Magic Sometimes Happens

by Margaret James

  ‘Whatever,’ I replied and tried to shrug.

  ‘Yeah, I knew you’d wet yourself,’ said Tess, grinning at me.

  PATRICK

  I was looking forward to spending time with Rosie.

  Yeah, she could be needle-sharp, but she also had a kind of sparkle. It was like the rest of us were dull, grey rocks while Rosie was a crystal, the sort of girl who made the world a brighter place and hell, mine needed brightening.

  Lex had taken Joe and Polly to a good old Minnesota apple-picking, pumpkin-carving, cider-drinking day with Mr Wonderful. Nowadays my wife and kids were staying on Grand Avenue, where the children had new bedrooms – pink and Barbie-ised for Polly, blue and Hero Factory-ised for Joe. Mr Wonderful had got some hotshot stylist round, spared no expense, said Lexie, and the kids were thrilled.

  So I would not get to see my children on the weekend unless I made a scene. I was determined I would never make a scene. I would not get drunk and frighten Joe and Polly. I would not be like – him.

  Ben had a brand new Mercedes sedan and told me I could drive. I suspected this was so he could make out with Mrs Fairfax Three while I kept my eyes fixed on the blacktop, while Rosie was knocked out by autumn leaves? I’m guessing she saw autumn leaves before?

  But I love to drive, so I was very happy to be driving Ben’s new baby, although it took a while to get accustomed to the stick shift. Why did Ben insist on buying European models with European stick shifts? I guess it was one more way of saying hey, guys – look at me.

  I soon discovered that driving an S-Class Mercedes is a bunch of fun. It also made a welcome change from driving my five-year-old sports utility, my mobile trash can full of baby wipes and juice containers, lunch pails, Lex-approved sugar-free candy bars and packs of Polly’s diapers.

  When we came to Red Wing, Ben said he had to make some notes about the sequel to Missouri Crossing and he had to make them now. While the force is with you, I didn’t like to say. But he’s such a jerk. You’d think he was Moses on the mountain, channelling the word of God, the way he talks about his precious writing. It’s as if he’s taking celestial dictation, as if writing fiction is some kind of sacred thing.

  But Tess seemed fine with this and said she had to go buy shoes.

  ‘Why don’t you two go look at Winona?’ Ben suggested. ‘Give the beast a run? I mean the Merc, not you,’ he added, as he winked suggestively at me.

  ‘Shall we go see Winona?’ I asked Rosie.

  ‘Whatever,’ she replied.

  ‘She means you bet,’ said Ben. ‘The British never do enthusiasm. When a British person says whatever they mean they can’t imagine doing anything more super-duper. Rosie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you and this ole boy call at a Starbucks, watch them while they fix your coffee and be sure to ask them for a takeout cup, the sort that has the lid on tight – okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Rosie, looking puzzled.

  ‘You be on your guard.’ Ben glanced at Rosie, winked again. ‘This guy can be dangerous, you know. He has – what do you British call it – form.’

  ‘You don’t want any shoes?’ I asked as we headed off in Ben’s new beast, making for Winona. We’d arranged to meet with Ben and Tess again after Ben was through with the celestial dictation and Tess was all shoed out. ‘A pair of genuine Red Wings, they’re meant to last a lifetime, so don’t you want to get a pair?’ I added, when she didn’t speak.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ She’d been staring through the windshield, profile sharp against the golden light of afternoon, but now she looked at me. ‘I do like shoes. I wouldn’t be a woman if I didn’t. But I don’t need any at the moment. What did Ben mean when he said I had to get my coffee in a takeout cup? When he said you had form?’

  ‘I don’t know what he meant,’ I lied. ‘But I wouldn’t pay him any mind. He’s always saying oddball stuff. It’s part of him, he thinks he’s funny. Rosie, do you want to see more leaves? As we were heading over here, there was a ton of green still mixed in with the red and yellow. We get the best fall colour in October, but I know a highway where it should be orange, red and gold with sumac, maple, aspen around now. It would be like driving through a forest fire.’

