My brain must have gone into overdrive. ‘Fossip!’ I said to Troy, before pressing the off
button.
The Houdini Effect
(It’s about time I ‘explained’ the title of my story.)
My phone in idle mode once more, I lay back down. But this time I didn’t sleep. No way could I sleep. All sorts of confused and confusing thoughts - not least my disappointment in Troy (what a pea-brain I had been about that boy!) - tangled around in my head, keeping me wide awake. I wanted to, but I couldn’t escape from my thoughts.
My need to escape. Yes, exactly. I gave what some writers would have called a ‘wry smile.’ I decided to call this need I was feeling The Houdini Effect. (It turned out to be exactly the same phrase Harry later gave to the name of his talent quest illusion. Coincidence, or what?) My need to escape had suddenly become as great as Harry’s - whichever Harry you choose to choose.
I picked up Harry’s (our Harry’s) Houdini book, which I had so far neglected. I blew off the dust, flicked through the first few pages and then some more. I was surprised. It was actually interesting. I turned back to the start of the book and for a while I read, losing myself in the story.
I’d almost forgotten how wonderful an escape a good book could be.
And I had Harry to thank for it.
Assistant
Upon waking I felt hungry (food is essential to clear thinking) so I got up and went to the kitchen.
As I returned from the kitchen past Harry’s room, sandwich in hand, back to my own safe space I
saw the object of his past affection, viz. the straitjacket. It looked as if he had squashed the thing up (as much as it could be squashed) and hurled it into a corner. Clear evidence that Harry had finally given up on it.
Harry himself was sitting in a tight knot on the edge of his bed almost as if he was still con-strained in the straitjacket. I paused. At that moment I felt sorry for Harry even though I couldn’t work out exactly why. Sympathy for my little brother was not an emotion I experienced very often but at that point I felt a little differently towards him. More kindly. Undoubtedly because of how unsettled I myself was feeling. My sympathetic response turned out to be a big mistake.
‘Sorry about what I said before,’ I stopped to say to him. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault. You can still do it, the thing with the straitjacket.’
‘No I can’t,’ said Harry. ‘You were right, I am a loser.’
‘I never called you a loser.’
‘Might as well have,’ he muttered. ‘The fact is, I should never have entered the competition.’
This sounded a much too serious reaction to what was basically a simple problem (with a simple solution). If Harry had any idea of the things that had suddenly begun bugging me right now . . . well, anyway, I thought I would call his
bluff. ‘If you really mean that, then it’s not too late to pull out, is it?’
Harry shook his head. ‘I wish I could but it is way too late for that. I’ve got my entry number and
I’ve told all my friends.’
‘Well, go back to the drawing board then,’ I
said, realising rather selfishly as I did so that I had no supportive sibling to spill my story to. Maybe I could say something to Rach or Em . . . but no . . . they were really good friends but they were also, both of them, two of the most down-to-earth people you could meet in a month of Sundays. Matters supernatural would be way over their heads.
Our English teacher had once talked about something called ‘suspension of disbelief.’ This poetical phrase means that you actively forgo your scepticism in order to believe the most stretched-out, far-fetched yarns. As they’d proved,
Rach and Em’s suspension of disbelief kicked in if I didn’t turn up at the pool, even when I was in possession of a halfway decent sounding excuse to explain my absence. Anything less ordinary, forget it. Once upon a time I could have fancied con-fiding in Troy but unless I learnt to speak back-wards (!) I now considered Troy a no-hoper, a character from a silly fairy tale (my own).
‘Too late for going back to the drawing board even if I wanted to go back to it,’ Harry explained. ‘I’m down on the talent sheet as an escapologist not just a magician.’
‘Then it’s obvious isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Find something else to escape from.
‘As obvious as that pimple erupting on your chin,’ said Harry. ‘Escape from what?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, automatically touching my chin before remembering my first rule, which was never to gratify Harry’s nasty habit, whenever he was stressed out, of dishing out personal abuse. ‘Didn’t you assure me more than once that you had a Plan B?’
He shrugged. ‘I might have been exaggerating,’ he had the grace to admit.
‘Funny that,’ I said. ‘I never would have guessed. But whatever. You’re the one with all the magic books, which you refuse to let me look at. You’ll come up with something else. You always do. You know you do.’
‘Do I?’
‘Of course. When have you ever failed before?’
‘Today, with the straitjacket.’
‘All you needed was more practise,’ I said, trying my hardest to sound convincing, aware that I wasn’t succeeding because I didn’t really believe it myself.
Harry shook his head. ‘No, I need to be older and stronger.’
‘Well then,’ I said conclusively. ‘That proves it.’
‘Proves what?’
‘That you didn’t fail. Like you said, all you needed was to be older and stronger. That’s not failing. It’s . . . ah well, it’s just not being quite ready for a straitjacket yet. Do something you are ready for.’
‘How can I come up with a new effect before October 27th,’ he said.
‘October 27th?’
‘My audition day.’
‘So soon!’
‘I told you when it was. I told all of you.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘That’s the trouble with this family,’ said Harry.
