Six Times a Charm

by Deanna Chase

  When the coughing finally died away, she accepted the water, sipping it slowly. After emptying the glass, she set it firmly on the counter. She gathered up her apron and used the hem to wipe at her eyes. She turned to the sink and washed her hands, lathering them up like a surgeon getting ready to enter the operating room.

  “Gran!” I said, when she started to pick up the saucers as if nothing had happened. “How long have you had that cough?”

  “It comes and goes.”

  “Comes and goes! It sounds like you’ve got pneumonia!”

  “It’s allergies. You know, the changing seasons always get to me.”

  I knew that spring always got to her. Spring, and its pollen. My grandmother had never had a problem with ragweed, or mold, or burning leaves. As if anyone still burned leaves in the fall. “You’ve never had problems in September before.”

  “I’m fine, Jane. Just fine.” She patted my hand and turned to the door, only to draw herself up short. “If you really are worried, though, there is one thing you can do, dear.”

  “What?” I would do whatever she asked. Run out to the drug store. Phone her doctor’s emergency line. Take her to the hospital.

  “Make me a promise.”

  “Gran!”

  “Promise me that we’ll go to the Smithsonian, next Saturday. A week from tomorrow. The Natural History Museum, like we used to visit when you were a little girl.”

  “Gran, I haven’t—”

  “Promise me! The three of us will go—you, me, and your mother.”

  I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell her that I had work to do. I wanted to make up some hot date, or some important library meeting, or some absolute need to wash my hair.

  But her coughing fit had frightened me. My grandmother wasn’t going to be around to extract promises forever.

  And, I had to admit, there was a teeny, tiny part of me that wanted to give Clara one more try. After all, she was my biological mother. And we’d spent less than an hour together. Her whole cult thing couldn’t possibly be as alarming as I’d made it out to be. And she certainly couldn’t be as into crystals as she’d seemed.

  “All right, Gran. Next Saturday.”

  “Wonderful. We’ll meet at the elephant. At 10:00.”

  The giant bull elephant was in the building’s rotunda; it greeted thousands of amazed tourists every single day. I had marveled at him when I was a little girl, inventing long, involved stories about his elephant wife and elephant children, and their happy lives in the African bush. Father, mother, perfect kids. Life was simple back then.

  “Now you bring in the tart, dear. We’ll serve it out here.” Then my grandmother swept into the living room, apologizing for her delay and serving up coffee, tea, tart, and crumbling cookies.

  I found myself sitting next to Samuel Potter, an old friend of Uncle George and the newest member of the concert opera guild board. “So, Jane,” he said. There was a glimmer in his eye, and I suspected that he pulled coins out of his own granddaughters’ ears. “Do you come to these little get-togethers every month?”

  “Oh, no. Only when I can help with the Gala planning.” That sounded wrong, as if I thought there was something wrong with opera, or with the board gatherings. I added, “I’m usually too busy at work.”

  “And where do you work?”

  “At the Peabridge Library.”

  “Is that part of D.C. Public?”

  I knew two things by the way he asked the question. First, he was a librarian, or someone he knew was one. We librarians were all hip and happening folks; we dropped “Library” from the names of major systems because we all knew what we were talking about. I had once dreamed of being a reference librarian at “New York City Public”, until Melissa told me that I sounded totally affected, phrasing it that way.

  The other thing, though, was more important: My magic spell was still working. I recognized the expression on Mr. Potter’s face; I’d come to know it well over the past couple of weeks. He was nowhere near as smitten as poor Harold Weems, but Mr. Potter was attracted to me. Not in an icky, dirty old man way. Rather, in an avuncular way. I thought that he might buy me a box of salt water taffy, or invite me to an ice cream social. And there was a part of me that was pleased to have that effect on him.

  I really had meant to ask David about that spell. About ways to soften its effect, or to withdraw it altogether. I’d forgotten, though, the night before. We’d had too many other things to talk about.

