The Rules of Magic (21 page)

“You can't make me leave if I don't want to,” he groused.

He kept his locked room dark. So much the better. Less costly electricity bills. They were counting pennies now. Dodging the shops where their parents had run up tabs: the butcher, the baker, the liquor store. They sold the living room furniture at a bad price, and did the same with a rug from Persia that had always been in the dining room. The entire town house was shadowed by the siblings' spiritual agony, therefore Franny tried her best to get her brother and sister out when prospective buyers came by, not that it did a bit of good. They hung around the home they couldn't wait to escape from in the past. In the end, Franny paid Vincent ten dollars each time he vacated before a showing. He then stomped out of the house and went to the Ramble, where he could concentrate on the only thing
other than music that held his interest. Magic. He was focusing on his powers of intense concentration. He could make larger and larger objects move, at first with a shudder, then with a leap. Rocks fell from the cliffs above the paths. People stayed clear of any area Vincent claimed for himself when he set a circle that couldn't be crossed. He carried
The Magus
under his coat, studying it so closely he had much of it memorized before long.

At last the house was sold to a lovely family who hoped to enter their girls into the Starling School. They wanted to move in as quickly as possible. Their lawyer suggested that Franny put whatever money they made from the sale into real estate. It was a good investment and they wouldn't have to worry about making the rent. They could forget the East Side, however, it was much too expensive. It was suggested that Franny look downtown.

She took the M1 bus to the end of its route, then walked to Washington Square Park, where she stood beneath the historic white arch. Long ago, Minetta Creek flowed here and Washington Square was a swamp. In 1794, Aaron Burr changed the course of the stream, so his own nearby property would have a pond, and later, when the city began encroaching upon the creek, muskrats still abounded. It was an extraordinary place, but it also held great sorrow, for Minetta Creek, known by the Indian people as Devil's Water, was a boundary for a cemetery that was in use from 1797 to 1826, a potter's field where twenty thousand bodies were buried and where they rested, uneasily or not, to this day.

The Hangman's Elm, said to be over three hundred years
old, stood in the northwest corner of Washington Square Park. That was where witches were said to gather. The last execution in Manhattan took place here in 1820, when a nineteen-year-old slave named Rose Butler was hanged for burning down her master's house. After that most people avoided the tree after dark, or at least they made certain to keep lavender in their pockets to bring them luck when they passed by. Folk magic could always be found in Manhattan, from the time English colonists valued the almanac in order to read astrology and magic parchments were sold as maps for treasure digging, along with divining rods and secret incantations. Divination and palmistry were studied. After the Revolution magic was so rampant, with peddlers selling forbidden books hidden in black covers, that ministers preached against it from their pulpits. The craft was dangerous and unpredictable, and witches were difficult to control, for they had minds of their own and didn't hold to keeping to the law.

As Franny walked on, the neighborhood smelled like patchouli and curry. It was the end of summer and everyone who could afford to be out of the city was. The Village felt like a sleepy town. It was a different city here; the buildings were smaller and it was possible to see the sky. No one cared what you looked like or what you wore. Franny stopped at a café for a strong cup of coffee. Listening to the waiters argue in Italian, she felt transported. She went to a flower shop and bought a rose that was so dark it appeared black. At last she turned onto Greenwich Avenue and there she stopped. She had come upon a tilted little house that had a For Sale sign in the street-level window where there had once been a shop. There was a school next door and the children were out at recess. When Franny looked through the window she could see a pie-shaped yard
filled with weeds. Shifting her gaze she spied a twisted wisteria and a few spindly lilacs. It was then she felt her heart lift.

She wrote the phone number of the Realtor on a scrap of paper and went on, across Sixth Avenue, past the Women's House of Detention at 10 Greenwich Avenue. It was a huge prison plunked down in the center of the city, built in 1932 in the Deco style on the spot where the old Jefferson Market Prison once stood. Women shouted rude comments through the bars that guarded the open windows. It was hot on the street and far hotter inside the prison.

Help a sister,
someone called.

Franny did the best she could. A cool wind rose to flit through the windows, down the hallways of the prison. For a moment, there was some relief from the heat. In response there were hoots of laughter and applause. Franny looked around. No one on the street was watching so she blew a kiss to those women who were locked away, and she left the wind gusting all the rest of the day.

