by Rose Szabo
“We don’t eat a lot of that here.”
“Well, it will go a long way toward making guests happy,” she said. “I was also thinking that the house needs to be brought into this century if we are going to entertain. You know I could not find a radio? Or a record player?”
“There’s a Victrola in the library.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “How about this one here?” she said, pointing to the catalog with the tip of her pen. “And while I am ordering things, what else are we missing?”
We spent about an hour going through the catalog, making up a list of things to get from the market in town, and writing out an invitation to the Hannafins. When we’d finished, Grandmere bundled up all the outgoing mail and handed it to me. “Will you tell Margaret to take all this to town?” she asked.
She must have seen me wince; her eyes filled with concern. “What is it?”
“Margaret doesn’t like to be talked to,” I said. “You can’t tell her anything. Or at least, I can’t. I don’t know why she listens to you.”
“Oh, that won’t do,” she said. “You are the head of this house, are you not?”
“No one seems to think so.”
“Is that not why you asked me to come here?” she said. “You know, we haven’t yet spoken about that.”
“You just got here. I didn’t want to impose. You’re our guest.”
“I am here for you, Eleanor,” she said. She cupped my cheek in one gloved hand. “You cannot possibly impose upon me.”
I couldn’t help but flush with pride.
“Do you want me to teach you how to do what I do?” she asked.
I nodded happily.
“The most important thing,” Grandmere said, “is that you have to learn how to feel every part of the place as though it is a part of you. Every room in the house is your body. Every being in the house is a finger on your hand. You have to learn how to feel them if you want to learn how to move them.” She flexed her own fingers a little. “Here is the first lesson. I want you to sit quietly and listen to the sounds.”
She took my hands in her hands, and settled herself a little farther onto the settee, and closed her eyes. I watched her face for a moment as she frowned, and the corners of her mouth twitched, and sometimes her eyebrows shot up. It was clear that she was hearing things I couldn’t. I shut my eyes, too, and strained to hear.
There was a faint clanging sound, I realized. Banging pots. I could hear the kitchen from here. From upstairs I could hear splashing water: Mother, taking her bath. I relaxed and tried to hear more. I could feel, too: a faint current of slightly colder air was coming from the hall, which meant that someone had opened a door to the outside. The clicking on the floor meant that someone had come in on four legs. Grandpa Miklos, by the weight of his footsteps. I opened my eyes.
“Tell me what you know now,” Grandmere said.
“Margaret’s washing pans,” I said. “Grandpa just came in—through the front door, which means he didn’t catch anything in the woods. Mother’s running water right now.”
“Good,” she said. “Very good. Eventually you will learn to always be listening at the back of your mind, and you will hear more, and know more. And eventually you will learn how to make things happen without ever lifting your hands.”
“Like … magic?” I asked.
“Exactly like magic. The kind of magic that you use to make a party—or a household—work perfectly. Now, I want to rest, so why don’t you go practice? You can tell Margaret to post these. If she won’t, or if she makes a fuss, come to me and I will help you.”
I took them and headed for Margaret. But when I stepped into the kitchen, I balked. Margaret was plucking a wild turkey, its head in the sink, a bucket of feathers on the floor beside her. She looked up when she saw me come in. She made a low droning noise in her throat, almost a growl.
I cleared my throat, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. For one thing, the idea of upsetting Margaret frightened me. But that wasn’t the only reason I hesitated. I didn’t like the idea of telling her to do anything, even if it worked. Margaret was always working; she was working right now. And anyway, I had feet, didn’t I? I could take the mail to town.
I held up the invitations and waved my hand toward the back door: I’m going out. Margaret frowned, but she turned back to her work.
As I slipped out through the back door, I instantly felt like I’d done something wrong. But why? I’d felt guilty about the idea of bothering her, and now I felt guilty about doing it myself. Or at least, worried about what Grandmere would think. I found myself sneaking around the house, hugging the edge of the woods, hoping she wouldn’t see me setting out for Winterport.
The walk was longer than I’d remembered; I hadn’t made the trip on foot since that first day, and I’d been buzzing with nerves then. My feet slid on the gravel road. And then I came around a bend and I could suddenly see the town curled below me, following the edge of the land, the spars of its docks jutting out into the harbor. Boats bobbed at their moorings. Red brick buildings caught the afternoon sunlight. It was so peaceful here. I wondered, for a moment, what it would be like to be any one of these people. To not be feared. And of course, I could see the church from here. I realized I was tempted to stop in, to see if Father Thomas would receive me.
Errands first. I passed the church and made straight for the post office, where I dropped off the catalog order forms and the invitation. Mrs. Hannafin spotted her name on the envelope and gave me a suspicious look before ripping it open in front of me. Her lips moved while she read it.
“GRAND-meer?” she asked.
“Gran-mare.”
She read on. “Well, I suppose we could. We need to bring anything?”
“Just the pleasure of your company.”
“No wine or nothing?”
“We’ll take care of that.”
She nodded, and eyed me appraisingly. “Alright, then.”
I put in an order for delivery at the store in town, and the man behind the counter shook his head. “We don’t go up there,” he said.
