Witch, page 13
Ishtar yawned.
“So you saw it too,” Ellen said softly. “That makes me feel better, somehow…. Poor thing, I hope it has a home.”
After a week of solitude she was bored with her own company, but not so bored that she was moved to seek companionship in town. Norman was away, Martha informed her when she called. Ellen wondered whether he had gone to Washington or Charlottesville to seek medical help for Tim. If I were in his shoes, she thought soberly, I wouldn’t dare leave town with Tim on the loose. It must be terrible to go through the days never knowing when the next irate call or piece of disastrous news would come; always braced for a blow, expecting the worst—and getting it.
She was in the kitchen preparing lunch when she heard the doorbell ring. She hurried to answer it, not ill pleased at the thought of company, though she wondered who it could possibly be.
Her wildest speculations could not have prepared her for the actuality. The face peering through the screen door belonged to Prudence Muller. Trying to conceal her surprise, Ellen invited the girl in.
“I thought you were working,” she said.
“It’s my lunch hour.”
“Oh, yes, you work at the drugstore in town, don’t you? I hope you didn’t walk all the way out here in this heat.”
Prudence mumbled something about a bicycle. Her face was scarlet with heat and exertion. Her eyes dropped away from Ellen’s and she began picking nervously at a loose thread on her skirt. She was obviously ill at ease, and Ellen felt an echoing uneasiness, mingled with pity. The girl was so hopelessly unattractive. The sight of her made Ellen’s maternal instincts itch; if Prudence had been her daughter she would have prescribed a dermatologist, a diet, and some decent clothes, just as a start. Penny had never looked that bad, even in the worst stages of puppy fat and pimples. Prudence was a hopeless case; her personality was as limp as her stringy hair.
“Can I do something for you?” Ellen asked kindly.
“I want a potion.”
Prudence was sitting on the edge of the chair. She leaned forward, and for a stricken moment Ellen thought she was going to drop to her knees. Misunderstanding Ellen’s silence, she went on eagerly.
“I’ve got almost ten dollars. Nine seventy-five. If that isn’t enough—”
“Wait. Stop.”
Ellen stood up. If she hadn’t moved, she would have screamed or smashed one of the fragile glass ornaments on the table beside her.
“Let me get this straight. I can’t believe…. What sort of potion is it you want, Prudence? I’m not a doctor.”
“A love potion. Like the one you gave Joyce, so Steve would stop being mad at her. The dance is tomorrow night; I’ve got to—”
“My God,” Ellen said.
She had believed, after her years of working with disturbed children, that nothing would ever surprise her again, but now she was at a loss. She didn’t know how to deal with this. With a silent prayer for guidance, she knelt by the chair and took the girl’s clenched hands in hers.
“Did Joyce tell you I gave her a—a love potion?”
“She wouldn’t tell me anything that would help me. She laughed at me. They all laugh at me, all the time. But I know.” Prudence looked at Ellen. She didn’t turn her head, and the sidelong roll of her eyeballs was ugly and sly. “I know about you,” Prudence said.
“Prudence, listen to me. You are making a terrible mistake. You go to church, don’t you? You must know better than to believe…”
“Samuel went to the witch of Endor.”
“That was Saul,” said Ellen sharply. “And you know what happened to him.”
“I don’t care what happened to him, it would be worth it.” The girl’s voice rose. “If ten dollars isn’t enough—”
“I did not give Joyce a love potion,” Ellen interrupted. “It was obvious that she and Steve were fond of each other. I guessed they would soon make up, and it was a lucky guess. That’s all there was to it.”
“You like her, and you don’t like me,” said Prudence. “That’s why you won’t help me.”
“My dear child, I’d like to help you. I’ll tell you what; there’s a certain kind of makeup that my daughter used to use for her skin. I’ll get some for you next time I go to the city.”
