The California Coven Project

by Bob Stickgold

  Lying quietly in her bed, eyes still shut against the morning light, Maggie was now definitely frazzled. Emotionally, she still didn’t believe the reality of half the things she was doing—she didn’t believe that Ann was better; that she had a cure for cancer; that she boiled up a few frogs every night for her medicine. She couldn’t call the preparation a potion, despite Beckie’s love of the word, became the name made the reality even more difficult to comprehend. Maggie didn’t even believe the change that had occurred in Carol, her sudden assumption of mature authority. Maggie didn’t believe that she was seriously considering leaving her job to do cancer treatments full-time—and that, of course, because she didn’t really believe that they were working—and she didn’t believe that she might be out of a job any day now regardless of what she did.

  She squeezed her eyelids shut even tighter. She could sense a hint of hysteria in her thoughts, and her stomach had become a knot. She tried to relax, practicing the same techniques she had taught hundreds of others, starting at her feet and working her way up, relaxing her muscles one at a time. The concentration and sense of purpose relaxed her as much as anything else. At last, with a clear sensation of ambivalence, she opened her eyes. The room looks the same as always, she thought, expecting that fact to help ground her in sanity. But somehow it seemed to have the opposite effect, hiding her from the fact that nothing was the same as it had been.

  She swung her feet over the edge of the bed and stood. Grabbing a bathrobe in case Carol already had some friend over, Maggie headed for the bathroom. One foot in front of the other, she thought to herself. It always gets you where you’re going.

  “Hi, Mom, how ya doin’?” Carol smiled around a mouthful of toothpaste.

  Maggie smiled despite herself. “I’ll survive,” she replied, grabbing her own toothbrush.

  “Beckie came by about an hour ago,” Carol said, “and I gave her the potions for today. She said that the two in San Francisco seemed to be getting better, but she wasn’t sure yet. I guess today should tell on them, huh?”

  Maggie shrugged. Carol changed the subject. “How are things going at the clinic?”

  “You’re full of serious questions today, aren’t you?”

  “What’s wrong with asking you how the clinic’s going?” Carol demanded.

  “Nothing’s wrong with asking. It’s just different from your usual Saturday morning conversation.”

  “Like what?”

  Maggie rinsed her mouth out and spat elegantly into the sink. “Oh, like where you went last night, and what kind of a time you had, and I haven’t heard any of the gossip from Melanie for almost a week I bet, or who’s not seeing whom anymore, and who’s seeing whom again, and—well, all the things in your life.”

  Carol looked outraged. “Are you saying that I’m not interested in you? That I only want to talk about myself?”

  “Now don’t go getting all in a huff. But, in fact, usually we do talk about you more than me. I don’t mean that negatively. I enjoy hearing about what you’re thinking and doing.”

  “Well, did it ever enter your mind that maybe I’d be interested in what you’re doing and thinking, too? The reason that we never talk about you is because you’re never willing to.”

  Maggie took a step back, surprised.

  “You know, you still treat me like I’m a six-year-old or something, You like to hear about what I’m thinking, but you always have that smile on your face when I tell you, like ‘Oh, isn’t she so cute.’ Well, I’m tired of being treated like a kid. Because I’m not one.”

  Maggie was confused by the attack, unsure how to respond. “You want to be treated more like an adult?”

  “Mom, I’m fifteen years old! I am an adult.”

  “An adult could have just said yes for an answer,” Maggie countered. “Carol, I actually have been trying lately to accept the fact that you are grown up, that you are an adult. But you have to realize that it means changing the way I’ve been acting for fifteen years, and that just can’t come overnight.”

  Carol seemed only partially satisfied. “Will you make me a partner in the cancer business?” she asked.

  “But you already are! You’re keeping the records—”

  “But I don’t get any say in the decisions that are being made. Really, I’m just a secretary, What’s the difference—being treated like a child or being treated like a secretary?”

