The Witch House of Persimmon Point (29 page)

That woman could sure make an exit.

 

30

Dominic in the Kitchen with a Crucifix

1960

“What?” Anne asked.

“Your mother, Lucy, is dead,” said the now impatient doctor on the other end of the phone for the fifth time.

What what what what what what what?
What?

“She is dead, Anne, and I need you to hear it. There are things that need to be done.”

“So what am I supposed to do about it?” In truth, Anne, the Anne that was capable, the Anne who was not trying to become her mother, knew what to do, because she had already done the whole thing once before for Nan. Her mother was the one who was incapable, who didn't understand what she didn't want to understand, the one who didn't hear what she didn't want to hear. Anne understood now what a luxury that was.

It was time for the madness to end. She needed to be stable, secure, and upright. She had to know what to do all the time in every situation. She had to become Nan.

Almost immediately she began speaking to the doctor differently. “Yes, doctor.… Yes, I see. Yes, I will make all the arrangements. Who should I call to have her body shipped? Yes … I will be here when the certificate arrives. Certified mail? Of course.”

*   *   *

Lucy's funeral was an odd one, as funerals go. Anne ordered all the flowers that came to the funeral parlor out of the wake room and replaced them with roses. Lucy hated roses.

She sat quietly in a musty, stained pink velvet chair with her hands in her lap. She didn't want to hear the stories that chair had to tell.

When Dominic walked in, he sat next to her and tried to take her hand.

“You got old,” she said.

“You got pregnant.”

“You left me.”

“You tried to kill me.”

“I was only a little girl.”

He was quiet then, and Anne noticed his eyes were puffy and swollen. He'd been crying.

Later, she'd overhear him at the house while everyone ate all the food she'd stayed up all night preparing.… Jell-O molds with walnuts, ambrosia salad, pasta, bundt cakes, and the like. She was outside the kitchen, smoking a cigarette and hiding, when she heard him pouring out his sad story to one of them damn church ladies named Beverly Bodine.

“I looked at her, Bev, and I swear … I wanted to be glad to see her, to connect with her. We shared a mother, for Christ's sake, but her eyes were vacant. She stared right through me. And inside that look I could feel everything she feels about me. Like, I left her and how she suffered because I wasn't there. I can't stand it. I've always assumed she was crazy and strong. But now, I'm starting to believe she may have needed me. Christ, Bev.”

“You can't take on all that guilt, Dom. It's not fair. She's just a demon child. Born
wrong
. Poor Nan. Poor Lucy. You did the only thing you could, son. You ran. Good for you, honey. Good for you.”

“But I wonder if I shouldn't stay closer now, with the baby coming.”

“It's sinful, is what it is. Everyone says it belongs to the devil himself.”

“Go big or go home, I guess. But either way, I owe it to my mother and my grandmother to watch over her and that baby. I should be closer to Anne. Keep an eye on her.”

Anne couldn't listen for one more second.

She walked in, letting the kitchen door slam the way Nan used to when she was mad.

“Oh, Bev,
darling
. Don't you worry. He always walks away. He isn't like those stories people told about his father, Prince Vito the Valiant!”

Anne needed a Valium.

“Anne, I—”

“Don't worry. My goal here is to make the both of you feel as uncomfortable as humanly possible.”

“You did good, then, little sister.”

Anne rolled her eyes and went into the front parlor.

There were a lot of tears in that room.

What are they all crying for? Is it that sad to lose the town drunk?

They are crying for themselves, not for my mother. Not for me.

Anne wouldn't cry. Lucy was free now.

It was, Anne was convinced, far better to be dead than to be alive. Killing herself was the one thing Lucy ever did that made Anne proud or even made her feel connected to her mother. She was not going to cry over a woman who had lived a bad, sad life. Lucy was weak. And she left Anne, just like everyone else. “I should give out certificates in ‘Leaving Anne,'” she said aloud without realizing. Everyone turned and stared her way uncomfortably.

“Okay, party over. Everyone get out of my house,” she said. No one moved. “I said, grab your things, and your pity, and your envy, and your lame lives and get the fuck out of my house. Now. Or else.”

