Second Nature

Table of Contents

 

Praise for
SECOND NATURE
and
Alice Hoffman...

“A rich and satisfying concoction ... [A] modern fairy tale, full of insights into the battle between instinct and upbringing, desire and conformity.”
—BOOKLIST

 
“Hoffman is a prolific and fine-tuned writer ... Everywhere within the larger structure of this book, in niches such beauty flourishes.”

 
 
 
 
“Iridescent prose, taut narrative suspense, alluring atmosphere, vivid characters.”

 
 
 
 
“A phenomenally romantic tale.”

 
 
 
 
“Another page-turner ...
Second Nature
is first-rate storytelling.”

“Beautifully written, suspenseful and thought-provoking.”

 
 
 
“Hoffman gets inside her characters and manages to make them all sympathetic and often downright touching ... a riveting novel.”

—
NEWSDAY

 
 
 
 
“Lyrical ... richly ambiguous.”

 
 
 
 
“Once again, Hoffman stirs up the unlikely with the ordinary and seasons it, expertly, deliciously, with our darkest desires.”

 
 
 
 
“A wise and gracious reminder that maybe what we really want is simpler than we think.”

 
 
 
 
“Hoffman is an endlessly fascinating writer.”

 
 
 
 
“Alice Hoffman takes seemingly ordinary lives and lets us see and feel extraordinary things.”

—AMY TAN

“She is a born storyteller.”

 
 
 
 
 
“Showing the magic that lies below the surface of everyday life is just what we hope for in a satisfying novel, and that’s what Ms. Hoffman gives us every time.”

 
 
 
 
“Hoffman’s novels get better and better.”

 
 
 
 
 
“With her glorious prose and extraordinary eye for the magic of the mundane ... Alice Hoffman seems to know what it means to be a human being.”

—SUSAN ISAACS,
NEWSDAY

 
 
 
“A reader is in good hands with Alice Hoffman, able to count on many pleasures. She is one of our quirkiest and most interesting novelists, and her skills and talents increase with each new book.”

 
—JANE SMILEY,
USA TODAY

 
“Magnificent.”

—
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

 
 
“A spectacular novel.”

—SUSAN ISAACS,
WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

 
 
“Hard to put down ... full of characters who take hold of your heart.”

 
 
“Beautiful.”

 
 
 
“Pure magic.”

—
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

 
 
“She is a born storyteller ... and
Turtle Moon
is one of her best.”

 
 
 
 
PRACTICAL MAGIC

 
“A beautiful, moving book about the power of love and the desires of the heart.”

 
 
 
“Splendid ...
Practical Magic
is one of her best novels, showing on every page her gift for touching ordinary life as if with a wand, to reveal how extraordinary life really is.”

“One of her most lyrical works ... Hoffman is at her best.”

 
—
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BOOK REVIEW

 
 
 
“Charmingly told, and a good deal of fun.”

 
 
 
 
“Written with a light hand and perfect rhythm ...
Practical Magic
has the pace of a fairy tale but the impact of accomplished fiction.”

—
PEOPLE

 
 
 
“A sweet, sweet story that, like the best fairy tales, says more than at first it seems to.”

 
—
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

 
 
 
“[Hoffman] has proved once again her potency as a storyteller, combining the mundane with the fantastic in a totally engaging way.”

 
 
 
“[A] delicious fantasy of witchcraft and love in a world where gardens smell of lemon verbena and happy endings are possible.”

 
 
 
“Hoffman’s best... readers will relish this magical tale.”

PROPERTY OF 
THE DROWNING SEASON 
ANGEL LANDING 
WHITE HORSES 
FORTUNE’S DAUGHTER 
ILLUMINATION NIGHT 
AT RISK 
SEVENTH HEAVEN 
TURTLE MOON 
PRACTICAL MAGIC 
HERE ON EARTH 
LOCAL GIRLS

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B2, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
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(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
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(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196.
South Africa

 
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 
SECOND NATURE 
A Berkley Book / published in arrangement with Property Of, Inc.

