Smoke and Mirrors

by Lesley Choyce

  I heard the front door open as my father began to walk out of the house. I heard his footsteps on the driveway. When I looked out the window I saw him getting into the car. I looked at my mother. Her head was down. She was crying. “Okay,” she said, still crying. “We’ll try.”

  I opened the window and yelled out to my father. “Wait!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  There was an air of reconciliation around my house. The arguing stopped. I spent less time in my room and the three of us were together more often. It’s not that we were doing anything exciting: eating a pizza together, watching a DVD. My father reading the newspaper and handing it to me to look for articles about two-headed chickens and gravity wells. There were still problems between them. That’s not something that goes away overnight. It wasn’t the thrill of having their boy back on expensive drugs — it wasn’t like I was going to be normal or anything. But I had triggered the change and I had to keep up my end of the bargain.

  Two pills, three times a day. I was a pharmaceutical wonder. A drug company’s answer to corporate profits. The stuff slowed me down some. My thoughts ran more in a straight line. I could stay focused more easily in classes. I could look straight at the teacher instead of darting my eyes around the room. I aced a math quiz, wrote a totally intelligible research essay about the Carthaginians.

  My mother took me shopping and I bought some clothes that were in style. I got a haircut.

  I missed the old me, I really did. The new me was much less entertaining. But Tanya liked the new me. She said nice things about my clothes and hair. (Is that all that is really necessary to make a girl pay attention? Scary thought.) She had me over to her house for dinner and then her parents went out. We were alone in their living room with their big-screen TV and home theatre surround sound. We were watching her father’s collector’s edition DVD of one of my all-time favourite films, The Matrix. All the lights were out and Tanya sat close to me. Before the evening was over, we were kissing. And it went a bit further than that.

  I had not seen Andrea since the night my parents were going to separate. Two more weeks had passed. Late at night, lying in my bed, I wondered about who she was, where she was. Had she been a true figment of my imagination? A hallucination? And such a convincing one at that. Such an interesting and charming one.

  The other option was that she had been real — at least as real as any apparition can be — and that she had done her “job.” She had helped me with my parents, helped me with Tanya, helped me with me. I was back on track, back on the road to becoming an upper-middle-class consumer-oriented suburbanite like my dad. He had even gone so far already as to buy me my first set of golf clubs. In the backyard, he was coaching me to putt better.

  Andrea had conceivably worked these miracles — “fixed” my life and moved on. (To where? To whom?) I tried contacting her — with telepathy — and had no luck. I put myself into self-hypnosis and tried to project out into the world, into the multi-tiered universe to find her, but still no luck.

  But why had she been so afraid of coming into my house? Why had she been there in my room and so uncontrollably upset when my dad was leaving? One part of me felt that it was right that I “moved on.” My parents may not have solved all their problems but they didn’t argue much. They were still pretty busy but made a point of trying to create what my father kept calling “quality time” at home. My mother sold a $600,000 house and the bond market was looking up. So everything was improving.

  I knew the drugs changed my day-to-day dealings on so many levels. I continued to miss the old me sometimes. My brain had once been filled with so many images, so many crazy thoughts. Some totally insane, some pure gibberish, some amazing. I had been a visionary, a seer, a wild genius, a maniac, and a lunatic, and now I was a well-groomed teenage boy with the right clothes and a girlfriend. I envisioned the pharmaceutical company that made my drug using me for a TV commercial: before and after. Simon the wonder boy of science. A product of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Maybe there was no going back.

  I sat at my desk in my room and looked at the cardboard box of weird and paranormal files. It all seemed a little childish — the fascinations of a very lonely boy. Each file was of a different colour. In some areas of my life I had always been very organized.

  The orange folder was the one I had read over and over and it included articles from magazines and newspapers about right-brain and left-brain research. Split-brain research it was called. The right side of the brain is where the imagination does its work and it’s where the creative stuff comes from. The left hemisphere of the brain is associated with logic and language control.

  Dr. Roger Sperry at Caltech was a researcher in this area and worked with some mental patients who had actually been treated for epilepsy by severing the ties between the two hemispheres. They were not unlike me — with my bruised and injured brain and my missing connective tissue. It was as if the lines were down between the two halves of the brain. Sperry suggested from his research that severing the ties was like turning someone into two different individuals. That, to me, had always been a scary thought, but I did not see myself as any kind of split personality.

  I knew from my own research and piecing things together that I was more right-brained than left. My imagination was powerful — full of all those weird and crazy and wonderful images and ideas. I often thought of myself as intuitive. (The teacher is going to call on Davis when she turns around, I would think. And she would.)

  Julian Jaynes, another researcher, had figured out that primitive peoples paid more attention to things most people consider to be invisible. They were, like me, more right-brained and more intuitive. They heard things that weren’t “there” — auditory hallucinations. They saw things that were not physical — often thought to be ghosts and angels and demons and such. And they often instinctively knew when there was danger or when the weather was about to change dramatically or if a loved one was in trouble — even if at a great distance. All of those qualities were forsaken when we became “civilized” and started to rely on our left hemispheres. Or so the story goes.

