Free The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits Page A

coughed. Gently at first, then more desperately. Her throat felt carpeted in a tickly fur, impossible to dislodge no matter how many times she hacked into her hand.
    She folded the letter, she returned it to the envelope, she placed it atop MISC . JUNK . This , she thought this is no road to pursue . Her brain whirred faster. She thought: What’s done was done . She thought: Where there once were dead people there is now a future filled with our trashy past. She thought: What does the vagrant want? What does the vagrant want?
    Outside, the sleet quieted down to nothing as it thickened into snow. Outside, it was as dark as evening.
     
     
     
    T o Mary’s knowledge her mother hadn’t seen Roz Biedelman since the one and only time the two had met, in April of 1987, some three months after the publication of Miriam . Mary recalled with visceral precision the dread she’d felt as through the window she watched Roz struggling to free her canvas tote bag from the backseat of her Volvo. Wearing an ankle-length kilim coat that lent her the hulking appearance of a Mongol raider, Roz had led the way up the Veals’ sidewalk that drizzly April morning followed by a skinny woman who wielded her umbrella like a panicky lepidopterist with her net. Dr. Flood, an obvious anorexic, was the third office member in Dr. Hammer and Roz’s brownstone suite. If Dr. Flood represented anything to Mary before this day, it was this: her anorexia had given Mary something mockable to offer her mother when she returned from her appointments with Dr. Hammer, and they had used the woman’s evident misery as a bonding opportunity during a time when the two of them were otherwise lacking in bonding opportunities. Until Mary was face-to-face with this extracurricular version of Dr. Flood, skittishly trailing Roz Biedelman up Mary’s own bricked walk, she had never seen any reason to find her behavior regrettable.
    Her mother, cheeks and neck still greasy with unabsorbed face cream, greeted Roz and Dr. Flood at the door with the high, cheerful tones she reserved for the unwanted. She took their coats and ushered them into the living room and asked if anyone wanted coffee. Dr. Flood rescinded into the crook of the couch wordlessly while Roz pulled files from her tote bag and arranged them in a semicircular flare on the carpet. Her mother returned with coffee and some slabs of week-old coffee cake, leftovers from a historical society brunch she’d hosted.
    Mary tried to catch her mother’s eye numerous times. Her mother refused to look at her.
    “So,” Mum said. Just that: so .
    Roz reflexively spooled off her CV: as she’d mentioned on the phone, she was a Harvard-trained psychologist and the author of the highly acclaimed book, Trampled Ivy . She volunteered as a mental health adviser at Semmering Academy though she had never treated Mary because Mary had never appeared to need treatment until her case was “beyond the legal purview of in-house counseling.” She, Dr. Flood, and Dr. Hammer had, until the recent publication of Dr. Hammer’s book Miriam , shared an office suite. In addition to being a colleague, she explained, Dr. Flood was also her “patient”; six months ago, Dr. Flood had joined Roz’s encounter group, Radcliffe Women Against Needless Domestic Abuse.
    “Is domestic abuse ever needful?” Mum inquired.
    “Elizabeth and I have decided that we won’t keep any secrets here,” Roz said, gesturing toward Dr. Flood. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable knowing about Elizabeth’s RWANDA involvement, because Elizabeth isn’t uncomfortable that you know this about her.”
    Roz looked to Dr. Flood for confirmation. Dr. Flood feigned transfixion with the fireplace.
    “As long as you’re not expecting an exchange of like confessions,” Mum said. “And by the way,” she said, turning to Mary, “you are not to say a word. Understand? Not one word to these people.”
    Mary nodded.
    “I’ve had enough of their