Ten Apprentices Read online

  When she came back, she looked tired and pinched. And that was before she went to work.

  After work, she took me out for dinner, and I still hadn’t brought out the quilt.

  She lingered over a glass of water. Not wine.

  I stared at her a little more closely. Ten years, and this was the first time she had asked me to come out and visit.

  “Mom, I have something I want to talk to you about.”

  I got out the quilt. “I have something I want to talk to you about, too.”

  Her eyes flickered over the quilt, then slid away. “I’m pregnant.”

  Did she think I would take her to task for not being married? I’d been married when I got pregnant with her, but I hadn’t stayed married for long. Her father had disappeared, frightened by my quilts, and she hadn’t seen him more than once every other year.

  “I just thought it was a good time. Things are going well at work. The partners are happy with me. I don’t want to wait until I’m too old, and I think I could be a good mother.”

  “This will keep you safe,” I said, holding up the quilt. “For now. I’ll work on some others in the next few months. And one for the baby, of course.”

  “Mother.” She held up a hand. “That’s not what I want from you.”

  “What, then?” I asked. I put the quilt down, crumpled it into the bag. What good was offering a gift if it would be ignored?

  “I just wanted you to know.”

  “And do nothing?” How could she expect me to hear about my granddaughter and not try to help protect her? Joanie was almost thirty years old. She’d survived on her own. After I’d raised her. But this was different. Now Joanie wanted to put her child in danger. An infant, in that house, with not a real, magic protection quilt anywhere. Not a real one.

  “Can’t you just be happy for me?” She was my little Joanie for just a moment, the little seven year-old girl who wanted to win the science fair contest, pitted against sixth graders.

  But there was another little girl inside of her.

  Which one did I pay attention to?

  “You should eat more,” I said.

  “Yes, Mother,” she said.

  “And take it easy. Sleep later. Work fewer hours.”

  “Anything else?”

  And take my quilt, I thought. Let me make enough to carpet your house in them. If I can’t be there to protect your baby myself, I could do that much, at least. How could she ask me to do nothing at all?

  “Will you let me come out for the birth?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” she said.

  So, this was a test. Be a good little grandmother. Keep your mouth closed. Keep your needles to yourself.

  “I would appreciate it if you would.”

  “I need a coach, but it has to be someone who will be here on a regular basis.”

  “I could do that.”

  “No, Mother. Definitely not. I’m thinking of one of my friends from work.”

  A friend from work instead of me? Stab me in the eye with a needle, why don’t you?

  “The father isn’t an option. I told him my situation. I didn’t want him to stay longer. He knows about the baby, but it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to do anymore.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  We ate the rest of the meal in silence.

  I went back to her house and took down the quilt I was working on. Folded it neatly and put it back in the bags. Pulled apart the plastic tubes.

  Looked out at the dark street and beyond.

  She came in, later. “You didn’t have to do that, you know,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Your quilts are beautiful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But you put so much into them, they are frightening to me. I don’t know if I ever told you that before. It’s like—sometimes I used to worry if there would be enough of you left for me.”

  “Will you let me stay a few extra days? Go shopping with you?” I asked.

  “You don’t have money for that, Mother.”

  I didn’t. “You can buy. I’ll just be your support. Just a few extra days. I promise I’ll leave after that.”

  She looked around the room. I’d put the garbage bags in the bathroom, so they’d be out of the way. It was white again, everywhere. Empty. The gun safe on the wall a sharp beige contrast to the rest.

  “OK. You can stay a little extra. But I can’t take more time off work. I need to get in as many hours as I can, while it’s still early.”

  “I can cook,” I said. The saliva in my mouth pooled there.

  “You don’t have to change yourself for me,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  I thought of a little girl on my lap, watching me quilt, taking a needle from me, and moistening it with her own spit. Pressing the needle to cloth, in and out.

  Joanie had never been that girl.

  I did not know if her daughter would be. But I would wait.

  My quilts would wait.

  DELILAH’S APPRENTICE

  Your own hair holds the most power, and next comes those who share your blood and whom you know and love. Or know and hate. It doesn’t matter much, one way or the other there. But let me tell you, when you have access to hair in quantity, already shorn, freely given, bags full, there’s no need to trick anyone.

  Mrs. Dill is one of my regulars. I call her Mrs. Dill because her face is always a little sour. She has thick hair, graying for the last ten years now. She comes in twice a month to get the roots done and a trim. She has a lot of it, and even if I cut it too frequently to make it powerful strand by strand, quantity can make up for quality.

  “You’re looking great. I think you look ten pounds lighter. Is it the new diet you were trying? The one with the lemon juice?” I walked over to the front of the shop, my scissors in the left front pocket of my apron. We were in a strip mall, just north of the center of town. A lot of traffic went by, some noisily.

  “I gave it up,” said Mrs. Dill. “Couldn’t stand the taste of the lemon. And I was hungry.”