  A laugh escaped Maggie. “Well, your politics are pretty grown up, I have to admit that.” Still smiling, she agreed. “Okay, I’ll give you a role in the decision-making. But only on the condition that you recognize and acknowledge that you’re still learning, that there will be times when I’m the only one capable of making a decision because I know more about scientific techniques.”

  Carol extended her hand to Maggie. “It’s a deal,” she agreed, and they shook on it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  At lunch Maggie got the call from Beckie. “It works!” Beckie shouted, almost deafening her. “Maggie, it works!”

  “Beckie, what happened?”

  “They’re both improving! They slept without medication for the first time in months, they both slept late this morning, and then both woke up without pain. Maggie, it works! It really works!”

  Maggie was pacing with excitement “Where are you now?”

  “I drove to N.M.A. headquarters; I wanted to be able to shout and jump around when I told you. Maggie, I’m so excited!”

  By now Carol was trying to hear, too. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  Maggie tried to calm down. “Beckie, please, could you just be seeing what you want to see? Are you sure they’re better?’

  “Me? I’m positive! I gave you the objective results. But the minute I walked in I could tell. It was just like going to Amy’s aunt’s house, when Amy came running out. They’re sure of the improvement, too!”

  Maggie jumped for joy, then threw an arm around Carol, and repeated Beckie’s message.

  Carol gave her mother a huge hug. “Mom, that makes four! It must be real! You’ve done it!”

  Maggie didn’t know where to turn. “Listen,” she finally said, “this is a crazy way to talk about it. Beckie, can you come over here? So we can all talk about it together?”

  “Who’s we all?” Beckie asked.

  “Oh, just you, me, and Carol. Do you think you can?”

  “I don’t know—there’s so much work to do here at the N.M.A.—oh, hell, of course I can. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

  * * *

  It was three o’clock before Beckie arrived. Maggie and Carol were working away in Maggie’s study. “Well,” Beckie asked, “What do you think?”

  “I’ve been pounding on Mom to try more patients, and do more variations, and basically, she’s still chicken.”

  “Carol!”

  Carol turned to Maggie. “Well, it’s true, Mom. You’re still afraid it’s all a mistake somehow.” She turned to Beckie, and added in a knowing way, “You know these older folks, it’s hard for them to get used to changes.”

  “Well,” Beckie put in, “I hate to get into a family squabble, but I suspect you’re right, Carol. Still, you should be able to discuss it in a more constructive way, don’t you think?”

  Carol looked a bit chagrined. “Honestly, Beckie, you’re as bad as Mom. I’m trying to be constructive and convince Mom that she’s not doing anybody any favors by going superslow on new patients. I mean, we blocked out about thirty patients worth of tests that we need to do, but taking everything one step at a time doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “Well, I don’t want to just listen to you two argue.” Beckie insisted, “so why doesn’t one of you start by telling me about the tests.”

  Maggie spread a sheaf of papers across her desk. “Here’s what we know so far: in the last three of our four cases, the recovery has followed the same time course. Ann was the only discrepancy; she received the medicine for a week without any effect, before I gave her th
e second treatment.

  “Now there are two differences between the first and second trials with Ann. The first time I gave it to her I didn’t tell her about it or try to get her confidence up. That’s what I think made the difference. But the second difference is that the first time I made one big batch and froze it, thawing some each day. In Ann’s second treatment, and in the treatments that the other three people were given, the medicine was prepared fresh each day.

  “So we have to sort out which of these two factors made the difference. Beckie, when Carol and I talked about it, we decided to test each factor independently, first trying a couple of patients with frozen medicine, but doing the normal confidence-building and all that, and then trying a couple of patients without telling them about the medicine, but preparing it fresh daily. In theory, one method should work, and the other not. If the theory holds, then we should be on the road to sorting all of this stuff out.”

  Beckie nodded. “Well, that seems reasonable, but at most that accounts for a half-dozen patients or so. How are you going to run thirty?”

