Once A Witch Part 9

"Are you having a wedding?" I ask, fascinated in spite of myself. Who knew that Rowena would ever even think to break with tradition?" It's still under discussion.

In any case she needs a lovely dress and so do you," my mother replies hastily.

Then she draws in a breath.

"You know, Aunt Linnie is very good with a sewing machine and-"

"I'll call you in the morning, Tam," Rowena says shortly, and then she's gone.

"So," my mother begins yet again, and then she makes an attempt at normalcy.

"How are your cla.s.ses going?"

"Fine," I say.

"And what are you taking this semester?"

"Art history, English, pre-calc-you know."

"Pre-calc?" my mother says doubtfully, as though it's some sort of disease.

"Math."

"Oh, well, good. That all sounds very ... interesting," she says at last. My stomach clenches on that word.

"Actually, I was wondering if I could talk to Grandmother. Is she around?"

"Well, she's not out playing bingo," my mother says, and I blink, then start to laugh. The image of my grandmother in nylons and pumps, clutching a purse to her chest and squinting at a score sheet, flashes through my head. It feels almost sacrilegious and I quiet down.

"But . ."

My mother hesitates and I try to fill in the blank. She won't necessarily want to talk to you right now. Or she's busy in the stillroom brewing up some love spell for any number of idiotic women in the town who-"She may be sleeping. She's not been ... well lately." Suddenly, I am all too aware of my own heartbeat.

"What do you mean she's not well? How is-"

"She's old, Tam," my mother says, as if this is somehow new information.

"It will be her time soon. She knows this."

"Mom-this is a lot of mumbo jumbo, okay? What about a doctor?"

"Your grandmother is a doctor."

"Oh, really? Excuse me, but I don't exactly recall where she got her MD?" My mother blows out a sigh, short and gusty, and it crackles down the phone wires into the hollows of my ear.

"You know your grandmother is skilled in healing" And before I can retort, my mother adds abruptly, "Hang on, let me see if she's awake," and puts the phone down with a clunk. I s.h.i.+ft and push away a few more shoes before cracking open the door and peeking into the room. A gentle snore coming from Agatha's bed rea.s.sures me.

There is a soft rustling noise on the other end of the line and a rush of breathing before "h.e.l.lo?" My grandmother's deep voice floods my ear. Instantly, I concentrate on clothes. Thrift-store T-s.h.i.+rts and fishnet stockings, preferably purple, my favorite color.

"Hi," I say through all this.

"Sorry to bother you." My grandmother is silent.

"But I have something I need to . ."

Confess? No, too guilty-sounding already.

"I have something I need to tell you" More silence. I take a breath. The cell phone is growing hot against my head, but I lost my earpiece more than a week ago.

"In the store the night of Rowena's engagement party, I met someone. A man came in looking for something."

"Ah," my grandmother says. It's one of her favorite words. Depending on the inflection, it means a whole bunch of different things. It could mean I was wondering when you would get around to telling me this. Or you continue to amuse me with your oh-so-predictable troubles. Or I see the solution to your problem even if you cannot. Right now I'm hoping it means a little of all three.

"Anyway ... " There is a large thumping going on above my head and I finish in a rush.

"I didn't tell him that I couldn't. I said I would help him find what he wanted to find. "

"And did you?"

"I did," I say, and pride creeps into my voice. I didn't need your help or Rowena's. Okay, so I needed Gabriel's, but I'll get to that in a minute. But before I can continue, my grandmother says, "Congratulations. So what's the problem, then?" Um ... how to answer that one? Let's see. I pretended to be Rowena, lied about being able to "find"

something for a stranger, found it in 1899, and nearly got killed in the process.

Finally, I whisper, "I think what I found for him is not what he wanted. And I don't think I should have found it anyway. "

"Ah," she says again, and I wait for what feels like an hour until she speaks again.

"It seems that you've just stumbled onto one of life's greatest lessons, then. Things are rarely what they first appear to be." Somehow this conversation is not going the way I thought it would go. But before I can say anything else, she sighs and suddenly I have a vision of her, the phone pressed to her ear, her face lined with an undeniable weariness.

