Ellen Klages - Basement Magic

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BASEMENT MAGIC
Ellen Klages
Ellen Klages has collaborated with science columnist Pat Murphy
and others on four books of hands-on science activities for the
Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. Her short fiction has
been published previously in Bending the Landscape, Lady
Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and Strange Horizons, and has
garnered nominations for the Nebula, Hugo, Campbell, and
Spectrum Awards. She is currently working on a YA novel about the
Manhattan Project. Her first story for us is a Cinderella tale for the
Space Age.
MARY LOUISE WHITTAKER believes in magic. She knows that
somewhere, somewhere else, there must be dragons and princes,
wands and wishes. Especially wishes. And happily ever after. Ever
after is not now.
Her mother died in a car accident when Mary Louise was still a
toddler. She misses her mother fiercely but abstractly. Her
memories are less a coherent portrait than a mosaic of disconnected
details: soft skin that smelled of lavender; a bright voice singing
"Sweet and Low" in the night darkness; bubbles at bath time; dark
curls; zwieback.
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Her childhood has been kneaded, but not shaped, by the series of
well-meaning middle-aged women her father has hired to tend her.
He is busy climbing the corporate ladder, and is absent even when
he is at home. She does not miss him. He remarried when she was
five, and they moved into a two-story Tudor in one of the better
suburbs of Detroit. Kitty, the new Mrs. Ted Whittaker, is a former
Miss Bloomfield Hills, a vain divorcee with a towering mass of
blond curls in a shade not her own. In the wild, her kind is inclined
to eat their young.
Kitty might have tolerated her new stepdaughter had she been sweet
and cuddly, a slick-magazine cherub. But at six, Mary Louise is an
odd, solitary child. She has unruly red hair the color of Fiestaware,
the dishes that might have been radioactive, and small round pink
glasses that make her blue eyes seem large and slightly distant. She
did not walk until she was almost two, and propels herself with a
quick shuffle-duckling gait that is both urgent and awkward.
One spring morning, Mary Louise is camped in one of her favorite
spots, the window seat in the guest bedroom. It is a stage set of a
room, one that no one else ever visits. She leans against the wall, a
thick book with lush illustrations propped up on her bare knees.
Bright sunlight, filtered through the leaves of the oak outside, is
broken into geometric patterns by the mullioned windows, dappling
the floral cushion in front of her.
The book is almost bigger than her lap, and she holds it open with
one elbow, the other anchoring her Bankie, a square of pale blue
flannel with pale blue satin edging that once swaddled her infant
self, carried home from the hospital. It is raveled and graying, both
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tattered and beloved. The thumb of her blanket arm rests in her
mouth in a comforting manner.
Mary Louise is studying a picture of a witch with purple robes and
hair as black as midnight when she hears voices in the hall. The
door to the guest room is open a crack, so she can hear clearly, but
cannot see or be seen. One of the voices is Kitty's. She is explaining
something about the linen closet, so it is probably a new cleaning
lady. They have had six since they moved in.
Mary Louise sits very still and doesn't turn the page, because it is
stiff paper and might make a noise. But the door opens anyway, and
she hears Kitty say, "This is the guest room. Now unless we've got
company--and I'll let you know--it just needs to be dusted and the
linens aired once a week. It has an--oh, there you are," she says,
coming in the doorway, as if she has been looking all over for Mary
Louise, which she has not.
Kitty turns and says to the air behind her, "This is my husband's
daughter, Mary Louise. She's not in school yet. She's small for her
age, and her birthday is in December, so we decided to hold her
back a year. She never does much, just sits and reads. I'm sure she
won't be a bother. Will you?" She turns and looks at Mary Louise
but does not wait for an answer. "And this is Ruby. She's going to
take care of the house for us."
The woman who stands behind Kitty nods, but makes no move to
enter the room. She is tall, taller than Kitty, with skin the color of
gingerbread. Ruby wears a white uniform and a pair of white Keds.
She is older, there are lines around her eyes and her mouth, but her
hair is sleek and black, black as midnight.
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Kitty looks at her small gold watch. "Oh, dear. I've got to get going
or I'll be late for my hair appointment." She looks back at Mary
Louise. "Your father and I are going out tonight, but Ruby will
make you some dinner, and Mrs. Banks will be here about six."
Mrs. Banks is one of the babysitters, an older woman in a dark dress
who smells like dusty licorice and coos too much. "So be a good
girl. And for god's sake get that thumb out of your mouth. Do you
want your teeth to grow in crooked, too?"
