Things without all remedy should be without regard. But what you can cure, do so willingly. What ails the human body and soul may be difficult to diagnose, but just as often there is a simple resolution. Black pepper for aching muscles, linden root and yarrow for high blood pressure, feverfew for migraines, ginger for motion sickness, watercress to ease labored breathing, vervain to quiet the pangs of unrequited love.
Before the sisters opened a shop on the first floor of the house, they made soap, prepared in an iron pot on nights when the moon was waning, a pale sliver in the sky above St. Vincent’s Hospital on the northeast corner of Seventh and Greenwich Avenues. This was the institution that had given the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay her second name, for her uncle’s life was saved there in 1892. Their own Vincent liked their downtown location so well he didn’t mind helping to improve the little house. He investigated construction sites, salvaging discarded windows and lumber. Once lugged home, what had formerly been trash was used to create a makeshift greenhouse, where herbs could be grown from seed. When it rained the place flooded, but that only seemed to help even the most delicate plants grow; they burst through the glass roof, and before long the entire greenhouse was covered with vines.
As for the shop, it was a disaster when they moved in, with peeling plaster and water-stained ceilings, but soon enough everything was painted a pale dove gray. For weeks they all had streaks of gray paint in their hair, as if they had prematurely aged. Franny bartered with a local plumber. If he would stop the pipes from leaking, they would dispose of his wife’s boyfriend; it was easy enough to do with a bit of Be True to Me Tea. For the carpenter who built shelves, the sisters concocted a hex breaker composed of salt, coconut oil, lavender, lemon juice, and lemon verbena. If he gave the mixture to the ex-client who was badmouthing him, the slanderer would fall silent.
Soon enough there were copper sinks and countertops made of white marble, salvaged from the boys’ and girls’ rooms of a school in the Bronx that was being torn down. The floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with bottles of every shape and size collected from junk shops, all containing herbs that would be necessary. The pine floors, which had been stained a blotchy maroon, were refinished until they gleamed. A stuffed blue heron that was too wonderful to leave behind had been found in an antiques store on the Lower East Side. He reminded Franny of the heron who had come to her in Central Park, and she paid an exorbitant price for him. He was too tall to be taken home in a cab, and so the sisters rented a flatbed U-Haul truck. Vincent applauded when they set the heron up in the window of the shop and named the bird Edgar, for Edgar Allan Poe’s ghost was said to roam their neighborhood, and for a time from 1844 to 1845 he had lived at 85 West Third Street, writing “The Raven.”
Franny often frequented a discount store that sold chemistry equipment, buying beakers and a Bunsen burner, along with tongs and funnels and goggles.
“Science teacher,” the checker guessed.
“In a manner of speaking,” Franny answered.
Despite everything, she still considered science to be her main interest. She set up a lab in the back room of the shop, and there the sisters readied their inventory, concentrating on love potions, for that was what Aunt Isabelle’s customers had always been most eager to buy. They consulted with Isabelle, who sent pages of notes in thick manila envelopes.
Remind customers they must be careful what they wish for, Isabelle instructed. What’s done cannot be undone. What’s set into motion takes on a life of its own.
They mixed henna with limes, roses, tea, and eucalyptus and let it simmer overnight, for henna’s hue reflects the strength of love of a woman for a man, the thicker and deeper the color, the more genuine the love. Amulets that carried apple seeds were made in the evenings as they sat out in the yard, meant to bring the wearer love, for apples signify the heart. For those who wished to gain willpower, and say no to a lover who would bring only heartbreak, there was a cure of rosemary and lavender oil. Bathe in it, and when you next saw the one you had once cherished, you would send him packing. They now had the recipe for Fever Tea, composed of cinnamon, bayberry, ginger, thyme, and marjoram, and for Frustration Tea, a combination of chamomile, hyssop, raspberry leaf, and rosemary, which Jet brewed for her sister in the mornings so that the day would go smoothly. Aunt Isabelle refused to hand over the formula for Courage Tea. That, she said, was one recipe you had to discover for yourself.
Though Jet had lost the sight, she was more than competent when it came to concocting remedies. A good thing, for they needed the income. Often the sisters were in the shop from early in the morning till long past suppertime. There was no complaining, no slacking off. Jet seemed perfectly fine unless you yourself had the sight, and then you knew she was not. She went to bed early, and too often Franny could hear her crying. Jet refused to speak about Levi and the loss of their parents. She hadn’t admitted she had lost the sight, but Franny and Vincent both knew. Usually they could trade thoughts, but when they approached Jet’s mind they were greeted by a wave of darkness. Franny mentally tried to send her a list of what she needed for the store and there was no reply, only a blank stare.
“Did you want something?” Jet asked.
“No, I’m fine,” Franny said. “You?”
“Perfect,” Jet replied.
She had lost so much that she had lost herself as well. She had a secret that she carried with her, and it hurt, as if she stored a stone beside her heart. It was her hatred of herself that was her burden, and it grew each day. At first it was tiny, a mere pebble, then it was as big as her heart, and then it was the largest thing inside her. She had decided it wasn’t the curse that was at fault. It was her.
During the day, she worked at the shop and never once complained. But at night she had begun to roam. She went to bars and after midnight found her way to Washington Square, where she smoked marijuana with strangers. She wanted to lose herself, get rid of her past, and forget the pain she carried when she thought of Levi. On the weekends she went uptown to Central Park. It was here, on Easter Sunday, that she walked farther than she had planned. Once there she heard bells and music and followed as if enchanted.
The park was crowded, the meadow was filled with a wash of love and acceptance. It had been a long time since Jet had felt part of anything. There were balloons drifting into the bright sky and garlands of flowers wreathed around necks and arms, and people in love, some in stages of lovemaking, some of them giving out LSD, not yet illegal. Fluff, Ghost, Sacrament, Sugar, named for the design on the blotter paper the liquid was dotted upon. Whether it caused happiness or confusion, the drug certainly created ripples in the texture of the world.
“Here you go,” a man ambling by said to Jet. He took her hand and was gone before she could see his face. “This will cure you,” he called over his shoulder.
“Nothing can cure me,” Jet said. She saw that she had a tab of acid in her hand. People said it was magic. One taste could transport you. And perhaps, if she were very lucky, she would no longer be herself or carry her burden.
She placed the tab of LSD on her tongue and let it melt. She had a shiver of expectation, and wasn’t that the sign of magic to come? She waited, but nothing happened, so she went on, drifting through the crowds. When she got a bit lost she stood still and tried to get her bearings. She had somehow blundered into a maze that everyone else seemed able to navigate. What path led uptown? Where was north? Where was her soul? Was it up above her in a tree, perched there like a goblin?
She must have looked as if she were setting off on a voyage because a young woman passing by said, “Happy travels.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jet replied. And then she realized that she was. She saw it happen in fast motion, in a whoosh. The grass was thrumming with life, a shimmering hallucination coiling and uncoiling in long stalks, populated by thousands of ants and beetles. There was music and someone grabbed her arm to dance with her, but she slipped away.
Forty minutes of real time had passed, but it seemed as if only moments had gone by. Surrounded by so many people, she felt even more alone. She experienced sickening waves of paranoia and lowered her eyes so no one could see into her mind. She had lost the gift of sight, but now she could see the air was crumpling into hard, little waves; the earth itself was folding, like a piece of paper. Perhaps there had been a small earthquake.
Jet darted down a path, dodging into the Ramble, where she could catch her breath. She was hyperventilating, so she counted to ten with each breath and raced on. Sunlight fell through the overhanging branches, and the shadows on the ground formed lacy patterns. Before she knew it she was at the Alchemy Tree, which was pulsating with green blood within its bark, so alive it might as well have been human.
She stood with her arms out and ran her hands over the tree. Everything glowed and shimmered, undulating before her eyes. She could actually taste the air. It was vanilla and moss. There were black weeds beneath her feet and when she wished them to bloom they did so, in shades of lilac and persimmon. She lay down in the brambles, sinking into them, yet she didn’t feel the stickers. They drew blood but the thorns didn’t hurt and each bruise of blood resembled a rose. If she were dead, would she be reunited with Levi? Was he waiting for her right now?