  Withdrawing from the only good memory of the night before, I smiled at Mr. Potter. “No, the Peabridge is a private library. We specialize in colonial America.”

  “Ah! I’ve walked by your place! You’re over by the University, right? In the heart of Georgetown?”

  I agreed that we were. Mr. Potter told me that he took his dog for a walk near us almost every evening. The shih-tzu had actually belonged to Mrs. Potter, but poor Lucinda had passed away about six months before. She was the one who had been a librarian, a cataloger. She’d always loved the profession.

  “I’m sorry that I didn’t have the chance to meet her, Mr. Potter.”

  “Aren’t you a dear.” He patted my hand. “She spoiled that silly dog as if it were her own flesh and blood baby. We were never blessed with children.”

  So much for his pulling coins from his granddaughters’ ears. Now I wanted to pat his hand. He shook his head, though, as if he were well-accustomed to changing his mood by force of will. “So tell me, dear. What do you do at the Peabridge?”

  “I’m a reference librarian by training.” Because I was at the board meeting of an arts society, I felt compelled to add, “But I’ve become involved with development lately.” Development. Not fund-raising. I’d picked up the lingo in the course of drafting my grant applications.

  “Have you now? What sort of projects are you working on?”

  “I’ve started to apply for grant funding. We’ve got several specific projects that we want to take on, cataloging our collection of manuscripts, developing a system to track all of our ephemera.”

  “Ah… My Lucinda would have loved to talk to you about those things. When we lived in Indianapolis, she got our little opera library in order. She organized all of the sheet music, along with the archives of programs, production notes….”

  “She sounds like a very interesting woman. Dedicated, too.”

  “She would have loved the Harvest Gala,” Mr. Potter said. His eyes started to look sad again, but he speared a bite of pear tart into his mouth. “Oh! This is wonderful!” He smiled at me conspiratorially. “Much better than those nasty cookies from the Watergate.”

  I laughed out loud, and then I needed to make up an explanation when Uncle George asked me what was so funny. I didn’t want him to think that I disrespected Gran’s choices, even if she did woefully misjudge baked goods.

  The rest of the evening passed quickly. Gran led the review of plans for the Gala. Ticket sales were strong. The reach-out program to local universities seemed to have worked; there were more young people (everyone turned to smile at me) than the Guild had seen in years. The caterer was an opera fan himself, and he was upgrading the hors d’oeuvres as a donation to the Guild. The silent auction was organized; a fussy-looking woman sitting on the chaise lounge had agreed to print out the bid sheets on her home computer.

  In fact, the meeting would have been perfect, if Gran had not succumbed to two more coughing fits. The first one left her surrounded by her fellow board members, each trying to help in perfectly ineffective ways, passing over glasses of water, trying to fan her with napkins, patting the backs of her hands. The second fit must have given her some warning; she said that she had something to check on in the kitchen and escaped before it grabbed hold completely.

  I followed her out of the room, trying to avoid setting off an alarm among the guests even as I moved quickly. The spasm wasn’t as bad as its predecessors, and Gran caught her breath quickly. “Silly me. I must have swallowed something wrong.”
r />   “Don’t play around with this, Gran. If you’re still coughing tomorrow, I want you to phone Dr. Wilson.”

  “He doesn’t want to waste his time with the likes of me. Especially on the weekend.”

  “You’re not a waste of time. You’re his patient.”

  She made a noise that sounded like, “Pshaw.”

  “Gran,” I said. “Come on, now. Promise me. You’re the only grandmother I’m ever going to have, and I don’t want to see you suffer like this for no reason.”

  She smiled at the mock warning tone in my voice. She’d used it often enough on me. “Fine, Jane. I promise.”

  By the time we returned to the living room, the meeting was breaking up. I collected another round of compliments on my pear tart and a handful of avowals that I would make some lucky man an excellent wife. I had my cheek pinched my Mr. Potter, and I submitted to a slobbery farewell from Uncle George. It took half an hour to gather up the china and wash it, another half hour to return all the finery to its properly appointed cabinets.

