The Witch House of Persimmon Point (28 page)

4:00 P.M.

Maj bounced downstairs, interrupting the narrative, holding a big black book in her arms.

“What's that, baby?” asked Eleanor.

“
Something important
,” Maj singsonged.

Eleanor, Byrd, and Maj sat at a table, flipping through the book. It was separated into parts. Some looked like recipes. Some looked like stories and scrapbook pages with photographs. Others were split up among the women. The Book of Nan. The Book of Lucy. The Book of Anne.

“This would have been a hell of a lot easier than the way I figured it all out. Thanks for a whole lot of nothing. Damn ghosts,” said Byrd, looking up at the ceiling.

“No,” said Eleanor, reopening it to the first page. “This is different. Let's look through carefully.”

“It's a book of spells. Dark magic, Mama. Deep dark loss magic. It's a book of loss and shadow and secrets,” said Maj.

7:30 P.M.

“You better be taking a bath, Maj!” yelled Eleanor.

Maj rolled her eyes at Crazy Anne.

“Did you take out the worst spell before you gave them the book?” asked Anne. Her hair was always moving, as if it were in the wind, only they were inside in Maj's new room.

“Yep.”

“Did you place it in the attic by the candle?”

“Yep.”

“Did you take the matches from the kitchen drawer?”

“Yep.”

“You should say yes, ma'am.”

“Nope.”

Anne's ghost face flickered for a moment. It's hard for ghosts to laugh, but she was trying.

“Before we burn the spell, can we use the Death Life Wither Wander spell one more time?”

“I told you it was too dangerous. Those fools downstairs would use it, sooner or later. Trust me.”

“I want to use it. I memorized it. I will use it.”

“Oh, hell. Fine. Get the dog.”

“Because she is old!”

“Yes. But there will be consequence.”

“Yes, ma'am. Hopefully a dog who never ever ever ever dies.”

8:00 P.M.

“The book is interesting, but there's nothing in it about murderous secrets, sadly,” said Eleanor, braiding Byrd's hair. It felt good to mother her. It felt right. “Unlike the fact that there's the body of a monster buried out by the Juniper trees. I guess we found our bones. And, Johnny won't go all the way back there. He's more focused on the house, and the foundation of Haven House. So, that's that. Mystery Solved.”

“I'm not so sure. I feel like there's way more to figure out. It's creepy and sad. The whole tale. I wish I'd known her. My great-grandmother. I wish she'd show herself to me,” said Byrd. She sighed. “That feels good.”

“It's impossible to get Maj to put those curls up. But I loved it when my Mimi used to braid my hair. You know what? I was about your age when I really started to know her.”

“Elly, do you think we're going to figure this out by tomorrow?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how much we can remove ourselves from these stories. On how far away we can get. It's all about perspective.”

“Yeah, I guess.… Do you like it here?” Byrd asked suddenly.

“I love it here.”

And Eleanor did. There was something about the way the light fell. About how she could always hear the ocean. It was peaceful.

“It's the kind of place that makes you feel like you are the only thing it loves,” Eleanor continued. “And isn't that what we all want? To feel like one person's beloved? That's what the women in our family wanted. That's all I ever wanted. Actually, speaking of wanting love, whatever ended up happening to Lucy?” asked Eleanor.

“Oh, man, listen to
this
one.”

 

29

Lucy in the Mental Ward with a Match

1960

SAINT SEBASTIAN HOSPITAL, FAIRVIEW, MASSACHUSETTS

The hospital wasn't half bad. Lucy began to feel strong again. Clean. The house and its demons were far away. The medications they were giving her took the haze out of her mind and emboldened her. She felt unafraid for the first time in a very long time.

Charming Lucy, as they began to call her, soon became a favorite of the staff, the doctors, and her fellow inmates, and soon the favoritism she had enjoyed throughout her years as a schoolgirl became the norm. The staff even did her small favors that weren't allowed. She was smart and coy, asking only for small creature comforts that were easy to deliver, yet had a big impact … extra baths, nice brushes for her still-beautiful hair, nail polishing sessions with her nurses, and, most important, she was allowed to smoke. Orderlies let her go to the courtyard to smoke, and her doctor let her smoke in their therapy sessions. Yet Lucy knew this was not a wonderful hospital. Terrible things went on around her every day: shock treatments, lobotomies, ice baths, straitjackets. But Lucy avoided all of this. She had a light shining from the inside. She became the person they all believed they could save, so they tried very hard to save her.

