’d found that her father didn’t need her one bit. So she would work on Margie.

  On the train to Boston, she told Margie how her class had learned about the Charter Oak, not only the spy-thriller aspect of the patriots hiding the charter from the British, but also about the tree itself and how environmentalists had tried to save it when it was dying. Margie remembered reading about that effort in the Hartford Courant; it was quite a few years back. “In those days,” Margie explained to Martha, “everyone called environmentalists bird-watchers, so saving the tree didn’t warrant much shrift.”

  Martha asked, “Mom, what’s bird-watching got to do with saving the tree?”

  Margie said, “The term bird-watchers, Martha, is derogatory. Kind of a degrading epithet for a conservationist. It means you’re a sissy and maybe a little bit cuckoo.”

  Just from her expression, let alone the tirade to follow, Margie could see that progress in the face of destroying sacred trees would hold no charm for Martha’s generation.

  They had fun in Boston, though Martha kept bringing up the subject of her dad’s stubbornness. Martha’s worry over her father was deeper than Margie had suspected. Margie tried to soothe her and tell her that what her daddy did was sort of a hobby. Just like some dads who were always building shelves. In fact, Charlie built a few shelves himself. “Just for the war room, Mom.” The tour guide at the Old North Church got a little annoyed with their whisperings.

  Margie took Martha to Durgin Park for dinner, where the waitresses are famed for their rough manner and where diners eat at long, groaning boards hip-to-hip with strangers. Martha was shocked.

  Margie said, “This is supposed to be a riot, Martha.”

  “Well it isn’t. And we can’t hear each other.”

  So they had their dessert in a nice quiet little tearoom, passing up the famous Durgin Park indian pudding; Margie would let Martha have her say. But it was more a lecture than a “say.” Martha wanted to know why her mother wasn’t worried about her father. Couldn’t she see that he was spending more and more time in the war room? He didn’t ever listen to ball games any more, let alone go to them. Margie had noticed. “It makes him happy, sweetheart.”

  Martha was appalled again. She said, “Happy? It’s not a life, Mom. How could it be happy?”

  When they got home, Charlie told Margie that her trip with Martha was actually good for him, as it allowed him to have a whole day alone—he’d gotten to review things he hadn’t thought were important. Margie had no idea he’d had that day off. She assumed he’d have offered to come along to Boston if he wasn’t working. Margie found crumbs in the war room. He’d had his meals there. That night, they lay in each other’s arms and Margie told him stories about Boston. Palma had been far too busy keeping her husband appease
d to go on jaunts with her children. But just when was it when Charlie stopped going on jaunts with his little girl?

  Martha came to enjoy her mother’s undemanding company more and more. The trip to Boston led to other trips over Martha’s high school years—they’d take the train to New York, to go to museums and art galleries and concerts. Martha also took Margie to quirky bookstores where she knew Margie would happily browse half the day. But the more Margie saw of the world that lay beyond the Hog River, the more she had to face up to the fact that she’d missed much bigger things than just the Mysterious Bookstore on Fifty-sixth Street where she’d gazed in awe at the author’s autograph inside the cover of a first edition of The Red-Headed League. While everybody had been talking about civil rights and feminism and Vietnam for the last ten years, Margie had been watching the Master of Illusion hypnotize Dixie or sitting around reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The autograph brought tears to Margie’s eyes, and she quickly wiped them away and carefully replaced the book in its special place. Martha watched, and her heart broke to think that her mother cried because she couldn’t afford $250 for an autographed Sherlock Holmes since the Cadillacs were always spoken for. Martha asked the clerk if he’d hold the book for her. She figured it would take her six months to save up the money. The clerk assured her he would.

