The Witch House of Persimmon Point (25 page)

Anne shook off the feeling and walked back out to the porch.

“Find the bathroom okay?” Gavin asked.

“I sure did. I found it, and a shitload of other stuff … not the least of which is this.” Anne waved the yellowed paper in front of Gavin's face.

“Shit.” Gavin put his head in his hands.

“
You left me there?
What the fuck kind of person are you?”

“Cool it, little girl,” begged Gavin. “I can't take all this right now, I don't know how to wrap my mind around this.… Your mother … your mother was the most wonderful and most horrible person I ever met. And when she didn't want me, I … I swear I never thought you would grow up, I thought I still had time … I thought—”

“You thought!” Anne interrupted his rambling harshly. “You
thought.…
Stupid man … you never had a thought in all your days that was worth thinking. I swear, you are going to sit here and try to make this whole thing make some sort of sense to me? You want me to feel sorry for you? My goodness, you
are
bold. You should get on your knees, you hear me? You should get on your knees and beg forgiveness from me.”

“Anne, this whole thing, this was never about you. You come from a long line of mistakes and missteps. I don't know why you are here, or what your purpose in life is, but now is not the time to begin to break yourself into tiny pieces, girl. You don't strike me as a person who can fall apart just like that. Do you honestly care about what you can't undo? What is done is done. No matter how you shake out the bedding. What matters is how you go forward. How we gonna go forward, darlin'?”

“I don't know.”

“How about we just sit and talk for a spell? You can say anything to me. You can tell me everything, all the bitty secrets.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you don't have anything to lose when it comes to me. I owe you.”

Anne thought that was sound reasoning.

*   *   *

They talked all night. Anne told him about her life. She told him about William and Lucy and Nan and the lost baby. She talked about the sea and the garden and how she belonged to the house. She told him she had never had a dream, not one, because Gwyneth absorbed them all somehow, and that she was now afraid to go to sleep. What she didn't tell him was how Jude stole her childhood.

In turn, Gavin told her about his adventures, his violent childhood. He told her how he fell for her mother and how he felt when Anne was born. He told her how often he thought about her, and Lavinia, and Jude.

What he didn't tell her was how, after he received the telegram, he got halfway to her, but—waylaid by a woman and the bottle—never made it all the way. How once he sobered up a few days later, he felt it was too late. How the regret of those actions kept him tied to the alcohol. She needn't have that burden as well.

He asked her when she was planning to leave.

She told him she'd be leaving the next day. Her head was hammering
. Tic tock tic tock tic tock. Tic.
And she was homesick for the Witch House already.

By the time they finished talking, it was very late. An awkward silence fell over them both. “You ready for bed?” he asked.

“Ready as I'll ever be.” Anne shrugged.

The dimly lit house veiled her eyes that were already so heavy. She barely noticed there was a bed at all. She sprawled across it and fell into a deep—but for the first time in her life, not dreamless—sleep.

Horrifying dreams found her. One after the other, like machine-gun fire. She dreamt of a trolley barreling into her when she couldn't move. She dreamt about a baby eating her ankles until Anne had no more feet. She dreamt she was on fire in the middle of the beach and William only pointed and laughed instead of helping her. She dreamt of another child, of dancing in the garden with Jude. She was very happy to wake up.

Anne woke up in a house very different from the Witch House, though the room looked eerily like her own: wallpapered in millions of little yellow flowers dancing all over; whitewashed floors. She got up and went to sit at the little dressing table. She lifted a silver hand mirror to her face.

Anne inhaled deeply. She smelled bacon and coffee coming from downstairs.

“My father made me breakfast.” She tilted her head at her reflection.

