The Rules of Magic

by Alice Hoffman

  She followed the Reverend into the house and up the stairs. The carpeting was beige and the walls were white, but yellowing. There was the scent of mothballs and of coffee that had recently been brewed. No lights were turned on. The Reverend didn’t like to spend the money on electricity bills, plus he could see just fine until it was pitch dark. After dark he went to bed. Or he sat by his window, looking into the yard as if he could see back through time into the past. His wife had died much too young, of cancer, and maybe that was when everything started to go wrong. He was strict with his son, and he feared bad luck, and then it seemed he had brought it upon himself, and upon everyone near him.

  “Watch your step,” he found himself saying, for the stairs were steep.

  Once inside, the Reverend switched on a lamp. Jet had wanted to see Levi’s room ever since they’d met. Whenever they sat in the park he would describe it in the greatest of detail. The blue bedspread, the trophies he’d won on the swim team, photographs of his mother and father on a picnic out by the lake. The wallpaper was blue and white stripes, the rug was tweed. Jet stood in the doorway now. If she closed her eyes she could see him sitting on the bed, grinning at her, a book of poems in hand. Her eyes were brimming and hot.

  “Unable are the Loved to die, for Love is Immortality,” Jet said, quoting Emily Dickinson.

  When she opened her eyes the Reverend was standing beside her, crying. They stood together like that until the light changed, with bands of blue falling across the floor.

  After a time, Jet followed him downstairs. He opened the screen door for her and they walked into the garden of daffodils. Everything else was black. Even the soil.

  “I can drive you to the bus station,” the Reverend said.

  “That’s okay, I like to walk.”

  He nodded. He liked to walk, too.

  “You can come by next time,” he said. When she looked at him, confused, he added, “I know you’re here every month. I see you at the cemetery, but I don’t want to disturb you. I know you want your time with him.”

  Jet stood on the sidewalk and watched him walk back up the steps to the porch. The lamp had been left on in Levi’s room and it cast a yellow glow. Jet waved and then turned. She walked the long way to the bus station. She liked to walk through town, especially in the fading light. It brought her comfort to know that for more than three hundred years people in her family had been in this town, walking where she walked now. The next time she came she wouldn’t wear this black dress, which was too warm for the season. And she would come earlier in the day so she would have more time, because for the first time in a long time, she felt she had all the time in the world.

  On June 28, 1969, the weather was hot, eighty-seven degrees, unusual for the time of year. New York City grew steamy, as if the heat rose from its core. On Christopher Street, between West Fourth and Waverly Place, the Stonewall, a restaurant that had originally been a stable, was burning from the inside out. The heat was trapped and it had to rise up. Organized crime ran it as a gay bar and everything about it was illegal. There was no liquor license and corrupt officials were handed enough cash to look the other way. Sometimes they did, but sometimes they chose not to despite the payoffs. There were raids and customers, including trans people, drag queens, and the young and the homeless, were beaten and humiliated and jailed, dragged onto the street, cuffed, bloodied, and facing a legal system that saw them as without rights.

  Late on this particular night, Vincent was walking with his dog when he came upon a crowd that was growing by the minute. He could have gone in another direction, but he came this way. Later he would wonder if he knew, if he needed to see for himself who he was and where he belonged. He usually paid no attention to anyone when he walked his dog at night, as he would have paid no mind to the crowd, which had been growing in number ever since the brutal arrests, had the police not encircled the area.

  Eight officers who had beaten customers were trapped inside, and when tactical forces arrived as backup, a riot began. Garbage cans and bricks were being used by the crowd to defend themselves. Vincent stood there, frozen. When confronted with the enormity of what was happening, the pure revolutionary action of standing up to be who you are, he was unable to move. Be yourself, his aunt had told him. Was this who he was, a man who feared to show himself? A rabbit? He could not have despised himself more at that instant.

  “Why don’t you do something?” someone shouted.

