The Mothering Coven (6 page)

“Like we regret life,” says Bryce. She is flattening spoons.

“I need an intellectual regimen,” thinks Ozark. She puts her fingertips to her temples.

“My brain feels strange,” says Ozark. What’s the word? She shuffles her flashcards. Empedocles? Bacon? Aqua vitae? Ozark slumps over the kitchen table. She fears there is something broken in her intelligence, or at least, badly sprained.

“Crossword puzzles,” advises Mrs. Borage. “They increase the mental elasticity.”

“For example, my corpus callosum,” says Mrs. Borage. “It has assumed the lotus position.” Mrs. Borage is eating Mr. Henderson’s prunes. She holds up a prune.

“The third eye,” she says to Ozark. She chews it thoughtfully.

“Would you like one?” she asks. She reaches in the bag.

“Oh,” says Mrs. Borage. “I’ve eaten all of them.”

“It’s okay,” says Ozark.

“Now I have a hundred eyes,” says Mrs. Borage.

“Like Argus Panoptes,” says Ozark.

“Like a scallop,” muses Mrs. Borage. She checks the refrigerator. Has Agnes made one of her scrumptious bivalve custards? No. Would it be in the freezer?

Mrs. Borage unwraps a popsicle.

“It tastes pink,” says Mrs. Borage. “It is delicious.”

[:]

In every nation, crossword puzzles are designed for a different category of ideal players. In England, ideal players are Mountbatten-Windsors. In the United States, they are retired sea captains.

“What’s the opposite of NNW?” asks Ozark.

“SSE,” says Fiona.

“Let me have a turn,” says Mrs. Borage. She studies the rows of empty boxes. They look like see-thru apartment blocks.

“The tri-cities!” says Mrs. Borage. “Cologne-Trier-Salzburg.”

[:]

No nation designs crosswords that target the argot peculiar to paleozoologists. The mountain stronghold of Venusberg designs circlewords for witches. The letters go around and around, in spirals. Agnes wouldn’t get to use “futhark,” perhaps ever, if it weren’t for the circlewords.

[:]

“Filthy excretions of sheep, the sweat of their auxiliary concavities, shall they cling about the surface of the tongue…”

“Oh cripes,” says Fiona.

“Such that the tongue,” continues Agnes, “scissored from the hollow of the mouth and rolled thusly in its blood upon the lees of new vintage…”

“Indeed,” says Dorcas, knowingly. “Sur lie.”

“Hath better hope of transmitting that wine’s savor than that befouled organ which ever thickens in thine jaws and tells not the larded collop from the prune though death be the difference…”

Reading faster now, Agnes holds up a finger. Ozark shuts her mouth with a pop.

“…and in death, no relief but rather torment as from the fangs of spiders grown inward from the skin, until the eglantine blooming upon the head of the marble statue of Trophonius, erected in the oracular cave of that divinity, be plucked and offered to the shepherd his flock torn by wolves across the north-flowing river or other compensation as judged meet.”

Agnes breathes out. We all breathe out.

“No, it won’t work in English,” says Agnes. “I’ve lost the hexameter.”

“It’s not very festive,” says Bryce.

“In case of party crashers,” says Agnes.

“Still,” says Bryce.

[:]

Agnes tiptoes to the little room beneath the stairs and puts her ear to the door. Would Hildegard like lunch? Agnes slips a chocolate coin beneath the door. She listens.

“L’hommelette!” says a voice.

As far as Agnes knows “h” is not pronounced in any of the Romance languages.

“Finno-Ugric?” wonders Agnes. “A magic language?”

[:]

In the front yard, Bryce has nearly finished laying the bricks, a pathway all through the cairns.

“There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home,” whispers Bryce. She clicks three times with Bertrand’s wooden clogs. A loose leaf of red lettuce falls from the closest cairn.

“Oh well,” says Bryce. What did she expect?

“Hollywood,” thinks Bryce, ruefully. Bryce regards a cockatoo. Did it always have that golden comb? Its eyes are gleaming. Bryce turns the key.

“Happy Birthday!” says the cockatoo. “Happy Birthday!”

“Shhhh,” says Bryce. “You’ll jinx it.”

X

Agnes opens the parlor door. Agnes adheres to the Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation. She spits not in the Fire and she kills no Vermin as Fleas, Lice, Ticks, &c in the Sight of Others; she lets her Countenance be pleasant but in Serious Matters somewhat grave, and above all she shews no Sign of Cholar and neither Curses nor Reviles.

