The Quick-Change Artist: Stories

The Quick-Change Artist

 The Quick-Change Artist Forest Lodge Glen Allen, Virginia July  VANGIE AND HER brother Luke are fishing at Hidden Lake in the middle of the night. It’s almost the same as day for Luke, who is blind, totally and utterly, his eyeballs having been removed long ago by Dr. Winfrey to prevent a fever and infection from spreading to his brain. To Vangie, Luke is a slim presence on the bank, a shadow within darkness, casting out his line.They have done this many times. Sometimes they swim, careful not to make noise, afraid they’ll be banished by the two sisters, Miss Amy and Miss Dorothy, who own the five lakes and the hotel. In the distance , Vangie can see tiny lights: the flames of candles strapped onto croquet wickets so hotel guests can play the game into the night. She attached the candles herself, at Miss Amy’s direction. “This lake’s drying up,” Luke says. “All of ’em are.” Vangie hardly hears him. She’s lying on her back, propped up on her elbows. She’s a chambermaid at the hotel. It’s only because she’s eighteen and in love that she can stay up half the night yet work the next day. She’s in love with the magician who performs evenings and Saturday afternoons at the hotel. He is Vangie’s lover, but she’s afraid he might have other lovers, too. He’s on her mind all the time, like a song. Luke tugs at his line. He slips away often from the Home for the Blind, where he lives and goes to school, to visit with Vangie and their Grammah. He and Vangie have played in the hotel gymnasium at three in the morning, jumping rope, vaulting over a leather hurdle, swaying on rings suspended from the high ceiling, and swinging Indian clubs to make their arms strong. Now Luke brings in his fish, which flaps silver as he drags it through the water. He picks the hook out of its gills and sets it free. “I’m going soon,” he says. “I’m sleepy.” “All right,” Vangie says, wishing she were beautiful. She should go home herself, back to the little house where Grammah sleeps with her hair curled up in rags. If Vangie were beautiful, she believes, the magician, whose name is Jolly Erdos (“say air-dish,” he always says) might train her to be a quick-change artist, waltzing onto the stage in a blue gown, then spinning once, twice, in the haze of smoke rising up in a scrim from the footlights, and lo and behold, she’s wearing a yellow dress instead. Jolly has described quick-change but will not say how it’s done. He will never tell his secrets. He calls tricks “effects.” She has described the tricks to Luke, hoping he can figure them out, but he is baffled, too. Maybe it’s impossible for a boy blind since age nine to picture a dogwood tree sprouting from a teacup in Jolly’s hand, its limbs growing until it’s a real tree, with buds unfurling into blossoms before the whole thing withers away, its limbs flopping  The Quick-Change Artist over Jolly’s arm. Then Jolly rolls it all up and stuffs it back into the teacup, covering it with a scarf. When he raises the scarf, a golden toad sits in the cup, breathing so that Vangie can see the motion of its tiny throat when Jolly strides to the edge of the stage. Luke’s face always glows when Vangie describes the toad. He has asked many questions: Does Jolly allow anybody to pet it? Does it try to hop away? Where did Jolly get it? Luke is jostling Vangie’s shoulder. Dew has crept through her dress to her skin, cool and damp. From the hotel yard, she hears the croquet players’ laughter and the thwack of mallets striking balls. “I must’ve fallen asleep,” she mumbles, rubbing her eyes. “What are you going to do, Vangie?” Luke asks, as he has asked since they were little. “What do you think? Go home. Go to bed.” “I mean forever. What’ll you do?” She wishes she were in bed already, with the sweet breeze blowing over the sheets. She picks out stars she knows: the Pleiades, a bright, blurred cluster so far away. She learned about stars...