Matchmaking for Beginners(86)

“No,” he says very firmly. “We need more than that.”

“And if it doesn’t work,” I continue, “then it’s just not the right time. Because if it’s meant to happen, it will. But things have to develop. We can’t force it to happen.”

“Would you please even look at the book of spells? I know you could find something in there to help us. This girl at my school said she knows this psychic lady and she rubs people’s heads and tells them what’s going to happen. So I know you could just read some words. I’d do it myself except you and Blix are the ones with the magic.”

“How do you know that?” I say.

He shrugs. “I dunno. I just know it.”

I glance over at the bookshelf, where the book of spells sits, bulging with papers. Its cover looks torn. Funny how some days I don’t even see it there, and some days it’s the focal point of the whole kitchen.

Like now.

Andrew, with his usual hangdog countenance (what I assume is the result of a perpetual, lifelong guilty conscience) arrives then, and Sammy leaves with his dad, trailing his overnight bag and holding on to his soccer ball, giving me backward looks and wagging his eyebrows at me. He mouths, “DO IT” as they leave. I sit there drinking my tea for a long while, listening to the way the house settles and creaks. The windows need washing. Everything needs washing around here.

I should call a real estate agent, find out what I have to do to put the place on the market. Why don’t I ever seem able to set all this in motion?

Bedford, lying at my feet, turns over in his sleep and thumps his tail. Tap tap tap.

I wash the dishes and sweep the kitchen floor, then go outside to get some fresh air. The wind is whipping up the trees. Patrick has put the recycling out by the curb and it’s full of cardboard boxes and containers. I look longingly at his apartment; the windows with the wrought-iron bars are a perfect metaphor for everything about Patrick.

Lola’s shades are up, I’m pleased to see. She got a pacemaker last week, and it’s made her feel worlds better, she says, filled with energy she hasn’t felt in years.

I pull the dead leaves off the rosebush and then traipse up the stairs and straighten the Tibetan prayer flags on my way inside. Maybe I should call my sister—but then I find myself standing in front of the book of spells.

It would not hurt to look at this book.

I could open it up and see how ridiculous it is—probably just a book of parlor games. Somebody probably gave it to Blix as a joke, a nod to her interest in unconventional things.

I open the front cover. There are a whole bunch of papers shoved between the pages, so I take them out very carefully and set them aside. They are grocery lists, little doodles, a note Blix evidently wrote to Houndy reminding him to bring home four extra lobsters because Lola and Patrick were both coming over for dinner. (Patrick came up for dinner? Really?) All the stuff of life that you shove away somewhere when company is coming over and you aren’t ready to sort through the papers cluttering the table.

But the book itself. The book is trying very hard—too hard—to be serious. It has a whole section about the history of spells, blah blah blah, an explanation of how humans have always thought they needed to claim some influence over the vagaries of life. And then, getting down to business, there are some five thousand actual spells for everything: cleansing energy, winning court cases, ensuring protection, finding lost objects, healing disease, getting money—and, of course, a huge section on love and sex.

In the love section, there are mentions of ingredients for a proper spell: rosemary, roses, chamomile. Some vanilla beans wouldn’t hurt.

A piece of paper falls out onto the floor.

On it, I see that someone has written in a scratchy light scrawl: “Lola open heart love brave dream. You know the man now. The man who will love you.”

At the very back of the book, there’s a thin green leather journal wedged between a couple of pages, wrapped up with a brown cord with a star charm attached.

I shouldn’t open this. Blix’s secrets are there, I’m sure of it.

But maybe—maybe she wanted me to see it. This isn’t exactly hidden away, after all. She could have destroyed all the things she didn’t want found. It wasn’t like her death surprised her; she knew for ages she was going to die. No, I am certain she put everything exactly where she wanted it, and for a purpose.

My hand touches the leather cord, and I take a deep breath, and then I’m pulling on it slightly and opening the journal. I’ll read a little bit, I tell myself. See if she mentioned me. I have a right to know if I was mentioned in her journal, don’t I? After all, she left me her house—maybe there are instructions here on what else I should be doing.

And there it is, the thing that breaks my heart.

She has listed the spells she was using for healing, and the date she employed each one, and the results. The Acorn Good Health Spell, for instance, that she used the previous fall. “I threw the acorns in the air. They scattered over the ground.”

On another page of her journal: “I’m frightened sometimes in the morning. I look at Houndy and I feel the fear. But it’s not like I’m desperate,” she wrote in a beautiful, looping scrawl with curlicues and little stars. “Everyone thinks medical science can cure this cancer. Why don’t they see what I see? That death is not the enemy.” Here she drew a starburst. “I know that my tumor is a living entity and that the tumor and I together can heal ourselves if it is meant to be that way.”