“That depends on how susceptible you are,” said Audrey.
“How susceptible?”
“Yeah, how easy you are to put under. I can find that out by asking you some questions.”
“What kind of questions?” I asked warily.
“Don’t worry, they’re easy ones,” she said. “Wait a second, I’ll get the book.”
Audrey walked over to a set of shelves jammed with paperbacks, pulled out a tall yellow book, and quickly flipped to a page near the front.
“Here we go,” she said. “Question number one: Do you take in strays?”
“Wait a minute. I thought you said you knew how to do this,” I said.
“I do.”
“Then why do you need that book?”
“It’s just like using a cookbook. That doesn’t mean you don’t know how to cook. It just means you haven’t memorized the recipes. So answer the question. Have you ever taken in a stray animal?”
It was funny, Audrey’s asking me that after Arthur had just told me he was a sucker for strays.
“Yes,” I said. “A cat.”
“I love cats. My mom won’t let me have one, though, because she’s allergic. What’s your cat’s name?” she asked.
I hesitated. There wasn’t a day that passed that I didn’t think about Mister, but I hadn’t realized until that moment how long it had been since I’d actually said his name out loud. A hard lump rose in my throat, and I had to swallow it back down before I could answer.
“Mister,” I said. “But he’s dead.”
“Oh,” said Audrey, “that’s too bad. Well, taking in strays is one of the signs that you’re susceptible to hypnosis, so that’s good anyway. How about question number two: Do you ever cry at movies?”
I often cried at sad books, and I’d come close to crying a couple of times listening to Frank Sinatra sing “Mood Indigo,” but luckily she had only asked me about movies.
“No,” I answered truthfully.
“Okay, there are just a few more questions.”
What was I doing here? Audrey Krouch wasn’t a real hypnotist. She didn’t know any magic words, and she wasn’t going to be able to help me. She was just a kid, and I didn’t want to answer any more of her dumb questions.
“I’m going to get going,” I said again.
“Wait,” said Audrey. “I kept my part of the bargain; I got you the pop. We can skip the rest of the questions. Stay here and I’ll get my stuff.”
I could have left. It’s not as if she could have stopped me—not physically anyway. Instead I stayed, and while I waited for her to come back, I went over and looked at the collection of framed photographs arranged in a semicircle on the table behind the couch. There were pictures of Audrey at various stages of childhood and Lucille Krouch, always smiling directly into the camera, looking exactly the same in every shot except for the color of her hair, which seemed to have been every color imaginable at some point along the way. I noticed there were no pictures of the dad Audrey had written her description about, but I figured that was probably because he’d been the one behind the camera, taking all those pictures of his great big wife and their goofy-looking kid.
“Back,” Audrey said, coming into the room a minute later with a shoe box in her hands. She set the box on the coffee table and went into the kitchen, where she opened a drawer and rummaged around for a minute before pulling out a large slotted spoon. She breathed on it, then polished it with the edge of her T-shirt.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
She came over to me and started slowly swinging the spoon by the handle back and forth in front of my face.
I snorted. “You’ve gotta be kidding. Don’t you know you’re supposed to use a watch on a chain when you hypnotize somebody?”
“Shows what you know,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what I use, just so long as you keep your eyes on it. You can look it up in the book if you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t care what your book says, I don’t want to look at that dirty spoon. Doesn’t your dad have an old watch lying around here someplace?”
A strange look passed over Audrey’s face.
“Look, do you want me to hypnotize you or not?”
I was a little surprised by the sudden change in her tone. She sounded mad.
“Take off your shoes and lie down on the couch,” she said.
“You want me to lie down?” I said uneasily.
I had the same feeling about lying on the Krouches’ musty old couch as I did about sitting on the rug at school, and I wasn’t too crazy about the idea of taking my shoes off either. The floor was covered in a shaggy carpet that looked as if it hadn’t been vacuumed in a while.
