“Aunt Fiona?” I asked. “Don’t you have any clients or court cases this week? You’ve been around a lot.”
“I took vacation time when I knew you were coming home. I figured you could use an extra hand.”
“Two hands, extra,” Mrs. Meyers said, “with Eve and your dad, for the semester, back to college.”
“Well, I certainly can use every hand.” I gave Aunt Fiona a steamer to smooth out vintage wrinkles, because I knew she’d use a light hand, and asked Mrs. Meyers to fold scarecrow donations while I continued sorting. By ten, my second floor had working fluorescents, the electricians on their way out the door.
“Olga,” Aunt Fiona said. “You needed to start baking by mid-morning for the church bazaar.”
“Oh, yes.” She kissed my cheek. “Anytime, I’ll come and help, Madeira. You call.”
Aunt Fiona and I stood alone. “Time for the ritual sweeping?” I asked. “If you still want to, I mean. If you think we need—”
She chuckled. “No reason to be nervous. You won’t break into witch speak or get an uncontrollable urge to circle Mystick Falls on a broom.”
I’m not nervous, I’m out of my mind, I thought. Once doors were locked, Aunt Fiona’s two big needleworked bags of supplies yielded candles, stones, essential oils, herbs, and sea salt. She had also brought in two, count them, two well-used round-bottomed brooms. “Let’s get started,” she said. “Goddess forbid your father should come by.”
“Dad does have a key.”
“But he also has class this morning. The black and gray candles banish negativity, as does everything I’ve brought. I chose votives for fire safety and put the black on the floor in corners, not too close to the walls. We’ll bless one room at a time and use the same candles in each. Between corners, place one gray candle with a selenite stone, and sprinkle rosemary and pine needles on the floor around them.”
She touched my hand. “Okay so far? Not spooked?”
“I’m not,” I said, surprised.
“Good. Now, it’s important to imagine the negative energy swirling up and away from us as we work.”
“What does negative energy look like? Green slime? Jelly shoes? Polyester?”
“Any shape that works for you. Try picturing a spiral of ugly rising through the rooms here and upstairs, then through the roof to disperse into the air. Make it a color you hate and send it flying.”
“Smoky folds of chartreuse polyester. I can do that.”
“But can you believe it?”
I didn’t know I could buy into a “magical” sweeping away of negativity. I mean, given the building’s history, recent and past, it couldn’t hurt, yet I wasn’t sure I could honestly believe. “I don’t want to disappoint you, but it’s not easy to believe in something that seems like a fairy tale.”
“Then picture your mother as she looks in your dream of us dancing beneath the full moon. Imagine her guiding an ugly chartreuse spiral up and out of your building. She’ll get rid of the negative energy for you. She’d fight a dragon for you.”
Chakra jumped into my arms, and between her soothing presence and the image of my mother, anything seemed possible. “I trust you, Aunt Fee, and I trust my mother’s beliefs and magical gifts. I just don’t know if I’m ready to make them mine. But you and my mother can rid my building of negative energy, and I can help.”
“Thank you, sweetie. Now, light the candles.”
She took out the sea salt. “Normally,” she said, “I’d use salt water, but I didn’t want to stain your newly-finished wood floors, so last night I sprinkled water into the salt and let it dry on a cookie sheet in my oven, though I’ll use it like salt water.” At the threshold of the people door, she sprinkled it and raised her head as if in prayer.
Gray Goddess, in your name,
We neutralize and banish the negative
From this place where death came.
Every inch, pediment to peak,
Negativity depart and nevermore seek.
With Chakra in my arms, both of us calm, I took it all in while I saw my mother whisking negativity up and away from here with the same love she gave to everything.
Aunt Fiona repeated the door blessing—negativity leave but never enter—at the huge unsealed side doors. I still owned two hearses that would need to be wheeled out, after all, so I needed a set of usable barn doors, which also might work for a large display or shipment.
