by Cathie Linz
He was just about to take a breather and sit down in his recliner when there was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” he shouted.
Opening the door, he found his parents and his sister standing on the other side.
“Sorry for dropping by unannounced,” Gaylynn said, “but Mom and Dad wanted to stop by on their way home from the airport.”
“I couldn’t wait any longer,” his mom said, as she put her arms around his shoulders and hugged him. “We’ve been gone so long!”
Seeing the packed boxes and general mayhem in the living room, his father said, “What’s going on here? You moving again already?”
“No, Dad, I’m not moving. I just got married.”
Seven
Michael’s sister Gaylynn was the first to break the stunned silence. “You’re kidding, right?” she said.
“No, I’m not kidding.” Seeing Brett standing on the kitchen threshold, he took her by the arm and brought her over. “This is Brett, my wife.”
“You really are married?” Gaylynn asked, voicing the astonishment reflected on his parents’ faces.
“I just said I was, didn’t I?” he replied irritably.
“Nice going, Michael. Why don’t you just hit them over the head with a hammer?” Brett said in exasperation.
“She’s a handyman,” he explained to his family. “She’s great with things like hammers.”
“She’s a man?” his mother repeated in confused horror.
Knowing how his mother avidly watched the tabloid talk shows, he hastened to reassure her. “Calm down, Mom. You’re not going to be seeing us on an episode of Oprah, or anything like that. I just meant that I hired Brett to be the building supervisor, to fix things up. That’s how we first met.”
“And when was this?” his mother demanded.
“Almost a month ago.”
“This marriage was rather sudden, then.”
“It’s the box,” his father suddenly said. “It is responsible.”
Michael sighed. “Now, Dad, don’t start with the omens.”
“If your right ear tingles, that is an omen. The box is bahtali.”
“What are you two talking about?” his mother demanded.
“His great-aunt Magda sent him a box,” his dad answered.
“Our son just got married and you have nothing better to do than talk about boxes?”
“It’s a Rom box,” his dad explained.
Pointing at Brett, his mother said, “And she’s an American wife. How do you do,” Mrs. Janos continued with old-world charm. “Your name is Brett, that is right?”
Brett nodded.
“Well, Brett, I would like to be the first to welcome you to our crazy family.”
Brett swallowed the nervous lump in her throat. Or tried to. It took her two attempts before she could say anything. “Thank you, Mrs. Janos.”
“You must call me Maria. And this is my husband, Konrad. And my daughter, Gaylynn.”
“Is that a baby I hear crying?” Gaylynn asked.
“It’s Hope,” Brett replied. “She’s crying because she woke up and Michael wasn’t there.”
“The baby is yours?” Maria asked.
“The baby is ours,” Michael said.
His mother looked ready to faint.
“We’re going to be adopting her,” Brett quickly explained. “The baby isn’t actually biologically ours.”
“I think I need to sit down,” his mother said. She took a few more steps into the apartment.
“I’m sorry the place is kind of a mess,” Brett apologized, grabbing a baby blanket from one of the lawn chairs that provided additional seating in the living room. “I just moved my things in yesterday and today and we haven’t finishing unpacking yet. It might be better if we sat in the kitchen. That room’s tidier.”
“Because we never go in there,” Michael said before Brett elbowed him in the ribs.
“I’ll just go get Hope,” Brett said, making her escape.
In the relative safety of the baby’s room, she picked up Hope and cuddled her soothingly, her mind jumbled with impressions of her new in-laws. Michael’s dad had the same high cheekbones and intense eyes as his son. His mother exuded old-world class. His sister, with her shoulder-length light brown hair and brown eyes, seemed direct and friendly—someone Brett could relate to. But would Gaylynn, or any of his family, relate to her? That was the question.
“Miklos, you had best explain from the beginning,” Michael’s mother said in that no-nonsense voice she only used when he’d done something outrageous, like climbing on top of the roof when he was seven. Actually, she hadn’t used his given name once since then.
“It’s kind of a long story…”he began.
“We’re not going anyplace. I will make tea while you talk and try to explain why you could not wait a few days to have your own parents at your wedding.” Maria marched into the kitchen, expecting her family to follow.
They did.
“It wasn’t a church wedding or anything like that. We went down to city hall,” Michael said as he sat at the table with his father and sister.
“You didn’t marry on the 14th, did you? That’s a bad day for marriage,” his father stated.
“No, it wasn’t on the 14th. It was the 21st,” Michael replied.
His mother was not pleased. “Yesterday? You got married yesterday? You couldn’t wait one more day for us to come home? Why the hurry?”
“Because of the baby. We want to adopt her as soon as possible.”
“And that’s another thing.” She waved a teaspoon at him. “Since when have you gotten along with babies?”
“Since Hope. Wait ‘til you see her, Mom. Then you’ll know what I mean. She’s special. A real heartbreaker.”
“You have never noticed babies before.”
“That’s because they always screamed whenever I got near them.”
“It sounded as if this baby has a good set of lungs as well,” his mother noted.
