Something Magic This Way Comes

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  He refused the drugs, at the end.

  Some part of him must have known it was close.

  Maybe he could feel the cancer eating him away inside.

  Maybe he knew the end was coming.

  We lay on the bed together—he had asked to come home from the hospital—and wept in each other’s arms, him telling me over and over, until the pain finally stole his words, that he loved me.

  When he died, I sat for hours staring at him. I couldn’t believe he was gone. I stared at features no longer ravaged by pain, looking desperately for a twitch of an eyelid, a flicker of a muscle, something that would tell me he was still here. When I finally managed to leave the room, I came running back halfexpecting him to be sitting up in bed, smiling at me and telling me what a funny joke he had played.

  I watched the setting sun bathe his face in gold.

  He died a week before the Changeover.

  * * *

  I stand on the balcony and inhale deeply, letting the scent of summer wash some of the pain away.

  If only it had come a week earlier. Or he had been able to hold on that little bit longer. How much would be different now?

  I lean over and look down the street to the right, where a once-busy road travels toward the city center.

  A trickle of people move along the route, dressed up in brightly colored costumes and extravagant bodies in preparation for some party or another. I see a twenty-foot man lope carefully over those below. They look up and scream in delight. He leans down and waves at them.

  I look back at my dark apartment, feel the wave of loneliness reach out and grasp me by the heart. I turn away again. I don’t want to be here. I’m tired of being alone.

  “You don’t have to be alone.”

  I whirl around. “Who’s there,” I snap. “Show yourself.”

  “I cannot until you give me presence. It is this act that moves you from the old into the new.”

  I take a step forward, relaxing slightly. “You’re my Angel.”

  “You may call me that. Some of your kind find it helps them accept us. I am whatever is most comfortable to you.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Only for you to be happy. I have watched you this past year. Watched your unhappiness shrink your soul when it should be so full of life. There is a time for mourning, Dana, and a time for letting go.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me when I can stop mourning!”

  I storm into the apartment, searching for a focus for my anger. “I loved him! We were together our whole lives and now he’s gone!” I scream. I collapse onto the couch. “Why couldn’t you have come a week earlier?” I ask, sobbing.

  Silence. Then, “Do you think he would want you to live like this?”

  “Go away.” Softly.

  “Think on it, Dana. I will be here. Always.”

  * * *

  Later that night I follow the road to Erin’s house, walking with a unicorn on my left and a brass robot on my right. I get strange looks from those who pass me, dressed as I am in jeans and a t-shirt. Normal clothes for a normal body. Nobody is hostile. They simply regard me with a mixture of sympathy and patience.

  Erin pops out of thin air before me. She looks around, as if to see where she is.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hi. I came to see you off.”

  “Thanks. I’m actually kinda nervous. Weird, huh?”

  I smile, and it feels strange. “Not really, Erin.”

  We reach the city center. Erin stops walking. “Here,” she says.

  “Here?”

  “So everyone can see.”

  “Oh.” I can’t believe it’s so soon. I thought we’d have a chance to talk, to say our goodbys properly.

  Erin comes forward and hugs me. I hold on tight, fighting an irrational urge to never let her go, to keep her with me forever.

  I step away. “Remember to come back.”

  “Of course I will. I’ll never leave you.”

  She was crying. “Hey,” I say softly, surprised at her show of emotion. “I’ll be okay. I’ve survived this long.”

  “Try to be happy, Dana.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Erin steps back and spreads out her arms. “Goodbye, Dana,” she says, and slowly floats upward, in a nimbus of golden light. Someone shouts and points, and soon everyone in the city center is focused on the slowly receding figure. After a few moments others join her, spreading their own arms and following her into space. I strain my eyes against the black backdrop and watch until she disappears, a golden star rising into the Heavens.

  A flight of red dragons flies past, bellowing fire and slowly flapping ponderous wings. I glance at them, look back to see if I can spot Erin, then turn and walk away.

  I intended to go home, but I find myself outside the graveyard. There are lights all around it, little globes of orange like miniature suns, chasing away the shadows where fear might dwell. I’ve visited his grave every day over the past year.

