Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Tommy was caught only twice before the day on which it all came out. The first time he attracted the attention of an LIRR conductor with nystagmus who soon plumbed the shallow surface of Tommy's cover story. Tommy spent much of November 1953, as a result, confined to his bedroom. But in school-he considered it part of his punishment that they continued to send him to school during the month he was grounded-he consulted with Sharon Simchas, who was nearly blind in one eye. He sent his cousin an explanatory letter in care of Louis Tannen. On the Thursday following the lifting of the punishment, he set off again for Manhattan, equipped this time with the name and address of Sharon's doctor, one of the doctor's business cards, and a plausible diagnosis of strabismus. The wobble-eyed ticket puncher, however, never reappeared.

The second time he was caught came a month before the leap of the Escapist. Tommy settled into his seat at the back of the last car and opened his copy of Walter B. Gibson's Houdini on Magic. Cousin Joe had given it to him the week before; it was signed by the author, the creator of the Shadow, with whom Joe still played cards from time to time. Tommy had his shoes off, his eye patch on, and half a pack of Black Jack in his mouth. He heard a clatter of heels and looked up in time to see his mother, in her sealskin coat, stumble into the train car, out of breath, mashing her best black hat down onto her head with one arm. She was at the opposite end of a relatively full car, and there was a tall man positioned directly in her line of sight. She sat down without noticing her son. This stroke of good fortune took a moment to sink in. He glanced down at the book in his lap. The dark gray wad of gum lay in a small pool of saliva on the left-hand page; it had fallen out of his mouth. He put it back in and lay down across the pair of seats in his row, his face hidden in the hood of his coat and behind the screen of his book. His sense of guilt was exacerbated by the knowledge that Harry Houdini had idolized his own mother and doubtless never would have deceived or hidden from her. At Elmont, the conductor came by to check his ticket, and Tommy scrabbled up onto one elbow. The conductor gave him a skeptical look, and though Tommy had never seen him before, he tapped the patch with a Fingertip and tried to echo the nonchalance of Cousin Joe.

"Ophthalmologist," he said.

The conductor nodded and punched his ticket. Tommy lay back down.

At Jamaica, he waited until the car emptied completely, then dashed out onto the platform. He got to the train for Penn Station just as the doors were closing. There was no time for him to try to guess which car his mother might have boarded. The idea of waiting for a later train did not occur to him until several minutes later, when-soon after she let go of his earlobe-it was suggested to him by his mother.

He ran right into her, almost literally, smelling her perfume an instant before a hard corner of her imitation-tortoiseshell handbag poked him in the eye.

"Oh!"

"Ouch!"

He stumbled backward. She grabbed him by the hood of his coat and dragged him toward her, then, tightening her grip, actually raised him half an inch off the ground, like a magician brandishing by the ears the rabbit he was about to dematerialize. His legs kicked at the pedals of an invisible bicycle. Her cheeks were rouged, her eyelids lined with black paint like a Caniff girl's.

"What are you doing? Why aren't you in school?"

"Nothing," he said. "I'm just… I was just…"

He glanced around the car. Naturally, all of the other passengers were staring at them. His mother lifted him a little higher and brought her face close to his. The perfume blowing off her was called Ambush.

It sat on a mirrored tray on her dresser, under a mantle of dust. He could not remember the last time he had smelled it on her.

"I can't-" she began, but then she couldn't finish her sentence because she had started to laugh. "Take off that damned eye patch," she said. She lowered him to the floor of the train and lifted the patch. He blinked. She flicked the patch back over his eye. Keeping her grip on the hood of his Mighty Mac, she dragged him down to the end of the car and pushed him into a seat. He was sure she was going to yell at him now, but once more she surprised him by sitting down beside him and putting her arms around him. She rocked back and forth, holding him tight.

"Thank you," she said, her voice throaty and rough, the way it sounded the morning after a bridge night when she had gone through a pack of cigarettes. "Thank you."

She nuzzled his head and he felt that her cheeks were wet. He sat back.

"What's the matter, Mom?"

She snapped open her purse and took out a handkerchief.

"Everything," she said. "What's the matter with you? How come you keep doing this? You were going to Tannen's again?"

"No."

"Don't lie, Tommy," she said. "Don't make this worse than it already is."

"Okay."

"You can't do this. You can't just skip school whenever you want to and go to Tannen's Magic Shop. You're eleven years old. You aren't a hoodlum."

"I know."

The train shuddered and the brakes screeched. They were pulling into Pennsylvania Station now. Tommy stood up and waited for her to get up and drag him off the train, across the platform, back out to Jamaica, and then home. But she didn't move. She just sat there, checking her eyes in the mirror of her compact, shaking her head ruefully at the mess her tears had made.

"Mom?" he said.

She looked up.

"I don't see any reason to waste these clothes and this hat just because you would rather saw a lady in half than learn fractions," she said.

"You mean I'm not punished?"

"I thought we could spend the day in the city. The two of us. Eat at Schrafft's. Maybe see a show."

"So you aren't going to punish me?"

She shook her head, once, dismissively, as if the question bored her. Then she took hold of his hand. "I don't see any reason to tell your father about any of this, do you, Tommy?"

"No, ma'am."

"Your father has enough to worry about without this."

"Yes, ma'am."

"We'll just keep this whole little incident to ourselves."

He nodded, though there was an eager look in her eyes that made him uneasy. He felt a sudden mad desire to be grounded again. He sat down.

"But if you ever do this again," she added, "I'll take all of your cards and wands and all that other nonsense and toss them into the incinerator."

He sat back and relaxed a little. As she promised, they lunched at Schrafft's, she on stuffed peppers, he on a Monte Cristo sandwich. They spent an hour in Macy's and then took in It Should Happen to You at the Trans-Lux Fifty-second. They caught the 4:12 for home. Tommy was asleep by the time his father came in, and said nothing the next morning when he came in to wake him for school. The encounter on the train was scattered in the cracks in their family. Once, long afterward, he summoned up the courage to ask his mother what she had been doing on that inbound train, dressed in her fanciest clothes, but she had merely put a finger to her lips and gone on struggling over another of the lists she always left behind.

On the day that everything had changed, Tommy and Cousin Joe were sitting in the outer room of the offices of Kornblum Vanishing Creams, where there was a false receptionist's desk. Tommy was in the armchair, a big wingback covered in a rough fabric like burlap, pool-table green, legs dangling, drinking a can of cream soda. Joe was lying on the floor with his arms folded under his head. Neither of them had said anything for what felt to Tommy like several minutes. They often passed long periods of their visits without saying very much. Tommy would read his book, and Cousin Joe would work on the comic book that he had been drawing, he said, ever since taking up residence in the Empire State Building.