Petty Magic (15 page)

After several hours in this place one finds one’s sense of wonder dulled by the abundance of it all; truthfully, one gets rather tired of all the enameled fripperies and Spanish lusterware, the rooms upon rooms of ditch-water landscapes. Shamans and sphinxes, fearsome Assyrians and flat-footed pharaohs, no longer impress the visitor who has stayed too long.

T
HE GREAT HALL
is bathed in wintry twilight, the cloakroom queues snaking endlessly. “Looks like we’ll be here for a while yet,” Justin sighs, and I wish I had oomph to spare so I could retrieve our coats at once.

“Pardon me,” comes a cheerful voice from behind us, and we turn around to find—who else? “Are those your coats?” Elsie says to Justin, pointing to a couple of jackets slung over the velvet rope.

“So they are!” Justin exclaims. He picks up the coats, hands me mine, and pulls the plastic coatroom ticket out of the back pocket of his dungarees. “I ought to complain to somebody about that.”

“You ought,” I say. “But I’m hungry.”

“Ooh, going out for dinner, are we?” Morven asks, and I grab Justin’s hand and whisk him away toward the door.

In another moment we’re trotting down the great stone steps into the filthy slush on the street, Justin exclaiming over and over how uncanny it was that those mischievous biddies should deliver us our belongings.

T
HERE AREN’T
any decent restaurants within walking distance of the museum, so we take a cab downtown to some Italian bistro Justin says has the most incredible pistachio ice cream. Over a bottle of house red he tells me all about his plans for the shop once Harry starts to give him a bit more leeway, and he talks like he’s forgotten that Emmet Fawkes is a stubborn old crank who’ll undoubtedly put the kibosh on any innovation whatsoever. He won’t be bedridden for long; men like Fawkes always live three times as long as they’ve a right to.

“Oh God,” I say with a laugh. “You’re
so
young.”

Justin frowns. “Why—how old are
you?”
He gives me an appraising look. “You can’t be more than a year or two older than I am.”

Now I double over.

“What are you talking about? And why do I feel as if I’m being condescended to?”

I just keep giggling helplessly.

“Are you really older than I am?”

“Just a bit,” I reply. “Just a bit.”

“How old
are
you?”

“A hundred and forty-nine.”

“You may be older than you look,” Justin says, “but you’re definitely too young to be getting coy about your age.”

“How was your steak?” I ask. “No, don’t tell me. It’s gone to a better place.”

* * *

“C
OME HOME
with me,” he says on the train back to Blackabbey. “I’d like nothing better. Where are you living now, anyway?”

“Found an apartment above one of the other shops on the mews,” he replies. “Convenient, eh?”

Suddenly I feel a little queasy. “Which shop?”

“The toy store. Why?”

“Have you already paid your deposit?”

He nods. “Why are you acting so funny? What’s wrong with the toy shop?”

“Your new landlady,” I say gloomily, for it’s too late to keep him from moving. “She’s a witch, you know.”

“She’s anal, all right. Insisted on first and last months’ rent
plus
a deposit. But she’s pleasant enough otherwise. I only moved in yesterday.”

“You haven’t signed a lease, have you?”

He shakes his head, his expression curious and slightly worried. “Month to month, for the time being.”

“Good.”

“What’s all this about, Eve? What’s wrong with Lucretia Hartmann?”

“Your home is not your own with the likes of her taking the rent,” I sigh. “Believe me, I know. But we’ll say no more about it. You’ll make the best of it, and then you’ll move.”

“Look at you, planning my life out for me,” he says with a smile, though there’s a subtle note of discord in his teasing. I’d better nip that in the bud.

“Oh, Justin, I don’t mean to boss you. It’s just that my family has … well, a
history
with her. I know her better than I would have cared to, you see. I just don’t want you to be unhappy with where you’re living. That’s all.”

The smile he gives me is reassuring. “It’s sweet of you to be so concerned.” He draws me in and puts his arm around my shoulders. “I’ll tell you what. If I find she’s breathing down my neck, I’ll look for another place.”

The rest of the journey passes very pleasantly indeed, with few words exchanged.

I
’M A
little disappointed to see that Justin’s apartment has a private entrance on the street—I was rather hoping I’d have the opportunity to poke around in Lucretia’s office. I’ve never noticed this door before, with a transom window marked
13A
in blue stained glass.

He doesn’t show me around the apartment, just leads me to his bedroom and pours two glasses of water from the kitchen sink. It’s difficult to get a sense of him from the few things in the room, seeing as he hasn’t settled in yet. There is one item of interest on the nightstand, a five-by-seven framed photograph of a family vacation at Niagara Falls. His parents have kind faces. That picture is a good sign.