  Margie was now referring to the war room as the Smithsonian. Not in a good-humored way. In a cynical way. There were now two walls of shelves rather than just one, and Charlie’s energies received an added jolt because during this time, a new era in American justice emerged. The FBI made available a clearinghouse of fingerprints. Charlie kept talking about how terrific it was to be able to find a set of prints, put them into a computer, and determine immediately who they belonged to. Margie thought that was terrific, too, but not for a particularly concrete reason. Then she wondered at how she could be so dense, sometimes. Sometimes she thought she didn’t have much imagination, which is why it was so exciting for her to read stories that people actually made up out of thin air. And why Charlie appealed to her so much. His imagination was so far-reaching that his ever-expanding quest would always be exciting. Despite Martha, Margie had kept telling herself that.

  So after waiting for some time for Margie to take the initiative, Charlie finally gave up and asked her if she wouldn’t mind having a photographer take a picture of the thumbprint at the bottom of her spine. Margie told him that yes, she would mind. He asked her why and she was honest with him, as she had always been. She told him that there was nothing personal about not wanting her scarred back photographed, it was just that she had no interest.

  He said, “No interest?” Charlie could be dense, too, in his own way. She didn’t answer him. Then he said, “Don’t you want to know who saved your life?”

  No, she didn’t want to know that. She already knew. Lots of people saved her life, she felt, mostly her Aunt Jane. She had enough guilt not being able to repay her aunt for all she’d done. But at the same time, Margie couldn’t hurt Charlie by saying such a thing because she loved him so much. So instead she said, “The scar is almost worn away. There are no ridges left.”

  And he said, so earnestly, so honestly, “But not after you’re dusted with powder. Then they’ll show up.”

  Charlie never said no to Margie. He gave her all she asked him for. He loved listening to her Martha tales, of their trips to Lincoln Center, and the free tour of Grand Central Station where you get the thrill of looking down from a hole in the ceiling to the floor 250 feet below. Charlie told Martha that the Wallendas knew that feeling when they stood, perched, high above the carpet of tanbark, high above the upturned faces of the audience. And he’d made a special glass case for The Red-Headed League for Margie’s birthday that year. Martha had been so touched when she’d shown her dad the book; he looked at the spidery crawl of the author’s signature and said to his daughter, “There wasn’t a real Sherlock Holmes?”

  But Charlie no longer had an interest in actually doing the things Martha and Margie were doing because he was “too wrapped up,” but he loved seeing it all through their eyes. Listening to their stories. So Margie couldn’t betray him. She’d never led him to believe that she wouldn’t take part in his search, so how could she pull the rug out from under him now? Okay, she decided, bring on the photographer. But even though she’d do this for Charlie, she still felt free to tell him what she was thinking. And so, Charlie and Margie had their first fight. While she explained her feelings, she referred to the witnesses as “specimens.” She said, “Charlie, up until now, I never felt you thought of me as one of your specimens.”

  He said, “Specimens?”

  “I don’t want my name pinned on the wall.”

  He was confused. “You can’t be on the wall. You were too young. No one knows exactly where your mother sat. But Margie, I haven’t treated anyone who’s come here like a specimen. I’ve treated them kindly.”

  She apologized. She dropped it. Afterward she knew she shouldn’t have because she felt this little bit of resentment bubble up. Just because he didn’t see her as one of his specimens didn’t mean she wasn’t one.

  A police-photographer friend of Chick’s came to photograph Margie’s back. Chick had said, “Don’t be embarrassed, Margie. This guy’s seen it all.”

  She wasn’t embarrassed. But she wouldn’t let Charlie be in the room. Margie was having a tough enough time without risking letting loose any more bubbles. Martha had brought up several, and last summer, a whole bunch of them had escaped when Charlie and she and his brother, Michael, and Michael’s wife rented a cottage at Chalker Beach. The low sand dune bordering the marsh grass that had hidden Charlie and Margie when they lay by the creek the summer they’d met had grown. It was six feet higher. They all oohed and aahed, and Michael’s wife said sand dunes were just like the kids—you can’t see them grow, but they grew so fast you wondered how it could have possibly been so easily missed. The resentment rose up that vacation week because Charlie kept making notes on a little pad. Margie had said, “Charlie, can’t you just let it alone for a week?” He said, “I can’t risk losing anything.”

