Magic for Beginners: Stories (9 page)

“So that you won’t go around doing it for fun,” he said. “Are
you going to do it again?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, making a face.

“Then I’m going to go wash up and change clothes. What were you
eating, anyway?”

“Grass,” Tilly said.

“Well, no wonder,” Henry said. “I thought you were smarter than
that, Tilly. Don’t do that anymore.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Tilly said. She spat in the grass.

When Henry opened the front door, he could hear Catherine
talking in the kitchen. “The funny thing is,” she said, “none of it
was true. It was just made up, just like something Carleton would
do. Just to get attention.”

“Dad,” Carleton said. He was jumping up and down on one foot.
“Want to hear a song?”

“I was looking for you,” Henry said. “Did Alison bring you home?
Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

“Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?” Carleton said.

Someone in the kitchen laughed, as if they had heard this.

“I had an accident,” Henry said, whispering. “But you’re right,
Carleton, I should go change.” He took a shower, rinsed and wrung
out his shirt, put on clean clothes, but by the time he got
downstairs, Catherine and Carleton and Tilly were eating Cheerios
for dinner. They were using paper bowls, plastic spoons, as if it
were a picnic. “Liz was here, and Alison, but they were going to a
movie,” she said. “They said they’d meet you some other day. It was
awful—when they came in the door, King Spanky went rushing outside.
He’s been watching the rabbits all day. If he catches one, Tilly is
going to be so upset.”

“Tilly’s been eating grass,” Henry said.

Tilly rolled her eyes. As if.

“Not again!” Catherine said. “Tilly, real people don’t eat
grass. Oh, look, fantastic, there’s King Spanky. Who let him in?
What’s he got in his mouth?”

King Spanky sits with his back to them. He coughs and something
drops to the floor, maybe a frog, or a baby rabbit. It goes
scrabbling across the floor, half-leaping, dragging one leg. King
Spanky just sits there, watching as it disappears under the sofa.
Carleton freaks out. Tilly is shouting “Bad King Spanky! Bad cat!”
When Henry and Catherine push the sofa back, it’s too late, there’s
just King Spanky and a little blob of sticky blood on the
floor.

Catherine would like to write a novel. She’d like to write a
novel with no children in it. The problem with novels with children
in them is that bad things will happen either to the children or
else to the parents. She wants to write something funny, something
romantic.

It isn’t very comfortable to sit down now that she’s so big.
She’s started writing on the walls. She writes in pencil. She names
her characters after paint colors. She imagines them leading
beautiful, happy, useful lives. No haunted toasters. No mothers no
children no crocodiles no photocopy machines no Leonard Felters.
She writes for two or three hours, and then she paints the walls
again before anyone gets home. That’s always the best part.

“I need you next weekend,” The Crocodile said. Her rubber band
ball sat on the floor beside her desk. She had her feet up on it,
in an attempt to show it who was boss. The rubber band ball was
getting too big for its britches. Someone was going to have to
teach it a lesson, send it a memo.

She looked tired. Henry said, “You don’t need me.”

“I do,” The Crocodile said, yawning. “I
do
. The clients
want to take you out to dinner at Four Seasons when they come in to
town. They want to go see musicals with you.
Rent
.
Phantom of the Cabaret Lion
. They want to go to Coney
Island with you and eat hot dogs. They want to go out to trendy
bars and clubs and pick up strippers and publicists and performance
artists. They want to talk about poetry, philosophy, sports,
politics, their lousy relationships with their fathers. They want
to ask you for advice about their love lives. They want you to come
to the weddings of their children and make toasts. You’re
indispensable, honey. I hope you know that.”

“Catherine and I are having some problems with rabbits,” Henry
said. The rabbits were easier to explain than the other thing.
“They’ve taken over the yard. Things are a little crazy.”

“I don’t know anything about rabbits,” The Crocodile said,
digging her pointy heels into the flesh of the rubber band ball
until she could feel the red rubber blood come running out. She
pinned Henry with her beautiful, watery eyes.

“Henry.” She said his name so gently that he had to lean forward
to hear what she was saying.

