The Lace Reader

by Brunonia Barry

  Rafferty sipped his coffee. He squinted to see what had captured the dog’s attention. At first he thought it was the boats heading out for the day. Or the huge ship coming into the harbor to drop coal at the power plant. Then he noticed something else…. The moorings were moving.

  He stood up. There were about twenty of them, right off the docks between the Willows and Winter Island, moving slowly and methodically along the shoreline. Rafferty looked again and realized he was looking not at moorings but divers’ buoys. They were searching for a body.

  Ignoring Byzy’s whines, Rafferty shut the dog back inside. Still carrying his coffee, he walked down the hill to the docks. It could be anyone. Probably some boater who got drunk and swam for shore. God, he hoped it wasn’t a kid.

  He could see the police cars on the bluff. The chief stood talking to one of the divers.

  “What’s going on?” Rafferty said.

  The chief dismissed the diver, then turned to Rafferty.

  “I tried you yesterday on your cell,” the chief said. “It happened as soon as you left. We got a tip. From Cal. He’s convinced that Angela Rickey is at the bottom of Salem Harbor.”

  “Cal confessed?” Rafferty asked. It was an unlikely scenario.

  “Not exactly,” the chief said.

  “What does that mean?” Rafferty wanted to know.

  “It wasn’t exactly a confession. But it might be almost as good if we find a body. He said he saw her dead. He told us where to look.”

  “That sounds like a confession to me.”

  “Not exactly,” the chief said. “He said that God had sent him the information. In a dream.”

  Rafferty looked down the harbor toward Winter Island. He could see the Calvinists lined up on the shore of Waikiki Beach watching the whole thing. A few of them were kneeling. There was an element of badly staged theater to it all.

  “He’s fucking with you,” Rafferty said.

  He knew the kind of pressure the chief was under. The merchants were furious about the Calvinists, who were interfering with the witch business and driving the tourists up the coast. Just yesterday the Chamber of Commerce demanded that Cal’s group be relocated to a campground in Cape Ann. In the chief’s position, Rafferty might have done the same thing.

  “Isn’t it your day off?” the chief replied.

  “Right,” Rafferty said. “It is.”

  Towner was coming down the path with Byzy on leash. She was wearing a bathing suit.

  “I’m taking him swimming.” Towner smiled. The dog followed at her heels, eager for any adventure.

  Rafferty thought quickly. He’d had enough of the whole thing. Like the chief said, it was his day off.

  “I know a much better place to swim,” Rafferty said, “if you two are up for a boat ride.”

  Sometimes the Reader must turn the lace in many different directions and gaze at the piece through varied light before the images begin to appear.

  —THE LACE READER’S GUIDE

  Chapter 24

  RAFFERTY AND I STOP IN Beverly for lunch at a take-out lobster shack that’s run by a friend of his. He brings the food back to the boat.

  He feeds Byzy a clam, which the dog spits out on the deck. It wedges itself into the gap between the planks. Rafferty goes on hands and knees to retrieve it, finally heaving it over the side. “That’s what I get,” he says, laughing.

  “I think Byzy prefers rabbit,” I say.

  “Of course he does.”

  Before we get under way again, Rafferty goes up to the docks and across Route 1A to a little grocery for supplies. He brings back a bag of food and puts it in the galley. He pulls out a dog treat.

  Rafferty lets me take the wheel and steer us out of the harbor. I am used to lobster boats. This one slips to port a bit, but it handles well. And it moves. He has done a great job restoring it. By that I mean it doesn’t smell like bait.

  We head toward the Miseries, and then he directs me past them and out toward open ocean.

  “Where is this place?” I ask.

  Rafferty points to the horizon. “It’s out there,” he says.

  “Really?” I am intrigued.

  It’s a beautiful day. Byzy sits on the bow like a figurehead, fur blowing back. When we slow, he comes over to see if we’re eating anything. When he sees we’re not, he heads back to the bow and barks at seagulls.

