The California Coven Project

by Bob Stickgold

  * * *

  After Carol had left for school, Maggie worked silently around the house, spending some time with her mother, cleaning here and there, continuing the endless job of organizing her records and notes. But her conversation with Carol still echoed a challenge in her ears.

  Finally, deciding she sat down at her console and summoned the Medocnet menu. Four minutes’ Keyword play yielded twenty-seven English-language references, twelve Latin, four Hebrew, and thirteen Chinese—but no texts. Well, Latin, Hebrew, and Classical Chinese would have to wait. The English sources could all be studied at the University. She called the Birth Center. “Hi, Beckie? This is Maggie. I’m going up to Palo Alto and the city today. If you have to get in touch with me, I’ll have my beeper with me, but I don’t think anything’s likely to Come up.”

  “Okay, I’ll put a note on the board,” Beckie replied. “Going up to visit friends?”

  “Yeah, and to do some work in the libraries.”

  “Your computer down again?”

  “Old stuff, but Medocnet has given me some good leads.” Anything that had been published since the turn of the century she could retrieve on her computer terminal. But putting books on disks was a slow process, and they had only reached 1900 last year.”

  “Okay,” Beckie said, “If I don’t get in touch with you in between I’ll see you the night of the next meeting.” Beckie hung up.

  Maggie was surprised and a bit irritated with herself for not telling Beckie the reason for her research. I’m afraid of her reaction, Maggie admitted to herself. I just don’t want to argue with her. She looked in on her mother a last time and headed out to the car.

  It was eleven before she finally reached the main research library at Stanford University. Working first through the card catalog, Maggie concentrated on references that led further and further into the past, until the had located material dating to the seventeenth century and earlier: books on faith healers, books on midwives, folk medicine; pamphlets, articles, and on and on. Card catalog numbers covering a sheet of paper, she waved her stack pass at an attendant and descended into the bowels of the library, where the legions of books stood a lonely vigil. At last, sitting on the tiled floor between two rows of bookshelves, Maggie read in the dim light of the lone twenty-watt fluorescent bulb overhead.

  The books were very old, the bindings ornate, the pages brittle; some had been written a century before the American Revolution. As Maggie took notes and shuffled from one work to another, she became absorbed into another world. There was a reality to the books that seemed to transport her back to the 1600s, to the time when “physicks” used herbs and not complex chemical compounds produced in huge factories, and when faith seemed a necessary part of the healing process. And she found many descriptions of bizarre mixtures guaranteed to ease the travail of labor, cool a feverish body, help a broken bone to mend, or remove a wart. All these she diligently copied, noting where the various books’ physicks for the same ailment agreed, where they disagreed. Internal references led Maggie to other works. Finally, hunger distracted her and she spared a moment for a quick look at her watch. It read 5:30! She bad been working more than six hours without even realizing that lunchtime had passed her by.

  Looking over her notes, Maggie decided she had found what she came for. Exhausted but satisfied, she left the library.

  The next morning she went about gathering the ingredients—a health-food store for fresh herbs, a drug store for salts and simple chemicals, a butcher shop for fat, and a pet shop for frogs. Back home, she cooked, she brewed, she steeped, working from a conglomeration of notes taken from her researches the day before.

  Maggie found herself recalling Ann’s stories about their ancestor, fifteen generations earlier, who had been tried for witchcraft in Massachusetts when it was still a colony. Almost 350 years ago Margaret Jones had also practiced medicine as best she knew how, perhaps even using the same recipes, and Maggie realized she feared the same accusations that had been made against Margaret Jones.

  There was, she realized, something absurd about the whole process. She was a trained professional, generally considered conservative for her hesitance to use drugs newly developed by the pharmaceutical houses, yet she was about to experiment blindly with the uncontrolled pharmacopeia of untrained medical personnel three hundred years dead.