As she thrived on attention, this was a healthy environment for Lucy. She was given the right cocktail of drugs, was treated well, and began to feel like she had a really good handle on what steps she needed to take next in her life. The doctors, nurses, patients, and staff of Saint Sebastian Hospital all took note and patted each other on the back, thinking, “We did it!”

One of her doctors in particular, Dr. David Crowley, took a special interest in Lucy. It was evident that he found her attractive. Everyone still did. She was beautiful and fragile, vulnerable in her hospital gown. Once after a session with her, he looked down at his notes to find he had written only three words the whole time:
A Beautiful Chaos.
Dr. Crowley decided to write a book on Lucy, documenting how they took a schizophrenic and were able to cure her. This would put him and his hospital on the map, and the fact was, she
was
cured. She had come into the hospital bloodied and raving about ghosts and demon houses and how they asked her to hurt herself. Classic symptoms. And now? Nothing. This kind of illness could not be faked, nor could the cure. She was sane again. This would be monumental in the world of psychiatry. It would change the way patients were treated. Dr. Crowley could practically see the future awards on his walls.

During what would be their last session, Lucy told Dr. Crowley she had a definite and clear plan on how she wanted to proceed. He nodded and smiled, without really listening. Lucy had a habit of twirling her hair as she looked at him, right into his eyes, and he couldn't help it. He would get lost in his head visualizing fucking her, not with gentle love and kisses, but with animalistic abandon. “Well, Lucy, I guess I can sign the papers and release you to your daughter next week.”

“Anne?”

“Well, she has custodial rights.… She is of age, is that a problem?”

Dr. Crowley immediately wondered if he could get rights and take her home, like a pet he could keep, one he could groom and—

“No, no, I see, yes, Anne … home,” said Lucy. Keep it together, she thought. Keep it together and stick to the plan.

“Good!” Dr. Crowley said. “So this is it!”

As they stood up, he put his hand on her shoulder a little too long, a little too tightly, and she looked at him. Lucy knew all along the secrets to this place, to this life.

Lucy knew he would love to have his way with her if given the chance. Just as she knew the nurses wanted to become her and the orderlies wanted to marry her. She knew how to work this system, just as she had known how to work the nuns, priests, and other kids back in school. She worked everybody; she was good at it, until Anne. She knew that house had wanted her out. It let her wither there as long as Nan was alive, because—as Lucy now understood, too late—Nan loved her, and the house wouldn't hurt Nan. Lucy also knew she was, in fact, crazy and probably always had been.

It was all clear now. There had only been one chance, one chance at happiness, and she lost it. When Vito died, she should have tried harder to keep it together, to be the mother she knew she could be, to have the kind of relationship with her son that she pretended to have.

But Dominic hadn't come to visit her. Why would he? He had his own life now, and Lucy hadn't even tried to keep up with him. How long had it been since she had seen him?

The only person she still felt she knew was Anne. And Lucy was convinced, now more than ever, that Anne was a demon, a demon like Nan always said lived inside Lucy, a demon that came out in the form of a child.

A demon born from a demon house.

Lucy had a hard time figuring out how her life had gone so wrong, how she had ended up on this end, the losing end, of things. It couldn't have been all Vito, her entire future could not have hinged solely on him. Could it have? Shouldn't there have been a way for her to find the path home? Back to the safe home inside her head, inside her skin? Her crazies and the high-pitched
hummm
had been on for so long that, now that they were calm and she was clear, it all seemed so sad. All that time just gone, lost, simply “poof,” and she's old and crazy and her family is gone and she has lost her way.

