The California Coven Project

by Bob Stickgold

  Maggie sank into a chair. “I’ve got about a thousand things to do. I have to log in today’s results. That shouldn’t take too long. Then I have to call Beckie to see how things are looking for tomorrow’s court appearance. Then I have to check my phone recorder, to see if any new patients have been found. . . . After that, I can relax until eight, when a couple of the women from the Coven are going to come over to watch me prepare the medicine. When all of that’s done, if I can get them to leave without socializing, I can get to bed.”

  Carol placed the salad on the table. “Do they know about me?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Do they know that I’m working with them on this project?”

  “Well, you’re working with me on it, not really with them,” Maggie pointed out.

  “No way!” Carol objected. “Who’s going to keep the records on the patients who get medicine made by these women? And who’s going to keep the records on the patients of the other six women you’re training?”

  “Well,” Maggie answered slowly, “I guess I had thougbt that everyone would keep their own records. It would be sort of hard for them to take their records to you every night, don’t you think?”

  “But there’s no reason I couldn’t go and get them once a week,” Carol countered.

  “But what’s the use? You’ll just be keeping duplicate files.”

  “Mom! You just don’t want me to do it!”

  “Oh, that’s not true!”

  “It is, too,” Carol insisted. “Because someone has to keep combined records. How else are you going to know how many successes you have, and how will you know if someone’s not doing as well as the others, and who’s going to keep track of the batches of medicine and which patients get which batches, and stuff like that?”

  “Well,” Maggie admitted, “I guess I thought that I’d do it.”

  “But that’s my job—you’re taking my job away from me.”

  “Carol, you’ve always kept my records, and that’ll still be your job.”

  “I’m not your secretary!” she shouted. “I’m a member of the Coven, and I’m one of the first three members, at that. You’re not going to throw me out, or hide me from the other members because you’re ashamed of me!”

  “What, in the name of the good Lord, is going on out here?” Ann stood in the kitchen doorway. “My word, I could hear you two all the way down in my room with the door closed and the radio on.” She turned to Carol, and added, “And young lady, it would not hurt you in the least to show a little respect for your mother.”

  Carol’s glare didn’t soften. “And it wouldn’t hurt her to show me some respect, either.” She stomped off to her room.

  “What was all that about?”

  Maggie sat down at the table. “Carol wants to be a part of the Coven, that’s all.”

  “And you said? . . .”

  “I said I wasn’t sure yet, Or at least, that’s what I said last time. This time the fight was rather oblique, and it probably sounded like I didn’t want her in it.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do. I’m delighted to have her working with me. But the Coven is really a midwives’ association, and she’s so young—”

  “Did you ask them?”

  “Ask who what?”

  “Did you ask the women in the Coven how they felt about it?”

  “I haven’t had a chance. We’ve only met once so far.”

  “What does Beckie think about all this?”

  “I haven’t talked to her about it, either.”

  “Hmmph.” She turned and started to leave, Then, turning back a moment, she added, “You two are both acting like children,” then headed back to her room.

  * * *

  Carol didn’t come to the dinner table, insisting she wasn’t hungry. After the meal Maggie headed for her study. It was getting late, and she wanted to be ready when the two new “pharmacists” showed up. Ann had announced that she was going to talk to Carol. Maggie hoped she wouldn’t make things any worse than they were already.

  Her two new “pharmacists” showed up at eight o’clock, sharp. Of the two, Maggie knew Amy Belever well. The other, Carla Partlow, worked with Amy in the San Francisco clinic, but had never been very active in the C.M.A. “Let me show you my study,” Maggie said, leading them down the hall. “That’s where I’ve been keeping most of the records of my work, and also where I’ve been keeping the supplies for the medicine.” She led them into her bedroom, and through to the study, where she stopped suddenly, “Carol! What are you doing here?”

