Lullaby

  Looking down at the rides, the spinning colors and screams, Helen says, “I’m glad you found me out. I think I always hoped someone would.” She says, “I’m glad it was you.”

  Her life isn’t so bad, I say. She has her jewels. She has Patrick.

  “Still,” she says, “it’s nice to have one person who knows all your secrets.”

  Her suit is light blue, but it’s not a regular robin’s-egg blue. It’s the blue of a robin’s egg you might find and then worry that it won’t hatch because it’s dead inside. And then it does hatch, and you worry about what to do next.

  On the guard bar locked across us, Helen puts her hand on mine and says, “Mr. Streator, do you even have a first name?”

  Carl.

  I say, Carl. It’s Carl Streator.

  I ask, why did she call me middle-aged?

  And Helen laughs and says, “Because you are. We both are.”

  The wheel jerks again, and we’re coming back down.

  And I say, her eyes. I say, they’re blue.

  And this is my life.

  At the bottom, the carnival man snaps open the guard bar and I give Helen my hand as she steps out of the seat. The sawdust is loose and soft, and we limp and stumble through the crowds, holding each other around the waist. We get to Mona, and she’s still reading the planner book.

  “Time for some caramel corn,” Helen says. “Carl, here, is going to buy.”

  And the book still open in her hands, Mona looks up. Her mouth open a little, her eyes blink once, twice, three times, fast. She sighs and says, “You know the grimoire we’re looking for?” She says, “I think we just found it.”

  Chapter 34

  Some witches write their spells in runes, secret coded symbols. According to Mona, some witches write backward so the spell can only be read in a mirror. They write spells in spirals, starting in the center of the page and curving outward. Some write like the ancient Greek curse tablets with one line running from left to right, then the next running right to left and the next, left to right. This, they call the boustrophedon form because it mimics the back-and-forth pacing of an ox tied to a tether. To mimic a snake, Mona says, some write each line so it branches in a different direction.

  The only rule was, a spell has to be twisted. The more hidden, the more twisted, the more powerful the spell. To witches, the twists themselves are magical. They draw or sculpt the magician-god Hephaestus with his legs twisted.

  The more twisted the spell, the more it will twist and hobble the victim. It’ll confuse them. Occupy their attention. They’ll stumble. Get dizzy. Not concentrate.

  The same as Big Brother with all his singing and dancing.

  In the gravel parking lot, halfway between the carnival and Helen’s car, Mona holds the daily planner book so the lights of the carnival shine through just one page. At first, the only things there are the notes Helen’s written for that day. The name “Captain Antonio Cappelle,” and a list of real estate appointments. Then you can see a faint pattern in the paper, red words, yellow sentences, blue paragraphs, as each colored light passes behind the page.

  “Invisible ink,” Mona says, still holding the page out.

  It’s faint as a watermark, ghostwriting.

  “What tipped me off is the binding,” Mona says.

  The cover and binding are dark red leather, polished almost black with handling.

  “It’s human skin,” Mona says.

  It was in Basil Frankie’s house, Helen says. It looked like a lovely old book, an empty book. She bought it with Frankie’s estate. On the cover is a black five-pointed star.

  “A pentagram,” Mona says. “And before it was a book, this was somebody’s tattoo. This little bump,” she says, touching a spot on the book’s spine, “this is a nipple.”

  Mona closes the book and holds it out to Helen and says, “Feel.” She says, “This is beyond ancient.”

  And Helen snaps her purse open and gets out her pair of little white gloves with a button at the cuff. She says, “No, you hold it.”

  Looking at the book, open in her hands, Mona leafs back and forth. She says, “If I just knew what they used as ink, I’d know how to read it.”

  If it’s ammonia or vinegar, she says, you’d boil a red cabbage and daub on some of the broth to turn the ink purple.

  If it’s semen, you could read it under fluorescent light.

  I say, people wrote spells in peter tracks?

  And Mona says, “Only the most powerful type of spells.”

  If it’s written in a clear solution of cornstarch, she could daub on iodine to make the letters stand out.

