The Lace Reader

by Brunonia Barry

  I apologized every way I could. I told her I hadn’t meant anything I’d said. We didn’t fight about it. She told me that she understood. That I was right.

  I was really starting to worry about her.

  Eva didn’t look too good when she came back from Florida.

  “Cal’s moving the family to the West Coast,” she told May. “He’s sailing for San Diego.”

  They’d sold the house in Florida, and he’d paid Eva back the money he owed her, which meant that she no longer had any leverage over Cal.

  “Is Emma going with him?” I could see that May still held out hope.

  “Yes, he wants his whole family together out there.” Eva pulled an airline ticket out of her purse, putting it on the table between them. It was obviously for Lyndley.

  “No way,” May said.

  Eva pulled out another letter, written in Emma’s hand.

  May read through the letter once, then a second time. “She’s willing to give up custody?” May asked. I could tell that it was something she never expected.

  “I talked her into it,” she said. “It wasn’t easy.”

  “Will she stick to it?”

  Eva shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. I’ve already spoken to my attorney,” Eva said. “The letter will never hold up in court. Not if Cal protests it, which of course he will…. If Emma were willing to tell all the facts, then maybe we’d have a chance.”

  “That will never happen,” May said.

  We all knew that something was going on. Even Beezer had been listening at locked doors, but he couldn’t hear anything, so he finally gave up. Eva and May were good. They had locked themselves in the kitchen so they couldn’t be heard, putting rooms between them and us to block the sound, the butler’s pantry on one side and the back porch on the other. I had been able to get onto the back porch, though. I’d picked the lock. Once I was inside, I hid behind the coatrack so they wouldn’t see me.

  I didn’t dare move until they had finished talking. May sat at the table for a long time after Eva left. Finally she got up and started making sandwiches for everyone, really bad sandwiches with peanut butter, which Beezer was allergic to, and with pickle relish, which made me gag.

  I ended up telling Lyndley what I’d heard—selectively. I told her that Cal wanted her to come to San Diego but that her mother had written a letter saying she could stay with us. I told her she would be switching schools, and although she seemed suspicious about it, I think she liked the idea of staying—but it was getting increasingly difficult to tell.

  Still, she was agitated. She pressed me for more details about San Diego. I ended up telling her that Cal had been fired from the Florida team. She was worried about that part, I could see, but when she thought about it, she tried to make the best of it. “San Diego is a better club,” she said, thinking maybe that alone could make things better and Cal happier.

  I didn’t tell her any of Cal’s demands. I acted as if he had signed the letter, too. She had no reason to think he wanted her to leave here, since he’d given her permission to stay this past year.

  I felt a little bad about what I left out, but I knew I couldn’t tell her. After that I had to make my mind as blank as possible, because she was a reader, too, and I didn’t want her to get really suspicious.

  “Is my mother all right?” Lyndley asked several times before I finally answered her.

  “She’s fine,” I said, again making my mind blank, willing myself to not think about Emma, so Lyndley couldn’t read my thoughts.

  But it didn’t work. Not for long. There were too many closed-door conversations between May and Eva. And no one except Eva was allowed on the island.

  “What’s really going on?” Lyndley demanded one night. She hadn’t slept. I could see the circles under her eyes.

  “I told you.”

  “Maybe you told me some of it, but you sure as hell didn’t tell me all of it.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. If there were more to the story, I said, I hadn’t heard it. She knew I was lying.

  All the lawyers said the same thing, that the letter Auntie Emma wrote turning custody over to either May or Eva would never hold up in court. Not if Cal really wanted Lyndley back. And Auntie Emma would agree to give Lyndley up only if no one disparaged Cal in any way. So they were in a no-win situation. In the end May and Eva decided to go to court in spite of it all, if it came to that. They figured they might have the time and money enough to make it inconvenient for Cal. If luck were with us and if Cal did start winning for San Diego, he wouldn’t have time to be going to court constantly to fight for custody, especially if the venue were Massachusetts. Plus, Eva had more money than Cal did. So May and Eva assured their lawyer that they were in it for the long haul.

