“Oh, you don’t need a doctor,” Grace said, sounding unsurprised. “What are the dreams about?”
“Granna mostly,” Connie said. “And of Lemuel, which is weird, since I never met him.”
Grace was silent for a moment, and Connie felt remorse. She worried that the mention of Lemuel would sadden her mother. Grace sighed again.
“Ah, you would have loved Dad,” her mother said, her voice a little wistful. “He wouldn’t have understood you, any more than he understood me, but he would’ve been crazy about you. I’m glad you’ve been thinking about him.”
Connie swallowed, suddenly sorry for her irritation. Grace just had an idiosyncratic way of expressing things. Connie reminded herself that she had pledged to try to listen to the substance of what Grace had to say, rather than her language or her idiom. “That’s not all, Mom—” she started to say.
“The thing about auras, Connie,” Grace said, interrupting her, “is that they have a way of lingering on things. Perceptive people can often pick up on these little remnants that get left behind. They can be surprisingly specific, you know. And I’ve always thought you were a very perceptive girl.”
Connie felt an odd mixture of pleasure at her mother’s praise and aggravation at the subject matter. Auras, indeed. Connie was willing to believe that she had an active imagination, and willing to believe that she was lonely, and so inclined to look for things that might not be there. But that was as far as she was willing to go.
“Mom, I’ve got to go,” she said. “There’s a heat wave over here, and this phone booth is killing me.”
“Are you sure there isn’t a boy?” Grace asked, voice wary. “If there is, you should really tell me, my darling.”
“
Mom
,” Connie said, exasperated. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you again soon, I promise. And you had better pick up.”
Grace began to laugh, and Connie smiled. She started to hang up the phone, thought better of it, said, “I love you, Mom,” and waited.
“I love you, too, my darling. Call me on Sunday if you like,” said Grace.
“I will,” said Connie, cheeks flushed as she hung up the phone.
W
ITH
A
RLO SNUFFLING IN HER WAKE
, C
ONNIE TIPTOED DOWN THE
wooden gangplank that led from the public park on the western shore of Marblehead harbor to the swimming raft that was anchored off the granite cliff face. The humid evening air had grown thicker and heavier since she left the house, and where it met the cool harbor water it congealed into a fog so dense that Connie could almost mold it into shapes, like clay. When she reached the raft, the fog closed off the gangplank behind her, and she found herself alone. She dropped the towel that she was carrying, and Arlo settled on it, stretching out his legs with a sigh. In the diffuse moonlight his fur looked mottled gray-black, almost invisible against the wood of the raft. Connie paused, inhaling the briny smell of the sea, and listened.
Only the muffled clanking of sailboat rigging through the mist told her that boats were moored sixty feet away from where she stood. The water slopped against the side of the raft, calm and waveless. She sighed with relief, pulling off her sweat-stained T-shirt and stepping out of her cutoffs until she stood in her underwear, invisible in the dark. The fog felt cool and comfortable against her skin, and she slid noiselessly into the harbor, feeling the heat from her suffering body pulled away by the delightful embrace of the salt water. Connie dropped beneath the surface, swimming sightless through the black night water, the silence closing in around her, conjuring nights stealing naked into Walden Pond when she was a child.
Her face broke through the membrane of the harbor surface some distance away, and she found that the fog curtain had obscured the image of the raft. Stretching out on her back, she floated, a pale island in the night. She was glad that she had reached Grace. Though their conversation had been vexing at times, she nevertheless felt reassured. And she hadn’t even told Grace that she had been to the sail loft! Connie grinned, a little salt water leaking into the corners of her mouth. She would tell her on Sunday. She reached one hand up to touch the fog, trailing her fingers in the mist.
A bark rang out, dampered by the moisture in the air, and Connie raised her head, treading water. “Arlo?” she called out. Happy whimpering answered her call, and then she heard a splash. She started to swim back in the direction of the raft.
The fog trailed apart as she advanced, and she could tell by the shift in vibration that there was something in the water with her. “Arlo?” she called again, casting her arms before her for the paddling shape of her dog. Her hand struck something, and a voice said, “Watch it!”
Connie cried out in surprise, and the voice said, “Connie?”
She looked closer, and saw that the lumpen shape emerging through the mist in front of her belonged to a young man, who seemed to be hanging on to the raft with one arm. Above him the silhouette of her dog stood, tail vibrating. “Sam?” she asked, unbelieving.
“Hi!” he said, letting go of the raft and sidestroking over to her.
She laughed once, utterly surprised. “What are you doing here?”
“
Swimming
,” he said, with authority. “Ask me another one.”
