Amber light cast long shadows and Kerrie could discern only an indistinct figure – only that it was male.  A rope tugged at her waist.  Was he pulling?  She wore a large kitchen apron, no other clothing, and faced a pit of fluffy goo.  In the light she’d thought it was whipped cream but now it looked like mud, sucking at the hot dry air.  Shrubs and landforms shifted – the light shifted.  Children or birds shrieked in the distance.  One thing was certain, Kerrie did not want to go forward into the goo.  She pulled back.

            The shadow seemed surprised, paused and chuckled.  His playful tug met her resistance.  On this went, tension accelerating until a tug of war ensued.  Back and forth, back and back, then a stumble forward.  Kerrie leaned back and dug in her heels which furrowed the sand as she was dragged forward.  Just on the verge of the muck she reached into her apron pocket, pulled out a bread knife and sawed desperately.  The rope frayed and broke.

            Thud!  She fell back.  The shadow moaned in surprise.  Fine dry sand itched and sucked moisture from her skin which shriveled up prune-like.  She studied her skin, opening her eyes wide with amazement until . . . opening her eyes wide . . . ah, a dream!

            Still looking at her skin Kerrie shuddered at the thought of the muck.  Sinbad stared for a moment as cats do, then jumped to the floor and scrambled away in a blur.

            Kerrie fed her cat and closed the garage for the evening.  The phone rang.  A man said,  “I want to come over and show you how I’m going to tier the patio down to the water.” 

            “Rodger, you’re always designing that lake house.  You never build it,” she said.  There was a click on the line as another call came in.  Kerrie checked the other call.  “It’s Chip.  I’ll have to call you back.”

            Rodger chuckled and shook his head as he put the phone down.  But in a moment she did ring back.

            “How do people stand these intense jobs where they sit in front of computers all day?  I’d rather be fooling with the kids at my school.  I want interaction with people.”

            Rodger began, “Chip uses his computer to interact with . . .”  and was interrupted by another click on the line. 

            “Let me see who that is.”  Kerrie sounded impatient even with her own favorite routine of juggling phone callers.  In a moment she returned, “That was . . . Uh, oh.  Now someone is at my door, probably Emma, we are going walking.”

            Rodger laughed.  “It’s the only way you can have a conversation!”

            “Thank God I don’t have a cell phone,” Kerrie also laughed.  “I’ll talk with you later.”

            Emma and Kerrie walked past rows of suburban homes, single story, ranch style, with garages sticking out front, sidewalks buckling from well rooted trees hanging heavy with their late summer burden in the soggy gulf coast air.  Technically it was fall most places, but weeks more of temperate weather would reign here.  “You are like a Houston tree,” Emma said.

            “How so?”

            “Clinging to your leaves, living an extended summer.”  Emma gestured with arched arms, drawing her fingers up.

            “I don’t get it,” Kerrie said.  Did Emma mean she looked young?  She knew that.  What was the business about the leaves?  The trees didn’t look young.  They weren’t.  But they sustained the neighborhood.  She liked trees.  Especially the one in her front yard.  Emma hadn’t responded.

             Their reverie was interrupted by a small barking dog chased by two girls about three and seven.  The older one had a daisy tucked in her curls over one ear.  She scooped up the dog and said, “Don’t worry Mrs. Thompson.  He won’t bite.” 

            “Hi Anna.  Hi Mable,”  said Kerrie.  She was suspicious of the dog but warmed to the kids and scooped up Mable, the three year old.  “I heard you got a new baby brother last week.  Tell me about him.”

            “He sleeps a lot,” said Mable.

            “Except he wakes up to eat,” chimed Anna as the dog wiggled out of her grasp and darted around sniffing everyone, annoying Kerrie.  Then she addressed Emma, “Are you Johnny’s mother?”

            “Um, hm.”

            “Johnny’s in my class.  He says you are a witch.”

            “Well, he thinks that when he misbehaves,” retorted Emma.

            “No, he says you burn candles and crush up flowers and make spells.”  Emma looked puzzled as if about to say something but Anna continued, “Will you teach me to make spells?”

