He holds up a paper bag. “Mango.”
I wipe juice from my chin. “How are you going to eat that while we’re walking?”
“I’m saving it for later,” he says. “It’ll go great with vanilla bean ice cream.”
“When did you get ice cream?” I ask as we cross the street. I’m leading, taking us towards the park.
He grins. “I haven’t yet. I figure I’ll get it at one of our stops along the way.”
But the second stop at a store never comes. What I see in the park sets me off in a new direction. We’ve been walking for half an hour while Laurie drops hints about leaving the greenery for the sake of ice cream hunting when I see him.
He’s an artist or he wants to be, and I automatically feel kinship with him. I also like him because he’s perched beneath the angel that Stephen brought me to just after I moved to New York. This place calms me. Though the world’s been lurching under my feet ever since I found out about Stephen and now me, this spot in the park reminds me that no matter what madness life churns out, Stephen and I still have this place. And each other.
The man is in his twenties, wearing glasses with thick, clear plastic frames and a rambling mishmash of clothes. He’s staring at a blank canvas and shuffling brushes in his hand like a deck of cards.
I stop, watching him.
Laurie takes a long look at me. “We gonna be here a while?”
“I think so,” I say.
He drops to the ground, rummaging in his bag for the mango.
“Okay, then,” I say to myself. Each time I do this it feels new and I’m nervous that it won’t work. But a moment later the world has blurred and I’m in the background again. Only the artist remains in focus. I wait, keeping my breath steady. The air around him begins to move, take shape. This isn’t like falling straw but appears as threads, weaving around his body. I swear I can hear a low hissing, like angry whispers, chasing around his body as the threads move. I can sense them knotting, tightening.
I pull myself out of the background, a little shaken by what I saw.
Laurie’s on his feet. He clasps my wrists, steadying me. His fingers are sticky with mango juice.
“What’s wrong?”
“He has no inspiration,” I say.
“That painter?”
I shake my head. “His creativity is blocked. That’s the curse.”
“And it was different than the cab lady’s?”
“Yeah,” I say. “This one is meant to last. It was tying itself around him. And it had a sound.”
Laurie takes a step back. “The curses make sounds.”
“His does.” I look at the artist.
He’s standing up, shoving brushes into a satchel. He kicks the blank canvas over, startling a cluster of pigeons. He doesn’t pick it up as he stalks away from the fountain.
“So it’s worse,” Laurie says, watching him leave.
I don’t say anything. I don’t need to.
“Well, let’s go, then,” Laurie says.
“Where?” I ask, still watching the artist. The angry set of his shoulders melts into a slump of despair as he disappears down the path.
Laurie waits until he has my attention. “To see what Stephen’s curse feels like.”
* * *
I can tell he’s surprised to see me. And even more surprised that Laurie’s at my side.
“Hey.” He recovers quickly, leaning in to kiss me.
I resist the urge to try to see his curse right then and there. He deserves fair warning before we do this. Even though as we know there’s a curse and kind of know its history, getting me this involved is taking our detective work to the next level.
I’m hugging Stephen hard, tongue-tied by how I’ve spent the afternoon. Fortunately Laurie has no such troubles.
“She can see them!” He bounces past us into Stephen’s apartment.
“I’m sorry?” Stephen keeps his arm around my waist as we follow Laurie into the living room.
Not wanting Laurie to continue speaking for me, I interrupt him, winning myself an eye roll in the process. “The spells. I can see the spells.”
“But Millie said—” Stephen is cautious.
“I know.” I sit on the couch, tucking my legs beneath me. “But I think that’s what she meant when she said I come by this naturally. I can see the spells. They’re what I’ve been drawing.”
Stephen sits beside me, leaning back. He doesn’t say anything for a while. Laurie makes a get-on-with-it motion, but I ignore him. I don’t want to go further without Stephen agreeing.
Finally he lets out a long breath. “What do they look like?”
“They take different forms . . . Some have sounds, both of which seem to correspond with the intent of the spell.”
His jaw tightens. “And you’re here to see mine.”
“Only if you want me to,” I say quickly.
“Why wouldn’t he want you to?” Laurie asks.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Stephen murmurs to himself. And then a moment later, “Go ahead.”
“Are you sure?” I don’t want to push him.
He nods, closing his eyes.
I want to hold his hand but worry it might interfere with my ability to see the curse. My heart is pounding. I have to draw several deep breaths before I can take myself out of my room. The background is different in the apartment, quieter and closer. I feel a little claustrophobic, like the walls are closing in.
I force myself to stay calm and focus on Stephen. At first he’s just there, the way I’ve always seen him. I pull farther back, trying to separate my feelings for him from the magic I need to see. It stirs reluctantly, slithering up around him. I choke on a scream. These aren’t threads. They’re tentacles. The thick, squirming appendages all around him. The squelching sound of their suckers latching and unlatching from his body is unbearable, as if they’re drawing out the very essence of his being. Stephen is still, settled in the midst of them. He exists within the nest of this curse.
