Petty Magic by Camille DeAngelis ppt

these travertine teeth, so when I look into the mirror over the mantel Ican flash my old Pepsodent smile.. When I’m finally dressed, perfumed, and done up, I surveymyself once more in th

This is a work of fiction Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is

entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Camille Marjorie DeAngelis

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers,

an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,

a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com Crown is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark

of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

DeAngelis, Camille.

Petty magic: being the memoirs and confessions of Miss Evelyn Harbinger, temptress and troublemaker / Camille DeAngelis.—1st ed.

p cm.

1 Older women—Fiction 2 World War, 1939–1945—Veterans—Fiction.

3 Loss (Psychology)—Fiction 4 Magic—Fiction I Title.

PS3604.E159P47 2010 813'.6—dc22 2009034348 ISBN 978-0-307-45423-2 Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition

“All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable”

1.

Witch, n 1 Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in awicked league with the devil.2 A beautiful and attrac-tive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond thedevil

—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

{|

There are many misconceptions of which I must disabuse

you, but the most offensive concerns the wands and warts andblack pointed caps Some of us may be wizened and ratherhairy in unfortunate places, but we ’re certainly no uglier than the rest

of you lumps

I look grandmotherly enough myself though, for it’s a rare

morn-ing I don’t nab a seat on the uptown 103—and when I am compelled to

stand, the respectable citizens around me will grouse on my behalf atthe bad manners of those buffoons claiming knee injuries or feigningdeafness As I disembark I wish the respectable ones a pleasant day,and I can see I remind them of their dear great-aunties Don’t I looklike the sort who bakes oatmeal cookies by the gross, slips a fiver intoyour birthday card? Nobody ever has an inkling, do they?

Some nights I ride the bus a third time, but you wouldn’t recognize

me then I’ll tell you how I do it First I run a crooked forefinger over

11

these travertine teeth, so when I look into the mirror over the mantel Ican flash my old Pepsodent smile Then I kick off my orthopedicshoes, say the right words to shrug off this sagging elephant hide, and

in a moment I’m lithe as a teenager again Thus liberated (and threeinches taller besides), I take a long hot bath with bubbles and candles,draw concentric hearts in the steam on the mirrors, and spend an hour

or more lounging about my bedroom with party clothes strewn acrossthe unmade bed and the contents of my makeup case all over the van-ity table When I’m finally dressed, perfumed, and done up, I surveymyself once more in the mantel mirror Can’t help grinning like a fe-line at what I see The beldame has sharpened her knives!

So I go out and avail myself of some delicious little boy I’ve found

at a bar I’ve never been to before and will never visit again Somenights it’s cinnamon vodka in china teacups and other times I’ll settlefor a two-dollar draft—not that I ever pay for my own drinks, mind! Idon’t just go for the pretty ones, either; he ’s got to sustain my atten-tion for the hours it takes for three or four rounds and a scintillatingtête-à-tête, a cab ride home (his place, always his), and a lively tussle

in the sack

You ought to know I never go for the ones who’re already taken,

no matter where their eyes might wander Wouldn’t be right But Iwatch how men and women alike guard their lovers: he spots anotherman eyeing his girlfriend’s cleavage, drapes his arm over her shoul-ders, and looks daggers at the interloper; she sees a single girl like memerely glancing at her man, shoots me a glare, and kisses him midsen-tence How primitive it is, the way they lay claim to one another.Not me, though I’m only asking for the night Not even, because

I leave as soon as he falls asleep At daybreak I find the city is at itsbleakest: through the window of a speeding cab I see the flickeringneon of a twenty-four-hour diner peopled with insomniacs, raccoon-eyed girls teetering home on broken heels, men too sauced to botherducking into alleyways to relieve themselves Even at this ungodly

hour the taxi driver is on his mobile I lean my still-smooth foreheadagainst the frosted window, the ghosts of his hands roving under myevening garb.

My taste varies by the night Sometimes I set my eye on a playboyand revel in my triumph when he loses sight of every other girl in theclub (Aren’t I doing them all a favor? And doesn’t he deserve theshame and indignation he ’ll feel when he rings the number I’ve lefthim and the woman who answers says, “Good afternoon, GreenacresFuneral Home”?) On other occasions I mark the loneliest boy in theroom and take a purer kind of pleasure in alleviating his melancholy.There are other things you ought to know We don’t even use ourbroomsticks for their ostensible purpose, let alone as a means of noc-turnal transport We do not shoot craps with human teeth We do notthieve the peckers of men who’ve spurned us and squirrel them away

in glass jars Think of us as sibyls or seraphs: fearsome, oh yes, butmore or less benevolent I may use magic to retrieve my youth, butwhen these boys climb into bed with me, they do so unenchanted

Blackabbey

2.

