27 Magic Words Read online

  A strip of light gleamed under the guest room door. Kobi heard Grandmamma’s voice on the phone as she tiptoed past.

  She made her way down the hall and slipped under her mother’s desk into the hideaway. Using her flashlight, she found the magic words in the drawstring bag where she’d put them. She smoothed out the wrinkled ones and put the words written on yellow Post-its in two columns:

  carillon

  fiddlesticks

  snapdragon

  razzmatazz

  squelch

  mayfly

  temporarily

  caribou

  honeysuckle

  freesia

  trillium

  phyllo bundle

  buoy

  dilettante

  veronica

  pantaloons

  She couldn’t read most of them because she was only five, but they tingled with magic as she ran her fingers over them. She studied them. Why did one of the Post-its have two words? Did it mean phyllo bundle was extra powerful and to be used for the most important things, like bringing her parents home?

  Kobi pressed her thumb against phyllo bundle and shut her eyes. She wanted the Great Alighieri to pull her close as they read Mr. Popper’s Penguins together. She told them to come home. She ordered them to come home.

  She waited. She didn’t hear the key in the lock or hear the Great Alighieri call, “Where is everybody?”

  She made two rows of orange Post-its. She touched each word and told her parents to come home.

  iridescence

  Montpellier

  dimpling

  malleable

  scrambled

  frippery

  hogwash

  parsimonious

  ragout

  She spread out the last few Post-its—the ones written on neon green—and studied them.

  lingua franca

  Avanti!

  buoy

  Her parents were not home and it was getting stuffy in the hideaway.

  She didn’t know how to make the words work. She rearranged them. She put long words in one group, middlesized words in another group. She tried saying some of the words, but they were hard.

  She yanked her hair. Why hadn’t her mother explained how to unleash the magic power?

  Only one word had an exclamation point beside it. She ran her finger over the letters, sounding them out in her mind.

  A-van-ti!

  At that moment, that night almost five years ago, in the hideaway under her mother’s desk in the San Francisco house, Kobi heard a rumbling sound as if stones were falling away from an opening. And there they were.

  The sailboat listed in the sand, a jagged hole in its side. Bright stars. A bonfire. Her parents’ shapes moving around the firelight.

  “Hey!” she called.

  Her dad turned the spit where a chickenlike thing was roasting. Her mother tried to open a can of beans. Kobi slipped her hand into her dad’s, but he moved it to poke the roasting thing with a sharp stick.

  Her mother stood up and walked toward the surf. Kobi followed. At the edge of the water, her mother stood gazing into the distance as if she had turned to petrified wood. Her face glistened with tears.

  Kobi wiped tears off her own face, hoping Mademoiselle hadn’t noticed. But Mademoiselle was admiring the detail of Brook’s drawing of the poor gentian. Sometimes Kobi wondered if she and Brook were really sisters. But of course they were. Sisters and best friends.

  After discovering that her parents were okay, she wanted to wake Brook and tell her. Brook would have been so happy. But Brook and Grandmamma didn’t know her mother had given her magic words before she disappeared. Grandmamma might not believe Kobi. The magic might stop working if she told, because her mother had said it was a secret.

  Kobi stood back and looked at her painting. There was their house in San Francisco in the upper right corner. And Grandmamma walking from Paris on what looked like a hanging bridge but was really the cat’s cradle, and of course Grandmamma hadn’t really walked, but she had come. And she had stayed. And she kept them close and brought them back to Paris with her to wait. The storm and the boat with a gaping hole in its side took up a lot of space on the canvas. But something was missing from the canvas. Something to bind all the parts together.

  Mademoiselle had taught them calligraphy, so Kobi decorated the left border of the painting with iridescence. That looked quite nice lettered vertically down the edge, and Mademoiselle would admire it because it was so Latinate. Kobi was half Latinate, in a way. Her Italian grandfather, whom she had visited when she was four, was handsome like the Great Alighieri. They hadn’t been able to talk to each other very well, but Kobi loved the smell of the linen shop where her Italian grandparents flung out wide swaths of fabric on the cutting table for customers to see. That was how iridescence worked. It made a moment come alive. When she said iridescence, everything glowed around the edges. She could smell things, like the bolts of linen. She could hear and feel the thunk of the heavy bolt of fabric on the cutting board. Iridescence made a perfect left margin for her picture. She balanced it on the other side with lingua franca, which she had not yet learned how to use.

