The Moment She Was Gone

6

Augusta has two older sisters, a younger brother, and a still-living father and mother. Her father suffered a stroke three years ago, and is in a nursing home. Her mother is a sprightly old lady who knows how to bake strudel. One of the older sisters is divorced and has three children, all of them legitimate, two of them married with children of their own. The other sister is still married, but childless. She’s supposed to be a play producer, but I don’t know of anything she’s ever produced.

Her husband is a theatrical agent and a supposed expert on wines. For Christmas the year before Maggie and I divorced, we sent Aaron and Augusta a bottle of Montrachet Grand Cru imported by Joseph Drouhin for the Marquis de Laguiche estate. The owner of our liquor store told us it was “a wine best drunk young,” certainly within five years. It cost us three hundred and twenty-five dollars, which is some bottle of white wine, believe me. Augusta’s brother-in-law, the wine maven, advised her to “put the wine down” and not drink it for fifteen to twenty years.

Augusta’s only brother is single and in the Air Force. He became a hero during the Gulf War, and was immediately thereafter deified by Augusta, who will boast about him at great length if you ever give her the chance. I never give her the chance. Otherwise, she will also bend my ear about her older sister’s married children, and their children and anyone even remotely related to the Manners family.

As a bizarre example of family solidarity, two or three years ago Augusta discovered that her darling daughter Kelly’s roommate — her roommate, mind you — was a distant cousin of someone who taught with me downtown, and this automatically bestowed honorary Manners Family status on both Kelly’s roomy and this math teacher colleague of mine, a nerd if ever there was one, who forever after kept asking me if I’d like to have a beer with him after school.

On the day after the World Trade Center attack, I called Aaron at his office to see how he was. Let it be known that Aaron’s office is on Fifty-seventh and Madison, and the school at which I teach is just off Canal Street, not too distant from where everything was happening that day. Aaron immediately began telling me that Augusta’s sister’s daughter Julianna, their niece whom I’d never in my entire life met, worked in the North Tower, and was twenty minutes late to work that morning because she had a dental appointment, thereby narrowly missing the first plane attack. Not a word about How are you, were you anywhere close at the time, is Mom okay, does Sis know what happened, nothing like that. Just all this shaking of the head and wringing of the hands over Julianna’s narrow escape, and then a long mournful monologue on the vagaries of fate. I thanked him for his concern, and he actually said, “Hey, what are brothers for, anyway?”

I walk away from him now with my fists clenched, thinking of Augusta and her goddamn family, thinking of the bottle of wine that had cost me half a week’s salary, thinking of the nerd math teacher who kept asking me to have a beer with him, thinking of Julianna whom I’d never met and never hoped to meet, thinking of Aaron keeping his secret for sixteen years, hiding from me the fact that my twin sister pissed in public and held a running dialogue with a non-existent person or persons who were attacking her!

I am furious with him.

And with myself as well.

How could I have missed it?

How could I not have known?

Or have I really known all along?

My sister Annie has told me at least a hundred times that she can recall her entire life as if it is on a loop of film. She can play the loop backward or forward, stopping it on any frame she wishes, calling up memories at will.

My own memory is not as accommodating.

But I can remember...

I can remember...

Maggie and I meeting on a bus.

This was in the fall of 1988. I was almost twenty-two years old and a senior at New York University. In fact, I was heading downtown to school. As soon as I graduated in June, I planned to leave for Paris, where I would become Ernest Hemingway. When I sat down beside her, I forgot all about Paris.

She was wearing blue jeans and a rust-colored turtleneck sweater that day. Black hair falling to her shoulders. Eyes lowered, reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Long black lashes. An exquisitely turned nose in a fine fox face, all high cheeckbones and swift jaw line and patrician brow. Altogether the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my entire shaggy bespectacled English-major life.

I dared.

“Any good?” I asked.

She turned to look at me. Raised her eyes to me. Eyes as black as chimney soot.

“Very,” she said, and went back to her book.

I had never heard of the book. I thought it was a comic novel. I tried to think of something brilliant I could say to this utterly exquisite creature engrossed in a comic novel as the bus sped her to whatever her destination might be, where she would step down onto the sidewalk and out of my life forever, but I was completely tongue-tied in her presence. I could not understand this. I was normally a somewhat garrulous student of English Literature at NYU.

