The Red Magician

The Red Magician

The cell meeting at the Unitarian Hall in Brighton proceeded as usual. Mr. Patrino, a heavyset man in his early fifties with a cauliflower ear and a booming baritone voice, began singing “The Internationale.” A piano accompanied him, and we all joined in when he came to the second verse. Then, David Liebowitz made a face that looked just like Mr. Patrino. And when he pulled his ears out and dropped his jaw, I started laughing. This, of course, was forbidden during “The Internationale,” and my father glared at me.

When we finished singing “The Internationale,” one of the members got up and spoke for a while about something called “the exploitation of workers.” He then told us there was a workers’ strike in Dorchester and asked us to join the picket line. A number of the members yelled out “solidarity forever,” and the meeting adjourned.

“You know you’re not supposed to laugh during “The Internationale,” my father said, putting on his overcoat.

“But it was funny,” I said as we stepped onto the sidewalk.

“But you’re my daughter, and our comrades shouldn’t see you laughing at “The Internationale.”

David walked by and gave me the Petrino face again. Then, just as I started to laugh, David’s father rushed up to him and clipped him on the back of the head.

“I’ll have a word with him, Kevin! It won’t happen again,” his father said.

“It’s OK, Dave. It’s all the TV these kids are watching these days.”

“He thinks he’s Milton Berle!

“Maybe he has a future as a comedian,” my father said.

“Well, if he does that act again, his career’s coming to an abrupt end,” David’s father said, giving David another quick smack. “Say, Kevin, do you think you could perform at my nephew’s graduation party next Saturday? We can’t pay you a whole lot, but it would be swell if you could. The kids would love it.”

My father, a professional magician, said, “No problem, Dave. I’ve been wanting to try out some new tricks anyway,” He took me by the hand and led me to the station wagon.

“I’m sorry I laughed during the Internationale,” I told my father as he drove off. “Are you mad at me?”

“No, I’m not mad. It’s just that a lot of people died because they sang that song, so you should have some respect.”

I was glad he wasn’t mad at me, but it seemed strange that we should respect a son because people died when they sang it.

I waved goodbye to David, who gave me a quick Mr. Patrino. I just smiled, trying hard not to laugh again. We got into the nineteen-fifty Ford Station wagon that the surfers would call a “woody” because of the wood paneling on the sides. My father drove back to Roslindale, where we lived on the first floor of a two-family home. We had moved in shortly after my mother died when I was around two years old. The house was on a quiet street lined with oak trees. Most of the kids in the neighborhood were Irish and Italian Catholics, so I told them we went to church on Sunday morning.

When we got home, my father pulled out his large black wooden case filled with all the items he needed to perform magic: playing cards, all sorts of coins of different sizes, feathers of various lengths, artificial flowers, and brightly colored boxes with trap doors and all the props needed to perform the tricks that would astonish and baffle his audiences. While he practiced his magic, he played music on the record player, mostly Brahms and Beethoven, but union songs by The Weavers once in a while. I always liked to listen to music while I did my homework. It seemed to make the time go by faster, especially when working on the math problems I hated.

Every week, we watched Ed Sullivan, which was my favorite because Senor Wences would perform. He was a ventriloquist whose puppet always seemed to speak on his own and would even talk back to him. This always made my father and me laugh.

“He’s very good at what he does,” my father said, “and it’s not that different from a magic act.”

I told my father that I wanted to be a ventriloquist someday, and my father would tell me that it took a lot of practice, just like magic. He said he’d get me a real puppet on my birthday, so I wouldn’t have to practice with one of my dolls. I imagined performing on TV and making millions of people laugh. I wondered if they would call me the Red Ventriloquist the way they called my father, The Red Magician.

I thought they called my father the Red Magician for the longest time because he had red hair. But that had nothing to do with it. My father really was a magician, performing all kinds of tricks, mainly at Bar Mitzvahs, First Holy Communions, graduation parties, and sometimes even at Blinstrub’s Night Club in South Boston. Most of his tricks were pretty standard: rabbits pulled from a hat, coins from behind the ear, and flowers from thin air--all the classics. But he always performed his tricks very smoothly and with great precision. He said it was about distraction and sleight of hand, much like a ventriloquist.

