Bewitching (32 page)

“Oh, you poor dear,” Celia said when Cook told her who was coming. “To have to see him with another girl. Never you worry. I shall do all the serving. You just get things ready in the kitchen.”

Again, my emotions scattered like a school of fish, invaded by a predator. Of course I didn’t want to see him with another girl. And yet, I wanted desperately to see him.

So, while Celia bustled back and forth, carrying plates and glasses, oysters and soup, I stood by and tried to hear the conversation. Finally, as the dessert was to be brought in, I could stand it no longer. I seized a tray of something called crème brûlée from Celia’s hands and practically dove into the dining room with it.

I had hoped to see him perturbed, bored, annoyed. Likewise, I had hoped to see in Hestia Rivers exactly the sort of boorish girl Brewster had described. I was disappointed in both regards. The girl sitting at Brewster’s side was lovely, dainty, and delicate with long, blond, curled hair, much like my own. Her blue eyes sparkled as she spoke. There was something strangely familiar about her too.

And Brewster, he was laughing.

“Miss Rivers, that is the cleverest thing I have ever heard,” he said.

I, who could say nothing, only stared.

“See,” his mother said. “So I was right in making the introduction. You should listen to your mother more often.”

“How could I have known?” Brewster said. “I knew I could love only the girl who had rescued me from the ocean, who held my hand as we waited for
Carpathia
.” He gazed at the girl, at Hestia, with something approaching adoration.

That was when I recognized her. Of course! Hestia Rivers had been on the lifeboat! She had been the young lady dozing on the other side of it as I pulled Brewster out of the water, as I had saved his life. Then, after I’d left, perhaps she had held his hand, but that was it. I was the one who had saved him. I was the one who loved him, not her. Yet I could say nothing to him, nothing. Brewster thought Hestia had saved him!

I felt the tray of crème brûlée teeter in my frozen hands, and before I could come to my senses enough to stop it, before I could even think to want to, it fell from my fingers and crashed to the floor.

“Clumsy oaf!” his mother shrieked. “You’ve ruined everything!”

I tried, mutely, to apologize, but I could not even see her through the waves of tears.

“Clean it up!” she screamed as her husband tried to calm her. “Clean it up, and then pack your bags and leave this instant.”

“Mother.” Brewster came to my rescue. “It was an accident. Surely it is not necessary to throw Dorothy into the streets at night.”

I stared up at him with something like gratitude even as my fingers worked among the shattered, sticky dishes. He did love me. It would be all right.

“At least let her stay until morning,” he said.

Until morning!

Beside him, Hestia was agreeing. “Yes, Mrs. Davis, it is quite all right. I know a little restaurant on Canal Street that serves dessert. Perhaps Brewster would like to take me there—and then out dancing.”

“I’d be glad to,” Brewster said, “although I was rather hoping to keep you here. I’ve purchased some new records for the Victrola. There’s a swell one called ‘You’ve Got Me Hypnotized.’”

I felt a sharp pain. A shard of china had jabbed my finger.

“Well, perhaps we can do that tomorrow,” Hestia said.

“Yes, tomorrow,” Brewster agreed. “Indeed, I wish to see you every night, now that I’ve found you again.”

I sat sucking my bleeding finger; my tears became a tidal wave.

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, okay,” said Mrs. Davis. “Stop the blubbering, you little fool, and get Celia to help you with that mess. You can stay until tomorrow, but no longer.”

She chased me from the room, so I needed not hear Brewster and Hestia, talking, laughing, making their plans, falling in love.

Eventually, the dishes and every bit of crème brûlée was cleared under Celia’s watchful, unsympathetic eye. Eventually, my meager possessions were packed in an old pillowslip, and I went to bed.

But I did not sleep. Instead, I waited, waited for the turn of Brewster’s key in the lock, and waited too for some answer to the questions that filled my head. What was I to do? Where was I to go? I had gambled, gambled everything like men on ships did in their card games, and I had lost. I not only had no Brewster, no job, no place to live, I had no family. I had no ocean. I had no voice. I had no tail.

I had nothing.

It was well after the clock had rung twelve times when I finally heard Brewster enter the house. Then, I heard voices.

“How did it go? Tell me everything.” That was his mother.

“When you’re right, you’re right,” Brewster said, laughing. “Not only is Hestia Rivers neither fat nor vulgar; she is, in fact, exactly the girl I sought. You shall hear wedding bells within the year, I wager.”

Their voices were low, but they filled the silent house, punishing my ears.

“Indeed,” his mother said. “I feared you were going to run off with the serving girl.”

He laughed. “Oh, that was nothing. Can’t expect me to ignore a pretty girl in my own house.”

And then the doors closed and the house was silent. It was not in my power to break that silence, and if it had been, I would not have screamed and raged, for it would have defeated my purpose. I knew now what that purpose was.

My purpose was to steal as quietly as possible from my bedroom.

