The Uses of Enchantment

by Heidi Julavits

  She closed the book and clutched it vertically between her knees.

  Does that seem at all true to you, I said.

  Does what seem at all true.

  Have you been taught that sex is naughty and dirty, I said.

  She shrugged. Then: I’m here, aren’t I?

  Yes, I said. You are here.

  Not because I want to be here.

  No?

  It’s my mother’s idea, she said.

  Not your father’s.

  My father thinks you’re probably more of a mental case than I am. Not you specifically. You as in all of you.

  What do you think? I said.

  She shrugged. Jury’s still out, she said.

  I’d like to return to your mother, I said.

  Mary confessed to me that her mother was fanatical about virginity. This had been true even before Mary had disappeared. Her sister Regina, she told me, suffered from anemia due to frequent menstruation; it was recommended by a doctor that Regina be put on the birth control pill to modulate her cycle, but her mother had refused, fearing (according to Mary) that her daughter would now feel free to experiment sexually in ways that had formerly seemed too dangerous, given the risk of pregnancy.

  How old was Regina, I said.

  Mary couldn’t remember. Twelve or thirteen, she speculated.

  Perhaps your mother was simply unable to admit that her daughter was becoming a woman, I said.

  She preferred that Regina stay sick than that Regina should get better, Mary said.

  But her resistance could also be viewed as her attempt to protect Regina from the pains of adulthood.

  Mary scowled. Just because she’s paying you doesn’t mean you have to take her side.

  I’m trying to suggest there are fuller, oftentimes contradictory dimensions to every family conflict.

  I had a dream, Mary said, changing the subject. It was nighttime and I was asleep in my room. I woke up and K was standing over me. “The house is on fire,” he said. He rushed me out of bed and wrapped me in a coat. “We have to go and wake your sisters,” he said. My sisters were asleep on the first floor, just past the dining room. Then my mother ran into the room and said, “We must save my jewel case!” She didn’t seem to mind that the house was on fire. K got really mad at her and said, “I will not risk the lives of my three children so that you can save your stupid jewel case.” We all ran outside, and then I woke up.

  What do you think this means? I asked her, thinking that she’d settled on a very traditional subconscious symbol for female genitalia, typically represented in dreams by boxes, jars, bottles, coffins. Ships. Snails. Churches. Books.

  The jewel case probably refers to my vagina, she said.

  That’s one interpretation, I said.

  Does that embarrass you? she asked. That I said vagina?

  Does it embarrass you?

  J’appelle un chat un chat, she said. And don’t you think it’s notable that my mother wanted to save the jewel case, but K didn’t want to save the jewel case?

  Do you think it’s notable?

  Perhaps because he knew there was nothing left to save, she said.

  Metaphorically speaking, then—you think the jewels had been stolen?

  You want to know if my jewels have been stolen, she stated.

  This is what you’ve just implied, I said.

  But you want to know, don’t you? About the jewels?

  If you want to tell me, I said.

  She stared out the window.

  I think some jewels might be missing, she said.

  Perhaps you should report this theft to the police. Give them a specific list of what’s been taken from you.

  But what for? Her eyes receded under her lids; her nose grew even redder. She started to cough.

  I offered her a tissue.

  Something keeps tickling the back of my throat. It feels like a very long feather. Rubbing at the back of my throat.

  How about some water, I offered.

  I opened the office door—the bubbler was in the waiting room—and ran into my suite mate, Rosemary Biedelman.

  Who was that? Mary asked when I returned. She comes to my school sometimes.

  Rosemary Biedelman. She does pro bono counseling with troubled kids at the local schools.

  Troubled, Mary said skeptically.

  Sometimes trouble isn’t so hard to spot, I said.

  Those are the least troubled troubled people.

  How’s the throat? I asked.

  Still tickly, she said. She took a sip of water.

  Should we talk about what’s missing from the jewel case? I asked.

  Her brows clenched.

  I don’t see what the point is, she said. What’s gone is gone.

  The question is, I said, whether or not what was stolen was never there to begin with.

  That sounds like stupid shrink talk to me, she said. So don’t you want to know who K is?

  My end-of-session alarm sounded.

  Yes, I said.

  Good, she said, gathering her coat. So do I.

  What Might Have Happened

  The girl and the man sat opposite each other in a black vinyl booth. The girl ordered the fried shrimp basket. The man ordered a coffee. They didn’t have much to say to each other. This made the girl feel more comfortable, more in control.

  You’re not much of a conversationalist, she said.

  Never have been, according to my ex-wife, he said. He picked a creamer out of a small dish of water that used to be a small dish of ice. He held the creamer directly in front of his face as though he’d never before laid eyes on a creamer.

  And another thing, he said. I used to be lactose intolerant.

  He peeled back the paper top; he dumped the cream into his coffee.

  The girl’s food arrived. She offered the man some shrimp. He nibbled at one clinically.

  I used to go into shock, the man said. My ex-wife told me recently about the time I almost died at her niece’s wedding. We were sitting at a table next to a businessman my ex-wife wanted to impress—she’s a stock analyst—and there was shrimp in the chicken bisque. Why would there be shrimp in the chicken bisque? My throat closed up and, in my panic, I dumped my bisque in the businessman’s lap. Fortunately, there was a doctor at the next table with an EpiPen.

