Husband Rehab

by Curtis Hox

  “I don’t, sorry.”

  He swallows another bite, smiling at her as if she can’t understand these things. “My wife wants me to remember day-to-day stuff, is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I have heard her say that before.”

  Josie sighs in relief, thinking this might not be difficult at all. “Great. Here’s how this works. You have your laptop, and you’ll probably be making important calls. Work a lot on the weekends?” He nods. “I thought so. That’s fine. But you’re going to have a few simple tasks. Just three or four the entire weekend. Think of it as practice.”

  “What kind of tasks?”

  Josie explains that at two thirty this afternoon, the old horse barn needs to be inspected. All she wants him to do is walk through it and make sure no critters are setting up shop inside (at least that’s what the grounds keeper thinks is important). Simple. Mr. Jenkins will also have to clean up Alice’s dishes after lunch and dinner. Moreover, Mr. Jenkins will do all the dishes Sunday, plus the trash, and the linens. Just a few things. Josie doesn’t want to make it so hard on him he’ll feel taxed. She even wants him to forget. She has to test her spell of course. It’s a simple one that works on the notion of someone asking him a favor. If he agrees and doesn’t do it on time…

  “Just to show you how this’ll work,” she says, “let’s run a test.”

  “Test?”

  He finishes his last bite. He leaves his nice-sized porcelain plate empty, except for a few crumbs coated in vegetable oil.

  “I’m going to ask you to wash that dish after I leave, and you’re going to agree to it.”

  “Okay.”

  “But you’re not going to do it.”

  He grins. “Sure thing.”

  “Mr. Jenkins, will you please wash that dish when I leave?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I certainly will.”

  “Thank you.”

  Josie strolls out the doorless exit into a pantry that leads into the kitchen gardens.

  Mr. Jenkins remains where he is, as if this is all a big joke. She steps aside so that he can’t see her anymore. Shelves full of baked beans, canned vegetables, potatoes, etc., line the wall. She stands in the corner, waiting. It should only take a few seconds. She placed the potion in his eggs before he came down. All that needs to happen now is for him to …

  She hears him stand, most likely leaving his plate on the table. The tap tap tap of his feet walking away …

  “Hey, wash me!”

  Josie peeks and sees a round, angry mouth in the center of the plate.

  Mr. Jenkins ogles the plate.

  “Wash me now, buddy. Hurry up. Wash me. Wash me.”

  He stares at it uncomprehendingly. A second later, he hurries to it as if washing it is the most important thing in the world.

  Mr. Jenkins rushes the talking dish to the sink. He scrubs for two minutes. He even checks to make sure the magical mouth is gone.

  “Now what?” he manages to say to Josie.

  “That’s it,” she says, “except for those other things I need help with.”

  “Right,” he replies, clearly shaken.

  Josie hopes he forgets, at least once or twice before going home.

  He’ll have spiteful objects watching over him for the next three months: plenty of time to right the wrongs he doesn’t even know exist. Still, as she watches him go, Josie wonders if what she is doing is wrong. A talking plate isn’t that different from an alarm clock, or a phone call from a friend. It’s a reminder. Sure, he can’t stop it. That’s why it will work. It’s the best sort of reminder. It’s reliable. Besides, some cases are more pressing than others.

  * * *

  Josie corners Mr. Ottis Ray Creeley in the winter garden. He’s standing beneath the multifaceted ceiling, each panel of glass the size of a dinner tray. They form a canopy of transparent squares that diffuse the light into a thatch-work pattern. Even better, the ceiling’s copper covered, cast-iron struts have turned verdigris green.

  This chamber, of all the rooms in the mansion, is Lady Birchall’s favorite because of the warmth it provides year round. She often spends her mornings in here, when the light shines through, as it does now. Mr. Creeley is standing near the dry fountain in the very place Lady Birchall likes to sit, a shaft of light warming his face. A marble boy riding a dolphin should be squirting water from his mouth. The rest of the conservatory supports a few plants here and there, even four spider orchids that Lardy Birchall personally cares for. It once teamed with tropic vegetation. But, like the rest of the house, it has seen better days.

