The Lace Reader

by Brunonia Barry

  We sit off to the side in the Whitney box, with its horsehair cushions and dusty velvet covers, once a deep wine color, now a crushed, fraying pink. The seats in the center of the church have been restored, and that is where the congregation sits. Even today, when it is so crowded that people are forced to stand in the back, the only box open is ours. This is probably due to liability issues rather than segregation, but it seems somehow to be a way of setting us apart from the crowd. Because we face the people and not the pulpit, it feels as if we’re sitting in a display case. I see people stealing glances at us when they think we’re not looking. Maybe that always happens at funerals, those looks, maybe it happens all the time, but the families never notice because they’re facing forward, looking at the coffin and not the congregation.

  Already it’s almost ninety degrees outside. “Too early for this,” I hear one woman say as she comes in. Her tone is mildly accusing, and I turn around to see who she’s talking to, but it’s a general comment meant for no one in particular, or maybe for God, whose house this is supposed to be. It’s as if she’s documenting something, going on record. People do that in this part of the country—they register weather extremes the same way they balance their checkbooks, making sure they get credit for everything and don’t incur any charges that don’t belong to them, as if the weather itself were controlled and obliged to produce a finite and determinable number of hot, snowy, or rainy days that must not be exceeded.

  The church is filled with women, all wearing hats and linen sundresses, almost southern-looking, out of place here against the cold stone architecture. My eye is drawn to the center of the church and a group of women, each one dressed in a different shade of purple and wearing a red hat. These are Eva’s regulars at the tea shop, a group she considered friends.

  People fan themselves when they first come in, using whatever they can find: a sun hat, a program from last Sunday that has fallen to the floor. Their sighs are audible. The stone church is not air-conditioned but holds the dank feeling of a New England fieldstone cellar, damp and cool, with a memory scent of apples from last fall’s Harvest Days and spruce left over from Christmas. The people get calmer as they finally begin to cool down; they stop fanning and fidgeting. There are even some momentary smiles of recognition tossed back and forth and then covered with the more appropriate somber demeanor. “Try to act as if you’re wearing black,” I once heard a Hollywood director say to one of his actors. That’s what these people are doing.

  The only people who actually are wearing black are the witches, but they wear black all year. They are also the only ones who are not treating this as a solemn occasion. They talk quietly among themselves, greeting others as they come in. Death isn’t the same for the witches, Eva told me once; she said it was because they don’t attach the prospect of eternal damnation to it.

  Dr. Ward gives the eulogy. He talks about Eva’s good works, about all the people she helped. “People are defined, finally, by the good works they do.” He runs through a list of Eva’s works, things I never knew about my aunt, things she might have boasted about if she’d been another type of person. I realize the selfishness of children. We love them, and we revolve around their universes, but they don’t revolve around ours. I left here when I was a child, and in some ways I haven’t grown up yet. That I didn’t know these things about my aunt speaks to that fact. I feel sorry about that as I sit here. I feel sorry about a lot of things today.

  Dr. Ward clears his throat. “Eva Whitney swam every day, beginning in the late spring. Before many of the boats were in the water, she would be there. People started putting their boats in when Eva started her daily swims, because they knew that the weather would stay warm, that the season was upon us. Eva’s first swim of the season was this town’s version of Groundhog Day. When she went into the water that first time, we held our collective breaths. If she went back again the next day, we’d put away our snow shovels for good—spring had sprung.” He looks around the room, making eye contact. “And now the season has changed. Summer is here again, but Eva is no longer among us.” He looks at Auntie Emma, then at Beezer and me. Beezer shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “‘To every thing,’” Dr. Ward says, “‘there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.’”

  He doesn’t finish the verse but steps down, gesturing to Ann Chase, who moves toward the pulpit, her speaker’s notes in hand, black robes brushing against the corner of our box as she passes. Dr. Ward remembers his manners, extends an arm to her, helping her up the steps, a polite gesture from an old gentleman. As she takes his arm, I can see that her hand is the supporting one. She’s helping him down more than he’s helping her up. Dr. Ward walks slowly to the front row and takes a seat facing the coffin. He looks straight ahead.

