Something behind one of the parlor walls went *ding!* This was followed by the sound rather like a passel of cats scratching madly in their litterboxes, but when Edwina went to the wall whence issued these noises and touched the spring catch that opened the desired panel, she revealed their true source, a flock of fountain pens rapidly scribbling away as if guided by unseen hands. There were twelve of them in all, though only two of them were working at the moment, transcribing a telephone conversation between Dov Godz and his older sister, Peez. Each one of the dozen pens was linked by suitably arcane spells to a piece of office equipment—be it telephone, fax machine, or any item of computer wizardry from desktop to day planner—in either the Miami or New York City offices of E. Godz, Inc.
Which was to say that the items themselves—all gifts from Edwina to her offspring— were enspelled eavesdropping devices, clandestine portals that permitted her to keep constant, magically enabled tabs on the children's every move.
Wouldn't it be silly to own and run America's only family-operated clearinghouse for magical power and not put some of that power to work spying on your kids?
For that, in a nutshell, was E. Godz, Inc.'s stock-in-trade: magic.
It was not a career path that Edwina had consciously sought out, at first. Rather, it was a by-product of all those years back in the '60s that she'd spent crisscrossing the country in flower-splashed vans, salvaged schoolbuses, or, in a pinch, VW Bugs painted to look like Peter Max's worst nightmare. Like so many of her hippie brethren, Edwina discovered that life on the nation's back roads and byways led a person to consider whether there were also spiritual roads-less-traveled that might bear exploration. The faith of her forebears wasn't a good fit for her new lifestyle: Peyote and Presbyterians didn't mix worth a damn.
She was not alone in this quest for new ways of getting in touch with her mystic side. The '60s were famous for having driven hordes of young people out of their families' churches and into the arms of the "earthy" religions out there. Chanting mantras was in, catechisms were out, and the incessant beating of drums was much more desirable than any silly old Bach mass for organ. It was part of the whole tribal-is-cooler/ethnic-is-in package. And in some cases it was a pretty good excuse to get high, in the name of seeking the One True Path, though heaven help anyone uncool enough to mention that the end-justifies-the-means trip had its roots in the writings of Saint Jerome.
It was here that Edwina's One True Path took a sharp right off the spiritual interstate and left the rest of her contemporaries far behind. Whereas they only nosed around the borderline belief systems, she jumped in feet first, with eyes and mind wide open. While her tribemates picked up this or that back-to-the-Earth faith, only to put it down again when the glitter of the new toy wore off (or when it failed to piss off their parents sufficiently), Edwina actually spent serious study time on every non-suburbia-standard religion she encountered.
And when Moonbeam Suntoucher (nee Greta Bradford-Smythe) announced that she was a shaman because she had bought a genuine dreamcatcher and a boatload of dried sage, or when Frodo Freelove (Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan's firstborn son, Sammy) insisted he'd achieved samsara because the check he'd written out to the Happy Times Ashram and Salad Bar had finally cleared, Edwina calmly went about the business of improving her grasp on the true powers that underlie the more Gaia-centric beliefs, if you sought them out with enough application and sincerity.
Either that or she just got lucky. But whatever the case, the fact remained that Edwina Godz came away from all of her spiritual quests with a command of magic and something more: the realization that the people who were following the many separate paths of some really Old Time Religions didn't have the business sense of bread mold.
It was sad. There they sat—be they tribe or coven or council or conglomeration of congregants—able to raise the might of the great earth-powers but helpless to do more than take it in the unmentionables every year when Income Tax Day rolled around.
Edwina had fixed all that. Edwina was good at fixing things. Perhaps it was her personal muse at work, perhaps it was thanks to her father's legal-eagle spirit, raised during one of the many assorted ceremonies in which Edwina had participated over the years, perhaps it was simply out-of-the-blue inspiration, but whatever the source, the result was the same: Edwina Godz saw a way to help both the old earth-religion followers, by whatever name they chose to call themselves, and herself. Retracing the steps of her spiritual journey, she approached them one by one with her modest proposaclass="underline" that she show them the ropes of fund-raising, the benefits of obtaining tax-exempt status as registered, organized religions, and the basics of bookkeeping to safeguard their continued economic health.
Could she help it if the best, most efficient way for them to do this was by her founding her own corporation and taking all of them on board as her subsidiaries? Was she to blame if they were so grateful to lay hold of the advantages she offered that they never uttered so much as a whisper of objection when she collected a nice, fat piece of the action in exchange for services rendered? Did anyone protest when she used the magic powers she'd mastered during her years of Searching to help run E. Godz, Inc. so smoothly?
Of course not. There was more than enough butter to go around so that everyone's bread was fully covered. The boat wasn't rocking, nothing was broken, and all was roses.
Except for a couple of thorns named Dov and Peez. In a perfect world, Edwina's children would have appreciated the goldmine that their mother had created for them. Instead they seemed to spend their free time trying to give each other the shaft. Didn't they understand that if their bickering over personal differences got out of control it could adversely affect E. Godz, Inc.? And then where would they be? Were they even fit for any other sort of employment?
That annoying *ding!* sounded again, signaling the end of a transmission. The pair of pens softly laid themselves down, their jobs done. Still clutching the family photo in her left hand, Edwina reached in with her right to remove the sheets bearing the transcribed conversation. It was a miracle that the papers didn't spontaneously combust in her hand, given the level of volcanic vituperation zipping back and forth between the siblings. As with every intercepted communication Edwina had ever seen, Dov and Peez each managed to let the other know that:
A. He/she did not like her/him.
B. He/she did not trust her/him.
C. He/she knew how to run the family business far better than her/him.
D. If there were any justice in the universe, the day would come when he/she would have the power to push her/him the hell out of her/his cushy, undeserved position and then all would be right with the world.
E. So there.
"I blame myself," Edwina muttered, crumpling up the papers and tossing them away. The parlor wastebasket sprouted cherub wings and zoomed in to catch the discarded transcriptions before they hit the floor, then fluttered back to its place, only pausing long enough to trade high-fives with the fireplace-ash broom. "A little. On second thought, no, I don't blame myself at all. Why should I? I always did what was best for them. I sent them away from home as soon as I could manage it, legally and financially. So I'm the Great Earth Manager, not the Great Earth Mother: So sue me. Which is worse, raising your kids yourself, come hell or high water, when you darn well know that it's not your scene, or sending them to the finest daycare centers and boarding schools and colleges that money can buy? Money which, might I add, we never would have had in the first place if I'd been tied down wiping runny noses and kissing boo-boos and baking cupcakes instead of being free to build up the business. I think I did damn well by those kids. If it's anyone's fault that they can't get along, it's theirs."