The Lace Reader

by Brunonia Barry

  The magic is with us. The tide is high, the moon right. We float into Back Beach on the tides, in a sea of sparkling phosphorescence.

  I tell her to stay in the boat. A few of the dogs come out of their caves to see what’s going on, but they don’t approach.

  “They won’t hurt you,” I say. “I’m going up to get May.”

  She nods, trusting me. She is barely moving, but I can see some blood in the boat and a lot of water. The baby is coming.

  I run up the beach, taking the new path, avoiding the part where the ocean is starting to erode the cliffs, beginning to take back its own.

  At the top of the path, I turn left, away from Auntie Emma’s house with its fallen porch and toward the distant lights of May’s house at the far end of the island.

  I cut across the baseball diamond toward the dirt road, passing the stone kennel on my right, the rock spires from which Lyndley jumped standing like a castle fortress on the left.

  I can see the old car, wisteria vines growing through its broken windshield, curling around the antenna.

  And I’m stopped by something, a presence. He is leaning against the car. I almost don’t see him, unshaven and in jeans and T-shirt. But his presence is unmistakable. A shiver runs to my feet. I stop dead.

  “Sophya,” he says, stepping in front of me, blocking my way. His tone is one of authority. The way he says it makes me realize now why I changed my name, why I had to. I couldn’t stand to hear my own name spoken. Because of how he said it, sibilant, snakelike. Sophya was a name that could be whispered in the night. Real quiet, so that no one else could hear it. Quiet enough so it didn’t even wake my mother.

  I am standing at the horizon where all the lines meet. All the lines of perspective I’ve drawn off of every surface in my life. It is the still point. Every thread runs from this point, and every thread runs back to it.

  We have been here before. I know what is coming. When the dogs begin to appear, it doesn’t surprise me at all.

  There is Byzy standing on the rocks; behind him are the others. I count ten, then twenty, then more. They move from their hiding places softly, silently. Cal doesn’t even see it happening until they are surrounding him. When he does finally see them, there is terror on his face, but there is also recognition. We have been in this still point together before, Cal and I. Cal on the boat he stole from San Diego. Dehydrated and dying. Lost at sea. And me lost here on this island at the same point somewhere in time. We shared the same vision, the same hallucination. We have both seen this same ending. And we both know that I am the maker of this lace. We both know that everything that happens from here on out is up to me.

  The dogs are closing in on him now. The same way the robed men closed in on us. Quietly moving forward. The dogs’ eyes are glowing, teeth bared.

  “You came to get Angela,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says. “I came for her.”

  “You can’t have her,” I say.

  As I say this, the dogs make their move. They are on him before I have a chance to speak another word. Tearing at his clothes, his flesh. And just like in the dream, I know that I can stop them. This time I know the word. But this time what is different is that I don’t know why I would want to.

  And then Angela appears. Moving toward Cal, trying to get between him and the dogs. “Stop!” she yells at them, but it only makes them more fierce.

  “Get out of the way!” I yell at her. She doesn’t move. And I can see in her eyes what May saw that night in Auntie Emma’s. It’s what made her unable to pull the trigger and stop all this, what made her miss the opportunity she’d been given.

  For whatever reason, Angela loves Cal Boynton. She loves him enough to die for him. “Please!” She is crying now. Trying to get close to him.

  One of the dogs turns on Angela, biting her forearm. I see the blood come.

  I am disgusted. By her as much as by him. All the anger of my childhood pours out, and for a moment I think they should die together. That they deserve each other. They deserve this end. But there is a fourth person here. And I can see her face. She is here with us. My sister. I can see her young, and I can see what she will grow up to become, what she wants to become if she is given the chance this time around. And I owe her that chance.

  “Stop!” I yell, knowing that the word Angela used was right, but that the word has to come from my lips. And knowing I have to mean it. “Stop!” I yell louder, meaning it this time. The world goes still. The dogs lean over on their haunches as if they’ve stopped in freeze-frame and are waiting for someone to restart this film.