  I haven’t seen Ann Chase since the summer that Lyndley died. She is a little bit older than I am, maybe four or five years. She looks slightly muted but otherwise unchanged these last fifteen years. Her features are less clearly defined, like a copy of an old master done by an art student, one off, more suggestion than reality.

  She doesn’t introduce herself. She doesn’t have to. With the exception of Laurie Cabot, Ann Chase is the most famous witch in Salem and a direct descendant of Giles and Martha Corey, who were once prominent members of the First Church (until they were executed as witches during the hysteria). They were not witches, of course. Their pardons hang now in the back of this church for everyone to see, pardons issued by Queen Elizabeth II at the end of this century, way too late for Giles and Martha and (some people would say) too late for Ann as well. “The sins of the fathers,” someone whispers, loud enough for everyone to hear. But if Ann hears it, she doesn’t flinch.

  Most people in this town think that Ann became a witch as some kind of family protest taken to the extreme, a “can’t beat ’em, so join ’em” kind of justice, an “I have the name, so I might as well have the game” type of thing. I’m not sure about that. Ann Chase was already practicing witchcraft by the time I left town, living in a hippie house down by the Gables, growing herbs, and brewing magic-mushroom tea for all her friends. She didn’t wear black then; she wore long, flowing Indian-print skirts made out of the same kind of material as the bedspreads Lyndley and I bought in Harvard Square. She usually went barefoot and had henna tattoos across her knuckles and a toe ring that wound all the way up her ankle like a silver vine. Part of the time, Lyndley and I thought she was very exotic. The rest of the time, we thought she was just plain strange. Like that day we saw her way out at the end of Derby Wharf standing huge against the tiny lighthouse, incanting love spells for her girlfriends, who followed her around like puppies. We used to spy on them from out in the harbor, from the Whaler parked on someone else’s mooring. We would laugh as we watched them, covering our mouths so they wouldn’t hear us. But those spells must have worked in the end, because Ann’s friends started having little hippie babies, which they dressed in tiny tie-dyed T-shirts and nursed in public places. Never mind that the sixties were long over by then. “The sixties didn’t arrive in Salem until the seventies,” Lyndley used to say, and of course she was right. But when the sixties finally did arrive in the old port of Salem, Ann Chase was one of the first to jump on board. And when that ship sailed away again, Ann stayed behind waving from the beach. She had found her home port.

  Back then everyone could do a little magic, but Ann took it to a new level. Instead of reading tarot cards or throwing the I Ching, she took up phrenology. She could tell your fortune by reading the bumps on your head. She would grab your head with both hands and press it as if she were buying a melon at the market. In the end she could tell you when you were going to marry and how many kids you were going to have. Lyndley went to her a couple of times, but I never did, because I didn’t like having my head touched, and besides, I had Eva to tell my fortune if and when I needed it.

  What Ann was best at were the oils. She grew herbs in window boxes and began brewing remedies and distilling essential
oils. One by one, as her roommates moved on, turning into yuppies first, then later into soccer moms, Ann replaced them with cats. She opened an herbal shop down at Pickering Wharf before it was a high-rent district, and she was successful enough to stay on when it became the fashionable place to shop. Eventually, as the shop got more and more successful, she stopped trying to grow her herbs in the window boxes and started purchasing them from Eva instead. That was when they became friends.

  Ann’s evolution into “Town Witch” was gradual. To hear Eva tell it, you’d think that Ann just woke up one day and realized that she was a witch. In fact, it wasn’t a decision; it was an evolution. But her family history was what made her famous. The witches of Salem—the locals who have taken up the practice or the ones who’ve been practicing and have come to Salem because it has been declared a safe haven for witches—have all rallied around Ann Chase. They wear their association with her like a badge of courage, one that proves that the Salem witches really did exist here all along, a kind of “look how far we’ve come” thing. It proves nothing of the sort, of course (because Giles and Martha Corey were not witches, just unfortunate victims), but the connection, once made, was difficult to erase. I wonder as I sit here how Ann feels about being their mascot.