  She was sitting at Maggie’s desk, file disks spread all around her. “Oh, hi,” she replied innocently. “I was just bringing our records up to date. I didn’t get a chance earlier to enter today’s data.” She turned to the other two. “I guess we haven’t met. I’m Carol, Maggie’s daughter, and I’m the official keeper of the data. I started working with Mom on it around the time of the C.M.A. split.” She rose to her feet as she spoke, and shook hands with the two women as they introduced themselves. Turning back to Maggie, Carol said, “If you want to use the study, I can come back later. I’m almost done.”

  “Oh, don’t bother,” Amy injected. “Your mom was just showing us around. You don’t actually prepare it here, do you, Maggie?”

  Maggie was still recovering. “What? No. I do it in the kitchen.”

  “Can I help carry anything?” Carla offered.

  In another minute the three of them had left the study, and Carol went back to her files. But when the footsteps recoded into inaudibility, she stealthily crept out to the hall door, and looked out. No one was in sight. In an instant she was across to Ann’s room. Crossing to her bed, she gave Ann a big kiss. “It worked just like you said it would, Gramma. You’re a genius!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  IT was after eleven when Amy and Carla left, and Carol was already asleep. Friday morning Maggie was out of the house before Carol was even up. Maggie had been impressed and irritated by Carol’s move. She had carried it off with such style that Amy and Carla expressed surprise when Maggie admitted that she was unsure as to whether Carol should really participate.

  “After all,” Amy had said with a smile, “we are a coven, and witches always train their daughters.” Maggie hadn’t argued.

  By midday she was starting to feel exhausted. That it was Friday didn’t help, because the treatments had to run for seven days straight. But her first apprentice of the afternoon brought her a message to call Beckie immediately. A bit apprehensively, she called the N.M.S. office in San Francisco.

  “Victory number one!” Beckie announced. “City Hospital just withdrew its ban on us. Apparently City’s lawyers told them they didn’t have a chance, that they’d have to go though full hearings before they could reach a decision. So at the least, we’ve gained several weeks of breathing room.”

  “That’s great,” Maggie said.

  “How are your patients going this round?” Beckie asked.

  Maggie shrugged into the phone. “This is only the fourth day, so medically I can’t say anything yet. But the apprentices are really good, and that’s a relief. Aside from that, I’m running a bit ragged at the edges from going nonstop, and I’m really counting on their taking over the treatments after next week.”

  “Well, you have to expect to run a bit ragged at the start. It gets easier with time.”

  “It’d better.” She looked at her watch. “Hey, I’m supposed to be thirty miles from here in forty-five minutes, and I haven’t seen this patient yet. I’ll have to talk with you later.”

  “Great, You know about the Coven meeting next Wednesday, right?”

  Maggie smiled. “Yes, I know about it, and I know how much you like that name, too.”

  “Maggie, I don’t know what’s the matter with you. It’s like there was something wrong with being a witch. You should read your history more carefully. Really, they were all government agents in disguise, and they never deserved the bad reputati
on they got.”

  Maggie groaned. “Good-bye, Beckie.”

  * * *

  By the time Maggie completed her rounds on Sunday, she was excited again. The medicine was working. Most exciting was that the three patients receiving daily doses from the frozen batch were all getting better. Two of the controls were also. Which meant that her new pharmacists were working well. Most likely, the last of the six would show signs on Monday. In fact, of the six, the one who hadn’t shown any improvement was the only true control, the only patient who received fresh medicine daily, always prepared by Maggie. The other two controls had been receiving fresh doses made by Amy and Carla since Friday. Everything was going better than could be expected, or even hoped for.

  On the following Monday the six patients received their last doses of the medicine, although they were told that there would be monthly boosters. Still, only five had recovered. The sixth showed no signs of improvement. It was their first setback, and Maggie was in an ambivalent mood when the second meeting of the California Coven met Wednesday evening.

  The meeting was at Beckie’s house, in Santa Cruz, and Maggie decided to hike the short mile. At eight o’clock, people were still drifting in, but it was already clear that the sense of the evening was going to be one of victory. She refused to discuss her results before the meeting was underway, insisting that she didn’t want to repeat herself. Despite this, word circulated rapidly, and the living room was buzzing with excitement.

