The Rules of Magic

by Alice Hoffman

  There was a chill in the air and Franny wore her mother’s ember spring coat and tall lace-up black boots, along with jeans and a shirt that had been Vincent’s castoff. She had an awful feeling in the pit in her stomach. A one-line message was never good. It meant there was no recourse to something that had gone wrong. For what you can fix, there are a hundred remedies. For what cannot be cured, not even words will do.

  To Franny it seemed that nothing had changed when she walked toward Magnolia Street, except that the Russells were no longer in residence. The house had been painted and two unfamiliar girls played in the front yard. Franny stopped and leaned over the fence, curious.

  “What happened to the family before you?” she asked.

  “They were stinkers,” one of the girls said.

  “We had to burn sage in all the rooms,” the older of the two sisters confided. She was all of ten. “Bad karma. We got the sage from the mean old lady at the end of the street.”

  Isabelle.

  “What made her mean?” Franny asked.

  “She always wore black and a pair of old boots,” the older sister said. The girls suddenly stopped their play and looked at Franny more carefully. Her black coat, her boots, her blood-red hair piled atop her head. “Oh,” both sisters said thoughtfully.

  The girls’ mother came to the door with a skeptical expression. “Lunch,” she called, clapping her hands. When the girls skittered into the house their mother walked onto the porch, hands on her hips, eyes fixed on Franny. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  Franny detected a stain on the porch beneath the gray paint. Crimson. She felt her face grow flushed. She knew what it was and it didn’t bode well. “What happened to Mrs. Russell?”

  “Are you a relative?”

  Sometimes the truth was the best way to find out more of the truth. “I’m Franny Owens. I think you got some sage from my aunt.”

  The neighbor continued to be wary. “What if I did?”

  “If you did, I’m glad she could help you.” The woman relented and came a little closer. She no longer seemed quite as guarded, so Franny went on. “Mrs. Russell was involved with my brother,” she explained. “So I just wondered.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing he wasn’t around when it happened. Her husband? He was kind of a mild-mannered guy? He murdered her. I take it she had all kinds of improper flirtations. We got a great price on the house because of the crime, but I’ve had to go to your aunt half a dozen times to try to rid the place of her aura. It still smells of burning rubber in the basement.”

  “Try some lavender sachets. Put them in every room and bury one under this porch.”

  “Frankly, it’s good you’re here,” the neighbor confided. “Your aunt hasn’t had the porch light on for weeks. People in town are a bit worried about her, but we all know she values her privacy.”

  Franny thanked the neighbor and walked on. October was such a tricky month. Today, for instance, it was as chilly as wintertime, but the sun was bright. The weather report predicted that the following day would be in the sixties. Vines snaking around the old house were still green, but there were no leaves, only thorns. When Franny went through the gate she noted the garden hadn’t been put to bed as it usually was at this time of year. The beds had not been raked, tender plants had not been taken into the greenhouse, where they would winter over in the faint sunshine. The new neighbor had been correct: the porch light, always turned on to let those in need of a remedy know they were welcome to call, burning for more than three hundred years, was turned off. Moths caught inside the glass dome were fluttering about helplessly.

  Finding the door unlatched, Franny shoved it open. Colder inside than out. A sign of a passing over to come. Franny kept her coat on. Her throat tightened as she walked through the house, the echo of her heels clattering on the wooden floor. There were dishes in the sink, unwashed, and dust glazed the furniture. Isabelle was always meticulous to a fault. Now there were ashes in the fireplace. Herbal encyclopedias were scattered over her bed. There was one book of poems, a present from Jet one Yule. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

  Franny came to see that the back door had been left open. A beetle squatted on the threshold. Deathwatch beetles are wood borers; they can be heard in the rafters calling for mates and there was a call from somewhere inside the ceiling. There was nothing Franny could do about the beetle hiding in the attic, but she stepped on this one and crushed it flat, then went on to the garden. The lilacs were bare but she swore she could smell their scent. If there are lilacs, her aunt had told her once as they’d worked in the garden, there will be luck. The spindly plant in the backyard of 44 Greenwich was one of the reasons she’d decided it was the right house for them.

