The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic
by
Emily Croy Barker
To my father, the best of magicians
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am enormously grateful to those who were intrepid enough to read early versions of this novel: Catherine Aman, Michael Barker, Maggie Rosen Briand, Shelton Crocker, Roger Devine, Kathy Fitzgerald, Alison Frankel, Susan Hansen, Pam DiRubio Hegarty, Dimitra Kessenides, Sally Rosen Kindred, Patricia Krebs, Anthony Paonita, Emily Allen and Trever Talbert, and Vivian S. M. Wang. Their comments were incredibly helpful, their encouragement even more so. Thanks to Roland Greene for kindly serving as my technical adviser on English departments and in the dissertation process; any errors are mine alone. Thanks to Pascale Retourne-Raab for moral support and to Matt Siegel for the tale of a mouse.
I couldn’t ask for a better agent than Emma Sweeney, not only for her wise counsel but also for the brilliant suggestions that helped tame and transform a sprawling early draft. Huge thanks to Pamela Dorman for her belief in this book, and to her and Beena Kamlani for their magical editing powers. Thanks to Clare Ferraro, Hal Fessenden, Leigh Butler, Dick Heffernan, Norman Lidofsky, Carolyn Coleburn, Nancy Sheppard, Andrew Duncan, Dennis Swaim, Kathryn Court, Patrick Nolan, John Fagan, Maureen Donnelly, Roseanne Serra, Francesca Belanger, Kiki Koroshetz, and Julie Miesionczek at Viking and Penguin for all they’ve done to make this book a reality.
Finally, thanks to my parents for all that they taught me, by word and example, about the joy of making things.
PART ONE
Much later, Nora would learn magic for dissolving glue or killing vermin swiftly and painlessly or barring mice from the house altogether, but that morning—the last normal morning, she later thought of it—as she padded into the kitchen in search of coffee, she was horribly at a loss when she saw the small brown mouse wriggling on the glue trap in front of the sink.
At the sight of Nora, the mouse froze for an instant, then tried to bolt, but only succeeded in gluing another paw to the sticky cardboard.
“Oh, crap,” Nora said aloud. “I can’t deal with this. Not on top of everything else.”
She was angrier at her roommate Dane, than at the mouse. Almost certainly he was the one who had set the trap, and then hadn’t had the decency to handle the result himself. Besides, the mouse problem was Dane’s fault in the first place. If he had not let Astrophel out—by accident, he claimed—Astrophel would not have attempted to cross six lanes of traffic, and would still be alive and keeping the house mouse-free. The ashy remains of Nora’s cat now resided in a small cardboard box on Nora’s desk, and the mice had become a scrabbling, bold presence in the house.
She thought about simply letting the trapped mouse remain there for Dane to clean up, but she would have to step over it to fill the coffeepot, and what if the mouse got loose while she was still in the kitchen? Before she could lose her nerve, Nora picked up the glue trap with her thumb and forefinger, and moved toward the garbage can.
But the mouse was still alive. That was disturbing. After a second’s thought, Nora took a bottle of olive oil from the cabinet. The good stuff, Tuscan gold, encased in a tall bottle with a sprig of rosemary suspended inside, and she was fairly sure it belonged to Dane.
Outside, a block from her house, in a sliver of park, she carefully poured olive oil on the mouse and the glue board. The smell of the oil filled her nose; she was suddenly hungry. The mouse, its fur now sleek and dark with oil, rolled back and forth on the glue board. All at once it was loose. Nora jumped back, and the mouse scampered away, leaving shiny drops on the pine needles to mark its trail.
She walked back to the house thinking automatically that she had a good story for Adam, and then remembering that she wouldn’t be telling it to him.
On her way to the English department, she kept an eye out for him anyway. He was still in town, probably, unless he’d gotten an earlier flight. She might bump into him on campus. It would be awkward. Then maybe not so awkward. And he would realize what a terrible mistake he had made.
Instead, when someone spoke her name outside the department lounge, it was her adviser.
“Nora. I haven’t seen you all week.” Naomi smiled, showing an unnatural number of teeth. Nora braced herself, trying as always to find Naomi’s presence empowering instead of terrifying. Naomi was carrying her eight-month-old son in a sling on her chest: Last fall, in a single semester, she had produced both the baby and a book on sexual ambiguity in Dickens. Following Naomi into the lounge, Nora wiggled her fingers at the baby, who gave her a somber gaze out of bottomless dark blue eyes. “Where are the rest of the papers from your Gender and Genre section?” Naomi demanded. “I have only half of them.”
Nora unslung the backpack from her shoulder. “Here they are,” she said.
“I wish you’d finished them sooner. I want to look them over before I turn the grades in.”
“I’m sorry. I had to grade the Modern Drama exams, too. It’s been a busy week.”
“Yes, it has. That’s why I wanted to see those papers earlier.” Naomi leafed through her mail, flicking most of it into the trash and then sliding a thin envelope with Italian stamps into the lustrous leather jaws of her slim briefcase.
It was not the best time to bring up any kind of request, Nora saw, but she had no choice. “Actually, I wanted to mention,” she began, “I decided to apply for that travel fellowship, the Blum-Forsythe grant? I was wondering if you could write a recommendation for me.”
“I thought you weren’t going to apply for that. Can’t you ask Marlene to send out the recommendation that’s on file?”
“I realized there’s some work I could do at Cambridge.” The idea had come to Nora two nights before, as she lay awake at three a.m. The inspiration had less to do with John Donne, her thesis subject, than a sudden need to escape. “The form asks some questions that aren’t covered by the recommendation you wrote for me before. If you tweaked the old recommendation, it should be fine. It just has to be postmarked by Monday.”
Naomi pivoted, a wrinkle of annoyance visible between her strong brows. “You know, I’m boarding a plane Sunday to fly to London. I don’t know if I’ll have time.”
“Oh,” Nora said awkwardly. “I didn’t realize you were leaving so soon.”
Naomi sighed and ran a hand through her hair, which was growing long, Nora noticed. Naomi usually had it cut on one of her frequent trips to Europe, one of the side benefits of having a boyfriend in London. “Come into my office, Nora. I want a word with you.”
As Nora lowered herself onto the steel-and-leather chair in front of Naomi’s desk, Naomi shut the office door. Nora’s stomach tensed. “I should tell you that if I do write you a new recommendation,” Naomi said, “I don’t know that I’d have anything very positive to add.”
Nora blinked. “Really?”
“I haven’t seen very much from you this year, just the one thesis chapter. It was fine, but you finished it
