Pausing before the landing that would lead her to the sixth floor. She took a deep breath. The tightness in her throat helped her identify this feeling. It was anger. It was not fear.
Her mother told her anger wouldn’t help her. It was rage that led to making bad decisions almost impossible to undo.
But she was mad anyway. Furious. She turned and walked back down the stairs and into the city.
The anger seemed to keep her going. It was her sustenance, it fed her baby.
She strapped the baby onto her back and followed the crowds down on the pier. For a week, she watched and learned. She slept next to boxes, she ate from the garbage.
The next week she volunteered to help clean fish. She did it for free.
By the next week, she was offered money. It wasn’t much, but it allowed her to rent a tiny room and eat less of other people’s scraps.
She had not seen Vincent. She had not found Giancarlo. And she had to leave the baby alone in the cold room when she was on the docks. Each day Nan would ask the children on the stoop if they heard a baby cry. They always answered “no.”
Nan started to believe the baby was stupid, born too early and ruined by Nan’s hate. That’s why she didn’t cry.
But the baby wasn’t stupid. She was very smart. She knew not to waste her breath. No one would come. The baby was alone all day, every day.
Nan came back to her baby each night stinking like fish and would carelessly pick her up and feed her a bottle of water with honey or sugar in it and try to feed her pieces of cooked fish. But the baby would refuse, which made Nan cry, “I hate you sometimes, baby.”
But the baby knew it wasn’t true. It wasn’t hate at all, just fear. And the baby knew that Nan could only survive if she turned her fear into rage. So she stayed quiet.
* * *
It was Vincent who came and found her finally. He’d grown so tall. Nan didn’t recognize him at first.
When she did, she immediately realized the price she would pay for her rage. She’d convinced herself he was safer there, in that tenement, working. But one look at his face, into his dulled eyes, spoke of a different reality.
“I heard you were here cleaning fish like a peasant. You know, everyone thinks you are crazy or dumb. I kept waiting for you to come get me, but now I don’t want you to. I came to tell you.”
“Vincent, I’m so sorry. That day, Marco brought me.… I had to leave. I couldn’t live there.”
“You don’t know what it was like. I protected you. I got you help when the baby came. I defended you when they were going to let you rot on that island. I trusted you. And you left me there. I don’t hate you, because you are my sister. But I will never forgive you either. Did the baby die?”
“No, she’s … she’s being cared for. Vincent, you can come live with me. We can save money and leave. How about that? You don’t have to go back.”
“Someday, Nan, I will own that building. I will own many buildings and have a family. I will provide for them. I will love them. And I will pay all these people back for the things they did to me. But I will do it alone, without you. I am finished counting on anyone but myself. Here.” He slipped a piece of paper in her hand.
“What’s this?”
“Giancarlo’s address. One of us had to respect Mama’s wishes. Do what you want.” Then he handed her an apple and left her on the docks.
Nan had a decision to make.
* * *
Some time later, Nan came back to the rented room to find the baby had broken out in sores. Based on her mother’s limited teaching, she knew it was due to a lack of fresh citrus fruit. It was time to find Giancarlo. For the baby, at least.
She put Vincent’s note, now worn, into her pocket, strapped the baby on her back, and walked into the city night, talking to herself.
“He’ll have to help us. It’s the honorable thing to do. I can gather a little money and run away later. I can pretend to love him. A bath, maybe he has a bathtub. A dress. Some hot food. Yes, I’ll love him.”
By the time she arrived at the building, she’d convinced herself he was going to be happy to see them. That he’d fall in love with the baby at first glance and they would be safe. She bounded up the four flights of stairs and began to knock on a gray door.
“Aspet, Aspet,” (wait, wait) came a man’s voice. Giancarlo, half dressed, skinny and tall with that same dark humorous mustache, opened the door. A woman lay naked on a mattress on the floor just behind him. The walls of the room looked too much like the walls she’d just left behind.
“Nan!” he said, surprised. He looked nervously at the baby. At his hestitation, Nan began to walk away. “Nan, wait! Stay.”