There were yellow warblers flickering by as they migrated, as if specks of light had broken off from the sun. The brightness of the little birds in the fading shadows was blinding. Jet closed her eyes. Still she couldn’t escape the light. Inside her eyelids there were fireflies. How had they gotten there? Everything was too bright, dazzling.
She thought she saw Levi, and she ran after him, but when she blinked he was gone. Now she was in the dense woods. Her breath was composed of filmy black sparks that rose up whenever she exhaled. She definitely heard his voice. She tracked the stream called the Gill and traipsed through the mud, not stopping until she came to the lake. The black water had turned into a mirror. Jet crouched on hands and knees and looked at herself. What she saw loomed. The girl who had ruined everything she touched.
She crawled closer to get a better look and as she did she tumbled into the lake. In no time she was in up to her waist. She deserved this. This was what was done to witches. Though she was freezing she plunged farther into this watery looking glass. She wanted to sink down, to be punished and done away with, but she felt the buoyancy inside her, and she floated when she meant to drown.
It was no good. She would not sink. She swam to the edge and sloshed through the mud. The grass was still pulsing with life. Jet struggled to breathe. It had been six hours since she had taken the tab of acid. It was no longer daytime. Stars filled the sky. There were still a few fireflies behind her eyelids.
She walked all the way home, following Fifth Avenue to the very end. When she came inside Franny saw that her clothes were wet, and that her dark hair was damp around her face.
“What did you do?” Franny asked. There was a circle of sorrow around her sister, a pale gray-blue, as though she were still walking through water.
“Nothing,” Jet said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You tried to drown yourself.” Franny could see it. The edge of the lake, the water weeds, the moment when her sister gave in to the call to go deeper.
“It was an accident.”
Franny went to embrace her sister. “The world will do enough to us, we don’t have to do it to ourselves,” she said. “Stay away from water. Promise me.”
Jet promised, she crossed her heart, but in fact she now knew that if a witch wanted to drown herself, she could do so. All she needed was some assistance. A stone, a rock, a spell, a cup of poison, a steely heart, a world of sorrow. Then, and only then, could it be done.
Once a week Jet walked uptown to the Plaza Hotel at Fifth and Fifty-Ninth Street. No one knew where she was. To the crowds rushing by she was nothing, just a young woman in black standing on the sidewalk crying. She always went directly to the place where it happened, and when she did she could feel the last moments she had spent with Levi before his accident. Even though she’d lost the sight, those instants were so powerful they hung in the air and were threaded through the trees. Everything glowed with a peculiar bright light. He’d held her near. He’d told her to close her eyes. She’d said, Don’t be silly, but he had insisted. At last he’d placed something in her hands. Now look, he’d said.
What is this? She’d laughed, feeling the small circular surprise in her hands. A bottle cap?
But when she opened her eyes she saw he had given her a ring, a thin silver band with a moonstone. She hadn’t taken it off since, though the silver had tarnished.
In the park in front of the hotel she watched the trees for a sign, but there was none. No dove, no raven, no spark of light. Then one day as she was working in the shop, she stumbled upon what she needed. The potion. That week she walked into the Plaza Hotel and rented the room Levi had reserved. He had showed her the reservation so she knew the room number: 708. Sometimes that number came up in the oddest places. On the cash register in the shop when someone bought a bar of black soap. In the grocery store when she went to pay for bread and milk. If it was over the door of a restaurant she then must stop, whether or not she was hungry.
Jet told the bellman she didn’t need help, then she tipped him five dollars and went up alone. There was no one in the elevator, or in the hall. It was very quiet. She was glad she couldn’t hear the thoughts of those inside the rooms she was passing. She appreciated silence now. Even the door to her room made no noise when she slipped inside. She drew the curtains and flung open the windows. Then she peered into the bathroom to see the huge tub and all the lovely bath salts and soaps, and finally she lay down on the bed fully clothed. She could spy the tops of the trees in the small park in front of the hotel and a wedge of blue sky. She thought about what might have been if the accident hadn’t happened. How they would have walked into the hotel together, come up to their room, this very room. They would have sat on the bed, shyly at first, before daring to embrace. He would have been gentle, and kind, although mad for her, and they might have cried together afterward, overwhelmed by sex and emotion. She supposed she was weeping as she thought about this, and the sound carried, and there was a knock on the door.
She didn’t answer. Perhaps guests nearby had complained. She forced herself to be quiet. But as it turned out, she had left the door unlocked and someone came into the room.
“Are you all right, miss?”
It was the bellman. Jet didn’t answer, so the bellman pulled up a chair and sat down. He was young and had a worried expression.
“When people check in without luggage you never know what they’re going to do,” he said. “And then I heard you crying. I put two and two together.”
“I’m fine,” Jet managed to say. “Please go.”
“You’re not going to kill yourself or anything like that?”
Jet shook her head. It was safer not to speak.
“Because I would feel responsible. I would be the last person to have seen you. That would mean that I forever would carry this moment around, and think of what I could have done to stop you. My life would probably be ruined. I’d get off track and start to drink and I’d drop out of school and after a while this place would fire me, because everyone would blame me, and worst of all, I’d blame myself.”
Jet began sobbing anew. She turned away from him. There had been a plan and he was ruining it. She felt the bed sink as he lay down beside her.
“Don’t cry,” he said. He stroked her hair. “I can get you room service.”
In spite of herself, Jet laughed. “Room service? Why would that help?”
“The room service is great,” he protested. “You shouldn’t pass it up.”
Jet turned to face him. They lay side by side looking into each other’s eyes. His were very dark, flecked with gold. He told her his name was Rafael and he was taking night classes at Hunter College. She told him she had lost the man she loved and that she no longer believed in love and wanted nothing to do with it. He told her he planned never to marry and thought love was probably a foolish endeavor. He had seen what had happened to his mother, who had raised three children without any help, and who worked two jobs, all due to love, while his father went on and married twice more and had other families and never looked back. Jet had found her perfect bitter companion. She felt at ease in his presence.
“What do they have here for room service?” Jet asked.
“Everything. You name it, they’ve got it.”
She wanted roast chicken, string beans, and a hot fudge sundae.
“Give me fifteen minutes,” Rafael said. “Maybe twenty.”
She fell asleep while he was gone and she dreamed of the Angel of the Waters at the Bethesda Fountain. The angel arose and was free from the shackles of metal and stone. She put out her hand and stopped time, and everything in Manhattan was motionless, except for the swirling stars above the city. It was then Jet knew what she wanted. To go back to that day and relive it.
When Jet woke, Rafael had returned with a tray that he’d arranged for them. He brought enough for two. They ate together, except for the sundae, which Jet alone devoured. He’d been right, the room service was fabulous.
“Are you going to get fired?” she asked.
“No, my uncle is the head bellman.”
“I don’t want your life to be ruined. I would feel bad if you did get in trouble.”
“Trouble’s actually my middle name,” he told her. “Rafael Trouble Correa.”
They both laughed. Then Jet looked serious. She got up her nerve.
“What if I wanted you to be him?” she asked.
“The dead man?”
“And we would never see each other again and it would have nothing to do with love. You would just be him once.”
Rafael thought this over. He had had many strange requests working in the hotel. People wanted privacy or they wanted women or they wanted drugs or drink. He always said he couldn’t help them, because that was what his uncle, who’d hired him in the first place so he could put himself through school, had said to do. This, however, was different.
“I think I’d have to be myself. I can’t be a dead man.”
They had begun to drink the whiskey in the minibar. There were several varieties, all excellent. They’d had quite a few.
“You’ll be him to me,” Jet said. “That’s what’s important. I don’t want to mislead you.”
Rafael nodded. “I understand. Can you at least tell me his name?”
“Levi.”
“From the Bible.” That seemed to make him feel better about the situation. “Was he a good man?”
“He planned to go to Yale,” Jet said. “Divinity School.”
Rafael got up and went to lock the door. When he came back he said he could wait in the hall vestibule while she undressed and got into bed. He felt as though he had wandered into a dream, and sometimes in a dream you just follow the path you’re given without asking too many questions. For once you do, the dream is over.
“That’s not the way it would happen,” Jet told him.
