Millroy the Magician Page 15

  Millroy looked pained as he squeezed these words out of his nose.

  ‘Buddhism is more a way of life,’ Mister Phyllis said, and glanced around. ‘I do wish I knew where Tinky was.’

  Otis said, ‘So you spent some time out there?’

  ‘Three weeks,’ Mister Phyllis said. ‘That was when I took my vows.’

  Millroy looked up and said flatly in his penetrating voice, ‘It takes longer than that to become an Eagle Scout.’

  ‘I had been studying Buddhist texts for years,’ Mister Phyllis said, stiffening and straightening, as though angrily trying to levitate himself out of his chair. ‘Four years anyway.’

  ‘It still takes longer to become an Eagle Scout,’ Millroy said. ‘And what’s the point?’

  ‘It is one of the world’s great religions. It teaches wisdom, piety, moderation, compassion, correct behavior.’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ Millroy said. ‘But as you say’ – Mister Phyllis squinted: what had he said? – ‘there’s beliefs and there’s believers.’

  ‘Danny Kaye wanted to be on the show,’ Otis said. ‘His agent was calling us day and night.’

  ‘He was a lovely man,’ Mister Phyllis said. ‘And so talented.’

  ‘An audience-junkie,’ Millroy said. ‘The worst kind of addict.’

  Mister Phyllis’s small wicked face looked tormented and poisonous. But Millroy was talking to Otis Godberry.

  ‘As you know, he used kids as props, to advance his career. Totally insincere.’

  Mister Phyllis lit another cigarette. He smoked using a carved holder that was brown-stained and chewed.

  ‘Why don’t you smoke on the show?’ Millroy said. ‘Wouldn’t it give your hands something to do?’

  ‘I just want Tinky at this point – hasn’t anyone see him?’ Mister Phyllis said. ‘Oh, Danny often came to dinner parties. I had a lovely home on the north shore – Manchester-by-the-Sea – do you know the Cape Ann area, Otis? So many show business personalities and celebrities came to dinner. Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, Pinky Lee, Art Linkletter, the lot. If only they could see that I ended up here, entertaining these dreadful kids.’

  ‘You won’t end up here,’ Millroy said.

  ‘I gave lavish parties. You would have hated my parties, Mister Millroy.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Millroy got out of his chair and walked over to Mister Phyllis.

  ‘The food. It was fabulous.’

  ‘Food is my favorite subject,’ Millroy said. ‘Guess what I had for breakfast?’

  Looking wicked again, his face stiff with glee, Mister Phyllis said, ‘I cannot imagine. Do tell me.’

  ‘I can show you,’ Millroy said, and picked up an empty bowl from the table of cut sandwiches and cake, and with a little bark he vomited efficiently into it. Then he held the bowl of steaming yellow chunks before Mister Phyllis’s face.

  ‘You are disgusting!’

  Whirling his hand into the bowl with a scouring motion, Millroy made its contents disappear, and then the bowl itself. He folded his arms, and when he unfolded them Millroy was holding the cat, Tinkum, which lay across one of Millroy’s arms licking its fur.

  ‘Come here, Tinky – come here, darling,’ Mister Phyllis said. ‘Don’t let that man torment us.’

  But the big soft cat had its flat face turned upon Millroy, who held it as though on a beam of light from his eyes.

  ‘Get over here, you big soppy thing. Tinky!’

  Mister Phyllis squashed out his cigarette, and still screeched.

  The cat was looking at Millroy, who was making a low fruity purring in his throat that was just barely loud enough for me to hear.

  ‘I am talking to you!’

  ‘Normally I don’t like cats,’ Millroy said. ‘I don’t like the things they eat. But I could wean this little fellow onto vegetable matter.’

  Millroy stroked Tinky’s head, and scratched behind its ears, and the cat responded by licking Millroy’s fingers. Just then, there was laughing in the studio.

  ‘The children are waiting,’ Millroy said.

  ‘Goddamn those kids, Millroy. They can get bent. Give me my Tinky back.’

  But the cat compressed its face and sat compactly without turning, without blinking, without even twitching a whisker, while Mister Phyllis said more filthy words.

