Enter Three Witches (7 page)

Bren picked up a football and ran with it across the green field that sloped up from the lake. He threw it hard, and Bob caught it on the run and threw it back. They did this for some time to the frustration of Shadow, who ran back and forth under the ball and never managed to get his teeth into it.

“You’re getting good at this,” Bob commented when they paused for breath. “Too bad you’ll never play the rest of the game. Even if they have it wherever you go to college, it’ll be much too late to start.”

“That’s all right,” Bren said. “Believe it or not, Dad, I can live the rest of my life without having some giant knock me down in the mud and step on my face.”

“You’ve actually got a point,” his father admitted. “I never cared for it myself.”

Bren laughed. “Then why be sorry that I’m missing all that ghastly fun?”

“I don’t know. It seemed like a proper, fatherly sentiment.”

“You’re weird. Let’s play something Shadow can play. He’ll never be a football player either, although he might make a good tackle. Let’s play three-cornered Frisbee.”

“You know the weakness of that idea,” Bob said, fishing the Frisbee out of the bag.

“Yeah, I know. Shadow can’t throw,” Bren said, “but he deserves a break. Come on.”

They spent the rest of the morning throwing and catching things. Bren thought it was one of the better mornings of his life.

In the early afternoon they wandered south to the shores of another lake in a part of the park where there was more to eat and drink. It had grown quite hot. Bob bought hot dogs and Cokes, and they flopped in the shade by the water.

“So how’s your mother and all the other strange ladies?” Bob asked, after a period of peaceful munching.

“Mom’s fine,” Bren said, and paused. He really didn’t want the conversation that now seemed inevitable. “They’re all fine,” he added reluctantly. “They’re a lot like they were when you saw them last except Madame Lavatky, who is happier, I think. She reached high C, or so she says. Nice for her, but a bit hard on the rest of us.”

“Your mother is a saint to put up with that screeching,” Bob said, and then laughed. “That’s a good one. Miranda the saint. I never thought of her in quite that way before.”

“She may not be a saint,” Bren said. “Who wants a saint for a mother anyway? But she does put up with a lot, and it’s a big house. Full of women,” he added bitterly.

“That’s subtle, Bren,” his father said.

“It wasn’t meant to be. Come on, Dad. I can’t believe you really like living in that beehive all by yourself.”

“When I could have such stimulating company in the House of Usher?” Bob asked. “You’d better believe I do.”

Bren was silent, staring out across the lake, thinking that his perfect day was taking a turn for the worse. Finally he muttered, “Well, I want you to come back, and so does Mom, in case you hadn’t noticed, but I guess you couldn’t care less.”

“Look, Bren,” his father said, “I love your mother, okay? Got that?” Bren nodded gloomily. “But she just doesn’t keep a tight enough ship for me. I can’t get up in the morning and find a baby bat in my shoe—one of my Gucci shoes—and then find that someone’s been monkeying with my shaving cream. My whole face turned green, for Christ’s sake, at seven o’clock in the morning.” The ghost of a smile appeared on Bren’s face and was quickly suppressed. “You think that’s funny. You should try it sometime when you’re going to breakfast with four top executives.”

“It must have been awful,” Bren said.

“Awful doesn’t begin to describe it. Childish. Maddening. But if that kind of thing only happened once in a while, I could put up with it. I
have
put up with it. Sixteen years I put up with a house full of weird smells and weird sounds and creepy animals turning up in unexpected places. Do you know what I found in my shirt drawer the day I left my hearth and home for good?” Bren nodded, but Bob paid no attention. “A goddamned python,” he said. “That’s what I found. It makes for marital wear and tear, Bren. I can’t put it any more plainly than that.”

“I think she might try to be more considerate,” Bren said, “if—you know…” He let the sentence trail away.

“She might,” Bob conceded. “But even if she reformed, there’d still be the grim old lady with the crystal ball, the squalling of the mad Bulgarian, lovely Louise, and loathsome Luna.”

Bren took the last swallow of his Coke and tossed the can into the trash basket. “I guess I understand,” he said. “At least a bit better than I used to. I’m looking forward to some similar troubles myself, as a matter of fact.”

“You are? How come? I thought you were all adjusted to the madhouse. You ought to be by now.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a question of having friends to the house,” Bren said. “You can imagine.”