Aunt Fiona neutralized dressing rooms, bathroom, stairs, and the top floor, with door blessings at windows.
The longer she worked her magic, the friskier Chakra became, bouncing off of us, howling as if she were chanting her own call for shelter from harm. And through it, I thought I heard my mother laugh, faint but true.
When Chakra jumped back in my arms, I felt calmer, less skeptical, more hopeful about my spiritual beliefs and the possibility of aligning them with nature. An earth-based belief system made sudden sense. Time to open my mind about my heritage.
After the blessing, Aunt Fee lit two protective smudge sticks—bound, dried white sage leaves—one for each of us, which we held as we circled each room, up and down, the pungent, not unpleasant scent following us, banishing negativity as we went. Aunt Fiona chanted:Purify this place with peace and grace.
Every floor, room, nook, and stair,
Protection, love, and joy ensnare.
With harm to none, hear our prayer.
Finally, she offered me a broom so we could sweep our way upstairs. “Only if you want to,” she said.
Magic or not. Did I have it in me? More to the point, if I did, was I ready to accept it?
Maybe, maybe not. As my mother’s daughter, I answered the question. “I’ll accept the broom on the condition that I sweep in Mom’s place.”
“How appropriate.” Aunt Fiona squeezed my hand. “Kathleen cherished this broom. I didn’t want the knowledge to color your decision, but your reaction reveals your natural talents coming through.”
“I don’t mind them coming through on their own,” I said, “but I’m not ready to force them.”
“I respect that, sweetie, and I’d never have suggested this ritual, if I didn’t consider it imperative to your well-being. When you want to read beginner’s books on the craft, let me know. For now imagine your mother’s hands on the broom, as they so often were, but over yours, guiding you and walking beside you.”
“If only I could see her like I can see him.”
“My name is Dante,” our watcher said, uncrossing his arms and uncoiling his lanky body to straighten and approach us. Not hard to look at. Not hard at all.
He examined our brooms, with doubt yet with curiosity and respect for our purpose. “By now, I guess you’ve figured out that I’m not negative.”
Fiona chuckled. “I knew that.”
“So did I.”
Dante’s face relaxed. “Then you aren’t trying to get rid of me?”
Who wouldn’t want a hunk like him around? “Never.”
He smiled, chin dimple deep. “Thank you. Proceed,” he said. “I’ll picture the negative energy here—and there’s been plenty—going up in that ugly-colored smoke spiral with you, basement to chimney.”
“Concentrate hard on the basement, Dante,” Aunt Fiona said. “Neither of us can picture it.”
“Happy to,” he said.
My confidence grew in our task. Funny how spirit confirmation helped, when so few of us saw spirits at all.
Us? I questioned. Those of us connected to more than one plane. Those of us with a gift. Hmm. I’d included myself in “us” without hesitation. Imagine that.
I followed Aunt Fiona’s lead and swept in a circular motion almost feeling the weight of dark energy flying from the ends of our brooms like sparks that burned themselves out. Negativity disappearing, leaving in its place a clean, pure energy that evoked peace and hope.
Funny, Aunt Fiona hadn’t told me to feel such strong emotions, this certain belief. She hadn’t said this time to picture it ha
ppening. The act simply slipped into my being on the dawning wings of a natural cognition and spiritual awakening.
As if sensing my newborn yet tentative spiritual harmony, Aunt Fiona hesitated, nodded, and continued. “Sweeping is our last step.” She began her final chant:Kathleen, raise our quest,
As we sweep from east to west,
Neutralize, purify, cleanse, and bless.
Protect this place with Goddess grace.
Your daughter’s dream from bud to flower
To grow and prosper by the hour,
With joy, luck, love, and laughter won.
Harm it none, we declare it done.
“Oh,” I said. “You invited Mom in. I feel her, Aunt Fee, as if I’m six, again, standing beside her in Stroud’s candy store. Chocolate. Smell the chocolate? That’s Mom.”