‘None of you ever listens to a word I say. No one ever listens to me. Everyone’s always too busy with their own stuff.’
I nodded. ‘Maybe that’s true,’ I said. ‘Up to a point. At least as far as Mum and Dad are concerned.’
‘And you as well,’ insisted Harry.
‘Who rescued you?’ I reminded him. ‘Who’s sitting here listening to you gasbagging on?’ Harry didn’t reply to that. ‘All you need to do is to find something you that don’t need to be older and stronger for to escape from.’
It seemed as if I might be getting through to him at last. ‘You think so?’ he said.
‘I know so. Go for it Harry. Re-check that dusty old magic book of yours. You’re bound to find exactly what you’re looking for.’
Harry visibly straightened his shoulders. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘Maybe I will have another look at Marvello’s book.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ I said, adding generously: ‘And let me know if I can help in any way.’
Famous and foolish last words from a considerate, but intemperate, sister.
‘I will,’ said Harry. ‘By the way, that looks like a nice sandwich. I’m hungry. Did you make it for me?’
‘As if.’ But in an extra flourish of generosity I handed him my sustenance (missing only one bite) and went off to make another one for myself.
Brain food
Crunching on a replacement peanut butter and pickled-gherkin concoction I mulled over all the
things that had happened. Truth to tell, Em and Rach’s deception (if that wasn’t too strong a word for it and, looking back, it undoubtedly was) and
Troy’s apparent disinterest in anything other than his weird linguistic skill (I had to admit, it was a skill. Perhaps he should have entered the talent quest!) paled into insignificance beside those two frightening random appearances of Laurie and Iris. Apart from the many past consternations caused by Harry’s magic tricks, nothing more inexplicab
le than them had ever happened to me. At least, deep down, you knew Harry’s magic could be explained (if magicians like him were prepared to divulge, that is) but I was at a total loss as to what to think and do about the mirrors. I’d done my best but I hadn’t been able to rationalise to myself how I had seen what I had seen.
Tell someone! a voice screamed in my head but how could anyone else (even if you excluded such arch-rationalists as Rach and Em) believe what I could hardly believe myself? As they say, you had to have been there.
And what if I’d been hallucinating or suffering from some sort of brain seizure? Maybe - I realised with sudden horror - there was something creepy going on in my head right now that meant I was on the point of dropping dead any second. My non-existent love life (ha!) would forever be non-existent!
And what if, just what if, dirty little Harry had been playing one of his tricks? It seemed in-
credibly unlikely but I didn’t want him to show me up as a gullible idiot whom he had fooled, yet again. They do it with mirrors. Smoke and mirrors.
I told myself to concentrate, to focus. By
exercising my brain a little more maybe I could, on my own, find some solution to the mystery. If the people I had seen in the mirrors definitely were Iris
and Laurie then that would be a start, of sorts. I had to be sure. But how?
The kitchen was adjacent to the laundry. Between the rooms was the back porch and door. I heard Dad make another appearance from his underfloor bolt-hole and go outside, heading for the garage. He spotted me eating at the window and raised a grimy hand in greeting. ‘Wouldn’t mind one of those sandwiches, Athens sweetheart,’ he called ingratiatingly, so I made one for him. I decided I was getting very proficient at it. Then I heard him call out again but not to me this time. ‘Nice day for it, May.’
En route he must have seen our neighbour over the fence. And that gave me my brilliant idea. If anyone could positively identify Iris and Laurie it would be May. I could try describing to her who I’d seen. Naturally I’d have to do it without her getting any hint whatsoever that I had in fact actually seen them. Tricky. Way tricky.
Once I’d pondered the matter a little further I came up with a better idea. What I had to do was somehow to get May to describe what Iris and Laurie looked like and then match up her description with the mirror images.
Feeling strangely light and elated, almost as if my problems were over (when in reality they’d
hardly begun) I made Dad’s sandwich and handed it to him when he came back. Then, before I chickened out, I scooted next door to talk to our strangely reticent neighbour.
Photographic evidence
Barry did work for the City Council but not for Building Consents as I’d once teased Dad about. We’d sometimes seen his work van parked at their kerbside or up their drive. It had Parks Department written on its side.
I hoped Barry wasn’t one of those people who came home for lunch if they were nearby. He could be anywhere during the day so he might just turn up if it suited him. I didn’t want him to find May and me discussing someone he didn’t like very much. I wasn’t sure how he would react and I didn’t especially want to know, either.
I walked up their driveway trying to look much more confident than I felt. No Parks Department van in sight, thank goodness. Not at the moment, anyhow.
May and Barry’s section was stridently tidy. Bushes had been boxed into shape, ragged edges eradicated and not a weed left alive. Mum would be deathly jealous. Before I’d even been inside their house I was already starting to feel envious of what it was going to be like. However, I suppose if you spend nearly all of your time in and around the house and garden what else would you have to do but keep things tidy?
