The Illusionist (28 page)

When it was time for me to go, Mr. Hanley shook my hand and said, “Sorry to lose you, Chrissie. You've been a very good worker.” I said good-bye to Mrs. Alderfer and Mr. Ford, who were, miraculously, still alive, and I leaned down into their wheelchairs and gave each of them a hug. “Good-bye, darling,” Mrs. Alderfer said. “You're a good girl. We'll miss you.”

“Bye-bye, Chrissie,” they said, like children. “Bye-bye. . . .”

Outside, the parking lot was filled with light from the windows of the Home. I got into my car and pulled out of my spot.

I was about to turn right, toward my apartment, when, on an impulse, I decided to say good-bye to Melanie. I hadn't seen her since the funeral. I'd called a couple of times, and when I asked Mrs. Saluggio how she was, her voice had seemed guarded, but she said that Melanie was “fine,” and when I spoke to Melanie herself, her voice was bright, and cheerful, almost unnaturally so.

I drove out of town along Route 7. On either side of me, the land was flat and treeless, with only an occasional house, vulnerable and unprotected in the wide space. I came to Melanie's house, small and spare, right on the edge of the road, a little fountain with a cherub in the midst of its neat plot.

I stopped my car, walked up the concrete path, and rang the doorbell. As I stood there waiting, I could hear the sound of the television coming from inside the house.

The door opened, and there was Mrs. Saluggio, slender and beautiful, her skin tanned and oiled, wearing pedal pushers on her slim legs, and mules on her delicate feet. “Chrissie,” she said.

Beyond, in the room, lying on the couch, was Melanie. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and I saw that her arms and legs were pitiably thin, the bones curved, the joints big. Her skin had a yellowish cast, and there were brown circles around her eyes, and all the light had gone from her hair.

“Mellie . . .”I said.

She saw me, sprang from the couch and ran to me. She was smiling, her eyes feverish. “Oh, Chrissie!” she said. “I'm so glad
you're here.” But it was as if she were speaking not to the person in front of her, but to some other being, in some other realm.

“You look so thin, Melanie.”

“I feel fine!”

Her mother stood still, watching her with dark, worried eyes. “She doesn't eat,” she said. “But we're working on it, huh, Mellie?”

But Melanie didn't answer.

“I came to say good-bye,” I said.

“Where are you going?” Melanie asked, with a brightness that could shatter glass.

“Up to Caledonia, to college.”

“Oh that's wonderful, Chrissie!” Then she said, “I gotta show you my room, Chrissie. I haven't seen you for months. Come and see what I got!”

And before I knew it, she was headed up the stairs.

As I followed her, I could feel Rosemary Saluggio standing at the foot of the stairs, watching us from below.

At the top, at the door to her room, Melanie paused, then threw open the door. “Look, Chrissie, look what I've done!”

I peered at the room. It looked unlived in, the pink chenille spread smooth as if no one ever lay upon the bed, Melanie's stuffed animals lined up neatly. The white curtains in the windows had little ruffles, and the wallpaper had a pattern of yellow roses. The air was warm and close, as if no life ever stirred it.

“Look,” Mellie said, sweeping her arm across the room.

The bureau was crowded with objects. She had made a little shrine to Dean. There was a newspaper clipping from the
Ledger-Republican,
in a frame, and in another frame, a photo of herself and Dean taken in the Wooden Nickel. They were sitting in the shadows of the bar, he was leaning over the table in a masculine pose, the arms of his T-shirt rolled up, butchy, elbows resting on the table by his beer mug, and she, beside him, was demure.

Mellie was all made-up and beautiful, her shoulder-length hair fine and gleaming, the mysterious smile on her face. She was
glancing over her shoulder at something. She looked just like a movie star.

Next to the photo were two books,
Modern Magic,
and
Magic Secrets of the World.
“Those were his,” she said. “They help me to understand him better.”

In a silver frame on the bureau was the picture of him as a little girl, the one his mother had held at the funeral home, Dean in pigtails, front tooth missing, cheekbones large even then, pointy chin. The look of surprise at the camera, the delight. “His mom sent it to me,” she said. “I wrote her and begged her for something of his. We've been writing. I guess I'm her only connection to him.”