  “Well I’ll be,” Mr. Creeley says when he sees Josie. “I’d heard rumors about this place, but I can’t believe how true they are.”

  “Yeah, Birchall Mansion’s quite a sight.”

  “Mostly shut up?”

  “All but a few rooms on the first floor and the second.”

  “Pity.”

  He has changed into blue denim overalls. They’re clean, which isn’t a surprise, and even pressed. Mr. Creeley is a board member in the local Baptist church, an active leader of the Rotary Club, and one of those country people who like to look both rustic and nice. The pink collared shirt he’s wearing appears to be a Ralph Lauren Polo. He’s clean shaven. His wire-rimmed glasses somehow sparkle in the soft light.

  “Mr. Creeley,” Josie says, “you’re a drag, apparently.”

  She stands under his gaze, waiting for his smile to deteriorate. Any sign of his sour mood, and she’ll set into him right away for having no sense of humor. If he runs, the grounds keeper is down the main hall, which leads from the vestibule through the double doors to the center of the house and the winter garden. He’s repairing some jacaranda wood paneling that’s pried loose over the years. She’ll have to shout, but he’ll hear.

  “Am I now?” he asks.

  “You are.”

  “Says my wife?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m here so that you can fix that?”

  She tenses. “You are, sir.”

  “Well I’ll be goddamned if that’s not the sorriest thing I’ve heard all year. Excuse me.”

  He walks past her at such a brisk pace she fears he might clip his knee on the stone railing that encircles the garden.

  “Mr. Creeley,” she says, before he can leave. “Please listen, so I don’t have to chase you. It’s simple. Stop with all the negativity, or whatever it is. Your wife says she can’t take it anymore.”

  He rounds on her, and she sees an agitation in his eyes that Mrs. Creeley probably has seen a thousand times. “What’re you planning to do to me? Go ahead and tell me. It can’t be worse than what’s going on out there. It’s not like global warming will disappear, or the ozone come back. Just yesterday I saw two men walking a dog together, and they were holding hands. Two men! Can you believe that. What’s the world coming to?”

  She waits a half second, fearful her spell hasn’t worked. She’s already doused him with a bit of magic dust, the concoction dropped into his sweet tea about an hour ago. She was hoping he’d show a bit of sand, so she could see him in action. Something about Mr. Ottis Ray Creeley makes her guess he’s more bark than bite, but that he likes to bark. She wonders if she’s not changing his core personality. Maybe he’s a grump at heart, has always been one, and will always be one.

  His eyes widen. He’s frozen. As if every part of him has turned to ice. She knows, though, he’s not really frozen. But he can’t move a muscle. The poor guy is stuck with one arm crooked, the other half way to rubbing his cheek. One leg is straight. The other is canted and holding him upright by his heel. His body will remain in that position for the next hour or so. He can breathe, and he has all his senses. His eyes bulge—something she wasn’t sure would happen. But now that it does, she wonders if his nostrils will flair as well. Nope. He’s as still as a statue. Stop fighting it, Mr. Creeley, and you won’t feel so bad.

  Josie can’t help herself from laughing a little at his un
dignified pose. She approaches him.

  She can smell aftershave, or something like Stetson cologne, on him. Or is that Brut?

  “Any time you’re rude, or spiteful, or just plain mean, Mr. Creeley, you get to be in timeout. This is the sort of thing I was taught when I was four. Never better than the present, wouldn’t you say?”

  He can’t nod, of course.

  She leaves him, all alone, with his thoughts, hoping he understands he’s been ensorcelled for a reason. She could have made it a lot worse, a lot.

  No, she thinks, we’ll start off slowly with Mr. Creeley. Give him a chance.

  “Impressive,” Josie hears a voice say.

  A figure appears in the shadows of the main hall. The sky lights in the roof are shut because most of the house is shuttered. She recognizes Lennox’s tall figure standing in a niche where a full sculpture in the round of Lord Birchall once stood.

  “Hey, Lennox.”

