Your Magic or Mine?

by Ann Macela

  Marcus shook his head, but he wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t remember or because he didn’t believe her. She had to be telling the truth. His mother never, ever lied. Images of his parents laughing and cleaning his ice-cream-smeared face and of them reading a bedtime story flashed through his mind, too quick to grasp and study. Were the pictures real? Or merely wishful thinking?

  “Of course, he doesn’t remember. Most of that was before he was five years old,” Stefan said with a shake of his head before he smiled broadly. “By God, how bright you were, Marcus. When we had you tested, you scored higher than either of us had, and we were no slouches. That’s when we brought in a tutor. Remember Toby Feldman?”

  Marcus nodded. Oh, yes, he remembered his tutor. Feldman had been in graduate school at the time, and very different and more outgoing than his parents. Much more fun. Marcus had hated it when Feldman graduated and went off to teach—and Marcus found himself in …

  “We knew we had to send you to a good school that would challenge you, and Silberkraft Academy seemed perfect. We had no idea that you were miserable there,” his mother said with a catch in her voice. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I don’t …” Marcus started slowly. The tears glistening in Judith’s eyes gave him a moment of panic. He’d never seen her cry, and he prayed she wouldn’t now. He cast around in his mind for the reasons he never told them of his misery. “I guess because … when we were together on vacations after I started boarding school, there never seemed to be time to talk. Simply talk. We were always going somewhere, meeting somebody, seeing something. We talked about my grades or what I was studying, but you never asked if I liked it.”

  “What was the problem? Why didn’t you like it?” Stefan asked. “We both loved our boarding schools. We thought you would, too.”

  “Oh, the classes were all right, and I had some good teachers, and I enjoyed learning,” Marcus answered. “Since I placed three years ahead of my age level, however, I was always in classes with the bigger kids. I wasn’t even in a residential house with boys my age because the school wasn’t organized that way, but by grade level. The older kids … well, let’s simply say, they weren’t always as friendly as they might have been. Those my age called me a freak because I was smarter than they were. I spent most of my time alone studying when I wasn’t with tutors. The only place I was in my age group was in sports, because teams were determined by age, weight, and height.” He wasn’t about to tell them about the hazing he’d also endured there.

  “Besides,” he concluded, “what could you have done about it? Sent me someplace else? It might have been worse. Look, don’t worry about that. It’s in the past. Over and done with.”

  “That may be,” Judith said, “but it’s all affecting your future. I’m doubly sorry we didn’t, as you say, simply talk. Those years were frantic, both of us chasing professorships or prizes or publication or something, while trying to fit in time to be together with you. You’re correct, there was no time to simply be.”

  She gave him a sheepish look. “I have to confess something also, Marcus. You scared me a little.”

  “Me?” He couldn’t stop his voice from rising or his eyebrows lifting toward his forehead. “I scared you? How?”

  “By being male. No, both of you hear me out. I never told you, either,” Judith said, pointing at Stefan when he laughed. “I was never totally comfortable around boys, or later, men. Remember, I went to an all-girls school. The few men I saw were stuffy old teachers who didn’t have an ounce of sex appeal among them. The only boys were those in a neighboring school who were rowdy, rude, and, after a certain age, probably rapacious, or so I feared. When I went to undergraduate college, again solely women, I ignored all males. That may have partly been the soul-mate phenomenon at work, but the result was the same. I repeated the pattern when I was in graduate school and again when I started teaching.”

  She smiled at his father and suddenly looked much younger. “Then I met Stefan. What a revelation! We were soul mates, with all that term implies. I learned more about men in our first three months together than in my entire life before that. My relationships with other men, however, remained the same—friendly but distant. And here you came along. A boy! What was I going to do with a boy? How do you talk to a boy? You were rowdy and rambunctious, of course, and interested in things that were foreign to me, like trucks and cowboys and space aliens.

  “After a while, just as I thought I was making progress with you, it was time to send you to school. The years simply flew by and suddenly you were a teenager and didn’t want to have anything to do with us. On vacation, I felt like we were dragging you around against your will. I counted it a success if we heard a whole sentence from you, much less a paragraph. The only people you wanted to talk to, thank goodness, were the ones to whom we were introducing you and who shared your interests, which didn’t coincide with ours. You grew up, of course, and we could talk about adult subjects, and I was comfortable again.”

  “Have I lived up to your expectations, accomplished your goals? Are you proud of me?” Marcus asked and crossed his arms again, bracing himself for the answer.

  “Of course, you have,” Judith said. “We both could not be prouder of you. Some of our colleagues are tired of us telling them about your latest achievements. Your equation is stunning, a real contribution to spell-casting. Why do you even have to ask?”

  “Because you don’t tell me so. All I hear is how you want me to publish more, to take a position somewhere else, to meet your goals. I think you’ve said ‘good job,’ your highest praise, to me eight times in my life, Stefan. What do I have to do, win the Fields Medal?”

  “I didn’t think we had to tell you,” Stefan said, looking both puzzled and somewhat defensive. “I thought we were showing you. Otherwise, we certainly wouldn’t have introduced you, especially as a young boy, to all our friends and colleagues, or gone out of our way to put you in contact with the leaders in so many disciplines. Man, I really enjoyed watching their faces when you started asking questions. You knocked their socks off.” He grinned, then frowned.