  Angela falls back now, sobbing.

  Cal is on the ground between us. He is bleeding badly.

  “I knew you would come for me,” Angela says, starting to move forward. Then, seeing the blood, she stops. As if cut in two, she doubles over with the first pain of labor.

  Cal struggles to get to his feet, dragging himself toward her. My eyes freeze him in place.

  “I’m okay,” Angela says, holding up a hand. She leans back against one of the rocks for support.

  And I can see that he loves her, too. He wants to help her. I can see it in his eyes. But as much as he wants to, he does not move. He can’t. When he finally speaks, it is to me. But he doesn’t say what I think he’s going to say. He doesn’t tell me that I’m possessed or a temptress or that everything that happened was my fault.

  “Forgive me,” he says, his voice soft. It is not a command this time. It is more like a prayer.

  Blood pools around his feet.

  He steps forward then. Toward me. His arms are outstretched. There are tears in his eyes.

  I stand still as a statue. I hear Byzy growl, but he doesn’t move. He won’t move until I tell him to, and the others won’t move without him.

  My mind is blank. I feel Cal reach for me, feel his arms come up, and then there’s a cracking sound, and I can feel my ribs break as I fall backward under him onto the rocks.

  We are fused together.

  And then I see May. Standing there, the rifle in her hand. The other women are with her. They move in, circling Angela, and I see one of them take her by the arm and lead her back toward the stone kennel, the closest building. Angela is crying. It’s a low, animal sound, composed equally of grief and birth. The women have enveloped her the same way they enveloped the frightened woman with the children the first day I was here.

  “Call the coast guard,” May says. “Tell them we need the medevac helicopter.”

  May puts down the rifle. Using all her strength, she rolls Cal’s body off me.

  The moans from the stone kennel merge with the sound of my own blood in my ears. The moans turn to the wails of a woman in labor. My life is flashing before me. With each of Angela’s moans, something flows out of me. Breath and blood. With every moan something slips further away. I am dying.

  They are all here. All the women. Auntie Emma is here, along with the others. Women from my past, teachers, friends. And then, through the crowd, I see Eva. Sitting off to one side, on the same rock Angela just left. She is working on something. Looking down at it. What is she doing? And then it comes to me. She is working on the piece of lace. My lace. The one she sent to me before she died. She is trying to finish it.

  I fight for breath. Darkness is everywhere. The fog is coming down. Covering the moon and stars. It is so cold.

  And all the time Eva just keeps working. Passing bobbin over bobbin. I want her to look up, to look at me, but she won’t do it. She just keeps weaving the lace. She is doing it for me, I realize. But she can’t help me. Not this time. I want her to look up, because I want to tell her that, because I know it, even if she doesn’t. This time my help can’t come from Eva. It has to come from someone else.

  I hear the sounds first, tiny farting sounds. It annoys me, it’s out of place. Then I see the sandals. And I look up. She is coming through the crowd, parting it. She is smoking a joint. And I think how much like Lyndley this is, how self-centered, that sh
e would be smoking a joint and fooling around even as I lie here dying. Stealing focus from me as usual, the same as she always did. She is wearing the bedspread. Not as pants the way she meant to, but draped across her shoulders like a huge shawl that’s too long and dragging on the ground behind her, pulling debris and small pieces of grass, getting dirty as it drags. Her hair is long and tied back in a braid.

  “Lyndley,” I say.

  “Towner,” she answers, as if this were nothing unusual at all, me lying here on the ground dying like this. She leans over to get a better look at my situation, taking a deep drag off the joint. And then I know what she is going to do. She is going to blow the smoke at me. I’m dying, and she’s going to blow smoke in my lungs and try to make me get high with her.

  “Relax,” she says, and I realize there is no way out of it.

  I feel her lips on mine. I can’t move away. I feel the smoke as it moves down my windpipe, burning, stinging.