But when he returns with the water glasses he seems restless, even nervous. He walks over to the window and looks out over the mews, as if there’d be anything to see this time of night. After a few moments I stand up from the bed and lay my hand lightly on his shoulder.

“The truth is …” He turns around to face me. “Well … I’m a little afraid of you.”

“Why should you be afraid of me?”

He doesn’t answer; he just keeps gazing at me with an inscrutable expression.

“Honestly,” I murmur. “I want to know.”

“We’ve waited a while for this, haven’t we?”

I laugh and say, “You have no
idea
how long it’s been.” He pulls back slightly and looks down at me, his face colored by flattered confusion.

“And to think that I was so sure I didn’t have a chance,” he says softly.

From then on everything seems to happen in slow motion. Every gesture shows a tenderness unwarranted by our relatively brief acquaintance, and I keep wondering if he feels it, the strange momentousness of it, because right now I have all the confidence in the world that he was Jonah, is Jonah. I run my hand over his unmarked flesh, his perfect kneecap.

And so we thump and shimmer, like a pulsar. I fancy we are glowing through the bedclothes.

A good while later we collapse in a sweaty knot of limbs. There’s a long contented pause. Happily he yawns, and feeling my eyes on him, he lifts a lid. “Was I worth the wait?”

When I say yes I very nearly call him by the wrong name.

I
WAIT UNTIL
Justin falls asleep before I put my clothes on and wander into the sitting room. It’s a pleasant enough space, full of boyish bric-a-brac and secondhand furniture in good condition, but I immediately notice something odd. One of the armchairs is drawn up against a door with a heavy-duty lock on it. My toes they are a-tingling, but I figure I have a few minutes yet; I shall have myself a snoop.

The lock gives me no trouble, and when I venture down and open the door at the foot of the stairs I find myself in Lucretia’s office.

It is preternaturally tidy, not an invoice out of place. There are stacks of crates along one wall, all neatly labeled
KEWPIE
or
ATARI
or
HOLIDAY BARBIES 1988
. I poke around her desk for a bit, but I’m beginning to think I won’t find anything interesting. Then I look up, and gasp.

There are marionettes leering down at me, dozens of them, hanging by the handful on metal ceiling hooks. They aren’t any ordinary marionettes, either—it’s perfectly plain they’re Olive’s handiwork. I don’t actually recognize any of the faces this time, but what does that matter?

I don’t like it—I don’t like it at all.

Good Juju

17.

A
FEW OF
our marionettes have never roused, never uttered a word out of their little wooden jaws, and my mother’s is one of them. Perhaps it has something to do with the circumstances of her death—Uncle Dickon hadn’t even begun to think of crafting her juju; she was that young. That’s the only reason he could offer.

We weren’t in Blackabbey when it happened, Morven and I—we’d just begun our nurses’ training at the infirmary in New York, and no one told us of her disappearance until a week had gone by. Auntie Emmeline, still in the flesh, mentioned that Mother had gone off with the swans, saying she might not be back for a few days.

As I say, that had been precisely seven days before, and I felt sick when I thought back to the events of the previous week. There had been snow and lightning that night; I remembered telling Morven as we ducked into the ladies’ WC at the infirmary that I was awfully glad we didn’t have to slog home in all that mess. I had only had this portent—lightning in a snowstorm—once before, the night my favorite spaniel died, and I could only hope it would prove insignificant.

I was afraid, but I didn’t let on. As far as anyone else was concerned, this absence wasn’t necessarily cause for alarm; Mother had grown less interested in keeping house in the years after our father had gone, and Helena had long since stepped into her shoes where domestic matters were concerned.

For weeks we waited for her to come back. The winter covention came, and Goody Harbinger and all the rest of the ancestors reassured us that she hadn’t joined their number. The summer covention came, and again they told us we had plenty of reason to hope. But at the next winter covention Uncle Dickon arrived bearing her juju, and though we said the words to give it life, the puppet hasn’t stirred from that day to this.

It has always been a bit of a sore point between us Harbingers and the branch of the Jester family that makes the marionettes. We have always felt obliged to say
It couldn’t be a fault in the craftsmanship, no, of course not
—but what other reason is there? Other beldames have died too soon, but
their
puppets have come to life just like all the rest.

So the very next morning I drag Morven down to the workshop on Alabaster Street, where Olive has evidently been turning out marionettes for the profit of Lucretia Hartmann. We are going to confront her.

