“Great!” He raises his half-empty glass. “I’ll drink to that.”
I avert my eyes from the ensuing slobbery.
You’d never know it by how far apart we’ve drifted but David and I were practically raised as siblings for the first ten years of our lives. Our parents lived in the same close-knit neighbourhood, and because we were the only children our age, we became friends as a matter of course. If there had been any other alternative, I’m sure we wouldn’t have; we’re so different that each conversation that we manage to get through could be considered a small miracle. David has always been compliant to the point of timidity in the presence of any authority figure; I more often speak my mind, and let the authority figures respond as they will. I enjoy reading; he loves to blast heavy metal through his earphones when he thinks that no one is close enough to overhear. He rarely caused any trouble for the adults comparable to my lapses in politeness, however, and in return they’ve always seemed to love him best.
Very little changed when we went to school. I remember, with shame, crying when our classes were separated by gender, or when we were placed on different sports teams, but I can also remember countless recesses and lunch breaks that he would spend sitting with me on the steps of the school building. Though he had no shortage of willing playmates, he wasted a lot of the time that he could have been spending on them trying to convince me to join their games. It worked only twice, once because I was curious and the other because I owed him a favour for not telling his mother that I had broken her jade elephant statue.
As he grew older, though, he did start spending more time with other, male friends, and though he never deserted me entirely, I was still lonely sometimes. I could feel us starting to grow apart, and since I had no other friends to fall back on and hadn’t yet understood that I didn’t really need them, that thought was unpleasant.
We were in the fourth grade when Belle transferred into our school. At first, she barely spoke to anyone, though I seem to remember her complimenting me on my clothing once or twice before we became friends. One day, however, after David had gone to kick a soccer ball around with the rest of the boys, Belle came over to my place on the steps and sat down beside me.
“Diana is a nice name,” she said. “Did you know it belongs to a goddess?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you always sitting by yourself? Don’t you have any friends?”
“Yes.” I pointed to David, who was charging toward the section of the fence which had been designated as the goal. “I’ve been friends with David forever.”
Belle watched him for a few moments, then made a face that was not quite a sneer. “Oh. But he’s a boy.”
“So?”
She looked at me blankly, like I’d just questioned the color of the sky. “Boys and girls can’t ever be friends. You should never trust a boy.”
“Why not?”
“Wait,” she said. “Just wait and see.”
I was intrigued by her from the start; I suppose that’s why I didn’t freeze her out. She seemed so much more experienced than the rest of us, so much wiser. I wanted to know what had made her that way, so that I could be like her. Silly, yes, but no more so than the other girls’ dreams of riding unicorns and meeting princes.
She didn’t mention David again, and so we never talked about him. We talked about other things: schoolwork, family, our hobbies. Back then, Belle loved to read fantasy novels that were far too adult for her; she stopped suddenly in high school, as soon as they would have been considered appropriate. And as time passed, I did find myself becoming more like her in some ways. Where Belle only makes fun of men and the occasional stupid girl, however, I’ve reached a point where I find it difficult to tolerate imperfection in anyone at all. Women, after all, share many of men’s faults, and have several that men have never even thought of. This new perspective, coupled with my directness, apparently made it difficult for my family to be around me for a while. Now, they’re just more careful, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
David, however, could never be content to leave well enough alone. “What’s the matter with you, Diana?” he asked me one day when we were thirteen.
“Nothing,” I replied, hoping that would be the end of it.
“It’s just ... you’ve gotten so ... cold,” he said with effort, as though each word had to be dredged up from that swamp he calls a mind. “You never used to be like this.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, like ... we used to talk. We used to have fun. I used to feel really ... safe with you, like I couldn’t do anything wrong, like I could really be myself.”
“You still can.”
“Can I?”
“Of course. Just don’t expect me to be quiet about it if you decide to act stupid.”
“See, that’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about. I keep thinking about how you made that girl cry because she sat at our lunch table the other day, or how badly you shot down that guy who asked you out last month.”
“That girl was a moronic cheerleader, and that guy stank of cheap cologne.”
He sighed. “Whatever. You know, sometimes I wonder what you think of me.”
“I’ve never made a secret of what I think of you.”
“No?” He seemed hesitant, then a bit excited. “Tell me then, right now. What do you think of me?”
“I think you try to be a decent person. You work hard, even though you’re not very bright. You keep going to Drama club, even though we both know that you couldn’t give a convincing performance to save your life. Whenever people come to you with their problems, you listen and you try to be helpful, even though your advice is often perfectly awful.” I shrugged. “You’re a good friend, I suppose.”
“Is that it?” he asked.
“I can go on if you like.”
“No, thanks.”
Belle
THOUGH I’VE LIVED in my mother’s apartment most of my life, I’ve never been able to think of it as my home. It’s always been my mother’s place, which I share out of necessity.
I help myself to a handful of chips and a small cup of yogurt. I know I should be making more of an effort to eat healthily, but I’m about as inclined to do that as I am to join the gym. Life is hard enough, and I’ve no need to look good.