  So, after I started back in on the meds, I had evolved from primitive to modern man. My guess is that the drug I was taking either suppressed right-brain activity or enhanced left-brain activity. It was a great little chemical experiment going on in my head. Funny though, that for a kid who had such a rich, crazy imagination, I had been so totally organized by keeping these files of paranormal and metaphysical clippings. I looked at the pile of “unprocessed” newspapers and magazines that my mom was now delivering dutifully to my room each day. I was wondering if it might be time to put that all behind me and get on with my new life here in the so-called real world.

  A typical evening for me was once sitting alone in my room with my “research” — reading the wacky news items, trying to communicate with the dead, or taking a trip by way of astral projection. That was all behind me, I supposed. Instead, nowadays, if I was home, I would read my school texts, spend time on the phone with Tanya, and, if I wanted to travel, I’d have to take a bus or get a ride from my folks.

  Lately I had been wondering about Ozzie. The Ozman, as I had fondly called him. Long gone, for sure, but he had been my best friend, heck my only friend, for so long and then he was gone. We had talked on the phone after he moved to the coast but he’d never come back to visit. And I’d never gone to see him. I pictured him out there on the beach playing volleyball with the girls and hanging out with the surfers. Maybe he had his own board. Maybe, if I found him, he could teach me to surf — just like he had coached me at skateboarding. Ozzie was always there, always the one to say, “Go for it, Simon. Fearless focus.” That was his motto: fearless focus.

  Ozzie never got hurt. Although he’d always push me one step beyond what I had been capable of up to that point. I never blamed him for my accident, though. Never once.

  I rifled thought a drawer in my desk where I kept old photos. I remembered Oz as this skinny little k
id — not much different from me. We were like two walking coat hangers — thin, all bones, big headed for our physical frames. Oz wore rimless glasses. He had hair that stood straight up. Skin pale as a bar of Ivory soap. No one had a sense of humour like he did. The Ozzer made me laugh.

  But not one photo of Ozzie. I did find a couple of old letters from the dude. Nothing recent, just some stuff from way back, not long after he had moved away. He wrote about living right by the beach, about watching people from his window with binoculars, learning to read their lips and being able to tune into their conversations. Odd man Oz, for sure. But there was no return address.

  I rooted through my desk some more looking for a phone number. Jeez, I felt bad that I hadn’t called my old buddy in a few years now. Maybe it was about time to do just that. But I couldn’t find anything with his name on it. No number to call.

  In my closet was a model of a DNA molecule that we had made together from blocks of wood. “Deoxyribonucleic acid” had once been our favourite phrase. I remember making the model and painting it; after we received honourable mention at the science fair, Ozzie wanted to pour lighter fluid on it and burn it outside at night. But I had talked him out of it. It was probably the only time I had talked the Oz out of anything.

  But no address, no phone number. Maybe I wasn’t meant to phone him. There was a good chance he wouldn’t like the new me at all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  And then it was my birthday. Seventeen years old. Tanya met me at my locker and held a piece of mistletoe over my head. “It’s not Christmas,” I said.

  “The Druids didn’t have to wait for Christmas.” She kissed me hard on the lips in front of everyone. And she slid her tongue into my mouth. It was the Druids who had brought us together, so they were often a part of our intimate conversations.

  “After school today, we should go do something special. My treat.”

  “Let’s make a stone circle and worship the sun,” I said. “Maybe build a fire and dance naked around it.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am,” I teased.

  “Let’s do something you really want to do.”

  “Okay, then. There’s someone I’d like for you to meet.”

  “Gotta run,” she said as the bell rang. She lifted the mistletoe again and kissed me one more time. Then she pressed it into my hand and headed off down the hall as I stood there watching her, realizing how much I enjoyed just watching the girl walk. As I was turning to put the mistletoe into my locker, I saw something out of the corner of my eye — another girl walking towards me as the crowd of students in the hall was thinning. I turned to focus on her and was sure it was Andrea. I started to run towards her but she turned and went into a classroom and closed the door behind her.

  It wasn’t my class but I followed her in, stood there at the front of the room looking at the students settling into their seats. No Andrea. I studied the faces of the girls. No, she wasn’t here. Everyone was looking at me and some were laughing.

  “Wrong room, Simon,” Mrs. Evans said. “Need some help finding your class?”

  Now everyone laughed. I said nothing, turned, and fled out the door. I stood there for a minute, my heart pounding, wondering why I felt the way I did. There had never been an Andrea, I told myself. But the thought of her had burst like a bubble coming to the surface of my mind. Hadn’t she been the one who had planted some suggestion into Tanya’s thoughts originally? Wasn’t Andrea responsible for that? And for beginning the truce between my parents at home. And prompting me to take my medication and becoming everything that I was now.

  Later that day, Tanya sat in the seat behind me in my History of Civilization class. I could feel her picking lint off the sweater I was wearing. It was rather public and very sweet. A sign of affection, for sure. Her interest and concern for me had grown to something quite extraordinary for a guy who had never had a girlfriend. Sometimes I wondered if it was completely brought on in some weird metaphysical way. Some kind of witchcraft, some kind of mind-altering effect. But who was I to question such a good thing?