            Kerrie looked at Emma who still looked puzzled and said to Anna, “What kind of spells do you want to make, Anna?”

            “Flower spells,” Anna scooped up the dog again.  Kerrie set Mable down and Anna continued, “I want to make flowers grow.” 

            Eyeing yellow mums in front of the nearest house Emma turned her gaze to Anna, then back to the house, and spoke at last, “Your mom must know flower spells.”

            “Do you think she would teach me?”

            “Of course.”

            The children squealed and ran off, and the dog ran after them.  Emma and Kerrie walked on chuckling.  “You really like kids, don’t you Kerrie?” 

            “Yeah, I do.”

            “You want grandkids, don’t you?”

            “Of course.  But I’ve just about given up on having any.  Chip finds it too easy to meet new women whenever one gets serious.  And Paula is much too picky.”

            “I don’t know any spells,” Emma said.  Kerrie just looked at her, half expecting her to say she did know some spells.  They continued walking.  Shadows were getting longer and the sky glowed orange where the sun had dipped behind trees and houses.  “But my father-in-law does.”

            “What?  Professor Hodges?”

            “Yep.”

            “ I knew Dr. George was into folklore and all sorts of weird stuff, but that’s kind of surprising.  He’s so, um… rational about everything.”

            “Yep.  He’s rational about magic, when you get right down to it.”

            “C’mon, there’s nothing rational about magic.”

            “If it works there is.  I’m not talking about burying a brown egg in the back yard with your initials on it.”

            “Is that a spell?”

            “It’s a fertility spell.  I read it somewhere.  For another one you make a doll, write names for your baby on pieces of paper, and stuff them in the doll’s mid-section before you finish sewing her up.  It’s kind of a cute idea.  Like an elaborate wish,” Emma chuckled.

            “And you think this works?  Is that how you got pregnant?”

            “No, the professor takes credit for that.”

            “What!?”

            Emma laughed uproariously.  “No, no!  Not like it sounded.  Tom got me pregnant the usual way.  But if you think about it, Tom got married and had kids before his friends did.  He got straight down to business.  And only the year before he seemed serious about nothing.  His dad takes the credit.”

            “So, you are saying spells work?”

            “If you believe them, sure they do.”

            “What if the object of the spell doesn’t believe in it, or they don’t even know you are making a spell?”

            “Most fertility spells have the man and the woman believing and doing perfectly sensible things that you’d think would result in babies.”

            “What about love spells?”

            “You didn’t say you wanted to fall in love.  You said you wanted grandkids.”

            “How am I going to have grandkids unless my kids fall in love?”

            “Maybe it will happen later.  You're making it complicated.  But I know what you are thinking.  Even for a fertility spell to work, they’d have to believe it, and you think they don’t.  You have to find what they do believe and use that.”

            “My kids don’t believe in any kind of magic.”

            “Sure they do.  They go to movies, they read stories when they were younger, they grew up in a culture that tells them what kinds of situations lead to, well, you know, kids.  And they believe it.”

            “They do?  I  mean … okay, I suppose they do.  I’d have to think about what they believe.”

            “The professor is coming over tomorrow evening.  We could have a blast with this line of conversation,” Emma said smiling.  “Will you come over?”

            Kerrie thought for a moment.  “I don’t think so,” she responded.  “I don’t want to be responsible.  I don’t want them to blame me if they aren’t happy.  And besides, I go to bed very early.”

            They parted in front of Kerrie’s house where the sloping trunk of her favorite tree seemed to invite one to walk up without climbing.  But she went in the house, not up the tree, bathed, and put on her nightgown.  Sinbad strolled lazily between her legs as cats do, letting his tail linger and curl around her ankle like a soft, velvet rope before curling up on the foot of the king sized bed.  Kerrie cut out the light and laughed to herself at the thought of her weird friend being confronted by the kids, and offering to help her with love spells – or rather, as Emma drew a distinction, baby spells.

. . .

            Sunlight curled through the blinds, tickling Sinbad’s whiskers.  He sat up and stared at the fidgeting woman he thought of as a large cat.  It made him nervous for her to behave strangely.