The truth was that they called my father the Red Magician because he was a Communist, and I guess that made me one as well. All the kids in school knew my father was a magician and were convinced that I could perform magic too, but I only assisted my father in performing some of his tricks and knew very little magic. My father told me never to discuss our politics with the kids in school, but most kids could have cared less, except for Arnold Fuller, who called me a Commie only once. He never did it again after I told him I could give him the head of a pig.

I hated Mondays and couldn’t wait to get home from school to watch TV. Big Brother Bob Emery was my favorite TV show. The star of the show, Bob Emery, who looked way too old to be anyone’s brother, would always wear a checkered sport coat, an enormous red tie, and huge rimmed glasses. He would hold a glass of milk in his hand and make a toast to a picture of President Eisenhower, who looked like a baby who’d grown old before his time. Then he would ask his audience, whom he called “the Small Fry Club,” to do the same. I would run into the kitchen and pour a glass of milk so I could toast our ancient baby-faced president. After we finished toasting the president, Big Brother would take out his ukulele and start to sing “The Grass is Always Greener in the Other Fellow’s Yard.”

Once when my father got home early, he looked into the living room, and when he saw what I was watching, he stormed into the room and abruptly switched off the TV. He turned to me and said, “He’s a fascist and an enemy of the people. You shouldn’t have to toast the president in a free country. Big Brother, my ass! A man wrote a book about big brother, you know. It’s called 1984!”

“But isn’t that a long time in the future?”

“Don’t you worry; it will be here soon enough!”

But I really liked Big Brother Bob Emery and decided to watch him anyway when my father wasn’t home. I knew I could never join the Small Fry Club since it was a fascist organization only for small fries.

While my father was away one day in June, Sandy and The Bean Man showed up at our door. Sandy was short, stout, and had sandy-colored hair, so I called him Sandy. The Bean Man was tall and thin with a head much too small for the rest of his body-- hence the name, the Bean Man.

When I answered the door, The Bean Man asked me if my father was home. I told him that he wasn’t but that he should be home soon. Sandy asked me if he could come in. I said he could, and he and the Bean Man let themselves in, and we sat in the living room watching Big Brother Bob Emery.

“Do you like this show, kid?” The Bean Man asked.

“Sure,” I said, “It’s swell.”

“My kids watch it all the time. What’s your name?”

“It’s Maureen.”

“That’s a pretty name,” Sandy said. “Did you say a toast to the president?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, unsure why he was interested in my abilities as a toastmaster.

They both seemed harmless enough, but I was wrong. I knew that right away when my father got home. He stepped into the living room and gave both men a dirty look as he took his coat off and threw it over a chair.

“Who are you?” he asked, looking a little scared and angry.

“I’m agent Paulsen, and this is agent Feldman, Sandy said. “We’re here on behalf of the House Un-American Activities Committee.”

“Well, you can leave on behalf of the fact that this is my home unless you have a

warrant,” my father almost yelled.

“Kevin, Kevin! Don’t be like that,” The Bean Man said. “We just want to ask you a few questions.”

“And I have nothing to say!” my father said as he turned to me and asked me to leave the room. I went into my room but left the door ajar and listened.

“Look, you’re not under arrest or anything like that,” the Bean Man said in an almost soothing voice.

“We just want to know about some of your friends,” Sandy said, “that’s all!”

“Get out of here!” Again, my father yelled, this time so loud that it scared me.

“Just a few names, that’s all.”

“Get out now!” my father yelled again.

“Look, we’ll leave in a minute,” the Bean Man said as my father stood there looking angrier than I had ever seen him.

“You’ll leave right now,” my father yelled.

Sandy and the Bean Man stood up and put their hats back on.

Sandy looked at me and said,

“Kevin, Kevin! It looks like you’ve got a really swell kid there, and things seem a little, well, shall we say, cluttered around here. I’m afraid we might have to report you to Child Services.”

