The Boy Who Couldn't Fly Straight (The Broom Closet Stories)

by Jeff Jacobson

  “Oops. Sorry. Bev, I know it’s hard for you to figure out what to say and not say. I’ll get dinner going, but you know I’ll add in stuff too. I can’t keep my mouth closed.”

  “It’s why I love you so much, honey.” Beverly said in a completely unconvincing voice. But she leaned over the counter and kissed him anyway.

  Charlie was surprised to find that he wasn’t embarrassed by their kissing. Maybe with all the other weird things going on in his life, this didn’t even merit his face turning red. He considered this to be a vast improvement.

  Beverly poured three glasses of water, handing one to Charlie and one to her husband.

  “Have a seat, kiddo,” she said, indicating one of the bar stools. He sat down, eager to hear whatever it was that she had to say.

  “Okay, here’s something you should know,” she began, after taking a long sip out of her own glass. “Witchcraft runs in people’s blood. It’s passed from family member to family member. This means that not just anyone can be a witch. Randall couldn’t if he tried.”

  “And believe you me, I’ve tried,” he said, slicing into a red pepper. Charlie watched as white seeds fell away from the bright flesh.

  “But just because someone has the blood in them,” Beverly continued, “doesn’t mean that they can do anything with their abilities. They have to go through a process that we call being ‘popped.’ Another witch basically helps their craft come to the surface. It’s kind of complicated, and not important right now, but suffice it to say that there are people out there in the world who are “unpopped,” meaning they have the blood, or the legacy, in them but maybe don’t know it, or can’t access it, or don’t want to.

  “Now, some of these people have what we call an ‘echo.’ It means that in spite of not being popped, some of their abilities leak out. It’s why some people claim to be psychic. Others seem to experience better luck than most. And others might be extremely talented in the work that they do, maybe as surgeons, or as firefighters, even professional athletes. They just seem better than the rest. This could be because of the echo in them.”

  Beverly paused a moment, then continued. “Mavis is an echo. She is sleazy, always running scams here and there. She didn’t even know about being an echo until she was an adult. By that time, it’s usually too late to be popped. People are just too set in their ways to be able to have their full abilities come to the surface. It’s like they calcify, and nothing can break through to bring their witchcraft out.

  “But I’m pretty sure her whole life she’s been able to do minor things, like make really great skin concoctions, maybe even get lucky now and then at pull tabs or the smaller state lotteries.”

  Charlie had no idea what pull tabs were, but he didn’t want to interrupt his aunt’s momentum. His own excitement was growing as he listened to all that she was saying.

  “Sometimes people like her are called ‘kitchen witches,’ which isn’t a nice thing to say to someone.”

  Charlie heard the term, and suddenly remembered the dog in the kitchen, taunting his mother. It had said, “Or what? You’ll bake something? You’ll come at me with a roller pin? Please Elizabeth, we both know that you are nothing more than a kitchen witch these days.”

  His lips begin to tremble, and shivers ran up and down his arms.

  “Charlie, what is it?” he heard his aunt saying. “You’re turning pale.”

  Her voice brought him back from the kitchen down in Clarkston, to this bigger, more modern one. He saw his aunt and uncle staring at him, the knife in Randall’s hand paused above the cutting board.

  He shook his head to clear away the images in his mind.

  “That dog, you know? The one that came into our house and…”

  “Yes?”

  “He called my mom that. A kitchen witch. Before she made him, uh, made him turn into a man. He said it to her.”

  “What?” Beverly snapped, coming around from the corner of the counter as if she were about to confront the man himself. “Idiot! He had no right to say anything like that to her!”

  “Hon, calm down, okay?” said Randall. “Just take a breather.”

  She paused, then looked at her husband. Charlie watched as she inhaled. “Okay, sorry. Charlie, your mother is not a kitchen witch. She was fully popped and had been developing her abilities for a few years before she…before she left Seattle. She stopped, so she isn’t very strong. But she has access to her full legacy. That dog didn’t know what the hell it was talking about.