She said, “You have the best of both worlds. A wife and children
who adore you, a beautiful house in the country, a secure job at a
company that depends on you, a boss who appreciates your talents,
clients who think you’re the shit. You
are
the shit,
Henry, and the thing is, you’re probably thinking that no one
deserves to have all this. You think you have to make a choice. You
think you have to give up something. But you don’t have to give up
anything, Henry, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a fucking
rabbit. Don’t listen to them. You can have it all. You
deserve
to have it all. You love your job. Do you love
your job?”

“I love my job,” Henry says. The Crocodile smiles at him
tearily.

It’s true. He loves his job.

When Henry came home, it must have been after midnight, because
he never got home before midnight. He found Catherine standing on a
ladder in the kitchen, one foot resting on the sink. She was
wearing her gas mask, a black cotton sports bra, and a pair of
black sweatpants rolled down so he could see she wasn’t wearing any
underwear. Her stomach stuck out so far, she had to hold her arms
at a funny angle to run the roller up and down the wall in front of
her. Up and down in a V. Then fill the V in. She had painted the
kitchen ceiling a shade of purple so dark, it almost looked black.
Midnight Eggplant.

Catherine has been buying paints from a specialty catalog. All
the colors are named after famous books,
Madame Bovary
,
Forever Amber
,
Fahrenheit
451
,
Tin
Drum,
A Curtain of Green
,
Twenty Thousand Leagues
Beneath the Sea
. She was painting the walls
Catch-
22
, a novel she’d taught over and over
again to undergraduates. It always went over well. The paint color
was nice too. She couldn’t decide if she missed teaching. The thing
about teaching and having children is that you always ended up
treating your children like undergraduates, and your undergraduates
like children. There was a particular tone of voice. She’d even
used it on Henry a few times, just to see if it worked.

All the cabinets were fenced around with masking tape, like a
crime scene. The room stank of new paint.

Catherine took off the gas mask and said, “Tilly picked it out.
What do you think?” Her hands were on her hips. Her stomach poked
out at Henry. The gas mask had left a ring of white and red around
her eyes and chin.

Henry said, “How was the dinner party?”

“We had fettuccine. Liz and Marcus stayed and helped me do the
dishes.”

(“Is something wrong with your dishwasher?” “No. I mean, yes.
We’re getting a new one.”)

She had had a feeling. It had been a feeling like déjà vu, or
being drunk, or falling in love. Like teaching. She had imagined an
audience of rabbits out on the lawn, watching her dinner party. A
classroom of rabbits, watching a documentary. Rabbit television.
Her skin had felt electric.

“So she’s a lawyer?” Henry said.

“You haven’t even met them yet,” Catherine said, suddenly
feeling possessive. “But I like them. I really, really like them.
They wanted to know all about us. You. I think they think that
either we’re having marriage problems or that you’re imaginary.
Finally I took Liz upstairs and showed her your stuff in the
closet. I pulled out the wedding album and showed them photos.”

“Maybe we could invite them over on Sunday? For a cookout?”
Henry said.

“They’re away next weekend,” Catherine said. “They’re going up
to the mountains on Friday. They have a house up there. They’ve
invited us. To come along.”

“I can’t,” Henry said. “I have to take care of some clients next
weekend. Some big shots. We’re having some cash flow problems.
Besides, are you allowed to go away? Did you check with your
doctor, what’s his name again, Dr. Marks?”

“You mean, did I get my permission slip signed?” Catherine said.
Henry put his hand on her leg and held on. “Dr. Marks said I’m
shipshape. Those were his exact words. Or maybe he said tip-top. It
was something alliterative.”

“Well, I guess you ought to go, then,” Henry said. He rested his
head against her stomach. She let him. He looked so tired. “Before
Golf Cart shows up. Or what is Tilly calling the baby now?”

“She’s around here somewhere,” Catherine said. “I keep putting
her back in her bed and she keeps getting out again. Maybe she’s
looking for you.”

“Did you get my email?” Henry said. He was listening to
Catherine’s stomach. He wasn’t going to stop touching her unless
she told him to.

“You know I can’t check email on your computer anymore,”
Catherine said.

“This is so stupid,” Henry said. “This house isn’t haunted.
There isn’t any such thing as a haunted house.”