To stop once more to gaze out the window and see the human world with its strings of stars, the world I had so long coveted, the world which had betrayed me.

To walk to the kitchen.

To open the oven door without a squeak.

To turn the knob.

To forget to light a match.

To position myself on the floor beside the oven.

To wait for sleep to come.

Then, I was floating, floating high in the air, above myself, looking down at the kitchen and the oven and, indeed, down upon the golden-haired girl in a borrowed white nightgown. At each side, an arm supported me, and there were voices.

“What shall we do with her?” said the voice to my left.

“I don’t know,” the voice on my right said. “She is a mermaid. She has no soul.”

“A mermaid? Then where is her tail?”

“Still…”

I looked from one side to the other. They were women, beautiful women draped in white, their wings flying behind them.

“Are you angels?” I asked, for my voice had returned.

“We are Daughters of the Air. If you are human, we may take you with us, and you’ll live in the sky forever.”

I stared down at the shell of the girl I used to be. I felt I did not know her, did not understand her stupidity, did not want to know her.

Still, I said, “I was human … for a while … the last while.”

Right looked to Left, then down at my still, silent body. “She has committed a grievous error. Suicide is a mortal sin.”

“But perhaps it was not suicide,” reasoned Left. “You saw how much trouble she had with the oven. I’m sure it was a tragic accident.”

“Do you think so?”

Left nodded. “I do, poor dear.”

Right pondered, and I hung, wingless, between them. Finally, Right said, “I think so too.”

And, with that, I was one of them, a Daughter of the Air, with wings of white feathers and a dress much more beautiful than the sad nightgown I left on earth. Together, we flew out the window and into the dark, star-spotted city, over the ocean, then up, up into the sky.

K
ENDRA SPEAKS
(
WITH GREAT REGRET
)

So you see how that really couldn’t have ended any worse, right? When they retell this story, sometimes they change it, so the mermaid gets her man in the end, and together, they defeat the evil Sea Witch, but that’s not what happened. This was what happened. The good thing is, no one knew about my involvement. Well, except sea creatures. But still, can you blame me for not wanting to get involved in people’s lives?

Emma may be miserable, but she’s miserable and alive. She’ll have other chances at happiness. Things tend to get a lot easier in college, and after that? Well, have you noticed that a lot of people who were rather nebbishy in high school end up with perfectly nice families and excellent careers? Indeed, seems I’ve seen a few movie stars who claim they weren’t part of the cool crowd. That’s because high school is hard.

That’s why I’m thinking Emma should just get through this on her own.

Well, maybe with a little help.

Part Three

Lisette and Emma

1

Once, in school, we read a folktale from the Philippines. It was about two sisters, Mangita and Larina. Unlike in Cinderella, both girls were beautiful, but only one was “as good as she was beautiful.” The good one, Mangita (a brunette), helps an old woman and becomes sick. The old woman comes back and tells Larina to give Mangita a seed every hour, to make her well. Larina doesn’t do this, for she wants her sister to die. Fortunately, the old woman comes back in time. She cures Mangita and makes it so that Larina has to spend the rest of her life combing seeds from her hair. Every time she combs a seed out, a new one appears.

I liked that story. Good was rewarded; Evil was punished.

It didn’t work out that way in real life.

So I had to watch Lisette and Warner. Of course, I had been wrong. It didn’t last a week. Her dumping him in a week would have given me what I wanted. Lisette couldn’t do that. I wanted him back, so of course she would hold on to him forever. She’d probably marry him and have five kids, just to spite me.

And I missed my father.

Some would say that I shouldn’t have wanted Warner back. They’d say he didn’t deserve me. They’d be wrong. Warner had fallen under Lisette’s spell because he was gullible, like my father. He wanted to believe she wasn’t lying. He was sweet like that. He couldn’t wrap his brain around the truth about Lisette because it was just too alien. I don’t know why he was less willing to believe me, except he was disappointed I’d lied to him. Also, I guess, I really hadn’t done anything to stop Mother from being cruel to Lisette. I was guilty of that, of doing nothing. Yes, Lisette had been mean to me first, but I should have been the better person. Now I was paying the price.

So, now, I saw him and Lisette in the hall. They held hands. I saw them in the cafeteria. She fed him grapes. I saw them in the library. She pretended interest in the books he was reading. She rode in his Civic like it was one of her old boyfriends’ Mercedes. She was always touching him, holding him, pretending to love him. I knew she didn’t, for the best possible reason: Lisette didn’t love anyone but Lisette. I actually felt sorry for Warner because, sooner or later, he’d find out. Unfortunately, it would probably be later, too late for me.

I remember Kendra saying that, if Lisette stole Warner, we could fix it. I wished I knew how. On television, the dumped girl gets a new hairstyle and takes back her man. In the movies, she’d put a hit on Lisette. That seemed extreme, but a haircut wouldn’t work.

No, it was hopeless.