The Witch

“Promise me one thing,” I went on. “If you ever have daughters, do with them as I’ve done with you for the past year.”

But they only laughed, shrugging their sharp little shoulders, then darkly muttering that there was no point waiting for them to get married. I thought them so fierce, so resolute, so solidly asexual in the slightly grimy jeans hanging loose around their slim hips that once again I let the matter drop, embarrassed to have let myself slip into sentimentality before that hard, gruff little pair.

Still, it vexed me to think that the power might be passed on no further. Their grandmother had grudgingly taught it to me, even though she so hated her own far mightier power that she never used it. She wouldn’t talk about it, probably did her best not to believe in it, considered it just one more in a hodgepodge of superstitions handed down by her illiterate mother. But when the time came, trying to forget for a few months that she had to project disbelief in the power’s very existence, and also motivated by a sense of duty weightier than her personal convictions, she taught me what I now know, in bits and pieces to be sure, with a palpable distaste that made me squirm in my chair, but tirelessly, until she saw me several times spill abundant tears of blood. Perhaps her lack of faith was responsible for my limited abilities. In my daughters’ case, I could see they would never feel obliged to obey any law whose violation entailed no serious consequences for their lifestyle, and even that they would soon forget passing the gift on was a law at all. How could I blame them? The force of their feral, sensual energy defied any notion of disappointment or rancor.

They gave me a hurried kiss on their way out of the basement, the faintly sweet scent of the blood lingering on their cheeks, and it occurred to me that when their father kissed them on coming home from work that evening he would immediately realize my lessons had borne fruit. He wouldn’t say anything about it to me. He would stick to the discretion, tinged with disgust and contempt, that he’d always shown my powers the few times I couldn’t avoid using them in his presence. He must surely have guessed what sort of exercise my daughters and I were regularly engaging in downstairs, and although he’d long known this day would come, it still might have nettled him. Maybe, I told myself, he’d been hoping, absurdly, that I would forget, would neglect to initiate Maud and Lise, or that they would prove so unreceptive to the discipline he knew the process entailed that I would give up on the idea. How, I wondered with a tingle of apprehension, would he react when he got a whiff of his daughters’ cheeks that evening? I feared he might conceive the same irrepressible aversion for Maud and Lise as he felt for me, an aversion his overworked, clouded mind didn’t see, but which I saw all too well, and which he didn’t always manage to hold in.

It wasn’t the girls I was worried about, convinced as I was that no change in the nuances of his amorphous displays of affection would ever affect their stubborn, greedy vitality, focused on promises and hopes well beyond the two of us, their parents, caring nothing for the modest goals we’d so laboriously attained. No, none of that would ever touch them, not, at least, coming from their minimally interesting, irascible, overstressed father. My fear, as I climbed the basement stairs to the kitchen, was simply that a little more revulsion and resentment in the overstuffed baggage of my husband’s feelings might turn the quietly disharmonious atmosphere of the house overtly oppressive.

“Oh hello, Isabelle,” I said at the top of the steps.

The basement stairs opened straight into the kitchen, so Isabelle saw me come in with the harried look that the exercise of my paltry gift inevitably left on my face. As always, she’d made herself perfectly at home in our house, though she was scarcely more than a neighbor. She’d brought along her four- or five-year-old son, who had a vaguely American first name. Looking out the window, I spied him in the yard with Maud and Lise.

“So what did you see?” Isabelle immediately asked.

And apprehension clenched her doughy face.