“Is it okay if I just stand up instead?” I asked.
“No. You have to lie down so you can relax and empty your mind, or I won’t be able to enter it.”
Audrey Krouch was skinny as a stick and at least two inches taller than I was. A sudden image of her trying to gather up her gangly legs and arms and “enter” my mind, like a giraffe crawling into a car window, made it hard to keep from laughing.
“How about if I just sit here like this?” I asked, taking a seat on the edge of the couch and folding my hands in my lap.
“Fine,” said Audrey, rolling her eyes. “Are you ready now?”
She opened the shoe box and took out a candle and a small blue glass bottle. She lit the candle, but it was so little, it didn’t make the room any brighter. Still, there’s something about candles burning that makes it feel as if something important is happening, and for the first time since I’d walked in the door, I had to be honest with myself. Even though I knew Madame Yerdua was only plain old Audrey Krouch, there was still a part of me that believed she might be able to help me forget.
15
AUDREY PICKED UP THE LITTLE BLUE BOTTLE AND unscrewed the cap. Holding her index finger over the top, she tipped it twice quickly and wet her fingertip before touching me lightly in the middle of my forehead and at the corner of each eye. The smell was familiar, but it took me a second to place it. Sapphy kept several bottles of perfume and lotions on her dresser top. I had opened them all one night, dabbing her wrists and spritzing the air in search of magic triggers. This same perfume had been there among them. I was sure of it. I remembered because the smell had been so much sweeter and stronger than the rest, almost overwhelming. I had looked at the label to see what it was called. Attar of roses.
Audrey put the cap back on the bottle and picked up the spoon.
“Before we can begin, you have to tell me why you want to be hypnotized,” she said, and she didn’t sound mad anymore.
“No more questions,” I told her. “Come on. Let’s just do it.”
“I have to ask this one. Otherwise how am I supposed to know what posthypnotic suggestion to plant?” she explained.
“What’s a posthypnotic suggestion?”
“It’s, like, say you’re a nail biter, right? And you want to stop biting your nails? I put you under, and then I tell you not to bite your nails anymore,” Audrey said.
“And that’s it?” I said.
“Pretty much.”
Could it really be that simple? Was it a posthypnotic suggestion that had made my grandfather bark like a dog at the county fair and then forget that he had ever done it? The small ember of hope, which had first sparked to life as I’d stood in the laundry shed looking at the blue flyer, began to glow more brightly now.
“You just tell me what to do and I do it?” I asked.
“Yep,” said Audrey. “So what do you want?”
It was such a simple question, I answered it without hesitating. Like opening a door without bothering to ask first, “Who’s there?”
“I want to forget,” I said.
“Forget what?” she asked.
Obviously I should have anticipated this question, especially from Audrey. But I had gotten caught up in the candlelight and the hopefulness and let my guard down by accident. Q
uickly I scrambled for cover.
“I didn’t mean that. What I meant was, I don’t want to forget, I want to learn why people forget, so I can help my aunt get her memory back.”
Audrey was watching me closely. “I thought you said you were going to do that with those trigger things,” she said.
“We are. But maybe there’s something else we can do while we’re looking for the triggers.”
“So let me get this straight. You don’t want to forget something?” she said.
“No,” I said, shaking my head adamantly. “What would I need to do that for? I’m not the one with the memory problem. It’s my aunt. I’m doing this for her. Not me.”
“Huh,” she said. “Well, that’s kind of confusing then, ’cause why am I hypnotizing you? Sounds like I should be hypnotizing her.”
“Sapphy? No. That would never work,” I said. “And besides, it could be dangerous. You might do something wrong and make her even worse. Why don’t you just hypnotize me, say something about forgetting, and let me worry about what happens after that.”
“It doesn’t really work like that,” she said as she reached for the yellow book, which lay facedown on the table, still opened up to the page of questions.
“Can’t we at least try it?” I asked. “Please?”
