Enter Three Witches (6 page)

“Anyone would, and I do,” Erika said.

“It’s a statistical project,” Bren said in a rush. “For math. You know how practical Miss Wentworth is, or don’t you? I forget you weren’t here last year. It’s part of the new math, I think. Like, no more meaningless theorems. No more dry examples. Everything must be related to life.”

Erika nodded gravely. “I can see the life part all right,” she said, “but the mathematics still eludes me.”

“Statistics,” Bren said. “I thought I’d count their spots and do a correlation.”

Math was, unfortunately, one of Erika’s strong points. “A correlation with what?” she asked.

Lacking a ready answer to this, Bren plunged on. “Anyway, you can imagine how impossible it was to count the spots on a bunch of frogs all hopping around in a tank and getting on top of each other, so I saw there was an empty tank in the corner and thought I’d take them one by one, count, put them in the other tank, then dump the whole lot back. But things got out of hand,” he finished with a helpless gesture that made Erika laugh.

“You’re really crazy,” she said. “I like that.”

“You do?” Bren asked dubiously.

“Absolutely. I hate ordinary, predictable people. Come on, let’s walk. I’ve got to get home and see if I can eat. Ugh! What a thing to look forward to.”

“You could take nourishment through a straw,” Bren suggested.

“For two years?”

“That’s true. You’d fade away.”

“You can’t be too thin or too rich,” Erika said, “but I think it would sap my strength and ruin my temper. What a marvelous afternoon.”

Bren nodded happily. They were walking up toward Broadway with the late sun shining warmly on their backs. “It’s turning nice for Saturday,” he said, adding to himself, “if I can only keep this damn frog alive.”

Turning right on Broadway, they passed the seductive windows of Zabar’s—“No, I really can’t give up eating,” Erika said. As they crossed Seventy-ninth Street, the river flashed blue at the bottom of the hill, and the rusticated stone of Erika’s building rose into view like a fortress.

Bren stopped at the tall gates and looked in at the fountains playing in the shadowy courtyard. “I always wanted to know someone who lived here,” he said. “What a neat place.”

“Come on up,” Erika said. “You can help me choose something to eat and then look the other way while I savage it.”

Bren was tempted, but only for a moment. The scrabbling sensation around his middle was growing weaker, and he wasn’t sure whether his mother would be pleased with a dead offering. There was also the strong probability that a more relaxed, indoor conversation with Erika would again turn toward treacherous waters. “I can’t this time,” he said. “There’s something I’ve really got to do.”

“Okay. ’Bye for now,” Erika said, and turned in through the gate.

As Bren started back up Broadway, he could hear the doorman’s cheerful voice, “Hey, Erika, what’d you do? Swallow a box of paper clips?” There was no reply.

The sky darkened again as Bren crossed Broadway and walked toward the park. Huge clouds were rising as if from some infernal cauldron in New Jersey, and the last rays of sun crept between them, casting a lurid glow on all that only a few moments ago had basked in the light of a clear September afternoon.

Bren felt his spirits sink with the failing light. He wanted to hurry now—to get home and rid himself of his increasingly unpleasant burden—but his footsteps dragged as he trudged the last block to his house.

Curiously, in view of his upbringing, or perhaps because of it, Bren was not given to brooding or to superstition. Now, however, he felt the ebbing life of the miserable creature inside his shirt as if it were his own. For the first time, he found himself thinking about the actual fate of a frog at the hands of a witch—a witch who also happened to be his mother.

Erika, he reflected bitterly, might prefer people who were out of the ordinary, but the eccentricities of Miranda West went beyond the merely unconventional. He wondered if one could have a lasting relationship with a girl and never bring her home. Many teenagers seemed to be ashamed of their parents and their living quarters, but this notion was foreign to Bren. He had always felt close to his mother and fortunate to live with her in the extraordinary old house. Now it occurred to him that he would do well to invent some dreary setting for his home life—a tiny, cramped apartment in one of the tenements that stood between Broadway and the park. It was an unappealing idea and one which would probably prove difficult to sustain.

