Leaving Bayberry House: A Novel

By Ann L. McLaughlin

Two sisters, Liz and Angie, meet at their deceased parents country house to prepare it for sale. The sisters have never been close, but both are besieged by memories of their childhood and their parents. They are haunted by this house, where their father, a pacifist Unitarian minister, committed suicide. In the end, the sisters reconcile with each other and with the past. The novel takes place during one week in August 1973, when the sisters are middle-aged, but each chapter ends in a flashback to the years of World War II, when they were adolescents and the family was in turmoil, the father wrestling with his conscience over his pacifism and an affair with a Polish refugee, a son killed in the war, and one daughter sinking into bipolar disorder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel & Daniel Publishers
• Release date: Mar 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781564747174

Book preview

inspiration.

Leaving Bayberry House

Chapter 1

Monday

Angie

It is the summer of 1973 and the Carlson sisters are finishing breakfast on the front porch. Liz lists the cleaning jobs, the sorting and packing they must do, but Angie is listening to the insects singing in the unmown grass. She glances at the door to the big room and shivers, dreading the memories that could flood out. A distant plane hums, coming in over the sea. Beyond the lawn is the marsh, and beyond it, Plum Island, a dark green streak with the ocean beside it, gleaming in the morning sun. The beach will soon be dotted with vacationers, Angie thinks, who have made the hour’s drive up from Boston to lie in the sand and splash in the cold salt water one last time before the fall.

Angie stares at the shiny leaves of a bayberry bush, but sees her fifteen-year-old self, strapped to a hospital gurney, rigid with fear as a white-coated doctor fastens electrodes to her head. The police had questioned her first; later the doctors had. No wonder she has not been back here in twenty-eight years. They must sell this place; that’s why she’s come.

The books are the big job, Liz says, and blows a blue stream of cigarette smoke toward the rusted screen. The top of Liz’s coral-colored shirt lies unbuttoned at her neck, displaying a gold choker, which is bright against her tanned skin. She has always had a sense of style, Angie thinks, much more than she herself ever had. Liz’s gray-green eyes are stern in her long face, which remains remarkably uncreased although she is forty-five. A few feathery strands of gray are visible in the wavy hair above her ears, a flaw her hairdresser will surely remedy when Liz returns to New York.

Angie pushes at her forehead with the heel of her hand and looks up at an abandoned hornets’ nest hanging in the corner of the porch ceiling. She’ll go upstairs in a minute and take an aspirin. Her plane from Detroit was two hours late getting into Boston last night, but Liz was waiting at the arrival gate, svelte-looking in a black top and tan skirt. She led the way to the baggage claim with Angie following, as she used to do. Liz talked busily about the real estate woman she’d chosen and the prospects for a sale as she drove her shiny new Datsun north in the summer dark, while Angie sat with her arms crossed over her summer jacket, dreading their arrival at the house and the week ahead, living with her sister.

All at once as the headlights cut through the highway darkness, Liz plunged into the uneasy matter that lay between them: Liz’s absence from their uncle’s memorial service in Boston two months ago. It had not been a work crisis, Liz confessed, shedding the implausible excuse she had given at the time. She had driven up from New York to meet Angie and their aunt Isabel, at the familiar Unitarian church, as planned. She had climbed the stone steps in her black suit and the mantilla she had bought at Blooming-dale’s that morning, but she had not gone in. She couldn’t, she said. She had felt sickened suddenly with memories of the other family funerals there. The church was full of sorrow for Angie, too, and yet leaving abruptly was such an un-Liz-like thing to have done that Angie had glanced at her dim face above the steering wheel, feeling she didn’t know her sister.

This place should have been sold thirty years ago, Liz says abruptly and flicks an ash into the clamshell ashtray. God knows we could have used the money. Mom could have. Aunt Isabel and Uncle Terry could have, too.

Well, there were problems, Angie begins.

Problems? Ha, Liz says. That’s putting it mildly.

Liz’s ironic tone makes Angie clamp her back teeth together and yet she will have to ignore that unease, she tells herself, if they’re going to get the house ready in the coming week. She slides one hand under her denim shirt and tugs at her bra strap. A button is missing from her shirt, she notices; a stranger looking at them would think she was the frumpy older sister, with her messy bun and the usual strands of hair hanging down over her ears. But never mind the comparisons; they must tolerate each other and step around a swamp of memories if they are to get this job done.