  “Anyway, there are people like Mavis all over Seattle, all over the world, really, who have some latent talent and use it to trick folks. They run seedy psychic shops, become fake fortunetellers. They do other scams too. We keep an eye on them. For the most part they don’t have enough ability to cause any real damage. Just more of a nuisance, really.

  “Today I just let Mavis know that I was onto her and gave her a very strong warning to stay away from you. She knows I can come after her and make her life miserable, should I want to. She wouldn’t want me or our community watchdogs to track her. I’m confident that she’ll back off and not cause any more problems.”

  “Why did she do that to me then?”

  “Do what, honey?” she asked, knitting her eyebrows together.

  “Put her hand on my arm like that?”

  “Oh, she could probably tell that you had some unpopped abilities and wanted to find out more about you.”

  “But she made me feel really dizzy, and kind of sick to my stomach, like I was gonna puke or pass out or something.”

  “What? That’s impossible! She doesn’t have that kind of ability. How could she…? Charlie, are you sure that’s what she was doing?” Beverly asked.

  “She grabbed my arm and started rubbing sunscreen on it. I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there. She was talking to me, then she looked at me funny, and said, ‘Hey, you’re a…’ and she stopped rubbing my arm. She held on to it, though, and started saying these words, words I couldn’t really hear. I felt all dizzy, and like all the lights started to go out.”

  “Damn it!” Beverly hissed, slapping her closed right fist into her left palm. “That changes things.”

  “What is it, Bev? Isn’t she just an echo?” asked Randall.

  “Yes,” she said, but her voice trailed off as she looked out the window over the Puget Sound.

  “Beverly, don’t go quiet on us now. What is it?” Charlie’s uncle pressed.

  “It’s just that,” she said, her voice muted, her face still turned away, “it’s just that she shouldn’t be able to do what she did. Something is up. Something is definitely up.” Charlie watched as her face hardened like it had at the market. His skin broke out in gooseflesh as he too looked out the window, half expecting to see Mavis standing outside on the deck, staring in at them.

  His aunt turned from the window and faced them both.

  “That’s enough for now,” she said, and the tone of her voice made it clear that there was no room for discussion. “We’ll continue this when the others get here.”

  Charlie didn’t think that it was enough. He wanted to know what was “definitely up,” wanted to know what she was thinking, wanted to know what Mavis had been doing and what it all meant.

  But Beverly had already turned to stare out the window again. When he opened his mouth to say something, Randall cut a glance at him and shook his head, mouthing the word “no.”

  Charlie sighed, accepting the fact that the conversation, at least for now, was over.

  He tried to imagine what getting popped was like. Images flooded his mind: a cork being removed from a champagne bottle; his friend Mike teaching him how to make popping noises by flicking his finger out of his mouth with his cheeks puffed out; watching Polaroid pictures develop in front of his eyes from his mother’s old camera; a human face breaking through the surface of still water.

  Was it like any of those things? Does it hurt? Would he be able to get popped?

  He walked out
of the kitchen while his mind raced with thoughts of echoes and popped witches, of people sneaking around behind Beverly’s back, of the dizzy way he felt when Mavis grabbed hold of him and wouldn’t let go.

  Chapter 25

  Charlie went back upstairs to change his clothes for dinner.

  He saw his cell phone sitting on the bed and suddenly remembered meeting Diego. He had forgotten about him after what happened with Mavis.

  He frowned as he sat down on the bed and picked up the phone. He was still shaken from what Beverly had been saying downstairs. He probably shouldn’t call the boy now, even though Diego had told Charlie to get hold of him about the party.

  The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that Diego had just been playing the nice guy. He probably felt sorry for Charlie, being the new kid and all, and wanted to help him out, like a charity case or something. Why else would he have entered his number into Charlie’s phone?

  He was about to give up on the whole idea when an image of the boy’s face appeared in his mind: the bright eyes, the warm brown color of his skin, the smile that seemed to be an invitation to kindness and adventure. He tried to erase the picture from his head, but it wouldn’t disappear.

