The Flower Bowl Spell (11 page)

****

The girls both doze off, and I’m alone with
my thoughts. I worry about Auntie Tess and my protection spell. I
mull over Viveka and her mysterious disappearance. And when those
thoughts go nowhere, I turn to fretting over my job, my boyfriend,
Tyson, the fairies.

When I was a child, whenever I was bad, I
would wait for a different manifestation of disapproval: creatures
like a staring doe on the hillside or a raccoon in our garbage cans
scolding me. Sometimes it took on the form of my contraband—a
packet of shoplifted chewing gum grew sticky legs and arms, climbed
out of my pocket, and walked back into the corner store from whence
it came while shaking its tiny fist at me. It made me wonder if
there really might be something like the Devil—an almost
all-powerful dude of mischief trying to get as many souls in
trouble as possible. But I’m too keen on the idea of self-direction
to buy into anything like pure evil.

If there is a pattern to my little friends’
visits, I have yet to crack the code. They show up during good
times and bad, when I’m hurting and when I’m overjoyed. I have
never called for them, and I thought that when I declared my
intentions to banish magick I had banished them as well. I wished
them gone and I assumed they got that. But I have to admit they are
beyond my ken. I should have known you can’t banish things over
which you are powerless.

In college, I watched the girls and boys who
longed to be witches, for whatever reason—a break from their
Christian upbringings, a get-back-to-nature effort—form their own
hopeful little occult club. I went to one of their meetings,
sneaking into the back of the lecture hall they occupied, using my
invisibility. They were just like my mother and Tess and the coven:
more kitchen than magick, more lonely than believer. What they
didn’t know, what no one who forms these communities can know, is
that they just aren’t quite ready yet, but they get so close—off by
mere degrees—that they truly think they’ve reached perfection. And
the thing is, you can’t. You just can’t. Nothing is ever perfect,
and it never will be, and that’s why we’re here, trying to reach
perfection. Once we do, we can get off this crazy planet and go
home, be One. And who knows if
that
will ever happen? I find
it comforting to have a purpose, even if it’s futile.

I’ve sometimes marveled that my mother
decided to play witch and drag Auntie Tess into it around the time
I discovered my abilities, and that I discovered them in exactly
the way I should, that something close to perfect happened. A
miracle? But we witches don’t believe in miracles. What if my
mother had been trying on Catholicism or atheism? What would I have
done with what I am?

****

We’ve been on the road for a few hours now
and are approaching San Luis Obispo. My father taught here for a
year, and my mother and I spent weekends with him before they
decided to give up on trying to even appear interested in anything
but themselves. It’s a pretty town, and the girls are hungry. I
don’t think they’d ever actually complain, but since they woke up
they’ve been sipping juice boxes and trying to determine whose
tummy is growling the loudest.

My cell phone rings, and I push randomly at
buttons while keeping my eyes on the road.

“Oh, you picked up,” says a surprised and
slightly disappointed voice on the other end. Tyson. Ty.

“Yeah. Is everything okay?”

“Are you—Sorry, what?” His voice crackles
over the line, some of his words swallowed up in the hills.

“I’m driving,” I say loudly. “We’re going to
stop for lunch in San Luis Obispo.”

“That’s where I am now. Want company?”

I’ve got one eye on an SUV bearing down on
us, its roof loaded with surfboards. I’m only doing fifty. Clearly
cell phones and driving don’t mix. I can only concentrate for a
millisecond on the change in Tyson’s tone from the day of our
interview. He actually sounds friendly.

We agree to meet at a taqueria we both know.
I toss the phone aside without a goodbye and concentrate on
steering straight and keeping up with the speed limit.

****

He’s surprised to see me with Viveka’s
daughters. I introduce him to the girls, who take him in with what
I’m beginning to think of as their customary demeanor of faint,
polite curiosity. I can’t really tell what they think of this
slender young man with the mirrored sunglasses that make him look
like an Asiatic Bono. A little in awe maybe. They’re acting
shy.

Tyson’s definitely less surly than before.
His aura shimmers in rose and silver with near nirvana-like
flawlessness. Even with the glasses on, I can identify the
resemblance to his sister. Alice had a shimmering, happy aura too,
when she wasn’t in classes. School was not her forte.