I make two cups of Earl Grey, stir two spoonfuls of sugar and a bit of cream into each, and take them into my bedroom. On a small table in the corner, I’ve arranged a white pillar candle, some incense, and a picture frame. I set one of the teacups down in front of the picture, and light the candle and incense.
“Hello, Gertrude,” I murmur. “I’m sorry I haven’t been to visit very often lately. School has been difficult.” I know that she’ll understand: even as far back as second grade, she was instilling the importance of academic success into me.
I kneel there for a few moments. Once the sensation of her presence has grown strong enough, I pick up my tea and take a sip of it. My eyes slide closed, and for one beautiful moment, I’m back on her couch, with a talk show providing background noise while she tells me stories. But then it vanishes.
“I’ll visit more often.” I blow out the candle and let the incense burn itself out. As the last wisps of smoke rise off the spent stick, I add: “Promise.”
Gertrude used to live two floors down from us. When my parents and I moved into this building almost twenty years ago, she’d already been here sixteen. The general consensus was that she was nice enough, but a bit of a recluse and maybe not quite all there.
When I was five, my father died of a heart attack, and when the insurance money started to run out, my mother fell back on her law degree. A few days after she’d managed to get a position as a Legal Aid lawyer, Gertrude came to the door and invited us down to her apartment for tea. “To celebrate a new beginning,” she said. “Aren’t you about to embark upon a new career?” My mother accepted the invitation, but couldn’t get over how quickly Gertrude had found out about
it. She denounced our building as a nest of vicious gossips, and has exchanged only the basic pleasantries with the neighbours ever since.
The Saturday afternoon after Gertrude had come to the door, my mother told me to put on one of my better dresses and took me to Gertrude’s apartment. I was shocked that the inside of her house looked so different from ours. Our furniture had been purchased from a liquidation centre, and there wasn’t very much of it; Gertrude’s apartment was full of glass tables, antique chairs, and curio cabinets containing objects that even I understood to be as valuable as they were fragile. Over everything, there was a subtle scent that I found out only much later was rose incense.
My mother had brought a few books to keep me entertained during the visit, but Gertrude’s home was much more interesting. It was almost like being in a storybook castle: the velvet curtains, the polished silver tea set, even the doily on the plate of biscuits. Then, there was Gertrude herself: the way she spoke, choosing every word carefully and pronouncing them all perfectly; the way she moved, slowly but gracefully, pouring our chamomile tea without spilling a drop or over-filling the cups. She didn’t speak directly to me that day except to ask whether the refreshments were to my liking, but I still felt very grown up to be one of three women sitting down to tea on a Saturday afternoon.
“Marion,” Gertrude said, “may I ask what arrangements you’ve made for Isabella while you’re working?”
My mother hesitated. “I’m not sure. There must be daycares nearby, I suppose. I was planning to look into it a bit more closely once I found a job.”
“Understandable.” Gertrude leaned forward and poured herself another splash of tea. “I imagine that it must be difficult to find a good daycare facility, though. There are simply so many variables: location, cost, atmosphere ... to say nothing of the other children. These days, so many of them act more like animals than human beings.” She smiled at me. “Present company excepted, of course.”
“Yes, well, you can see why I’ve been putting it off.”
“Of course.” Gertrude sipped her tea. “I wonder, Marion, whether you might think me overly forward if I offered to watch Isabella for you instead?”
My mother blinked. “Oh, well ... I don’t know whether I’d feel comfortable imposing on you like that, Gertrude.”
“Please don’t be silly. It wouldn’t be an imposition at all.” Gertrude lifted her hands to indicate the apartment around us. “After all, what have I to do with my days but sit here? I might as well have some company.”
“I ... suppose, but —”
“Would it make you feel better to think of it as a business transaction?” Gertrude said softly. “Of course, I would charge you something, if only for Isabella’s meals and the like, but I can certainly promise you that it would come out cheaper than any commercial centre that you might find.” She selected a biscuit and placed it on her saucer. “Please don’t feel that you have to give me an answer immediately. Only promise me that you’ll consider it.”
In the end, of course, my mother took her up on the offer. It was simply too good to pass up, she said, although she added that if I felt uncomfortable or afraid at any time, I was to call her right away. “We can make other arrangements,” she said.
My mother needn’t have worried: I loved staying with Gertrude. At first, I only spent a couple of hours there on Monday and Thursday evenings; a year later, though, I was there on Wednesdays until about seven o’clock as well. Gertrude was very attentive: she would always ask how my day had gone, laugh at the stories that I would tell her of my classmates, and help me with my homework. When I started having dinner there on Wednesdays, she asked my mother for a list of my favourite dishes.
Once my homework was done, Gertrude would let me watch television. If I didn’t feel like it, or there was nothing suitable on, she’d tell me stories about her life instead. Like me, she was an only child, but her parents had been quite wealthy. She hadn’t made many friends at school, only “enough to get by,” and she’d never married. Instead, she’d gone to work, and combined her savings with the money she’d inherited from her parents to retire early. “Now, I spend my days reading or doing volunteer work,” she said.