  She has been talking now for several minutes: about Eva’s gardens and her plant conservation, which has been written up in magazines I’ve seen over the years. I want to hear what Ann has to say, but that same person is whispering again, and it’s interfering with my concentration. I look around, but I can’t find the source, and so I try again to concentrate on Ann’s speech and on the details of my aunt’s life.

  “Eva saved at least one plant species that I know of from extinction,” Ann says.

  “Wild exaggeration, load of malarkey,” the same voice whispers, loud enough for me to hear this time. I reel around, shushing the women to my left, thinking it’s one of them. They look at me strangely. “As if you have two heads,” the voice whispers in my ear, louder this time, much closer. I recognize the voice. It is Eva. She is speaking loudly enough to fill the church, or at least to be heard in the rows around me, but it is clear that I am the only one hearing her voice.

  “Eva Whitney was one of us,” Ann begins, and some of the witches clap. “Not officially, of course, but she was.”

  I’m looking at the reverend now, which is where Eva wants me to look. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. He was a good friend. I have memories of him at the house, discussing Scripture and literature late into the night.

  I look at Dr. Ward. I can tell he’s distraught. He’s trying to hold himself together for the sake of the congregation.

  “I am reminded of a quote that was a favorite of Eva’s,” Ann says. “‘The grass will grow green again next year. But you, beloved friend, will you return?’” Ann looks right at me as she speaks that line.

  Ann is stepping down now, and Dr. Ward is heading back toward the coffin. As Ann descends the stairs, her dark robes inflate, and I am reminded of flight, and of witches on broomsticks. Then Eva tosses me a snippet of memory, of us all sitting here—Beezer, and Eva, and me—“the day the man flew,” or at least that’s how Beezer always referred to the incident.

  It was Christmas Eve. Dr. Ward was new then, and Eva was showing her support for him by making sure everyone attended services. Beezer had been selected to play the bells that year, along with twelve other children, who all wore matching red robes. Each child had one bell, and together they played an oddly timed “Ode to Joy,” each child lifting his bell on cue and shaking it as if his very salvation depended on it. When Beezer finished, he made his way back to the booth. He was blushing from all the attention and from the heat, which Dr. Ward had cranked high to make sure the children stayed warm in the drafty old building.

  The pews in the center aisle are slightly elevated, about six or seven inches, which is unusual, and if you forget about it for even a minute, it can be treacherous. I remember sitting in this box with Beezer that night. The service was ending. The choir was singing, just as it is now. An older gentleman, in a hurry to get home and seeing a break in the procession, violated protocol and jumped in line, but he must have forgotten about the step down. What I remember most is the look on Eva’s face as the man came hurtling into our box, headfirst, as if he were flying, his legs almost parallel to the floor. Beezer spotted it before the rest of us and yelled “Holy shit!” which was something Eva would have slapped him for if we’d been at home, but before she could reach him, he was down on the floor of the box pulling me with him. Everyone in the church turned in time to see Eva reach both hands up over her head and grab the old man midflight, like a gymnastics coach spotting a vaulter. It changed the man’s trajectory and probably saved him from a broken neck. And for a moment, before he came down, the man was weightless and flying. I remember thinking he’d be okay if he could just believe he was really flying and not that he was about to get hurt. But the old man lost it, his face contorted, bracing. He landed hard, half on Eva’s lap and half on the gate to the box, shattering the mahogany as he did. By some miracle the man wasn’t hurt. And neither was Eva. I remember how impressed Beezer had been by Eva’s catch and by her courage. He talked about it for days.

  “Holy shit!” the voice whispers then, and I see Beezer smile. I realize that this memory was meant for him, not me. He’s half laughing now, half crying as he remembers. Then the soloist begins to sing “Raglan Road,” which is an odd choice but a good one, one that my brother picked out and that I know Eva would have liked.

  I see Ann smile as she passes, her robes still flowing, and there’s movement as Eva’s spirit jumps from our box to Ann. I look at Beezer to see if he has noticed, but he’s up and moving toward the coffin along with the other pallbearers, and he hasn’t seen anything.