“Yeah, she does,” Michael ruefully acknowledged. “But she stops crying when I hold her.”
“This I have to see to believe,” his sister said.
“She wants you, Michael,” Brett said as she brought the fussing baby into the kitchen.
Michael held his arms out for the little girl, astonishing his family with the ease with which he held the baby—who indeed stopped crying as soon as she was in his arms.
“You certainly do look like a pro,” Gaylynn noted admiringly.
“I’ve had plenty of practice over the past couple of weeks,” Michael admitted with a laugh.
“I am still waiting for an explanation,” his mother reminded him, her frosty demeanor melting as Hope gave her a drooling grin over Michael’s shoulder. “Oh, she is adorable! Will she let me hold her?”
“Sure she will,” Michael replied. “Won’t you, Hope? You ready to meet your new grandparents, kiddo?”
While his mom held Hope and the rest of his family cooed and fussed over the baby, Michael used the opportunity to take Brett aside and have a private word with her. “I know I told you that it would be safe going to the police, and that sort of blew up in our faces, but I’d like to tell my family the truth,” he said quietly. “They won’t betray our confidence. They won’t tell anyone if we ask them not to. What do you say?”
Brett knew that, given the hurried manner in which she and Michael had gotten married, his family was bound to have questions. “We have to tell them something and the truth would probably be the best thing. You’ve certainly botched things up so far,” she added irritably.
“I wasn’t expecting them to drop by so soon.”
“Yeah, well, this time let me do the explaining,” she said.
In the end, Brett simply told his family the truth, from her finding Hope in the foyer to the social worker hot on their trail.
Brett ended by saying, “I lived in foster homes for most of my childhood. I just couldn’t bear the thought of Hope ending up in
that system.” She briefly considered telling them about the hysterectomy she’d had, but couldn’t seem to screw up the courage. Her confidence was precarious enough as it was and facing his family unexpectedly this way had used up what courage she had for the time being.
“We needed to move fast or risk losing Hope,” Michael stated.
“One must never lose hope,” his mother said with a sweet smile.
“Thanks, Mom. I knew you’d understand.”
Hugs were exchanged all around as Hope gurgled with quiet pleasure.
Later, as Brett and his mother and sister fussed over the baby, Michael took his father aside in the living room to talk about the box.
“So come on, Dad. I’ve been waiting for weeks now. What’s the deal with the box?”
“It holds a Rom love charm that has hit every second generation of Janoses since…the early 18th century, I think.”
“A love charm?” Michael repeated in disbelief.
His father nodded.
“That only hits every second generation?”
“That’s right.”
“And who would that be?”
“You, Gaylynn and Dylan, of course.”
“Great.”
“Do you want to hear the legend or not?” his father retorted.
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
“Family legend has it that a beautiful young Rom girl fell in love with a nobleman but their love was forbidden, because he was a count…”
“A no-account, if you ask me,” Gaylynn inserted as she joined them.
“No one did ask you,” Michael retorted.
“If this is a family legend, I have as much right to hear it as you.” Noticing Michael’s glance toward the kitchen, Gaylynn said, “Brett and Mom are getting along like longlost pals. They’ll talk for ages yet. Go on with the story, Papa.” That was what she called their father.
“Where was I?” Konrad asked.
“At the part where the beautiful Gypsy girl fell for a no-account count,” Gaylynn replied.
“Ah, yes. The count did not return her feelings, so the girl paid to have a love spell cast on her behalf. To pay for it, she brought with her the only thing of value she had, an engraved box that had been in her family for generations. The problem was that the spell was done by a shuvani who got things messed up. Regretting her error, she let the girl keep the box and would accept nothing for the spell.”
“What do you mean exactly by messed up?” Gaylynn asked.
“The spell skipped a generation—every second generation of Janos children would find love ‘Where they looked for it’—which was taken literally! The first person of the opposite sex that they saw after opening the charmed box was the person they would fall in love with and vice versa. We are direct descendants of that original Rom girl.”
“How come I never heard this family story before?” Michael asked.
“It is no mere story,” his father replied. “The charmed box is real and is said to have caused some unusual relationships in the past. I said nothing before because the spell did not apply to your mother and myself. But your grandparents…” His father shook his head. “It hit them hard, this love charm. My mother was a talented violinist. She even played with the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1930s. She’d gotten the box when her grandmother died. My father was a much younger car mechanic who was fixing her car at the time. One look and they were in love. Then World War II broke out and my father was drafted. During the war, my mother was nearly sent to a concentration camp because of her Rom blood. As it was, she was devastated when my father was killed on the last day of the war. I was their only child. She lived long enough to see me married, but it has been my lifelong sorrow that she died before any of you children were born…” His father blinked away the tears. “She would have been proud to have such good grandchildren.”
Gaylynn hugged their father while Michael squeezed his shoulder in a form of silent communication. Konrad Janos was a man of deep emotion, be it pain or joy. He displayed both with equal zest. It didn’t matter if the emotion had first occurred decades or days ago—the intensity remained.
