The Rules of Magic (14 page)

He recognized Levi right away. The white shirt, the dark hair, his serious demeanor as he made his way down the steps of the high school. He went right past Vincent, in a hurry. Vincent rose to his feet and took off running to catch up with him.

“Hey, Levi. Slow down.”

Levi threw him a puzzled look. “I don't know you.”

“Yeah, well I know you. Slow the fuck down.”

“I have to get to work.” Levi had slowed his pace. “Over at the pharmacy.” He looked at Vincent more closely. “Did you want something?”

“No. But you do.” Vincent took out the letter. “From my sister.”

Levi grabbed the letter and tore it open, reading it hungrily.

Vincent gazed around. “Your father's not here, is he?”

“What? No.” Levi went on reading. “You're supposed to give me twenty dollars.”

“I am?”

“Sorry. I wouldn't ordinarily agree to this, but my father puts all of my earnings into a bank account I can't access. I need money for the bus to New York.”

Vincent gave him the twenty. “You don't think you might be looking for trouble?”

Levi thanked Vincent for the loan, but laughed at the question. “Life is trouble, brother. You've got to fight for what you want.”

They shook hands. Vincent didn't know what to think. He saw in Levi something he'd never felt himself. This was what love
looked like. This was what it could do to you. Vincent found himself walking to Magnolia Street. It had begun to rain, and so he ran. He wondered if he would ever feel that someone was worth fighting for, if there would ever be a person who would make him stand up and take a chance and have the courage to be reckless.

Isabelle wasn't surprised to see him. When she gave him tea and a piece of pie, he realized he was starving. He explained that he had been in the school band, but had quit once their performance was over.

“I take it you're not staying.” Isabelle had noticed he had nothing with him but a jacket.

“The school reserved hotel rooms. I only came to deliver a letter for Jet.” It was impossible to tell a lie to their aunt.

“Levi Willard,” Isabelle said. “I used to see them walking together last summer.”

“Apparently, his father hates us.”

“Did he see you?”

“I don't think so.”

Isabelle gestured for Vincent to lift up his left foot. She took his heavy black boot in her hand and examined the sole. There was a nail through it.

“Think again,” Isabelle said. “He knew you were here. He left out nails.”

Vincent fiddled with the nail, his face furrowed. “I can't get it out.”

“Of course not. This is the sort witch-hunters use.”

Isabelle took a small vial from a shelf. Rosemary oil infused with holly and hyssop. She dabbed some on the nail and uttered an oath.
This cannot harm you on this day. When you walk, you walk away. When you return, all of your enemies will burn.

“What happened between our families?” Vincent asked.

“Family,” Isabelle corrected.

Now he was thoroughly confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what I say.”

“We're related?”

“Charlie is here,” Isabelle said.

A battered station wagon had pulled up at the gate. None of the local taxi services would come to Magnolia Street, therefore Isabelle had called Charlie Merrill, the handyman, to give Vincent a ride back to the hotel where the band was staying.

“Is there more to the story?” Vincent asked.

“There's more to every story,” his aunt told him.

On the drive, Charlie was pleasant enough, though he barely spoke. He was even older than Aunt Isabelle and had lived in town all his life.

“Do you know the Willards?” Vincent asked him.

“The Willards?”

“Yeah. The Reverend and his son.”

“Did your aunt say I knew them?”

“She didn't say anything.”

“Well, then, I don't know anything.”

Clearly, the handyman's loyalty was to Isabelle. He didn't utter another word, other than
Good night
when they got to the hotel. Vincent was glad to have a room to himself. Something didn't feel right. He felt a chill. He wondered if what people said was true, that no one could hate you more than members of your own family.

He felt an ache, so he propped his foot up on his right knee. The nail was gone. But when he took off his boots and socks, he noticed there was a hole in his left foot. It was a good thing
he had gone to his aunt for help. The nail had already drawn blood.

It began to snow toward the end of December, big flakes that stuck to the pavement. Soon the drifts were knee high, and the streets were difficult to navigate. It was the week before Christmas, and the stores were busy with shoppers. Franny was looking for a microscope at a lab warehouse. It would be an ideal gift for Haylin. She had dragged her brother and sister along.

“I thought you didn't believe in presents,” Vincent said.

“This is different,” Franny said. “It's practical.”

Vincent and Jet exchanged a look. Their sister without a heart had spent two hours looking for the perfect microscope. On the way to the warehouse they'd stopped at a coffee shop, and when Franny ordered toast, the pats of butter melted as soon as she reached for them.

When at last she was done shopping, and the gift had been chosen and boxed, all three wheeled into the street, where the snow was still swirling down, faster now, like a snow globe, with drifts so high many parked cars were buried. It was already twilight and the world had turned an inky blue. They walked arm in arm, mesmerized by the beauty of the blue-white flakes all around them. Anything seemed possible, even to Vincent, who turned out the streetlights as they walked on.

“Let's always remember how beautiful tonight is,” Jet said.

