The Rules of Magic (45 page)

“Shall I tell you a story about a rabbit?” the doctor would say, and the children would always say yes because they all knew the story by heart. It was the one about a rabbit who had once
been a witch. They knew that a witch must never deny who she is, and that no matter what happens it's always best to be true to oneself. Hay also gave out lollipops, which the children liked, especially when they had scratchy throats, and black bars of soap for their mothers, which were very much appreciated.

Folks often saw Dr. Walker leaving the house on Magnolia Street early in the morning, whistling, followed by that old dog of theirs, which had taken a liking to him. Frankly, people wondered what a wonderful man like Haylin Walker was doing associating with the Owens sisters, he was so kindhearted after all. He knew everyone's name, and all of their ailments, and when walking with Franny to the library for board meetings he reminded his patients to stop eating salt and take their medications. At night he came up to Franny's room. After she undressed he sometimes brushed her hair. He said there had never been a more beautiful color on earth, or a more beautiful woman, even though she knew that if that had ever been true, it wasn't anymore, except to him. She always wanted him in her bed, even though he was so tall and took up so much room. Even after all this time, when he kissed her everything left her mind except for the moment in time they were in, and the heat went through her, slowly, and she fell for him all over again, as if it were the first time.

Hay was still a whirlwind, working all hours, though Franny did her best to slow him down. With every step they took time was passing, spring was ending, summer was gone, ice was covering the windowpanes. Vincent's old dog passed away, the vines grew taller, Haylin's young patients grew up and began to bring their own children to him. Before they knew it, twenty years had gone by. They didn't know how time had moved so
quickly, but these were, by far, the best twenty years of their lives. For all that time they had managed to avoid the curse, meeting at midnight, then sneaking into each other's beds, saying their good-byes at dawn.

“The curse will never find us,” Hay always said.

“Is that possible?” Franny would then ask.

“Isn't that what we've done? We're here together, darling.”

“You two are like teenagers,” Jet teased them when she came upon them kissing in the parlor or the kitchen.

“But aren't we still?” Hay said with a grin.

“Oh, yes,” Franny said. “And you're still refusing to eat a tomato sandwich.”

“And you're still difficult.”

There was that grin, so how could she be annoyed? Still, she protested. “I was never difficult.”

“No,” Hay said, linking his arms around her, pulling her near. “Never once.”

As most doctors do, Haylin diagnosed himself. He had cancer and he knew enough to know it was too late. He conferred with an old friend at Mass General, a specialist in oncology and hematology, but he already knew what the advice would be. Live now.

He told Franny at the lake, where she wept in his arms. Still, he insisted there was always some good to come out of every circumstance. Now the curse could not touch him. They'd held it off with trickery. He was dying and nothing more could bring him to ruin. They could finally be husband and wife. It was too late for many things, but it was not too late for that. Jet had been
right. Whenever they looked at each other they saw the people they had first fallen in love with. She was a gawky, beautiful freckled girl with long red hair who liked tomato sandwiches for lunch and had shivered when he first kissed her. He was a tall boy who cared more about other people than about himself, one who had almost died of appendicitis at Harvard and who had refused to stop loving her, no matter what fate decreed.

That same afternoon when he told her he was dying, he went out and bought her an engagement ring, an emerald, which some people say is much preferable to a diamond, for it causes love to last. In certain lights it was the gray-green of her eyes, and in full sun it reminded her of the garden, a deep, lush green.

Haylin went to Jet for her permission to ask Reverend Willard if he would officiate at the service. Jet telephoned the Reverend, who said he would be honored to do so. Haylin then went over to his house and the men drank glasses of whiskey. The Reverend said he liked to get to know the people he would be marrying; it was more personal that way.

“We've been together since we were kids, sometimes more so and sometimes less so,” Haylin told him.

The Reverend congratulated Dr. Walker and said he was a lucky man. Franny was waiting for him at home. He walked so slowly now, it broke her heart to see it, but she waved and rushed out to meet him. She worried that the Reverend had changed his mind, and that Hay would be disappointed, but instead the men had wound up having several drinks.

“I told him it was the end of the curse,” Haylin assured Franny. “At least for us. If we're choosing anything, let's choose love.”

On the day the doctor married Frances Owens the whole
town came out to stand on the sidewalk and watch through the window of town hall, moved by the power of love. Some of the children had never even seen a member of the Owens family, for they weren't allowed to walk down Magnolia Street, and they wondered now why their parents had always been nervous about the tall lady with red hair. The Reverend wore his old black coat and his thin black tie. He had aged greatly, and was now quite stooped. His arthritis made it difficult for him to drive, so on Sundays, Jet often picked him up in the station wagon she and Franny had bought and she would drive the Reverend to the cemetery. They usually brought plastic lawn chairs so they might stay awhile, especially in fair weather. When the daffodils were blooming they brought armfuls along. They remembered Levi better than anyone, and because of this they often didn't need to speak. Jet still wore the moonstone. She had never once taken it off, not even to bathe.

As the wedding service was about to begin, the Reverend nodded to Jet, who was the maid of honor, dressed in a pale green shift. She nodded back, and in that quiet way they shared the grief the feud between their families had caused as well as the joy of the day.