Aunt Fiona’s eyes grew bright. “I smell the chocolate, sweetie. We miss you, Kathleen.”
Oh, we do, but I was too choked up to say so.
We ended our sweep in the storage room, where we’d left the candles to burn out after the blessing, because this room, more than any, needed uber-positive energy.
“Madeira? Fiona?” my father called as he entered the first floor of the shop and came up the stairs.
In this crowded room, we hadn’t been able to place the candles against walls, so Fiona kicked one of the more obvious votives from sight.
My father stopped in the doorway with the two of us holding oddly shaped brooms, ones he probably recognized.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Twenty-nine
I have a kind of in-built clock which always reacts against anything Orthodox.
—VIVIENNE WESTWOOD
I felt a need to defend my beliefs, a surprising turn I’d have to reflect on later. “Bad day, Dad?”
He clenched and opened his fists at his side, as if fighting something within himself.
Certain he meant to blast Aunt Fiona, or both of us, for the ritual brooms, I thanked the Goddess, or my mother, for the scent of chocolate growing stronger and overshadowing that of burning smudge sticks.
Or, chocolate is how my nostrils interpreted the scent. Goddess knew what my father thought.
He took a deep breath, hands relaxing at his sides, and breathed easier, as if overcoming his inner turmoil. “You locked the door in the middle of the day,” he said, less hard, more in sync with the peace of our ritual.
“Dad, this is a business. We’re not open till noon tomorrow. The locals are eager. When this was a crime scene, I sold an outfit, outside, from one of the boxes in the parking lot.”
His shoulders also relaxed. “To be truthful,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe himself, “as I cleared the stairs, I got a flash of your mother in labor eating a candy bar on our way to the hospital.”
Holy thingamabobbin, he smelled the chocolate, too.
“That shouldn’t make you cranky, Harry,” Aunt Fiona said. “It should make you smile.”
“She’s right, Dad.”
Welcoming peace, he gave a serene sigh, and his lips curved up, almost involuntarily. “Other men griped about crumbs in their beds. For me, it was chocolate wrappers.” He chuckled, surprising us all, even himself.
I dropped my broom to throw myself in his arms. “That’s the most open you’ve ever been about Mom. I’ve ached to know that kind of silly little detail about her.”
He held me tight for a minute, really tight, until he cleared his throat and pushed away as if seeing me for the first time. “Look in the mirror, Madeira. She’s right there.” He touched my cheek. “That’s her dimple.”
Like Fiona, I swallowed. “I’ve been known to eat chocolate in bed, too. Didn’t know it was hereditary.”
“Poor Nick.” My father hesitated, the puritanical professor tripping over unacceptable knowledge about his daughter. “So,” he said, changing the subject and rubbing his hands together. “You already made a few bucks?”
“If you want to call three thousand dollars a few.”
That got his attention. “How many outfits?”
“One.”
“You got me,” he said. “You do know what you’re doing.”
It was pure luck that somebody donated a treasure trove of rare vintage and that the White Star Circle harbored a true collector, but I wasn’t admitting that to the man who once predicted my failure.
Dad watched while Fiona and I swept up the debris left by the electricians.
“Harry,” Fiona said, as we were finishing up. “We need to move some furniture down to Maddie’s sitting room area, so the shop will look good for her grand opening.”
“Not a bad idea.” He looked over the possibilities in the storage room. “It’d save you money, Madeira, if you didn’t buy new.”
“I know, Dad. I may as well go vintage all the way.”
“I can get a few locals to help move you after work hours,” he said. “What did you want downstairs?”
“The fainting couch.” I ran my hand over it. “The jadeite lamps, this side table, that desk. I’d use the cabinet if it were enamel black, not hospital white. I’d display my fashion dolls in the glass-front top.” And relegate the tools of the mortuary trade to a body drawer.
“I can spray paint the cabinet,” Dad said. “Won’t take much sanding. Time has taken care of that, but there’s a drawer missing.”