“Can I ever,” Bob said, and then with growing comprehension, “Oh, Lord, girlfriends! You poor kid. You really could have a problem there.”

“Let your imagination roam,” Bren said. “Conjure up a few pictures of what could happen. That’s what I’ve been doing, and each new scenario is more gruesome than the last.”

“You’ve met someone?” his father asked cautiously. “Someone you would theoretically like to bring home?”

“It’s not so much that I’d like to bring her home,” Bren explained. “It’s that I don’t see any way out of it. She’s hopelessly curious, which is one of the things that makes her so neat, and we live so close to each other. Apart from telling her the whole house is infected with smallpox, I really can’t think of an excuse.”

“I’ll put my mind to the problem,” Bob promised. “After all, it’s not as if I lack experience. Young executives with large houses are expected to entertain. Remember the time those two senior vice presidents and their wives came to dinner?”

Bren shook his head. “I was at camp, but I heard rumors when I came home.”

“Your mother, to be fair, tried quite hard,” Bob went on, “and looked absolutely gorgeous. We cleared out the fortunetelling stuff, and Rose actually stuck to her cooking and did one of her better things, grumbling and casting black looks, but nothing beyond what a slightly eccentric old lady might do. Luna was locked in the studio. The salamander was evicted from the bathtub. Madame was persuaded not to practice for one night. The only uncontrollable factor was Louise, and of course, where there’s a weak link in a chain, that’s where it’s going to snap.”

“You can’t influence Louise,” Bren said. “She’s a force of nature.” He had heard this story before, but never from his father’s point of view.

Bob proceeded with gloomy relish. “All went well until we were gathered in the living room for coffee—all nice and genteel and boring as hell, I have to admit, but still, just the way I wanted it to be. Then the door bangs open and there’s our friend in full fig—purple dashiki, orange turban all covered with those funny signs. To make it worse, she decides to go into an Aunt Jemima routine: ‘Oh, Missy West. Ah sho’ is sorry. If Ah’d knowed you all had company, Ah nevah would come in like this.’ Your mother now makes a fatal mistake and puts on her gracious monarch turn: ‘Never mind, Louise, dear,’ she says, ‘but perhaps whatever it was could wait?’ ‘Wait it cannot,’ cries Louise—the black queen challenging the white queen. ‘The spell be wound, the fire burns, the twin smokes rise, and not a pinch of henbane do I have. But don’t you stir, my lady. Just give me the key to your cupboard, and I’ll fetch it myself.’ ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ your mother says and marches dear Louise right out the door. Unfortunately, the damage had been done, and when there was an opening farther up in the company, those two VPs were strangely reluctant to consider me.”

“Awful,” Bren said, “but only money and a job. I’ve got a girl, or at least I think I do.”

His father laughed and scrambled to his feet. “Play it by ear, Bren,” he said. “Just play it by ear, old son. That’s what I always had to do.”

Alone in the big apartment she shared with her father, Erika sat on the covered radiator in the living room window and watched the sun set over the Hudson. It had been a long day with nothing to do but look forward to the evening. Now, almost against her will, she thought about Bren. It’s too soon, she told herself sternly. I hardly know him. All we’re going to do is have a neat date, see something I want to see on a fall evening in New York. But in a different part of her mind she already knew that Bren was not just another boy. There had been plenty of those in Philadelphia, where she had lived the stormy, miserable years of her early teens. She smoothed the fur of the plush baby seal she held in her lap, her last stuffed animal, the one she was never going to give up. “Well, Silky, he certainly couldn’t be more different,” she said. “Maybe he’s someone even Dad would approve of, that is, if he’s got pots of money along with good looks and good manners. Ugh. I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

What seemed to Erika to be a long procession of boyfriends filed past in her imagination—older boys mostly, good dancers with cars who took her places she wasn’t allowed to go, handsome, fun-loving, and ultimately disappointing. “I’m getting old, I’m settling down!” she said to the stuffed seal. “What a funny thing to happen in New York, of all places.”

Erika stared at the red ball of the sun, willing it to set, and because it was already so close to the horizon, it seemed to obey her command. Briefly the shore of New Jersey, with its isolated towers, was silhouetted against an orange sky. The river was dark blue watered silk, on which a single white sail skimmed in to harbor at the Seventy-ninth Street boat basin.

