A Girl Named Anna, page 21
“So it was Daddy who...?”
Mamma nods. “It was Mason who first told me about The Lilies. He said they’d come to town a couple of months before from Indiana, that their leader had started his mission in San Francisco in the eighties to bring purity and righteousness to the world.”
“Father Paul?” I coax. I shift uneasily on the bed, feeling the snarl of twine against my skin, trying to ignore every sensation except for the sound of Mamma’s voice.
She sighs. “It was the first time I heard his name. And when I made to leave, Mason clasped his fingers around mine and said he thought I’d really like their church, and would I like to go. I said yes.”
“But—” I try to cling to words, form a sentence from the thoughts that tumble from my mind. “Why?”
Mamma clasps her hands together, and there’s a brightness in her eyes that sets off a creeping unease in me. “The way Mason talked about him, it was like he was the Second Coming. You have to understand—I had nothing in my life. Nothing to divert me from my daily chores. But suddenly there was this man, showing me a new way to be.” I think of William, of the chance of freedom he has shown me, even before all of this, and I think I understand. “The church was about half an hour’s drive away from where we lived.” Mamma’s fingers play idly with a corner of her dress, working a seam with the edge of her nail. “It was set right next to the river, and the crystal water bounced the light off it and reflected right onto the church, so it seemed to glitter white. As we got out of the car, Mason explained the river was one of the signs Father Paul looked for when assessing the grounds of a new church. He said they believed the soul must be continually baptized, not just at birth, in order to wash away the sins that stick to the mortal body from the outside world. He told me Father Paul was a blessed man. That he had been chosen by God, to deliver His mission on Earth.
“Mason squeezed my hand and led me to the altar, to a tanned man in a white linen suit, with his hair tied back in a ponytail. He said, ‘Father Paul, I’d like to introduce you to Mary,’ and he presented me to him. Father Paul beamed at me—he had two rows of perfect teeth. He said, ‘Mary, welcome to our little church. We do hope you like it.’ He said they’d heard so much about me.
“I often think to myself, what would it have been like if I’d never met Mason? If I’d never gone to that church?” Her head shakes gently from side to side, and she fixes her gaze on the Bible on the floor beside her. “Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”
She rises from the chair, crosses the attic floor. There is something fragile in her movements, despite her height and broad stature; a trembling, in the intricate bones of her fingers; an unsteadiness on those long legs.
I swallow. “But what did?” I strain to catch her eye, but she stands at the window, looking out.
“After that first visit, it was so easy to fall into it all.” The back of her neck stretches as she looks through the slanted glass, over the treetops and parceled fields that have always protected our little house from the outside world. In a way, she is as trapped in here as I am. “There was a small fee, to join officially, to pay for the robe and the sandals, and other items necessary for my first baptism. I got an allowance from the work I did on the farm, but I was always embarrassed that I wasn’t offering enough. I started selling some of my trinkets—a necklace I inherited from my grandmother, my mamma’s pearl earrings—and every time I was able to contribute a little more, it made me feel good, especially with Mason sitting beside me, squeezing my hand and telling me how generous I was, that I was truly a blessing on the church.
“I brought flowers I had grown, to dress the church, and when Father Paul saw them, he took me into his arms and told me it was clearly the will of the Lord that I had been sent to them, that I was special. No one had ever told me that before. For the first time, I felt like I was surrounded by people who treasured me, and admired my gifts, and valued goodness and truth. For the first time, I felt loved.”
I am mesmerized, captivated by Mamma’s story: a woman who seems to have been so devoid of love her whole life. I want to speak up, to ask if it could have driven her to do such a thing as this, but something stops me. Instead, I listen.
“After that,” she says, “Father Paul began showing a particular interest in me. He gave me license to plant whatever I wanted around the church, and I spent all my free time there, sowing seeds, my hands in the earth. I grew lilies, of course, great big white ones that the members would pin to their robes on special occasions, hoping for my good fortune to rub off on them. And white roses—the symbol of the Lord Himself—and wild purple Passiflora, each part a representation of the Lord’s Passion and suffering. And they all blossomed and multiplied so fruitfully that it really did seem like the will of the Lord.