  16

  Millroy’s eyes changed color according to his mood – what was he looking at? What was he thinking about? – whiteish and blinkless when he saw something he wanted, bluest when he was happy, yellow-green when he was suspicious, reddish when he was lecturing about food and hunger, and so on, and never mind colors, just the single word ‘hamburger’ made his eyes go dead, and they darkened with concentration, and if they went black you were done for.

  Mister Phyllis was smiling into the camera and buttoning his candy-striped sweater with precious gestures. The Paradise Park theme song had begun to play.

  Wear a smile, all the while,

  In Paradise Park,

  We are free, you and me,

  In Paradise Park …

  Millroy was intent, almost prayerful, in the way he regarded Mister Phyllis. He positioned his head like a weapon, and his eyes glittered like chips of coal.

  ‘If you think there are two Mister Phyllises, the one that smokes and swears off-camera, and the one that smiles and simpers into the screen – if you think that, you’re wrong, but it’s a common misconception. There is only one Mister Phyllis.’

  But if you didn’t know that he smoked and boasted and swore and said Chop her silly fingers off, wouldn’t you think this smiling man, buttoning his colorful sweater, was a nice person?

  ‘See, it’s not a smile, for one thing,’ Millroy said. ‘It’s a snarl. He is very unhappy.’

  Mister Phyllis was saying, ‘I know a song about buttons – want to hear it?’

  ‘And it’s all written on his face, the details of this deeply imperfect man.’ Millroy was half whispering, half ventriloquizing. ‘You just have to know how to read him. Yes, he has Smoker’s Face, and you can tell from the slant of his mouth and the color of his teeth that he rarely has a good word for anyone. But, listen, even if he was on the radio I’d know from the sound of his voice that he was – I’m not going to say diabolical, but how about pernicious?’

  Mister Phyllis was singing flat and off-key with his sour-shaped mouth,

  ‘Buttons big and buttons small

  Squeezed inside a buttonhole

  Keep our clothing …’

  Millroy’s eyes flashed at Mister Phyllis and then he closed them, and he sighed, pinching his fingers.

  ‘Gah,’ he said. ‘That whistle, that lisp of self-love, the way he enjoys listening to himself. His singing reveals everything – his bad circulation, his fibrillating ticker, his black lungs. And that’s just the dumb drone of his body. Is this the message we want to send America’s children?’

  Turning from the man himself to the studio monitor, Millroy shook his head.

  – I wonder what the Frawlies are doing on this fine sunny day? I bet they’re being sweet little Frawlies and keeping nice and clean in their tree-stump in Paradise Park.

  Mister Phyllis pushed his face into the TV screen of the monitor and made his famous monkey-cheeks.

  – Do you keep nice and clean?

  ‘Pillow-biter,’ Millroy said. ‘That man is just selling poison cookies.’

  The Frawlies’ mouse-music played, tumpty-tumpty-tee, and Mister Phyllis put his hand to his ear.

  – I think I hear our favorite tinies. Can you?

  ‘A malign influence,’ Millroy said.

  – Of course you can! And, look, there’s Wally Frawly!

  Somewhere, in another part of the studio, under the eye of another camera, a puppeteer was whacking Wally Frawly up and down the tree-stump, and when
the music swelled, Mister Phyllis turned from his microphone and, seeing his cat Tinkum, made his voice nasty and said, ‘Get over here!’

  But the cat hesitated and crept away toward the audience of children on chairs, where a little girl wearing a badge that said Trish stroked Tinkum’s head.

  On the screen, the Frawlies were gathering cans and brushes and talking about painting their tree-stump.

  ‘Get your filthy hands away from my cat,’ Mister Phyllis said.

  The little girl knotted her fingers and pressed her lips together and looked as though she was about to cry.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know how to warm your backside,’ Mister Phyllis said.

  The Frawlies were singing,

  ‘Shall we paint it blue or green,

  red or yellow or …’

  Mr Phyllis was making threatening gestures at Tinky.

  ‘Even if he had a bag over his head and didn’t say a word – even if he was not in this room, and overseas, and not on television and I happened to be sitting here, I would know he was dangerous.’

