The Lace Reader

by Brunonia Barry

  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.

  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.”

  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 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.”

  I don’t know whether it was a slipup or whether she was being 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 good-bye 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. “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.

  “No wonder he hated it here,” Auntie Emma said. “No wonder 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.

  May turned around at the top of the dock. “Come!” she yelled to me, clapping her hands together as if I were one of the dogs. “Now!”

  May walked ahead of us back to the house. Beezer waited for me. He took another hit of his inhaler.

  Beezer grabbed my arm as we walked, just in time to keep me from falling into a rabbit hole. It was a hole I’d never seen before, right there in the middle of the path, and it was a dangerous one. It surprised me to see it there. I thought I knew where all the rabbit holes were, but this was a new one. The rabbits must have dug it sometime last night, while everyone was sleeping.

  I heard the boat pull out, but I didn’t turn back. I was trying not to think about what it meant. I couldn’t believe that Auntie Emma was really going. I couldn’t believe it was all going to end like this.

  Winter to summer…

  I like the hospital. I like being here. It feels safe. But I miss the smell of the ocean so much. I just wanted to say that.

  I’m trying to remember what happened that winter, but I can’t. Most of the memory has been lost to the shock therapy. I only remember being very cold and very lonely. I don’t think I heard from Lyndley at all. I don’t remember.

  The next time I remember seeing Lyndley was the following summer. The weather was beautiful the day she arrived. I was finally warm.

  When the school term ended, Lyndley came back to Salem by herself.

  Since neither Cal nor Auntie Emma would allow Lyndley anywhere near May, my sister was officially staying with Eva in the rooms that later became mine. But Lyndley came to the island anyway. She spent her time moving back and forth between the island and the mainland, and no one ever really knew where she was staying on any given night, so no one really worried about her if she didn’t show up, which suited Lyndley just fine. When she stayed on the island, she slept in the room that May had prepared for Auntie Emma.

  It was the happiest I’d ever seen her. Lyndley was free. She had liked school and was looking forward to her senior year. She had a lightness I’d never seen in her, and her natural wild streak was unleashed. She had always been pretty, but now she was magnetic. In the same way May was. The beginning of legend. Everyone wanted to be with her. I had to fight to get equal time.

  “Let’s go to Harvard Square,” Lyndley suggested one day, and I jumped at the chance. “Bring your jacket,” she said. “It’s going to get cold later.”

  We rode the bus to Haymarket, which took forever, then the T into Harvard Square. It was hotter in town, and Lyndley traded my jacket to a hippie panhandler for a pair of huarache sandals, because her feet hurt, but the sandals were one size too big, so she went barefoot unless we went into a store, like this head shop she found. Then she’d put the sandals on and flop around, her feet making tiny farting sounds as she walked. The guys at the counter were getting a kick out of it, but guys always got a kick out of anything Lyndley did, because she was so pretty, and besides, their eyes were really bloodshot, so I think they were stoned, which makes anything funny. Every once in a while, when the sound was really outrageous, she would blush and say, “Excuse me,” or “Pardonnez-moi, s’il vous plaît,” and they would about fall off their seats. By the time we left, Lyndley had gotten a 20 percent discount on a silk sari and a five-finger discount on some rolling papers that they pretended not to notice her pocketing. She got away with this only because she had promised one of the guys that she would give him her phone number, a good trick since she didn’t even have a phone. She hoped he’d forget about it, but he followed us out of the store with a pen, and Lyndley ended up scribbling Eva’s phone number on the guy’s arm.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” he yelled after her, tripping over the curb as he tried to read his arm.

  “Eva Braun,” she said.

  Lyndley thought this was very funny, but the guy didn’t get the joke, and I wasn’t laughing, because not only was it not funny at all, but I was starting to get pissed off about the jacket, although it wasn’t one I really liked. Even I knew that you didn’t give away a fifty-dollar jacket for a pair of ten-dollar sandals. That was just plain stupid.

  By the time we got out of there, I could tell that Lyndley felt bad about it, too, because she took me into Marimekko, where she was going to buy me something, but the designs there were too cheery for her, or anyway that’s what she told me, so we went to Pier 1 instead, and she bought us two Indian-print bedspreads. She was going to cut hers up and make pants out of them, she said, because Eva had a sewing machine she could use. But I didn’t have to make pants with mine, she said. I could keep it as a bedspread if I wanted to.

  At another head shop down the block, I saw a pair of earrings that were really pretty, and I pointed them out to Lyndley, who went ahead and bought those, too, but not for me, for her. It kind of pissed me off that I was the one who had found them—not that she hadn’t bought them for me, she had already bought me too much, but that she had to buy them at all. When she asked me what I thought, I told her they looked good on her, but she could tell I was mad.

  “Where are you getting all this money?” I asked.

  “Eva gives me an allowance,” she said. “She doesn’t know how much kids should get, so she gives me way too much.”

  I looked at her. She could tell I was judging her. We are all readers, even Lyndley, who likes to pretend she isn’t.

  “Come on, let’s go get some incense,” she said, grabbing my arm.

  Lyndley bought some frangipani incense and a purple tie-dye T-shirt. Then we stopped for oolong and Earl Grey at Tivoli, and she p
aid for that, too, but we both agreed that it wasn’t very good, because they didn’t warm the pots the way Eva did when she made us tea.

  We took the bus back to Marblehead, getting off at Fort Sewall just at sunset, as the blasting cannons from the yacht clubs shot their echoes all around us. We ran down the stairs to the Whaler, which we had tied up to someone else’s mooring, and luckily our boat was still there. We arrived back at the island just as May appeared at the top of the dock, Lyndley losing one of the sandals as she ran up the ramp, like Cinderella or something, but she ran back for it herself instead of leaving it for some prince to find.

  “I thought you were in Salem,” May said to us, and I could tell she’d been watching where the boat came from.

  “Marblehead,” I said.

  “You told me Salem.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  She looked at us, then at the bag and at Lyndley’s one sandal. I was really scared for a minute that she was going to ask to see what was in the bag, and I was hoping that Lyndley had kept the rolling papers in her pocket and not transferred them to the bag or anything, but May didn’t ask. Instead she started pulling up the ramp.

  “Next time you’re late,” she said, “I’m just going to pull this up, and you can sleep on the float all night.”

  My mother was so weird.

  It did get cold, and rainy. For the next few days, we stayed inside playing gin rummy with Beezer, who was starting to wheeze. Lyndley kept trying to cheer him up by drawing fake tattoos on his arms with a ballpoint pen, dotting the ink on—a phoenix on one arm and a killer shark on the other. Then she took out her sketch pad and drew pictures of Skybo lying on the rug, but he was dreaming and his feet kept twitching, so she finally gave up and just started writing her name over and over in different styles, trying to find a new style of penmanship that suited her.

  By Thursday, Lyndley was itching to get out, and May needed some groceries and some ephedra for Beezer’s wheezing, so we volunteered to go to town. Eva was on her way out when we got there, but she had the ephedra and some other herbs ready for us to take, as well as some tea, and then Lyndley asked if we could borrow some furniture from the coach house while we were at it.