Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters

by Emily Carpenter

  Even a monster like my grandmother’s place of birth.

  Chapter Two

  Mom pointed past the hospital, across the lawn to a side lot where two guys and a young woman were unloading equipment from a white SUV. “There’s the crew.”

  A different kind of electricity zinged through me. Griffin Murray, the director of the promotional documentary we were creating about my grandparents, stood with Liz and Naveen, his two camera operators. Griffin was tall and solid, with tattoo sleeves covering both arms, and unexpectedly full lips. He wore jeans and a rust-colored retro Rat Pack button-up shirt that flapped open over a white T-shirt. Brown hair jutted out of a black knit beanie, and he sported a brown and ginger scruff. He looked more like a boxer than a filmmaker. An exceptionally lucky boxer whose face had miraculously escaped destruction.

  I flashed back to a couple of months ago when I first interviewed him. His qualifications were extensive: NYU film school, a stint at Sundance, and an award for a short on Alabama poverty. The clincher was that one of his relatives had been an itinerant country preacher just like Charles and Dove. He told me that doing work like this would make his family so proud. Apparently, they were fans of my grandparents.

  “Honestly, film school was a blow to my dad,” he told me wryly. “He was hoping for a doctor or maybe a professional baseball player in the family. But he’s been trying lately. He was the one who actually heard about this job.”

  “That’s great,” I’d burbled, trying not to be totally dazzled.

  “Not that it’s all on you to hire me and resolve my personal baggage, but . . . I mean . . . if you want to, I won’t stand in your way.”

  He’d flushed so adorably that I had flushed too. In fact, I was so charmed by him, I’d barely been able to form a coherent question from that point on. At the conclusion of the interview, Griffin—Griff, he told me everybody called him—stood and gave me a brief appraising look.

  “You look like her. Your grandmother, I mean.” He ducked his head, somehow pulling off the most endearing display of manly sheepishness I’d ever seen. “Yeah, I’ve already started on the research. Dug up a few pictures, talked to a bunch of people. She had the same straight red hair that you do. The same . . .” He pointed to his own face absently. “You look like you stepped out of a speakeasy or something.”

  The past few months, he and his small crew had been traveling all over the country, documenting the history of Charles and Dove’s ministry and meeting with people who’d experienced—or claimed to have experienced—a brush with God’s healing through them. As a result, we’d only talked on the phone since that initial meeting. But the calls were always fun, full of easy banter and inside jokes, so to say I was looking forward to seeing him in person again was a massive understatement.

  I checked my makeup in the visor mirror and swiped smudged eyeliner from under my eyes. “You guys go on in. I need to brief the crew.”

  “Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days?” Danny said.

  I gave him a sisterly eat-dirt look as we climbed out of the car, but he winked at me and took Mom’s arm. They joined the crowd that was streaming toward the entrance of the hospital. I straightened my all-purpose black dress and made my way toward the white SUV. Griff met me, PMW-200 camera in hand, on the lawn beside the hawthorn Mom had pointed out. Its branches were studded with long, sharp thorns and wreathed in lacy white blooms. A bird cooed from some unseen top branch.

  Griff’s white tee revealed exactly three chest hairs. And although I wanted desperately not to have noticed, I couldn’t help staring. I also wanted not to be enjoying how good he smelled, like coffee and old books. How his grin made me grin immediately, like a reflex.

  He broke a small bloom off a branch and handed it to me. “Nice to see you.”

  I took it in my left hand. My right arm, the bad one, twinged the slightest bit. Nerves, probably. I tucked it behind my back.

  “You too,” I said.

  I knew I shouldn’t hide my arm. It was an illogical response, but I always had a hard time resisting the impulse. Just like using that term, bad, was illogical. Constraint-induced movement therapy taught me that arms weren’t bad or good; they were just appendages. Instruments to help us dress ourselves, brush our hair and teeth, write or cook or touch a loved one’s face. I’d gotten in the habit of doing almost everything—opening the fridge, brushing my teeth, blow-drying my hair—with my right. Still, I couldn’t write with it. And it always felt like there was a neon sign on it, blaring its differentness. So at times, I gave into the urge to keep it out of sight. I didn’t want Griff to notice my arm, at least not yet, and that was all there was to it.