Liz has already called a storage place and has arranged for the Salvation Army to pick up discarded clothes and bedding. I’m going to call a roofing company in Newburyport, she says. That leak in the roof, I showed you. She rests her cigarette in the clamshell and picks up a pencil from beside her memo pad.

But I thought Jack would do that. Angie thinks of Jack Nelson, the good-looking roofer and jazz pianist, on whom she and Liz both had crushes when they were adolescents and he was the teasing, black-haired son of the farmer at the bottom of the hill.

No. I called him; he’s too busy.

Too busy for us? For the Bayberry House? Angie watches Liz tug at her choker, her manicured fingers pinching the bright metal. He’s worked on the roof before.

Liz reaches for her package of Chesterfields to pull out another, remembers the lighted one, and lifts it to her lips instead. She’s hiding something about Jack, Angie thinks, and looks down at the cracked paint on the arm of her chair. She peels back a strip of white, dangles it a moment, then lets it fall to the brick floor.

That’s another job. Liz flicks her wrist at the chair and points to the table with its peeling top. Painting all the porch furniture.

Why do that? Angie says. That’s a big project and the buyers might not want this stuff anyway. Uncle Terry used to do it every summer, she adds. Remember? He used to complain, but he enjoyed it. Uncle Terry would never paint the porch furniture or mow the lawn again. Angie thinks of Liz at the church doors, staring into at that dim, familiar interior as the organ prelude ended, unable to walk down the aisle to join her aunt and sister in the front pew. Angie had left for the airport immediately after the service, but she knew her aunt was upset and embarrassed that her other niece had not appeared. Uncle Terry and Aunt Isabel had been their substitute parents, after all.

We’ll get a gallon of white at Dixon’s, Liz says, and a quart of green for the trim. Aunt Isabel wanted the trim blue, but she’ll never know.

Actually, she might, Angie says, and clutches a fold of denim on the knee of her dungarees. We may hear from her soon. She wants to come see us while we’re here and help with the packing.

Oh, God. Liz claps her hands on her head, letting a cigarette ash fall. When did she say that? She can’t drive anymore, can she?

No, but she has a friend at Stonecroft who might bring her. Isabel had announced the plan during the week after Uncle Terry’s death that Angie spent with her aunt in the guesthouse at the retirement home. Isabel insisted she knew where things were far better than Liz and Angie did, since they had not lived there for years and she and Uncle Terry had spent almost every summer in the house after the girls’ parents had died. Besides, Isabel said, there were items in the house that she needed.

Angie looks back at the hornets’ nest. Even if Isabel arranged to come for just a day, she would be in the way of their sorting and cleaning, which they must finish in their week here, and her constant talk and opinions would be exhausting. It’s all a little vague, Angie says uneasily, aware that she has been her usual evasive self, not direct with her aunt, as Liz would have been.

Isabel’s always vague, Liz says. Vague or furious, she adds, and sighs.

She’s eighty-six now. She’s allowed to be a little vague. Angie looks out at the sea, feeling defensive. Isabel could be difficult and yet the joint ownership of the house had worked surprisingly well for years. The two brothers had agreed every spring on the weeks each would occupy the house in the coming summer and on the projects each would do: scraping down the sailboat, widening the rose beds, cutting back the wild cherry trees, painting the porch furniture, all of which had happened, more or less as planned, at least until the war. Isabel was the one who came up with Bayberry House, Angie says. She named it, remember?

No, it was me. Liz lets out another stream of smoke. It was the day we picked a big pan of bayberries. We thought we could make soap and we boiled them up, but all we got was one measly candle. That’s when I thought up the name. Angie starts to dispute this; she’s sure it was Isabel’s idea, but Liz grinds out her cigarette and straightens. I’m going to start on the kitchen. Do you want to begin on the books? You said Larry wants that 1934 encyclopedia or whatever it is.

