He glances down at his program. He fidgets, tells me how he played the flute as a kid, and says he never could have played it in public. He says his kid is braver than almost anyone he knows.
I’m about to ask him if he will come to Thanksgiving dinner, but then the curtain opens, and a teacher gets up and says this is a sacred space when children are performing things they’ve practiced so hard, and he personally will come out into the audience and confiscate any cell phone that happens to ring, and the audience laughs nervously, and then he adds that he will also smash it to pieces, and we all laugh even harder when a man yells out from the audience, “Please! I’m begging you! Take mine!”
Then the music begins and kids tumble out onto the stage, jumping all around, singing songs. Some perform cartwheels and some leapfrog over big beanbag pillows. And they sing about freedom and happiness, and I can’t concentrate on the words because I’m suddenly smiling so hard that my ears aren’t working anymore. The whole stage is a blur of colors and radiance.
When Sammy comes out and does a series of cartwheels across the stage, I sneak a peek at Jessica and see that she is no longer in this hot, hard auditorium; she’s gone someplace else, and Andrew is right there with her. They are smiling at each other! I say this to Blix, who might not hear me, being dead and all.
There are choruses and dances and the bright, shining faces of kids. A group of boys reenacts “Who’s on First.” A girl does an improbable series of handsprings all across the stage to thunderous applause.
And near the end of the show, when the moment comes that Sammy edges over to the front of the stage, I think we are all going to die there. The spotlight beams on him, and oh, he’s such a little boy standing there in the yellow pool of light, so sturdy and yet so vulnerable. He starts out in a wavery voice: “The day my dad moved out I ate a plate of eggs . . .”
The room falls silent, and Jessica puts her head in her hands. Andrew, next to me, stops breathing. He reaches for Jessica’s hand and holds it.
The poem isn’t long. It’s about a boy looking at a plate of over-easy eggs and thinking how his father is the yellow part and his mother is the white part, the surrounding stuff that holds the family all together, but then later when he’s eating a hard-boiled egg, the boy sees the yellow part hop out and fall away. Then there’s something in there about the boy noticing that he’s the piece of toast; he’s not the thing that holds the yolk and the white part together, but the thing they can both join with, like he’s an egg sandwich maybe?—and then it’s done, and the air comes back in the room, and everybody claps for him. People stand up, clapping and cheering. And several of the other parents smile at Jessica and Andrew, and one woman pantomimes wiping away tears while she’s smiling. Andrew is now holding fast to Jessica’s shoulder and she’s leaning against him and they’re both shaking their heads and smiling.
When it’s all over, we walk outside together, but I find a reason to separate from this fragile, private love between Jessica and Andrew and Sammy because it’s at that stage, you know, when the night is holding it so delicately and I could blink and it might all disappear, all the magic might be gone, and Jessica would be complaining again about Andrew’s supposed maybe girlfriend, and Sammy would look miserable instead of triumphant.
And anyway I want more than anything to be back in Blix’s bedroom, sitting on her kantha, looking at her book of spells. And of course getting ready for Thanksgiving. That.
I walk to the subway, and my phone dings with a new text message.
But I am already underground, having stepped out of the cold, blowy night into the harsh yellow of the underground world, which always feels like stepping inside a huge world of light and noise, and the train is coming now. It’s here, having screeched to a halt, all the metal clanging as if it would fall apart. And people are getting off and then getting on, and I have to hurry to make it.
I look down at my phone, but the train is crowded—at this hour of the night!—and all I see, before the cellular service disappears completely, are two words, from Patrick:
Can you
And suddenly I am so happy. It’s ridiculous how those two words can have such an effect. They’re not even words you’d expect could make somebody happy; they’re not, for instance love you—but there they are, lighting me up just the same. I’m beaming as I hold on to the pole, bobbing back and forth, smiling into the faces of strangers, thinking how lucky I am to be here.
I send some white light to the rumpled-up guy who is panhandling, and the older woman who has rolled down her stockings and has her eyes closed, and the girl in the cloche hat, the one who keeps running her fingers along her boyfriend’s neck and then leaning over to kiss him. There is so much love for all of us, and Patrick needs me to do something.
Can you, can you, can you.
Whatever it is, I can!
When my stop comes, I press the button, and the phone lights up again, and I can see his message for real. And my heart drops into my stomach.
Can you come here as soon as possible? Don’t go upstairs first!!
THIRTY-SEVEN
MARNIE
Patrick has made cream puffs filled with vanilla pudding, and he hands me one as he lets me in.
“What do you think? Should I have made them with ricotta instead? That’s more authentic Italian, I think.”
“I like pudding best,” I say. “So, why couldn’t I go upstairs? What’s happened? After that text of yours, I expected to see police tape outside the building!”
“Oh. Was I overdramatic? So hard to get texting just right.” He looks at his phone, scrolls back. “Oh, yes. I see. It was the two exclamation points. Sorry. It’s just that there have been new developments this evening, and I wanted you to come here in case Noah is upstairs.”
“You think he’s there?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure—I haven’t heard noises up there for a while, but earlier he had a long, loud conversation on speakerphone with his mother, right on the sidewalk here. I had taken the recycling out, so I was where he couldn’t see me, and so of course I stayed there and listened. Not nice of me to eavesdrop, I know, but I think you ought to know that she’s furious with him. About the will.”
My heart sinks.
“Yeah. Apparently she and his father want to contest Blix’s will, and she was yelling at him that he’s not been doing his part.”
“His part?”
“Yes. His job has been to figure out how you might have manipulated Blix into leaving you the property. I guess because you’re such a known vixen who probably goes around getting old ladies to leave you stuff all the time.”
“Only if their grandnephews dump me. Otherwise, I let them give their stuff to anyone they want.”
“Well, sure. You’re chill that way.”
“So how are they going to decide if I’m guilty? Did they say?”
“I don’t know.”
“Blix wrote me a letter that the attorney gave me . . . and in it . . . oh God, in it she talks about how I asked her for a spell to get Noah back. And he—well, one night he asked me if he could read it. Oh my God.” I put my hands over my mouth.
“Wait. There’s more,” Patrick says. “His mom said that if they can’t prove you tried to influence Blix, they most surely can prove that Blix wasn’t of sound mind when she wrote the will. On account of her doing magic and all. She was a practicing witch, is what his mom said. And she thinks maybe that would stand up in court.”
“Witches aren’t of sound mind?”
“She kept saying she knew they could prove whatever they needed to, and that their family attorney was only too happy to get involved in this case, but—and I think this is really creepy—in the meantime she wanted Noah to look for any supporting stuff he might find—you know, stuff that showed she was crazy—and mail it to her. She said they’ll have someone do a psychological evaluation so he should mail everything. Artwork, good luck charms, talismans—whatever he could find.”