  THREE

  THAT evening, Mr. Gyver came to dinner. Grandmamma arranged seven cobalt-blue vases on the mantel below the Louis XV mirror. She began filling them with freesia. She filled the first one for her first husband, Kobi and Brook’s grandfather, whom they never knew. She filled the next one for their mother and the Great Alighieri. The next one for Grandmamma’s second husband, Mr. Mallory. The next for Grandmamma and Mr. Mallory’s son, Wimbledon, their half uncle.

  “We’ve never met him,” Kobi said.

  “Yes, we have,” Brook said.

  “No, we haven’t.”

  “Yes, we have.”

  “Girls,” Grandmamma said.

  One freesia bouquet was for Brook. One was for Kobi.

  “Who is the last one for?” Brook asked.

  “For Leonard.” Grandmamma smiled at Mr. Gyver, who smiled back.

  “I’m entering a new phase of my life, girls,” Grandmamma announced, looking both happy and anxious as she put the flowers in the last vase. “Leonard and I aren’t getting any younger and we’ve decided to marry.”

  “Can we be bridesmaids?” Brook said.

  Grandmamma laughed. “We’re too old for all that. We’ll be married at city hall in a few weeks while you girls are with your uncle Wim in Des Moines.”

  The last time Kobi had been separated from people she loved, it hadn’t turned out well. “But we don’t know him! Why can’t we stay here?”

  “Because Leonard and I are going to Beijing, where he is to receive an award, and then we will travel around the Far East for a while. It will be a honeymoon.” Grandma’s cheeks pinked up and she said, “Won’t that be nice?”

  “We could stay here with Madame Louise and Mademoiselle,” Brook said. “This is our home.”

  Grandmamma kissed Brook’s head. “Yes, it is. When we all return from our travels, Leonard will move here because this is your home. Going to the US will be an adventure. You’ll get to know Wim. You’ll experience an American school again after all these years.”

  Kobi remembered nothing about kindergarten except the time the Great Alighieri came to visit.

  “We’ll all be back here for Christmas,” Grandmamma said. “Together.”

  She kissed Mr. Gyver’s head then, and he caught her hand.

  “You are fine girls,” he said. “I will try to be a good stepgrandfather.”

  Kobi liked Mr. Gyver, and she liked for Grandmamma to be happy, but she worried about being apart. Caribou, she said to herself when Grandmamma sank into her chair and lifted her wineglass to Mr. Gyver. Caribou, I love you. You can go away but you have to come back. It worked to bring Grandmamma back from dining with friends, from outings with Mr. Gyver, from the hairdresser, from visiting with the concierge. It would bring her back from the Far East.

  G
randmamma said that because of Mr. Gyver’s prize, there wasn’t a moment to be wasted. Thus, Kobi and Brook and Grandmamma found themselves in the Paris airport only two weeks later.

  Grandmamma had worry lines as she searched the crowd for Mr. Gyver. He should have picked them up at the apartment and brought them to Charles de Gaulle. But he hadn’t come and didn’t answer his phone, so finally they had called a taxi. And here they were in line, and would soon be sucked through the security gate.

  Grandmamma would fret all the way across the Atlantic if she didn’t see Mr. Gyver before they got on the plane. She tried telephoning him once again. “He’d forget his head if it weren’t screwed on.”

  Brook fiddled with the zipper pulls on her carry-on. When they were all perfectly centered, she turned to Kobi. She ran her finger from the tip of Kobi’s nose up Kobi’s forehead to the barrette that held back Kobi’s growing-out bangs. And then she used her hands to measure the distance from Kobi’s ears to the barrette.

