The Witch House of Persimmon Point

by Suzanne Palmieri

  All was gone except the one sin she couldn’t undo. And it would become her redemption. She would name her daughter Lucia Amore. Lucy. She would raise her right. Nan would be the woman she should have been all along. A God-fearing, simple, and hardworking woman.

  Nan needed to sleep the sleep of the just.

  The Book of Lucy

  1910–1940

  10

  A Spirit in the Parlor with a Slice of Toast

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2015

  9:00 A.M.

  Maj woke up next to her mama in the big bed. Mama said not to be scared if she woke up first and didn’t know where she was. Mama worried a lot about all kinds of things she didn’t need to worry about, which wouldn’t be so bad if she also worried about the really big things. Grown-ups, Maj had decided, don’t pay attention to any of the right things. She’d be different when she grew up. In any case, Maj knew exactly where she was as she blinked her eyes against the sun of the brand-new day. She was in the Witch House, in Nan’s bedroom. The one that her new friend Ava talked about. (Crazy Anne had introduced them in her dreams.) The pretty room with the blue-and-white flowered wallpaper. There were saints, the ones like Mimi had, on low shelves next to the deep-red reading chair near one of the almost floor-to-ceiling windows. There was a dresser with a mirror on it that Maj could see her reflection in when she sat up.

  She sat up and down a few times, playing peek-a-boo, until she woke her mama.

  “Why are you bouncing?”

  “That’s a silly question. I bounce, that’s what I do. It’s one of the things I do best.”

  Mama pulled a pillow over her messy bun and groaned.

  “Wake up wake up wake up!” laughed Maj, pulling the pillow off. Mama reached for her and drew her down under the blanket, holding her tight.

  “Go back to sleep for a little bit. Let me hold you.”

  Mama loved to cuddle with Maj. She didn’t like to cuddle with anyone else. Maj thought that was kind of sad because Mama was a really good cuddler and should share it with other people, too.

  “No no no noooo! It’s already getting hot outside. And you should have your coffee.”

  “I should. Crap. There probably isn’t any coffee.”

  “There’s all kinds of things. Let’s go look.” Maj pulled her by the arm and dragged her out of bed.

  “It’s nice in here,” she said. “I really wasn’t expecting it to be so clean. That Byrd did us a huge favor. You okay?” Mama leaned down with her face all scrunched up.

  “I’m fine, Mama. Really fine. I’m not homesick. Now, let’s go! I want to play outside.”

  She dragged her down the hall past the bathroom.

  “Beep beep. We have to stop here, Mr. Conductor,” said Mama. “Go find your toothbrush. I think it’s in the duffle bag by the front door. Get it and come back. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. I mean it. Do not explore. Do not go outside.”

  The bathroom glistened white in the morning sun. Mama leaned into the mirror in her white tank top and white underwear, staring at her eyebrows.

  “Do you want me to find your pants?”

  “Go get your toothbrush, smarty.”

  Maj skipped off down the hall toward the stairs and thought … Mama is happy. She doesn’t know it yet, but she is happy here already.

  * * *

  Eleanor woke up thinking about Nan. About the terrible loss that occurred on the property right under their feet. And that strange urgency to discover the secrets the land held motivated her to get some coffee. She was also feeling a sense of overprotection. She wanted to hold Maj closer to her than ever. Byrd would tell her the next installment of the family saga, and then they’d sit down and figure it out. Together.

  The house looked different in the morning. Not as lonesome or dim as it had the night before. And yet, the clock. Tic tock tic tock tic tock. Tic.

  No matter where she went, she heard it. Felt it. Her head was pounding. A genealogy headache.

  She glanced out the bathroom window and saw Byrd sipping from a mug on the side porch. The screen door opened, and Maj started to go outside. Eleanor quickly opened the window, fear shooting through her.

  Strange thoughts zipped through her mind.…

  Don’t let her out of your sight, you’re being a lazy mother. You’ll pay and lose everything.

