The Black Witch of Mexico

by Colin Falconer

  They stripped out of their wet clothes and towelled off then climbed into the massive four-poster bed and pulled the duvet over them to get warm. They wrapped their bodies around each other, shaking with cold.

  They made love in a listless way and afterwards they clung to each other and listened to the thunder. The lights flickered and went out. He found a box of candles and lit them around the room.

  It should have been magical, but it just felt primitive.

  Lightning hissed and burned overhead. He felt like he had lost her. Something had broken the spell.

  Chapter 9

  The automatic doors hissed open and the EMS crew hurried in with a Chinese woman in heavy labor. He stayed where he was while the triage nurse went over to examine her. It was a hot day in hell that they had to deliver a baby in the ER, though once he had helped a woman give birth to twins in the parking lot on Christmas Eve.

  But this wasn’t their purview and that suited him fine.

  He watched over the top of his newspaper. The woman was in bad shape, the man who was with her--he guessed it was her husband--looked like he was about to faint. He looked more scared than her.

  This was what people didn’t think about when they planned families: they didn’t consider abnormal presentations, about babies being born with cystic fibrosis or cerebral palsy. Even if this came out all right, and he was sure it would, what would happen to this sweating and exhausted young woman, this shaken young man? The dynamic changed after a baby, it had to.

  Or you ended up like Frank: ten years in and it’s all over, and he’s going to Mexico-- Mexico!--because it’s all just too goddamned much.

  The nurse sent the paramedics up to the OB floor for another evaluation and called up from the phone at the nurse’s station. Adam went back to reading the Boston Globe.

  * * *

  There were no messages on his phone when he got home. Nothing on his mobile either, -she always sent him at least one text during the day. He wished they’d never gone down to Cape Cod now.

  He turned on the television. He was too tired to think about all this now.

  She had left the tarot reader’s business card on the coffee table. He was about to rip it up and throw it in the trash but it was still there when he went to bed, and it was the first thing he saw when he woke up.

  He showered and made coffee then sat down, tapping his cell phone against his forehead, staring at the card. His finger hovered over the keypad.

  What the hell was he doing?

  She was a fake, and he was going to prove it. Maybe it was a long way to go to make a point. Look at it like a relaxing drive into the country. What could it hurt?

  He dialled the number and made an appointment.

  Chapter 10

  It was an hour and half drive out past Newton almost to Springfield. “The Witche and the Wardrobbe” was in the main street, between a coffee bar and a hardware shop. Witche and the Wardrobbe! He despised the way businesses tried to be quaint, using words like ‘shoppe’ and ‘olde.” If they wanted to be eighteenth century so badly, why did they charge twenty-second century prices?

  The doorbell rang as he stepped inside. He almost took a step back, overcome by the fug of frankincense and the chanting of American Indians on the sound system. It was a gloomy little shop, crowded with glass shelves of candles, sage, new age books, gemstones and crystals. There were armies of fairies and gargoyles and dragons, framed prints with names like The Sorceress and The Magic Circle.

  It was a Monday afternoon and there was no one else in the shop. He spotted Winifred - the ‘witche’ - at the cash register. Behind her there were some posters for courses on Reiki and therapeutic massage. She put down her book and took off her glasses.

  “You must be my three-thirty,” she said. She went to the door, locked it and turned the ‘Open’ sign around to ‘Closed.’ “This way,” she said and led him to a curtained alcove at the rear of the shop.

  Chapter 11

  “I went back to see that fortune teller,” he said to her.

  “What?”

  “That fortune teller at the fair. You left her business card on the coffee table. I rang her and drove over to Springfield to see her.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in it. ‘Horse crap,” you called it.”

  “I was curious.”

  “I didn’t think you were curious about anything. You know everything.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  “You were very secretive with what she said to you. Now you want me to tell you everything?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She went back to her magazine. She wasn’t going to pester him, damn her.

  “She said I should let you go.” He waited. “You don’t look surprised.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “She said our destinies were linked but not intertwined. Is that what she said to you?”

  She turned the page in her magazine. “She was a little vague.”

  He shrugged and went back to his book. After a while he tossed it across the room, went to the kitchen and poured a couple of fingers of bourbon into a glass with ice. He went up to the roof to stew. He was in the mood for a fight and that wouldn’t be a very good idea.

  He thought again about what Winifred had said to him. “You must keep loving her in a secret place in your heart but you have to let her go.”

  One set of playing cards and she thought she was a relationship counsellor.

  There is nothing you can do about it. It is not part of her destiny or yours for you to be together.

  Destiny was an excuse people made when they gave up.

  There is a darkness gathering around you. If you do not let her go it will swallow you up.

  He paid thirty bucks for that.

  Well, everything was going to work out just fine. He wondered how long he would have to wait before he could go back and show her what a fake she was and get his money back.