Angie thinks of her husband, who would be in his study soon, grading exams from his summer-school class. Larry knew the house only from her descriptions, but he remembered that set of the Britannica she’d told him about, and it seemed to Angie now that his instructions for packing and mailing the set arose more out of an attempt to distract her from old memories than out of a need to acquire more volumes for his library.

Liz starts to rise. She’s kept her good figure, Angie notes; her coral topslopes down over her high breasts, and she’s tall, like Poppy. Angie has grown a little thick around the hips, she knows; she is what a saleswoman in one Ann Arbor boutique termed statuesque.

Liz sits again and leans forward. Look, she says, frowning. I’ll do the basement. Okay? Her voice is stern and she looks straight across the table at Angie. You don’t need to go down there at all.

Okay, Angie says. That’s fine with me. She means to sound reassuring, but she thinks of her screams, which must have filled the room and this porch, too, years ago. Larry argued with her about this trip; he did not want her to come. When Liz first called her about selling the house and the job of cleaning it out, Angie agreed she would not go; she had good reasons for not returning. But then she reconsidered. Twenty-eight years had elapsed. She was strong now; it was unfair to make Liz do all the work alone, and sad not to say goodbye to the house that they had loved, despite all that had happened there. And yet now a full week in this house feels risky. Angie glances down at the brick floor of the porch. Her screams could not have filled this space; the policeman would have hurried her out through the kitchen courtyard into the police car.

She jerks back, pushing the image from her. I wonder if houses have memories? she says. I mean, if this house could talk.… She stops. What is she saying? Memories are exactly what she is determined to avoid. Besides, Liz would think her sentimental, talking that way.

Is Ceci home now? Liz asks, ignoring Angie’s question. Will she be around to cook for Larry while you’re gone?

Angie thinks of her daughter and catches her upper lip between her teeth. She must tell Liz about Ceci. I don’t know about cooking, she says. But she can unfreeze the casseroles I made. She lets out a short laugh. Darren can take care of himself, can’t he? He’s a good cook. She bites down on her bottom lip, annoyed with herself for veering away from the subject of Ceci.

Yes, but he’s in London. Left Friday for a World Health conference. Liz frowns. I’ve got another job in Tehran in September. I’ve got to be back in New York Sunday. I can’t stay here any longer than a week.

I know. I can’t either, Angie says, aware that Liz’s reasons for hurrying home are much more urgent than her own, which are mostly her futile worries over Ceci. She glances at Liz, feeling an old mixture of admiration and jealousy rise. You’ve been to Tehran three times now, haven’t you? You’re an expert on that place.

As a Farsi interpreter for the State Department, Liz travels often, usually to the Middle East. Her life with Darren in New York seems glamorous and sophisticated to Angie compared to her own life in Ann Arbor: her husband, her two almost-grown kids, her work as a potter, her part-time teaching and the academic community they know well. It is all quite predictable and safe, which was what she wanted, she reminds herself.

When does Ceci go back to college? Liz asks.

Mid-September, Angie says. If.…

She plucks at a thread hanging from a tear on the knee of her faded dungarees. This is the moment to plunge in, but Liz says, She told me she was bored and I told her to find some more-challenging courses this term. Then she’ll feel better, I think.

Angie stares at her sister; Ceci must have talked to Liz about her restlessness at college during the weekend she spent with her aunt in New York back in February. I hope she’ll visit me again soon, Liz says. We had fun.

She loved that visit. She talked about it for days. Clearly Liz has formed a bond with Ceci, which makes it more urgent that Angie explain the situation.

Larry and I are worried about Ceci, Angie begins. She left the dorm in April; she’s living with this guy.

Gary? Liz supplies.

Well, yes. So Ceci had talked to her aunt about Gary, too. She’s thinking of dropping out of college for a while. Did she tell you that?

No, Liz says. She just complained about the dumb Comp and Reading she had to take.

Dropping out is Gary’s idea, Angie explains. Larry and I have talked about it a lot. We’ve given her our advice, lots of it. Larry says she’s just got to decide in her own way. I mean, of course, we want her to go on with college, but right now the culture is so.…

Sounds like a tough time all around, but it’s not something you can solve.

That’s what’s so hard. Larry and I can’t solve it. She’s got to do it herself. We just have to be patient, you know, wait and see.