  One of the homeless kids from Christopher Park was being beaten, doing his best to protect his face with his hands. Before he could think, Vincent pushed the officer off. He concentrated and a hail of stones fell, scattering several of the officers. When the kid limped away, the officer went for Vincent, tackling him. Vincent toppled, his face hitting the cement. Harry was barking like mad, and would have attacked whoever came after him next, but Vincent gathered his wits and rose to his feet, calling the dog off. They ran down West Fourth Street, off the pavement, cutting off traffic. Vincent was bleeding, a gash down the left side of his skull.

  He let the dog into the yard at 44 Greenwich before going to the ER at St. Vincent’s. For days afterward there were riots, and many of the wounded would be brought here. Vincent himself had a concussion and was in need of stitches, and there was the matter of his hand, which had bent backward during his fall. They sent an intern to take care of him.

  “What have you done to yourself?” the tall rangy intern asked.

  When Vincent gazed up he saw Haylin Walker, in his scrubs, a look of worry on his face.

  “There’s a riot out there, Dr. Walker. I didn’t do this to myself.”

  Haylin then recognized him. “You!” He threw an arm around Vincent so heartily Vincent winced in pain.

  “Are you sure you’re a doctor?” Vincent asked.

  Hay grinned. He still had the same easy smile he’d had at fifteen. “Pretty sure. I just got posted to a residency at Beth Israel.”

  He was good at stitchery, and, because there were many other patients waiting for him on this day, extraordinarily fast. “There. Your looks won’t be ruined. What a mess today has been.” He got to work on a cast. “You may have trouble with this hand for a while.”

  “I was lucky. It’s mayhem out there.”

  Hay looked embarrassed, but he swallowed his pride to ask, “How’s Franny?”

  “Considering you let her go, do you care?”

  Hay gave Vincent a look, then took a moment to sit beside him on the gurney.

  “Does anything turn out the way we want it to?”

  Vincent got up, leaving Haylin to the line of patients waiting for him. “You want to be smart?” Vincent said before he went to check out. “Don’t waste time when there’s someone you love.”

  When Vincent came home, Franny made him lie in bed with an ice pack on his skull.

  “Wrong place, wrong time,” Vincent explained, but the night had done something to him, and, in fact, he no longer felt as alone in this life. He was part of something bigger than himself. All the same, he wanted to protect William. “Do not call him,” he told Franny. “He’s out at Sag Harbor with his family. I don’t want him to worry.”

  But William had the sight, and knew something was amiss. When he turned on the news the riots were on every channel. He came the next morning, driving his father’s old Jeep, parking illegally, pounding at the door. Franny let him in and he paced in the parlor while she told him what had happened. He was already damning himself for not being a part of it.

  He went upstairs and knocked at Vincent’s door. When there was no reply he said, “I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  Vincent came to the door, his appearance shocking. William embraced him, then stepped back to take a better look. “We’re getting out of the city,” he said.

  He found Vincent’s suitcase and began packing.

  “Why go?” Vincent said. “We can’t escape from who we are.”

  “Of course not. Why would we want to do that?”

>   Vincent laughed, for he agreed. “We wouldn’t.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, Vincent. Because I certainly don’t wish to be anyone other than who I am and I don’t wish to deny it. I’m taking you to see someone who had to do that all his life.”

  “Who’s that?” Vincent asked.

  William opened the bedroom door. It was time for them to leave.

  “My father.”

  They went to the town of Sag Harbor, where William’s family had a home dating back hundreds of years. The house had been a summer place, a ramshackle wood-shingled building with huge porches that overlooked the glassy sea and the shoreline of Shelter Island. But it had been insulated and a heating system had been put in. Now William’s father lived there year-round. He was tall and Vincent saw that William resembled him in many ways, not just in his appearance, but also in his calm demeanor, which belied a passionate heart.

  “William used to row out to the island in storms just to see if he could. He went in a hurricane once, despite my warning. He wasn’t one to ever back down.” William’s father had been waiting for them at the far end of a great green lawn. He embraced William, and then embraced Vincent as well, extremely happy for their company. “My son has always been brave and he reveals that to all who know him. I’ve always envied him this quality, for it escaped me completely.”