  ‘I think I’ve had enough of roads and leaves.’

  ‘Do you like to climb?’

  ‘You mean up mountains? Yes, I do. I was in the mountaineering club at university and we did some climbing in the Alps and Dolomites – in Italy, you know?’

  ‘We don’t have any mountains here in Minnesota, but we have some bluffs.’

  ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever climbed a bluff.’

  ‘Let’s go climb one now, then. There’s no mist today and so we should be able to see for miles and miles.’

  ‘All sounds good to me.’

  So, while Ben and Mrs Fairfax Three stayed in Red Wing, Ben in a little coffee shop mainlining lattes and vanilla Danish and tapping on his laptop, and Tess no doubt buying a thousand pairs of shoes, we headed off along the valley of the Mississippi.

  Aspen, maple, oak and ash – I didn’t think the early fall was quite as beautiful as usual. This was probably because we had such scorching temperatures a week or two ago and the leaves had withered and crisped before they fell. Or maybe I thought this because of Lex, because our marriage had crisped and withered, too?

  It was baking hot again today. But soon enough there would be snowfall, with kids riding on sleds, with snowploughs on the streets and snow chains on the cars. Waterfalls would turn to sheets of ice and so it would go on until the spring.

  The Merc purred like a tiger, eating up the miles – boy, it was fun to drive! I’d have to write a book myself and get my own some day …

  ‘Where are we going?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘We’re headed for the Sugar Loaf.’

  ‘What’s the Sugar Loaf?’

  ‘A chunk of limestone on the Mississippi River. It used to be some rock, but it got quarried in the nineteenth century and the stone was turned into Winona: sidewalks, public buildings, all that stuff. But it’s still impressive, still dominates the town.’

  ‘We could climb this Sugar Loaf? I mean without equipment, ropes and stuff?’

  ‘Yeah, there’s a trail, it will be easy.’ I turned the air con higher. ‘But I ought to warn you, it will be hot up there.’

  ‘I like the heat.’

  ‘You have some sunscreen in your backpack?’

  ‘No, but I don’t need it. I’m so dark I never burn.’

  ‘Okay.’ I pulled into the parking lot. ‘Let’s do some serious hiking, then.’

  She was pretty fit. She ran up that hiking trail like it was on the level, her legs flashing like Flo-Jo’s in the hundred metre sprint. I like to run myself. I don’t want to end up overweight and diabetic with a bunch of heart conditions, so I try to spend an hour or two on some form of exercise each day. But Rosie had me beat.

  ‘You’re like – who is that girl in Greek mythology, the one who could outrun all of the men?’ I asked. Or I should say I panted as I slumped down on a boulder, my T-shirt sticking to my back and chest.

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘You know – the one some guy managed to beat by dropping golden apples? So she stopped to pick them up?’

  ‘Oh, yes – Atalanta.’ Rosie scooped her hair back from her face and fixed it with a clip. ‘My goodness me, Professor Riley, fancy an American scientist knowing about Atalanta.’

  ‘There’s some reason why I shouldn’t?’

  ‘No, no reason, but – I’m sorry, that was very rude of me.’ She blushed, or maybe she was overheating now. We should have brought some water. ‘You weren’t very far behind me, were you?’

  ‘You were miles ahead. You’d have scooped those apples up and won the race as well, been sitting on a wall and eating them when I came gasping up. Do you run every day?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Most of the time, I’m a fat slug. When I’m in London, I roll straight out
of my bed into the tube – I mean the subway – and then I sit behind a desk all day. But I sometimes run half marathons for charity and I have to train quite hard for them. I’m lucky, I suppose. I have the physique to be a runner, if not a beauty queen.’

  Your physique is perfect, I wished I could say. You’re strong yet graceful. You make me think of panthers and black jaguars. You’re so much more attractive than any simpering, bleach-blonde beauty queen.

  We sat there in the autumn sunshine, gazing. The view was beyond awesome, with the river and the forest all spread out before us, like when the world was made.