  “Young lady, I swear to God if you take one more step—”

  Byrd looked up at Eleanor. “Good morning to you, too, Elly. I’ll make Maj some toast. Would you like a valium with your coffee?”

  * * *

  As she made her way downstairs, Eleanor examined the paintings hanging in the hallway. Nan, Lucy, Anne, Opal, Stella. Names she hadn’t known until the day before, a whole part of her history she’d never heard. The portrait of Stella looked so much like Byrd would when she was older. Byrd, who seemed so very alone, who’d lived alone for months accomplishing things a fourteen-year-old shouldn’t have been able to accomplish. But she was no ordinary teenager. You weren’t either. None of them were. Maj won’t be, she thought.

  Reaching the foyer, she turned to walk through the great room, but stopped short.

  There was someone in the parlor. Eleanor knew this feeling, the one you get when you are in the presence of the dead. There is sound where there ought not be sound. A shape where there ought not be shape. An extra layer to the air. She knew, somehow, that if she faced forward, the spirit would disappear. And part of her, magic or not, was scared it wouldn’t. She’d convinced herself ghosts didn’t really exist. Echoes, surely, but not spirits. But even more, she knew that was just something she told herself.

  The sheer curtains danced in the breeze. Except it was a flat, windless morning.

  Here we go, she thought, bracing for an actual encounter. She tried to recall what Mimi had told her about spirits. But right when she turned to greet the ghost, there was nothing. Just an emptiness in the air that was worse than anything she could have imagined. A cold sadness that wasn’t her own.

  “It’s different, isn’t it? The way the world looks from these windows,” said Byrd, holding out a coffee cup.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “No, Byrd … really. Thank you. I think Crazy Anne was about to bite me.”

  “Must you haunt everyone but me?!” yelled Byrd at the ceiling. Then she stomped out.

  Eleanor leaned against the window and drank her coffee. She didn’t know if it was the fact that the glass had been repurposed from an older, damaged home, or if it was some kind of message, but Byrd was right. Everything was stretched and rounded. The road, the walkway, the trees. Like being inside a snow globe.

  * * *

  As they went into the kitchen, Maj ran over to Eleanor and started bouncing again.

  “Whoa!” said Eleanor, holding her cup high. “I don’t want to spill any, there’s no more to make. We’ll have to hit the market in a little while.”

  “I want to explore. Can I go, can I go?”

  “I suppose. Hold on, I have to find my shoes. Can you wait ten minutes or so, honey? I want to finish my coffee.”

  “I don’t want you to come. I want to be shipwrecked on an island and starving for food. I have to draw a map of the whole yard because it is the island. And the house is the wrecked ship. And I have to find a good fort. And scavenge for food. And hide things.”

  “Absolutely not. I haven’t explored all the child hazards yet. Old wells, snakes. Cliffs. Strangers with guns.”

  “Whole lotta imagination flyin’ around this room,” said Byrd.

  “I’ll stay by the house. Right in the garden. Please, Mama? Pleeeeeeease?”

  “How about we walk her out there together and we can set up some rules, and then you and I can keep an eye on her from the porch. The porch is the best place to tell Lucy’s story anyway,” Byrd said.

  Eleanor sighed. “Okay, kid. But don’t leave my line of sight. I mean it.”

  “Some of the
plants are bigger than me. I may be in and out.”

  “Just stay in one place and come when I call you.”

  “Yes, Mama,” called Maj, already skipping down the steps and disappearing into the garden.

  “Nan’s story really got to you, didn’t it? Good. Now let’s talk about Lucy,” said Byrd.

  “I saw her portrait on the stairs. She was beautiful. Like a movie star.”

  “And crazy like a shit house rat.”

  “My branch of the family likes to use the term batshit crazy thank you very much. Now, go get some paper, our notes will be important.”

  Eleanor sat back and watched Maj dart in and out of the hedges surrounding the kitchen garden. She heard the phone ring, listened while Byrd chatted.

