The Lace Reader

by Brunonia Barry

  I must be making a face. “It’s not easy,” she says, “when it’s someone you love.”

  The inspector finds water in the basement. There’s just a small puddle in the wine cellar, next to the wall where Eva has hung some of her dried flowers. He inspects it, curious about its origins.

  He looks at the wine bottles to see if any of them are broken. Not finding anything, he turns to me. “Is there a sink above this?”

  “No,” I say.

  “I don’t think it’s anything too serious,” he says, “maybe just a spill of some kind.”

  The Realtor picks up a dried bouquet and smells it. It’s lavender, I can see that from here. She makes a face as if she were smelling bad cheese. “Who in the world would dry flowers in a basement?” she wants to know. “Get rid of these and you get rid of half the problem.” She gestures to the drying flowers. “They’re all mildewed.”

  I think it’s odd that Eva would dry flowers down here, but she has them everywhere, little bunches hanging upside down drying, so maybe she just ran out of room upstairs. Or maybe the cellar was dry at the time.

  “I’ll throw them away,” I say, and the Realtor smiles, erasing her bad-cheese expression. I know I should write this down, or I’ll probably forget to do it.

  “Anything else?” she says to him.

  “Some of the windows need reglazing. But the house is in pretty good shape considering its age.”

  “What more can you ask for than that?” The Realtor turns to me. “I wish someone would say that about me.”

  I try to smile.

  The Realtor finishes her list. “Is any of the furniture for sale? Or the wine?”

  The inspector takes this as his cue to exit.

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “You probably need to get an appraisal. You’ve got some nice things here.”

  She gave me a number for someone at Skinner’s, for the antiques. “We have a guy back at the office who’s pretty good with wine,” she adds. “Collecting it, I mean, not drinking it. Although he’s pretty good at that, too, come to think of it.”

  I walk her out. The peonies are flopping in the heat. I don’t think anyone has watered them since Eva died, so it’s amazing they’re even still alive. When I get back inside, I look up Ann Chase’s phone number and dial.

  “Hi, Towner,” she answers, “I’ve been expecting you to call.” She speaks in a low, spooky-mystic voice. Before I have a chance to fall for it, she laughs. “I was only kidding. I wasn’t expecting you. I just sprang for caller ID.”

  I can hear some voices in the background. “Is this a good time?”

  “It’s tourist season. There won’t be a good time until after Halloween, and that’s months away. But that shouldn’t stop you from calling…. How are you holding up?”

  “I have something for you.”

  “Sounds intriguing.”

  “Maybe I’ll come by.”

  “I came by there this morning, to see if you needed any help with the garden. You must still be on California time.”

  “Probably,” I say.

  “I watered them a little for you.”

  “I didn’t even hear you. Thanks.”

  “You need to give them a lot more water. A good soaking.”

  I hear the sound of an old-fashioned cash register cha-chinging as she rings someone up.

  “Water the whole garden,” she says. “But don’t do it until late afternoon or you’ll scorch the leaves. This sun makes the water into a magnifying glass. I’ll come over tomorrow morning, and we can figure out the rest.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. How’re you holding up other than that?”

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “Okay is good,” she says. “Sometimes okay is real good.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “So drop by the shop if you want. Otherwise I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I realize I’m starving. There’s nothing in the house. I need to go out, but first I have to find something to wear. I have no clean clothes. Because of my surgery, I couldn’t lift a suitcase when I came here, so I only brought the pillow. I go to my closet, but I’ve already worn all of my teenage stuff. I put on an old pair of cutoffs that Lyndley and I bleached one summer. I cinch them tight with a beaded belt that reads WOLFEBORO, NEW HAMPSHIRE across the back. Then I raid Eva’s closet for shoes and a short-sleeved shirt.