  Suddenly, the crowd seemed to quiet. Maggie looked up from her conversation and saw Carol at the door. Spotting her mother, Carol waved casually and then turned and walked over to Amy, who was talking with Carla and a small group of midwives. A minute later, the incident had been forgotten—but not by Maggie. She quickly crossed the room. “What do you think you’re doing, Carol?” she muttered quietly. Only Carol could hear.

  “Hi, Mom,” Carol answered cheerily. “I figured I’d better come, in case there were any questions about the records. And besides, I wanted to meet more of the women in the Coven since we’re all working together.” She smiled at Maggie.

  One of the women turned to Maggie. “You never told us your daughter was involved. Amy tells us she’s been a real help.”

  Maggie grudgingly agreed. “Especially at the start, before the Coven was set up. Back then, Carol was the only one who knew besides me.” She put an arm around Carol, and gave her a squeeze. “But I came over here just now to give her hell for crashing the meeting. I’m not sure it’s appropriate for her to be a member of the Coven—”

  “Oh Maggie, sometimes you’re such an old fogey,” Amy complained. “if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll bring it up as an agenda item, and we can make it formal. Okay?”

  “Well, I don’t want to sound pushy, but—”

  “But you won’t even have to say a word. I’ll handle it myself. If people object, which I’m sure they won’t, then well just have to hear them out.”

  Maggie looked embarrassed. “Look, if you bring it up, then it’s your problem, so I’m just not going to worry about it, okay?”

  Amy smiled. “It’s a deal.”

  * * *

  It was eleven before the meeting broke up. There was a festive air to the room, as people prepared to leave. An unavoidable fever of success had infected the group, and the news of one patient’s failure to recover had not dampened their excitement in the least. As Beckie pointed out, they could live with a ninety-percent success rate instead of a hundred. Even Maggie had been lifted out of her normally worrisome state, and had begun to have faith in her cure. And she was delighted by the warmth with which the Coven had accepted Carol. Beckie had even snuck out to the kitchen, tied a bow around her broom, and presented it to Carol after the vote.

  Mother and daughter left Beckie’s together, the broom handle sticking out a meter behind Carol’s bike. Pedaling beneath the clear night sky, Maggie could imagine only clear sailing ahead for the Coven.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  THE next week, Maggie slept. Her two pharmacists made up a week’s potion for six patients, and the six apprentices handled the six new cases they had recruited for that week. Maggie still visited each case with them and spent considerable time talking to the apprentices about procedure and showing them how to format daily reports that Carol could incorporate into the records. But the schedule was working well, and they were getting through the six patients by three o’clock, and Maggie was routinely finishing by six. When Friday rolled around, Maggie was feeling better than she had in a month. She would have been feeling perfect, except two of the six hadn’t responded to the treatment. Instead, she was worried.

  Friday evening, she sat in her study, poring over her records, thankful for Carol’s organization, searching out any clue to why these two had failed. We’re moving too fast, she told herself. All three failures have come since other people started to help me. Is that the problem? She stared at her pencil, tried to stand it on its point, and finally let it fall onto her notes. Sixteen patients, seven types of cancer had been treated. People in differing stages of terminal cancer had been treated. Some were in their seventies and one was in her thirties. What factor had caused three to fail? She shook her head in despair. Eventually, exhausted, she turned off her light, and stared out the window. The dim, post-Crunch streetlights left broad dark areas between cones of illumination. She stared at the darkness, made all the darker by the brightness so nearby. I should go back, she decided, back to doing them all myself. If it means spending a year, then it means spending a year, that’s all. Her face contracted into a frown. In fact, why am I keeping the treatment to myself? It’d make a lot more sense to turn it over to some university or medical school that could test it out properly. Teat it out on a thousand mice in a month. And then she laughed, remembering. How do you convince a thousand mice that they’re going to be cured? How do you get them to participate in their cure?