  Well, if her experimentation was like her opposing over-treatment during childbirth, then she was probably right, she decided. But just then she was too exhausted to deal with self-scrutiny. She had confidence in her original decision to try folk medicine and her new recipe seemed as good a place as any to start. Judging by its frequent appearance and many variants, the recipe Maggie had found in the Stanford University Library probably represented the culmination of centuries of experience garnered by herbal doctors. She would try it. Later on, perhaps much later, she would sit down and try to figure out the logic that had driven her to it. Suddenly Maggie sat down to gather her thoughts, but was interrupted by the ringing of her mothers bell. Looking at the clock, she saw that it was 12:30. She hadn’t even considered her mother’s lunch yet. Annoyed with herself, she went to see what she wanted.

  In her mother’s room a sense of gloom pervaded, despite the fresh flowers and the sunlight streaming through the windows. It’s basically an unused room, she realized. It looks too neat and orderly for a room where someone is active. And, of course, it wasn’t. “Maggie, I’m starving. Do you have lunch for me?”

  Ann seemed more alert than usual, as if the pain had receded temporarily. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t noticed the time. I’ll get it right away.”

  “Well, really, Maggie, I would appreciate it if you could get it for me. There’s no way I can get it myself!” Her tone bordered on irritation.

  Smiling to herself, Maggie allowed an expression of embarrassment to creep onto her face. “I’ll get it right away, Mother.” She was delighted by her mother’s attitude. Maybe she would be entering a stronger period. Turning, Maggie headed for the kitchen.

  And there was her . . . the word potion came into her mind, and it surprised her. What should she call it—medicine, drug, potion, brew? She smiled at the sudden significance that the decision took in her mind. And how the hell will I administer it? she wondered. From the formulas she was sure it would be unpalatable. She smiled—perhaps she should just serve it to her mother for lunch in a bowl with, maybe, a bottle of catsup to kill the taste?

  The bell rang again. “I’m working on it, Mother,” she called into the hall, but the ringing continued. Finally, half in irritation, she went to see what her mother wanted. But when she entered the room, she knew what was the matter. Ann’s face had a bewildered look crossed with pain. “My pills,” she whispered. “I need my pills!” The confusion brought on by the sudden onset of the pain was evident in her voice. There were tears in her eyes, and Maggie wasn’t sure if they reflected the intensity of the pain or the shock produced by its sudden appearance. But, in fact, it didn’t matter. She turned and crossed to the locked bureau where she kept her mother’s medicines and quickly found the painkillers. With trembling hands, her mother took the pills and swallowed them dry.

  “Would you like some water, Mother?”

  Ann nodded weakly, struggling to sit up. Maggie helped her up and held the glass With Ann while she drank. Finished, she sank back against the pillows, exhausted by the effort. “I was feeling so much better this morning,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Is it really worthwhile? Dragging it out like this?” But the question was rhetorical, and she sank farther into her bed and pillows, fighting the pain while she waited for the drugs to work. Maggie sat with her until the drugs took effect, then returned to the kitchen.

  Maybe this would be the best time to give her the—brew, she thought. It would definitely be less objectionable when she was drugged up, and she would be unlikely to remember it tomorrow, so Maggie could give her several doses. A week, she decided, if it’s going to d
o anything, I should see it in a week. Curious, she took a small spoonful and tasted the brew. She spat it out immediately. God, it was terrible! She thought for a moment and added a package of dried onion soup in the hope that it would cover some of the greasy taste. Finally, she added some grated cheese and christened it onion soup au rotten. Taking a bowl full, which contained what three sources agreed was “a portion,” she headed back to her mother’s room. By now Ann was so groggy she was only half aware of Maggie’s presence.

  “Lunch, Mother.” Maggie put the bowl down by Ann’s bed and maneuvered her into a sitting position. Ann mumbled unintelligibly and tried vainly to help Maggie get her up. Finally, leaning back against the pillows she allowed herself to be spoon-fed.