  “You hear that?” He broke into a delighted grin. “The bird? That’s a dove.”

  “Seriously?” The scent of the flower, sweet with an edge of decay, was giving me a headache. It pulsed at my right temple.

  “It’s a sign. It’s got to be.” Suddenly, his expression shifted from delight to frantic worry. He patted himself down. “Oh, great.” He yelled over his shoulder, “Liz! Get my phone, will you? I think I left it in the console.” Then he turned back to me. “Probably subconsciously lost it on purpose. My dad’s obsessively calling, practically every ten minutes, wanting a look at the footage.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “He is?”

  “Oh yeah. Remember? My parents are Dove and Charles superfans.”

  I lifted a shoulder. “It’s kind of sweet.”

  “Or annoying, depending on who you talk to. So, shot list?”

  I scanned the property with a businesslike squint. “You don’t need to get anything from the newer part of the hospital. Just the old place here. You got the grounds, right?”

  “Check. Cemetery, outbuildings, spooky underground passage Dove escaped through. We already got lots of the interior too. One of the administrators let us in this morning. Hell of a haunted house.”

  “Psychiatric facility,” I said, although I’d seen the pictures from before the reno and he wasn’t that far off. Life here for the patients, for Dove, must’ve been a true nightmare. “People should feel sympathy for where Dove came from,” I went on. “A connection to her. But we don’t want to go too dark or serious; we want to keep things upbeat and inspirational. This is a sales tool, not a hard-hitting investigative piece. We don’t want to bum anybody out.”

  “That’ll be a feat of spin. This place is terrifying, even on a sunny day.”

  “Later, I’ll introduce you to Darrell and Margaret Luster, our newest donors, and we can do an impromptu interview. Sound good?”

  Griff was staring into my eyes, and I could’ve sworn his thoughts weren’t wholly related to the Luster interview. Or at least, it felt that way. But maybe it was just my wishful thinking. I was moving to Colorado, and it was kind of cart-before-the-horse to imagine a long-distance thing when we hadn’t even had our first date. When we’d never so much as held hands. Or kissed.

  “Griff!” Liz yelled from the SUV, shaking me out of my romantic reverie. “No phone in the console!”

  He groaned. “Shit.”

  “Buy a burner at Walmart,” I said. “You can expense it when we get back. Find me during Mom’s speech, and we’ll wrangle the Lusters.” I left him and, telling myself to snap out of it, headed toward the hospital.

  I walked up the steps. The massive front door was propped open, but even though people continued to brush past me, I couldn’t seem to propel myself past the vestibule. Goose bumps rose on my arms and all I could do was stare into the huge entryway.

  The place was more opulent, more overwhelming, more . . . everything than I’d expected. The marble floors had been honed and buffed to a rich glow. Wainscoted walls gleamed, leaded glass windows sparkled, and in every corner fat ferns burst from atop ironwork pedestals.

  A red-carpeted double staircase split and soared around a brass chandelier that cast constellations of light across the coffered ceiling. My gaze rose to the upper balcony that ran along the seco
nd floor. Nestled between two stained glass windows was an oil portrait of my grandmother. She stood with a hand on a simple wooden chair, light-blue caftan falling in folds to the floor. It was exactly the way I remembered her. Delicate bones, translucent skin, pure white hair smoothed back into a bun, just like Mom’s. And the red lipstick. Always the red lipstick.

  I could practically hear her voice. I’m not the one who can give you your miracle . . . and I looked away. But still I felt those eyes on me. That enigmatic smile an invitation, almost as if she were physically drawing me toward her across the threshold. And so I looked back.

  We did that for a moment, her regarding me and me regarding her back, and in a lightning flash, I understood the message she was sending. She was inviting me in. Daring me to venture into her territory. She was taunting me to learn all the secrets she’d kept from me and Danny and Mom. But I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want to know any more of my grandmother’s secrets.

