Magic Circle

Elijah was sure a maker of magic must live in some dark, secluded place. The edge of the city, where the rows of houses snap into ever-marching prairie. Some small forest or collection of trees, dark and gloomy from thick branches even in the middle of the day. Perhaps somewhere in the city, but under it, some back alley door that would open to a dank stairwell that would lead down, down, down, so deep you’d wonder whether you were still, technically, in the city.

The business card he had been handed at that party had an address. A real address. 1801 Poplar Lane. When he plugged it into his phone, the blue line tracing his path did not end at the edge of the city, or the middle, or the woods. It ended on Poplar, some nothing street in the middle of the southern suburbs that ended in a cul-de-sac. Elijah was wary. She was a maker of magic. Perhaps the business card was magic, too. The entire drive he spent just as much time staring at the GPS display as the road, waiting for it to mysteriously recalculate, send him somewhere else.

No such thing happened. Twenty-two minutes after he left his midrise apartment he found himself stopping in front of 1801 Poplar Lane. It was a split-level ranch, like all the other houses surrounding it. Painted a light blue, with a yellow door and shutters. There was a beat-up Dodge Caravan in the driveway. A handful of colorful, plastic children’s toys in the side yard. A rainbow pinwheel spun lazily in the morning breeze. A flag hung next to the door, and it took Elijah a few seconds to place it. The local football team.

This can’t be it.

It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. What sort of magic could be found in a house that had a football flag waving next to the door? It was wrong. It was a prank. Any second now that asshole Jeremy and his equally-asshole wife Tina were going to come busting out the front door, laughing the whole way, taking pictures. You stupid gullible fool, how could you think magic was real?

But…the look on Jeremy’s face that day. New Year’s Eve. Jeremy and Tina’s apartment, with the roof access. Elijah had been doing so well, and then he hadn’t been. And then he really hadn’t been, and he’d searched for a quiet place to completely lose himself. A quiet corner of the roof where, unbeknownst to Elijah, Jeremy hid the cocaine under a loose brick. He’d come for drugs and instead found Elijah a sobbing, wet mess. And perennial Asshole of the Year Jeremy Forte hadn’t yelled out for everyone to come look at the crying man. He hadn’t even mocked him. He’d patted him on the shoulder, reached into his wallet, and pulled out a battered business card

“Really?” Elijah had managed to ask, reading the words on the front.

“She helped Tina,” Jeremy said. “After her mom died. Remember?”

Elijah did. Three years ago Tina’s mom had died unexpectedly of some sudden human bullshit or another and for months Tina was completely destroyed. No one had seen her, Jeremy claimed she wouldn’t even get out of bed but refused to go into more detail (he was an asshole to everyone except his wife, it seemed).

And then one day, Tina showed up at the bar like nothing had ever happened. Polite society: no one questioned it. They all just assumed she found a good doctor who had given her good drugs and she was able to function again.

“I’ve been holding onto it, waiting until someone else needed her. She can help.”

If Jeremy was going to fuck with him, it would have been at the party, with witnesses. It was a little past nine on a Tuesday on a street so deep in the suburbs it was a mile and a half to the nearest building that wasn’t a single-family home. A woman was pushing a stroller and walking a dog. A couple of old men were power walking down the street, deep in conversation. The rest of the morning was quiet.

Seconds before Elijah put the car back into gear, he killed the engine and got out.

Knock. At least knock. See who’s there. And if it is a prank, at least we can get McDonald’s breakfast on the way home. A little treat for being screwed.

The sound of the doorbell triggered a dog barking, followed by a woman’s voice.

“Meatball, shush! Meatball, fetch!”

The door swung open, revealing a petite woman in a university sweatshirt and clamdiggers, her curly hair pulled back loosely. A crown of flyaways surrounded her head, and with the morning light cutting through the house behind her they were all lit up like a halo. She gave him a guarded smile.

“Hello?”

A golden retriever came running up behind her, a stuffed animal shaped like a moose in its mouth. Elijah looked between the dog and the woman.

“Meatball?” he asked.

The woman smiled and shrugged. “The kids named her.”

The woman still had a hand on the door, and Elijah realized he was a strange man standing in front of a woman’s home.

“I’m Elijah,” he said quickly.