  “As for heaping more praise on you? Frankly, I was apprehensive too much of it would go to your head. Nobody likes a show-off or an overweening ego in a young man, even a brilliant one. The last thing we wanted was for you to end up like that Pritchart fellow.”

  “What about my meeting your goals?”

  “What do you mean?” Judith asked.

  “Like publishing more, like teaching at an Ivy League school? What about my goals, the ones I set for myself?”

  “Oh, Marcus, I thought those were your goals.”

  “No, those were the ones you set for me, not the ones I set for myself. We’ve never discussed goals from my perspective. Neither of you ever asked what I wanted to do. You always told me.”

  “Ah, I see where you’re coming from,” Stefan said, his frown clearing. “All right, what are your goals?”

  “To make whatever advances I can in my field and in magic, to teach my students and help them learn as well as I’m able, to continue to write my science-fiction books, and to live my life as I see fit.”

  “Those sound commendable to me,” Stefan stated. “Oh, by the way, I enjoy those novels of yours.”

  “You read them? Why didn’t you tell me?” The discussion was becoming one surprise after another. First, they actually wanted him, and second, his father read his books. What next?

  “The subject never came up.”

  “Of course, it didn’t. I wasn’t about to ask since I thought you disapproved of my writing them because you never said a word. Why go looking for criticism?” The real question was, why did he have to ask? Why hadn’t Stefan said something? He opened his mouth to ask those very questions.

  “Hold it, you two,” Judith interjected, holding up both hands before he could say a word. “We’re missing the main point here. Let’s agree that none of us can read the others’ minds and that we need to discuss every
thing from this point forward and to give praise when it’s due. No matter what our parents did, Stefan.” She gave him an emphatic nod.

  “Let’s stipulate that as parents we should have talked with you more, instead of at you, Marcus. I think we both assume the professorial demeanor too quickly—heaven only knows how frustrated I become when your father starts ‘dictating’ to me as if I were one of his students. But I don’t let him get away with it. I never thought you would take his statements like commandments. All right, does everybody agree on these points?”

  The two men nodded. Marcus kept himself from smiling in triumph. No more guilt or frustration over not living up to their goals. They were recognizing him as an adult at last. He was almost floating with happiness, when her next words brought him back down to earth.

  “And you, Marcus,” she continued, “might have told us how you’ve felt about school, goals, and your novels and probably other things. Even if males in general don’t discuss feelings, it would have helped if you’d raised the question about goals and whose they were, and we should have asked. On the other hand, you’ve certainly gone your own way successfully, and we’re very proud of you.”

  She looked from him to his father and back. “The most disturbing discovery of your situation for me is that we have fallen into a pattern over the past years of not discussing the really important parts of our lives—our family, our hopes, our dreams, our successes and failures. We’ve been simply existing on the surface, but not sharing deeply. No wonder we haven’t been communicating. Do you both agree?”

  “Yes, Judith,” Marcus murmured and shot a glance at his father who also said, “Yes, Judith.”

  “That brings us back to the real reason we’re here,” Judith said with a smile that boded trouble. Here came his biggest problem. “You have a soul mate. You’re trying to reject both her and the phenomenon. According to what you told Gloriana, you’re doing it because you don’t know how to be a mate or a father, you don’t know how to show affection for a mate, and you were afraid you’d treat her and possible children as you think we’ve treated you. You think you can’t be loving, and, I suspect, you think that you aren’t loveable. Am I correct in those statements?”

  Marcus managed not to wince at her statements. His mother always could get right to the core of a thesis. He’d never consciously thought about not being loveable, although he supposed it was part of the mix. His parents had certainly given him cause to think so. He looked to his father to see if he wanted to add a comment, but Stefan only raised his eyebrows in question. He turned back to his mother and nodded in the affirmative. “Essentially, yes.”

  “Son, I have news for you,” Stefan stated. “Love is the most important thing there is, the most ancient magic, the basis of the soul-mate bond and the resulting family bond. We love you, completely, wholeheartedly unreservedly. We haven’t said that enough to you, and I apologize. We haven’t taught you to say it back to us. My parents didn’t teach me, either. Your mother did, at least to her. I’m not sure when we stopped saying it to you—probably when you were a teenager. New rule: whoever says it first, the other has to say it back.” He looked back and forth between Marcus and Judith until they had each agreed.

  “Furthermore, Gloriana loves you, and not because of the imperative. Judith said your soul mate’s love came through right over the telephone line, even though she doesn’t acknowledge it yet. She’s probably denying it to herself for protection if you follow through with your rejection. Why on earth would she have tracked us down and told us about you if she didn’t?” Stefan shook his head. “I swear, you two need to work on your communication like the rest of us do.”

  “As for your ideas about soul mates, children, and all that blather”—Judith waved a hand in the air—“of course you don’t know how to be a mate or a parent. None of us did until we met our mate, got married, and had children. Oh, you can read books galore. When faced with the actual mate or child, however, your education, training, or upbringing on that subject … it simply flies out the window. Trust me, you will learn quickly how to show affection.”