  “Funny dog,” Rafferty says.

  I smile.

  Rafferty’s island is straight out to sea, past the Miseries, past Baker’s. It looks like something you’d find in Polynesia, narrow sugar-sand beach sloping to a small hill. I recognize it immediately. I’ve been here before. When we were kids, we used to play pirates on this island.

  “It’s not on any of the maps,” Rafferty informs me. “It doesn’t have a name.”

  I don’t know why I don’t tell him I’ve been here before, but I don’t. We came here a few times, Beezer and Lyndley and me, but it was always a little too far to go and a difficult place to land—because it’s so rocky, it’s hard to get to shore. You can’t even drop anchor here very easily, because beyond the rocks the bottom smooths out and becomes as slippery as ice. An anchor dropped here will drag out to sea with nothing to catch onto. You’ll leave your boat, and when you come back, it won’t be there. It will have drifted off and disappeared into the blue.

  It happened to Beezer and me once. At first I didn’t believe it. I thought it was Lyndley playing pirate tricks on us, and I told Beezer so, which only made him cry and get more scared when I was actually trying to be reassuring. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” he said. I wasn’t sure which thing I’d said to make him so distraught, but we found the boat anyway, behind the island, and it wasn’t very windy that day, so I was able to swim out and retrieve the Whaler, no harm done. So I don’t know why he took it that badly, but he never wanted to go back to No Name Island after that. That’s what we called the place, No Name Island.

  I can tell that Rafferty’s been here a number of times. He’s got a system. He has brought rope with him, a lot of it, which he has attached to the bowline. Then he wades in and climbs up on the bluff about twenty or thirty feet and ties the line around one of the only existing trees on the island.

  He comes back to the boat to get me, but I’m already in the water, handing him the bags with the food. As soon as I get to shore, he lets the boat drift out until the line goes taut. He gives me a hand, and we climb up the eroded bluff together.

  On the far side of the island, you can’t see anything but open ocean. It’s one of the only places from here to Rockport where you actually look straight out to sea and not at the protected bay that leads up to Cape Ann. It is wild and windswept, and its lack of vegetation makes you feel as if you could be anywhere, from the surface of the moon to Treasure Island or the Blue Lagoon.

  Byzy and I swim while Rafferty collects driftwood for a fire.

  Later we sit on the beach facing out to sea, watching the sun drop. The fire is dying down enough to cook, and I watch as Rafferty piles on some seaweed for steaming and throws several ears of corn on the fire. Then he pulls out cheese, crackers, and a huge steak. He loves this place. He tells me he’s never seen anyone else here. “Not another living soul,” he says, and hands me a lemonade.

  We eat steak and corn. Three plates, one for each of us. Byzy hunkers over his, gulps.

  Afterward we watch the sky streak and then go dark. The moon comes up above the water. Rafferty notices that I’m shivering and puts his jacket over my shoulders. His jacket is old. It smells of the ocean.

  Byzy burrows into the sand and starts to snore.

  “This island doesn’t have a name,” Rafferty says again, as if I missed it the first time, or because I didn’t react. “That sandbar over there has a name—they even named that, but they never named this place. It slipped through the cracks,” he says, happy that something, anything, could slip through the proverbial cracks.

  “Maybe it doesn’t really
exist,” I say. “Maybe we’re the ones who have slipped through the cracks.”

  He looks startled at first. Then he starts to laugh. Not loud, but genuine. “You’re an interesting woman,” he says. “You walk that line.”

  “What line is that?” I ask, knowing very well what line he’s talking about. The line that by its very definition is not a line but a crack. One I slipped into a long time ago.

  He thinks before he speaks. “The one between the real world and the world of the possible.”

  “Poetically put,” I say.

  “Sometimes the real world is much crazier,” he says.

  I can tell he means it. Something has happened out here today. “How’s the case going?” I ask. The question sounds too much like small talk, and I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about it, so I don’t press him for an answer.