So he sat on the bed beside her and kissed her and they kissed for a very long time. This was the way it would have begun. At first she thought she would cry again, but then Jet kept her eyes closed and the bellman was Levi to her. She said Levi’s name. Rafael might have been offended, but inside he pitied the dead man for all he had missed out on. He unbuttoned Jet’s blouse and undressed her gently, just as Levi would have. He had a condom in his wallet, though he hadn’t expected to use it today. Jet kept her eyes closed. When Rafael touched her he expected her to be cold, but she wasn’t. She was hot under his touch.
“I want you to look at me,” he told her. When she did he said, “I don’t want to be the dead man.” Jet turned away and began to cry, but he insisted. “We can’t pretend. We’re both alive. We have to do this like living people. Otherwise I wouldn’t feel right.”
She really looked at him. He was a handsome young man who was worried about her even though he didn’t know her. She kept her eyes open as he made love to her. She was supposed to have had her first time with Levi, but instead she was here in a bed with a stranger. They could hear traffic on Fifth Avenue. They could hear the wind in the trees. When she embraced him he was himself, and that was fine.
“Is this one of these things where I have to be responsible for you for my whole life now?” Rafael asked. “Like when you save someone from death, and then you’re their angel, and you can’t have any peace until you know they’re all right.”
“I am all right,” Jet said.
“Then why am I still worried?”
It was dusk now and the room was dark. Jet was pretty certain Rafael would get fired despite his uncle. “If you lose your job, it would be the reverse. Then I have to be responsible for you.”
“If I lose my job, it’s fate,” he said.
“We make our own fate,” Jet said, and then all at once she realized that they did. They could not control it, but they could choose how to respond to what happened. She insisted he get dressed and go back to work. He did so, although he seemed reluctant to go.
“So this isn’t a relationship,” Rafael said.
“Absolutely not.” She told him about the curse, and the trouble people in her family had in matters of love. There was no reason not to tell him everything since they would remain as strangers. The truth was, he looked different to her now. He was even more good-looking than she’d thought at first, and he had a concerned expression. He wasn’t Levi and he wasn’t going to be no matter how hard she tried to pretend that he was.
“We should meet here in six months. Check in with each other,” he said. “Then I would know you didn’t kill yourself.”
Jet shook her head. “I won’t. But we’re never going to see each other again. Let’s just get that straight.”
“You miss him,” Rafael said. “Even right now.”
She did, but the day of the accident now felt as though it belonged to the past. She was glad she had kept her eyes open.
“I’m glad you were you,” Jet said.
He kissed her good-bye as himself and then they both laughed. “So am I,” he told her.
When Rafael left, Jet took a long bath, then she put on a white robe and finished what was left of the chicken. She got into bed and phoned Franny to tell her where she was.
“You are not at the Plaza Hotel,” Franny said. “That costs a fortune.”
“I had to stay here. I needed to complete what should have happened that night.”
She could see the lights come on along Fifth Avenue now. Rafael would be checking out of work and heading for night class. He had told her he wanted to be a teacher. She went to the window and gazed out. She thought she saw him, but she wasn’t sure. She barely knew him after all.
“It’s beautiful here,” she told her sister. She’d forgotten how lovely the sky was at this hour of the day.
“Will you come home in the morning?” Franny wanted to know. “We can’t afford another night at the Plaza.”
“Yes,” Jet assured her. “I promise I will. After I have breakfast from room service.”
The Plaza Hotel was the least of their financial problems; there were heating bills and electricity and taxes, things their parents had seen to in the past. Even before the shop opened their savings had all but disappeared. Jet set a paper spell, hoping to bring money their way, burning a dollar bill coated with honey and milk in the fireplace. The only result was an order from a small pharmacy on Bleecker Street for a box of black soap. Franny had altered the recipe, adding city ingredients that were available. There were no blooming roses outside the door, no lush herbs and flowers as there were in Isabelle’s garden. So she made good with what she had. A branch from an ash tree in Washington Square Park, two dappled feathers of a nesting dove on West Fourth Street, leaves from the wavering lilacs in their yard. The result was grittier than Aunt Isabelle’s recipe, with more intensity. Wash with it, and not only were you beautiful, you were ready to do battle. It was especially good for anyone riding the subway or walking down a dark street after midnight.
The pharmacy ordered several more boxes in the ensuing months, but the sale wasn’t enough to sustain them. When their money ran out they had no choice but to divest themselves of family belongings. They sold their mother’s good Limoges china at a bad price. They sold the French cooking pots, and then the costume jewelry their mother favored, jeweled bugs and starfish and butterflies. One gray day, when they hadn’t enough to pay the electricity bill, they brought nearly all of Susanna Owens’s Chanel suits and Dior dresses to the secondhand store on Twenty-Third Street near the Chelsea Hotel. Franny bargained as best she could, but in the end they collected only a few hundred dollars for the timeless clothes their mother had bought in Paris when she was young and in love. They sat in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel and counted their money.
“You could have stayed here instead of the Plaza,” Franny said. “Then maybe we wouldn’t be so broke.”
“My fate wasn’t here.” Jet had a small smile on her face that gave her away.
“Oh really.” Franny now understood. “What was your fate’s name?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jet assured her.
Franny narrowed her eyes. “Love?”
“Absolutely not. We never intend to see each other again,” Jet said cheerfully.
“Perfect,” Franny said. “Then you’re the new Maid of Thorns.”
“Oh, no,” Jet said. “You’ll always hold that title.”
“Will I?” Franny said thoughtfully.
Jet went to her sister and sat beside her. “Franny, that was a joke. You have the softest heart of any of us.”
“Untrue,” Franny shot back, though she was near tears. She had hated seeing her mother’s clothes hung on wire hangers in the thrift shop.
“Very true. This just means I know you better than you know yourself,” Jet said. “But what else is a sister for?”
Posters were affixed to every lamppost in the neighborhood and Franny took a small ad in The Village Voice, the alternative newspaper whose offices were right around the corner in Sheridan Square. On the day of the grand opening, the shelves were stocked with cures and Edgar the heron was set in the window and festooned with ribbons and bows. By noon, only a smattering of people had showed up, a huge disappointment. Two teenage girls with long straight hair in search of true love sneaked in, giggling, afraid of the stuffed heron, nervous about magic, eyeing the bones and teeth set out in jars.
Franny threw up her hands, preferring the drudgery of cleaning the storeroom, but Jet found she enjoyed dispensing cures, and was happy to offer the girls the most basic potion: rosemary leaves, anise seeds, honey, and red wine. Since the Plaza Hotel, she had retained a deep empathy for those in love. She told the girls about a home remedy they could use when their money ran out, not wise for a shopkeeper to give away free advice, but true to Jet’s nature. To grow a lover, she told them, they must plant an onion in a flowerpot and add plenty of sunlight and water. The girls were amused to hear that such a plain, smelly thing as an onion could bring love to them.
“That’s all we have to do?” they cried, delighted.
Jet told them yes, an onion and a pure heart were the best ingredients. She’d had a pure love too once upon a time. These girls were too young and innocent for doves’ hearts or spells written in blood. They hadn’t the faintest idea of what love could do. Jet, on the other hand, knew only too well, and should she ever forget, should she wake up in the middle of the night and not know where or who she was, there was always the scar on her face to remind her. You had to squint to see its delicate outline, but it was there. Jet could run her hand over her face and feel it and then she thought about the glass breaking and the sound of the thud as the taxi had hit Levi. That was when she would phone Rafael, who at this point knew her better than anyone. It wasn’t love, not at all, but he’d been right. He’d saved her from what she had intended to do at the Plaza Hotel that night and now he felt responsible for her. In some way she was his. He’d known what she’d planned to do. She’d brought along a tincture of belladonna that night, a mixture that quickly induces dizziness and nausea, then weakness and breathing complications. She had planned to ingest it, then get into the bath, and when she passed out she would drown, which seemed only fitting. No one could float after partaking of this tincture, not even her. Rafael had derailed her plans when he came into the room and lay down beside her. He’d reminded her that she was alive.
The last time they’d met she’d showed him the Alchemy Tree. They’d brought along a six-pack of beer, and after the second bottle, Rafael admitted that he had guessed her plan when she’d said she didn’t need help getting to her room, yet tipped him five dollars anyway. In return he had saved her life. He was her secret, one she kept close. It wasn’t love, but for her it was something more. He was someone she trusted.