Taking a deep breath, Konrad continued, “Your great-aunt Magda was your grandmother’s sister. She’s the one who sent the box to you, Michael. I remember Magda swearing that she’d never open the box when it came to her as the next in line after your grandmother’s death. It goes to siblings first, oldest to youngest and then remains there until it is time for the second generation. As far as I know, Magda never did open the box and she certainly never married. Who did you look at when you first opened it, son?”
Michael’s eyes shift to Brett, in the kitchen.
“Ah, so it was Brett you first saw. Then this marriage between you two is a love match, after all,” his father said with a twinkle in his eyes. “And with you living on Love Street, it is indeed bahtali.”
Michael shook his head. “I told you, we married for the baby.”
His father waved away the words. “It was the charmed box working.”
“What about the key inside the box? What does the legend have to say about that?” Michael asked him.
Konrad shook his head. “I know nothing about a key. Show it to me.”
Michael went to get the box, which had been sitting on his stereo. But it wasn’t there any longer. “Brett,” he called out. “Do you know where the Rom box is?”
“No,” she called back from the kitchen. “It might have gotten misplaced what with all the mayhem of my moving in and trying to child-proof your apartment.”
“That’s okay,” Konrad reassured Michael. “You can show me the box next time. On Christmas Eve, perhaps? You are coming over along with Brett and Hope, no?”
“You bet.”
“I’m sorry I don’t know anything about the contents of the box,” Konrad said. “I do know that there were other stories of couples affected by this love-charmed box in earlier times. I can’t recall them at the moment, but I know your mother wrote the stories down as my mother told them to us when we were still in the old country. They are with the family papers.”
“I just thought you might know what the key is supposed to open. Maybe a room in an old house, because the key is a very old type not commonly used these days. It looks like it’s sterling silver and is intricately engraved.”
“Did you ever consider that this mysterious key might be to your heart?” his father wryly suggested.
“Come on, Dad. You know I don’t believe in magic.”
“Magic is just making something happen that you want to happen. There is no fighting it. The Old Ways are powerful and are not to be trifled with. Remember that and all will be well.”
“Do you think Hope is too young to understand what’s going on?” Brett asked Michael as she pushed the baby’s stroller through the crowds at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.
“She’s old enough to have a good time,” he replied before demanding, “What have you got in this diaper bag? It weighs a ton.”
“Going out with a baby requires a lot of stuff.bottles, blanket, diapers, diaper-rash ointment, toys.”
“Twenty-pound weights,” he added to the list.
“Oh darn, I left the weights at home,” she returned with a grin.
“You look as excited as Hope is.”
“I’ve always loved coming to see the Christmas Around the World exhibit. I remember the first time I visited it.I must have been about four. I was staying with a nice family—she always smelled like vanilla. And they brought me here to see the trees. They looked huge to me. I’d never seen so many ornaments. I’ve never forgotten it. They moved me from that foster home shortly after the holidays. I’m not sure why, I think maybe she was going to have a baby. Anyway, I wasn’t able to make it back to the museum until I was thirteen, when I came on my own. As I walked past the tree from Sweden, I decided I’d visit there someday. I went around the entire exhibit and picked which countries to visit based entirely by the way they
decorated their trees. Of course, it was just a dream. I’ve never done any traveling. Not yet, anyway. But someday maybe…”
To her surprise, Michael said, “It’s good to have dreams.”
“I’ll bet last month you never dreamed you’d be a married man, pushing a baby stroller.”
“I’m not the one pushing the stroller, you are.”
As they neared the entrance to the exhibit, she said, “I don’t think Hope is going to be able to see from her stroller. Maybe you should pick her up. You can set the baby bag in the stroller then.”
“Good idea. Hope weighs less than this bag does, don’t you, stinky britches?”
Brett rolled her eyes at his latest nickname for the baby, a result of her having him change Hope’s diapers.
Walking behind them, Brett got the biggest kick out of watching the way Hope’s eyes widened and blinked in awe at the trees Michael was so meticulously pointing out to her. She hid a smile-when Michael read the signs aloud to Hope. The baby babbled along with him. He didn’t even seem to notice that Hope was drooling all over his nice shirt. But Brett did, and she reached into the baby bag for a cloth to wipe the baby’s mouth. When Brett straightened, she found a beautiful woman talking to Michael.
“Mike! What a surprise to find you here! I thought you hated crowds. Oh, my God, I don’t believe it! You’re holding a baby!”
“What’s so strange about that?” he said defensively.
“Come on. You with a baby? You’ve got to admit it makes a wild picture. The man who gets nervous if a woman even comments about his furniture or lack thereof?”
“I’ve changed.”
“In a month? I saw you at the beginning of November. We went to that little French place for dinner, remember?” Her voice dropped seductively as she laid her hand on his arm.
“I’m married now,” Michael announced in a loud voice.
“Get out of town!” The woman playfully drew her finger down his chest. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Do you see me laughing?” he retorted curtly, stepping away from her touch.