  “I second that,” Stefan stated. “Your mother scared me to death when we met. The feelings that bombarded me practically left me in a coma when I was alone. When with Judith, however, simply being in the same room and not even touching … let’s say I was stupefied no longer.”

  Marcus looked at his mother, who was blushing. His father’s words took on a deeper meaning, and he looked at his hands when he felt his face heat. Too much information.

  “If you’re as smart as I think you are,” Stefan went on, “you’ll come to your senses and go to Gloriana and make up, not only for the time you’ve wasted, but also for putting that woman through a bunch of hoops she shouldn’t have had to jump through. You have to have faith in the process. The phenomenon doesn’t make mistakes. You’ve never given us cause to be disappointed in you. Please don’t start now.”

  “I agree,” Judith said and turned to his father. “I think we’ve covered our main points here, Stefan.”

  “I can’t think of any others, either.”

  “Marcus, we’ll leave you to think about everything we’ve said and your desires and needs,” she said and stood up. “In your usual fashion, you’ll need to go over and over all we’ve said in your brain until you accept it. Your father and I have a reservation at the Driskill Hotel. We’re going there to get some rest. The flights were not conducive to sleep.”

  Marcus stood automatically when his mother did. “Wait… we still have things to talk about. I have questions about everything.”

  “We’ll talk more when you’ve resolved your most important problem and made peace with Gloriana,” she told him. “Now, give me a hug. It’s been too long. I think you stopped hugging me when you went through those horrible teenaged years. Come to think of it, that’s when we stopped talking, also.”

  “But …” No, it was the other way around—she had not wanted to hug him or had not wanted him to hug her. Or something like that. He didn’t get to voice his opinion, however, because she was giving him a fierce embrace, and he was returning it. And it felt sooooo good. He shut his eyes tight to make the burning sensation in them go away.

  “I love you, Marcus,” she said, drawing back to look into his eyes.

  “I love you, too,” he answered and saw the tears in her eyes that must mirror the ones in his.

  “Good boy,” Stefan said, and, as soon as Judith released him, he pulled Marcus into his arms and pounded him on the back. “I love you, son.”

  “I love you, too,” Marcus said through a suddenly tight throat.

  “The women are correct here. They usually are when it comes to feelings. You get together with Gloriana, and everything will be a lot clearer.”

  Marcus walked them out to their car and exchanged more hugs. While he watched them drive away, he rubbed his forehead. The revelations of the past hour had made him woozy. He looked down at Samson, who had accompanied them to the curb. The hound grinned and yodeled.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  What just happened here?

  His head spinning, Marcus went back into his house and stood looking down at the chairs and sofa grouping, replaying the conversation in his head.

  His parents had come in like a double tornado and obliterated his complete theory and ideas about himself, his relationship with them, and their whole family … what was the term? Family dynamic? Yes, their entire family dynamic, all blown to hell and completely reorganized. His new understanding was going to take some getting used to.

  What had he been thinking previously? About looking truth in the eye?

  They’d certainly done it. Talk about seeing something from the other’s point of view. He knew they were telling the truth, and not simply as they saw it, but as it actually happened. How to decide what to do? His mother was correct; he did go over and over problems. That was his mathematical process, and the answer usually appeared like … well,
like magic once he’d looked at it from all viewpoints.

  He plopped down on the chair he’d been sitting in. Samson came over and put his head on Marcus’s knee, and he rubbed behind the dog’s ears. “What do you think, boy? Have I been a total idiot, or what?”

  Samson shut his eyes and leaned against him.

  How pathetic he was. On the other hand, to hear the words total idiot out loud certainly drove his predicament home. Maybe, instead of living in his head all the time, it would help to actually verbalize his thoughts. Only the two of them were here, and if it didn’t work, nobody would witness his failure, and Samson wouldn’t talk.

  “What I don’t understand is how I could have been so wrong-headed about my family. Where did I get all those ideas? I hardly remember anything before going off to school. Although … Come on, boy, let’s go downstairs.”

  With the hound following, Marcus went down to his office and over to the corner farthest from his desk. He knelt next to the floor-to-ceiling shelves and perused the bottom shelf. “Yes, here they are, my copies of The Hobbit and the Belgariad series. And look here … Elric … and Thomas Covenant … and Narnia. Oh, here’s Philip Pullman I found in my twenties.”

  He picked up a few of the dog-eared books, took them to his desk, and sat down while Samson sniffed around the books and the shelves. When he leafed through them and read passages, he could hear his father’s voice saying the words. Yes, they’d read them together, every night, until he went to Silberkraft.

  “Oh, my God. I was totally wrong.” He closed the book he’d been looking at and tossed it onto his desk. He pointed a finger at the hound. “But not about everything, Samson. I wasn’t wrong about there never being time to talk about inconsequential things—how I liked school, for example. Even Judith agrees with me on that. I certainly wasn’t wrong about being miserable.”

  He nodded at the correctness of those statements and added another. “Was that really inconsequential? It was to them, I suppose, since they couldn’t imagine me not enjoying myself. But it sure wasn’t to me.”