When we first came to this little city, two years before, I made the mistake of telling Isabelle about my powers, optimistically thinking I might try to initiate her, since after all nothing forbade passing the gift on to women who weren’t my daughters, and because Isabelle seemed a person of some importance who, I thought at the time, I wanted on my side. She reigned uncontested over our little subdivision, her authority not founded in any store of objective virtues, for Isabelle was neither pretty nor intelligent, nor hardworking nor thoughtful, nor even subtly and perversely magnetic, but rather (that authority) imposed as a historical fact, duly imparted from neighbor to neighbor. Isabelle and her husband were the first to build here; from that arrival on the still-virgin land at the gates of the city she’d drawn the need to serve in some sense as the memory of us all, we who were appearing from all over the region, and even the country. It was from Isabelle that we learned what had to be known of this or that neighbor’s ways to keep from upsetting the general entente of the neighborhood, and should anyone attempt to break off with Isabelle so she wouldn’t come barging in several afternoons a week she made it clear that she would turn the entire subdivision against them with her unscrupulous gift for gossip. Stocky and stout, bulging in stretch wear, her hair bleached, her face proud, obtuse, and inquisitive, she strode from house to house, one hand tugging her son, never failing to castigate him copiously if he stumbled or fell, if he whimpered with fatigue, in short if he got on her nerves in any way.

So I’d offered to teach her what little I knew, having early on got the impression that she didn’t much care for me. Not without shame did I now remember pushing my cowardice so far as to try to mollify the infernal Isabelle with that priceless gift, to think I could prove worthy of her esteem only by appealing to her keen sense of a good deal. But I hadn’t taken into account Isabelle’s profound laziness; the moment I mentioned regular sessions she flatly refused to go on. What I was so generously, cravenly offering her, which she grasped in a hazy, fragmented, pragmatic way, interested her only insofar as she thought she might turn it to her instant advantage. And so she immediately prodded me to tell her if her son would be admitted to the École Polytechnique, or rather to confirm that he would be.

“So did you see him this time?”

I dropped onto a chair, facing her across our oilcloth-draped table.

“You know, Isabelle, I never see much.”

“Right, but did you see the little moron this time, yes or no? Did you see him at that school?”

Isabelle’s face was flushed, impatient, peppered with acne scars. She had on a thin turtleneck sweater that very precisely, almost lovingly delineated the five thick folds her stomach took on when she sat. She did her best to keep herself up, but she was missing two bicuspids. I then realized that I was going to have to offer her an aperitif, and that she would stick around, this being her happy hour, which would keep me from cooking anything decent for Pierrot (my husband), who would soon be home, no sooner pulling into the garage than displeased to be smelling no appetizing aromas—yet more fuel for his imprecise, ineradicable indignation at all the nice dinners he had a right to and I never had waiting. Poor Pierrot, I thought, always second in line after Isabelle.

I took a deep breath, smiled, and answered:

“I did make out something about your little Steve, yes, I saw him, maybe twenty years old, walking down a wide avenue, under a morning sun full of promise. He was wearing a white shirt but no tie, I sensed a smile on his face. That’s what I saw, Isabelle. It took a lot of trying.”

Then I half turned toward the window to hold off Isabelle, whose thin lips, a pale, dry crease she was gnawing in irritation, were readying a salvo of questions.

Maud and Lise had disappeared. Abandoned, Steve was standing stock-still in the middle of the lawn, shivering in the dusk, arms dangling, looking lost and resigned. He knew his mother didn’t like him disturbing her when she was in discussions, even when he was yards away she complained about having him underfoot. Patient and anxious, he was waiting for it to come time to go home. But Isabelle’s determination to see her son become a high-powered person meant his wait would be long this evening, because she had no intention of leaving until I told her what she wanted to hear.

“No tie, you say, but people have to wear ties in that place, all those Polywhatevers wear ties. What does that mean, Lucie, no tie?”

“Well, first let’s call Steve in, he’s looking chilly,” I pleaded blankly.

“Oh, for once he’s keeping quiet, why do you want to get him started up again? If you knew how he made his mama sweat all day long, I’m not like you, I lose my cool, oh boy do I lose my cool with that little clot. Anyway, he must have had a tie. You think maybe he’d stuffed it in his pocket, that could be, you say you saw sunshine, maybe he took that goddamn tie off and crumpled it up in his pants pocket?”

“Yes, that’s possible. Like a touch of vermouth, Isabelle?”