The shop is just as it was in Dickon’s day: sawdust all over the floor, an unfinished doll head sticking out of the vise on the workbench, the shelves stacked neatly with cans of tole paint, spools of thread arranged in rainbow order on a rack behind the sewing machine. Olive doesn’t seem annoyed by the interruption; she even offers us a cup of tea. “No, thank you,” is my brisk reply. “I suppose you know why we are paying you a visit today?”

“I hope you’re not still upset about your jujus.”

“Well, yes,” Morven concedes. “
She
is, I mean. But she’ll get over it.”

“Honestly, though, Uncle Dickon always used to get them started
decades
ahead of time.”

I stomp my foot. “That is not what this is about!”

Olive smiles wryly. “I take it you saw my puppets in the toy shop window, then.”

“And why might I find that so objectionable?”

“I don’t know,” she replies, which is of course a prevarication. “I’ve been selling these puppets at trade shows for years, and you never had a problem with it.”

“Now you listen here, Olive Jester. Doing business with Lucretia Hartmann is nothing short of a betrayal.”

“I know she’s not exactly at the top of your last will and testament right now, Auntie, but would you try to see it from my side? I’m a single mother who needs to make a living, like anybody else. What do you want from me?”

There is nothing more we can say. She’s just so aggravatingly reasonable.

T
HIS ISN’T
the first time my holiday gemütlichkeit has given way to panic and paranoia, and I resent the reminder as much as I do that silly Olive making plans for my headstone. There are some memories I would rather not revisit.

I never did let on why I quit Berlin in such a hurry the first time. It was mid-December 1938, and I had taken the flue down to Nuremberg for lunch with Neverino and a bit of a browse at the
Christkindlesmarkt
, the greatest in all Germany. From there I would flue home to Blackabbey for the covention, and I wanted to arrive with my arms piled high with toys and gingerbread so I would be everybody’s favorite auntie.

It was a perfect winter evening, crisp and clear. The lights were twinkling on the great Christmas tree in the square, and on the steps outside the Frauenkirche a choir was singing “Adeste Fideles.” A warm gust of cinnamon thrilled my nostrils whenever I passed a stall of roasted candied nuts.

I wandered up and down the cobblestone lanes clutching a mug of steaming Glühwein. Most of what was for sale could be got at dozens of other stalls—little wooden boats and shiny railroad cars, tree ornaments that bobbed and glittered in the lamplight, figurines with faces painted on dried plums or walnut shells—and I was looking out for something different, something odd.

Finally I found it: a puppetmaker’s stall. Most of the toys were rather simpler than our jujus at home—red-dotted cheeks and yarn for hair—but there
was
one proper marionette in lederhosen and suspenders, with a tiny feather tucked in the brim of a green felt hat. He was just like something Uncle Dickon would have made.

I needed another marionette like I needed a kick in the head, but there was something about his face—the broad forehead, the wide gray eyes, the bulbous nose—that made me think he was a trustworthy sort of fellow. The countenance of the lady running the stall, however, was not so kind. “That one,” I said. “How much?”

“That one is not for sale,” the old woman replied.

I gave an incredulous laugh. “Well, why ever not?”

“It is merely to show the consummate skill of the craftsman,” she replied with a haughty wave of the hand.

This was awfully strange, but who was I to argue? I gave my little friend one last regretful look and went on my way.

A few minutes later, I was perusing a display of hard candies in glass jars when I noticed a man watching me. What had caught my eye was this: he had sidled up to a high table at which marketgoers are meant to enjoy their mulled wine while standing up, but instead of purchasing his own, he had picked up an empty mug and was pretending it belonged to him.

I had no doubt the Gestapo had a file on me back in Berlin—owing to the nature of my livelihood, you know—but why here? I was a stranger in Nuremberg, but so was most everybody else at this time of year.

So I did what one generally does when one suspects one’s being tailed: I bobbed and weaved in the crowd, turned corners and dodged back again, and each time when I looked back, I found him no farther behind. He had the most expressionless face I’d ever seen, even for a Nazi—there wasn’t a trace of vicious anticipation. And
that
was what frightened me.

I began to run. So did he. I hadn’t the faintest idea how I was going to get out of this, short of sprouting wings in front of hundreds of people—which, of course, is never actually an option.

As I ran I noticed I was passing by the puppetmaker’s stall once again, and when I looked at the marionette in Bavarian dress it hit me that
he was looking back!

“This way!” he said as I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the sour old woman was nowhere to be seen. “There’s a
wasserklosett
behind the baker’s counter, in there.” He pointed to a shop just beyond the last row of stalls that was reachable through a narrow space between them.

