The hours pass in a blur of waltzes, hook-nosed masks, and trays of fizzing champagne flutes bobbing and weaving among the crowd. Justin tells me over and over how he’s having the time of his life, and he gives me another thrill of happiness every time he politely declines to dance with another girl. Morven dances a few, too, with borrowed partners, and I can’t help tittering when I spot her with a man in a foofy pirate blouse. We drink and we eat and we dance some more.
Sometime after midnight the buzz begins to subside, however, and we wrinkle our noses at the sounds and smells of excess. The food trays look picked-over, the cotton candy machine has gone dark, and the tablecloths are smeared with grease because the beldames who put on this party are more than likely using their magic for other purposes now. Even the carrot-stick Ferris wheel looks like someone’s been gnawing at it. I begin to notice the glazed expressions of the gay young men I laughed at a few hours ago, the awfully pointed eyeteeth of the girls leading them by the hand into those cozy curtained alcoves.
“You know something?” my sister murmurs in my ear. “This is hardly more dignified than a Roman orgy.”
“Or any other kind of orgy, for that matter.”
I am reminded of why we ordinarily never go to events like this. These balls are great fun, don’t get me wrong, and reveling in the opulence is always amusing for an hour or so. But I feel increasingly uneasy in the presence of these men, these hapless pretty-boy ninnies, because this party has turned into one tremendous joke at their expense. Every one of these men is going to wake up alone in his bed tomorrow afternoon with the most painful headache of his life and only the haziest memories of tonight’s revelry.
I decide I do not wish to know, do not like, the women who organize this ball every year; yet when I look at Justin, who has already consumed two full bottles of champagne and wears the court jester’s grin to prove it, I see I am no better.
“I’ve met the nicest girls just now,” he says as I begin the discreet process of pocketing various finger foods in paper napkins. (I tell you, a bottomless purse is a girl’s best friend.) Morven drains one last glass of punch, then rolls her eyes when she notices what I’m up to.
“Oh?” I say lightly as I slip a handful of gougères into my purse. “As nice as me?”
“Not nearly as pretty, but much more appreciative,” he says, and I freeze with my hand hovering over the mortadella.
“Justin, I think we’d better be going now.”
“But we only just got here!”
“We’ve been here four and a half hours,” Morven says patiently.
“Can we stay just a little bit longer? There are some girls over there who want to give me an award!”
“Oh, dear.” Morven leans over and points to where the hostesses are standing on the grand staircase holding a gaudy brass scepter and conferring among themselves. One of them points to us, and two others start down the stairs. “They want to crown him Lord of the Slippy!”
Each year as the ball draws to an end the organizers announce the winner of a sort of beauty contest, in which all the young male guests have been unwitting participants. The most desirable man among them is called up to the front of the ballroom and his many masculine virtues are volubly praised as tittering beldames bedeck him in a crown of olive branches and a long velvet cloak trimmed in ermine, and put that ridiculous scepter in his hand. Then he is pulled rather unceremoniously in the general direction of the master bedroom, and he is never seen or heard from again.
The disappearance of a man no one would be seeing again in any event is not necessarily cause for alarm—no doubt he’ll quite enjoy whatever it is they plan to do with him—but it is still rather unsettling the way they drag him up the stairs.
“Lord of the Slippy?” Justin says dubiously. “I don’t know what that is, but I don’t think I want to be it.”
“Well put.” I take him by the hand and feel a thrill of anxiety as we hurry through the ballroom doorway and out into the hall. As far as we know, no one has ever refused to give up her date before. If we don’t hightail it out of here there could very well be blood.
“The park!” Morven says breathlessly as we hurry down the steps of the mansion. “They won’t follow us.” There were other boys nearly as good-looking as Justin, after all. Next year we’ll be blacklisted, of course, but I can’t say I’ll care much.
At the park entrance Justin turns and gapes at the cheerless façade of Temple Emanu-El. “We … we weren’t … we couldn’t have been in a party in the synagogue!”
“Of course not.” I take his hand and pull him away, into the park. “We were in a building behind the synagogue.”