  Chapter 12

  He could never pick the moment that it happened; there was just a slow leeching of the magic, undefinable. She stopped staying over at his apartment on the weekends; she was busy more and more nights during the week, too, taking a new yoga class, or working late when the company took on a new client and she had to stay back to finish a pitch. She never said: “I don’t love you anymore.” She never ever said that.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked her one night, the first time he had ever said those words to a woman. Usually the woman said it to him.

  They had made love without enthusiasm. The pillows were still perfect.She smiled but her eyes were mirrors. “Nothing,” she said.

  He didn’t push it.

  He supposed they had both been working too hard. He talked it over with Jay one day when he was on a break in the lounge.

  “Just let her go,” he said. “She’s playing you. If you walk away and you don’t hear from her again, you know you made the right call. If she calls you up and says “let’s talk about it,” you know there’s still a chance.”

  Was this what she was doing, making a play? Perhaps she had her own exit strategy, same as he did. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, was waiting for him to end it, just as he’d done to a dozen other women before.

  Wasn’t this what he wanted, since that day in the park? So what was wrong with him? He got a sheet of paper and wrote down the pros and the cons of keeping Elena in his life. The pros column filled the whole page. On the other side of the ledger he wrote: Wants Kids, She’s Messy and couldn’t think of anything else.

  The more she withdrew, the more he tried to pick up the slack. For the first time in his life he found himself ringing a woman during the day for no reason; he sent text messages instead of just answering them.

  Sometimes they would go a whole week without seeing each other. She stopped talking about the future. Panicked, he even suggested they go back to Cape Cod for Memorial Day weekend, they could stay
at a friend’s beach house, and she smiled and said that might be nice but she would have to check on what her family had planned, she had not seen them in a while and thought they might be doing something.

  This was when he knew. She hated spending holidays with her family because she always got in a fight with one of her brothers and her father always put her down. She never felt good enough around him, and any visit left her seething for days afterwards.

  Now she wanted to spend a whole weekend up there. Okay, no big deal. He would stay cool about this. They would work it out.

  Chapter 13

  His sister Lynne lived out in Newport, in a white clapboard Victorian. She was a teacher but these days she stayed home and looked after her two little boys. Her husband, Denny, was a nurse over at Newton-Wellesley.

  The front yard was the usual disaster. There were a couple of overturned bikes, a thick wedge of envelopes and junk mail jammed in the mailbox. He sneaked a look in the back of the Subaru wagon parked in the driveway, it looked like someone had dumped their trash in there.

  When she opened the door he handed her the mail and she tossed it in a bowl on the hall table without even a glance.

  “They’ll just be bills and shit,” she said.

  Their black Lab, Gaucho, ran in barking, and when he saw Adam he rolled straight over on his back to get his tummy tickled. “Great guard dog,” Adam said. He tripped on a plastic truck in the kitchen. She picked it up and tossed it onto the sofa. “Matty, don’t leave your toys on the floor, how many times?”

  He couldn’t even see his nephew, but he could hear him, he could hear both of them.

  The boys, three and five, were a moveable riot. Lynne never really gained full control; she just hustled the trouble from one place to another. A sheepdog in a track pants. But he found the crocheted and framed homilies about Jesus and the kids’ crayoned pictures stuck on the refrigerator oddly comforting. He could never live this way but it was good to know that someone in his family knew what normal looked like.

  He stared at the photograph of Mom and Dad on the kitchen dresser; they looked like America’s Greatest Couple. Dad had a great smile when the camera was on him. He should have been a politician.

  There were clothes piled on the table just off the line. Lynne cleared a space. “How’s Elena?” she said.

  “She’s fine.”

  “What are you guys doing for Memorial Day?”

  “She’s going upstate to see her folks.”

  “You’re not going with her?”

  “I heard you and Tom were having a barbecue. Thought I’d get myself an invite, spend some time with my sister.”

  “You two broken up?”

  “Everything’s fine”

  “Then why aren’t you spending the holiday together?”

  “What is this, Homeland Security? We don’t have to live in each other’s pockets.”

  Lynne gave him one of her big sister looks she had been giving him all his life whenever she caught him out in a lie. “You know you don’t want to leave her too long without a ring on her finger.”

  “Who says she wants one?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “You can’t go chasing women forever.”

  “I’m not ready to settle down. That doesn’t mean I want to go chasing other women. I just want to let things happen at their own pace. She’s okay with that.”

  “Is that what she told you?”

  There was a yell from outside. Jake, her youngest, had fallen off the swing. She opened the kitchen window and told him not to be such a baby, then shouted at his big brother, Matt, told him not to swing so high. He ignored her and almost knocked his kid brother through the neighbour’s fence. Now he was really yelling. Lynne swore under her breath and headed out the back door to sort it out.

  He shook his head. He didn’t think he’d have the patience.

  He wasn’t going to be rushed into it, and if Elena couldn’t be patient, there were plenty of other girls out there.