“Yeah,” the Bean Man said, “they wouldn’t tolerate a situation like this. Usually, they just take the kid right out and move her to a real nice foster home.”

“Right! Get the kid away from all this Commie crap.” Sandy interjected.

“Look,” the Bean Man said, “here’s my card. Give us a call by next Wednesday,

and we can forget all about Child Services.”

“And don’t worry about your friends,” Sandy added, “They’ll never have to know you spoke to us.”

“Get out!” my father yelled again.

The two agents left, and I stepped out of my room. I was shaking badly, and when my father saw me, he held me tightly.

“It’s all a big bluff,” he said, “a big fat fascist bluff!”

I felt like I was about to cry but didn’t because I thought it would upset my father, and he looked upset enough.

“Are they going to take me away to live in a froster home?” I asked.

“A foster home,” he said. “No! No way! It would be totally illegal. They would have no right to do that. They’re just bluffing. That’s what they do. They just want to scare us so that we’ll give up the names of our friends.

I could not sleep that night, and I imagined my father making Sandy and the Bean Man disappear on stage. My father came out on stage wearing his tuxedo and asked both the agents to come up. When they did, he pointed to both of them, and they instantly disappeared. The audience applauded, and all our comrades turned to me and smiled while the piano played “The Internationale.” I was holding a puppet—the same one Mr. Fuentes had. The puppet turned to me and said, “they got what they deserved.

"

As the agent’s deadline approached, my father checked the mail the next week, becoming more and more anxious with every day that passed. Finally, when Wednesday came, his hands shook as he opened the mailbox. He examined each envelope, carefully looking at the back and the front for any sign of a notice from Child Services. Instead, there were only a few magazine subscription renewals and a National Magician’s Association letter. He sighed as he threw the envelopes on the kitchen table and poured himself a drink.

When I walked into the kitchen, my father looked at me and smiled, and I knew right away that everything was going to be OK.

“A big fat bluff; that’s all!” he said.

I went over to him and hugged him as hard as I could, trying not to cry.

“See, I told you,” he said. “They just want to intimidate you into cooperating

with them. That’s all. That’s what they do! So what do you say we go out to Friendly’s and

get ourselves a couple of sundaes?”

At that moment, I thought that I was happier than I had ever been. Of course, I was pleased for myself, but more than that, I was happy for my father. The dragon had been nothing more than a bluff, slain by the Red Magician before it could attack. My world was saved; my father had won, and we were going out for sundaes.

I was watching Big Brother Bob Emery the next day when I heard a knock at the door. It was the mailman, and he handed me an envelope that he said “looked pretty important” and that I’d better wait until my father got home before I opened it. It was just a plain white envelope addressed to my father with Child Services written in the upper left-hand corner, but I dreaded to think what it contained.

When my father returned home, he looked very excited and happy and announced that he would be performing at Blinstrub’s on Saturday. But his expression changed immediately when he looked at the envelope in my hand. In a second, his face changed from glee to stunned fear. My hand shook as he took the envelope from me and opened it.

The letter read:

Please be advised that Miss. Marcia Crenshaw,

The city of Boston Child Services caseworker will

be making a home visit on Wednesday, September

15, 1955. The meeting will be at 10:00 and should

last about an hour.

This home visit has been made necessary

because a report relating to your child’s welfare has been filed by federal agents.

My father slammed the letter onto the kitchen table.

“Bastards,” he said, “filthy bastards!” Then I saw him do something I hadn’t seen before, even when my mother died. He sat in a chair, held his head in his hands, and started to cry. He cried so hard that his entire body shook. I put my arms around him and started to cry, too, mainly because it made me so sad to see him like that.

“What will I do? What will I ever do?” he kept saying and then would begin to cry again.

