The Witch House of Persimmon Point (24 page)

The rocks were cool and wet beneath her feet. She knew to avoid the dark spots of slippery seaweed and the barnacles—they drew blood, and why shouldn't they? They were alive, and her feet would hurt them, too, as she made her way slowly out to the very edge. A perfect stillness came over her even as the waves crashed all around her. She could hear the roar of the ocean, the crush of the waves on the rocks, the sucking in of the tide, the rushing out of the tide, until the wind rushed in, filling her eardrums with its whistles and ghostly screams. Then just as quickly, it would retreat, and the sounds of the ocean would pummel her again. She felt the mad sea spray on her face, God's spit, God's blessing, it slapped her, burned her, made her unable to see. She closed her eyes against it and raised her arms up so that the wind could just take her, and for a moment, she thought that the earth, the sea, the rocks, the horizon, the clouds, the sky, would all just swallow her up, because for one moment she felt she had achieved what she had spent so long searching for, a “oneness” with the planet.

It's time, thought Anne.

“Anne!”

William's voice rose above it all, and Anne's spell was broken. She would not, after all, be swallowed up by the sea. She felt torn: throw herself in and end it now (begin it?).

All of a sudden she was a bit cold, and a little off balance on the rocks (the water was up to her ankles now), and she felt a feeling she didn't like. She felt afraid.

“I'll not die afraid,” she said. “I will walk from this earth with a straight back and a fearless disposition if it kills me.” She turned toward William. “Keep your pants on, Will. I'm just thinking. Why don't you just go on home?” she called.

“Anne, please talk to me. You owe me this much.”

“I owe you?” she said, rushing back to the beach to face him.

“I lost the same dream you lost.”

“Fine. What do you want?”

“Marry me. Just marry me and let's try again.”

William had tears in his eyes. He tried to hold them back, but Anne saw his Adam's apple moving back and forth, choking down the hurt.

If he'd just waited a second longer. If he'd been brave enough to let those words of love and support linger inside of Anne, let them take hold, this story would have a much different ending. But instead, he said, “I'm going to seminary, Anne. If you won't have me, I have to go.”

Amore women never respond well to threats.

“You want to be a priest, Will? You?” She laughed in that cruel way she learned from her mother. “And when will you start diddling little boys?
Hmmmm?
These things are, what did Gwen say? Cyclical, you know.… It happened to you, you will do it to someone else.…”

William stared at her in disbelief.

“You don't get it, Anne. You don't get it and you never will. After I met you, those things never bothered me anymore. Every time it happened, I thought of you. I thought about us, escaping, being a family. Like it was the price I had to pay. But I am done paying, Anne, especially for something that I can't have. If I can't have you, then I don't want anyone, and the only thing left for me is the only thing I know.”

“Don't you do this to me, Will. Don't you make me say this. I will hate you for it. You know who I am, you know
me
. I can't love you! I can't leave here!” Anne wanted to throw up. If William was asking this of her, then he really didn't know her. Which meant no one did, no one at all, except for ghosts.

He looked at her for a long time. He let his eyes linger over her pale face and angry, beautiful eyes. In his mind, he saw himself touch her hair. She smelled like roses. Had he ever told her that? Like wild roses. He walked away from her.

Anne was alone.

*   *   *

William wrote to her. But Anne never wrote back. He'd done the unforgivable.

He'd left her. That was all there was to it. And Nan had left her, too. Death was no excuse.

Everyone left her.

Anne didn't like to dwell on how much she thought about her father. How many times she'd daydreamed about him swooping back in and taking her away. Protecting her.

The more she wanted it, the more she fought feeling anything at all.

That's when she decided to go find him.

And Lucy couldn't be bothered to care enough to stop her.

Lucy said. “You will terrify the entire gulf coast with your pale skin, and how do you know he even wants to see you?”

“He doesn't have a choice.”