  Leaning back into the porch swing, holding her coffee cup, Eleanor noticed her breathing was easy. Breathe in, exhale, inhale, breathe out … all her own air, all her own little molecules of sorrow and joy dispersing into the air around her. Not Anthony’s or Nan’s. Not Byrd’s or Ava’s. Just her own. And in that moment, she saw her own truth. Nan’s story hadn’t just “got to her” as Byrd said. It was changing her.

  I will love him forever. And I will grieve, but what a gift it is, this pain.

  She’d never before faced a day ready to enjoy all the pain and peace of life.

  The house was unwinding her, she could feel it.

  “You ready for Lucy? Because the world wasn’t,” Byrd said, sitting back in her chair.

  “Hit me,” said Eleanor.

  9:30 A.M.

  Maj walked through the side gardens, winding her way through a poplar grove, and tried to think of good things so she wouldn’t cry. She didn’t know why she felt like crying—she was brave and happy. But she knew that feeling, the heart-beating-fast, almost-throwing-up kind of feeling. She knew it well. She’d have no choice in the matter.

  “Why are you sad?” piped up a little girl who emerged from behind one of the poplars.

  “Ava!”

  It had to be Ava. Anne had promised she’d play today. But to be sure, Maj closed her eyes and counted to ten the way Mimi taught her. That way you could tell if the person was alive or dead. You do that when someone seems to appear out of thin air.

  Ava was still there.

  “Do you want to play sardines?” the ghost asked.

  “What’s sardines?”

  “Backwards hide-and-seek.”

  “I don’t really like hide-and-seek.”

  “Me either. Backward or forward.”

  “When I came over here, I felt so sad, was that you, Ava? Are you sad?”

  “And scared, Maj. I’m so scared.”

  “What are you scared of?”

  “I think I’m supposed to be somewhere else. But I’m scared I’ll stop being me. I know I’m dead. But I don’t want to be dead. And I don’t want to disappear. I want my mother to come get me. I thought she was coming once, only she wasn’t. She was scared of me. And I used to have Gwen, but then she left, too. I’m lonesome. But maybe you’re just sad on your own. Could that be it?”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think so. Why are you lonely? Doesn’t Anne stay with you?”

  “She’s bossy. And she’s not here all the time.”

  “Did she ever tell you where the secrets were hidden here? She won’t tell me. All she wants to do is color. We have to find them all out by tomorrow and we aren’t getting very far.”

  “Anne’s like that. Always playing tricks. I can ask her about the secrets, though.”

  “Want to play pirates?”

  “I thought you’d never ask!”

  11

  Nan in the Witch House with a Bible

  1910–1940

  The Witch House did not earn its name, it learned it.

  Gossip-worthy from its birth, the Witch House teased its neighbors with its oddness, hinting at horrors that people began to talk about without fear. With Reginald and Gwyneth dead, rumors that had only ever bubbled below the surface broke wide. Missing people and devil worship. Poppy fields and infanticide. Gwyneth most certainly killed all her babies. Reginald must have had rows and rows of cages in the cellar for the people he experimented on. The monsters he made. Then killed. Then fed to all those who came to their soirees.

  Any doubts Nan might have had about changing her life completely no longer mattered: now she had no choice. These were the types of verbal weapons she left Italy to avoid. Her baby would not grow up unsafe.

  When word spread that she’d been left the deed to the property, the talk was about her affair with Reggie, and the baby she carried. She cried. And then she went to church and fed their fears.

  “I will not speak of it. It was terrible,” she’d sniff.

  “You were taken prisoner by them?”

  “I will not speak of it!”

  “They took advantage of you.”

  “I will not speak of it.”

  “You poor dear.”

  She’d wanted to hex them all. But she wouldn’t. She would accept the church. She would pay for her sins. She would speak her native language and shun the magic. She would raise her daughter right.

  And as she’d been robbed of the time and space and luxury to mourn those she loved the most, she threw herself completely into creating a new home, a new value system, and to sharpening her hatred for the world. She’d make that house safe. She’d make certain she never lost anyone she loved ever again. First, she would avoid love. And second, if love happened, by accident or nature, she’d destroy anyone who tried to take it from her.

