The Evening Spider (24 page)

Northampton Lunatic Hospital

Northampton, Massachusetts

December 21, 1885

H
ow did you sleep, Harry?

Did you find your inn comfortable? Is it very far from here?

I did not sleep so well. One of my roommates was crying, as she tends to do on third or fourth nights. I do not know her well, as her English is poor and she works in the kitchen. But I believe there is someone she misses very deeply. That is what makes her weeping so difficult to bear. When I hear her, I invent ridiculous stories to attach to her tears—a dropped pie, a mouse-nibbled cake, a persistent and unmaskable mustache (and she does have a faint one, by the way). That way I can giggle at her rather than be sympathetic with her—
What a silly woman!—
just long enough to fool myself to sleep.

Occasionally, the trick does not work. Last night was one of those nights. After seeing you, I could not convince myself that there isn't a soul that I miss as painfully as that troubled weeper does.

Because there is such a soul.

And I worried, in the depths of the night, that I had imagined
or dreamed your visit. I worried that when morning came, the nurses would deny you had ever been here. And then you would not appear ever again.

I made an agreement with my conscience, and it was this: If your visit proved real in the morning, and if you came again, I would tell you the absolute truth. For yesterday, I was not entirely truthful with you. And I was beginning to worry that my harsh penance might be that your presence had been a dream or delusion.

And so:

The arsenic, Harry. Its purpose was not entirely innocent. My intentions were innocent when I purchased it, I assure you. But in the weeks that it sat in my hope chest, more sinister possibilities grew like a persistent mold in the darkest, deepest folds of my brain.

Haverton, Connecticut

December 19, 2014

I
f I walked to a neighbor's house in my pajamas and got someone to call the police or help me pick my own lock or break down my own door—I might be blind by the time I actually got to Lucy. Blind and broken, as my heart now threatened to thrash itself into a bruised and bloody pulp.

I opened my eyes. I wasn't blind. But Lucy was still crying.

I rushed to the side of the house. I found the right window. The side window to the living room. That would have to be the one. I scanned the driveway and narrowed my gaze on the cheap driveway lights Chad had staked along its length. I pulled one up, slipping with the effort but managing to stay on my feet. It wasn't very long or very heavy, but it was metal and it was better than using my bare fist.

The sound of the glass breaking wasn't as loud as I'd have expected it to be. Maybe the snow muffled everything.

It took only two punches with the lamp to clear a big enough hole to reach up and unlock the window. I took off my sweatshirt and used it to sweep the broken glass from the windowsill. Then I put the sweatshirt onto the sill to protect myself
from any leftover shards and hoisted myself over and into the house.

I ran to the kitchen and unbuckled Lucy from her car seat. I nursed her for a few minutes, ignoring the draft quickly coming into the kitchen from the gaping living room window. I felt vaguely aware of its cold, but insensitive—almost impervious—to it.

“I'm here,” I whispered. “Mama would tear this whole house down, if she had to, to get to you. You know that, Lucy?”

My forearms seized with goose bumps. I folded the bottom half of my T-shirt over Lucy to give her an extra layer against the cold.

She quieted quickly. I buckled her back into the carrier, then lugged it to the coatrack. I put on my maternity coat, as that was the only winter coat I could find from the previous year. Then I checked the pockets of my fall jacket. The keys were there. It hadn't been as cold the last time I'd taken out the car.

I took the side door out, snapped Lucy's car seat into the backseat, and started the car.

As we backed out of the driveway and started out of our neighborhood, I let the heat run on full blast. Most of the lights on the other houses were out—but for a few doorstep and porch lights that gave the whole street a storybook glow.

“Victorian charm,” I mumbled to myself, trying to regulate my breath and steady my grip on the wheel.

Snow flew at the window steadily, though not furiously. Driving into the dark tunnel of flakes—lit only by my high beams—felt like driving to another galaxy. I was glad of the
sensation, putting great psychological distance between me and the house.

