What was the point of being a witch if Annabelle couldn’t manage a spell to fix her broken heart? There, she’d said it; I’m a witch, I’m a witch, I’m a witch! She felt slightly guilty and a tiny bit fraudulent—she wasn’t in a coven or anything, and she couldn’t be sure that any of the spells she’d tried had actually worked. What Annabelle had done was read a bunch of books, created a sacred space in her apartment, listened to her inner voices, and… well, observed the Celtic calendar and all that. Two years in a row, she got on the Uptown Number 1 to go to the summer solstice celebration at St. John’s Cathedral at 3:00 a.m.
At least it made her serious.
Rolling over in her bed, light slanting through the ground floor windows of her one-bedroom in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, she stared at the pattern the past-midday sun made on the ceiling. She fixated on the place where the ceiling met the wall in the southwest corner of her medium-sized boudoir, and wished she had done a better job painting the walls the soothing Wedgewood—things got sloppy around the edges, and she knew she’d never be bothered touching up the ceiling with white, even though the bits of blue tortured her. Not as much as they tortured Wil—whoops. Almost lost it there. Oh, nooooo, even the mean, stupid, lousy, crappy things he said had the power to set her off crying.
Rolling over, other side. . . bad choice: 11 million sodden tissues littered the floor, or rather, coated it. It was sickening, this was sickening, it wasn’t the end of the world, it was just, you know, a breakup, an ending, the making of room for a new beginning, an opportunity for psychic fine-tuning—Oh God, she thought, Remember when Wilson—when he teased me about my affirmations? It was really so cute and obviously he was listening… When he made up all those hopelessly corny little sayings, and even went so far as to write them down on index cards and tape them up all over the apartment? Helplessly, Annabelle started to cry again. Prepared as always, she ripped into tissue box number four and was about to settle down for another good bawl when the phone rang.
Her stomach flipped—then rushed to her throat—then hit the floor. For a second, a split-second, the gaping, aching hole in her chest filled with a bubble of hope. Amazing, the thought that can fill a split-millisecond: It’s him! It’s Wilson! He’s changed his mind and wants me back! Oh God, it’s him and he does still love me.
Her body sang with it, the relief, the exhilaration. But in another split-millisecond, in the time it took or her to check her caller ID, she knew it wasn’t him. It was Lorna.
She tried for blasé, or at least cheery.
“Hi!” There. That was peppy, the peppiest she’d been in days.
“You sound dreadful.” Annabelle could hear the exhalation of vape smoke and could see it filling Lorna’s minuscule West Village studio-with-loft-bed.
“I’m fine.” Annabelle snorted into a tissue. “Coming down with—”
“Anna. Please. I’m not completely insensitive. Did you sleep?”
“Eventually. Nightmares. I’m sure I’m PMS’ing as well.”
“Would you like to talk?’
“Oh.” Annabelle’s voice clogged as her broken heart got caught in her throat. “Yeah. Maybe? Later. I’m still in bed.”
“I’ll come out to you.”
“Oh my God, it’s that bad, isn’t it? I mean, come out to me? In Brooklyn? Take the F train?”
“I will be taking a cab, of course. I don’t love you that much.”
“The place is a disaster; I haven’t cleaned in days—”
“This may never happen again, Anna, so enjoy it. I’m coming over.”
Annabelle hung up as the tears surged again: those were the exact words that Wil—that he used the day he called her, a call so unexpected, she’d known immediately something was up.
62y
“I’m coming over.”
Annabelle almost dropped the receiver. It was 4:12 p.m. and Wilson was calling. If Annabelle learned anything in the three years and nine months she’d known and loved him, she knew that he never called on odd minutes. Not in terms of ones, threes, fives, etc., but odd in terms of being off the hour or the half hour. Nor did he call, ever, during work.
A little quirk of his, an adorable little control freak quirk, totally in line with one of the first compliments he had ever given her: “You’re so orrrrrrrganized,” he’d rumbled when he first saw her apartment—third date—stroking his hand down from the top of her ash blonde head, hesitating at the small of her back, and turning her toward him for a kiss.
“Hello? Annie?
“Hi, yeah, come on over. You sound weird? Bad day?”
“We need to talk.”
No. No way. Battle stations. Danger. Danger. Annabelle took a breath. “Whoops. Sounds serious. Have I been leaving the seat up again?” Humor. Good. Good girl.
“I’m in a taxi.” Taxi? Oh shit. “I’ll be there in ten.”
“Wilson, what’s going on.” Teary, begging.
“Annie. Just wait. I’m on my way.”
Dial tone.
Ah, there’s a feeling she hadn’t felt since second grade, when she routinely used to faint during math. Every Tuesday, this kind of feeling would overcome her; a light-light-lighter-than-the-air-that-was-slowly-leaving-her-body feeling of disconnection. The room would zoom away from her, then rush back to proper perspective. Her skin would tingle all over, with sounds distant and echoing in her ringing ears and especially, especially, the slow blur of vision, the glowing ring of light that entirely filled her line of sight and then went black.
“I will not pass out, I will not pass out, come back, come back, come back, Annabelle Annabelle Annabelle… ” Her head continued to buzz. Head. Headache. Aspirin. Bathroom. Face. Make up.
Face. White. She’d always thought that was a literary flourish, pale as a ghost and such. Nope, there it was, her round Irish face as chalky as cheese. Chalky as cheese, chalky as cheese…
This would be a good time to rearrange the bookshelves. The aspirin bottle clattered into the sink. She’d been meaning for weeks to switch from chromatically arranged within theme—women’s fiction, travel guides, travel writing, homeopathy, art, history, art history, herbs, etc.—into a more straightforward and visually varied alphabetical mode. Perhaps complete and utter alphabetization was called for, i.e.: art, drama, homeopathy, etc. Perhaps she need not throw out the idea of chromatic arrangement, either; she could still color-code each section—
He’s going to break up with me.
Her photographs—hmmm. Why not set them in chronological order, starting from the top right, along the shelves, in front of the chromatically and alphabetically sorted books? And her souvenirs, the ones she’d bought herself, and the ones that Lorna and Maria Grazia brought back from their travels, organized perhaps, by weight and volume.
He’s going to—
Phone. Speed dial. Ring. Ring. Ring. Please. Please.
“Maria Grazia? It’s Annabelle. I think… I think Wilson’s going to break up with me.”