“Listen,” I said at last, “I want to marry you.”

She turned to me again. Patiently. She raised her eyes. A slight smile formed on her mouth. Such a beautiful, lovely, stunning, gorgeous mouth with sticky red lipstick all over it.

“Oh do you?” she said.

Faintly amused. I hoped.

Or would she hit me on the head with her book?

“First tell me your name,” I said.

“Maggie,” she said.

“Maggie, I love you.”

“Have you read this book?” she asked.

“No, is it funny?”

“You should read it. I think you may be mistaking me for your hat.”

“Will you marry me?” I said.

“Not just now, but thanks anyway.”

(In the story later based on our meeting, a black guy sitting behind us says, “For Pete’s sake, marry him, lady.” This did not happen. And the story never sold. It was called “Bus Ride.” I think maybe the title was too close to “Bus Stop.”)

“Maggie,” I said, “would you like to have a cup of coffee instead?”

(In real life, there actually was a black man sitting not behind us but across the aisle. He did not pay us the slightest bit of attention.)

This time, she looked me over.

I am not a particularly attractive man. I do not know what Maggie saw in me that day on that bus hurtling downtown too fast through crowded city streets to a destination that would take her out of my life for all time. I never could imagine what she continued to see in me during the three years of our marriage. My sister is the beautiful twin. I am merely a washed-out impression of her, my blond hair what used to be called “dirty,” my nose a trifle too long for my face, my green eyes (my sister’s sparkle like emeralds) too pale and less than compelling behind glasses I’ve worn since I was ten. I don’t know what she saw in me, but she saw something.

She would later rue the day.

But on that September fifth, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, Maggie nodded slowly and said, “Yes, I would like to have a cup of coffee instead.”

It starts over coffee, it ends over coffee.

We went to a little shop on First Avenue, close to Volumes and Tomes. This was the first surprise. Maggie From the Bus was Maggie Knowles, who in turn was Margaret Katherine Knowles who — at the age of twenty-four, two years older than I — was the proud owner and proprietor of a bookshop called Volumes and Tomes.

“So why would a rich lady like you...?”

“Rich lady, ho-ho.”

“... want to marry someone like me?” I asked.

She looked across the table at me. I thought she’d say something smart like “Hey. Buster, back off, we’re just having a cup of coffee here.”

Instead, she said, “I don’t know why.”

Which meant she was going to marry me, of course.

I reached across the table and took her hands in mine. She did not pull them away. I smiled and nodded. She smiled and nodded back.

Actually — though we did not realize this at the moment — there were very good reasons for us to marry each other. To begin with, we looked good together. The classic beauty and the messy would-be writer. Maggie was the one you saw framed at the Met in all those medieval portraits, the long black hair and dark mysterious eyes, the porcelain complexion, the creamy white bosom swelling above a fur-trimmed velvet bodice, I should have tried writing historical romances before I quit writing altogether. And I beside her (though not hanging in the Met), Andrew Gulliver, my muddy blond hair unkempt, my glasses tilted at a rakish Harry Potter angle (though he had not yet been dreamt of back in 1988), my corduroy trousers rumpled, my favorite red maroon sweater somewhat frazzled.

We looked good together.

I fancied myself not the absent-minded nerd, which I sometimes was, but instead the emerging poet, this despite the fact that in my entire life I’d written only one poem, and that a sonnet to Maggie.

(By the way, I knew even then that “face” and “bus” did not rhyme. But I considered their mating a sort of slant rhyme, if you will. Besides, I felt I had more than compensated for this truly slight lapse with the internal “raced” rhyme that followed in the last line of the stanza.)

(I also liked the sort of internal “yes” and “yet” rhyme in the closing couplet. All in all, I felt I’d written a fair example of a sonnet, twelve lines, iambic pentameter, ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, with a rhyming GG couplet at the end. Perfect. Except it was lousy. To everyone but Maggie. She thought it was magnificent. So let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.)

It was Maggie who kept insisting that I write. This was another good reason to get married. Her own self-imposed hours at the shop were horrendous, which gave me a lot of time to myself. I spent that time writing. In the year before our marriage, I must have written two dozen short stories and three chapters to a novel I never finished. During that time, my sister was in India again.

She wasn’t even home for our wedding.

