Magic – by Maria Takolander and David McCooey
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
1.
I can do magic. That’s what she told me when we met. We had found ourselves walking side-by-side among a small group of strangers on a tour of the local gardens. She told me her name and then came out with the confession. It hung between us, like a rabbit, pale and trembling, pulled out of an invisible hat. I had no idea what she was talking about. I wondered: why had she hand-picked me? I was becoming paranoid: what was I unknowingly giving away about myself? After that, even the grass seemed vaguely treacherous, but then I’ve never been an outdoors person. We passed a cafeteria, in which I could see pendant light fittings dangling like moons. As soon as the tour finished, I shepherded us there, away from the boorishness of the sun. That was when I remembered: what a relief it was, to find shelter with someone.
2.
Soon we were living in the same house. We brought our few things together and, after some initial awkwardness, some might say inelegance, it was as if those items had never been apart. Over time, our domestic menagerie grew. She liked to rescue furniture that had been dragged from homes onto roadsides for anyone to see. She wasn’t hoarding. It just wasn’t right, she said, for sofas and bedside tables and chipped ornaments to be abandoned outside like that. I drew the line at some things. A rusty filing cabinet went into a dim corner of the garage, where it did seem, I had to admit, grateful for the refuge. It didn’t stay alone in there for long. I came to understand: this is what I’d always wanted, to feel myself surrounded, truly ensconced by love. This was, I thought, her power: to make me happy for the first time since childhood.
3.
I was lonely as a child, without so much as a caged budgerigar. I was also wishful, perhaps as a result, though I never knew what I was hoping for. I remember how, once, I saved a matchbox. This was back in the days when it was normal for houses to be littered with that kind of paraphernalia. I lined that little carboard box, that doll-house drawer, with cotton wool extracted from a plastic bag I found in a mirrored vanity cabinet, though I never worked out what should be stored inside. There was the expectation that it had to be something special. I was aware, or perhaps made aware, that other boys might choose a beetle of some kind, but the idea was too funerary, and I had no interest in the outside world. The box stayed empty. I don’t know what happened to it. I guess it disappeared in time, the way things do.
4.
Her salvaging went on. After a while we had to park our cars on the street, but they were fine. It was different for them. Like the bicycles she always left where they’d been discarded, they were in their natural habitat. We had to leave the house too. They were dutiful forays. The goal was always to return. She worked at the library, while I managed the gift shop at the hospital, selling silver spoons and teddy bears of imperishable fabrics. Of course I knew that few really wanted such toys and trinkets, but I also knew how much they were needed in precarious times: their sleights of hand, the comforts of even the pettiest materialism. Every evening, when I went back to where all our things were waiting, the relief was immense. I felt so safe. I was a homebody through and through.
5.
But then one day she left and never came back. I was at work, which is to say I was right there, in the centre of the whirlwind, of all those bodies in flux, but I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear anything, besides the usual sounds of acrylic nails and plastic cards. I was used to being walled off from what was happening, by stands of helium balloons and fake bouquets—we didn’t sell real flowers, which made too many demands—but it bothered me that I didn’t even have a premonition. No fingertips had ghosted the back of my neck. One day she was there, and the next she wasn’t. When I went home, after she’d vanished, I saw the ottomans and floor lamps and chairs, huddling like hostages. I’d like to say that it was solace I felt, knowing they’d be with me until the end, but it was something else. ▼
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