  He approaches. He’s wearing cut-off cargo pants, a tee-shirt with a big wave on the front, and flip flops. Her heart flutters in her chest when she thinks of him tearing off that shirt, maybe at the beach, and running for the water. He’s naturally tan and fit like a lifeguard. She’s seen enough of him in film and TV to know what kind of body is under those clothes …

  She pries her eyes away before he notices.

  “This place is massive,” he says.

  The great hall is a long, wide corridor paneled in the dark wood from Brazil. Its arched ceiling is thirty feet high, with skylight wells providing illumination. The floor is polished granite from the local quarry, but they walk on a thick, burgundy rug that runs down the center. The grounds keeper waves, then steps out.

  Lennox glances at the doorways to the right and left of the open portal into the garden. Both the doors are shut.

  “Where do those lead?” he asks.

  “Library and banquet hall.”

  He peeks into the winter garden and see Mr. Creeley, still stuck in place. “So, it’s true what they say about you, Josie Bran. You’re a talented witch?”

  “I am, you have a problem with that?”

  He shakes his head, as if it were no more problematic than she being a female prize fighter. Her mother had been so bothered by her grandmother’s craft that she turned to booze and drugs and left Josie to be raised by whomever would help. Her grandmother, was her guiding light. She saw what was in Josie, and she introduced her to the craft. She died an old woman, happy her granddaughter can prosper in these new modern times.

  Lennox inspects the banquet-hall door. It’s nearly eight feet tall, each side of the frame nearly as wide as Josie’s waist. She fully expects it to be locked. When he pushes on the heavy handle, to her surprise, it swings open.

  “You know,” she says and walks forward, “I haven’t been in here in years.”

  She walks into the massive space. She can’t remember the dimensions, although she measured them one summer as she prepared for a school project. She wrote a paper and gave a presentation on Birchall. She visited every one of its rooms. This is one of her favorite. The hall’s arched ceiling of exposed wood is sixty feet tall. Two huge, iron chandeliers in the form of layered circles hang from the ribbed ceiling. A lacquered chestnut dinner table is still set for a party that won’t arrive. The far wall is dominated by a massive, two-chimney fireplace, the single flue, a wide brick affair tapering toward the ceiling. The other walls are adorned with European tapestries with knights and dragons. These stretch all the way to clerestory-like windows.

  Josie edges around the dining table, staring up at the ceiling. “I use to come in here and pretend to be a princess. The house wasn’t as shut up then as it is now. Even so, I’d get in trouble.” She pauses when she notices Lennox watching her. “What is it?”

  “You,” he says. “You really love this place.”

  “It’s seen better days. Even when I was younger it was in decline. I’d love to see it prosper.”

  “Husband Rehab?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “When my wife came to me and said she wanted me to go to therapy, alone, I thought I’d be sitting in my mom’s office, or something similar. Then I heard about this. Your Aunt Emma sure likes to chat. I remembered you always talking about this place, and I knew you were in town, so I told Stella I’d go to therapy. To my delight, there you were last night to welcome me. I knew, right then, I’d have someone who could help me.”

  “Help you?”

  She can’t imagine Lennox being the difficult one in the relationship. She hasn’t yet figured out what she’ll do when it’s the wife who’s the problem. Probably won’t have to deal with that too often, she tells herself. With Lennox, he could be her first instance of a genuine victim.

  “Stella and I are at each other’s throats all day long, all night long. We can’t agree on anything. We fight, and rarely make up. We’re both so raw with each other it hurts. It’s my fault, I think. I’ve changed. When she married me I was happy to be an actor. We went all over the world. She got to live the life with me. Now, I’m tired of it. I want to do other things. That drives her crazy. I also don’t want the limelight. That’s even worse for her. I think she’s less interested in me now.”

  She’s an idiot.

  Josie feels sweat form on the back of her neck, as if he’s propositioning her. She can imagine a heady encounter, maybe in the side passage that leads from the banquet hall to the main kitchen. She could scream her head off in ecstasy and no one hear.

  “What can you do to save me from my ruined marriage?” he asks.