This continued for the rest of the afternoon until I finally went to my room and lay in bed sobbing until I eventually fell asleep. We didn’t eat that night, and later when I went to the bathroom, I saw my father still sitting at the kitchen table with a drink in his hand. He was no longer crying but was staring at the letter still on the table as if it were some frightening animal about to strike. He finally crunched it up and threw it against the wall with all his might. Then he threw the drink. The glass shattered, and I ran back into my room and cried myself to sleep.

Just as the letter had said, Miss. Crenshaw arrived the following Wednesday at exactly 10:00 AM. She wore a dark blue pants suit, and her grey hair was tied back in a bun. Her lips were pursed, and she tightly held a brown leather briefcase as she entered our apartment.

This means trouble, I thought, as my father greeted her.

“I’m Marcia Crenshaw. I’m a caseworker for Boston Child Services,” she announced, “and I’m here to look into the welfare of your daughter, Maureen,” she said. “May we have a seat?”

“Of course,” my father said politely as he led her to the kitchen table. I was surprised at how calm and courteous he was, not at all like his confrontation with Sandy and The Bean Man.

We sat around the kitchen table, and for a moment, I thought she might ask us if we wanted to play a game of Monopoly. But instead, she pulled some papers out of her briefcase.

“There are several questions I have to ask you,” she began, looking at the two of us as if we were second-grade students. “They may seem personal, but believe me, they’re essential, and it’s imperative that you answer them honestly and completely.” She then looked at my father and asked him how long we had lived in our apartment.

“Eight years now,” he answered, “since my wife died.”

She then asked him about my health, how I did in school, what my friends were like, and whether I was happy or sad most of the time. The questions seemed pretty stupid, but my father answered them honestly and calmly, which surprised me.

“Do you drink?” she asked him.

“Once in a while,” he said.

“How much?”

“Maybe once or twice a week,” he said.

With that, she made a note on the form in front of her.

“Do you go to church or synagogue?”

I thought this would infuriate him, but instead, he answered as calmly as he had to any of the other questions.

“No.”

As soon as he said that, she made another note.

She then turned to me, looking at me as though I were an orphan who’d been abandoned since infancy.

“Do you have any friends at school?”

“Some,” I answered.

“And do you like them?”

“Most of them.”

“And do they like you?”

I thought that was about the stupidest question I’d ever heard. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I said, “I guess they wouldn’t be my friends if they didn’t.”

She looked slightly perturbed and said, “You’re a very smart girl, aren’t you?”

“I guess so, except for math,” I said.

“Do you watch TV?”

“Yes.”

“What shows do you like to watch?”

“I like the Ed Sullivan Show,” I said.

“Do you watch Big Brother Bob Emery”?

“No.”

“Why not?” she asked, scratching her chin.

I looked over at my father, who looked back at me indifferently.

“Because he’s a fascist.”

She made a quick note on the form and turned to my father abruptly.

“Well, I guess we’re about finished here today,” she said, carefully putting her papers back in her briefcase. “You’ll be hearing from us in a week.”

She then shook my father’s hand as if she’d just closed on a real estate transaction, and he led her to the door and let her out.

I thought my father would be furious when he came back into the kitchen, so I braced myself for a lot of yelling and smashed glasses. But instead, when I asked him how it went, he just shrugged and poured himself a drink.

The next day I got a call from the Bean Man and handed the phone immediately to my father.

My father listened for a while but then said, “go to hell!” and slammed the phone down as hard as he could. Later I learned that the Bean Man had asked him if he had changed his mind and that he shouldn’t leave town because he and Sandy were watching us.

“Morons!” my father groaned

“Are they still watching us?”

“Probably,” he said as he made a silver coin disappear in front of him.

I spent hours looking out the living room window to see if Sandy and the Bean Man were sitting in their car, staring at us with binoculars. But all I ever saw were the usual cars and an occasional delivery truck parked across the street from us.

I wondered if they might have some special telescope that allowed them to spy on us from a distance or some kind of special spy plane that took pictures of us from above.

When I told my father that I didn’t see them, he just said, “Don’t worry, they’re watching us.”

