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She did glance at him then.
He winked, gave her the grin that Cameron called “so appealing” and finally left her, tossing the coffee cup in a trash can on his way.
Mary Anne did not watch him go. Instead, she reflected that if he knew anything about her, he wouldn’t have tried to impress her with his mention as a most eligible bachelor, never mind People—if that was what he’d been doing. She detested celebrity, thought that even journalists only remained dignified if they kept out of its limelight. Nobody became famous and retained his dignity. Graham Corbett, as far as she was concerned, was no exception. He was, however, becoming famous, his voice as familiar to many people as Garrison Keillor’s, and his following stronger than Dr. Laura’s. He’d been interviewed on several major television network talk shows already.
She looked toward the recording booth, seeing Jonathan’s compassionate expression as he interviewed the coal miner. Being a journalist was different. Jonathan wasn’t a celebrity and never would be, even if he someday won a Pulitzer. He was interested in other people, in things outside himself.
She had no idea what Cameron saw in Graham Corbett. But, as for Jonathan…Oh, hell, a love potion couldn’t possibly work. But it might be kind of fun to try. She pushed away from the computer console, met Jonathan’s eyes for one brief electric moment through the glass of the recording booth and as she left the studio reached in her purse for her cell phone to call Cameron.
BACK AT THE WOMEN’S resource center, Cameron resumed dealing with the details of her work. Calling a plumber to fix pipes in the safe house. Phrasing an ad for the newspaper inviting volunteers to train for the helpline. Checking in with the woman who was presently covering the helpline.
Cameron did her turn on the helpline, too. She knew she was reasonably good at counseling women in trouble, getting them to take advantage of the center’s resources. But every time a woman finally made the decision to leave a partner, Cameron felt so much empathy it was as if she, herself, had endured the ordeals. The husband who disassembled the car to prevent his wife from using it to flee. The cop boyfriend who sat with his service revolver, threatening suicide, in front of the single mother and her three-year-old. Then, there were the calls from men. Threats against her, every employee of the women’s resource center, the ex-spouses and ex-girlfriends, the runaway wife, the volunteer.
Graham Corbett, Cameron reflected again, would be the perfect man for her. He was kind on his show, and he gave damned good advice. No way could Cameron imagine him turning into a controlling, possessive type. And he was smart.
Cameron suspected that Graham had the hots for Mary Anne. She’d felt the currents running between them. She even wondered if Mary Anne felt it, too, but was in denial, too fixated on Jonathan. Besides, Mary Anne’s father was an actor and musician, an attractive celebrity whose exploits had been covered in international tabloids, a big deal. Mary Anne detested this, and she was never going to go for a man who lived and worked in the public eye.
The love potion had been a fun idea. But a deep part of Cameron badly wanted Mary Anne to succeed with Jonathan, for the simple reason that she herself wanted the chance to date and get to know Graham Corbett—who clearly preferred her cousin.
She should forget the radio star.
Her cell phone rang and she looked at the screen.
Mary Anne.
Cameron smiled and answered, wondering if she was going to learn that her cousin was willing to try a love potion after all.
“WHAT ARE YOU KEEPING those for?” obstetrician David Cureux asked his ex-wife. He had followed Clare into her basement to discover an entire bookcase stocked with foam meat trays. Those were not the only things stored in the basement. There were old magazines, including every copy of Midwifery Today ever printed, a stash of gift boxes that took up twenty-four cubic feet of space, the infamous box of rubber bands, another of twisty ties. The woman never threw anything away, but for the life of him David had no idea what she planned to do with those meat trays.
“We’ll need these things when it all falls apart,” she said.
It, David knew from long and turbulent experience with this woman, was civilization as they knew it. She’d raised two children, who now spoke with a sort of hushed horror of growing up amidst the ominous predictions of a woman they still believed to be a seer, even though they’d finally learned to tune out her prognostications of global disaster.
“I guess you could put them together with duct tape and build yourself a house,” he reflected of the meat trays. “Or a coliseum.”
“Never mind that. Let’s move these upstairs.”
These were more than twenty boxes too heavy for the sixty-eight-year-old woman to carry up the cellar steps by herself. They contained telephone directories for the years 1968 to 2005. Not just phone directories that had belonged to Clare, but most of the discarded phone directories for the state of West Virginia—or so David suspected.
“I have to get this done,” Clare said, referring to the delivery of the boxes to recycling, which her ex-husband had promised to do with his pickup truck. Clare was reluctant to part with them, but she’d realized that every issue of Birth Journal could no longer be kept upstairs. So those magazines were coming downstairs and the phone books would have to leave. “We need to hurry. Someone’s coming about a love potion.”
A person who knew Clare less well would draw one of the following conclusions: One, she’d made a previous appointment with someone who wanted a love potion. Or two, she’d received a phone message or written message asking her to be home at a particular time to greet a customer interested in a love potion.