  “The rest are simple things,” Carol jumped in ahead of Maggie. “We’re just going to see how often you have to give it, like whether one dose is enough but it takes a week to work, or whether two doses a day would be even better, or things like whether the dose is ten times bigger than it needs to be. Mom also wants to try leaving parts of the medicine out to see if it’s all important or not, but I like it the way it is, all sort of spooky.”

  “Well, then,” Maggie said, “you can start preparing the medicine. Personally, I hate dropping those frogs into boiling water, and I’ll be really embarrassed if it turns out that they’re not necessary.”

  Beckie smiled. “Maggie, did the recipe say they had to be alive when you drop them into boiling water?”

  “Well, no, it didn’t say anything about how to do it.”

  “Do you know why you chose that method?”

  Maggie thought a moment. “No, not really.”

  “Because you’re thinking of it as a witch’s brew!” Beckie laughed in delight. “Somewhere in your subconscious, you have this image of a boiling cauldron, and a witch dropping live toads and frogs, newts and snakes into it. You insist on calling it the ‘medicine’ but really you’re still thinking of it as a witch’s brew.”

  Maggie smiled sheepishly. “Much as I hate to say it, I suspect that you’re right, Beckie. But nothing gets changed without controls, and I’m afraid that goes for frog-killing, too. So we’ll just put that onto the list of experiments to try, and worry about it when we get to it.”

  Beckie seemed satisfied. “Carol,” she asked, “what was your complaint, then? Everything seems to be going ahead reasonably.”

  Carol frowned. “Except that we don’t have any patients at the moment. She hesitated a moment, then added, “And I know why Mom’s afraid to recruit them, too.” She could feel Maggie’s eyes on her, but she spoke to Beckie, not looking at Maggie. “It’s because she really is a witch!”

  “Carol!”

  Carol turned to face Maggie’s astonishment. “It’s true!” she insisted. “I looked it up in the dictionary, and it said a witch is someone who other people, think is a witch. That’s what people thought about your gramma Margaret Jones, so she really was a witch, and you’re afraid that people will think the same about you, and then you’ll be a real witch, too.” She turned to Beckie. “And she’s even named after old Margaret Jones. That’s why her name is Maggie.”

  Beckie looked from one to the other of them, her mouth agape. “What are you two talking about?” she demanded.

  “Oh, it’s just a silly old family story,” Maggie sputtered.

  “Then how come you told me I have to name my first daughter Margaret, huh?” She turned to Beckie, “Her gamma’s name was Margaret, and my gramma, Ann, named her Margaret, and now I’m supposed to name my daughter Margaret. Every second generation, we name the first daughter Margaret, and we’ve been doing it for over 300 years. Mom says we’re the only matriarchy in the whole country. Right, Mom?” She turned and smiled at Maggie.

  Maggie managed a strained smile. “Right, Carol.”

  “Now wait a minute! Someone’s going to have to explain this to me before we go any further. Who was this Margaret Jones?”

  Carol leapt in before Maggie bad a chance, “A doctor! She was the first woman ever to be a doctor in Massachusetts, back in the 1650s, even before the Revolutionary War. And all the men doctors didn’t like her because she was a woman, and she used all sorts of herbal cures that really worked, instead of all the crazy stuff that the doctors were doing. Back then, you know, the doctors would bleed you—with leeches—if you were sick. That’s how George Washington died. He got a bad case of laryngitis, and the doctors bled him so much, he was actually bled to death! Anyhow, Margaret Jones didn’t do that stuff, and the other doctors couldn’t say ‘Well what does she know, she’s not a doctor,’ because she was a doctor, so they trumped up charges that she was a witch, and they put her on trial. The whole story is told in the diary of the guy who was governor of the colony, and she’s the first woman ever to be tried as a witch in the colony, too. Pretty neat, huh?”

  Maggie laughed. “That’s the most outrageous presentation of a sacred tradition I’ve ever heard—accurate, but outrageous.”

  “It’s true?” Beckie asked.