  People were staring. Kobi wanted to push Brook’s hands away, but she didn’t because Brook was trying to keep any more people from disappearing.

  Montpellier. The word echoed nicely in Kobi’s head, like a shout in a cave. Montpellier—ellier—ellier. Which was probably why it was a good word for big, cavernous places like airports and cathedrals.

  “There’s Mr. Gyver!” Brook cried, pointing.

  The worry lines between Grandmamma’s eyes vanished as Mr. Gyver waved from the crowd.

  Kobi smiled.

  Mr. Gyver was out of breath when he reached them. “. . . Oh, Amelia, I overslept . . . misplaced my telephone . . . sorry.” He kissed Grandmamma on each cheek, making her look like a flower that had been watered. “And I am sorry if you girls were worried,” he said, turning to them.

  Kobi threw her arms around him. He smelled like toothpaste and the little brown cigarettes he was always trying to give up.

  They were almost to the security gate. Mr. Gyver gave Kobi and Brook quick kisses. “See you at Christmas.” He gave Grandmamma another peck. “See you Sunday, my dear.”

  And then they removed their shoes and placed their belongings in a tub on the moving belt.

  The security machine behaved perfectly when Grandmamma and Brook went through. But it squawked at Kobi, making her heart nearly leap out of her throat and making everybody look at her. A security guard told her to lift her arms and then ran a wand around her body.

  “Do you have something in your pocket?” he asked.

  The key.

  Kobi nodded.

  He told Kobi to place whatever it was in the bin.

  Grandmamma’s frown warned Kobi not to make a fuss, but things could happen to a small key in a busy airport. The key caught the light as she placed it in the bin. Dimpling, she breathed as the bin disappeared into the maw of the security machine. Dimpling, she said to herself as the guard waved her through the gate. Dimpling, she whispered as she waited for the bin to reappear. And there was the key! Kobi dropped it in her pocket.

  Awhile later, when the plane leveled off above the clouds, Brook said, “Tighten your seat belt in case we hit air pockets. And finish your orange juice in case you have to go to the bathroom. You can’t go while we’re landing.”

  “But we don’t land for hours.”

  “But we might land unexpectedly. Fix your hair clip, too. Hair in your eyes can make you blind.”

  Kobi’s hair did keep falling over her face, which made Grandmamma cross. So Kobi smoothed it and reset the clip in the exact center to keep everybody happy. She had to admit she could see better—though there was nothing to see except the seats in front of her.

  Brook took the magazines and information cards out of the seat pocket. She put them back so they were centered, smaller things in front of larger things. Then she did it again. And again. Kobi knew better than to interfere. If Brook had decided she needed to organize them five times, and Kobi interrupted her, Brook would have to start over.

  So Kobi shut her eyes. The plane droned, seeming barely to be moving. Wrapped in the hum, she tried to relax. When her toes were nicely limp, she said Avanti!

  Silvery waves broke on the shore. Gulls circled in the wind. Her mother knelt on the beach, washing clothes in the surf. On a thorny bush, she had pinned a shirt to dry. It was the one she’d worn when she waved goodbye the day she and the Great Alighieri sailed out of San Francisco Bay. The shirt was faded and ragged. The Great Alighieri was dragging a net into the surf.

  Kobi tried to make them understand that they needed to hurry home.

  FOUR

  THEY had a brief stop at O’Hare—long enough to eat what Grandmamma called famous Chicago hot dogs—before they made their way to the gate.

  Brook stared at the Chicago hot dog when it was put in front of her. “Something’s wrong with it,” she said, pointing to the strange, curving X shape of the ends.

  “It’s cooked in the cervelat style,” Grandmamma said, “but try it. You’ll like it.”

  Brook took a cautious bite.

  “While you’re here, remember not to remark on differences too much,” Grandmamma said. “It’s rude.”

  “Why has Uncle Wim never come to visit us in France?” Kobi asked, wiping mustard off her fingers. It didn’t look or taste like mustard, though Grandmamma assured her it was. American mustard.