  One was enough.

  Chapter Three

  My grandmother, Dove Jarrod, the prominent evangelist and faith healer, died at a ripe old age—eighty-nine, ninety-five, or ninety-eight, depending on who was telling the story and when they were telling it.

  At the time, she held a place of honor in certain religious circles. She was regarded by her faithful followers as a miracle worker who could heal any ailment that afflicted a body. Many said that under her touch, asthma and diabetes submitted to the perfect will of God and disappeared. That in the presence of the glory of the Almighty, stunted limbs grew and tumors shrunk. She was a faithful saint, a revered elder, and everyone agreed that living to Dove’s age was a reward for being an obedient servant of the Lord.

  But even back then, when I was just a kid of sixteen, I knew better.

  My grandmother wasn’t a saint. She wasn’t even one of the good guys. She was a con artist and a liar, and she told me herself, straight out, two years before her death. She might’ve been known as a worker of miracles, but she was a fraud. The humbug behind the curtain, the Professor Marvel working the levers, putting on a show for the gullible crowd. And being a coward as well, she chose to reveal this information only to me.

  She and I were never close, but she wasn’t close with her own daughter, my mother, either. She’d gotten pregnant later in life, as had my mom, both in their early forties. And sometimes I wondered if, in my grandmother’s case, she’d meant to at all. At any rate, she lived in Alabama my entire childhood and every year dutifully sent my brother and me extravagant gifts for birthdays and Christmases. A couple of times, we all three flew to Alabama for visits, but the stays were always brief and rather formal. Even as a kid, it struck me as odd that she’d chosen to live so far away from her family.

  “She was born down there,” my mother told me. “In a psychiatric hospital of all places. She has very close ties to many of the people there.”

  Apparently, many years ago, my grandmother had gotten mixed up in some trouble with the women in a family down there and felt responsible to stick close and try to help them. I wondered how she could feel more duty toward people she wasn’t related to than us. When I was fourteen—old enough to access my mother’s travel account and book myself on a flight—I went to Alabama and found out. It wasn’t that Dove loved those people more than us. It was that she could be her true self with them. And she had to lie to us.

  Here’s what I figured out. Pretending you’re someone you’re not for a couple of days is doable. But lying all day every day to the people you love is unbearable, and Dove couldn’t do it. Additionally, she knew that for her daughter, my mother, faith was everything. It smoothed the rough edges of her depression and anxiety, got her out of bed each morning. I think my grandmother understood that if she had been around more—if she’d made the effort to be closer to us all and somehow the truth came out—my mother’s faith would’ve shattered.

  So Dove stayed in Alabama. She kept up a regular and cheery, if somewhat superficial, correspondence with us, and Mom stayed safe in her make-believe world and all was well. Until it wasn’t.

  When I was sixteen, Dove decided rather abruptly to move back to Pasadena, into the stately gray-shingled home she and her late husband had bought back in the forties and that the foundation had maintained for her during all her travels. Almost as soon as she was situated, she called and asked me to lunch. I knew what she was up to. She’d chosen me as the keeper of her secret—and now that she was back, she wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to betray her.

  I told her I had to study. It was an excuse, but it was for the best. If my grandmother had looked me in the eye, she would’ve seen the truth—that I was ashamed to be related to her. That I believed she had ruined my life. That I would keep her secret, but I hated her.

  A few weeks later, on a chilly October night, she passed. Went to be with the Lord—was how I put it to Mom’s colleagues at the Charles and Dove Jarrod Foundation when I phoned the next day. Mom had started to make the calls, but when I found her, she was sitting on the side of her bed, holding the receiver, trembling and staring into space. I hung up the phone, gently tucked her under the covers, and finished the job myself.

  I relayed the news: Dove went peacefully in her sleep, in the privacy of her home. At eight o’clock the next morning, she was discovered by her housekeeper, who called 911. A deputy ME from Los Angeles County arrived, and after a cursory examination of the body, notified the funeral director, releasing it to the care of Arroyo Valley Mortuary.