Unable are the Loved to die, for Love is Immortality,
the Reverend quoted when he ended the service, a blessing not only for the husband and wife but for Jet as well, who understood his meaning in his choice of Emily Dickinson. Levi would always be with them.

When the happy couple walked out of town hall there were wild cheers. Franny hadn't even known there were so many people in their town. She hunched down, unused to all the attention. The doctor's patients threw rice and the children's chorus
from the elementary school sang “All You Need Is Love.” Franny carried a bunch of long-stemmed red roses. Hay was slowed down a bit by the problems with his leg and by the pain he was suffering, but he grinned and waved as if he had won a race, his arm around his bride, who was crying too much, right there in public, to notice much of anything other than how crowded the street was on this day. Even people who had always disliked the Owenses, and blamed them for every misfortune in town, had to agree that Frances Owens made a beautiful bride, even at her age, even though she dressed in black.

Dr. Walker moved into the old house, for he had no fear of curses, just of the pains and suffering of real life, and anyone could tell he was happy. People would see him watering the garden. He weeded between the rows of lettuce while singing to himself. He had to close down his office, but he'd talked a young doctor from Boston into taking over his practice, which was fortunate for him and even more fortunate for the town. These days Haylin wanted to spend as much time as he could with Franny, who liked to tease him about his new gardening mania. He'd put out a wooden box just inside the fence, filled it with lettuce, and urged their neighbors to take as much as they'd like.

“The best lettuce in the commonwealth, if we can keep the rabbits away,” he told people passing by.

“They're never going to walk through the gate,” Franny insisted.

And then the oddest thing happened, they did. His patients and her neighbors all came past the gate, and although some appeared to be nervous, they gratefully took the lettuce, heads of all varieties, each so good that people who made salads of the stuff dreamed of rabbits and of their own childhood gardens.

Charlie Merrill was now deceased, so Franny had asked his sons to bring over a bench so Hay could sit and rest out on the porch, which he had begun to do. He had slowed down, but not completely. He let Jet water the garden now and Franny weed, but all that summer he set out lettuce for his friends and patients.

“Aren't I lucky,” he said one evening when he and Franny were sitting on the bench holding hands, watching the dusk sift down. Hay remembered walking through Central Park, lying on the grass looking at stars, swimming in the cold pond just before he went away. He remembered Franny with her red hair pinned up haphazardly lying on the floor with him in the cook's room at her parents' house, naked and beautiful.

He tried not to take painkillers because he didn't want to spend any of his time with Franny in a haze. “I might have drowned long ago, and then we wouldn't have had all of this.”

Franny had no idea how it was possible to love him more, but she did. She thought perhaps that was the curse, to love someone so much when you knew he would leave you. But Hay was right.

“
We
are lucky,” she said.

“It was all because of third grade. When you walked into the classroom in a black coat, looking pissed off.”

Franny laughed. “I was not pissed off.” She looked at him. “Was I?”

“You most certainly were. Until I sat next to you.”

Haylin grinned, which undid her, as always. She leaned her head against his chest and wondered how on earth she could ever let him go.

“Was it fate?” she asked.

“Do we care?” he answered.

The truth was, they had managed to get what they wanted. It just wasn't lasting long enough, not that it ever could. When he passed, the doctor was sitting on the porch on an autumn night. The lilacs were blooming out of season. There were so many stars in the sky it was impossible to count them all. They had turned off the light on the back porch, the better to see the swirling show above them.

Oh, how beautiful
was the last thing he said.

There was no warning when it happened, and no pain, he just was there one moment and then he was gone. Franny sat outside with him all night. She was so cold in the morning that Jet brought her a pair of gloves. Charlie's sons took him to the funeral parlor in their new truck, with Franny insisting she go. She sat in the bed of the pickup with the doctor, who had been covered by a woolen blanket. She did not notice what roads they took or that the sky was piercingly blue. They made sure he was dressed in a black suit, with no shoes on, for that was the way people were buried in their family, in a plain pine coffin. Franny sat in the funeral parlor all night. Near midnight Jet came with a thermos of tea and a blanket for her sister and they sat together, not speaking, but holding hands, as they had when they were girls sitting on the roof that first summer they visited Aunt Isabelle's house, wondering where life would lead them.

The Walkers did not argue or protest Haylin's final resting place in the Owens cemetery. They were all buried in Bedford, New York, but they understood his place was not with them. His
family came up to Massachusetts in three long, black cars. The Reverend performed the service. It was brief, and allowed time for patients and friends to stand up and say their piece or give a blessing. The youngest speaker was nine. Dr. Walker had cared for him when he had appendicitis, and the speaker, who had been bought his first suit for the occasion, wanted to say that he had decided to become a doctor because of Dr. Walker.

Mr. Walker was old by then, and he had lost his only son. His wife had been gone for some time. Even though he was rich and had a new wife, even though Haylin had spent a lifetime quarreling with him, Mr. Walker was bereft. Franny made sure Haylin's father sat next to her, with Jet on his other side.