The family was beginning to recognize that Annie was a world traveler. Moreover, there seemed to be a pattern to her comings and goings. She would fly off hither and yon, stay in one place for a month or two, move on to another place where she would live for a while on the money my mother kept sending her, and then move on again in search of yet another guru or yet another location for the jewelry shops she opened and closed with alarming frequency. At last, she would come back to New York to settle in with my mother again, something Mama began to appreciate less and less as the years went by. Her longest trip — her second one to India — ended in the spring of 1990.

One sunny Saturday morning, Annie took a taxi from my mother’s apartment, where she’d been staying for the past several weeks, and showed up at our apartment with a suitcase. She hugged us both, told us how we should be seeing more of each other now that she was home, and then asked if it would be all right if she spent a few days with us before “heading up to Maine to see what it’s like up there.”

The next day, we learned why she was really there.

“You can do a promotion linking my work to the Kama-sutra,” she told Maggie. “Build like a pyramid of books with my jewelry displayed in front of it.”

“Gee, Annie, I don’t think that would work for my shop,” Maggie said. “I don’t even carry the Kama-sutra.”

“I’m sure you can order copies. You’d probably sell a ton of them. And you’d be helping me a lot, too.”

“It’s just that my space is limited...”

“Oh, come on, we can always find space.”

“And my clientele isn’t into... uh... you know, Oriental religions.”

“How about jewelry? Are they into jewelry? We can forget the Kama-sutra, if that’s what’s bothering you. Just let me set up a little table someplace in the shop.”

“It’s just that I’ve never sold jewelry before, Annie. Volumes and Tomes is a book shop, you see. It would seem odd if I suddenly started selling jewelry.”

“Well, gee, I don’t really think my jewelry is odd.”

“No, no, neither do I. My selling it would be odd. In a book shop. People don’t normally look for jewelry in a book shop.”

“What’s so abnormal about putting up a small table with jewelry on it? Look, if it’s the content of the work...”

“The content is a bit explicit, but...”

“Well, you don’t have to be condescending, really. If it’s the erotic content that’s bothering you...”

“No, that has nothing to do with...”

“... you can shake hands with the rest of the world, believe me. I’ve had people walk into my shop, and look around, and then turn up their noses when they recognize a penis or a vagina. If that’s the case here, just say so, I won’t be offended, really.”

“It’s just I’m a small independent bookseller...”

“Oh, sure, forget it. But Tantra isn’t all about sex, you know, it’s not some kind of free-love cult. Tantra is a Sanskrit word, in fact. It means to expand or extend, to manifest, to release a cosmic weave into the universe. By inspiring our innate sensual spirituality, Tantra awakens and liberates upwardly-motivated energies, allowing us to realize worldly ambitions. So this wouldn’t be some kind of uninhibited sex show, Maggie, on the contrary. But look, forget it. We probably wouldn’t have time to do it, anyway. I’ll be leaving for Maine in a few days.”

The few days stretched into a week and then ten days, and Annie was still with us. Maggie and I were living at the time in a small apartment above Volumes and Tomes. You entered into a tiny foyer and then there was a pocket kitchen on the left and a small dining room dead ahead, and then a living room and two bedrooms beyond. Our bedroom faced the building’s back yard. The adjoining second bedroom — which also doubled as a storeroom for books — was where we put up Annie. The three of us shared a bathroom nestled between the two bedrooms.

At night, as Maggie and I lay side by side in bed, we could hear my sister next door, reciting her mantras, repeating over and over again what sounded to us like nonsense syllables, but which she said served to concentrate and redirect spiritual energy by eliminating or silencing the mind.

“Om Mani Padme Aum,” we heard over and again, coming through the paper thin walls, “Om Mani Padme Aum, Om Mani...”

Which Annie literally translated for us as “The jewel is in the lotus.” Or, in other words, “The lingam is in the yoni.” Or, more simply put, “The penis is in the vulva.” But, hey, Tantra wasn’t all about sex, right?

“I know you love your sister,” Maggie whispered in my ear, “but I’m not sure I can stand another minute of this.”

“She’ll be gone in a few days,” I whispered.

But she wasn’t.