Vincent had stopped bringing random women home, which was a relief to both sisters. They’d never known whom they might find in the kitchen when they went to fix their morning coffees. A teenager from Long Island in her T-shirt and nothing else, a waitress from the Kettle of Fish, a college girl from NYU, all wandering through the house with spellbound, confused expressions.
“Why do you bother?” Franny had asked once. She was at the table eating toast. Some woman had just made herself scrambled eggs before leaving, without even bothering to introduce herself.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Vincent snarled, defensive, brooding over why he could never feel anything for the girls he brought home.
“Fine. Never mind.”
“Why do you bother?” Vincent tossed back at his sister.
“I don’t!”
They were not the sort to discuss their emotions, or even admit they had them, so Franny kept her insights to herself.
“I think we have a disorder. Maybe we should have read Dad’s book,” Vincent wondered. “We might have been more normal.”
Actually, Fanny had been reading it. She’d expected to find it preposterous, filled with crackpot theories about genetics. But as it turned out, A Stranger in the House was a love letter to Dr. Burke-Owens’s children, something none of them would have ever guessed. Certainly, Franny was shocked by her father’s warm, loving attitude.
They may be nothing like you, he had written, they may surprise you, they may even repel you when their behavior is out of control, when they climb out their windows and drink underage and break every rule, but you will love them in a way you had not thought possible before, no matter who they turn out to be.
All that year Vincent had earned cash by busking on corners and in subway stations. His exceptional voice made people cluster around, especially when he sang of the troubled times. He felt connected when he performed; he found that if he put away his guitar, there was nothing inside him. It was as if when he had been stolen as an infant, he had come back as a changeling, as if someone had reached inside him and grabbed his heart to keep under lock and key.
He had always been a night owl, but now he had found a coterie of late-night rovers. He frequented the clubs on Eighth Street—Cafe Au Go Go, The Bitter End, the Village Gate—and often dropped by the San Remo, the hangout of poets, both unknown and great, including Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso, and Dylan Thomas. Vincent listened to the poets who had no hope of ever making it, and those who were on the cusp of changing the meaning of what poetry was and could be. Whenever possible he caught Bob Dylan at Gerde’s. Dylan was making his mark as a poet and musician with a voice that was unmistakably his own. That was true beauty. That was the map of one’s soul. To do so meant to reveal some inner part of yourself, and that Vincent was unable to do.
By now he was known in the clubs. Some people knew him from the Jester, and when they called him the Wizard the nickname stuck. When he spoke his voice was so soft that whomever he was addressing had to lean in to hear, and then some sort of enchantment happened. He was more handsome than ever, but that was only part of the spell he cast. Rumors began. People said he could pick your pocket without ever touching you. He could swipe a song lyric right out of your head; he seemed to know what you were thinking or maybe you’d blabbed a chorus to him and when he added a few words he made it so much better than anything you could ever dream up, that in the end you wouldn’t even recognize your own music. He carried a book of spells with him, and for the right payment he could make things happen for you. The unexpected became real before your eyes. A girl who never looked at you before would follow you home. A job for which you weren’t qualified would be yours. A letter would arrive informing you of an inheritance from a relative you hadn’t known existed.
Vincent worked briefly as a waiter at the Gaslight, where he gratefully ate for free from their quirky menu: date-nut bread and cream cheese, grilled cheese, beefburger, pink lemonade, and a series of sundaes he sneaked home for Jet. Mint, brandy, rum, chocolate, and vanilla. He’d have to run all the way home to Greenwich Avenue so the ice cream wouldn’t melt and leave sugary puddles on the sidewalk. Eventually, the management fired him when a ticked-off waitress he had rejected ratted him out as being underage.
On the weekends he usually made a quick stop in Nedick’s, a hot dog place on Eighth Street and Sixth Ave, before heading down to Washington Square Park, where folk musicians gathered on Sunday afternoons. He still had his same old Martin guitar he’d bought when he was fourteen, an instrument that seemed to feel and emote in a way that eluded him. He was inspired when he performed, his voice blessed with a soaring grace. And then he would stop and feel empty all over again, a hollow reed the wind blew through, another young man in a black jacket hanging out on the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker.
“Are you sure you’re seventeen?” the best guitar teacher in New York, Dave Van Ronk, asked after Vincent sat in to play with a group of older men at the park. Van Ronk was known as the mayor of MacDougal Street, a pal of Dylan’s, and a legend himself.
“I’m not really sure about anything,” Vincent said, shaking the big man’s hand, making sure not to run his mouth for once in his life.
“Well, keep playing,” Van Ronk said. “That’s one thing you should be sure of.”
These were the times when children dreamed about nuclear testing and falling stars. There was an undercurrent of unrest, like a wave, racial division in the cities, the war halfway around the world blooming with blood. When Vincent walked through Washington Square Park he could hear the thoughts of the people he passed by, such a ragged outcry of emotion he sometimes thought he would go mad. He understood why Jet seemed not to care that she had lost her gift. It was awful to hear the voices of dead paupers buried in unmarked graves beneath the cement paths. All but forgotten, they cried out to anyone who might hear them. For them the world had been a veil of tears. The murdered, the abandoned, the ill, the ruined, victims and criminals alike all cried out to him. He wished he’d never had the sight. What had been a game when he was a boy had become an affliction. He had no desire to tap into other people’s pain, to know them better than they knew themselves.
He took to wearing a black cap woven out of metal thread in an attempt to shut out his clairvoyance. He’d found the cap on the Lower East Side, where he’d bought his first book of magical instructions. He’d never admitted the truth to Franny, but he’d first read about The Magus in a book he’d found on a shelf in their father’s office, for Dr. Burke-Owens had studied folklore and ancient magic and Jungian archetypes. Vincent had been a kid, but one who knew what he wanted. He wanted to be the best at what he did, no matter the price. He searched for The Magus, but in every bookstore the clerks laughed at him and told him all of the copies had been burned long ago. Then he had come upon a shabby vendor strung out on drugs who peddled magic from a makeshift room in an abandoned building. There, hidden in a wheelbarrow, beneath a threadbare blanket, Vincent found the book. In exchange for the text, Vincent had handed over a fifty-dollar bill filched from the coat pocket of one of his father’s patients and a strand of his mother’s pearls, stolen from her jewelry box. He’d assumed the vendor had no idea of the true worth of this treasure, but then the old man had said to Vincent, “I’ve been wanting to get rid of that. It will lead you down the wrong path if you’re not careful. It’s a burden.”
When Vincent returned to search for the iron hat, he’d looked up the old vendor, but the magic man had long ago disappeared. Squatters had claimed the building he’d once occupied. They’d tried to turn Vincent away when he examined his predecessor’s space, discovering the hat left on a shelf, as if meant for him. Harassed, Vincent began a fire without flame or wood, and the squatters backed off. Standing in the ruin of a place, he’d felt oddly at home. He knew the creed he’d been taught by their aunt, the first rule of magic is, Do no harm, but that was not the world he was drawn to. Hexes, curses, conjuring for causing spiritual sickness, such practices could be addictive, especially when customers were willing to pay high prices for them.
He set up shop in his predecessor’s room. It was sympathetic magic he dealt in, some so exhausting he had to sleep for days to regain his strength. In no time, he had a list of wealthy clients who didn’t care about the rule of three. They took it upon themselves to turn evil back on the one who had created it, which meant that a candle must be burned backward or a container spell with mirrors must be put into use. Wicked magic was used to bind an enemy, often in business, wherein a photograph or doll or other image was used to represent the one who would be cursed. Some of the spells were painful and risky. All were unethical. And yet, Vincent began to collect and sell the paraphernalia of jealousy and hate: coins, mirrors, combs, pyramids, figurines, amulets to protect and those meant to harm. Franny had been right about his magical leanings. They led to trouble, and always had.
His sisters loved him, but he couldn’t be the person they wanted him to be. There was no reason for them to know how he earned his money. When he brought home bags of groceries and footed all the bills, they asked how he could afford to do so. He simply remarked, “What can I say? I’m a great waiter.” He didn’t bother to mention he’d been fired from the Gaslight. Did they truly believe the expenses were paid off in tips? Or from the profits of their shop, empty of customers most days?
