she was just plain strange. Like that day we saw her way out at the end of Derby Wharf standing huge against the tiny lighthouse, incanting love spells for her girlfriends, who followed her around like puppies. We used to spy on them from out in the harbor, from the Whaler parked on someone else’s mooring. We would laugh as we watched them, covering our mouths so they wouldn’t hear us. But those spells must have worked in the end, because Ann’s friends started having little hippie babies, which they dressed in tiny tie-dyed T-shirts and nursed in public places. Never mind that the sixties were long over by then. “The sixties didn’t arrive in Salem until the seventies,” Lyndley used to say, and of course she was right. But when the sixties finally did arrive in the old port of Salem, Ann Chase was one of the first to jump on board. And when that ship sailed away again, Ann stayed behind waving from the beach. She had found her home port.
Back then everyone could do a little magic, but Ann took it to a new level. Instead of reading tarot cards or throwing the I Ching, she took up phrenology. She could tell your fortune by reading the bumps on your head. She would grab your head with both hands and press it as if she were buying a melon at the market. In the end she could tell you when you were going to marry and how many kids you were going to have. Lyndley went to her a couple of times, but I never did, because I didn’t like having my head touched, and besides, I had Eva to tell my fortune if and when I needed it.
What Ann was best at were the oils. She grew herbs in window boxes and began brewing remedies and distilling essential oils. One by one, as her roommates moved on, turning into yuppies first, then later into soccer moms, Ann replaced them with cats. She opened an herbal shop down at Pickering Wharf before it was a high-rent district, and she was successful enough to stay on when it became the fashionable place to shop. Eventually, as the shop got more and more successful, she stopped trying to grow her herbs in the window boxes and started purchasing them from Eva instead. That was when they became friends.
Ann’s evolution into “Town Witch” was gradual. To hear Eva tell it, you’d think that Ann just woke up one day and realized that she was a witch. In fact, it wasn’t a decision; it was an evolution. But her family history was what made her famous. The witches of Salem—the locals who have taken up the practice or the ones who’ve been practicing and have come to Salem because it has been declared a safe haven for witches—have all rallied around Ann Chase. They wear their association with her like a badge of courage, one that proves that the Salem witches really did exist here all along, a kind of “look how far we’ve come” thing. It proves nothing of the sort, of course (because Giles and Martha Corey were not witches, just unfortunate victims), but the connection, once made, was difficult to erase. I wonder as I sit here how Ann feels about being their mascot.
She has been talking now for several minutes: about Eva’s gardens and her plant conservation, which has been written up in magazines I’ve seen over the years. I want to hear what Ann has to say, but that same person is whispering again, and it’s interfering with my concentration. I look around, but I can’t find the source, and so I try again to concentrate on Ann’s speech and on the details of my aunt’s life.
“Eva saved at least one plant species that I know of from extinction,” Ann says.
“Wild exaggeration, load of malarkey,” the same voice whispers, loud enough for me to hear this time. I reel around, shushing the women to my left, thinking it’s one of them. They look at me strangely. “As if you have two heads,” the voice whispers in my ear, louder this time, much closer. I recognize the voice. It is Eva. She is speaking loudly enough to fill the church, or at least to be heard in the rows around me, but it is clear that I am the only one hearing her voice.
“Eva Whitney was one of us,” Ann begins, and some of the witches clap. “Not officially, of course, but she was.”
I’m looking at the reverend now, which is where Eva wants me to look. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. He was a good friend. I have memories of him at the house, discussing Scripture and literature late into the night.
I look at Dr. Ward. I can tell he’s distraught. He’s trying to hold himself together for the sake of the congregation.
“I am reminded of a quote that was a favorite of Eva’s,” Ann says. “‘The grass will grow green again next year. But you, beloved friend, will you return?’” Ann looks right at me as she speaks that line.
Ann is stepping down now, and Dr. Ward is heading back toward the coffin. As Ann descends the stairs, her dark robes inflate, and I am reminded of flight, and of witches on broomsticks. Then Eva tosses me a snippet of memory, of us all sitting here—Beezer, and Eva, and me—“the day the man flew,” or at least that’s how Beezer always referred to the incident.
It was Christmas Eve. Dr. Ward was new then, and Eva was showing her support for him by making sure everyone attended services. Beezer had been selected to play the bells that year, along with twelve other children, who all wore matching red robes. Each child had one bell, and together they played an oddly timed “Ode to Joy,” each child lifting his bell on cue and shaking it as if his very salvation depended on it. When Beezer finished, he made his way back to the booth. He was blushing from all the attention and from the heat, which Dr. Ward had cranked high to make sure the children stayed warm in the drafty old building.
The pews in the center aisle are slightly elevated, about six or seven inches, which is unusual, and if you forget about it for even a minute, it can be treacherous. I remember sitting in this box with Beezer that night. The service was ending. The choir was singing, just as it is now. An older gentleman, in a hurry to get home and seeing a break in the procession, violated protocol and jumped in line, but he must have forgotten about the step down. What I remember most is the look on Eva’s face as the man came hurtling into our box, headfirst, as if he were flying, his legs almost parallel to the floor. Beezer spotted it before the rest of us and yelled “Holy shit!” which was something Eva would have slapped him for if we’d been at home, but before she could reach him, he was down on the floor of the box pulling me with him. Everyone in the church turned in time to see Eva reach both hands up over her head and grab the old man midflight, like a gymnastics coach spotting a vaulter. It changed the man’s trajectory and probably saved him from a broken neck. And for a moment, before he came down, the man was weightless and flying. I remember thinking he’d be okay if he could just believe he was really flying and not that he was about to get hurt. But the old man lost it, his face contorted, bracing. He landed hard, half on Eva’s lap and half on the gate to the box, shattering the mahogany as he did. By some miracle the man wasn’t hurt. And neither was Eva. I remember how impressed Beezer had been by Eva’s catch and by her courage. He talked about it for days.
“Holy shit!” the voice whispers then, and I see Beezer smile. I realize that this memory was meant for him, not me. He’s half laughing now, half crying as he remembers. Then the soloist begins to sing “Raglan Road,” which is an odd choice but a good one, one that my brother picked out and that I know Eva would have liked.
I see Ann smile as she passes, her robes still flowing, and there’s movement as Eva’s spirit jumps from our box to Ann. I look at Beezer to see if he has noticed, but he’s up and moving toward the coffin along with the other pallbearers, and he hasn’t seen anything.
We follow the coffin then, all of us. As the massive church doors open, the cool inside air condenses into a fine mist, steaming as it releases us to the burning pavement below. But before we go, there’s a moment when everything stops. No one wants to go back outside. A step outside is the end of something, a huge change. We can all feel it. Never mind that it feels like about ninety-seven degrees out there. This is something else. For a moment the threshold seems too high to step over, not only for the pallbearers but for everyone else as well. No one wants to be the first to take that step. Eternity is in this one moment, and we are all suspended in it. It is finally Dr. Ward who breaks the spell and steps outside.
Waves of heat rise off the asphalt driveway, distorting the figures of the people as they step into sunlight, blurring everybody’s edges then, not just Ann’s. It’s as if we were all spirits and the coffin with its dark horizontal lines is the only thing that has any true weight and mass. People