  They cut across the lawn, then walked down a lane past a small cemetery, where the Grants had always been buried, the first being Everett Rejoice Grant, who had died in 1695. Family mattered to the Grants. William had been an only child, but that had been made up for by scores of cousins and friends. William’s mother had an apartment in New York, and stayed there year-round, but she came out to celebrate Thanksgiving with the family, despite having a separate life from her husband.

  It was a clear, bright, beautiful day, the air tinged with salt, the climbing roses blooming. The graveyard was filled with sunlight.

  Retired now, Alan Grant had been at the district attorney’s office in Manhattan for nearly thirty years. All the while William was growing up, his father didn’t come home until late, sometimes not until nine or ten, and then he would sit up even later, files spread out over the dining room table. He got lost in his work, and often forgot his family. Those days, however, were long gone. Today he had set out lunch for his guests on a porch that overlooked the sea. There were oysters and a salad and white wine. There were roses in a milky vase in the center of the table on a white lace cloth that had belonged to William’s great-grandmother.

  “I hear you were there at the riots,” Mr. Grant said. “My darling son has always thought he could win over everything nature set before him, and I admire his attitude. We must fight against bigotry in all its forms, for it is prejudice that ruins a society.”

  “So says the DA,” William said, clearly proud of his father.

  “I’m proud of you, too,” Mr. Grant said, toasting Vincent.

  Vincent was abashed. “Me? I did nothing. I just stumbled into it and managed to get myself beat up.”

  “It’s more than that. I’m proud you can be honest about who you are.”

  “Well, it’s recent, believe me.”

  “I have every cause to believe you, especially because you are with my son. He knows truth when he sees it.”

  After lunch, Vincent and William walked down to the shoreline. The beach was rocky, covered with small mossy stones at low tide. Out in the water there was a blue heron that looked like Edgar, the stuffed bird in the shop. Herons mate for life, and Vincent thought this was a good sign, and an even better sign that Mr. Grant had seemed to like him.

  “My father felt he had to hide the fact that he was homosexual. My mother knew, of course, and they had their arrangement, but at work and in the larger world, he couldn’t have anyone know. It would have likely meant his job and would have left him open to blackmail, which he paid off once or twice. It was not a way to live, and it took a toll. On all of us, but especially on him. We loved him, but he despised himself, so it made for rocky going sometimes.”

  Vincent recounted the story his aunt had told about their cousin Maggie, who, having denied who she was, was turned into a rabbit. “That clearly didn’t happen to your father.”

  “No. In spite of all of us, he managed to have quite a life of his own. He’s no rabbit. He’s a fox.”

  They both laughed.

  “Well, so are you,” Vincent said.

  “He taught me what to be and what not to be and I’m grateful that I live in this time, now, with you. It’s far from perfect but it’s not what my father went through. He was the one that was usually out rowing, if you really want to know, not me, and sometimes I feared he wouldn’t come back. That he’d just keep going until he reached a place where he could be happy. Or happier. He took on the worst cases, murder, rape, because he wanted to change the world in his own way, but also because he needed to fight, and he couldn’t fight for himself. That’s one of the attributes that first attracted me to you. You’re a fighter.”

  “Am I?” Vincent said.

  “You’ll see. When the time comes. You’ll fight for the life you want.”

  After walking for a while, they stopped by a tide pool, and took off their shoes, and then, as if having the same thought at the same time, they undressed and raced into the water, whooping, for it was cold as ice. Vincent was alive, more alive than he’d ever imagined he’d be. He dove into the water and everything was green. His mind was clear and cold. His heart pounded in his chest. He was caught up in the water, but he knew he couldn’t drown. All the same, William reached for him and steadied him, then pulled him out of the tide.

  “You’re mad,” William said. “There’s a current.”

  “It doesn’t matter to us.”

  Vincent threw his arms around William. He dared to think that at last he was truly happy. He looked out to Shelter Island. He had the urge to swim for it, to try something impossible, for everything he’d done up to this time seemed selfish and small.

