Read Online The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Heidi Julavits
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daughter’s suicide.
Mary broke for a cup of grief tea, then returned to tackle her mother’s filing cabinet. Bills, more letterhead, tax returns, a family tree that traced the Veal family back to Abigail Lake and very few other notables save a Nantucket whaling captain named Alonzo Veal. Alonzo Veal was the reason her mother had stipulated in her will that the family should go on a whale-watching trip on her next birthday, her sixtieth, and scatter her ashes at the first sight of a whale. Given her mother’s practical allergies against powerboats and earnest poetic gestures, this request struck Mary as more than a bit peculiar; and again, while in the esteemed mahogany chambers of Harold “Buzz” Stanworth as he read droningly through the will’s subsections, she had to remind herself how little she knew her mother anymore.
Mary shut the top two drawers and tried to shut the bottom drawer, but the bottom drawer would not shut. She jiggled the drawer, she semi-carelessly back-and-forthed it. From the muffled thunking noises this produced, she brilliantly concluded: something had slipped behind the drawer after she’d unlocked it. She muscled the drawer out of its slot and reached into the newly revealed space.
The object was palm-sized and made of metal, smooth save for the spidery-webbed engraving she could feel with her fingertip.
She knew what it was without having to look at it.
She placed the cigarette case—taped around its middle to a large manila envelope labeled decorator’s estimates—on the floor by her feet, stupidly fearful of holding it. Though the case, like the book, had disappeared years ago, she’d always assumed that she’d simply misplaced it. She’d been careless with it, leaving it on her desk, stashing it in the odd drawer; she’d wanted it to go away, and was pleased to discover one day that it had. So she was surprised, and fairly unnerved, to discover her mother had been the thief.
Mary turned her attention to decorator’s estimates . She slid the metal prongs through the gummed hole in the fold and slipped her hand inside, withdrawing a receipt torn from a generic sales slip pad. A rubber stamp had been pressed crookedly into the top: DEN OF ANTIQUITIES , it read, and beneath that, in black ballpoint:
engraved cigarette case $13 + .65 tax TOTAL $13.65
Mary stared at the receipt, uncomprehending. Stranger still was this: the receipt had been written by her mother. No doubt about it, the handwriting was her mother’s.
Which made no sense at all.
Mary set the case and the receipt aside to examine the remaining items inside decorator’s estimates . She pulled out a typewritten document, sawdusted with yellowed white-out.
Ida and the Arsonist, by Mary Veal
Ms. Wilkes, Period 2 English
10/01/85
Ida lived on a very dull block in a very dull town during a very dull time. On the dullest of dull days, she noticed a man hiding behind a tree in the neighbor’s yard. She saw the man again hiding behind the gates of her school. One day she was late coming home. When she turned onto her street she saw that her house was on fire. The fireman told her that everyone inside the house was dead, including herself. The neighbors didn’t recognize her. She said “I’m Ida!” and they told her not to play games with the dead. Then she saw the man in the crowd, flicking a lighter. Ida ran. She ran through the cemetery and across the golf course to the highway and caught a ride north with a bearded man in a truck. They drove into the mountains. They stopped for gas. The bearded man said “Stay here,” but Ida followed him to the pay phone. She heard him say into the phone, “I’ve got her.” Ida grabbed her knapsack and escaped into the woods. Pausing for breath on a rock, she heard the sound of a lighter behind her. Snap snap snap. Soon the leaves were ablaze. Ida ran until she was too tired to run anymore. She lay down
Mary broke for a cup of grief tea, then returned to tackle her mother’s filing cabinet. Bills, more letterhead, tax returns, a family tree that traced the Veal family back to Abigail Lake and very few other notables save a Nantucket whaling captain named Alonzo Veal. Alonzo Veal was the reason her mother had stipulated in her will that the family should go on a whale-watching trip on her next birthday, her sixtieth, and scatter her ashes at the first sight of a whale. Given her mother’s practical allergies against powerboats and earnest poetic gestures, this request struck Mary as more than a bit peculiar; and again, while in the esteemed mahogany chambers of Harold “Buzz” Stanworth as he read droningly through the will’s subsections, she had to remind herself how little she knew her mother anymore.
Mary shut the top two drawers and tried to shut the bottom drawer, but the bottom drawer would not shut. She jiggled the drawer, she semi-carelessly back-and-forthed it. From the muffled thunking noises this produced, she brilliantly concluded: something had slipped behind the drawer after she’d unlocked it. She muscled the drawer out of its slot and reached into the newly revealed space.
The object was palm-sized and made of metal, smooth save for the spidery-webbed engraving she could feel with her fingertip.
She knew what it was without having to look at it.
She placed the cigarette case—taped around its middle to a large manila envelope labeled decorator’s estimates—on the floor by her feet, stupidly fearful of holding it. Though the case, like the book, had disappeared years ago, she’d always assumed that she’d simply misplaced it. She’d been careless with it, leaving it on her desk, stashing it in the odd drawer; she’d wanted it to go away, and was pleased to discover one day that it had. So she was surprised, and fairly unnerved, to discover her mother had been the thief.
Mary turned her attention to decorator’s estimates . She slid the metal prongs through the gummed hole in the fold and slipped her hand inside, withdrawing a receipt torn from a generic sales slip pad. A rubber stamp had been pressed crookedly into the top: DEN OF ANTIQUITIES , it read, and beneath that, in black ballpoint:
engraved cigarette case $13 + .65 tax TOTAL $13.65
Mary stared at the receipt, uncomprehending. Stranger still was this: the receipt had been written by her mother. No doubt about it, the handwriting was her mother’s.
Which made no sense at all.
Mary set the case and the receipt aside to examine the remaining items inside decorator’s estimates . She pulled out a typewritten document, sawdusted with yellowed white-out.
Ida and the Arsonist, by Mary Veal
Ms. Wilkes, Period 2 English
10/01/85
Ida lived on a very dull block in a very dull town during a very dull time. On the dullest of dull days, she noticed a man hiding behind a tree in the neighbor’s yard. She saw the man again hiding behind the gates of her school. One day she was late coming home. When she turned onto her street she saw that her house was on fire. The fireman told her that everyone inside the house was dead, including herself. The neighbors didn’t recognize her. She said “I’m Ida!” and they told her not to play games with the dead. Then she saw the man in the crowd, flicking a lighter. Ida ran. She ran through the cemetery and across the golf course to the highway and caught a ride north with a bearded man in a truck. They drove into the mountains. They stopped for gas. The bearded man said “Stay here,” but Ida followed him to the pay phone. She heard him say into the phone, “I’ve got her.” Ida grabbed her knapsack and escaped into the woods. Pausing for breath on a rock, she heard the sound of a lighter behind her. Snap snap snap. Soon the leaves were ablaze. Ida ran until she was too tired to run anymore. She lay down
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