            “Oh!” Kerrie gasped, waking herself with the noise.  “Oh . . .” she sat up and looked around, catching only a glimpse of her companion who scampered under the bed.  In a moment her breathing settled down.  She got up and began dressing.

            At school Kerrie checked her email.  There was a message from Chip.  “I’m not sure if things are going to work out with Susan,” it said.  “We might cut the cord instead of tying the knot.  I won’t be seeing her Friday night but we’ll come over Saturday as  promised.”

            Kerrie wrote back, “You should be good at cutting the cord by now.  This is your third engagement.”

. . .

            Kerrie fed her cat and closed the garage door for the evening.  The message light was lit on her phone.  She punched the a button and Chip’s voice said, “Just wanted to get your advice about Susan.  Talk with you later.”  There was a second message from a neighbor about plans for the church dinner.  Kerrie began cooking her own dinner and while the red beans were heating and the rice steaming she called Rodger.

            “I want to tell you what I dreamed last night,” she said.  “It bothered me.”

            “Okay, tell.”

            “I was holding this basket of kittens on a rope, trying to pull them up over the side of a boat.  The rope broke and they fell in.”

            “So, what do you think that means?”

            “I don’t know.  But the night before I had another rope dream.  And this morning Chip said his relationship with Susan was on the ropes.  They might break their engagement.”

            “You think the dream had something to do with that?”

            “Maybe I sensed it coming.  I could have.  He’s getting predictable.”

            “And the other dream?”

            “It was different.  But there was a rope that broke.”

            “So there is a rope that breaks, and this keeps repeating?  Maybe you need to change something.  Use something beside a rope.”

            “What?”

            “I don’t know what.  Ropes pull.  Try pushing.  Try something different.”

            “There’s my other line again.”

            “See!  You are breaking another connection.  You are trapped in a repeating universe and can’t get out.”

            “No, I’m not trapped.  Just hang on.”

            “I’ll just let you go, I was going out.”

            “Okay, see you.”  The other caller had hung up by the time Kerrie switched the line.  She went back to her cooking frustrated, ate, washed up, and sorted through the mail.   She fidgeted with the mail, looked at the clock, and changed into some comfortable jeans.  Then she left.

. . .

            Water trickled out into the street and a curving stone path disappeared into a maze of mostly flowering plants varying from three feet to head high.  There was not a blade of grass to be found this side of an imaginary line separating the yard from its neighbors, and hardly any two plants were alike.  Kerrie carefully followed the path, avoiding any misstep into the spongy lawn.  She passed a fountain with a maiden pouring water from a jar, and paused before a small porch with ivy clinging to brick on one side and a wrought iron column on the other.  The mat said “Welcome.”  Kerrie stepped up, her caution emanating not from any strangeness of the surroundings, of  which she took only slight notice apart from her care in walking, but perhaps from uncertainty over what might transpire inside.  Slowly she reached out thinking the whole matter over, and rang the bell.  A boy of about seven with disheveled hair in a bowl cut answered the door.  Large brown eyes sized her up as if she were not quite expected.  Kerrie was caught off guard as well.  Finally he spoke.

            “Are you going to come in?”

            “Yes.” 

            Kerrie stepped into an small old fashioned formal living room with a piano and numerous family portraits.  Voices were evident from further in the house and she followed their trail without guidance from the boy, who closed the door and vanished the way kids and small animals can do in familiar surroundings.

            Through an interior door she found a den with a fireplace too large for this warm climate, a bay window with two women seated on its sill, an older white headed man on a recliner, and Emma and a young woman on a comfortable sofa.  The young woman was holding a baby and the baby was nursing.  Emma looked up.

            “Kerrie, you decided to come!” she said as she stood up, motioning the young woman to scoot over.  “Come, sit down.”

            Kerrie sat on the sofa.  “I was just curious,” she said heading off unwanted questions.  “Can I listen in?”

. . .

