The Rules of Magic (20 page)

Now that they had their freedom, they didn't know what to do with it. No one put out the garbage. There were piles of trash in the kitchen that had begun to stink. Before long two rats had taken up residence in the broom closet, creatures Franny dealt with by flinging blocks of Swiss cheese inside for them. All at once she noticed how dilapidated everything was: the paint was chipped, the lights flickered, only one burner on the stove worked, and then not until Franny blew on it to light the flame.
The town house had been deteriorating for some time, with no funds for repairs. As it turned out, the family was in debt and had borrowed heavily from the bank. So many of their father's patients had been seen gratis, and their mother had spent whatever small inheritance she'd had years ago. The house would have to be put on the market. Jet hated the idea, and barely left her room. It therefore fell to Vincent and Franny to attend a meeting at their parents' attorney's office and listen to the lawyer address their dismal financial situation until Vincent said roughly, “Who the fuck cares?” storming out when he realized how broke they were.

“I believe the meeting is over,” Franny said. Before she departed, she signed all the necessary paperwork. As the eldest she was assigned to be her brother and sister's legal guardian. It was up to her to make decisions. And, without a word to the others, she'd already made several of them.

Occasionally, their father's patients would leave bouquets of flowers at the back door, which Franny immediately threw in the trash barrel. Several members of the psychoanalytic society had sent sympathy cards, which were burned in the fireplace. What was done was done and could not be undone. How much Franny missed her parents was unexpected. She wished she could sit down and talk to her mother, whom she discovered had convinced the local shopkeepers into giving them credit. She wished she could ask her father how to get rid of the flying ants in his office and how he had found time to write his book early in the morning before anyone else in the family was
yet awake. She now understood why they had chased after Jet that night. It was fear of the Willards and their shared history of judges and victims.
If only,
Franny thought, but the list of what she wished she could have changed was too long and there was no way to rewrite their history.

Vincent spent most days sleeping, then he crept out in the evenings, not saying where he was headed, although they all knew the only place that currently interested him was the Jester. He didn't come home till the wee morning hours, clearly having been up to no good, smelling of whiskey. He'd stopped going to school, and perhaps that was just as well; they could no longer afford Starling's high tuition. When Vincent was at home, he wasn't alone. He brought home countless girls, including Kathy Stern, the nymphomaniac, kleptomaniac patient of their father's. Once she was ensconced in Vincent's bedroom, she refused to leave. From listening in through the heat vents during Kathy's therapy sessions, Franny knew Kathy had a wicked fear of birds. She let Lewis into the room, and before long Kathy ran screaming out the door in her underwear as the crow pulled on her hair, fistfuls of which were left on the floor. Later they realized Kathy had stolen their mother's gold and pearl Chanel necklace.

“She was hilarious,” Vincent said. “She has a notebook listing all the men she's ever slept with. She took photographs of their dicks and taped the photos in her book. She said she was going to make a collage out of them. So how could I deny her?”

There wasn't anyone to tell Vincent
no,
except for Franny. Since their parents' deaths, he refused to take anything seriously.

“Don't you get it, Franny?” he said. “We have to live now,
while we can. It will all be over soon enough.” He was almost sixteen, tall and dark and brooding, usually carrying a guitar, which made him all the more attractive, and all the more dangerous both to whoever might fall for him and to himself.

As for Jet, she remained in bed long after the doctors insisted she was fine. Her cracked ribs had healed, her bruises were fading, and what had been gashes in her hands and knees were thin red striations no one would recognize as wounds. The only thing that remained was the scar on her face, a jagged line shaped like petals on a stem that could be seen only in certain sorts of light.

“What's the point?” she would say when Franny suggested they go for a walk.

Jet's hair was so tangled a brush would no longer go through it. She didn't bathe and ate only crackers and ginger ale. She slept with the edition of Emily Dickinson that Levi had given her. Inside he had written
Forever—is composed of—Nows.
Because they could hear Jet crying at all hours, Franny nailed the second-floor windows shut just to make sure her sister couldn't make the rash decision to leap.

More and more Franny turned to Haylin, though she knew it was a mistake to do so. She had vowed to be with him only once, yet they were together every day. The closer they became, the harder the inevitable break would be. She should have told him about the future that loomed, but she couldn't speak it aloud.
Not now and not ever,
she should have told him.
Not if it will bring you to ruin.
Every day she planned to end it, but instead of breaking up with him, she had sex with him in the spare room until they were both depleted and euphoric. Then they would lie there entwined and watch the crow fly through the room like a shadow.

“My mother would be mortified,” Franny confided. “She had an aversion to animals.”

“Lewis is not an animal,” Haylin said. “He seems to know what you're thinking.”