“You? You want me to stay with you? Look at you with this whore. Living in filth.”
She watched his expression change from curiosity to anger. She’d let her anger get the best of her again.
“Yes, I know she’s a whore. Like you, isn’t that right, Nan? I seem to like whores who spread their legs willingly.”
He glanced at the baby again.
“Is she mine?”
“Yes.”
He examined her more closely.
“Nan, what did you do to the child? Who cursed you? It’s got sores all over it! Take it away from me before I get the curse, too.”
“Me?! Who cursed you? You lying whore lover!” She got very close to his face and hissed, “I take it back. I curse you. You with your disgusting hands and sweaty fingers and your stink. Take the baby. I don’t want her.”
“Are you mad? You take her! This demon can’t stay with me!” He slammed the door in her face.
Nan crumpled to the ground and wept. Her baby cried, too, and Nan pulled the makeshift sling around to the front of her body, cuddling her daughter close, then looked at her. She wasn’t an infant anymore—and despite the sores, was rather cute.
“Don’t cry. I wouldn’t really have left you. Not forever.”
The baby sucked her thumb.
“You need a name,” she said, walking down the stairs. “Ava. That’s what Mama wanted me to call you. So the oceans wouldn’t be between us.
“I will figure something out, Ava,” she whispered. “I will. But if you have any of your grandmother’s talents, please help me. Guide me. A mother shouldn’t lean on her child this way, I know, but you and I are all we have now. You’ve been so brave for me. It’s my turn to be brave for you.”
Wandering through the street market the following day, begging for oranges for Ava, she overheard women talking of a fishing port in a place called Virginia where there were many jobs and not enough people to fill them. She followed the chatty, plump, rosy-cheeked hens and boarded a ship that would sail her into a deep and startling unknown.
Standing on the deck, feeding orange slices to Ava, Nan thought she might be all right. She’d get healthy. And settled. And then she’d send for Vincent.
1902–1905
Nan thought Haven Port was paradise. The harbor was full of colorful boats and laughing people, and everyone seemed kind. She thought she would have to ask around to find out where to go for a decent job, but almost as soon as she stepped off the boat, a boy ran up to her with a flyer and said, “If you are looking for work, try the big house on the cliff, you can see it from here.” He pointed. Nan saw a glass cupola balanced on top of the peaked rooftop in the distance. It would be easy to find. She adjusted the baby on her back and started to walk away.
“Wait!” he called out. “They won’t hire you if you look and smell like that. You and your baby. Go the back way. Down on the beach you can clean up. Then there’s a staircase built into the rocks that’ll get you to the back property. Soon as you clear the juniper pines, you’ll see the whole grand place. Sometimes, when it’s hotter than Hades in the summer, they let us kids swim in their pool.”
“A pool?”
“Yeah, you’ll see. Go on now, I got more recruiting to do. I get ten cents an hour. It’s a fortune!”
“
Let’s go, Ava.”
“To home?”
“Words? You said words! Oh, yes, home, my darling. Hopefully, home.”
* * *
The boy had said juniper, and Nan knew what to do. She made her way along the beach, climbed the steps, masterfully carved, and once at the top, gathered some needles and cones. Then, she journeyed back down to the water’s edge and used the juniper to wash with. It smelled clean. She even risked washing their clothes and Ava’s sling, hiding between dunes of sand as they dried.
She’d not felt so good in a long time. Smiling, she made the climb back up the stairs and wended her way through the back gardens, trying to think of some lie to tell to get her employed.
As she made her way around the giant orangery and swimming pool (she’d thought, at first, that it was the actual house, it was so big) to the front of the estate, she saw a woman standing on the porch, like a ship’s figurehead. Blond and tall. Graceful.
She smiled at Nan.
“Will you just stand there, then? Like a ninny in the garden? Well, do what you must, but come in for god’s sake. It’s probably 110 degrees out here.”