  “Poor thing,” I murmured. It had been a mistake to bring that up. “Must be that dress, then. New, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, do you think so?” She put her hands to her hips and looked down at herself. Then she did a half turn and looked in the mirror. “Green is supposed to make my skin look warmer. The contrast, you know. The woman at Macy’s told me so when I bought this.”

  “It’s lovely,” I lied.

  There, I’d done my part. Now it was her turn.

  She put her hands up to fluff her hair. “I think I want a change,” she said.

  Hoo-boy, I thought. Not this again. I had talked her out of doing a wedge about six months ago.

  “I want to look more modern,” she said. “What do you think of an asymmetrical style?”

  I thought it would make her look like the Green Goblin. What I said was, “A younger look is a great idea. You want to go shorter?”

  She tilted her head to one side and look at herself in the mirror, as if trying to get a preview of the asymmetrical cut. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “A little shorter. You have such beautiful hair. And you don’t want to go so short that you look—well, shorn.” I smiled and gently patted one arm.

  “Whatever you say, then, Maxie,” she said. “I know I can trust you. I always look better when you’re finished. You have a magic touch, or something.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That would be nice. If there really were magic around, that is.”

  I led Mrs. Dill to the farthest washing station and turned on the water. I felt it with my own hands to make sure the temperature was right before I let her lean back into it.

  She sighed then. “You get everything perfect.”

  I started rubbing her scalp.

  She let out a soft sound of satisfaction. Mrs. Dill’s husband could use a few pointers, I think. “Your fingers are incredible,” she said.

  “Lots of p
ractice.” I lathered her up, then rinsed her off and sat her back up. I was just sitting her down at my station when I felt a sudden energy fill the shop. It made me sway and my vision went dark for just a second.

  “Are you all right?” asked Mrs. Dill.

  I was more than all right. But I did wonder what Kris was doing here. I looked over and saw him at the front of the shop, his blond ponytail sparkling in the sunlight. God, the power in that hair. Times like this I was almost tempted.

  But, that could ruin everything. A man doesn’t like to be loved for his hair alone.

  Kris made a half-wave, but his whole body was tense and his eyes were very dark. It didn’t take magic for me to figure out that something was wrong.

  “Can I take a minute?” I asked Mrs. Dill.

  “Sure, dear. You go on ahead. If I had that young man waiting for me, I wouldn’t be cutting my hair, either.”

  It was nicer than I expected her to be. She was normally a little jealous of my time. If other customers came while she was in, she would tend to take longer than ever to make me do the last few flourishes.

  But I saw her looking at Kris. Her eyes were narrowed with interest. She was going to be watching me the whole time with him. That would be her pay off. And then she would gossip about it with her friends. The hair stylist and the biker, or something like that. Well, I would just have to be careful I didn’t reveal anything truly personal.

  I also stepped between her and Kris. He was wearing a black leather bomber jacket and he had his hands stuffed into the back pockets of his jeans. He looked delicious, as always.

  “Sorry to bother you at work,” he said. He had never made a comment about my job, even if he had wondered about it.

  “Don’t worry about it,’ I said. “What’s wrong?” Mrs. Dill was content for now, but I had about four minutes before she started to melt down, at the most.

  He looked away. “Look, I probably shouldn’t have come.” He turned to the door.

  I put a hand on his shoulder and drew him back. Now I could see the worry in the bags under his eyes. When was the last time he had slept? When we were together, two nights ago? That was what it looked like.

  “It’s my baby sister, Lou. Louise.”

  I waited for him to tell the rest.

  “She’s in the hospital. In the mental ward,” he let out slowly.

  I nodded.

  “She’s always been—intense. But this time, she tried to kill herself. And she shaved off her hair. It looks bad. There are cuts all over. She must have done it with a razor or something.”

  My body went tense at this information. It sounded like something I knew all too much about.

  “She was found in an alley, a mile or so from her apartment. She won’t talk to me. She won’t tell me why she did it. She won’t say anything at all. She reacts to any male nurse or doctor, to anyone male. They suggested that maybe a woman would be better.

  “Will you come see her?” he asked.

  I could feel Mrs. Dill behind me, her eyes on my back.

  “Of course I’ll come,” I said to Kris. “You don’t have to ask me things like that.”

  I reached back to pull the ties of my apron off.

  “It doesn’t have to be right this second,” said Kris. His eyes flickered behind me. “I mean, if you have an appointment. I know this is your job and stuff. You can’t drop everything for me.”

  “I can,” I said. “And I will.” I walked out of the shop and into his car.

  He started to drive, and I started to think.

  “Kris, she’s not going to just talk to me the minute I walk in.”

  He stared at me, letting this sink in. “Yeah, I guess not.” He ran a finger through his hair.

  “I’ll just sit with her until she feels ready. If she feels ready.”

  Kris had told me he had a sister who was about sixteen, but he’d never told me more than that. Not even her name. I assumed that she still lived with his parents, also never a topic of conversation with him.

  But he had come to get me from the shop immediately after seeing her.

  He knew that I could do something for her. I don’t know how consciously he knew it, but he did. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, either. I’d never had a relationship work out where the other person knew about my magic.