“When I was done each day, I’d scrub my hands until not a speck of dirt remained, to please Father Paul, to show how strongly I believed. I became so good at it, so meticulous, he would call me up to the altar, heralding me as an example to the congregation. ‘Look at your sister!’ he would say, holding my hands out for the church members to inspect. ‘See how she toils the land, and despite this keeps herself pure as the lilies in the field? This, I tell you, is doing the Lord’s work.’
“But soon, I started running out of things to sell. My donations to the pot got smaller and smaller, and I became fearful, every week, that someone would notice and say something. But Daddy was always leaving change around here and there, and there were little things I found to pawn, things nobody could notice, money that would benefit the church far more than our crumbling farmhouse. I felt bad, it’s true. I spoke about it during the Confession Ceremony, and let the members shouts of ‘Unclean’ swell around me, but afterward Father Paul called me to his office, told me I shouldn’t feel guilt for actions that would benefit the church, that The Lilies had a higher plan for me. The way he looked at me, and touched his palms to mine, I felt certain he was right.”
Mamma’s movements are hypnotic: the pulse of her eyelids, the jolt of her throat with each swallow, the repetitive smearing of her palms across her skirt. I can’t tear my eyes away from her.
“Daddy complained about the missing money,” she says. “I told him it was probably one of the farmhands, but he knew straightaway that it was me. One night, Mason dropped me back home, and I found everything I owned strewn on the front porch. Everything trampled through the dirt.
“When I walked in the house, it was so dark I almost missed him completely. But there he was, sitting at the head of the carved oak chair that his daddy had sat on, and his daddy before him, every inch the head of the household. And he told me I had to leave.”
Mamma’s hands squeeze into fists, and her face twists in hatred. “I spent my whole life being scared of that man. Everything about my life up to then was dirt and decay, from that wretched farm to my own father’s soul. My muddied clothes were a symbol of that. Before, I was trapped—there was nowhere else for me to go. But now I had a choice. There was Mason. And Father Paul. And purity and love and happiness. I made a choice, Anna. I chose The Lilies. If you had two paths in front of you, one you knew was dark and the other had even the smallest promise of light, which would you choose?”
When she looks at me there is a ferocity in her eyes, an intensity bubbling up in her that makes me feel scared, yes, but also the tiniest bit impressed. “I understand,” I murmur. And I do.
Mamma’s face softens, and she comes over to me on the bed. I struggle against the twine, twisting my fingertips to reach for her hand. She notices, moves it toward me, and I clutch her fingers clumsily in mine. Would it have been different if she had had a mother; or someone who cared for her as she has cared, in her own way, for me? We remain motionless, listening to the faint call of birdsong and my own dry swallows. I think this could be it—the moment she’ll come to her senses and let me go.
But then a noise intrudes into the silence. Low at first, but gradually getting louder. A repeated thud, thud, thud.
And a voice. A man’s voice.
Mamma drops my fingers, and her whole body goes rigid, her eyes round as full moons. She races to the door and barricades it with her body.
She turns to me, her face white. “It’s him.”
ROSIE
Through the French windows, the daylight is mellowing into early evening. Michael seems to relax into himself, his body slackening against the sofa. Georgia. At last it seems he is bringing us closer to the woman in the navy dress. Closer to Emily.
It’s quiet, Michael’s home. I’m so used to the familiar grumble of traffic outside our front door, or the even patter of Mum moving through the house, or the soft chords of Dad’s music, switched on as soon as he walks in the door. But here, it’s like every living thing has left us alone, giving Michael the stage to tell his story.
“Stepping off that plane in Atlanta was like stepping right back three years. The lingering smokiness from mountain wildfires, the corporeal reek of the Bradford pear trees, that dry, scorching heat. When I was living there, they became so much a part of my makeup that they’d stopped existing for me, but distance made each scent fresh and new.