  “Get ready for the fight of your life,” was his response.

  Lyndley would be seventeen in less than a week—they figured if they could hold off the court date for a year, they had it made. Because once she turned eighteen, there would be nothing Cal could do to get her back if she didn’t want to go. She would finally be free.

  A few days later, Lyndley cornered me again. “Tell me the truth this time,” she said, “the whole truth and nothing but.”

  I caved. I told her everything. I’d been so guilty about not telling that it was like a dam had burst or something, and it all poured out of me.

  And it helped. We weren’t exactly close anymore, but I could tell that she trusted me again.

  When the date on the ticket came and went, Cal started calling Lyndley on the island ship-to-shore. I was in the kitchen when May intercepted one of his calls.

  “What do you want?” she said to him.

  “I want my daughter back.”

  “Get used to disappointment,” was her reply.

  “You tell her that her mother needs her. Tell her if she doesn’t come out here herself, I can’t be responsible for what’s going to happen.”

  “Be more specific with your threats,” May said. “I’m tape-recording this.”

  May turned off the radio after that. But I saw a shadow moving down the hall and knew that Lyndley had been listening the whole time. Two days later Jack dropped off a letter addressed to Lyndley. It sat on the kitchen table unopened until May asked me what was going on.

  I took it upstairs and put it on Lyndley’s bed. She didn’t touch it. The third day was our birthday. I opened the letter.

  “I’m leaving for Canada the day after your birthday,” it said. “Marry me.” Taped to the letter, wrapped up in tissue, was a ring. It was silver, with a small diamond in the center of a simple setting. He had probably spent a month’s lobstering money to buy it.

  Lyndley was looking out the window at the Boynton house. I had read her the letter, and I was waiting for her answer. The same way Jack might have waited if he’d been here to ask her himself.

  I looked out the window to see what she was staring at. The house needed work. Its wraparound porch was half gone—Cal had removed it last summer to replace some rotting boards, then never got a chance to finish the job.

  “It’s going to fall down,” she said, still looking at the house.

  “Maybe.”

  “What if he kills her next time?” Lyndley asked, remembering her mother’s broken jaw. “And I’m not in San Diego to stop him.”

  “You weren’t there to stop him this year,” I said by way of encouraging her.

  She smiled then. “When did you start believing in all that happily-ever-after crapola?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, meaning it. “Today, maybe.”

  I had her packed by midafternoon.

  By five o’clock we were socked in by fog. Eva radioed to say she couldn’t get out of the harbor. She had four bags of groceries for May to cook for our birthday dinner, and she was stuck on dry land.

  Part of me was relieved that Eva wasn’t coming. The birthday dinner that Eva and May cooked us every year was a great tradition. But every year Eva did a lace readi
ng on our birthday, and tonight I was afraid of what she might see.

  The fog would lift eventually, and when it did, I would get Lyndley to Jack. I didn’t want anyone standing in the way.

  May did her best to put together a birthday celebration. She reverted to sandwiches, because it was all we had on hand. But she did make a cake with one huge candle in the middle of the buttercream icing.

  After dinner was over, we sat around. No one knew what to do. We were accustomed to Eva running our parties. But Eva wasn’t here.

  After a while Beezer got up and did the dishes. May stayed at the table, watching us. We kept glancing at the fog, which was getting thicker by the minute.

  “If I didn’t know better,” May said, “I’d think there was someplace you’d rather be.”

  “No,” I said, too quickly.

  “This is great,” Lyndley said. She walked over and kissed May’s cheek, which was something I’d never seen her do. “Thank you for this lovely party.”

  May smiled. “You’re welcome,” she said.

  “Let’s play a game,” Beezer said as he came back into the room. He’d started for the Monopoly board when May held up her hand, remembering something.

