A Broom With a View (4 page)

T
he last of her boxes were unpacked.

Liza’s meager personal belongings were either neatly stowed away in closets or arranged on bookshelves and credenzas throughout her grandparents’ house.

Her
house.

She wasn’t sure it would ever completely be
hers
, but she knew she belonged there. 

Liza didn’t bring much with her. The few items she’d deemed important enough to transport from Boston were sentimental and random. In fact, from the looks of some of the things she packed, Liza was now worried she might have unknowingly suffered from some kind of mental breakdown before she left.  Her belongings had clearly not been chosen by someone who was in full control of their decision-making and cognitive skills.

For instance, she hadn’t brought a single cup or plate or towel with her yet somehow managed to carefully pack the collection of foreign Coca-Cola bottles she’d gathered during their international travels. They were now artfully displayed on a library table in the living room.

She’d forgotten to pack any underwear (and, since all her drawers were empty when she left the house, had no idea where they were, which was a little disturbing) but
had
packed a box of nothing but melted candle wax that she’d collected from all the candle holders in the house. Yes, she liked to melt down the old and make new candles but why had she deemed
that
wax necessary?

And then there was the plastic bag full of more than three-hundred corks.

Still, she’d managed to bring every single item of clothing she’d ever owned, including the sweatshirt she’d cut the neck out of back in 1989 when she was just a kid. Well, other than her underwear.
That
, she’d managed to leave…somewhere.

“Liza Jane,” she declared, her voice booming through the empty rooms. “You’re a little pathetic.”

The dryer buzzed in response, a reminder that she needed to change loads. The sheets and blankets on the bed were clean, but musty from non-use over the past few years. She’d spent the previous night coughing and sneezing. She wasn’t ready to throw them out yet so she hoped a good dousing with Tide and that fabric softener with the annoying white teddy bear who was always laughing would help.

Momentarily forgetting her self-deprecating speech to herself, Liza scurried to the dryer to take action. With each thing she’d done that morning, she’d mentally hit Mode over the head with it.

He
didn’t think she could hack it.
He
didn’t think she’d stay down there.
He
didn’t think she could be alone.

Liza Jane was a stress cleaner. She enjoyed dusting, washing dishes, mopping, and organizing. It just wasn’t cutting it today, though. The more she thought about Mode’s phone call, the madder she got.

Thinking about Mode frolicking around her house with Jennifer did not help. Changing her locks. Ha! Like a lock could keep
her
out.

Mode would’ve known that, too.

Oh, he
knew
she was a witch. He was embarrassed by it, but he knew. “Just don’t do anything out in public, okay?” He hadn’t even had the decency to look ashamed or embarrassed when he’d asked.

“Like what, Darren?” she’d snapped. “Ride my broom? Turn the waiter into a frog?”

She’d looked at his face then and saw that it wasn’t awkwardness of her abilities that had him humiliated, it was old-fashioned fear. He was afraid of her. She’d softened a little then and changed the subject after promising him she wouldn’t make a public spectacle of herself.

Hours later something must have clicked inside and he’d felt guilty. As a peace offering, he’d brought her a broom, one of those old-fashioned ones that looked handmade and like it belonged by a storybook witch’s front door.

In fact, it
was
now standing by her front door. She was sentimental, after all. And it was a nice broom.

Still, his ideas never wavered. Two years later he asked her to move her altar out of their bedroom and into another room of the house. He claimed it was for the sake of “space” but she’d read him like a book. It was easy to do it by then. She only had to lightly press her thumbs together. She’d pressed them on his temples once, and then on his third eye, and they’d been connected ever since and would be forever.

Until
she
ended it.

“Well, shit,” she sighed, looking around her living room again.

Her face cooled just a fraction and she closed her eyes to gather herself together again. She was angry at herself, angry for allowing him into this space, for making her angry
here
. Somewhere that had nothing to do with him. This space was meant to be hers and she’d all but invited him inside and asked him to throw darts at her.

It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t her life be fair for a change? She’d given up years of it for his career. She’d helped put him through that last year of school, the year his parents died and their account (and subsequently his college funding) had been frozen.