I jerk out of the background. Laurie is staring at me. Stephen begins to tremble when he sees my face. I bolt from the couch and make it into the bathroom just in time to vomit.
Chapter 15
THIS WHOLE TIME, I’ve wanted to know exactly how she saw me. I’ve hung on to every detail. I’ve waited for every clue.
Now I’m not so sure.
It is like I am killing her. Just by standing there. Just by having her examining me.
I am killing her.
She runs out of the room, and Laurie follows. I stay in the same spot, afraid.
I don’t want her to see me anymore. Not if it does that to her.
Being invisible, I’ve never had to withstand another person’s revulsion before. I’ve never been the catalyst for such a reaction.
Now I know how it feels.
And it kills me.
* * *
Laurie comes back.
“Where are you?” he asks.
“Right here,” I say.
He follows my voice. “She’s okay. Just a little shaken up. I think maybe we need to call it quits for the day—”
But before he can say anything more, she returns to the room.
“No, it’s fine,” she says. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.”
She looks at me. I want to hide. For her sake.
“It’s all right,” she tells me. “I’ve turned it off. That part of it.”
“What did you see?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I can’t really explain it. I mean, I don’t understand it at all. I can see things, but I don’t know how to interpret them. All I know is that it’s one powerful curse your grandfather’s put on you.”
“It hurt you to look at it,” I say.
“I don’t know if hurt is the right word. It overpowered me. Almost like it could tell I was looking, and it had to send me away.”
“Don’t do it again,” I say. “Promise me. Not until we know more.”
“I promise. Not unt
il we know more.”
* * *
My father comes home for dinner. I’m not expecting him, but I’m not really surprised, either.
“What did you do today?” he asks, as if I’ve just come home from soccer practice.
I laugh. I can’t even begin to tell him.
“Look,” he says. “About last night . . . I hope it’s okay that I told you all those things. I’ve been wandering around the city all day, thinking about it. I never wanted this day to come. I honestly thought that—well, I thought—”
“You thought Mom would be around to tell me. You didn’t think you’d ever have to have the conversation because you knew it would be up to her.”
“Exactly.”
I call the Italian place down the street and order us dinner, charged to his card, as always. Then I sit back down across from him at the kitchen table.
I have so few memories of him. Sometimes I would make them up. I’ve seen so many fathers pushing their kids on swings, so many fathers playing catch, so many fathers watching with a mix of nervousness and excitement as their sons took their first sled rides down a steep, snowy hill in Central Park. I could make myself believe that we’d had these things too, in the time before I could remember, in the time before he left. I never needed him to teach me things, or to be my hero. I just wanted him around to carry me on his shoulders when we went to the zoo.
He’s talking to me now, telling me about his life in California, telling me about my sisters, trying for once to fill the empty space that he’s left in my life. He’s filling it with the wrong things, but in some twisted way I appreciate the attempt. I’m not really listening; instead I’m trying to imagine what it was like, to be in love with my mother, to marry her, and then one day to be told about this curse, this threat. He didn’t want to believe it was true, and who can blame him? I don’t want to believe it’s true, and I’m the proof that it’s true.
I guess the question I have to ask myself is how much I truly expect my father to bear. What are the responsibilities, really, once things like curses and spells become involved? Can I blame him for not wanting to have anything to do with it?
Well, yes, I can blame him. So I guess the question is whether I should blame him.
“Obviously,” he’s telling me now, “I haven’t told them the real reason I’m staying. But I want to be here for you. For as long as it takes to sort this out.”
“What?” I say.
“I’ve told them a business situation has come up. And I think—I hope—my wife knows me well enough to know I’m not having an affair. So I’m going to stay in the city. I don’t have to stay here—I respect that you have every right to privacy at this point. But surely there’s something I can do.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “You can go.”
“No. We’ll beat this thing.”
He says it emphatically, like I have cancer and he’s going to hold my hand for the treatments. We’ll beat this thing. But there’s no treatment that’s been devised to beat this thing. There’s no need for him to hold my hand.
He starts talking some more about the sisters I’ll never meet, the sisters who don’t know I exist.
Dinner arrives. As we eat, he asks me about what movies I like. When I name a few he’s never heard of, he says we should watch them together. I assume he means this hypothetically. But when dinner’s over, he goes straight to the DVD player and puts one in.
He sits in the chair that might have once been his. I sit on the couch. I’ve seen the movie a hundred times, but this time it’s different. We’re laughing at the same things. I can feel us both rooting for the main character. I can feel him enjoying it.
It’s like one of my fake memories, only real.
* * *
Elizabeth, Laurie, and I return to Millie’s inner sanctum at the appointed hour the next day.
This time, the door guardian lets us in without a word, simply pointing to the stairs that lead to the hexatorium.
Millie looks calmer and more collected than she did yesterday. She is putting some of the books back on the shelves when we arrive.
“So good to see you again,” she says, even though she hasn’t looked at us yet.
We sit down in the same places from the day before.
