The Witch House of Persimmon Point

by Suzanne Palmieri

  One time, before Dominic was born, he was out on Forever Lucy taking in a great haul with his brother, when suddenly, he was overcome with crippling nausea. “Frankie!” he called out. “Frankie, we need to go in! I need to get to Lucy!” And sure enough, when he ran into Oyster House, he found her naked in an empty tub, shivering and rocking back and forth. Her protruding stomach made her arms and legs look stick thin and vulnerable. She was having a fit. He took off his shirt and got right in the tub with her. He held her so she could feel his breath, hear his heartbeat. He held her until their heartbeats became one and she stopped shaking. Then he picked her up and carried her to their bed. He pulled back all the bright bedcovers she had made them and tucked her in. He locked up the house—she liked it locked up when she felt like this. He made sure she heard all the latches clicking and windows closing, and then he climbed into bed with her and held her close once again. He could feel his unborn child kick on his belly, almost as if the baby were inside of him. It wouldn’t take long … a few hours maybe, and she would be right as rain. This is how it went with them. This is how he took care of her. This is what people do when they love from all the right places and for all the right reasons.

  She would always whisper, “I am so sorry, Vito…,” and he would always reply, “You have nothing to be sorry for—if you changed a bit, I would leave you forever.…”

  And so Dominic was welcomed with love, security, and a sense of humor. Life was easy for Lucy and Vito until the fishing began to dry up.

  When the money got tight, Vito took a chance. He had to provide, and there was only one option left. He had family in New York City, and there was money to be made during Prohibition. Good money, the kind that was dangerous to make. He knew she would put up a fight, so he agreed without telling her. He knew best.

  “You can’t go there. You will die! How dare you? How dare you?!”

  “I won’t die.”

  “You will, Vito. You will.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And what if you do?”

  “I won’t. Hey! Think of it this way: with all the money I’ll make, we can all go to France. Me, you, Dom…”

  “France?”

  “Yes! Oh, my sweet Lucy, I can send you presents from Fifth Avenue. And I promise, I will not die.”

  “But what if you do?”

  “Babe, if I die … then I will be on that other side, that side that makes you so afraid, and I will send you signs, great big signs, that everything is okay over there … and then you won’t be afraid anymore. And I’ll just wait for you, and one day, when you are an old lady, when it’s your time to pass, you can bet I’ll be there to collect you.”

  She didn’t have a choice; she had to let him go. She had to trust him. She sent him off with love. They held each other very tight. And then, handsome in his new suit and shiny shoes, he was gone.

  Deep in the middle of a moonless night on the river, Lucy woke up sweating and crying and knew. She knew he was dead. Saw guns, and cement, felt the lead in his gut. It wasn’t the sort of panicky anxiety she was so used to: this was knowledge, it was plain unadulterated knowing. Dominic woke up as well and climbed into her bed. They were silent. They cried a little, and in an effort to “keep it together,” as Vito would have wanted her to at least try to do, she hushed him: “It’s going to be fine … hush, he is with us … hush now, we will be fine.…”

  Lucy waited for his sign. She waited for a very long time. She waited and she waited and she waited.

  To her credit, she tried, successfully for a while, to keep it together. But then a potent strain of the flu, reminiscent of the one that haunted her as a child, came like the boogeyman, like the nightmare that just wouldn’t end. Everyone would die around her; there would be bodies in the streets.

  Lucy began to lose her mind. Better to lose her mind than her son. When Nan came by, she tried to talk to Lucy through the door. Nan begged her to come home.

  “The Witch House? That’s what everyone calls it, you know. That’s the kind of place you created. You want me to come to the Witch House!?”

  “Lucia, what are you going to do? You have to come. If you don’t come, I will get the constable and tell him you are unwell. I can have them take you away. Don’t forget, Lucia, your Vito is dead now. You are alone! You hear me, Lucia?” she spat. She turned around in a huff, and Lucy watched her old lady of a mother walk away, knowing she meant what she said.