Friday came.  Kerrie awoke to Sinbad meowing and poking his little paws as he prowled about on top of her.  She appeared undisturbed and toyed with him a bit until she noticed the clock and sprang into her morning routine with haste. 

Friday evening Kerrie met with her neighbor about the church dinner.  Susan went to the university library to work on an assignment for her architecture class.  Chip had drinks with his client at the downtown Caribbean Grill and Bar.  They were talking about the logistics of an offshore customer service operation.  Chip was echoing everything the client said, ordering drink refills at twice the rate of the client, staring at the waitress’s cleavage, darting his attention back to the client, and then looking about again.  After a while the young woman who had been at Emma’s walked in with a girlfriend.

Kerrie was startled awake by the ringing phone.  Who would call at this hour?  She caught her breath and answered it.  There was a male voice on the other end of the line.  After a pause she said, “Sure, come on over.”

. . .

When Chip and Susan arrived on Satuday a man and the boy with disheveled hair were already there.  “Come in, don’t mind the crowd.  You know Tom, my friend Emma’s husband.  Tom you know Chip.  This is his fiancée Susan.  Susan this is Tom.”

Susan smiled politely and extended her hand.

“And this is Johnny,” Kerrie continued, referring to the boy,  “Emma lent me Tom to help fix my ceiling fan in the bedroom, but it seems he brought his chaperone with him.”

“I didn’t know anything was wrong with the ceiling fan,” Chip said.

“My mom’s a witch,” Johnny ran up.  “She put a spell on Mrs. Thompson,” referring to Kerrie.

“Oh come now, you don’t believe that stuff,” Kerrie tousled his hair.

He shook it out.  “No, but you do,” came the precocious reply.  “Don’t you?”

“We’ll see about that,” Kerrie laughed.

“Something smells good,” Susan said.

“Probably the apple pies I’m baking for the church dinner tomorrow.”

“My favorite,” Chip gazed in the direction of the kitchen.

“I’m hungry!” said Johnny.

“I’m afraid the pies have tied up my oven and I have nothing for lunch,” said Kerrie.  Then addressing Chip, “I thought maybe you and Susan would take Johnny to get some pizza while Tom and I finish up with the fan?  Then later with the movie we can have one of the pies, I made an extra one.”

“What are you going to eat?” he said.

“I’m not very hungry, maybe you could bring back one of those small pizzas for me and Tom.”

“Oh boy, can we go to Funhouse Pizza?” exclaimed Johnny, looking right up at Chip.

It was beginning to look like this deal was all set, and it wasn’t going exactly as Chip expected.  Visits to mom were usually routine.  “Uh…”  He turned to Susan, “You okay with this?”

“Sure, fine with me.”

They trundled out.  Walking up to Tom and turning around with a mischievous smile Kerrie said, “Don’t hurry, we’ll be awhile.”

Chip looked back as if to ask what that meant but Johnny was tugging on his arm, “Chip, do you like to play the games?  Will you play games with me?”

Clouds were gathering and a gusty breeze kicked up debris in the parking lot.  “It’s going to rain,” Susan said.

“Nah, not before tonight,” Chip responded.  He was hunting around in the back of the parking lot at a strip center, mentally computing the walking distance from the end of each row to the entrance of Funhouse Pizza.

Susan could see well what he was doing.  “Park down there,” she gestured to the opposite end of the strip center where some spaces were open next to the covered walkway.

“Why?”

“If it’s raining, we won’t get wet when we come out.”

“I’ll go and get the car if it’s raining,” said Chip gallantly.

“I want to look in the window of that shoe shop,” Susan rejoined.

“Oh, now the truth is out!” Chip laughed and swung the car around, narrowly missing a pedestrian.  Susan grimaced.

The parking space was in front of an empty storefront in the strip center, and next to that was the campaign headquarters of someone running in a local election, obviously chosen and furnished to scrimp on every dollar.  Beyond was a hair and nail salon, then an alleyway, and then the more upscale side of the strip center with the shoe store, a nutrition shop, and the pizza place.  Johnny had been quiet throughout the trip, but now sprung to life exploring every window and the alley.  The unexpected coolness in the breeze must have stimulated him.  A couple of water droplets appeared on the windshield as they got out, but it did not seem rain was imminent.  The sun still shown through building clouds.  Susan and Chip exchanged glances without further comment on the weather but other subjects presented themselves as they walked along.