Dominic was by her side then, his hand on her arm, “Anne, Anne…”

“You get out first. And get your hands off me before I kill you. Don't tempt me, I swear.”

“I'll go, but I'm not going far.”

“We'll just see about that!
Get out!
”

People say the house shook with her scream. They say shutters clapped open and shut and the staircase swayed. They say that those who ate the food threw up for days. They say it was the Witch House, not Anne, who ejected them. But no matter what anyone believed, Anne had her own truth.

They left. They listened, and they left. Because everyone was always leaving Anne, except her ghosts. The ghosts did not leave her, could not. She was sure of it. And not the house. Her house would not leave her. It was her cocoon, her true love, her sanity.

*   *   *

The next day Anne sat at the kitchen table and made a list.

How to become my grandmother, Nan:

1. Switch rooms, again.

2. Tidy hair.

3. Attend church.

4. Maintain the garden and do all chores with glee.

5. Be pragmatic.

6. Be orderly.

7. Be strict.

8. Lie about the things you don't want to admit.

Ava sat at her feet playing peek-a-boo with a stray cat she had tricked into coming inside, but Gwyneth stood in the shadows.

 

31

Miss Anne in the Kitchen with the Mushrooms

1960

She'd begin with William. She had to reestablish her relationship with the church.

Besides, Anne wanted William back. She missed him, though she'd never tell him that. It was William who should be the priest at Our Lady of Sorrows. Maybe she could talk to old Father Callahan? She knew, from William's letters, that he was interested in coming back to his old parish but that there was “no room at the inn.” Anne decided to have Father Callahan over for dinner. She called the rectory.

“Why sure, Anne, I'd be delighted. I always wanted a look-see inside Nan's house.”

Anne bristled at “Nan's house.” It was her house. Always her house.

“And,” the priest continued, “I am thrilled you are finding your way back into God's graces. Thank you, I will see you on Sunday after mass. You will come to mass?”

“No, Father, I don't think I'm ready quite yet. Maybe when you come for dinner you can hear my confession and then I can come the following Sunday?”

“Of course, Anne.”

Anne prepared roasted beet salad and pasta and sausage, and she uncorked a bottle of her Nan's dandelion wine. The smell brought her right back to early spring. Then she went out into the gardens to visit with her ghosts—she'd been working hard bringing Nan's garden back to life. It was amazing how one season allowed the wild right back inside.

As she surveyed her work, Gwyneth surveyed her Anne.

Hair pinned back, her apron tied neatly around her waist. She was still wearing those old boots loose and untied; the whole outfit made her look a little like a deranged prairie girl might. One hand was holding Ava's hand, and in the other, she held a cigarette. Gwyneth sat on the garden bench.

“Anne, darling, you have to give them all up. All of Lucy's habits. You look ridiculous in this here garden wearing Nan's clothes and smoking.” Gwyneth slapped her knee and laughed. “And just look at your lips, you need to wipe off that bright-red Lucy lipstick. Nan would never have worn whore's red. At least, not the Nan you knew.”

“Well,” said Anne, taking another drag of her cigarette and ignoring the leading edge of Gwen's last words. “It's boring being Nan. It's funny, really: by being both of them, I can fully appreciate how they could never get along. I can't hardly get along with myself now. How am I supposed to go back to this? How am I supposed to just give up all of that freedom?”

“Nan did it.”

“Nan had people to take care of, it was easier. She was … I don't know! Busier!”

“Have you looked down lately, honey?”

Ava patted Anne's belly.

“You're going to have someone to take care of really soon. Now put down that damn toxic gas, wipe your mouth, and get some practice shoes. You got a priest coming for dinner.”

“I do indeed, Gwen. And I need a few special ingredients.”

*   *   *

Back at the house, Anne added a few mushrooms she'd collected to the pasta and watched out the kitchen window as Father Callahan fumbled with the side gate.

She grimaced. He was a fat man. His hair stood up at an odd angle and was combed to the side in an unsuccessful effort to hide the pale, shiny top of his head.

