Once a Witch (11 page)

“It seems that you've just stumbled onto one of life's greatest lessons, then. Things are rarely what they first appear to be.” Somehow this conversation is not going the way I thought it would go. But before I can say anything else, she sighs and suddenly I have a vision of her, the phone pressed to her ear, her face lined with an undeniable weariness.

“Tamsin, regardless of what you should have done, you've started down this path. Now, I believe the only thing you can do is see it through. You have to see it through. If you don't, I can't see any other way for you. Or for all of us, for that matter” And somehow her voice holds a mixture of sadness and resignation. I blow out a breath, then say in what I think is a pretty calm tone,

“What are you talking about?” Is it possible she doesn't understand?

“I'm…

“I'm not a witch, I want to howl. But apparently that's all I'm going to get because she says in an entirely different tone,

“Now, if you'll excuse me, Jeopardy! is about to begin.” And with a soft click my grandmother is gone.

“WHAT ABOUT this one?” Rowena asks, pirouetting before me. Her reflection catches in the three-way mirror, a dizzying spin of ivory silk and lace.

“It's great,” I say.

“Very bridal.” Rowena stops twirling, her skirts settling slowly. She stares at me, eyes narrow.

“You said that about the last one and the one before that and the one before that.” I raise my hands in mock defense.

“You look great in all of them” What can I say? Rowena, with her ripples of blond hair, her pale skin, and her green eyes, was born to waltz around in long white trailing dresses.

“Why isn't Mom here for this? Isn't this something she should be tearing up over?”

Rowena snorts.

“She hates the city. You know that.” It's true. Last year Rowena drove me to New Hyde Prep. I wouldn't have minded taking the train, but my mother insisted that we drive. She sat in the passenger seat, her hand pressed to the window, her eyes fixed on the diminishing squares of sky between the tall buildings. When my resident adviser handed me a subway map, my mother looked startled and fearful and advised me not to take the subway after nine o'clock.

Rowena and I had exchanged rare but entirely complicit eye rolls. After my sister had packed our mother back into the car, Rowena pressed her cool cheek against my hot and sweaty face for an instant. Then they drove off. They had stayed exactly forty-two minutes.

“And there's nothing up around Hedgerow. Unless I want to find my dress in a consignment shop” She gives a delicate shudder, as if imagining the horror of donning dusty lace.

“I've found some of my best pieces in consignment shops. Like this necklace. I just bought it last week for twenty dollars” I hold up the round locket that is dangling from its silver chain around my neck.

“And look–it opens and it's a watch inside” I study the tiny watch face inside the locket. The slender hands are permanently fixed on twelve o'clock.

“It doesn't work, but it's still pretty. I call it my docket. Get it? A clock crossed with a locket?” My sister meets my eyes in the mirror.

“Charming,” she says briefly and then fingers a creamy ruffle edging the bodice of her dress.

“What do you think if I took this off and–”Thankfully, I don't have to weigh in, because just then the saleslady comes bustling into the back and coos and oohs until Rowena is glowing and I can sneak glimpses at my copy of Macbeth that I am supposed to write a five-page paper on for this Monday. In my opinion, the three witches are overrated. Maybe that'll be my thesis. When we leave the shop, a persistent wind is eddying random flyers, crumpled napkins, and a few stained coffee cup lids along the sidewalk. A waft of incense, burning so strongly that I can almost taste it in the back of my throat, lingers in the air.

Glancing around, I pinpoint the source: a corner table where a man dressed in a bright multicolored robe is waving narrow purple and yellow packets and calling out prices to anyone who walks by.

“Twodollarstwodollarstwodollars.” I look upward at the clock tower on the Jefferson branch of the New York Public Library. With its red-brick turret it always looks like a castle to me, but apparently it was once a women's prison before it became a library branch. Close to six o'clock. The sun is already setting and I am all for edging my way back to the dorm, where I promised Agatha we'd go to the campus movie tonight. But then Rowena says,

“Let's get a cappuccino. You can never get a good one at home.”

“Um… I can't. I have to be somewhere.”

“You really do?” Rowena says, then adds almost wistfully,

“I never see you anymore, Tam.” I blink.