She batted some water at him impatiently. “I mean, what are you doing swimming
here
? You live one town over!”
“And have you ever seen Salem harbor? It could spontaneously ignite, it’s so polluted. I swim here all the time.” He ducked his head under the water, rising again with his head tipped back to smooth the hair out of his eyes. The moonlight shone on his skin as the water ran down his face in rivulets, glinting on the small ring under his nose. Connie wondered how long he had
had that. She usually detested jewelry on men, but Sam’s nose ring looked unconventional. Dangerous.
“So, I met Arlo,” Sam remarked, breaking into her thoughts. “He’s pretty cool. Didn’t bite me, anyway. Though I don’t think he’d let me steal your towel without a fight.”
“He wouldn’t,” she said, mouth twisting into a wicked smile. She paddled leisurely away from the raft, and he followed behind her.
“So,” he ventured as they swam, “any developments on your favorite witch?”
Connie rolled her eyes and kicked out with one foot, directing a focused splash squarely into his face.
“Hey!” he sputtered, flailing. “What was that for?”
“For talking about work when it’s too hot,” she said. “And I’m not afraid to do it again.”
“Fair enough,” Sam said, chastened. “We will not discuss work.” He paused, creeping closer in the water and shifting his eyes left and right. Connie watched him, treading water. Her pale shoulders just emerged from the black harbor surface, and her unbraided hair swirled around her in the water, dark brown brows swept together over her eyes. “You know, it might be dangerous for us to be out swimming here this late at night,” he said, voice low.
“Why is that?” she said, dropping her voice as well.
“Well,” he said, assuming a mock-serious tone, “because of the squid.”
“The squid,” she repeated, arching one eyebrow.
“Oh, yes. The rare North American poison-spitting squid. They only come out to hunt in the fog. If you feel something brush against your leg”—he moved still closer, dropping his voice to a whisper—“it’s probably already too late.”
Connie felt a set of toes grope across her knee under water, and she reached one hand down, grasping the ankle that belonged to the foot and hoisting it up out of the water. “Hey! I got one!” she exclaimed in triumph as Sam pitched backward, ducking his head below the surface in a froth of
laughter. “Oh, wait—this one is covered in tattoos,” she remarked, inspecting the leg as Sam’s arms waved and splashed for the surface. He wrenched the leg away and, gasping, splashed after her as she paddled away, laughing.
From where he lay on Connie’s towel, Arlo heard water splashing and great whoops of laughter, mingled with calls of “You are
so
dead, Cornell!” and “You’ve got to catch me first, Hartley!” He raised his head at one point, ears pricking forward, searching for sound, when the laughter died to quiet giggling. But then his questing ears found their voices whispering, and so he dropped his head back to his paws and waited, fading to the pale moonlit color of the fog.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Late June
1991
C
ONNIE STOOD IN THE CRAMPED LADIES’ ROOM ON THE FIRST FLOOR
of the Harvard Faculty Club, weaving her hair into what she hoped was a tidy-looking braid. She paused to examine the results in the mirror and saw a bump of hair poking up from the top of her head.
“Dammit,” she said, undoing her work. She ran the comb under water in the sink and then pulled it more tightly through her hair, digging its teeth into her scalp. She had never quite mastered the art of looking pulled together. On dressy occasions she always felt wracked with anxiety, mindful of falling into hidden sartorial traps. As she braided she muttered under her breath. Why had Professor Chilton insisted on lunch here, anyway? She could just as easily have met him in his office. He usually took graduate students here only to celebrate something. Or to intimidate them.
“Stupid,” she said, wrapping an elastic around the end of the braid and tossing it over her shoulder. She gazed at her reflection in the mirror. Behind
a waxy purple orchid, which filled the bulk of the visual field over the sink, the mirror reflected an image of a young, blue-eyed woman in a droopy floral dress, its basic conservatism making up, she hoped, for what it lacked in style and tailoring. Sensible Mary Janes replaced her habitual flip-flops. Her shoulder bag was just a shoulder bag. Connie sighed. She should have borrowed something from Liz.
“Ridiculous,” she said aloud, not sure if she was commenting on the situation or on her outfit. Perhaps both. She looked at her watch, decided that she had hidden in the bathroom as long as she could justify, and opened the door.
Graduate students never ventured into the reading room of the Harvard Faculty Club, and as Connie edged her way inside, she wondered why. It was meant to be inviting. Deep, tufted sofas and polished leather armchairs sat grouped at either end around low coffee tables, and the rugs on the floor were bleached by decades of loafered feet and unfiltered sun. The room was watched over by the benevolent, painted eyes of clerical Harvardians, long dead. Its air smelled reassuring, a blend of polished wood, coffee, and “cake box” pipe tobacco. And still, grad students cringed away, as if something in its rarefied air might be toxic.