She hesitated for a minute, then left the book where it was.
“I guess,” she said. “If that’s really what you want to do.”
“Thanks,” I said, my heart pounding as if I’d just stepped off the curb and narrowly missed being hit by a car. I was hopeful that she could help me, but that didn’t mean I was willing to tell her why I needed her help.
Audrey picked up the big metal spoon and began to swing it slowly back and forth in front of my face. She told me not to take my eyes off it no matter what, and so I watched it swing back and forth, back and forth.
“Your eyelids are feeling heavy now. You wish that you could close them. You wish that you could sleep. But it’s not time yet. It’s not time. Soon it will be time to sleep. Soon it will be time. But not yet.”
At first it was hard not to laugh. Audrey Krouch was swinging a big spoon in my face and telling me not to go to sleep. It was ridiculous. But I bit my lip and didn’t laugh because I knew it would make her mad, and if she got mad, she might change her mind about trying it my way.
And then I didn’t feel like laughing anymore. At first I thought maybe it was my imagination, but then I realized, no, it was true, my eyelids were beginning to feel a little heavy. As if two cool copper pennies were resting on top of them, pushing them closed as I fought to keep them open.
“Not yet,” said Audrey quietly, “not yet. But very soon.”
Pennies, or maybe fingertips. But whose fingers were they? Audrey’s? My own? I struggled to keep my eyes open. Back and forth. Back and forth went the spoon. Sapphy would have liked the way the light caught in the metal and sparkled as it swung. Back and forth. Back and forth. If only I could close my eyes. Just for a minute. If only I could sleep.
“You may close your eyes now,” Audrey said softly, and she put down the spoon and reached for the yellow book on the table. I was so relieved to finally be able to shut my eyes, I forgot all about my feelings about the musty couch and lay right down, sinking deep into the soft cushions. I didn’t even mind it when I felt Audrey untie my shoes and pull them off. “I want you to imagine that you are on a sandy beach. Warm sun shines down on you, caressing your body with its healing light. Gentle waves lap at the shore, and a moist, cool sea breeze blows through your hair.” I had a feeling Audrey must be reading from the yellow book, because the words didn’t sound like things she would actually say. She went on in a soft, dreamy voice. “In the distance you see a tall building. That is your destination. The tall building. Your feet walk effortlessly upon the warm sand. Almost as though you are gliding.”
I was still listening to Audrey’s voice, but I was also picturing myself on the beach, gliding along toward the tall building. I was moving so smoothly, my feet barely touched the ground. The sun poured over me like warm syrup and the waves sparkled and Audrey’s voice seemed to come from somewhere far away, out where the blue of the sea met the blue of the sky and they both just kept going.
“You are focused on the building. That is your destination. You are almost there. I want you to stop walking and take three deep breaths with me now.”
I lay on the couch, with my eyes closed tight, and took three slow, deep breaths, exhaling through my mouth each time.
“You are walking again. You are walking upon the warm sand. And now, at last, you reach the tall building,” Audrey continued in her faraway voice. “As you enter, you notice a large elevator on your right. You can see yourself reflected in the shiny metal doors. Do you see yourself in the doors?”
I did see myself. Like in a dream.
“Mmm-hmm,” I murmured softly.
“Good. Now the doors slide open, and you enter the elevator. The number ten lights up as the elevator doors close. The car begins to move. You are going down. You see the numbers light up in red as you descend. Down, down, down you go, and the numbers go down too. Ten…nine…eight…”
She counted slowly all the way down to one.
“And now you have arrived. You are all the way down. All the way down under the ground, where it is safe and warm. You can relax now and be at peace with yourself.”
I was floating a million miles away. I could hear her voice, so I knew I was still awake, but it was as if I were sound asleep at the same time. It felt so good, I didn’t want it ever to end. I wanted to keep floating like that forever and never have to come back. Everything would get smaller and smaller, just the way the house in Battle Creek had after we drove away from it for the last time. I wanted to keep floating until no matter where I looked, there was nothing to see but clear blue water, and then I would close my eyes, take a deep breath, and finally let myself forget….
