Houdini Heart

  Gazing down into the tank, I think: what a crazy thing to do. I think I understand drowning. But not like this. Something could have gone wrong at any time. How could he stand the stress of doing what he did, performance after performance? And why?

  Dotty Parker wrote: Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live. What the clever self-hating little Jewish girl from Jersey neglected to mention is that all these small annoyances are as brief as a passing hail storm. But not this. Two minutes upside down and drowning. Not if I can help it.

  After he called me Houdini Heart, I looked Harry up on the internet. E. L. Doctorow put it like this: “He was so insanely devoted to what he was doing and so disciplined that the ultimate insanity of his life never occurred to him.”

  I stand at the top of his ladder and I agree with Doctorow with all that remains of my heart. This is completely nuts. Never mind what he was doing. What am I doing?

  Whatever I think I’m doing, Harry needed help for all this. I have no help. Or maybe the little girl means to help me. But unless she’s taken her Alice in Wonderland pill and is now growing larger and larger, she can’t.

  What now?

  Philip Massinger, the second-rate Seventeenth Century playwright, but first-rate portrayer of women, wrote: “If you like not hanging, drown yourself; Take some course for your reputation.”

  For my reputation, such as it is, would I both hang and drown myself?

  ~

  I sit down on the platform, take off my tool-belt, my hat, my sweater, my shoes, my socks. Dropping them off the platform, the tool-belt and its contents make a terrific racket when they hit the floor far below. Wearing only a black tee tucked into tight black pants, I place my naked feet in the half stocks, close the other half over it, and am now effectively locked into place. I could still open the thing, still get out—but the little girl is chanting and the dog is panting and Houdini’s Asleep in the Deep is playing over and over.

  At this point someone should be locking the stocks, and someone else should begin pulling me up somehow, perhaps by hauling hand-over-hand on one particular set of chains. Looking at it, I see the thing is a simple block and tackle device. It’s basically an engine hoist, a looped chain. Depending on which side you pull, it’ll raise or lower an engine block at virtually the touch of a finger. I can hoist myself up, lower myself down with great ease. So who will lock my stocks and who will pull on my chains? Me, that’s who. After all, there’s no one up here but me…with the key, which I will hide under my tongue. No strait jacket, no locked lid, perhaps not even a demure curtain pulled across the plate glass so no one can see my struggles. So that no one can see I have a key under my tongue. As for cheating with the key: this is my first and probably last time. I’m due a break here.

  I understand now. This is my test. It’s rather like tying a woman into a ducking stool. If she lives through the long and breathless immersion, she’s a witch; if she drowns, she’s innocent.

  But who tests me. The dog? The child? Who tests me, if not me myself? If I have done all this, then I was right in the first place. Reality is an illusion and this illusion is mine and mine alone. If I have not done all this, then I am wrong and I understand nothing about reality, nothing—just like everyone else. No matter if they call themselves Pope or Ayatollah or Guru, or if they speak out as a worthy and respected scientist, or as a brilliant philosopher, not one of us really knows a true thing about reality. Socrates said that to know one knows nothing is the mark of an intelligent man. I know nothing. I wish that meant I had talent. I wish that meant I could write. I wish that meant I could change the past. I wish, I wish, I wish…if wishes were fishes, even the guilty could swim.

  If I am wrong and River House is alive in some way, as alive and as malevolent as Shirley’s Hill House was meant to be, or, heaven forbid, as King’s Overlook Hotel, then I am trapped here. No choices for me: River House has made all the running. I cannot flee. I cannot stay locked in my room. I cannot seek help. I can’t even give myself up to the Law. I can do nothing but what River House intends me to do. Is this because I belong here? Or because I don’t belong here?

  No end to my questions. No end to my suffering. Unless death is an end. Is it? I don’t know.

  ~

  Houdini never understood a thing about illusion; he thought the word “illusion” meant “trick.” From his point of view, he played cunning tricks on his audience, while mediums tried to play shabby tricks on him. A trickster outraged at the tricks of others, Houdini spent his life working to debunk them.

