The Rules of Magic

by Alice Hoffman

  He poured more wine. It was a perfect afternoon, one Franny would think about often. He would be in the hospital another six months.

  “Just promise me you won’t fall in love with anyone else when I go,” Franny said. “That’s all I’m asking. You can take them home, do whatever you want, sleep with whomever you want, just don’t fall in love.”

  “I never would.”

  “What about Emily Flood?”

  “Emily who?”

  They laughed and finished their drinks. “What about the nurse?”

  Haylin gave her a look.

  “Aha.” Franny made a face. “She’s your type.”

  “You’re my type,” Haylin said. He took her hand and brought it to his mouth so he might kiss her. “You’re leaving, aren’t you? Why? Because you think it’s safer for me if we’re apart? After everything that’s happened to me do you think I give a damn about being safe? I’m coming back to wherever you are.”

  He refused to listen to any arguments against his plan. They walked back to the Rue de Rivoli, where they found a taxi. It was still difficult for Haylin to shift his leg into a car. “I’ll get better at this,” he vowed. Once inside the taxi, Haylin drew her to him so that she was on his lap. The driver didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention, no matter how heated their kisses became. “We’ll outwit the curse,” he told her. “Wait and see.”

  Franny liked to sit in the yard wearing her black coat and her old red boots no matter the weather. These days she kept to a schedule. Every morning, she wrote a long letter to Haylin. She ate the same diet, noodles and apple tart for dessert, or beans and toast and soup. Simple, practical things. She loved the garden: the bats flickering over the pine trees as they devoured insects, the frogs that came to sing in the spring. On most evenings, women arrived, in search of remedies. But tonight was different. She spied a girl standing inside the gate.

  Nearly everyone in town was too afraid to walk into the yard. Even the ones who came to the back porch to knock on the door felt they were taking a risk. They remembered the boys who had been struck by lightning and the stories their grandparents told about the women who could turn a hair into a snake and call birds to them and change the weather if they had a mind to. People still crossed the street when they saw the sisters coming, and at the library no one dared to defy Franny when she made suggestions. The grocery boy who made deliveries wouldn’t set foot in the kitchen even when offered a ten-dollar tip. But here was a girl, utterly unafraid, staring at Franny.

  She thought it was her neighbor’s child at first, the one who was writing her life story in a blue notebook, but as the girl came closer Franny recognized her. It appeared to be Regina Owens. Franny still had the drawing of the black dog and the cat. It hung in the kitchen in its original frame. The girl resembled Vincent, with her long black hair and her confidence. She had bloomed and was a true beauty, but then she would be, considering who her parents were.

  “You’re in California,” Franny said. “You can’t be here.”

  The girl gazed at her and Franny was reminded of the time when she saw Isabelle on the window seat, or the essence of Isabelle at any rate, when their aunt was actually up in her bed. It was a spirit that had come before her, a wisp composed of thought rather than deed.

  “My mother will be bitten by a spider. I’ll run away with the man I’ll marry. You should have told me to stay away from love. Not that I would have listened.”

  “Well, why don’t you listen now?” Franny asked.

  “Because I’m not here, silly. Remember one day you must do as you promised. And then you’ll get a big surprise.”

  “Really? What’s that?”

  The image of Regina had already begun to fade into transparency. It was possible to see right through her to the leaves of the lilacs.

  “Wait,” Franny called.

  Regina shook her head and smiled and then there were only the lilacs in the garden, no girl at all.

  That night Franny phoned April in California.

  “I wondered if you were ever going to call me,” April said. “I read about Vincent in the newspaper, and then Jet called me to tell me he was still alive.”

  “Did she?”

  April laughed. “He was always too alive. Anyway, I knew. He sent Regina a record player of all things. And she always gets a box of her favorite cookies from Paris on her birthday. No note. But it’s him.”

  “Were you bitten by a spider?” Franny asked.

  “Are you mad? I don’t even work with spiders anymore.”

  “And how is Regina?” Franny wanted to know.

  “She’s fine. What’s all this about?”

  “I had a vision, I suppose. Regina was beautiful. She looked like him.”

  “She does,” April said sadly. For all this time she had never been in love with anyone else. “It could have been different.”

  “No,” Franny said. “We were who we were. No more, no less.”

  “He told me we could depend on you.”

  “Of course.” Talking to April now, Franny wondered why they hadn’t been friends all along. Perhaps they were too much alike. Headstrong, willing to do anything for Vincent, refusing to accept certain aspects of their upbringing and their fate. She looked out the window and saw a fleck of white in the garden. A single rose bloomed.

  Dusk was falling. Vincent always said it was the best time of the day. Half in one world, half in another.

  “Always,” Franny said.