  If the brew bothered Ann, she gave no indication of it. She ate it not with any relish, but, again, not with any objection. When the bowl was finished, Maggie sat quietly by her mother’s side, reliving the six months since she had been told by Ann’s doctors that her mother had cancer, that it was too late to do much about it, except to relieve the pain while waiting for the end. But the mere enormity of the emotion made its recapture impossible, and somehow in half a year the knowledge had lost much of its strength and now seemed to remain only as a sullen depression that could loom up over her at any moment.

  Eventually Maggie realized her mother was asleep. She had no idea bow long ago Ann had fallen asleep, but there remained no reason for her to be sitting around. Back in the kitchen, she looked at the big Farberware kettle that contained her brew. That’s how I think of it, she realized, my brew. There was enough to last a week. She froze half, and put the rest in the refrigerator. Finally, she took the detergent bottle and sponge to wash what Carol had missed, as usual, of the breakfast dishes.

  Over the next week, Maggie made sure that her mother got her daily bowl of brew. When Maggie was working, she would give it to Ann as dinner, otherwise at lunch. If Carol had noticed the strange addition to Ann’s diet, she had not mentioned it, and Ann, who only once commented that she was getting tired of the same soup every day, didn’t seem to find it particularly objectionable. But it was a hard week for Ann, and more often than not she was too heavily drugged to be aware of what she was eating.

  Now and then, Ann would show signs of feeling better, and Maggie would find herself flooded with a mixture of hope and fear over her mother’s condition. But by the end of the week, Maggie didn’t feel that there were any grounds for hope.

  “Gramma’s getting worse, isn’t she?” Carol brought it up the day after the week of treatment had ended.

  “Yes, I guess she is.” And only then did Maggie realize that her feeble attempt had failed. Tears welled up in her eyes unexpectedly, as all hope fled, leaving her again with the raw knowledge of Ann’s imminent death. Maggie cried.

  Chapter Five

  IF MAGGIE had felt bad about the failure of her treatment of Ann, she had no time to feel it beyond the momentary breakdown in front of Carol. It had been hard to deal with, because she had not mentioned to Carol anything about the treatment, wanting neither to get her hopes up, nor to have to justify the treatment in the first place. In fact, the only one who had any knowledge about it was Beckie.

  And it was with Beckie that she drove up to San Francisco to the Medical Practices Committee meeting. She had wanted to talk about Ann and her treatment, remembering how Beckie had frowned at the idea when she had first proposed it two weeks earlier. But as seemed to be their policy, they spent the entire time discussing how to deal with their motion that was still before the committee.

  They arrived at Amy’s house early and helped her set up for the meeting. She was intermediate in age between Maggie and Beckie, and like Susan Glanvil, Amy’s background was as an obstetrical nurse. She had received her training at Stanford University Hospital, one of the most prestigious and technologically advanced hospitals on the West Coast. Unlike Glanvil, she clearly sided with Maggie on the issue of the use—or overuse—of complex medical procedures during childbirth. “But Glanvil clearly has two things going for her that we don’t, Amy commented while they arranged chairs in her living room. “First of all, she’s taking the same attitude that most M.D.s have taken—the more technology the better. And really, it’s not just the M.D.s, but basically the whole American ethic—that more is better. You’d think that the last fifteen years would have changed peoples minds, but really they haven’t.”

  “People are such asses!” Beckie interjected. “How they can keep believing that, in light of how close we are to running out of everything, is beyond my comprehension. And doctors! If their insistence on hospitalization and overmedication for every minor ailment hadn’t led to the development of infections they can’t clean up or cure, we wouldn’t be out here delivering babies at home. With hospital superstaph infections the second greatest cause of infant mortality, you’d think that they’d realize there was something wrong with their philosophy, rather than attacking us for deviation from the line.” She was furious. “But as if the M.D.s weren’t bad enough, half the midwives in the area agree with them.”

  Maggie objected. “That’s really not fair, Beckie. We were trained to believe that we knew nothing compared to M.D.s, and that we should always defer to them. When you get that pounded into you often enough it’s bound to have some effect. You really can’t be surprised when some of the others get confused and turn to the medical establishment for advice.”