{|

My fatherlasted longer than average, and so I have two

sisters We are evenly spaced at eleven months: Helena isthe eldest; then Morven, who lives with me on the LowerEast Side; and then me Helena is 151 but she still runs a B and B in thehouse we inherited from our great-auntie Emmeline, the house wegrew up in Harbinger House, says the sign beneath the porch light;rather ominous, I’ll admit, but the most traumatic thing that ever tran-spired there involved a holiday turkey that broke out of the oven.Featherless and terrified out of its last wit, our would-be dinner ram-paged through the downstairs rooms and sent all the family shriekingfor cover before Helena could put an end to it Good thing our chinanever breaks

Blackabbey, the town’s called now: a spurious name for a place offthe Jersey turnpike There was a community of Franciscans there atsome stage, but who knows why they named it Blackabbey—after all,

no plague ever decimated their number But Blackabbey is a far bettername than Harveysville, which is what the town was called up until theFirst World War “Harveysville” sounds like a hamletful of inbreds.Harvey was the name of the innkeeper who supposedly put upGeorge Washington two nights before that great man crossed theDelaware The inn is still there, stodge central, every wall covered

with plaques boasting of its one famous guest who only stopped in for

a pint of ale, if he stopped at all Even in the eighteenth century, on thesurface at least, it was a dull little town full of ordinary people

Since the mid-1950s, however, Blackabbey has been ratherrenowned for its antiques Interior designers, ladies of leisure, andmiddle-aged friends-of-Oscar make the two-hour bus ride south fromManhattan to peruse those quaint and cozy shops, and it’s the mon-eyed sort who fill Helena’s B and B every weekend

This little shopping mecca wasn’t there while we were growing

up, of course Back then the mews was known as Deacon’s Alley, andthere were a bookbinder, a pharmacist, and a few other stores withdust-filmed windows that seemed to be open only one day a week for aquarter of an hour at a time and sold things nobody would havewanted to buy anyway The streets were unpaved and we walkedknee-deep in horse dung

But our town has more of a sense of humor now than it did inWashington’s day The Blind Pig Gin Mill, which is almost as old asthe inn, has a very official-looking plaque by the front door that reads:

Seems we ’re the only ones who appreciate the change, living aslong as we do

Signposted from the main street is Blackabbey Mews, where all theshops are If you turn the corner just after the Harveysville Inn, you’llenter a narrow cobblestone alley with cheerily painted row homes oneither side, the first-floor windows full of typewriters, gramophones,and landscapes in gilded frames White geraniums tumble from thesecond-floor window boxes The alley hasn’t been paved since the

Here at the Blind Pig Gin Mill, on the 21st of February 1783, upon the second stool from the end, Alexander Hamilton got piss-ass drunk.

Revolution, so watch out for rogue cobblestones At the end of thelane is a confectionery-café, my niece Mira’s place actually There areoutdoor tables where the aforementioned city folk sip bowls of chilledcarrot-ginger soup under an oak tree that is even older than I am.One store specializes in antique and collectible toys (a set of shinytin soldiers lined up inside an elliptical railroad track, red painted sledsfor decoration only), and others carry racks of moth-eaten theatricalattire and vintage wedding gowns; there ’s even a tiny haberdasheryfull of trilby hats Other stores deal in fine and costume jewelry, ringsand earbobs of clear green glass that throw bright spots on the walls

in the afternoon light

But there ’s only one spot along this row where you can find aseventeenth-century alchemy kit alongside a pack of Garbage Pail Kidstrading cards, only one place where you might prick your finger on

a stuffed porcupine Fawkes & Ibis, says the hand-painted sign thatswings above the door Est 1950 Antiques, Collectibles, Curi-osities And beneath, in much smaller lettering: Ask No Questions.This one is my favorite

Fawkes and Ibis was the first antiques store here Harry Ibis is anIrish Jew who hasn’t boarded an airplane since the close of the SecondWorld War, and Emmet Fawkes is an Afroed malcontent who hobnobswith grave robbers and maintains an extensive collection of Victoriansmut You’ll generally find Fawkes seated on a low stool out on thesidewalk, either chatting with prospective patrons or grumbling tohimself about the rodent problem When you greet him he may an-swer you, or he may not, and either way you mustn’t take it personally.You open the door and part a heavy velvet curtain with dust bunniesflecking the hem, and as you enter the front room you’re hit with thesmells of stale incense, mothballs, and old men

The window display never quite typifies the wonderland within:there might be a gilded birdcage full of Christmas ornaments, a Deco teaset, maybe a concertina or a hurdy-gurdy Venture in, and above your

head is the strangest chandelier you’ll ever see, a Leuchterweibchen, a

wooden mermaid with an enigmatic expression and antlers sproutingfrom her shoulder blades I hope nobody ever buys it The shelves be-hind the counter are cluttered with molting taxidermies and variousitems pilfered from med school labs, eyeballs and eardrums lollingabout in crusty glass jars, and cork-stopped medicine bottles full ofsticky brown gook (fig candy laxative or honey-cherry-balsamcompound typewritten on the yellowed labels) There are old leather-bound books in languages neither owner can read, heavy ornate keys

to doors that may never be locked (or unlocked) again, gargoyles vaged from the rubble of architectural progress Fawkes takes especialpride in a bird he claims is the penultimate dodo

sal-The place is chockablock, all right, and you might even call it tered, but don’t dare call it a junk shop Every object in the room has ahistory worth knowing, if you only know how to read it Sometimesthe people who’ve owned the books in this shop leave little clues be-tween the pages, and not just love notes or pressed flowers You might