“I'm home, like, every other weekend. ”

“Yeah, but . .”

She frees a strand of blond hair that's caught underneath the shoulder strap of her purse and gives me a wry smile.

“Only because you have to be.” I consider lying and telling her I have to sign in at the dorm by six. And then I wonder if Rowena is possibly ever lonely up in Hedgerow now that I'm gone. In the next instant I'm scoffing at this. She has James, and she has Gwyneth (although who would want Gwyneth, really?).

True, she doesn't have her own version of Agatha (Gwyneth does not count), but she has… pretty much everything else. But right now she looks so eager to sit down and have a coffee with me that I don't have the heart to lie.

“Okay. Le Petit Cafe is down the block,” I say, hoping to myself it's up to Rowena's standards.

“Great,” she says with a smile that catches at me no matter how hard I try not to let it.

“My treat,” she adds, swinging me around with her and starting off in the direction I've indicated. Le Petit Cafe is predictably crowded at this hour. I find seats at last by the window, dust the crumbs from the table's scarred surface, and wait for my sister to return. When she does, she's balancing our drinks and a cookie plate somehow very gracefully.

“The guy at the counter gave me these cookies for free. He said they were just baked” My eyes skip to the front of the room. Figures. It's the cute blond guy who I thought I had been flirting with successfully all last year. I hadn't seen him yet this term and I had come to the sad conclusion that he had gotten fired or quit. But no, here he is. Showering Rowena with desserts. I crunch into the biscotti my sister held out to me, pressing a sharp edge of the cookie against my tongue.

“So, Tam,” Rowena begins slowly after she has settled herself.

“Have you given any thought about what you're going to do after you graduate from high school?” I take a sip of my iced mocha, tear the corner off a packet of raw sugar, and pour it into my glass.

“I mean, will you come live at home or…”

“No,” I say, more vehemently than I should. Rowena's slender brows pull together.

“Why not? Mom would love it.”

“And do what? I'm not like you, Rowena. I don't… fit. Besides, I want to go to college.

“It's no secret that my mother and grandmother are grooming Rowena to take over the family one day. She'll be the one who everyone turns to when a decision needs to be made; she'll be the one to lead the rituals and rites every spring and harvest season; and she'll be the one to diagnose the town's men and women when they come after dark, tripping up to the back door in search of help. It's a good future, an assured and self-sustaining one.”

Tam,” she says gently now.

“It's your home. You'll always have a place. James and I will always–”I stiffen.

Already it's James and I this and James and I that. James and I want to build a website for Greene's Herbals instead of using those old-fashioned mail-order catalogs.

“Rowena,” I break in.

“Don't you ever want more out of life than…” I circle my hands high in the air.

“Than our family and the house and… ”

“And what?” she asks, her voice perplexed. Everything, I want to say, but of course I can't. Who would want more than to be Talented the way she is, the way everyone is except for me.

“Nothing,” I mutter. I glance around the crowded cafe, desperately hoping to change the subject, and that's when I see Alistair Callum reading what looks like student papers, a white mug at his elbow. He raises his head, turns slowly, and smiles at me. Oh, nooooooooo!

INSTANTLY, I DUCK behind my tall skinny iced mocha, some part of me knowing that it's futile to hide, and not just because a tall and skinny glass does not provide much cover.

“Tam,” my sister is saying, and I get the feeling that she's been saying this for a while. Alistair is pushing back his chair now, gathering up papers and stacking them neatly in his briefcase.

“I… know that professor” I stand so suddenly that I knock my chair into the table behind me, where a young mother is cooing into a red bullet of a baby stroller. She glares up at me.

“Sorry,” I whisper, straightening the chair. Turning, I angle my body outward with the half-formed idea of reaching Alistair before he arrives at our table. But I am too late.

“Rowena,” Alistair says to me, and even though he is tall already, I get the sudden impression that he could touch the ceiling if he stretched out his arms.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rowena swivel her head from Alistair to me, then back to Alistair, her lips parted in surprise.

“Have we–” she says.

“Professor Callum,” I cut in, striving for the formal.

“I always seem to be running into you. I didn't realize you came here,” I add, realizing too late how inane this sounds.