"Tamsin, regardless of what you should have done, you've started down this path. Now, I believe the only thing you can do is see it through. You have to see it through. If you don't, I can't see any other way for you. Or for all of us, for that matter" And somehow her voice holds a mixture of sadness and resignation. I blow out a breath, then say in what I think is a pretty calm tone, "What are you talking about?" Is it possible she doesn't understand?

"I'm ...

"I'm not a witch, I want to howl. But apparently that's all I'm going to get because she says in an entirely different tone, "Now, if you'll excuse me, Jeopardy! is about to begin." And with a soft click my grandmother is gone.

TEN.

"WHAT ABOUT this one?" Rowena asks, pirouetting before me. Her reflection catches in the three-way mirror, a dizzying spin of ivory silk and lace.

"It's great," I say.

"Very bridal." Rowena stops twirling, her skirts settling slowly. She stares at me, eyes narrow.

"You said that about the last one and the one before that and the one before that." I raise my hands in mock defense.

"You look great in all of them" What can I say? Rowena, with her ripples of blond hair, her pale skin, and her green eyes, was born to waltz around in long white trailing dresses.

"Why isn't Mom here for this? Isn't this something she should be tearing up over?"

Rowena snorts.

"She hates the city. You know that." It's true. Last year Rowena drove me to New Hyde Prep. I wouldn't have minded taking the train, but my mother insisted that we drive. She sat in the pa.s.senger seat, her hand pressed to the window, her eyes fixed on the diminis.h.i.+ng squares of sky between the tall buildings. When my resident adviser handed me a subway map, my mother looked startled and fearful and advised me not to take the subway after nine o'clock.

Rowena and I had exchanged rare but entirely complicit eye rolls. After my sister had packed our mother back into the car, Rowena pressed her cool cheek against my hot and sweaty face for an instant. Then they drove off. They had stayed exactly forty-two minutes.

"And there's nothing up around Hedgerow. Unless I want to find my dress in a consignment shop" She gives a delicate shudder, as if imagining the horror of donning dusty lace.

"I've found some of my best pieces in consignment shops. Like this necklace. I just bought it last week for twenty dollars" I hold up the round locket that is dangling from its silver chain around my neck.

"And look-it opens and it's a watch inside" I study the tiny watch face inside the locket. The slender hands are permanently fixed on twelve o'clock.

"It doesn't work, but it's still pretty. I call it my docket. Get it? A clock crossed with a locket?" My sister meets my eyes in the mirror.

"Charming," she says briefly and then fingers a creamy ruffle edging the bodice of her dress.

"What do you think if I took this off and-"Thankfully, I don't have to weigh in, because just then the saleslady comes bustling into the back and coos and oohs until Rowena is glowing and I can sneak glimpses at my copy of Macbeth that I am supposed to write a five-page paper on for this Monday. In my opinion, the three witches are overrated. Maybe that'll be my thesis. When we leave the shop, a persistent wind is eddying random flyers, crumpled napkins, and a few stained coffee cup lids along the sidewalk. A waft of incense, burning so strongly that I can almost taste it in the back of my throat, lingers in the air.

Glancing around, I pinpoint the source: a corner table where a man dressed in a bright multicolored robe is waving narrow purple and yellow packets and calling out prices to anyone who walks by.

"Twodollarstwodollarstwodollars." I look upward at the clock tower on the Jefferson branch of the New York Public Library. With its red-brick turret it always looks like a castle to me, but apparently it was once a women's prison before it became a library branch. Close to six o'clock. The sun is already setting and I am all for edging my way back to the dorm, where I promised Agatha we'd go to the campus movie tonight. But then Rowena says, "Let's get a cappuccino. You can never get a good one at home."

"Um ... I can't. I have to be somewhere."

"You really do?" Rowena says, then adds almost wistfully, "I never see you anymore, Tam." I blink.

"I'm home, like, every other weekend. "

"Yeah, but . ."

