Smoke and Mirrors

by Lesley Choyce

  My mother would say, “Simon, you can do whatever you want with your life as long as you have a solid education and apply yourself to something practical.”

  Practical was not any area that was on my radar.

  “Simon,” my father would say, “you can become whatever you would like to be. Just strive to be the best.” These were the words coming from a man who had descended from an alpha male ape. Being the best at something sounded exhausting.

  The house resonated with my parents’ arguments over money or me. It seeped into the walls and ceilings and floors. The living room carpet soaked up lectures about success that meant little to me. The furniture absorbed my mother’s late-night strategies for selling an expensive house to a man of modest means. The paintings on the walls changed colours sometimes if both parents were in the room together arguing about whose money was really carrying the household.

  I did not like all the woe that piled up around the house like the old newspapers and magazines I kept in my room for my clipping file. I tried changing my parents into people I would have liked better but failed. They were pretty powerful hominids. I did not hate my parents. I felt sorry for them, but they refused my pity.

  I did succeed in creating a force field around my room that kept all their negativity outside my private domain. This was achieved after taking advice from Lydia, the downtown psychic. She was this crazy ex-hippie who read tarot cards and palms or told you about your previous lives. I met her first at the psychic fair on Downey Street. She charged me ten dollars to tell me about my past life as a soldier in Napoleon’s army. She said she too had been a soldier in Napoleon’s army and I had saved her life in the battle at Waterloo. She insisted we become friends, although “allies” was the word I think she used. Lydia also looked at my hands very closely and announced to anyone within earshot at the psychic fair, “These are the hands of a healer.” She held up my hands for everyone to take note. Once that was established, she didn’t charge me anymore for advice or psychic services. Teaching me to create an anti-negativity force field she said was “on the house.”

  Inside, seated at the kitchen table, it seemed that there were voices talking to me, all saying the same thing. The refrigerator telling me Andrea could not possibly exist, the microwave telling me to get a grip on my life. The goddamn toaster suggesting a reality check. I turned on the radio to distract the voices and that didn’t help. So I went upstairs and turned on my computer, let the dog outside where it peed on the lawn and barked at the sound of imaginary cars programmed into the software.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I would not tell my parents about Andrea, but I needed to tell someone. So I told Lydia.

  Her apartment was tiny, a cramped living space above a used record store down on Argyle Street. She had no doorbell, no buzzer. An old used envelope tacked to the door said simply, “Go upstairs and walk in. You are expected.” Her idea of a psychic’s joke.

  Old tabloid newspapers were piled on the steps up to her place, some with headlines like, “Elvis found Alive and Well Living Among Baboons.” Or “Hitler’s Son a Proctologist in Miami.”

  I knocked on the door and walked in. The smell in the air was a combination of garlic and marijuana. Lydia called the marijuana an “herb,” and she seemed quite open about the fact that she was a toker. Never once did she offer me any or even ask if I had ever smoked. I was now a non-toker and a non-drinker. I didn’t want to mess with whatever natural chemical process was going on in my brain. That’s why I snubbed even the store-bought pharmaceuticals my parents were squandering their money on.

  “Hey there,” Lydia said as a smoke alarm went off in the tiny kitchen where she was burning something in a frying pan. I walked in and tried to reach for the alarm, but I wasn’t tall enough. The shrill sound hurt my ears. Lydia cursed loudly at it and failed to make it stop so she swatted it with a broom, knocking it onto the floor where it split open and spilled its battery, then fell silent.

  “Simon, I knew you’d be over today. It’s about a girl, isn’t it?”

  I smiled and sat down on a piece of plastic lawn furniture that served as a kitchen chair.

  “Good guess,” I said.

  “I never guess,” she said. “I know.”

  Everyone around town thought Lydia was a phony. Few believed in her psychic powers. I’m not sure I did either. But Lydia was my friend. After Ozzie left town, she became the only person I could talk to about everything and anything. She was opinionated but kind. And I needed that.

  “A skeleton goes into a bar and asks for a drink,” she says. “And the bartender tells him ...”

  “I’ve heard it before,” I said.

  “Just testing your memory.”

  “My memory is fine. How are you?”

  Lydia had henna purple hair. She wore a long, free-flowing kind of gown or dress that reached the floor. She had funny eyebrows, having plucked her real hairs out and inscribed two straight lines with an indelible marker high above her eyes. Her eyes themselves were unusual. One was green and one brown. She was maybe thirty, possibly older. I never asked.

  She scraped whatever she had been cooking into the trash can and apologized for the smell and the smoke. “Let’s go into my office,” she said, leading me into the little living room where the walls were covered, every inch, with astrological charts.

  She flopped down into an old beanbag chair and offered me the famous wicker seat — famous because she claimed the wicker chair held traces of the personality of every person who had ever sat in it. “And there have been some amazing characters that have shown up here over the years,” she said.

  “About the girl,” I began.

