Magic for Beginners: Stories (7 page)

“Scented markers,” Catherine said. She stood in the door,
holding a pillow against her stomach. “I was sleeping downstairs on
the sofa. You walked right past and didn’t see me.”

“The front door was unlocked,” Henry said.

“Liz says nobody ever locks their doors out here,” Catherine
said. “Are you coming to bed, or were you just stopping by to see
how we were?”

“I have to go back in tomorrow.” Henry said. He pulled a
toothbrush out of his pocket and showed it to her. “There’s a box
of Krispy Kreme donuts on the kitchen counter.”

“Delete the donuts,” Catherine said. “I’m not that easy.” She
took a step towards him and accidentally kicked King Spanky. The
cat yowled. Carleton woke up. He said, “Who’s there? Who’s
there?”

“It’s me,” Henry said. He knelt beside Carleton’s bed in the
light of the Winnie the Pooh lamp. “I brought you a new
toothbrush.”

Carleton whimpered.

“What’s wrong, spaceman?” Henry said. “It’s just a toothbrush.”
He leaned towards Carleton and Carleton scooted back. He began to
scream.

In the other bed, Tilly was dreaming about rabbits. When she’d
come home from school, she and Carleton had seen rabbits, sitting
on the lawn as if they had kept watch over the house all the time
that Tilly had been gone. In her dream they were still there. She
dreamed she was creeping up on them. They opened their mouths, wide
enough to reach inside like she was some kind of rabbit dentist,
and so she did. She put her hand around something small and cold
and hard. Maybe it was a ring, a diamond ring. Or a. Or. It was a.
She couldn’t wait to show Carleton. Her arm was inside the rabbit
all the way to her shoulder. Someone put their little cold hand
around her wrist and yanked. Somewhere her mother was talking. She
said—

“It’s the beard.”

Catherine couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry or scream like
Carleton. That would surprise Carleton, if she started screaming
too. “Shoo! Shoo, Henry—go shave and come back as quick as you can,
or else he’ll never go back to sleep.”

“Carleton, honey,” she was saying as Henry left the room. “It’s
your dad. It’s not Santa Claus. It’s not the big bad wolf. It’s
your dad. Your dad just forgot. Why don’t you tell me a story? Or
do you want to go watch your daddy shave?”

Catherine’s hot water bottle was draped over the tub. Towels
were heaped on the floor. Henry’s things had been put away behind
the mirror. It made him feel tired, thinking of all the other
things that still had to be put away. He washed his hands, then
looked at the bar of soap. It didn’t feel right. He put it back on
the sink, bent over and sniffed it and then tore off a piece of
toilet paper, used the toilet paper to pick up the soap. He threw
it in the trash and unwrapped a new bar of soap. There was nothing
wrong with the new soap. There was nothing wrong with the old soap
either. He was just tired. He washed his hands and lathered up his
face, shaved off his beard and watched the little bristles of hair
wash down the sink. When he went to show Carleton his brand-new
face, Catherine was curled up in bed beside Carleton. They were
both asleep. They were still asleep when he left the house at 5:30
the next morning.

“Where are you?” Catherine said.

“I’m on my way home. I’m on the train.” The train was still in
the station. They would be leaving any minute. They had been
leaving any minute for the last hour or so, and before that, they
had had to get off the train twice, and then back on again. They
had been assured there was nothing to worry about. There was no
bomb threat. There was no bomb. The delay was only temporary. The
people on the train looked at each other, trying to seem as if they
were not looking. Everyone had their cell phones out.

“The rabbits are out on the lawn again,” Catherine said. “There
must be at least fifty or sixty. I’ve never counted rabbits before.
Tilly keeps trying to go outside to make friends with them, but as
soon as she’s outside, they all go bouncing away like beach balls.
I talked to a lawn specialist today. He says we need to do
something about it, which is what Liz was saying. Rabbits can be a
big problem out here. They’ve probably got tunnels and warrens all
through the yard. It could be a problem. Like living on top of a
sinkhole. But Tilly is never going to forgive us. She knows
something’s up. She says she doesn’t want a dog anymore. It would
scare away the rabbits. Do you think we should get a dog?”

“So what do they do? Put out poison? Dig up the yard?” Henry
said. The man in the seat in front of him got up. He took his bags
out of the luggage rack and left the train. Everyone watched him
go, pretending they were not.