“I have to go to the dance tomorrow night,” Prudence said. “I have to have a potion, nothing else will work in time. I have to go with—”
She stopped speaking and a darker red stained her plump cheeks. Ellen felt so sorry for her she was tempted to go along with the fantastic request. A harmless mixture of sugar or baking soda…. The psychological effect of such faith was undeniable, it might give the girl the confidence she needed.
But Ellen was too experienced to succumb to the temptation. The trick wouldn’t work because Prudence needed more than a psychological boost. She needed a whole battery of experts working full time. And the effect of such a procedure on Ellen’s questionable reputation in town…
“There is no such thing as witchcraft,” she said firmly. “I couldn’t give you a magic potion if I wanted to.”
“I have ten dollars in my bank at home,” said Prudence. “For twenty dollars would you do it?”
“Not for twenty or fifty or a hundred. I can’t, Prudence; why don’t you understand? Look, come out some evening and I’ll show you how my daughter does her hair and—”
Prudence wrenched her hands from Ellen’s grasp. She stood up so suddenly Ellen almost fell over backward.
“Witch!” Prudence screamed. “Dirty old mean old witch! I’ll get even with you, I’ll fix you! Just wait! I’ll tell them all you hurt me. I’ll get you—”
“Out,” said Ellen, in a voice she seldom used. “Get out of here. And don’t come back until you are ready to apologize.”
Sobbing, the girl ran from the room. Ellen heard the door slam.
Her second visitor came late in the afternoon. By this time Ellen had locked the downstairs windows and doors and was sitting in the kitchen distractedly eating bread and cheese. She had been too upset to eat lunch.
When the bell rang, she peered out of the kitchen window instead of going to the door. I’ll be acting like a witch if this goes on, she thought morosely, as she squinted to see between the boughs of the dogwood tree. She couldn’t see the front door, but she recognized the antique truck parked in the driveway.
With his punctilious courtesy Ed had retreated after ringing the bell and stood waiting on the front steps. He declined her invitation to come into the house.
“This is pleasant,” he said, with a glance around the screened porch with its wrought-iron furniture and bright weatherproof cushions. “I will sit here, if I may.”
“Wouldn’t you like to see what I’ve done to the house?”
“No,” Ed said calmly. “I am not interested in interior decoration. You should not invite strange men into your home, Mrs. March. This is a censorious community.”
“So I am learning.” Ellen couldn’t help smiling; censorious was a mild word for the town if it could suspect improper “goings-on” between herself and Ed. “May I get you something to drink?” she asked.
“Thank you, I drink only water and I have had enough of that for the moment. But do not restrain yourself on my account. I do not judge the habits of others.”
“I could use a drink,” Ellen admitted. “But I won’t have one. I suppose you know what happened today? Is that why you came?”
“That is one of the reasons. However, I have been remiss. I have neglected my obligations toward you. I have allowed personal disinclination to keep me from my duty. I am a selfish man.”
“You’re a very good man,” Ellen said. “Stop berating yourself.”
Ed shook his head. He looked like an Old Testament prophet, with his long gray beard and rough clothing. They were certainly an oddly matched pair, and yet Ellen felt as comfortable with him as she did with Norman. She could even follow his somewhat oblique reasoning, and knew that his disinclination to seek out her company was a compliment rather than the reverse. The illogical empathy between them threatened his self-imposed isolation.
“I am not a good man,” he said irritably. “Good and evil are emotionally laden terms, Mrs. March. I am a rational man, and reason tells me that I must behave in a way that accords with my admittedly high opinion of myself. It is conscience—if I may use an inaccurate but convenient term—which has brought me here today. I don’t like what is going on in town.”
The sudden descent from Emersonian prose to colloquial comment made Ellen laugh. She did so unrestrainedly, knowing Ed would understand. His beard twitched in the manner that indicated an underlying smile, but he shook his head at her again.
“That is the core of your problem, Mrs. March. You laugh too easily, at matters other people regard with deadly seriousness. Are you not aware that a sense of humor is dangerous?”
“Whom have you been talking to?” Ellen asked resignedly.
