by Mary Rickert
“With all this talk of being bad girls,” Mavis says, her hand shaking slightly as she fumbles with the cigarette, “I take it, Ruthie, you no longer believe?”
“Believe? Of course I believe! Oh, wait, are you saying you…do you mean…you…well, don’t be silly. Are we talking about magic? Who would believe in such nonsense? Not me, that’s for sure.”
Nan is stunned. How could she not have thought of this possibility?
“Ruthie?”
“Yes, Nan?”
“I don’t understand what… It’s wonderful to see you after all these years.”
“I feel the same way. I thought we would never see each other again. When I think of how often I wished I could call you girls, well, that’s water under the table now, isn’t it? What’s done is done. Who would have guessed? When we were young?”
“Guessed what?”
“Well, you know”—Ruthie frowns—“how long the past is. The way it just goes on and on.”
Ruthie always did have a way of veering off subject, and Nan refuses to be dragged into one of her wanderings now. “This isn’t about us. We need to talk about Bay.”
“Well, that’s my pointer,” Ruthie says. “We need to let go of the past so it doesn’t weigh down the child.”
Nan and Mavis exchange a look.
“Even as we speak, there is a circle, yes there is, a prayer circle I meant to say, in my community for Bay, and us as well. I asked them to remember all of us. Don’t look so worried. I didn’t tell them why. I just said we could use their help, isn’t that right?”
Nan mumbles a thank you as she pulls the chair away from the computer table and sits, suddenly possessed of a need for more wine.
“Now, look,” Ruthie says. “We’ve come to this naturally. We are in perfect position for a circle ourselves.”
Mavis coughs, or gasps. She makes some indefinite noise between the two. Nan rises to fill a glass with water, but Mavis waves her away, and the strange noise dissipates into a throat clearing, during which she scowls at Ruthie. When silence finally settles on the kitchen, it seems unusually thick.
“Ruthie, honey?”
Ruthie, who is looking at Mavis as though she emits a sour odor, turns to Nan with a beatific smile. “Yes?”
“I think, what I need to know, what I wonder after all these years, it’s just lovely, I mean, just lovely to see you again.”
“I feel the same.”
“Yes. But what I wonder, now that the conversation has turned this way. I understand that you, yourself, don’t believe in…well, you know, but how do you feel about, well…believers?”
Ruthie sits up, her posture, from the top of her copper-colored hair to the soles of her white-shoed feet flat on the floor, erect. She pulls her lips in tight, a morning glory shut against the dark. “Sinners? Is that the word you’re looking for?”
Mavis breaks into another coughing fit. This time Ruthie fills a glass with water. Nan studies the way Mavis arches her neck, hunching into herself, making a rather convenient ruckus, which stops abruptly when she takes the glass Ruthie offers, eyeing Nan over the rim.
“Ruthie, what I’m trying to understand is what you would do if you found out someone was an actual witch?”
Ruthie, her lips pressed thin, her eyebrows drawn close to her narrow nose, shakes her head. “No, no, no,” she says as if accused. “What are you saying? Is this some kind of trick? Did my husband put you up to this?”
“I’m talking about the way we were. I don’t even know your husband.”
“Well, you’re beginning to sound an awful lot like him. I think we can all agree that life is not a fairy tale.”
“Well no, of course not,” Nan says. “But we did read her book, didn’t we? We did try a few things. Remember?”
Ruthie’s hands are folded neatly in her lap, her lips pursed. She shakes her head. “We were playing. We didn’t understand. We were practically children ourselves. We weren’t”—she leans over to whisper the word—“witches.”
“All right then,” says Nan. “What about Miss Winter?”
“What about her?”
“Let’s say she lived here. Next door, for instance.”
“But, Nan, you don’t have any neighbors.”
“Pretend I did. It doesn’t have to make sense, Ruthie. I’m just trying to understand your position. Say, through some impossible way, Miss Winter was my neighbor today—”
“She would be well over a hundred years old by now!”
With an exhalation, Nan slumps in her chair.
