The Illusionist (7 page)

At the top of Schermerhorn, we pulled into the yard in front of my house. The house was just a little frame box, really, which had been painted white a hundred times over. Once, maybe, it had been a chicken coop or a storage shed. It was one story high, with a gray tin roof rusted at the joints. A wooden porch clung to the front of it, and there was a huge freezer left over from some previous tenant long ago that nearly filled the space, and the rest was cluttered with Bobby's toys, his wagon, his plastic trike.

The yard in front was rutted, frozen mud. We climbed out of our cars and we both paused a moment, instinctively listening to the wind dipping and sighing through the fields all round us.

I unlocked the front door and we went inside. The house was low-ceilinged, the floor covered with worn blue linoleum, patches of wood plank showing through. There was a big woodstove.

It was furnished with the stuff I got from the Salvation Army and leftovers from previous tenants over the years, a round oak table, chairs with broken braces, the windows had little white cottage curtains, the fabric worn and torn. To the side of the living room were two tiny bedrooms, one for me, the other Bobby's.

As soon as we got inside, Bobby cried, “I'm hungry!”

“Just a minute!” I said. “Gimme a minute.”

I pulled off Bobby's jacket. “I'm going to make his dinner,” I told Dean. “Fish sticks. Want some?”

“Sure,” he said.

While I put the cookie tray with the fish sticks into the oven, Dean sat on the floor and played with Bobby. “Let me show you a magic trick,” he said.

He reached behind Bobby's ear, pulled out a quarter. Bobby smiled up at him, but he didn't get the magic of it. Too young to understand the trick, and Dean didn't understand that Bobby was too young.

“How'd you do that?” I asked from the stove.

Dean smiled. “I'll never tell.”

“You could be a professional.”

“That's what I want to be. I'm not working at the Laundercenter selling soap my whole life. . . . I want to have like a traveling show. Go from place to place. Maybe do it out of the back of the truck. People'll pay money. Once I really get it perfect, I'll be able to charge.”

“I'll bet you will.”

He started pushing Bobby's big yellow dump truck across the floor. Then he made a road with Bobby's blocks, giving Bobby his close attention, concentrating on the game, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, making his eye squint. I wished he wouldn't smoke, because of Bobby's asthma. But I was afraid to say anything. I already knew I wanted Dean to be happy here. I wanted him to stay.

And Bobby, sitting on the floor in his denim overalls, legs spread out, was gaping up at him, fascinated by this new person.

*  *  *

After dinner, I gave Bobby his bath. As I knelt beside the tub, I was so tired there was a buzzing inside my skull. It was if all the blood had drained from it. Only a half hour more, I thought, and then he'd be in bed. As I washed Bobby's thin, white body, I could hear Dean in the kitchen, clearing the table, stacking the dishes in the sink. I was grateful for his help.

Outside the bathroom window, a velvety wind rose over the fields, then, after a few moments, subsided like a breath. Not a summer wind with all its fullness and sweetness, but a damp, November wind, brushing the surface of the hills, promising worse.

Bobby was chattering up at me. “This the submarine . . . this the boat . . .”

“Yeah, honey.”

I lifted him from the tub, and he ran naked into the living room, a tiny white body on skinny legs, and I ran after him. This chase was part of his bedtime ritual.

In the big room, Dean caught Bobby in his arms, and I swept him up and carried him back into the bathroom.

I dried Bobby off, and put my ear to his chest. “Sshh. Stand still. Let Mommy listen.” Coming from deep within his chest was a sound like the whistle of a train, a sound far away in the distance. It was the asthma. But there was no retraction, no struggle for breath. Dr. Vakil had taught me how to detect the danger signs. “Trust yourself,” Dr. Vakil said. “Always listen to the mother, that's the first thing they taught us in medical school. The mother knows.”

When I'd pulled Bobby's blue feet pajamas on him, I sat him down in front of the TV to watch
Jeopardy!
and hooked up his Pulmo-Aide machine.

“What's that?” Dean asked.

“His medicine. Gets there quicker with this.”