“That sounds boring.”
She smiled. “I’m quite certain that I’m happier with my lot than most people.” And she did seem happy, most of the time. There were a few indications to the contrary, however, and the first of these came when I failed my first test in second grade. Gertrude was very understanding when I told her about it, but there was also a firmness in her voice that I couldn’t remember having heard before. “It’s important that you work hard, Isabella,” she said.
“I’m no good at math,” I said. “I don’t get it.”
“That simply means that you need to work harder.”
“Why? Lots of other kids don’t get it either.”
She lifted my chin and made me look into her eyes. “Because, my dear, if you don’t manage to turn out pretty, you shall need to be smart.”
Some time after that, I arrived at her apartment to find Gertrude looking through some old photo albums. “Come and have a look at these, Isabella,” she said. “I thought that you might enjoy seeing what some of those people in my stories looked like.”
I wasn’t particularly interested in it at the time, but I still sat on the couch with her and listened to her explanations of each picture. The stories and faces were beginning to blur together when we reached a picture of a woman in a wedding dress. The photo took up an entire page of the album. I asked her who the woman was.
“Her name was Emily,” she said softly.
“She’s pretty.”
“Yes. She was.” Gertrude took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. “She was my best friend. We used to call ourselves sisters.” She paused. “That picture was taken on her wedding day. It was the last time that I saw her alive.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. It was what everyone had said to my mother when my father had died.
“So am I.” Gertrude’s fingers slid across Emily’s smiling face. “It was her husband. Once they were married, he kept me from seeing her. I didn’t even find out that she had passed until the funeral was over.” Her fingers stopped. “I believe that he found me threatening. He thought that as long as Emily loved me, she would love him less.” She moved her other hand to stroke my hair. “Do you understand, Isabella?”
Of course I didn’t, but I still said: “I think so.”
“Then remember, for your own sake, that men complicate relationships between women. There will always be a part of them that tends toward dominance, toward control, and it is a rare bond indeed that can survive that kind of strain.” Her hand grew still over my hair. “Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl. Turn the page.”
Three years after I had started going to Gertrude’s after school, my mother began working much longer hours. Now, I went to Gertrude’s every day and usually ended up staying until after eight. The first few times that this happened, my mother apologized to Gertrude, who simply waved off the apology. “Please, Marion, it’s just fine. Isabella and I were getting along very well, weren’t we?” She turned to me, and I nodded vigorously.
When I was in the fourth grade, Gertrude lent me a few fantasy novels. I had a difficult time with them at first, but I quickly grew to love them. They were everything that I felt the fairy tales should have been, full of shades of grey and characters who had real motivations, flaws, and strengths. Most of all, I loved the magic, the power that could make kitchen maids into invincible sorceresses with entire kingdoms at their mercy. “Wouldn’t it be so great,” I said to Gertrude one day, “if magic was real?”
“What makes you think it isn’t?” she said, smiling.
“Everyone says it’s not real. It’s just make-believe.”
“Does that make it so, then?”
“I don’t know.” I closed my notebook over the homework that I’d been workin
g on. “Is magic real?”
For what seemed like a long time, Gertrude just looked at me; then, she came to sit across from me at the table. “Magic is real, Isabella,” she said. “It bears very little resemblance to the stories you’re familiar with, but it is real, and it is powerful.”
“How do you know?”
“I can use it.” I felt her serious gaze as a physical weight. “You could be taught as well.”
My eyes widened. “Really?”
She inclined her head. “If you like.”
That day, I took a small book of magical theory home with me. Gertrude had warned me to keep it hidden from my mother, but she needn’t have worried: by the time that she got home from work, my mother could hardly find the energy to make sure that my limbs were still attached, much less concern herself with what I was reading. I read the book through twice in as many days before I brought it back to Gertrude.
“Do you still want to learn?” she asked.
I thought of what I’d just read, the stories of miraculous healing and soul-destroying attacks, the path of trials and the Goddess that oversaw it all, and answered: “Yes!”
For the next five years, most of my time with Gertrude was spent studying witchcraft. I read every book she’d collected on the subject, and found a few more tucked away in second-hand bookstores and libraries. After that, I began working with the tarot. When I asked my mother for my own deck for Christmas, she gave me a strange look, but bought it anyway. Later, I progressed to energy manipulation and meditation, and by the time I was twelve, Gertrude had begun to hint that she might begin teaching me spell craft.
One day, though, Gertrude wasn’t home when I came back from school. I let myself into her apartment with the key she’d given me and waited for nearly an hour, but she didn’t come back, and so I went upstairs. For hours after that, I wandered from room to room, trying to call her every fifteen minutes and wondering where she could be. It was only the next morning, as I was getting ready for school, that the phone finally rang.
A Tale of Beauty Page 4