Under the best of circumstances, Annie would not have been an ideal house guest. She left dirty bras and panties on the bathroom floor, presumably hoping Maggie would toss them into the wash whenever she laundered her own. She never washed her own dirty dishes either, eating whatever meal she’d cooked for herself, and then leaving dishes and utensils on the dining room table, dirty pots and pans in the sink. Nor did she ever volunteer to do the marketing or take out the garbage, or clean the apartment, even though both Maggie and I were out working all day long.

In the evening, Annie smoked marijuana as part of her daily chakra-puja or “circle worship,” the basic Tantric religious ceremony, lacking — in Annie’s case — only other worshippers and a guru. The grass was a mind-enhancing soma that was supposed to precede four other Tantric “enjoyments,” as she called them. Three of these involved the consumption of various exotic grains, meats, and fruits Annie bought in Chinatown. The fourth was supposed to be sexual intercourse with a male worshipper...

“... but unfortunately I haven’t got one handy just now,” Annie said. “Maybe I’ll find one up in Maine.”

After she smoked her pot, and enjoyed her other three Tantric delights, she put on her nightgown — a long cotton one she’d bought in India — went into her bedroom to say her mantras and was promptly asleep by nine o’clock. This meant she got up early every morning, and was once again reciting her Oms and Aums before either Maggie or I was awake. I didn’t mind this too much. My teaching day started at eight A.M., anyway. But Maggie didn’t open the shop till ten, and she didn’t appreciate being awakened at the crack of dawn by my sister’s incessant chanting.

All in all, it was a difficult time for both of us, and we were delighted when Annie said she’d be leaving for Maine that coming Saturday. As it happened, an author named Carlo Zannetti was coming to do a reading and signing in the shop on Friday night, so Maggie proposed a farewell dinner in the apartment afterward. Annie was thrilled when she learned that Mr. Zannetti was a hypnotist, and that he’d written a book called MindSet.

“I can’t wait to meet him,” she said.

In the eight months and a bit more of our marriage, Maggie and I had developed a sort of laissez-faire attitude when it came to routine household chores. Since we both worked, any task that needed doing was usually tackled by whoever could find the time to do it. We never even discussed such matters. See an unmade bed? Make it. Spot a pile of dishes in the sink? Wash them. It was as simple as that. We were truly partners.

So while I was off teaching that Friday, Maggie did all the marketing for our dinner. And when I got home late that afternoon, we both worked side by side in the kitchen, slicing and dicing the ingredients for our salad, mixing an oil and vinegar dressing, scrubbing the potatoes I would later bake (for some peculiar reason, I have always had an aversion to mashed potatoes, gee, I wonder why). Maggie had one eye on the clock. She was supposed to meet Mr. Zannetti in the shop downstairs at five-thirty. We were salting and spicing the lamb chops I would later pop into the oven, when my sister breathlessly rushed into the apartment and locked the door behind her.

“They’re here,” she whispered.

Maggie must have thought she was referring to the people who’d be attending the book shop event. But that wasn’t due to start till six, and it was still only five-fifteen.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I still have fifteen minutes.”

“The ones from Charing Cross,” Annie said.

“Who do you mean, honey?”

“When I had the shop there.”

“What about it?” I asked.

On her way over to India this time, she had stopped over in London, and had briefly opened a shop exhibiting her own jewelry. The shop closed in three months, after which Annie moved on again. But while it was still functioning, she now told us, a pair of men in blue jackets with the letters FBI in yellow on the back came to visit her one day, pretending to be interested in her jewelry, but really there to check up on Sally Jean.

“Who’s Sally Jean?” I asked.

“She was my roommate when I was living in Amsterdam,” Annie said. “She used to do translations for the UN. That’s why they’re so interested in her.”

“Who, Annie? Who’s interested in her?”

“The FBI! Are you listening to me, or what? They’re downstairs!

They followed me here.”

“You’re saying there are FBI agents...”

“The same ones from Charing Cross,” Annie insisted. “After the FBI left that time, some skinheads in tight pink trousers showed up, you could see the outline of their genitals and all, it was awful.”

“Sounds good to me,” Maggie said, and winked.

“This wasn’t funny, Magg. They stood outside on the sidewalk, outside the front window, making threatening gestures, you know, running their fingers across their throats, you know, like slitting their throats? To indicate they were going to kill me?”

“She’s serious,” Maggie said to me.

“Oh, you bet I am. These people don’t play games. They’re after Sally Jean, and they want to know what I know about her. It’s the same as what happened on the Air France flight from Paris to Luxembourg, when a female agent...”

