“Really!” I say. “I’d heard about all the leaves falling off the trees and possible early snowfalls. But I didn’t know that about the teeth.”
“Well, my mom works for a dentist, and she says it’s because of the cold weather. That when you’re outside and you breathe in the cold air, your teeth get sensitive. And then everybody goes to the dentist. That’s what she said.” He starts beating on the table like it’s a drum, and then gets up and does an effortless cartwheel across the kitchen floor. Then he stops and looks at me. “Also, can I tell you something else? Did you know everybody has a superpower? You know what my superpower is? I have the magic power to notice when the clock says 11:11 or 1:11. I always, always look up then. It’s kind of amazing.”
“Wow. Well, that’s a good one to have.”
“Sometimes I see 2:22 or 4:44, also. Not so many of the other ones, though.”
I concentrate very hard on trying not to laugh. “You are clearly on your way to superhero status.”
He nods seriously, then sits cross-legged on the floor for a moment, looking at me so directly that my heart stops. He swallows hard before he speaks. “So, I have a plan for getting my mom and dad together.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, so there’s a concert at school, and I’m performing at it—and I think they should both come, and then I’ll get up and play my flute or sing or read a poem or something, and after we’ll all go out for ice cream and you can do a little spell or something on them, and I think they’ll decide to get back together.”
“Really.”
“But you have to do the spell. All we need is a little bit of magic to get them to both come to the concert and be nice to each other. So far all they do is fight about it.”
“They do?”
He sits down at the table next to me and rests his head on his elbow. “My mom yells at my dad that he won’t remember to come on time. And that he won’t be wearing the right clothes. And then she said that I had to tell him no girlfriends allowed because she will walk out if she sees him there with some woman.”
“But you said he doesn’t even have a girlfriend.”
“He doesn’t. But my mom is worried anyway. Maybe she thinks he’ll get one.” He starts drawing on the table again with his finger, outlining the same star that I love to outline with my finger. Then he gives me a little smile. “So we need to look at the book of spells and find a good spell you could use on them.”
I think about it. “I think we should let the concert do the magic. Play your flute and that will be magic enough. All that beautiful music curling out over the audience . . .”
“No,” he says very firmly. “We need more than that.”
“And if it doesn’t work,” I continue, “then it’s just not the right time. Because if it’s meant to happen, it will. But things have to develop. We can’t force it to happen.”
“Would you please even look at the book of spells? I know you could find something in there to help us. This girl at my school said she knows this psychic lady and she rubs people’s heads and tells them what’s going to happen. So I know you could just read some words. I’d do it myself except you and Blix are the ones with the magic.”
“How do you know that?” I say.
He shrugs. “I dunno. I just know it.”
I glance over at the bookshelf, where the book of spells sits, bulging with papers. Its cover looks torn. Funny how some days I don’t even see it there, and some days it’s the focal point of the whole kitchen.
Like now.
Andrew, with his usual hangdog countenance (what I assume is the result of a perpetual, lifelong guilty conscience) arrives then, and Sammy leaves with his dad, trailing his overnight bag and holding on to his soccer ball, giving me backward looks and wagging his eyebrows at me. He mouths, “DO IT” as they leave. I sit there drinking my tea for a long while, listening to the way the house settles and creaks. The windows need washing. Everything needs washing around here.
I should call a real estate agent, find out what I have to do to put the place on the market. Why don’t I ever seem able to set all this in motion?
Bedford, lying at my feet, turns over in his sleep and thumps his tail. Tap tap tap.
I wash the dishes and sweep the kitchen floor, then go outside to get some fresh air. The wind is whipping up the trees. Patrick has put the recycling out by the curb and it’s full of cardboard boxes and containers. I look longingly at his apartment; the windows with the wrought-iron bars are a perfect metaphor for everything about Patrick.
Lola’s shades are up, I’m pleased to see. She got a pacemaker last week, and it’s made her feel worlds better, she says, filled with energy she hasn’t felt in years.
I pull the dead leaves off the rosebush and then traipse up the stairs and straighten the Tibetan prayer flags on my way inside. Maybe I should call my sister—but then I find myself standing in front of the book of spells.
It would not hurt to look at this book.
I could open it up and see how ridiculous it is—probably just a book of parlor games. Somebody probably gave it to Blix as a joke, a nod to her interest in unconventional things.
I open the front cover. There are a whole bunch of papers shoved between the pages, so I take them out very carefully and set them aside. They are grocery lists, little doodles, a note Blix evidently wrote to Houndy reminding him to bring home four extra lobsters because Lola and Patrick were both coming over for dinner. (Patrick came up for dinner? Really?) All the stuff of life that you shove away somewhere when company is coming over and you aren’t ready to sort through the papers cluttering the table.
But the book itself. The book is trying very hard—too hard—to be serious. It has a whole section about the history of spells, blah blah blah, an explanation of how humans have always thought they needed to claim some influence over the vagaries of life. And then, getting down to business, there are some five thousand actual spells for everything: cleansing energy, winning court cases, ensuring protection, finding lost objects, healing disease, getting money—and, of course, a huge section on love and sex.
In the love section, there are mentions of ingredients for a proper spell: rosemary, roses, chamomile. Some vanilla beans wouldn’t hurt.
A piece of paper falls out onto the floor.
On it, I see that someone has written in a scratchy light scrawl: “Lola open heart love brave dream. You know the man now. The man who will love you.”
At the very back of the book, there’s a thin green leather journal wedged between a couple of pages, wrapped up with a brown cord with a star charm attached.
I shouldn’t open this. Blix’s secrets are there, I’m sure of it.
But maybe—maybe she wanted me to see it. This isn’t exactly hidden away, after all. She could have destroyed all the things she didn’t want found. It wasn’t like her death surprised her; she knew for ages she was going to die. No, I am certain she put everything exactly where she wanted it, and for a purpose.
My hand touches the leather cord, and I take a deep breath, and then I’m pulling on it slightly and opening the journal. I’ll read a little bit, I tell myself. See if she mentioned me. I have a right to know if I was mentioned in her journal, don’t I? After all, she left me her house—maybe there are instructions here on what else I should be doing.
And there it is, the thing that breaks my heart.
She has listed the spells she was using for healing, and the date she employed each one, and the results. The Acorn Good Health Spell, for instance, that she used the previous fall. “I threw the acorns in the air. They scattered over the ground.”