The Lace Reader (26 page)

I was desperate. I had to find her before Cal did, but Lyndley was the best of all of us at this game, and I had no idea where she would be. I did something strange then. Instead of looking down, I looked up at the stars. I stared at them until I lost them completely and everything blurred into a lacy pattern and then finally the stars disappeared altogether. Then, when everything was gone, I took that blur of vision and focused it back down. And when I did, when I focused my eyes again, I could see Cal at the red schoolhouse, and I could even hear him calling to her through the door. I could see my mother, May, who had fallen asleep reading in her room, and Beezer The Lace Reader 235

sitting in the living room at the table trying to stay awake until I came back in. I could see Auntie Emma sitting on the top step on her porch, too dizzy to stand now, holding the railing for support. I saw the yellow dogs, hundreds of them in their sleeping places in the caves at Back Beach, all heads and tails piled together, their fur against the pebbles as if someone had thrown a big carpet on the beach. I could see the whole expanse of the island, the whole figure eight of it—the houses, the cliffs, and the ocean beyond. And then, past the baseball diamond in another grove of trees, I saw something glowing. I have no idea what made it glow. Maybe Lyndley had lit up a cigarette, because it was a place she used to go to smoke sometimes, an old abandoned car. Maybe it was the moonlight, which seemed to be illuminating the whole island. But it was definitely glowing. It couldn’t have been more plain if a guiding star or even some cartoon arrow had come out of the sky and pointed at the car with a big flashing sign that said lyndley! lyndley! lyndley!

I scrambled down the rocks and raced for the other end of the island and the car, running as fast as I could go, knowing that any minute Cal would abandon the red schoolhouse and head back in the direction of the baseball diamond.

I cut across the field. I couldn’t breathe. I missed a step and twisted into one of the rabbit holes and almost went down, but I was moving so fast my foot didn’t go that far in, and I was able to catch my balance and keep going. I was getting closer, and I could see the car clearly now, its two rear wheels stuck in the dirt. May’s father and his friends got it out here on a barge, then got it stuck and abandoned it for good in the middle of the field. The grass was growing up around the flattened and long-rotting tires, into the wheel well, as if the car had just grown out of the earth and died there and nature was taking back her own.

When I got to the car, the windows were all fogged up. I reached for the car handle, the finish line. I threw open the door. 236 Brunonia

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I didn’t know at first what I was seeing. All arms and legs moving and trying to sit up. Then my eyes focused, and I realized that yes, it was Lyndley I was looking at and that she wasn’t alone.

“Damn it, Towner, close the door!” Lyndley said, and I saw Jack struggling to find his clothes and cover himself.

“Cal’s back!” I gasped. And by the way I said it, she knew that it was bad. Then, like an idiot, I actually closed the door and stood there waiting for them, more shocked by what I’d just seen than by the danger of Cal himself.

The baseball bat came down hard, smashing the front window of the car, shattering glass everywhere. Lyndley screamed, hurt, bleeding from it, and suddenly Jack was out of the car, ready to fight for her. Ready to kill Cal himself if it came to that, wanting it to. Cal backed into the shadows, waiting to make his next move. I had to do something quickly. I’d seen Cal’s rages. And I knew in my gut that if this was going to be a fight to the death between them, it would be Jack and not Cal who was going to die. I ran faster than I’d ever run before. I ran to get May, to get her gun.

May stood, frozen in time and place, gun leveled at Cal.

“Get dressed,” May said.

Lyndley and Jack scrambled for their clothes.

“He’s the one you should shoot,” Cal said.

But May wasn’t listening to him; she was staring at the bat hanging at his side.

“You’re all wrong about this,” Cal said, looking for a crack. “I was just trying to defend her. You have no idea what was going on here.”

Jack pulled on his shirt.

“Go home,” May said to Jack.

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Jack started to protest, but May wasn’t having any of it.

“You are disgusting,” Cal said to him. “You are filth!”

I could see the muscles tense in Jack’s neck. He reeled around and moved toward Cal.

May kept the rifle leveled at Cal, but she was speaking to Jack.