“But we just came down the steps straight onto the street!” he cries, still glancing over his shoulder.
“I’ll explain it when you’re sober,” I reply, though naturally I haven’t any intention of doing so.
The surface of the duck pond looks like quicksilver in the moonlight. We clamber rather awkwardly over a wrought-iron fence and up one of those giant boulders overlooking the pond, and Justin stumbles up behind us.
We settle ourselves in a small circle on the rock, folding our legs beneath our swishing skirts. A warm wind rustles through the trees all around us, our view beyond hemmed by all those posh old high-rises with windows still lit here and there. Justin pulls off his bow tie and swings the white strip of fabric around and around, and he laughs when it slips from his hand into the darkness below. He looks at me with gleaming eyes. “Is this the meeting of a very secret society?”
“This is the Very Secret Society of the Late-Night Snack.” (Which, we hope, will sober him up tout de suite.)
I start drawing folded grease-spotted napkins out of my little black bag and each time Justin giggles like a small boy, then devours whatever’s inside without further ado. At some point he remembers himself and asks, “Want some?”
As if on cue, my stomach gurgles ominously, and Justin laughs. “It’s nothing,” I say. “Mild dyspepsia.”
“Or a bellyful of lies,” Morven mutters. I pinch her arm and she stifles a shriek.
Justin turns to her. “What did you say?”
“Nothing,” she replies meekly.
“Did you have a good time tonight, Morven? Eve tells me you aren’t really the partying type.”
“This right here is my idea of a good party,” she says, gazing out over the trees and high-rises. Absently she runs her fingertips over her face and throat and smiles to herself.
“It’s great, isn’t it?” he says with a happy sigh. “A midnight picnic.”
“Oh, but it’s well past midnight, dearie,” I reply.
When Justin wrinkles his nose he looks uncannily childlike. “Don’t call me ‘dearie.’ ”
“Why not?”
“It makes you sound like an old lady.”
“So?” I watch him gobble up the last sausage en croûte. “We’d better get you on a train back to Blackabbey soon.”
“Why can’t you just take me back to your place?”
“We’ve been over this before, Justin.”
“But I’ve met your sister now. She likes me, doesn’t she? Don’t you like me, Morven?”
“Of course I do,” Morven yawns.
“Then why can’t we just take a taxi back to your apartment and I’ll go home in the morning when I’m sober?”
“When you’re hungover, more like.”
“Answer the question, Eve.”
“Has anyone ever told you what an aggravating drunk you are?”
“Come on, answer the question.”
Morven puts her lips to my ear. “Look, I’m not sure if we really have a choice at this point. There are no more trains back to Jersey until a quarter past five, and it’s only half past one now.”
“Good point, sis,” Justin says loudly.
“Fine then. We’ll take a cab. But I’m putting you on the train first thing in the morning.” I snap open the clasp on my evening bag and pull out another gr
ease-stained napkin.
“Feta tartlets!” He pops one and is still chewing as he exclaims, “I thought they’d run out of these!”
“They did,” Morven replies drily. He polishes off the rest in seconds flat.
“I managed a partial bottle of Grey Goose as well,” I whisper to my sister. “He’s too drunk to wonder where it came from, don’t you think?”
“Are you cracked?” she says. “Why would you want to give him any more alcohol?”
“Hair of the dog,” I reply as I pull out a can of V8.
“That purse is bigger than it looks,” Justin remarks as I produce the vodka.
“Sorry,” I say. “Forgot the celery stick. And the hot sauce. And the black pepper.”
“It will do,” he replies as he reaches for the bottle.
“Better save it for the morning,” says my sister—who has never had a hangover in all her life—so I pull out a bottle of Evian instead.
Once Justin has fully refreshed himself, we clamber down the rock, toss the rubbish in a wastebasket along the path, and hail a cab off Fifth Avenue.
“Worth and Baxter, please,” Morven tells the cabbie.
Justin nuzzles my neck. “You didn’t tell me you lived in Chinatown.”
Morven and I exchange a glance over his head and she looks positively frightful with anxiety. Playtime is fast running out—we’ve got to get home and get Justin to sleep before our faces can betray us.