  If it was lemon juice, she says, you’d heat the pages to make the ink turn brown.

  “Try tasting it,” Helen says, “to see if it’s sour.”

  And Mona slams the book shut. “It’s a thousand-year-old witch book bound in mummified skin and probably written in ancient cum.” She says to Helen, “You lick it.”

  And Helen says, “Okay, I get your point. Try at least to hurry and translate it.”

  And Mona says, “I’m not the one who’s been carrying it around for ten years. I’m not the one who’s been ruining it, writing over the top of everything.” She holds the book in both hands and shoves it at Helen. “This is an ancient book. It’s written in archaic forms of Greek and Latin, plus some forgotten kinds of runes.” She says, “I’m going to need some time.”

  “Here,” Helen says, and snaps open her purse. She takes out a folded square of paper and hands it to Mona, saying, “Here’s a copy of the culling song. A man named Basil Frankie translated this much. If you can match it to one of the spells in that book, you can use that as a key to translate all the spells in that language.” She says, “Like in the Rosetta stone.”

  And Mona reaches to take the folded paper.

  And I snatch it from Helen’s hand and ask, why are we even having this discussion? I say, my idea was we’d burn the book. I open the paper, and it’s a stolen from some library, and I say, we need to think about this.

  To Helen, I say, are you sure you want to do this to Mona? This spell has pretty much ruined our lives. I say, besides, what Mona knows, Oyster is going to know.

  Helen is flexing her fingers into the white gloves. She buttons each cuff and reaches out to Mona, saying, “Give me the book.”

  “I can do it,” Mona says.

  Helen shakes her hand at Mona and says, “No, this is best. Mr. Streator’s right. It will change things for you.”

  The night air is full of faint faraway screams and glowing colors.

  And Mona says, “No,” and wraps both arms around the book, holding it to her chest.

  “You see,” Helen says. “It’s already started. When there’s the possibility of a little power, you already want more.”

  I tell her to give the book to Helen.

  And Mona turns her back to us, saying, “I’m the one who found it. I’m the only one who can read it.” She turns to look over one shoulder at me and says, “You, you just want to destroy it so you can sell the story. You want everything resolved so it’s safe to talk about.”

  And Helen says, “Mona, honey, don’t.”

  And Mona turns to look over her other shoulder at Helen and says, “You just want it so you can rule the world. You’re just into the money side of everything.” Her shoulders roll forward until she seems to wrap her whole body around the book, and she looks down on it, saying, “I’m the only one who appreciates it for what it is.”

  And I tell her, listen to Helen.

  “It’s a Book of Shadows,” Mona says, “a real Book of Shadows. It belongs with a real witch. Just let me translate it. I’ll tell you what I find. I promise.”

  Me, I fold the culling spell from Helen and tuck it in my back pocket. I take a step closer to Mona. I look at Helen, and she nods.

  Still with her back to us, Mona says, “I’ll bring Patrick back.” She says, “I’ll bring back all the little children.”

 
And I grab her around the waist from behind and lift. Mona’s screaming, kicking her heels into my shins and twisting from side to side, still holding the book, and I work my hands up under her arms until I’m touching it, touching dead human skin. The dead nipple. Mona’s nipples. Mona’s screaming, and her fingernails dig into my hands, the soft skin between my fingers. She digs into the skin on the back of my hands until I get her around the wrists and twist her arms up and away from her sides. The book falls, and her kicking legs knock it away, and in the dark parking lot, with the distant screams, nobody notices.

  This is the life I got. This is the daughter I knew I’d lose someday. Over a boyfriend. Over bad grades. Drugs. Somehow this break always happens. This power struggle. No matter how great a father you think you’ll make, at some time you’ll find yourself here.

  There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them.

  The book lands in a spray of dust and gravel.

  And I yell for Helen to get it.

  The moment Mona is free, Helen and I step back. Helen holding the book, I’m looking to see if anybody’s around.