There was a fellow in Washington Square Park who dispensed certain illegal items needed for such spell work—vials of blood, the hearts and livers of animals—who warned Vincent to be careful in the occult world. What you send out will come back to you, this fellow had whispered in a thick voice. Not once but threefold. What do you think happened to your predecessor? Are you ready for that, brother?
Vincent ignored the advice. He knew he was squandering his talents, but he didn’t give a damn. There was always a price to be paid. What you get, you must also give. But he had cash now, and he didn’t seem in the least bit jinxed. At least, not yet. In fact, he was gaining an audience in the Village. He’d helped this along with invocations from The Magus, but so what? Fame was addictive, even the tiny bit he’d garnered. People crowded round him in the park, and often a group was gathered there waiting for him before he arrived. But he wondered if it was magic that drew them to him, and, when they dispersed, he felt more alone than ever. He could make it happen if he wanted to, the crowds, the fame, the records, the stardom. But what would the price be? He thought of a story Franny had told him when he was a boy. A minstrel used sorcery to climb to the heights of fame. Don’t worry about the price, the wizard the musician had gone to had advised. And then the time came for reparations, when it was too late to change his mind. Only then did he discover that the price was his voice.
On the night of his birthday Vincent wandered home in the September dusk, a tall, stark figure, rattled by the magic in which he’d recently been complicit. Every time he had sold a spell for some perverse intention—to ensure that a rival would fail or a wife would disappear—he felt he’d sold a portion of his soul. It paid the bills, but he slept fitfully and then not at all. In the middle of the night he dressed and walked the streets in a daze, with a hollow feeling, as though he were famished and couldn’t get enough to satisfy his hunger. He wanted to stop, but magic took hold and wouldn’t let go.
He was turning eighteen, but he felt so much older. Master of denial, master of dark magic, master of lies and loneliness. What good was it to be a conjurer if he couldn’t conjure his own happiness?
Now he was late for his own birthday dinner. Jet was making his favorite meal to celebrate: coq au vin, with potatoes and fresh peas. Franny had baked Aunt Isabelle’s tipsy chocolate cake, the mere scent so intoxicating a person could get drunk on it. Still, he wasn’t ready to face a celebration and pretend to be happy. He found an empty bench in Sheridan Square and gazed at the old streetlights, there for over two hundred years. He made them dim, then go black. He could go in a bad direction and he knew it. What would happen then? Would he lose his voice? Be unable to make amends?
He smoked a joint and tilted his head up. There were no stars in the sooty sky. Eighteen years of being a liar, he thought. When he looked down he saw that a creature was staring at him.
“If you’ve come for me, you’ve made a mistake,” he warned it. “I’ll turn you into a rabbit.”
The animal came close enough for Vincent to feel its hot breath. It was no rabbit, but a black German shepherd, without a collar or leash. The dog faced him with a serious expression, his eyes flecked with golden light. Vincent smiled despite his glum frame of mind. “Friend or foe?” he asked. The dog offered his paw as an answer, and they shook. “You’re very well trained,” Vincent said admiringly. “If you have no name, I’ll call you Harry after the greatest magician, Mr. Houdini. I would discuss your situation further, but it’s my birthday and I have to go home.”
The dog trailed him across Sixth Avenue, following to Greenwich Avenue. Vincent looked over his shoulder before coming to an abrupt halt. “If that’s what you have in mind we might as well walk together. We’re late for dinner.”
Vincent had no friends, yet after he’d come home, Franny overheard him conversing with someone in the entrance hall. Curious, she went to peek. There was an enormous German shepherd who waited patiently as Vincent hung up his coat. Male witches were often known to have black dogs, or so the texts in the library had stated. Immediately, Franny knew this beast was Vincent’s familiar, his double and alter ego, a creature of a different genus that had the same shared spirit.
The dog shadowed Vincent into the kitchen, then lay beneath the table, waiting for his master’s next move. Jet’s little cat let out a howl when it spied the huge dog, then leapt from Jet’s arms and raced from the room, skittering up the stairs to the safety of the second floor. The dog merely watched impassively. He clearly wasn’t about to humiliate himself by giving chase.
“Poor Wren!” Jet sighed. “Her home life has been ruined by a sibling.”
“Like ours?” Franny teased.
“You know you were both thrilled when I was born. Or did you hire that nurse to get rid of me? I could forgive you if you tell me there’s a tipsy chocolate cake,” Vincent said, far more upbeat than usual, delighted to find he could be surprised by fate.
“If you tell us who your friend is,” Franny countered. As his birthday gift, she’d wished he wouldn’t be so alone, and had burned a paper coated with honey to complete the spell, and now here he was with a companion.
“He’s Harry.” At the mention of his name the dog picked up his huge head. “He’ll be staying with us from now on.” When the sisters exchanged a look, Vincent added, “You have to admit, we won’t have any robberies with him around.”
“We wouldn’t anyway,” Franny said, “we’ve got a fixed spell on the door.” But she’d already filled a plate with chopped chicken and rice for the dog. She was pleased; everyone knew a dog was an antidote to alienation. “Happy birthday, dear Vincent.”
It was a cheerful dinner, and when it was over, Vincent took out the trash without being asked, around to the alley where there were a dozen garbage cans. He was actually whistling. After all, he’d never liked his youth, maybe he’d prefer being older. He inhaled the night air and listened to the city sounds he loved: sirens in the distance, laughter and catcalls on the street. It was then he noticed a card atop the trash can. The ink was faded, nearly invisible to the naked eye, but he managed to read the message. Abracadabra. It was Aramaic in origin, meaning I create what I speak, the most mystical and powerful blessing and curse. Begin by walking down Bleecker Street.
Vincent glanced around. No one was in sight, only the dark silky night. But he felt his pulse quicken. Clearly, he had somewhere to go.
He went out after his sisters had gone to bed. He did this nearly every night, but this time was different. He was not headed for the Jester and a night of drinking that would leave him blotto. He felt unusually elated as he headed down Greenwich to Bleecker. At the corner, he noticed the street sign was unfamiliar. It read Herring Street, the original street name of the address where Thomas Paine had lived, a name that hadn’t been used for over two hundred years. Something odd was happening. There had been a fusion between the present and the past; things that were logical and those that were impossible were now threaded together. Well, if this was the way his eighteenth birthday was to be celebrated, so be it. He was a man tonight. Legal in the eyes of New York State.
There was a mist rising from the asphalt as he followed along Grove Street, where Thomas Paine had died in 1809. In honor of Paine’s The Age of Reason, the surrounding lanes had virtue names: Art Street, now part of Eighth Street; Science Street, which became Waverly Place; and Reason Street, renamed Barrow. Only Commerce Street, running between Seventh Avenue and Barrow, was left with its initial name, a remnant of the past. Vincent realized he was headed onto an even tinier lane, one he’d never before noticed. Conjure Street. There he found a wood-and-brick town house with a knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Once he went inside, he realized it was a private club, yet no one stopped him from approaching the bar.
He ordered a whiskey, not taking note of a man who came to sit beside him until he spoke. “I’m glad you could make it,” the stranger said. “I’m a fan.”
“Of folk music?”
“Of you.”
Vincent turned to him. The man beside him wore a gray suit and a shirt made of fine linen. For some reason, Vincent felt flustered. For once in his life he fell silent.
“I hope you don’t have a rule about not talking to strangers,” the man said.
He let his hand fall upon Vincent’s arm. Vincent felt stung, yet he didn’t pull away. He just let the sting he felt go on, as if he wanted it, as if he couldn’t understand how he’d ever lived without it.
“I’ve heard you play in the park. I go most Sundays.”
Vincent’s gaze settled on the man’s dark, liquid eyes. When he tried to answer, there was a catch in his voice. He, who had talked himself in and out of trouble his entire life, who had charmed the nurse who had stolen him on the day he was born and every woman since without ever caring about a single one, had fallen silent, as if bewitched.
“I’m thinking I should be an exception to the rule. Talk to me,” the man urged. “You’ll be glad you did.” Vincent’s new companion introduced himself as William Grant, who taught history at the progressive university the New School, although he seemed far too young to be a professor. “I’ve been waiting for you to notice me, but since you haven’t, I thought I’d invite you here. The card was from me. You know as well as I do, Vincent, we don’t have all the time in the world.”
