This plotting kept her warm.
Once, when her mother was fifty-three minutes late, a record even for her, Mary had gone so far as to act; she’d tried to hitchhike, but no cars passed. When the headlights of her mother’s Peugeot rounded the horseshoe, she slid along the side of the station steps and crouched behind the Dumpster, fenced off with lattice. She gripped the lattice with her gloved fingers and wondered how long she would let her mother’s panic build. Three minutes, perhaps. Three minutes to check the station waiting area and the station restroom and the train platform seemed a generously brief amount of time, given that her mother had kept her waiting in the cold for nearly an hour.
Her mother pulled into the parking lot and sat in the idling car, peering upward through the windshield at the clock on the station’s exterior wall. She squinted toward the empty train platform, again at the clock. Mary waited for her to honk. She waited for her to emerge from the car and search the platform. But her mother did neither of these things. One minute and twenty-three seconds after arriving, her mother put the Peugeot in gear and, without a backward glance, drove away.
Mary stared at the Peugeot’s brake lights, dumbfounded. Her coat pockets were empty of change so she called home collect, trying to keep the outraged teariness from her voice as she gave her name to the operator. Her father appeared within seven minutes, smelling of gin and peanuts. Her mother, when Mary arrived home, stood at the kitchen counter cutting onions. Strange, her mother said. I looked for you everywhere.
Mary heard the screech of tires as the Peugeot—the same Peugeot—careered into the parking lot. Classical music blared behind the windshield, the entire car pulsing like a salt-rusted cocoon about to pop a bombastic insect.
She slid into the passenger seat, cringing against the wall of sound.
Regina pulled recklessly back onto Old Bellows Road. She looked awful, the lights from the dashboard transforming her face into a haggard landscape of sinkholes and fault lines.
The humid smell of pizza pressed against Mary’s cold nose. The closeness of the air plus the decibel level of the music made her feel sweatily claustrophobic.
“Can I turn this down?” she asked.
Regina didn’t respond.
“Do you mind?” Mary asked. “I have a headache.”
“You have a headache,” Regina said. “You didn’t have to spend the past two hours with Aunt Helen. Did you know you broke her vase?”
“I didn’t break it,” Mary said.
“She found a hairline crack,” Regina said. “It’s worthless now.”
“Too bad,” Mary said.
Regina didn’t respond.
“I bet Weegee’s upset.”
Regina didn’t laugh.
“That was funny,” Mary said.
“What?”
“That was funny. You should laugh.”
“Hah hah hah,” said Regina.
Regina glared through the windshield. Clearly she was in a bad mood, which probably exempted her, in her own mind, from her promise to be nicer. But Mary was feeling vulnerable, not to mention giddy, after her visit with Roz Biedelman. If selfishness were a virtue, than she would persist in being selfish. She would selfishly force her sister into a confiding, kindly relationship with her even though Regina was not in a headspace that made provisions for sisterly bonding opportunities.
“So,” Mary said. “You look tired.”
“I am tired,” Regina said.
“Have you been exercising?” Mary asked. She couldn’t help herself.
“Me?” Regina said.
“I mean—what I mean is, how are you?”
“I’m fine,” Regina said. “And by the way I picked up the pizzas for dinner. I paid for them myself.”
“I’ll pay you back,” Mary said.
“Don’t worry. It cost $50, including the tip. But really don’t worry about it. It’s my treat.”
A pinched silence descended.
“I’m sorry about Bill,” Mary said.
Regina sniffed.
“It must be hard dealing with a breakup on top of Mum and everything else.”
What Mary didn’t say was it must be hard to lose three fiancés in four years. By which she would mean emotionally hard, but also impressively difficult to accomplish. Then again, Regina’s first two fiancés were fuss-potty men who Gaby suspected, somewhat predictably, to be gay; Regina’s first fiancé, Jim, was a cruddified preppy from Concord and the sort of man who wrote on the endpapers of novels the date he finished reading said novel and where he was at that historically momentous instant; Perry, an urban planner, was such a tedious expert at the obvious that he earned the nickname “Perry Is Perry.” (After the breakup, Gaby renamed him “Perry Was Perry.”) Bill, according to Gaby the most promising of the bunch, ran a domestic abuse hotline in Somerville.
“You never even met Bill,” Regina said, half accusingingly.
“Gaby liked him,” Mary said. “Gaby said he was her favorite.”
“And you consider Gaby, who’s never had a boyfriend, a reliable judge of fiancés.”
Mary considered this. “I do,” she said. “She’s…unbiased.”
Regina snorted.
“Seriously though,” Mary persisted. “Do you feel like talking about what happened?”
Regina took her eyes from the road long enough to gauge her sister’s sincerity. Apparently, Mary appeared convincingly sincere.
“What always happens?” Regina said. “I exhaust people.” She tried to say this boastfully, as though to imply that “people” were pathetic and lacked stamina. But Mary could tell that she was more destabilized by this realization than proud of it.
Mary nodded. “You do have a certain intensity,” she said. “Someday you’ll find a person who treasures that side of you.”
