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.
They would think I am only a sick old man with a disease. They would think I am remembering one of my shows from long ago, when I could do magic.
Ahh, but with the mirror . . . I still can.
If I can only remember it all when I get back to my room.
I will shut off the computer now and try to get back to my room in time. In time to remember.
* * *
The young woman watched as her father crossed the recreation room in an old man’s shuffle. She had left her purse behind, but she stopped when she saw her father standing up from the small computer desk and beginning the long trek back to his rooms.
From here it was safe to watch him. It was safe to remember him as he was before . . . before the illness and before her mother had died. She could watch, and in her mind he was once again the amazing magician of her youth, able to conjure coins from thin air, cause paper roses to burst into flame, make cards float up and into the air as though they were feathers captured on a breeze. She remembered that man well.
Her father’s face wore a determined, almost stern expression, and his lips moved slightly, as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t quite grasp the words.
As he made the turn down the hallway, she slipped behind him, still watching. His was a slow walk, and she knew she should get home to feed the kids, but stealing these few minutes to walk down memory lane would make rushing dinner hour worthwhile. He had not been the same man in a long time.
Finally, he turned and entered his small room. The door shut behind him.
The magical memories playing in her mind stopped.
She resumed her normal stride, then paused outside his door.
Gathering her strength one last time before seeing him again.
* * *
From the computer desk, across the recreation room, and up the hallway, I just kept repeating it to myself. Remember the mirror!
It was a mantra that I mentally spoke with each step taken. I would remember the mirror, I would remember how it worked.
I opened the door to my room and there it was.
The mirror. What had I wanted to remember about it?
I let the door close behind me. The mirror was special.
It had belonged to a famous man. Houdini
? Yes, that seemed right. He had been a magician. Like me.
Memories flashed sharp and bright in my mind.
I could remember the mirror. There was no time to lose. No time to say goodbye. Not even to my daughter who was standing outside my door this very minute. It was impossible to say how long my mind would last.
Not strong enough to lift the mirror, I knelt down and looked into the silvered glass.
My own aged reflection stared back at me: the face of an old man, desperate with the dual longings of hope and despair.
How was the mirror activated again? What made its magic work?
Behind me, I heard the doorknob turn. I couldn’t look around. I didn’t dare. The memory was right there.
“My beloved,” I whispered. The glass of the mirror shimmered once, twice, three times, and then I saw her. The face of my wife—young and beautiful and strong as she had been on the day we married.
And she was waiting for me.
I saw her lips move and form the echoing words, “My beloved.”
“Yes,” I said. “The magic is real. I remember!” My last words were shouted with more strength than I knew I possessed.
Behind me, I heard my daughter’s voice cry out, “Daddy! What’s wrong?” Her footsteps sounded loud behind me.
There was no time. The magic had to happen now.
I looked into the mirror once more, fixed my wife’s features firmly in my mind and said the magic words.
I meant to shout them, but they came out only as a faint whisper. “I love you.”
I could hear my daughter behind me, hear her say, “I love you, too,” but my eyes remained locked on the mirror. I felt my heart contract once, painfully, and my muscles fell slack.
Still, even as I slid to the floor, I kept my eyes on the mirror.
“Daddy, what’s the matter?”
I wanted to answer her. To tell her the truth about the mirror and about real magic, but already the last moments of my life were flashing by, my spirit striving to break free and join my beloved wife in the other world.
I wanted to tell her that real magic is about more than cards or coins or paper roses. It is not an illusion, but something quite real and elusive. Real magic, I wanted to tell her, comes from belief . . . and from love.
The mirror shimmered once more, and then darkness fell. My words, my magic words, left unspoken.
* * *
Tai wanted to call the nurses, but she knew that to do so would be a cruelty. Her father had obviously suffered some kind of heart attack. To try and revive him now—to bring him back, God forbid—would be to condemn him to more years of this lost existence.
He’d been staring into that silly old mirror when she’d come through the door, and she glanced at it now—and felt her jaw unhinge, then close again with a snap. She rubbed her eyes.
Had the reflection in it wavered just a moment, shimmering like an autumn lake in the sunrise and showing an image of her parents?
No, Tai realized, shaking her head. She knelt down and gently closed her father’s open eyes.
That would be too much to hope for. Too much like real magic.
Then she stood and quietly left the room, her eyes clear with the sure knowledge that not even her father’s magic could cheat death.
No magic could.
ANGEL IN THE CABBAGES
Fran LaPlaca
“THERE’S an angel,” Sharon Madsen said, clearing her throat nervously, “in the cabbages.”
Joe Shippey, her manager, looked up blankly, then shrugged.
“Yeah, okay, Madsen, whatever. Did you finish the display?”
Sharon looked back through the plastic windows in the swinging doors and nodded. She could see her display of new fall apples from all the way back here, the green and red spheres stacked neatly and compactly under the sale sign, gleaming in the florescent lights. “Make Your Own Candy Apples!” a handlettered sign shouted. Say what you will, Sharon knew her displays were good.
“Fine. Then get these onions out there. And tell Mack to get a u-boat and refill the pumpkins.”
“Okay.” Sharon hesitated. “But what about the angel?”
“What?” Joe’s attention was already back on the paperwork in front of him.
“What should I do about the angel? In the cabbages?”
