The Mothering Coven (11 page)

Ozark has run up the hill to smother the fire. Is the quilt of knowledge flame retardant? Alas.

How can Dorcas have lost a pie-eating contest to the World’s Smallest Boy?

“Trickery,” thinks Dorcas. The pie was yellow. Yellow tastes different than pink. It has a sharp, sad taste. Still, it was delicious.

Dorcas won’t fit in the equipment trailer. “I wouldn’t mind riding with Helena,” says Dorcas. “If Helena doesn’t mind.”

“What about Mrs. Borage?” say Agnes.

[:]

Mrs. Borage is looking at the burning house. She takes one deep breath. She blows. The wind has changed direction. The flames grow higher. Trick candles. Mrs. Borage sighs. What did she wish for? Just look. The wish is still there, hanging, unwished, above the rooftops.

What say the ghosts? They have just exited the Holland Tunnel, heading north.

“Look at the smog,” says Henrica. She is sitting on a charger. It belongs to Sir So-And-So, a gentle knight, of generic tunic and unclean hose, with a bright shield, couchant something, and a more or less cross—sad story, he was pricking on the plain, a model of puissance, by all counts ydrad, but not without a softer side, not unwilling to roast a duck for his old mother, and do the dishes, now and again, and felt the occasional hat, but, suddenly, a something volant (isn’t it always?), dragon or very large bird, caught him unawares, pricking, English saddle, up, down, up, down, utterely exposed there on the plain, not so much as a walnut bush or crocus, and on the knightly up, a birdly down, a good grip with the talons, one quick twist, and that was that, his neck never the thickest, and his head carried off, to cozy an egg in a distant nest, or act as an eaglestone, who knows, a shame, his poor mother, all alone, a cold duck sandwich—and poor Sir So-and-So tripping quite a bit on tire treads and other turnpike lilies, unpleasant walking, headless, not to the dexter either, but sinistral, closer to the eighteen wheelers, that’s chivalry, Sir So-and-So can’t say to Henrica, “What smog?” his mouth being third to go, after the eyes and nose, a close third, and he remains sullenly silent, chivalry is imperfect, and Henrica says simply, in accented English, “It is shaped like a wish.”

Is that a story?

“It is a lengthy sentence,” says Mrs. Borage, “a sentence from an aberrant present, one of the many lapsed futures which forked from a long ago moment. It is in that somewhat attenuated process of never coming to have passed.”

“An awkward phase,” says Ms. Kidney, not without sympathy.

“There is a tense for that,” says Agnes, thinking.

It’s on the tip of our tongues.

“Mrs. Borage, are you coming?” calls Agnes. Mrs. Borage is floating further and further away. Her next stop, the frozen sea. The fog is settling. Mrs. Borage’s fine smile is gleaming, or it may be the particles of ice, with the fire shining through them.

Mr. Henderson has been trying to remember his geometry.

“Sooner or later she will reach a vanishing point,” thinks Mr. Henderson.

Not in the spherical plane. There are no vanishing points.

Mrs. Borage floats ahead. The universe is there, everywhere at once, opening.

acknowledgments:

I have borrowed phrases from the following writers and sources: Frank O’Hara, William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Carrie Collier, Gervase Markham, Pliny the Elder, the New American Standard Bible, George Washington, Edmund Spenser, various Farmer’s Almanacs, a CSC drinking song sung by my cousin Peter Ruocco, Robbie van Leeuwen, and Bragi Boddason.

Special thanks to my writing buddies Carrie, Linnea, Christine, Jonathan, Corinne, and Art; to my classmates and teachers at Brown, especially Carole, Brian E., Joanna, and Brian C.; to Radhika and the witches; and to Eugene, Chemlawn and the Admiral.