Well, here was a chance to practice what Grandmere wanted me to learn. At least it wasn’t Margaret; that was too hard. “It says on your sign that you do deliveries twice a week. Our address says Winterport. Why can’t you deliver to us?”
“We don’t go up there,” he repeated. He was gripping the edge of the counter, and I wondered if he was imagining me springing across it, sinking my teeth into his throat.
I took a deep breath. I remembered that tone that Grandmere used sometimes. I mouthed a little to myself, trying to imitate it.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
“I need you to make that delivery,” I said.
He nodded. “Hey, alright, then,” he said. “Didn’t realize it mattered so much to you.”
I smiled. “Good,” I said. “We’d like it on Friday.”
As I left the shop, I felt elated. I’d stood up for myself and gotten what I wanted. But on my way out of town, a creeping doubt set in: that what I’d done wasn’t just talking. And more than that: it had been familiar. I’d heard my voice do that before. But when?
It had been warm the last few days, but the road was shaded over and cold, and I found myself shivering in my light sweater. Father Thomas’s rectory was the last house on the way out of town. I felt a sudden nervousness. I didn’t know why I felt so guilty about it. After all, hadn’t Grandmere told me to go after what I wanted? Maybe I wanted to save the plants. And to do that, I needed to find out how to care for them. I’d asked everyone in the house except Margaret, and nobody seemed to know.
Father Thomas answered the door holding a cup of tea in his liver-spotted hands.
“Can I come in?” I asked.
He looked at me, starting with my feet and ending on my hair.
“We’d better go into the sanctuary,” he said.
He led me up the path that connected his cottage to the church. It was a sm
all one, capable of seating maybe a hundred people. In the nave, he sat down on the steps to the altar and gestured me toward the front pew.
“Is this where you talk to people?” I asked.
“It is where I like to talk to Zarrins.” He must have seen the dismay on my face, because he added, “Your grandmother came here, at times. Weekdays, when it was empty. She said that God lived in empty places. That if you could empty a place out, something would move in to occupy that nothingness.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Not sure if that was a superstition, or more of a metaphor.”
“You two were close,” I said.
He shook his head. “Maybe when we were younger. Later on, she mostly wanted to be with her family. We still saw each other a good deal, though, at births and deaths.” His voice told me something different than his words. He sounded hopeful, even now, after she was buried in the ground.
“You were in love with her.”
His neck turned pink above his clerical collar. “Well, yes,” he said. “I suppose there’s no point in denying it. But we stayed—well, loyal to our own lives.”
I knew he was lying. Arthur had told me, after I’d pressed him. Had I asked him in the same way I’d asked the shopkeeper? With emphasis, with intention?
“But why don’t you tell me why you came to call on me today?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you at Mass since you arrived.”
“I’m sorry, Father,” I said. “Things have been very busy since the funeral. But there’s something I wanted to ask you about.”
“And what’s that?”
“Did Grandma Persephone ever tell you why she sent me away?”
He sighed and put a hand to his forehead. “She said you might ask me that.”
“Did she tell you not to tell me?”
“I’m afraid she didn’t tell me anything, really,” he said. “She said that if you asked, I should say that you know why.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really don’t. She never told me, and I was just a child. Maybe I did something, but I can’t remember.”
He looked pained, like he wasn’t sure whether he felt wary or sympathetic.
“I wish I could help you,” he said. “You know, she had a journal she carried everywhere.”
“I have it.”
“She wrote everything down,” he said. “I’m sure she wrote something about her decision. Maybe that will give you some clarity. But, um…” He hesitated. “Be careful. I am sure she wrote down a good deal about her practices. And I hope you won’t be tempted to engage in any of them.”
I pretended to be surprised. “Practices?” I said. “Like fortune telling and that sort of thing?”
He laughed in my face.
“That was a good try,” he said. “But I know Zarrins too well for that to work on me. You’ve done something already, haven’t you?”
I thought about the vulture. About feeling around in the dark, knowing that somewhere in those teeming slimy guts was a secret. I looked him in the eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
He chuckled again and planted his hands on his knees to rise shakily to his feet.
“Well, young Eleanor,” he said. “I feel obligated, as a professional courtesy, to remind you that dabbling in witchcraft may be detrimental to your immortal soul.”
“Do you think my grandmother lost her soul?”
“Well, no,” he said. He smiled, the wrinkles deepening around his eyes. “I don’t. But I can’t trust myself when it comes to her.”
He walked me to the door. On the threshold, I could not resist any longer. I turned to him and said, “I think she’s still here. In the house.”
He nodded. “That wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”
“What should I do?”
“There isn’t much you can do,” he said. “She has to find her own way to heaven. I could never lead her there. I suspect that neither can you.”
The day was still clear and bright, but I barely saw it as I trudged up the hill out of town, through the birch forest. I realized I was nervous. I’d done nothing wrong, I told myself. But I hadn’t asked Margaret to do the errands, as Grandmere had asked me to.
I was being silly. I’d just say I’d wanted the walk. I’d tell her about talking to the shopkeeper. Everything would be fine. And why was I so afraid? She’d been nothing but kind to me. Still, I’d rather not have that conversation. And so I skulked through the edge of the birch wood and let myself in through the back door, feeling like a fool and a coward and wondering why that didn’t make me feel any less worried.