“Go!”

Jack waited for Lyndley’s nod, grabbed his jacket, and walked toward the dock. It took everything he had to leave her there, but he did it.

“Go ahead and shoot,” Cal said to May. “They’ll string you up. You and your whole goddamned family.”

Even as he said it, he knew he was wrong.

She cocked the rifle. She was going to do it.

And then I saw Auntie Emma. Moving over the rise. Having trouble walking. Willing herself forward. Her jaw hanging crazily to the side, bruised, blood running down the side of her face. She stopped dead when she saw us. “No,” she said. “Oh, God, please, no.”

Cal recognized his only shot. He played it perfectly. With remorse and concern. As if he couldn’t believe his eyes. I almost expected him to ask who had done this to her. What monster? “Oh, God,” he said.

“Oh, my God, Emma.” He was crying real tears.

Cal took a step toward my aunt.

“Don’t you touch her,” May said, aiming the rifle. Cal froze. He’d gone too far, and he knew it.

Auntie Emma stepped between them, lunging for the gun with the little strength she had left, falling.

May was the one who reached for her. Not Cal. The gesture was automatic. Instinctive. Any right person would have done it. I reached for the gun. I wanted to finish him. But by the time I picked it up, Cal was already gone.

“Don’t you ever come back!” May yelled after him. “Or I swear I will kill you.”

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But it was far too late. She had missed her chance. We stood together in the still point. Where past, present, and future all come together. For a moment we had a glimpse of the future. Of how we might have changed it if we had taken the chance we were given. But then, like all glimpses, it was gone as quickly as it had come, and we were left with reality.

And there was Auntie Emma on the ground, her jaw contorted, resting on her neck. There were things that had to be taken care of. Not in the future. But in the here and now.

Auntie Emma had a broken jaw, two black eyes, and multiple lacerations. She had seventeen stitches across her left eyelid and cheek. The doctors at the hospital referred her to a plastic surgeon, but she never went. She refused to file charges. My mother tried to file for her, but May wasn’t an eyewitness, and even though I’d been in the house and heard everything that happened that night, I was not technically an eyewitness either, especially since my aunt was denying the whole thing, telling the police that she had slipped and fallen down the stairs. Both Eva and May pressured the authorities, trying to at least get a restraining order against Cal, but without cooperation from my aunt there was no way. Cal was a local hero. The towns of both Salem and Marblehead were claiming him as their own; he was everybody’s bet to skipper the next America’s Cup. This would be good for Marblehead, which was fast losing its reputation as the yachting capital of the world to Newport and San Diego. Since Cal was heading back to Florida in a few days anyway, the police said they believed that the “trouble was over.” They’d spoken to him, they said, and he’d assured them he would stay at the club until it was time for him to sail.

With Auntie Emma’s permission, Eva pulled some strings and managed to get Lyndley into Miss Porter’s School. Cal was livid. He The Lace Reader 239

threatened Eva, he threatened my mother. The police were called one night when a neighbor heard him yelling in front of Eva’s house, but Eva told the police that everything was okay, that she and Cal were just “having a little chat.” She took him inside and made him a cup of tea.

The “little chat” included a reminder to Cal that Eva held the second mortgage on his house in Florida, an unfortunate circumstance that had become necessary after Cal’s financial dealings with some of his sailing buddies went bad. Eva assured Cal that Miss Porter’s would help to discipline Lyndley, who was admittedly getting wilder by the moment. She also pointed out that Cal would hardly be able to keep an eye on his daughter while skippering the America’s Cup team. She reminded him that this was his one chance at fame. “Opportunity knocks but once.” That’s what she told him.

She glanced down at the lace when she said it, and not even Cal could contain his eagerness.

“What do you see?” He had to know.

“I see that you can’t afford any distractions, that this is your big chance to really distinguish yourself.”

“But am I going to win?” He couldn’t help asking. Eva only smiled at him. “I’m not going to tell you that,” she said.

“It wouldn’t be any fun if I told you that, now, would it?”

