Harry didn’t have any openings at the supper club, but he gave Annie a job at the Sports Shop. After she made it only one squeamish day behind the bait counter scooping night crawlers into Styrofoam cups with her eyes closed, Annie had the bright idea to ask my dad for a job in the front office at the mill.
Seeing Annie twiddling her thumbs, filing invoices, and chatting with old men all day while she waited for her Prince Charming, I felt the walls closing in on me in Friedrich. I knew I didn’t want what Annie chose—I felt she was settling, biding her time. That left me to be like Magda, the queen of a small domain, or I could be like my mother, a ghost. I didn’t want any of it. At night I dreamed of Europe or New York or even Minneapolis, anywhere but Friedrich and what I was there.
In the busy June days leading up to Solstice, an idea started to take shape.
Friday was the summer solstice, an important day for our family, when Fiir and Wasser were more abundant than ever and the ice floe was recharged with that abundant, positive energy returning to our world from the other side. Our grandmothers had always known the power of that day, and it had been a key day in our service to the community since the Watrys first settled in Friedrich. It was our busiest day of the year, with a steady stream of clients asking for charms to augment their luck using the extra solstice energy—perfect conditions for changing just about anything in one’s life.
That year we had been asked by the county farmers to do something about the drought threatening the area farms. At the end of the day, we would visit the inlet that brought the flow of freshwater into Clear Lake and see what we could do. The solstice was for the most powerful of our charms, the most difficult cases, the day we were most visibly of service to our neighbors. While we spent the year showing the town how respectable we were, Magda liked to remind them—especially the ladies who talked about us and the families that avoided us at church—how powerful we were, how dangerous we could be if we ever so chose. It reminded them that we were more than the innocuous healers on the north side of the lake.
I had long been afraid that Solstice the year I was eighteen would be the day that would bind me to the Watry-Ridder house forever. That fear became crushing after I learned Magda had already bound my heart and was coming for the other half. The family business—duties and privileges and all that went with it—was something I had been told to want, and I had wanted it, on some level, since I had first set that box turtle on Randy Hayes in first grade. But I could no longer ignore the question that haunted me: What else is out there?
The days running up to Solstice passed in an endless blur of water charms. Magda avoided me behind closed doors, and I was determined to avoid her too as I weighed my options. While I daydreamed about leaving it all behind, what I really wanted was to stand up to Magda, to show her that she couldn’t control me. I started to wonder: What if I defied her publicly? What would she do then? Would she still want to bind my heart if I wasn’t the sweet, obedient Watry girl she wanted me to be?
I saw little of Mary except during supper each evening. But when she crashed into her bed next to mine at night, I could feel she was changed since the incident at the beach. She had a new power, her abilities waking up all at once. I wanted to shout at Magda for not taking Mary’s freedom too. I wanted to shout at her for giving my heart away. I wanted to shout at my mother for letting her.
I lay awake many nights listening to Mary’s light, even breathing. Sometimes I wanted to wake her up and tell her everything about Magda, about the cedar chest, or about going all the way with John. Pride stopped me. I was supposed to be special, chosen—how could I complain to Mary, the passed-over little sister? I felt more alone in my burden than ever, alone in my own family.
In my sleep-deprived delirium, all thoughts of Magda and the cedar chest and our familial duty kept pointing me to Solstice. I could leave, I thought one night. How awful would it look for the fearsome Magda Watry if I’m not there to do her bidding?
A new but somehow familiar jolt of energy ran through me.
Yes, mein Liebling, a high, gravelly voice whispered in my ear.
Great-Grandma Dorothy? I thought. I felt her presence, an energy around me in the night. I couldn’t see her but I felt her there, like a hand resting on my shoulder. After she had warned me in my dream, I knew in my gut it was her.
It wasn’t always this way, Great-Grandma Dorothy whispered.
What do you mean? I asked her silently, starting to understand how we could communicate. Was this how Mary talked to her too?
She didn’t answer, leaving me to mull it over for myself until morning. But I swore I felt the lightest pulse of energy every time I thought about ruining Solstice, about embarrassing Magda. Is that what you want from me, Dorothy? I asked the darkness.
At first, I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. But in those days leading up to Solstice, as I stewed in resentment and hurt, the desire crystallized: I kept picturing myself walking away from Friedrich, riding off into the horizon, leaving the town and my family and responsibilities in the dust. But it felt like a foolish fantasy. How will Magda ever let me go? I asked myself in despair. Our whole family’s legacy hung on me. How could Magda ever let me walk away?
I wanted to defy Magda. I wanted to stand up to her, to make her look foolish, even. If I couldn’t escape entirely, at least I could mess with her. When the house was quiet, I began to practice, thinking of ways to mess up Solstice. I practiced shielding myself, cutting myself off from the ice floe for seconds, then minutes, at a time. It was like holding my breath underwater, fighting the urge to shoot up and open my eyes. What would Magda do if I just disappeared during Solstice, the moment when she needed me most to show off for our neighbors?
I grew braver as my resentment swelled, practicing sound and visibility blankets in the corner of the room as I watched TV at night with my parents. If Dad had turned his head, he would’ve seen an empty armchair and thought I’d left the room when he wasn’t looking.
Good, Dorothy whispered to me as I got stronger.
I didn’t understand why Great-Grandma Dorothy was troubled enough to stir from her eternal rest and get involved, but it felt good to have her in my corner. Whatever Magda had done that Dorothy so disapproved of—My daughter lost her way long ago—I was grateful to have my great-grandmother’s guidance from the other side. It reassured me that it wasn’t all in my head. Magda had overstepped, and Dorothy knew it too.
John called or stopped by some nights, and we snuck off a few times to the cornfields for quick, sweaty encounters with the steering wheel digging into my back—better than the dusty flatbed, at least. But I found myself disappointed every time, waiting for it to be over, my mind slipping back to Solstice. It was easier to say that I was too tired after reading agitated housewives’ energies all day, easier to watch TV with my parents instead. When John joined us, he sat in the armchair next to my father like he was already part of the household.
One night my mother gazed at John, then back at me. Her face changed, worry flashing across her face so quickly with the subtlest downward tug of her brow that I could have imagined it.
“What?” I asked her, too sharply, from my position on the floor near John’s chair. I was nervous that my mother, or worse, my father, had somehow seen the change between us—that they knew we were fooling around, that they knew how disappointed and trapped I felt.
Mom said nothing and gave a small shake of her head. She pressed her lips together firmly and that was that. John tightened his grip on my shoulder, and I wondered if he too had seen the look from my mother.
Is this all I have to look forward to?