The Lace Reader (14 page)

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 116 Brunonia

Barry

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.”

The Lace Reader 117

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. 118 Brunonia

Barry

u

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 The Lace Reader 119

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.

120 Brunonia

Barry

“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.”

The Lace Reader 121

“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.”

“It’s okay. Give me an hour.”

“I’ll give you two,” he says.

I fire him a look.

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he says. “I don’t get off work until seven, is what I meant. Then I have to pick up the boat.”

“The boat?”

“Did I forget to tell you that the restaurant is in the middle of Salem Harbor?” He grins.

“I think I would have remembered that.”

“Sorry . . . the restaurant is in the middle of Salem Harbor.”

“I’ll dress accordingly.”

He looks at what I’m wearing, and, to his credit, he decides not to comment.

Firecrackers suddenly pop and snap. Everyone has come out. Across the park one of the proselytizing Calvinists is watching the house. Or maybe I’m being paranoid, and he’s just looking this way because he’s seen Rafferty’s car and, like everyone else, he’s trying to figure out what’s going on at Eva’s house now.

I’m on time. Rafferty is late. He’s apologetic, says it’s pathological. He has called for a reservation at least, but now he’s afraid they’re not going to hold it. When we get to the middle of the harbor, not only is there no reservation, there is no restaurant. It’s gone. Rafferty pulls out his cell phone, has to wait a minute for service. I can tell he doesn’t like to wait.

“Yeah, this is Rafferty. Has anyone reported a missing restaurant?”

122 Brunonia

Barry

I can hear laughter on the other end of the line.

“I’m serious, the Rockmore is gone. . . . ” More laughter. “Well, where the hell did it go?”

“Uh-huh . . . Forever, or just for tonight?” He nods into the phone.

“I see.” He hangs up, turns to me.

“They moved the restaurant to Marblehead for the evening.”

Now I am intrigued.

“Something about the harbor illumination.” He thinks about it.

“Do you still want to go?”

“Do you?”

“Sure, why not?” he says. “A free meal’s a free meal, right?”

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” I say, quoting Eva. And even though I agree, I still wish I hadn’t said it out loud.

“True enough,” he says. “But this isn’t lunch, it’s dinner.”

“Good point,” I say.

“Hang on,” he says, and I take him at his word, grabbing the gunwales as he roars off, ignoring the five-mile-per-hour limit. We pass the tiny lighthouse at Winter Island. We turn to starboard, toward Peach’s Point, cutting close to Yellow Dog Island. It’s getting dark. May is down on the ramp, securing it for the night. In the grove of pines is a meditation circle. Or tai chi. We get closer to the rocks than most people would dare, as close as I would if I were piloting the boat, which is impressive because it means that Rafferty knows these waters well. One of the women in the Circle hears the engine, looks up at us, annoyed by the interruption. She recognizes Rafferty first, then me.

“That ought to start a few rumors,” he says, loud enough to be heard over the engine.

It takes half an hour to get to Marblehead—not because of the distance but because of the crowds. By the time we reach it, there are so many boats tied up to the floating restaurant that it is hard to find a spot.

The Lace Reader 123

The Salem police must have called for Rafferty, because they seem to be expecting us. The owner is waiting, and helps us tie up.

“I thought you knew about the move,” the owner says to Rafferty by way of apology. “We do this every year.”

When we go inside, the owner holds the chair for me to sit down. I can feel people looking at us; I don’t like the feeling. I sit as quickly as possible, but I can still feel their eyes. A wave of paranoia spreads over me. I turn to see who’s looking, to send it back, but the light is fading and it’s difficult to see.

“Something wrong?” Rafferty asks.

“No,” I answer, glancing around. I am feeling watched again, but I don’t want to
seem
paranoid.

“Would you rather sit on this side?” Rafferty asks.

“No, this is fine,” I lie, picking up the menu, trying to cover. He follows my lead, looks. “I hope you like fried food.”

I order a fisherman’s platter and a side of onion rings. Plus a Diet Coke, which I can tell amuses Rafferty.

I feel the eyes again, then hear someone’s thoughts:
Hey, when
did crazy Sophya get back to town?
I move my chair to get out of the range of vision. Rafferty moves his chair slightly, blocking my view of the back deck, acting as if it weren’t calculated. It does the trick. I start to relax.

“You ready to order?” the waitress asks, placing a red plastic basket of rolls in front of me.

“Is the scrod haddock or cod?” Rafferty asks.

“It’s neither,” the waitress says. “It’s scrod.” She shrugs, looking at him as if
he’s
crazy. I can read her. She is thinking how much she wants to go home.