She raised an eyebrow.

The card, idiot, the card.

He reached into his pocket for it and held it out to her.

The change was instant. A softening of the shoulders, widening of the door. She took the card and inspected it, perhaps making sure it wasn’t a photocopy.

“Ah,” she said. “Come in.”

Elijah hadn’t even realized there had been a part of him hoping the inside of the house would be an obvious witch’s den until it wasn’t and palpable disappointed crawled down his spine. There was no cauldron. No shelves of glass jars filled with whatever eye of newt was. No magic books, no black cat, no brooms. There was the sound of Roomba toodling along downstairs, but he couldn’t imagine a witch flying a round little vacuum through the night.

The house was the picture of modern suburbanity. As she led him up the half flight to the upper part of the house the wall was covered in pictures, mostly of three kids at various holidays and school events. The living room had a large television, a sectional covered in stains, and more kids’ toys scattered about. More pictures on the wall. Meatball following him closely, shoving the stuffed moose into him but refusing to let go when Elijah tried to take it.

The kitchen was much the same. The table had paint stains. A white board calendar hung on the wall, filled with things like JOSIE DANCE RECITAL and ALEX HOCKEY PRACTICE. The fridge was covered with art and tests with bright red A’s on top.

“Can I get you something to drink? Water? Lemonade? Coke?”

“A Coke, I guess,” he said.

She went to the pantry and reached up to the highest shelf.

“It’s going to be warm but I can put ice in it. My middle kid, Sophie, has become an addict. I have to put it where she can’t reach it.”

She poured the can into glass full of ice, and as the foam fizzled out the top she went back into the pantry and pulled and impressive selection of cookie boxes.

“Josie’s a Girl Scout,” she explained as she lined a tray with cookies. “So we get ‘em all. You’re not allergic to peanuts or anything are you?”

Elijah shook his head. He was still wondering if this was a prank. Or if he had completely misunderstood what was going on here. The card had said ‘maker of magic,’ and now that he thought about it, what sense did that even make? It told him nothing. What sort of magic? She was a middle aged housewife with three kids and a dog named Meatball. What, exactly, was she supposed to do to help him?

“Come on,” she said, picking up the tray. Feeling like he was too deep to simply set the glass down and walk out of the house, Elijah followed. Down the stairs, through a hall, stepping over the Roomba picking up dust. A single door remained.

This is it. This is where the magic will be. The cauldron and the black cat and the funny looking broom.

Of course that wasn’t what was in there. Elijah had barely believed it himself. It wasn’t even dark and spooky. A large window faced into the backyard, letting in a large square of sunlight across the beige carpet. There was a couple of rocking chairs. A table in-between. More pictures of the kids and more of their art on the walls.

Except for the far wall, where someone had DIY’d a series of wooden shelves in the shape of hexagons, like honeycomb, except instead of honey ever single hexagon was packed full of yarn.

“Pick a base color,” she said, gesturing to the wall with her head as she put the cookies down on the little table. “I need to call my husband real quick before we begin.”

While she told her husband she’d gotten an unexpected client and could he please pick up something for dinner on the way home? Elijah explored an entire world of color. There was no organization. No system. A single honeycomb would have several reds, a green, a mustard, three different shades of pink, and a multicolored strand. A whole wall of this. A riot of color. It almost made him nauseous. He picked a cool gray from the middle and quickly turned around.

“Good choice,” she said, taking it from him. “Wool. Very soft, and only gets softer. It won’t be machine washable, are you okay with that?”

Elijah shrugged. He didn’t even know what would happen with it, let alone if he’d want to wash it.

She picked up on this, frowning. “They didn’t tell you how this works, huh? Please, sit right there.”

Sitting in one rocking chair, she gestured to the other. He sat, surprised at how comfortable the wood was. There was a drawer in the little table between them, and she opened it. He hadn’t seen them since his grandmother died, so  it took him a second to remember what they were. Crochet hooks.

“It’s really very simple,” she said, picking one with a red handle. “But also a little hard. You tell me the things you don’t want anymore. I put them in the blanket.”

Elijah frowned. “You mean…my memories?”

“Hmmm, it’s more complicated than that. You’ll still remember things, I don’t take the actual memories. Just the emotions surrounding them. When we’re done, you’ll be able to remember without being overwhelmed.”