“I’m going to vote for this guy,” Susan said as they passed the campaign headquarters.  “He wants to stop the commuter rail from plowing through Pine Hill, tearing right through classic homes from the 20’s and 30’s.”

“He’ll never win,” Chip said.  “Big money is backing the rail.  It increases the value of real estate downtown.”

“They are going to tear down a really cute little art deco home that I wanted to own some day.  I’m studying to be an architect.  Stuff like that is important to me.”

“If you want a job when you graduate, you’ll vote for the rail and hope the whole downtown gets re-developed,” Chip winked.

Susan didn’t seem to appreciate the advice and dropped the subject.  It had already distracted her from looking at the shoes and they were now at Funhouse Pizza, where you could feed yourself while entertaining your kids with cartoons, arcade games or sports TV depending on which dining area you picked after going through the buffet line.  Barely had they sat down and eaten two slices when Johnny coaxed Chip into the arcade room. 

First they played an adventure game with a clown like character hopping over obstacles shooting weird creatures.  It was a lot like a pocket game, and too hard.  They grew tired of it and moved on to a simulated racer in which one could sit down like in a race car.  It was very cool, but when they each had got around the course once they wandered back into the corner where they found an old Missile Command game.

“This is an antique,” Chip exclaimed.  “I swear it was here when I grew up.”

“What’s it do?” Johnny got right down to business.

“I’ll show you.” 

In plunked a quarter and Johnny took the controls.  Blam, blam, the game was over.  Enemy missiles had destroyed all the houses!  “What?” Johnny looked puzzled.

“Try again,” Chip plunked in another quarter.

Johnny figured out how to shoot down the incoming missiles.  By the third try he was good at it, but still didn’t get past level two before all the houses were destroyed and the dreaded game over message appeared.

“Ignore the missiles that aren’t coming at houses,” Chip suggested.  “That way you don’t have to shoot them all down.”

“Oh,” Johnny raced to level three before his last house was blown up by a buzz bomb that didn’t travel in a straight line.

An older couple sat down next to Susan, who twiddled her pizza crust alternately staring at Chip and Johnny or out the window where it had started a fine blowing mist of rain.  

“We like to come here because it makes us feel young,” the lady said nodding her gray locks.

“And I like to play the games,” the man said.

“You come to watch the cheerleaders on TV, be honest now,” said the woman.  Then nodding in the direction of Chip and Johnny, “Is that your son over there, he’s so cute.”

“Which one?” Susan came back.  “They look about the same age from here.”

. . .

The lights went out and the credits rolled.  It was a romantic comedy that promised to keep you guessing until the end, and everyone in the audience had a piece of apple pie.

“How can a romantic comedy have a surprise ending?” Chip asked.

“Shhhush,” exclaimed Kerrie, somewhat inappropriately snuggled up to Johnny’s dad on the sofa.  “Just watch it and see.  It’s supposed to be good.”

“I’ve heard it’s good,” said Susan.

“This pie is what’s good,” said Tom, smacking and licking his lips.

Johnny was too busy eating to say anything.

Chip watched and waited for something surprising to happen.  Johnny laughed at the comical pile up where the two leading characters ran into each other and were forced to share a ride in the back of a farmer’s truck, then lost interest.  He went over and whispered something in Chip’s ear.  They left the room.

“You missed a good movie,” Kerrie said when they returned.  The lights were on.  Susan had joined them on the sofa and thumbed through something on the coffee table, not exactly a magazine, some sketches or pictures or something, Chip couldn’t tell what.

“What was the surprise?” Chip queried.

“That would ruin it,” Kerrie said.  “You might want to watch it later.” 

It didn’t seem this was a real possibility, but before Chip could protest Susan interrupted, “Hey, what’s this?  Who does this belong to?”