Joe shook his head and sighed.
“You’re a piece of work, Madsen, I swear. Take the angel home with you for all I care. Just make sure the onions are full before you do.”
He didn’t believe her, Sharon knew, but that was all right. She filled the onions and then loaded the crates of pumpkins onto the u-boat. The lightweight, wheeled cart, narrow along the base but with both ends higher than Sharon was herself, resembled nothing more than a huge letter U, and had been dubbed a “u-boat” by some wit in the grocery business long ago. The name had stuck, and as awkward as the u-boat was, the design worked, and Sharon was able to easily pull the heavy order of pumpkins out to where Mack was working.
Mack was lazy, and Sharon did half his work. She could always tell Joe, but she didn’t mind. Mack was nice to her, called her “Sharon baby”, and he’d never once told her she was “a piece of work.” Sharon wasn’t quite sure what Joe meant by that, but she was sure it wasn’t very kind. Besides, saying no wasn’t the easiest thing in the world for Sharon. In fact, it was one of the hardest.
She was used to people not being too nice to her.
It was usually because they thought, as her mother had always thought and said, that she wasn’t the brightest candle in the window. It didn’t matter to Sharon what they thought. She knew she was smart, she knew she was funny and witty and wry and flirtatious.
Underneath. If none of those traits ever made it to the surface, well, that’s the hand she’d been dealt.
Shyness, Sharon knew, was just as much a handicap as losing an arm or a leg. Maybe worse, because people without an arm or a leg could still talk to whole people. Shy people could rarely talk to anyone. And confrontations? As far as Sharon was concerned, that was a word in a totally different language.
She punched her time card, put on her jacket, and headed for the cabbage display. She looked carefully, but the angel was gone. She felt a little sad but a little relieved as well. She wasn’t sure she’d have had the nerve to ask a heavenly being to come home with her.
“I’m not an angel.”
Sharon jerked her head around. It was late, the store was closing in less than an hour, and except for Mack, way over on the other side, the produce section was empty.
“Over here.”
A sudden motion caught her eye, and she stepped a few feet sideways, to the bin that contained the fresh portabella mushrooms. There, sitting comfortably on one of the large mushroom caps, sat the angel.
The angel frowned.
“I’m not an angel,” she said fiercely, her rainbowhued wings beginning to flutter as if in anger. “What are you, totally stupid? I’m a sprite.”
Sharon just blinked.
“A sprite? You know, an imp? A pixie? An elf with wings?” The winged being shook her head in disgust.
“Hello? A fairy?”
“I know what a sprite is,” Sharon said in a reasonable voice.
“Then why didn’t you say so?”
“I was just wondering,” Sharon said, “what you’re doing here, that’s all.”
“Well, then why didn’t you just ask?”
Why, indeed, Sharon asked herself. It’s not like it was, well, a person.
“I am too a person,” the fairy said even more fiercely, and Sharon blinked again. Before the fairy could insult her further she blurted out, “You can read my mind?”
“Look, let’s just get out of here, and we can chat all you want. It’s too cold here, and that pipe thingy up there keeps raining on me.”
“It’s a mister,” Sharon said automatically as she held out one hand for the fairy to step upon. “It keeps the vegetables from drying out.”
“Well, it keeps getting my wings soaked, and I don’t like it,” the fairy complained as she dug her hands into Sharon’s jacket sleeve and began to climb. “I can’t fly with wet wings, did you never think of that with your mist-thing?”
“We don’t get a lot of fairies,” Sharon said faintly as the fairy reached her shoulder and perched.
The fairy sighed and nodded.
“No, I don’t suppose you do.” She tucked a bit of Sharon’s hair into her fist to balance herself. “Most of them go to the natural food stores. Can we get some Chinese food? It’s been ages since I’ve had any lo mein.”
* * *
“I don’t see why we have to share,” the fairy stated as she picked up a long lo mein noodle off Sharon’s paper plate and bit off the end.
“Well,” Sharon said, “payday isn’t until Friday, and I only have ten dollars left until then. Four, now,” she said as she picked up a piece of garlicky beef.
“So ask for a raise. You’re worth more anyway, you know that.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Sure it is. ‘Hey Joe, I’m tired of doing all the work here while you sit on your ass and Mack sneaks smokes in the men’s room. I want more money.’ See? Easy peasy.”
Sharon stared.
“How do you know all these things? About Joe, and Mack, and all?”
“You learn a lot hiding behind ugli fruits, you’d be surprised,” the fairy told her. She shook her wings.
“Almost dry, thank heavens. Speaking of which, what made you think I was an angel? Not that I’m not flattered, of course.” The fairy smirked. “Although angels are a bit plainer, if you know what I mean. All that white, you know.”
And truly, Sharon thought, the fairy was anything but plain. Her wings shimmered in colors of every hue, her nut brown skin was complemented by the earthy green bits of fabric that fluttered around her dainty form, and her eyes were the blue of a summer sky. Sharon paused.
“Your wings, I suppose. And of course, fairies aren’t real, not really.”
The fairy gaped.
“Not real? Then who are you talking to, banana brain?”
Sharon blushed.
“I mean, of course they are. Now. But until I saw you, I didn’t think they were real. No one does.”
Something Magic This Way Comes Page 10
