“Psychiatric facility,” I corrected. “And this event will be great for the foundation, bring us recognition outside just the religious community. The women’s program that’s going to be headquartered at Pritchard has already been written up in several journals.”
“I can’t believe she was born here,” Danny said. “Can you imagine?” He caught himself. “What am I saying? Of course we can. We’ve done the time, haven’t we, Mom?”
Mom’s voice was distant. “Yes, Daniel, we have.”
“You know what I can’t get over?” he went on, and I sensed an edge in his voice. That old sharpness he used to get when he’d started drinking but was still sober enough to remember the things he was angry about. “That our grandmother was born in a nuthouse and got out by the hair of her chinny-chin-chin. But then, years later, her daughter and grandson end up in places just like it.”
“Danny—” I started, but Mom interrupted.
“We should pray.” She clasped her hands and closed her eyes, her back hunching. I sighed and checked the rearview mirror. Danny’s head was tilted back, eyes defiantly open, but he’d gone quiet. Mom’s stalwart, unwavering faith was off-limits. We’d both agreed to that a long time ago. He knew as well as I did what kept her boat on keel.
Mom prayed, “Dear Father, you’ve brought us so far, and we thank you for all your many mercies. We thank you for Pritchard—both a terrible place and a wonderful one. Dove did love this place, in her own way. She had good memories here, so many gifts . . .”
I checked the mirror again. Danny was staring out the window.
“. . . a friend, a boy she played with, remember she told me that once? They used to hide gifts for each other. I always thought that was so sweet. So tender . . .”
Her voice faltered, and I settled in for the long haul. I felt a sharp needle of pity for her. Mom did this every once in a while, lost the trail when she was praying and ended up reminiscing instead. It was just one of her quirks, but also one of the ways I realized that her constant, acute yearning for family had never really been fulfilled.
She said Charles Jarrod had been a doting father, delighted by the baby girl he’d had late in life, but he’d died when she was just a child, and Mom clearly felt the loss. Especially in contrast to the chilly, almost formal relationship she had with Dove. My own father, once a sound tech for Dove’s shows, had been a blip on the radar—fathering two children, then melting away into the ether. After that, Mom just stopped functioning. She stayed in her room day and night. Wouldn’t cook meals for Danny and me or bathe us. She even forgot to send us to school a couple of times. When they hospitalized her, someone from the foundation came to stay with us.
Then Dove died and left the bulk of her estate for the restoration of Pritchard Hospital and only a pittance to the Jarrod Foundation. The message conveyed to my mother was all too clear. What was important to us—the foundation—didn’t make a whit of difference to Dove. Her concerns, cryptic and unknowable, took precedence.
But now that we were here, seeing Dove’s dream of reopening the hospital to its fruition, Mom seemed to have reframed the situation. She was beaming, almost tearful, and clasped her hands over her heart.
“This place may have been Dove’s beginning,” she said in a fervent voice, “but by God’s grace, it was not the end.”
“Amen,” Danny said quickly.
“Amen,” I echoed.
Mom looked around the car, seeming to only vaguely recall where she was. Then she turned and sent me a bright smile. “Eve, when did you say the film crew would arrive?”
“Our director flew in the day before yesterday. He should’ve connected with the local team, the second camera person and assistant. I haven’t seen any footage yet, but supposedly they got some fantastic B-roll. Tape of the grounds and the cemetery.”
She didn’t answer. I hadn’t realized it, but we’d reached the end of the drive, where the canopy of trees had finally opened up and the exterior of Pritchard Hospital had come into view. She grabbed my right arm, the weak one, and pointed.
“Look! There it is!”
Danny’s tapping finally stilled. “Damn.”
But a laser beam of setting sun had hit my eyes, blocking my vision. I squinted and flipped down the visor, focusing on making my weak right arm wheel the car around a lacy iron fountain without smashing into it. I only caught flashes of the huge building as I drove past. Red brick, stone, and wood. Belfries, arches, and parapets. All flickering between shafts of sunlight like an old-time film reel running past a projector light. I maneuvered the rental into a reserved spot beside a sleek silver BMW, killed the engine, and looked in the rearview mirror.
Okay. Wow.
Old Pritchard Hospital was a Gothic monster of a place. Formidable and reassuring all at once, if that was possible. Two long brick wings extended out from either side of the center spired tower, each anchored by enormous magnolia trees. The facade was a series of lancet and quatrefoil granite-capped windows. I felt a chill travel along the surface of my skin.
“. . . and there’s the hawthorn tree!” Mom was saying. “The one Dove used to talk about. Remember, she planted one at her house in Pasadena? And never let us cut any blooms from it? I wonder if that’s the same one that was there when she was.”
I mumbled something in the affirmative, but I couldn’t say what it was, I was so focused on the massive building behind me. Now that I’d seen the place, even if it was just in my rearview mirror, I felt infinitesimally better. That was the thing about fear. It always encroached in the misty, shadowy unknown. Once I had my hands around a situation—whether it involved my own physical therapy, my mother’s anxieties, or my brother’s addictions—once I could see the threat in broad daylight, the monster lost its teeth.
Even a monster like my grandmother’s place of birth.
Chapter Two
Mom pointed past the hospital, across the lawn to a side lot where two guys and a young woman were unloading equipment from a white SUV. “There’s the crew.”
A different kind of electricity zinged through me. Griffin Murray, the director of the promotional documentary we were creating about my grandparents, stood with Liz and Naveen, his two camera operators. Griffin was tall and solid, with tattoo sleeves covering both arms, and unexpectedly full lips. He wore jeans and a rust-colored retro Rat Pack button-up shirt that flapped open over a white T-shirt. Brown hair jutted out of a black knit beanie, and he sported a brown and ginger scruff. He looked more like a boxer than a filmmaker. An exceptionally lucky boxer whose face had miraculously escaped destruction.
I flashed back to a couple of months ago when I first interviewed him. His qualifications were extensive: NYU film school, a stint at Sundance, and an award for a short on Alabama poverty. The clincher was that one of his relatives had been an itinerant country preacher just like Charles and Dove. He told me that doing work like this would make his family so proud. Apparently, they were fans of my grandparents.
“Honestly, film school was a blow to my dad,” he told me wryly. “He was hoping for a doctor or maybe a professional baseball player in the family. But he’s been trying lately. He was the one who actually heard about this job.”