  Dominic was scared of his mother. She wouldn’t let him go outside, and she was washing them in basins every hour. She locked him in the house and went outside so she could burn all the clothing. He finally escaped through a front window and went first to find his Uncle Frank, but when he wasn’t at the bridge, he knew he only had time to run to one other person, no matter how afraid he was. And by now, he was more afraid of Lucy than Nan.

  Nan marched down the hill and straight to Oyster House. She flew up the walkway and banged her fist on the raspberry door. Lucy was busy scrubbing every surface yet again. “Lucia! I have your boy! Come here right now!” Lucy opened the door. Nan had Dominic by his collar. “Get dressed and come home.” Nan turned around and dragged Dominic back down the walk with her. She didn’t turn around. She knew Lucy would follow. There was nothing else to do.

  Frank, Vito’s brother, came after Lucy and Dominic moved back to the Witch House. He stood in the middle of Lucy and Vito’s enchanted and now abandoned life. He packed up their essentials and left the rest. They wouldn’t sell or rent this house. Dominic would need it, probably sooner rather than later, and as Frank locked the raspberry door, he had a heavy heart, knowing that whatever magic had once lived there was lost, that Lucy died with Vito in the streets of New York. What would become of them?

  Lucy was full of terror those first few weeks back home. It was surreal. Her mother had taken dictatorlike control over the grandson she barely knew, and though Lucy felt bad for him, there was a certain relief that came from letting someone else handle everything.

  But then, one afternoon, Lucy heard weeping from the front hall. Dominic stood, positioned in a corner, by the door. His posture said it all; he needed to escape but was unable to make himself leave the house, so he compressed himself as hard as he could into the corner by the nearest exit. Lucy knew this feeling, this need to flee. Her boy was down there, her baby boy, her beautiful strong wonderful miniature Vito. She flew down the stairs and grabbed him fiercely by the shoulders and pried him from the wall. He turned to her but would not take his hands from in front of his eyes. He did not want her to see him weak. He was a good boy, a noble boy, a strong boy. He was his father’s boy.

  “Baby, Mama is sorry.” Her voice took on a forced strength. “Mama is so, so sorry. I am going to try, baby. I am going to be good. I swear … Mama is going to be good. Don’t cry!”

  And he believed her, because he had nothing else to believe in, and she was good. For a few years she tried her best. She put her unruly hair back up and wore a red kerchief on her head as she cleaned. Lucy sang songs Vito had taught her. They made her want to break down, to spiral uncontrollably into a dark abyss, but she knew they comforted Dominic. So she sang them.

  She went up to the attic and brought down the Haven House possessions that Nan put away. Lucy took her time looking through trunks of clothes.

  The black silk shawl with the black fringe and the multicolored embroidered flowers all over it. She wrapped it around herself in the attic that day, and afterward, was rarely seen without it.

  She tried to get along with Nan. She made friends with the ladies at the church even though she still refused to go, and she would make trips to the farmers market to sell her colorful bags. She didn’t have to cook anymore; that was Nan’s magic. This made her sad, but she had her son and his love, and she tried her best to wait patiently for a sign from Vito, the sign he promised to send.

  And then Nan rented the gatehouse to a mousy, tall woman named Lavinia Masters. She had a young son, Jude, and an angry, h
andsome, rich older brother who was setting her up in Virginia to avoid some kind of a scandal that Nan said was “None of our business.” His name was Gavin, and what a man he was. There had never been, it seemed, anyone more handsome, so utterly damaged and in need of repair. Gavin was born looking for the road back home. And he could never find it. But he thought he’d found it when he met Lucy. Gavin Masters would be the final undoing of Lucy, but he would be the beginning of Anne.

  14

  Gavin on the Docks with a Bastard

  1939

  We all bring our pasts with us into a new relationship. Memories haunt every single reaction we have. And when people like Gavin and Lucy try to make a go of things, things go south real fast.

  Gavin’s memories were far worse than Lucy’s. They were even worse than Nan’s.