  He thought about the easy way Diego had chatted to him, and how Charlie didn’t have to explain himself when they’d talked.

  ‘Maybe we really could be friends,’ he thought. And before he could talk himself out of it, he found Diego’s name in his contacts and called him.

  “Hello?” said the voice on the other end of the line, in a cheerful, slightly breathless way.

  “Uh, Diego? Is this Diego?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Oh, um, yeah. Hi. This is Charlie. The uh, the guy from the…”

  “Charlie! Charlie Creevey! Oh good, you called back. I didn’t think you were going to.”

  “Why not?” Charlie forgot that he’d told Diego his last name. Sometimes kids teased him about it. He’d heard “Creepy Creevey” his whole life. But Diego didn’t tease him. Charlie liked how it sounded when the boy said it, as if he had filed it away in his memory as something important.

  “Oh, I’m weird that way, that’s all. Hey, do you still wanna go to that party Tuesday night? Did you ask your aunt and uncle?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “No, you don’t want to go, or…?” he asked, his last word rising up into a question.

  “No, no, I mean, no, I didn’t ask them yet. But I’d like to, uh, yeah, I’d like to go, if, you know, if that’s okay and all.”

  “Totally okay, you goofball,” the boy said, and laughed.

  Charlie smiled. He’d never been called a goofball in a nice way before.

  He lay back on the bed and looked out the window. A gust of wind swayed the birch trees in the front yard, making their leaves flash from green to silver to green again.

  While the boys began to chat, the whole experience of Mavis, of witches being popped, of people with echoes, faded into the background. They talked about school, about their teachers, about Seattle. Diego was a junior and had taken Chinese for two years.

  “Ni juede xuexi Zhongwen nanbunan?” Diego said, sounding completely different, like maybe he was Chinese or something.

  “Um, I have no idea what you just said,” Charlie replied.

  Diego laughed. It was a gentle laugh, not cruel, just a sound that seemed to mean he was enjoying himself. It was a sound Charlie liked.

  “I asked you if you thought studying Chinese was difficult.”

  “Yeah, definitely. I mean, sometimes I don’t even know what Chen Laoshi is saying until class is over, and then it’s too late.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”

  They talked some more, until Charlie heard the doorbell ring downstairs and remembered that he hadn’t changed his clothes yet.

  “Uh, Diego, look, I think I should go. Some people are coming over for dinner.”

  “Hope they taste good,” he said. “Ha ha ha.”

  “Okay, now who’s the goofball?” Charlie replied. He wasn’t used to teasing people, and the words felt as foreign in his mouth as Chinese did.

  But Diego laughed again, harder this time.

  “Okay, man, take care. Hey look, the party starts at seven. I can come by and pick you up at six forty-five. Why don’t you have your aunt and uncle call me? They can talk to my mom to make sure it’s all cool. Adults like that kind of thing.”

  “Sure, sure they do,” Charlie said, just like a kid who was used to asking his mom if he could go to parties.

  Charlie pressed “end” on his phone, then got up and walked over to the window. The wind had died down, and the street in front of the house was quiet. People must be settling in for their Sunday evenings together, he thought. Just before he turned around, he spied a small cat sitting on the curb on the opposite side of the street, in front of a thick expanse of green trimmed lawn. The cat seemed to be staring right at him, and its tail stretched out from the side of its sleek body. As he watched, another cat approached and sat down next to the first. Both animals seemed to be looking directly up at the window where he stood.

  “That’s weird,” Charlie said out loud. He left the window and went over to his closet to find something to wear for dinner.

  Chapter 26

  The sun sat poised above the Olympic mountain range. The colors of the pre-sunset sky mingled with oranges and purples, pinks and maroons. They would look cheap painted as makeup on a woman’s face, Mavis thought, but even she had to admit that it just made the sky look prettier.

