Moey slowly surveys the café. A half-dozen pairs of wingback chairs are strategically placed throughout the room. Between each pair of chairs stands an antique coffee table, and beneath each coffee table rest two plastic Scholl’s Footbath Massagers. Their electric cords disappear into slits cut into the thick Persian rug covering the hardwood floor.
Here and there sculptures of feet sit on white pedestals. Antique cabinets line the walls. Trancelike, Moey wanders towards the first cabinet. On its mahogany shelves stand rows of beaded moccasins, Dutch clogs, and woollen slippers. The next cabinet contains foot-shaped soap dishes, clay pots of foot balm and soaking salts, pumice stones, foot-shaped towels, and pearl-handled nail clippers.
On the shelves of an adjacent cupboard, scrolled charts of acupuncture, reflexology, and horoscopes-for-the-foot vie for space with handmade address books, each the shape of a foot and bearing the title Footnotes on its cover.
Flower vases in the shape of feet, foot-shaped oven mitts, stationery bearing winged feet, DVDs entitled Foot Care & You, earrings and necklaces of feet, foot pillows, foot stools, key chains, address labels, plant pots, picture frames ... everywhere Moey looks, he sees feet. Even the piñatas, he belatedly realizes, are bright papier mâché feet.
He picks up what looks like a small jam jar, its lid covered by a square of red gingham tied at the mouth with a big red bow. Aloud he reads the words: “Fresh Homemade Foot Butter.” He looks at the brown-speckled stuff in the jar, and his fingers tingle with revulsion.
“Cinnamon spread,” Karen says behind him.
Moey almost drops the jar as he spins around.
“Cinnamon spread,” Karen repeats, hobbling into the room. “It’s very good. Made with fresh butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar. Delicious on hot toast or scones. It’s one of our best sellers.”
He looks down at the jar in his hand. “Foot butter,” he repeats stupidly.
“I had to call it that, otherwise Morris wouldn’t let it in the shop.”
“Morris?”
“My husband.” She flushes. “I convinced him that as part of a balanced diet, essential oils and fatty acids maintain the health of the foot. In the summer I sell an average of twenty jars a day.”
“Ah.” He thinks for a moment. “How much?”
“Seven-fifty a jar. Costs me less than half that to make it.”
“Good profit.”
“Yes.” She shifts her weight on her crutches. “Uh, the tea is ready, but I can’t carry it in. Could you?”
“What? Sure. Of course.” He replaces the jar of foot butter on the shelf and, after giving himself a mental shake much as a dog physically does upon rousing from a slumber, he ducks after her behind the heavy curtain.
Dazed, he follows her through a small workshop (she must make everything, a small part of his mind computes), through a door, and into a small sun-yellow kitchen. On the yellow Formica table sits a pot of tea in a foot-shaped tea cozy beside a pot of sugar and a carton of cream.
“We could sit in here if you prefer ...”
“No,” he replies, so quickly and forcefully that her hazel eyes widen.
“I mean, if it’s okay with you,” he says, trying to smile reassuringly, “I’d like to go back to the café.”
She nods uncertainly. “Of course.”
He picks up the teapot, sugar, and cream and together they return to the teahouse. A few minutes of strained silence later, Moey finds himself slouched in one of the wingback chairs sipping a cup of Earl Grey. Karen sits beside him, her broken foot propped on a coffee table. They both resolutely study the piñatas dangling from the ceiling.
When the silence reaches the snapping point, Moey clears his throat. It is time to Listen to Fate. Karen looks at him expectantly.
“You, uh, you get many customers?” he asks. Even to himself, he sounds as if he’s been sucking on helium.
“Lots in the summer. Tourist season, you see. Some days there’s barely enough room to stand in here.”
“Oh.” He clears his throat again, trying to lower his tone an octave or seven. His vision jumps erratically, his heart pounds hard against his throat. “And the rest of the time?”
“When a tour bus pulls in, I’m swamped. And every holiday — Easter, Valentine’s Day, whatever — it gets busy with people showing their relatives around.”
“I see.”
Silence again. Moey’s thoughts churn. His palms feel as slick as wet lasagna noodles. He gulps down a swallow of tea and scalds the back of his throat.
“Haugh ...” he begins, then coughs his throat clear and tries again. “How are you going to manage with your foot like that if you have to carry things from the kitchen and back?”
“Morris is going to buy a hot plate today to set up in here. And he’s going to help me do the baking each night.”
“Ah.” He sips his tea again. Another long, awkward silence descends. Karen studies the piñatas once more.
Do it, Moey tells himself fiercely. Ask her.
I can’t, a hitherto unknown portion of his person whines.
Don’t be a wimp, he answers, and takes a deep, quavering breath. Puts down his cup. Faces her. “Karen?”
She turns to him. “Yes?”
“I...I would like...” He wipes his sweaty palms on the knees of his kickboxing uniform, tries again. “I was wondering...”
“Yes?”
“I would like...”
She leans forward. “Yes?”
“I’d like to work here,” he blurts. “As a belly dancer.”
Magic — what exactly is it? Most people don’t recognize it when they see it, but Karen has always known about its existence, has been able to correctly identify it. She’s taught her children to recognize it, too.
“Look, Candice, magic! We push this silver thing, and voilà, warm water comes out. Clean, warm water to wash a baby’s hands in. Magic!”
And: “Shall we gaze into the crystal ball and see what pictures we can find? Press the magic button, Andy. There! Look, there’s Big Bird. You made Big Bird appear in the big glass window! How did you do that, you clever boy? And we can hear him, too!”
And: “With a flick of the magic wand I shall dispel darkness from this room. Let’s count together — one, two, three...”
Water faucets, television remotes, light switches — for Karen they represent magic. It exists all around her: telephones, automobiles, ice cubes tinkling in a glass of cold tea. Rather than explain these phenomena to her children in the technical language of the witches and wizards who have created them (a mathematical language she equates with spells), she defines them as magic.
A plumber in oil-slicked coveralls is a warlock who threads brass and copper tubes together and commands water to appear at her house whenever she desires. A gas fitter is a sorcerer who combines invisible gas, complex equations, and wire circuits to provide her with warmth on a frosty night. The midwife who assisted at the births of Candice and Andy is an earth goddess; the woman who taught them swimming lessons a water sprite; the Lynn Canyon forest ranger a sylvan deity. Godkins, fays, spellmasters, and shamans — this is how Karen sees car mechanics, nurses, teachers, and surgeons.
For as long as she has lived in her own house, she has left thumb-size portions of food on her kitchen windowsill. Not to please ethereal spirits, and certainly