She’d dropped out herself to work two jobs so that he could start his business and had then traveled all over the world with him so that he could work with the pop opera group and feel “fulfilled.” She had put off having children because he wasn’t ready, let her massage license expire so that he could have someone at home, kept the house clean, hired the maintenance workers, kept his records and balanced the checkbook, hid her magic and–

Liza, in the midst of her depressing and angry march down Memory Lane had not counted on the fact that the house could read her thoughts. She wouldn’t make
that
mistake again.

Before she’d finished her last thought, two things happened at once:

The front door swung open from the pressure of a hearty knock…

And two of the foreign Coca-Cola bottles sailed off the shelf on the other side of the room, hovered dramatically in the air before proceeding to spin around uncontrollably, and then crashed to the ground, showering the living room with a thousand glittery shards of glass.

Liza, hand covering her mouth in embarrassment, was left staring at her visitor in shock.

“Um, hi?”

The curly-haired brunette holding a corning ware dish covered in aluminum foil gave her a baffled grin. “I’m your neighbor from the next farm over. Um, welcome to Kudzu Valley?”

STILL EMBARASSED
at her emotional display back at the house, Liza stomped through the library’s double doors and exhaled loudly. Several people sitting in rocking chairs grouped together around the magazine stand glanced up at her from their periodicals, disgruntled.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

It was obvious to Liza that Jessie Shelby, twentysomething housewife and casserole making extraordinaire, had tried to ignore the fact that she’d just seen her new neighbor make glass bottles dance around in the air and then crash to the floor using nothing but her mind. She’d chatted casually about the weather, asked about her mother, mentioned the new coffee shop going in downtown and had politely inquired about Liza’s business venture.

In the end, though, after she’d patiently followed her into the kitchen and watched Liza place the broccoli and cheese casserole (topped with crumbled potato chips) in her refrigerator, Jessie just couldn’t help herself. 

“Did I just see you–“

Liza had mumbled some unintelligible reply without turning around but Jessie accepted the answer for what it was–confirmation.  She knew better than to lie, although her younger self might have made something up to change the subject.

Jessie waited a beat and then continued her line of questioning. “Does that mean you’re a–“

“Yes.”

The awkward silence that followed was only interrupted by the old-fashioned clock on the wall, ticking away the minutes that seemed to stretch on forever. Liza continued to root around in the refrigerator while the other woman studied her from behind. She could all but feel the questions building in Jessie’s mind, but a combination of fear and southern respect kept them at bay.

Liza sighed inside, disappointed in herself for making the other woman uncomfortable. She wasn’t ashamed of being a witch, she’d never hurt anyone on purpose, and she’d just moved from an area that actually focused part of its tourism campaign on witchcraft. But the words her mother had told her the morning she set out for Kentucky still rang in her ear.

“Don’t be talking about any of that stuff you can do,” Mabel had warned her. “You just don’t know how people are going to react and you don’t need them mistreating you. Or worse.”

“Oh, Mother. It’s not like they’re going to burn me at the stake. Besides, I don’t just go around bragging about it or wearing a T-shirt. And anyway, Nana Bud was a witch,” Liza had pointed out, feeling both small and defensive.

Mabel had let that one pass. “And she kept it quiet, too. Didn’t go blabbing her mouth about it to everyone. Just do what you want, you always do, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

She was used to her mother’s heightened paranoia about the people around her. Mabel was always convinced people were talking about her and excluding her from things with malicious intent. If Mode hadn’t said something along the same vein, she might have just ignored her. But he’d also sent out a warning.

“Don’t talk about witches while you’re there!” his text had read.

Liza had been confused about the “while you’re there” part. He still didn’t believe she was going there to stay. But his words, coupled with her mother’s, had made her nervous. She was in a politically conservative area. What if they mistook her for a devil worshipper or something?

Still, she
wasn’t
going to hide it anymore. She hadn’t practiced, not really, in years. And that had been hurtful, wounding to hide that part of her away. She liked her abilities, she enjoyed having powers, and she hated having to pretend to be something she wasn’t.