Agnes trembles at the threshold.

“Even for a woman of assiduous restraint,” whispers Agnes, “A woman who pays decorous inattention to the most egregious daily insults…” She takes a faltering step into the parlor.

“Even for a queen of the turned cheek…” She lowers her forearm from her eyes.

“The word is… unendurable,” breathes Agnes. Chewing gum foils and bottle caps. Acorns and cocktail sabers. Sequined leaflets. Tea bags filled with candy hearts. No, she cannot deny it. In the straining muscles of her outthrust jaw, Agnes identifies the presage of violent distemper. Agnes swallows. Her toe stubs upon a stack of records. She winces at the crash of Hanover shellac.

“The East Chisenbury middens?” wonders Agnes. “The rub bish heap of Oxyrhynchus?” She eyes something shrouded.

“Bryce?” she hisses, and yanks the leech of a gaff sail.

“Odsbodikins!” curses Agnes. Magazines come tumbling towards her,
Dusselgossips
and
Helsinki Winkis, Birkensnakes
and
La-canian Inks
and… Agnes hurls herself from the parlor. She slams the door. She leans her back against it.

“Well,” says Agnes. She hums a few bars of the Colombian Anthem. The Colombian Anthem is remarkably restorative of the personal composure.

“Oh yes,” says Agnes, brightly. “Otter gauntlets.” Can you order otter gauntlets from the
Dusselgossip?
Not likely. Where to start looking? Agnes trips over a tower of library books and falls into the dining room. She feels light-headed. A musk otter on the mantel! It’s not moving.

“Origami,” thinks Agnes. Or is it macramé?

Agnes takes the musk otter and inspects the underside. She hears a sound.

“ZZZZZZZZZ!” says a collective voice. The sound is coming from a place that Agnes would identify as “swim bladder.” The term is not zoologically accurate, but it is polite. She hangs up immediately.

She watches Bryce tape pictures of the Finnish National Hockey Team to a television screen.

“What is a family anyway?” Agnes asks herself. “A cytoplas-mic sequence? A postal code?”

[:]

Mrs. Borage was born on Montag.

“Of course,” says Agnes. “The Moon God.”

Every twenty-eight years, the days of the month return to the same days of the week. It is impossible to celebrate your 100th birthday in consonance with the Moon God if you were born on Montag.

“According to the Julian Calendar,” observes Mrs. Borage.

Mrs. Borage follows the Calendar of Drifting Hours. It is also called the Calendar of Midnights. It may even be called the Veterinarian’s Calendar. Dorcas thinks that it is.

“Then when does the party begin?” asks Agnes.

“When the guests arrive,” says Mrs. Borage.

[:]

Bryce stops outside the little room beneath the stairs. She slips a pixie stix beneath the door. Something furry slides out.

“A Rattenkönig,” gasps Bryce. She looks around to see if anyone could have heard her. How could she think it was a Ratten-könig? It is a sheet of fake mustaches. Bryce thinks of all the hair she’s swept into the dustbin in her lifetime and feels ill.

“They are beautiful,” says Bryce. She recognizes one of the mustaches. The young man from the pinochle deck. Of course.

“More slings and arrows,” sighs Bryce. She sticks the mustache to her palm, where her heart line used to be. It tickles.

[:]

Agnes is at loose ends. She puts the Crown of Light on her head. The Crown of Light fits strangely. She wanders through the kitchen, out of sorts. Should Ozark tell her that candle wax is dripping on the lenses of her safety goggles? Ozark is too busy eating anchovies. Anchovies are brain food.

Agnes opens the oven door. What’s this? Oh yes. An alarming letter.

[:]

Dear Dr. Agnes Pancake,

Within moments, a French rocket ship will pass through a spore-nebula of Teufelsdreck, enter Earth’s atmosphere, and drop into the sea, contaminating the world’s air and water supplies with innumerable microscopic spores of Teufesldreck. We invite you to imagine the sea roiling, the valley flooding, red waves, kittens on the gambrel roofs, Wedgewood pitchers, bisque Frozen Charlottes, who knows what-all whatnots. Teufelsflotsam. Teufelsjetsam. Horrors.

Here at the National Zoological Society, we have partnered with Greater Friends & Chemicals of Western Rhode Island to develop O-poxy, a heat-reactive compound that will expand in the thermosphere, creating a powerful seal, thereby preventing the rocket ship and its bacterial cargo from a disastrous re-entry. We believe O-poxy provides the only hope for our civilization.

