Godmother (22 page)

Everything was in its place.

I closed my eyes and breathed in. “It is time,” I said. I ignored the pain pounding through me. In a few more minutes, it would all be over.

I snapped my fingers, and the coachman jumped to the ground and opened the carriage door. Inside, the velvet seats were as red as blood. I turned to Cinderella and watched the dying light on her face, her skin, the ice blue of her dress.

He would take one look at her and forget me.

“Come,” I said.

She did not move. My own emotions were too strong, too ferocious, for me to read what was happening within her.
Just go,
I thought.
Go!
I forced myself to think of the fairy lake. The water that wrapped around me like a pair of arms. The way we never felt anything at all resembling longing, because our world was already perfect, so full it brimmed over. In moments I would be there.

Cinderella still stood, and I saw she was shaking.

She reached up just as I was about to go to her. She ripped her hair out of the swept-up bun I had conjured for her. I watched, unmoving, as the diamonds scattered down into the grass. Watched her kick off the glass slippers. They tipped over into the grass. I couldn't take my eyes off them.

“I am not going,” she said.

THE NEXT
morning I woke up slowly, painfully. My wings were bunched up behind me in my bed. There was a burning in my shoulders. Every muscle hurt.

The sun was bright on my face. Hazy images, of trees and grass and forest paths, scattered across my mind.

I remembered then, and it was like a blade cutting through me: I could not fly. The desire stretched from my wings down into my bones, into every vein. But I could not fly.

I curled up, into myself. My face burned with embarrassment, even though I was alone.
George must think I'm out of my mind,
I thought.

Was I? After so many years of wandering the earth, had I finally lost it completely?

I had thought the prince was in front of me, leading me into the flower shop. I had seen him at the diner. The same voice. The same way of looking at me. It had felt as if no time had passed at all, as if I were a fairy again and he was the only one who could see me. Me, who had always fluttered above humans, made my way into their thoughts and dreams, whispered advice into their ears, changed their hearts. I who was a wisp of a thing, dangling in the air and floating above them. Always on the outside, in the periphery. Invisible. To be in that body pressed up against him … Tasting his lips, feeling his tongue and hands, his eyelashes as they tapped my cheeks.

He had seemed so close. My world had seemed so close. How could I feel flight through every inch of me, have these appendages that ached for the air, and not be able to fly?
Maybe they were never coming back. Maybe they had abandoned me to this world for what I had done and were never, ever planning to forgive me. The photos, the prince at the diner … Was it all just in my head? Wishful thinking, as they say?

I was homesick. My chest ached. So many years, I realized, I had been quietly waiting, wishing I could change history, suffering but not putting a name to it. It was amazing how a person could opt out of his or her own life. Follow a routine. Go to work in the morning, come home in the evening. Turn on the television, take a hot bath. Forget. You could get through so many days and nights that way. I had done it for years, barely acknowledging the terrible emptiness inside me, like a tide always trying to pull me out to sea.

I looked down at my wrinkled, ragged hands. I was so old. Once I had been one of the most stunning creatures in the world.

It had been three hundred years in human time. Cinderella and the prince had been dead for centuries.

I shifted. Where they met skin and bone, my wings ached.

It was seven
A.M.
I needed to get to work. I knew that George would be sick with worry. My answering machine had been blinking when I got home. I had heard the phone during the night.

George. Despite everything, a shiver of pleasure sparked through me, a glimmer of hope. I
would
be redeemed. I knew it. Today I would call Veronica and let her know that everything was set. And then I could go back.

I sat up. My wings didn't hurt so badly, I decided.
Suddenly I was filled with energy. It had just been too early, I thought. I couldn't fly
before
sending them to the ball. I was a fairy godmother! That was who I was. It didn't matter that my wings didn't work and that my hands were covered in wrinkles. Nothing mattered but getting her to the ball.

If only I had understood that back then.

I washed as well as I could, careful not to hurt my wings further. The banging on my door started as soon as I stepped out of the bath.

I wrapped a towel around me and crept into the bedroom. It was already eight-thirty I had no time for visitors. Quietly, I dried myself off, then slipped into a skirt and blouse.

Just then I heard the front door clicking open, the little bell I'd strung to the top of it tinkling against the wood. I froze.

“Ms. Lillian? I'm coming in.”

Leo. A moment later I could hear him moving around the front room.

I thought back, to all those other moments when people had crept up on me in the dark, rifled through my things, noticed the occasional feather drifting through the birdless air. All the times that people had changed, one second open and normal, the next their faces clenched like fists. I knew that look, the faces people made when they pointed and called me “witch” or “devil.” It had been many years now, but I knew it. You could almost forget, sometimes, how much threat there was, past the locked door.

I pushed into the main room. “What are you doing?” I asked. “How did you get in?”

He raised up his hands and just stared at me. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I came by to talk to you, is all. I've left you messages, notices. I can't seem to reach you.”

“But how did you get in?” I said, hearing my voice rise.

He held up a rusted key. “I've been going through my grandfather's things,” he said. “Mainly, I just wanted to see if this still worked. I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.”

I stared back at him, my heart beating wildly.

“I just … I really need to talk with you. It's urgent. I brought a notice here to leave for you. I wanted to make sure you got it, that you were okay.”

“I'm fine,” I said. “I'm very busy, that's all. I don't appreciate your coming in this way.”