  Haylin came back the following year. He rented a small house near the town green, saying the curse would never be able to figure out where he was, since he slept there on some nights and at Magnolia Street on others. Whenever he came for dinner, he would ask for a salad, since their garden was so marvelous, and of course Franny always obliged. They went out together at dusk. It always smelled the same here, the green scent of weeds, and lilacs, and rosemary. They had several rows of lettuce, the best in the commonwealth. Butterhead, red leaf, Boston, looseleaf, curly oak leaf, Red Riding Hood, escarole. They were both reminded of the evenings when they would meet in the park, when they were sixteen. In all that time Franny had never loved anyone else. He’d kept his promise and she’d kept hers. They pretended that they meant nothing to each other to keep the curse at bay, but everybody knew the doctor had come here for her.

  Hay’s favorite season was August. He and Franny always swam in Leech Lake, and he never drowned and Franny never had to rescue him. They didn’t wear bathing suits, though he had that leg he had to unhook before hopping in, which could make for precarious going over the flat rocks. All the same, they swam on a daily basis even though half the town knew and was scandalized. People avoided the place and privately called it Lovers Lake and rumors grew up around it. A dip in the water could bring the man or woman who’d broken your heart back to you, and some women took to wearing vials of lake water around their necks on a string to ward off evil and bring luck to their families.

  For several years Hay commuted to Boston, where he was on the orthopedic surgery team at Mass General, the hospital where he was treated when he was a student. He continued to be on staff and often consulted, but he decided to open a practice, setting up the first floor of his house as an office and hiring a nurse and an assistant, local women Jet had suggested, as they were clients of hers and in need of jobs. Haylin was the only doctor in town, which was a blessing to everyone. When a child was sick he always made himself available to make a house call. He impressed everyone with his pet crow, and he let well-behaved children feed it a cracker or give it a pat on its gleaming head.

  “Shall I tell you a story about a rabbit?” the doctor would say, and the children would always say yes because they all knew the story by heart. It was the one about a rabbit who had once been a witch. They knew that a witch must never deny who she is, and that no matter what happens it’s always best to be true to oneself. Hay also gave out lollipops, which the children liked, especially when they had scratchy throats,
and black bars of soap for their mothers, which were very much appreciated.

  Folks often saw Dr. Walker leaving the house on Magnolia Street early in the morning, whistling, followed by that old dog of theirs, which had taken a liking to him. Frankly, people wondered what a wonderful man like Haylin Walker was doing associating with the Owens sisters, he was so kindhearted after all. He knew everyone’s name, and all of their ailments, and when walking with Franny to the library for board meetings he reminded his patients to stop eating salt and take their medications. At night he came up to Franny’s room. After she undressed he sometimes brushed her hair. He said there had never been a more beautiful color on earth, or a more beautiful woman, even though she knew that if that had ever been true, it wasn’t anymore, except to him. She always wanted him in her bed, even though he was so tall and took up so much room. Even after all this time, when he kissed her everything left her mind except for the moment in time they were in, and the heat went through her, slowly, and she fell for him all over again, as if it were the first time.

  Hay was still a whirlwind, working all hours, though Franny did her best to slow him down. With every step they took time was passing, spring was ending, summer was gone, ice was covering the windowpanes. Vincent’s old dog passed away, the vines grew taller, Haylin’s young patients grew up and began to bring their own children to him. Before they knew it, twenty years had gone by. They didn’t know how time had moved so quickly, but these were, by far, the best twenty years of their lives. For all that time they had managed to avoid the curse, meeting at midnight, then sneaking into each other’s beds, saying their good-byes at dawn.

  “The curse will never find us,” Hay always said.

  “Is that possible?” Franny would then ask.

  “Isn’t that what we’ve done? We’re here together, darling.”

  “You two are like teenagers,” Jet teased them when she came upon them kissing in the parlor or the kitchen.

  “But aren’t we still?” Hay said with a grin.

  “Oh, yes,” Franny said. “And you’re still refusing to eat a tomato sandwich.”

  “And you’re still difficult.”

  There was that grin, so how could she be annoyed? Still, she protested. “I was never difficult.”

  “No,” Hay said, linking his arms around her, pulling her near. “Never once.”

  As most doctors do, Haylin diagnosed himself. He had cancer and he knew enough to know it was too late. He conferred with an old friend at Mass General, a specialist in oncology and hematology, but he already knew what the advice would be. Live now.

  He told Franny at the lake, where she wept in his arms. Still, he insisted there was always some good to come out of every circumstance. Now the curse could not touch him. They’d held it off with trickery. He was dying and nothing more could bring him to ruin. They could finally be husband and wife. It was too late for many things, but it was not too late for that. Jet had been right. Whenever they looked at each other they saw the people they had first fallen in love with. She was a gawky, beautiful freckled girl with long red hair who liked tomato sandwiches for lunch and had shivered when he first kissed her. He was a tall boy who cared more about other people than about himself, one who had almost died of appendicitis at Harvard and who had refused to stop loving her, no matter what fate decreed.