“I have heard absurd stories from several people. Today I encountered something more serious—a hysterical verbal attack from Muller’s idiot daughter.”
“I guess I’d better give you my version.” Ellen told him what had happened. She added, “I suppose Prudence accused me of hexing her, or something.”
“That was the gist of the accusation.”
“What did you do?”
“I addressed her and the others who were listening to her. My speech was, momentarily, very effective.”
Ellen had a sudden vision of Ed orating, with his gray beard waving like that of John Brown.
“I believe you,” she said.
“But only momentarily. The voice of reason is feeble against human stupidity, and the Muller family, collectively and individually, represent the quintessence of feeblemindedness.” Ed leaned forward; a very human curiosity softened his austere face. “What on earth did you say to those silly children?”
“I can’t remember details! It was a pack of nonsense—vague promises and guesses. That’s the whole point of fortune-telling. The customer remembers if some event occurs which he can twist into confirmation of a prediction. He conveniently forgets the incorrect guesses, and only remembers the ones that come true. And he doesn’t remember those accurately; his memory is colored by later events and by a lot of wishful thinking.”
Ed nodded.
“I am familiar with the psychology of the problem. The Muller girl is an excellent example of what one might call the Cinderella syndrome. Only magic can give her what her heart desires; she therefore finds magic in what is only a matter of elementary character study, and demands a fairy godmother for herself. However, I must say that your level of accuracy is higher than the statistical average one might expect.”
“Not so high,” Ellen protested. “Joyce and Steve and the dance was a sure thing; it wasn’t even a guess.”
“Still it counts as one. Number two was the vehicular accident—no, you need not explain your reasoning to me, I can follow it. That does not alter the fact that our fellow citizens interpret it differently. Number three was the gift to Sue Ann—”
“What gift?”
“It came only yesterday; perhaps you are not aware of it. Did you not tell the girl she would soon receive a valuable gift from an unknown admirer?”
“Oh, Lord.” Ellen dug her fingers into her hair and tried to think. “I said something about gifts. Her birthday is in a few weeks; she was talking about it.”
“The gift was a pendant, with what is apparently a pearl of some size,” Ed said coolly. “She found the parcel in her mailbox yesterday. Number four—”
“Oh, no!”
“A letter to young Charles Yates informing him that Harvard College has found a place for him after all. He had been rejected by all the institutions to which he optimistically applied, and was planning to attend the local teachers’ college.”
“I never told him anything like that,” Ellen exclaimed.
“Now it is you who fail to understand the psychology involved. There are only two possible explanations for Charles’s admission to Harvard. Either all the members of the admissions committee have gone insane simultaneously, or some strong supernatural influence has been brought to bear on them. Of the two, witchcraft seems the more reasonable explanation. With such a miracle, and the force of the other predictions, it is not surprising that Charles should ‘remember’ a prognostication that was not made.”
“It’s ridiculous!”
“It would be ridiculous in any town but this. Mrs. March, I believe I warned you not to go to church. Having gone, however, you ought to have stayed.”
“I can’t feel guilty about that,” Ellen said.
“Guilty, no. Cautious, yes. Winckler came to call on me once,” said Ed reminiscently. “A ministerial call, to tell me of the evil of my ways. He did not come a second time.”
“What did you do to him?”
“I threw him into the lilac bush. It was a sacrifice, for it damaged the bush—my favorite white lilac. But I did not wish to risk actual damage to bone or vertebrae.”
Ellen laughed. Then she stopped, struck by a sobering thought.
“Do you suppose he’ll call on me? I can’t throw him out bodily.”
“Don’t let him in,” Ed advised. He rose. “I have overstayed my time. This is foolishness, Mrs. March, as you and I know. But stay away from those unstable children—including young Tim.”
“For a self-styled hermit, you know quite a bit of gossip,” Ellen said severely. “Tim is a sick boy. He needs help.”
“We cannot help others,” Ed said. “We can only help ourselves.”