  * * *

  The next morning, Carol came in to do the records and found the study a mess. She had been up early, and eaten breakfast before Maggie had risen. Now Maggie was in the kitchen. Normally the record disks from the day before were neatly piled for Carol to go through, often with notes from Maggie or the apprentices. But this morning she couldn’t even find yesterday’s data sheets. Irritated, she walked heavily out to the kitchen. She would not be a maid for her mother. “Mom, you’re going to have to leave your data sheets somewhere where I can find them if you want me to keyboard the data for you.”

  Maggie didn’t look up from her coffee. “So don’t do them.”

  “What?” Carol demanded. “It’s my job, and I’m going to do it!”

  Maggie turned and frowned at Carol. “Then do it. I don’t care.”

  Carol started to object.

  “Carol, listen, I know you’re a big, important member of the group now, and I’m all impressed with you, just as I should be, and I think it’s fine that you’re all impressed, too. But I’ve got a headache and I’m not going to have you shouting at me. If I can’t do it to you, I’ll be damned if I’ll sit here and let you do it to me.” She turned back to her coffee. “Now go away, and give me a little peace and quiet.”

  Annoyed, Carol left the kitchen, suppressing an urge to slam the door behind her. Ann called to her as she walked past her room. Pouting, Carol dropped into the rocker in her grandmothers room. “Sounded like a fast one from back here,” Ann commented.

  Carol kicked at the floor. “Oh, she’s just in one of her bad moods, that’s all.” Ann waited patiently for Carol to continue. “Oh, she left her data sheets somewhere under a big mess and I couldn’t find them this morning, so I went out and complained to her about it.”

  “And she said—”

  “And she said she had a headache.” Carol looked down at the floor. “I mean, she didn’t even say she was sorry.”

  “Sorry that she had a headache?”

  “No, sorry that she had left things so messy.”

  Ann let out
a most unfeminine snort. “Honestly, Carol, sometimes I can’t decide which of you has more of the child in you. She’s your mother, not the Virgin Mary. She makes mistakes. She forgets to do things. She even gets tired sometimes, and just doesn’t do something because she’d rather not.” She wagged a finger at Carol. “You are not fully grown up until you acknowledge that your mother is entitled to make as many mistakes as you are. Remember that, it’s a sure test of your maturity.”

  “You’re telling me that she makes mistakes? She makes more mistakes than I, and boy, do I know it!”

  Ann smiled. “Well, good for you. But recognizing that she does isn’t a sign of maturity, it’s a sign of adolescence. Maturity is recognizing that she’s entitled to those mistakes. The first is realizing that she’s not God, and the second is realizing that she is human. ‘Ya ain’t there yet,’ as they say in your culture.”

  Carol frowned. “Well, you’ll never catch her admitting that she makes mistakes.”

  “Ask her sometime.” Ann returned to the newspaper that she had been reading, and glanced at it briefly. “Well,” she muttered, “I just wanted to say good morning. I know you have some records or something that you want to get back to, so don’t just sit there being polite.” Without waiting for a response, Ann turned her full attention to the paper.

  Carol walked to the study and stared at the mess. It wasn’t really so bad. Just sort of spread out. Maggie must have been going through the notes last night, looking for something. Whatever it was, it doesn’t look like she found it. Wonder what it was. Shrugging her shoulders, she began returning things to their rightful places. Within two minutes everything was in order, and she had Fridays data sheets. Curious, she skimmed through them.

  Two more failures! No wonder Maggie was in a bad mood. Two failures! Carol broke out in goose bumps. Maybe it doesn’t work. Which ones were they? She entered them into the records first. Thomas O’Connell in Santa Cruz, lung cancer, Oates cell, a particularly deadly type, but one they had cured twice already; John Cafferty in San Francisco, bladder cancer, the first one that they’d treated. Hmmph. Both men. Figures.