  The fourth night at the beach they had had to sleep in the gym at Old Saybrook High School because a hurricane had just skimmed Cape Hatteras instead of turning inland. It would hit the Connecticut shore around dawn. Though hurricanes can wreak havoc, they can come and go in just a few hours, and this one, as it turned out, lost most of its punch when it crossed Long Island. And since it hit Old Saybrook at low tide, flooding was minimal. The next morning, the two couples returned to the cottage. The sand dune was gone.

  Margie and Mike’s wife got some pails to collect whatever treasures the hurricane might have left on the beach. They walked along, and Margie looked over her shoulder to see Charlie sitting on a beach chair scribbling in his notebook.

  Chapter Eight

  The cop may have seen it all, but he stepped back just a tiny bit when he took the towel from Margie’s back. Her eyes were closed, but she felt his flinch. It felt nice, though, having him dust the scars with his soft brush. He took several shots using just the light from the window, then a flash, then a big spotlight, then with a white umbrella next to her. With another brush, he dusted off the powder. He said, “The powder is just talc, Mrs. O’Neill. You don’t have to worry about it.” She still went and took a shower.

  Margie didn’t care to see all the pictures, just the close-up Charlie sent to the FBI. It looked like a thumbprint, all right. The ridges were as clear as the sandbar at the creek at low tide; the one that fed the dune. Charlie said, “The FBI will be able to find the man if he’s still in the service. Or if he’s a criminal.”

  Clayton T. Bart was still serving in the air force, though unfortunately, he was stationed in Japan. This, Charlie said, was going to be a job for Chick. Chick had traveled the country, across and back many times, looking for clues linked to the identity of Little Miss 1565. He knew how to look and where to look. Unlike the Little Miss, rea
ching Clayton T Bart meant starting with a name rather than hoping to end up with one—a far sight simpler. Chick’s wife, Aunt Annette, said, “Thank God that man’s going to have something to do for a few days.” He flew down to Washington and came back a few days later with all the info—Aunt Annette knew exactly how long it would take him.

  After the war, Captain Bart had been a member of the occupying forces in Tokyo. At the end of a six-year stint, he came to think of Tokyo as home because he’d mastered Japanese easily—a natural skill he didn’t know he had. Also, he loved the food, and, of course, he’d fallen in love with a Japanese girl. In the air force, he had reached the rank of captain and now served as military attache to the US. ambassador.

  When Chick arrived in Washington to start figuring out the best way to contact Captain Bart, the ambassador to Japan happened to be in Washington to launch an exhibition of Japanese-manufactured computer chips in the capital. That news was in the copy of the Washington Post that Chick had been reading on the shuttle. Chick called from his hotel. He went looking for the exhibition hall, figuring he could ask around to see if the ambassador’s military attache had accompanied him. The exhibit, it turned out, fit in a cardboard box. “I was expecting some kind of car show,” Uncle Chick said. But the important thing was that the attache was with the ambassador. This neat little coincidence saved Margie a wad of money. It would have cost two Cadillacs to send Chick to Japan.

  So Chick found Captain Bart quite easily, and via his network of police buddies, got him on the phone, told him who he was, arranged a meeting, and at the meeting told him who Margie was. At lunch, Captain Bart then told Chick how he’d been at Brainard Field during the month of July, in 1944, learning to fly B-52s. Big B-52s, the ones with the huge bomb bays. He had had to report on the Fourth, the holiday, so was free the two days following. He had decided to go to the circus. He’d been just nineteen years old. Later, when she heard this, Margie thought: Same age as my mother. Then, Chick told Captain Bart about Charlie, and he agreed to be interviewed. Chick said into the phone, “Margie, you there?”