Mary Louise says nothing, but withdraws her damp puckered thumb
and folds both hands in her lap. She looks up at Kitty, her eyes
expressionless, until her stepmother looks away. "Well, an-y-wa-y,"
Kitty says, drawing the word out to four syllables, "I've really got to
be going." She turns and leaves the room, brushing by Ruby, who
stands silently just outside the doorway.
Ruby watches Kitty go, and when the high heels have clattered onto
the tiles at the bottom of the stairs, she turns and looks at Mary
Louise. "You a quiet little mouse, ain't you?" she asks in a soft, low
voice.
Mary Louise shrugs. She sits very still in the window seat and waits
for Ruby to leave. She does not look down at her book, because it is
rude to look away when a grownup might still be talking to you. But
none of the cleaning ladies talk to her, except to ask her to move out
of the way, as if she were furniture.
"Yes siree, a quiet little mouse," Ruby says again. "Well, Miss
Mouse, I'm fixin to go downstairs and make me a grilled cheese
sandwich for lunch. If you like, I can cook you up one too. I make a
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mighty fine grilled cheese sandwich."
Mary Louise is startled by the offer. Grilled cheese is one of her
very favorite foods. She thinks for a minute, then closes her book
and tucks Bankie securely under one arm. She slowly follows Ruby
down the wide front stairs, her small green-socked feet making no
sound at all on the thick beige carpet.
It is the best grilled cheese sandwich Mary Louise has ever eaten.
The outside is golden brown and so crisp it crackles under her teeth.
The cheese is melted so that it soaks into the bread on the inside,
just a little. There are no burnt spots at all. Mary Louise thanks
Ruby and returns to her book.
The house is large, and Mary Louise knows all the best hiding
places. She does not like being where Kitty can find her, where their
paths might cross. Before Ruby came, Mary Louise didn't go down
to the basement very much. Not by herself. It is an old house, and
the basement is damp and musty, with heavy stone walls and
banished, battered furniture. It is not a comfortable place, nor a safe
one. There is the furnace, roaring fire, and the cans of paint and
bleach and other frightful potions. Poisons. Years of soap flakes,
lint, and furnace soot coat the walls like household lichen.
The basement is a place between the worlds, within Kitty's domain,
but beneath her notice. Now, in the daytime, it is Ruby's, and Mary
Louise is happy there. Ruby is not like other grownups. Ruby talks
to her in a regular voice, not a scold, nor the singsong Mrs. Banks
uses, as if Mary Louise is a tiny baby. Ruby lets her sit and watch
while she irons, or sorts the laundry, or runs the sheets through the
mangle. She doesn't sigh when Mary Louise asks her questions.
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On the rare occasions when Kitty and Ted are home in the evening,
they have dinner in the dining room. Ruby cooks. She comes in late
on those days, and then is very busy, and Mary Louise does not get
to see her until dinnertime. But the two of them eat in the kitchen, in
the breakfast nook. Ruby tells stories, but has to get up every few
minutes when Kitty buzzes for her, to bring more water or another
fork, or to clear away the salad plates. Ruby smiles when she is
talking to Mary Louise, but when the buzzer sounds, her face
changes. Not to a frown, but to a kind of blank Ruby mask.
One Tuesday night in early May, Kitty decrees that Mary Louise
will eat dinner with them in the dining room, too. They sit at the
wide mahogany table on stiff brocade chairs that pick at the backs
of her legs. There are too many forks and even though she is very
careful, it is hard to cut her meat, and once the heavy silverware
skitters across the china with a sound that sets her teeth on edge.
Kitty frowns at her.
The grownups talk to each other and Mary Louise just sits. The
worst part is that when Ruby comes in and sets a plate down in front
of her, there is no smile, just the Ruby mask.
"I don't know how you do it, Ruby," says her father when Ruby
comes in to give him a second glass of water. "These pork chops are
the best I've ever eaten. You've certainly got the magic touch."
"She does, doesn't she?" says Kitty. "You must tell me your secret."
"Just shake 'em up in flour, salt and pepper, then fry 'em in Crisco,"
Ruby says.
"That's all?"
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"Yes, ma'am."
"Well, isn't that marvelous. I must try that. Thank you Ruby. You
may go now."
"Yes, ma'am." Ruby turns and lets the swinging door between the
kitchen and the dining room close behind her. A minute later Mary
Louise hears the sound of running water, and the soft clunk of plates
being slotted into the racks of the dishwasher.
"Mary Louise, don't put your peas into your mashed potatoes that
way. It's not polite to play with your food," Kitty says.
Mary Louise sighs. There are too many rules in the dining room.
"Mary Louise, answer me when I speak to you."
"Muhff-mum," Mary Louise says through a mouthful of mashed
potatoes.