No, if she was going to get off on the right foot in Kudzu Valley, she was going to have to be honest, even if it made both of them uncomfortable.

At last, Liza had turned around and studied the young woman standing before her. She was a perky little thing with beautiful curly hair and big green eyes. At the grocery store Liza had been surprised to see so many people wearing flannel pajama pants that dragged to the floor, their edges brown and frayed from the ground. She’d never seen such a thing before and it had taken her aback, making her wonder if that was the popular women’s style in Kudzu Valley. (If so, she was out of luck. She wanted to fit in, but no way was she giving up her clothes.)

So now, as she took another look at her young neighbor, Liza felt a certain amount of respect for the woman’s stain-free khaki pants, wrinkle-free pullover, and black pea coat. She wore little ladybugs at her ears and a matching necklace.

“It’s a family thing,” she’d explained to Jessie. “Kind of a legacy I guess you could call it; it’s just something that’s been passed down over the years. My grandmother was the same way, and my sister is in her own way, but they could always control themselves better. Sometimes I just let my temper get the best of me. I was thinking about something I really shouldn’t have been and it just kind of…happened.”

“Huh,” Jessie had replied.

Liza couldn’t judge the blank look on her face and felt it rude to violate her thoughts at their first meeting.

“I guess it’s not that different than having a musician for a parent or an artist,” she’d said, “and then getting some of that ability yourself. We’re all different. I can’t do all the things that my grandmother did and my sister can’t do the things I do. But we all have a part of it.”

Jessie nodded then, and didn’t appear to be particularly shocked.  “Yeah, people talked about Rosebud sometimes. I only seen her out in the garden when we rode our horses up here. She was always real nice. Others, though, they’d come up here when their kids were sick or they had some kind of problem that doctors or church couldn’t fix.”

Liza smiled. “She enjoyed getting company up here. I think she regretted not having a bigger family. She always liked taking care of people.”

“My mom brought me up when I was eight. I kept getting these ear infections. Went up to Lexington and had saw a specialist. Had surgery and tubes and everything. Nothing helped. I’d wake everyone in the house up in the middle of the night just hollerin’ my head off,” Jessie laughed. “Drove everybody crazy. But my daddy brung me up here to see her. Said she was probably the only one who could help me. She sat down there in a rocking chair in the living room and pulled me up on her lap. I reckon I was four, maybe five. Anyway, Bud lit up a cigarette, brought her head close to mine, and blew smoke right in my ears. They never bothered me again.”

Liza’s nose began to twitch, a warning that her eyes might start to fill next. “She did that to me once, too. It was the only time I ever saw her smoke. She was a healer. That was one of her biggest strengths. I’m not
that
good, but I do it as well. I’m actually opening up a business downtown. I’ll be helping people find natural remedies to things and giving massages and spa treatments. Would you like to go sit down in the living room?”

At first Liza had been a little uncomfortable at the idea of a stranger just showing up on her doorstep without an invitation and inviting themselves inside. But that had worn off soon enough. 

The two women had spent an enjoyable hour talking about the town and changes it had seen since Liza and her family left. They’d laughed quite a few times, seemed to share similar interests in music and movies (Jessie loved Jason Aldean but her husband called him “crap” and had refused to go his concert with her when he came to Rupp Arena in Lexington so Jessie had gone alone).

But even throughout the visit, Liza still got the distinct feeling that Jessie wasn’t entirely comfortable. She could sometimes all but feel the other woman’s nervousness and apprehension. Liza watched her as Jessie’s eyes darted around the room, often landing on the bottles and studying them intently, as though just waiting for the moment when one would fly off the shelf and at her head. When Liza offered her a drink, Jessie had jumped up and offered to get it herself, overly eager to be accommodating.

Liza knew from experience that the apprehension would fade over time, but for some people it was never going to be possible for them to feel relaxed with their guard down when they were sitting in front of a person they thought could curse them for no other reason than they felt like it. 

Still, Liza liked her new neighbor and hoped they could be friends. God, she needed friends. And she didn’t think Jessie would be leading the rest of the townspeople with pitchforks any time soon, so that was something.