The second letter arrived in a few days. It was a much longer letter than the first one but stated that a determination had been made and that my father was to turn me over to Miss Crenshaw in the interest of my well-being. Crenshaw that Friday.

My father sat back in the easy chair in the living room. I thought he would be upset, but instead, he looked relaxed, even amused as he read it, not at all how he looked when the first letter arrived. When he finished reading the letter, he turned to me and said, “I have an idea. Can you still fit into the black box?”

“You mean the way I did during the girl in the box routine. Just barely,” I said, knowing I had grown at least an inch since I’d last gotten inside the box during one of his stage acts.

“Let’s give it a try,” he said, dragging the box out onto the kitchen floor. I crouched into the box, and he asked me to pull my legs up behind my knees. I was just able to fit in the box.

“This should work if I can get the hall for Friday night.”

“This is going to be fun,” I said, glad that I was going to assist my father in his act for the first time in quite a while.

“I don’t know about fun, but if we rehearse it enough, it should work.

“What?” I asked.

“The magic, of course,” he said, giving me a sly smile.

We rehearsed the act all that week. My father said that it had to be “pitch-perfect,” which meant that the timing had to be just right and that there could be no mistakes. Finally, as Friday approached, the act worked with split-second timing. My father called the comrades and reserved the hall for that Friday night at seven. He also called Miss. Crenshaw and asked if he could perform one last act with me. I listened to my father on the phone as he pleaded with her for one final performance.

“It’s just this one time, and then you can take her,” I heard him say; “she’s asked me over and over again if she could perform with me on stage. It would mean so much to her. Please. Yes, I understand that the agents will be there. Believe me, there won’t be any trouble. The act will only last about forty-five minutes. Yes, as soon as the act is over. Thank you! Thank you so much!”

It must have infuriated him, pleading with her like this, but he showed no sign of that, except for calling her a “bitch” when he hung up the phone.

We rehearsed the act one last time on Friday. The act went so well that it seemed like my father had really made me disappear. I wondered where I would go if that did happen. I thought I might show up on The Ed Sullivan Show or Big Brother Bob Emery, and The Small Fry Club might toast me instead of a picture of Eisenhower.

My father had reserved the hall, and with the help of Mr. Liebowitz and several of his friends from the cell, he had prepared the stage the night before our performance. He wore his tuxedo and had his hair cut and his shoes polished. That night the hall was packed with comrades from our cell. This crowd was exactly what my father had wanted since Miss. Crenshaw and the two agents would have to sit in the back while my father performed his act.

My father introduced me as his assistant when I got on stage. There was instant applause as I bowed and stepped into the box. I always liked this part of the act since it made me feel like I was the star of the show and I was on the Ed Sullivan Show. I pulled my legs up behind my knees just as we had rehearsed. There was a trap door at the bottom of the box, and an opening in the floor had been cut just below the box.

I could see Sandy, The Bean Man, and Miss Crenshaw sitting at the back of the hall. Miss Crenshaw looked perturbed, while Sandy and the Bean Man seemed bored and a little annoyed. The rest of the audience looked excited. There was a lot of chatter until the lights dimmed, and my father announced that I was the only girl in the world who would survive being cut in half. The pianist pounded a few chords as my father slowly sawed through the black box.

I had phony legs sticking out of the front of the box. They looked real, too, with two feet that moved when I pulled a string inside. Usually, my father cut the chest in half, and I would jump out and stand on stage next to him while the audience applauded.

This time was different, though. My father yelled out. He had kicked both cans filled with pig’s blood, and streams of thick red pig’s blood flowed onto the stage, dripping down onto the floor, forming a scarlet pool in front of the first row. The people in the audience stood up, staring in horror at the pig’s blood and at me as I screamed out loud in feigned agony.

I kicked the floorboard just below the box as hard as possible, but nothing happened. Then I kicked it again, and still, nothing happened. I felt like I was about to cry, and my father gave me a nervous look. I didn’t know what to do. Nothing like this had ever happened before, not even in rehearsal. Finally, I looked at my father and said, “It’s not working!”

He said, “give it another kick!”