And I chattered merrily, still unable to shake the degrading need to keep that unlikable, calculating, acrimonious woman happy. She was younger than me, which I always found surprising, and in a strange way delightful, and it pushed me to like her far more than she deserved, in spite of it all. Poor Isabelle, I sometimes said to myself, when I suddenly remembered she was only twenty-three or -four. Oh, poor Pierrot, I said to myself again as I poured out Isabelle’s red vermouth.

I listened for the garage door, invaded by dread but incapable of sending Isabelle away. I heard Maud and Lise slam the front door and clump upstairs to their room. Darkness now enveloped Steve’s frail form, all but the fluorescent letters on his jacket, on either side of the zipper: For a Pretty Boy—Best in Worldwide. He was standing so still, probably numb with boredom and uncertainty, that he might have been mistaken for a new sort of garden gnome. Only on one point had I lied about him to Isabelle: Steve was not smiling in my vision of him at twenty, striding down a street on a summer morning, he wasn’t smiling at all, his expression was one of poignant sadness, there was something failed and old on his banal, sharp little face.

I threw open the window and called out:

“Steve, come on in and have some orange juice.”

“That won’t work,” Isabelle said placidly, “he’ll only come if it’s me calling him. You wouldn’t have any peanuts, would you?”

Upon which she jumped up, glass in hand, leaned half out the window, and bellowed:

“Get in here, now!”

Encased in the turtleneck, Isabelle’s shoulders were so fat and massive that they rippled under the cotton with every movement of her arms. She shook her mop of hair, almost white with black roots, draping her dark-downed nape in pointed locks. Then she went back to her chair, sour and self-satisfied, and drained her vermouth, smacking her lips, while I rummaged for peanuts in the cupboard, and little Steve, wrenched to attention by his mother’s command, hurried toward the kitchen. He timorously came in, his eyes on the ground, knowing from experience that any decision could be countermanded a minute later by Isabelle, as violently and indignantly as if he’d deliberately disobeyed her. He stood by the door and I handed him his juice. He had his mother’s bulging eyes, and, not knowing where he had permission to direct them, his gaze was fleeting, tortured, terrified, and defeated, even when she wasn’t near.

I refilled Isabelle’s glass, pushed the bowl of peanuts her way. From her detached, listless air, I sensed a boastful melancholy coming. She delicately turned the rings she wore on each finger, silver-plated metal bands ornamented with the head of a lion, a big heart, fat letters: I Am OK. It was then that I noticed, Steve having unzipped his jacket, that dozens of words were scattered every which way over his clothes, his polo shirt, his track pants, his tennis shoes: Little Bear—Best Team—Heading for NY—Bikes and Cars—Hi Man.

“You see, Lucie,” Isabelle muttered, “the thing is, here I am, I am who I am, fine, but don’t go thinking it’s always going to be this way, don’t assume I’ll always be here dealing with…”

“Won’t your husband be getting worried?” I asked her gently. “It’s already eight o’clock.”

Eyes half-closed, I saw Isabelle’s husband without too much effort, not even wanting to. In their kitchen, more or less identical to ours, he was pouring himself a glass of wine, standing up, illuminated by blazing bulbs in a little rustic ceiling light. His face expressed nothing, neither fatigue nor impatience, only the resigned blankness of a routine. I then tried to turn my vision toward Pierrot, but all I could see was the glowing tip of his cigarette. Two big tears of blood were quivering at the rims of my eyes.

“Hey, you saw something,” said Isabelle, noticing them. “What was it?”

She filled her mouth with peanuts, amassing them in the hollow of one cheek and then dislodging them one by one with her tongue.

“I need to know, Lucie, I really need you to tell me, what sort of life am I going to have in a few years, with Steve on my hands? If on top of everything else he doesn’t get into that school, if he wasn’t even keeping his tie in his pocket but didn’t have a tie at all, his neck out in the open like a nobody…Hey, Steve, look at me, will you, how is it that Lucie saw you without a tie, huh? What’s that supposed to mean? You think maybe your mommy’s going to put up with you becoming a nobody, you think that’s what I’m killing myself to give you an education for, doing absolutely nothing with my life, just watching the days go by?”