It occurred to me that the way May appeared to live her life was a bit like being under house arrest. Right then I felt an affinity with her. Mum most
definitely would not want to be without her paying day job, not even for the sake of a pristine house and garden and a working husband. Once upon a time, maybe, she might have thought differently but certainly not anymore. A tidy home is the sign
of a life wasted, I’d once read on a greeting card. I’d almost bought it for Mum.
I wouldn’t have been wasting my precious holidays at home right now either if it wasn’t for Iris and Laurie. I felt sorry for May but, honestly, I felt sorrier for myself.
I heard the click of the front door. May must have just finished whatever work she had been doing outside when Dad called out ‘nice day’ to her. Oh well, nothing for it but to ring the bell, pretend like a proper visitor.
‘Oh, hello Athena,’ said May when she opened the door and found me standing on the other side of it. (Naturally I didn’t correct her version of my name. Her use of it just made me appreciate her all the more.) ‘I haven’t seen you to talk to for a while.’
‘Not since the night of the barbecue,’ I agreed, ‘and that was ages ago. Nice garden you’ve got,’ I added.
‘I’m glad you think so,’ May answered. ‘It knows its place, shall we say.’
Funny way of putting it, I thought. ‘You must spend a lot of time in it,’ I said to her.
‘Not me,’ she replied, which confused me even more since Dad had told me she was often in the garden. ‘That’s Barry’s domain.’
‘Oh, really?’ I said.
But, really, I could have worked that out for myself instead of leaping to an erroneous
conclusion. After all, Barry was the one who worked for the Parks Department and whoever kept a garden as regimented as theirs must have known a bit about gardens as well as being something of a control freak. When I contemplated
it, it was hard to imagine May as the latter.
‘Mostly I walk around, wondering how it would look if I were in charge,’ May added. I’d forgotten she voiced her thoughts slowly and deliberately and that she was capable of coming up with something out of left field. I decided it might be wisest to drop the subject of the garden.
‘I hope you don’t mind me coming round,’ I said instead, deciding to get to the point just in case Barry did unexpectedly turn up. ‘I was wondering if you might have some information I need.’
At the very moment I said that, a new, third idea popped into my brain. It would be far easier if I could see what Laurie and Iris had looked like, not just be given a verbal description.
‘Information?’ said May. ‘About what?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it occurred to me that you might have some photos of Laurie and Iris.’
Now it was me who’d said something out of left field. May blinked, her turn to be surprised.
‘Laurie and Iris?’
I realised I should have come up with a plausible excuse as to why I wanted to see photos of Laurie and Iris. I had to invent one, double-quick. ‘Um . . . I was remembering what you told us about them. They, ah, sounded like interesting people.’ (How feeble is the desperate mind! Call that a plausible excuse. Not!)
‘Is it for school?’ asked May, throwing me a
lifeline.
‘Yes, that’s it!’ I said. ‘For an English assignment. We all have to do a biography project about someone.’
Who would have thought a homework
assignment would come in so useful?
‘A biography. Well, that might be difficult, seeing that neither Iris nor Laurie are here to talk to.’
For a second I wondered if May had an ironic streak like Mum and me but I decided no, she hadn’t. She was just stating the facts. Iris was long dead and Laurie long gone. Well not that long but long enough for anything to have happened to him, including having died. As May said, it would be difficult for anybody to write a bio when the subjects weren’t around to be interviewed.
‘Oh, I don’t necessarily have to interview anyone,’ I said. (This was actually true.) ‘We can research from books and the internet if we can’t decide on anyone local, contemporary and easily available to talk to. (Also all true). And so it doesn’t have t
o be about someone still alive. (True, too). But, like I said, Laurie and Iris sounded interesting people when you and Barry - well mainly you - were telling us about them. (Sort of true. They had become, through no fault of my own, much more interesting since.) So I thought, why not do them?’ (Not true, not until that
very moment.)
‘To be honest, there probably isn’t a great deal more I can say about them,’ said May. ‘They were both rather private individuals as people their generation tended to be. And in the years after Iris died, Laurie turned into something of a recluse.
Eventually he didn’t even want to talk to us anymore.’ Automatically, her voice dropped. ‘Well, even to me, to be exact. Before that he never liked to talk to . . . well, anyway, maybe I can add a few extra colours to the picture if I put
my mind to it.’
‘A picture would be perfect,’ I reminded her, trying to sound firm. ‘The project needs to be illustrated so unless you happen to have a photo of them there probably isn’t any point in going further. I’d have to choose someone else.’
I crossed my fingers behind my back.
‘As it happens I do have a photo,’ said May. ‘Not of Iris, just of Laurie. It was taken a while after Iris died, before Laurie got really miserable and retreated into his shell. It was on or around his seventieth birthday as I far as I remember. I organised a little party for him and for his and Iris’s friends, not that there were a great many.’
‘That’d be prefect.’
A photo of an old Laurie minus Iris wouldn’t be as good as a young Laurie with Iris but it would be better than no photo at all. With luck I’d be able to recognise the young in the old.
‘Can you show me now?’ I asked, hoping I wasn’t coming across too eager, or too bullying. I didn’t want to sound like Barry.
‘Of course,’ May said, ‘Come in.’
The Houdini Effect Page 8