Nan walked slowly up the elegant front steps. The wraparound porch was dizzying and seemed to go on for miles. As she walked into the foyer, she had to place her hand on the doorknob of the large front door for support. It was not an ordinary doorknob. Metal—gold, perhaps?—molded with whimsical vines and what Nan thought looked like little cherub faces (but could have just as easily been flowers).
I thought I’d miss home forever. Now I feel as if I’m alive again. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful, she thought.
“Are you thinking about how beautiful it is here? Don’t worry, I don’t read minds. I didn’t seem to get those talents from my people, though Reginald is determined to recover them somehow or another.
“Before we talk business, let’s have a tour, shall we? She’s called Haven House. The Green family, who purchased the land when the community was new and still forming, built the house as a refuge. There was some kind of terrible falling out up north, and everyone scattered. Our half of the Green family, well, we are dangerously, famously wealthy, and we employ most of Haven Port’s citizens. I assume that is why you’ve come. Did little Walter find you at the docks?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Nan.
“My name is Gwyneth Green. I am the lady of the house. Follow me, there’s no reason to stand on propriety. You will learn we are not proper. Eccentricity is the privilege of wealth in this country.”
Gwyneth walked into a large study ahead of Nan.
“I married my first cousin, which is perhaps the reason we haven’t had any children. Or, at least, none that have survived infancy.” Gwyneth glanced at Ava. “But the upside to inbreeding is that I didn’t have to change the embroidery on any of my linens.”
Nan probably should have felt uneasy at the immediate, intimate way Gwyneth had with her. Gwyneth was, perhaps, even crazy. But Nan liked her for it. There was an honesty there that reminded her of her mother. An authenticity of self. Besides, she’d spoken of talents. Maybe I’ve found more lost witches, Mama, thought Nan.
By the end of the tour of Haven House, Nan had become quite familiar with the more interesting details of the Green history. She knew Gwyneth and her husband, Reginald, led an aloof and estranged marriage, but because they understood the importance of family prestige and power, they feigned happiness. She learned of Gwyneth’s intense need to have children. She heard the details about each of their six stillborn babies and how, after the last loss, Reginald moved into the east wing of the house with a view of the ocean from the top floor. The couple had very little contact after that.
“It breaks my heart each day,” said Gwyneth as she walked through the house, “being so close and yet so far apart from the man I married. I grew up here, you know. My father and mother were estranged as well, and it’s something I sought to avoid. Daddy spent all his time in the gatehouse doing god knows what. I thought we’d be different, Reggie and me. I really truly did. I know that if we’d had a child we’d still be close. I’ve prayed and prayed for a miracle, and here you are.
“Like the sunrise today! A pretty woman with a little tot of your own strapped on your back. I immediately liked you, which is a welcome surprise … as I like so few people. You’re brave, and interesting. My goodness, how I do go on.… We’ve known each other for the better part of an hour now, and I don’t even know your name. What is your name?”
“I am Anna Amore. But I am called Nan.”
“Well then, Nan. Would you like a job?”
“I don’t have many skills. I sew a bit, and I cleaned fish in New York. I can work on the docks.”
“Nonsense! You can live here with us, and you will be my companion. How does that sound?”
“And Ava?”
“Is that her name? This delicious little thing. May I hold her?”
Nan gave Ava to Gwyneth, and Ava smiled. “Oh, she’s lovely! Where is your husband?”
“I don’t have one.” Nan waited for the standard reprimand.
“Clever girl. They are more trouble then they’re worth.” Gwyneth laughed. “Let’s get you settled. Then we can introduce you to Reggie. That is, if he ever decides to stop skulking about in the cellar or in his rooms. He used to be such fun. Now … well, anyway. I’ll have to find you a dress for dinner tonight, but next week we’ll go shopping in Richmond. You have the run of the house, so should we get a nanny for Ava? No. No, I think not.”
Gwyneth chattered on and on, and at some point, Nan began to relax. She’d asked for Ava’s help, and Ava had delivered them heaven.