With these pessimistic words in her mind, Ellen was glad to find a sheaf of letters when she walked down to the mailbox. She settled down on the porch with the cocktail she felt she deserved, and began to read her mail.
Penny’s letter was a brief scrawl. She was having a marvelous time, but she was homesick. “Can you believe yawning at the ‘Mona Lisa’?” she wrote. “I love museums, but I’ve had too much of a good thing. I was getting tired before I left Europe, and now I’m so close to home, it seems unbearable that I can’t be with you. I may cut my so-called vacation short.”
There was a postcard from Phil, whose humor was of the bucolic variety; this gem featured an outhouse and a fat lady. The message ran, “Having a great time. Glad you aren’t here, you’d hate it. I got forty mosquito bites last night. Love, Phil. P.S. I miss you.”
The P.S. was scrunched into a corner upside down. Phil didn’t want the United States mail to know of his lapse into sentimentality.
Ellen saved the best for last. With a luxurious sigh she opened Jack’s bulging letter with its gaudy foreign stamps.
“The cooking in this place is terrible,” he wrote. “No fudge cake, no lemon meringue pie, not even a tuna-fish-and-noodle casserole. I live on rubbish like boeuf bourguignonne and coquilles Saint-Jacques. I’ve been grousing so much they are talking of sending me home. Seriously—I have to go to Washington next week for conferences; am counting on at least one meal at ‘our place.’”
Ellen smiled. “Our place” was the Howard Johnson’s in Bethesda, hallowed by many forgettable meals with the young, who considered that chain the ultimate in gourmet food.
As she read on, through descriptions of embassy parties and luncheons with local dignitaries, she thought Jack’s humor seemed a little forced. She knew him too well to miss the undercurrent of mild depression. It was typical of their relationship that, at the end of the letter, he should accuse her of the same thing.
“If you’re lonesome, I wish to hell you’d break down and admit it. I get the feeling something is bothering you, Ellen. Your little town sounds like quite a place—fine to visit, but are you sure you want to live there? As for your young delinquent, the more I think about him, the more he worries me. I know you hate my being protective, but I can’t help it. A boy like that can be dangerous, all the more so if he likes you. You know how readily these attachments can turn perverse. Do me a favor—just because I ask you to—talk to Jim Bishop, or Doctor Frank, or one of your other buddies in the psychiatric business before you go any farther with this boy. I’m not ashamed to admit caring even if you are.”
Ellen lifted her eyes from the letter. It was dusk—the saddest, most beautiful time of the day. The shapes of the pines stood out black against the pale translucent blue of the evening sky. From the depths of the woods a bird called with infinite melancholy. And on the gatepost, barely visible in the declining light, sat a small white shape.
Ellen picked up her letter and her empty glass and fled indoors. She turned on all the lights and prepared a meal. Jack’s letter had hit home with an accuracy he had not intended. She missed him so desperately she could only endure the loneliness by never admitting it; but as she glanced around her pretty kitchen she thought wistfully how much she would enjoy this place if she had someone living with her. Jack would laugh himself sick over the town’s nonsense, and then deal with it, with the mixture of bluntness and tact that was his hallmark. He would scoff at shadows….
And she had better sit down right now and answer his letter before he got any more worried. His comments about Tim had been full of insight; no doubt he would be relieved to learn that she had come to the same conclusion and meant to follow his advice. She must write Penny, too, or the girl would be arriving on her doorstep. Ellen didn’t want that, not now. Not while all this foolishness was going on….
She wrote both letters that night. Next morning she went out to mail them, despite the fact that it was raining. She drove into town even more slowly than the wet pavement made expedient, but it was not until she pulled up in front of the store that she realized how reluctant she was to be there. Only her innate stubbornness got her out of the car.
The chairs on the front porch were unoccupied. Breeze-blown rain pattered the empty seats. The whole town seemed deserted. Ellen knew the weather accounted for the absence of loungers and pedestrians, but the overall effect was disturbing, as if the town had withdrawn, turning its back on an unwelcome intruder.