Sitting on the taqueria’s patio, we chow down
on fish tacos, chips, and guacamole. The restaurant is close to a
playground. I used to come here as a kid to play, then fill up on
quesadillas next door. There’s a new feature in the park, a petting
zoo. Romola and Cleo really want to see the goats and ducks.

After lunch we throw away our paper wrappings
and cups, and enter through a picket gate into a replica of an
idealized, miniature barnyard. There’s a goat-food pellet
dispenser, and we buy some for a quarter a turn. A nanny goat wolfs
down Romola’s handout in one second flat. Cleo holds her stash
close to her chest and doles out the pellets one at a time. The
goats respect this, standing back and waiting, taking the feed
delicately out of her fingers between their yellow chompers.

Tyson and I lean along the white-painted
railing and watch. I check the goats, look them in their hircine
eyes, but they are just animals. I find this a little
disappointing. Two of the white ducks, however, are wearing
clothes. One is knitting while the other taps something out on a
small electronic device that I later realize is a Scrabble game.
These two are tucked away on the side of a small duck house—like a
henhouse except inhabited by ducks. I look to Tyson and the girls
to see if they see what I see, but they glance several times in
that direction without any sort of reaction.

“So, what’s the deal with the munchkins?”
Tyson asks in a low voice, gesturing to the girls.

I tell him a shortened, PG version of
Viveka’s out-of-the-blue visit. I’m too distracted by the ducks for
more. The knitting duck is most impressive, the way her (his? It’s
wearing a small Dodgers starter jacket) wings manipulate the small,
duck-sized needles. It appears she’s just started on something
green. The other duck is dressed in a brown leather vest and is
easily using his beak to press the buttons on his game.

“How come Mr. Bailey’s not taking care of
them while you’re on tour with us?”

This question snaps me out of my duck study.
There are at least three things about his question that poke at
me.

“You know, if you want me to call you Ty,” I
say, “then you’re going to have to start referring to him as
Cooper. Or my boyfriend.”

His eyebrows raise above the sunglasses in
mock-innocent befuddlement, which is actually rather sexy. “Right.
Cooper. Your
boyfriend
.” He nods at Romola, who is following
a duck—a naked one—and is unconsciously imitating its waddle.
“Don’t they have school?”

“They’re home-schooled.”

“Home-schooled?”

“You have heard of it, haven’t you?”

He nods. “Oh yeah. I’ve heard of it. Isn’t it
for religious freaks?”

I kick him in the shins harder than is
friendly. He elbows me in the side. He makes a face and I slit my
throat with my finger. He grimaces in understanding.

“Oh. I gotcha.” Tyson shakes his head and
looks at the girls with a laugh. Cleo is about halfway through her
pile of pellets, and dumps the remainder on the ground. She points
at the goats and they wait, their sideways ears alert. She turns
her back on them, walks a few steps away, and waves her hand.
Voila! The goats fall on the food like famine victims.

Cleo stops next to Tyson and looks up at him.
“Do you like being home?”

He smiles down at her and makes a little
quizzical noise. “Do I like being home? Yeah. Do you?”

“Not really. Sometimes. I like it here. “ She
looks beyond us into the depths of the playground. “Romy, lets go
on the seesaw!” They run to the little gate and let themselves out.
Tyson turns back to me. This close, I can see his eyes behind the
sunglasses, a different pair than the ones he wore the other day. I
myself have one ten-dollar pair I bought at Walgreens five years
ago. I never lose them. Tyson’s eyes linger on the locket Cooper
gave me. It’s half-tucked in my blouse and I pull it free, patting
it straight.

Before we go out the barnyard gate, I look
back at the ducks. The vested one nudges his toy around with his
beak so I can see the screen. Among the gibberish are the words
wings
,
toes
,
elder
, and
Peking
. His
companion puts down her knitting and waddles over to the place
where the girls fed the goats. She pecks at whatever infinitesimal
niblets are left.

I catch up to Tyson, who is trailing the
girls at a leisurely pace. He holds himself straight, which makes
him look taller than he is, and I wonder about his military days,
about what that was like for him.

