The Answers To All Your Questions

The Answers To All Your Questions

Steven paces between the pool and the gazebo, repeating the words he will use when he is introduced.

“What you are about to witness”—special emphasis on the ‘W’ in witness—"has only been performed once. While it is perfectly safe, I promise you, there are no answers. It’s magic.”

Around him, the party is in full swing. A hundred of his father’s associates, clients and friends have come to the family estate in Weston to celebrate his retirement. Among them, people that Steven recognizes. People that knew him before and about what had happened and what the family had to do to recover. They might still blame him. Arthur still did. But none of that mattered now. He’s not that guy anymore.

Ben thought the musicians and the long catering line with the white linen tables and champagne flutes was too much. Retirement was a process not an event. What could you say about forty-two years of meetings and memos. Forty-two. Is that possible? The party was his kids idea. Elise, the youngest, a debutante whose single accomplishment was marrying a guy who two weeks later got hit by a piece Skylab that had circled the earth for years until it fell directly on him (The settlement was enough for her to buy the house next door); Arthur, the oldest, who works with him at Fidelity and wields the family name like Excalibur, slaying dragons of his own making (He expects to get his dad’s office with the cherry wood blinds and Banksy originals); and Steven, squeezed (unwillingly) between them.

“Grandpa,” Arthur’s six-year-old daughter, Andrea, calls to him. “Can I have a piece a cake?”

Ben does not like being called ‘grandpa’ or ‘grandfather’ or anything similar. For forty-two years he has had to prove himself, first against those who came in with him as they competed for rank and now with their kids, snobs with Ivy League smiles that hide their contempt. He has had to keep his edge. Minimize his liabilities. Grandpa was a label he couldn’t afford. It favored his competition and he had tried to discourage Andrea from using, but she persists, coached, no doubt by his wife Alice.

“I’m not sure you can. You need to ask Alice. She may not be ready to cut it yet.”

“That’s stupid. It’s just sitting there.”

From across the pool Ben hears the sounds of laughter. He recognizes them as old neighbors from Beacon Hill, people that he and Alice no longer see, not since their kids stopped attending summer camp. They have aged. But he could hear their younger versions in their voices and see them in his mind. There was Andrew, the English professor, who he had passed out in Alice’s bathroom after drinking a bottle of prestige Port. (His wife collected him the following morning and that evening packed up the kids and moved to Colorado.) There were the Willards, holding hands with everyone else. Were they swingers now? And Josh, who stopped saying he was building a bunker under his garage when the FBI started collecting his trash. How will he get past them without being seen? That’s when he hears Steven’s voice from behind the azaleas.

“Steven. What are you doing out here? Why aren’t you helping your mom? You know I don’t like when you’re alone?”

“I’m rehearsing,” Steven says.

“Rehearsing? What are you rehearsing? A speech. God, you’re not going to give a speech are you? I’d expect that from your brother, but you.”

“No, no way,” Steven stammers.

“Well, I don’t mind if you do, but…I mean, if you want to say something, something short and factual. Factual. That’s the important thing.”

“Nope, not going to say anything.”

“Well, that’s probably good.”

“No, well, I mean, I have things to say. But not tonight. No speech. Tonight, I’m a man of action. I’m going to perform a magic trick.”

“A what?”

“A magic trick. It’s the only thing I could think you would want. At least, it’s what I would want if I was your age.”

“Maybe just congratulate me. Simple. Sweet and to the point. That will be sufficient.”

“That’s nothing. Not for all you have done. ”

“Should I be concerned?”

Ben knew a little about a lot. But about personality disorders he knew a lot about a little. Specifically, he knew that for all the time and money he and Alice had spent on therapy and consultations, the experts still could not explain what had happened to Steven when he was thirteen. They could not explain why he called the State police and reported that he had been kidnapped from a farm family in Pataskala, Ohio. And why he was so convinced that it was the truth that a therapist recommended flying the family out to meet Steven. But here’s the funny thing—funny in retrospect—the family confirmed Steven’s story and for a minute, the tables turned and the therapist and State police started listening to Steven and not to Ben and Alice and Steven used the opportunity to argue that there was more going on behind Ben’s grey-eyed expressions, like the fact that Arthur was a robot put there by Ben to monitor Steven’s activities. He even produced a log book, written in Arthur’s hand, that recorded everything Steven had been doing for the past two years, down to the dates and times of his bowl movements. It took the family a long time to get over the humiliation and strife and when it was finally resolved (Steven continued to live with Ben and Alice, though with fewer privileges), Arthur didn’t talk to Steven until he went off to college. He still has trouble saying his name without swallowing first.

That’s why Ben feels a chill whenever Steven begins to ramble. There is a bottle of oxymorphone in a bottom drawer of his desk that he was prescribed for back pain but continues to use to redefine his relationship to Steven. He’s feeling the urge to move in that direction now.