With the eyedropper, I mixed the medicine into a little container, fitted the transparent mask over Bobby's face, and switched on the console. Air hissed through the tube that led from the console to the mask and Bobby sat there breathing it in like a good boy. With the plastic mask over his face, he looked like a little spaceman.

After only a few minutes, the hissing stopped. It was all used up.

Dean asked, “Can I give him a kiss good night?” That pleased me, and I held him down to Dean so he could kiss him.

Then I put Bobby into bed in his own room, tucking the covers around his tiny frame. As I reached the door, his voice came to me. “Sing!” He sensed I was in a hurry to get to Dean. He wasn't going to let me get away without giving him his rightful due, without the ritual of my nighttime departure being complete. So I went back, and I sat on his bed. “Go to sleep—go to sleep,” I sang. “Go to sleep, little bi-ird. . . .” Our own special words for the song.

He lay on his back, sucking on his thumb, listening intently to make sure I sang the words exactly the way I always did, exactly as I had a hundred times before.

*  *  *

After Bobby had fallen asleep, I went back in to Dean in the living room. I washed the dishes Dean had stacked for me in the sink, and Dean dried them. Above the kitchen sink, there was a small window that looked out across the fields behind the house. Beyond the house were fields, the grass brown and matted, waiting for the snow.

As Dean reached next to me into the drainer for the dishes to dry, I could smell him, the fresh, washed flannel of his shirts, the scent of wind and air on his skin. His green eyes shone, his cheeks were flushed red, there were soft golden hairs on them. He had this little smile, his teeth resting on his lower lip, as if he was aware of being watched, would burst out laughing at any moment.

A sudden energy seemed to knit my flesh. I was wide awake. Dean looked at me, a teasing smile on his face. He reached out his hand, touched my cheek, and under his fingertips, the pores of my skin rose. It was as if an electrical current were somehow magnetizing my skin, drawing it up, toward him.

He leaned over, touched his lips to mine. He was shorter than me by an inch or so, and I had to bend my knees slightly to receive the kiss. His lips were full, unexpectedly soft, his mouth fresh and moist, though not too moist. His breath was sweet, like spring or dawn.

I stepped closer to him and reached to put my arms around his neck. But he backed away, as if he didn't want me to touch him, danced a little shuffle step away from me, and smiled. Then he stepped forward again, leaned over, kissed me, but he held himself away so our bodies didn't touch.

At first his kisses were dry, subtle, feathery, his full lips barely touching mine. Then he'd pull away. Making me want more. Eddie's kisses were always too wet, his tongue too big, filling my mouth. When Eddie kissed me sometimes I felt I had no room to breathe.

Dean's tongue was making darting motions in and out of my mouth, entering, then withdrawing. Each little kiss made my body
seem to swell more. And every time, he pulled back so that it almost hurt me physically. It was like he was torturing me, teasing me, making me want it more and more.

He wouldn't let me catch his tongue with mine—he'd pull it away just in time. It was like a dance he had designed, all the moves planned out.

Then, finally, he gave me his full mouth, all ripe and healthy, tasting sweet like fresh fruit.

“Take your glasses off,” he ordered.

I said, “I can't see without them.”

“You don't need to see.”

I removed my glasses, and he peered into my eyes. “Your eyes are kind of hazel—greenish. Then, there's like these brown specks in them. . . .”

I knew I had permanent red marks on the bridge of my nose from my glasses. I rubbed at the marks now, knowing they were there. But the marks never went away, they were like scars on my face.

He led me by the hand into my bedroom. The wrought iron bed, with its chipped coat of white paint, took up nearly the whole space. There was a quilt, faded and torn, that had been left behind by some other tenant, and the old mattress sagged in the middle. In the corner, jammed up against the bed practically, was a little bureau.

Outside, the wind rose, the window rattled in its frame. For a moment, the house trembled. It was dark in the tiny room, except for a shaft of light coming through the door from the main room.

Dean lay down on the bed beside me, the springs squeaked. But he still held his body away from me so that we didn't touch. Then he curved his body toward me, but it wasn't touching mine, and kissed me so nothing touched but our lips.