  Wow, said the girl.

  My ex-wife admitted to me that it was one of those moments in our marriage where she found herself hating me and wishing she were married to somebody else, because her life might have been completely different and in a good way different.

  The man paused, took another bite of shrimp.

  She tells me a lot of these stories in which she quietly suffered, he said. It’s part of some women’s therapy group she’s involved with. “Reclamation therapy” it’s called. She gets to take her story back from me.

  You took her story? the girl asked.

  Apparently I committed acts of domestic narrative abuse, the man said. Which is more damaging than just beating up a person. Regardless, spending time with me is very cathartic for her.

  She wants to be forgiven, the girl said.

  No, the man said. She wants recognition. She’s never been able to tell anybody about these terrible thoughts of hers, and on a certain level she’s proud of herself because it is absolutely not at all the way a Phi Beta Kappa Radcliffe graduate should think. She believes it makes her unique.

  Hitler was unique, the girl said.

  Are you studying Hitler? the man asked.

  We’re studying Freud, the girl said.

  For a science class?

  For English, the girl said. My teacher says that Freud is the greatest novelist of the twentieth century.

  Huh, said the man.

  I had to write a paper about this girl who was hysterical.

  How’d it go? the man asked.

  I got a B, the girl said.

  That’s not so bad, the man said.

  A B from this teacher is like a D
from any other teacher, the girl said. But I didn’t really follow the assignment. I wrote a story instead about a young girl who’s being chased by a man who burned her house down and killed her family, including her, or at least that’s what everyone thinks. But she’s still alive and the man is chasing her.

  Sounds like a morbid story for a teenager to write, the man said.

  I based it on a book I read as a kid. Or at least I think I read it. I’ve never been able to find the actual book. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I just made the whole story up myself. I mean, who would write a kid’s book about an arsonist who kills a whole family and then tries to kill a little girl?

  I read once that a decent percentage of children’s book writers in fact hate children, the man said.

  I wonder if she knew something, the girl said. Do you think maybe she knew something she didn’t know she knew?

  The real question is, the man said, pointing a half-eaten shrimp at her, if she has to be reminded that she knows something, does she really know it?

  Maybe she blanked it out to save herself, the girl said. She knew if she knew this thing, that someone would try to pry it out of her.

  Dessert? the man said, yawning.

  Are you tired? the girl asked.

  Prohibitively, the man said. I haven’t slept for two days. Chronic insomnia.

  Really, she said. From the amnesia?

  It’s a not unusual side effect of head trauma, he said. The brain is too rattled to doze off. A primitive response. Imagine the cave man who wanted to prevent his head from being bashed in by a rival. Insomnia was his friend. This is what I tell myself: insomnia is my friend.

  The girl ordered pie, the man a coffee refill and a vanilla malted. By the neon pink clock over the cash register, it was five minutes to nine. Her parents would be home soon. They used to check on the girls, especially in the early days when they first began leaving them home alone without a babysitter. But by a certain age their safety seemed guaranteed. The girl had lain awake at night after her parents had returned home from a dinner party, she’d heard them switching off the downstairs lights and running water in the kitchen. She’d heard them come upstairs and shut their bedroom door without looking into their daughters’ rooms. Soon the house would be dark and quiet; soon she could hear the muted snores her father made after he’d been drinking.

  The man stirred his malted. The girl collapsed her pie crust with the backside of her spoon.

  So what you’re saying, the girl said, is that if you have amnesia, you know things you don’t know. Or no. The reverse. You don’t know things you do know.

  I guess so, said the man.

  Which could be kind of cool, the girl said. I mean if you’re sick of your life and you get hit by a car. You can wake up and be a totally blank person.

  True, the man said.

  Like the girl in my story whom everybody believed was dead, the girl said. She could decide to be anyone.

  But she’s being chased by an arsonist, the man reminded her. He knows who she is.

  If she escaped the arsonist, the girl said. Let’s say she escaped. Let’s say she moved to Paris and the arsonist forgot about her.

  Memories are shoddy things, even under the best of circumstances, the man said.

  Which makes me wonder, the girl said. Can you really trust this ex-wife of yours?

  The man shrugged. Trust, he said.

  I mean, she could be messing with you. I think that would be a lot of fun. To mess with a person’s head like that.

  How do you mean? the man said.

  Maybe you were never allergic to shrimp. Maybe you weren’t even a lawyer. Maybe you were something far, far worse.

  Worse than a lawyer, the man said, trying to make a joke of her observation. But the girl could see she’d unnerved him.

  Maybe she’s not even your ex-wife, the girl said. She’s just some deceitful nurse.

  She showed me pictures of our wedding, the man said. We honeymooned in the Keys.

  Still, the girl said, you can’t be too trusting. For example, I could tell you something about yourself that you’d probably be tempted to believe.

  Such as? the man said.

  Such as, we used to be neighbors.

  On Beacon Hill? the man asked.

  Exactly, the girl said. Before my family moved to the suburbs.

  OK, the man said slowly.

