The Uses of Enchantment

by Heidi Julavits

  Yes, he decided, his paranoia growing, his ex-wife had put the girl up to this. How else to explain it? What kind of girl would engineer her own kidnapping by a strange man? It didn’t make sense that a girl would do a thing like this. Who would intentionally put herself at risk? Who would purposefully cause such alarm back home? Unless that was the point. She was using him, and in return, she was giving him what she thought any man his age would want. Sex. Yes, she’d figured, any man would want to have sex with her, particularly if it were being forced upon him as a natural part of his past.

  Upstairs he heard a door open and close. In the silence that ensued he heard what he interpreted as the sound of her interim nakedness as she shed the field hockey uniform, the sweatpants, the slippers, and re-draped herself with the overtly sexual or patently ridiculous outfit she’d fashioned from his ex-wife’s drawers. Almost as though her nakedness triggered it, a continent of wet snow slid from the roof and landed outside the door with the dense thud of a body striking ground. He started, thinking maybe she’d thrown herself from the window. Defenestration was all the rage.

  He opened the door—it was completely dark now—and stared past the cabin’s glow into the indistinguishable murk beyond. The night was so evenly and inertly chilled that the effect was akin to staring into a refrigerator whose bulb had burned out. In the distance he heard a coyote, and the desperate noise of some clawed animal scratching itself.

  Don’t turn around, the girl said.

  She was behind him. How had she gotten behind him?

  Can I close the door? the man said.

  Were you leaving? the girl said.

  No, the man said. I was thinking.

  You think a lot when you’re about to abandon me, the girl said. What were you thinking about?

  I was wondering if you’d thrown yourself from the bedroom window, the man said.

  Why would I do that? she said.

  I have no idea, the man said. I don’t know you well enough to say.

  Do you believe that knowing a person means they can’t still surprise you? the girl asked.

  The man could hear the girl breathing. Raspy. Maybe she’d been crying upstairs. Maybe after all those hours in wet clothing she’d caught a cold.

  I guess not, the man said.

  Would it scare you if you were the person who knew me better than anyone else in the world?

  We’re wasting heat, the man said. I’m shutting the door now.

  He didn’t wait for her to condone his plan. As he closed the door he heard her scurry, sock-footed, into the kitchen.

  Lie on the couch, she said. With your feet facing the door.

  Can I freshen my drink? the man asked.

  No, the girl said. You’ve had enough to drink tonight.

  She’s been spying on me, the man thought as he extended his body on the couch.

  Would it? the girl said. She’d positioned herself now behind his head. In the window opposite, he caught her reflection. Momentary, because she caught it too. She flicked the row of switches by the stairwell, extinguishing the lamps and the upstairs hall light. He shivered on the couch, the outside chill still clinging to his sweater. She looked like no one he recognized.

  The house was dark, save for the meager glow of his struggling fire.

  Would it what? the man said.

  Would it scare you if you knew me better than anyone else in the world, the girl repeated.

  Scared, the man said. I don’t know about scared. Maybe sad. Sad for you.

  You shouldn’t be sad for me, the girl said. You should be sad for yourself.

  I am sad for myself, the man said. Not actively. But atmospherically, I am sad for myself.

  Poor you, said the girl.

  I’m not asking you to pity me, the man said. I’m being matter-of-fact. If I know you so well, you should know me well, too.

  But I do know you, the girl said. Better than you do. You forget.

  Right, right, the man said, growing tired of this charade.

  Have you ever gone to therapy? the girl asked. I’ve always wanted to go to therapy. Maybe I’ll go when I get home. I’ll probably need it.

  The man didn’t ask her why.

  Don’t you think I’ll need therapy? the girl prodded.

  I say this respectfully, the man said, but it’s my hunch you needed therapy long before you met me.

  Could be, the girl said thoughtfully. But I didn’t have a reason to go. Now I’ll have a reason.

  Do you need a reason? the man said.

  In my family, the girl said, yes.

  So that’s why you’re here? the man said. You want a reason to go to therapy?

  Maybe, the girl said.

  Seems a lot of trouble to go to, the man said.

  But we’re having fun in the meantime, the girl said. We’re having an adventure and we’re learning a lot about ourselves.

  Why do you want to go to therapy? the man said.

  The girl laughed. Why does anybody want to go to therapy? she asked.

  The man did not know the answer to this seemingly obvious question.

  I’ve always had a fantasy about going to therapy and saying not a single true thing about myself.

  Why would you want to do that? the man said.

  Because, the girl said. I could become anyone.

  You could become your own most impossible person, the man thought.

  I’d imagine that’s difficult, the man said. Saying not a single true thing. The truth creeps in. Every good lie is founded on a truth.

  Then I’ll tell bad lies, the girl said.

  So when you get home, the man said, what bad lies will you tell about us?

  Behind him, he heard the snip of a lighter.

  I don’t know, the girl said through her exhale. That all depends on what happens.