Steve stared wide-eyed, panic on his face. He looked my way, hoping for help, for an explanation, and at the same time he nervously fingered his fly, which was stamped with a jaunty The Best of You.

“I’m sure Steve will do everything he can,” I said with conviction. “Go on, go wee wee, you know where the bathroom is.”

“Go pee, Steve,” Isabelle said magnanimously.

She sighed, drained her glass at one go, forced the last peanut from her cheek. Suddenly happy, she sighed again:

“Ah, this life of mine!”

Then at last she stood up, stretched, her turtleneck riding over her white, prominent, puffed-out belly, above the black leggings so tightly girdling her short, robust legs and wide hips that her crotch was perfectly, guilelessly defined. On her feet, austere, serious running shoes made for vigorous workouts. Maud and Lise burst into the kitchen like avid little animals.

“Mama, we’re hungry. Steve pissed all over the seat, he’s afraid to come out.”

Isabelle groaned, but the two vermouths, mingled with a contemplative overview of her still hopeful existence, had left her inert and lenient, so she didn’t make a move. Not to mention that her principles on the need for maternal authority did not include Steve always having to show himself to his best advantage.

I found the boy standing in the tiny toilet room, with the lights out. He was shivering in terror and fatigue, his eyes were frantic, and since I was too beleaguered to try to reassure him, I simply pulled him out by one hand. But, living as he did in constant incomprehension of what adults felt about him and wanted from him, he might have thought me angry, bent on demolishing him in some way or other, so I forced a smile, telling him it wasn’t serious. At the same time a second vision of Steve came to me, he might have been thirty years old, he was yelling at someone or something I couldn’t make out, he was dressed in a T-shirt blaring with words and drawings. And the look on his face seemed so vapid, his mouth so hateful, that I couldn’t hold back a surge of resentment at little Steve, whose urine I would now have to wipe off the tiles and toilet seat, quickly, before Pierrot came home, and who would with impunity turn into that disagreeable, pitiful young man.

I gave him a quick shake, scolding him:

“Come on, really, you could be a little careful, you’re a big boy now.”

But shame and weariness immediately washed over me. In the kitchen, Isabelle was holding forth to the girls, and I could see she’d got just what she wanted. Maud and Lise didn’t hate Isabelle, even if they already looked on her with the unconscious, subtle, decorous disdain of children who knew that the richest possibilities of a sumptuous and triumphant existence were offered them daily. Isabelle didn’t impress them, I envied them that. I supposed that Maud and Lise recognized in her a crude, unthinking force similar to their own, even as they sensed the superiority of their intelligence over Isabelle’s cunning. I let go of Steve’s hand and immediately thought it was the Garden-Club, and nothing else, that gave my daughters their breathtaking self-assurance.

“So, little slob, you made a mess at Lucie’s?” Isabelle breezily tossed out.

She gave Steve a crisp, automatic smack on the top of his head, then put on her fringed leather jacket, gave us a suddenly tired-sounding “bye-bye,” and bustled off, as usual when tipsiness in our kitchen full of warmth and respect for her bluster gave way to the prospect of a return home, five lampposts farther on, in the chilly April evening, dragging along—like a ball and chain, she thought, an exasperating mistake—that snot-nosed little Steve with his dim-witted distress.

I watched them walk away down the street that ran past our identical houses, and all at once I felt a sort of compassion for their graceless silhouettes, Isabelle hulking and squat on her big champion-athlete shoes, the boy frail and weedy, lurching along because his mother walked too fast for his short legs. Poor Steve, I thought, which reminded me that I still had to wipe up the pee.

Maud and Lise had turned on the kitchen TV and were doing their homework on the table, nibbling potato chips from a bag. My tongue burned with a longing to ask if they’d used their new power since I last saw them, and how they rated its clarity, its precision, but discretion forbade me to question my daughters on that. I then said, a bit crossly:

“You could have helped out the kid, instead of coming and blabbing to his mother that he’d…”

“We told him he was revolting,” Maud answered. “That Steve’s so pathetic, he’s just one big fail.”

