“Okay, so . . .”
She sighed. “So I’m having an off day.”
I raised my glass in a toast. “I hear that.”
Iris leaned back again. “It’s pretty out here,” she said. “Calm.”
I looked out at the waving field of prairie grass, trying to see it as anything but a wasteland. The lightning bugs had all gone to sleep, along with the few neighbors we could see, and it was quiet, quiet, quiet. In the town behind me lay the college campus with its old stone buildings and its suddenly unfunded and un-staffed literary magazine, all folded in for a summer’s hibernation. Sometimes I thought I could hear it snoring, rumbling like an approaching summer storm. Soon it would wake, breaking open like a hatching egg-sack with motion and noise and youth, and I knew we’d see Allan then, at least. He wouldn’t turn his back on a tenure-track position, even if he had no problem turning it on me.
“So what would your wish be?” Iris asked, turning over on her side. Her wings out of sight behind her, she looked just like a woman in miniature.
“I don’t know,” I said. “World peace? Naw, that’s boring. I really don’t know. Money wouldn’t fix anything. I don’t even think having my job back would.” I took another drag from my cigarette and blew the smoke over Iris’s recumbent form.
She shivered in delight. “You want him back?”
“Can you really do that?” It didn’t occur to me to ask how she knew about Allan in the first place.
She laughed. “No, not really.”
This time I laughed too. “Oh. Well, he always comes back eventually. Not that it matters much. Seems like he’s not here even when he is here.” I paused, sipping from my glass. Iris did the same, then extended her toothpaste cap to me. I took it, dipped it into the wine in my own glass, and handed it back to her. “I guess my wish isn’t so much that he’d come back as that it would matter if he did.”
“That’s a tough one.”
“I know. So how ‘bout you? What’s your wish?”
She looked at me, startled. “I—I don’t know.” She turned toward the ocean of green grass, wings moving subtly in the breeze, but before she did I thought I saw a new look on her tiny face, a darkness that I couldn’t quite identify.
#
The next morning I woke to the sounds and smells of breakfast, and for an instant I thought Allan had returned. But he doesn’t make breakfast, I thought. And then I remembered the previous evening.
I stumbled downstairs to the kitchen, where Iris was flying above the stove. Under her command breakfast literally made itself, spatulas hanging in the air waiting to turn slices of French toast and bacon. She was still naked, of course, and I wondered how she avoided splatter burns.
Kari busied herself setting the dining room table—four plates, but only three with glasses and silverware. On the fourth plate sat Iris’s toothpaste cap. Kari scurried past me holding a carton of orange juice and a jug of syrup, while Elise huddled next to the stove, watching intently as Iris hovered over the frying pans.
Seeing that there was nothing I could do to help I sat down at the table. Before I could even pour myself some orange juice Iris and my girls came into the room, preceded by floating plates of food that somewhat unsteadily set themselves down on the table.
“Good morning, girls,” I said. And to Iris, “Looks like you’re having a better day.”
She smiled, breaking off a crumb of French toast with her hands and carrying it to her plate. “Your girls have been helping me.”
“I set the table,” said Kari, her face already smeared with syrup.
“I see that, Kari,” I said. “Thank you.” Elise’s eyes remained focused on little Iris sitting cross-legged on her floral-print plate. “Elise, how were you helping?”
She just shrugged and stabbed a piece of French toast with her fork. I looked to Iris, hoping to catch some sort of answer in her gleaming eyes. But her head was bowed away from me.
Ebullient and oblivious as always, Kari broke the silence. “What’s your family like?” she asked, showing everyone her partially masticated breakfast.
Iris looked around as though she wasn’t sure the question was addressed to her. As her attention settled on my younger daughter her wings drooped. “I don’t really have one . . . anymore.”
“What happened to them?” asked Kari.
The little fairy shrugged, moving wings as well as shoulders. “What happens happened. The world is big; we’re small. It’s easy to lose things.”
Her sadness was palpable, so many times bigger than her. It hovered around the table as if borne by transparent wings.