“Now,” she says, “before we begin, I must ask your names.”
Such an elemental test of trust. It hadn’t even occurred to any of us to introduce ourselves last time. I think we assumed she already knew.
We give her our full names. Laurie says he’s Elizabeth’s brother. I say I’m Elizabeth and Laurie’s friend.
“I should have seen the resemblance,” Millie says, looking at Laurie and Elizabeth. “I hope you’ll pardon me. I was rather . . . distracted.”
“Completely understandable,” Elizabeth says.
Then we sit for what feels like a minute in silence, waiting for Millie to continue the conversation.
Finally, she tells us she didn’t sleep last night.
“So you’ll have to pardon me again. There’s a lot on my mind, especially considering what I’m about to do. I don’t want you to think that what I am about to disclose is being said without any deliberation. This is not easy for me, and I need you to appreciate that.”
“We do,” Elizabeth tells her. “We appreciate you seeing us again. We appreciate whatever it is you’re about to say.”
It’s like someone’s put me and Laurie on mute. There is some connection between Elizabeth and Millie, and, once again, the minute we walked into this room, the story we were acting out became about her, not me. Millie isn’t talking to either me or Laurie, even though she clearly doesn’t mind if we hear what she has to say. But really, she’s only talking to Elizabeth.
“When you came here yesterday, I felt so many different emotions. And those emotions are what kept me awake last night. More than anything else, I felt old. Older than I’ve felt in a long, long time. I felt the burden of everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve learned, and how that burden has made me slower, more hesitant. The older you get, the wiser you are—this is true. But you also question what use this wisdom is.
“When I started sensing your presence, Elizabeth, I assumed you were another relic like me. It never occurred to me that there would be someone with your power who was merely a girl. Untrained. Natural. When you arrived here, I didn’t know what to do, how much to tell. I’ve made a living for so long solving people’s two-bit problems, upholding my reputation as the local freak. I’ve drifted from all the things that I was raised to do.”
She pauses for a moment to make sure Elizabeth is following; it’s an unnecessary pause, because we’re all rapt.
“It may seem like a very strange gift to have—to be able to see spells and curses without being able to do anything about them. That is the paradox that spellseekers live with. It’s like being able to hear music but never being able to make it. There are pleasures, but there are also many desires that go unfulfilled. You get used to it, but you’re never entirely happy with it. You want to be able to affect the world you see. We all do.
“I’ve debated how much I should tell you. But I think for you to truly understand, I have to take you back to the beginning, or at least to a long time ago. Don’t worry—I’m not that old. We’re not immortal; we have the same long, short lives as anyone else. But there are histories—many of the last ones are in this very room. So we know what it was like, even a long time ago.
“Nowadays, spellseekers are bystanders. We see things, but there’s not much we can do about them. We are, at best, diagnosticians for the damned. We can tell people the cause, but we seem to have lost the cure. Hundreds of years ago, however, this was not entirely so. We were not so helpless. There were more seekers than there were casters, by a large number. And we used our skills to monitor the casters. Some even suspected that a few of the most powerful seekers had the ability to draw out curses and reverse spells, but that was never more than rumor and speculation. Those seekers
who may have had that kind of power knew how quickly they’d become targets of the casters. Or maybe they didn’t want to shoulder the burden of removing curses when most of us can’t. I didn’t blame them for wanting to exist in obscurity. We were, to make a crude analogy, both police and judiciary. If a caster was abusing his or her power, we would step in. As a result, cursecasting was extraordinarily rare, and only justified in extreme circumstances. We were, strangely enough, the protectors of free will. And the casters went along with that.”
Millie pauses. There is an incurable sadness in her eyes.
“Over time, this changed. There was no single event, no caster revolution. It may have been their plan, to have us die out. I don’t know—you’d have to ask them. But whatever the case, there became fewer and fewer seekers. Casters did what they wanted, without repercussions. And, as you know, the world became a much, much bigger place than anyone had known it to be, which meant it was impossible to follow and monitor all of the casters. The rules did not break so much as disintegrate.
“I know I am not the last of the spellseekers, but I know I am certainly one of the last. As the world became smaller again—as technology made us closer—I wondered if there wasn’t some way that contact would be resumed. But I’ve never heard from another spellseeker, even though I’ve hardly kept my gifts a secret. I imagine it didn’t take you very long to find me, did it? That was deliberate.”
“All you really need to do is let the comic book geeks know,” Laurie says, “and the rest of the world will follow.”
“I don’t know if that was precisely what I intended, but I can see from years of experience that your hypothesis bears scrutiny. Still, being so open has of course left me somewhat vulnerable. The casters no doubt know what I am.”
“Or they think you’re a crackpot,” Laurie offers.
“Or that. It’s always possible. The good thing about casters is that they are unable to seek—they can create spells and curses, but they cannot see the work of others. Nor can they sense seekers in the same way that I can. For example,” Millie says, looking at Elizabeth, “I doubt that Maxwell Arbus knows about you. Not yet.”
Invisibility Page 14