“How many guest rooms do you have?” Tristan asked Rebecca quietly. “I’m responsible for her, I have—”
“You are not responsible for me,” said Erszebet, immediately exchanging glee for contempt. “And you have no authority over me at all.”
“Excuse me, miss, but if it wasn’t for me, you’d still be a crone living in a retirement community.”
“You had nothing to do with that,” she said dismissively. “It was Melisande who found me. Not that she has authority over me either, but I owe her at least a debt of gratitude.”
Journal Entry of
Rebecca East-Oda
MAY 19
We’ve brought all three home for the night. I made it clear they must respect this as our home, not merely a dormitory for experimental physicists and their sideshow curiosities. (Obviously didn’t say that. Still in shock about Erszebet.)
Immediate disagreements about sleeping arrangements. We have the guest room (double bed) and Mei’s room (twin). Tristan said he would take Mei’s room, but Erszebet demanded to sleep alone. Then:
ERSZEBET: It is ridiculous that you (Tristan/Mel) refuse to share a bed.
MEL: We don’t refuse to—
ERSZEBET: Good, then, do it.
MEL: It’s just that we don’t.
ERSZEBET: Why not?
MEL: We’re not romantically involved.
ERSZEBET: Why not?
MEL: Because we’re just not.
ERSZEBET: That answer is too stupid to justify depriving me of my own room. Even in that prison, I had my own room to sleep in at night.
MEL: He snores very loudly and I won’t be able to sleep.
TRISTAN : Yeah, it’s terrible, women leave me all the time because of it.
ERSZEBET: They leave you for other reasons.
MEL: So please, let’s you and I share the double, and Tristan has his own room.
ERSZEBET: I cannot believe the indignities I am already having to suffer under your regime. Sharing not just a room but a bed. I haven’t had to do that since the 1930s.
TRISTAN : You want to go back to Elm House, I’ll drive you.
MEL: Let’s everyone just calm the f**k down.
Tristan took Mel aside to discuss surveillance of Erszebet. Assuming my role as hostess and lady of the house, I stepped in to see how she was settling in. She had left the elder-hostel with only one large bag of faux leather that looked stolen from a fashion shoot. She was removing her possessions from this bag and laying them out neatly on the painted wooden dresser: ancient boar-bristle hairbrush, couple of camisoles and dresses, small satin bag for toiletries and makeup, nylon stockings. Plus one object made of yarn or string, a kind of fiber-sculpture. The calico had leapt up onto the dresser to examine this, but seemed to know better than to swat at it.
I looked closer at it. It was very old and frayed in places. Its central artery was a length of spun wool perhaps as long as my forearm, and tied to it were several hundred more slender strings, of varying lengths. All bore multiple knots along their lengths—knots of varying shapes, sizes, complexities, and densities. A number of strands were deliberately entangled to each other, and some of the strands were tied together into bundles thick as my thumb, creating an effect like dreadlocks. It resembled a design I remembered from my favorite college class, on South American anthropology, so I assumed that what appeared to be the ruins of a mop was in fact a calculation-and-record-keeping device.
“Looks like an Andean quipu,” I said.
“Mm,” said Erszebet absently, removing her shoes and wiggling her toes. “Mine is better.” She shooed the cat off the dresser. “What do you use?”
“Sorry?” I said.
“What do you—” She stopped herself, blinked, looked lost. “Never mind,” she said, sounding cross but looking confused. “I forget there is no magic now except in this ODEC.” She gave me a searching look. “So you can’t do magic? Ever?”
“That’s right,” I said. Neutral voice, neutral expression.
“Well, you can now, with this ODEC-room,” she said.
“I don’t do magic,” I clarified, hoping Mel would return and interrupt this conversation. “I have no idea how to do it.”
“Ah,” she said, still distracted, and began to brush her hair. “Of course, if it cannot be done, then it cannot be practiced or remembered. I wonder will Tristan Lyons require me to show witches how to do magic. Probably.”
“I don’t see myself volunteering to become a witch,” I said.
She paused in her brushing to give me a curious look. “You are already a witch.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “I don’t know where you would get that impression from. Do you think that just because I knew what a quipu is? That’s nothing to do with magic, it’s because—”
She resumed brushing her hair. “Of course you are a witch,” she said with offhand impatience. “You smell like a witch.”
“What?” I demanded. “What do you mean by that?”
She shrugged. “What is the scent of a baby or an old person or a man in love? There are different human scents. You have the scent of a witch. How wonderful it feels to have a full head of hair to brush again! You take these things for granted when you’re young.”
“Excuse me, I’m not a witch,” I said. “That would be ridiculous.”
“Then your mother’s mothers were,” she said very matter-of-factly, setting the brush on the dresser. “Some ancestress. You carry the blood.”
Suddenly I was irrationally angry at Frank. “Did my husband tell you to say that to me?”
“I would not say something because your husband told me to. Ha! What an idea.”
“I have an ancestor who was hanged in Salem, but she was not a witch—”
“Well, somebody was,” she said, and peered into her toiletries bag for something.
“This is nonsense,” I said, ruffled. “I don’t have one of those”—pointing to the quipu-like object—“and I don’t do magic, and I’m not a witch, and I shall go put on deodorant right now if you think I smell like one.”
“You act as if I have insulted you,” she said, sounding amused. She took a bottle of witch hazel and a cotton pad from the little silk bag. “I have given you the greatest compliment.”
“Not by my lights,” I said.
As soon as I left her, I confronted Frank, who never understands that the Salem witch hysteria is inappropriate for jokes. He claimed innocence, pointed out that he had never been alone with Erszebet, but then—since the matter had been raised, I suppose—repeated his perennial joke-theory that Mary Estey really was a witch. “Now that we know there really are witches, don’t you want to know?” he said with his eager little knowing grin. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
How could I ever fault him his curiosity? So. Made sure the guests were settled in with bath towels and water glasses, and then went up into the attic to Nana’s trunk, which I have managed to avoid opening for a quarter century, despite Frank’s nudging. God knows why I felt compelled tonight. I already know the family tree; I don’t require seeing it in writing. But something pushed me to go up.
I pulled the string on the bare bulb that hangs from the attic ceiling, knelt down by the heavy cedar chest that lives equidistant from the central chimneys, windows, and attic door. Blew the worst of the dust off the top. Grasped the two near corners and lifted carefully as the wood creaked in protest; the clasp broke at least a century ago.
Inside, I saw the sheaf of family papers I knew would be there—but then I saw something I had never noticed before. I thought it was a cowl or scarf, maybe a battered swaddling cloth. Then I realized. Froze. Felt dizzy. Its similarity to Erszebet’s was unmistakable. I should look at that more closely, I thought. I should reach for it. Yes, I’ll reach for it.