  She went on to the greenhouse, thinking of the night she learned to make black soap, and in doing so learned who she was. The door was ajar and she peered inside. There was Aunt Isabelle sitting in a wicker chair.

  “You received my note,” Isabelle said when Franny came to her, her voice a dry rasp. Her skin was sallow and she was clearly chilled to the bone, for she wore a sweater, a coat, and a shawl. Still she trembled. “I won’t play games with you. It’s pancreatic cancer. One can’t escape every evil under the sun.”

  Franny sank onto the wicker ottoman and took her aunt’s hands in her own. Her emotions swelled into panic. “Is there no cure?”

  “Not yet.” Isabelle was honest above all things, a trait Franny admired. It was an important rule. Nature could be shifted, but not controlled. “Not for me,” Isabelle said. “But, darling, you can cure yourself. I wanted to make certain I spoke to you about this matter right away.”

  Franny smiled softly. It was so like her aunt to worry about her when she was the one who was dying. “I have no disease.”

  “You will,” Isabelle said. “Unless you love someone.”

  Franny bent to rest her head on her aunt’s knees. “You know I can’t. It’s not possible in our family.”

  “Maria Owens did what she did for a reason. She was young and she thought damning anyone who loved us would protect us. But what she had with that terrible man wasn’t love. She didn’t understand that when you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together. That is not a curse, it’s what life is, my girl. We all come to ruin, we turn to dust, but whom we love is the thing that lasts.”

  “Maybe I’m afraid of love,” Franny admitted. “It’s too powerful.”

  “You?” Isabelle scoffed. “Who chose courage? You’re stronger than you know. Which is why I’m leaving you what matters most. The book.”

  Franny raised her head, touched by her aunt’s generosity. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “Can we change what’s happening to you? You once said that just as anything whole can be broken, anything broken can be put back together again.”

  Isabelle shook her head. “Everything except for this. Death is its own circle.”

  “How long do you have?” she asked her aunt.

  “Ten days.”

  Then and there they began the work that would take ten days to complete. They shielded the furniture from daylight and dust by laying down white sheets. They made soap out in the garden, the best batch that had ever been prepared. If used once a week it could take years off a person’s appearance. They wrapped the portrait of Maria Owens in brown paper and string for storage, then put bay leaves and cloves in the closets to keep moths away. They telephoned Charlie Merrill, who could be trusted to keep their business private, and had him exterminate the attic and the rafters to rid the house of beetles. Before he left, they asked him to fashion a plain pine coffin and to please do so quickly. He stood there, blinking, choked up and not knowing quite what to say to Miss Owens.

  “I can’t do that,” he said, distraught.

  “Of course you can. And I’ll appreciate it, just as I’ve appreciated all of your hard work over the years,” Isabelle told him.

  She handed him a check for ten thousand dollars
, since she had been underpaying him for fifty years, and when he protested she simply wouldn’t hear anything more.

  “We have too much to do to argue,” she said and off she and Franny went to the pharmacy, where they ordered hot fudge sundaes with marshmallow cream at the soda fountain.

  “Much too fattening,” Aunt Isabelle said. Her hand shook each time she lifted the spoon.

  “But we don’t care,” Franny said, though she had noticed that Isabelle was only taking small bites and that her silver sundae cup was overflowing with melted ice cream.

  They saw to all of their chores, readying the house and the garden, and on the eighth day, when Aunt Isabelle could barely walk, they had Charlie take them to the law firm in Boston that the Owens family had always used. There a will was taken from a file. It had been drawn up after Franny had come to spend the summer. Isabelle now confided that she had known right then. Franny was the next in line.

