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AT SCHOOL WE’RE learning about the Salem Witch Trials. Between 1692 and 1693, Mrs. Crowley tells us, 250 women were accused of witchcraft, 150 imprisoned, and 19 hanged. They could be convicted by “spectral evidence,” an accuser’s assertion that they appeared in ghostly form, and “witches’ marks,” moles or warts. Gossip, hearsay, and rumors were admitted as evidence.
“There’s this great line from The House of the Seven Gables: ‘The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease.’ Your father must have felt he had to forge his own path, even if it meant cutting ties to his family. It’s brave to resist the pull of the familiar. To be selfish about your own needs. I wrestle with that every day.”
As the summer progresses she goes back and forth between Walton and me like a carrier pigeon, carrying scraps of news, impressions, gossip. She is perfectly suited to the task—one of those girls with boundless energy and intelligence and no place to exercise them, like a terrier with a housebound owner.
“Did you hear what I said?” Do other people walk around in this state? Did my parents? What a strange idea—that perfectly ordinary people with mundane lives might have once experienced this quickening, this vertiginous unfolding.
It feels as if my life is moving forward at two separate speeds, one at the usual pace, with its predictable rhythms and familiar inhabitants, and the other rushing ahead, a blur of color and sound and sensation. It’s clear to me now that for twenty years I have gone through the motions of each day like a dumb animal, neither daring to hope for a different kind of life nor even knowing enough to desire one.
The entire family bathes on the third Monday of each month in the same water in the kitchen,
AUGUST IS EXQUISITE agony. I want each day to last forever. I am fretful, fevered, perpetually irritated by everyone but Walton, to whom I’m determined to show my best self. It’s a peculiar kind of dissatisfaction, a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment not yet past. Even in the midst of a pleasurable outing I’m aware of how ephemeral it is. The water is warm but will cool.
After a few moments, she sighs. “Look, Christina. Be careful. That’s all I’m saying.” I know Ramona means well. But this is like telling a person who has leapt off a cliff to be careful. I am already in midair.
I think about the destructiveness of desire: of wanting something unrealistic, of believing in the possibility of rescue.
Maybe my memories of sweeter times are vivid enough, and present enough, to overcome the disappointments that followed. And to sustain me through the rest.
Heating this old house is like heating a lobster trap.
These neighbors leach pity the way a canteen of cold water sweats in the heat. The slightest inquiry is freighted with words unsaid.
The older I get, the more I believe that the greatest kindness is acceptance.
What she wants most—what she truly yearns for—is what any of us want: to be seen. And look. She is.