  Chadwick

  NOVEMBER 9, 1999

  She stood at the threshold to the man’s house. I am dreaming this, she thought, I am surely dreaming this.

  The man slipped behind her to shut the door. It latched meaningfully with a chunky, no-going-back sound that echoed through his foyer.

  She should have been shocked by the man—by the mere fact of him standing here before her—but instead she felt seized by a more pressing panic. Her mother had met the man. Impossible, unthinkable. In all her many imagined permutations of the past, she had never once entertained this scenario. But if her mother had met the man then her previous theory, supported by her vision of her mother and Dr. Hammer sitting around his living room drinking coffee liqueur, was violently upstaged. The table overturned, the image ignited from the sides and consumed itself. In the bright blankness, nothing new coalesced. Her head was a stunned and newly empty space, the hole from which a wisdom tooth had just been pulled, the pain dulled by Novocain and a dense plug of gauze.

  She was struck by the smell of cooking fish.

  Sorry, the man said, gesturing toward the kitchen. I’m making dinner.

  She stared at him numbly.

  Fish, the man explained.

  He smiled uneasily. His face had changed so little that she was confident she’d have recognized him on a plane or in a hardware store, she’d have experienced that electrocuted vertigo sensation that attended all unexpected meetings with people you’d relegated not only to the past but to your imagination. He had ceased to exist for her.

  I’m not hungry, she said.

  No no, he said, it was just that—when I imagined seeing you again, I didn’t factor in the possibility that my house would smell of fish.

  I love the smell of fish, she said.

  Nobody loves the smell of other people’s fish, he said. Drink? Vodka? Wine? Vodka?

  Vodka, she said.

  They remained awkwardly in the foyer. His house reminded her of a hotel business suite—functional and striving to offend no living creature. The walls were painted a drab khaki, the at-attention living-room furniture upholstered the color of an unexceptional dog, a generic gray
-tan-brown that would, she imagined, appear browner in the sun, or more tan, or more gray. A kaleidoscope of blah is how she would describe his decor if asked; she repeated this phrase—a kaleidoscope of blah a kaleidoscope of blah—as a way to calm herself.

  The smell of fish became the smell of burned fish.

  So then, the man said. Can you hold on a minute?

  He abandoned her in the foyer without inviting her farther inside. She considered leaving. She’d dreamed of seeing the man again, of course she had, but this reunion was not as she’d imagined it would be. She’d imagined they would fall back into an easy rapport tinged with hostility and a slight erotic promise that no real-world concerns would have spoiled in the interim. She’d imagined her insides would flutter wildly, as though she had swallowed a small and giddy bird. She’d imagined that she would discover that all these years she’d been waiting for an unspecified something to happen to her, and that this something was embodied by the man. The loneliness of this realization was overwhelming.

  The man returned, face sweaty, hands fumbling with a dish towel.

  That’s that, he said. Tossed it to the cats. Figure of speech. Wouldn’t want you to think I’d become a cat person. Oh. I forgot your vodka.

  The man disappeared again.

  Make yourself comfortable, he called from the kitchen.

  This, she wanted to inform him, would be an impossibility.

  She slung her coat over a chairback and sat rigidly on the couch amidst his kaleidoscope of blah. If she’d known she’d be seeing the man tonight, she might have taken more care to appear as the remarkable girl he’d once known, rather than the invisible woman she’d become. Maybe, she reflected, her disappointment upon seeing the man had nothing to do with him; maybe her disappointment was inspired only by herself, and her own failure to be instantly transformed by his appearance. But at least, she thought, at least she could still be upended by a person, even if the upending was due to a disappointment. Better than seeing Bettina Spencer and experiencing nothing except the nostalgic sensation of lack, a distant muscle memory of what it used to be like to succumb to the magic pull of a stranger.

  Here’s your vodka, said the man. He held his glass in one hand, the vodka bottle wedged under his arm.

  He sat in an easy chair opposite her. The coffee table, a glossy blank slab between them, supported no books or magazines. No photos lined the fireplace mantel. The framed paintings on the walls—reproductions—were of gray harbors and gray piers and distantly gray lobster boats, not depressing exactly, more meditative and sober, portraits of bland stolidness.

  He placed the vodka bottle on the coffee table.

  Can I offer you something to eat? the man said. Nuts?

  She shook her head.

  The only thing worse than the smell of other people’s fish is the smell of other people’s burned fish, he said apologetically.

  It’s not the fish, she said. To be honest I don’t have much of an appetite.

  Me neither, he concurred.

  Amazingly, she thought, he had barely aged. Yes, his skin had turned more sheeny and hidelike and it was stretched tighter over his face as though he had shrunk it one day at the beach. She was relieved to note that his lips had not retracted into his mouth, lending him the inwardly seething puppet look so many men his age suffered from. They remained on the exterior of his face, more darkly red, concentrated in color and thickness like a dried cranberry.

  He still had very nice lips.

  How about a fire, the man said, slapping his thighs. I’ve gotten better at building fires since you last saw me.