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s her sign?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “My guess would be she’s a Capricorn. That’s because the moon is in your first house so that makes you shy and moody and it would be attractive to a Capricorn right about now. Tell me a bit about her. Is it her body that attracts you to her or her heart?”

  “Well, it can’t be her body because I don’t think she is real. I mean in the corporeal sense.”

  “I see. What makes you think she’s not corporeal?”

  “No one else but me can see her.”

  “But she looks like a regular girl?”

  “Define regular.”

  “Hmm. What about her clothes? She had clothes, didn’t she?”

  “Her clothes seemed like something a girl at my school would wear. Nothing special.”

  “So she’s probably contemporary, not someone from the past.”

  “Seemed like she was here and now.”

  “I still think she must be a Capricorn. Are you in love with her?”

  “I don’t think so. In fact, I think I finally got Tanya Webb to notice me. Or I think my new friend did something to make Tanya like me.”

  “Wow. Some friend. This Tanya, is she real?”

  “She is, and she has a great corporeal presence.”

  “Be careful. Tanya sounds like trouble.”

  Lydia lit some incense even though she knew I didn’t like the smell of patchouli. She walked to the window and blew some dust off a large dream catcher, making it swing freely in the sunlight.

  “The other one have a name?”

  “Andrea.”

  “Does she frighten you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Do you sense anything about her that is foreboding?”

  “No. She just looks confused sometimes like she’s trying to figure something out.”

  “Why do you think she appeared to you?”

  “She says she’s here to help me.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Maybe she is.”

  Lydia seemed at a loss for words. “You know I’m between spirit guides right now. Kassan said he had to move on, and I’m waiting to make contact with a new guide. So far, no go. Oh, I can contact plenty of spirits, but there are so
many that are unreliable. What a bunch of jokers.” She changed the subject. “You shouldn’t slouch so much. You want to keep your spine straight so you can absorb as much energy from the sun as you can and direct it to all your vital organs.”

  Lydia probably had a form of ADD too. She jumped around a lot, called herself a “non-linear thinker.” “How’s your chess game?” she asked.

  “I won three in a row against a hotshot on the Internet. I’m getting better.”

  She nodded her approval, switched back to the main subject. “A contemporary girl appears out of thin air to a young man in school,” she said, stroking her cheek with two fingers. “I think you should build this relationship with caution.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about marrying her.”

  “That’s comforting. But I would still be careful. Don’t do anything to upset her. She could be the one in a vulnerable state.”

  “She seems to have things under control. Maybe all I have to do is sit back and let her help me.”

  “The energy has to flow in two directions.”

  “Have you had this sort of thing happen to you?”

  “My guides are always very real to me but not in any physical sense. I can see a face maybe while I am in a trance, but no, they don’t sit down on the furniture and watch Oprah with me or anything like that.”

  “Then this girl is unusual.”

  “Unusual but not impossible. I think you have been selected somehow.”

  “Chosen?”

  “Either verb will do.”

  “I guess I was kinda hoping you could look into the future and tell me what might happen next. I really don’t want to screw this up.”

  Lydia laughed. “Do you see a crystal ball anywhere around here? I know I’ve given you warnings and advice in the past but I haven’t ever predicted what will happen. I don’t like to mess with free will.”

  “Maybe just give me a heads-up.”

  She breathed in deeply. “There’s not one of the spirits I’m in communication with that I can currently trust. They are all rascals. I’m not even giving them the time of day. You want advice? Be nice to her. Don’t push things. Trust your instincts.”

  “Sheesh,” I said. “Very profound.”

  Lydia laughed. Those funny eyebrows were two high thin lines rising up on her forehead.

  “I’ve been afraid to ask her this, but I’d really like to know exactly what she is.”

  “If I were you, I’d worry less about what she is and stay focused on who she is. Labels always have a way of screwing things up. You should know that better than anyone.”

  Lydia began to rearrange some small crystal rocks in a bowl she had on the coffee table. I thanked her for her time and said I’d stay in touch.

  “I’m positive she’s a Capricorn,” Lydia asserted as I walked out the door.

  Dinner was Chinese takeout, which I hated. My parents both used chopsticks to eat their food. They thought themselves very clever. I opted for a microwaved pizza with special cardboard flavouring (the NEW AND IMPROVED aspect, I supposed) and two fortune cookies. One said, “You are about to experience the respect you deserve,” and the other said, “A modest man never talks of himself.” An interesting combination.

  My mother was going on and on about a house she had just “listed.” My father was wondering out loud if it was going to rain on the weekend and spoil his golf game. I asked if I could have some money to go bungee jumping at the new place called Over the Edge.

  “No way,” my dad said, punctuating the denial by tapping his chopsticks together in front of him.

  “Simon, be realistic,” my mother said. “No way / be realistic” was a kind of household chant, an all-purpose dual parent response to any of my serious questions. I didn’t tell them about Andrea, naturally, and I wouldn’t bother getting the dirty looks by telling them I went to visit Lydia.

