She is no fairy—she is a witch.
An evil witch who ruined my husband’s nature, then robbed me of my joy.
Because it must have been her, who else could it have been, it was clearly her.
Wasn’t it?
“It was you,” I hiss, and as my voice strengthens, so does my certainty. “You were the one. The one who stole my passion. My life’s spark. You told me the dress, the glass slippers, the carriage were your gifts, because I was good, because I deserved it—but you lied, they weren’t gifts, your magic wasn’t free, you made me pay for everything, didn’t you? And the price was too high, and it ruined my life, it ruined my marriage, because I never felt completely right, I never felt completely there, I knew in my heart that something was always missing, something was always missing in my heart, and now I see what it was! Everything, everything is your fault, you knew just how it would play out, you arranged for all this to happen—”
Swiftly, irritably, she waves her hand about, as though dissipating some bothersome smell. A sudden silence stretches from one wall of her overheated room to the other. She continues to blink at me through her glasses, yet now she looks concerned, and all at once I feel a bit disoriented. To get my bearings, I glance at the framed diploma above her desk, at the box of tissues on the table next to her, at her plump middle-aged figure settled in her ample leather armchair, and the familiarity of my surroundings serves to quiet my agitation, as it always does.
“You are still doing it, I’m afraid,” she offers, gravely. “Still blaming outside circumstances for your own actions and shortcomings. Yet anger is a healthy emotion, even when misdirected, so I feel we’ve made progress today.” She sets down her pen, gently closes the notebook she holds in her lap, reaches for the tissues, and hands them to me just as her face begins to grow imprecise through the sheen of my tears. “Our hour is up, but we will pick this up next week. And in our next session, I want to work on your sense of self-worth, so let’s return to our discussion of your Cinderella complex. We talked about it back in the fall, remember, when you were first considering separation. Why did you think your husband was your benefactor when he married you? Did you believe that he was better than you in some way? Was it just his wealth and your inferior social status, as you perceived it, or were there other reasons, too? I want you to think about these things during the week, and we’ll talk about them next Tuesday at eleven. Here, let me write down the time for you, you’ve been forgetting our appointments lately. Of course, stress will make you forget a few things.”
She makes a pencil note on her business card, and I take it with a grateful nod, blow my nose, and stand up to put on my coat, and step outside. The cold suburban street stretches as far as the eye can see. I walk in the noonday glare, sliding my finger along the surface of the card, touching the raised letters of “Dr. Faye Wand, Licensed Therapist” embossed in its snowy white center. Just before I reach my sister’s home, plumb in the middle of the row of identical working-class houses, I slip the card into my pocket, feeling reassured.
Dr. Wand truly is a miracle worker. She always helps me see clearly.
In the Suburbs
The doorbell rings the following morning.
Melissa’s husband has already left for the lumberyard (he has just been promoted to supervisor), and her three eldest—Meg, Mary, and Myrtle—have gone to school; the baby is asleep in the crib upstairs. Melissa has made the children’s beds, brought down Myrtle’s latest creation to stick to the door of their new refrigerator (the first one on the block, she often mentions in a casual tone, her pride writ large on her face), and poured us each a mug of coffee, which we are now drinking at the kitchen table.
“She’s only seven, so who knows,” Melissa says. “But don’t you think so?”
“Sorry, what?”
“Myrtle. Don’t you think she has talent?” She motions to the drawing, sounding a bit reproachful, and I am reminded that I have been sleeping on her living room sofa for nearly three months, and should, if only out of gratitude, pay more attention to the accomplishments of her children—even if it pains me.
“It’s very… colorful,” I say quickly, to appease her, “colorful” being the first word that alights on my tongue—but then I look, really look, and am arrested by the picture’s imaginative vibrancy. In the bright green meadow, under the bright blue sky, stands a bright yellow house shaped like a shoe. Its door is red, its roof is green, with a blue weather vane fashioned like a rabbit; doves are flying overhead in a bright white flock, and smiling children, so many of them, lead a happy dance around a short laughing woman in an apron. Melissa, too, is looking at it, and there is an odd, dreamy expression in her eyes.
“It’s that Mother Goose rhyme, you know the one,” she says.
“The girls demand it every night before sleep. Of course, I change the words when I read it to them, I say, ‘She kissed them all gently and put them to bed.’ Because, you know, I would never. Although sometimes, God forgive me, I do so want to give them a good, sound smack. Some days are just overwhelming—there are only the four of them, and one still a baby, but I swear, sometimes it feels as if… as if I had a full ten.” She falters, sets the mug down, slides her worn wedding band up and down her finger. “Can I tell you something? I haven’t told anyone, not even Tom.”
“Of course. Is something wrong?”
“No, it’s just… it’s this anxious dream I keep having, the last couple of months. Since you’ve come to live with us, actually.”
She stands up to splash more coffee into our mugs as she begins to talk. In her dream, she is herself, and still married to Tom, but Tom is a real woodsman, the kind who chops down trees, a green-clad giant of a man with an ax over his shoulder, and they live in a blooming woodland glade, on the edge of a great, ancient forest, with their great many children. For, in her dream, there are Meg, Mary, and Myrtle, just as in real life, and the baby is there, too; but there are also six boys, six loud, boisterous, tiring, exasperating, wonderful boys, the life and the curse of the house, the pride and the torment of the mother’s heart. But they are poor, there is not enough food to go around for everyone, and in a thoughtless moment of frustration, of which she has so many every day, whenever one of her unmanageable sons pulls Mary’s braids, or releases piglets inside the house, or flings mud at the cow, she screams that the boys are too much, that they are eating all of them into an early grave, that they would be better off spending their wild, freewheeling days as ravens feeding off the bounty of the land, living at the mercy of the forest. And just as her reckless, dangerous words fly into the wind, her six precious boys, the light of her life, transform into shaggy black birds and, cawing, take off for the woods, never to be seen again.
Or at least this is what happens in some dreams, and she spends the remainder of the nighttime hours pacing her kitchen, twisting her hands, willing her baby to grow up with magical promptness so she could venture out into the gloom of the silent trees and bring her brothers safely home, for the onus of any deed of salvation is ever on the youngest. In other dreams, though, there are no ravens. More heartbreaking still, she and her husband discuss, debate, deliberate, then choose their docile, helpful, artistically gifted, domestically inclined, soft-spoken girls over their savage, bright-spirited, impractical, ravenous, exuberant boys, and Tom, expressionless, stoic, takes the boys deep into the forest, by invisible paths known only to him, and there abandons them to their cruel fate. Occasionally, the slumber gods do take pity on her, and somehow she knows that her sons will not perish from hunger, thirst, and wild beasts but will stumble upon an enchanted oasis of milk, honey, and gingerbread at the heart of the woods, and will cavort in the trees forever after, joyful, free, fed on cookies and candy canes by some benevolent, maternal presence—and that, moreover, this new, unfettered life will suit them much better than their old, small life of chores and chastisement within the four walls of the family home and they will be eternally grateful to her, their mother, for having released them in her endless motherly wisdom.