The Witch House of Persimmon Point

by Suzanne Palmieri

  Stores and markets in the greater Haven Port area sold them as well. She needed to have a good way to get the jars safely from place to place, so she bought herself a truck, a 1950 GMC pickup truck, turquoise and chrome. It was a wonderful investment and quite a fun toy. Anne and Stella became fixtures driving it around town, dressed all in black, with their long black hair flying free (Anne’s streaked with silver as the years wore on) and the windows down and jars and crates of something or another clattering and clanging in the back when Anne took a hard corner. And people liked her, they liked her style. Her black capes, her black combat boots (new ones that fit), her cigarettes. Her wild hair. Stella wore hers wild, too. And she was smiling, always smiling.

  1990

  “Gran! Gran! There’s a letter for you. The postman came all the way up the road. He must be new, because he didn’t look one bit scared, not one bit. I had to sign for it. Like a grown-up! Gran?”

  Anne was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, afraid to touch the letter in Stella’s hands.

  She’d woken in the night, shivering. Knowing her father was dead. It seemed a cruel blow. She’d somehow thought that he’d come back for her, finally. She’d never stopped waiting. Finality is always hard, but harder for a witch. No spells are strong enough to raise the dead. Well, fine. There are those spells, but they are best left undone.

  “Leave the letter there, darling, and go play. I need to be alone when I open it.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s bad news. And it’s the ending of something that I never had a chance to start. Those are hard things to figure out. That’s why I need you to go play and let me be brave here on my own. Gran will be fine.”

  “I’ll go study the big black book. I’ve almost memorized the reckoning spell. And now I want to find out what the house is saying when it’s worried.”

  “What the house says?”

  “You know, Gran. Tic tock tic tock tic tock. Tic,” she said, singing its eerie beat as she skipped up the stairs.

  Anne turned to the letter in her hands. She felt the outline of the folded paper under the triangle seal. She noticed another outline, too—a photograph, perhaps.

  Lord, I’m not ready for this. She thought.

  Dear Anne,

  I am old now, and unwell. I guess my time is about up. I wanted to write you a letter, to give you the farewell you deserve. I don’t expect you to come on down here; I’m probably already dead and buried. I just figured I needed to make my peace, and I hope you don’t find all this too selfish. So here goes …

  I never said I was sorry. At least, I don’t think I did, and if I did, I didn’t mean it, but now I do. I really am sorry, Anne girl. Sorry for what I did, for what I didn’t do, and for who I was never able to be.

  I don’t say this to force you into a position to forgive me, I don’t deserve it, I don’t need it, and I don’t even want it. I know what I did. I have to make some sort of peace with it on my next trip ’round this crazy place. I just wanted to give you something, maybe a little something to hold on to, to make whatever time you have left on this planet a little more bearable. (Am I giving myself too much credit? Probably, but I’m a goner, girl, so cut me some slack.)

  The point is, I love you. I loved you the minute I saw you. I loved you each time I came back, and I loved you when you brought your crazy ole self here. I just love you. For real. Whether you know it or not, whether you will believe it or not, you have always belonged to me.

  That is what I wanted you to know. That you have always been a part of me, living all on the inside of me. You. Belong. To me.

  I tried to make my way back, but I just didn’t get there. No excuses. I just didn’t.

  I shouldn’t have left you there. I knew it that day on the stairs. Do you remember that day? I should have picked you right up and run away. They wouldn’t have cared, would they? I don’t think so. So that is what I am doin’ right now, baby, right now as I lie in bed and write this, I am making up a pretend.

  I am pretending that you ran down the stairs, and instead of promising you pretty things and skulking off, I stopped, and I held out my arms, and you jumped down the last two stairs right into them like a little kitten. I pack up your stuff, no one stops us. I promise them I will take real good care of you, and Nan packs up some food for the trip. When we get outside, I put you high on my shoulders and we walk on down that damn hill straight to the station. We are singing, baby, “Froggy Went a-Courtin’,” do you remember that song? And we are just the two of us, the two musketeers.

