“No,” I said, with a shake of my head. “This is where I grew up. My home is in Golgotham. With Hexe.”
“Golgotham’s a haven for freaks and monstrosities,” my mother sniffed. “Decent humans have no place there.”
“I belong in that world far more than I ever have in yours,” I said flatly. “In fact—I’m a full-fledged Golgothamite now.”
My mother’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”
I turned to Clarence, who was in the process of sliding a nice, juicy slice of prime rib onto my father’s plate. “Clarence, could you bring me a pair of paper clips?”
“Of course, Miss Timmy,” he replied. Clarence nodded to Langston, who nimbly stepped in and took over the carving knife and fork, and then disappeared into the kitchen.
“What on earth do paper clips have to do with this?” my mother asked with a frown.
A few moments later, Clarence returned to the dining room, brandishing a pair of jumbo gold-colored paper clips. “Will these do, Miss Timmy?”
“Just what I need,” I smiled. “Thank you, Clarence.”
I quickly unbent the metal wires and used them to construct an impromptu sculpture utilizing the welter of tableware on either side of my plate. The “body” was fashioned from my coffee spoon, while its four “legs,” joined by the repurposed paper clips, were made from the salad and dessert fork, the seafood fork, and the butter knife. I decided it looked like a horse. Granted, a spindly, somewhat lopsided horse, but a horse nonetheless.
“What are you doing?” my mother sighed. “And couldn’t this have waited until after we’ve had dinner?”
“Your mother does have a point, Princess,” my father agreed as he munched on his prime rib.
“You asked me what I meant when I said I was a Golgothamite,” I replied, as I placed my handiwork down in the middle of the table. “It’s far easier for me to show you.”
I reached out to my creation, just as I had with the clockwork dragon, and felt the familiar spark of connection. Suddenly my ungainly little tableware horse began moving forward under its own steam across the tabletop, although the cocktail fork did result in giving it a pronounced limp.
My father dropped the roll he was buttering onto the floor, along with the knife he was using. To his credit, Clarence promptly retrieved the fallen utensil without batting an eye. My mother squealed in horror and threw her napkin at the thing stumping toward her, knocking it over. The “horse” lay on its side, its mismatched legs still moving, like those of a tipped turtle trying to regain purchase. Although I will admit to taking a certain satisfaction in freaking my mother out, I was genuinely surprised when she suddenly burst into tears and leapt up from the table, fleeing the room. I jumped up and hurried after her, leaving my father to poke at the now-lifeless construct with his own fork.
I found my mother in the conservatory. As unlikely as it seems, she has always had a green thumb. But where other “ladies who lunch” make a hobby out of cultivating orchids or tending bonsai gardens, her passion was container gardening—tomatoes, zucchini, squash, various peppers, cucumbers, even watermelons. Indeed, most of the vegetables that graced the family table were grown on the premises. But not only was her penthouse vegetable garden her hobby; it also served as my mother’s private refuge.
She was sitting in a wicker plantation chair, between the beefsteak tomatoes and the snap peas, daubing at the tears in her eyes with a tissue as she struggled to regain her composure.
“Mom—are you all right?” I asked gently. “I really didn’t mean to scare you like that.”
“I’m okay,” she said between sniffles. “I guess I should have known this day would come. After all, magic has its price. But I never thought the price would be you.”
I frowned in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
She heaved a deep sigh that seemed almost to deflate her. “All of this is my fault. I brought it upon myself and on you.”
“Mom, you’re not making any sense. . . .”
“I’m a complete fraud, you know,” she announced matter-of-factly. “A complete and utter fraud. Have been from the start.” She looked at me appraisingly. “Do you know where I was born?”
“Sure; in Philadelphia.”
“Oh, I was born in Pennsylvania, all right!” she said with a humorless laugh. “But not in Philly. I was actually born in rural Lancaster County, deep in Pennsylvania Dutch country, on a Mennonite farm.”
I blinked in surprise. Although my maternal grandparents had died long before I was born, I was fairly familiar with their family history. “I thought Grandfather Bieler owned a textile company.”
My mother smiled ruefully. “The closest my father came to textiles was the wool on the sheep he raised. I was the fourth of their seven children—yes, that’s right. I’m not an only child, either. You have aunts and uncles and rafts of cousins I’ve never told you about, most of them still in Lancaster County, I suppose.
“The farm I grew up on wasn’t big, but it wasn’t that small, either. The boys helped Father work the fields, while the girls kept the house and tended the livestock. Every morning before school I had to milk the goat and feed the chickens and then, when I got home, I had to muck out the horse stalls. And I hated every minute of it. The goats would try to butt me, the chickens would peck at me, and the horses were always trying to step on my feet. I promised myself that when I grew up, I would make sure I never had to look at the wrong end of a mule for the rest of my life.”
“Your parents—my grandparents—are they still alive?” I asked hopefully.
“I’m afraid not,” she replied, with a shake of her head. “My father died a couple years after I ran away when a tractor rolled over on him. My mother died of cancer, not long before you were born.
“They were good people, I suppose—but uneducated. Neither of them had graduated from high school. My mother was fifteen when she married my father and sixteen when she started popping out kids. I never really knew her that well—she was always either pregnant or tired. I wasn’t particularly close to any of my siblings, either—I was the only one of the litter who had dreams of doing something besides working on a farm or marrying a farmer. I wanted bigger, better things than that, and was determined to escape the first chance I got. So I ran away from home when I was seventeen. I wanted to go to New York City and become a dancer on Broadway. It took some doing, but I eventually got there.”
My jaw dropped in surprise. “You were a showgirl?”
“I realize I’m your mother, but you don’t have to look that incredulous,” she chided. “Yes, I was a showgirl—and a damn good one, too. I could line-kick with the best of ’em, and in high heels, no less.” She paused to study me for a moment. “Did I ever tell you how your father and I first met?”
“Sure,” I replied automatically. “It was at the after-party for the Met’s staging of Rossini’s Cinderella. . . .”
“It was at an after-party—but for A Chorus Line, not the opera. It was being held out in the Hamptons, and one of the producers of the show I was in asked me to be his ‘date.’ He was queer as a three-dollar bill, of course, but he would bring me along as arm candy, for appearances’ sake. When we got there, I realized the mansion was full of younger society types—the ones who went to Elaine’s and Studio 54. Everywhere I looked there were glamorous women with pedigrees as long as my arm, dressed in the latest from Paris, and literally dripping with diamonds. I felt like a hick farm girl with hayseeds in my hair and pig shit on my shoes.