Tonight, Manny would announce, for the first time anywhere in the Americas, I will use the Mandarin’s Box to make my trusted cockatoo vanish and reappear right before your eyes.
Gently, Manny would place Lucinda in the chest and shut the doors. Closing his eyes, he would utter an incantation in a Chinese of his own invention, while tapping the chest with his wand. When he reopened the doors, the bird was gone.
After bowing for a round of applause, Manny would ask for silence, explaining that the spell to make the bird reappear was far more complicated than the one that made it vanish. Taking a deep breath, he would double up on his oriental mumbo jumbo, working it to a suitable pitch. Then opening his eyes, he would point his wand. Seemingly from nowhere, a ball of fire would explode and engulf the chest, prompting the audience to gasp and Manny to take two steps back. But once the smoke had cleared, there was the Mandarin’s Box without so much as a scratch. Stepping forward, tentatively, Manny would open the doors of the chest . . . reach his hands inside . . . and withdraw a platter on which sat a perfectly roasted bird surrounded by all the fixings.
For a moment, the magician and audience would share the silence of the stunned. Then raising his gaze from the platter, Manny would look out into the theater and say: Oops.
How that would bring down the house.
* * *
? ? ?
So. Here’s what happened on Sunday, the twentieth of June. . . .
Having woken at the crack of dawn, at Woolly’s insistence we packed our bags, tiptoed down the back stairs, and slipped out the door without making a sound.
After putting the Caddy in neutral and rolling her out of the drive, we fired her up, put her in gear, and half an hour later were sailing up the Taconic State Parkway like Ali Baba on his magic carpet.
What cars were on the road all seemed to be headed in the opposite direction, so we were making good time, passing through Lagrangeville by seven o’clock and Albany by eight.
After being given the business by his brother-in-law, Woolly had tossed and turned for most of the night and woken up looking as low as I’d ever seen him, so when I saw a blue steeple on the horizon, I put on the blinker.
Being back in the bright orange booth seemed to lift his spirits. Though he didn’t seem as interested in his place mat, he ate almost half of his pancakes and all of my bacon.
Not long after we passed Lake George, Woolly had me turn off the highway and we began winding our way through the great bucolic wilderness that makes up ninety percent of New York’s landmass and none of its reputation. With the townships getting farther apart and the trees getting closer to the road, Woolly almost seemed himself, humming along with the commercials even though the radio wasn’t on. It must have been about eleven when he sat up on the edge of his seat and pointed to a break in the woods.
—You take that next right.
Turning onto a dirt road, we began winding our way through a forest of the tallest trees that I had ever seen.
To be perfectly honest, when Woolly had first told me about the hundred and fifty grand that was stashed in a safe at the family’s camp, I had my doubts. I just couldn’t seem to picture all that money sitting in some log cabin in the woods. But when we emerged from the trees, rising before us was a house that looked like a hunting lodge owned by the Rockefellers.
When Woolly saw it, he breathed an even bigger sigh of relief than I did, as if he’d had his own doubts. Like maybe the whole place had been a figment of his imagination.
—Welcome home, I said.
And he gave me his first smile of the day.
When we got out of the car, I followed Woolly around to the front of the house and across the lawn to where a giant body of water shimmered in the sun.
—The lake, Woolly said.
With the trees coming right down to the shoreline, there wasn’t another residence in sight.
—How many houses are on this lake? I asked.
—One . . . ? he asked back.
—Right, I said.
Then he began giving me the lay of the land.
—The dock, he said pointing to the dock.
And the boathouse, he said pointing to the boathouse. And the flagpole, he said pointing to the flagpole.
—The caretaker hasn’t been here yet, he observed with another sigh of relief.
—How can you tell?
—Because the raft isn’t on the lake and the rowboats aren’t at the dock.
Turning, we took a moment to appreciate the house, which looked down over the water like it had been there since the beginning of America. And maybe it had.
—Perhaps we should get our things . . . ? Woolly suggested.