  Is that okay with you? Can I pretend that for a little bit? Just enough to get me through … is it selfish? Probably.

  I missed you, baby, I missed you all the time. And I never wanted anyone or anything more than I wanted you, not my own mother, not the booze or the women, not even Lucy. Just you. You have always been the home I have been trying to find. Somehow, I just couldn’t find my way. I didn’t try my hardest or give it my best and for that I will be eternally sorry.

  Try to do your best, girl, God knows I didn’t.

  Much Love,

  Your Daddy,

  Gavin

  Anne wiped the tears off her cheeks. She hadn’t even known that her eyes were leaking. She folded up the letter and put it back inside her apron pocket, along with the picture. Later she would find a pretty frame and put it up on the mantel where Ava’s used to be. A prime spot.

  That photo …

  Anne didn’t have a lot of photos of herself. You need a loving family, or celebrity status, or friends in order to collect pictographic images.

  “How funny that the very moment my life turned weird and took a turn for the worse is caught here on film.”

  She remembered that day. Not the circumstances, but the day. Gavin had taken her downtown. Anne had ridden on his shoulders, and he was so handsome and she was so proud. He had bought her ice cream, and she kept asking him if he was going to stay this time. He wasn’t answering her. He would keep putting her down, taking pictures of everything with his fancy camera. When they got back home, they all sat out on the patio and ate a delicious lunch. Anne remembered eating tomatoes, how they would squish between her teeth, and drinking ice-cold lemonade. She remembered Gavin asking Lucy to take a picture of them together. Lucy must have, Anne remembered the flash.

  Later, they had fought … Lucy and Gavin. There was a lot of yelling, and Anne had hidden herself on the back steps. Gavin came running from the yard, shooting by his daughter. He paused at the screen door to take a look at her, and she held out her arms and said, “Don’t go, Daddy, please don’t go? Promise you will come back?”

  And Gavin had placated her with promises of more ice cream and rides on his big boat and even a camera of her own so they could take pictures together. And then he was gone.

  She thought of this for a long time and tried to figure out if she would have, in fact, preferred his pretend ending to their story. Most people say that if they got the chance, they wouldn’t change a thing, that it makes them who they are.

  But not Anne. If given the chance, she would have taken him up on that alternate ending.

  It put her life into perspective, and she would live the rest of it with the guiding premise that it was a life that never should have been, a mistake for sure. Not that Anne herself was a mistake—that was what Lucy thought—but that it was Gavin’s mistake that could not be undone. It was what it was. It was easy to live in the mistake. It would help negate the bad things, help her to embrace growing old. Everything would be okay now.

  “Gran? Are you okay?” asked Stella.

  “I’m fine, my darling. Come, let me look at you. Would you like some jam? On a spoon?”

  “Gran, I love you so much. Past the moon and speed of light. I will never leave you.”

  “And I will never leave you, my darling. Now, shall we watch the night come out from behind the sun? Later can we practice sleeping spells.”

  And they ate jam from spoons and wal
ked through the gardens while looking up to find dinosaurs in the clouds. Anne had never been happier.

  1998

  If only the solemn vows of nine-year-old girls could be trusted. But they can’t. It’s not their fault, though. At nine years old, the world is more beautiful and safer than it ever was or ever will be again. At nine years old, you can learn to make your own ice cream and eat it alone with no regrets.

  Our Stella couldn’t stay nine forever. She did what most of us do. She grew up. She fell in love, as ought to happen to a young, beautiful, mysterious girl. And she decided to finish high school early and defy her grandmother by not going to college.

  Defy could be a strong word. Because Stella understood the risk. But she did it anyway. She left her happy little enclave of Haven Port in Persimmon Point, Virginia, for Magnolia Creek, Alabama, where Patrick Whalen lived.

  “There is nothing bad about being in love or leaving home. I love Paddy, Gran. I love him with all my heart,” said Stella, trying to reason with Anne.