“Vielen dank!”
I whispered, and ducked between the stalls. In another second I was taking the baker by complete surprise, and a second after
that
I was doubled over on the rim of the upstairs bathtub, catching my breath. So much for my triumphant candy-gingerbread homecoming.

That poor dear juju saved me a lot of grief. I wonder what ever happened to him.

T
HE FOLLOWING
Saturday the Harbinger House doorbell rings soon after breakfast. A middle-aged woman in a serge suit and sensible shoes stands on the doorstep, but instead of a suitcase or duffel bag she carries a brown clipboard.

“Good morning,” the woman says crisply. “My name is Rose Smith. I’m from the Board of Health.”

“On a
Saturday?”
I mutter from midway up the stairs, and the woman on the step glances up at me with a look of mild disdain.

“Oh my.” Helena puts a hand to her chest. “We weren’t expecting you for another two months.”

The inspector gives my sister a pinch-lipped smile as she strides into the foyer. Helena accompanies Rose Smith to the kitchen, where at once she busies herself reading the thermometer inside the refrigerator, peering into the oven and up the ventilation hood, and inspecting the rubber seals on the sugar and flour jars on the counter, making notes all the while and muttering “hrmmm” at regular intervals. She confirms that the chopping boards are all made of hard maple and that the industrial-grade dishwasher conforms to the standards outlined in title 10, section 36 of the State Board of Health regulations.

From the kitchen they take the service stairs up to the guest rooms while Morven and I sit sipping our tea, and when they come down again by the front stairs Vega’s look of proud satisfaction tells me the inspector has found nothing amiss. But her face falls when the inspector enters the parlor and gives a “Hmmph!” of disapproval. “You keep a
parrot?”

“Why, yes,” Helena replies. “We’ve had him many years now. None of the other inspectors seemed to mind …”

“And look: it’s molting on the carpet! That’s an additional sanitation issue, Mrs. Harbinger.”

“He,”
Helena replies politely. “The bird is male. It’s normal for him to molt when he’s anxious.”

“Well, a parrot flying loose in a bed-and-breakfast is
not
normal. You can get away with this sort of thing in Europe, I suppose, but here in America we have standards which
must
be adhered to if you wish to remain in business.”

“He
is
toilet-trained,” Helena says, and the inspector snorts by way of reply. “Truly, Ms. Smith. Hieronymus is meticulous in his personal hygiene.”

“Please, Mrs. Harbinger. Don’t be absurd.”

I glance at Uncle Hy, who is giving the inspector a gimlet stare.

No doubt he’d like nothing better than to peck her eyes out; too bad he hasn’t the beak for it.

Helena puts her finger to her lips, urging him not to mock her, and in response he turns claw so that he’s facing his lectern. As he flips a razor-thin page Rose Smith’s eyes widen, and she clutches the clipboard to her chest.

“As I said, he is a
very
intelligent bird,” Helena says mildly.

“Ahem. I have yet to inspect the breakfast room.” Rose Smith turns and exits the parlor and we all follow her into the dining room. During covention time we have that grand old mahogany table to feast on, but the rest of the year the room is filled with small tables for two or four people and topped with white tablecloths, condiment trays, and fresh flowers.

Fruit bowls and Tupperware cereal bins line the sideboard, and the inspector pokes through the oranges and bananas to ensure the produce at the bottom isn’t furred over with mold. Then, with an air very nearly bordering on triumphant, she points to the flip-top spout on the granola bin. Vega gasps.
The lid is open!
One of the guests must have neglected to close it, and my niece overlooked it when clearing up after breakfast. The Harbinger girls hold their breath as the inspector writes on her clipboard.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you have failed this inspection.”

We all start talking at once:

“You’re closing us down over a lousy granola bin?”

“Look, we’ve told you the parrot is toilet-trained!”

Rose Smith holds up a hand to silence us. “Did you happen to read in the papers late last month that a dead mouse was found in a cereal bin by a guest at an establishment down in Cape May?”

We can only stare at her, mouths agape.

“Now.” The inspector tears the pink sheet off the bottom of the inspection form and hands it to Helena. “One of my colleagues will arrive in one week to perform a complete inspection for a second time. If you pass that inspection you will be permitted to reopen.”

None of us are panicking yet, for this is all fully reversible: with a few simple words the marks will shift on that inspection sheet, and Rose Smith will say
You run a very fine establishment, Mrs. Harbinger. Congratulations on another stellar inspection report
, all the while blinking like a barn owl. Vega is raising her forefinger to do just that when Helena holds up a hand in gentle restraint. Her granddaughter looks at Helena incredulously as Rose Smith strides from the room, but she does not argue. Nor do I, as I’m too stunned even to open my mouth.