Free A Bird's Eye by Cary Fagan Page B

woman friend, a private school teacher named Elspeth Watson, with whom she spent every Friday and Saturday evening.
    My father, it turned out, was good company. He could be quite cynical and witty. He told her stories about the people he met during the day. He did not appear to want any sexual favours from her. Best of all, he was an excellent backgammon player. She would put Tosca or Rigoletto on the record player and they would drink beer and play.
    For his part, my father enjoyed Daphne’s company. He found himself more talkative than he had been in years. Backgammon intrigued him from the beginning, and soon became a passion. It was the only game he never tried to cheat at. He puzzled over the patterns and strategies of a game so simple and yet with such depth.
    At home, his spirit was lighter. He found himself more kindly disposed towards my mother and me. In his free time he began to work on the house, stripping off the old wallpaper, caulking the drafty windows.
    This reformed behaviour made my mother happier but also more guilt-ridden. She was having sex with the emotionally wrought Sigismond several times a week, usually in the morning before opening up the stand. She worried that Jacob suspected. In fact, my father still had not the slightest idea. She worried about me too, with more reason.

The act that I came up with was really just a series of unconnected tricks. First some colour changes with scarves, then vanishing a dove, then the lota bowls — three brass bowls emptied of water to the last drop that became full again. It was a simple trick, one only had to put a finger over a hole under the rim of the bowl, but it had to be done slowly and with a sort of hushed reverence. I finished with a cup and balls routine.
    I also worked out my patter, but the words came out stiffly and if anything took away from the tricks. “I will now make this dove vanish,” I would say, giving away the effect.
    Practising so hard, and being so afraid, I didn’t have a lot of time for Corinne. I thought this was what a woman did, wait for you. I didn’t see that she had ambitions of her own, even if she was less sure of where they might take her and was more realistic about the obstacles.
    Of course, she came to my first performance. Corinne was the only one who knew besides Murenski, who never left the Island. The master of ceremonies came out and made some jokes and then began to introduce me. He said that I wasn’t called the Little Wonder for the reason the audience thought. “You have such dirty minds.” For some reason the small band in the pit played “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” as I came onstage. The lights were hot and blinding and I couldn’t see the audience scattered in the seats near the front and up in the balcony. I tried to speak, but my throat felt closed up and I couldn’t get any words out. So I started anyway, pulling a red scarf out of the air. The scarf tricks went well enough, but I tried to be too careful with the dove, not wanting to hurt it, and I could tell by the titters that some people in front saw me change it for a dummy before collapsing the cage.
    I carried out the table for the cups and balls. It hadn’t occurred to me that the act was too intimate for a large theatre until someone in the balcony shouted, “What are you doing down there, counting rice? We can’t see!” But I kept going through the routine to the end, when the curtain closed and the band played “Oh! Susanna.”

I hadn’t gone to see my aunt Hannah for a long while, as I had better things to do these days. And besides, I was making money now and felt less need for the handful of dollars she always slipped me when I was leaving. But I knew of her failed engagement and for some time I had been worried about her, for she seemed the most delicate person I knew. So I went in the late afternoon, when I knew that Uncle Hayim would be at the factory. And