“He was telling me they have these devices, kind of like
ultrasound equipment. They plot out the tunnels, close them up, and
then gas the rabbits. It sounds gruesome,” Catherine said. “And
this kid, this baby has been kicking the daylights out of me. All
day long it’s kick, kick, jump, kick, like some kind of martial
artist. He’s going to be an angry kid, Henry. Just like his sister.
Her sister. Or maybe I’m going to give birth to rabbits.”

“As long as they have your eyes and my chin,” Henry said.

“I’ve gotta go,” Catherine said. “I have to pee again. All day
long it’s the kid jumping, me peeing, Tilly getting her heart
broken because she can’t make friends with the rabbits, me worrying
because she doesn’t want to make friends with other kids, just with
rabbits, Carleton asking if today he has to go to school, does he
have to go to school tomorrow, why am I making him go to school
when everybody there is bigger than him, why is my stomach so big
and fat, why does his teacher tell him to act like a big boy?
Henry, why are we doing this again? Why am I pregnant? And where
are you? Why aren’t you here? What about our deal? Don’t you want
to be here?”

“I’m sorry,” Henry said. “I’ll talk to The Crocodile. We’ll work
something out.”

“I thought you wanted this too, Henry. Don’t you?”

“Of course,” Henry said. “Of course I want this.”

“I’ve gotta go,” Catherine said again. “Liz is bringing some
women over. We’re finally starting that book club. We’re going to
read
Fight Club
. Her stepdaughter Alison is going to look
after Tilly and Carleton for me. I’ve already talked to Tilly. She
promises she won’t bite or hit or make Alison cry.”

“What’s the trade? A few hours of bonus TV?”

“No,” Catherine said. “Something’s up with the TV.”

“What’s wrong with the TV?”

“I don’t know,” Catherine said. “It’s working fine. But the kids
won’t go near it. Isn’t that great? It’s the same thing as the
toothbrush. You’ll see when you get home. I mean, it’s not just the
kids. I was watching the news earlier, and then I had to turn it
off. It wasn’t the news. It was the TV.”

“So it’s the downstairs bathroom and the coffeemaker and
Carleton’s toothbrush and now the TV?”

“There’s some other stuff as well, since this morning. Your
office, apparently. Everything in it—your desk, your bookshelves,
your chair, even the paper clips.”

“That’s probably a good thing, right? I mean, that way they’ll
stay out of there.”

“I guess,” Catherine said. “The thing is, I went and stood in
there for a while and it gave me the creeps too. So now I can’t
pick up email. And I had to throw out more soap. And King Spanky
doesn’t love the alarm clock anymore. He won’t come out from under
the bed when I set it off.”

“The alarm clock too?”

“It does sound different,” Catherine said. “Just a little bit
different. Or maybe I’m insane. This morning, Carleton told me that
he knew where our house was. He said we were living in a secret
part of Central Park. He said he recognizes the trees. He thinks
that if he walks down that little path, he’ll get mugged. I’ve
really got to go, Henry, or I’m going to wet my pants, and I don’t
have time to change again before everyone gets here.”

“I love you,” Henry said.

“Then why aren’t you here?” Catherine said victoriously. She
hung up and ran down the hallway towards the downstairs bathroom.
But when she got there, she turned around. She went racing up the
stairs, pulling down her pants as she went, and barely got to the
master bedroom bathroom in time. All day long she’d gone up and
down the stairs, feeling extremely silly. There was nothing wrong
with the downstairs bathroom. It’s just the fixtures. When you
flush the toilet or run water in the sink. She doesn’t like the
sound the water makes.

Several times now, Henry had come home and found Catherine
painting rooms, which was a problem. The problem was that Henry
kept going away. If he didn’t keep going away, he wouldn’t have to
keep coming home. That was Catherine’s point. Henry’s point was
that Catherine wasn’t supposed to be painting rooms while she was
pregnant. Pregnant women weren’t supposed to breathe around paint
fumes.

Catherine solved this problem by wearing the gas mask while she
painted. She had known the gas mask would come in handy. She told
Henry she promised to stop painting as soon as he started working
at home, which was the plan. Meanwhile, she couldn’t decide on
colors. She and Carleton and Tilly spent hours looking at paint
strips with colors that had names like Sangria, Peat Bog, Tulip,
Tantrum, Planetarium, Galactica, Tea Leaf, Egg Yolk, Tinker Toy,
Gauguin, Susan, Envy, Aztec, Utopia, Wax Apple, Rice Bowl, Cry
Baby, Fat Lip, Green Banana, Trampoline, Finger Nail. It was a
wonderful way to spend time. They went off to school, and when they
got home, the living room would be Harp Seal instead of Full Moon.
They’d spend some time with that color, getting to know it,
ignoring the television, which was haunted (
haunted
wasn’t
the right word, of course, but Catherine couldn’t think what the
right word was) and then a couple of days later, Catherine would go
buy some more primer and start again. Carleton and Tilly loved
this. They begged her to repaint their bedrooms. She did.