Mavis raises her gaze from the glass. “What Nan is asking,” she says, drawing out the words, “is what you would do if you met a witch today?”
“A real witch?”
Mavis nods.
Ruthie looks from Mavis to Nan, settling at last to stare at some distant point between them. “Obviously, I would pray for that person to be released from evil.”
“But, Ruthie,” Nan says, “what if the person, you know, is young?”
“Young?” Ruthie says as though it is a dirty word. “Well, that would be easy enough then, wouldn’t it? The young can be retrained. Also, I’d consult an exorcist.”
Mavis, her spotted hand shaking, fumbles with the matchbook tucked into the cellophane of the cigarette package, dropping it at her feet. Ruthie leans over, but Mavis makes an odd noise—a bark? a growl?—picks it up herself, strikes the flap, and lights the long-abused cigarette.
“Ruthie, what did you think when I told you about what happened to Bay at the river?”
“Well, I, Nan, you can’t be—”
“We understood you were speaking figuratively,” Mavis says.
“Well, of course. Nan, you can’t be thinking…oh my. Nan, Nan, Nan. People get stuck in ghostwort all the time without drowning. You can’t possibly believe that sweet child out there is a witch?”
Ghostwort? Nan has never heard of such a thing. Ruthie has been mixing up words all day, and somehow she turned duckweed into ghostwort. Nan smells the sharp odor of salt permeating the scent of lemon, smoke, and the flower-scented dish soap before she even opens her mouth, but what is she supposed to do? It’s obvious she can’t tell the truth.
“Don’t be silly. Of course I don’t think Bay is a witch.”
“Well, I hope not. Teenagers are difficult, Nan. It’s just their nature. Why, my own Billy got so upset he shot his father once.”
“He shot his father?”
“Just a graze. He suffers from poor impulse control, as well as poor aim.” Ruthie sighs. “A trait that runs in the family.”
Nan starts to speak, but is cut short by a sharp throat clearing from Mavis. It is just as well. How can things be so completely messed up before they’ve even begun?
“Time for bed,” Mavis says, looking meaningfully at Nan. “We can take care of this mess in the morning.”
“Bed?” Ruthie squints at the stove-top clock. “Oh my heavens, well would you look at that? I had no idea it was so late.”
“I told the boy to stay the night.” Mavis turns to Nan, blowing smoke in Ruthie’s face. “He’s a bit drunk.”
Nan wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to Howard, who seemed to enjoy the evening thoroughly and did appear especially fond of the wine, but where will he sleep?
“I told him we’d set a pillow and blanket on the couch. You have a couch, don’t you?”
Nan nods even as she muses over Mavis’s use of “we.” Mavis isn’t going to set up a bed for Howard any more than she helped with dishes or dinner. She certainly won’t wake up in the morning to tidy the kitchen. That’s just the way Mavis is and has always been. Nan is too tired to think about this now. Her plans are in complete disarray. How can she possibly make sure Bay will have the life she deserves, with Ruthie lurking about, threatening an exorcism, and Mavis too lazy to help?
>
When Mavis struggles to stand, Ruthie and Nan move to assist her, but she ignores them, walking over to the kitchen counter, where she takes one final, languishing puff on her cigarette before tamping it out into the saucer. “I don’t know about you two,” she says, “but I’m ready for bed.”
“Aren’t we going to pray?”
“You go ahead, why don’t you?”
“Nan?”
“I have to get Howard’s bed set up. Mavis is right, Ruthie, this can wait until morning.”
Nan walks down the hall, past the dining room to the narrow window beside the front door, where she parts the lace curtain, looking for Bay and Howard.
It’s not prayer that bothers Nan, but the fact that Ruthie’s sense of what is good and evil puts Bay on the side of corruption. What have I done? Nan thinks.
“What are you looking for, Ruthie’s torchbearers?”
Nan takes half a step sideways to accommodate Mavis at the window. “I don’t know what I was thinking. How silly of me to believe she stayed the same all these years.”
“Oh?” Mavis says. “Do you think she’s changed?”
