The Lace Reader

by Brunonia Barry

  Across the street on the common, there are three thousand pumpkins, all carved and lit up, lining the pathways or sitting on tree limbs. It is something to see. A couple of days ago, the weather got too warm—it went up into the eighties for a day or two—and Rafferty was worried that the pumpkins would rot and not last until Halloween, when his daughter would get a chance to see them. But then it got cold again, so he need not have worried. He told me his daughter wanted to get a lace reading, that she’s always wanted one. She doesn’t know about Eva and what happened to her; she just saw Eva’s sign once on one of her trips up here and thought it would be fun to have her fortune told.

  I think about Jack a lot. He has moved away from here, to Canada, where he always wanted to live. And I think about Eva. I even think about Cal, and I wonder about forgiveness. I know it is what must happen. Every book I read tells me that. As does Dr. Ward. All forgiveness is self-forgiveness. That’s what he says. But I do not yet know how to forgive. Or who, in the end, really needs to be forgiven.

  Beezer and Anya are staying around for a while. They’re still living in Cambridge, but they come out here a lot to help out. She is nicer than I believed. They want to have children. May is thrilled at the thought. She wants to be a grandmother. She says she’ll be better at it than she ever was as a mother, and Beezer says that’s not far to go, but I don’t know. May was a good mother to Beezer; she gave him what he needed. And she was a good mother to me when my own mother couldn’t be, when she was too weak and wounded to act as a mother anymore.

  I don’t know if Emma knows what has happened. Or if she even recognizes me as her daughter. Sometimes I think she does, but I can’t be sure. It is enough for me that I recognize her. That she is still alive and, I would say, finally happy in her world as she understands it. We are given gifts, I realize. Small ones and big ones.

  I have finally read my journals. And the book Eva wrote: The Lace Reader’s Guide. Pulling apart the pages and finding her faint hand. Each page reveals another secret, like when we were kids and we used to make disappearing ink out of lemon juice and then hold it over a lightbulb to be read. I am doing my best to restore it, laying my handwriting over hers. Its gaps mimic my own, and I work at filling in the pages the same way I work at filling in my own history. Slow going. A lingering process. Good work for the long winter that is coming.

  I notice one curious thing as I work. As my pen moves over Eva’s and the words on the page grow darker and easier to read, my image of Eva begins to grow dimmer. It is as if the two have somehow traded places, one moving into the foreground as the other fades back.

  Still, I do get visits from Eva on some occasions. Today I was taking something inside, up the old staircase, and I ran into Eva coming down. She was dressed for her swim, in a beach robe and a bathing cap, a towel slung over her shoulder. She still does this; she goes for her swim. It’s the only time I see her. She doesn’t speak anymore. And her image is very faint. As she passes me, she smiles as always and then does something else that she always does. She checks her pockets as if she’s looking for something.

  I put the things away in Eva’s room. My room now. I’m a little tired. I decide to lie down for just a minute on the canopy bed, for a quick sleep and maybe a dream. I don’t worry about the dreams anymore; the nightmares have stopped. Propped against the other pillows is the lace pillow that Eva sent to me before she died.

  I pick it up to move it to the bedside table, so I can lie down. And I think of Eva checking her pockets. I remember the pocket on the lace pillow; I checked it before. I checked it the day I got the pillow, expecting to find a note, surprised when there wasn’t one. I check it again now, thinking maybe I missed something that first time, that this is what Eva is trying to tell me when she keeps checking her pockets. But the pocket is empty. And then I see her again in my mind’s eye. Checking her other pocket. One, two. Everything in twos. But traditionally these lace pillows had only the one pocket. I know that. It is something I have learned. Still, I turn the pillow all around, and under the gathering on its opposite end I find the second pocket. Inside is the little set of scissors I recognize from childhood, the ones Eva used to cut off my pigtail. I also find the note.

  Dear Towner:

  I’m doing it. I’m swimming to the moon. I will finish what your sister started so long ago. I can’t think of any other way to help you out of your downward spiral but this—I will swim to the moon. I will do for you what your sister ultimately could not. I will take your place.

  Live a long and happy life…. And trust your gift. It is true.

  Eva

  I cry for a long time. When I finally wipe the tears from my eyes, I pick up the scissors and cut the lace free from the pillow. I hold it up to the light, turning its crazy patterns and looking at it from all perspectives, seeing each of its imperfections.

  And then I say back to Eva the same words she said to me so many years ago, when she cut my braid. Maybe it wasn’t true then, or not lastingly true anyway. But it is true now. The words I say back to her are the same words she said to me that day so long ago: The spell is broken. You are free.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank the following:

  –Alexandra Seros for years of help and friendship.