  I reach out to grab her arm, but she is gone again. I squint my eyes to see her, but the moon has come down. It is descending on us too fast.

  The fog clears then, and I realize that once again it’s not the moon but something moving that I see. And then I hear the sound, as it catches up with the light. It’s not the moon, and it’s not the party boat either. It brings the wind with it as it descends, and my vision clears. The wind from the helicopter blades has blown off the fog.

  I watch Lyndley turn and walk away from me and toward the stone kennel. It is time. She looks back and smiles and then goes inside to take the chance that was stolen from her so long ago.

  I try to say her name, but I can no longer recognize my own voice.

  “Who is Lyndley?” I hear one of the women from the Circle ask May, as she hears me say my sister’s name. The paramedics swarm around me. The woman’s voice is tiny, afraid.

  “It’s not Lyndley,” May says to her. “It is Lyndsey…. Lyndsey was Sophya’s twin sister.”

  “Is she here?” The girl is looking around. She sees the shadow as it passes. Her eyes follow mine.

  “No,” May says. “Lyndsey is not here. She died at birth.”

  She did. I know. And I don’t know. It is true and not true, both at the same time.

  I am dying. And at the same time, in the stone kennel, my sister, Lyndley, is finally getting her chance to be born.

  The dogs run for cover then, all the dogs except for Byzy, who won’t leave my side until May grabs his collar to keep him from biting the paramedics as they take me away from him, putting me first onto the stretcher and then the helicopter.

  PART SIX

  As each piece of lace is finished, it is cut free from the pillow and held up to the light, and for the first time its delicate pattern is revealed. The cutting of the lace is done with great care and ceremony. The women gather in a circle, holding their breath as the lace maker cuts the delicate linen threads. One is reminded of midwives, of birth, the cutting of the umbilical cord, such is the delicacy, the anticipation. When finally the lace is cut free, there are murmurs of delight and admiration. This is a moment of great joy for these women, who have come so far together.

  —THE LACE READER’S GUIDE

  Chapter 33

  I WAS AT MASS GENERAL for six weeks. One of my lungs collapsed from the rifle bullet, which went through Cal and into me. I had six transfusions.

  Beezer and Anya came home from Norway. They were there most days, as was Rafferty, who actually tried to bring Byzy in to see me. But he was turned away at the door. Instead he stood outside and made me look out through the window to the sidewalk below, where he had Byzy on a leash, and I could see even from there that Rafferty was already sneezing. He said he did it for Byzy and not for me, because the damned dog kept swimming to town to look for me and kept getting himself arrested by the dog officer and put in the pound. He said he needed to show Byzy that I was all right, so he would go back to the island and stay there. “And stop being such a pain in the ass all the time.”

  May came once. To talk to the doctors. She told me that Angela had a baby girl. “She named her Linda,” May said, looking at me. The doctors had told her what I thought, that Angela’s baby was my sister, Lyndley. “Interesting choice of name,” May said. “Don’t you think?”

  Both Angela and her baby are gone from this place. Not north this time, but south to some friends May has made in Georgia, people who will help her, part of the Underground Railroad. She is not in danger from the Calvinists anymore. But she couldn’t stay here.

  The Calvinists are gone, too. The group dispersed when they learned of Cal’s death. But they would have broken up anyway. It was either disappear or be arrested on several counts of arson. As well as attempted murder. They have left town one by one, dumping their robes in trash cans around town or on park benches. Disappearing into the vapor, never to return.

  I am seeing three different psychiatrists as well as a researcher from Harvard who is doing his doctoral thesis on precognition and has taken an interest in my case. To the best of my knowledge, no diagnosis has been made. Dissociative disorder is certainly part of it. And survivor’s guilt.