  * * *

  Gavin and Lavinia’s father, Early Masters, was a very bad man. But that was Early’s magic, being bad. He could ruin everything just by breathing. Sometimes Gavin thought even the plants would roll up and die when they saw him coming. For some reason, Gavin’s mama saw him as a sick man, a wounded man, a man she could save … but Gavin knew, was born knowing, that he would be lucky if he saw grammar school.

  There was a bit of a respite when Early left to go preach in an Alabama parish for a few years. But he came back after his granddaddy died on the saw, and things got especially bad.

  When Early returned, he was bona-fide crazy. He told everyone Jesus was talking through him, and he started charming snakes.

  A few years later, Early told Lavinia to watch their baby brother Junior who’d just learned to walk.

  Somehow or another Junior got ahold of one of those snakes … and after the fuss and the funeral Early took Lavinia into the music room and locked the door, screaming about divine justice.

  But instead of killing Lavinia, he killed himself.

  He just shot himself in front of Lavinia, some kind of sick witness.

  Gavin ran far away … fast. His mind went first, and then his body followed.

  Three years after Early shot himself, Gavin went home.

  His sister met him at the door toting a toddler that was the spitting image of Junior and told him her secret. Their crazy father had raped her in that music room before he killed himself.

  That’s when Gavin knew there was no God.

  He’d been to Haven Port once with his mama. She’d loved it so much, she’d said that little town, with its ocean music and ponies running wild, could heal anyone’s soul. So that’s where he brought Lavinia and her boy.

  He came to Haven Port a broken man. He saw Lucy from the decks of his boat as they anchored. She was walking with a young boy on the piers, looking at all the fresh catch. Her skirt was bright red and her blouse was white and it fell off of her shoulder. She had a flowered black shawl wrapped carelessly (yet with great care) around, through, and under her arms. He had to follow her.

  She was joking with the boy, teasing him, making him laugh.

  Gavin pretended to trip on a piling and he fell gently into her. She turned to see who had been so rude, and that was that.

  “Excuse me, beautiful lady, which way to Persimmon Point? We’re expected at the gatehouse.”

  She smiled, he fell in love. Her hair, those black curls, took an extra three seconds to follow her face, and he felt he was in the presence of a great lioness, a gypsy, a witch, a real honest-to-goodness woman.

  “You seem to have stumbled right onto your welcome wagon. I’ve been sent to fetch you, Mr. Masters. Would you like to come home with me?” she said.

  She wasn’t shy. Once Lavinia and that boy of hers were set up, Lucy took him into her bed. He knew there was something not right about her, not right about the house and the land it was built on. But he didn’t care. It was good. Until it wasn’t. Nan didn’t like him. Dominic, Lucy’s son, couldn’t stand him. Lucy started to get distant.

  He wanted to take her and Lavinia and the kids back down south but she wouldn’t hear of it.… She mumbled something about waiting for signs. His drinking increased as his patience decreased.

  And then Lucy dropped the news that she was pregnant. And she refused to marry him … she just wanted him in her bed.

  He started going on more and more fishing expeditions. The next few years were spotty for Gavin, hazy with sea spray and bourbon. He recalled trips back to the Witch House. His daughter was a beautiful little birdlike thing. She was quiet, though, and it seemed everyone liked her just about as much as they liked him. He felt sorry for her … but in the end, he felt Lucy would be a good mother to the girl. He could still see Lucy on the dock where he first met her, playing with Dominic: that mothering part of her was half the attraction. Each time he came back, Lucy was a little crazier, a little drunker, and an ocean grew between them.

  When it was clear she didn’t want him anymore, he left. When he asked her one final time to come, she sent him word that he was no longer a part of her story. He was washed from her memory.

  He should have tried harder. Because he left his little bird daughter in terrible danger.

  This danger had a name, and it was Jude. Gavin’s bastard nephew and half brother. Evil was in the lineage. A toxic mix afoot.

  15

  Maj in the Backseat with the “What If” Game

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2015

  12:00 P.M.

  “This seems as good a place as any to take a break,” said Byrd. “Anne’s story comes next, and hers is the longest,” said Byrd.