“That’s Rodger’s,” Kerrie said.  “He’s always talking about his dream house up on some lake property and tries to get me to help him design it, or help him pick out a style, or figure out where to put the bathroom, or whether the bathroom should have a glass wall facing the lake.  Who knows?  I don’t think he’ll ever build it.”  Kerrie gathered up the now empty pie saucers while Susan continued to study the sketches.

Later that afternoon Emma came to collect Tom and Johnny.  “Thanks for babysitting my husband,” she joked as she wiped her wet shoes on a mat before coming in.

“Thanks for lending me your handyman,” Kerrie returned in kind.

“How did everything go?”

Kerrie took a deep breath and sighed as she let it out and just looked at Emma.

“Well, let it cook a while,” Emma said confidentially.  She came further into the room and was followed by a young woman holding a baby.  “You guys ready to go, or are you having too much fun out of your cages?” Emma said to Tom and Johnny, who both grinned sheepishly.  Emma tousled Johnny’s hair.  Everyone seemed to do that, except Chip.

Johnny went over and teased the baby.  The young woman shifted the baby to free up one hand and tousled his hair.  “Unnnh!” he exclaimed and went around to the other side.

“Excuse me, haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” Chip said to the young woman. 

“Excuse me,” said Emma.  “I should have introduced you.  Lila, this is Kerrie’s son Chip, and his fiancée Susan.  This is my daughter, Lila, and her daughter, Jeanne.”

The young woman named Lila extended her free left hand and Chip took it.

. . .

Autumn turned to winter, if winter may ever be said to come to Houston.  Susan and Chip grew colder and broke up.  Kerrie’s last remaining aunt died just after Thanksgiving.  Kerrie and Emma discussed their experiment.  Emma said to give it more time but Kerrie was convinced it had backfired.  There was a little friction on this point, but Kerrie accepted when Emma invited her family to spend Christmas with Emma’s family.  Chip grew quite attached to Johnny.

And that’s not all he grew attached to.  By Valentine’s day he had moved Lila and her baby in with him against Kerrie’s advice.  The move caught everyone by surprise, except Emma.

. . .

            Emma and Kerrie walked past rows of suburban homes, single story, ranch style, with garages sticking out front, sidewalks buckling around well rooted trees sucking moisture from the fresh earth to feed their display of new blooms and leaflets.  Technically it was still winter most places, but weeks of temperate weather had already reigned here.  “You are like a Houston tree,” Emma said.

“How so?”

            “Sprouting new leaves, enjoying an early spring,”  Emma gestured with arched arms unfolding her fingers skyward.

“I don’t get it,” Kerrie said.  Did Emma mean she looked young?  She knew that.  What was the business about the leaves?  She liked trees.  Especially the one in her front yard.  Emma hadn’t responded.

Their reverie was interrupted by a small barking dog chased by two girls, about four and eight.  The older one had an azalea bloom tucked in her curls over one ear.  She scooped up the dog and said, “Hi Mrs. Thompson.  Hi Johnny’s mom.  I hear Johnny has a new big brother.”

“That’s right,” said Johnny’s mom.  “And Mrs. Thompson has a new grandbaby.  And how is your baby brother?  He must be six months old by now?”

“Wait a minute, what did I miss?” Kerrie interrupted, touching Emma on the arm.

“He wakes us up a lot,” said the younger one, Mable.

“We have to go eat now,” chimed Anna as the dog wiggled out of her grasp and darted around sniffing everyone, annoying Kerrie.  All three of them scampered off, leaving Emma and Kerrie alone looking at one another.

Emma responded to Kerrie’s touch pulling her just a bit closer, looking directly into her eyes.  “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?  You came to a witch and asked for a grandchild.  I gave you mine.  You thought everything had to be done a certain way, in a certain order, but what you wanted was right there the whole time.”

“Emma…,” Kerrie said, but she didn’t continue.  The two women pulled closer and embraced in the deepening twilight.  Their families were united, perhaps forever.

. . .

            In May Susan graduated and the first home she designed was her own.  Later that summer ground was broken on some lake property north of Houston.