“I admit I was scared. Excitement and a fair bit of bravado had got me as far as border control, but once I entered Georgia proper I couldn’t escape the feeling that Father Paul would somehow know what I was up to, and I half expected him to be there waiting for me as soon as I walked through the exit. It wasn’t that I thought he was dangerous, exactly. It was more of an overall unease.
“I hired a car, parked in town, just walked around for a bit. I bought some food from a deli and went to sit in the park. There was a group of teenagers in the shade near me, and something in their manner, the way they moved, reminded me of Ruth. There was the careful way they sat on the ground, the cautious glances they gave to their hands, subconsciously checking them for dirt. When I spotted the pendants around their necks, I knew I’d found who I was looking for.
“I played the tourist card, told them I was passing through on a road trip with my wife and daughter, that we were heading through Georgia down into Florida, and might stop off at that theme park... Astroland... Had any of them ever been? No, no, they all shook their heads. Most of them had never been out of the state. They genuinely seemed like they didn’t know why I was asking. Did they know that a girl had disappeared there, a little English girl, about ten years ago? That was when they began to get shifty, like maybe I was starting to go a bit off the beaten track. I told one of them that I liked her necklace. She was a pretty girl with white-blond hair that hung in a sheet down her back. I reached out to touch the necklace, but she pulled away and they all seemed to get up at once, said they had to leave. I was being stupid and erratic, but I’d come all that way and I was jet-lagged to buggery and thought this might be my only chance.”
Michael seems to hesitate, as if he’s decided to say something else but then thinks better of it, because his cheeks puff and he sways his head a little before carrying on. “I ate dinner with the owners of my B and B—a sweet old couple. I was the only guest, and the wife was keen to show off the best of her Southern hospitality. The husband told me their kids had all left the state, and that it was nice to have someone new visiting, so I let them coddle me. When I was released at last I sat in my room with its dusty floral bedspread and all those doilies, and I tried to piece together the broken fragments of the story.
“There was a knock on my door about ten o’clock, and Mrs. Leary, the wife, peeked around it. She was sorry to be bothering me, she said, but there was a man there to see me. She’d said I might be sleeping, but he told her it was urgent.
“Even before I left the room I knew who I would find. Part of me feared it, but part of me realized this was what I needed all along. I saw his boots first, shined so high his reflection bounced onto you. And a white suit—not a crease, not a wrinkle. And that hair, so neatly tied. Father Paul was standing in the Learys’ chintzy living room, under a wooden sign that said, ‘If Mamma Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy’—”
From upstairs there comes a distant wail, footsteps moving on the landing. Michael turns his eyes to the ceiling, then looks back at us. “Hugo waking up from his nap.” He looks almost as though he’s going to ask us to leave, and although I feel bad for forcing ourselves upon him, one look at the images scattered on the table tells me I can’t leave, not yet.
“What did Father Paul say, when you saw him?” I ask, gently but forcibly pushing him back into his story.
He cocks his head toward the hall, listening for signs of his family. “He told me I was an easy man to track down.” The noises upstairs settle and fade, so he turns reluctantly back to me. “There was a sneer to his voice, the way he said it, as if to say, wasn’t he so clever, to have found me. But now I think of it, I suppose I wasn’t being awfully discreet. An Englishman poking around a small town, asking questions. Once those kids mentioned it to him, it wouldn’t have been too hard to find me. He was very jovial, as seems to be his way. Asked me how my trip was, how I was finding the bed-and-breakfast. He asked after Angela, and Ruth. When I told him about Bill, he held his hands up to the heavens and said that was always going to be the way. He said, ‘Cancer like that—there’s not much chance of coming back from it.’”