  “Let’s not talk about that tonight,” he says.

  The moon is almost full. It carves a path through the darkening water, and for a minute I think of Lyndley. My eyes tear up. I don’t want him to see it, so I turn away until the tears recede.

  Rafferty gets up. He walks to the water. He leans over, scoops some water, looks at it, then lets it fall through his fingers. Then he puts his hand to his mouth and tastes the salt. I can see him make a decision.

  “Let’s swim,” he says.

  It surprises me.

  We swim for a long time. He’s a strong swimmer, not one who flows with the water but one who is strong enough to power through it. He swims with his head out; he must have worked as a lifeguard during his summers on Long Island. Lifeguards always swim with their heads out of the water, always on the alert, keeping an eye on the victim. It’s different when he sails. Sailing is to Rafferty what swimming is to me.

  There is magic in the water tonight, phosphorescence. Every stroke we take leaves a sparkling trail.

  We’re both tired when we get back to shore. It’s a beautiful night. We fall asleep in the sand.

  I awaken to the sound of Byzy up on the hill, baying at the moon. He is actually howling, the way I’ve heard the island dogs do when the moon is waxing and almost full. The moon is overhead now, so I know it has to be after eleven. I climb to the top of the bluff, to the center of the little island, and perch myself on a small outcropping of ledge with views all around. From up here you can see the curve of shoreline, the mouths of several harbors. I can make out the party boat heading in on its last run of the night, its draping string of lights making it look more like the Golden Gate Bridge than a boat. We are not close enough to hear the music; it’s just the visual, lights moving slowly, floating strangely right above the water, a ghost ship.

  I remember the first time I saw the Golden Gate Bridge. There was a man I was dating for a short period. His family had a house in Sonoma County, and we drove up the coast to see it. For some reason, as we were driving across the bridge, he told me how many people kill themselves each year by jumping off that bridge. We broke up shortly afterward.

  I let Rafferty sleep. It’s not as if I have anything pressing, and I know he doesn’t sleep much. I’m glad he suggested this day. If I had my way, I wouldn’t go back to town at all. I’m much more comfortable out here.

  Rafferty finally wakes up and comes looking for us.

  “What time is it?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. I just saw the party boat heading in.”

  “Midnight,” he says. “I guess we’d better get going.”

  I nod, but I don’t get up.

  I can tell he feels the same, that going in is the last thing he wants to do. He sits down next to me. Neither of us moves.

  “Why is it,” he says finally, “that it all looks so pretty from out here?”

  “It is pretty,” I say, “even from in there it’s pretty. It’s just the people who make it ugly…sometimes.”

  “Not all of them,” he says, his eyes holding on mine.

  I don’t look away.

  I’m not sure who kisses whom. It’s the most mutual kiss in the world. It is perfection in compromise, in cooperation. Nothing can follow it. Anything else would be a letdown. We’re both old enough and smart enough to realize it.

  “What about Jack?” Rafferty says.

  “There is no Jack,” I say.

  I watch him make the decision. He has decided that he will believe me. Then he takes my hand, and we walk together back to the boat.

  We don’t get home until after two. Rafferty and I fall asleep together on top of his bed, my head in the crook of his shoulder. I shift, roll toward the open window, and his arms come around me, muscles taut even in sleep. He sleeps peacefully, not the way you would expect from him. When I shift, he moves to fit.

  I wake at first light to discover the lace in the window. I didn’t see it last night. If I had, I never would have come into this room. But I see it now. It catches me in its swirls and pulls the breath out of me as if the air itself were only part of the thread, the part that creates the negative spaces so that the pattern can exist. I see the pattern clearly only as I am pulled into it, into the world behind the world. It is a place I know, a place I’m terrified of. It is the still point. All movement freezes in this place; the breath pauses on top of its wave, neither cresting nor falling, as if the whole ocean had frozen solid. I will be paralyzed and trapped here until it thaws to release me, and there will be no thaw until the lace shows me what it has pulled me under to see. I hold my breath. The wave stops, but the rhythm of it remains, as regular as waves on sand.