“Yes, well, sometimes being in my office gets too… quiet.” I can't really see how that's funny at all, but of course my sister laughs, her famous one-look-at-me-and-you'll-lose-your-heart-forever laugh, and right on cue Alistair does look at her.

“And this is my sister, Rowena,” I say, focusing on the pattern of Alistair's tie, red diamonds on a black background, until it makes me slightly nauseated.

“Rowena, Professor Callum” Alistair shifts his briefcase from one hand to the other, looks at me through the prism of his glasses, then angles his head toward my sister. All the hum and chatter of the cafe seem to have fallen away at this moment, leaving a hollow ringing in my ears.

“How lovely to meet you, Rowena,” Alistair says at last. Her name curls, falls slowly off his tongue, the three syllables so sharply distinguished that I lift my eyes to stare at him. Rowena makes a motion to rise, and of course Alistair makes the reciprocal motion to indicate no, don't get up, so she doesn't. She extends her slim hand.

“How nice to finally meet one of Tarn's professors,” Rowena says, as if I have been deliberately squirreling all my teachers away from her.

“He's not my–”But Rowena is already saying,

“Please, sit,” to Alistair.

“Oh, no, Professor Callum, we don't want to keep you,” I interject, but he has already pulled back a chair.

“So formal,” he chides me gently.

“And here I was sure that we were on a first-name basis, Miss Greene” And he bares his teeth in what could pass for a smile. Swallowing, I pull my chair out, careful not to bump into anyone this time. I sit, studying the flecks of cinnamon in my iced mocha.

“Are you also a student at”–here Alistair pauses and looks at me for confirmation–”New Hyde Prep, was it?” Rowena laughs merrily and I see two guys at a neighboring table look over at her. I trace my spoon through the muddy dregs at the bottom of my glass.

“Oh, no. I'm older than Tamsin,” she says, leaning forward a little as if revealing a secret.

“Indeed?” Alistair says politely.

“I couldn't tell who was older. ”

“Thanks,” I say. Alistair looks amused at my tone.

“You're far too young to be worried about looking old, Miss Gr–oh, yes, Tamsin”

He and Rowena smile at each other and all at once I want to kick his chair.

“I just happened to be in the city and Tamsin was helping me shop for my wedding dress,” she informs him as if they're old confidants. I give the ice cubes in my drink a stir with my straw, hard enough so that they rattle audibly.

“Oh, yes? When is the happy event?” As Rowena chatters on about details and Alistair makes the appropriate noises here and there, I study him covertly. He looks tired, and his fingers are trembling slightly as they grip and flex around his mug of tea, like mine do when I've had too much caffeine.

“But I'm afraid we're boring Tam,” Rowena's voice cuts into my thoughts.

“She doesn't find wedding dresses all that fascinating. Or dresses in particular” I stare at her. So much for the sisterly camaraderie she's been foisting on me for the past two hours. Alistair smiles politely and turns to me.

“So,” he says,

“have you had any luck with the… project?” My fingers tighten on my straw.

“Yes, but why don't I come by your office tomorrow and–”

“Oh, but if you found it, then why not–”

“What's this?” Rowena breaks in, leaning across the table.

“Is this a homework assignment?” she asks and gives another one of her delicate laughs.

“I just told you he's not my professor,” I say. Underneath the table, I try to mash my foot down on hers but end up kicking the table leg instead.

“You haven't told your sister?” Alistair says to me now, and I give up all hope of getting out of this situation alive.

“Alistair asked me to find something,” I burst out.

“To find… oh!” Rowena gives a little gasp as if she just got burned.

“But… Tam . .”

I stare at her, wishing that one of her gifts is telepathy so I can scream silently at her to shut up.

“How would you even manage . .”

She trails off, and now I feel like reaching across the table and slapping the look of confusion off her perfect face.

“I found it,” I hiss at her. Her jaw doesn't exactly drop, but her eyes go wide, and I try to memorize the moment since it's probably all the satisfaction I'm ever going to get. Alistair pins his gaze on me.

“You have?” he asks quietly. His fingers are trembling again and he pushes the mug away from him. I nod, suddenly reluctant to speak.

“What is it?” Rowena asks and then, toying with the sugar packets on the table, adds,