  The argument between my mom and dad started over something small — some flaw in the phoned-in order involving sweet and sour sauce. Then it escalated into World War Three. Fortunately for all of us, my parents were only verbal types and didn’t get physical. They said unkind things to each other, pointing out this shortcoming and that flaw and then they almost always brought me, or at least the subject of me, into the battlefield.

  “If you’d been a better mother — if you’d instilled some common sense into your son — he may have been ...”

  “Normal” is the word my father did not say. He paused right there in the heat of battle, as if realizing for the first time that I was still in the room.

  “You bastard,” my mother said, stealing a look at me as if she were coming to my defence. “How dare you!” She had both volume and resonance in her voice. My father looked like he had just stepped in a cow pie. He threw down his chopsticks and left the room.

  For many years after my skateboard accident (which I refer to as my “lobotomy,” although the term is not really accurate) I wondered if my parents would have been better off without me in their lives. I often believed myself to be the cause of their unhappiness. Lying in bed at night, I wondered if there was some better place for me to be — better for them, better for me. So, thanks to some serious book study, I would astrally project myself, leaving my body and travelling up this long silvery thread into the night sky and off to anywhere I wanted to go.

  Sometimes that took me to a beach in Australia where it was daytime and there were lots of well-tanned girls and many friendly and wise young men surfers who liked me. They said things like “Fair dinkum” to anything I said. I wanted to surf badly and asked to borrow a board. “Sure, mate,” one bushy-headed blonde guy said. “Go get tubed.”

  But every time my big toe touched the sea, I was yanked back into my body on the other side of the planet.

  I woke up early the next day and walked to school, down the old railway track hiking trail. I expected Andrea to appear, but she did not. At school, however, I saw her at the far end of the hall and she waved, but as I approached she walked away. I found my locker and fumbled with my books. Some days my mind is clear about school — where to go when, which books to take. Today was not one of those days. I looked at my schedule taped to my locker door; I selected the books I needed. And then I looked up and realized Tanya Webb was standing there. She was smiling.

  “I have a report to write about Druids for Hist. Civ. class and I don’t know where to begin. I was wondering if you might help.”

  The fortune cookie was right.

  “I’d love to. The Druids built Stonehenge, you know?” This was my version of flirtation. I realize it was not typical of Stockton High, but a door had opened here into another dimension — the dimension of encounters with the opposite sex.

  “That’s in England isn’t it?”

  “Sure. The Druids were Celts.”

  “Were they short?”

  “Not necessarily. You shouldn’t mix up Druids and dwarfs.”

  Tanya just smiled, and I pinched myself to see if I was really in school or still home in bed, imagining all this.

  Then I saw Andrea standing behind Tanya. Andrea waved but slid her fingers across her mouth like it was a zipper, reminding me not to say anything out loud to her. Andrea had tweaked something in Tanya’s mind to make her feel kindly towards me.

  “Let’s meet in the public library after school, okay?” I boldly said. The bell was about to ring.

  “Sure. See you then,” Tanya said and walked on. I just stood there and watched her walk. She did it extremely nicely.

  “That went well,” Andrea said.

  “Did you do that?”

  “I knew she had a paper on Druids and figured here was a window.”

  “A window?”

  “An opportunity. Remember, I’m here to help you.”

  “You’re here to help me with girls?”

  “I’m here to help you in general. You are a loner, Simon. You spend too much time by yourself, too much time inside your head.”

  “It’s
true. Anyway, I appreciate it. Are you coming with me to class?”

  “Which one?”

  I had forgotten already. Rats. I had to look at my schedule again and realized that it was Thursday. “Math. And I didn’t do the homework.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Mr. Michaels nailed me not five minutes into the class. “Simon, do problem 3 on page 147. At the board.”

  Many other teachers took pity on me and didn’t send me to the board. Not Michaels. Humiliation was his forte.

  I got out of my seat and carried my book to the front of the class. Andrea was right behind me. I wrote the long equation on the chalkboard and didn’t have a clue as to where to begin to find out what X equalled. I took a deep breath and began to turn to look at Mr. Michaels and give him my long-practised and well-rehearsed shrug when Andrea took my arm and began to move my hand.

  I giggled. The class laughed. Michaels scowled. “Get serious,” a voice said.

  I cleared my throat and pretended to be studying the equation. I moved letters and numbers from one side of the equation to the other. I crossed some things out. There appeared to be multiplication and division involved. I seemed to know what to do with the parenthesis. And then, suddenly, I had discovered that X equalled Y minus 19.

  My hand set the chalk down. Andrea let go, but I could still feel a kind of energy radiating in my hand from where she had held it. I turned around. Michaels looked puzzled. “That is correct,” he said flatly, “although I wouldn’t have done those steps quite in that order.”

  I sat back down in my seat and Mr. Michaels picked the next victim — Parker, who was looking a little pale.