That afternoon, the sweet pipe tobacco smell was emanating from a white-haired gentleman settled on the divan under the grandfather clock, an open newspaper level with the gold spectacles on his nose. He rattled the newsprint and puffed without removing the pipe from his mouth. Connie moved to the opposite end of the reading room to wait.
She admitted to herself that she was excited to tell Professor Chilton what she had learned so far. Imagine how surprised he would be! She jiggled one foot in anticipation, a wry smile bending the corners of her mouth.
“Miss Goodwin?” a voice asked, and Connie started. She had not heard the waiter approach.
“Yes?” she asked, tugging at the hem of her dress with nervous fingers.
“Professor Chilton asks if you will join him in the dining room,” said the waiter, smirking so slightly that only a practiced cynic such as Connie
would be able to detect it.
Of course he can’t come retrieve you himself
, said the smirk. Connie sighed.
“Guess I’ll just go into the dining room, then,” she said, rising.
“Very well, Miss Goodwin,” said the waiter, bowing a fraction of an inch.
T
HE DINING ROOM WAS CURTAINED AGAINST THE AFTERNOON SUN, AND
Connie had to hunt for a few minutes in the dark before she located Manning Chilton seated at a table in a plush alcove. He was reading a dense book—
Alchemical Practice as Moral Purity
—which he stashed in a satchel under the table at her approach.
“Connie, my girl,” he said, rising in a dignified half-crouch.
There he goes with that “my girl” business
, Connie thought as she shook hands with her advisor. She plastered over her annoyance with a bright smile, and the waiter pulled out a chair for her.
“I am so pleased that you could join me today. Shall I ask James for a menu, or do you know what you would like?” Chilton asked. The waiter, James, hovered at Connie’s elbow, one eyebrow peaked in the same ironic manner with which he had retrieved her from the reading room.
“Ah,” Connie said, stalling. The dining room, with its crisp, ironed linens and silver butter knives, always made her ill at ease. Most grad students survived on a mishmash of foodstuffs culled from the ends of departmental meetings. For one whole week last semester she and Liz had subsisted on a cheese plate stolen from the classics department new-student reception. When free food was scarce they could resort to the dining hall, with its steady diet of spaghetti with plain tomato sauce and tuna casserole.
It’s a wonder more of us don’t come down with rickets
, she thought before realizing that she had not yet answered Professor Chilton. James cleared his throat delicately.
“May I see a menu, please?” she asked, aiming her question into the uncertain air between Chilton and the waiter. A tall leather folder appeared
in her hands, the florid descriptions of the food on offer swimming before her like a foreign language. She looked closer and realized that it
was
in a foreign language: French.
“Just the chicken, I guess,” she said, hoping that the menu actually included chicken as it was plucked from her grasp and James vanished into the dim recesses of the club.
“Now then,” Chilton began, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, “tell me of your great discovery.” Connie glanced at him to see if he was mocking her, but then decided that he was serious.
“I have found my unique, perfect primary source,” Connie started to explain. “Actually, that is not accurate, strictly speaking. I have found evidence that my unique, perfect primary source
exists
.”
Chilton leaned forward, elbows folded on the table. “Tell me,” he commanded.
Connie began by describing her adventures looking for Deliverance Dane in the Salem meetinghouse archive, leaving a gaping Sam-shaped hole in her narrative. When she started her story by returning to the strange name that she had discovered, Chilton frowned but said nothing. Connie spoke quickly, squelching any opportunity for him to interrupt. She carried him up to her visit to the Salem Will and Probate department, and listed the inventory of Deliverance’s belongings at her death.
“Connie, I am waiting to hear where this litany is going,” Chilton interrupted. “So far I have only heard you spending a lot of time mucking about in archives with little result.”
Connie pushed aside her aggravation at Chilton’s comment, her own enthusiasm outweighing her desire for his approval. “But I was confused by the list,” she continued, undaunted. “I couldn’t figure out why the executors would have listed a receipt book on the same line as Deliverance’s Bible, rather than treating it like any of the other books that she had in the house. Why would a ledger book have had the same value, financially speaking, as a big expensive family heirloom?” She paused to take a swallow of ice water.
At that moment James appeared again at her elbow, silently thrusting a
steaming plate of chicken fricassee onto the table between her silverware, and a platter of grilled salmon before Chilton. “Will there be anything else, sir?” James asked. Chilton looked questioningly at Connie. She shrugged.
“Not at this time, thank you, James,” Chilton said, dismissing him. She smiled apologetically at the waiter, who sent her the faintest hint of an eye roll in response before disappearing.