  Her last act of magic from the book her mother sent was a dark spell of protection, cast under the full moon as she buried Reginald’s pocket watch in the earth turned over for the foundation.

  Tic tock tic tock tic tock. Tic.

  * * *

  Born from the rubble and remains of Haven House, the Witch House was constructed with aid from neighbors and other generous volunteers, as well as church groups who wanted to help. It was a mixture of styles but beautiful all the same. The foundation came from stones salvaged from the ruined east wing. Most of the lumber was new, but the porch columns and serpentine scrolling in the corners and eaves were taken and fixed and placed on the newer home as decoration.

  Somehow one lone cupola from Haven House survived all damage. It was secured to the top of Nan’s new home. Slightly off-center, like a paper party hat on a restless child.

  It was a crazy quilt of architecture and design. The house had windows mismatched in both color and shape, strange ornamental flourishes used as foundational parts of the structure, and a majestic carved wood double door beneath the roof of the wraparound porch. It seemed unlikely that the house would end up beautiful, but it did.

  If one were to think about the inside strictly in terms of number of rooms, the house would become very confusing indeed. Its internal structure was a mishmash. Odd, yet useful.

  The kitchen had a large cooking fireplace, a deep porcelain sink, and hardwood floors, which were the easiest to keep clean.

  And, there was, of course, a multitude of windows. A surprising amount of glass remained intact from Haven House, and the builders used every bit. There was a vast assortment to choose from: plain glass, stained, etched, leaded, milky … all sorts of panes to play with while building the new house.

  In the kitchen, there was a rounded breakfast nook where a long narrow oak table began and then extended into the middle of the room. The nook itself had a bay window with stained glass along the upper portions, which bathed the room in dancing colors on sunny mornings and then again in the afternoon. And a conservatory was added, because even though there would be no more dabbling, there would be healing ways. It was income, after all. So Nan needed a potion kitchen, and a potion kitchen she received.

  The two halls off the kitchen ran parallel to a front hall that was never used much. Nan understood its importance but found it a waste of space. The stairs curved down, the banister gently swooping to allow for wide
bottom steps. The front door was carved with mermaids and mermen and flanked on both sides by stained-glass windows of every color, leaded in the shape of flowers and gardens.

  And there was the doorknob in case she forgot her penance. And in the library, the grandfather clock.

  Nan hung up a picture of the pope in each room. Each exactly the same size.

  Upstairs in the bedrooms, the beds all shared crisp white linens and heavy drapes to keep things warm in winter and cool in summer.

  * * *

  There were deep-red velvet drapes on the windows of her own bedroom, creating an almost theatrical backdrop for the altar adorned with statues of Catholic saints and little colored glass candleholders that flickered with candlelight prayers.

  There was a suite of rooms on the third floor that Nan wanted arranged for Vincent. But when she wrote to him, he refused to come.

  “I have a life all my own now. I don’t need your charity,” he’d said.

  Nan knew what he meant. It was too little, too late. He was punishing her for leaving him to fend for himself all those years ago.

  She would pray for him.

  She loved the kitchen the most. It was full of light and warmth and space to practice her own sort of magic—her cooking. She didn’t need much else. There was a pantry that was eventually turned into a wash closet and then a full bathroom as the years passed, and she was always quick to upgrade the house for ease.

  The living room housed a beautiful piano, though. The centerpiece was the fireplace and on the mantel Nan kept mementos taken from her life at Haven House. Scavenged treasures. Colorful bottles and pretty glass vases to catch the sunlight. And charred photographs in fancy frames.

  The house’s extremities, the attic and basement, were opposing spaces, not just because one was at the very top and the other at the very bottom, but because the basement was damp and dark whereas the attic was dry and bright. The basement was gloomy, as most basements are, and it would flood every spring, bringing panic and chaos. Finally Nan gave up putting anything at all on the floor and chose instead to use the cellar of the gatehouse.