  “You lie! And what if you have a baby? I swear!” said Anne, her graying hair blowing in the wind. She clutched her black book of memories and magic against her breast on the front porch of the Witch House as the car waited to take her Stella away.

  “If you have any children in any other place than this, you won’t live to see them grow! This house is your lifeline. This is your destiny! You are breaking fate. It is suicide! Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

  Stella left the Witch House and grandmother she loved with a bitter taste in her mouth and a growing fear of her own past.

  36

  Anne in the Witch House with Despair

  1999

  When Stella left, Anne placed herself, along with the Witch House property, in some sort of snow globe and decided to get old. Her life seemed lived up, used up already. It didn’t matter that women with her lineage lived longer than most. I’ve had enough time. I’ve done enough damage. It’s time to be old now, she thought.

  It was the first and last time Anne Amore would be reflective. The two years that passed between Stella leaving and Anne dying felt like the longest she’d ever lived. Which seemed silly, because during her life men walked on the moon, telephones became cordless and then, eventually, wireless. Everything had gone electric.

  But Anne had gone backward instead of forward. She got rid of her television set and even her radio. She had an emergency wind-up radio in case she felt a storm was coming and also for the occasional interest in news (which would inevitably lead her to putting the thing away again in disgust).

  She stopped her canning and selling; if the people missed it, she wouldn’t have known, because everyone was starting to move out of Haven Port. There was money to be had in America, and none of it involved staying in a town with no industry. Slowly, everything around Anne became very, very quiet. And she liked it that way. She would wake up, say the rosary, and make a strong pot of coffee on the stove. On milder days, she would take her coffee outside into the garden, to feel the morning sun on her face. Then she would go inside and make breakfast and get on with her day. She loved this newfound quiet. Just her breathing and the sounds of the house and the birds outside. And in the winter, when the world was frozen, so frozen it seemed it would crack, it was very quiet, too.

  She thought of Lucy.

  “It’s quiet, Mama.”

  * * *

  And those were the days, as she got older, that she loved the most. The coldest, quietest, dimmest days. She would sit, and read, and cook a bit, and think, and pray, and clean. And, of course, sit with William. Because he was dying, too.

  She could tell when he was saying mass. He had paleness, a gray tone to his skin that Anne had begun to notice around people who were near death. She went to the rectory after the service to talk to him.

  “You are ill.”

  “You noticed?” They shared a knowing smile.

  “Is it bad?”

  William nodded. Anne was startled, and she thought it had been a while since he had come to the house. She was so busy—time went by fast these days. He was too thin. She knew, being up close to him, that it was only a matter of when, not if or what. Nothing in her old spell books could undo it.

  He bent his head and began to cry. Anne felt the heat of sorrow burn up her throat. She was not accustomed to having all that pain she pushed hard down inside her come back up. It made her furious. But instead of running away, scratching at her eyes, she patted his shoulder instead. “Don’t worry, Will.”

  Anne asked the rectory for permission to bring him home, and they asked the bishop, who agreed. She knew the house would end it quickly for William. He knew it, too, just as he knew it was time to go. She moved him into the Witch House and put a sickbed in the open living room. As they had both predicted, he quickly took a turn for the worse. The house shifted, letting a chill in through its cracks, and as the cold air made its way to his lungs and his phlegm thickened, William began to suffocate.

  One night, he called out to her in a hoarse whisper, “Anne!” She came quickly to his side. “Anne, lie next to me the way you did when we were young.”

  Anne laid her head on the pillow and looked into his eyes, taking his hands in hers so it looked like they were praying. Anne noticed William’s eyes didn’t look sick, or old. They were still young as ever and sparked with humor. But it didn’t matter. At that very moment, Anne’s soul felt very, very old, and so did William’s.

  “Do you want me to try and fix a remedy, Will? We could stay together for a while longer. An hour, a day, a week?”