  ‘You’re very quiet, Professor Riley?’ She touched my sleeve, the contact light as gossamer, but it was like a trillion volts passed through me and lit me up like billboards in Times Square. ‘I expect you’re thinking serious scientific thoughts?’ she added, kind of teasingly.

  ‘No, my mind’s a blank.’ I quit contemplating trees and water and turned to look at Rosie. ‘Why don’t you tell me something about you?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Where were you born and raised?’

  ‘In Dorset – it’s an English county.’

  ‘Where did you go to school?’

  ‘In Cheltenham, at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, it’s an English public school.’

  ‘So let me get this right. The public schools in the UK, they’re private schools, not open to just anybody, and you have to pay to go to them?’

  ‘Most people pay, but some have scholarships.’

  ‘Did you get a scholarship?’

  ‘No, my family paid. I’m an over-privileged member of the British middle class and so I got to go to boarding school.’

  ‘Boarding school – you mean it was like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts?’

  ‘My school was not at all like Harry Potter’s.’ She laughed and it was – what does that song say – like music playing. ‘We didn’t study magic spells and stuff. But yes, it was a boarding school with houses, sporting trophies, lots of rules and regulations. Don’t you have boarding schools here in America?’

  ‘Yeah, but they’re for special kinds of kids – super-rich kids, troubled kids, kids with intellectual disabilities, delinquent kids, those whose parents work or live outside of the USA – or orphans. I hope you’re not an orphan?’

  ‘No, I’m not an orphan. Going away to school is what some British children do. It teaches independence, self-reliance, encourages us to have enquiring minds. Or that’s the theory, anyway.’

  ‘You studied French and German when you went to Cambridge University?’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I guess Ben must have mentioned it one time.’

  ‘What else did he mention?’ she demanded and her tone was suddenly sharp – there was that squeeze of lemon.

  ‘I reckon that was all.’ Okay, I thought, mind your own business, Riley. The lady doesn’t want to talk to you.

  But this wasn’t CIA in-depth interrogation. I wasn’t threatening her with water-boarding if she didn’t spill, and I liked to listen to her talk. No, it was more than like. I loved to hear her voice. ‘Dorset’s where?’ I asked, thinking this could not be classified, that Google must know Dorset.

  ‘It’s in the south of England, on the coast.’

  ‘You grew up by the ocean – at the seaside, do you call it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have brothers, sisters?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and it was like a door slammed in my face. ‘It’s your turn now,’ she added. ‘Tell me something about you?’

  ‘I grew up in Missouri. I went to high school there. Then I won a scholarship to college here in Minnesota. I’ve lived in the Twin Cities ever since. I didn’t go to boarding school. I’ve never seen the ocean. I don’t speak a foreign language.’

  I do understand a few, of course. After all, my job involves messing with sounds and words. But my spoken Spanish is embarrassing. Germans think I have a speech impediment and my French cracks everybody up.

  ‘Didn’t you learn a second language when you were in high school?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘Yeah, I took a class in Spanish. I can just about order a beer.’

  ‘It’s too late to go to boarding school, but you could see the ocean and improve your Spanish. Or even learn another foreign language.’

  ‘What language should I learn?’

  ‘French is very easy for most English speakers.’

  ‘Say something in French?’

  ‘Je voudrais te baiser.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘It’s very hot up here.’

  ‘Let’s go down then, grab a soda somewhere?’

  ‘That would be good,’ she said, but didn’t get up. She was busy scrabbling and scraping like a rabbit scratching out a hole.

  ‘Hey, you’re not allowed to break off bits of Minnesota,’ I said sternly when I realised what she was doing.

  ‘Why is that?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s probably a federal offence.’

  ‘Oh, go on with you – and anyway, it was already loose.’ She scrutinised her rock. ‘See how it sparkles in the sunshine?’

  ‘The hell with how it sparkles. This is a national monument, you know.’

  ‘You mean like Mount St Helens? I bet it’s jolly not. It’s just a lump of rock above the Mississippi River.’

  ‘It’s a Mississippi bluff.’

  ‘Okay, Professor Riley, it’s a bluff. What’s this kind of stone, I wonder?’