“Well, that wasn’t very nice of you.”

Maud looked at me for a few seconds in surprise, and her charming little face, sharp, almost identical to Lise’s, expressed so sincere an ignorance of what I was talking about that I was once again at a loss for words. My daughters’ features were exquisite, every element of their sweet faces finely, clearly drawn.

“Why do we have to be nice to Steve? He’s got nothing going on up here,” said Maud, tapping her forehead.

She turned her eyes back to the screen, bored with my thoughts, no insult intended. Her hair stopped at her sharp little chin. My daughters’ perfection filled me with wonder. I sighed all the same, then picked up the mop and, as I turned around toward the bathroom, I had a vision of Pierrot’s face haloed in blue, probably from the plush upholstery in his car. That was a vision of the present, a simple representation in images of my thoughts, which had happened to turn toward my husband.

If he’s driving, that means I still have a few minutes, I told myself in relief.

The blood then flowing from my eyes was pale, watery, this being only a modest projection, a minor diversion from the power’s intended targets, the past and the future, so I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand, a little troubled to have seen, I thought, Pierrot’s lips moving: Who could he be talking to in his car?

My husband was on his way home from the Garden-Club, twenty miles away, where he spent his days trying to convince respectable, well-to-do couples to buy a lifetime of annual weeklong vacations in spots as varied as they were idyllic, all over the world, just one little week a year, to be sure, but Pierrot made it his business to show them how unforgettable that week would be, each week adding on to the weeks before as the years went by, which, all told, offered the customers hundreds of marvelous days for, Pierrot then intoned, an almost shockingly nominal fee. At the Garden-Club, the strategy for conquest was planned out to the minute. Invited by a flattersome letter two weeks before, potential customers came to lunch amid the Garden-Club’s sprawling grounds, girded with tall iron bars, deep in the countryside. They were welcomed by Pierrot, who guided them around the vast buffet of charcuterie and exotic salads, seizing the occasion to slip in a few preliminary remarks on the opportunity he was handing them, and then on to the swimming pool, the sauna, the massage room, always waiting close by, always within sight in his light gray suit with the crest of the Garden-Club, every half hour advancing a little further in his enumeration of the inconceivable privileges that came with the purchase of a week’s annual relaxation in Bora-Bora, Miami, Trouville, virtually anywhere the most perverse fancy might compel a person to go. Next came an intimate dinner with his prey, their skin rosy and perfumed, their souls grateful for the lavish reception, pleased that a man as imposing as Pierrot, with his perfect, slightly loose suit, his severe, chiseled face, had never let them out of his sight, and by the end of the dinner he would know if he’d won the day, if not there was no hope, he’d learned that from experience. That was what Pierrot did, he was paid for every contract signed. So far he was the only agent at the Garden-Club who’d convinced more than one couple out of two, which earned him a nice prestige at the park, and the aureole of that prestige did not fade when he drove through the ironwork gates but enveloped him all the way home, all the way into our house, an emanation of pride and success concretized by a regular influx of money. After an hour at home his moodiness took over again, his unfocused, gloomily tended acrimony. But the modest glory in which his triumphs at the Garden-Club bathed him was enough to nourish Maud and Lise’s social pretensions, even if for their own future they now aimed far higher than the Garden-Club. Our daughters were accustomed to a matter-of-course prosperity, because, frequenting as he did the moneyed couples at the Garden-Club, both invitees and those who came out for the day with their membership cards, my husband was for the most part no longer ignorant of their tastes in foods and belongings, and that new understanding inevitably governed every purchase for the house, everything Maud and Lise wore. I knew that Pierrot didn’t enjoy wasting his money on trinkets, fancy shoes, sophisticated toys for the girls, that he had an atavistic reluctance to reach for the most expensive in an array of similar products, but