“Now, Deliverance left everything to her daughter, Mercy,” Connie continued. “So I thought, if the book was that important, maybe it would be mentioned in
Mercy’s
probate record, too.” Connie gesticulated with her fork, and a shadow of disapproval traveled across Chilton’s face.
“Indeed,” he said, toying with his fish.
“But get this,” said Connie. “I couldn’t find Mercy anywhere. I know that records can sometimes be incomplete from this period, but it just seemed kind of strange to have her vanish with no trace whatsoever. But then I realized that I was just being too narrow.”
“In what sense?” asked Chilton, watching her.
“Say ‘Mercy,’” said Connie.
“I beg your pardon?” Chilton asked, taken aback.
“You have an old-style Brahmin accent, Professor Chilton,” Connie said, wondering if she was stepping out of bounds. Do people with accents know that they have accents?
Let’s hope that Chilton has a sense of humor
, Connie thought, knowing that there had been no prior evidence in her years as his student to support that hope. Ah, well. “Please just humor me.”
“Mehcy,” he said, straight-faced.
“Right,” said Connie. “The dropped
r
, the flattened vowel. Now, say the name that is spelled ‘
M-a-r-c-y
.’”
“Mehcy,” Chilton said again.
“Exactly!” Connie said, gesturing with her fork again. “In phonetic spelling, which is how they did things before dictionaries and printing standardized the language, the names ‘Mercy’ and ‘Marcy’ are the same name!” Connie forked an overlarge slice of chicken into her mouth and chewed with triumph. Chilton smiled at her enthusiasm. Connie felt pleased to see that
she was beginning to win him over. “When I started looking for
Marcy
Dane,” she added, “I found all kinds of stuff. In fact, it turns out I had even stumbled across a number of her records at the First Church already without knowing that she was important.”
“Such as?” Chilton prodded.
“I couldn’t figure out exactly when she was born, but she belonged to the First Church in Marblehead for her whole adult life and was in good standing the entire time. She married a guy named Lamson in Salem, but I haven’t found his first name yet. She was involved in some kind of lawsuit in 1715. And she died in 1763. Leaving a probate record.”
She paused for another drink of water and saw that Chilton was now fully absorbed, though she suspected that he could have no idea where she was really going.
“And…?” he asked.
“And listed on her own probate record, along with the same house that Deliverance left her, was something described as ‘book—receipts for physick.’”
“Another ledger?” Chilton asked.
“That’s what I wondered at first,” Connie said. “But in the course of poking around town I found some interesting material culture.” She described the boundary marker with its strange charm and carvings. Again she left Sam out of her account. She was not sure if this omission was because she wanted to impress Chilton with her research acumen, or if it was because she wanted to keep the warm sensation that she felt whenever she thought about Sam a secret, for herself alone. Even now, perched across from Chilton at the table, zipped into awkward clothes, turning her thoughts to Sam made Connie feel taller, more alive. A pleasurable tingle traveled from the crown of her head down the back of her neck, and she smiled a tiny, private smile.
“Connie, I don’t follow you,” Chilton said. “What does this boundary marker have to do with a ledger book?”
“Wait,” Connie said, polishing off her chicken. “The boundary marker
is a vernacular example of magical thinking at work in the real world. Now, think back to what we know for sure about Deliverance Dane. She was
ex communicated
in 1692. In Salem.”
“Excommunication was hardly uncommon in the Puritan religious structure,” Chilton pointed out.
“But it was also the first thing that happened after someone was tried and convicted of witchcraft!” Connie struck her plate with her fork in her excitement. Chilton’s mouth began to pull into a smile.
Connie pressed on. “I started to think that if Puritan culture could produce a would-be magical object like the boundary marker, then perhaps that culture would have left other evidence of magical thinking as well. What if a receipt book isn’t a receipt book at all?” Connie paused.
Chilton waited, saying nothing “
Receipt
is also a variant spelling of
recipe
,” Connie clarified.
“Recipe?” Chilton repeated, brows knitted.
“When I found Mercy’s probate record I was finally sure. What kind of book would be valuable enough to get its own listing in a probate record, would be handed down from mother to daughter, and would contain recipes for ‘physick,’ also known as ‘medicine,’ and would have been owned by a woman who was probably convicted of practicing witchcraft?”
Surprise and pleasure began to crawl up Chilton’s face, and his lips slowly drew back into a wide grin. Connie reflected that she had never known her advisor to smile while showing his teeth before.
“A spell book!” Connie announced.
Chilton gazed across the table at Connie, his eyes gleaming with a hard, cold light.