The Magician (Good Intentions collection) by Rebecca Serle

Author:Rebecca Serle [Serle, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2023-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

The theater is packed on Tuesday. Sandra stopped selling out shows about seven or eight years ago, but tonight, it’s shoulder to shoulder.

Andrea, my mother’s manager, comes bustling up to Seth and me. She’s a woman in her early forties with a pixie cut and a voice so low she has a side hustle doing voice-over work. Everyone knows, but she still tells you like it’s a secret.

“Can you believe it?” she says. “This is a parade!” I think I spot a cigarette in her hands, but she’s moving them so much it’s hard to tell.

I shake my head. “Honestly, no. It’s surreal. She doesn’t seem upset it’s ending.”

Andrea either ignores me or doesn’t hear. “Should be a great show. The Times came. Everyone’s here.” She nods in acknowledgment of a fiftysomething man in a checkered button-down. “Vanity Fair,” she whispers. “Can you imagine?”

“You think they’ll do a retirement profile?”

Andrea crosses her fingers. No cigarette. Then, handing our tickets over, she says, “Final performance requires the front row. No discussion, Char.”

“She told me it wasn’t her last!” I hiss.

Andrea waves me off. “Your mother,” she mouths. Which means both who knows and of course she did.

I’ve sat in the Cherry Lane Theatre on Commerce Street hundreds of times, but never in the front row, as I am tonight. It always felt too intimate, too close. I was worried that she’d be talking to me, that I’d distract her, maybe. Or, more to the point: that she’d see me sitting there and treat me like she would any other audience member.

We take our seats before the lights dim. The theater doesn’t allow food or drink, and suddenly I can feel my throat is parched.

“Do you have any lozenges?” I ask Seth.

He rotates and sticks his hand in his pocket, pulls out a Halls. I unwrap and suck.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” comes the announcement. “If you’ll please take your seats and direct your attention away from the windows and exits, our show is about to begin!”

Mom’s dear friend and fellow magician Clarke Cable is the opening voice. He passed away of liver cancer eight years ago, and some of his recording is not super accurate anymore; for instance, the theater no longer has windows. But Mom refuses to update it.

“This is a magic show. Which means everything you see here is real.” A big, healthy pause. “But to be clear: you will not be offered an explanation.”

The lights all at once fade to black and then a white spotlight finds the stage, and there is Sandra Kramer, my mother. She always wears her street clothes, never some kind of performance ensemble. What you see her in picking up coffee at the bodega is what you see her in onstage.

Tonight, she has on blue cargo pants, a cream-colored turtleneck, and some gray motorcycle boots. Over her sweater is draped a watercolor silk scarf.

“Hello,” she says. Simply, easily, casually. “Welcome.”

There’s applause. She’s charming them already.

She takes a step toward the audience and peers at them, peers at me.

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