  Millroy was gathering up his magician’s pots and pans, slipping objects into his sleeves, vegetables into his pockets, making himself ready for Mealtime Magic.

  ‘I say “dangerous” because he’s an authority figure,’ Millroy said. ‘Innocent children look at him and think he has the answers.’

  ‘But if he was overseas’ – I was still trying to figure that one out – ‘how would you know he was dangerous?’

  Mister Phyllis disappeared just then, as the Frawlies chased around their tree-stump, dumping cans of paint on each other.

  ‘By his smell?’

  ‘By his cat,’ Millroy said.

  The cat Tinkum glanced over to him, as Millroy said this.

  In another part of the studio, Mister Phyllis was saying, ‘I will talk as loud as I jolly well please. I want a cup of hot tea with three sugars for my parched throat, and I want my cat!’

  Millroy was staring at the microphone hanging above Mister Phyllis’s head as he complained. By now, the children in the audience had become used to Mister Phyllis’s outbursts, and so they were watching the Frawlies rough-housing with the paint cans on the studio monitor.

  ‘His cat is a cushion, a hair-bag, a loose piece of meat. It is overweight and needy. Its eyes are cloudy, its fur is dull. This animal’s muscle tonus is poor. It has the reflexes of a shoelace. Forget for a moment all the canned meat it has ingested. Consider the cigarette smoke this cat has passively inhaled by being in Mister Phyllis’s slipstream. I knew Mister Phyllis was in trouble when I saw Tinky.’

  Only then did he turn from staring at Mister Phyllis’s microphone and set his dark eyes on Tinky.

  ‘When I say “in trouble” I mean a loss of elasticity. The pair of them.’

  He beckoned to the cat by simply extending his hand, releasing his fingers.

  ‘Animals trust me. They are never rivalrous. They don’t smell meat on me. They don’t smell blood.’ As the cat lifted its nose against his fingers, Millroy said, ‘And children feel the same. But, as you know, some adults resist me.’

  I could tell that when he said that he caught Mister Phyllis in his gaze.

  The man was making a witch-face at him and what made it worse was the mouthful of unswallowed coffee bulging like a hard ball against his cheek.

  The Frawlies had stopped fighting. They were now covered with fresh paint and making music, and all that you saw and heard on the monitor were these mice, opening their mouths wide, singing loudly.

  ‘Tinky belongs by my side and not with some irresponsible twit,’ Mister Phyllis said.

  It was Mister Phyllis’s usual Tinky spasm. When the Frawlies were on the screen without him, he tramped up and down, beneath his turned-off microphone, being bad-tempered. And it did not matter. Pretty soon he would be shrunk by the camera, a silent little guy in a striped sweater, with his tiny cat on his lap. No one ever heard him on the puppet or cartoon parts of the show.

  But where was his cat today? It was crouched in front of Millroy, who was whispering to the soft misshapen creature. The cat looked around, and took careful tottering steps towards the children’s chairs, its belly swaying.

  ‘Get over here,’ Mister Phyllis said, scooping backward with his hand.

  Tinky paid no attention and its paws went on padding towards the kids, who had begun to make soft kissing noises to call the cat.

  No one heard Mister Phyllis say, ‘Leave my Tinky alone!’

  Millroy was now concentrating on the Frawlies.

  – Holly’s acting strange, man.

  – Don’t upset your brother!

  – All I said was – and the little mouse Holly Frawly blinked her long eyelashes – I’d like to eat a cat for a change. I mean, eat it alive.

  This unexpected joke upset Mister Phyllis, who called out ‘No!’ and Millroy said, ‘Look. He’s unhinged.’ Millroy was smiling.

  Mister Phyllis was hacking the air with his hands, motioning for his cat.

  ‘You’ll be sorry,’ he called out to the children in the audience, who were stroking Tinkum’s fur.

  The fact that his microphone was off during the Frawly segment always gave him confidence, but today he was hyper, spitting and swearing.

  But he should have been warned, not only by the darkness of Millroy’s eyes but by the brightening of the studio lights above his head, as though on Millroy’s command.