  Josie feels her mouth hanging open. She shouldn’t be having this conversation. First, she’s not a therapist. Not a real one. She’s here to twist the ears of men who’ve forgotten how to live civilly with their wives. She’s not here to help them escape—as if they would need her help, as if Lennox would ever need help …

  Wait a minute, why would he need saving …?

  “Lennox, what’s going on?”

  He glances around the room, as if peep holes might allow spies to listen to their conversation.

  “I’m … I’m not what you think.”

  Christine confirmed. But Josie’s always known. All this time, she’s known there is something special about him. Warlock!

  “Really?”

  He nods, as if he’s a drug abuser admitting his history to another drug abuser. “Since I was a boy.”

  Josie rushes to his side. “That’s so dangerous, Lennox, especially here.”

  “I know. Stella uses me for her own reasons, and my mother can’t stop her. Stella’s only a minor witch, herself, but she has powerful friends.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “Since you know now, she’ll expect you to break me down, make me pliable. She’ll expect you to keep her secret, as if she’s the one who’s keeping me from practicing. She’ll pretend she’s harnessing me for the good of society when she really uses me. We have to fool her.”

  “I can figure something out.” Josie muses over this curious fact and realizes she’s just found a way to get close to Lennox without drawing anyone’s attention. A secret between them …”What if I pretend to cast a spell to make you amenable? Uhm, tell her that it takes some time to work. You’ll need to stay for a week … or two.” A slow grin crosses his face, the kind that might emerge over a glass of wine. “Say that any time you’re difficult or whatever, you’ll get a raging headache.” She nods furiously. “That’s it. It’ll give us time to figure out what to do about her … and you. You know what I mean.”

  He grasps her tiny hands in his large ones. “Thank you.”

  She thinks he might lean in for a kiss. Instead, he whisks himself by her toward the exit.

  Lennox Cruz and I have a secret, she thinks with a soaring heart, and I totally have a crush on him again.

  * * *

  Josie slams the door to her room and drops the bolt.

  Enough morning sunlight pours through the window panes to illum
inate the room. The center of her wood floor is dominated by an oval rug. She jumps on it like a surf board. It slides, and she rights herself. She dances a few steps, her hands swatting the air like a break dancer’s.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she says.

  Josie hurries into her closet, past all the old clothes (and a few new ones she’s hung up). She finds a latch in the far wall. A door on silent hinges swings inward. She walks down three wooden steps into a wide space running from the doorway to a far gable. She’s covered the wood floor in several mismatched rugs. The roof is slanted on one side. Bare, wooden struts and beams cross the space above her. She surveys her workroom to make sure no one’s been in here. The five windows on the south wall allow in plenty of light, the curtains held back by rings.

  The room is muggy, so she activates a portable air conditioner that’s running via an extension cord connected to an outlet in her room.

  She walks past her main workbench, which is covered with household items she’ll need to finish her potions.

  Against the gable wall’s wide window is another desk. She sits at a chair and stares at the four business cards that Roxy ensorcelled. She brought them in earlier as a precaution; didn’t want to leave them lying around in her bedroom. The enchanted objects continue to cycle through key moments of the men’s wrongdoing. She’s already studied Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Creeley’s. She pushes these aside and stares down at the other two.

  Okay, Mr. Brookings, she thinks, let’s see what all the fuss is about.

  She lifts up the business card. Inside, a window plays into Mr. Brooking’s past. It’s a montage of events from his life of lies. There he is telling his wife he’s at work, when he’s at a restaurant with an old friend eating prime rib and a buttered potato. The magical footage switches, and she sees and hears him telling his wife that their taxable income is one amount. It immediately jumps, as if directed by some cameraman in the sky, to Mr. Brookings reviewing the final document with his tax attorney. The numbers don’t match.

  World-class liar, she thinks.

  She sees a string of seemingly innocuous lies pour from his lips. He pretends to have won at golf when he lost. He claims he went to the gym when he didn’t. He even, and this makes her chuckle, pretends to have outrun a dog that came at him the street. First, there was no dog. Second, he did no running.