  “You’re forgetting our tradition,” she said. She opened the top drawer of the sideboard and pulled out a piece of lace.

  “You’re not a reader,” I said.

  “Just because you haven’t seen me do it doesn’t mean I can’t,” May said.

  “Read me first,” I said, doing anything I could think of to keep her from reading Lyndley.

  May held the lace in front of my face. I tried to clear my mind, to keep from thinking about Lyndley or Jack or anything that was about to happen. I held my breath.

  The image formed quickly in the web of thread. Everyone saw it. Everyone except Beezer. May would later claim she saw nothing, but I knew better. I watched as her expression changed.

  The image was of Auntie Emma. Badly beaten, her face and eyes cut.

  Lyndley gasped. May dropped the lace.

  We sat in silence for a long time.

  “What did you see?” Beezer asked.

  “Nothing,” May said. “Absolutely nothing.” She got up and put the lace away. “It’s getting late,” she said, dismissing us. “You look tired.”

  Lyndley and I walked to our room in more silence. She didn’t want me to know she was crying. “Why won’t she leave him?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, opening the door.

  I pulled up the shade and looked out. For a moment I could see the lighthouse beam from Marblehead Neck. Just a flash of green, but it was there.

  “It’s lifting,” I said, pointing to the beam.

  She turned toward the window.

  “Synchronicity,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The fog is lifting. It’s a sign that everything’s going to be okay,” I said.

  She tried to smile.

  We couldn’t get Lyndley off the island until high tide. I had already moved the Whaler to Back Beach and tied a long line to its bow. I figured if the tide was turning high and the rocks were covered, I could put Lyndley in the boat and tow her out, with me on land walking the rocky perimeter of the island, dragging the line along until she was safely past the point. Then I would throw her the rope, and Lyndley would pull it in, letting the Whaler drift out toward the Miseries. She wouldn’t start the engine at all until she was past the barrier islands and no one could hear her leaving. She could get to the docks by midnight.

  The house was dark when we let ourselves out. We closed the screen door slowly so it wouldn’t creak.

  We walked in silence, taking turns carrying her suitcase, crossing the baseball diamond. We passed the abandoned car where I’d found Lyndley and Jack what seemed like such a long time ago now but was only last summer. We passed Lyndley’s house, with the pieces of the porch still lying in a pile by the steps, rotting now. Lyndley didn’t look at the house or at the porch but kept her eyes on where she was going.

  Though it was hard work, the plan was successful. I had such calluses on my hands from the ropes that I had to keep them in my pockets for days so no one would see them. Ultimately I’m sure everyone figured out that I helped Lyndley. They knew there was no way she could have escaped all by herself.

  If the waters at Back Beach didn’t exactly part for us, they didn’t rise against us either, though in retrospect maybe it would have been better if they had. I pulled the rope along the rocks as far as I could, the dogs watching me as I worked. When I got past the point, I threw the rope far into the water. It landed somewhere to her port side, and she pulled it in. She stood in the boat, and for a minute we just looked at each other, but then the boat got wobbly and she had to sit down. She waved to me then, and I watched her for as long as I could. I watched her drift past the point, the way I had planned. I didn’t watch her out of sight, partly because I was crying too hard and my eyes were starting to blur, and partly because of what Eva had always told me, that it was bad luck to watch people until they were out of sight.

  I didn’t find Jack’s ring until the next morning. It was right there in plain sight on my bedside table where Lyndley had left it, but it was dark when I got back, so I didn’t see it right away. I ran down the stairs and went through the cabinet where I had seen May put the ticket Cal had sent to her. I pulled the whole cabinet apart before I realized that the ticket was gone.

  Eva went to San Diego to get Lyndley back, but it didn’t work out. She came back alone.

  Fall to winter…

  May took Lyndley’s departure hard. If she had been somewhat reclusive before, now she was showing the first real signs of agoraphobia. When she managed to go into town, she would get so agitated she’d have to come right back. She couldn’t breathe, she said. Not with all those people around.