Of the three of them, it had been Ruthie who had to have it explained. No, Eve had not just gained a little weight. No, she wasn’t crying tears of joy.
“What are you staring at?”
“It is like old times, after all,” Nan says. “Isn’t it?”
Mavis laughs, a broad cackle that reminds Nan of Grace Winter laughing in the garden all those years ago when Nan asked what herbs repel a man.
They stand at the window, like ghosts themselves, Nan thinks, sentenced to watch life on the other side of darkness. For a moment, she smells the scent of honeysuckle, a pleasant odor in spite of its implications, quickly followed by the taste of ash. What is she doing? What has she done? She steals a look at Mavis, hoping to discover an unmined tenderness in her countenance, but Mavis stares straight ahead, a strange expression on her face as if, she too, has the flavor of death in her mouth.
MOONFLOWER Moonflower, used for centuries as an intoxicant, provides protection against evil spirits, but is highly dangerous and can kill.
On certain August nights there is a promise of rain that carries with it the scent of summer: the ripe odor of dirt, the lingering effusion of dew on grass, the rich fragrance of chocolate mint, the stony scent of water, and the sweet aroma of moonflower intoxicating anyone who breathes.
This is such a night, and Bay, who sipped only a little wine, feels deliciously drunk (or what she imagines of drunkenness) lying in the backyard, her arms opened wide, embracing the dark, while Howard lies beside her, reciting one of his poems.
“What tree within its limbs knows sin?
What flower within its stamen?
I am not a wild thing,
A rooted weed or demon.
What night would cast its stars to sea?
What morning rejects its sun?
This is a natural course
Though I often wonder
What it means to live
Without being denied my water?”
What is he talking about? Bay has no idea, but what does it matter? She is hugging the night, though truthfully, she would rather be hugging Howard. Who cares about Wade Enders pulling her from the duckweed’s grasp? Who cares about the beating of her heart as she stood there, adjusting her twisted swimsuit while Mrs. Desarti made a big production out of Bay almost drowning? Who cares about the slimy bits she found hanging in her hair later, remembering then the way she smiled at Wade, not knowing how she looked? Who cares that he turned out to be as mean as the others? Who cares (she is almost positive) that he, just before, hollered out the car window? Who cares about stupid Wade Enders when there’s a boy lying on the grass beside her, reciting poetry?
“I guess that one’s a piece of shit too,” Howard says.
“No, oh no, it’s good. It really is. Mavis doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
Howard looks at Bay with the kind of expression she imagines an older brother might give his sister, which is not the expression she was hoping for.
“You know, you’re lucky to have all these old ladies around.”
“I am?”
“They know stuff. At least Mavis does. You should take advantage. Learn something while you can.”
Bay feels vaguely insulted. Is he implying that Mavis is the only one who knows anything?
“My Nana teaches me a lot. Once we made dandelion wine, though that didn’t turn out too good. We make lavender soap every summer. Well, I help with the beginning, and she does the rest. I know she’s kind of different, I mean that’s obvious, but she’s also kind of wise, actually.” Bay is surprised to hear herself say this. She would never say it to anyone at school, where such a confession would almost certainly be cruelly used against her.
Howard rolls on his side, playing with the blades of grass. (Bay can’t help but think that her hair would make a much better place for his fingers.) “What happened to your parents?”
The circumstances are so well known that no one asks Bay anymore. “Nana found me on her porch.” She hardly ever has to think how strange her birth story is, weird enough even before she learned about the caul. Strange, strange, “strange.” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. She shoots a look at Howard. “What are your parents like?” she asks, hoping to deflect more questions.
Howard squints at Bay as though she is disappearing, then rolls onto his back. Bay stretches her bare foot, accidentally scraping his pant leg, sending a delightful tingle through her body.
“Do you ever feel like the sky might crush you?” he asks.
