Spoonbenders

“Because that’s what you need!” Frankie said. “Everything. Start to finish.”

“You gave him the pot, didn’t you?”

“Are you using your power on me, Reenie?”

“I don’t know, are you Trebeking me?”

He laughed. “Okay. Listen to me. I did not give your son marijuana. Do you hear that? Didn’t happen.”

“I hear it.”

“Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take in the night air.”

He stepped onto the porch and nearly slipped on the tile, now slick with condensation. The night air, it turned out, was as moist and thick as swamp gas. “Jesus, this humidity,” he said. “It’s…what’s the word? Cloying.”

“Like a Sally Struthers infomercial,” she said.

“Exactly.” Irene, she always knew the clever thing to say.

“I’m sorry about your house,” she said.

“Temporary setback,” he said, and climbed into the van.

—

That Irene. Always the smart one. She was only a year older, but he always felt like she understood things he didn’t, spoke in a language he didn’t understand. The language of adults. Of women. When they were little, Irene and Mom would exchange a look and it was like they were beaming information at each other in some frequency available only to the females of the species. He’d grown up with two moms, and he’d been unable to please either of them.

Not like Buddy. Buddy was an emotional wreck, yet somehow beloved. Mom and Buddy especially shared something inaccessible to him. Frankie would see them cuddling together, whispering to each other, and know there was no room for him there.

He moved his attention to Dad. A tough nut to crack, but the man with the keys to all the locked rooms. Frankie didn’t want to be like his father, he wanted to

be him. He wanted to dress in a fine suit, pull a fedora low over his eyes, and set a roll of cash on the table. Teddy Telemachus was the opposite of invisible. He drew your eyes, and at the same time directed your attention to whatever he wanted you to see—an empty hand, a diamond-encrusted watch, the brim of a hat—while he made his magic.

Irene used to say that the only thing Dad cared about was the act. But that didn’t mean he didn’t care about the family. The family was the act and the act was the family. But back when they were touring, Frankie knew, deep down, that he was failing as a performer, and as a son. He couldn’t bend a paper clip. He couldn’t levitate a water glass. It shouldn’t have surprised anyone when the Astounding Archibald had revealed Frankie’s ability to be nothing more than Dad kicking the table to life. Dad had been doing all of Frankie’s tricks since they started performing. Irene needed no help; she had genuine ability. Buddy, when he wasn’t having a meltdown, could call every shot on the Wonder Wheel. And of course Mom was the best of them, a world-class talent in a second-rate vaudeville act.

And Frankie? Frankie was the faker.

It wasn’t until Mom’s funeral that he finally moved something, but even then he couldn’t take credit for it. The power seemed to come from outside himself, arriving of its own accord while he watched his mother being lowered into the ground. Then nothing, for years, until he found pinball, and again he felt like he wasn’t so much controlling the table as communing with it. The bond could break down at any time. His power was not something he possessed, but a skittish companion he had to woo to his side, and who’d vanish as soon as he showed fear.

He would have spent his whole life chasing that feeling, if he hadn’t walked into that bar on Rush Street and met Loretta. She was the first person who thought he was special. The morning after they first made love, he started to pull on his pants and leave, but she grabbed him by the waistband and pulled him back into bed. “Maybe you don’t understand,” she’d told him. “You’re my man now.”

He didn’t know how to respond to that. And she said, “You’ll come around.”

He did come around. And stuck around. Loretta was ten years older than him, but by designating him as her man she’d promoted him to full adulthood. She wanted him to help raise her girl, and make more babies. She wanted her children to be Telemachus children. And when he told her he wanted to create his own business, she believed him. And when he said he wanted to do something great, she believed that, too. She fell for his con.

That was her mistake. His was that he fell for it, too. Now the only way out of this predicament, this clusterfuck he’d created, was to make all the lies into truths.

He had to do something great.

—

The paranoia that accompanied an act of greatness, however, was exhausting. Headlights seemed to be following him. On North Avenue he was certain a police car was on his tail, but then the vehicle passed him, and he saw it was just a sedan with a luggage rack. A luggage rack! How were those things legal?