“Annie, slow down,” I said.

“I’m sure I told you about the female FBI agent who reached over from the seat behind me and kept my arms pinned...”

“No, you never...”

“... while two big male agents carrying nine-millimeter Glocks boarded the plane and demanded to see my credentials. They carried me off the plane in handcuffs, Andy, I’m sure I told you all this.”

“No, I don’t remember your...”

“They cook me to a secret room and examined all my orifices. They told me they were looking for contraband narcotics, but who knows what they were really doing? They have ways of eavesdropping, you know. They have these little transmitters. Whatever they did to me that time in Luxembourg, it worked. They were able to trace me here, weren’t they?”

“Annie,” Maggie said, “there is no way a pair of FBI agents...”

“Three of them this time! Right downstairs!”

“... would go marching around New York advertising themselves in jackets that say FBI on the back.”

“The two from Charing Cross and another one I never saw before!”

“Okay, I’ll go downstairs and talk to them, okay?” Maggie said. “I’ll tell them to get the hell away from my shop.”

“No! Stay here! I don’t want you getting mixed up in this!”

“If somebody’s stalking you,” I said, “let’s call the police.”

“No, they’re probably in on it, too.”

“The police? Why would they...?”

“The UN is here in New York, isn’t it? And Sally Jean used to do translations for them.”

“Well, then I’ll explain that you’re entirely innocent in this matter. Yow never did translations for the UN, did you?”

“No, but I know things about the health care system.”

“I doubt the FBI...”

“Oh, that’s what you think.”

“... or the NYPD would be interested in your experience as a candy striper at Lenox Hill.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Then what would you like me to do, Annie? Tell me what you’d like me to do, and I’ll do it.”

“I know you will.”

“So tell me, okay? What do you want me to do? Go down and break their eyeglasses?”

“They’re not wearing eyeglasses.”

“Break their arms? That’ll cost you more.”

“How much?” she asked at once.

“Arms and legs are a dollar apiece. Or...” I narrowed my eyes and lowered my voice to a whisper. “I can always terminate them with extreme prejudice.”

“Yes, do it,” she said.

“Later. Meanwhile, let’s put some oregano on these chops, okay?”

“This isn’t funny, I don’t know why you think it’s tunny,” she said, and turned away swiftly and ran down the hall and into her bedroom. We heard her locking the door behind her. The clock on the wall read five-twenty-five.

“I have to go down,” Maggie said. “Will she be all right?”

“Yeah, sure, go ahead.”

“Well... okay,” she said, and glanced at me, and then left the apartment.

Annie did not come out of the bedroom until the signing was over and Maggie brought our guest upstairs. The usual routine was for an author to read for fifteen to twenty minutes, take questions from the audience for the next half-hour or so, and then sign Books for another half-hour. The events usually broke up sometime between seven-thirty and eight. Maggie planned to bring Mr. Zannetti upstairs as soon as the shop cleared, We’d have a drink and then sit down to the sumptuous (I hoped) meal I’d prepared.

Well, the event was a spectacular success. The Q and A went on for forty minutes, and almost everyone in the shop — some fifty people in all — bought books. Moreover, Zannetti was a generous man who chatted up anyone who wanted a book signed, so he and Maggie did not come up to the apartment until almost nine o’clock, by which time I had consumed two glasses of red wine.

Carlo Zannetti turned out to be a rotund little man with a small mustache that curled upward at either end, giving the impression that he was perpetually smiling. He was not, as I’d mistakenly surmised, Italian. That is to say, his grandfather had been born in Italy, yes, but both his parents and he himself had been born in Philadelphia, where he still lived. The “Carlo” was a tribute to the grandfather he’d never met; Zannetti was called “Charlie” by everyone he knew.

Charlie’s eyes were the only indication that he might be a hypnotist. Large and brown, overhung by black eyebrows shaggier than his small smiling mustache, they seemed capable of peering into a person’s very soul. Annie took to him at once.

“Did you hypnotize anyone tonight?” she asked.

“No, no,” Charlie said. “I never do that in an uncontrolled venue.”

“What do you mean, uncontrolled?”

“Well, I don’t think anyone expected to be hynotized tonight. That wasn’t why they were there.”