Did he believe her? It almost didn’t matter. He wanted to believe her. ‘Overwhelmed’ was an understatement for what those memories did to him. They consumed him. Smothered him. Made him forget how to stand, how to breathe, how to be alive. He didn’t want to forget. He only wanted to function.

“You said it’s a little hard?”

She nodded. “You need to tell me everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything you no longer want. You must tell me. Say it out loud. Tell me the story. The telling of it, that’s what does the trick. The telling of it puts the emotion into the blanket.”

Could he? Physically, he meant. Could he physically get through saying it all out loud? Could he make his mouth move? His tongue? Could he force the air through his vocal cords and make the sounds?

“If it’s too hard-”

“I want to try,” he said. “I want to.”

She gave him a sad smile and nodded.

“We can stop whenever you want. We can take breaks. Whenever you’re ready.”

She had already begun, making a circle with the cool gray.

Elijah sat in silence, and she let him. Trying to find the right spot. The spot in his memory where it all went wrong. Where everything tried to shut down.

When he started talking, it seemed he could not stop. Out and out the words flowed. Only pausing for a sip of Coke. A bite of Thin Mint. A crying jag that left him so out of breath he thought might pass out onto the floor. She would wait patiently as this happened, holding the yarn in her lap, and when he finally had himself under control she would begin again.

He was only vaguely aware of her. He mostly stared out the window, and out of the corner of his eye he could see her compact motions, the circle of yarn getting larger and larger, around and around and around.

When it was all out it was late afternoon according to the sun outside, four-forty five according to his watch. New sounds were in the house. Kids, out in the back yard, yelling at each other. Meatball barking. The television upstairs blaring. He hadn’t noticed it all.

“Very nice,” she said, holding up her work. “I told you gray was a good choice.”

When had she gotten up for more yarn? He didn’t remember, but she must have, because the whole blanket was not the gray he had chosen. It switched, to a black, to a white, to another gray, and to several rounds of the most delicate, light blue he had ever seen. Had that even been on her shelf?

It was not a full blanket, but still pretty big. Three feet across, maybe. A lap blanket, for the couch.

“How do you feel?”

“Exhausted,” he said automatically. Which was true. But he also felt…light. As though he’d been carrying some ridiculous weight on his back this whole time, and somebody finally noticed and took it off.

He experimented. He thought about the things he’d been avoiding, the things that had kept catching up with him.

The memories were there.

The destruction was not.

He looked at the blanket she was holding. “They’re…they’re in there?”

She nodded again. “Do you want to keep it?”

“Keep it?”

“Some people do. Some people don’t. The emotions are still there. Here. I didn’t destroy them. I put them in the blanket. So, if you touch it…”

He’d been reaching for it but pulled his hand back like he’d been about to be burned.

“Why would I want that?”

“Some people do,” was all she said. “Take it home. You can get rid of it later if you want.”

She put the blanket in a paper bag so he could take it with her. And as she handed him the blanket, she handed him back her business card.

“Pass it on,” she said. “When you meet someone else who might need me.”

Her husband was pulling into the driveway as left the front door. The paper bag he carried was much bigger, and smelled of curry. He smiled at Elijah as they passed on the walk.

“You must be her unexpected client. Did it go well?”

“I think so.”

“She’s amazing, isn’t she? Got a knack.”

Then he was past him, up the stoop, in the door, bellowing into the house dinner has arrived!

When Elijah arrived home, the emptiness of his apartment was simply a fact. A dinner alone was nothing more than a dinner alone. Half a bed was nothing to worry about.

His life had been given back to him.

The blanket he kept in the hallway closet, in the paper bag, on the highest shelf. He never thought he’d want to see it again, but one night, watching television and flipping through social media on his phone, a distinct urge rose in him. Something akin to picking at a scab or biting a sore. He turned off the television. Put down his phone.

The blanket was where he had left it. He brought it to bed, only taking it out after he had laid down.

Emotions swallowed him whole, he was crying before he knew it, but there was something different this time. The tears felt less devastating, more cathartic. Because this time, he knew, when he was done, he could put the blanket away. Put the grief away. And move on.

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