“It’s okay,” said Elise, finally starting to eat her breakfast. “You can stay with us.”
She didn’t ask me if it was okay, and the parent in me wanted to protest on principle. Nonetheless I was glad when Iris answered, “Maybe just for a little while.”
When we finished eating, Iris cleaned our plates with one sweeping wave of her arm. Like that the syrup and crumbs and the little white strings of bacon fat that Allan used to eat but none of us liked were dispatched, perhaps to some other realm. “Beats the dishwasher, don’t it?” she said, winking at me. I heard myself giggling, imagining the dimension of banished items. A land piled high with table scraps and lightning bugs, but also with secret treasures stored for safekeeping, with precious children and irritating lovers.
Echoing my own thoughts Elise asked, “But where does it go?”
“Would it bother you if I said I didn’t know?”
Elise shook her head and Iris watched her, an appraising look on her face. “I think it’s just gone.”
“Can you bring it back?”
The fairy was grave. “Disappearing is easy, but bringing things back is hard. It may be the hardest thing in the world.”
#
Iris had been with us for a week, which meant it had been eighteen days since Allan had gone, and I still wasn’t thinking about him. Not enough to pick up the phone, anyway, and once again be the first to crumble. It had always been easy not to answer when his cell number appeared on the caller-ID; the calls were never for me. This time, though, he hadn’t called. But it seemed like even the girls missed him less with Iris around. Who needed Allan when there was magic in the house, a little more magic each day?
With Iris’s help the housework got done in a snap: dirty socks floated merrily into the washing machine and streaks simply vanished from the windows. Even better, she was very patient with the girls, taking the edge off the long summer days that would ordinarily have had me begging for year-round schooling. Elise in particular had taken to the little fairy, and if she wasn’t haunting the college’s library or reading in her room she could be found trailing Iris around the house like an oversized shadow.
Every day I felt I ought to be looking for a new job, but then I would remember where I was and laugh out loud at my nonexistent options. Having been let go by the college, what was there for me? The town didn’t even have a grocery store.
After dinner we’d all go out to the backyard and watch the day’s radiance give way to darkness. You could see stars blink on almost one-by-one, mirrored on earth by the creepy staccato blink of hundreds of fireflies. Warm nights were a relief after sweltering days, and Iris and I would sit on the verandah and sigh into our wineglass and toothpaste cap.
Iris fidgeted with her cap of wine, picking it up then setting it back down, then picking it up and passing it from one hand to the other. Without looking at me or at Kari and Elise she asked, “Do you see what they’re doing out there?”
“They’re catching lightning bugs.” Almost every night my girls were out in the tall grass trapping the luminous bugs in a jar.
“Maybe you can’t see it from here,” she said, peering into the dim yard. “Kari’s catching them; Elise is doing something else.”
I covered my eyes with my hand and squinted, but I could only see the shapes of my daughters hunched in the grass. They were just figures outlined a
gainst a backdrop of tiny green lights blinking on and off.
“Maybe you should go look,” Iris said, still avoiding my gaze.
I pulled myself out of the low chair, feeling huge and ungainly and suddenly excluded, and stepped into knee-high yellow grass. It whispered as I waded through it, but I couldn’t understand what it said.
I came up behind Elise without her noticing, she was so focused on something in front of her. She knelt so motionlessly that I almost worried about her; she looked like she’d been turned to stone. In front of her, fireflies blinked on and off and she watched them, intently.
I knelt behind her and watched what she watched. As my eyes adjusted to the dark the lightning bugs came into better focus, and I could confirm visually what I knew intellectually: that even with their lighted butts extinguished the bugs still existed, flying about as modestly as any fly in the dark. But then, two feet in front of my daughter, I saw one that didn’t. The firefly’s taillight went out, and with it the whole bug popped right out of existence. I blinked my eyes and shook my head, hoping to clear whatever distortion had produced the effect, but as soon as I opened them I saw it again. The light was snuffed and the bug was gone.