David, however, understood that Clare simply “knew” someone was going to come by. Enough people approached her about love potions that it wouldn’t be a huge coincidence for her to receive an unannounced visitor requesting one. If such a person arrived in the next few minutes, David would chalk it up to the popularity of his ex-wife’s brand of snake oil. Their lives had been full of these instances of Clare supposedly “knowing” things were going to happen. Like the time she’d made them pack up from fishing because Bridget had broken her arm. “Bridget’s been hurt. We have to go home,” she’d said.
He’d found these announcements aggravating, because she always expected him to act on them. And coincidence had made her nearly always right.
If it wasn’t coincidence, there was a scientific explanation of which he was unaware. Whenever he told her that, Clare said matter-of-factly, “Of course, there is.” Clare’s point of view was that she had “the sight,” but that there was a scientific explanation for this gift.
Nonetheless, David’s physician’s mind did not stretch to encompass love potions that worked. The love potions were snake oil, and they appeared to “work” because people who were so determinedly in love that they would try such things could often get their way anyhow. And then there was the placebo effect, with all its variations, including the power of positive thinking. The strength of human belief could account for the supposed “success” of the love potions.
David hefted a box of phone books. On the off chance that a victim was on her way—usually it was women who went in for love potions—he preferred not to meet the person. Or be seen anywhere around Clare at the time. His city council seat was up for election again, and the council was having credibility problems as it was; damned if he’d let association with a dispenser of love draughts scupper his chances. He told his ex-wife, “You might think of me.”
“I do,” she said, misunderstanding. “You need the exercise.”
“LET’S TAKE ANOTHER CALL now. We’ve got Julie on the line. Hi, Julie.”
Mary Anne had switched on the radio as she started her car to drive herself and Cameron to Clare Cureux’s house in Myrtle Hollow and obtain a love potion. Hearing the detested voice of her least favorite person, she reached out to turn the radio off again.
“Don’t touch that dial,” Cameron said, batting her hand away.
“Hi, Graham.” It was a shy-sounding, young-sounding female voice. “It’s about my fiancе.”
“You’re engaged. Great! That lucky guy.”
“The hypocrite,” said Mary Anne. “I don’t think he’s ever asked out the same woman twice.”
“He’s waiting for the real thing,” Cameron insisted, undoubtedly partly in jest.
“Thanks,” the radio caller said, sounding so sweet that Mary Anne herself listened attentively for her problem, the problem the young woman expected to resolve by listening to Life—with Dr. Graham Corbett, which Mary Anne thought of as Get a Life. “Well, we’ve been engaged six months and we’re planning to be married at Christmas, and I totally love my fiancе, but he does this little thing that kind of bugs me. He says these things. I know he thinks he’s being funny, but he really hurts my feelings. Like I’m a little overweight but I’m not superfat, and I was showing him a wedding dress in a Brides magazine, and he asked if it comes in plus sizes.”
“Creep,” Cameron hissed.
“That’s not very nice,” Graham remarked, sounding compassionate.
From the man who says I have an ass that’s made for radio, Mary Anne reflected. You sorry piece of work.
“And I’m an English teacher, but I really want to write short stories, and I sent some in, trying to get published, and he says, ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.’”
“Have you told him how these comments make you feel?”
“Yes. He says I’m oversensitive.”
Graham made a thoughtful sound. “Julie, I want you to do something for me. I want you to think about how you feel when he says these things. Then, I’d like you to close your eyes…Got them closed?”
It was the intimate older-brother tone that listeners seemed to love. Knowing how little relation it bore to the real Graham Corbett, Mary Anne found it pretty hard to take.
“Yes,” said the girl who was engaged to a jerk.
Beside Mary Anne, Cameron had her eyes closed.
“Just imagine spending the rest of your life with someone who says things that make you feel that way.”
The poor girl made a slightly distraught sound. Cameron echoed it.
Mary Anne said, “I can’t believe you buy in to his act.”
“Shh!”
“Now, let’s try a different experiment,” Graham said. “Imagine how you would feel with someone who loves you so much that he wouldn’t dream of saying anything that could hurt your feelings. This is going to be a self-confident guy, so he doesn’t need to make himself feel strong by making you feel rotten. He’s going to say things like, ‘I can just imagine you in that dress. You will look so beautiful. But you’re always beautiful to me. I love you so much. I cannot wait till you’re my wife.’”
Mary Anne was not sentimental, but she had to admit that Graham was on the money with this one, and he certainly had a gift for conveying such sentiments in a way that sucked in the female audience.
Beside her, Cameron sighed.
“It’s all lies, Cam. That’s not what he’s really like. Trust me.”
“Shh! This is therapeutic for me. It keeps me from being a godless man-hater.”
“Yeah,” Julie said softly. “Okay. I see.”
“Julie, you don’t seem oversensitive to me, but this clown does seem under sensitive. He has some growing up to do, and I’d make sure he does it before you get to the altar.”