“Are you saying he's my familiar? That would make me a witch.” Franny rested her face against Haylin's chest. She could hear his heartbeat, which gave her great comfort. She thought of the entries in Maria's journal, and kept quiet even though she longed to tell him everything.

“I don't care what you are, as long as you're mine,” Haylin told her.

On the day Jet finally came out of the bedroom her stunning black hair was shorn as short as a boy's. She'd used a pair of nail scissors and the ends were choppy. She was paying her penance. She had ruined all of their lives. She knew why Franny's eyes were often brimming with unshed tears, and why her sister was still wearing the dress she had worn to their parents' funeral. Franny had locked herself in her father's office, the desk strewn with scattered papers, dust motes spinning through the air, and there she had telephoned the admissions office at Radcliffe to withdraw her acceptance. She did so in secrecy, but her voice had risen through the vents, the way their father's patients' tearful confessions had during their therapy sessions, and Jet had overheard.

“Oh, Jet, you've cut your hair,” Franny said when she witnessed what her sister had done.

Jet was still in her nightgown, barefoot. She resembled a
cat, with a cat's suspicion and mistrust, a gorgeous creature despite her attempt to ruin herself. Jet had already decided she would not be finishing high school. She felt far too old for that, and from that day forward, she wore only black. She rid herself of the girlish clothing she'd favored in the past—frilly, floaty dresses in shades of pink and violet—giving it all to Goodwill. Her clothes no longer suited her, for she wasn't the same person she'd been before her birthday. That girl was gone forever. Sometimes she went back to the scene of the accident. She could no longer hear other people's thoughts and was so alone she felt like a moth in a jar. She sat on the curb, like a beggar woman, but no one passing by could grant her forgiveness and that was something she certainly couldn't allow herself.

Her one salvation was the novels she read. On nights when she thought it might be better not to be alive without Levi in the world, she opened a book and was therefore saved, discovering that a novel was as great an escape as any spell. She favored Jane Austen and the Brontës and Virginia Woolf, reading one book after another. On most days, she was happy not to leave home. She, who was once the most beautiful girl in two states, who had inherited their mother's gorgeous features, now seemed mousy and unremarkable, a bookworm who could hardly be convinced to look away from the page. Boys no longer noticed her, and if they did, she made it clear she wasn't interested. She walked late at night, when the avenues were deserted, as if tempting fate. She felt a kinship with the lonely, forsaken people drifting through the streets at that blue hour.

Seeing her sister's distress, Franny wrote to their aunt. Surely there was a remedy to help Jet through this terrible time. Two
days later a crate arrived with Jet's cure. Franny laughed when she looked inside, then immediately went to wake Jet.

“Isabelle sent you something.”

Jet sat up in bed and wiped the sleep from her eyes.

“It's not a rabbit, is it?” Jet asked.

“Goodness, no.”

Jet rose from bed and knelt to peer inside. There was a small black cat. Wren, who had followed her in their aunt's garden. She scooped it up and dissolved into laughter, a lovely thing to hear after such a long period of mourning. The cat sat completely still, surprised by the attention.

“Oh, she's perfect! You have your crow,” Jet said to Franny. “Now here's my Wren.”

Jet let the cat onto the bed to play with a ball of blue string. She stroked her and told her what a lovely little cat she was, but her eyes never lit up, and Franny remembered what Isabelle had written on the card that had accompanied the cat.

A remedy such as this can only last so long.

A real estate agent soon began showing the neglected house to prospective buyers. Every now and then the siblings would discover strangers being led through as they were told how a little remodeling could easily restore the true beauty of the house. Vincent kept his room locked and he drew a skull on the door in black ink.

“Stay the fuck out,” he told the shocked Realtor, who wore a pillbox hat, of the sort Jacqueline Kennedy wore.

The agent had known Susanna Owens from the Yale Club
and was showing the house as a favor. Anyone else would have quit in light of Vincent's shenanigans. The nearly tame rats in the broom closet, the flickering lights, the smell of spoilt milk in the kitchen sink. The Realtor didn't dare to open Vincent's door, and made what she hoped were reasonable excuses. Just a small child's room, potential buyers were told. You'll need to paint and plaster. This was the way to avoid the drained bottles of whiskey, the hashish and marijuana, a fancy glass hookah pipe, piles of unwashed clothes, stinky boots, books of magic, and an amazing collection of record albums stored in orange crates. Even Franny was told she must knock before entering his room. Now that they were leaving, Vincent, who'd never seemed to give a damn about their home, was in despair. “I don't see why we have to sell the place,” he complained.

“Because we're broke,” Franny said with a forthrightness her brother didn't appreciate.