I asked her why she wasn’t cooking anymore.
She shrugged. “Too much trouble. And who would I cook for?”
I became increasingly worried about her. I’d phone her at suppertime to check that she was eating. “Are you having dinner?”
A pause. “Yes.”
“What is it?”
Another pause. “Something.”
“Is it in a can?”
“More or less.”
“Are you sitting down?”
“None of your business.”
So she was snacking—eating in bits and pieces, like a teenager foraging. I brought her a noodle casserole. “You can heat it in the toaster oven,” I said.
“There was a fire.” She didn’t seem too worried about that.
“In the toaster oven?”
“Yes.”
“When was it? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I put the fire out, so why would I tell you? It was that Miss Scace. She started it.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes!”
“Don’t concern yourself, my pet. This time I’m winning.”
I finally pried the full backstory out of her. She and Miss Scace had been at war for centuries, through several incarnations. They’d once been friends but had fallen out over a young man. Four hundred years ago, give or take, they’d begun to have battles in the air at night. Not on brooms, she added: that cliché about flying brooms was just a superstition. Then Miss Scace had ratted my mother out to the authorities for witchcraft, and the outcome had been fiery, and then terminal. According to my mother, her heart had refused to burn, so they’d had to incinerate it separately; the same had been true of Joan of Arc, she added proudly. Miss Scace had been at the bonfire and had jeered.
“I should have tattled on her first,” she said. “But I thought it was dishonorable. A betrayal of our traditions.”
“What happened to the young man?” I asked. There was no use talking to her about inventions or delusions: she would just clam up. And if I said I didn’t believe her, there would be a fracas.
“Scace used him up,” said my mother.
“What do you mean ‘used him up’？”
“For her depraved sexual purposes,” said my mother. “Night after night.”
“Are we talking about the same Miss Scace?” I simply couldn’t picture it. Miss Scace, in the gymnasium, coaching the girls’ basketball team, with her umpire’s whistle and her skinny legs below her pleated gym outfit. Flat-chested Miss Scace, in health class, scrambling for euphemisms while explaining the menstrual cycle. Sex was unmentionable then: officially it did not exist. “Surely not,” I said firmly.
“She looked different in the old days,” said my mother. “A lot more enticing. She had whalebone stays and cleavage. She painted her face with arsenic.”
“Arsenic?”
“It was the style. Anyway, she wore him out. Sucked the marrow right out of his bones. Then, when he was exhausted, she stole his penis.”
“What?” Penis theft was something new: that piece of lore hadn’t come up when I was in high school.
“She must have been annoyed that it no longer worked. One morning he looked down and it was gone. I expect she’d pointed at it when he was asleep. She was keeping it in a cedar box with some other penises she’d stolen; she was feeding them on grains of wheat. That’s the usual method of tending penises.”
I took firm control of myself. “Why was she doing that?” I asked cautiously. “Collecting penises?”
“Some people collect stamps, she collected penises. Many of us did in those days. Anyway, he consulted me—through a clairvoyant, of course, as I was no longer in that earthly incarnation. I told him to complain to the authorities, so he did, and she was forced to give the penis back.”
“And reattach it, I suppose.”
“Naturally, my pet. But that wasn’t the end of it. She had to give all the other penises back, as well—she’d collected the penises of some very important men, I can tell you! One of them was a baron. And then they burned her anyway. Served her right.”
“And here you are,” I said.
“That’s true. Here we are. But there aren’t any authorities anymore. Or not that kind.”
“Do you mind me asking . . . Are you and Miss Scace still fighting in the air? At night?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Every night. That’s why I’m so tired all the time.”