  ‘Stop that stupid nonsense, you feeble-minded midgets –’

  He just fussed, but he should have been warned when – as though of its own volition – a camera turned itself upon his sad shrivelled face.

  He went on working his furious lips and then shrieked, ‘I’d love to have a carving knife right now!’

  He looked like a hairy-faced woman with a black hat in an old story.

  The studio seemed bewitched. It seemed to hum with heat and light. The laughing children in the audience were playing with Tinkum. And on the screen, Wally Frawly was singing his revenge song, about mice eating live cats. And Mister Phyllis was on the screen, with a white cat-like face, raging.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Otis Godberry said, appearing from the door to the control room.

  – Hateful bratty children – it was Mister Phyllis on the monitor, clawing the air and showing his small teeth – chop their goddamned fingers off!

  In that instant, like another wicked word, a rat’s snout poked from his mouth and choked him as it slid out and bounded to the floor.

  ‘The hell was that?’ someone said. ‘Are we still on the air?’

  ‘His mike’s live – but what’s he doing there?’

  ‘We are going to lose our license,’ Otis said.

  Mister Phyllis was still on the screen, squawking and looking horrible.

  ‘We just lost the picture,’ a cameraman said.

  Hawaiian music began mockingly to play.

  Millroy was smiling, but he looked exhausted, as though he had just lifted something very heavy – a sudden weight – and now he was panting and a little damp and pale.

  ‘He lunched it,’ Millroy said. ‘And he doesn’t even know he lunched it.’

  Because Mister Phyllis had not stopped hissing – and was that his purple tongue or another rat in his mouth?

  Someone said, ‘Shut him up.’

  The children were teasing Tinky, the Hawaiian music was playing, and Mister Phyllis gagged on the next thing he said. Then he was silent and he seemed very small next to the security man’s big blue belly.

  ‘Cue Uncle Dick –’

  Millroy was already in position, framed by his Uncle Dick curtains, and when they jerked apart, he stepped forward smiling, and produced a flock of white doves from the cuffs of his flapping sleeves.

  ‘It’s time for Mealtime Magic!’

  The children looked up at the circli
ng birds and cheered, and when they looked back at Millroy he was spinning two plump yellow melons, on the upright index finger of each hand.

  At that moment I saw Mister Phyllis glance from the studio exit door, where he was being helped away by the security man. Now he knew what magic meant.

  He was in the green room, still looking small, when Millroy entered after the show was over and offered his hand in consolation.

  Mister Phyllis worked his little purse-like mouth around a short wicked word and just then there was spit on his lips.

  Millroy showed Mister Phyllis his empty hand and magically conjured a quarter from his fingertips.

  ‘Your name is Sidney Perkus,’ Millroy said, ‘and you’ve mentioned your mother several times.’

  This softened Mister Phyllis’s expression.

  ‘Here’s a quarter, Perkus. Call your mother and tell her you’ve just gotten yourself fired from a major TV series.’

  17

  That was how Millroy took over Paradise Park. He just stepped in smiling and produced those doves, and then the melons, which he spun on his fingers and divided among the children. And although there were only two melons, and a hundred children, there were enough segments to feed each child. No one remarked on this little miracle, and all that Millroy said as he served it was, ‘Magic is natural.’

  In came Uncle Dick.

  ‘So often in life,’ he told me, ‘you hear or see something, and you think, “I wish I hadn’t heard that.” ’

  He was wincing at the thought of Mister Phyllis.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t seen that.’

  Out the door went Mister Phyllis, looking beaten, the dead lights decomposing in his eyes, and the air seeping out of his face – no definite color with his make-up rubbed off, he seemed like a wrinkled beach toy with a slow leak, and so soft and so old and sad, so suddenly frail, like someone stripped naked, that Millroy said he felt sorry he had told him, ‘Call your mother. Tell her you’ve just gotten yourself fired –’

  Going away slowly, Mister Phyllis looked different, not just punctured. He had been growing smaller, and defeat reduced him further, until he was very small. He walked strangely, sagging slightly, lopsided with failure, as though learning how to limp, and from that moment onward he would always be a cripple.