turned and looked at the woman then. “She’s in love,” she whispered. She rose from her chair and walked toward the woman, staring right at her.
The woman shut her eyes. Faint lines stretched out from her eyes and mouth and faded into her hair. You could see all her days in the field, all the harvesting she’d done. Her cow-milking hands were red and chapped.
“She’s burning up,” Mary said softly, pressing the back of her hand against the woman’s forehead. “Tessa, could you make up a batch of tea, black leaves with cranberry bark crushed in, maybe?” She winked at me. “The last jar on the left and second from the right.”
I nodded and scurried off my stool as if an army were beating at the door.
My hands shook as I pushed a stool up to the side of the stove and climbed up and stared at the jars. Mary’s words jumbled in my head. Last on the right or left? Second from the left? I squinted at the black markings scribbled on tape stuck to the jars but couldn’t make them out. The herbs inside looked reddish black on either side. I panicked, then reached out and grabbed the last jar on the left and the second from the right. This is wrong, I thought, close to tears, as I sprinkled a bit of herb from each jar onto a piece of cheesecloth and folded it into a pouch.
By the time I was done, I could hear sobbing from the front of the room. I raced back, holding up the cup so it wouldn’t spill. The tea made me a part of this, and I felt necessary in a way I never had before.
The woman was hunched over Mary’s desk, weeping.
I set down the tea in front of the woman. “Here you go,” I said, my heart pounding.
“She’s in love with her neighbor’s husband,” Mary whispered.
The woman jolted up then. “I can’t help it,” she said. “I feel so dirty, like a criminal. I feel it in every vein of my body.”
“I know,” Mary soothed. “I know. My friend Tessa here made you some tea; why don’t you try it?”
“Yes,” the woman said, picking up the cup. “Oh, yes, I’m sorry, thank you. My name is Beatrice, by the way. I come from outside Spring-field. I’m sorry for this, for being this way.”
Mary leaned over and put her hand on Beatrice’s shoulder. Her hair fell forward as she peered in Beatrice’s face. I watched Beatrice take a sip of tea and was relieved when she didn’t collapse afterward.
“I’ve been in love like that, too,” Mary said.
I was confused. “But isn’t that good?” I asked. Not that I knew anything about it.
“Sometimes,” Mary said. “If you’re loved back.”
At that, the woman began crying again. “I keep looking for him everywhere. I stand at my window so I can see him tending his crops outside. I dream his face when I go to bed and then when I wake up in the morning.”
“It’s like a sickness,” Mary said, nodding. “It is.”
“I’ve gone to meet him in the barn. He doesn’t love me, doesn’t want me, but I’ve let him do things to me that I’ve never even let my husband do. He uses me up and then zips up his pants and leaves me lying there, like some whore. And I go back and back. I whisper I love you to him, but he never even looks me in the eye.”
“Keep drinking your tea,” Mary said. “It’ll help. Cranberry root always soothes an unrequited love. I’ll give you a handful before you leave, from my garden in back.”
Beatrice smiled slightly and downed the rest of her tea. I watched, fascinated, as she wiped bits of root from her lips.
“Thank you,” she said, looking at me. I looked down, blushing straight to my toes.
“You need to boil cranberry root every day,” Mary said, “and drink it with your meals, and whenever you are feeling like you really need it. Put a black curtain over that window you watch him from, and hang garlic across the top. You can also sip honey water mixed with cinnamon to make your sleep more dreamless. If you want to dream, just not of him, boil cranberry root, too, and use that water with the honey.”
“Yes,” Beatrice said, sitting up straight. “Yes, I’ll do that. I want to be free from this.” Already her cheeks were becoming less flushed. Her face seemed to soften, as if we’d sprayed it with mist.
“Wait here,” Mary said. “We’ll get you some herbs to take home.”
We went back to the kitchen. Mary reached for the second jar on the right, lifted out some of the cranberry root, and dropped it in a small paper bag.
I breathed out in relief. “I was so scared,” I said. “I thought I’d picked the wrong one. I couldn’t remember.” I cringed then, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.
“It doesn’t really matter,” Mary said, lowering her voice. “When you’re foolish about love, herbs can only help so much.” I looked up at her, shocked. Mary tied up the bag and winked down at me.
When we came back, Beatrice seemed a different woman from the one who’d skulked through the door a half hour before. She clutched her bag of herbs and radiantly offered Mary a small stack of bills.
“Thank you,” Mary said, taking the bills and hugging Beatrice as if she’d known her forever. When Beatrice leaned down to hug me as well, I found myself hoping she would always be the way she was right then.
The moment the door closed, Mary turned to me and rolled her eyes, letting out a deep breath. She handed me two of the bills in her hand, then rolled up the rest and thrust them in her skirt pocket.
I looked toward the door, and at Beatrice’s empty cup of tea, and at the two bills in my palm. “But is it wrong?” I asked, a pang of guilt sweeping through me. “To take this?” I clutched the bills in my hand. “It feels weird. She was so sad.”
“We didn’t ask Beatrice to come here,” Mary said. “If she wants to give us her money, let her.” She shrugged. “And of course she’s sad. Who isn’t?”
“Oh,” I said. I looked at the ground, confused.
“A cup of tea can’t change someone’s heart, no matter how powerful the herbs in it are. The herbs have a mind of their own, you know.” She laughed. “But you make people believe in extraordinary things, and extraordinary things will happen. The rest is up to her. It’s the same as in the circus.”
“The circus?”
She grinned at me. “Well, you know,” she said, raising her eyebrows and leaning toward me, “I was in one before I came here. I performed on the trapeze. I wore glitter all along my cheeks and down my arms, and turned circles in the air.” She drew out the words, filling them with flourishes. I forgot all about Beatrice.
“Trapeze?” I repeated.
“A long bar and two pieces of rope,” she said, “hanging from the sky. Like a swing. You can sit on it or swing from your shoulders or ankles or knees. You can even hang on it from your chin.”
My eyes were enormous as I stared at her. “What was it like?” I breathed. “What did you do?” I pictured Mary in the air then, like a bird. Her chin resting on a bar the way she rested it in her hands and peered down at me, sitting behind her desk.
“It was like flying,” she said, smiling and widening her cat’s eyes. “Like having no weight to you, no bones, no skin. It was like melting right into air. And I did flying-trapeze acts, too, with a catcher.”
“What’s that?”
“You swing out, holding the bar with your palms, and just let go.” She stretched her arms in front of her, pushing away the air. “You just fly, Tessa, and in those moments you can twist or do somersaults or just keep your body pressed into one straight line until the catcher catches you. But in those moments, time stops completely.”