She frees a strand of blond hair that's caught underneath the shoulder strap of her purse and gives me a wry smile.

"Only because you have to be." I consider lying and telling her I have to sign in at the dorm by six. And then I wonder if Rowena is possibly ever lonely up in Hedgerow now that I'm gone. In the next instant I'm scoffing at this. She has James, and she has Gwyneth (although who would want Gwyneth, really?).

True, she doesn't have her own version of Agatha (Gwyneth does not count), but she has ... pretty much everything else. But right now she looks so eager to sit down and have a coffee with me that I don't have the heart to lie.

"Okay. Le Pet.i.t Cafe is down the block," I say, hoping to myself it's up to Rowena's standards.

"Great," she says with a smile that catches at me no matter how hard I try not to let it.

"My treat," she adds, swinging me around with her and starting off in the direction I've indicated. Le Pet.i.t Cafe is predictably crowded at this hour. I find seats at last by the window, dust the crumbs from the table's scarred surface, and wait for my sister to return. When she does, she's balancing our drinks and a cookie plate somehow very gracefully.

"The guy at the counter gave me these cookies for free. He said they were just baked" My eyes skip to the front of the room. Figures. It's the cute blond guy who I thought I had been flirting with successfully all last year. I hadn't seen him yet this term and I had come to the sad conclusion that he had gotten fired or quit. But no, here he is. Showering Rowena with desserts. I crunch into the biscotti my sister held out to me, pressing a sharp edge of the cookie against my tongue.

"So, Tam," Rowena begins slowly after she has settled herself.

"Have you given any thought about what you're going to do after you graduate from high school?" I take a sip of my iced mocha, tear the corner off a packet of raw sugar, and pour it into my gla.s.s.

"I mean, will you come live at home or ..."

"No," I say, more vehemently than I should. Rowena's slender brows pull together.

"Why not? Mom would love it."

"And do what? I'm not like you, Rowena. I don't... fit. Besides, I want to go to college.

"It's no secret that my mother and grandmother are grooming Rowena to take over the family one day. She'll be the one who everyone turns to when a decision needs to be made; she'll be the one to lead the rituals and rites every spring and harvest season; and she'll be the one to diagnose the town's men and women when they come after dark, tripping up to the back door in search of help. It's a good future, an a.s.sured and self-sustaining one."

Tam," she says gently now.

"It's your home. You'll always have a place. James and I will always-"I stiffen.

Already it's James and I this and James and I that. James and I want to build a website for Greene's Herbals instead of using those old-fas.h.i.+oned mail-order catalogs.

"Rowena," I break in.

"Don't you ever want more out of life than ..." I circle my hands high in the air.

"Than our family and the house and ... "

"And what?" she asks, her voice perplexed. Everything, I want to say, but of course I can't. Who would want more than to be Talented the way she is, the way everyone is except for me.

"Nothing," I mutter. I glance around the crowded cafe, desperately hoping to change the subject, and that's when I see Alistair Callum reading what looks like student papers, a white mug at his elbow. He raises his head, turns slowly, and smiles at me. Oh, nooooooooo!

ELEVEN.

INSTANTLY, I DUCK behind my tall skinny iced mocha, some part of me knowing that it's futile to hide, and not just because a tall and skinny gla.s.s does not provide much cover.

"Tam," my sister is saying, and I get the feeling that she's been saying this for a while. Alistair is pus.h.i.+ng back his chair now, gathering up papers and stacking them neatly in his briefcase.

"I ... know that professor" I stand so suddenly that I knock my chair into the table behind me, where a young mother is cooing into a red bullet of a baby stroller. She glares up at me.

"Sorry," I whisper, straightening the chair. Turning, I angle my body outward with the half-formed idea of reaching Alistair before he arrives at our table. But I am too late.

"Rowena," Alistair says to me, and even though he is tall already, I get the sudden impression that he could touch the ceiling if he stretched out his arms.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rowena swivel her head from Alistair to me, then back to Alistair, her lips parted in surprise.