  I pondered all this as Mr. Holman, quite enthusiastically, lectured about how the barbaric Gauls invaded Rome in 400 B.C. There were no walled fortresses to keep them out and they stormed down from the north, killing, destroying, and spilling more blood into the great thirsty mouth of history itself.

  When I was younger and lustily reading many books on psychics and metaphysics, I became a fan of what was once called “automatic writing.” Like others before me, some documented by the likes of William James (the so-called father of modern psychology), I would sit at a desk and put myself into a trance and then let my hand travel with a pen over a sheet of paper. And so I sat one day back then, with pen in hand, on a lonely grey winter afternoon, and went out into other realms, waiting for a spirit to enter into me so I would begin writing.

  Certainly my hand moved, and I scrawled away for twenty minutes or more at a time, but I could never read what I had written. Fluid loops and curves, Ls and Ts and numbers even, but it was all garbage. This happened at least six times before I focused on a specific request inside my trance.

  After relaxing every part of my body and mind, I seemed to travel to some other place where I put out a silent request to anyone listening in that realm that I was looking for an entity (one of my most cherished words in those days) with good handwriting.

  And thus it seemed that something entered into me. I could feel “him” occupying my thoughts. I gripped the pen a little tighter, sat more upright, and began to compose words upon the page.

  Here ye, hear ye. Smitten twice all called to the kingdom of Dilapades and henceforth wisdom to the ponds and forests. Gentle composure towns slipping east all afternoon whilst crown grumble folk meet between. Fumble stock over the drumlin. Twin earth power root and mangle foot. Alms to all the sad armies beneath the cataracts. Lessons one two three. Dream wild little boy thimble high and carry wide. Allegiance to all the winged thoughts. Adieu.

  I remember falling asleep after writing that and dreamed of wide, green, rolling fields with a castle in the distance. A lone white horse came out to greet me and stood shyly by my side nibbling at the grass. I woke when my mother knocked on my door, telling me it was time for dinner.

  For many days I studied what he or I had written. I had succeeded in contacting or conjuring a spirit with excellent penmanship but I wasn’t sure he made any sense. I read meaning into every part of it though and memorized it, reciting it to Ozzie as we rode our skateboards along the paved bike path down by the river. Ozzie was most impressed and urged me to recite it at the school talent night saying it was a poem I had “written.” Well, I had written it, but it wasn’t exactly mine.

  I did, in fact, recite my “poem” before a rather stunned audience of parents, students, and teachers. I was in grade six at the time. Adults, many of them, told me they were amazed at my gift. They thought it was a fabulous poem and they acted as if they understood what it meant. All except for one old geezer — a retired English professor who introduced himself as Dr. Lester Willis. He took me aside after the show and accused me of plagiarism. “You lifted it from James Joyce, didn’t you, lad?” There was a musty smell about him and an odd look in his eyes.

  “No. I don’t even know who James Joyce is.”

  He became quite rude and nasty. “Theft of any sort, especially great literature, is a crime against humanity. My guess is you copied this from Ulysses, or possibly Finnegan’s Wake. Am I correct?”

  I had heard of neither book, although I looked them up later in the library and found them dense and unreadable but not entirely unlike my “poem.”

  “Sir,” I said, “I did have some help in writing it.”

  “Very well,” he said, changing demeanour, now satisfied. “Then you have confessed. The truth will always prevail.”

  He turned away, and it suddenly struck me how oddly he was dressed. I never saw him again and thought it strange that a man like that would h
ave been in attendance at all. It was as if he himself had come from another time and another place. A restless literary constable on the prowl for boys claiming to have written verse that was not their own.

  My parents typically had not been able to attend the evening and thus missed my moment of glory. My father picked me up afterwards, however, and at home my mother asked to read the poem. I could tell from her furrowed brow that she feared this to be another example of how odd a child I truly was. I did not ’fess up to the origin of the work.

  “The handwriting is extraordinary,” she said.

  There were many more days of scrawling, rolling, tumbling, florid handwriting on white pages but there were no real words to speak of. Vowels and consonants strung together but mostly just hills and valleys of ink, Vs and Ss and endless Ms. In my trance, I would request contact with someone who could write in English, someone with good penmanship, and someone who had something intelligent to say.

  These seemed to be fairly stiff demands. The “poet” never returned to me. There was a feminine entity that drew pictures of flowers with bees buzzing about them. And a pale boy with spiky hair who drew kites. And then it all stopped and each time I tried to hypnotize myself I just fell asleep.

  I explained to Tanya where I wanted to go.

  “She’s a what?”

  “A psychic,” I said. “And an old friend. Her name is Lydia, and she’s unusual. I want you to like her.”

  “I thought we were going to do something special. It’s your birthday, remember?”

  “This is special. Lydia says she has a new, um, guide.”

  “Like a guide dog? Is she blind?”

  “No. Lydia is a medium. She contacts spirits, dead people. Sometimes they can speak through her.”

  “This is giving me the creeps. Can we maybe do something else?”