  It got cold early that year. Beezer, who was already in boarding school, wrote letters expressing his concern that I wasn’t in school at all.

  Eva came out and tried to talk May into coming to town for the winter, saying she would give us her entire third floor as an apartment. From there May could go up on the widow’s walk and keep an eye on the island. She didn’t have to come down until spring, Eva said only half kidding, trying her best to say something, anything, to convince my mother. May refused. Eva asked me to come—ordered me to come, in fact—but I didn’t dare leave May. It was true that I hated my mother, but even I could see that she shouldn’t be left alone out here. She was hardly sleeping. She had taken to burning her lamp both day and night. She had stopped taking her vitamins. She wasn’t shouting orders at me all the time, and she had even stopped making sandwiches.

  In October the Department of Social Services came out to the island. Someone had tipped them off that there was a child on the island who wasn’t attending school. Homeschooling was illegal in Massachusetts at the time. I always figured it was Cal, but in retrospect I realize that it might have been Eva who called them. May got angry and wouldn’t talk to them. She left them in the living room with me. I didn’t know what to say. I kept thinking about what Eva would do in such a situation. I offered them tea.

  Then one day, later in the month, May came downstairs as if everything were fine. She made cereal. She told me she had decided something. She had decided that I should go live with Eva. “You can come back in the summer if you wish to,” she said, “but you should go to live at Eva’s now.” As an afterthought she added, “And when Beezer comes home for vacation, he should stay in town with you.”

  And just like that, May gave the rest of her children away. As if she’d finally remembered what had worked for her once before when she was overwhelmed by having had two babies instead of one. Give one away had been her answer then, and even with all the heartache and trouble that had caused, she had decided that it had been a good solution then and it was a good solution now. May packed up my belongings, and I found myself at Eva’s before I even knew what hit me. She told E
va she would join us as soon as the weather turned cold, and Eva believed her, I think. But I didn’t.

  A week later Beezer sent us a letter. He said he was thinking about coming home and maybe going to public school with his friend Jay-Jay. His tone was light, but I could always read his subtext. He was as worried about May as I was. Eva wrote back immediately and told him it was a bad idea, that even if he did come back, his school plan wouldn’t work out. The LaLiberties lived up in Witchcraft Heights. The Witchcraft School was out of our district, so he wouldn’t get to go to school with Jay-Jay. She told him that things were going fine and that he should stay put.

  Eva enrolled me at Pingree. After all, she had already paid for Lyndley’s spot, so it made sense. I was too late to sign up for bus service, so Eva hired a driver to take me to school every day. The day I started school was the day the hurricane hit. We were evacuated by noon, and by the time the driver got back to Salem, he had to turn around to retrieve me and bring me home. I spent the rest of the day up on the widow’s walk, freaking out that May was still on the island. I had no idea whether my mother even knew that a hurricane was coming. I was the one who listened to the radio—either Beezer or myself, May never did. I tried to send her an SOS, then some other signals in Morse code, but the rain was so heavy you couldn’t have seen the light even from the coast guard station on Winter Island, let alone from our place. I stayed up on the widow’s walk until the winds got really bad, and Eva made me come in. She told me she expected May to come in any day now. She was sure of it. But it never happened.

  I kept to myself at school. November first came and went. By then even most of the fishing boats had stopped going out, but my mother never showed up. To distract me Eva gave me a job in the tearoom. And the dancing school. In November, I got an invitation to a cotillion at Hamilton Hall. In the past I’d always thrown the invitations away, and I did the same this time, but Eva fished it out of the garbage and sent an RSVP. When I hadn’t seen May’s light for two days and wouldn’t come down from the widow’s walk for most of the weekend, Eva decided she’d had enough. She got a lobsterman to take her out to the island to fetch May, the same way she had with Lyndley, but again she came back alone. I could tell that Eva was upset, and also that she didn’t want to worry me. It was Veterans Day, I remember, because we had the day off from school.