WE DO it, but barely. Drag him through the courtyard and up the four flights to our flat, and no sooner have we dumped him on the sofa and locked ourselves in the bathroom than we are made prunelike as ever.
“What if he wakes up before you’re restored?” Morven asks as we smear on the Pond’s side by side in the mirror above the sink.
“I’ll just lock the door and sleep as late as I please. The fridge is full and the TV works. And if he asks why I didn’t let him sleep with me”—I gaze at my wizened face in the glass and can’t help a wry smile—“I’ll tell him I was afraid he’d heave on the sheets.”
“Wouldn’t be a lie,” Morven remarks as she pops the cap off the toothpaste.
“What’ll you do in the morning?”
“As to keeping up the illusion for the benefit of our houseguest? Tut tut. I don’t think so. No, Elsie and I are going to the museum tomorrow. I’ll be gone long before he gets up.”
I PAD INTO the sitting room at a quarter past one the following afternoon, face in place and Bloody Mary in hand, and what do I find but a dozen cats crawling all over him! He’s still sleeping, and when they lick his face he stirs, smiles, and murmurs gibberish. I grab yesterday’s newspaper off the coffee table, roll it up, and thwack as many feline bottoms as I can.
“Scat!” The cats make for the window as Justin jerks up.
“What? What is it?” He puts his hand to his cheek. “Why is my face all wet?”
I point to the open window, where a brazen black cat sits on the sill gazing at Justin and licking a white forepaw. “Scat!” I cry again, and it gives me one last resentful look before it leaps out onto the fire escape and away.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have left the window open.”
“Why did you leave me on the couch?”
“I was afraid you’d puke in the bed.”
“Oh,” he says, considering this. “Fair enough.” I hand him the Bloody Mary and he takes a grateful drink.
Then he notices the double doors that open into my bedroom are ajar. “Can I see your room?”
“What for?”
“You can tell a lot about a person from their bedroom.”
“Hah! That’s what I’m afraid of.”
He stands up and makes a move for it, but I hold out my arm. “Just give me a minute, okay? I don’t want you to see my dirty underthings all over the bed.”
“Don’t see why it matters,” he replies. “I’ve been seeing a lot of your dirty underthings lately.”
I close the doors behind me so I can hide pretty much every photograph on my dresser, including my two stolen pictures of Jonah. I’m just about to head for the nightstand to hide his pocket watch when Justin opens the doors and pokes his head in. “Hey, what’s the big deal? I wish you’d have let me sleep in here. I’ve always wanted to sleep in a four-poster.” He hops onto the unmade bed, picks up a pillow, and buries his face in it. “Smells like you,” he says with a smile. Then, just as I was afraid of, he notices the pocket watch on the table beside him and picks it up. “Where did you get this?” He pops the clasp and examines the clock-face, then shuts it again and stares at the initials engraved on the lid: JAR.
“Found it at a junk shop in Paris,” I reply rather too casually.
He looks at the watch, then at me, then back at the watch. “What?”
“Nothing.” He places it back on the nightstand, hesitates, and picks it up again, holding it to his ear so he can better hear the ticking. “It’s still keeping perfect time.”
I want to tell him he can keep it, but sentiment wins out. If I give it back to him now, I’ve got one less thing to remember him by.
We decide to go out for brunch, but there’s still the sticky question of how to get him out of the warren without his noticing the cockfight ring or that old shack with MRS. PRIGG’S FRESH HOT FISH PIES above the doorway.
In the end I’ve got to blinker him, which is to say I give him memories to fill in for the things he shouldn’t see. Once we’re out the front gate, all he’ll remember is the dingy tenement stairwell and the crooked cobblestones of an ordinary courtyard.
In Which Evelyn Resolves to Make a Decision
24.