  I know the answer to my question now. Am I Houdini? No, I am not Houdini. I am much better than a trickster—or much worse. I believe illusion is what reality is made of. I do not fool around. What I do, I do for real, and trust that my own hidden (at least to me) intentions will form the reality I seek. I also trust—I have to, no way to know for sure—that the reality I see around me is the reality I sought.

  I do know this. I set out to die for my sins, for I am a true-blue genuine first class sinner, and I will die.

  The irony here is that not only will I drown, and in a tower of all places, but that in dying I will still prove not a Catholic but a witch.

  ~

  I begin pulling on the chains. It works. The stocks slowly rises bringing with it my firmly padlocked feet. To keep from rubbing the skin from his ankles, Houdini has had the holes lined with sheepskin. I thank him for this. I’ve always expected to be frightened, but never intended to experience pain. I’m not good at pain. If there was pain, I would be almost certain to stop. And I can stop. But as I’ve said before, self-chosen or compelled, I have nothing else to do. Though I really can’t see how I shall manage to lift myself high enough to dangle over the tank, or to lower myself into it. I’ve always had strong legs, but weak arms. Yet I keep going. If I am meant to do this, it will be done. I can’t believe I am meant merely to try to do this and to fail. If so, nothing would make sense, nothing. And in the last few moments, much that has seemed senseless becomes meaningful. Perhaps not to a rational mind, but to one now purely instinctual, purely magical, partly mad, partly sad, and purely suicidal, it makes the utmost sense.

  ~

  Sometime in his teens, he became convinced he would die young. He believed all great artists die young. Unwavering in this conviction, he also thought the last gasp of youth meant somewhere around the mid Thirties. To prove this, he recited a goodly list of those who had gone before him: Bobby Darin, Buddy Holly, River Phoenix, James Dean, Jean Harlow, Jimi Hendrix, John Belushi, Carole Lombard, Marilyn Monroe. I stopped him at Doc Holliday. With the possible exception of Holliday, I said, not one of those you’ve named was a great artist. These, said I, are the great artists who died young: John Keats, Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Nick Drake, Dylan Thomas, Marlowe and Shelley and Mozart and Byron, not forgetting all the Brontes, even Branwell Bronte, who admittedly was no artist at all, but still managed a short life by depression or debauchery, I forget which.

  I made him laugh. But not for long.

  The night before his thirty-sixth birthday, he began to panic. He was still alive. He was just about to pass into the last of his Thirties. This could only mean one of two things: either he was just about to die, or he was not a great artist. Either interpretation made him ill with fear.

  We both sat up all that night, him freaking and drinking and sniveling and writing rather funny farewell notes to mostly me, but some to the world. I sat up holding him, stroking him, trying to calm him. But he was well and truly convinced he would die, if not that night, then on the morrow. How, he had no idea. But that he would, he harbored not a shadow of a doubt.

  I’m still amazed he remained coherent considering the amount of booze he put away, not to mention the Valium he swallowed.

  He lived.

  I shall always believe he was gravely disappointed to survive that night and the following day. I shall a
lways believe his not dying on or about his thirty-sixth birthday was the beginning of his doubt about his talent, a doubt that only grew as the years passed. Being as talented after his birthday as he was before his birthday made not a jot of difference to him. He was sure that at any moment someone would find him out, and he would begin the long road down to obscurity.

  Believing as I do in the power of belief, I did not laugh.

  Until all that has happened, happened, I held no beliefs about my own death. Like most people I thought of my personal demise as seldom as possible, and when I did, the thoughts were idle, slightly silly. Like most people I hoped death would come swiftly, painlessly, and without preamble. In other words: whap! you’re gone.

  Since Kate died, I’ve thought of nothing but death.