  As I slipped my coat from the hall closet, Gran rested her palm against my cheek. “Thank you, dear. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “You’d do just fine, and you know it. Besides, I enjoyed the meeting. I think the Gala is going to be wonderful.”

  “I certainly hope so.” She smiled. “It’s late, sweetheart. Why don’t you just go sleep in your old room?”

  Gran had kept my bedroom set up, almost as a shrine. It had last been decorated when I was sixteen years old. Although I had torn down the movie star posters and taken the high school yearbook photos from the frame of my mirror, I couldn’t do anything about the Barbie pink color that I had once thought was the height of sophistication. I’d tried to convince Gran that she should convert my bedroom into a home office, but she just laughed and reminded me that she didn’t work from home. And I have to admit, a part of me was pleased that everything was just the way I’d left it.

  Of course, I couldn’t sleep in Gran’s apartment. I had to go home and feed Stupid Fish. I had to make sure that Neko had not gotten into any trouble. I had to start organizing those books in the basement; there were several spells that David had mentioned the night before that seemed intriguing.

  Besides, Jason might have called.

  My life was much more complicated than Gran needed to know. I laughed as if I thought she was joking about my spending the night. She sighed but saw me to the door. “Now, you aren’t going to take a bus at this hour are you?”

  “Of course not, Gran. I’ll take a cab.”

  “I can give you money.”

  “I don’t need your money.” I patted my purse. “I’ve got my own.”

  “Promise!” she insisted.

  “I promise!”

  My fingers were still crossed as I walked out the door of her apartment building and headed up the street. I went two blocks north, up to Calvert, so that there was no possible way for her to see me getting on to the 42R. My timing was good. I only needed to wait five minutes, and I got a seat at the front of the bus. I wondered if I could find a spell to make all of my transportation endeavors work so flawlessly.

  Chapter 17

  I stared out the window of the yoga studio, cursing my choice of “scissors” that had succumbed to Melissa’s “rock.” Unaware of my thoughts, the instructor was saying, “Today, we’re going to work on inverted poses. We’ll start with a supported shoulderstand.”

  I wondered if our colonial fathers had ever considered using the asana, instead of placing people in public stocks for humiliating punishment. Taking a deep breath, I met Melissa’s game smile. “I love this,” she whispered to me. “I feel so strong when the energies shift to my head.”

  Strong was not the word I would think of. Silly, maybe. Foolish. Completely and utterly out of balance.

  The yoga instructor was undaunted. “The pose is called Salamba Sarvangasana. It is extremely important that you do it properly. You must not turn your head to either side, or you risk serious neck injury. You can use a blanket if you’d like, folded once on top of your mat, but don’t give yourself any more padding. You can hurt yourself badly with this posture.”

  Okay, now I was getting a little afraid. There were more qualifications for contorting my body than there were for working magic. It sounded like the instructor was doing her best to keep from being sued. I imagined my legs, kicking up into the posture. I saw myself toppling sideways, knocking over Melissa to my right and sending her falling into the next three students. I envisioned myself in a hospital bed, tied to one of those strange triangular bars that looked like an oversized instrument from a giant child’s music class. I saw the bandages wrapped around my head and neck, turning me into a classic mummy.

  I sat back on my heels.

  “Come on,” Melissa whispered. “Just try it once. It’s easier than it looks.”

  “Easier for you,” I muttered. But then, I stopped to think. Since my last yoga class, I had accomplished any number of new things. I had worked successful spells. I had begun a campaign to keep the Peabridge alive. I had faced Clara. I had even kept from chewing my fingernails—sure, my nail polish was chipped from use, but I had not gnawed it off since Roger had given me my manicure.

  No silly supported shoulderstand was going to get the better of me.

  And I did it.

  I followed the instructor’s words, and I did it. My legs moved into the air as if they had a power all their own. The pose felt out of balance, but I shifted my hands higher on my hips, providing a little more support for my lower back. I tucked my chin in closer to my chest, and I felt my spine stretch and relax, just like the instructor had said that it would.