We are asking for your financial contribution. Every dollar pledged helps ward off the imminent exothanatos.

Sincerely,

The NZS Team

We are not sure exactly how alarmed we should feel. Agnes often receives this sort of letter. Agnes is an heiress.

As for the plesiosaurs in Lake Champlain, Agnes believes that they are sovereign creatures, or, at the least, supraterritorial. Neither Burlington nor Montreal can claim them. Lobbyists should expect no response from Dr. Agnes Pancake.

[:]

For the record:

Mrs. Borage is not alarmed at all. Mrs. Borage remembers the burning sky in Siberia. She regards the stuffed clownfish hanging from the branches of the hat stand, better known as “After the Tunguska Fireball.”

Mrs. Borage turns the keys and the jaws of the clownfish start popping.

“Que sera, sera,” sing the clownfish.

“Que sera, sera,” sings Mrs. Borage.

[:]

“My fingers smell like gas,” says Bryce.

“Gas has no odor,” says Mrs. Borage. “You are smelling the odorizing agents.” Mrs. Borage likes the smell of the odorizing agents. They smell like cabbage.

Either way, Bryce decides to eat her cinnamon toast in elbow-length leather gloves.

“Tannins,” warns Mrs. Borage. “Tannins.”

X

Bryce is uncoupling the gas lines in the elementary school cafeteria. She removes the bottles of gas. All done. She looks around the cafeteria.

What’s on the lunch menu for today? Sloppy Joes, tater tots, and pizza! How wonderful! Bryce takes her tray to a table in the corner. Her smock is a big hit with the children.

“We like the bunnies,” say the children.

“Fertility,” says Bryce, with some horror. She is not used to being surrounded by children. It frightens her. They are sticky and small with big, irregularly blinking eyes. Bryce takes a few bottles of nail polish from her pockets and lets them paint her beret. While they paint, she eats their tater tots. One serving is not enough for someone of Bryce’s age and stature.

Bryce finds more and more to like about the children. A very plump girl has just painted a tolerable portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes right in the middle of the beret. Rutherford B. Hayes would not have been Bryce’s first choice in portraiture, but the very plump girl has given him the eyes that Bryce likes, the ones that follow you all around the room. A very plump boy has just painted a blob. Upon closer inspection, it is Pangaea. The children are fantastically talented.

“To think, not long ago you were sea creatures,” marvels Bryce.

The lunch monitor is approaching. Bryce gathers up the bottles of gas. She puts on her beret. She feels quite full. The nail polish is giving her a headache.

“See you all tomorrow!” says Bryce.

[:]

Have the townspeople noticed that their ovens aren’t working? They have not. The townspeople have many things to eat that do not require ovens. The townspeople are eating Bismarcks and Waldorf Salads and crudités and the many kinds of breakfast cereal available in the supermarket. Bryce likes to go and look at the boxes of breakfast cereal. They are perfect just the way they are.

[:]

Mrs. Scattergood is buying muesli. There is a woman next to her in line who smells like a nail salon. The woman is giving Mrs. Scattergood a thunderous look. Her shopping cart is filled with sliced bread.

“One of those crazy women who feeds the birds,” thinks Mrs. Scattergood. As though the birds did not have plenty to eat in Nature, beechnuts and pinecones and pussy willows and litter, all the ripped opened packets of ketchup. Mrs. Scattergood has been reading the science journals. Avian obesity—entire flocks too fat to fly south, freezing to death in the eaves of the houses. She returns the woman’s thunderous look.

Nearby, an extremely tiny old man is sitting in a shopping cart in footsie pajamas. He is bald with a walrus mustache. He waves at Mrs. Scattergood.

“Hello, Herr Walrossbart,” says Mrs. Scattergood. “Peek-a-

boo.”

[:]

Agnes is the only paleozoologist in the county. It is remarkable that she can’t find steadier work.

“There are very few opportunities in this town,” says Agnes. Very few technical careers, very few high-level executive positions or full professorships, very few objets petit a. Agnes is certain that’s why Bertrand left us.

“Where does it say that?” asked Bryce. Agnes held the note to her chest.

“She’s gone to find her objet petit a,” said Agnes. “It’s what she doesn’t say.”

[:]

Years ago, before Hildegard, we had a foreign student named Dragomir. He was merry and ate many eggs. He arrived with a note written on the stationery of the General Inspectorate of Romanian Police.