When I slipped into the kitchen, Margaret was waiting for me. She grabbed me by the arm and yanked me along the passageway into the scullery. Through there to the little door that led to the corridor that led to the library. She pointed through the open door.
The room was a mess. Books were strewn everywhere, some piled up, some flung facedown. The box of magic implements, too, was overturned again, spilling its pincushions and film canisters. Nothing was where it should have been; even the chair was upside down. The inkwell had been tipped over onto the desk, and the word LEAVE was spelled out in spilled ink across the blotter.
Margaret pointed at the mess again, and then jerked her hand at me. Was she telling me to leave? Asking me to explain myself? I shook my head. Tears sprang to my eyes. None of this made sense. Did Grandma Persephone want me to leave, after she’d given me her book? And how had she torn the room apart like this, when last night she could barely move a box? Was she getting stronger?
I tried to back away, but Margaret caught me by the shoulders. She stared into my eyes as though trying to see something inside me. Her eyes were green, I realized, and more wild than any creature’s I’d ever seen. It was worse than staring down Grandpa Miklos.
“Eleanor?” came a voice from upstairs. “Was that you coming in? Where have you been, darling?”
Grandmere. Margaret let go of me, almost flinging me away, and stalked off back down the corridor that led to the scullery. She slammed the door behind her as Grandmere swept down the stairs.
“Ah, my dear,” she said. “I was wondering where you got to!”
I was so relieved that I ended up telling her everything. About taking the mail to town, about the shopkeeper, about Father Thomas. She didn’t seem concerned until I told her about Margaret, and the library.
“I thought I heard banging from upstairs,” she said. “This is why I want you to be able to speak to her. She could have hurt you!”
“You don’t think Margaret did this?” It certainly made more sense than Grandma Persephone. And I was afraid of her. But I had a hard time picturing Margaret making a mess.
She sighed. “I do not know,” she said. “I am afraid it is possible. She seems suspicious of you. I want you to be careful not to be alone with her for now, my dear.”
“I want to clean this up,” I said. “I don’t like seeing the place like this.”
She smiled. “You have such a good heart. I wish that everyone saw it as clearly as me.”
She cupped my cheek and kissed me on the forehead.
“I am going to go speak to Margaret,” she said. “Thank you for going to town.”
As she swept away, I wondered why I had ever been afraid. She was so gentle with me. She’d never hurt me. She loved me more than anyone else ever had. She’d all but said so herself.
Alone in the library, I made piles of the books, smoothing out bent pages before closing them and tucking them back onto their shelves. I was up on a stool putting one back when I heard something fall off the desk. The spilled inkwell. A cold breeze blew against my legs.
“Hello?” I said.
The inkwell, leaving a trail of black ink behind it, had rolled under the desk. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled into the footwell to pick it up. As I did, the breeze came again, and a few little wisps of something lifted off of the carpet. They blew toward my face. I grabbed at one, clambered back from
under the desk, held it up to the light.
It was a little plume of black down, a feather of some kind. For a moment I thought it must have come from the inkwell, but it was the wrong kind of feather for a quill: too small, too fine. Black as night all over. Something was wrong here.
What was she telling me? Was this from Margaret, who was always plucking birds? But this couldn’t have come from the turkey. The vulture, maybe?
I retreated upstairs, as quietly as I could, with the feather tucked into the palm of my hand. I knew Grandma and Margaret both did divination with bird guts. Maybe I’d find a list of the types of birds they used. Maybe I’d learn something. I locked my door and crawled behind the bed to read.
The journal was a mess: hard to look through, entries written crammed in the margins of older entries. I flipped through it looking for pictures that would give me clues. She drew about half as much as she wrote: pictures of plant anatomy, diagrams of interlocking circles and lines that I couldn’t interpret and that made me remember Father Thomas’s warning. When I eventually found a page with a bird on it, it was a drawing of a pigeon with its guts arranged on the ground in a bed of pine needles. Beside it in cramped handwriting, it said, May 11. Got off the train in Ohio. I am close. The man I am supposed to marry is in this town. I will find him by sunset.
I am afraid.
I flipped through, looking for more birds. There were a few more drawings like this, of patterns of guts. But no black birds. They were as absent from the journal as bells were from our house. I wondered if that was because of Grandpa Miklos and his fear of crows.
“Eleanor?” Grandmere called from downstairs. “Have you finished in the library? It’s dinnertime.”
“I’m up here,” I called. I tucked the feather into the pages of the journal, shoved the book between the mattress and the bed frame, and scrambled for the stairs.
* * *
The next few days were a flurry of cooking and cleaning, led by Grandmere, with me as her assistant. The meat from the woods was fine, she said, but people from town wanted vegetables, dinner rolls, casseroles, and desserts with their deer haunch, and they wanted it less bloody. Grandmere stepped into the kitchen herself, evicting Margaret, with me at her side. She showed me how to make puff pastry dough, and how to efficiently chop vegetables. She produced aprons for both of us, although hers never seemed to get dirty.