  Her hands in fists, Mona leans toward us, her red and black hair hanging in her face. Her silver chains and charms are tangled in her hair. Her orange dress is twisted tight around her body, the neckline torn on one side so her shoulder shows, bare. She’s kicked off her sandals so she’s barefoot. Her eyes behind the dark snarls of her hair, her eyes reflecting the carnival lights, the screams in the distance could be the echo of her screams going on and on, forever.

  How she looks is wicked. A wicked witch. A sorceress. Twisted. She’s no longer my daughter. Now she’s someone I may never understand. A stranger.

  And through her teeth, she says, “I could kill you. I could.”

  And I finger-comb my hair. I straighten my tie and tuck the front of my shirt smooth. I’m counting 1, counting 2, counting 3, and I tell her, no, but we could kill her. I tell her she owes Mrs. Boyle an apology.

  This is what passes as tough love.

  Helen stands, holding the book in her white-gloved hands, looking at Mona.

  Mona says nothing.

  The smoke from the diesel generators, the screams and rock music and colored lights, do their best to fill the silence. The stars in the night sky don’t say a word.

  Helen turns to me and says, “I’m okay. Let’s just get going.” She gets out her car keys and gives them to me. Helen and I, we turn away and start walking. But looking back, I see Mona laughing into her hands.

  She’s laughing.

  Mona stops laughing when I see, but her smile is still there.

  And I tell her to wipe the smirk off her face. I ask, what the hell does she have to smirk about?

  Chapter 35

  With me driving, Mona sits in the backseat with her arms folded. Helen sits in the front seat next to me, the grimoire open in her lap, lifting each page against her window so she can see sunlight through it. On the front seat between us, her cell phone rings.

  At home, Helen says, she still has all the reference books from Basil Frankie’s estate. These include translation dictionaries for Greek, Latin, Sanskrit. There are books on ancient cuneiform writing. All the dead languages. Something in one of these books will let her translate the grimoire. Using the culling spell as a sort of code key, a Rosetta stone, she might be able to translate them all.

  And Helen’s cell phone rings.

  In the rearview mirror, Mona picks her nose and rolls the booger against the leg of her jeans until it’s a hard dark lump. She looks up from her lap, her eyes rolling up, slow, until she’s looking at the back of Helen’s head.

  Helen’s cell phone rings.

  And Mona flicks her booger into the back of Helen’s pink hair.

  And Helen’s cell phone rings. Her eyes still in the grimoire, Helen pushes the phone across the seat until it presses my thigh, saying, “Tell them I’m busy.”

  It could be the State Department with her next hit assignment. It could be some other government, some cloak-and-dagger business to conduct. A drug kingpin to rub out. Or a career criminal to retire.

  Mona opens her green brocade Mirror Book, her witch’s diary, in her lap and starts scribbling in it with colored pens.

  On the phone is a woman.

  It’s a client of hers, I tell Helen. Holding the phone against my chest, I say, the woman says a severed head bounced down her front stairway last night.

  Still reading the grimoire, Helen says, “That would be the five-bedroom Dutch Colonial on Feeney Drive.” She says, “Did it disappear before it landed in the foyer?”

  I ask.

  To Helen, I say, yes, it disappeared about halfway down the stairway. A hideous bloody head with a leering smile.

  The woman on the phone says something.

  And broken teeth, I say. She sounds very upset.

  Mona’s scribbling so hard the colored pens squeak against the paper.

  And still reading the grimoire, Helen says, “It disappeared. End of problem.”

  The woman on the phone says, it happens every night.

  “So call an exterminator,” Helen says. She holds another page against the sunlight and says, “Tell her I’m not here.”

  The picture that Mona’s drawing in her Mirror Book, it’s a man and woman being struck by lightning, then being run over by a tank, then bleeding to death through their eyes. Their brains spray out their ears. The woman wears a tailored suit and a lot of jewelry The man, a blue tie.

  I’m counting 1, counting 2, counting 3 . . .

  Mona takes the man and woman and tears them into thin strips.

  The phone rings again, and I answer it.