She wished she could eat paint. Whenever she opened a can of
paint, her mouth watered. When she’d been pregnant with Carleton,
she hadn’t been able to eat anything except for olives and hearts
of palm and dry toast. When she’d been pregnant with Tilly, she’d
eaten dirt, once, in Central Park. Tilly thought they should name
the baby after a paint color, Chalk, or Dilly Dilly, or Keelhauled.
Lapis Lazulily. Knock Knock.

Catherine kept meaning to ask Henry to take the television and
put it in the garage. Nobody ever watched it now. They’d had to
stop using the microwave as well, and a colander, some of the
flatware, and she was keeping an eye on the toaster. She had a
premonition, or an intuition. It didn’t feel wrong, not yet, but
she had a feeling about it. There was a gorgeous pair of earrings
that Henry had given her—how was it possible to be spooked by a
pair of diamond earrings?—and yet. Carleton wouldn’t play with his
Lincoln Logs, and so they were going to the Salvation Army, and
Tilly’s armadillo purse had disappeared. Tilly hadn’t said anything
about it, and Catherine hadn’t wanted to ask.

Sometimes, if Henry wasn’t coming home, Catherine painted after
Carleton and Tilly went to bed. Sometimes Tilly would walk into the
room where Catherine was working, Tilly’s eyes closed, her mouth
open, a tourist-somnambulist. She’d stand there, with her head
cocked towards Catherine. If Catherine spoke to her, she never
answered, and if Catherine took her hand, she would follow
Catherine back to her own bed and lie down again. But sometimes
Catherine let Tilly stand there and keep her company. Tilly was
never so attentive, so
present
, when she was awake.
Eventually she would turn and leave the room and Catherine would
listen to her climb back up the stairs. Then she would be alone
again.

Catherine dreams about colors. It turns out her marriage was the
same color she had just painted the foyer. Velveteen Fade. Leonard
Felter, who had had an ongoing affair with two of his graduate
students, several adjuncts, two tenured faculty members, brought
down Catherine’s entire department, and saved Catherine’s marriage,
would make a good lipstick or nail polish. Peach Nooky. There’s The
Crocodile, a particularly bilious Eau De Vil, a color that tastes
bad when you say it. Her mother, who had always been disappointed
by Catherine’s choices, turned out to have been a beautiful, rich,
deep chocolate. Why hadn’t Catherine ever seen that before? Too
late, too late. It made her want to cry.

Liz and she are drinking paint. “Have some more paint,”
Catherine says. “Do you want sugar?”

“Yes, lots,” Liz says. “What color are you going to paint the
rabbits?”

Catherine passes her the sugar. She hasn’t even thought about
the rabbits, except which rabbits does Liz mean, the stone rabbits
or the real rabbits? How do you make them hold still?

“I got something for you,” Liz says. She’s got Tilly’s armadillo
purse. It’s full of paint strips. Catherine’s mouth fills with
saliva.

Henry dreams he has an appointment with the exterminator.
“You’ve got to take care of this,” he says. “We have two small
children. These things could be rabid. They might carry
plague.”

“See what I can do,” the exterminator says, sounding glum. He
stands next to Henry. He’s an odd-looking, twitchy guy. He has big
ears. They contemplate the skyscrapers that poke out of the grass
like obelisks. The lawn is teeming with skyscrapers. “Never seen
anything like this before. Never wanted to see anything like this.
But if you want my opinion, it’s the house that’s the real
problem—”

“Never mind about my wife,” Henry says. He squats down beside a
knee-high art-deco skyscraper, and peers into a window. A little
man looks back at him and shakes his fists, screaming something
obscene. Henry flicks a finger at the window, almost hard enough to
break it. He feels hot all over. He’s never felt this angry before
in his life, not even when Catherine told him that she’d
accidentally slept with Leonard Felter. The little bastard is going
to regret what he just said, whatever it was. He lifts his
foot.