“We didn’t advertise Charlie as a hypnotist,” Maggie said. “His book isn’t about hypnotism.”

“It isn’t?” Annie said, surprised.

“It’s about making the most of one’s potential,” Maggie said.

“Sounds like Tantra,” Annie said.

“More salad, anyone?”

“Thank you,” Charlie said. “Actually, it’s about realizing the power of the mind.”

“That’s what I meant,” Maggie said. “Potential. Power.”

“Well, that’s hypnotism, isn’t it?” Annie said. “Controlling someone else’s mind?”

“No, no,” Charlie said. “In any case, I meant realizing the power of one’s own mind.”

“But you said you wanted a controlled venue.”

“Yes, it works best if people come with the expectation of being hypnotized. I don’t like surprises, I don’t like secrets.”

“Secrets?” Annie asked.

“I’ll do a corporate speech, for example, and we’ll all be sitting down to lunch afterward, and the CEO will suddenly stand up, and clink his glass for attention, and announce, ‘I’ve got a surprise for you! Mr. Zannetti also hypnotizes people!’ And I’m supposed to get up and turn an account executive into a chicken.”

“But that’s what you do, isn’t it?” Annie said.

“I have on occasion caused people to cackle, yes,” Charlie said, and smiled and lifted his wine glass. “Maggie,” he said, “here’s to you and your beautiful shop and the lovely event you planned for me. I appreciate it sincerely.”

“And here’s to you for providing an unforgettable evening,” Maggie said graciously.

“How about the chef who prepared this unforgettable dinner?” I said.

“Let’s hear it for the chef,” Maggie said.

“Can you make me cackle like a chicken?” Annie asked.

“Now why would a beautiful girl like you wish to cackle like a chicken?” Charlie asked.

“Girl, gee, thank you,” Annie said, and smiled “But seriously. Can you hypnotize me?”

“Annie, please,” Maggie said. “Charlie’s been on for the past two hours, give him a break.”

“Or isn’t this a controlled venue?” Annie asked.

“This is definitely not a controlled venue,” Charlie said. “A controlled venue is a space filled with people who’ve come there expressly to be hypnotized. Or to see someone else hypnotized. The larger the space, the more people there are, the greater chances of success. If I have a hundred people in an audience, I may find ten who are good subjects. That’s a ten percent chance of success. If I have a thousand people in an audience, I’ll get a hundred and fifty good subjects. The odds go up exponentially.”

“Am I a good subject?” Annie asks.

“I have no idea.”

“Well, how can you tell?”

“She wants to be hypnotized, Charlie.”

“I just want to know how it works, Andy. Controlling another person’s mind.”

“It isn’t about control at all,” Charlie said. “A hypnotist enters into a partnership with his subject. In a sense, all hypnosis is really self-hypnosis. All I am is a coach of the imagination.”

“That’s lovely,” Maggie said. “You should have been a writer.”

We all laughed. Except Annie.

She leaned closer to Charlie.

“But if you turn someone into a chicken, you’re actually controlling her mind, aren’t you?”

“There is no way I can turn the CEO of a giant corporation into a chicken,” Charlie said. “He simply will not allow himself to become that. If someone allows herself to cluck like a hen, then deep inside her unconscious there’s a sense of playfulness, perhaps a need for role playing. All I do is help that person tap the unconscious. In much the same way that we all conduct inner dialogues with ourselves...”

“Inner dialogues?” Annie asked at once.

“Self-talk,” Charlie said. “The things we say to ourselves inside our head.”

“I don’t say anything to myself inside my head,” Annie said, and laughed.

“Oh well, of course you do,” Charlie said. “We all do.”

“Not me.”

“What’s this sudden interest in hypnosis, anyway?” I asked.

“I’ve always been interested in it.”

“We’re subjected to hypnosis every day of the week,” Charlie said. “We just don’t realize it.”

“What do you mean?” Annie asked.

“Politicians, religious leaders, faith healers, television commentators, even novelists...”

“Better not invite any more novelists to the shop, Maggie.”

“They all try to sway people through the power of suggest...”

“Television commentators?” Annie asked. “Can you hypnotize a person through a television set?”

“I meant that figuratively.”

“What I’m asking is can you exert power over a person’s mind by beaming something at her from a television set?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not in the sense that...”