Cal finally agreed to let Lyndley attend Miss Porter’s, provided that Eva pay the tuition and all other expenses, and she assured him she would. But, he said, next summer, after he’d won the cup, he was going to pull his daughter out of that school, and she could damned well finish her senior year at home.

“Of course,” Eva said, as if she had no objection. “After you’ve won the America’s Cup, you’ll want the whole family to be together.”

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intentionally duplicitous, but it was exactly what Cal wanted to hear.

“Or,” she said, “perhaps your fame may present new opportunities for you.”

Now Cal was intrigued. “What kinds of opportunities?”

“You never know,” she said. “It could be something out west. Or in the media.”

He leaned in.

“We’ve got a whole year to figure it out,” she said. Cal left Eva’s house smiling to himself. He left town a few days later under full police escort and with the requisite fanfare from the clubs who were sponsoring him, but without even a word of goodbye to any of his family, which, under the circumstances, was just fine with everybody.

But his new confidence didn’t last long.

May prepared a room in our house for Emma, who was more like a real sister to her than a half sister. Auntie Emma’s house was not winterized, and if she were going to stay up north, it would have to be with us or with Eva. My mother was so happy to have her as a houseguest that no one even dared suggest that Eva’s place might be the more logical choice. After all, Eva was Emma’s mother. But May nursed my aunt’s wounds. She made frappes for Emma to drink until the wires came off her jaw. I’ve never seen May as happy as she was for those few weeks when she was taking care of my aunt. May might not have been a great mother, but she was (it seemed) a born nurse.

Then things began to change. The week before Labor Day, the yacht-club launch came out to the island with a letter. It was addressed to my aunt and sealed with wax and the yacht club’s emblem. Thinking it was some kind of invitation, like the ones I got to Hamilton Hall or to other assemblies, I hand-delivered it to her. It was an invitation all right, but not the kind I was expecting. The Lace Reader 241

“Come back to me. As God is my witness, I will never harm you again,”

it read.
“I do not want to live my life without you.”

Cal’s newfound confidence had lasted less than a week. Auntie Emma was packed to leave by the next morning. She called the water taxi before May was even up.

My mother caught up with her on the dock. May tried to haul the bags back, and she and Emma actually struggled physically. It was like something out of a bad movie, and one of the handles on my aunt’s leather suitcase ripped almost all the way off.

“Leave me alone,” Auntie Emma said through clenched teeth.

“Let me go!”

“You’re crazy!” May said. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“He’s my husband.”

“He’s just trying to manipulate you.”

“He needs me.”

“Please.”

“He loves me.”

Women are so stupid. That’s what May was thinking. I could read the disbelief in her, that it would come to this. She knew she had to raise the stakes. “The same way he ‘loves’ your daughter?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

May’s silence said it all.

“Tell me,” my aunt said. “Tell me what you mean by that remark.”

“Open your eyes,” May said.

“You are a sick, perverted woman,” Auntie Emma said. May said nothing.

“You are disgusting,” my aunt said.

“And you are blind.”

The world seemed to stop for a moment as the impact of May’s chosen word was taken in by my aunt.

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he had to get away. . . . You accuse him of horrible things. Unspeakable things.”

“How long do you think it’s going to be before he pulls her out of that school? A week? A month?”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“At least think about your daughter.”

My aunt grabbed her suitcase and threw it into the boat.

“All right,” May said. “If you want to be an idiot, I can’t stop you. But I won’t have you putting your child in danger.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that if you try to take her back there, I will stop you.”

“You’re a fine one to talk about putting a child in danger.” She looked past me toward Beezer, who had just appeared, inhaler in hand, at the top of the dock.

“Come on,” May said to me, starting up the dock. I didn’t follow. I just stood on the dock looking at my aunt. I could not believe that she was really going; it seemed impossible. We stood there looking at each other, and she must have been able to read what I was thinking, because she broke the gaze first, going back to get the broken suitcase, dragging it over, pushing it onto the boat. The skipper grabbed it. I saw him notice the bruises on her face, which were starting to fade to yellow, like jaundice.