  We follow the coffin then, all of us. As the massive church doors open, the cool inside air condenses into a fine mist, steaming as it releases us to the burning pavement below. But before we go, there’s a moment when everything stops. No one wants to go back outside. A step outside is the end of something, a huge change. We can all feel it. Never mind that it feels like about ninety-seven degrees out there. This is something else. For a moment the threshold seems too high to step over, not only for the pallbearers but for everyone else as well. No one wants to be the first to take that step. Eternity is in this one moment, and we are all suspended in it. It is finally Dr. Ward who breaks the spell and steps outside.

  Waves of heat rise off the asphalt driveway, distorting the figures of the people as they step into sunlight, blurring everybody’s edges then, not just Ann’s. It’s as if we were all spirits and the coffin with its dark horizontal lines is the only thing that has any true weight and mass. People move slowly, deliberately, down the steps, their eyes adjusting to the bright sun.

  There is no hearse waiting. Instead the pallbearers have opted to carry the coffin to the graveyard—Beezer, Jay-Jay, and some other young men I don’t recognize, friends of Eva’s, maybe.

  A few doors down at the Witch House, a group of day-camp kids, preschoolers, is lined up on either side of a thick yellow rope with loops every few feet. Each child holds on to a loop with one hand; some are absently sucking thumbs with the other. A few of the older ones, more used to the buddy system than to the rope, clutch a loop with one hand while holding hands under it, not taking any chances. It would be difficult to walk this way, but they’re not walking now, they’re just standing in line waiting to get inside. I wonder at their teachers, bringing them here to the house of Jonathan Corwin, who was one of the hanging judges, though he was far more skeptical and less committed to the sad practice than were the rest. The kids won’t get it. They’ll think, as I did at their age, that the Witch House is a place where witches lived. If they think of anything, they’ll think of Halloween and candy and what their costumes are going to be for next year. They won’t get the rest of the dark story, which is just as well. Some are sleepy with the heat, dis
tracted, looking for something to pull them out of their dazed state. Their eyes catch the coffin as it moves slowly out of the church driveway, and they watch as it bobs down the street, locking onto it, going for a ride with their eyes, unaware that they shouldn’t. They have no frame of reference for death; to them it’s just part of a tour they got tickets for, or perhaps they think we’re like the street performers they’ve seen wandering the town doing skeleton skits, trying to lure you to the Salem Witch Museum or the Witch Dungeon or even one of the haunted houses.

  We pass the gardens of the Ropes Mansion. The cars are stopped in both directions as we cross Essex Street and head up Cambridge toward Chestnut Street, which was Eva’s favorite street in town. The Whitneys had originally lived on it, before politics drove them down to Washington Square with the rest of the Jeffersonian Republicans. It is Beezer’s intention to turn right on Chestnut Street and pass the old Whitney house before turning up Flint Street and down Warren, then looping back up Cambridge Street again toward the Broad Street graveyard. It’s an idea that sounded good at the time (and would have made Eva happy), but it is far too ambitious. The heat makes it almost impossible. Already I’m exhausted and out of breath. I’m thinking it would be better if they went straight and didn’t make the detour at all. I try to send Beezer that thought, but when the procession gets to Chestnut Street and Hamilton Hall, Beezer steers them right, as planned, and the coffin follows, the back end swinging wide like the stern of a boat.

  Chestnut Street is decked out for summer with window boxes and flowering planters on the front steps of the old Federal houses. It’s beautiful at any time, but it’s never been the easiest place to walk. The old brick sidewalks are like waves dipping up and down to accommodate the twisted tree roots and frost heaves of the last two centuries. It’s a moment in time, this street, but it’s as uneven as Salem Harbor in a storm tide, and the coffin bobs along as if it were floating on the water. A tourist trolley pulls around the corner, and some of the visitors, sensing a photo opportunity, lean out to snap pictures as they pass. As the trolley rings its bell, an older man playing solitaire at a window table shoots a look of tolerant annoyance at the trolley, only to be surprised as the coffin floats by his window at eye level, our entire parade behind it. He gets up, walks to the window, and closes the Indian shutters.