…the way Old Gray always seemed to be sitting out on the office steps when I came home from school each day. How he’d wave to me and start up a conversation as I walked past. And then how one day he said if I would help him hang up his Christmas lights, he’d give me five dollars. I said sure, and I put down my books and climbed up on the ladder to help him hang the strings of colored bulbs from the rain gutters.
While we worked, Old Gray asked me all kinds of questions. What was my favorite subject at school? Did I have a best friend? And how did I feel about not having a father around anymore? I told him that my mom didn’t like it when I talked about my dad, but Old Gray said he didn’t mind a bit if I wanted to talk about my dad. In fact I could talk about him all day long if I wanted to, and he promised he would never tell my mother. “Trust me,” he said. “It will be our secret.”
He was so easy to talk to. He made me feel like I was the most important person in the world. He kept asking me questions, and I kept telling him things. How I hadn’t made any friends at school yet. How Mister had died and how I missed my dad and couldn’t understand why he hadn’t at least called me to see how I was doing. “My mother says he’s good for nothing,” I told him, “but he’s still my dad, and Christmas isn’t going to feel right without him.” I told him that my mother said she didn’t feel like celebrating, so we weren’t even going to have a tree, and Old Gray said that gave him an idea. How would it be, he asked me, if he got a Christmas tree for the office and I came over and helped him decorate it on Christmas Eve, just the two of us? I said I thought that sounded like a great idea. I liked Old Gray, and I could tell he liked me too. He cared about what mattered to me, and somehow he seemed to understand how I felt even without my telling him. We finished hanging up his lights, and I helped him fold up the ladder and carry it around back to the toolshed. Before I left, he put his arm around my shoulders and told me that if he had a son like me, wild horses couldn’t drag him away. “By the way,” he said as he pulled a crisp five-dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it to me, “wha
t’s your favorite candy, Jamie?”
“Butterscotch,” I told him.
After that, Old Gray talked about the Christmas tree every time I saw him. At first he said he was going to get a really big one, like the ones I’d told him we’d always had in Battle Creek. But then he decided it might be more special to get a live tree instead of a dead one off the lot. He told me the live trees weren’t as big as the chopped-down kind, but that it wouldn’t matter—we would still be able to decorate it with candy canes and tinsel when I came over on Christmas Eve.
“And I’ve got a present for you too, Jamie,” Old Gray told me, “something I know you’re going to like.”
Old Gray asked me not to tell anyone about our tree-trimming party. He said he didn’t want the other kids at Wondrous Acres to find out and feel bad that they hadn’t been invited. So after dinner on Christmas Eve, while my mom was busy giving Sapphy a bath and getting her ready for bed, I told her I was going for a walk, slipped out of the house, and headed over to Old Gray’s office. I figured it wouldn’t take long to decorate the tree—Old Gray said it would be small. I was sure I’d be back home by the time my mom was finished with Sapphy.
There was about a foot of snow on the ground, and I stamped my boots on the steps while I waited for him to answer the door. It suddenly occurred to me that if Old Gray had a present for me, maybe I was supposed to have one for him too. I felt bad, but it was too late to do anything about it. He opened the door and told me to come inside. I followed him into the back room where the tree was. It was sitting on a table in a shiny red plastic pot. Even though he had warned me that it would be small, I was surprised by how little it really was. More like a houseplant than a Christmas tree. Still, we managed to wind a string of miniature lights around it and hang tiny candy canes and tinsel on the thin branches.
It had always been my job at home to put the star on the top of the tree. When I was little, my father would scoop me up in his arms and hoist me over his head so that I could reach. Later I would stand on the kitchen step stool while my mother held it steady, one hand on the stool, the other on the small of my back, all the while warning me to be careful not to fall.