The Houdini Effect by Bill Nagelkerke

bubbling hotly to
the surface.
    ‘ No way!’ Mum and I said
together.
    ‘ This is
definitely the last one,’ added Mum. ‘This is it. Finito .’
    I think she majorly surprised Barry by
having the last word.
     
    After they had gone, Dad said, ‘Was I right
or was I not? They’re a rum pair, aren’t they?’
    ‘ I discern many hidden
depths,’ said Mum. ‘At loggerheads with one another,
definitely.’
    ‘ You and he got on all
right,’ I accused Dad.
    Then Dad surprised me. He’s capable of
surprise once in a blue moon. (Blue Moon = two full moons in a
single month. In other words, rather rare.) He scratched the
balding crown of his
    head and said, ‘Superficially, yes. But
there’s something skew-whiff about that man. I can’t put
    my finger on it but he’s not my cup of tea.
Bit of a cold fish, that’s what I thought the first time I met
him.’
    ‘ Maybe he’s superficial,’ I suggested.
    ‘ Hmm,’ said Dad. ‘Maybe.
Anyway, it’s May I feel sorry for. I took Barry off into the garden
so you three could have a quiet chat together. Poor woman. I
suspect she doesn’t have many friends to talk to.’
    ‘ You know something?’ said
Mum. ‘You also have hidden depths.’
    ‘ Some of Athens’ famous
sensitivity must have rubbed off on me,’ Dad joked.
    I have to say it, not only did Dad surprise
me that evening, he impressed me, too.
     
    Random thoughts about old age, rest homes
and other stuff too depressing for a teenager like me to be
thinking about but something I do occasionally anyway because
    THAT'S THE WAY I
AM

    (And, as I said earlier, you could have
skipped all this but you’re still reading so it’s your own fault
that you have to share the depressing bits with me.)
     
    So this house, our house now, had once been
the home of Laurence Harvey Laurison.
    Grumpy Old Sod or, Poor Old Thing?
    Which to choose?
    Or were both pithy descriptions true and
accurate?
    Before May and Barry left that night I found
out two other things. One I’ll tell you now; the
    other, soon.
    Just as they were going out the door May
volunteered to me, again in that hushed voice of hers, that she had
written to Lawrence – Laurie – a couple of times and that he had
replied, just the once, in very wavery and uncertain handwriting.
His letter was short, mainly small talk, she said. Reading between
the lines (yeah, tell me about it!) he sounded well enough
physically and mentally - which surprised May considering that
she’d wondered if he had gone slightly loopy with his talk of Iris
breaking a mysterious promise - but very unhappy emotionally, which
didn’t surprise May at all. The rest home he’d gone to was just a
big house he told her. It didn’t mean anything to him especially
not without The Missus.
    When she mentioned that, I immediately felt
guilty that Dad had bought the house, which had been Laurie and
Iris’ home for so many years. I remembered Dad telling us excitedly
what a cheap price he’d paid for it. ‘A steal,’ Dad had said. That
made it all the worse.
    I pictured Laurie in his
rest home, not restful at all, squished up in the folds of one of
those enormous faux-leather (faux = fake. Sounds impressive,
doesn’t it? Like carapace) recliner chairs you see lined up in the
front bay window of so many rest homes, Stately Havens being one
such example.
     
    (DEEP THOUGHT WARNING # 5) The writer in me
has often noticed that these chairs almost always face inwards,
away from the light, so the
    old folks don’t see the world passing by.
Although, to be fair, maybe it’s their choice to face that way.
    Maybe they don’t want to
see the world passing by because it reminds them that they aren’t
considered to be much a part of the world anymore and the only
passing they’ll be doing is their own, sooner rather than
later.
     
    I felt stricken for Laurie. To put it
inelegantly, my gut ached when I thought about the situation he had
found himself in. And that made me feel extra sympathetic