  That same afternoon when he told her he was dying, he went out and bought her an engagement ring, an emerald, which some people say is much preferable to a diamond, for it causes love to last. In certain lights it was the gray-green of her eyes, and in full sun it reminded her of the garden, a deep, lush green.

  Haylin went to Jet for her permission to ask Reverend Willard if he would officiate at the service. Jet telephoned the Reverend, who said he would be honored to do so. Haylin then went over to his house and the men drank glasses of whiskey. The Reverend said he liked to get to know the people he would be marrying; it was more personal that way.

  “We’ve been together since we were kids, sometimes more so and sometimes less so,” Haylin told him.

  The Reverend congratulated Dr. Walker and said he was a lucky man. Franny was waiting for him at home. He walked so slowly now, it broke her heart to see it, but she waved and rushed out to meet him. She worried that the Reverend had changed his mind, and that Hay would be disappointed, but instead the men had wound up having several drinks.

  “I told him it was the end of the curse,” Haylin assured Franny. “At least for us. If we’re choosing anything, let’s choose love.”

  On the day the doctor married Frances Owens the whole town came out to stand on the sidewalk and watch through the window of town hall, moved by the power of love. Some of the children had never even seen a member of the Owens family, for they weren’t allowed to walk down Magnolia Street, and they wondered now why their parents had always been nervous about the tall lady with red hair. The Reverend wore his old black coat and his thin black tie. He had aged greatly, and was now quite stooped. His arthritis made it difficult for him to drive, so on Sundays, Jet often picked him up in the station wagon she and Franny had bought and she would drive the Reverend to the cemetery. They usually brought plastic lawn chairs so they might stay awhile, especially in fair weather. When the daffodils were blooming they brought armfuls along. They remembered Levi better than anyone, and because of this they often didn’t need to speak. Jet still wore the moonstone. She had never once taken it off, not even to bathe.

  As the wedding service was about to begin, the Reverend nodded to Jet, who was the maid of honor, dressed in a pale green shift. She nodded back, and in that quiet way they shared the grief the feud between their families had caused as well as the joy of the day.

  Unable are the Loved to die, for Love is Immortality, the Reverend quoted when he ended the service, a blessing not only for the husband and wife but for Jet as well, who understood his meaning in his choice of Emily Dickinson. Levi would always be with them.

  When the happy couple walked out of town hall there were wild cheers. Franny hadn’t even known there were so many people in their town. She hunched down, unused to all the attention. The doctor’s patients threw rice and the children’s chorus from the elementary school sang “All You Need Is Love.” Franny carried a bunch of long-stemmed red roses. Hay was slowed down a bit by the problems with his leg and by the pain he was suffering, but he grinned and waved as if he had won a race, his arm around his bride, who was crying too much, right there in public, to notice much of anything other than how crowded the street was on this day. Even people who had always disliked the Owenses, and blamed them for every misfortune in town, had to agree that Frances Owens made a beautiful bride, even at her age, even though she dressed in black.

  Dr. Walker moved into the old house, for he had no fear of curses, just of the pains and suffering of real life, and anyone could tell he was happy. People would see him watering the garden. He weeded between the rows of lettuce while singing to himself. He had to close down his office, but he’d talked a young doctor from Boston into taking over his practice, which was fortunate for him and even more fortunate for the town. These days Haylin wanted to spend as much time as he could with Franny, who liked to tease him about his new gardening mania. He’d put out a wooden box just inside the fence, filled it with lettuce, and urged their neighbors to take as much as they’d like.

  “The best lettuce in the commonwealth, if we can keep the rabbits away,” he told people passing by.

  “They’re never going to walk through the gate,” Franny insisted.

  And then the oddest thing happened, they did. His patients and her neighbors all came past the gate, and although some appeared to be nervous, they gratefully took the lettuce, heads of all varieties, each so good that people who made salads of the stuff dreamed of rabbits and of their own childhood gardens.

  Charlie Merrill was now deceased, so Franny had asked his sons to bring over a bench so Hay could sit and rest out on the porch, which he had begun to do.
He had slowed down, but not completely. He let Jet water the garden now and Franny weed, but all that summer he set out lettuce for his friends and patients.

  “Aren’t I lucky,” he said one evening when he and Franny were sitting on the bench holding hands, watching the dusk sift down. Hay remembered walking through Central Park, lying on the grass looking at stars, swimming in the cold pond just before he went away. He remembered Franny with her red hair pinned up haphazardly lying on the floor with him in the cook’s room at her parents’ house, naked and beautiful.

  He tried not to take painkillers because he didn’t want to spend any of his time with Franny in a haze. “I might have drowned long ago, and then we wouldn’t have had all of this.”

  Franny had no idea how it was possible to love him more, but she did. She thought perhaps that was the curse, to love someone so much when you knew he would leave you. But Hay was right.

  “We are lucky,” she said.

  “It was all because of third grade. When you walked into the classroom in a black coat, looking pissed off.”

  Franny laughed. “I was not pissed off.” She looked at him. “Was I?”