  “Oh, no, Anne, I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to be made dark or crazy. It wouldn’t be the same. It wasn’t right.… It wasn’t supposed to be like that, for you or for them. For Opal.” He began to cough.

  “Enough with the lecturing, Will, I just thought I would ask. We don’t even know if it would work.”

  “True,” he said as he caught his breath. “Anne?”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you promise me something?”

  “Anything…”

  “If there is a life after this, will you marry me?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “And will you give me Opal? Can we make her together, you and me? Out of love? Maybe if she was made in love, she could stay.”

  “Yes, Will.”

  He gasped for air. “I love you, Anne.”

  “I know.”

  William looked at her, the longing for her to say it back was clear in his eyes. But she couldn’t. Anne opened her mouth and nothing came out. And then William took his last breath. He was gone. She lay there for a long time, looking at him and holding his hands as they grew cold. She closed his eyes with her fingers, and then, when he was no longer looking at her, she said the words he had always wanted so desperately to hear, the words she wanted desperately to say.

  “I love you, too.”

  The next morning the doctor came with the death certificate, and the funeral director took him away in a shiny black death wagon. And Anne began to close up the Witch House. She placed sheets over the furniture. She had the roof inspected. Anne was very, very, busy with preparations. There was much to do before she joined him, and she knew her soul could not continue to thrive without sweet William in the world.

  * * *

  “Anne, would you like me to call Stella, or try to find Opal?” Bev asked.

  After all these years, Anne had been struck down by stage four or stage one thousand of some kind of man-made illness Anne couldn’t and didn’t want to pronounce.

  Anne sighed, wondering why Bev wasn’t dead yet. Old hag. “No. Please. I just want to be alone with my house,” she said.

  * * *

  Anne waited to die in the bed, now hers, that used to belong to her Nan. She was alone. Except for her house.

  The house breathed around her, crying, holding her in, creating a cool breeze to blow in through the windows to make the white sheer curtains dance like magic
(she had loved to watch them as a girl), and wafting in the scent of the pine trees (long rotted and removed, in which she used to climb and sleep). And Anne understood how fully the house loved her and she cried with it, a sweet, sad, and joyful cry that expressed all the pain and pleasure of living.

  And as she died she wondered, Where do we all come from? Where do we belong? Maybe it isn’t so defined. Perhaps it becomes … as everything else does … whatever it is.… All the clichés. “Home is where you make it.” “You get out what you put in.” “If you try, you will succeed.” Anne began to realize that they had all been liars, every one of them. She lied to herself about who she was. It was apparent now that she had been a sad little girl who simply missed her father. There is nothing so extraordinary about that. And Lucy, she had been a beautiful widow, with a damaged mind and heart, who missed her husband. Nothing less, nothing more. She led a charmed life that took a wrong turn. And Nan, she had been a dreamer who thought her dreams died on the shores of America just when everyone else’s around her were coming true. But they didn’t. If only Nan had known she was having dreams come true every single day. Miraculous and extraordinary things unfolded for her, like the roses in her garden, all the time, and she just did not notice. If she had known … she could have changed it all, she could have changed their histories. At least now there were no more of them left to harm one another. Stella was right. It was good to let bad things end. Let other people get it right; their story was over.

  Anne’s ghosts returned, right at the end, good now, not to eat her up, not angry with her selfishness, but come to deliver her home; and there was her child, not Opal as she would be all grown up, but the Opal she raised, the one she remembered. The one she loved too much. With her golden hair shining like the sun and her blue eyes clear as a blue sky, and wearing that white lace communion dress as white as a cloud on a perfect day. “Mama,” she whispered, and Anne’s soul just rose right up, right out of her body, and she ran. Anne ran to her lost baby and her ghosts and into a perfect beautiful place. And as she left, the house heaved with a sob of great loss, and a rumble went through Haven Port, and the church bell broke, this time for good, and the drawbridge stuck midway, and everyone in the neighborhood stopped what they were doing for a moment and forgot to remember something, then shook their heads and went back to their lives.