  I see the gun. I hear the crack as the shot flies. I smell the powder. I feel the bullet pierce my side, not physical pain, exactly, but the cut of it, the creation of the divide. The rhythm of the wave changes then, not wave at all (I realize now) but breath. I don’t know it is breath until its rhythm alters, shortens. I feel Rafferty’s arms around me then, tight, tighter, and I hear his breath, feel it as it comes, gasping now. He has been hit. The blood is warm, pooling around us. The shot has pinned us together, fusing us. It is a killing shot. It is meant to be.

  “No!” I scream, jumping up, tearing the lace from the window. I cannot have this, I will not. Not him.

  His instincts take over. He is out of bed and at the window, pushing me away from it, out of the line of fire.

  We hit the floor hard. It takes him a minute to realize we are both okay.

  “Cal,” he says.

  “No,” I say.

  He heard it, too. I know it as he says it.

  He looks outside. Then he sees Byzy, staring at us from the other room. If there had been a shot, the dog’s reaction would have been different and much more agitated.

  Rafferty tries to clear his head. He spots the lace on the floor. “I saw Cal…” he starts.

  “It was a dream.”

  “He was here.”

  “No,” I say.

  He rubs his temples.

  “You were dreaming,” I say. I gesture to Byzy, who is staring at us. “If there had been a shot…”

  Rafferty holds up his hand, already getting it. He sits back on the bed. “God,” he says. “It seemed so real.”

  I will not look at him. If I look at him, I’ll never be able to leave. And I must leave. I have seen it in the lace. The bullet went though him and into me. I felt the life go out of him, and I was alone. We were still attached, still fused, but he was dead.

  Put your hand together with mine as if you’re praying, Lyndley used to say to me. Then run your thumb and index finger across both of them…. That’s what dead feels like.

  No, not Rafferty. Please, not him.

  He reaches for me, tries to draw me to him.

  I twist away.

  “This was a mistake,” I say.

  “It’s okay. It was a dream.”

  “No.” I pull back. “Not that. This.” I point to the bed, to us. “This was a huge mistake.”

  I can see the hurt on him, a lot of hurt. But no real surprise. Rafferty is more psychic than he knows. I only real
ize that now. In some deep psychic place, he already knew that it would come to this.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I do not look at him. I cannot look at him again or I won’t be able to leave. If I stay, he will die. I have seen it in the lace. The bullet will fuse us together, but the man I love will die.

  The realization of my own feelings stops me. But only for a minute. I know what I have to do. I fumble for Byzy’s leash. I clip it to his collar and pull him up.

  “Where are you going?” Rafferty asks.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. I drag Byzy to the door and down the steps.

  I look toward town and Eva’s house. The only place to go. It seems so far from here that I’ll never make it. When I get there, I’ll make the call and get myself to California. I’ll do what I did once before. I’ll get as far away from here as I can without falling off the edge of the earth.

  PART FIVE

  If the question is right and the Seeker is prepared to receive, the answer will be immediate.

  —THE LACE READER’S GUIDE

  Chapter 25

  RAFFERTY HUNG UP THE PHONE and looked at his watch. Leah was coming in at three. He had time.

  He’d been smart for a change and talked directly to his ex. “Would you mind if we went back to the original schedule?” Rafferty had asked. There must have been something in his voice that got to her, because she didn’t hang up.

  “You mean tomorrow?” she asked.

  “I mean as soon as possible.”

  “Yeah, I guess. That is, if it’s okay with Leah,” she said, then added, “The only problem is, we’ve already made plans for the week before Labor Day. I’ll have to change them if she’s coming back early.”

  “I don’t want her to go back early,” Rafferty said. “Hell, I don’t want her to go back at all.”