  May and the doctors have helped me fill in the gaps. My twin sister, Lyndley, was born dead. Her real name was Lyndsey, or would have been if she had lived. May has explained everything to the doctors, and I know she is telling the truth, because it resonates on some level the way truth always does. My sister died as a result of a severe beating my mother got from my father, Cal Boynton. We were both born prematurely, but I am the one who survived. Emma has always blamed herself for Lyndley’s death. Lyndsey’s, I mean. That’s what May says. It is not unusual for the abused to blame themselves for everything that happens. By the time we were born, Cal had my mother convinced that most things that went wrong in the world were her fault.

  May says that Emma is like the other abused women in that regard. They often blame themselves. The beatings don’t start overnight. Most abuse begins slowly. An offhand remark, something derogatory that the woman already believes about herself. It starts with the undermining of already fragile self-esteem. Then isolation. It is a scenario May has seen again and again. It is a gradual process you hardly notice. Until the actual beatings start. By that time the victim is usually so shaky and unsure of herself that she is no longer capable of escape.

  There is another specialist coming to town sometime next week. Someone Rafferty found who has written a book on grief counseling in twins. And another who specializes in long-term sexual abuse in children. The best doctor I see is someone my own shrink set me up with, a classmate of hers from Harvard. I started seeing him while I was still at Mass General, and I go into Boston twice a week now that I’m out. Sometimes I take the train. Sometimes Rafferty drives me, and we stop in the North End for lunch or maybe an early dinner and some gelato if he doesn’t have to get back to work.

  I am grieving. For Eva. For my real mother, Emma, and everything that has happened to her. And for Lyndley. I am asked to sit with my grief, to feel it. It is difficult. It breaks through at times, but I am so accustomed to feeling nothing that even the pain itself feels distanced, as if it were happening to someone else. But I make the effort.

  I have taken the house off the market. I cannot sell, not yet. Some of the reasons are practical. One whole wing of it was burned in the fire. It’s surprising how little of it was lost, considering the intensity and scope of the fire. About a quarter of the house was gutted, the part with the tearoom in it. I’ve hired a builder to restore it, someone recommended by the Peabody Essex Museum. They are very interested in restoring the tunnels, if they can talk the town of Salem out of filling them in. I’ve donated the chinoiserie to the museum. We’ll see about the rest. For now Byzy and I are living in the coach house.

  Going back and forth to the main house as we need something, but sleeping in the little house where it’s cozy, more like the caves he’s used to.

  We have to stay for May’s trial. It will be sometime nex
t year, probably in the spring.

  I have seen Ann Chase on several occasions. She wants to open Eva’s tearoom again, though somewhere else, in some commercial space downtown. She and her girls have started reading lace.

  As part of my therapy, I have taken up painting. I sit for long hours at the easel Eva set up for me the year I painted Swimming to the Moon. I paint the harbor and the common. Sometimes I try to paint the flowers. If there is one thing that all the doctors agree upon, it is that I have no talent whatsoever. But they urge me to keep trying, convinced that the talent must be inside me somewhere, the same way they believe that Lyndley was inside me. And so I sit.

  It is getting cold. Tomorrow is Halloween. All this month the Fright Train has been running from Boston to Salem, bringing the tourists here for what has turned out to be the busiest season for the merchants. People in monster costumes serve mixed drinks to the commuters. I sit and watch them sometimes and think about free enterprise and just how creative it can get. Mom-and-pop haunted houses crop up on every corner this time of year, with no legislation to limit them. That law didn’t pass. It failed for the same reason that Rafferty says the Calvinists would have ultimately failed if they hadn’t done themselves in. It failed because Salem is a town of tolerance—religious, social, and even economic. Maybe it doesn’t achieve perfect peace. Such a thing is difficult to imagine in today’s world. But in the end Salem is a town that doesn’t take itself too seriously, because it learned early on, way back in the 1600s, what can happen when you do.

  The limos are already lining up in front of the Hawthorne Hotel. The Witches Ball is tonight. It is formal, and I understand from Ann that it is a beautiful event, the highlight of their social season.