There wasn't yet enough snow on the ground for it to be treacherously slippery. All that was required was a little care—a little confidence.

“I'll manage,” I assured Lucy, shouting over the noisy heater.

We arrived at the S
TOP
sign to the main road. I turned down the heat a notch.

“It feels like everyone in the world is asleep,” I said into the backseat. “Except you and me.”

I turned right—toward the gas station. I could stop there to think about where to go next—rather than driving aimlessly in the snow.

When we reached it, mine was one of only three cars. A man came out of the gas station clutching a small package—cigarettes or gum, I guessed—and drove off. And then it was just me and Lucy and presumably the person tending the register in the store.

I listened to Lucy's thoughtful sucking on her pacifier. Glancing in the mirror, I saw she was wide awake. Wondering, perhaps, what was going to happen next. Nothing like this had happened in her life so far.

Snowflakes landed gently on the windshield.

I considered the wisdom that
No two are alike
and decided it was bullshit. How could we know that for certain, without looking at them all?

I wished I could stay here all night, turning the heat on and off, allowing the snow to hide Lucy and me from the world.

But it couldn't hide us. We were a mother and an infant
wearing pajamas in an old Ford at a gas station in the snow. We'd be a troubling sight if we lingered here too long. We weren't allowed to be invisible. I was more visible now than I'd been before Lucy, and would be until she was about twenty-one.

I was not allowed to sit here and wonder about the fucking snowflakes. Except maybe to consider their cold, and to calculate how many layers of clothing Lucy needed as a result of their falling.

Lucy's sucking intensified.

“I
do
love you,” I said. My hand, however, refused to start the car.

I turned from the windshield and stared out the side window. My own reflection greeted me. Dull eyes sunken into purple shadows, American Gothic sort of hairstyle, ragged pajama T-shirt stretched and sloppy around my collarbones. I was exactly the sort of mother you'd expect to find parked outside of a gas station on a night like this.

As I turned from the window, I thought of Frances's words:

Is all of the light to come from me?

It stunned me to think of them—as I'd skimmed right over them the first time I'd seen them—looking then for more details about Martha and the attempted murder.

Now they scared me perhaps more than anything in that journal. Now I could relate to them.

I started the car. There was only one motel in Haverton—the Candlelight Inn. It had a reputation of being a bit outdated, a bit dingy. But I'd never heard of anything bad happening there, or any reports of rats or cockroaches. A more reputable chain hotel somewhere out of town would be better, but that would mean more driving in the snow. And I was too tired for that.

Northampton Lunatic Hospital

Northampton, Massachusetts

December 21, 1885

T
he purpose that developed was suicide. I will be direct about that now, Harry. The notion grew in my heart and in my hope chest in the weeks after the initial purchase. That was, as you'll remember, the same time I realized I was pregnant. In truth, I wondered if my body and mind could endure another ordeal like the one Martha's birth had caused me. I would, in those weeks, sometimes open the chest and lift the package and consider its possibilities, should I grow more desperate. Probably those thoughts were rarely serious, as there was Martha's future to consider. But occasionally, I must admit, they were most sincere. For what good was a deranged mother to Martha? Another pregnancy—at least so soon—was therefore frightening to think of. Try to understand that, Harry.

This fear dissipated when I lost the pregnancy. And after I observed Rosa Hayden—the very next day—a clarity and resolve took its place. The resolve was the one I spoke of yesterday. Do you remember? Allow me to return to that point. It might help you, ultimately, to understand the despair that preceded it.

That resolve blossomed on my second or third night home from that final December trip to New Haven. I rose after Matthew had fallen asleep. By the gaslight, I hemmed the emerald-green Christmas dress I'd begun for Martha. And as I stitched, I tried to focus my mind on this question: When, precisely, had my own mental weakness begun? If I wished not to be like Rosa Hayden, I had to try to examine this matter in detail. I had always been odd. And I'd always known this but had been relatively skilled at keeping it mostly to myself. When had I lost my skill for that? When, specifically, had I become
confused
?