*   *   *

Lucy was sick of remembering. She needed to get out of this hospital and back home. Back to her real home. She thought of that childhood rhyme they used to sing at recess: “Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire, and your children will burn.” It used to scare and delight them; now it made Lucy weep. But the fire … the fire … Lucy got an idea. Maybe she could have a second chance after all.

It is terribly difficult to kill yourself in a mental institution. They make sure of it. No sharp objects to cut yourself with, no loose sheets to hang yourself with, and no unmanned baths to drown yourself in. But Lucy, she thought outside the box. One option was left and was perfect. A perfect death. The absolute perfect solution in so many ways. She danced around the common room laughing and clapping on the day she conceived the “fire” part of the plan.

Fire purifies, and she was in dire need of purification. She needed to meet her Vito on the other side, and she had to wash off Gavin and Anne, burn them right off. Burn the skin they touched. The womb Anne grew in, and the breasts she sucked on. All of it.

Joan of Arc died on the pyre, and she became a saint. (Would they saint her? Maybe Saint Lucia, patron saint of putting up with horrible mothers?) Lucy remembered reading somewhere that once the initial horrific pain burned through the nerve endings, it wasn't a bad way to die. Even the smoke inhalation could knock you out while the fire did the work. The trick was, not to survive. She also read that surviving burning was intolerable, so this was not an option.

Once she decided on the method, she just needed to figure out the implementation. She played the games, gave peeks to those who were peeking, allowed the crazy Dr. Crowley to look deep into her eyes; she could practically see him wiping the spit off his chin.

Nurse Nancy was a sympathetic one, a lonely, washed-out kind of a girl. Lucy had divulged to Nancy many secrets about how to keep her husband happy in their marriage bed, and Nancy was extremely grateful. Nancy was the one with the beautiful nails. She offered to paint Lucy's nails once, and they had had so much fun. Lucy just let her yap on and on all the while. It had become a weekly ritual. This week while they painted nails, Lucy made sure that Nancy knew she was going home. “Nancy! Be a dear and give me the polish and the remover so when I get home I can have my darling Anne continue our tradition?”

Nancy didn't even hesitate. She got up and got a small paper bag from the pharmaceutical repository, popped both bottles in, folded the top over, and handed the bag to Lucy. She was crying. “I will miss you, Lucy.”

“Oh, Nancy, don't you worry, you will think of me in bed!” They both laughed.

Fire starter: check.

Matthew, an innocent yet sexually charged young man who was the night orderly in her ward, would take her out for a midnight smoke. And she'd get her matches.

In the courtyard, under the moon, Lucy smoked her cigarette, listening to Matthew whine about his insufferable mother whom he still lived with. As if he had the monopoly on insufferable mothers! Please! And then she did something out of their script. She asked for another cigarette. And she asked to be left alone to smoke it.

“I don't know…” he stuttered as she approached him. He stood very still. She reached her hand in his pocket; she could feel he was already excited. While she wrapped her hand around the cigarettes and matches, she let her fingers find him as well.

Fire: check.

“I am getting out of here this week, Mattie,” she whispered, so close to his ear that her tongue flicked it. He shivered. “Give me this time to collect my thoughts alone, and I'll make sure and have you visit us in Haven Port.”

He simply nodded his head, and slowly, very slowly, she removed the hand from his pocket with the pack of cigarettes and the matches.

She took her time and smoked the second cigarette. Then pocketed the matches. Matt never noticed.

*   *   *

Lucy removed her gown and piled it up with the bedsheets and pillows and old newspapers she'd stashed.

Her plan was to set a fire and die of smoke inhalation. She lit the pile of fabric and stood in the corner of her room and thought of her life on the river with Vito in their little fisherman's cottage and of her real, true baby, Dominic. “Dear God,” she prayed. “Please bring me back there. I want everlasting life back there. Amen.”

She was not afraid. She had no fear. She was going home.

The smoke was thick. Her plan was working. The fabric was smoldering.

*   *   *

When poor Mattie came running down the hall and saw the smoke billowing out from under her door, he—who now believed he was truly in love with her—made the terrible and reckless error of opening the steel door that was containing the blaze. The fire exploded into the hallway, and everything went crazy. Crazy like Lucy. She took the whole wing down with her.