Regina cocked her head. “Do you think that would make a difference?”
“I do,” Mary said.
“Bill was that person. He treasured all my worst qualities.”
“That’s rare,” Mary said. “That’s the mark of a keeper.”
“Except that he broke up with me.”
“Still,” Mary said. “As a type, maybe you can see Bill as…an improvement. I mean over the long haul. You’re trending upward, I guess is what I’m saying.”
“Is a person who treasures your worst qualities a keeper,” Regina asked, “or is he a doormat?”
“One person’s doormat…” Mary offered.
“I exhausted Bill, but he was determined to love me. Not some future improved person. Me.”
“Like Dad did with Mum. That’s not a bad thing,” Mary said. As a vision of her slack-faced father flashed through her mind, she realized that she did not believe this.
“Nobody told me that I need to calm down, or get rational, or stop being so self-obsessed. He practically encouraged me to misbehave. And so I became Myself Plus Plus. It was unbearable. Not for him. Or not only for him. It was unbearable for me.”
“What an honest statement,” Mary said, immediately regretting her knee-jerk Roz-ism. She meant the comment in a sincere, not a patronizing, way. She truly was impressed with Regina’s sudden onslaught of self-knowledge—as perhaps, she reflected, Roz had been sincerely impressed with hers.
Fortunately Regina took her comment in the manner it was intended; she smiled appreciatively, and Mary glimpsed behind her listless features, a touching flicker of the plain girl who could convince people that she was beautiful. She had to stifle an urge to put her hand on her sister’s arm.
“I’ve been doing some soul-searching,” Regina said. “And I’ve been writing a lot. I’m assembling the more polished poems into a chapbook.”
“That’s great,” Mary said encouragingly. “It’s about time somebody published you.”
“It’s self-published,” Regina said.
“Oh,” Mary said. “Well. You’re somebody.”
“Maybe you can fly out for my publication party,” Regina said.
; “I’d like that,” Mary said.
“Have you ever tried writing poetry?” Regina asked. “It’s very therapeutic, so long as you don’t worry about rhyme. Or meter.”
“I don’t think I’d be very good at writing poetry,” Mary said, her face heating up. “Bake Sale 1621” wasn’t the covertly mocking success she’d hoped it would be. She’d written the poem but it hadn’t won the Semmering Poetry Contest. Regina’s poem hadn’t won either. Nothing had unfolded as she’d planned and she should have learned something from the experience. She had not.
“Do you see a therapist?” Regina asked.
“Me?” Mary said, relieved that the topic had shifted. “Who would have me?”
Regina laughed. “Now that’s funny.”
Out her window, Mary clocked the familiar beginnings of the Semmering grounds—the sharp-tipped, wrought-iron fence that lassoed the entire 110 acres and was as much intended to keep its students within as to prevent the much-feared vagrants from invading. The sports fields swept like an unreflecting black sea up to the school itself. As the building emerged from the dark, Mary imagined that Miss Pym stood in one of the windows, spookily observing them as they drove by.
Regina, similarly transfixed, pulled her foot off the accelerator. As the car slowed, the fence’s metal bars transformed from a translucent black blur into the ever slowing tick of individual spokes.
The Peugeot coasted to a stop before the school’s entry arch.
“Vox in Suburbo,” Regina announced.
Mary said nothing. She wanted Regina to continue driving, to allow the building to recede back into the night, but didn’t want to call attention to this desire. She worried it might imply something damning about her, the fact that this place could still unnerve her so.
“Do you remember the Semmering fight song?” Regina asked.
“Kind of,” Mary lied.
“Give a roar, give a roar, for the feisty Semmering whores…” Regina tapped on the steering wheel. “They will suck out all your blood, they will nah nah nah nah nah…”
Regina peered at her expectantly. Mary perceived a slight barometric change inside the car, the formerly chummy atmosphere tensing into one more potentially hazardous.
“I guess I don’t remember it,” Mary said.
Regina laughed. “Really? You don’t remember?”
“You didn’t even play sports,” Mary said. “Why do you care about the stupid fight song?”
“Because I feel overcome by team spirit,” Regina said. “Don’t you? Don’t you feel overcome by team spirit? Or possibly you’re just overcome by spirits in general. Tomahawk-waving rapist witch spirits. How about it, Mimsy. Do you feel like talking about it?”
Mary didn’t respond.
Regina pushed the Peugeot’s gear shift into drive and floored the accelerator. A good half-second later, the Peugeot’s tortoise engine lurched to life. Then the two back wheels spun grudgingly to attention and the rusted body swayed back and forth as though threatening to capsize. The car hurled itself downward, the bumper grinding against the asphalt until the shocks retracted and the car pitched dopily forward.
“Feel better?” Mary asked dryly.
“Much,” Regina said.
“Good,” Mary said.
“So,” Regina said, “while we’re baring our sisterly all. I thought you should know that Gaby thinks you went to Boston to see Dr. Hammer.”
“Why would she think that?” Mary said.
“She thinks that Mum’s death is prompting you to have a moment of castigating self-reflection, and that this is making you act secretively again.”