“I'm so sorry,” he repeated. “Here, I'll just leave this.” He placed an official-looking document on my table. I refused to look at it. “I do need to talk to you. And again, I am sorry to have barged in like this. The thing is, I've sold this building. The new owners are planning to turn it into offices. So you will need to move. I feel terrible. I know you've been here a long time.”

“I can't just move,” I said. “You can't do that.”

“Actually …” he said, coughing, not quite meeting my eye, “you don't actually have a lease anymore. I found an original agreement that hasn't been valid in at least three decades. And even with a lease … Well, even with a lease, buildings get sold. I feel terrible. I know how close you and my grandmother were. I'm offering a nice deal for all the current tenants, which will help you get settled somewhere else.”

I was sick. He didn't seem to know where to look. I just stood there. Where could I go? How could he do this?

“Like I said, we are offering a very generous buyout. Just read the papers.”

In a few more days, it will not matter,
I thought. My mind latched on to the ball, clung to it. They would be coming back for me by then, once I'd set things right. None of this mattered.

“I'll read them,” I said.

“Okay.” He stepped back. Awkward and sheepish. “Again, I apologize.”

“Fine,” I said. “Now I have to get to work, if you don't mind.”

“Yes, of course,” he said. But he was hesitating.

“Is there something else?” My mind flashed to the bathtub, the feathers that would be floating in it, the same feathers that would be scattered across my bed, through my room. I couldn't remember the last time someone else had been in the apartment.
I should be more careful,
I thought.

“I—” He stopped himself. “Well, I've got a bunch of photos. My grandfather had just boxes and boxes of stuff. I found some old photos of you, even.”

I shook my head, confused.

“You were something,” he said. And then, embarrassed, “I mean, you were really beautiful. No disrespect intended.” He coughed again. “Anyway. I thought you might want some of them. You and your … family.”

“I think you're mistaken,” I said. “They're not mine.”

“Well,” he said, looking at me strangely, “I mean, I saw the other stuff. I just … Well, I can come back with them. If you change your mind.”

“I really am late for work,” I said.

“Yes, okay,” he said, turning to the door. Then, as he was leaving, he looked back at me. “I'm just really sorry I guess I never quite realized, and … You're a strong lady.”

The moment he was gone, I locked the door and pulled my living-room chair over, shoving it under the knob. I stood for a moment, realizing how loudly my heart was pounding. It throbbed in my forehead and ears, up and down my legs and arms. His words had disoriented me. A sick feeling crept over me, one I could not explain. An image of shattered glass entering my body.

There was nowhere for me to go. The ball, the gala at the Pierre, was in less than a week. I knew that it would change everything, but still I felt a terrible, gaping fear. What if I had misunderstood everything? And there were feathers everywhere. I thought of the bathwater, the feathers floating on top of it and sticking to the tiles. Evidence.

The feathers gave me a purpose. It seemed imperative suddenly that I get rid of every shred of evidence. The last thing I needed was to be found out when I was so close to leaving this world forever.

I pulled a cardboard box from my supply closet and went to the bath. The tub had partly drained, but the surface of the water was covered in long, gleaming white feathers. I reached down and swept my palms across them. They were softer than fur, whiter than snow. Even floating on the water, they curled and stretched like living things. Sad, separated out, but still vital, perfect.

I released the drain in the tub and began scooping up the feathers, letting the water run off them. I dumped clumps of wet feathers into the box. Wisps of them stuck to my palms and wrists and fingers, but I kept scooping and dumping until
the tub was empty and only a few soft white strands clung to the sides. After, I wiped the tub down, careful to pick out the feather remnants from the sponge and add them to the box.

I walked through the rooms, stopping at my bed. I raked through the bedsheets to pick out all the other feathers that had accumulated. When I was done, I walked into the main space with the feather-filled box—they were all dry by now, magically, shimmering and glacial—and, again looking around to make sure I was alone, removed the iron cover from the right-hand front burner and lit a fire. The blue flame flared up and turned yellow.

One by one I dropped the feathers into it. Despite myself, despite the fact that I had performed this ritual for years, my heart ached as I watched the feathers flare up. The fire took hold of them, turned them white hot, made them burn so bright I had to cover my eyes. And then, two seconds later, gone, without a trace. Just a faint smell of vanilla and smoke. It took me fifteen minutes to get through the box. Then I lit a match and wiped it against the sides, letting all the bits and pieces flare up and disappear.

It was already
9:30 A.M.
I locked the door behind me and headed to work.

GEORGE WAS
waiting for me when I arrived.

“Lil!” he said. “What the hell happened? I've called and called. I went by your apartment. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I said. “I just ate something bad. I was ill. I'm so sorry I reacted that way and made you worry.”

“Lil, you went crazy! Are you kidding?”

“I don't know what came over me. Really.”

I had a hard time meeting his eye. He knew. He had to know. There had been so many feathers, they had blown all over him.

“Are you sure?” he asked more quietly. “I've been worried about you lately. You seem to get distracted so easily. And just … I worry about you.” I glanced up at him, saw his face knotted with worry. I couldn't help but notice how handsome he looked, with his flushed cheeks and dark eyes. He and Veronica would be so handsome together.

I mustered all my concentration, to look as sweet and innocuous as possible. “George,” I said slowly, “I didn't feel well and maybe overreacted a bit. It can be scary, getting old. You lose control of your body in ways you never thought you would. It can be very difficult.”

I knew I had succeeded in making him uncomfortable. The specters of age and decay always did that to the young.

“Yes,” he said, looking away. “I'm just sorry I couldn't be more help to you. Maybe I overreacted, too. I don't know.”