The green dress was beautiful, with white satin ribbons I'd sewn carefully across the bodice. I do not think I was pretending when I fancied how beautiful Martha would look in it—and anticipated how the color would bring out the sylvan spirit of her eyes.

The beauty of it—and my pride in it and my love for its recipient—belied what my mind could no longer deny. My mind's troubles had begun in the late spring of the previous year. They had begun early in my first pregnancy. That is, in my pregnancy with Martha.

It seemed important to determine whether it was
knowledge
of the pregnancy, or the physical effect of it, that had started all of the difficulty. Had the very physical condition weakened my body and mind? Or had my sullen character simply rebelled against the condition, falling into despair at what should have been my greatest joy?

And what of that summer night when I had thrown that goblet and it had damaged Matthew's leg? What of
that
night?

I had not known yet that I was pregnant on that night. In fact, I believe the unsteadiness I felt that evening was my first sign.

Frances. Frances, did you hear me?

I'd stood by myself in the kitchen, ignoring Matthew's request.

I asked you to come here. I asked you to bring me a glass of water.

I was steadying myself on the sideboard, as I'd never felt so light-headed before. What were these colored lights in front of my face? Was this heaven calling me home? As I righted myself and the colors disappeared, I considered what could make a woman feel this way so suddenly, at my age and station.

Had I calculated my condition in that moment and become immediately enraged? Enraged at myself, or at Matthew, or perhaps at the certainty I would die in childbirth?

Frances! Are you daydreaming in there?

Had I felt enraged, or simply doomed, when that goblet left my hand? One or the other, but leave my hand it did.

Frances! What in God's name!

Later we spoke of how light-headed I had been. And it was true that I felt light-headed that evening. I felt the sensation in the moment in the kitchen just before I threw the goblet. And again in the later moments in the parlor, tending Matthew's cuts. But perhaps not in the moments in between. Perhaps not in the moment the goblet left my grasp. That moment had a fierceness to it that had nothing to do with light-headedness.

The cuts were not so terribly bad. When I suggested that he might need Dr. Graham's attention, Matthew said,
Nonsense. It will heal.

A week later—or perhaps a bit more—I saw him still favoring one foot. I urged him to reconsider, and he said that he would.

I'll go consult with him tomorrow, so you won't worry. And I won't tell him how I sustained it. I'll tell him I dropped the goblet myself. Is that agreeable to you, my darling?

By then I was fairly certain of my condition. I had told him that very day—and he was treating me delicately.

I wondered much, in those days, and in the days after Martha's accident, if he'd kept his promise. I doubted he had.

Now, in the aftermath of Rosa Hayden's tears, it seemed I ought to determine precisely the significance of my doubt. Whom had he told? What had he told them? And why?

Haverton, Connecticut

December 19, 2014

I
was inside the house. Lucy was safe. There was snow on the ankles of my pajama bottoms, melting into tiny puddles around my feet.

Cold air rushed through the hole in the living room window, so I held Lucy to my chest. I pulled my cardigan around her, but it was too thin to provide much warmth for either of us.

The rest of the window was covered in snow, but through the hole in the glass I could see outside. There it was not snowing at all. In fact, our driveway looked like a beach. And as I stepped closer to the hole in the window, I could hear the sound of its waves.

Swish. Shush. Swish.

There was a woman standing there in the sand. She was wearing a black skirt and cable-knit gray sweater. It didn't matter that she had no face and no legs, or that she was broken down the middle and across the waist. I knew who she was. She'd worn those clothes at the wake.

Swish.
A gentle wave of water swept over the driveway, wetting only her pedestal bottom. When it receded, it left a single seashell next to her on the driveway.

I woke up with a gasp and glanced at the clock next to the bed: 2:49.

At least Lucy was still sleeping beside me. I pulled her to the very middle of the bed and curled around her. On her other side, I checked the positioning of two stiff motel pillows I'd rigged to keep her from possibly rolling off, then pulled the spongy nylon blanket halfway up her body to warm her.