  “Oh, hell” Beckie retorted. “I mean Susan Glanvil doesn’t surprise me. As far as I’m concerned she’s prematurely senile, anyhow—but there are women who have received all of their training since the doctors agreed to give up on hospital deliveries, yet follow the lead of the A.M.A. anyhow. Amy, that’s what drives me crazy!”

  “Oh, come on now, Beckie.” They had gravitated into the kitchen while Amy prepared a few trays of simple snacks, “You know as well as I do that most of the people who disagree with you just plain disagree with you because they hold a different view, not because the A.M.A. told them to. You’re just being silly.”

  Their discussion was interrupted by the doorbell. From then until eight o’clock, members kept arriving, being unusually polite, Maggie noticed, under the strain of the issue at hand. In contrast to their normal casual intermingling, the women broke up into groups of three and four, talking quietly among themselves. Maggie could easily identify groups that supported her proposal and groups who opposed it, in addition to groups that, as far as she knew, were uncommitted. She could feel twinges in her stomach that bordered on cramps. She hated playing politics.

  “I think we’ve got it made.” Beckie had come up quietly. “It seems to rest on that group Michelle’s in. I can’t figure if they’re for or against us, but Kathy’s among them, and when I talked to her last weeks she was definitely with us.” There was a mischievous look in her eyes.

  “You actually like this part of it, don’t you?” Maggie asked in honest astonishment.

  Beckie looked equally confused. “Of course I do. Glanvil is such an ass, it’ll be worth it to me just to see her get voted down—if she even shows.” She Looked around the room. “She isn’t here yet, is she?”

  Maggie looked around halfheartedly. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Hell,” Beckie said, “I’m sure she’s planning some sort of grand entrance.” She had a look of disgust that Maggie thought might just contain a trace of jealousy.

  “Beckie, you’re not doing this just because you hate Susan are you?”

  “What?” Beckie seemed not to have heard. “Oh, of course not! I’m doing it for the same reason you are, to improve the quality of care that we’re giving. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t hate Glanvil and her whole reactionary attitude, or that I don’t get pleasure out of beating her in a fight. They’re different things, that’s all.”

  A sudden hush spread over the room as the front door closed loudly. Turning, Maggie saw Susan Glanvil taking off her coat, accompanied by a middle-aged man who looked fai
ntly familiar but clearly had no business at their meeting. She turned back to Beckie to see her smiling.

  “Who? . . .”

  But Beckie’s face was frozen in a beatific smile. “Somers,” she whispered to Maggie. “I can’t believe it! She brought Somers with her.” She turned to Maggie, victory on her face. “I can’t believe that she’d be so stupid! We’ve won hands down now.”

  Maggie looked back at the pair walking across the room toward Amy. Beckie was right, it was Somers. “But he was the main opposition to the approval of midwives in the A.M.A.,” Maggie protested. “Why would Glanvil bring him with her?”

  “It’s the carrot-and-the-stick approach to negotiations, and I’m sure that he’s the stick.” Beckie laughed, then shouted across the room, “Amy, it looks like we’re all here, should we get started?”

  “What’s Somers doing here?” someone asked. “He’s not staying for the meeting, is he?”

  Beckie turned to Maggie and whispered, “That came from the ‘undecided’ bloc, and I suspect that they’ve decided now.” She turned toward the woman who had asked the question. “Why don’t we all sit down and get started. I’m sure Susan has some good reason for bringing Dr. Somers—whether or not he stays can be put up as the first order of business.”

  People began to sit down in the seats arranged earlier, and Amy, who was chairing the meeting, took her place up front. “Want to keep it moving,” Beckie whispered to Maggie. “Don’t give Glanvil time to figure out how badly she’s screwed up this time, or time to plan how to weasel out of it.”

  Amy was already officially calling the meeting to order. “Before we discuss any of the items that have been assigned to the agenda, including the reading of the minutes of the last meeting, I would like to use the prerogative of the chair to propose that we decide whether Dr. Somers—who I’m sure is familiar to all of you—will be allowed to stay.”