The Evening Spider (17 page)

Northampton Lunatic Hospital

Northampton, Massachusetts

December 20, 1885

I
could not cease thinking about Mary Stannard's face, detached from her head and floating in a jar at Yale. I began to wonder what it would have been like if they'd brought it into court as the defense had requested. Her face would have been nothing more than a putrid flap by then—draped over a skull.

And I considered my own mask—equally removable, and equally grotesque. Did I not deserve to have mine torn off as well? Did I not deserve it more—much more—than that poor innocent?

You see, I was becoming more certain that I was not what I appeared to be. Even the pages of my journal revealed a false character—a fantasy.

I don't care much for sewing, for one. And truly, I've never gotten excitable, in my heart, for a plum pudding or a spice cake—except when I was a child and did not have to cook it myself.

There were days when I cursed both duties. And now, in one
way I have gotten my wish. In another, I've gotten the absolute opposite.

For now I sew all day, on most days.

While I rarely work in the hospital kitchen, I
do
sew all winter long. I am allowed the privilege of helping in the greenhouse from time to time, but the majority of my days are spent in the Sewing Room. Mr. Pliny Earl, the director of the hospital, sets quotas for us, with incentives. More meat and fruit for those who meet the expectations, and less desirable accommodations for those who refuse to produce.

Mostly I've sewn shirts, but I've sewn two straitjackets as well. I wonder if there is some calculation to the assignment of sewing a straitjacket. Is one given the job because of one's precision with the needle, or as a perceived need for a reminder of where, exactly, one resides?

Have I worn one? Yes, Harry. But only in the earliest of my days here. When I'd throw myself about and scream my Martha's name. On the last and longest night so restrained, I felt an itching up my chest and was convinced a spider had crawled inside the terrible garment. I was so hoarse then that my claims of the spider went unheard. My screams became whimpers, and then nothing at all. As dawn came, I thought of my two lovely birds. They'd helped numb me of Martha's memory once—and so they did it again. And thereafter, the nurses found they did not need to restrain me any longer. Archibald and Mercy keep me quiet and still enough that my body can be put to work, and my mind, at night, to sleep.

Haverton, Connecticut

December 15, 2014

Wallace agreed to come to my house during Lucy's morning nap. We left the time open, and when Lucy was finally down, I called Wallace at the historical society, and he drove over.

As we settled at the kitchen table, I propped the video monitor on a nearby windowsill so I could spy on Lucy as she slept. Wallace watched me as I adjusted the monitor's volume and brightness but didn't comment.

“Since finishing reading,” he said, “I've been doing a bit of research on Frances Barnett and some of the people she mentions in the journal. I gather from your response to my e-mail that you've been doing the same.”

I nodded. “I looked up all three Barnetts—Matthew, Frances, and Martha—on a Connecticut vital records database. I could only find Matthew. He died here in Haverton in 1912. Of course, the basic death record doesn't say if he died at home or not.”

Wallace glanced around my kitchen for a moment, taking in the hastily wiped countertops, the neon plastic baby bowls, and perhaps the slight whiff of diaper coming from the garbage can.

“Does that matter?” he said in a stage whisper.

“It's just one of those things that would be nice to know,” I said. “Anyway, I couldn't find Frances on either the Connecticut one or the Massachusetts one. I tried Frances Flinch and Frances Barnett. There was a Frances Barnett who died in 1864 in Framingham, but of course that's not her.”

Wallace nodded. “Those databases are, of course, missing information from the nineteenth century. You can often get lucky and find something you're looking for, but you can't count on someone being there.”

“I called the vital records office here in Haverton, too. They couldn't locate a Frances Flinch Barnett or any variation on that name. Martha, either. There is a record of her birth, but not her death.”

“There's a reason you didn't find Martha,” Wallace said. “I
figured out that she went by the last name Barnett for only one year of her life.”

“What? How?”

“I also tried vital records,” Wallace explained. “I couldn't find a marriage or a death record for her—at first. But then I recalled something—again, Dr. Graham's notes. There is a little girl named Martha Wooley whom Graham visited in 1885. She had the measles. As did her mother, Clara. Clara had a really terrible case, apparently. Clara Flinch Wooley. Kind of cozy name, huh? Wooley.”

“Clara, Frances's sister, then?”