As she made her way downstairs, she got a better look at the house. Somehow it seemed even more incredible than it had the day before. The walls of the hallway were half plaster, from the floor up to a chair rail, and then wallpapered in some design just short of Victorian. And there were so many pictures, lovely paintings of people and places that looked exotic, covering every wall. Everywhere she looked she saw something that delighted and intrigued her. There was a whole world here for her to explore. The formal staircase was a double one: one for coming up and one for coming down. Anne felt like the whole Witch House could fit right there in that grand hallway with those staircases. The walls here were all painted linen with white trim. Refinement at its most refined. Anne was beginning to love this house, and it made her feel like she was betraying someone, something. So she stopped exploring and found the kitchen; it was surprisingly small and unlovely, and that made her happy for some odd reason. Her father stood by an old-fashioned stove flipping pancakes—and drinking a beer already. She felt she didn't really know him yet, and she couldn't tell if she wanted to.

“How did you sleep?” Gavin asked.

Anne let go a sudden, loud laugh and clapped her hand to her mouth. Gavin looked at her quizzically.

“Inside joke with myself,” Anne explained.

“Anything you want? Anything you need before you go? We have some time.…”

Anne considered this. There was something she needed.

“I want to learn how to drive. I will need to drive when I get back.”

Gavin flipped the last pancake and finally blurted out the words he had been forming in his mouth all night.

“You can stay with me,” he said, not looking at her. “You belong with me.”

“A little late, no? I have to go back. All I have is the house. Besides, Lucy needs someone to watch her drink herself to death. That woman is nothing without an audience.”
Tic tock tic tock tic tock. Tic.
He heaved a sigh and turned around. His girl was stubborn, but he had to give it his best shot or he wouldn't be able to live with himself. He couldn't regret this, too.

“That is the point: here, you have me.”

“What? So I can trade in taking care of one old drunk for another for the rest of my life? No thanks.”

Gavin was hurt. But humbled. She was a smart one. He liked her.

“Suit yourself.”

And then she surprised him.

“You could come with me?” she offered.

“No way, little girl, you take your seasons.… I'll take the sun and my beer.” He toasted the cloudless sky through the one tiny window over the kitchen sink. He couldn't see Lucy again.

So instead, that day, he did what he could do. He taught her to drive. She was a quick study, and he found himself a mighty proud daddy, but there was no way but awkward to show it.

Then, back at Magnolia House, they ate a delicious dinner he made of fried fish and black beans, before she went off to bed to dream again. This whole dreaming business was going to take some getting used to.

The dreams were bad, but not as bad as the night before. And then something interesting happened. Gwyneth was there. Anne knew it was a dream, but somehow still real. Anne was right there in the bed in Magnolia House, and Gwyneth was next to her, stroking Anne's forehead. “Little Anne,” she whispered, “I will always be with you. I am the butterflies.” And then she was gone. And Anne woke up for real.

In the morning Gavin let Anne drive to the train station. After she shut off the engine, they sat there for a while. It is hard to say good-bye when you don't want to. They both struggled with it.

“You ever gonna put on your shoes?” Gavin grumbled through the silence.

“Only when I must.” Anne smiled and looked down. Her hands and fingers traced the steering wheel. “Huh, okay, well. I guess this is it. I'm just going to go, okay? I am just going to go and get on the train.”

“Anne. Stay. Please, stay.”

“No!” Anne flung the door open and jumped out of the truck and pulled her bag from the back before she could change her mind.

And then Anne did something neither of them expected: she put her palm to his cheek. His face melted against it, before she pulled it away. “Bye, Dad.” She turned her back on him and walked toward the platform.

“Be safe, my girl.” His voice broke. Lord, he needed a drink.

Gavin moved over to the driver's side and started the engine. Anne took one last look at her handsome, graceful, sort of a father, then took a deep breath and walked to the platform. His tires on the road echoed in her head for miles and miles and miles.

Anne got on the shiny streamliner, found her light blue leather seat, and leaned her head against the train window. It was dark outside, so all she could see was her reflection. She looked sad. She
was
sad. But it would be better this way; there would be less to feel. Anne wanted to be home at the Witch House. At least, she thought she did.

Anne got colder on the trip back north. Every stop seemed to bring more discomfort and more layers of clothing. She thought she was coming down with a virus, but in reality, she would carry with her a shiver the rest of her life, a permanent reminder that she should have stayed with her father.