“Well, you yourself used the word ‘power.’ ”

“The power of suggestion, yes. Concentrate on that other word. ‘Suggestion.’ ”

“Are you hypnotizing me now?” Annie asked, somewhat flirtatiously, I thought.

“You would know if I were,” Charlie said.

“Because you told me to concentrate, you know...”

“Yes, look deep into my eyes,” Charlie said playfully, and passed his hand over her face like Mandrake the magician.

“Bad man,” Annie said. “Next you’ll tell me to go kill somebody.”

“Hypnotists can’t do that, can they?” Maggie said. “Force people to do something against their will?”

Annie was nodding. “Control people’s minds,” she said. “Transmit thoughts to them.”

“We cannot force anyone to do anything he would not do...”

“Is that ‘he’ generic?” I asked.

“He or she,” Charlie corrected. “We cannot force them to...”

“Compounding the felony,” I said, and winked at Maggie, who didn’t get it because grammar was not her strong point.

“We cannot force anyone,” Charlie persisted, “to do something he or she would not normally do.”

“Normally,” Annie repeated.

“Normally, yes. But we can manipulate reality.”

“Meaning?”

“I can hand you a forty-five-caliber pistol, for example, and regress you to the age of five, and tell you the weapon is in reality a water gun, and suggest that you playfully squirt it at your brother here...”

“I wouldn’t do it,” Annie said. “I’d know it was a real gun.”

“Perhaps. There are many hypnotists who believe a person never goes under completely. A part of the mind retains control...”

“Control again, see?” Annie said. “I find that very scary.”

“Well, it is scary,” I said.

“I mean, suppose somebody out there has already hypnotized all of us...”

“Annie, that’s science-fiction!” Maggie said, and glanced at me pleadingly, her eyes urging a change of topic.

“No, it isn’t!” Annie insisted. “He just told us he can make us believe a forty-five is a water pistol!”

“Can he make us believe an Entenmann’s pie is a baked Alaska?” I asked.

“All I’m saying is, if it’s true someone can transmit messages...”

“No, I didn’t say...”

“... that tell me to do something I don’t want to do...”

“No one can do that, dear lady.”

“Then how can I protect myself?” Annie asked.

“Just say no,” Maggie said.

We all laughed again.

Except Annie.

Maggie waited until she was sure my sister had finished her mantras and was asleep. Then she rolled over next to me and put her mouth close to my ear, and whispered, “Andy? Are you awake?”

“Yes,” I whispered back. “What is it?”

“Andy... I think there’s something wrong with your sister.”

“No, no. She just wanted to know about hypnotism, that’s all.”

“I don’t mean just tonight. Though that was strange, too, don’t you think? Her being afraid of someone controlling her mind?”

“Well, it is sort of frightening, I think so, too. That you can convince someone a pistol...”

“I meant... Andy... please... I know she’s your sister... but... don’t you think all that FBI stuff was strange? She seemed to be saying that someone had... I don’t know... surgically implanted a transmitter or something. She picked up on it tonight, too...”

“I never heard her say anyone had implanted...”

“All that stuff about them taking her to a secret room and examining all her orifices, didn’t you hear her use that word? She was trying to tell us they’d... I don’t know. Don’t you remember her saying the FBI has little transmitters? That this is how they eavesdropped on her? Andy, I’m sure she thinks they did something to her in Luxembourg...”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“Yes, she does. She thinks that’s how they traced her here.”

“You’re misreading what she said.”

“Andy, she seemed terrified!”

“Well, if somebody was stalking me, I’d be...”

“She said it was the FBI. She specifically said the FBI!”

“Shhhh, you’ll wake her up.”

“And tonight she wanted to know if someone could beam commands to her from a tele...”

“No, she didn’t say that, Maggie.”

“She was worried about thoughts being transmitted to her from a television set, yes! Where were you, Andy? Didn’t you hear any of this?”

“Shhhh!”

The bedroom went silent.

Maggie was still for a very long time.

Then she said, “I think she should see someone.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think she needs help.”

“No, come on.”

“You’re her brother,” Maggie said. “Take her to get help, Andy.”

“Well.”

“Andy?”

“Yes, Magg?”

“Do you hear me?”

“Let me think about it,” I said.

She was silent for several seconds.

Then she said, “Good night, Andy.”

“Good night, honey.”

Next door, I could hear Annie’s gentle breathing.