  There wasn’t much that she found pretty these days. Everything looked washed out and gray, even without the constant drizzle that would certainly be settling in any day now. Mavis sighed, shifting her weight on the park bench, which was growing steadily colder.

  She’d wanted all of this, hadn’t she? She’d wanted to be more, had told herself for years that if she could, life would be better. It would be easier. More colorful even. She wouldn’t be so broke all of the time.

  Well, that hadn’t happened yet. Who cared if she could actually do more now? She used to be able to live in relative obscurity, deciding how her days went, even deciding who she got to pal around with. She and her friends would mostly complain about everything, always wanting things to be different. But at least they got to complain when they wanted to.

  But now, no. Now her time was dictated by others. She felt like an indentured servant, with the terms of her unwritten contract changing all the time, getting worse.

  And the money never came. That was the biggest rub. You had to have a good plan in order to liberate people of their hard-earned cash, and in order to have a good plan, you had to have time. She was a fool. She’d only thought about being able to do more, to have more, to finally upgrade herself to be more like a real…

  “Hello Mavis,” said a soft voice in her right ear. She jumped, her hands clutching at her ample bosom.

  “Jesus!” she wheezed. Unable to catch her breath, she started coughing.

  The young woman sitting on the park bench next to her laughed, clear notes ringing true in the cooling twilight.

  “It’s just me, honey. Relax.”

  Mavis remembered Beverly saying, “Don’t you ‘honey’ me.” She almost opened her mouth and repeated the line, but she cherished her existence too much to start the conversation like that.

  “Do you always (cough) have to (cough) sneak up on me like that?” Cough, cough.

  Another laugh. “I thought you’d quit smoking.”

  Mavis sucked at the air, trying to stay calm. She had once thought she could hold her own with these people. Now she just did her best to remain unscathed.

  “I did. Damage’s been done, though,” she said, pointing to her lungs.

  Mavis turned her head to look at the woman. Claudia was young, black, with tight curly hair springing from her head in coils that reached just below her earlobes. Her eyes were the color of jade, and would have been beautif
ul on a normal human being. On Claudia they were exquisite. Painfully so. As was everything about her, from her high cheekbones, to her mahogany-colored skin, to her lithe figure. She had a warm, sugary scent about her. She looked like she belonged in a multi-vitamin commercial, or an ad for a Caribbean cruise.

  Looking at her was a mistake. Mavis held her hand over her mouth to feign another cough. Instead she mumbled a few Words, and relaxed slightly as she felt a thin veneer surface between them. It helped Mavis to find her balance again. Claudia could suck her in and enchant her in a heartbeat if she wanted to.

  “Mavis, dear, why the distance? You know you’re safe here with me.”

  “Ha! That’s a laugh. Like the sheep is safe with the wolf?”

  “Like the sheep is safe with the shepherd, dear one. You know that.”

  Several retorts sprang into her head, but she kept her mouth closed. She was learning. She had spent her entire life saying whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. The luxury of all of that easy tongue-wagging was nearly gone. Bank account drained, so to speak. The price of getting what she always thought she’d wanted was watching her freedom and time drift away from her, slipping right through her fingers. And it was too late to do anything about it.

  “What can I do for you, Claudia?”

  The young woman sighed, and her sugary smell filled Mavis’s nostrils. It made her want to cry, to let her head drop down onto Claudia’s firm breasts and be held while she wept and told her everything.

  But Mavis knew that she had to keep whatever autonomy she still had these days.

  Claudia patted Mavis on her hand. The woman’s skin was warm. What it must be like to let those fingers run along your skin, to let her palm press down into…

  “What do you want?” she asked, wishing this were already over, wishing that she were home alone, in her robe and slippers, watching American Idol, a hot mug of tea and a plate of cookies her only companions.

  “Just a report, sweet ‘ums. That’s all. What’s new in the neighborhood?”

  Mavis still wasn’t sure why they needed people like her to report in on goings-on. Claudia and the others dripped with so much power that it was like sitting next to a nuclear reactor. Couldn’t they just divine what they needed and leave her alone?