A teddy bear sat on the bureau. Melanie picked it up and hugged it to her breast. “He gave it to me on our first date. I call him Dean. Isn't he cute? Want to hold him?”

I took the bear, petted it like you would to oblige a child, then tried to give it back to her. “No, you can hold him,” she said, watching me, studying me, as if she was trying to remember the image of me holding the bear because I was tied together in her mind with him.

“You're the only other person left who was close to him,” she said.

On top of the bureau was a scrapbook with “Dean Lily” in big black letters.

She opened the book. Pasted on its pages were more newspaper clippings from the case. “Area Man Convicted in Multiple Killings.” She turned the pages. An empty Skittles bag stuck down, an advertisement for Mountain Dew cut from a magazine. “That's what I'm mostly eating now. Skittles, because of him,” she said with a little laugh.

Pasted on a page under a piece of Scotch tape was a lock of golden brown hair. “His mom sent it to me with his picture.”

“Oh, Mellie . . .” I said. And I sighed.

I sensed a movement behind me. I turned and I saw that Rosemary Saluggio was standing in the doorway. I hadn't heard her.

“You gotta eat something other than Skittles, Melanie,” Mrs. Saluggio said. “You gotta drink milk.”

But Melanie was staring at the photo of Dean as a little girl, as if she hadn't heard her mother.

“Didn't you know?” I asked Melanie. “I mean, how could you not have known?”

Still staring at the picture, “No. I never knew.”

“But it was obvious. I knew.”

“I didn't know. I believed him.”

Her head angled toward the picture. As if I was not even there now. “It didn't matter,” she said. “Because Dean acted like a man, he did everything a man does. He loved me the way a man loves a woman. I mean, if he does everything that a man does? What does it matter?”

And now she seemed not to know we were there at all, me, and behind me Mrs. Saluggio in the doorway, her hair like a gleaming cap on her head, dark red lipstick, watching with her dark eyes, watching her daughter, who had become a child again, a child with a thin body and no breasts, little and frail, and lost, forever lost to her.

*  *  *

It was still early evening when I entered my apartment on Washington Street. The atmosphere was close and it smelled of warm wood and I pushed up the window to let in some night air.

Everything was ready to go. I didn't have many belongings anyway. The futon was too heavy to load into my car. I would leave it here for the next tenant.

I had borrowed a suitcase from my mom and all my clothes fit into it. My precious things—my yearbook—I would take them with me. My books were packed in a box. I had almost as many books as clothes. The Mariah Carey poster was too torn to salvage so I ripped it off the wall and crumpled it into the garbage.

In the bedroom near my mattress was my green fireproof box. I knelt down, pulled up the lock, opened the lid. Inside was my birth certificate. I kept my Social Security card there too, in case I
lost my wallet. I saw the big manila envelope with the writing on it, Bureau of the Public Debt. That was my savings bond. I pulled the envelope out of the box and opened the flap.

Inside it was empty. The savings bond was gone.

I sat up on the mattress. “Son of a bitch! Shit!” I cried, into the empty room. He had taken it. Screwed me too. I had begged him not to steal from me, but he must have stolen it while he was actually staying here with me. I had trusted him, I hadn't bothered to look in my green box for months.

Now, crouched on the mattress, I felt my face heating up in anger and sweat spring from my body. He had dared—he had counted on my trust, counted on the fact that even if I discovered the savings bond gone, I wouldn't throw him out of the house. He knew he had me under his spell.

I felt the tears well up in my eyes. It wasn't just the money, it was the fact that, in the end, I was just an object to him too, like all the rest of them were.

I dropped the envelope back into the box, closed the lid. So, that was the ending, I thought, even our friendship couldn't transcend who he really was, a compulsive betrayer of all people. In the end he trusted no one, except maybe Melanie—the one girl he wouldn't let himself have.

It was ten o'clock now, and my apartment seemed to have a harsher light because everything was packed away. The windows were open, I could hear noise, children playing. Outside in the humid spring air, the fake gaslights on the street were surrounded by a golden aura.

The room looked clean and anonymous, as if I had never even lived here. The wainscoting on the walls was smooth, the brass sconces gleaming. The phone rested upon the bare floor. My suitcase was closed up, the box of books sealed with tape. As if the room were waiting now, for the next stranger.

