Spoonbenders

“God damn it,” Frankie said softly. He squeezed his eyes shut. Then he hustled up the stairs, shouting for everyone else to stop shouting. Matty followed him into the guest bedroom, which served double duty as a kind of utility room, crowded with boxes and laundry baskets. The padded cover to the ironing board was on fire, and the iron sat in the middle of the flames, its black cord dangling over the side, not plugged in. The three-year-old twins stood in a corner, holding hands, looking wide-eyed at the flames; not afraid so much as surprised. Mary Alice held one of Buddy’s huge shirts up in front of her, as if she was shielding herself from the heat, though she was probably thinking of smothering the flames with it.

“Jesus, get Cassie and Polly out of here,” Frankie said to Mary Alice. He looked around the room, didn’t see what he was looking for, and then said, “Everybody out!”

The twins bolted for the hall, and Mary Alice and Matty moved only as far as the doorway, too fascinated to leave completely. Frankie crouched beside the ironing board and picked it up by the legs, balancing the iron atop it. He carried it toward them as if it were a giant birthday cake. Mary Alice and Matty scampered ahead of him. He went down the stairs, moving deliberately despite the flames in his face. This impressed Matty tremendously. Mary Alice opened the front door for him, and he walked to the driveway and dumped the ironing board on its side. The smoking, partially melted iron bounced twice and landed bottom-side down.

Aunt Loretta appeared from around the corner of the house, followed a moment later by Grandpa Teddy. Then Matty’s mom burst through the front door, followed by the twins. The whole family was standing in the front yard now, except for Buddy.

“What happened?” Loretta asked Frankie.

“Whaddya think?” Frankie said. He turned the ironing board so that it was upside down, but flames still licked at the sides. “Pack up the hellions and Mary Alice. We’re going home.”

For months Matty couldn’t get that videotape out of his mind. It seemed to be a message from the distant past, an illuminated text glowing with the secrets of his family. He desperately wanted to ask his mother about it, but he also didn’t want to break his promise to Uncle Frankie. He resorted to asking his mother oblique questions about The Mike Douglas Show or Grandma Maureen or the government, and every time she cut him off. Even when he tried to sneak up on the topic—“Gee, I wonder what it’s like to be on TV?”—she seemed to immediately sense what was up and change the subject.

The next time he and his mother returned to Chicago, he couldn’t find the cassette in the TV cabinet. Uncle Buddy caught him pawing through the boxes, trying each tape in the machine, fast-forwarding to make sure Mike Douglas didn’t pop up mid-tape. His uncle frowned and then slumped out of the room.

Matty never found the tape. The next Thanksgiving Frankie didn’t seem to remember showing it to him. At holidays Matty sat around the dinner table, waiting for the adults to talk about those days, but his mother had placed some kind of embargo on the matter. Frankie would bring up something that seemed promising—a reference to Grandma Mo, or “psi war”—and Mom would fix him with a look that dropped the temperature of the room. The visits became less frequent and more strained. A couple Thanksgivings Frankie’s family didn’t show up at all, and some years Matty and his mom stayed home in Pittsburgh. Those were terrible weekends. “You’ve got a melancholy streak,” she’d tell him. If that were true, he knew where he got it from; his mother was the most melancholy person he knew.

It was true that he was unusually nostalgic for a kid, though what he pined for was a time before he was born. He was haunted by the feeling that he’d missed the big show. The circus had packed up and left town, and he’d shown up to find nothing but a field of trampled grass. But other times, especially when Mom was feeling good, he’d be suddenly filled with confidence, like the prince of a deposed royal family certain of his claim to the throne. He’d think, Once, we were Amazing.

Then his mother would lose another job, and they’d have to eat Kraft macaroni and cheese for weeks straight, and he’d think, Once, we were Amazing.

And then, when he was fourteen years old, his mother lost the best job she’d ever had, and they moved back in with Grandpa Teddy, and soon afterward he found himself sitting in a closet full of his dead grandmother’s clothes, recovering from the most interesting thing that had ever happened to him. His embarrassment had faded, which made space in his body for other emotions, a thrumming mix of fear, wonder, and pride.

He’d left his body. He’d floated eight feet off the ground. Some ceremony was called for.