Yeah, that’s it, I guess. Hey. Liz shoots out one arm and peers at the small gold face of her wristwatch. It’s almost nine. We’ve got to get started. She pulls the shell of cigarette ashes closer and looks at Angie. I want to hear more, but right now we better get started. Okay? She stands. I got some boxes at Murphy’s. They’re in the car.

Angie feels an old humiliation flood through her. Of course, they must get started, but.…Her timing was wrong, she tells herself as she stacks the plates and cereal bowls on the tray; she should have waited. Liz carries the tray inside and Angie follows with the percolator. She stops in the doorway. The straw rug in the big room, as they always called it, is streaked with morning sun. Angie glances up at the cathedral ceiling and then at the staircase leading to the balcony above. She looks at the balcony on the opposite side of the room and starts to remind Liz how they once called Romeo, Romeo. Wherefore art thou Romeo? from one balcony to the other, but Liz is already in the kitchen. Angie stares, feeling incredulous that she is actually in this room again, a middle-aged woman, who has lived almost thirty years without these smells, that couch, that long table, this familiar-feeling space.

The fireplace is below the larger balcony, and the long couch and the armchairs sit staring into its emptiness. The French doors at the end of the room open to the porch on the other side, where the family used to eat supper so they could watch the sunset. Angie glances at the long dining table in the corner of the room with the built-in bench on one side. She sees the family around the table, the candles in the tall pewter candlesticks, the bowl of lobster shells in the middle, the swapping of claws, the buttery fingers and someone rising to get more napkins. Stop it, she tells herself, and moves into the kitchen.

The kettle on the stove is already steaming. Liz pours the hot water into the enamel dishpan and turns the brass faucet to let in some cold. She talks about the Murphys as she pulls the mugs and then the bowls from the soapy water and sets them in the dish drainer. Angie dries them quickly, trying not to think of evenings when she and Liz filled this space with their singing as they dried glasses and plates: Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.

Liz pours the soapy water into the sink. Come on, she says. Let’s get those boxes. They walk across the lawn to the drive-way and Liz turns the key in the lock of the trunk, but it doesn’t open. Damn it, she mutters. I just bought this car a month ago. Angie puts her hands on her hips and leans back to look up at the blue, cloudless sky, then glances down the driveway. The path to the playhouse is overgrown; she’ll clip back some of that brush, if there’s time. Liz twists the key again and the trunk yawns open. She lifts two cardboard boxes and drops them on the gravel driveway. This’ll be a start, she says, and drops three more.

Angie fits two boxes into a larger one and starts across the lawn. She pulls the screen door open with one hand and glances back. The sea has turned bright silver in the morning sun. She starts down the hall to the back living room, glad to begin on the books, glad to be alone at last.

———

Angie is kneeling in front of a bookcase. Books are stacked on either side of her: an unsteady pyramid on the right of books for the library, and on the left, a loose jumble of books to discard. The empty boxes are pushed together near the fireplace, the encyclopedia stacked beside the couch. Angie looks up at the almost empty shelves, surprised at how much she’s done. She glances back at the encyclopedia and thinks of Larry. Should she be here? Larry thought not, though he’d been supportive once she decided to come. Dr. Land gave no opinion, of course, but Angie could detect her concern in the way she held her coffee mug in both hands at their last appointment.

She lets her eyes travel to the empty fireplace. She was the one who discovered him, the one who called the police. Suppose she started shaking now, sobbing or screaming. Suppose she had to go to a hospital again: unknown doctors with their clipboards, questioning her. It could happen. This place is coated with memories, like layers of paint—some good, some terrifying, and yet all of that was almost thirty years ago.

Has she come to prove to herself that she is entirely recovered? No. She proved that long ago in the twenty-five years of her marriage: zipping children into their parkas, finding boots, carpooling in the cold mornings, cooking supper at night. Liz was not a part of that, really, or only in glimpses, and she was not so convinced of Angie’s recovery. Has Angie come to prove to her sister that she is strong and competent, with a full life of her own?

Angie sighs and puts a stained thesaurus on the discard pile. Liz is tense and it isn’t just about her; something about Darren, maybe, or Jack. Could it be Jack? She and Liz