I did, and with that, the floorboard opened. He yelled out to the audience that “something had gone terribly wrong!”

Mr. Liebowitz and several other comrades ran up on stage and surrounded the box.

“Oh, my God, the child’s been hurt!” Mr. Liebowitz yelled with all his might. Then, someone else screamed, “Dear God! He cut her leg!” as thick red blood poured out onto the stage and dripped onto the floor in front of the first row.

The entire first and second row of the audience rushed forward onto the stage and surrounded the box. I saw Sandy and The Bean Man try to run up to the stage, but there were too many people in the way. When The Bean Man almost made it to the stage, he slipped on the pig’s blood and fell hard on the floor. Sandy tried to help him up, but he kept slipping on the floor and falling again. I looked at Miss Crenshaw. Her face had turned white, and she looked just like a ghost.

I pulled my head back into the box and jumped down into the cellar below the way it had been planned. I ran to the cellar door. When I tried to open the door, though, it would not give. I was terrified that it had somehow been locked from the outside. I thought of Miss. Crenshaw’s face and then of the foster home. I thought of sitting at a long table with lots of other kids looking miserable and eating bowls of oatmeal. I would never see my father again and have to toast President Eisenhower four or five times a day with stale milk.

But then I saw that the cellar door had a latch lock. So I pulled the lock open and ran outside, feeling the evening rain on my face. I got into the Woody and waited for my father, breathing so heavily that I did not think I would ever catch my breath again.

My father followed, jumping down into the cellar and out to the Woody. He turned the ignition on and drove off. When Sandy and The Bean Man got on stage, we were five miles down the road on our way to New York.

We stayed off the highways and took the back roads. There were stoplights all the way, and every time my father would come to one, he’d curse and slam the steering wheel. I kept looking out the rear window for police cars, sure that I would see the flashing blue lights and hear the siren as it caught up to us.

But the police car never came, and we crossed into Connecticut, making our way onto the highway that led to New York. I knew we would be OK when I looked at my father, and he smiled at me. I had never felt that way before; it was the sheer sensation of absolute relief.

When we reached Brooklyn, it was early morning. The sun had just started coming up through the clouds in the East and cast a pale light on the abandoned city street. My father pulled up outside a two-family house next to a furniture store on one side and some row houses on the other. We walked to the front door and rang the bell, but no one answered. My father waited a minute and then rang the doorbell again. Finally, a burly-looking man with a grey beard dressed in a tee shirt and blue shorts answered the door. My father was still in his tuxedo, and the man looked at him suspiciously, but when my father told him that he was a friend of David Liebowitz, he gave an exhausted grunt and let us in.

His wife then came out to greet us. She was a lot younger than her husband, still in her nightgown with dark brown hair, wearing pink slippers with rabbit heads.

“Are these David’s friends?” she asked her husband in what sounded like a strange Boston accent spoken with a head cold.

“Yeah, They’re comrades from Boston,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his

eyes.

She looked at me as if I were her long-lost child.

“Well, aren’t you a darling!” she said and asked my father if we had had breakfast. He told her we had driven straight through from Boston.

“You must be starving. Let me fix you up some pancakes,” the woman said.

“Do you have maple syrup?” I asked.

“Of course we do,” she said, “what would pancakes be without maple syrup?”

They told us that there was a vacant apartment down the street and that we could stay with them in the meantime. So we moved in a few days later. I liked Brooklyn a lot and even got used to the other kids’ funny accents, though I never adopted it myself.

After that, we weren’t bothered by Sandy and the Bean Man or anyone like them. My father continued to perform, though I never assisted him again. He did far better than he ever did in Boston and even appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show once.

That was a long time ago now. 1984 came and went. Things changed, and the magic was never quite the same because it was at that time back then, on that stage in Boston that the real magic happened. It’s the kind so real that it stays with you no matter what. All the time in the world can go by; you can live forever; you can hope and pray and try to dream all you want, but there will never be a time like that again. That was the time that The Red Magician defied the night and let the girl out of the box.