  ~

  I pull on the chains and I rise. I pull and I rise still farther. It’s easier than I thought it would be. It’s more painful as well. Not only my ankles, but my back and my neck hurt. Lack of exercise. What else could it be? After all, I haven’t seen the inside of a gym for I don’t know how long. I’m thin but not toned. I haven’t run other than the chase through the halls of River House…whenever that was. (So odd to think I raced after a child, meaning to hurt her. But then, at the time she wasn’t a child; she was still an older woman. Or a young woman. As already said, I begin to forget my time in River House. I also begin to mix up my memories. What came before what? What caused this or caused that? How much that I recall were dreams? Did I dream at all? How long have I been here?) It’s hardly surprising my body might complain at being hung upside down. Though how I am to maneuver myself over the watery tank is still a problem. I shall face that when I get there, literally.

  I’m off the platform now, my head inches from the wood, the blood rushing into my brain. The music has not stopped, if anything it’s become louder, drowning out the chanting child and the panting dog. I am grateful for this small mercy. A few more pulls and I will hang far enough above the surface of the tank water to begin to lower myself down. And that has to be done quickly. If not, I waste precious time getting to the bottom, and in Houdini’s Chinese Water Torture, even for someone not padlocked into a strait jacket, there is no time to waste. It will take all the strength I have left to pull myself back up the chains and out of the water before I drown. Do I right myself? Do I go back up as I went down, head down, feet up?

  This is where I really need a pair of helping hands. Just a small push would get me where I need to be. There are no hands but mine, and I’m using them on the chains. There’s the child, of course, but she’s grown much too young to climb the ladder. The dog would be useless even if he got up here, which I hope he does not.

  I begin to wriggle, trying to make myself sway a bit, and then possibly to swing. The idea is to force the hinged rod above the tank to move by my movements.

  And it does. Inch by inch, and then a jump of half a foot, then a few more inches, and I swing out over the water. Being upside down, I can’t easily see the tank. What I see are my hands gripping the chains and my feet in padlocked stocks fastened to the high domed ceiling above me. I should also be able to see out all four of the windows. But with the tower lit as it’s lit, all four windows are like mirrors, dark mirrors reflecting back only me—and the tank. And behind the tank, a small and serious child with straight black hair, her hand on the quiet head of a small black dog. They stand waiting, both of them, looking up at me. Momentarily, I think that surely anyone looking at what is after all a landmark that can be seen for miles must have seen me by now? But then I know they can’t. For all save the child and the dog, I am a ghost. When did I become a ghost? The tower I hang in is not the same tower that looks over Little Sokoki. For all I know, it is broad daylight and a parade trombones its way up Main Street. For all I know, it’s the Twenty-Second Century and River House was torn down years ago. For all I know, Harry Houdini is right this minute attending a séance in the once home of Charles River Akeley and less than an hour ago I was the star attraction.

  For all I know, these and a million other moments are taking place all around me, and they always will be, but I have chosen only this one moment to remain in, perhaps forever. My own perfect, perfectly strange, and perfectly awful moment. My own River House. My own hell.

  It’s now I must lower myself quickly into the water, and now that I am supposed to slip the key to the padlocked stocks under my tongue. I loosen my grip on the chains, begin my slide, headfirst towards the tank, and at the first touch of water on the top of my head, I take in air, enough air to keep me alive…for how long?

  For as long as it takes.

  And then it occurs to me. Fucking hell. I have no key. There never was a key. I must have been dreaming I had a key.

  ~

  This is bullshit. If this is what River House wants, it can go screw itself. Even if what I see and what I hear and what I do is an even bigger illusion than life itself, I’m not doing this. I’m not Polanski’s tenant driven again and again to jump from his window by whatever corruption occupies the room he’s rented. I am a writer. Not a great writer, but not so bloody bad I end like this. Or a story of mine ends like this.

  There must be a better ending. There always is. You just have to take your time, never rush, even if every producer in Hollywood is talking about needing the script yesterday.

  It takes no time at all to pull myself back to the platform at the top of the tank. No time to release the unlocked stocks, to climb back down the ladder. I quickly dress, quickly refill and rehook my belt so I can crawl out the hinged window and back onto the roof of River House. And where was she all this time? Or her dog? Gone.