As I closed my eyes, my mind went back to the gray cable-knit sweater that Wendy's mother was wearing at the wake.

You might not have known this about Wendy, dear. She almost died from her anorexia before she came to college. Her organs were still very weak—her heart was still weak. She couldn't handle those pills like a stronger girl might have. Even if you'd found her earlier—hours earlier—there's probably nothing that could've been done.

She'd clasped my hand in her cold palms as she'd said it, and I had not been able to move my gaze above her sweater and onto her face. Even if I'd managed it, the memorial service was not the time or the place to confess that Wendy had
told
me that she'd been anorexic. It was, in fact, something Wendy was not at all shy about telling. She'd told me on our second night living in that room together.

Nor was it the time or place to mention that I'd always been a little put off by how much Wendy seemed to enjoy explaining to me how troubled she was. I had had friends like that in high school, who seemed to want to compete about whose parents' divorce was nastier or who'd had sex the earliest, or who was really bulimic and who just threw up occasionally for sport. Probably I was like that, too, if we were going to be completely honest about it. But I was in college now and I was
over
that
shit. I was smarter than that, and I expected the same of anyone who wanted to be my friend. And Wendy
could
maybe be my friend if she'd just quit embarrassing herself.

No, the wake had not seemed the right place to confess any of that.

Or that Wendy did talk that last night—rather casually, but not for the first time—about wanting to take a pill or a bullet that would make her disappear.

Or that I'd said,
Maybe you need to talk to someone, Wendy.

And she'd said,
My parents have already made me talk to lots of someones and lots of no ones. The someones they make you talk to are all no ones, really. Because they don't care about you. Not really. They're paid to care and then they say your time is up and then they go home. You know what it means when a person says, “Maybe you should talk to someone?” It means “Maybe you should talk to someone that's not me.”

Well, what do you want me to say, Wendy?

I don't know, Abby.

I'm just trying to help.

Well, aren't you nice?

Maybe you'll feel better if you get some sleep.

Maybe.

Can I turn out the light now, Wendy?

Sure, I guess.

Nor did the wake seem the right time or place to confess that those were the last words I ever spoke to Wendy—unless you counted the words I'd said to her dead body in the morning.

You'll actually feel better if you get up and get your ass to class.

Or at least take a shower and have a little breakfast and see how you feel.

Not knowing that she was dead, of course. Not knowing till the afternoon, when I opened that door and found her curled in the exact same position, knobby knee sticking out of the lilac afghan.

Turned out she had sleeping pills and painkillers and some peppermint schnapps to wash it all down. I had no idea where a person our age even got pills like that. I had no idea where in the room she kept them.

She was smarter than me. Way smarter. I was not such hot shit after all.

I had been a vile young adult. There was no way around that. My parents had tried to raise me right, and Wendy's parents had presumably tried the same, as they seemed nice people—and still we'd ended up in a room together, one of us dying rather casually and the other ignoring her to death.

It had seemed like there should be a time and place to confess all of that someday. All of that and a thing or two more. But of course the opportunity never presented itself. I never saw Wendy's mother again. Why would I? Unless I sought her out.

Which I hadn't.

And yet—I hadn't demanded much of life after Wendy because I knew little—if anything—was owed to me. I spent my life in the presence of privileged adolescent girls, and I listened as best I could to their endlessly erratic emotions because that was approximately what I deserved.

I wasn't such hot shit. But a decade and a half passed, and I'd started to forget that. And then look what I had gone and done. Who exactly did I think I was? I had birthed a beautiful child who would grow up, and whom I'd send out into a world of young adults no better than the one I had been. And I would
deserve nothing better. Lucy might. But I wouldn't—no matter how much I loved her. Loving her could only make my punishment and penance more painful when it finally came.

I traced a gentle circle on the flannel back of Lucy's pajamas and buried my face in my pillow. I cried until my eyes were too sore to produce any more tears. My body screamed for sleep, but I forced my eyes to stay open.

Why had I ever thought I deserved to sleep?