* * *
Gwyneth and Reginald treated Nan well, and the two women became extremely close. Neither trusted anyone, but they both had great warmth: an abusive combination. Nan began as a companion to Gwyneth but soon became a real part of the household, with servants all her own. Ava was growing strong and beautiful, and she brought much joy to Gwyneth. Many times, Nan didn’t see her daughter all day. Gwyneth, who was an avid collector of all things, insisted that Nan have a photograph taken of Ava as a child; Gwyneth would pay for it, as it was a new technology and very costly. Gwyneth had commissioned portraits of all her dead infants and kept them safe in the lovely round turret room made of stained-glass windows. It became a shrine. Nan agreed, to please her employer and friend, even though she believed all photographs were dangerous somehow. The idea of capturing a moment was too much for her to think about. But once the photograph was taken, she was glad to have it. Nan liked the photo so much she asked Gwyneth if she could keep it with her own things in her room. Gwyneth, who had grown to truly love Nan, could deny her nothing.
Ava loved Gwyneth and, as weeks turned into months, called both women “Mama,” which made everyone happy. Even Reginald was beginning to venture out from the east wing of the mansion. He would come out to the gardens and sit and watch Nan run around with the pretty, laughing Ava, and he watched as Gwyneth read or did needlepoint. He saw how she always seemed to have her eyes on Ava. The child brought out the best in her. They made an interesting, little family. But a family nonetheless.
For the first few years, all their joy and love was focused on Ava, who grew into a creative girl, and as she got older and was allowed to play on her own, she would hunt through the mansion for interesting nooks and crannies. She found hidden closets and trunks filled with old-fashioned clothing under the eaves in the many levels of the attic. She would climb up into the cupola and proclaim herself queen of the world. Her favorite spot became the turret room. It was cozy with Oriental carpets and the light of the stained-glass windows scattering designs all over. She loved to play in that room. It was where Gwen spent many hours as well. It was safe there. You could see all around you. There were no surprises.
8
The Fortune-Teller in the Library with a Revolver
1905
“Reggie, would you like to tell her or shall I?” asked
Gwyneth at breakfast. Breakfast was always a big to-do at Haven House. Shining silverware, cold fresh juices, someone always there to refill your glass. Coffee in big, steaming pots.
“What is it, what is it, what is it?” cried out an excited little Ava.
“Don’t be shocked, dear heart, but this news will not be so exciting for you. As a matter of fact, you may have to let Hetty put you to bed next Saturday night.”
“Why on earth?” asked Nan.
“We are going to have a party. Our first soiree in more than four years. We used to have them all the time. Rollicking fun. In fact, Nan, thank you,” said Reginald.
“For what?”
“For bringing the light back into our lives.” He placed his hand on Nan’s shoulder and squeezed. And unlike other times when he’d touched her, there was heat beneath his hand. And Nan did not try to move him away.
* * *
“Is it true there’s to be a party, miss?” asked Walter. He assisted Nan whenever she went into Haven Port. Sometimes to pick up more lye for a new soap she was making. Sometimes to sell her medicinal preparations. In recent years she had gained quite a following as a local healer of sorts.
“Yes, it is. Very grand, so I hear.”
“Be careful, miss.”
“Walter, if you are concerned about any sort of—”
“There are stories, miss. Terrible ones. People used to go missing. Screams. Smells. Until a year or so before you came. Even the police thought it was fishy. It got so’s none would go to those parties. It got so’s no one that wasn’t already working here would take a job. Until you.”
“Rubbish. And don’t spread that nonsense. No more, Walter. You hear? Or you might go missing as well.”
* * *
Walter hadn’t been wrong. That first party should have shocked Nan to her core with its lascivious nature and decadence. Velvets and absinthe, opium and wanton disregard for moral proprieties. Only it didn’t. When the morning after elicited no reproach or embarrassment, Nan found herself eagerly waiting for the next party. Which led to another, and then another. Nan was introduced to yet another way of life. Costumes and champagne. Lavishly produced stage plays and themes like “Exploring the Amazon” and “Taming Cleopatra.”
The Witch House of Persimmon Point Page 7