  Once they’d been ushered into a private office, they sat in oxblood-red leather chairs facing the lawyer, Jonas Hardy, a young man with sad, moody eyes. His father and grandfather and great-grandfather had all worked for the Owenses. He shyly addressed Franny. “You are the trustee for your brother and sister when it comes to the house, in which you have equal shares. Everything else, however, goes directly to you. That includes all belongings: furniture, dishes, silver. There is a trust used to manage the house, so you never have to worry about taxes or upkeep. But you can never sell the house, you understand.”

  “Of course she understands,” Isabelle said. “She’s not a nincompoop.”

  Franny signed the necessary papers, then they had tea and sugar cookies.

  “Your aunt gave me this tea when I first met her,” Jonas Hardy said. “She sends a box here to the office every year.” He lifted his cup. “Thank you, Miss Owens!”

  Franny took a sip. Courage.

  They all shook hands when the papers had been signed and the tea had been drained to the last drop, and then Franny and her aunt got into Charlie’s waiting car, and they navigated the bumpy streets of Boston, which had been cow paths when Maria Owens first came to set up the initial trust for her daughter and her granddaughter and all the daughters to follow. Aunt Isabelle rested her head back and dozed. She woke once when they hit a pothole and was clearly disoriented. “Is this New York?”

  “No. We’re going home,” Franny assured her.

  When they arrived at Magnolia Street, Franny brought her aunt into the house and up to bed. She helped Isabelle undress and gently pulled her nightgown over her head. Her aunt was still shivering, so Franny found some wool socks and a knitted shawl. She brought in a basin of warm water and used a soft washcloth to clean her aunt’s face and hands with black soap. In the morning she phoned Jet and Vincent and told them to come. They rented a car and arrived on the afternoon of the ninth day, having sped along the Mass Pike at ninety miles an hour, fearing that time was against them. They trooped into the house and, without bothering to remove their coats, came to sit at the foot of Isabelle’s bed. They were all silent, too dazed for any emotion. All three had been half convinced Aunt Isabelle would live forever. What was happening seemed impossible. Things ended, and then they began again, only they would begin without Isabelle.

  A sparrow darted inside the house and flew around the room. Franny fetched a stepladder from the linen closet, climbed up, and held out her hand. “Don’t come back here on Midsummer’s Eve,” she told the bird. “There won’t be anyone here to rescue you.”

  Because there was a wind from the north, and their aunt’s condition was precarious, Franny took the sparrow down to the stairwell landing so she could pry open the green glass above the window seat. She watched as the bird lifted into the air. When she turned she was stunned. Her aunt was beside her.

  “How did you get here? Let me help you back to bed,” Franny said.

  “I want to give you this.” There on the velvet seat cushion was Maria Owens’s sapphire. Franny had read about it in Maria’s journal, the jewel her lover had given to her. “Wear it and your heart will come back to you. Do it now.”

  Because her aunt was so insistent, Franny slipped on the necklace, tucking it under her blouse. It was surprisingly warm.

  Jet came to the top of the stairs and called to Franny. “Hurry. She’s failing.”

  “No. She’s right here.” But when Franny looked there was no one beside her. She ran upstairs, where her aunt signaled for her to come near. Franny went to her bedside and knelt down beside her.

  “Oh, dear aunt,” Franny said. “I have so many more things I want to discuss with you. You can’t go now.”

  “I don’t make all the decisions, you know,” Isabelle managed to say. “I just do the best I can to face what life brings. That’s the secret, you know. That’s the way you change your fate.”

  Vincent had edged closer to the door. His face was ashen. It was an awful sight to see such a strong woman become so weak, like a moth folding up on itself. “I don’t know if I can stay,” he murmured.

  “You’ll stay,” Franny told him. “We owe her that and more.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” Isabelle managed to say.

  Franny patted her arm. “Don’t exert yourself,” she urged their aunt.

  Isabelle had very little energy. She gestured for Franny to lean in as she spoke her last words. No one heard but Franny, for the message was a final gift, and one that brought Franny to tears.