  “You matter more than anything to me,” William said.

  Vincent shook his head. “You think too highly of me.”

  “I know exactly who you are,” William responded. “Just as I always knew who my father was. And I loved him, not despite it, but because of it, the way that I love you because of who you are.”

  One still night, people happened upon a deer lying on the ground in Washington Square Park. No one knew where it had come from, although there were said to be deer in the Bronx and perhaps this one had come down along the riverside. It was an albino deer, said to bring bad luck. It was curled up beside a wooden bench, and the next morning all the children in the neighborhood came to see it. There it still was, sleeping in the park, and even children who didn’t believe in fairy tales found themselves believing. They stood on the concrete paths, in awe of the woodland creature. It was so silent and it didn’t seem the least bit afraid. The children left hay and grass, and a few brought other offerings: sugar, blankets, sweet herbs.

  For many it was a time when miraculous things happened every day. This past summer, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had been the first people to reach the moon, on Apollo 11, landing in the Sea of Tranquility. It seemed the distance between earth and the stars and planets was growing smaller, and perhaps the world, that floating blue orb, could be better than it had ever been. But there was no peace to come; instead there was unrest in cities that were brutal and brutally hot. In the park there were swarms of bees, so many that Franny took to wearing a scarf when she sat beneath the Hangman’s Elm. She brought the deer a bowl of cool water, but it refused to drink. She could see in its eyes that it had given up.

  Sometime in the night, someone shot the deer with a bow and arrow, as if hunting season had been declared in Manhattan. People were outraged and a sit-in began, with many of the protesters the same children who had tried their best to save the deer. The mayor took up the cause and a collection was raised so the deer could be buried on
the grounds of the Cloisters.

  For days after the murder of the deer, there was a trail of blood on the concrete path where the poor creature had last lain. Near that place the children of PS 41 planted a rosebush one murky afternoon. It bloomed overnight with masses of white flowers, though the blooms were out of season. It was a miracle, everyone said, and some were satisfied, but to anyone with the sight there was still a sense of doom in the park. Franny stopped going to Washington Square. Instead, she sat shivering in their own small garden and she waited for whatever was bound to happen when a white deer appears, when white roses bloom overnight, when bees follow you home to nest in your rooftop.

  It didn’t happen until October. A letter arrived at 44 Greenwich on a Sunday afternoon, a time when mail wasn’t delivered. There was no stamp and no return address, but the cream-colored stationery and the slanted handwriting were instantly recognizable. The missive was addressed only to Franny.

  “Aren’t you the lucky one?” Vincent said drily. He had stopped by for coffee, as he often did in the morning when William left to teach his classes.

  Franny looked at the envelope on the floor by the mail slot. She had no urge to retrieve it, in fact she had gone quite cold with dread. In the end, Jet was the one to get the letter. She looked at her sister and Franny nodded. “You open it.”

  Wren hopped on Jet’s lap as she sat down to inspect the envelope. When the cat batted a paw at the letter there was the thrum of a bee.

  “Better take it outside,” Jet suggested to Franny. “It’s addressed to you, after all.”

  Franny went out to the rickety back porch. The city smelled like possibility and corned beef hash. Franny used a dull knife to slit open the envelope, then watched as a bee rose into the cloudy air. The last time they’d seen bees they had portended a death.

  The note inside was brief.

  Come today.

  Isabelle did not often make requests, and when she did it was best to comply. So Susanna Owens had believed and so her daughter did as well. Franny packed a suitcase and took the bus to Massachusetts within the hour. Jet had packed her a lunch, a tomato sandwich and a green apple and a thermos of Travel Well Tea, composed of orange peel, black tea, mint, and rosemary. Riding through the lush New England countryside, Franny thought of the first summer they’d come to visit, when Haylin wrote letters every day. She thought she could have what she wanted; she thought she could see the world from above, as if it were a distant blue ball whose sorrows had nothing to do with her. She had wanted to be a bird, but now she knew, as she looked out the window to see Lewis following, that even birds are chained to earth by their needs and desires.