  ‘I guess it’s oneota dolomite. What you have there is limestone made from creatures which were living a million years ago.’

  ‘What about the crystals?’

  ‘They’ll be quartz.’

  ‘Gosh, aren’t you well-informed?’

  She twinkled at me and her eyes were brighter than the sparkles in the stone. ‘Mythology, geology, technology and half a dozen other ologies – I’m betting you’re an expert on them all.’

  ‘Now I come to think of it, Ben did mention something else about you.’

  ‘Oh? What did he say?’

  ‘You smuggled a suspicious British apple into the USA. Now you want to smuggle out a rock without a permit.’ I shook my head and sighed. ‘If you’re not careful, Rosie, you’ll end up in a facility where they re-educate women like you.’

  ‘What do you mean, women like me?’

  ‘Who break the rules.’

  ‘What’s the point of living if you don’t break any rules?’ She stood up now and stretched, her T-shirt riding high, revealing smooth, tanned skin. ‘I want this for Dad. He has a collection of bits of foreign stone from all over the world. We – I mean, I – like to …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she replied. ‘Come on, Dr Riley, I’ll race you to the parking lot.’

  She took off down that trail like she was being chased by wolves. I stood there for a minute, several minutes. I watched her skitter down, dislodging little rocks and jumping bigger ones, a beautiful gazelle of a young woman, full of nervous grace.

  Je voudrais te baiser.

  You asked her to say something, say anything in French and that was the example came into her head. She didn’t mean it personally.

  ROSIE

  Je voudrais te baiser.

  I would like to kiss you. Or that’s the polite translation. What about the stone for Dad? Charlie had brought home all kinds of minerals for Dad. Smooth grey soapstone, striped red agate, polished turquoise – Charlie went on voyages of discovery for one reason only, risking life and suffering extreme discomfort in those last few places where even Coca-Cola hadn’t yet set up its stall, to collect rare geological samples for our father.

  This was the usual family joke or fiction, anyway.

  Dad kept the samples in a china bowl in his study. I wasn’t really sure if I should add to the collection, if it would hurt him more than it would please him. But—

  ‘Rosie?’

  ‘Yes?’
<
br />   ‘You’re about a million miles away.’ Pat had caught up with me and now he frowned. ‘Do you have something on your mind?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I forced myself to smile at him. ‘I’m enjoying getting good fresh air and exercise. I’m having a great time.’ It was almost true. But I hadn’t meant to have great times. It was not appropriate that I should have great times.

  So I didn’t know why I felt happy – not laughing, singing, giggling happy, but contented, cared-about and quiet happy. Why, as we went down the trail, I glanced at Patrick Riley and was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness because he wasn’t mine.

  What business did I have to think of him at all? Why had I told him I would like to kiss him, more than kiss him? It was just as well he knew no French. But it didn’t have to be this way. I didn’t have to let him get to me. Soon I would be going home and then I could forget him and all the confusing feelings and emotions he aroused in me. Balance, moderation – Patrick Riley’s personal attraction genie didn’t know the meaning of those words.

  I ran on ahead.

  But I didn’t look where I was going and all of a sudden something slammed right into me. My foot felt like it had been hit with twenty, thirty hammers. My head began to spin and I felt sick with pain. My eyes filled up, spilled over.

  I half slumped, half fell on the hard ground. I started crying and I found I couldn’t stop. ‘I h-hurt my foot,’ I stammered when he had caught up with me and asked me what was wrong and I could finally trust myself to tell him. ‘These t-trainers weren’t designed to run up mountains.’

  ‘Trainers – oh, you mean your sneakers, right?’

  He hunkered down beside me, dark eyes serious and kind. I didn’t want him to be kind. I wanted him to tell me to get up and not make such a fuss. But he did nothing of the sort. ‘They do look kind of flimsy,’ he agreed, as if it were the trainers’ fault, not mine for choosing them, for running up and down a mountain in them. ‘I guess you smacked into that boulder, yeah?’

  But I could only nod.

  ‘You think you’ve broken anything?’