  When Isabelle sighed, the last of her breath rose to the ceiling, then followed the path of the sparrow, into the hallway, down the stairs, out the window. By then the house was dark. Somehow night had fallen. It was after midnight. The tenth day. Time had passed so quickly they hadn’t even noticed.

  The sisters washed their aunt with warm water and black soap, then dressed her in white. They went down to the garden, where the night was starry and clear. Later, Charlie came with his sons to carry their aunt down from her room in the coffin. She was taken in their van to the old cemetery where the children’s parents had been buried. They knew she didn’t want any fanfare, therefore no service was held. They sent a telegram to April in California, and to the Owenses in Maine, and to the ones in Boston, with the date and time of Isabelle Owens’s death. Contributions in her name could be made to the town library. Charlie’s two sons, who had been cured of drug addiction and thievery by Isabelle Owens, and who’d always been afraid to look her in the eye, wept as they lowered the coffin. Jet had phoned April when they’d learned Isabelle had taken ill, and April had sent a huge flower arrangement of white roses and ferns. Jet gave the blessing from the book of poems she had given her aunt.

  In this short Life

  That only lasts an hour

  How much—how little—is

  Within our power.

  “She was a good woman,” Charlie said.

  Vincent insisted on refilling the grave himself. He stripped off his black jacket and his boots and socks, then labored, digging, until he was sweating through his white shirt. He’d brought along a bottle of whiskey, and they all toasted to the memory of Isabelle Owens.

  When Franny told her brother and sister they had inherited the house, all three knew they needed to return to Manhattan. As they were bound not to sell the property they would let it stand empty. Franny hired Charlie to be the caretaker, to make certain that no one vandalized the house in the absence of any tenants, and ensure that vines or roots which might disturb the plumbing or the foundation be cleared away. When they returned to the house, Franny gave Charlie the chickens, and said they might be reclaimed someday, but until then he was entitled to all the eggs they would lay.

  When the Merrills had gone, Jet came to stand beside her sister. They looked out at the garden, which had now turned to straw. Isabelle had done all of the autumn planting, but she wouldn’t see anything bloom in the spring. “What did she say to you at the end?” Jet asked. She’d been wondering ever since their aunt had whispered something that had
brought Franny to tears.

  “She said you and I should share the Grimoire. She said the sight would come back to you.”

  A blister arose on Franny’s tongue as she spoke. Ever since she and Jet had shared a room, they had shared all that they had, but the one thing Franny wanted to keep for herself was her aunt’s last words.

  Jet took her sister’s hand. “You were her favorite.”

  It was true. Early that morning Franny had found a card Isabelle had left under her pillow. If there be a cure, seek till you find it. If there be none, never mind it.

  Today everything smelled earthy, the rich scent of mulch and decaying leaves and roots. It was an ending and a beginning, for the month itself was like a gate. October began as a golden hour and ended with Samhain, the day when the worlds of the living and the dead opened to each other. There was no choice but to walk through the gate of time. Franny had already packed up her suitcase and carried the Grimoire with her. The book, and all it contained, was now theirs.

  While they waited for Vincent to shower and change, the sisters took a final inventory of the house. They found the keys to the front door in the silverware drawer, and Isabelle’s bankbook in the vegetable bin. They packed up the remedies stowed in the cabinets into several boxes that would fit neatly in the trunk of the rented car.

  The sisters sat in the shade of the arbor beside the shed. Wisteria grew here in spring and spread out like a canopy; grapes twisted along the structure in late summer. The town was sleepy, but without Aunt Isabelle’s presence it was empty as far as Franny and Jet were concerned. They were tempted to uncover the black mirror in the greenhouse and take one last peek at the future, but they restrained themselves. Instead, they crammed the car with belongings, locked the front door, and cut down an armful of bare lilac branches to take with them before latching the gate. What the future would be was yet to be discovered. As for the past, they already knew it too well.