  He stood beside the fireplace, its marble mantel so highly shined it could have been made of molded plastic, and flicked a light switch on the wall. She heard a click and a whump! Blue flames jagged upward through a symmetric crisscross of fake logs.

  He smiled at her proudly, but she could tell he feared that he appeared silly, or incomplete, or somehow lacking to her.

  That’s better, he said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation of the heat headed his way. Who knew it would snow in early November?

  It’s been a week of unexpected occurrences, she said, training her gaze toward the fire and holding it there. She wanted to give him the chance to examine her privately, to assess how she’d changed—hair more coarse and gravity-bound and less an iridescent nimbus, cheeks less voluptuous, nose longer and more prominent, total face effect verging, in her opinion, on that of a fancy spook-eyed hound—so he could gauge whether the girl he’d known before had hearkened her at all.

  So, he said, thrusting his glass over the coffee table toward her. Cheers.

  Cheers, she said.

  If she were narrating this, she thought, she would say an uncomfortable silence descended. She would say the problem with fake fires is that they don’t crackle and snap, they don’t make noises to relieve an awkward silence nor do anything unexpected that justifies a pretend diversion. All she could hear was the steady, numbing rush of gas into the perforated metal floor of the hearth. What had run through her mother’s mind when she’d met the man? Had she thought: This man maybe had sex with my daughter. Had she thought: This stranger is a memory touchstone that reminds me of no one so much as her.

  She pushed her mother away and she easily evaporated. Her mother did not belong here.

  She tipped back her glass, finished the vodka in one swallow.

  Are you married? she said, holding out her glass for a refill.

  The man raised an eyebrow.

  Is that too personal a question to ask? she said.

  It’s nice to be asked a personal question, the man said as he filled her glass. Rather than told the personal answer.

  I’ve lost my touch, she said. Unlike you—she gestured toward the fireplace—I haven’t been improving my skill set.

  I doubt you’ve lost your touch, the man said. Too quickly, she thought. Almost eagerly. She allowed herself to plainly stare at him. What was the point in coyness? She was too old. He was too old.

  Be that person, she could see him pleading. Be that person so that I can be that person. If she was disappointed in her ability to be transformed by him, he was equally fearful of his inability to be transformed by her.

  She could not be that person.

  Are you married? she repeated.

  No, the man said.

  You never remarried?

  No, he said. Does that upset you?

  Why would it upset me, she said.

  He shrugged. Because it’s upsetting, he said.

  Better than remarrying five times unsuccessfully, she said. Better than remarrying your ex-wife.

  The man chased a small object—lint or a bug—around the inside of his vodka glass. He wiped his finger on his pants.

  Maybe I did remarry my ex-wife but I’m too embarrassed to tell you, the man said.

  You shouldn’t care what I think, she said.

  Does that seem plausible to you? he persisted. That I remarried my ex-wife and lived miserably ever after?

  She could not be that person.

  Endings never were my forte, she said, more sharply than she intended.

  The man appeared pained by her remark. But he pushed this reaction away.

  But you’re here, he said, as though her being here represented an ending of some kind, and in his view a successful one.

  I’m here, she agreed.

  Good, he said. I mean it. I’m glad.

  You were expecting me, she said. That’s what you said when you answered the door.

  I’ve been expecting you every day for the past fourteen years, he said. Weren’t you expecting me?

  No, she said.

  He appeared puzzled.

  But you found me, he said, somewhat defensively.

  Roz Biedelman gave me your address, she said.

  She realized how this sounded.

  But I came here because I wanted to, she added.

  Ah, he said.

  I don’t suppose yo
u want to explain, she said.

  How Roz got my address? he said.

  She nodded.

  How do you think she got it? he said.

  She stifled another barbed retort by returning her gaze to the whooshing gas jets and the five blue flames. The fake fire was so absurdly fake; whoever had designed it had tried to make it look fake, as though the whole enjoyment behind a fake fire was the fake part, not the fire part.

  She was sick to death of fakeness.

  You know what they say, he said, prodding her. Hesitation is the modesty of cowards.

  You know what they also say, she said. Sarcasm is the lame humor of assholes.

  He smiled, evidently pleased.

  See? he said. Found your touch and it’s only been two minutes.

  I have no idea how Roz got your address, she said stonily.

  No? he said.

  No, she said.

  Pah, he said. You’re no fun.

  He polished off his vodka, hiding his face in his glass to mask his displeasure. He set the empty glass dramatically onto the coffee table. His face aged ten years with no forced smile to scaffold it. She could sense that he was no longer scared of her, and that this was what scared him. In desperation, he was goading her to toy with him again, even if, deep down, he knew the effect was pointless. His life, she assumed, was defined by a soul-deadening certainty. Today the paper will come. Today I will have lunch alone, today I will want to eat spaghetti for dinner but will wisely opt for a salmon fillet that will stink up my house because nobody unexpected ever appears.