“Of course we will,” Franny agreed.

But Vincent would be the one to remember this evening when his sisters had long forgotten how they'd tried and failed
to get a cab, then took the subway, singing “This Land Is Your Land,” and how the microscope was so heavy they'd had to take turns carrying it. When they got home, Vincent went to his room and closed the door. He sat on his messy, unmade bed. His clairvoyance was becoming more intense. He experienced the future not as a panoramic vista but as bits and pieces, like a living crazy quilt. It was becoming more difficult for him to deny what he saw.
A man standing on a hillside in California in a field of yellow grass. A street in Paris. A girl with gray eyes. A cemetery filled with angels. A door he'd have to open in order to walk through.

One spring day, they knew something out of the ordinary had transpired because their mother had ordered a huge cake, which was set out on the dining room table. She had lit a hundred candles, which shivered with yellow light even though it was no one's birthday. Fifty candles would have been more than enough. Even more revealing that something was up: their father was putting in an appearance at the dinner table. And what's more he had actually cooked, fixing Ritz crackers with Brie and red peppers warmed up in a Pyrex dish.

Before a family meeting could commence, Vincent was called out of his room. He came into the dining room brooding, annoyed to be called away from the world of his bedroom, which reeked of smoke and magic. He had found a hanging wicker chair, with a lattice seat, which he had attached to the ceiling with bolts. He often perched there, bat-like, practicing guitar riffs for hours, in no mood to be disturbed.

Once they had all gathered, their parents let loose and roared with pride.

“Congratulations!” James Burke-Owens waved an envelope. “This just arrived from a little college on the banks of the river Charles.” Anyone crossing paths with the doctor would know he went to Harvard, and then Yale, within five minutes of meeting him. He now clasped Franny to him in a bear hug. “You're a good girl, Frances Owens.”

Franny, always embarrassed by displays of emotion, slipped out of her father's embrace. She took the envelope from him, barely able to contain her excitement. Inside was her acceptance to Radcliffe, Harvard's all-female equivalent, created when higher education for women was scandalous.

“You've joined the club,” her father boasted.

“We all knew you were the smart one,” Vincent said. “Now don't screw it up.”

“Very funny,” Franny responded. She knew Vincent to be the most intelligent among them all, albeit the laziest.

The admission to Radcliffe was not in the least bit funny to Jet. College catalogs had been arriving in the mail for some time, and Jet had worried that when Franny went off to Cambridge or New Haven she would be forced to deal with her parents on her own. How would she ever be able to see Levi without Franny to cover for her? She simply could not live without him. That very afternoon they had sat on a park bench kissing until they were dizzy. When it came time to part, they were upset, and they continued to embrace in the Port Authority Bus Terminal while Levi missed one bus after another.

Now, as the family was celebrating Franny's acceptance to Radcliffe, Jet did something terrible. She wished that Franny
wouldn't be able to leave New York. She knew she was being selfish and she chastised herself for it afterward, but it was too late, the wish had been made. It was bitter and carried the acrid scent of smoke, and when it lodged somewhere inside Jet it made her cough, a hacking rattle that lasted for months.

“Cheer up,” Vincent said as Jet despondently watched their parents open a bottle of champagne. “It won't be as bad as you think.”

“What won't be?”

Vincent tousled her black hair. “Your future.”

It was then she realized that Franny could provide the perfect excuse to see Levi. Every time she said she was going to visit Franny in Cambridge, she could get off the train at New Haven. Levi had gotten into Yale, and he would be there waiting for her. She thought she would bring him a new coat on her very first visit, then he wouldn't have to keep the old one his father had him wear. She had changed her mind about Franny going off to school. She even drank some champagne. She took back her wish right then and there, but unfortunately such things simply can't be done.

Haylin's letter from Harvard arrived in the mail the following day. He came around to collect Franny so they could celebrate their impending independence from their small-minded parents and their dreadful school and awful childhoods, for which they were already feeling nostalgic. They nestled close together to avoid a pale rain as they walked toward Madison Avenue, pretending to fight over a single umbrella.

“The only thing I'm taking with me when I leave is the microscope,” Haylin announced. “I'm donating everything else.”

At the coffee shop on the corner, they ordered waffles and eggs, and because all of Manhattan smelled like bacon that day, a side of Canadian bacon as well. Hay topped it off by wolfing down two jelly doughnuts, which he'd craved ever since his marijuana experiments. They were both starving for food and for freedom. The brilliance of the day made them dizzy and hopeful in ways they had never imagined. In Cambridge anything could happen. The rain was stopping; the air was green. Spring was thick with lilacs and possibility. Everything was delicious, their food and New York City and their futures. Hay was to live in Dunster House, Franny a stone's throw away, if you had a strong arm, which Haylin did, at South House on the Radcliffe Quad. They toasted to liberty, clinking together their glasses of orange juice.
O joy,
they crooned to one another.
O learning and books and baked beans and the Red Sox and the filthy Charles River.