All these months, I thought, all these months . . .

His hand moved to my breast, and when he cupped it in his hand it was as if all my body were centered there. He lifted my blouse, pushed up my bra, reached behind, and unhooked it like
he was practiced at this. But again when I reached out to touch
him,
he shrank away.

Now his lips were on my breast, his cold wet tongue flicking the nipple and as he did that, he unzipped my skirt, loosened it, pulled down my panty hose, pushing up the skirt. I cooperated, lifted my hips for him. Didn't care anymore. Had been so long. In fact, it had
never
been. I felt the air on my naked skin and I was so wet there it was like a pool. It was all for me and not for him, if that was the way he wanted it. . . .

He whispered, “Take as long as you want.”

And then he was down there, taking my swollen body into himself.

Every now and then he'd come up for air, kissing me, and I could taste myself on his wet lips, the lemony taste, detect the faint smell of myself on his mouth.

He didn't go inside me.

Afterward, I lay with my back to him, and he wrapped his arms around me, his body warm, warmer than any body I'd ever lain next to before, at least the one man I had ever known.

The next day Dean brought all his stuff over from Chrissie Peck's place. Chrissie was his “bud,” he said, just his friend, a good person. Dean didn't have much to bring, just what he carried around in the truck with him, his backpack with some clothes, his magic books, his ditty bag. In the bathroom, I peeked inside the ditty bag—there was a razor, a roll of Ace bandages, Polo aftershave, a toothbrush, some pills, with the name of the drug on the label blacked out with Magic Marker. The label read L. Dean. Pharmacist's error, I thought.

That night, when we made love, Dean again insisted that it be dark. And when I touched him on the chest, I felt a thickness there, from the long underwear he wore, and then—maybe something underneath that. When I tried to touch him at his waist, or below, he pulled my hand away, and gripped my wrist tight. But I didn't mind, for now, at least, if he only wanted to give
me
pleasure. He arched his body over mine, pulling himself up on one arm, thrust his fingers inside me, then his hand, until it seemed like his whole fist was inside me. As he did it, he studied my face, like he was reading a book—though I was a book in motion, my head sweeping from side to side.

I felt him push one finger into my other hole, then another finger, prying me open, and I could feel my flesh part, a place
exposed that no one had ever known before, and I could feel myself close around him tight enough to kill him.

After it was all over, I fit my body into the curve of his, my back close to his chest. I could feel two soft lumps there. As I turned, he stirred. “Hi,” he said.

Now, as I turned to face him, he opened his eyes, caught me looking at him. Then he closed his eyes again, smiling and pulling my head down to rest in the crook of his neck, so I couldn't look at him.

“Dean,” I said.

I pulled back away from him a little, and reached my hand out, almost afraid to touch him, but I did, on the chest, and his flesh gave way under my fingertips. I realized that before he must have been wearing a bandage around there. But now he was naked underneath his long underwear top.

I slid my hand under his top. He was wide awake now, watching me, and I felt his warm, smooth skin, the mounds of flesh so soft they gave away instantly under my fingertips, and his nipples had hardened into little stones.

I pulled his underwear top all the way up to his neck and I could just see, in the light from the fields, the smooth skin of his chest. Now a fragrance seemed to rise from his body toward me. It was familiar, a warm perfume that seemed to emanate from the very pores of his skin. It was the perfume of breasts, I realized.

“What?” I said. “What's this?”

“It's a deformity,” he said. “I usually wear a bandage around it, but I took it off because it was itching.” Indeed, the Ace bandage lay on the floor by the bed.

“A deformity?”

“Like nature made a mistake. It happened when I hit puberty. I usually hide it.”

I slid my fingers around the breasts. The breasts were small and soft. “Does it feel good when I touch them?”

His eyes were closed now. “Yeah.”

“Like a woman's?”

“Ummm . . .”

I saw the smooth skin, moist-looking, the aureole around the nipple wide and dark, the skin puckered, long soft hairs sticking out. I squeezed his nipple between my thumb and forefinger, and watched his face. He closed his eyes, and turned his head from side to side.