EVERY BELDAME needs a circle. We are gregarious by nature, but more to the point, we require comrades to support us in times of trouble, to rein us in lest our baser impulses get the better of us. A dame without a coven is a suspicious character, like a knife sharpener with all ten of his fingers. We have a name for a beldame like that: a hysterix, after the porcupine genus. Porcupines are solitary creatures, after all, and little wonder, but there’s no hide of quills to keep their witchy counterparts from socializing with their neighbors. Who knows why they forgo the comfort and safety of the warrens?
Anyway, when we meet again to discuss Helena’s case it is universally agreed that proof is impossible to come by, but the elders are unwilling to leave it at that.
“Fine!” I cry in exasperation. “Hold the bloody séance then. It doesn’t matter. She’s got nothing to hide.”
“It is a very serious undertaking,” says Dymphna, “and one that will probably cause considerable distress for each of us. But I see no other way.”
We generally take dirty business like this outside the coven, and that’s where the hysterix comes in. Our regard for one another is strained by default: the hysterix is polite but perceptibly disgruntled at having her psychic stores thus intruded upon, and we are rather sniffy toward her since we can’t help taking her decision not to join our cadre as a personal affront. What’s in it for her? Some dark and stormy night she’ll be needing our help, and as they say, life is long and memory is longer.
So Dymphna rings the only hysterix in Blackabbey, a woman named Clovis who’s moved here in the last few years, and we arrange to pay her a visit. The hysterix mentions no restriction on the number of callers, so we decide that Morven and I plus all of Helena’s daughters will also be in attendance. This is a meeting of introduction and preparation only.
The hysterix lives in one of those awful condominiums built recently on the edge of town, a little purgatory of numbered parking spaces and balconies furnished with white plastic patio chairs.
I have a definite idea of what the hysterix will be like, though it bears little resemblance to those few I encountered years ago in Germany. I’m expecting a hag straight off the Scottish moors, or at least a straggle-haired hippie with a parlorful of hookahs, but I am disappointed on both counts. Clovis is astonishingly young and as ordinary looking as the complex in which she lives. Th
e interior of her apartment betrays the life of a beldame in only the most subtle ways—the candles on the end tables crusted with drips of dried wax but tall as when first lit; an apothecary’s chest in the kitchen labeled with names of rare herbs—but she has not bothered to replace the wall-to-wall carpeting or the vertical blinds that go clackety-clack when the air conditioning kicks on. The furniture is mod in style, probably inherited, and the pictures on the walls don’t quite appeal to the imagination. It’s not at all like our house, or the houses of the Jesters or Peacocks.
Marguerite proffers an ambrosia cake wrapped in wax paper and Clovis offers us each a glass of iced tea. The subject is broached after a brief interval of sipping, compliments, and inquiries as to the brand of tea and ratio of sugar used. “All I ask,” says Clovis, “is that you do not question my methods.”
“Of course, of course,” says Dymphna.
“We won’t have to exhume him, will we?” I ask.
Helena sniffs. “Don’t be absurd, Evelyn. I’d never allow it.”
“But, Mother, your reputation!” Deborah cries.
“Certain things are more important than one’s reputation, respect for the dead being first among them.” Helena pauses. “Clovis?”
“It really won’t be necessary.”
My sister sighs in relief.
“But I will need two or three of your husband’s possessions, the dearer or more frequently handled the better. Do you have a lock of his hair, by any chance?”
Helena raises her hand to her neck and lifts the glass locket so Clovis can see it.
“Good. And the last thing I need is a handful of grave dirt. Will that be a problem?”
My sister shakes her head. “He’s buried in town.”
“Good. But don’t bring it to me in Tupperware or plastic of any kind, understand? Use a tin cup.”
WE Go home again so Helena can gather a couple gardening tools and a tin measuring cup from the kitchen cupboard, but they all leave again without me. As I say, I never set foot in a graveyard if I can help it.
Vega’s left a pitcher of lemonade and a quarter of an ambrosia cake on the porch table, bless her heart, and I sit on the swing with the daily Sudoku sipping the sweet stuff and occasionally writing down a number. After a few minutes I look up and see Justin coming down the street. It’s too late—he’s already seen me. I glance down at myself as if I don’t already know I’m not the Eve he knows. But he can’t have found me out—he’s waving!
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