  My feet are bigger than hers, and the only shoes I can find are the sandals I bought her my last summer here. Frilly white ones with daisies on the strap. I figured she’d like them because they were flowers, but they’re still in their original box. I scratch up the leather soles with a metal nail file I find in one of her dresser drawers, because they’re too slick for me to walk down the stairs in them as they are.

  I walk over to Red’s Sandwich Shop. It’s packed. There’s a line halfway down the block. I get in, but then a seat at the counter opens up and no one wants it, so I grab it. I order everything I can without going over ten dollars, which is what I have in my pocket.

  “Coffee?”

  “Tea.”

  “With milk?”

  “Straight up.”

  They’re grilling English muffins and piles of potatoes and eggs in groups of a dozen at a time. I’m wondering where all these people are coming from, and the waitress answers me as if I’d asked the question out loud.

  “Fleet’s in,” she says.

  The cook groans.

  “Twelve o’clock tour bus,” the waitress explains, pointing to the Trolley Stop.

  The crowd stirs, and a group of tourists moves together toward the windows. Outside, a young woman in Puritan costume is running down the street, trying to escape from a crowd. They follow, finally catching her, holding her while a man berates her, reading a list of accusations in a loud voice. I recognize Bridget Bishop and check my watch. She was the first of the accused witches. They put her on trial once every few hours in the summertime, recruiting the tourists to sit on the jury. Poor Bridget is often condemned and sentenced to hang all over again…often, but not always.

  I hear some whispers and turn around. Two women sit in a booth, a mother and a daughter. They stop talking as soon as I look at them. The daughter picks up her coffee, sips.

  I pay the cashier and have to walk through the line that is all the way out the door.

  Rafferty’s coming in as I’m going out. He takes one look at the line, swears under his breath, and heads back outside, stopping when he recognizes me, grabbing the door at the last minute before it hits me.

  “I thought you went back to California,” he says.

  “Nope.”

  “May told me you did.”

  “Maybe I did, then,” I say, shrugging. “God knows May Whitney is always right.”

  He laughs. “According to her, anyway.”

  I see him struggling to think what to say next.

  “I’m selling the house,” I volunteer. “That’s probably what she meant.”

  “You’re selling the house?” He sounds surprised.

  “It’s too much.” I feel stupid explaining, feeling the need to explain.

  “It’s a lot of house.” He is trying.

  I nod.

  “Does that mean you’re going back to California?” he asks.

  “Pretty much,” I say.

  “Too bad.”

  It seems an odd thing to say, but he doesn’t elaborate.

  “Nice meeting you,” I say, extending my hand to shake his. It is good Eva etiquette, but not really in character for me. I can tell he gets a kick out of it.

  He grins. “You’re not leaving today, are you?”

  “No. I’ve got to finish cleaning out.”

  “I’ll see you before you go.”

  I get all the way up the street before I think of asking him for the key. I remember Jay-Jay saying they had one, and not only do I not like the thought of a key floating around, even if i
t is with the cops, but I’d told the Realtor I’d make her a copy. It occurs to me that the only key I know of is in police custody. I rush back down the street.

  “You okay?” he asks me as I catch up with him. “You look a little pale.”

  “Fine,” I say. “How about you?”

  “I’m Irish. I always look a little pale.”

  I ask him for the key then, and although he clearly doesn’t know what I’m talking about, or remember that they even had a key, he tells me he’ll look into it and get back to me.

  I return to the house, intending to do more packing. But I catch sight of myself in the mirror and think better of it. I do look a little pale—not surprising, really. I feel slightly queasy and decide to slow down a bit. It’s getting too hot to do any work on the second floor. Instead I decide to walk down to Ann’s shop. I pick up the box of lace that Anya left on the table and head out.

  The store is crowded, and Ann is in the back doing a reading on someone’s head. She motions for me to wait a minute.