  We stopped at the hospital parking lot.

  Did I want to talk to him about why he’d asked me to come here?

  No. It wasn’t the right time, if there ever was a time, which I wasn’t entirely sure of.

  I got out. He came around and walked next to me. No arm-in-arm thing, like we often did. He was too tense for that.

  I didn’t mind.

  When we got to the elevator, though, we were alone as the doors closed. He said, “I really appreciate this, Maxie. This is above and beyond.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I’d do anything for you, Kris. I hope you know that.” I hadn’t meant to put my heart out there like that for him. I’m not sure I knew myself how much I felt for him before then.

  “Maxie, I—” he started to say.

  “Hey, it’s OK. Later,” I told him, and then gave him a quick kiss before the elevator doors opened again.

  We walked down the hall and he pointed out his sister’s room, to the right.

  There was a nurse inside, changing the saline solution.

  “Oh, good to see you. Isn’t it good to see him, Louise? Your brother came back. And this time he brought a friend with him,” said the nurse.

  Lou stared straight ahead.

  I could see the cuts all over her head. It looked like whoever had cut her hair had done a horrible hack job of it. The cuts were worse on the left side than on the right. I couldn’t tell if they’d started on one side and then she’d gotten more violently upset, or if she had grown more catatonic as her hair fell away.

  I hoped she wasn’t so far gone I couldn’t help her anymore.

  The nurse went out and left us alone.

  Kris sat in a chair by his sister’s side, holding her hand in his. “Lou, I brought my friend to see you. My girlfriend, Maxie. Remember, I told you about her? The one with the short hair?”

  I moved a little closer to him, so she could see me.

  “Lou, please. You’ve got to talk to someone. Whoever did this to you is still out there. You don’t want them to do this to someone else, do you?” he asked. There were tears leaking out of his eyes.

  I had never seen him cry before; he didn’t look ashamed of it.

  “OK, I’m going to leave you two alone together. I’ll be right outside, Lou. But I think you might want to talk to Maxie. She’s a really good person. And she’s strong. Whatever you say, it won’t be too much for her. I promise you.”

  Kris nodded to me.

  “I’ll take care of her,” I said.

  He kissed me on the forehead. “I know you will.” He looked back once at the door, then walked out and closed it behind him.

  He trusted me. With his sister’s life.

  We’d never said the three little words, but somehow that seemed ridiculous now. I knew I loved him and he loved me. I’d known it for a while. I just hadn’t had to look it in the face until this moment.

  “Hi, Lou,” I said. It felt strange calling her that when I didn’t know her, but I didn’t want to call her “Louise” like the nurse had, either.

  I sat down on the chair still warm from Kris’s excellent ass, and I leaned forward. I let my arm come close to hers on the bed, but didn’t quite touch it. Not yet.

  “I’m really glad to meet you finally,” I said. “Kris has talked about you before, but he hasn’t said much. You probably know how that works on the other side. I bet he hasn’t said much about me, either? But I know he loves you. More than his parents. It’s in his eyes when he talks about you.”

  She stirred a little.

  “I work as a hair stylist. Yeah, I know, not much of a profession. But it works for me. And Kris is no snob.” I real
ized suddenly I’d mentioned hair. What was I thinking?

  Her hand twitched, the one next to mine.

  I brushed against it and was surprised at the coldness I felt.

  “I’m here for you, Lou. Anything you want, just name it.” I watched as her shoulders began to shake.

  Then she whispered the same thing over and over again, “my hair, my hair, my hair.”

  She was still saying it when Kris came back in.

  “What happened?” he asked, looking towards me. He didn’t look happy. He might as well have asked what I’d done to her.

  “I tried,” I said. “I don’t know what else to do.” I felt like a liar when I said it, though. I knew what to do. All I had to do was give her some of my magic. If I touched her hand, I could let her take it, or pour it into her if she didn’t do it herself. I’d never tried to grow someone’s hair back. But it couldn’t be much different than some of the other things I’d done.

  To myself, to keep me going.

  It seemed strange to use magic from hair to grow more hair. I bet it would take a lot, to make it her own hair again, and not just a wig that grew out of her own scalp. But it could be done. It was just a matter of how much I would give up. Or wouldn’t.

  “There’s something you can do, though,” I said, behind him. My voice was low, but I knew he heard it.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Your hair,” I said. What was I doing? Why was I saying this?

  He put a hand out to rub at it, then brought it back down consciously. “What about my hair?” He sounded less confused than he might have been.

  “Let me cut it,” I said.

  This time he pulled out the ponytail and he ran his fingers through the length of the hair as if he knew he would never be able to do it again.

  I loved the play of light on his hair, even the artificial light of the hospital room. I loved it, but I was talking about cutting it off. Making it disappear.

  “You don’t have to,” I said. “Maybe there’s another way.” Like me giving up my own power for her. But I didn’t say it out loud.

  “Maybe there’s not,” said Kris. He kept looking at her. Not at me.

  I thought we loved each other. But sometimes, there are other loves.

  He loved his sister, too. He’d loved her for longer.