“Elise . . .” I said.
I said it calmly, but she jumped so high she almost fell over. She turned and looked at me with saucer eyes.
“Are you doing that?”
She nodded, a grin creeping onto her face.
I stood up, startled by a tug on the back of my shirt. Twirling around I saw Kari, lifting a jar high in front of her for my approval. “Look mom,” she said.
In the jar were four lightning bugs, and I stared at them for a long time. When I was satisfied they weren’t going anywhere I looked back to my younger daughter, forcing a smile. “Good job, Kari,” I said, backing toward the house. “You too, Elise. Good work.”
Stumbling back onto the solid ground of the porch I felt my heart racing. Iris was still sitting on the edge of an overturned ashtray that served as a bench, and when she looked up at me her tiny face was blank. “What else have you taught my kids?” I asked.
“It wasn’t me,” she said.
I laughed, bitterly. “Like hell it wasn’t.”
“Sit down, Deb.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I said, weakly. I wavered between sitting and standing before dropping into my chair.
“Do you know what Elise’s wish is?”
I looked at her, overcome by a sick feeling in my stomach. “I don’t know,” I said. “What? To become a witch?”
Iris shook her head, a sad smile on her face.
“Okay, what? I don’t know.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” she said, and with a sudden flap of her wings she lifted off the table, floating toward the yard.
“Wait,” I said, wondering how we’d gotten so far off track. “I think you should leave.” Even I could hear that my voice carried no conviction.
Iris just started laughing, bobbing up and down like a buoy. “You gonna make me?” she asked. “Your kids like me better than you, and we’re more powerful than you are. I like you, Deb. So relax, and stop saying stupid things.” She turned sharply and flew off into the yard, leaving me stunned and alone.
I grabbed my wine glass and went back into the kitchen to re-fill it. Damned uppity fairy, I thought. First Allan and now her. I thought of calling Allan, making him come back. I had the feeling it would fix everything that was broken, but something stopped me. Pride, maybe. Or something deeper. It wouldn’t fix everything, my editor-brain corrected. It would fix everything but you.
I wandered around the house. Everything sparkled a little more than it used to; it seemed fresh and clean, but also unfamiliar and subtly menacing. I found myself standing in the doorway to Elise’s room, looking into it as if for the first time. The room was a sea of lavender, her favorite color. Every surface was covered with either stuffed animals or books, and they all seemed to be watching me with dark accusing eyes. I stepped into the room and sat down on my daughter’s neatly made bed.
Her bedside table and the floor in front of it were littered with library books. Setting my wineglass down I picked the top one up. Magic, Applied was the title, and the one under it was Invocations, Spells & Charms. They were all on similar topics. The topmost book on the floor, The Magical Encyclopaedia: R – V, had a rainbow-colored bookmark sticking out its top, festooned with a red yarn fringe. I picked up the book, opening it to that page. There were a number of entries in the two-page spread, but one of them was marked with a penciled-in star. “Summoning,” the book said, “is the act of bringing an object or a person to the summoner by means of incantation or spell. The degree of difficulty—and danger—varies with the object being summoned, with even small inanimate objects requiring a moderate to high level of magic. The summoning of persons should not be attempted except by one well-trained in—”
“Snooping, huh?” The voice startled me, and I dropped the book. I whirled around to see Iris shaking her finger at me as if to say shame on you. Guiltily I picked up my glass and took a step toward the door, but as I got closer I saw that Iris was smiling. “It’s okay,” she said. “I snooped all the time when I had kids.” She waved her arm in the air, brushing that topic away. “But that’s beside the point. Have you figured out what your daughter’s wish is yet?”
Iris hung in the middle of the doorway like the littlest gaol-keeper, and I couldn’t bring myself to brush past her. Diminutive as she was, I was tinier still.
“No, I was just—” I paused, remembering the book. “Summoning? Is that it? What does she want to summon?”
“Hey, you’re almost there,” she said.