William lifted his hand away to signal to the bartender for another round. In that instant something happened to Vincent. He realized he had a heart. It came as a great surprise to him. He sat back on the barstool, stunned. So this was it, and had been all along, the way a person felt when he was enraptured, when he didn’t care about anyone else in the room, or in the city for that matter. It had finally transpired, what he had seen in the mirror, the man he would fall in love with.
They went to William’s apartment on Charles Street. If there was anything Vincent might have done to stop it he wouldn’t have done so, for this occurred only once in a person’s life, and then only if he was lucky. It happened the way things happen in a dream. A door opens, a person calls your name, your heart beats faster, and everything is familiar, yet you don’t know where you are. You are falling, you’re in a house you don’t recognize and yet you want to be here, you have actually wanted to be here all of your life.
Vincent was shocked by the depth of his feelings. All of the women he’d had and he’d felt nothing. Now he was burning, he was at someone’s mercy, embarrassed by his own need. He, who prided himself on being a loner and not caring what anyone thought, cared desperately. When William ran his hands over Vincent’s body, his blood was hot, he wanted to be here and nowhere else. In the past the sex was only about what others might do for him. He had been selfish and thoughtless, but now he was a different man entirely. What they did together was a form of magic, maddening and ecstatic.
Vincent didn’t go home that night. He didn’t care if he ate or slept or if his sisters worried over what had become of him. William set up a Polaroid camera and took photographs of them together. They appeared as if by magic, lifting off the page. In each image, they embraced each other. It seemed they were one person, and that was when Vincent began to worry. If you were one, what befell you hurt the other as well. In a sudden cold sweat, he remembered the curse.
He cared nothing about the ruination of himself; trouble didn’t have to look for him, he went right toward it. But William’s fate was another matter. Not love, he and Franny always said to each other, for look at what had happened to Jet. Anything but that. And yet Vincent stayed, unable to give up this dream he’d stumbled into, the one he’d always had but had made himself forget.
On their seventh day together Vincent fell silent, exhausted by sex and by his own fears, which now had grabbed hold of him and wouldn’t let go.
“What’s wrong?” William asked.
Vincent couldn’t bring himself to speak of the curse or let the idea of it into the room with them, even though William would have understood in a way another man would not. He was a bloodline whose relative Matthew Grant had been tried for witchcraft and then acquitted in Windsor, Connecticut, before disappearing. There was no official record of William’s ancestor after his trial, but there didn’t need to be. He’d come to New York, where the family had settled on Long Island, and William had spent every summer at his family’s house on the shore. He had an easy manner, but was direct and comfortable with himself. He’d been to Harvard, so he understood Massachusetts as well, and he’d written his thesis on John Hathorne, the witch-finder and judge who had sentenced so many of their kind to death, and several of the classes he taught at the New School centered on outsider societies.
“Do you know your fate?” Vincent asked as they lay together, entwined.
“I know yours.” William laughed. “I told you when I met you.”
“To sing in Washington Square Park?”
William grinned. “To be mine.”
When Vincent went missing Franny was worried sick the first two days, furious over the next two days, and hurt every day that followed.
“He’ll be back,” Jet insisted. “You know Vincent.”
Franny walked the dog, who continually pulled on his leash to the corner of Bleecker Street, then would stop, puzzled, refusing to walk on until Franny dragged him home. She wondered if her birthday wish had gone wrong, and had driven Vincent further away.
“You would know if something was wrong,” Jet assured her sister. “You still have the sight.”
At last Vincent phoned to say he was sorry to have been out of touch.
“Out of touch?” Franny had barely slept a wink since her brother had disappeared. “I was afraid you were murdered.”
“Worse,” Vincent told her. “I’m in love.”
“Very funny,” Franny said.
He’d had so many admirers and he’d never cared about a single one. He laughed, understanding his sister’s response. “This is different, kiddo.”
“You don’t sound like yourself.” Franny was already looking for a canister of salt and some fresh rosemary to dispel whatever afflicted him.
“I am myself,” Vincent told her.
He gave her an address and told her to come see for herself. Franny packed up the ingredients she thought she might need, then leashed the dog and took off. Vincent’s instructions were odd, however, and the streets unfamiliar. Finally she came to Conjure Street. It was dusk when she thought she saw Vincent on the stoop of an old town house, but Harry didn’t bark to greet him and it was another man who waved to her. Franny approached, suspicious. The dog, on the other hand, went right to the stranger, who introduced himself as William Grant. Although he wasn’t especially handsome he had charisma and even Franny was engaged by his manner.
“I’m meeting my brother here.” Franny was studying William more closely. His dark sensitive eyes, his intensity.
“I am as well.”
“Really?”
There had been so many people who’d been mad for Vincent; Franny assumed she’d simply come across one more admirer. She had persisted with her childhood task of watching over her brother. Every week she dropped a protection amulet into his jacket pocket, made of black cloth and bound by red thread, containing clove and blackthorn. Often, however, she found the amulets discarded in the street.
“And I’m here to meet you, too,” the fellow said. “Your brother was too shy to be here when we first spoke.”
“My brother? Shy? We’re not talking about the same person.”
William laughed. “This is all very new to him.”
“But not to you?”
“Well it is if you mean falling in love.” When Franny didn’t answer, it was William’s turn to study her. “You can’t be surprised. He thinks you knew before he did.”
She’d certainly known that Vincent had never been in love with a woman. That neighbor of their aunt’s who had seduced him, the college girls, the waitresses, the fans of his music, all were meaningless. He rarely saw them more than once, and often couldn’t remember their names. But William Grant was different. Franny knew it as soon as her brother came outside to join them. She could tell when he looked at William.
“So now you know,” Vincent said.
“I think I always knew,” Franny said.
“Well, then, now it’s out in the open.”
“I’m sure you don’t mind if we speak privately,” Franny said to William, taking her brother by the arm.
“Not at all.” They left William with the dog, who seemed perfectly content to be entrusted to this stranger.
“He has the sight,” Vincent protested as Franny directed him toward an alley. “There’s no privately. It’s all out in the open. You might as well speak in front of him.”
Her brother could be so irritating when he pretended to be dense. “You know you’re not supposed to do this,” Franny said.
“Be with a man?”
“Fall in love!” They both laughed, then Franny’s expression darkened. “Seriously, Vincent. The curse.”
“Oh, fuck it, Franny. Aren’t you sick of being ruled by the actions of people who are long dead? Maybe everyone is cursed. Maybe it’s the human condition. Maybe it’s what we want.”
Franny was truly worried. There was no one of whom she felt more protective. She thought of sitting beside his crib with a canister of salt, refusing to leave him after he’d been returned to them. She had seen a halo around him, the sign of a beautiful, but short, life. Franny had the salt with her now, but here he was with a grin on his face. And there was William Grant, watching them, concerned, clearly mad for her brother.
“Franny,” Vincent said. “Do not argue with me. Let me be who I am.”
As she threw her arms around him, she forgot about the salt and the rosemary and the curse and the ways fate could surprise you.
“Then I wish you happiness,” she said, for that was really all she’d ever wanted for him.
There was a crow on the lamppost on New Year’s Day. They’d had a small dinner, stuffing a goose with Aunt Isabelle’s recipe, which included chestnuts and oysters sure to inflame the erotic center of anyone who partook of the meal. Vincent and William took off after helping to wash up, laughing as they packed some of Vincent’s belongings. He was so often at William’s apartment it seemed he lived there. After he’d gone, Franny saw that he’d left The Magus at home, which she took to be a good sign. She went after it, thinking she would hide it under a loose floorboard in the kitchen, and perhaps Vincent would forget about it entirely. But when she went to grab the text, it burned her fingers. “Fine,” she said to the book. “As long as you leave him be.”
As Franny and Jet stored away the dishes, Jet noticed the crow in the yard. “Isn’t that Lewis?”
Franny went to greet him, having not seen him in more than two years. When she held up her arms he came to light on her shoulder. No matter what anyone said about crows, there were indeed tears in his eyes.
“Is it Haylin?” Franny asked.
The crow rested his beak against her cheek and she knew that it was. She went inside and found the phone number of Dunster House.
