The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic #2)(48)
“We should meet here in six months. Check in with each other,” he said. “Then I would know you didn’t kill yourself.”
Jet shook her head. “I won’t. But we’re never going to see each other again. Let’s just get that straight.”
“You miss him,” Rafael said. “Even right now.”
She did, but the day of the accident now felt as though it belonged to the past. She was glad she had kept her eyes open.
“I’m glad you were you,” Jet said.
He kissed her good-bye as himself and then they both laughed. “So am I,” he told her.
When Rafael left, Jet took a long bath, then she put on a white robe and finished what was left of the chicken. She got into bed and phoned Franny to tell her where she was.
“You are not at the Plaza Hotel,” Franny said. “That costs a fortune.”
“I had to stay here. I needed to complete what should have happened that night.”
She could see the lights come on along Fifth Avenue now. Rafael would be checking out of work and heading for night class. He had told her he wanted to be a teacher. She went to the window and gazed out. She thought she saw him, but she wasn’t sure. She barely knew him after all.
“It’s beautiful here,” she told her sister. She’d forgotten how lovely the sky was at this hour of the day.
“Will you come home in the morning?” Franny wanted to know. “We can’t afford another night at the Plaza.”
“Yes,” Jet assured her. “I promise I will. After I have breakfast from room service.”
The Plaza Hotel was the least of their financial problems; there were heating bills and electricity and taxes, things their parents had seen to in the past. Even before the shop opened their savings had all but disappeared. Jet set a paper spell, hoping to bring money their way, burning a dollar bill coated with honey and milk in the fireplace. The only result was an order from a small pharmacy on Bleecker Street for a box of black soap. Franny had altered the recipe, adding city ingredients that were available. There were no blooming roses outside the door, no lush herbs and flowers as there were in Isabelle’s garden. So she made good with what she had. A branch from an ash tree in Washington Square Park, two dappled feathers of a nesting dove on West Fourth Street, leaves from the wavering lilacs in their yard. The result was grittier than Aunt Isabelle’s recipe, with more intensity. Wash with it, and not only were you beautiful, you were ready to do battle. It was especially good for anyone riding the subway or walking down a dark street after midnight.
The pharmacy ordered several more boxes in the ensuing months, but the sale wasn’t enough to sustain them. When their money ran out they had no choice but to divest themselves of family belongings. They sold their mother’s good Limoges china at a bad price. They sold the French cooking pots, and then the costume jewelry their mother favored, jeweled bugs and starfish and butterflies. One gray day, when they hadn’t enough to pay the electricity bill, they brought nearly all of Susanna Owens’s Chanel suits and Dior dresses to the secondhand store on Twenty-Third Street near the Chelsea Hotel. Franny bargained as best she could, but in the end they collected only a few hundred dollars for the timeless clothes their mother had bought in Paris when she was young and in love. They sat in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel and counted their money.
“You could have stayed here instead of the Plaza,” Franny said. “Then maybe we wouldn’t be so broke.”
“My fate wasn’t here.” Jet had a small smile on her face that gave her away.
“Oh really.” Franny now understood. “What was your fate’s name?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jet assured her.
Franny narrowed her eyes. “Love?”
“Absolutely not. We never intend to see each other again,” Jet said cheerfully.
“Perfect,” Franny said. “Then you’re the new Maid of Thorns.”
“Oh, no,” Jet said. “You’ll always hold that title.”
“Will I?” Franny said thoughtfully.
Jet went to her sister and sat beside her. “Franny, that was a joke. You have the softest heart of any of us.”
“Untrue,” Franny shot back, though she was near tears. She had hated seeing her mother’s clothes hung on wire hangers in the thrift shop.
“Very true. This just means I know you better than you know yourself,” Jet said. “But what else is a sister for?”
Posters were affixed to every lamppost in the neighborhood and Franny took a small ad in The Village Voice, the alternative newspaper whose offices were right around the corner in Sheridan Square. On the day of the grand opening, the shelves were stocked with cures and Edgar the heron was set in the window and festooned with ribbons and bows. By noon, only a smattering of people had showed up, a huge disappointment. Two teenage girls with long straight hair in search of true love sneaked in, giggling, afraid of the stuffed heron, nervous about magic, eyeing the bones and teeth set out in jars.
Franny threw up her hands, preferring the drudgery of cleaning the storeroom, but Jet found she enjoyed dispensing cures, and was happy to offer the girls the most basic potion: rosemary leaves, anise seeds, honey, and red wine. Since the Plaza Hotel, she had retained a deep empathy for those in love. She told the girls about a home remedy they could use when their money ran out, not wise for a shopkeeper to give away free advice, but true to Jet’s nature. To grow a lover, she told them, they must plant an onion in a flowerpot and add plenty of sunlight and water. The girls were amused to hear that such a plain, smelly thing as an onion could bring love to them.