Franny found Vincent in the Jester on Christopher Street. He was drinking absinthe and lemon juice, a sugar cube tucked into his cheek.

“Hey, Franny,” he said when he caught sight of her. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Two attractive girls from NYU sat in the booth with him, the prettier one slouched in the hollow of his arm. The girls seemed annoyed to see Franny and sent looks of frustration Vincent's way. As if he cared about them. Franny didn't know why he bothered. Was it to prove something to her or to himself?

#8220;Let's go,” Franny said with a nod. Vincent could tell from her tone that she was deadly serious. “We're moving.”

“What?”

Franny had received a notice from the attorney. They had enough to buy the ramshackle place on Greenwich and still have a nest egg of cash to survive on a shoestring for a while. After that they were on their own.

“The movers come this week. Our house has been sold and we're going to a place we can afford. Or at least I hope we can.” She paid Vincent's bill and waited for him on the sidewalk while he told his girlfriends good-bye. Then they walked side by side, boot heels clattering, two tall moody individuals with scowls on their faces. People crossed the street to avoid them.

“So we just leave home?” Vincent asked. “And what about Radcliffe?”

Franny gave her brother a sidelong glance. “You knew I was never going.”

“I wish you could have.”

They splurged on a taxi uptown. Then they stood in front of the house where they'd grown up and gazed at it sadly. They would likely not come back to Eighty-Ninth Street once they were gone. They would avoid it after they were settled downtown. You don't go back to a place where you've lost so much.

“What about Haylin?” Vincent asked.

Today New York smelled like wet grass and jasmine tea.

Franny shrugged. “He'll give up.”

“You're selling him short. He'll never let you go.”

When Haylin phoned, Franny told him he must go to Cambridge alone. He wouldn't listen. He continued to call, so she stopped answering the phone. He came to their door at all hours, but she didn't respond. Sooner or later he'd have to leave New York. It was now September. Everything in the park was fading to yellow, and huge clouds of migrating birds lit in the trees.

“You're staying for me,” Jet said.

Franny shrugged. “You're my sister.”

“But Hay?”

“Hay will be fine.”

“Will he?” Jet wondered.

“Yes, he will, but he won't listen to me. You tell him the truth,” Franny said in a surprisingly small voice. “Cover for me.”

“What if you lose him for good?”

“Then it was meant to be.”

Jet was convinced she must talk to him. Haylin had posted himself at the Owenses' town house, a determined expression on his face. He looked the way he had when he chained himself in the school cafeteria. Jet told him Franny had withdrawn from school and would not be leaving for Cambridge. In fact, they were moving downtown. There was no way to change Franny's mind. Jet had already tried.

“If I just saw her,” Hay said. “If I could talk to her I think she would leave with me.”

“You know Franny, she's stubborn.”

Haylin was already two days late for the semester and had missed registration; if he waited any longer they might retract his acceptance.

“Go,” Jet told him. “And don't feel guilty.”

She went inside and locked the door, leaving Hay to stand
there, dazed and despairing. He had no idea why Franny had done her best to stop love's hold on him. He looked upward, shielding his eyes. The movers were packing up the town house. Vincent had suggested they leave everything behind—all he was taking was a backpack of clothes and his guitar—but Jet had taken great care in wrapping up the china her mother had brought home from Paris and had filled a trunk with Susanna's chic clothing. She had boxes and boxes of books stacked in the hall. As for Franny, she took only the letters Haylin had written to her the summer she was away, and some of the clothing she'd worn when she was with him. She was packing it all into a single cardboard box when she happened to gaze out and see Haylin on the sidewalk. Her heart broke then; she could feel it tearing in two. He looked so alone out there.

The crow was peering out the open window. “Take care of him,” Franny said.

When Haylin turned to leave, the crow plummeted down to perch on his shoulder. Hay didn't seem the least surprised. He had a cracker in his pocket, which he offered to his new companion. The two disappeared down the street, into the yellow haze of the park. They were both gone, her heart and her soul. The scent of chestnuts was in the air. It would be autumn soon. Hay would be in Dunster House, the crow would be perched on a rooftop in Cambridge, and Franny would be living at 44 Greenwich Avenue, following her fate, even though what she wanted most of all was headed in the opposite direction.