The crow paced on the coffee table and kept an eye on her. Jet paced as well, as Franny did her best to get through to the school. It was a holiday, and Harvard was all but deserted. At last a custodian answered. As Franny wasn’t a relative, he couldn’t give out any information.
“Don’t take no for an answer,” Jet urged. “Stand up for yourself.”
Franny pleaded with the custodian, who at last gave in, telling her that the student in question had been taken to Mass General Hospital.
“Of course you’ll go,” Jet said. “There’s no question about it.”
“But what if I ruin him?” Franny asked her sister. “Maybe I should stay.”
Franny had never before asked for her sister’s advice and Jet was somewhat startled, especially because she had not been forthcoming about her own life. She had intended not to see Rafael again, but that’s not how things turned out. They often met outside the hotel, then walked through the park. Jet read the papers he wrote for class, and later when he wrote a book about teaching kids who had been labeled unteachable he thanked her in his dedication, although no one in his family had ever met her. She had not regretted a moment.
“Go,” Jet told Franny. “What’s meant to happen will.”
Franny stored her toothbrush and an extra T-shirt in her backpack, then had Lewis climb into the cat’s carrying case, for it was too miserable a night to fly such a long distance. She took a cab to Penn Station and bought a ticket on the first train to Boston.
The car was overcrowded, and Franny had to stand until they reached New Haven, when she could finally slide into an available seat. By then she had a deep sense of foreboding. The other passengers must have felt it as well; as crowded as the train was, no one would sit next to her.
When she got to Boston she let Lewis out of his case and he lit into the sky. She stopped at a shop outside South Station and bought a bag of jelly doughnuts, then took a taxi to Mass General. This time she knew she would be questioned about her relationship to the patient. When she said she was his sister, she was told that Hay had suffered from appendicitis. His roommate had found him curled up in a fetal position, teeth chattering, unable to respond, and had frantically called an ambulance. It was touch and go, the nurse divulged as she led Franny along the hall; they had feared septic shock and Haylin was still weak.
He was in a shared room, which meant Franny had to edge past the man in the bed closest the door. He was exceedingly old and she could tell he was dying. There was a dark circle tightening around him like a shroud, instant by instant. Franny paused to take his hand, and the old man clutched at her, grateful. “Are you here to see me?” he asked. “Will you say good-bye to me?”
“Of course,” Franny assured him.
Haylin had been dozing, but he rose up through his half sleep, brought fully awake by the sound of Franny’s voice. He was pale and much thinner. There was the dark stubble of a beard on his face. The old man now soothed, Franny went on to Haylin’s bed. She dumped her backpack on the floor and lay down beside him, careful not to disturb the IV tubing inserted into his vein. She circled her arms around him.
“Franny,” he said. “You came.”
“Of course,” she said.
“It’s always been us,” Haylin said.
Franny told him how Lewis had come to the city to fetch her. “He’s never really liked me,” she said. “He’s always preferred you.”
“You’re wrong,” Haylin told her. “He’s crazy about you. I have a photograph of you on my desk and he sits there and stares at it, lovesick.” Hay chuckled, then clutched at his abdomen, in pain. Franny had brought along a protection spell. She tied a blue string that had been coated with lavender oil around Haylin’s wrist, then kissed his open hand.
“Is this to bring me back to you?” he asked.
“It’s to make you well.”
She delivered the bag of jelly doughnuts, which brought a grin to Haylin’s face. “You remembered.”
“Of course I did.”
Hay then launched into praising Cambridge, how much Franny would appreciate the narrow streets and the riverside. She could take a class or two at Radcliffe. They could get an apartment in Central Square. He had been taking extra courses, and planned to graduate a year early so they would have more time to spend together. She submitted to this dream of happiness, but only briefly, until she gazed out the window. The crow was on the windowsill, watching, his head tilted. He knew what she was thinking. She was too afraid of the curse to ever place Haylin in danger. Franny slipped off the bed. It was too difficult to be near him. She poured Haylin a cup of water.
“Franny,” he said. “We were meant to be together. Your coming here proves it.”
She had no idea what she would do next, if she would stay or go.
“You can’t leave me now,” Hay urged, and she might have said she would never leave him again, but just then a tall blond girl stepped into the room, breaking their intimacy. The girl was perhaps twenty, pretty, with a huge smile, her cheeks flushed from walking along the Charles River, which she complained about as soon as she arrived. Her sleek cap of hair was in place despite the windy day. She wore a plaid skirt and a blue cashmere sweater and a scarf knotted at her throat. She, too, carried a bag of jelly doughnuts.
“I’m freezing!” the girl declared. “And oh, my God, Hay, I was out of my mind with worry last night.” She went to Haylin’s side. “I didn’t even get to call your parents until this morning. They’ll be up tonight.” She pulled off her scarf. “I didn’t leave here until the doctor assured me a hundred percent that you were fine.”
“I am,” he said roughly, his eyes still on Franny.
The girl had been so intent on Hay she hadn’t even noticed Franny lurking by the window, wearing her ill-fitting black coat. “Oh, hello!” the girl said brightly. “I didn’t see you there.”
Lewis tapped on the window glass, but Franny was distracted. Her heart was pounding. She’d gone white as a sheet, her freckles splotchy across her pale face. “Hello,” she said. Her voice cracked with the fever of resentment.
The girl came forward and stuck out her hand. “I’m Emily Flood.”
Being in such close proximity to this interloper caused a series of images to flicker behind Franny’s eyes. “You’re from Connecticut and you went to an all-girls private school and you’re Haylin’s roommate.”
“Why yes! How did you know all that! I’m not officially a roommate, but since I’m there every night, I guess so! It’s a good thing I am. Otherwise who would have called the ambulance? Hay is so stoic. He would have shivered there uncomplaining until his appendix burst.”
“Oh,” Franny said. “It was you who saved him.”
“Franny.” Haylin seemed truly in pain now.
Emily looked at Hay, then at Franny. “You’re Franny? I’ve heard so much about you. How brilliant you are.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m actually stupid.” Franny went to retrieve the backpack she’d dropped on the floor when she climbed into bed with Haylin. “And I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
Hay got out of bed, gripping his side, lurching forward so that the IV stand nearly toppled. Emily caught the IV and righted it, but no one was paying much attention to her.
“Franny, do not leave,” Hay said. “Things changed. You were gone for two years.”
He had the nerve to reproach her with Emily Flood standing right there. If that pretty roommate of Hay’s spoke to her again, she couldn’t be held accountable for her actions.
“That’s right,” Franny said. “I didn’t get to go to school. I couldn’t be your roommate.”
She went to the door, past the dying man. The shroud was almost completely encircling him now, but he murmured his gratitude when Franny stopped to touch his forehead. She stayed until he had passed over; it was so brief, like a sigh. Then she went on, despite Hay calling out to her. She ran all the way to South Station, her heart thudding against her chest. Emily. His roommate. Well, what had she expected? She had sent him off. She had told him to go and not to look back.
On the train, Franny smoldered with fury and hurt. At Penn Station she cut a path through the crowd and walked home in the dark. That night she cried tears so black they stained the sheets. She didn’t change out of the clothes she’d worn when she was beside Haylin in bed. They still carried his scent. In the morning, she went into the garden.
Jet spied her sister from the kitchen window. She went outside and they sat together on the back steps. Snow had begun to fall but the sisters remained where they were.
“He found someone else,” Franny said.
“There will never be anyone else.”
“Well there is. Her name is Emily. She’s his roommate.”
“Only because you told him to go.”
“Either way, she’s the one who has him.” Oh, it was horrible. Franny was crying. She was mortified. She quickly buried her face in her hands. “I let him go and now he belongs to someone else. And it’s better for him that way.”
“You can love him if you want to,” Jet told Franny. The scar on her face bloomed in cold weather, turning the color of violets. “To hell with the curse. You don’t have to make the same mistakes all the other women in our family have made.”
“Why would I be any different?”
“You’ll be the one to outsmart it.”
“Unlikely,” Franny said sadly.
“You will,” Jet insisted. She didn’t have to have the sight to know this. “Wait and see.”