A trio of musicians is playing from a parquet landing near the house. Between them and the gardens is an open space reserved for dancing, but it is empty. It is still early and not enough wine had been served. There are people in the crowd, not those with brittle bones and vertigo, that will soon begin dancing. Andrea will be among them, throwing herself about like an untethered sail in the wind, hoping someone notices her frail naked arms and strawberry blonde hair. There are others too. They have been sneaking glances at each other in the off hope that someone else might share their urges or be bored enough to try something new. Steven is standing to the side with his hands on his hip, whispering to himself. Whatever it is, it’s something he seems to want others to hear. Arthur runs his hand across his throat to quiet the band and with a showman’s wave, encourages the guest to gather around him. Elise creeps up behind Ben and takes his hand.

“Come on daddy,” she says, convincingly.

“What’s this,” Ben asks.

“It’s your retirement party, of course.”

“Oh, is that what this is?” he teases.

“It’s tradition and people want to say nice things about you. Steven even has a surprise for you.”

“It’s a magic trick.”

“A magic trick? What’ll he think of next?”

Arthur waits until the guests have formed a semi-circle around him. He has written a speech, but left the pages in his wife’s purse. He knows what he wants to say, to acknowledge his father’s career, but more importantly to launch his own. It’s his time now. He will be the only Oswald at Fidelity and when he is introduced for the first time to important clients and potential investors, they’ll say to themselves, ‘He looks so young to have accomplished so much.’ And he won’t bother to correct them because his father’s legacy will have merged with his. So, the fewer words about him tonight the better. Ben doesn’t mind. He is thinking about Steven and his magic trick and the medication is now beginning to take effect. The band starts in with “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” but Elise talks over them.

“Wait, wait. I have a surprise,” she squawks. “Steven, come on. Steven is going to perform a trick. I don’t know what it is, but he’s been practicing and wants to do this for our father.”

Steven maneuvers his way toward the landing. He hears murmurs coming from the crowd, but ignores them. Then, with a snap of feedback, he says into the microphone, “Steven could not make it today, but he sent me in his place. I am Estevan, the magician.”

Ben sees the pained expression on Alice’s face and he remembers what the doctors had told them years ago—without a diagnosis, Steven is not cured. There remains the possibility that what happened before could happen again. That he might lose himself and then reappear; maybe as a kid from Ohio or a dog from Mars. Who knows? And it may throw the family into chaos again and reignite the guilt and recriminations that took them years to dismantle, years to settle out what was real and what was not. He’d seen enough of Steven’s magic for a lifetime.

“Today, I am going to perform a feat that many have tried before,” Steven begins. “Before you ask, let me say, there are no answers. That’s what magic is. But don’t worry, Alice and Elise and Arthur, it is perfectly safe and Ben will be fine. I promise.” Then, with the patience of a nurse, he explains that he is going to send his father back in time in order to give him the gift of a few extra days, something, he adds, that we will all bargain for in the end.

Ben is now on the stage, dropped-shouldered and unsuspecting yet cooperative. Standing there, Andrea is at his side, cupping a piece of cake with both hands, next to her, Elise, an unlikely conspirator, and just off stage, Arthur, roiled and contemptuous, he thought about how little time he actually spent with them. Maybe it was Steven’s fault, but he could not excuse himself. He felt sad for them and what they have had to manage.

Steven stands behind Ben now and with a wave and a flourish of excitement, Ben disappears; more like, walks away, since he did not disappear in a flash of light or de-materialize like James Kirk. Nothing spontaneous or instantaneous about it. It was sort of a slow transition, more a fading away, but fast, faster than Ben would have moved on his own.

There is an uncertain pause as the audience tries to interpret what has happened. Then, like a ripple, first one and then another says aloud, “Where did he go?” Steven stares down at the spot where his father had been standing and with a look of satisfaction hands the mic back to Elise.

The crowd doesn’t move. It is caught in an emotional quandary, somewhere between surprise and disappointment. The easiest thing to do, which many do, is to dismiss the trick all together, to laugh and assume it was something Steven and Ben concocted beforehand and the joke was on them. Then someone suggests that it was Ben’s way of escaping the attention and getting away without saying goodbye. Maybe he did it as a favor to Steven, a balancing of the scales between him and Arthur. It is a lot to digest.

Arthur, who is not one to deliberate on things, chases Steven off the stage and motions to the band to start playing again. Elise is equally agitated. “What was that?” she demands of Steven. Then she sees her mother’s face and realizes she is being too hard on him. Magic is hard to explain. “That was a great trick Steven. I’m sure Dad appreciates it. Wherever he is. Ha-ha.”

“You think so?” Steven asks.

The party continues without Ben. The guests still have their own reasons for being there, their own stories and deceptions, some known and others yet to be discovered. When the last of them finally picks themselves and makes their way to their cars, Ben is still missing. He will not reappear for two days and when he does, the first question he will ask Alice, in a voice full of vigor and purpose, is: “Where’s Estevan?”