In her eyes I saw encouragement tempered with frustration and mockery. “It’s not Allan, is it?” I asked.
“You got it!” she said, flying in a celebratory circle.
“But the book said—”
“That’s right. That’s why you should be worried.” She flew closer, so close she was looking into my eyes one at a time. “You may actually have to talk to your daughter.”
#
I re-filled my glass, then changed my mind and left it in the refrigerator. While it might’ve been easier for me to tell Elise about the danger of easy answers with a glass of wine in my hand, it definitely would’ve been harder for her to listen. Taking a deep breath I stepped onto the porch, where both girls were sitting on its edge.
The screen door slammed behind me and they looked up together. “Is it time for bed?” Kari asked.
“Yeah, Kari. Go brush your teeth, okay?” She ran into the house, letting the screen door bang closed again. I had to smile; at least she seemed unchanged. Elise started to follow her little sister. “Elise, can I have a minute?”
She shrugged. I sat in the place Kari had occupied, unsure how to begin. I looked up at the bright carpet of stars, but they were silent, inert. I decided to lie.
“Hey,” I said, pointing up. “Shooting star! Make a wish.”
Elise looked at me like I was a lightning bug she hoped would disappear. “I didn’t see it. Can’t make a wish if you don’t see it.”
I sighed, dropping the pretense. “Elise, what’s up with you lately? You’ve been so quiet.” She shrugged again, silent and inert as the stars. “Is it because dad’s gone?”
Nothing.
“You know, it’s not like I don’t miss him too,” I said.
Elise snorted.
“I do miss him. But you can’t force someone to be someplace if he doesn’t want to be.”
“I can,” she said, and I saw a scary gleam in her eye. It was probably my imagination, but in that instant her brown eyes seemed to glow green.
“Okay,” I said, hearing the quiver in my voice. “I know you’ve found a way that you think you can bring him back, but—”
“I don’t think,” she said. “I know I can. Even if you don’t believe in me.” She started toward the house.
“Elise,” I said, almos
t begging, “please don’t. What if you get hurt?”
She snorted again. “Like you care.”
Shocked, I could think of nothing to say.
“I’m doing it,” she said, in an eerie low whisper.
“Elise”—my voice was raising into a shout, the twang of my frustration clearly audible—“just listen to me!”
“No, you listen!” She towered over me, and I was actually afraid of her. “I’m bringing him back, and you can’t stop me.” She stalked into the house, letting the screen door fall. But this time it stopped before slamming, settling into its frame without a sound.
I sat there for a long minute, looking out into the prairie grass. Fucking Ohio, I thought. Fucking Allan, fucking college, fucking prairie grass. Fucking magic. Fucking fairies.
As if on cue Iris flew out the door holding her toothpaste cap in one hand, preceded by my wineglass. “Didn’t go well?” she asked, landing beside me on the porch.
I turned to her, panicked. “What could happen to my daughter if she tries this?”
“Bringing things back is the hardest thing in the world. Even I couldn’t do what Elise wants to do.”
“Okay,” I said, my patience at its end. “But what will happen to her?”
“It’s like . . .” she seemed to search for an appropriate simile. “Electricity, right? The wires in your house can only handle so much, and if you try to pull more through them they . . . blow a fuse?” She frowned. Maybe this wasn’t the simile she was looking for. “Except there are no fuses for this kind of power.”
“So what happens?”
“She’ll be destroyed. And so will I, and probably you and Kari too.”
“What do you mean, destroyed? What does that mean?”
Iris just shrugged, an almost imperceptibly small movement.
“Great,” I said, jumping up from the porch. “Thanks! So what do I do, smarty? Clearly I can’t talk to her, and apparently I can’t stop her.” Iris stood on the porch in the strange light-and-dark shadow of my wineglass, impassive. I felt like grabbing her, crushing her in one hand, crumpling her into a ball like a piece of winged junk-mail. “This is all your fault!” I yelled. “I wish you’d never come here!”
Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas Page 22