The Rules of Magic (28 page)

“Not all,” Jet said.

“Hardly anything,” April assured him.

When the chocolate cake was ready they had it hot from the oven, served with mounds of vanilla ice cream.

“Am I allowed to have that?” Regina asked.

“Of course,” Vincent told her. “Always remember,” he whispered, “live a lot.”

Regina ate most of her cake. “You can have the rest,” she told Vincent, as she set to work on a drawing of Harry and Wren. In her rendering the two were best friends who held each other's paws.

Vincent was charmed by the child, but when he glanced at his watch he stood up. “I'm late,” he said.

“For a very important date?” April said, blinking.

“Indeed,” Vincent said. “I'm involved with someone.”

“Don't tell me you actually care about someone?”

“We're not supposed to, are we?” Vincent joked.

“No,” April said. “We're not.”

Vincent grinned and kissed the little girl good-bye on the forehead, then went out with his dog, two shadows spilling into the night. “See you when I see you,” he called over his shoulder.

“See you when I see you,” Regina called back.

“He's still the same,” April said.

“Not completely,” Jet said. There was no need to go into details and hurt April any more than she already was.

“Vincent is Vincent, thank goodness,” Franny said as she started in on the dishes.

April shook her head. She pulled her daughter onto her lap. “Will he ever grow up?”

“Yes,” Jet said. “And we'll be sad when he does.”

In the morning, the cousins were gone. Regina's drawing of a black dog and a black cat had been left on the kitchen table. Franny had it framed later that afternoon, and from then on she kept it in the parlor, and even years later, when she moved and left almost everything behind, she took it with her, bundled in brown paper and string.

S
he saw Haylin walking
down the path. At first she thought she had conjured him, and perhaps he was a ghostly image of himself, but no, it was Hay. He was so tall she spotted him right away, wearing the same denim jacket he'd had since he was fifteen. Franny sat on the rock, knees to chest. She was a mess and damned herself for being so. The last time she'd seen him, she'd caused a scene in the hospital. Now she vowed to be calm and collected. She had lost him, so her heart shouldn't be thudding against her chest. It was over, and she should be happy that he had been saved from throwing in his lot with an Owens woman.

She wore old sneakers and jeans and a black and white striped T-shirt she'd found in the ninety-nine-cent bin at the thrift store where they'd sold their mother's beautiful clothes. She hadn't even brushed her hair that morning.

Haylin spied her and waved, as if they'd seen each other only hours before. He came to sit beside her. “Don't tell me you've been waiting here all these years?” Franny laughed out loud. Hay smiled, pleased he could make her laugh. But his hurt made him say more. “I know you haven't been waiting for me. I've come here every time I'm home and you're never here. So I gave up on us.”

Franny threw a hand over her mouth as if holding back a sob. Her eyes were rimmed with tears.

“Franny.” He hadn't really wanted to hurt her.

“I'm not crying, if that's what you think,” Franny responded, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“I know that. Do you think I'm an idiot?” They both laughed then. “Don't answer that,” Hay said with a grin.

He was attending Yale Medical School, Franny's father's alma mater. It made perfect sense that he would become a doctor. He had always wanted to do good in the world. And it made sense, too, when he revealed he'd placed distance between himself and his family.

“I don't go home anymore,” he said, morose as he always was when thinking about his heritage. “It's like a fucking mausoleum with my father getting richer on the war, and my mother drinking so she won't go berserk because she's married to him.”

“Where do you stay when you come to New York?” When Hay glanced away, Franny knew. “Oh.” She could barely bring herself to say it. “With Emily.”

“You remember her name,” he said, surprised.

“Of course I do. Emily Flood, your roommate.”

“You don't usually take note of people.” He flushed when Franny threw him a deadly look. “Well, you don't!”

“Of course I took note of her, Haylin. How could I not?”

“Yeah,” Hay said, feeling more like an idiot than ever.

“So where is she? I'm shocked that she lets you out of her sight. Maybe you'd better run on back to her.”

“I don't understand why
you're
mad,” Hay said, frustrated and unwilling to bear her anger. “
You're
the one who didn't want
me.
”

“I had no choice! I had my brother and sister to see to. There was the accident to deal with. Or do you blame me for that?”

Franny stood up with the intention of leaving. When Hay took her arm, she glared at him. But he was looking at her the way he used to, when he was the only person in the world who really knew her.

“Don't go yet,” he said.

“Why? You're with Emily.”

“I am,” Haylin said.

“And do you blame me for that, too?”

She was heartless. The Maid of Thorns.

Haylin shook his head. If only he would stop looking at her like that. So she took it further.

“Well I'm glad you're with her,” Franny said. “You'll be happier than you would have ever been with me. She's normal!”

Lewis was perched above them, ever vigilant, upset they were arguing. Hay called the bird to him and the crow skimmed the air and came to perch on the rock. He gazed at Franny for too long, and just when it seemed he might say something that would change their path, he snapped out of it. “I should probably leave Lewis with you. I don't really have time for a pet.”