I hadn't done any damage to the place. I hadn't paid Mr. Chin, the landlord, for May—he could have my security for the rent.

I was taking off at 8
A.M.
and I would be in Caledonia by lunchtime, and have the weekend to settle in.

I needed a drink and to say good-bye to Carl. “Don't you leave without saying good-bye,” Carl had said. Funny, I had never seen Carl actually in town, as small a place as Sparta was. I knew he lived in the Sparta Apartments off Courthouse Square, yet I'd never seen him on the street. His only life was the Wooden Nickel, I thought. I'd go over to there, have a drink, and just say good-bye.

*  *  *

As I drove up Washington Street, I could smell the spring air. There was the tinkling of bicycle bells, and the sound of a calliope somewhere from an ice cream truck. Kids were riding their bikes on the sidewalk while their mothers, wearing shorts, thighs still pale from winter, sat on the stoops talking.

I passed the Opera House and I saw a line of cars. They had raised enough money to restore just the ground floor of the building. And tonight was the opening of an art show by local artists. While they were mounting the exhibit, I had peeked inside. There were paintings of the river, and of Washington Street itself, with the red brick buildings seeming to glow in the light; there was even a painting of the CITGO station, all squares and triangles, bright oranges and yellows.

Now, driving up Washington Street, I came to the New York, New York store. The old lady who ran the antique shop next door to it had been complaining to the cops about all the drug dealers hanging around New York, New York, claiming they were keeping legitimate customers away from her place. You could see her sometimes, a tiny, white-haired figure dressed in blue jeans, standing there yelling at the kids to get off her stoop. The old lady said she wasn't afraid of the drug dealers killing her. She was too old to worry about dying.

And as I drove through the crazy spring air, the city seemed to glow and there was life echoing in the streets. At the end of Washington Street, I turned onto 7 and coming through the window of
the car was the fragrance of cut grass—people had already begun mowing their lawns. In the shadows of covered porches, old women swung back and forth.

On the steep banks rising from Noland Street, people had planted begonias and impatiens, even though it wasn't officially Memorial Day yet and there was always the danger of frost before then. But after the long harsh winter, people were in a hurry.

On the rise above the river, I saw the lights still blazing in the windows of the Nightingale Home. I could hear the soft clanking of the cement plant across the river, the sound filling the humid air.

I curved around to Old Route 27. Down below, the river ran parallel to the road, a milky color in the spring night, and the sweet smell of the water permeated the air.

Occasionally, as I drove, I passed a lone house, the curtains in the window drawn, the blue light of a television set leaking out from around the edges. So that you saw a darkened house, the shape barely visible from the road, and a blue light emanating from it. Little families in their homes. Little families all together, life within.

Cars whooshed past me. People out late because it was spring, a holiday weekend. There was the old trailer lot, giant trailers unsold and abandoned, looming. And a stretch of dark road now.

I saw a white clapboard building ahead of me, The Wooden Nickel. It seemed almost to glow in the thick night. Funny, I'd never been upstairs in the place. Carl said the second floor was just storage, filled with junk. Once, long ago, when this had been a real inn, the proprietors had rented out the rooms on the second floor to weary travelers on the old coach road. Two hundred years ago, before the white man came to Palatine County, Old 27 was probably an Indian trail, and there had probably always been a trading post of some kind here. It was a natural spot on the road for it. And then the white man had built his inn.

There were cars parked in the lot now. The sign with the Indian head was all lit up. Funny old gnarled Indian head. The place was
probably named “The Wooden Nickel” because of the Taponacs. The Taponacs were all gone now. Except maybe for their descendants intermarried with the blacks.

I pulled into the lot. It was lit up almost like daylight by the harsh spotlight.

As I entered the Wooden Nickel, people were watching the local news on TV and customers were playing video games in the back. Bruce Springsteen was on the jukebox singing “Glory Days.” Carl had the top ten of all different years on his jukebox—strange, random years that made no sense. Must have been some package deal he got from a distributor. There were new releases and oldies. Oldies to cater to the older patrons, and on some nights the older customers would take over the jukebox completely and just play record after record of
their
music, and the younger patrons would jeer and laugh, and there would be actual music wars. It seemed like the older group had won tonight.