Everything starts to happen very fast. There is music. Dick Clark makes a funny face like he’s afraid he might be late, and he hops over to his podium. The celebrities take the stage. I’ve never heard of either one of them. The next thing I know, Mom is coming out with her hair clamped back in barrettes, looking smaller than ever.
But she’s wonderful. The speed round is a thing of beauty. Mom gets seven words out of seven every time, and wins the cash bonus. Her celebrity is not as dumb as a bag of hair. In fact, her celebrity is not remotely dumb.
The other contestant is good, but his celebrity speaks too slowly and says the word bat while giving clues for the word batter, an amateur’s mistake. They lose that point and a couple of others. Before I know it, Dick Clark is leading Mom over to the Winner’s Circle.
“This is it,” I hear Richard whisper to himself. “Ten thousand dollars.”
“Ten thousand dollars,” my brain says. “Ten thousand dollars.”
Mom’s celebrity looks determined. Mom looks scared. Dick Clark is smiling. He’s the only one who looks relaxed. He’s chatting with Mom for a minute, and I know Mom is trying to focus, to lift a corner of her veil so that she’ll be able to see the big things. So she can see the thread.
Dick Clark is still talking, and I realize: we never practiced the chatting. I am suddenly afraid. I am hearing the ocean. How can Mom lift her veil and see the magic thread with Dick Clark talking to her about her stupid job? I focus on Mom and try to help her concentrate. Louisa is getting nervous again, and she starts whispering about Dick Clark, “He doesn’t age, I tell you. Dick Clark simply does not age. It’s amazing.” I’m chanting to myself, “Magic thread, magic thread,” and I’m staring at Mom so hard that my eyes are almost aching.
Finally, Dick Clark is done chatting. “Here is your first subject,” he says. “Go.”
Then the strangest thing happens.
Magic Thread
Mom is jumping up and down, and I hear the sound of hundreds of people cheering and clapping, lifting me like a wave and carrying me. I am out of my seat, I am floating down the aisle, people are patting me on the back or reaching out to squeeze my arm, and then the stage is in front of me, I am going up some steps, and then light is everywhere, too bright, and it’s hot.
Mom is still leaping around. She’s hugging her celebrity, she’s hugging Dick Clark. One of her barrettes is down by the side of her face, hanging on for dear life and banging against her cheek. She hugs me, and my head is pulled up and down as she jumps, so that I am forced to jump with her.
I feel happy. I smile and grab Mom’s hands and jump up and down with her. I let go of her and raise my arms over my head and feel the audience roar louder.
I am not thinking of the wall-to-wall carpet, or the camera, or the trip to China.
I am jumping up and down because at the very moment Dick Clark said the word “Go,” it was like an invisible hand reached out and snatched away my veil. And for almost a minute, I understood everything. When that veil isn’t hanging down right in front of a person’s face, a minute is long enough to realize a lot of things.
I realized that when you took our key from the fire hose, when you left me the notes, when you stole Richard’s shoes and Jimmy’s Fred Flintstone bank, you had already read my letter. You had read it many times, even though I have not yet written it.
That’s how you knew where the key was, even before you asked. That’s how you knew everything. I will tell you, in my letter. The letter you asked me to write.
“But that’s impossible!” my brain squawked. “You’re saying the laughing man read a letter that you haven’t even written yet! It makes no sense!”
Common sense is just a name for the way we’re used to thinking.
Time travel is possible.
You came to save Sal. And finally—finally!—I understood.
Dick Clark never ages. I thought of what Marcus had said about going to the movies in my time machine, that if I didn’t leave until I was sixty-two, the ticket guy wouldn’t recognize me.
I might not even recognize myself.
Maybe Dick Clark never ages. But the rest of us will. I will. Sal will, thanks to you. And Marcus will, too.
Please deliver your letter by hand, your note said. You know where to find me.
I thought of the beat-up metal door next to the garage, and I thought, “Yes, I do.” Because you are still here after all, to read my letter. Marcus is here. And when he reads the letter, he’ll realize that he has seen himself arrive, before he left. That’s what my letter is for.
And then, in who-knows-what year—the year of the burn scale, the year of the dome—Marcus will come back. You will come back. You will come back with a mouth full of paper. You won’t be yourself when you reach me but you will get the job done. You will save Sal. You already have.
Marcus is the magic thread. You are the laughing man. You are Marcus. Marcus is the laughing man. Or he will be, when he’s old.
“None of it makes sense!” my brain yelled.
“But all of it is true,” I answered.
Like I said, it lasted just under a minute. It lasted fifty-five seconds, to be precise. Which is how long it took Mom to guess six categories and win ten thousand dollars.
And then Mom and I are on the stage together, jumping up and down until they make us get off.
Things That Open
We take the bus home because we think it’ll be so much fun to take the bus home, knowing that we are rich now and can take a cab anytime we want. And it is fun. Sal and I don’t talk much, but we lean into the turns the way we used to when we were little and actually believed that we could make the bus tip over.
After Mom won her ten thousand dollars, she played another speed round. But this time she had to be partners with the other celebrity.
“He wasn’t as dumb as a bag of hair,” Mom says on the bus, “but he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer either.” They lost. But Mom gets to keep her ten thousand dollars, and her twenty-one-hundred-dollar cash bonus. “Not bad for a day’s work,” she says, smiling at me. “Not bad at all.”
When we get to the lobby, Louisa has to change into her uniform for work.
“Want to watch some TV?” Sal asks me.
I tell him I would love to. Another time.
Upstairs, Mom puts on a record, and she and Richard dance for a while in the living room while I sit on the couch and grin, just watching them.
Then I go to my room, shut my door, and pull the box out from under my bed. Right on top of everything is a big envelope for Mom—Richard gave it to me a week ago for safekeeping. And underneath it is Richard’s birthday present.
Mom is in the kitchen, making birthday tacos and a box cake. Every once in a while she yells, “Whoo-hoo! We’re rich!”
I write on Mom’s envelope with a marker: I personally do not care about wall-to-wall carpeting. Louisa says carpets are full of dust mites anyway.
I make an origami frog for Richard and put it on top of his box.
I make an origami frog for Mom and put it on top of her envelope.
I can’t get enough of these origami frogs.
It’s time for dinner. We eat the tacos. We sing. We cut the cake.
I give Mom her envelope. “What’s this?” she says. “It’s not my birthday!”