*   *   *

Anne stood outside the streamliner to Florida, thinking about just how amazing the world outside her small Witch House reality actually was. She wanted to watch the rushing people for hours. But her train was boarding. The streamliner was more art than transportation. Bulletlike, smooth. Gentle as well as dangerous. It astounded her. So Anne put her palms on the cold steel, but it was a new train. It didn't have many stories to tell her fingers yet, so she let the tide of people move her into the coach.

The train ride took a day and a half. Anne was rapt the whole journey. It's one thing to know that the world has all sorts of different places in it, to see pictures; it is another thing entirely to know it with all your senses. As the train went further south, the doors would open to let passengers on or off, and the smells that would come in were different from anything Anne was used to. Spicy and sweet. The smell of salt marshes and pine groves mixed with date palm and the heady perfume of tropical flora intoxicated her. The ground also became flatter, the stops less congested, the people friendlier. It was an amazing voyage. But then it was over, and it was time to do what she came to do. She stood before the open train doors, unsure of what to do or where to go next.

Trust yourself, she thought.

She got off the train, and the heat smacked into her, heavy and damp. Anne walked until she came to a street lined with tall live oaks and dripping with Spanish moss. Each tree was placed with care in front of an amazing brick dwelling with wrought-iron fences. They unfolded, magically, one after the other, as she walked by. They were close together and similar in architecture, but each house had its own flavor, its own character. They liked her well enough, but they weren't
her
house, nor were they the house she was looking for.

She stopped in front of the house. There was a sign on the gate:

Magnolia House.

Gavin had just finished shaving in the sunny front bathroom on the second floor. He looked out the window and saw her right as she looked up. They locked eyes. He knew her instantly.

Gavin wiped off his face quickly, motioning for her to go around. Anne came through the gate and headed to the back of the house, taking in the stonework walkway and the lush tropical gardens. It was all so rich-seeming, so luxurious. Excess met with restraint. This is Southern charm, she thought: restrained excess.

The back of the house was one massive screened-in porch with several sets of wide planked whitewashed wooden steps leading to different entrances. Anne walked up the stairs feeling only half herself. She was not as nervous as she was excited to see Gavin. She paused, taking a moment to look the grounds over. Palms mixed with deciduous foliage and other fantastic shrubs, dotting the emerald green lawn. The landscaping pointed downhill, like perspective in a painting, to the dock and a sailboat and the river behind that led to the sea. Anne felt her world shift to Technicolor—the world of her father, her own personal Oz.

“A river…” she whispered. It was late afternoon, and the sun had bathed everything, Anne included, in a wash of golden light. She turned back around to knock, but Gavin had already opened the screen door. Her hand wavered midair, her jaw slack for a moment, and then she walked past him.

“Well now, this
is
a surprise. Come on in, my girl!”

“I'm already in,” Anne said. Of all the first words to her father, these were not the ones she expected to say.

“I know … just tryin' to lighten up the air a tiny bit.” He shut the door, turning to greet her properly with an open hand. Gavin watched an internal struggle play across her face. She moved toward him stiffly with her arms open, as if she were going to embrace him (which would have been surprising, yet fine with him), but her face was contorted in contempt and her neck strained backward against the rest of her body. Gavin had heard of mixed emotions, but this was ridiculous.

“Okay,
fine
!” Anne burst out, stomping her foot before she shot toward him, flinging her arms around him. Gavin hugged her tight. She smelled like Lucy, like roses. God how he missed her.

“
Shhhhhh
…” he hushed. “I'm right here, it's okay now, Pap's got ya'. I'm right here. Now, what brings you all this way, honey? Not that I am displeased to see you, but I would have liked to prepare for your arrival.”

Anne pulled herself away, mad at herself for touching him—for seeming weak.

“Look,” she said “I don't even know why I'm here. I should probably just go.”

“Don't be silly. Why don't you just sit down out here for a second?” He swept his arm in an arc. Her eyes followed, seeing the porch in all of its magnificence for the first time. The wide, whitewashed, well-worn plank floors were covered with the richest-looking Oriental carpets Anne had ever seen. (And Nan and Lucy weren't exactly cheap decorators.)