  Maggie nodded. “I have to admit it. Every word of it is true. That is, about who Margaret Jones was. Not about my being afraid of being called a witch. That’s nonsense.”

  “Well, then why are you afraid to go out and get a dozen cancer patients to try it out?” Carol demanded.

  “You just can’t do it that way,” Maggie insisted. “First of all, for a lot of these, we don’t even know which way we want to do it yet—with the fresh preps of medicine, or with the building up of confidence in the patients. We definitely have to sort that out. And besides, no one’s thought about dealing with twenty patients. Even if I work at it full-time, I doubt that I could treat twenty in a single day—and I’m not working on it full-time.”

  “What?” Beckie looked surprised. “Maggie, after these results—I thought for sure you’d work full-time on it. What are you waiting for?”

  “As a matter of fact, I’m waiting for two things. I’m waiting for my patients at the clinic to deliver, and I’m waiting for a salary to appear by magic, so that I can feed my family.”

  “And in the meantime,” Beckie asked, “how fast do you think we can take patients?”

  Maggie shrugged. “I figure between us we should be able to do two or three a week.”

  “See what I mean? She just refuses to go any faster. Mom, I think you’re just chicken.”

  “You want to work to support us?” Maggie snorted back.

  “Yes.” Carol turned defiantly to her mother. “If that’s what it takes to get you to work harder on this.”

  Maggie looked surprised. “Well, I tell you what. The very first thing we need to do is run the tests to see if we need it fresh, and to see if we need to prep the patients psychologically. Why don’t we say that we’ll run two of each, as fast as we can find them.”

  “Which,” Beckie pointed out, “brings up the question of how we’re going to recruit patients. It’s going to he hard getting patients without bringing more people into our little club. I mean, we know, and Amy knows, and of course the four women we’ve treated know. We could ask them to find us more patients, but I’m not sure that’s any better than telling people whom we trust more.”

  “Like more midwives?” Maggie asked.

  “Sure. Why not some women from the N.M.A.? We must know a couple of dozen we could trust to keep it quiet.”

  Maggie frowned. “You’re playing games with me, Beckie.”

  Beckie looked surprised.

  “You’re trying to connect the cancer cure with the N.M.A., so you can use it as a strategic weapon in the fight with the A.M.A. And don’t look surprised, either.”

>   “But I’m not playing games with you. I know that I’m trying to do that, and I told you I wanted to do that. I’m not keeping any secrets from you. What do you suggest, we ask Susan Glanvil?”

  “Listen,” Maggie said, “I don’t want to get all upset over this. Basically I think your idea is a good one, so why don’t you draw up a list of who you think would be good, and we’ll go over it.” She turned to Carol. “What do you think?”

  She seemed a bit stunned by the arguing. “Okay, I guess. I don’t see how it’s all that important who helps us find the patients, as long as they can keep it a secret.”

  Maggie smiled. “I agree.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was a gray Monday morning. But Maggie’s excitement was almost unbearable. She headed for the clinic, her attention focused entirely on the cancer cure, and she found herself seriously contemplating leaving her job there. The thought scared her. Forty, she thought, was no age to start a new profession.

  The morning passed smoothly, and by lunchtime she was back into the swing of things. She loved her job, both the prenatal work and the actual helping with the birth. She felt she could never trade it for another. But her enjoyment was shattered when Beckie came running into her office.

  “Maggie, they’ve struck—the A.M.A.! And the California Midwives Association has joined them!”

  Maggie’s mouth dropped open. “The C.M.A. has joined them? In what?”

  “In calling for the legislature to strip us of our right to practice midwifery. Maggie, they issued a joint statement calling for our licenses to be revoked, and then Somers issued a separate statement—I don’t have the story straight for sure, I think he made a separate A.M.A. proposal, but it might have been just his personal stand. Anyhow, Somers called upon hospitals to immediately review our privileges, and urged them to suspend our rights to bring emergency cases into hospitals until the legislature decides.”