  Two days later, Dove was laid to rest at Forest Lawn in Glendale alongside my grandfather, who’d died back in the late seventies. The graveside service was private but dignified, befitting a minor celebrity of her stature. Just family and a few foundation employees in attendance. Danny was in one of his bad cycles of drinking back then and hadn’t answered any of my phone calls, so it was just Mom and me.

  That morning, I gave Mom a pill, then dressed her in one of her trim black pantsuits. I helped her apply mascara and her favorite coral lipstick and then put up her hair. I drove us to the cemetery and handled the greeting of the mourners as they arrived. She didn’t utter a word the whole time.

  In fact, my mother stood dry-eyed throughout the pastor’s message. It was only when he said the benediction that she finally turned to the small group gathered around the open grave and spoke.

  “The girl has not died but is asleep.”

  Everyone froze. Chills raced up my spine. Her voice sounded so strange. Like it was coming from someone I’d never known.

  “Matthew 9:24,” she said, then lifted one finger and sliced it back and forth across the crowd. “You all know the scripture. She isn’t dead. So stop crying. Stop crying!”

  I turned cold, the reality of what was happening dawning over me.

  “She can see us all.” Mom’s voice was now a full octave higher. “Every one of us, right now, right here. And she is watching what we do. The foundation is all we have left of my mother. Of Dove. It is our duty to keep up the work. Until the trumpet blows. Until the glorious day of resurrection.”

  I glanced at the others, desperate for help, but they were hanging on to my mother’s every word.

  “We keep up the work,” she went on. “We keep up the work or I will . . . I will die too . . .” At this she let out a long, shrill, keening sob and collapsed on the ground.

  The pastor raced to help her up and together we bundled her into my car. “It’s up to you now, Eve.” He patted me gently on the shoulder. “You’re the keeper of the flame.”

  I know there were other things said to me that day, but his were the words that burned into my brain. Because he was right. My mother was so fragile, helpless. If she was to keep the foundation going, someone would have to keep her going. With Danny out of commission, that person was me.

  And I was up to the task, I knew it. I could keep Mom going in a way that Dove, who ran and hid from her family and the foundation, had never been able to. I would stay and take care of the pe
ople I loved. Build them up and protect them. Everybody may sing Dove’s praises, but I would be the one they could count on.

  And I would shield the foundation from her lies. If anyone so much as dared to suggest Dove Jarrod wasn’t everything she claimed to be, I’d shut them down. If anyone even considered slandering my grandmother, I’d make sure they regretted the words before they even left their mouth. I’d see that Dove’s legacy endured intact. For my mom. For my family. This was all that mattered.

  The next day, I started working at the Jarrod Foundation. I was only part-time, but I knew as soon as I graduated from college, I’d take on a full-time role. And I did, sinking my fingers into every aspect of the organization. I saw to it that the foundation did valid, lasting work—after-school programs for at-risk children, aid for sex workers, jobs and education for abused women. I helped people, got us good press, and pursued donors with the tireless zeal of a true believer.

  Even though that was the furthest thing from who I was.

  What I believed in was being prepared. In a locked drawer of my desk, I kept a prepared official statement that addressed any claims that Dove was not exactly who she said she was—a woman with a gift of healing. I also had a vague plan to fly us all off to Hawaii or St. Lucia to hide from prying eyes when and if the truth actually came out. Over the top, maybe, but I’d seen the havoc a scandal like this could wreak.

  Aside from a nominal sum of money, the gray-shingled three-story Pasadena house was my mother’s only inheritance. The day after the funeral, Mom, Danny, and I moved out of our condo and into the spacious home. It had 5,500 square feet of furnished rooms, a kidney-shaped pool, and a gnarled hawthorn tree by the back terrace. My new bedroom, originally a guest room, was done completely in ivory. The first night there, I had a muscle spasm in my weak arm and spilled Coke all over the carpet.

  I didn’t clean it up. Instead, I lay down on the fluffy white bed and stared up at the ceiling. I flexed my fingers out, then curled them into a fist. Open, close. Open, close. As I worked, I chanted a litany.