Chapter 45
We spend the evening cooking eggplant Parmesan and rehashing horror stories about old boyfriends. Sam, Mia’s husband, has to shush our cackles of laughter multiple times.
“You’re going to wake the kids,” he’d say, and each time we boo him away.
We aren’t even drinking wine but I feel loopy. I wish I could bottle this feeling. This lightheartedness.
“Do you think I’m going crazy?” I ask Mia when we are digesting our dinner and sit, curled up in sweatshirts, in her living room.
“No,” she says immediately, staring me intently in the eye. “Of course not.”
“So do you think I’m being haunted?”
She glances out the window, which has a view of the Boston skyline.
“I don’t know if haunted is the right word.
But I think you are picking up on something that happened.
Something evil. Who the hell knows what happens when you die?
It makes sense to me that there could be some sort of echo left behind, if something terrible happened. ”
A pause. “Topher is worried about you.”
My chin pulls back instinctively. Of course he’s talked to her. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I contemplate telling Mia about how far we’ve drifted but can’t bring myself to verbalize it.
“Am I like Jack Nicholson in The Shining?”
Mia laughs. “No. As long as you don’t see blood pouring down the walls and creepy twins at the end of the hall, I think you are okay. But you need to take care of yourself.” She clears her throat. “Do you feel okay being up there?”
“I don’t know how to answer that. I’m regularly terrified. But I also don’t think the person means me harm. And I just feel like I need to figure this out. I don’t think I can just drop it.”
Mia’s eyes search my face. “Okay,” she says. “But you can come stay here any time. And I can come up to you.”
“You have two kids,” I protest.
“Yes, I do! So, give me an excuse for a girls’ weekend!”
We sit in comfortable silence.
“So, I’m not Jack Nicholson?”
“You are not Jack Nicholson.”
* * *
Driving away from Mia’s the next morning, I feel lighter than I have in a while.
I also had the deepest, most restful sleep I’ve had in weeks.
But as I drive to Garden Vistas, I feel my mood darken.
It’s my first time visiting my grandmother since moving to Vermont and I feel racked with guilt.
I worry what Bev at the front desk will think when I arrive.
Will she think I’m a neglectful granddaughter?
Or am I flattering myself that she’ll think anything at all about me?
I also can’t stop thinking about the Tarot reading.
I know it’s silly. I know I shouldn’t let something that Gina with the purple hair, with the “you take the blonde, I’ll take the brunette,” said affect me so much. But it has.
When I get to Mathilde’s room, she’s sleeping in her hospital bed.
I gently kiss her cheeks and smooth down her hair.
If it’s even possible, she looks smaller and frailer than the last time I’d seen her.
When I picture her in my mind, I see my grandmother of five years ago.
A woman who was vivacious and witty, who loved fried clams and a good beer. I squeeze my eyes shut a moment.
I take her hand and talk for a while. I tell her that the baby is growing well, and that we’ve learned she’s a girl.
“We will name her Mathilde.” My voice is beginning to crack, and I don’t want her to hear me cry, so I stand up and walk over to her closet.
I roll the door open and look inside, running my hands over her clothes.
She had a simple, but elegant style in her life before Garden Vistas.
Floral blouses with a strand of pearls, sensible slacks.
I notice a box on the floor of the closet, labeled “Mathilde’s Personal Documents.
” I’m sure I’ve seen the box before, most likely when I moved Mathilde from her old nursing home to Garden Vistas.
But I must not have paid any attention to it before.
I kneel on the floor and slide out the box. I glance over my shoulder and Mathilde is still sleeping peacefully. Inside the box, I find a series of folders. One folder is labeled “Estate Planning.” Inside, I find typed and signed copies of her will, her health care proxy and power of attorney.
There’s another folder labeled “Medical Records.” I hesitate to flip through this one, as it somehow feels more personal, but I do it anyway.
There’s a set of printed-out sheets, which look like copies of her more recent medical records.
I glance at these briefly and see a laundry list of medications.
Ditropan. Lopressor. Clozapine. Zyprexa.
Zestril. There’s an ancient-looking vaccination card, with handwritten dates for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis.
I hold the card in my palms, like it’s a baby bird.
My great-grandmother must have first held on to this when Mathilde was just a baby.
And when Mathilde was grown and setting off on her own, her mother would have given her this card.
Keep it somewhere safe, she would have said.
I picture my grandmother, young and with her whole life ahead of her. My throat feels tight.
I’m about to put the cover back on and shove the box back in the closet when I notice a small paperback book at the bottom.
The cover shows a stern-faced man, dressed in eighteenth-century preacher’s clothes.
His arms are spread wide, and he is surrounded by Puritans, who look up at him in adoration.
It’s titled Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and Other Puritan Sermons.
I flip through the book and notice the pages are worn thin and dog-eared.
I remember this from high school. Jonathan Edwards’s fiery sermon that reenergized religion after the Enlightenment.
My grandmother was never a religious woman, at least as far as I remember.
It seems strange that she would have kept a copy of this and preserved it over the years and moves, given it as much care as her medical and financial records, as her childhood immunization card.
I pop the book into my purse, move the box back to the closet, and give my grandmother one more soft kiss.
Before starting the drive back to Newfield, I give the book one more scan in the car.
Mathilde had highlighted text that apparently held significance, and some pages nearly bleed with yellow.
One line that she highlighted is also circled with red ink.
There is laid in the very nature of carnal men a foundation for the torments of hell.
Next to it, she’d written one word. Fools.
* * *
“How was Mia’s?” Topher asks, helping me unload the car.
Such an innocent question. Once upon a time, I would have smiled dreamily and gushed about the way time never seemed to have passed when we got together, shared stories of the rest of our squad of girlfriends who would have joined the night out, bemoaned the number of tequila shots we’d taken, the liquor and lime still churning my stomach.
But this was not a normal trip. This time, we were hunting for witches and consulting with psychics.
“Fantastic. So good to see her kids again. It was definitely a much-needed trip.”
“I’m so glad.”
Topher doesn’t seem too bothered by the lack of elaboration. Perhaps he can’t ask for more than a succinct and happy report. Even if he knows I’m lying.