The gray stone house looked forbidding in the darkening afternoon. No lights shone from the long, narrow windows; it had an expectant air, as if it waited for some shattering event—a scream, a bolt of lightning, a dark figure hurtling from its topmost floor. Bren was surprised to find his home so suddenly transformed into the set for a low-budget horror movie. “Halloween,” he muttered, as he climbed the stairs. “It’s being a Halloween house, and this is Halloween weather.”

He slammed the front door and headed for his mother’s studio, a strangely subdued Shadow slinking at his heels. The stairwell was filled with an eerie glow as light filtered through the stained glass skylight. From above floated Madame Lavatky’s scales, making the silence below seem more intense.

“Enough of this,” Bren said, and started flipping light switches as he went. He unbuttoned his shirt and dropped the frog into the terrarium, where, to his relief, it opened its eyes and limped bravely off to the pool.

The house had seemed empty when he came in, but his grandmother appeared from the shadowy depths of the parlor as he went down the stairs. “So here’s the young prince,” she cried. “Every light in the house he must have on, but does he pay the electric bill? Not he!”

“I’ll get a paper route,” Bren said, “and give my all to old Con Ed, but please, Gram, let’s have some light. It’s such a gruesome afternoon.”

Rose stopped with her hand on the light switch. “Got the willies, have you? Me too. Something’s brewing today for sure. Get your mother away from that black witch is what I say, or creepy will come to crawly, and what goes bump in the night might come to stay.”

Bren was now genuinely alarmed. “They’re down there together?” he asked.
“Doing
things, you mean?”

Rose nodded. “They’re down there together,” she said, “and if you think they’re knitting baby clothes, you’re entitled to your opinion.”

“I’ll take a look,” said Bren, resolute now, the man of the house. He was not, in fact, afraid of either his mother or Louise LaReine, having lived with both of them all his life, but he very much disliked the idea of their combining forces. “Shadow, you stay here,” he added as he started down the basement stairs. Shadow, in fact, showed no enthusiasm for a merry chase among black chickens. He lay down at the head of the stairs and followed Bren’s descent with worried brown eyes, a whimper at the back of his throat, the plume of his tail quiet on the floor.

The door was ajar, and Bren gave it a gentle push. It opened onto a surprisingly large, low-ceilinged room which was painted black and hung with dark purple draperies. At the farthest end a black table stood inside a white triangle painted on the floor. There was a cupboard full of dusty bottles behind the table, and on it a thurible which sent a column of smoke wavering up around a small brass pot suspended by three chains. Here, in the cozy glow of a fringed Victorian lamp, Bren saw the two witches. They were not knitting baby booties, it was true, but neither were they summoning dark winds or ghastly spirits of the deep. Miranda and Louise appeared to be cooking and exchanging recipes.

Louise chose a bottle and shook something tiny into the palm of her hand. “Eye of newt,” she said. “Can’t seem to make anything without old eye of newt.”

“I know,” Miranda said, “but they’re so hard to cut up, and a whole one always seems to be too much.”

“Just make a lot and put it on the shelf. This stuff don’t spoil, babe. It can’t spoil. No way. Not if you put it through the flame and say the words.” Louise popped the newt’s eye into the pot, and Miranda leaned over to sniff the steam.

“Evil,” she said, drawing back. “It smells awful, Louise. Nobody’s going to drink that stuff voluntarily.”

Louise shook her head. “Miranda, child, how many times I have to explain? First the things of power you put in and make sure they be well charmed up, then the sweet things of field and woods to make it good. Now rhino horn.”

“We shouldn’t, you know,” protested Miranda. “The poor rhinos are almost extinct just because of people like us.”

Louise put down the jar she was holding with a thump. “You think you charm a man without rhino horn? You just show me how. Go on. Find something.” She gestured at the row of bottles. “I truly waiting to be surprised.”

“Well, maybe just a pinch,” Miranda said. “You’re right; there just is no substitute, and after all, this rhino perished long ago. There’s no point letting it go to waste. I don’t expect to be needing this particular potion again.”

Louise snorted. “Better make it strong, then,” she said, shaking the gray powder into the pot. “You won’t hook that cold fish with any wimpy little pinch of horn.”

“It’s not me he doesn’t like,” Miranda explained. “It’s everything else.” She sniffed again. “Mmmm. Better already. I wonder how this will taste with Scotch?”