Erika felt a growing sensation of warmth in her seat. The radiator was coming on. “It’s going to be cold tonight,” she said, and she jumped up and strode off to her bedroom for a serious consultation with her wardrobe.

The long closet was divided into two distinct collections, one (large) consisting of clothes her father had bought and she refused to wear, the other (small) of her own purchases. Ranks of tweed skirts with matching cashmere sweaters, of silk shirts, tailored slacks, and jersey dresses gave way to a row of more eccentric garments, predominantly black. Already dressed in black jeans and a white, ribbed turtleneck, Erika added a black V-neck sweater that was several sizes too large for her slender frame and stood back to study the effect in the full-length mirror. She pushed the sleeves of the sweater up to her elbows and added a huge, black digital watch to one white-clad wrist.

“Warm enough?” she asked the girl in the mirror. “Well, maybe not.” She reflected that Bren, though clearly a passionate and creative person, might be a slow starter when it came to keeping a person warm, so she pulled out a black gypsy shawl tasseled with jet beads. “Mmmm, festive,” Erika murmured when she had layered the shawl over the sweater. She glanced at her outsized watch, saw that only fifteen minutes remained of the interminable day, and decided to meet Bren in the courtyard.

Bren approached the Apthorp with a quaking heart and cast about for an explanation to banish the tremors that grew with every step he took toward the tall iron gates. Neither his continuing ignorance of the ballet nor the forbidding aspect of Erika’s building seemed enough to cause such turmoil. He refused to recognize his symptoms as the disorder known to all on the brink of an important first date.

The courtyard was filled with autumn dusk, warmed by the glow of the ornamental lamps around the garden and a scatter of lighted windows in the gray walls. It was very quiet. Bren could hear the splash of the fountains, and then he saw Erika by the nearest one, straining her eyes into the gloom. The light picked out her white turtleneck, her small white face and strawberry hair.

“Hey, Bren?” she called softly, as if still unsure who he was, and stood up as he crossed the driveway into the garden. They confronted each other, tongue-tied for a moment.

“What a spooky place,” Bren said at last. “Doesn’t anybody ever come or go?”

“This is just a weird, in-between sort of time,” she said. “Half an hour ago the shrieking of five-year-olds and thunder of tricycles was probably deafening, and any minute now there’ll be beautiful people popping out of all four doors headed for night life—just like us,” she finished with a flashing silver smile.

“I see you’ve given up keeping your mouth shut,” Bren said.

“The vow of silence was just too much. I felt like a cloistered nun.”

“You don’t look like a nun, cloistered or otherwise,” Bren said with an admiring glance at her exotic wrappings. “Have you got enough on? I brought a blanket.”

“Clever you. We’ll bundle,” Erika said. “Do you know what that is?”

“I think so,” Bren said cautiously, and the uneasy, lurching sensations returned.

Erika laughed. “Come on, then, let’s blow this genteel scene and head for the wilds of Central Park.”

Walking with Erika was fun, if rather exhausting. She had a swift, long stride for someone so small, and plenty of breath left over for talk.

“I love New York,” she said, gazing up and down Broadway as they waited for the light. “I’m sorry. I have to learn not to say that. I always think of a little red heart being dropped, plunk, right in the middle of my sentence, knocking out the love’ and sticking in a sort of ‘umph’ in its place. Stupid.”

“Well, it’s good you umph New York, anyway,” Bren said. “Where are you from?”

“Philadelphia. Such boredom you can’t imagine, and we lived in a quiet neighborhood—not even a deli for miles. I took to playing hard-core at volume ten, you know? So the neighbors went up in arms, and Dad threatened to send me away to school, and I said, please do, but nothing came of it except a little temporary excitement. This place is heaven, believe me.”

“I do,” Bren said. “But when you’re here for a while, you start looking for quiet places—like the park. But maybe that’s not your thing—trees and grass and open spaces.”

“Oh, it is!” Erika said. “It’s just respectability I hate. Where do you live?”

“Over there,” Bren said, with a vague gesture to the north. “In a house, but it’s not very respectable. I mean it’s a nice house, but—oh, a little…bizarre,” he finished, wondering why, out of his large vocabulary, he had not been able to dredge up a less intriguing word.