  “I finally get to learn more about Crazy Anne?” asked Eleanor, putting down her notes.

  “Yep, Crazy Anne. My great-grandmother.”

  “It’s astounding to think how much hate and loss was suffered here. I’ve always thought that houses were like sponges, soaking up everything. But I don’t feel the sorrow here. This house still feels like a hug.”

  “I agree with you there,” said Byrd. “But maybe it isn’t the house at all. Later, if we take Maj to see them ponies she keeps yammering on about, we could take some time feelin’ out that old foundation.”

  “Good idea, but for now, let’s go grocery shopping. We cannot live off coffee grounds and whiskey.”

  “You just lack imagination, but FINE. I’ll get Maj. Do you see her? I don’t see her.”

  “She’s right there—see the hair bouncing over the topiary?”

  “I love that hair.” said Byrd. “I love that kid. She’s just my kind of weird.”

  Elly smiled. Someone else was noticing the amazing parts of Maj. Someone else was loving Maj for who she really was. It was lovely to no longer be alone in the adoration of her child.

  12:30 P.M.

  Driving away from the house, Eleanor looked at the gatehouse, overgrown with weeds and boarded up. Like a bruised face. She wondered if she should clean it out and try to rent it, as Nan had. Or maybe use it as a painting studio. Then she shivered. It was as if two parts of her were arguing. One pragmatic, one visceral. She put all of it on hold. Too much was happening already.

  Once on the main road they played the “What If” game in the car. Byrd fit right in.

  “If you were an ice cream flavor, what would you be?” asked Maj.

  “Vanilla,” said Byrd.

  “Me too,” said Eleanor.

  “I’m cherry,” said Maj.

  “Cherry ice cream or cherry ice, baby girl?”

  “JUST CHERRY.”

  “Fine,” said Eleanor.

  “If you were a punctuation mark, what punctuation mark would you be, Mama? I’m an exclamation point,” said Maj.

  “That’s a good one. You stumped me. And I think you’re an exclamation point, too,” Eleanor smiled.

  “I’m a question mark,” said Byrd.

  “Yes you are!” laughed Eleanor.

  “Mama, you have to answer. What would you be?”

  “Baby, I don’t know.”

  “You’d be an exclamation point, too. It’s … what was that word Dr. B
used, Mama?” asked Maj.

  Eleanor thought back to their last psychotherapy appointment. Then she remembered. “Genetic, is that the word you’re thinking of?”

  “Yes! See, if I’m an exclamation point, so are you.”

  Eleanor parked the car in the half-empty lot.

  “I wish I were. But … I’m a.…” Eleanor felt the tears come before she could fight them back. The sorrow came on so quickly when she stopped focusing on the Witch House and its mysteries. She missed Mimi. And she missed Anthony and hated him and loved him and now she was trapped in the car with her baby girl and her odd young question mark of a distant cousin, about to lose her mind because of a game.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Byrd. “Question mark?”

  “I’m just sad. Sometimes people just get sad, and there’s nothing much they can do. I don’t like to be sad. Don’t people in Alabama get sad? How about you take Maj in the store, and I’ll get my act together.”

  “Maj is right here,” said Maj.

  “Sad means regret, did you know that? Seems to me you’re angry, not sad. And there are plenty of angry folks in Alabama, believe you me. There’s an emergency cigarette in the glove compartment. You know, for times like these,” said Byrd.

  “It’s my car. My glove compartment, and my emergency … oh, can it, kid. Go inside. Leave this almost-middle-aged woman with her crisis.”

  Eleanor watched them walk inside and defiantly lit her cigarette. She thought about all the things Anthony used to say to her. And it didn’t really matter that she knew he was only lashing out because he’d been hurt.

  “I hate it when you smoke. I don’t understand you. You seem so much smarter.”

  Yes, she thought, because this is the real truth:

  I am not an exclamation point.

  He is a long story. I am an ellipsis.…

  Or maybe, on a rainy day, a comma,

  A fucking pause,

  Yes. I’m a pause.

  Onward to the groceries.

  2:30 P.M.