“Child, you think these are pretty, shoot … out here is where we put the old used-up ones! Wait until you get inside!” Her eyes got even bigger when they latched onto the beautiful white wicker rocking chairs and sets of deep, comfortable-looking sofas covered in delightful floral fabrics next to tables set up for dining or cards. “Where would you like to sit?”

Anne thought maybe he was fishing for some kind of compliment—she could see it on his vain, still handsome face. But she shouldn't give in. So it was beautiful, so what? He didn't build it, he inherited it. He was just the fucking caretaker.

“How about here?” Anne immediately looked disinterested and plopped herself down on the first couch she saw.

“Okay then…” Gavin said, suddenly uncomfortable and confused, “let me get you a beer—do you, um, can you?”

“I can, and no thanks.”

Gavin went to the kitchen. He opened a beer bottle and leaned on the sink, putting the beer to his lips to take a drink, and then to his forehead for some cooling support. Back out on the porch, he pulled up a chair to face her, his past. After all those years and miles, now there was only a small round glass table with wicker supports sticking out like spider legs standing between them. Gavin leaned back into his chair, took a drink, and then took a good, solid look at his kid.

Anne could only guess what he saw.

•  She was damaged. Her eyes screamed the words
lost
and
vulnerable
.

•  She was dangerous, like Lucy—he could feel the hate and bitterness coming off of her.

•  She was weird, with a flair for the dramatic (not that he would have expected anything different). Anne was dressed all in black, had straight black hair like her mother's only not, and was barefoot. What looked like Chinese slippers dangled between her fingers.

“Why don't you tell me what this is all about? Do you need somethin', child?”

This was just too much for Anne. Did she need something? Did she
need
something? She might have to kill him.

“I need the bathroom.” she said.

But what she really needed was Proof of Love.

“There are far too many of them in this damn house. Feel free to poke around. I'll wait for you here, if that's alright.”

*   *   *

Magnolia House was breathtaking and huge, as most Southern mansions are. It boasted ridiculously high ceilings and gleaming, recently waxed floors. The walls—the ones she could see, at least—were painted pale blue with white trim. They reminded her of her own house, only inside out. All the trim was white, except for the dark natural cherry of the double front doors. The whole house smelled faintly of cigarettes and bourbon. Anne felt at home here. It unnerved her.

“Everyone keeps secrets in closets. Let's go look, lady,” she whispered to herself.

The front hall was really a room unto itself, with an impressive set of carved wooden doors and massive floor-to-ceiling windows of etched glass flanking them. The nearest closet was vast as well: she figured it could hold two hundred or so coats for some kind of fancy soirée or something. Anne looked up and let out an annoyed sigh. “There must be a million boxes in here!”

Noticing a step stool in the corner, Anne took the liberty of using it to go up and down twenty or thirty times and, in the waning light summer, arranged a whole lifetime of memorabilia around herself as she sat on yet another wonderful Persian carpet.

A picture of her mother stared up at her from the first box she opened. This was her box. She'd hit the jackpot. There were pictures of Lucy in many stages of her pregnancy with Anne. Beautiful, artistic photos that showed just how much Gavin had loved her, probably still did. She didn't want to keep looking. It hurt her heart. But it was a good kind of hurt, so she did. There was a picture of Nan and Dominic in the vegetable garden and a picture of the Haven House ruins. Had he loved them as much as she did? And then she saw a slip of paper. It was yellowed and folded over many times—a telegram.

GAVIN I DO NOT WANT YOU STAY AWAY DO NOT RETURN COME GET THE GIRL SHE BELONGS TO YOU YOU ARE BOTH DEAD TO ME LUCY

Anne couldn't breathe. Lucy hadn't lied to her. He really didn't want her. He only wanted Lucy, and when he couldn't have her he just stayed here. And he knew how unloved Anne would be. Lucy was right. She wasn't anyone to anyone. Not until William. And now he was gone, too. And the baby … her throat began to close from swallowed grief.