April Owens arrived on a Greyhound bus on a bright spring day in 1966 and walked to the Village from Forty-Second Street. It had been nearly six years since she had first met Franny and Jet and Vincent, but somehow it had felt as though she’d known them forever, so it made perfect sense to show up in New York without bothering to write or call. It was a long walk, but she didn’t mind. All she wanted was to be free. Every mortal being was entitled to that right, no matter what her history might be. April was still fierce, but now she was most fierce in her devotion to her daughter. She didn’t mind when Regina, only five and usually very good-humored, grew tired and cranky by the time they passed Pennsylvania Station, and had to be carried the rest of the way.
Regina was dressed in a T-shirt and a gauzy little skirt that she referred to as her princess outfit, but now she was an exhausted princess. She fell asleep in her mother’s arms, heavier in sleep than she had been while awake. No matter. April kept going. She was wearing jeans and a fringed vest and her long pale hair was in braids, bound with beaded leather ties. She stood out in midtown among a sea of suits and proper dresses, but as she headed downtown she looked like anybody else on the street. She found number 44 Greenwich and rang the bell. She liked what she saw. The tilted house, the trees in the garden, the shop that sold enchantments, the school yard next door where scores of children were out at play.
When Jet threw open the door, she embraced April and her daughter, who resembled Franny, though her hair was as black as Jet’s and Vincent’s. For the first time since Levi’s death Jet felt a bit of happiness when she looked into the face of the little girl. She wasn’t even grumpy to have been woken and introduced to a stranger. She was very serious and she shook Jet’s hand and said, “Very nice to meet you.”
“I can’t believe how big Regina is! And how polite! Are you sure she’s an Owens?”
“She most assuredly is.”
“You should have told us you were coming for a visit. I would have prepared something special. Now the house is a mess.”
“That’s immaterial. And this is not a visit, dear Jet. It’s a jailbreak.” April had an overstuffed backpack and a duffel bag, both of which she deposited on the couch in the parlor. There were dark circles under her eyes and she appeared drained. “My parents want to take Reggie from me. They want her to grow up on Beacon Hill and go to a private school in a chauffeured car. It’s everything I don’t want for her. Everything I wanted to escape from. They said they’d fight me in court if they had to. I think they’ve already retained a lawyer. So I’m headed to California. Let them try to find me there. This is just a pit stop. I hope you don’t mind.”
“You know you can stay as long as you’d like.”
Franny came in from the garden with a basket of herbs she had just picked, comfrey, mint, and, though it was not as often needed these days due to the birth control pill, pennyroyal. City soot had veined the herbs’ leaves black, so Franny always had to soak them in cold water and vinegar in the big kitchen sink. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the little girl.
Regina looked up at her and smiled. “You’re the good witch,” she said.
Franny laughed. She’d certainly never thought of herself that way, still she was charmed. “Have you ever heard of a tipsy cake?” she asked.
Regina shook her head no.
“Why, it’s absolutely delicious. It’s the most chocolaty chocolate you’ll ever taste. I think I’ll make you one.”
Franny nodded a greeting when April came into the kitchen in search of Regina. She thought their cousin looked the worse for the wear, with her pale hair lifeless and her already slender frame now excessively thin. “We’re just about to make a tipsy cake, but I’ll leave out the rum,” Franny said. “For Regina’s sake. I must say, this is a surprise. But then that’s your style, isn’t it? Just show up out of nowhere.”
“I won’t impose, Franny. I just need a night. We’re leaving for California tomorrow. I’ve got a ride on something called the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a van that goes cross-country.”
The little girl shivered when California was mentioned. She was so sensitive she seemed a walking prediction, as if she had the sight times two.
“You don’t think you’ll like California?” Franny asked the child.
“Maybe. But I know what happens there.”
“Which is?” Franny pressed.
“Well, people die,” the little girl said.
“For goodness’ sake,” April said. “People die everywhere.”
“You should avoid California,” Franny told her cousin. “She has a premonition. There are better places to raise your daughter.”
“You sound like my mother. Say whatever you want. I’ve made up my mind. I’ve got my degree from MIT, despite my mother’s protests. Biology. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past four years. I have a friend at a geo lab in Palm Desert. I can work there and Regina can be safe for a while.”
Jet came in to make tea. “Safe from what?”
April glanced over at Franny, who was studying the child. “You see it, don’t you?”
Franny did. There was a halo around Regina that usually indicated a shortened life span. Such people seemed more alive when they were young, filled with light. She had never told a soul that Vincent had had the same halo around him when he was a baby, and perhaps this was why she’d always been so protective of him.
Regina sat cross-legged on the floor to play with Wren. “She’s got gray eyes, Momma. Like us.”
“Of course,” Franny told the little girl. “That’s because she’s an Owens cat.”
When it came down to it, Franny was sorry she and April always had quarreled. She wished she could console her cousin, but there was no way to skirt around some things. Not when they both had the sight.
“I want her to have a happy life, a free life,” April said, resigned. “I’m going to do everything I can to see that she gets it. She’ll find that in California. People are more open there. Not so quick to judge.”
Jet had collected a pile of books for the child. “I really don’t know what you two are talking about.”
April turned to observe Jet. “You’ve lost the sight. Maybe that’s for the best.”
“I had no choice in the matter,” Jet said. “My fate wasn’t what I thought it would be.”
“I know what that feels like,” April said in a soft voice, just as the front door was falling open.
Vincent had arrived. Jet had telephoned and insisted he come to dinner. Hearing his cousins’ voices he now knew why. He wandered in with his dog at his heels and bowed to April. “To what do we owe this visit?”
“Bad luck and the need to run away.”
“It’s always the same story,” Vincent said with a grin. “Parent trouble.”
“You know so much and yet so little,” April remarked.
No one mentioned Vincent’s involvement with William. Franny because she didn’t think to do so, and Jet because she knew it would be painful news for April. She wanted this evening to be a happy time, and it was exactly that. Thankfully, April had never had the ability to get inside Vincent’s head. Regina took to him, just as she had when she was a baby. After dinner, she begged him to read aloud from Half Magic by Edward Eager, her favorite book, and he obliged. Vincent thought the novel was advanced for her age, but Regina was not a typical child. She had taught herself to read, and always carried a book with her. Vincent was especially funny when he acted out the dialogue of a cat that was half real and could only half talk. Regina was soon enough in fits of bright laughter.
Vincent’s dog was at his feet, his shadow, silent and dignified and more than a little mortified when Regina laid her cuddly stuffed bunny rabbit beside him.
“I call her Maggie,” Regina said.
“Do you?” Vincent said, giving April a grin.
“What did you expect her to call it? Mrs. Russell?” April teased.
“How did you know about that?” Vincent asked. Then he saw a look exchanged between April and Jet. “Does everyone know all the details of my life?”
“Not all,” Jet said.
“Hardly anything,” April assured him.
When the chocolate cake was ready they had it hot from the oven, served with mounds of vanilla ice cream.
“Am I allowed to have that?” Regina asked.
“Of course,” Vincent told her. “Always remember,” he whispered, “live a lot.”
Regina ate most of her cake. “You can have the rest,” she told Vincent, as she set to work on a drawing of Harry and Wren. In her rendering the two were best friends who held each other’s paws.
Vincent was charmed by the child, but when he glanced at his watch he stood up. “I’m late,” he said.
“For a very important date?” April said, blinking.
“Indeed,” Vincent said. “I’m involved with someone.”
“Don’t tell me you actually care about someone?”
“We’re not supposed to, are we?” Vincent joked.
“No,” April said. “We’re not.”
Vincent grinned and kissed the little girl good-bye on the forehead, then went out with his dog, two shadows spilling into the night. “See you when I see you,” he called over his shoulder.
“See you when I see you,” Regina called back.
“He’s still the same,” April said.
“Not completely,” Jet said. There was no need to go into details and hurt April any more than she already was.
“Vincent is Vincent, thank goodness,” Franny said as she started in on the dishes.
April shook her head. She pulled her daughter onto her lap. “Will he ever grow up?”
“Yes,” Jet said. “And we’ll be sad when he does.”
In the morning, the cousins were gone. Regina’s drawing of a black dog and a black cat had been left on the kitchen table. Franny had it framed later that afternoon, and from then on she kept it in the parlor, and even years later, when she moved and left almost everything behind, she took it with her, bundled in brown paper and string.