  “Wim doesn’t like to fly,” Grandmamma said. “It’s difficult for him. Especially long transatlantic trips.”

  “Why have we never gone to see him?” Brook asked.

  Grandma dabbed her lips with her napkin and sighed. “Families are complicated.”

  “Do you not like Uncle Wim?” Kobi asked. “Because if you don’t, maybe we shouldn’t stay with him.”

  “Of course I like Wim!” Grandmamma exclaimed.

  “Does he not like you?” Kobi asked. That was hard for her to believe.

  “Parents and their grown children don’t always agree,” Grandmamma said. “But don’t worry. You’re going to have an adventure. And it’s just for a little while.”

  Their plane landed in Des Moines on time at 4:45.

  Kobi spotted her half uncle, whom she recognized from pictures, in the crowd at the bottom of the escalator. He wore a T-shirt that said YOU CAN’T BEAT A WOMAN.

  “What does that mean?” Brook asked Kobi as, from a few steps behind them, Grandmamma called, “Wave, girls!”

  They waved.

  He waved back.

  As they got off the escalator, Grandmamma kissed Uncle Wim’s cheek and he hugged her, but Kobi thought they acted like each thought the other didn’t want to.

  “Wim, you remember your nieces,” she said, turning to Kobi and Brook.

  “Hello, nieces,” he said.

  “This is your uncle Wim,” Grandmamma chirped to Brook and Kobi. “You three are going to get along famously!”

  One of his eyebrows went up. He slung Grandmamma’s carry-on over one shoulder and Brook’s and Kobi’s over the other. On the way through the busy terminal, he stared straight ahead as if leading the way to the baggage carousel were dangerous work.

  Grandmamma and Brook saw a restroom and detoured. Kobi went with Uncle Wim to get their luggage.

  The carousel began to turn as they arrived. Beside her, Uncle Wim waited, stiff as a nutcracker.

  She asked him what the message on his T-shirt meant.

  He glanced down. “Oh.” He made a fist and looked mean. “You can’t beat a woman, and you can’t beat a woman.” He made a kind of goofy face. “Get it?”

  She shook her head.

  He pulled out the front of his shirt and stared at the message as if he didn’t understand what was not to get. When the conveyor belt began to spit out luggage, he looked relieved.

  “The pink ones are mine,” Kobi said. “The purple ones are Brook’s.”

  Uncle Wim began to grab suitcases off the carousel, piling them on a cart. When no more pink or purple appeared, he looked at the stack of luggage as hi
gh as his shoulders. “Surely this can’t be everything.”

  “Except for my footlocker,” Kobi said, pointing. She patted her pocket to make sure the key was there.

  Houses shaded by trees lined the streets. Kobi watched Uncle Wim’s eyebrows in the mirror. They were talkative like her mother’s.

  He caught her eye. “What’s in your footlocker?”

  “Things.”

  Grandmamma cleared her throat.

  “There’s nothing alive, is there? Nothing else I’m going to have to feed and take care of?”

  “No!” Kobi said. She thought his eyebrows said he was joking, but she wasn’t sure.

  “I hope there’s nothing dead in there.”

  “Never mind, Wim,” Grandmamma said firmly.

  “What’s that?” Brook cried.

  Kobi turned to look where Brook was pointing. A colorful stack of chairs made a pillar in front of a little stone house. At the top of the column, a red chair perched at a tilt, one fancy leg stuck out like a can can dancer’s.

  Uncle Wim pulled to the curb.

  A woman in cutoffs was pushing a lawn mower along the bank in front of the house. She wore boots and her bare legs were peppered with bits of grass. She stopped mowing and came to Uncle Wim’s window, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses.

  “Hello, Amelia,” she said.

  “Sally Hancock,” Grandmamma said, a chill in her voice.

  “Meet new fans of the chairs,” Uncle Wim said. He tilted his head toward Kobi and Brook. “Kids, this is my friend Sally. And those are her mother’s chairs.”

  Brook asked, “How did your mother get them up so high?”

  “With difficulty.”

  “Aren’t you afraid they’ll fall over?”