Sometimes, Bay feels like her ribs squeeze into her, that she is not being held together by that structure of bone, but imprisoned by it. Trina Heckworth, walking down the school hallway, even when ignoring Bay, gives her that feeling, because when Trina isn’t absorbed in conversation with her own group of friends or smiling up at Dale, she locks her bright eyes on Bay, leans her head back, and pretends to howl, like a wolf. Bay acts like she doesn’t even notice, though of course she does. Bay sometimes feels like she is being crushed, not from the sky, but from within, as though she can’t survive herself. But Bay doesn’t want Howard to know what a freak she is. He hasn’t seemed to realize it yet, and she doesn’t want to give him any hints to look for it in her. “No,” she says, “I never felt like that.”
“Right. You’re all set, aren’t you? Living here in your enchanted kingdom, huh?”
Bay doesn’t know why Howard sounds mean all of a sudden. It makes her heart skip a beat. Is he one of them? Is he a tormentor too? “There’s a boy living in our garden.”
“What? Where?” He sits up (which Bay is sorry to have induced, because it was nice to have his face so near) frowning at the shoe planters as though he expects to see a fairy-sized child among the wild strawberries or hanging from the foxglove.
“Back there. In the forest.”
“Does Nan know about him?”
“He’s a runaway,” she says. Then it occurs to her to try something she never thought she’d attempt. “He’s pretty cute.”
“Oh yeah?”
Bay nods, pleased that Howard’s face, which she only recently assumed could bear no unpleasant expression, does. “He’s good-looking, for a boy.” She emphasizes the word “boy,” meaning to say that he is not in the same league as Howard, who is, after all, in college.
“I can’t believe she told you,” Howard says.
From her position lying on the ground, Bay thinks Howard looks particularly handsome, the bruise on his cheek swallowed by shadows.
“It’s not like I’m ashamed, ’cause I’m not. It’s just I told her in confidence.”
Bay mentally goes over their conversation, trying to understand what he is talking about. Howard is acting unreasonable, and
Bay believes that unreasonable behavior is one of the signs of jealousy. She’s sorry she mentioned Karl now. What was she thinking? Who did she think she was? Just to make everything worse (and okay, a little better, because she does feel some relief from the interruption) Nan is standing in the yard, calling. “I’m out here,” Bay shouts, and, “Coming, Nana.” She presses against the ground to stand, glancing at Howard, who sits with his shoulders hunched as though the night has turned suddenly cold. “I’ll be right back,” she says, though she’s not sure she will be. He’s acting so strange.
Nan takes a good look at Bay when she comes walking out of the darkness, blades of grass tangled in her red hair, an odd expression on her face. “Are you all right?”
“Sure, Nana. Great.”
“What were you doing?”
“Talking.”
Nan sniffs. She smells the vague hint of rain and the flowers’ perfume, particularly heavy with their last gasp of life, and that sour smell from way in the back where something has died, but there is no trace of salt.
“I think I made him jealous,” Bay says.
“Jealous of who?”
“I told him about a boy I think is cute.”
Nan notes that Bay wears an expression much like the one Nicholas assumes after he has had his saucer of milk. Nan squints into the moonlit night until she locates Howard, sitting all the way at the back of the yard, gesticulating as though talking to someone.
“It’s late, Bay, we have a big day ahead of us, and Howard is drunk. I think he might be quite drunk, actually. He can’t drive home. He’ll have to stay the night.”
“Really?” In spite of his very recent behavior, Bay feels a tingle of excitement at the thought of having Howard as an overnight guest. “I’ll tell him,” she says.
“No. You go to bed.” Nan is still not sure how much time she wants Bay spending with the boy. After all, he is an odd boy and while Nan normally considers oddity an attribute, she won’t risk Bay’s safety.
Bay watches her Nana walk carefully across the yard toward Howard, who is either talking to himself, the lilacs, or Karl. Bay is kind of relieved she doesn’t have to find out which. Howard was right, in a way, when he said that living here must be like living in an enchanted kingdom. When I was a little kid, I really believed it was, she thinks as she walks up the back steps and opens the screen door. She used to pretend the house and yard were a land called “Forever.” How could she have forgotten that for so long?