clut-come upon an unused Amtrak ticket tucked between the pages of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmesor a sprinkling of crumbs along the gut-

ter inside The Complete Engravings, Etchings, and Drypoints of Albrecht Dürer. Makes you wonder what kind of person noshes on a salami

sandwich over The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Browsing Fawkes and Ibis always gets me feeling a little choly, though I suppose that’s part of why I adore the place No, I’llnever again wander through the cobbled lanes and crowded markets ofthe cathedral cities, never sip another green chaud in some Nouveaucafé with chandeliers knotted in cobwebs and flies in the sugar pots.Our psychic stamina is not without limit, you see I could poof in andout of public loos from San Francisco to Samarkand, go antiquing to

melan-my heart’s content, but then there ’d be no oomph left over for takingthe wrinkles out on a Saturday night Crooked fingers, crooked prior-ities; what can I say?

• • •

On this particular afternoon I’m on no particular errand, onlythat I’m home for the weekend and haven’t been to Fawkes andIbis in a while It’s the twenty-third of June, and the air is alive withthe scent of honeysuckle and the excitement of children newly sprungfrom the classroom The little hellions race one another down the av-enue, their smooth limbs and happy faces dappled by the sunshinethrough the maples, and the sound of their laughter puts a smile on myface

Mira is out clearing tables, and she gives me a peck on the cheek as

I make my way down the alley There are other cries of “Auntie Eve!How do you do?” though not all the girls who greet me are amongHelena’s granddaughters (Helena has three daughters—Rosamund,Deborah, and Marguerite—and six granddaughters in all, and thoughthey are all delightful it’s Vega and Mira, daughters of Marguerite,whom I hold most dear.)

As usual, Emmet Fawkes is on his stool muttering to himself—

“Satan’s foot soldiers are on the march!”—and on cue a squirrel scurriesloudly across the roof tiles and an acorn pings off the gutter spout Ihear voices through the heavy velvet curtain, and when I step inside I

spot several things on the table beneath the Leuchterweibchen that

weren’t here last time: a phrenology model, a pair of golliwogs (it’shere you’ll find the playthings Lucretia Hartmann of Hartmann’sClassic Toys won’t touch), an armillary sphere with silver contoursglinting in the sunlight

There ’s another man in his eighties behind the counter, with itsbronze crank-model cash register and apotropaic doodads arrangedunder the glass He wears a bow tie and gray suspenders over a short-sleeved dress shirt, and you’d know from his coloring that his wispywhite hair was red once On this side of the counter there ’s a younger,

heavier man drumming his fingers on the glass I can tell by the tone ofhis voice and the tattered Macy’s bag that he ’s come to make a return.

Make an attempt, that is.

“Hello, Evelyn,” says Harry Ibis in his usual placid tone, whichseems to agitate the man even further “Lovely day, isn’t it?” I murmur

my agreement, Harry gives me a wry look over his customer’s der, and the man glances at me nervously before continuing his plea

shoul-“My wife is a wreck, Mr Ibis She ’s terrified! Every time she picks

up the mirror she sees someone staring at her over her shoulder.Someone who isn’t there when she turns around.”

Mr Ibis points to the sign tacked to the shelf above his head:

Absolutely no refunds or exchanges.

“You aren’t going to give me my money back?”

Harry Ibis shakes his head “I do apologize, Mr Vandersmith, but

if I gave a refund to every customer who changed his mind we ’d goout of business.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do with it then? I can’t bring itback into the house My wife has already had to go on antianxietymedication!”

“I’d try eBay, if I were you,” Harry replies “You might even getmore than you paid for it.” Plenty of fools all over the planet willing topay good money for allegedly haunted bric-a-brac

The man pulls the mirror out of the bag and thrusts it into Harry’shands “You don’t believe me You think I’m crazy Or my wife is Butjust you look in the mirror and tell me you don’t see him.”

“Him?”

“Just look Just look and tell me you don’t see him.” Mr smith pauses “He ’s got big long sideburns and a moustache And he ’sgot no eyes, just empty sockets.”

Vander-Harry is opening his mouth to tell his customer that he really not countenance such a story, that he is not so patient as he looks now

can-he ’s in his ninth decade of life, but I decide to interrupt “What alovely mirror,” I say as I approach the counter “Victorian, is it?”

Mr Vandersmith nods, suspicious

I rest my fingertips on the mirror handle “May I see?”

“I don’t know if I should allow you, ma’am,” he replies entirely inearnest “What you see may frighten you extremely.”

“Oh, I don’t scare easily Mr Ibis can tell you so himself I’ve beenshopping here since the day you opened, haven’t I, Harry?”

Harry cocks an eyebrow “So you have, Evelyn.”

I raise the looking glass and angle it so I can see over my shoulder

I stare into it for several moments “My niece had a mirror quite likethis one once It was part of a set There were two brushes and twocombs and a tray to match.” I lower the mirror and place it gently onthe counter “Such a shame the mirror cracked.” With a few words she’dmade it good as new again, but a girl can never own too many mirrors

Mr Vandersmith stares at me “You you didn’t see anything in