“It isn’t the house,” Catherine said. “It’s the stuff we brought
with us. Except for the downstairs bathroom, and that might just be
a draft, or an electrical problem. The house is fine. I love the
house.”

“Our stuff is fine,” Henry said. “I love our stuff.”

“If you really think our stuff is fine,” Catherine said, “then
why did you buy a new alarm clock? Why do you keep throwing out the
soap?”

“It’s the move,” Henry said. “It was a hard move.”

“King Spanky hasn’t eaten his food in three days,” Catherine
said. “At first I thought it was the food, and I bought new food
and he came down and ate it and I realized it wasn’t the food, it
was King Spanky. I couldn’t sleep all night, knowing he was up
under the bed. Poor spooky guy. I don’t know what to do. Take him
to the vet? What do I say? Excuse me, but I think my cat is
haunted? Anyway, I can’t get him out of the bed. Not even with the
old alarm clock, the haunted one.”

“I’ll try,” Henry said. “Let me try and see if I can get him
out.” But he didn’t move. Catherine tugged at a piece of his hair
and he put up his hand. She gave him her roller. He popped off the
cylinder and bagged it and put it in the freezer, which was full of
paintbrushes and other rollers. He helped Catherine down from the
ladder. “I wish you would stop painting.”

“I can’t,” she said. “It has to be perfect. If I can just get it
right, then everything will go back to normal and stop being
haunted and the rabbits won’t tunnel under the house and make it
fall down, and you’ll come home and stay home, and our neighbors
will finally get to meet you and they’ll like you and you’ll like
them, and Carleton will stop being afraid of everything, and Tilly
will fall asleep in her own bed, and stay there, and—”

“Hey,” Henry said. “It’s all going to work out. It’s all good. I
really like this color.”

“I don’t know,” Catherine said. She yawned. “You don’t think it
looks too old-fashioned?”

They went upstairs and Catherine took a bath while Henry tried
to coax King Spanky out of the bed. But King Spanky wouldn’t come
out. When Henry got down on his hands and knees, and stuck the
flashlight under the bed, he could see King Spanky’s eyes, his tail
hanging down from the box frame.

Out on the lawn the rabbits were perfectly still. Then they
sprang up in the air, turning and dropping and landing and then
freezing again. Catherine stood at the window of the bathroom,
toweling her hair. She turned the bathroom light off, so that she
could see them better. The moonlight picked out their shining eyes,
the moon-colored fur, each hair tipped in paint. They were playing
some rabbit game like leapfrog. Or they were dancing the quadrille.
Fighting a rabbit war. Did rabbits fight wars? Catherine didn’t
know. They ran at each other and then turned and darted back,
jumping and crouching and rising up on their back legs. A pair of
rabbits took off like racehorses, sailing through the air and over
a long curled shape in the grass. Then back over again. She put her
face against the window. It was Tilly, stretched out against the
grass, Tilly’s legs and feet bare and white.

“Tilly,” she said, and ran out of the bathroom, wearing only the
towel around her hair.

“What is it?” Henry said as Catherine darted past him, and down
the stairs. He ran after her, and by the time she had opened the
front door, was kneeling beside Tilly, the wet grass tickling her
thighs and her belly, Henry was there, too, and he picked up Tilly
and was carrying her back into the house. They wrapped her in a
blanket and put her in her bed, and because neither of them wanted
to sleep in the bed where King Spanky was hiding, they lay down on
the sofa in the family room, curled up against each other. When
they woke up in the morning, Tilly was asleep in a ball at their
feet.

For a whole minute or two, last year, Catherine thought she had
it figured out. She was married to a man whose specialty was
solving problems, salvaging bad situations. If she did something
dramatic enough, if she fucked up badly enough, it would save her
marriage. And it did, except that once the problem was solved and
the marriage was saved and the baby was conceived and the house was
bought, then Henry went back to work.

She stands at the window in the bedroom and looks out at all the
trees. For a minute she imagines that Carleton is right, and they
are living in Central Park and Fifth Avenue is just right over
there. Henry’s office is just a few blocks away. All those rabbits
are just tourists.