“Amen,” Mary Anne said. “Or else you’ll end up with someone who says you’ve got an ass made for radio.”
“Who said that?” Cameron asked, eyes suddenly wide and vigilant, turning in her seat.
Mary Anne’s cell phone rang. Knowing that up in Myrtle Hollow she might not have reception, she pulled over near the historic Henlawson Bridge and answered.
“Mary Anne Drew.”
“Hi, Mary Anne, this is Jonathan.”
“Jonathan.” Why was he calling? She wouldn’t be recording her next essay until the following Tuesday. This was Thursday.
“Hey, Angie and I are engaged, and we’re having a little party upstairs at the station Saturday night. I wanted to make sure you’re there. Angie wants to meet you.”
His words jolted her. Thinking she might throw up from the emotional impact of hearing him say he was engaged, Mary Anne managed to answer, “Thanks, Jona than. I’ll be there.”
“Great. See you then.”
She shut the phone, closing her eyes and trying to imagine Jonathan Hale telling her that she was always beautiful to him.
Cameron lifted her eyebrows.
Mary Anne repeated what he said.
“A party?” Cameron echoed. “People drink things at parties.”
Mary Anne followed her thought and her mischievous tone to its obvious conclusion. Grimly she put the car in gear, heading for her last hope, for the thing that couldn’t possibly work.
Myrtle Hollow
THE HOUSE WAS in fact a cabin. When Mary Anne parked her RAV4 outside, a bearded white-haired man was loading heavy cardboard boxes into a pickup truck. He glanced at the women in the vehicle and she saw a flash of turquoise-blue eyes.
“That’s Paul’s dad,” Cameron said. “He used to be an obstetrician. He lives in your neighborhood.”
“David Cureux,” Mary Anne replied, thinking with annoyance of the man she knew to be David Cureux’s next-door neighbor—Graham Corbett. “City councilman, possibly implicated in the misuse of city funds.”
“He absolutely wasn’t,” Cameron said. “Anyhow, he and Clare are divorced, but they’re still good friends. Well—at least he’s always helping her with projects. Paul,” she pronounced, “has mother issues. He needs therapy.”
“Of course, he does,” Mary Anne retorted. “His mother brews love potions in her spare time.”
The woman who came out onto the porch wore her still dark but white-threaded hair in a long braid. The years had etched a map of grooves on her olive-toned skin. The dark eyes seemed only briefly interested in Mary Anne and turned fiercely on the white-haired man, as though supervising him at his task. She wore a flannel shirt and blue jeans, and her feet were bare.
Cameron said, “She never wears shoes unless she’s forced to go somewhere they’re required. Paul finds that mortifying, too. Myself, I like her.”
“Does she know we’re coming?”
“Possibly, but I didn’t call her to ask, if that’s what you mean.”
Uneasily, Mary Anne touched the driver’s door handle as Cameron got out of the passenger seat. What in hell am I doing?
“David,” said the gray-haired woman, “why don’t you see if the library can use some of them?”
“The library has no use for thirty-year-old phone books. You could have used them for kindling.”
Clare seemed to think this over.
He hurried to get behind the wheel, as if afraid she was going to ask him to unload the cardboard boxes he’d just loaded into the truck bed. He shut the door and drove off.
The maker of love potions scowled.
“Waste,” she said to Cameron. “People are going to regret all the things they throw out when it all falls apart.”
Cameron said, “Hi, Clare. This is Mary Anne Drew. We’ve come to ask you about—”
“A love potion,” Clare answered. “Let’s go inside.”
Cameron cast Mary Anne a sidelong look, inviting her to be impressed by the woman’s powers. Mary Anne wished she was back at the newspaper office, accepting defeat with dignity.
The walls of the cabin’s kitchen were lined with shelves full of canning jars containing leaves, roots and other unidentifiable things. Clare asked, “Would either of you like a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you. I’m fine.” Mary Anne was a little bit uneasy about accepting a cup of tea from someone who brewed love potions. Whatever this woman made, would it be safe to give Jonathan? What if it poisoned him?
“Thank you,” Cameron said. “Do you have nettles?”
“Yes.” Clare gave her an approving nod. Mary Anne wondered again why Cameron didn’t simply marry Paul, who was handsome, intelligent and employed—a keeper and interpreter at the state park zoo by day and a musician by night. Except that Cameron didn’t especially want to be married, and she had said Paul definitely didn’t want to be and she didn’t like him that way anyhow. But Cameron seemed so at home in this atmosphere.
In contrast, Mary Anne felt out-of-place, felt exactly what she was. A woman who liked highlights and pedicures and bikini waxes and shopping and New York, who wouldn’t reject the idea of Botox or tooth bleaching, who could lie around watching entire seasons of Sex and the City on DVD over and over again.
They sat at a beautiful handmade wooden table on mismatched chairs.
Mary Anne said, “Cameron, this is unnecessary.”
Cameron gave her a fierce look.
“Good,” said Clare.
