Boy, Snow, Bird(15)

“But your husband is frightened of you,” the magician told her.

“I’ve given him no cause to be,” she replied.

“And yet he can hardly bear to look at you . . .”

“It isn’t necessary for him to look at me.”

Mia read that part over three times, and for a moment I thought I was busted. But she continued writing in silence, cupping her hand over the page as though she were the imposter and not me.


“Grow wings,” he told her. “Bear fruit.” She did neither. He pursued her for miles of farmland, got in the way of all her daily tasks, issued command after command, whatever came into his head. “Become a walking stick!” She didn’t. His voice grew hoarse. At last he admitted that she was a formidable witch, and that he was willing to learn whatever she could teach him.

“It isn’t magic,” she said. “It’s just that I’m well dressed. You men who try to tell me I’m a scarecrow or try to grab my arm but can’t manage it, don’t you understand that you’re not really addressing me? It’s more as if you’re talking to a coat I’m wearing.”

She was sat on a low chair, shelling beans, and he sat down at her feet and began to help her. “I don’t see what you mean,” he said. “Teach me. Show me.”

“What can I teach you?” she said. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth wide. She stayed like that for one minute, two minutes. He thought she was sleeping and forced himself to place a hand on her shoulder. A snake’s head glided out from between her lips, bright as new chainmail; he saw that its golden coils wound down her throat.

“You’re wrapped around her heart,” the magician said.

“I am the heart,” the snake replied.

He left the farm without looking back. There are few things in life more unpleasant than the laughter of a snake.

“Maybe that isn’t the version you read,” Mia said, watching me. She bit the end of the pen a few times. “I think I read it in Italian, so . . .”

“No, this is pretty much the version I read,” I said, because it felt too damn late to back down. I imagine that from time to time some similar situation has led governments to declare war.

I had to be up early for a trial shift at a bookstore, so I sent Mia home right after dinner.

“Hey,” she said, on her way out of the door. “Maybe this bookstore job is the one.”

I said: “Maybe!” But I thought: Probably not.

The best line of work for me would be roadside sprite. I’d live quietly by a dust-covered track that people never came across unless they took a wrong turn, and I’d offer the baffled travelers lemonade and sandwiches, maybe even fix their engines if they asked nicely (I’d have used my solitude to read extensively on matters of car maintenance). Then the travelers would go on their way, relaxed and refreshed, and they’d forget they’d ever met me. That’s the ideal meeting . . . once upon a time, only once, unexpectedly, then never again.





5

the next morning Ted took Webster on a trip to Wachusett Mountain. He said it was “just because,” but we decided between us that he was either going to propose or he was going to call the whole thing off. I hoped he would propose. She’d been so sad that he hadn’t proposed on Valentine’s Day. She’d asked me if I thought some women just weren’t meant to be married. I said: “Yes. But not you.” I meant it too.

She swung between hope and despair. She rehashed old conversations with Ted until I told her she had to stop it before she made herself ill or something. She was hopeful because she’d caught Arturo Whitman looking thoughtfully at her fingers, sizing them up, as it were. She despaired because long ago Ted had told her he didn’t believe in marriage. She’d asked him how he could say that when there were so many real, live married people walking around, and he’d called her a wise guy. I told her she was born wife material whether Ted Murray realized it or not. She smiled at that. “And what about you?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m nothing but a pack of cards.” I echoed Mia to protect myself. Not that it was necessary. Webster asked questions only out of politeness. Pursuing answers wasn’t her style.

She knocked on my door just before Ted picked her up. It was six in the morning.

“Just wanted to say good-bye,” she said, sitting on my feet. (When had we become friends?) “This could be the last time I speak to you as an unengaged woman.”

I muttered, “Try not to break your neck on the slopes, Webster. I’ve gotten used to you,” and I waved good-bye from my bedroom window as Ted drove away with all their ski apparatus clattering away on top of his car. I even crossed my fingers for her.

—

a couple of hours later I emptied my purse out onto the windowsill and counted up my coins. I had bus fare, but only one way if I also wanted to eat lunch. I figured I’d take the bus back and began walking along Ivorydown, taking the route I’d so gladly abandoned a few weeks before when I’d changed jobs. It was a windy morning, and the wind pushed me, and the road dragged me, and the tree branches flew forward and peeled back and broke away, and their scrawny trunks hugged each other. I glimpsed—or more became aware of—someone walking on the other side of the saplings. She wasn’t there at the beginning of the walk; I don’t know when she caught up with me. This person was my height, her stride more or less the length of mine, smooth locks of her hair (blond) and flashes of her coat (navy blue) showing through the leaves. I was wearing a navy blue coat too. She had her hands in her pockets and I didn’t want to speak to her, I’m not sure why, maybe because she was walking so close to me but didn’t seem to notice that I was there. Or if she did, she didn’t find it odd that we stayed neck and neck all the way down the hill. I tried to get a little ahead of her so that I could look back through the branches and see her face, but she chose the exact same moment to speed up and I began to feel as if we were running from somebody. Then she spoke. She said: “Hello? Hello? Is that you?”