Anne met him at the gate and helped him with the latch.

“Why, thank you, Anne. My, how big you've gotten! I don't believe I've seen you in what? Four or five years?” The priest lumbered past her. He wanted to see the house. She could feel his excitement.

“You really should have come to the front doors, Father. It is a grander entrance to the house.”

“Oh, no, this is fine. I have seen the front doors a thousand times. This is less formal.”

Anne didn't like the way he said “less formal.” His voice was thick and muffled by a flabby throat. Anne visualized what the inside of his larynx must look like, all polyped and chubby, catching phlegm and food. She was disgusted.

The priest made a lot of “
Hmm
's” and “Oh my, yes's” as he entered the house and began looking around. He touched everything. Anne wondered if his hands were dirty.

“Father, would you like some wine?”

“Oh, yes, please. Do you have red?”

“I think I may have an old jug of Chianti, but I uncorked some of Nan's famous dandelion wine. It is the most absolutely lovely thing. Would you like some?”

“That sounds delightful,” he said, coughing. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, spit into it, and then put it back into his pocket. Anne gagged. What a foul man. This is the man who had touched her William? This man had heard her confessions? And her Nan's confessions. This man was dirty, unholy. She left him to explore the house.

“Anne?”

“Yes?” she called from the kitchen.

“May I go upstairs? I would love to see Lucy's—I mean, the portraits.”

Anne strode across the living room with two glasses full of light yellow wine.

“Oh, Father, I am so very sorry. Upstairs is so untidy.”

Father Callahan took his glass of wine and raised it. “Here's to your return to the church, Anne.”

These Irish with their toasts, thought Anne, as she clinked her glass to his. “
Salute
, Father.”

She took a dainty sip. Father Callahan took a gulp and a thin line of yellow leaked out from the chapped, inflamed corner of his mouth.

“How about we eat? The pasta is getting cold.”

“Yes, please, sweet Anne.” He reached out to tuck a stray wisp of hair that had fallen from her bun behind her ear. “You really look so very young. You could be a child still.”

I believe you have forgotten you prefer boys, she wanted to say. But she didn't. She had a mission. She needed to convince Father Callahan to retire.

At the table his behavior was even more inappropriate and grotesque. He drank the remainder of the wine and let food fall out of his mouth as he chewed.

“Anne, I do believe we should find you a husband. It just won't do. God forgives many things, but people are not so forgetful. Surely there is a nice young fellow for you to marry, now that you have come to your senses.” A mushroom fell out whole onto his lap.

“I suppose.… Father? Have you ever thought of retiring?”

Father Callahan gave a little snort of a laugh and a half-chewed piece of beet fell back onto his plate. “No, ma'am! I will die on the altar, just see if I don't.”

Anne pushed her food around. She wasn't fond of mushrooms. She sipped her wine. It was now or never.

“And what would happen if the diocese found out that you raped little boys?”

Father Callahan dropped his fork. “What—what did you say?”

“Surely you heard me, Father.”

Father Callahan was sweating. He stood up, and his chair fell backward onto the floor. The sound was louder than it ought to have been. He couldn't think. He felt vomit rising into his throat and ran to the sink. He heaved, but nothing came out. He heard his heartbeat in his ears. Something was wrong. So much more wrong than just this simple girl with her simple threats.

“Anne … help … call help…” he gasped, grabbing at his throat.

The firemen came. They were there fast. It was good there was a firehouse so close by.

Father Callahan was dead three days later. First there was the vomiting, then the diarrhea, then the splotches that turned into bleeding sores all over his skin.

The doctors thought it was surely some type of virus brought on by the incision Anne had to make in his throat to remove the mushroom he'd choked on. Her quick thinking saved him, but nothing could save him from the infection he must have picked up at the hospital. Anne's status began to shift in Haven Port that day. I truly am becoming Nan, she thought. Nan overcame her heathen ways, and everyone loved her. Now I'm going to do it, too. Smiling, she rubbed her belly while reading a new book on poison herbology.