The duck finishes her snack, quacks, and goes
back to her knitting. Alice used to knit, and nostalgia floods me.
“Ty,” I say, forcing myself to stop before the
son
. “I miss
Alice.”

He doesn’t stop walking, but there is a catch
in his step, and his aura darkens. How easy it is to read him.
Almost too easy. I wish it weren’t, and I wonder why it is.

“Me too,” he says. He clears his throat. “I
mean, she—she was my little sister.”

“She was one of my best friends.” My best
normal friend. “She was good to me.”

I only received one missive from her when she
was in Africa, a postcard with the briefest outline of her
surroundings. I’ve read it so many times, I have it memorized, no
charm needed:
The Bantu are so cool, such a gorgeous group of
people! Not to say they are perfect, but most are kind. Been going
by train and boat to get to villages, and of course on foot. I
thought it would be more dusty. Bailey’s French classes are coming
in handy, for sure.

I was so happy she had sent the card—still
am—because we had had a disagreement right before she left. She’d
been having an affair with a married man, which was partly why she
had decided to join this little-known charity group and work with
refugees in Africa, to get some distance and clarity about her
life’s direction. She didn’t want to end things with her lover, but
I thought she should since she wasn’t his only mistress and he said
he would never leave his wife. She accused me of being judgmental,
which I’ve never denied.

I tried to say sorry. I made the protective
amulet for her without her permission, and she made fun of it. She
almost wouldn’t accept the gift, she was so pissed at me. But Alice
could never stay mad for long. And as always, I figured I knew
better than she did.

Tyson is nothing like her. He’s more like me,
a little reserved.

He looks at me, and I can imagine the inside
of his glasses fogging up. But he doesn’t take them off. “You took
it hard, yeah?”

I nod, thinking,
You have no idea
.
“Pretty hard. It changed my life.”

“Mine too.”

I’m about to say more, but the children
interrupt us.

“Ty!” Romola calls out. The girls have tired
of the seesaw and moved on to the swings. “Push me!”

“Me!” Cleo says. “Me me me!”

“No sweat.” He gives a fake little cough as
we make our way over to them. To me, he says, “I figure by now
you’ve heard the rumors about me and Cheradon.”

“I’ve read some stuff.”

“Right. Finally catching up on your press kit
reading. Good one.” I try to pinch his arm, but he dodges swiftly
away. He grabs on to Romola’s swing and pulls back, the muscles in
his arms taut. Her jaw drops open and he holds her in the air for a
moment, suspended. After releasing her, he does the same for Cleo.
“Anyway,” he says to me over their screaming laughter. “That stuff
going to be a part of your investigative reporting?”

I sit down on a tire swing. “This isn’t
exactly investigative reporting. It’s more like”—I shrug in
apology—“fluffy fluff.”

He stares at me, his eyes still obscured, and
after a moment he smiles. “It doesn’t matter one way or the other
to me.”

“Your manager requested me,” I say. “I didn’t
ask for this assignment.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Do you think that I’m stalking you or
something?”

He laughs. “I remember that about you. That
you like to jump to conclusions.”

I know what he is thinking of. “My infamous
overactive imagination,” I say, remembering. “Like my theory about
what Mr. Kiplinger really kept in his ubiquitous cigarette box?”
Mr. Kiplinger. My ninth-grade geography teacher.

“Sure, like that.”

“Wacky tobacky laced with a garnish of angel
dust. I stick by my guns.”

“Are you high?”

“No, but he was.”

Tyson laughs. “I suppose you got confirmation
from Mister—from your boyfriend.”

The girls have found their own momentum on
the swings. Ty grabs the nearby rings and does a shaky but decent
iron cross. The idea that he is flirting crosses my mind, but I
push it away.
Get over yourself, Memphis
. He jumps down into
the sand and grabs the chains of my tire swing. I tip backwards,
but hang on, the tang of the metal chains rubbing into my hands. Ty
braces his feet on the tire, bends his knees, and we begin to rise.
I try my best to be his counterbalance.

“Whatever happened to that guy you liked?” he
asks.