  Melissa was right. It was easier than it looked. And the energies did shift to my head. I felt them, just as I had felt the power of my magic when I extinguished the fire in my kitchen. There was a distinct hum, a definite buzz as my body realigned itself.

  I should remember this, I told myself. I should draw on this when I’m working with David.

  The instructor had us hold the shoulderstand for a few more minutes before she walked us through a supported headstand. Salamba Sirsasana, for those of us who wanted to add to our Sanskrit vocabularies. Not that I’d remember that name after I left the studio.

  We took up stations along the wall as the instructor assured us that many students needed the security of a vertical surface. In fact, she pointed to a patch of wall where the paint was a half-shade lighter than the rest, and she admitted that she had put her own foot through the wall not two weeks before.

  Maybe that should have intimidated me, but it had the opposite effect. If my instructor had not perfected the pose, then how could I expect my own attempt to be flawless? I might as well try.

  The headstand was harder than the shoulderstand—it hurt. I felt as if the crown of my head was going to break open. But then the instructor reminded us to take as much weight as we could on our arms, to transfer our balance outward. People around me were falling down, and I got distracted more than once, but each time I was able to try again. I finally managed to hold the pose for a full minute, and then the instructor decided it was time to move on to our closing sequence.

  As we stretched and balanced before settling into corpse pose, I could not keep a smile from my face. I had conquered the inverted poses.

  Okay, that might not have been a very yogic way of thinking about things—”conquering” was probably not the central metaphor that I should use when talking about peace, meditation, and harmony between body and mind. But I knew what I meant.

  As I practiced my deep breathing and blanking my mind to conscious thoughts, the instructor walked around the room. She approached each student with lavender oil on her palms, making small adjustments to our necks and shoulders. When she lengthened my spine, she leaned close to my ear and whispered, “Excellent job today, Jane.”

  Well, maybe she didn’t. I’d never heard her compliment anyone like that duri
ng class. I’d never heard her make any purposeful noise to break up the meditative silence. But I could sense her approval in her fingers.

  “Really!” I said to Melissa as we walked away from the studio. “I could tell that’s what she believed. For once, she didn’t think that I was wasting my time there. She was proud of me.”

  “She’s always proud of you,” Melissa said, shrugging. “You’re the only person who thinks you should be perfect the first time you try anything.”

  “I don’t think I should be perfect!” I met Melissa’s smirk, and I corrected myself. “I don’t always think I should be perfect. I should just be more flexible than I am. I should be able to stretch more.”

  “And you do. Over time.”

  I started to argue, purely out of habit, but I realized that Melissa was right. Yoga was getting easier. Even downward-facing dog—I had enjoyed the stretch instead of feeling like my calf muscles were about to tear loose from my bones. Or tendons. Or ligaments. Or whatever my muscles attached to.

  I was spared needing to reply because we’d reached M Street, the main drag of Georgetown. We were supposed to meet Neko on the corner. He was going to join us for mojito therapy.

  Roger had gone out of town for his sister’s big-deal thirtieth birthday party, and Neko was sulking because he hadn’t been invited. I didn’t think that my familiar truly wanted to wander the wilds of West Virginia, attending long-scheduled family events as the ho-mo-sex-you-al companion of a hometown boy, but I hadn’t said anything. I understood that Neko had wanted to be invited, even if he didn’t actually attend. I just didn’t think it would do any good to tell him how miserable he would likely be. Or to point out that he’d only known Roger for a couple of weeks. Or to mention that he was squandering his ability to roam free from our book collection if he only used it to moon after Roger. I bit my tongue.

  We found him on the corner, leaning against a streetlight. He sighed as we approached, the deepest sigh I’d ever heard from someone who wasn’t a teenaged girl. Anyone passing on the street might have thought that the poor man had just learned that he was suffering from some terminal disease. “Hey, Neko!” Melissa said. We’d already decided that our best strategy was to ignore his despondency.