Bren had listened shamelessly from his dark vantage point near the door. Now he felt that he had heard enough. He cleared his throat and advanced into the room. “Do you know what time it is?” he said. “Couldn’t we think about cooking something a little more nourishing?”

Miranda gave a guilty start. “Oh, Bren, is school over? I completely lost track.”

“School has been over for a century,” Bren said, “and the house is so gloomy even Gram’s got the creeps. Come up and make like a mother for a while, if it’s not asking too much.”

Miranda turned back to her crony. “Louise, dear, can you wind up the charm by yourself? You’re so much better at it than I am, and duty calls.”

“You better believe I am, babe,” Louise said. “I just surprised you trust me alone with your potion. How you know I won’t turn your fish into a goat?”

Louise chuckled at her own humor, and Miranda fixed her with a bright, blue stare. “Oh, I’m not worried about that,” she said. “As a certain fish once pointed out, the price of real estate on the West Side has gone much too high in the last few years for anyone to take any chances. But thanks, Lou, for all the help and for the rhino horn. I’ll pay you back for that.”

Miranda blew a kiss to her sister witch and followed Bren up the stairs. When they reached the hall, Bren said, “I got your wretched frog, by the way, which is why I’m late, so if you’re fiddling with the weather, you can stop.”

“Oh, Bren, that is good news,” his mother said. “But I wasn’t, you know—fiddling with the weather, as you put it. All of this changing from clouds to sun and back again is someone else’s work entirely.” Miranda cast a pious glance in the direction of the skylight, then turned back to look closely at Bren. “How long were you down there watching us?” she asked.

“Not long, but long enough,” Bren said. “If you think you’re going to mix that glop with twelve-year-old whisky and get an expert like Dad to drink it, you must be crazy. You couldn’t fob that stuff off on a Bowery bum.”

“Oh dear, I hope you’re wrong,” Miranda said. “I thought we could invent a new cocktail or something.”

“Lots of luck,” said Bren. “Just lots and lots of luck, Mom.”

The kitchen was nearly dark except for the fire and the light from the refrigerator, into which Rose peered with wrinkled nose. “Leftover brussels sprouts,” she said. “Turnips, cabbage, and something that might be last week’s spaghetti with clam sauce.”

“Steaks in the freezer,” Miranda countered. “The kind you can thaw in no time—baby peas and French fried potatoes.”

Bren laughed and turned on the lights, suddenly feeling better than he had all day. “Take your choice,” he said, “but I’m with Mom. This is definitely a steak and French fries night.”

“Food to banish the supernatural?” Miranda asked with a knowing smile. “Well, we can try. Get a potato peeler, Bren, and we’ll whip up a hearty, all-American meal.”

Bren woke Saturday to see the leaves of the maple outside his window drenched with a light of such purity and grace that he seemed to be looking out on the first morning of creation. He knew that he would spend not only the evening, but the entire day in Central Park, first with his father, then with his new love. What more could one ask of life? He stretched, feeling the inner contentment of one who has suffered much to arrive at a just reward. The days of rain and of what still seemed like rather unrewarding drudgery for Eli, the traumatic afternoon of the frogs—all, Bren felt, had brought him this perfect Saturday.

After a hasty breakfast, he snapped on Shadow’s leash and headed for the park. It was still early by his father’s standards, but they had a favorite place, and Bren knew he could go there and be confident that Bob would turn up. From the entrance at Eighty-first Street he turned north on a winding, hilly path and came at last to the quiet shores of the small lake near 103rd Street. Here he slipped off Shadow’s leash and watched the big dog gallop along the shore and finally dash into the water up to his chest. There were weeping willows on the margins of the lake, their green cascades now laced with chains of gold. Each tree had been a castle to Bren when he was small. Now he found a short stick and stood under a shimmering canopy to throw it again and again for Shadow until his father arrived.

Bob West came jogging in white shorts and a red shirt with an alligator on the pocket. He was carrying a large bag full of things that could be thrown and caught.

“Hey, Bren,” he said, panting to a halt under the willow tree and dumping his bag on the ground.

“Hey, Dad. How’s it going? Down, Shadow, you ass!”

“Not bad. How about this weather? What did you do to deserve this?”

“Plenty,” Bren said, “but let’s not talk about that.”

“I brought a batch of stuff to throw,” his father said proudly, pointing at the bag.