Michael’s mouth thins into a hard line. “I think he was goading me. It was like he was trying to cut the small talk and get straight to the point, and I took the bait, like an idiot. I went for him. All that praying, and all that money, and he knew all along it was a complete waste of time. I told him he was a fraud, and a con artist, and that I could have him locked up. And he just listened to me rant and rave, and when I finished he quoted, as if by rote, that studies show that hope and prayer can have a powerfully healing effect. He said he wasn’t touting anything that hadn’t been written about by the modern, mainstream Christian Church. He was actually laughing at me, that scumbag, so I told him, let’s cut the niceties, why not tell me how The Lilies were involved in the disappearance of Emily Archer.” At the sound of her name my whole body tingles, and I sit up, convinced, suddenly, I’m about to hear the definitive proof I need.
“I thought I had him there, for a moment,” Michael says. “He didn’t speak, and his expression froze on his face, but then everything seemed to smooth itself out like an iron over one of his goddamn white robes, and he said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know who that is,’ with a voice like silk. I was feeling cocky now, and told him I knew all about it—that I had the images of the woman from Astroland. I thought I had him pinned down—a park full of kids, the proximity to Georgia, a member of his church, there on her own. Why else would she be there? I made a mental leap—the park’s exactly the sort of place Father Paul would despise...dirty, noisy, messy. I thought perhaps she’d been sent to kidnap someone... I don’t know...for one of their purification rituals or something.
“I said I knew they’d taken her, and demanded to know if she was still alive and where they were hiding her, and what they wanted her for. That’s when Father Paul really began to laugh. He told me I didn’t know anything at all. He said they had nothing to do with the girl, and that I should learn to keep my nose out of other people’s business if I knew what was good for me. And then he said, completely in control, ‘You should think very carefully before trying to involve yourself in matters that go way beyond you. You should go home, to your life in England.’ And he looked me dead in the eyes and said, ‘Look after your lovely Rebecca.’”
Beside me, Keira puffs her cheeks and blows a stream of air through her lips. “This guy sounds like a lunatic,” she says.
Michael nods. “That’s putting it lightly. It creeped me out, the fact that he used Rebecca’s name. We’d only been dating about six months. But I didn’t take him too seriously at first. Anyone with half a brain and access to Facebook would be able to find us. I kept my head down for the rest of the week, looking out for anyone who looked like Emily, spending a lot of time at the local library, reading through reports from the time and trying to find something unusual that could point me in the right direction.” Again he pauses, as if something has come into his mind he’s considering mentioning, but again he shakes it away. “But there was simply nothing to be found. So I went home.
“I didn’t think much more about Father Paul’s threat. I was still convinced I was on to something, even with nothing solid to go on, and that was when I started writing on TheHive myself. I mentioned the church, calling for information, anyone who knew what they were up to. I went back to that detective, the one who’d given me the images. But he dismissed me, told me I couldn’t possibly have found something that wouldn’t have already been checked out by the police. And then one day I came home and there was a card in the post. A watercolor on the front—of lilies, what else? When I opened it, a picture spilled out. It was a photo of Rebecca going in my front door. Just that. We’d just found out she was pregnant... It wasn’t exactly planned, but we were pleased all the same,” he mumbles. “I’d asked her to move in with me.” He puts his head in his hands, and I feel the blood run cold in my veins.
“I looked at the envelope for some kind of clue,” he says, “but it was plain brown, delivered by hand. I threw it away immediately, didn’t say anything to Rebecca, of course. But that was just the start. They sent letters to my work—I’d stopped freelancing by then. There was nothing direct. One was just a blank postcard, a picture of Atlanta on the front. Another sent Congratulations, great article! from The Lilies, with a torn-out copy of my latest hack job. One was just a quote from the Bible—Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: he that shutteth his lips is deemed a man of understanding. Each time, they seemed bolder. They sent a bunch of lilies to the house. Rebecca assumed they were from me and thanked me for being so thoughtful, and I had to put up with their cloying smell and have their brown pollen dust on my clothes every day as a reminder, until she finally threw them out.