  We lived in the brownstone across from your brownstone. You and I were fast friends. You took me to movies, you took me to restaurants. My parents didn’t care because they were those sorts of parents, and I was a middle child, and they figured the extra attention was good for me. Plus they assumed my regular companionship eased the pain of the fact that your ex-wife couldn’t have children.

  My ex-wife didn’t want children, the man said.

  That’s what she told you, the girl said. In fact, she was infertile. I overheard her confessing to my mother that she’d had an abortion when she was just out of college and dating around. She was ambitious, your ex-wife; she didn’t want to be saddled with a husband and children before she’d had a chance to establish herself in the world of finance. The operation went badly. She probably told you all this before you married her, but you’ve forgotten. Now she’s decided there’s little point in divulging personal details to an ex-husband who doesn’t remember the marriage anyway.

  The man nodded, his face vaguely gray.

  So. You and I, we were like a father and a daughter who never fought. I trusted you. Even after everything that happened, I trusted you.

  After everything that happened, the man said.

  You were ashamed, of course. That’s why you burned down our house. Ask your wife if it’s true—the family’s house across the street burned down. An electrical fire, they determined. But I knew. You knew I knew.

  This is obscene, the man said, signaling for the check.

  Is it? the girl asked. Then why have you parked across from the cemetery every single school day this semester? Why have you been so interested in me?

  You have a good imagination, I’ll give you that, the man said, flapping open his billfold. He wedged too much money under his malted glass.

  Maybe this isn’t imagined, the girl said. Maybe I know something. I know something and you want to know what I know.

  The man refused to look at her.

  I’m taking you home, he said.

  Outside, the rain had abated to a random spattering of drops, shaken loose from the nearby tree branches by the gusting wind. The man started the Mercedes, put the car in drive, then put the car in park again.

  A person would remember, he said. A person would remember if he’d done a thing like that.

  But you forget, the girl replied. Memories are shoddy things, even under the best of circumstances.

  West Salem

  NOVEMBER 9, 1999

  Despite the house’s state of festooned disarray, Mary found the phone book where the phone book had always been, fitted inside a roasting pan in the farthest right-hand kitchen cabinet. Biedelman, Rosemary was not listed in the Hulls Cove–West Salem–Massapoisset white pages; nor was she listed in the yellow pages under psychiatrist, mental health professional, overzealous Freud-hater, feminist rabblerouser, or recurring life-disrupting nuisance. Mary dialed the number for Semmering Academy; the switchboard operator speedily routed her to Roz’s personal line.

  She hung up before Roz’s phone could ring.

  Since Regina and Gaby had taken Mum’s Peugeot to Boston and Dad had disappeared for the day with his American-generic sedan, Mary’s transportation options were limited to feet or bike, neither of which was especially tempting given the weather. But the sleet-rain-snow had stopped; the moisture was in the process of being sucked back up to the sky and the air had warmed and thickened. Mary found three Semmering-era bikes leaning against the far wall of the garage behind a folded card table and a stack of equally old firewood, the remnants of a backyard maple her father had split and stacked in t
he early ’80s on the assumption that their defunct fireplace chimney would soon be restored to working order.

  Detangling the bikes from one another was like freeing a single coat hanger from a pile of coat hangers; the curled, raggedy-taped handlebars caught on the brake cables, the toothed pedals caught in the spokes. The first bike she freed was Regina’s; were Regina home to witness Mary commandeering her bike (unridden for more than a decade), Mary would never have done so, since Regina remained viciously possessive over long-neglected objects well into her so-called adulthood. The color-coded belongings of childhood (bikes, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, mugs) were clung to like hard-won plastic checker pieces, forever reminding Mary that there was still a score being kept.

  Mary found a bike pump and inflated the warped front wheel; she tested the arthritic brakes on the wet street, much to the evident irritation of Ye Olde Bastard, wearing a tam-o’-shanter and walking his miniature schnauzer back and forth across his lawn. She felt a momentary flush of affection for the man, his disgruntlement was so sincere and unconditional that he couldn’t even quell it for politeness’ sake, dead mother be damned. She far preferred it to the glassy courtesy of Mum’s friends and the sundry neighbors who, in the days before the funeral, had stopped by with casseroles in foil pans or tin containers of cookies. They peered into the kitchen as though she weren’t even there, perhaps hoping that her father or her sisters were nearby and might be recruited to dilute the encounter with the pretend invisible person at the door.

  Mary biked past the Smiths’ house, the Harringtons’, the Ewings’, the Pooles’, dodging the icy snow remnants still condensed near the curbs and over the storm drains. She made a left on Neale Street and narrowly missed the pothole she’d hit at the age of twelve trying to turn the corner while standing on the bike pedals, arms outstretched and jerkily feathering the air. The barrette she’d been wearing at the time dug into her scalp and she’d suffered temporary amnesia, wandering the streets until a neighbor found her and drove her to the hospital. For three hours she didn’t know who she was or why she was upset, but she knew definitively that something was wrong. It was a terrible sensation, and ironically, she could remember quite viscerally this experience of non-remembering, the sensation of knowing something while not knowing it at the same time.