  Where did they go? Honestly? By now? Who the fuck cares?

  If she’s me, young again…so? If she’s Kate showing me a life she wasn’t allowed to live…too late. I can’t help her. If she’s even my damn mother who’s finally allowed me inside River House, well fuck her too. I’ll crouch here in the dark until I make up my mind what to do.

  Not River House. Me. I’ll decide.

  ~

  The hunger’s come back. This time I can’t ignore it. If this isn’t the time to do as I’ve always intended, when is?

  You might think it too old by now, but it’s not. I never needed it to last that long, just long enough for the moment I knew all along was coming. Which is why I pickled it in an ill-smelling ill-used room in a Motel 6 on the edge of Sacramento, California. In its sealed jar, his heart could last for years.

  Unlike myself.

  Soaked in cloves and allspice and bay and garlic, it’s rather nice.

  I was always a good cook.

  ~

  From where I sit, which is where I sat before I broke into the tower, I have to turn to see there’s no light in the tower windows. It’s as dark as it’s been every night since I moved in, every night that is, but this night. All light’s off now. Window’s closed. I don’t remember closing it, but I suppose I did. As for the little house on the roof, Charles River Akeley’s house, I need only to look ahead to see that all the windows facing me are lit. Before, at the séance, it was gaslit. I think. But now, in each window there shines one candle. From where I once again sit, cold back against the cold tower wall, cold butt on the sleek black flat roof of River House, Akeley’s secret house looks warm. It looks charming. It touches the sentimental sap in me, the part that oooohs and aaaaahs over winter scenes on Christmas cards. It’s the house I would have had if I’d ever had the house I truly loved. There’s nothing like it in Los Angeles. Houses like this only exist in novels and movies. Of course, if it were mine, it would be on the ground somewhere, surrounded by a gate and a garden, not on the roof of a once hotel.

  Slowly chewing, I can’t take my eyes off it.

  What will River House conjure up now?

  ~

  Time to find out. I close the empty jar and slip it back into my belt. No making messes, not me (but I did throw an empty bottle down into Main Street, didn’t I?), and no le
aving evidence. There’s the camcorder. Should I use the boy’s camcorder and finish his film for him? No. I have all the film I need stored right in my head. Too much film. I open the camcorder and yank out his evidence or work or whatever he thought it. Ruined now, I tie it in a huge bow on the latch of the tower window. And then I notice the illuminated church spire clock a block or so up Main Street. Four fourteen in the morning. I’m not surprised. I am beyond surprise, though I am not beyond fear. Or curiosity.

  Time to pad across the smooth black roof of River House—what did Benjamin Willow cover it with, rubber?—and find out what awaits me. The tower was nothing, a bit of showmanship, a scene thrown in for its scare value. The little house is the real thing. It makes no sense. It shouldn’t be there. Anyone come back from the Gold Mines of Old Califorlorn to build a hotel big enough and grand enough to rub his success in the eye of Little Sokoki, would also have built himself a mansion on one of the hills overlooking the town. From there he could look down, while everyone else had to look up. He would have erected one of those houses found all over America, a grand, overdone, tasteless, somehow hilarious, and thoroughly wonderful robber baron’s house. By now it would be called the old Akeley place and Little Sokoki would be as proud of it as it had once hated its builder.

  So. No. Though I found it on the blueprints on the wall of Benjamin Willow’s office, it was never really Benjamin’s office, not the second time I came calling, so this little house exists only for me. Which means, it’s mine.

  After the right time to eat, it’s the right time to take possession.

  ~

  I pad across the roof and open the door.

  There comes a rumbling and a roaring and a cracking of solid rock—craaaakkk! Dirt clods, bits of root, shattered shells from ancient seas, old pot shards, fragments of podzol and brimstone, of jet and chert and tufa and wacke, erupt like Old Faithful from Faye's back lawn, spraying her little brown house with muck. Where a second before there was a table under a tent, now there's a deep black fissure, spitting up slurps and lallops of heart's mud, blowing huge sticky bubbles of urk.