“I've told you! He's not a pet! He comes and goes as he pleases. Isn't it clear? He's chosen you, Haylin. I don't blame him.”

“Well, he can't stay with me anymore. Emily has a fear of birds.”

“What if she does?”

“We live together in New Haven.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

He looked at her, but she simply stared. She wanted him to say it.

“I'm here for you.”

“But you live with her!”

“What should I have done? You never answered any of my letters. I thought you hated me because we were together when the accident happened.”

“What's done is done. I don't think either one of us should come here anymore.” He had made his choice, Franny thought. Emily. And there was the curse to protect him from. She refused to be responsible for any of his sorrow. “We were young and now we're not.”

Haylin laughed a short unhappy laugh. His shoulders were hunched, the way they were when he sulked. “We're twenty-four, Franny, for Christ's sake. We have our whole lives to live. You're going to let me marry her? Is that what you want?”

“Apparently that's what you want.”

When she walked away she felt as though she were falling. It seemed as if the world was a snow globe that had been shaken, and where she'd ended up had nothing to do with where she had begun.

When she reached the zoo, Franny stopped and sat on a bench, with Lewis perched beside her.

“I suppose you're mine,” she told him. In response he did the oddest thing; he sat on her lap and let her pet him, something he'd never done before. He made a funny clacking noise, then took to the sky. Was he letting her know that if she ran she could catch up with Haylin? She knew the paths he took to cut across the park. But his life was set out before him, and he would be better off without her, and because she still had no idea how to break the curse, Franny walked home, four miles as the crow flies. When she reached 44 Greenwich Avenue she went inside alone, and
only the crow knew that it was possible for a woman to claim to have no heart at all and still cry as though her heart would break.

Vincent and William flew to San Francisco, a city cast out of a dream. It was the Summer of Love. Free love and a free society had called a hundred thousand people to the city. There were indeed flowers everywhere, and along the bay the scent of patchouli and chocolate infused the air. Strangers embraced them as they walked down Haight Street. In Manhattan, theirs was a secret society, but here the doors were open to everyone. They camped out in Golden Gate Park surrounded by eucalyptus trees, and when a pale mossy rain began, they raced for the shelter of the public library. There in the stacks they met a couple who invited them to their apartment in the Mission, where they spent the night on a quilt on the floor, entwined and madly in love. It was true, Vincent was in love, despite the warnings, despite the world, despite himself. This was what he had seen in the mirror in his aunt's greenhouse, the image that had terrified him because from that moment he knew what he wanted, a life he thought he'd never have, and now, at last, he did.

In the morning they were given a breakfast of toast and honey-butter and orange tea.

“Are you always so kind to strangers?” William asked their hosts.

“You're not strangers,” they were told, and it seemed in this city, at this time, they were embraced by those who saw them for who they were.

They rode around in a convertible Mustang, borrowed from
a cousin of William's who lived in Mill Valley. The cousin had informed them California was not like New York; they did not need to keep themselves hidden. They had the nerve to kiss on a dock with a view of Alcatraz and the bright blue water of the bay. They went to clubs in the Castro District where they felt completely at home dancing until they were exhausted. They drove along in the pale light of dawn in an ecstasy of freedom. Magic was everywhere. They spied people wearing feathers and bells on Mount Tamalpais, and in cafés in the North End, and all along Divisadero Street, where young girls handed out magical, ceramic talismans in the shape of a triangle or an eye.
Blessed be,
they called, and indeed Vincent and William felt blessed to be in California.

In Monterey they slept in a cabin overlooking the ocean and made love in the blaze of the pure yellow sunlight and felt something dark lift away from them. They had been hidden, casting a clouding spell wherever they went in New York, but they would do that no longer. It was the end of secrets, the end of lies, the beginning of everything they did not yet know. Something was about to happen; they could both feel it. Vincent thought about the black mirror in his aunt's greenhouse. There had been so many images, but now as his future became his present he recognized the visions he had seen.

William was acquainted with a publicist working for the record producer Lou Adler, who had come up with the idea for the Monterey Pop Festival, held on the weekend of June 16, 1967, inviting the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin and the Who and Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding and many others for three days of music, and love, and peace. Somehow William had talked his friend into letting Vincent perform. When Vincent heard the
news he hesitated; he was a street singer, not meant for large venues, but in the end he was talked into it and William slipped a roadie ten bucks so Vincent could use a guitar. He wore black and took off his boots and socks. William placed a wreath of leaves on his head just before he went onto the stage.

It was an odd hour, dusk, a dim, murky time no one wanted to claim on the stage. So there he was. A nobody. Vincent and a borrowed guitar. No one knew him; no one cared. He seemed calm if you didn't look too closely at his beautiful, worried face. When he began people had their backs to him, but the microphone was turned up suddenly, by William's hand no doubt, and Vincent's soaring voice drifted over the crowd, as though it were an enchantment. A quiet fell as darkness sifted down from the trees.