  I hold the phone against my chest and tell Helen, it’s some guy. He says his shower sprays blood.

  Still holding the grimoire against the window, Helen says, “The six-bedroom on Pender Court.”

  And Mona says, “Pender Place. Pender Court has the severed hand that crawls out of the garbage disposal.” She opens the car window a little and starts feeding the shredded man and woman out through the crack.

  “You’re thinking of the severed hand at Palm Corners,” Helen says. “Pender Place has the biting phantom Doberman.”

  The man on the phone, I ask him to please hold. I press the red HOLD button.

  Mona rolls her eyes and says, “The biting ghost is in the Spanish house just off Millstone Boulevard.” She starts writing something with a red felt-tip pen, writing so the words spiral out from the center of the page.

  I’m counting 9, counting 10, counting 11 . . .

  Squinting at the lines of faint writing on the page she has spread against the window, Helen says, “Tell them I’m out of the real estate business.” Trailing her finger along under each faint word, she says, “The people at Pender Court, they have teenagers, right?”

  I ask, and the man on the phone says yes.

  And Helen turns to look at Mona in the backseat, Mona flicking another rolled booger, and Helen says, “Then tell him a bathtub full of human blood is the least of his problems.”

  I say, how about we just keep driving? We could hit a few more libraries. See some sights. Another carnival, maybe. A national monument. We could have some laughs, loosen up a little. We were a family once, we could be one again. We still love each other, hypothetically speaking. I say, how about it?

  Mona leans forward and yanks a few strands of hair out of my head. She leans and yanks a few pink strands from Helen.

  And Helen ducks forward over the grimoire, saying, “Mona, that hurt.”

  In my family, I say, my parents and I, we could settle almost any squabble over a rousing game of Parcheesi.

  The strands of pink and brown hair, Mona folds them inside the page of spiral writing.

  And I tell Mona, I just don’t want her to make the same mistakes I made. Looking at her in the rearview mirror, I say, when I was about her age, I stopped talking to my parents. I haven’t talked to them in almost
twenty years.

  And Mona sticks a baby pin through the page folded with our hair inside.

  Helen’s phone rings again, and this time it’s a man. A young man.

  It’s Oyster. And before I can hang up, he says, “Hey, Dad, you’ll want to make sure and read tomorrow’s newspaper.” He says, “I put a little surprise in it for you.”

  He says, “Now, let me talk to Mulberry.”

  I say her name’s Mona. Mona Sabbat.

  “It’s Mona Steinner,” Helen says, still holding a page of the grimoire to the window, trying to read the secret writing.

  And Mona says, “Is that Oyster?” From the backseat, she reaches around both sides of my head, grabbing for the phone and saying, “Let me talk.” She shouts, “Oyster! Oyster, they have the grimoire!”

  And me trying to steer the car, the car veering all over the highway, I flip the phone shut.

  Chapter 36

  Instead of the stain on my apartment ceiling, there’s a big patch of white. Pushpinned to my front door, there’s a note from the landlord. Instead of noise, there’s total quiet. The carpet is crunchy with little bits of plastic, broken-down doors and flying buttresses. You can hear the filament buzzing in each lightbulb. You can hear my watch tick.

  In my refrigerator, the milk’s gone sour. All that pain and suffering wasted. The cheese is huge and blue with mold. A package of hamburger has gone gray inside its plastic wrap. The eggs look okay, but they’re not, they can’t be, not after this long. All the effort and misery that went into this food, and it’s all going in the garbage. The contributions of all those miserable cows and veals, it gets thrown out.

  The note from my landlord says the white patch on the ceiling is a primer coat. It says when the stain stops bleeding through, they’ll paint the whole ceiling. The heat’s on high to dry the primer faster. Half the water in the toilet’s evaporated. The plants are dry as paper. The trap under the kitchen sink’s half empty and sewer gas is leaking back up. My old way of life, everything I call home, smells of shit.

  The primer coat is to keep what was left of my upstairs neighbor from bleeding through.