Mary reached into her pocket to touch the piece of paper Roz had given her.
“That’s idiotic,” Mary said. “Besides, he’s been disbarred. Or whatever the equivalent is for therapists. De-couched.”
They passed the cemetery. As they neared the spot where the Mercedes used to park, Regina jerked the wheel to the right; the car’s tires ground along the shoulder, kicking gravel against the undercarriage and creating an unmelodious series of pings.
“Watch it!” Mary said.
Regina returned to the road.
“I was avoiding the dog,” she said innocently.
“What dog?” Mary turned around. There’s been no dog.
“In addition to being nicer to one another,” Regina said, ignoring Mary’s bewilderment, “we also need to start being honest with one another. The way I was honest with you.”
“Obviously,” Mary, still distractedly searching for the dog over her shoulder.
“You agree,” Regina said.
Mary refused to reconfirm this.
“So then you’ll tell me what you were doing in Boston. I mean if you weren’t meeting Dr. Hammer.”
“I was following a lead,” Mary said.
The windshield fogged. Regina poked the Peugeot’s DEMIST button.
“How euphemistic,” she said tightly.
“Sorry,” Mary said. “I went to Boston to see Dr. Biedelman.”
Regina cast her a sidelong withering look.
“Don’t insult me, Mimsy,” she said.
“I went to see Dr. Biedelman,” Mary repeated.
“I know you probably think that one dishonest turn deserves another. That’s how you’re rationalizing your behavior, am I right? We went behind your back so, you think, it’s justified that you go behind ours.”
Mary didn’t respond.
“So what did Mr. Bolt tell you?”
“Who’s Mr. Bolt?” Mary said.
“Please. The painting’s worth a lot more, as you obviously discovered.”
Mary fingered the DEMIST button. When she was younger, she’d thought DEMIST was a French word, she hadn’t realized it was the English word for getting rid of mist.
“I hope you know it wasn’t my idea to try to cheat you out of your share of the money. Gaby doesn’t think you deserve anything from Mum’s estate. Because, as Gaby sees it, you’re the reason Mum got cancer and died.”
Mary’s vision turned white, then black, then white again. She thought she was having a stroke then realized they were driving past St. Hugh’s new outdoor hockey rink, with its blinding, distantly spaced overhead lights.
“How about you? Is that how you see it?” Mary said.
“It doesn’t matter how I see it,” Regina said. “Everything’s always about you. We even had to have Mum’s funeral on the anniversary of your disappearance.”
Mary’s heart was beating inside her face. Hot and staccato, just under her cheeks.
“Dad insisted on the date,” Mary said. “Because of Reverend Whittemore’s schedule.”
“So you say,” Regina said.
“It was a coincidence,” Mary said. “A really, really shitty one.” For me too she refrained from adding. She didn’t want to sound self-pitying.
Regina wasn’t listening.
“Even Dad blames you for Mum’s death. He’d never admit it, but don’t for a second think that Mum was the only person who didn’t want you coming to the hospital last week.”
This stung. More than anything else, this stung, and made Mary feel not only alone but stupid and naïve and alone.
“I think we should leave Dad out of this,” Mary said quietly. “I’d also suggest leaving all speculative causes of terminal diseases out of this.”
Regina sniffed. “I was only telling you how Gaby felt.”
“Gaby actually said that?”
“Don’t act surprised. If you knew your sister you’d understand: Gaby is a steel-mouthed bitch.”
Regina hit the last straightaway before Rumney Marsh and floored the Peugeot again, filling the car with the stink of diesel and vaporized salt.
“So?” she said.
“So what?”
“Now you know we tried to cheat you out of your inheritance. What do you have to say to that?”
Mary fingered the scrap of paper in her pocket. She had nothing to say for herself. Nothing at all.
“Weegee’s tired,” she said tightly, staring at the lightless woods.
Aunt Helen’s station wagon was still parked in front of the house.
“She’s going to be too drunk to drive home,” Regina said.
“She can stay in the guest room,” said Mary coldly.
“She cannot stay in the guest room. I am staying in the guest room.”
“I thought you were staying in your room.”
“My room is the guest room,” Regina said.
“I guess I meant the study,” Mary said.
“She can’t stay there. Weegee will eat all of Mum’s stuff, which you left in piles on the floor.”
“I’m still sorting,” Mary lied.
“Whatever. Aunt Helen is not staying in the study.”
“Fine,” Mary said. “We’ll just let her drive home and kill herself.”
Regina opened the door and, in her haste, dropped the car keys; Mary heard them skitter off to a distant shadowy place.
“Damnit,” Regina said. “Will you jump around? I need some light over here.”
Mary positioned herself directly under the motion-sensitive light angling from the garage eaves. She jumped up and down. She waved her arms. Nothing happened.
“Come on,” Regina said.
“I’m trying. It’s broken.”
“It’s not broken,” Regina said.
“Maybe I’m invisible,” Mary said, feeling suddenly quite worried about this possibility. It wouldn’t have been the first time that day.
The Uses of Enchantment Page 22