  I don’t go in.

  I stand outside on the pavement resting my head against the chipped green paint of the metal fence, staring in the direction of a headstone I can’t see through my tears.

  * * *

  I dream of Alex that night.

  I see him lying on a hospital bed. I see me sitting at his side holding his hand. “Promise me,” he says, “Promise me you’ll move on. That you won’t let this change you.”

  The me by his side doesn’t answer.

  Don’t say anything, I scream, but they ignore me.

  Don’t promise anything!

  “I promise,” I hear myself say.

  Tears roll down my face. Don’t promise anything, I whisper. It all comes to lies.

  My pillow is wet against my cheek. I lied to him.

  Even when I gave the promise, I knew it was a lie. I just wanted him to be happy.

  The white edge of the moon appears at my window.

  I watch it as it slowly slides into view. Maybe it is time to honor the promise. I will never forget him.

  My feelings are too strong for that. Even if I become like the others. But maybe it is time to stop blaming everything else and playing “What if?” It happened.

  There is nothing I can do about it now.

  I sigh, a long shuddering sigh that turns into fresh tears. I no longer pretend to know anything anymore.

  How am I supposed to go through life with this pain in my heart and pretend it is not there? How am I supposed to smile when all I want to do is cry? How am I supposed to live my life?

  One day at a time, comes the silent answer.

  I let my eyes close. I can’t remember what it feels like to be happy. I miss that feeling, of laughing without feeling guilty, of waking up in the morning without a leaden weight in the pit of my stomach reminding me of the past.

  But maybe all we can do is try to move on and hope that time will lend a hand.

  I open my eyes. A woman stands at the bottom of my bed. Her features blur and change, so fast that they actually form a kind of generic face smoothed out of the sum of the parts. I can feel the peacefulness that emanates from her, the overwhelming feeling of calmness.

  I stare at her for a while. “Did I give you presence?”

  “You did.”

  “Does that mean I am ready?”

  “Only you know that.”

  “I think I am ready to try. That’s all I can promise.”

  “That is good. Life is not meant to be lived in the past.”

  “I know that,” I say softly. “It’s just . . . some things are harder to let go of than others.”

  The woman drifts backward and slowly starts to fade. “I will not leave you now, Dana. Rest. Tomorrow is a new day.”

  I wake up with the sun slanting golden rays across my face. Something is different. I stare at the ceiling and try to figure out what it is. Then I realize. It is the first time I have woken up in a whole year without anxiety being the first emotion I feel.

>   I lie still, experiencing the feeling of simply being happy to be awake, of not wanting to roll over and sleep again so the day will pass quicker.

  I hear a noise from the lounge. I wonder if Erin has come to visit. But no, she has gone away for a while. I smile sadly. I hope she enjoys it.

  Then what is making the noise?

  Alex runs into the bedroom, leans over and kisses me on the lips.

  “Look,” he says excitedly. He spreads his arms out and floats upwards until he is five inches above the floor. “Look what I can do,” he says, his words tumbling from his mouth in a rush. “Can you believe it? How can you still be in bed with what happened yesterday? Come on, get up. There’s things to do.” He smiles. “But first, I’m gonna make breakfast . . .”

  He turns away and floats rather unsteadily from the bedroom.

  I stare at his receding back, too shell-shocked to do anything else. Was it him? Am I dreaming?

  But even as I ask myself this, I remember last night, and I know, with a certainty that I have never felt before, that I am not dreaming.

  I scramble out of bed and hurry through to the kitchen. I hesitate by the doorway, watching him waver in the air while he cracks eggs into a frying pan.

  I run up behind him and throw my arms around his waist, hugging him to me as tightly as I can.

  “Hey,” he gasps, turning in my grasp and hugging me back. “I need to breathe you know.”

  I weep, and my tears are gold.

  HOUDINI’S MIRROR

  Russell Davis

  “God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love someone is to render her transparent.”

  —Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

  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 it
s 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.