  It’s a nice store, not too touristy. I notice the Ipswich lace and pictures of Yellow Dog Island. In the far corner, there is a marketing display, a good one, eye-catching, with a rocking chair, a spinning wheel, a braided rug. Very New England, very homey. Rounds of bobbin lace hang from a makeshift mantel, the old fireplace is filled with bobbins. A lace pillow sits on the rocker, as if someone had left for just a minute and would be coming right back. I recognize the chair from the island. It used to sit in our den. This is a display of lace made by the Circle. On the mantel are framed photos of the women and a pile of brochures telling the story of how the Circle started and why, complete with order forms. In front is a pile of brochures and a handwritten sign: TAKE ONE.

  The brochure is lined with photos: women making lace, a beautiful golden retriever lying at their feet, a long shot of the spinning room, skeins of yellow yarn made from the dog hair, and everywhere the pieces of lace.

  The main photograph, the one on the front of the brochure, is the archetypal Early American home. It looks the way you’d imagine settlers’ lives to look if you didn’t know the hardships they really endured. Still, there is something wrong with the pictures, and it takes me a while to figure out what it is. When you look at them carefully, you realize that there aren’t any faces on the women. Not that the faces have been rubbed out or erased or anything, just that the photos have been taken from a perspective that never allows the faces to appear in the shot at all. Precautionary, I’m thinking, but still oddly disconcerting.

  “They say their yarn has magical powers.” A salesgirl is at my side, standing a little too close. I am guessing she works on commission.

  Ann finishes with her customer and hurries over, catching the last part of the sales pitch.

  “It’s dog hair,” Ann says to her, “not the Golden Fleece.”

  The salesgirl shrugs. “I’m just telling you what they say,” she says to me, and huffs off.

  I hear Ann sigh.

  “I can’t stand her, personally,” Ann says, “but she’s the best salesperson I’ve got.”

  I hand Ann the package I’ve been carrying. She opens the box. Inside are twenty or thirty pieces of lace. “You’re not giving this to me,” she says in disbelief.

  “I tried to give it to Beezer and Anya as a wedding present, but they wouldn’t take it.”

  “I won’t take it either,” she says. “This was Eva’s lace. She’d want you to keep it.”

  “If you don’t take it, I’m donating it to the Peabody Essex.”

  She puts the package behind the desk.

  “Consider it a thank-you gift in advance.”

  She looks at me blankly.

  “For helping with the gardens.”

  She is clearly delighted. But then she remembers. “I can’t come until the day after tomorrow,” she says. “Is that okay?”

  I grab the gift as if to take it back. She laughs.

  “Thank you,” she says. “I will treasure it.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  Ann takes a break between readings to get a cup of tea with me. When the tour bus pulls in, she gets up, sighs, walks back inside. “See you Thursday,” she says. She stops before the door. “You’ll have to water them before that. Otherwise we’ll have to deadhead the entire garden.”

  “I’ll water,” I say.

  Ann stops to pose for some photos on her way back inside. She fluffs her black robes and smiles mysteriously for the camera.

  I take the rest of my tea out to the bench and watch as the first mast of the Friendship is raised. It’s a replica of a ship that sailed from Salem in the old days. Eva told me half the town is working on it. Over by Eva’s boathouse is the rigging shed where the volunteers recreate history. A crowd gathers to watch as the huge crane lowers the top third of the mast into place. I watch for almost an hour before I have the energy to walk back up the hill and water Eva’s gardens.

  Eva has over an acre of gardens, carved out wherever there is room, between the house and the coach house, along the path. Every available space is filled with flowers or vegetables, not segregated but growing together—tomato vines next to snapdragons next to daylilies.

  The summer porch has been turned into a potting shed. I drag a few of the smaller container plants inside and put them in the sink to soak. It’s hot in here, and it’s dry. The sink spits air before it comes on, and the first water that runs is too rusty and hot to use. This is Eva’s drying room—the main one anyway. Scents of lavender and coriander permeate the old wood. Flowers and herbs are tied with ribbons into bundles that have been hung upside down lining the beadboard walls. There’s still some room left on one of the far walls, which makes me wonder why Eva risked ruining bunches of lavender by hanging them in the cellar to mildew. I decide that maybe she wanted to keep them out of the sunlight, because of the fading. Besides, she didn’t know they would be there so long, did she? When she went for her swim that day, I’m sure she thought she was coming right back. It freaks me out more than a little to think about it.