"Oh, for god's sake. Don't talk with your mouth full. Don't you have
any manners at all?"
Caught between two conflicting rules, Mary Louise merely shrugs.
"Is there any more gravy?" her father asks.
Kitty leans forward a little and Mary Louise hears the slightly
muffled sound of the buzzer in the kitchen. There is a little bump,
about the size of an Oreo, under the carpet just beneath Kitty's chair
that Kitty presses with her foot. Ruby appears a few seconds later
and stands inside the doorway, holding a striped dishcloth in one
hand.
"Mr. Whittaker would like some more gravy," says Kitty.
Ruby shakes her head. "Sorry, Miz Whittaker. I put all of it in the
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gravy boat. There's no more left."
"Oh." Kitty sounds disapproving. "We had plenty of gravy last
time."
"Yes, ma'am. But that was a beef roast. Pork chops just don't make
as much gravy," Ruby says.
"Oh. Of course. Well, thank you, Ruby."
"Yes ma'am." Ruby pulls the door shut behind her.
"I guess that's all the gravy, Ted," Kitty says, even though he is
sitting at the other end of the table, and has heard Ruby himself.
"Tell her to make more next time," he says frowning. "So what did
you do today?" He turns his attention to Mary Louise for the first
time since they sat down.
"Mostly I read my book," she says. "The fairy tales you gave me for
Christmas."
"Well, that's fine," he says. "I need you to call the Taylors and
cancel." Mary Louise realizes he is no longer talking to her, and eats
the last of her mashed potatoes.
"Why?" Kitty raises an eyebrow. "I thought we were meeting them
out at the club on Friday for cocktails."
"Can't. Got to fly down to Florida tomorrow. The space thing. We
designed the guidance system for Shepard's capsule, and George
wants me to go down with the engineers, talk to the press if the
launch is a success."
"Are they really going to shoot a man into space?" Mary Louise
asks.
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"That's the plan, honey."
"Well, you don't give me much notice," Kitty says, smiling. "But I
suppose I can pack a few summer dresses, and get anything else I
need down there."
"Sorry, Kit. This trip is just business. No wives."
"No, only to Grand Rapids. Never to Florida," Kitty says, frowning.
She takes a long sip of her drink. "So how long will you be gone?"
"Five days, maybe a week. If things go well, Jim and I are going to
drive down to Palm Beach and get some golf in."
"I see. Just business." Kitty drums her lacquered fingernails on the
tablecloth. "I guess that means I have to call Barb and Mitchell, too.
Or had you forgotten my sister's birthday dinner next Tuesday?"
Kitty scowls down the table at her husband, who shrugs and takes a
bite of his chop.
Kitty drains her drink. The table is silent for a minute, and then she
says, "Mary Louise! Don't put your dirty fork on the tablecloth. Put
it on the edge of your plate if you're done. Would you like to be
excused?"
"Yes ma'am," says Mary Louise.
As soon as she is excused, Mary Louise goes down to the basement
to wait. When Ruby is working it smells like a cave full of soap and
warm laundry.
A little after seven, Ruby comes down the stairs carrying a brown
paper lunch sack. She puts it down on the ironing board. "Well,
Miss Mouse. I thought I'd see you down here when I got done with
the dishes."
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"I don't like eating in the dining room," Mary Louise says. "I want
to eat in the kitchen with you."
"I like that, too. But your stepmomma says she got to teach you
some table manners, so when you grow up you can eat with nice
folks."
Mary Louise makes a face, and Ruby laughs.
"They ain't such a bad thing, manners. Come in real handy
someday, when you're eatin with folks you want to have like you."
"I guess so," says Mary Louise. "Will you tell me a story?"
"Not tonight, Miss Mouse. It's late, and I gotta get home and give
my husband his supper. He got off work half an hour ago, and I told
him I'd bring him a pork chop or two if there was any left over." She
gestures to the paper bag. "He likes my pork chops even more than
your daddy does."
"Not even a little story?" Mary Louise feels like she might cry. Her
stomach hurts from having dinner with all the forks.
"Not tonight, sugar. Tomorrow, though, I'll tell you a long one, just
to make up." Ruby takes off her white Keds and lines them up next
to each other under the big galvanized sink. Then she takes off her
apron, looks at a brown gravy stain on the front of it, and crumples
it up and tosses it into the pink plastic basket of dirty laundry. She
pulls a hanger from the line that stretches across the ceiling over the
washer and begins to undo the white buttons on the front of her
uniform.
"What's that?" Mary Louise asks. Ruby has rucked the top of her
uniform down to her waist and is pulling it over her hips. There is a
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