When she got home, she freed her ghosts. She didn't want to live alone with Lucy.

 

26

Anne in the Moonlight with the Trick

1960

The years went by. William wrote to Anne. She read every letter, but she never wrote back. She studied her magic and even took a correspondence course toward a college degree. But she was bored and lonesome. And Lucy was driving her crazy.

Anne's trip to see her father had freed her in many ways. But in others, she became more caged than ever.

“I swear, I feel like a lizard, or a frog. Just cold and lifeless inside. Nothing makes me happy anymore,” she told her ghosts while pruning the garden roses. “It seems to me that the issue was that damn baby dream. That's what got me the happiest. The thought of a little baby to care for. Will was a nice addition to that, but when you sit and think about it, that couldn't have lasted or worked. The house would have killed him or chased him away sooner or later, it always does.”

“So, you felt the best when you were planning the baby, not the marriage. I understand. I felt that way each time I—well—never mind, it was so terribly long ago,” Gwyneth said, swishing through the weeds.

“Maybe I should get pregnant again.” Just saying the words made Anne feel better. Yes, that was it. She needed to right the wrong that Lucy had committed. “But I would have to get married. Who would marry me?”

Gwyneth screeched, exasperated, “You don't have to get married, child. Nan raised Lucy, alone.
A
.
L
.
O
.
N
.
E
.”

“Okay. I will have to have sex, though, you smarty-pants, unless you have some weird ghost rule up your sleeve that I don't know about. Who will I make this baby with?”

“What about William?” Ava peeked out from underneath a large zucchini plant.

“He's gone to God. And I hate him for leaving me, even though I told him to. That's the kind of crazy you get when you mess with a girl whose father left her. Does no one read novels anymore? Who else?” Anne threw down her shears and lit a cigarette. “Damn. I can't think of anyone else. Being an outcast is all kinds of fun until you need to get inseminated.”

Then Anne figured it out. It came to her so fast, and with such clarity, that it was like the memory of something that had already happened.

“What about Jude?”

Gwyneth got real quiet, before she said, “Anne, he hurt you. Why would you want that?” But she was intrigued, Anne could tell. (After all, we
are
talking about the ghost who blew up Haven House.)

“He's in prison, anyway,” Ava added.

“No.” Anne pulled some loose tobacco from the tip of her tongue and spit it out. “I heard he is coming home. And I bet he'll need somewhere to live. Aunt Lavinia made new friends out in Richmond. She won't come back, I don't think.”

“He only likes little girls,” said Gwen.

“I've never been convinced that's true. I think he likes power. And power is just easier with little girls. But it doesn't matter, I can still be a little girl.”

“Oh,” said Gwyneth. “I see. You will trick him.”

“Yes,” Anne said, a cold glint in her eye, “I will trick him, and I'll kill him.”

Gwyneth eased herself down on the bench in one languid movement, her smile wry. “Interesting…”

Ava giggled.

The three of them were silent for a bit, scheming together in their minds … and then Anne broke the silence.

“Gwen?”

“Yes, dumpling?”

“If I kill him, will I go to hell?”

“I don't know, Anne. But I do know that if he goes to hell when you kill him, and then you go to hell when you die, then you get to scare the pants off him for all eternity, and that doesn't sound half bad.”

“Did you go to hell for what you did?”

“I don't remember. But I do remember waking up and taking care of you. And if that's hell, then I don't care one itty bit bit.”

Ava growled.

“Don't blame my ghost for my crazy human brain, Ava darling. I've watched over you, too. Penance can be downright warm and cozy.”

*   *   *

The very day Jude came slinking back, she put her plan into action. First, Anne gathered jimson weed from her witch garden of poisonous plants. (Jimson weed causes terrible hallucinations when concentrated and injected into the bloodstream.) She was fond of that garden. Proud of it, even. After Nan died, Anne didn't mind making the Witch House a real and true
witch house
.