  I drag in all the containers I can, but the bigger ones are too heavy for me, so I go for the hose. I can’t lift anything much. I can still feel the pull of the stitches. I should walk, I think. The doctor said walking is good. And swimming—I think he said I could swim. It occurs to me that I am going to miss my follow-up appointment, if I haven’t missed it already. I’ll have to remember to call.

  I wait until four o’clock, and then I start to water the garden. It takes over an hour, and by the time I finish, I’m wet and dirty. My sandals are slippery—they are actually soaking—so I leave them midstride on the path, footprint art. I cross to stretch the hose to one last patch, the one where the fuchsias are, all pinks and purples, and there’s a lone passionflower crawling up the side of a potted bougainvillea. The hose won’t stretch that far. It tangles back on the edges of one of the raised flower beds, and I know I should walk back and untangle it, but I’m too tired. Instead I pull, not using my stomach muscles but my full weight, and after stretching to the breaking point, the hose lets go and I go with it, taking a tumble over the marjoram and into a bed of young tomatoes and eggplants, which Eva has labeled TOM and EGG, respectively, as if they were little people. I look around to find that I’ve wiped out the first two rows of baby plants, and I feel bad about it, and careless. I’m too tired to get up right away, so I just sit there.

  It is here that Rafferty finds me, covered with dirt and murdered vegetable matter, surrounded by the fuchsias where the hummingbirds are feeding. I must have wiped out some mint, too, on my way, because I can smell it on me. The mint will take over the flower beds if you let it. I remember Eva telling me that. You have to be careful with mint. You have to confine it to its own space.

  Rafferty’s looking down, following the green hose trail to its logical end where my sandals are splayed. He stops, looks at me, then up at the hummingbirds.

  “I’m not even going to ask,” he says,
swatting one of the hummers away as if it were a bee as he leans over to pull me up.

  I brush myself off, checking the scratches. He reaches into his pocket, draws out the key. A bunch of things fall out with it, including nicotine gum, one piece, old, its package fraying. He hands me the key.

  “I hope this is the right one,” he says, bending over to pick up two very wet coupons, which he waves in the air to dry. He looks at them. “Darn it,” he says. “What’s today’s date?”

  “I think it’s the third,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says, looking at the coupons. “I’d forgotten these.” He shows them to me. Free dinner for two. I can’t quite make out the name of the restaurant.

  “It expires tomorrow, part of the Salem Bribe-a-Cop program. You want to go?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Sure. Tonight, tomorrow, whatever. I just don’t want these to go to waste.”

  “Tomorrow’s probably better.”

  “Yeah, they’ll probably have fireworks tomorrow,” he says.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Tomorrow, then.” He gathers and stuffs the rest of the things back into his pocket. “Seven.” He starts to the gate. “You’d better check that key. It’s the only one I could find, but it’s not labeled.”

  “Will do,” I say.

  He starts to leave. Turns back. “What were you doing anyway? Before the attack of the killer hummingbirds?”

  “Watering the plants.”

  “Interesting technique,” he says, starting down the path again.

  I try the key on the way back inside. The door opens. I’ll have to have a copy made for the Realtor. And I’ll have to fix the broken glass, I think, turning to look at it, assessing the damage. And move the moldy flowers. I decide I’d better start that list but can’t find any paper.

  As if by magic, Rafferty’s face appears where the glass should be. I’m startled by it, and I jump.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  “What’s up?”

  “It has to be tonight.”

  “What?”

  “You got the date wrong. Today is the Fourth of July.” Firecrackers pop in the background, proving him right. “I’ll understand if it’s not enough notice.”