“It’s in my bedroom. I took stuff home in it.” A quilt and outfit that Eve feared I’d read in front of her, but Dad knew nothing of my psychometric ability, and I prayed he never would.
He nodded. “I’ll paint it in the basement at home, happy I’m not teaching as many courses this semester.”
“Now if we could figure out a way to shed some light on the collection I put inside.”
“Madeira,” my father warned.
“I’m thinking out loud.”
“You could paint the inside a lighter color,” Aunt Fiona suggested, “to give the fashion dolls prominence.”
“Pale yellow inside,” I said, “and after the outside dries, I’ll paint funky fashion designs on it. Maybe make the bottom cupboards look like they have frog closures. I’ll see where my muse takes me. Let me know when it’s dry, and I’ll decorate it before we bring it back.”
The scent of chocolate got stronger and sweeter, swirling around us like ribbons of fudge bringing the three of us closer, tying us with a chocolate bow.
“Your mother,” my father said, startling me, “inherited furniture from her parents that she loved. In the, uh, early days, after we lost her, I relegated them to the basement beneath a tarp. Take what you want for the sitting area. She’d be pleased.”
My mother knew how much I adored those pieces, my first introduction to art deco. The designs fascinated me. I remember tracing them with a tiny finger. I wonder if Mom had just nudged Dad’s memory.
Scary stuff, straddling the veil between the planes. Or comforting? Or all in my mind?
My father headed for the stairs. “I’m off to buy black enamel and pale matte yellow paint.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He waved. “Madeira, you might want to get that black candle away from your cat. And Fee, don’t forget to sweep up the salt by the windows and doors.”
He knew!
Thirty
Just like the silhouette of a car needs to be changed periodically so as not to lose its power of attraction, in the western world the female body is also reshaped from time to time.
-BERNARD RUDOFSKY
I grabbed Chakra so she’d stop gnawing on the candle and I gave her some of the kitty treats I kept in my pocket. “You gave us away, you.”
“She only confirmed our activity,” Aunt Fiona said. “Your father probably saw the salt at the front door. He always had a way of ferreting out spells, but I must say, he’s mellowed in his old age.”
“Old? Dad’s a young fifty-two.”
Fiona grinned. “So am I.”
I chuckled as my watch alarm rang
. “Time got away from us. I have an hour before Eve and I leave to pick up my car, and another before we have drinks with Lolique.”
“Lolique? Councilman McDowell’s midlife crisis?”
“You mean his late-in-life crisis. How long have they been married?”
“No more than a year. He had to have his first wife declared dead before he could marry her.”
My head came up. “Why? What happened to her?”
“Nobody knows. She went missing years ago, and they say he did everything possible to find her. Him and the Groton police.”
Groton? “I saw her picture but didn’t know her history. Speaking of whom, come see this.” I brought Aunt Fee to the stacked white boxes. “This is where I found the cape and dress. Look, these are priceless.” I took out several outfits to show her.
“I might buy this.” She held up a patchwork skirt and vest set, slipping her hand in the skirt pocket. “Look, a broken fingernail.”
I reminded her about how we found Lolique. “If these are from Lolique,” I said.
“It’s weird that she should break two nails packing clothes,” Aunt Fiona said.
“And that they should all end up in pockets? Seems practically premeditated to me.” I pulled out a silk draped evening dress by Lucien Lelong in a translucent aqua coloration. A one-of-a-kind masterpiece. “This looks so familiar. I must have seen a picture of it when I studied fashion design. It’s decades older than the rest, and I hate the way it’s been treated. Who would put such treasures in boxes? Help me get them on hangers and into garment bags, will you?”
I rolled a rack over. “I’ll send some of them to an artisan friend in New York to be cleaned and restored.”
Before Aunt Fiona hung each piece, she searched their pockets and found four more leopard fingernails.
Larcency and Lace Page 13