  * * *

  He took her to a Mexican restaurant in Cambridge. It was softly lit with brass sconces and framed Mexican rugs hanging on the walls. She sat there with an uncertain smile, kept checking the door as if she thought they were being watched. The waiter brought them margaritas. They struggled for conversation between mouthfuls of the pork tamales, the sautéed chicken livers with tomatoes.

  He hadn’t seen her for six weeks. Jay had told him that was how long it took for someone to really miss you.

  She was wearing all white, there was a gold crucifix at her throat, and her hair was tied back in a French braid. She must have spent all her time at the beach.

  She looked happy, happier than he had seen her a long time. There was a high colour to her cheeks. He hated that she should look like that when he felt so desperate.

  He remembered what his sister said, you let her go, you’ll be sorry. Well he wouldn’t let her go. It had only been just over a month, how could that be too late?

  “There was something I wanted to say to you,” he said.

  She bit her lip and looked anxious, kept glancing at the door like she wanted to be somewhere else. But he was determined she would hear him out.

  “I’ve thought it over. I know I said I didn’t want kids right now…that I wasn’t ready for the whole, you know, the whole thing. But, Elena, how it is, I don’t want to lose you. This is the first time I’ve ever said this to anyone. I love you.”

  There, it was out of his mouth.

  He touched his pocket, felt for the ring in his pocket, wondered if this was the right moment to surprise her with it.

  “Come back to me,” he said.

  “Adam, there’s no point. You know what I want and you’re not ready for that. You told me yourself, you aren’t built to be monogamous.”

  “Maybe I was wrong.”

  “I know you don’t really mean this.”

  “I do mean it.”

  He thought that would be enough. His fumbled for the little plush lined box in his pocket. He thought she would fall at his feet. Instead she glanced at the door, like she was planning her escape. “This isn’t like you.”

  “I’ve changed. People can change.”

  “You’re not being rational.”

  “I don’t want to be rational. I’m through with being rational.”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t think you’d take it so hard. But, Adam, you’re not that kind of guy. We had a great time together but it’s time to move on. A month from now you’ll have forgotten all about me.”

  “But we’re meant for each other.”

  She bit her lip. “Julie said I shouldn’t have come tonight.”

  “Julie? Your sister?”

  “She said you’d try to find a way to get me back and that it wasn’t healthy.”

  “Get you back? Are we split up?”

  “Adam, what do you think?”

  “I thought we were just taking a break.”

  “Well, it’s the same thing.”

  “Is it? What else did your big sister say about me?”

  “Nothing,” she said and looked away. Adam thought so Julie must have said a whole lot. He had no chance if the Beloved Julie was against him. Or perhaps it was Julie who had poisoned her mind against him in the first place. He could imagine the scene, her kitchen, Julie’s kitchen, a Starbucks.

  “Don’t let him string you along. If he doesn’t want kids now he’ll never want them. His career always comes first with him. You have to do what’s best for you.”

  “This is too good to just to throw away,” he said. “We make magic together, you and me.”

  “Passion fades, Adam. Real love comes from friendship and suitability.”

  “Is this your sister talking again?”

  “I didn’t get this from my sister. It’s what I think.”

  “Because it sounds just like the pocket philosophy she writes for that magazine. Did she give you a quiz to do as well?”

  �
��I love you, Adam, but we have too many differences. It would never work out, you know that.”

  “What differences?”

  “You don’t want children, for one thing.”

  “I just finished telling you, I’m willing to rethink that.”

  “You’ve never wanted kids till now.”

  “I never said I didn’t want children. I just don’t want them now.”

  “If you don’t want them now, when will you want them?”

  “What does that mean? I’m only thirty-two for God’s sake.”

  “You’re married to the ER.”

  That seemed like his cue. He reached for the small velvet box in his pocket. This would show her he was serious, that her damned sister and her newsstand psychobabble were wrong about him.

  “I’ve met someone else.”

  He slid the ring back in his pocket, feeling like the biggest fool in the whole goddamned world, just grateful he had not gone into the whole speech thing he had prepared.

  “You’ve what, sorry?”

  “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “Someone else? You cheated on me?”

  She shook her head, brushed away a tear. What did that performance mean? “Not yet, or please don’t ask me?”

  “It was good while it lasted.”

  He slammed the flat of his hand on the table, spilling a glass. “You cheated on me?”

  Everyone stared. Elena blushed scarlet and leaned towards him, breathing hard. “I swear, if you don’t keep your voice down, I’m leaving.”

  He fought for control. A waiter came to the table, fussed over the spilled glass of wine. Adam wanted to grab him and throw him across the room: “Just leave it,” he said, “it doesn’t matter.”

  He had to keep it together. “How could you do that?” he said, after the waiter had gone.

  “You don’t want me, Adam, let’s face it. You’re not ready, and I am. Thank you for saying you’d do all those things but I don’t want to have babies with someone who’s just doing it for my benefit. That’s not my dream.”