“Yes. I believe so. It appears that Clara and her husband, Jonathan, raised Martha as their own after Frances was sent to Northampton. Makes sense, doesn't it? Frances's journal—if it is to be believed—indicates that Clara often cared for Martha even in her infancy. Perhaps Matthew Barnett—perhaps everyone involved—felt that it would be most kind to the child to be raised by her aunt rather than some hired nanny. I mean, I can only speculate as to the reason.”

“Did they both make it through?” I felt my chest tightening. “The measles, I mean?”

“Yes. They did.”

I let out a sigh of relief.

“I'm sorry,” I said, after a moment. “I just realized I didn't even offer you anything to drink. Tea, maybe?”

“I'll have a tea if you're having one. But don't make it just for me, please. I'm sure you spend a fair amount of time catering to someone else's needs. I don't want to . . .”

Wallace stopped speaking as I filled a teakettle with water and plopped a basket of assorted teabags in front of him.
Catering.
I hadn't thought of it that way before. I was a
caterer
this year. That was so much more respectable than a
cow.

Wallace selected a plain English tea, and I pulled out chai spice.

“Do you wish to hear more about Martha?”

“There's more?”

“Yes. I went back to the vital records and found a marriage certificate for Martha Wooley of Haverton who married an Alexander Soloway in 1903. I didn't find her death certificate. But I've had some luck, quite often, sniffing out people in the old census records that are available through the state library system. I found a Martha Soloway showing up several times living with Alexander Soloway in Cheshire, with seven children. She showed up there consistently until 1940. The census records aren't accessible after that. But still. If someone who was born in 1879 made it at least until 1940, I'd say she did pretty well. If we're talking about quantity and not quality, of course. There's that.”

“You did a lot of work,” I said. “Thank you.”

“It only took a few minutes, actually. I access those sorts of records all the time when people want a little help with genealogy projects and the like.”

“It's a relief,” I admitted. “After the tone of Frances's last few journal entries . . . I was worried about Martha.”

“I sensed you were, yes. Now you know that she was probably okay. I gathered from the journal—as I'm sure you did—that her aunt Clara doted on her.”

“Yes . . .” I said.

The teakettle's metal bottom began to squeak softly as it
heated, as if voicing the unease that was settling back upon me as quickly as it had lifted.

“But then . . . Martha never lived in this house again, after that,” I pointed out. “Probably. So while it's a relief to know she survived her mother's difficulties and lived a long life . . . it doesn't really answer any of my concerns about Frances.”

The crag near Wallace's nose deepened. “Your concerns?”

“She was crazy, right? So . . . knowing what happened to Martha doesn't help me to know what Frances did. What Frances did in
my house.
”

I watched Wallace carefully as he reacted to this. He didn't seem to know what to do with his face. He grimaced and bit his lip.

“Well, it was Frances's house first, let's remember,” he said.

The teakettle was rumbling to life. I picked it up rather than waiting for it to whistle, and poured.

“Exactly,” I said. “That's exactly it. I'm starting to wonder . . . maybe it still
is
her house, in a sense.”

I sat across from Wallace, sliding his tea to him. He fiddled with his teabag tag, then dipped the bag up and down.

“Still
is
her house?” Wallace repeated.

“Like she's still here. Or like there's something of hers that was left.”

I heard my own voice go low as I said these words.

“Something?” Wallace said, smiling uncertainly, as if trying to detect if I was joking.

As I stared at the steam rising from my tea, my neighbor Patty's words came back to me:
She was crying, “Please don't take me away! Who is going to take care of the baby?”

Wallace stared at me, lifting his mug to his lips. He took a swallow, then gasped at its heat and put the cup down.

“GAH!” he said, and flicked his tongue, apparently trying to cool it off.

“Would you like some water?”

“Please.”

I handed him a glass from the tap, and after he'd taken a long sip, he said, “I'm sorry. Of course I should've let it cool off. Your expression . . . distracted me.”

“I'm sorry,” I said softly.

I seized the video monitor and turned up the volume.

“Are you all right?” Wallace asked.

“Yeah. I just thought I heard her waking.”

“That really is a nifty thing. I wish they'd had them when my sons were growing up.”

“Sons? How many?” I asked.

“Three. Trouble is . . . when do you shut it off?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly that.
When
do you shut that thing off? When they're three? Four? I wonder if I'd still be watching my sons while they sleep, if I could.” Wallace paused and massaged his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I mean, if the technology had been available to me.”