 
Copyright © 1994 by Alice Hoffman.

eISBN : 978-0-425-16163-0

 

—JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

BY APRIL MOST PEOPLE HAD already forgotten about him, except for some of the nurses on the floor, who crossed themselves when they walked past his room. The guard stationed outside his door, who had little to do but read magazines and drink coffee for more than three months, bragged to his friends that on nights when there was a full moon he needed a whip and a chair just to set a dinner tray on the other side of the door. But in fact, the guard had never even dared to look around the room, where the metal bed was made up with clean white sheets every week, though it had not once been slept in.

The man who occupied the room had no name. He refused to look anyone in the eye or, even after months of work with the speech therapists, to make any sound whatsoever, at least not in the presence of others. Officially he was listed as patient 3119, but among themselves the staff called him the Wolf Man, although they were expressly forbidden to do so. He was underweight and had a long scar along the inside of one thigh that had healed years before but still turned purple on cold or rainy days. For two months he’d needed to wear a cast on his reconstructed foot; otherwise he was in surprisingly good health. Since he had no birthday, the staff at Kelvin Medical Center had assigned him one. They’d chipped in to buy him a sweater, blue wool, on sale at Bloomingdale’s, and one of the cooks had baked and frosted an angel food cake. But that was back in January, after he learned to use a fork and dress himself, and they’d still had hope for him. Now, they left him alone, and when he sat motionless, and sunlight came through the bars on his window, some of the nurses swore that his eyes turned yellow.

The evening before his transfer upstate, the barber was sent to his room. There would be no need to sweep the floor after his shave and haircut; the raven that had been perching on the window ledge was waiting to dart through the bars and gather up the hair to wind into its nest. One lab technician, who had been brave enough to look through the glass window in the door, had once seen the raven eating right out of his plate while the Wolf Man calmly continued with his dinner. Now, the raven watched as the attendants strapped the Wolf Man into a metal chair and held his head back. The barber wanted no chances taken; a human bite was the most dangerous of all. In the interest of speed, he used a razor rather than scissors, and while he worked he quickly recited a blessing.

The following morning, two attendants helped the Wolf Man into a black overcoat, which would be taken away once he settled into the State Hospital, since he’d never need it again and another patient could make use of it. The cook who had baked the angel food cake for his birthday wept. She insisted he had smiled when she lit the candles on the cake, but no one believed her, except the guard stationed at his door, who had been made so anxious by this bit of news that he took to biting his fingernails, close enough to the skin to draw blood.

The cook had discovered that the Wolf Man would not eat meat unless it was raw. He liked his potatoes unbaked as well, and would not touch a salad or a pudding. For his last meal, an early breakfast, she had simply passed a hamburger patty over a flame for a moment. So what if uncooked meat was bad for you, and most of the patients liked cereal and toast, she wanted him to have what he liked. She had an impulse to hide a knife or a screwdriver inside the folded napkin, because she knew that as soon as he’d eaten his breakfast, he would be handcuffed, then released into the custody of a social worker from the State Hospital for the ride along the Hudson. By afternoon he would be signed into a ward from which no one was ever released. But she didn’t follow her impulse, and after the Wolf Man had his meal, the attendants dressed him and helped him into the black overcoat, then clasped the handcuffs on him, quickly, from behind, before he could fight back.

Outside the door, the guard turned his Walkman up to the highest volume, and he slipped his sunglasses on, though the April sky threatened to storm. His friends liked to hear stories about the Wolf Man—how he crouched and circled three times before he curled up to sleep with his back against the wall, that five strong men were needed to hold him down each time they drew blood or inoculated him against measles and tetanus—and the guard was always happy to oblige. But what he never mentioned, as he drank cold beer with his friends, was that on nights when there was thunder he often heard a whimpering behind the door, a sound so pitiful it turned his bones cold and his heart inside out.