“Well, I think I'll turn it off when she's not as likely to hurt herself. Like, when she's old enough not to strangle herself in a tangled blanket.”

“Not as likely to hurt herself,” Wallace repeated, shrugged slightly, and took a sip of tea. “You realize, of course, that they never become any less likely to hurt themselves? It's just the conceivable manner in which they'll do it that changes.”

“Of course.” I sighed. I wondered why older parents so often felt the need to piss on the parade—to remind you of how mouthy or pimply or drug addled your baby might soon be. “I just meant hurt herself in her sleep. When they're a little older, they at least learn to pull things off their faces. Untangle themselves from blankets. That sort of—”

I stopped talking.
Untangle themselves from blankets.
The lilac afghan. With holes so big her elbows and feet sometimes poked right through.

“Abby?” Wallace prompted.

“Look,” I said. “Can I find Frances Flinch Barnett on the census records, you think?”

Wallace shook his head. “I tried already. Frances Barnett and Frances Flinch, but I didn't find anything relevant. The national census records for 1890 were destroyed in a fire in 1921. So that certainly doesn't help—as that would be the decade I'd think she'd be most likely to show up if she ever got out of the asylum. I fear she may have died in Northampton. A next step would be to check Northampton's death records—which might require a trip up there. But I suspect that deaths in that institution might not have been meticulously documented. Just a hunch.”

Wallace blew on his tea, puckering his lips delicately. For such a dapper older gentleman, he seemed to have a slightly exhibitionist way with his mouth.

“Now . . . can we get back to your previous comment? About what Frances may have left in the house? Now, did you mean that literally? Figuratively?” Wallace hesitated. “Supernaturally?”

I looked up, startled. Wallace was watching me with eyebrows raised and a sheepish little smile—as if he half expected
me to slap him. He also looked slightly weary. It took me a moment to identify what made me think so. The skin beneath his eyes formed two thin little pouches. Was he tired today? Or just old? I couldn't remember if they'd been so prominent on the day I'd met him.

Just old, I decided. He had three grown children. He'd heard it all before. Surely he'd met crazier people than me. For all I knew, he was one.

“The last one,” I admitted and then sat back in my chair and finally took a sip of my own tea.

“Okay,” Wallace said and nodded just slightly. “Do you wish to say more about that?”

“I'm not sure,” I answered, glancing at the monitor again.

“All right,” Wallace said. “Fair enough. Thank you for answering the initial question, though.”

“Suffice it to say, I'm concerned specifically about what happened to precipitate Frances's being dragged off to an insane asylum. Because whatever that was—and I'm assuming it had to be pretty bad—probably happened
here.
”

Wallace stretched and massaged the back of his neck. “Dr. Graham's note said she was suicidal.”

“Yes. But he doesn't say what she actually
did.
And she didn't write about suicide.”

“But she wrote about arsenic. That's close, in a way, isn't it?”

“Not for someone who actually seemed pretty interested in forensics. Not for someone who didn't sound suicidal in her diary even a few days earlier.”

“Didn't she?”

Wallace picked up the caramel-colored briefcase at his feet and pulled out Frances's journal and a stack of photocopies.

“I copied the pages so I could give the original back to you. And so we could both use copies if we want to reread, and prevent wear and tear on the original,” Wallace flipped through his pages and read, “‘
Perhaps repetition is good for the soundness of the mind. Corn corn corn berry berry corn corn corn. As long as one doesn't allow too many stray thoughts to interrupt the pattern.
'”

“That sounds suicidal to you?”

“Well . . . no. But it sounds like someone who might be struggling to keep herself in a certain frame of mind . . . or
out
of a certain frame of mind. Don't you think?”

I shrugged. “Certainly possible. I guess we're not ever going to know what actually happened. Like, if there was an actual suicide
attempt
or not. Or if it was just a theory on the part of her husband and doctor.”

“Does it matter terribly if there was an actual attempt? We know what the outcome was. Attempt or no, she was sent to the hospital in Northampton. And likely never came back to Haverton.”

“It might just be useful to know how . . .” I hesitated. “Well, how dark things got.”

“Useful?” Wallace repeated. “Are you sure of that?”

“She wants to know how much arsenic it would take to kill someone smaller than Mary Stannard,” I reminded Wallace.