  –My agent, Rebecca Oliver, for believing and making it all happen. Brian Lipson for having the vision. The Endeavor Agency.

  –Laurie Chittenden for being such a champion of this story. Laurie Chittenden and Clare Smith for great notes and inspiration. All of the great people at William Morrow/HarperCollins. And a special thanks to Lisa Gallagher for reading the manuscript at Heathrow Airport.

  –My mother, June, for her prescience and gift of second sight that told me to keep writing. My father, Jack, who always believed in the good guys. And good dogs. And me.

  –Pal and Pal: Whitney Barry and Emily Bradford for reading and commenting on numerous drafts, for their unwavering faith, and for their incredible gift of The Lace Reader’s garden.

  –The Warren Street Writers: Jacqueline Franklin and Ginni Spencer for five years of support and suggestions.

  –Diane Stern for all her help.

  –Kelley and Hall for their PR expertise.

  –Tami Wolff and the Deer Island APS English class for my first reading.

  –Rema Badwan for generously sharing her vast knowledge of the publishing industry.

  –Jim McAllister for checking historical accuracy and Salem trivia.

  –Early editing: Tom Jenks for notes on point of view. Ed Chapman and Norma Hoffman for their editing expertise. Also, Laura Vogel and Ruth Greenberg.

  –And the readers: Mandee Barry, Mark Barry, Susan March-and, Donna Housh, Ed Trotta, Marcia Goodstein, Dottie Dennesen, Andy Postman, Jeannine Zwoboda, Carol Cassella, Gloria Kelley, Jocelyn Kelley, and Megan Hall.

  …and last but not least, to Byzy, great warrior and super pup.

  AUTHOR’S DISCLAIMER

  The Lace Reader is a work of fiction. Still, the sense of place is very real, and many of the locations do exist.

  However, a few of the locations are fictional extrapolations of real places. Yellow Dog Island does not exist, but its geography and topography closely resemble that of the real Children’s Island, where I once worked. Eva’s house is a compilation of one that we considered buying in Salem, the one we ended up buying, and my grandmother’s house, which was not in Salem but in Swampscott. Eva’s gardens were inspired by the gardens at the historic Ropes Mansion.

  Cutting the lace free is something Ipswich lace makers do not do, since the threads are wound around pins. If you cut the actual thread used to make the lace, it would unravel the lace and ruin the piece. Eva invented the technique of tacking the lace to the pillow in order to hold the work in progress securely in place. This was done with a sewing needle and a separate thread that could later be cut.

  I have taken some liberties with the time frame of the book. It is loosely set in 1996, but I have combin
ed Salem details I found interesting from other years in the same decade: the pumpkins in the park, the progress on the Friendship, and so on. In general, when historical events are cited, every effort was made to present them as accurately as possible, provided that in doing so the integrity of the fictional narrative was preserved (i.e., this is a novel, not a history book).

  My apologies to Roger Conant, who was never in danger of being removed from his podium for lewd behavior and would no doubt have been appalled at the thought.

  Oh, and I’ve never seen any rats near Salem Harbor (or anywhere else in Salem, for that matter).

  About the Author

  Born and raised in Massachusetts, BRUNONIA BARRY studied literature and creative writing at Green Mountain College in Vermont and at the University of New Hampshire. She has created brain teaser puzzles for Smart Games and lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with her husband and their beloved golden retriever, Byzantium.

  www.LaceReader.com

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  Credits

  Jacket photographs: cliff © by Jan Stromme/Getty Images; woman © by Digital Vision/Art Life Images

  Prologue

  IN THE YEARS WHEN her middle name was Trouble, Zee had a habit of stealing boats. Her father never suspected her of any wrong-doing. He let her run free in those early days after her mother’s death. He was busy being a pirate reenactor, an odd leap for a man who’d been a literary scholar all his life. But those were desperate times, and they were both weary from constantly carrying their loss, unable to put it down except in those brief moments when they could throw themselves into something beyond the reach of their memories.

  In her fantasy world, the one where she could forgive herself for what happened that year, Zee liked to think that her father, Finch, would have been proud of her skills as a thief. In her wildest dreams, she pictured him joining her adventure, a huge leap for the professor, but not for the pirate he was quickly becoming.

  She had a preference for speedboats. Anything that could do over thirty knots was fair game. There was little security back then, and most of the keys (if there were any) were hidden somewhere on the boats themselves, usually in the most obvious place imaginable.

  The game was simple. She would pick a boat that looked fast and sleek, give herself exactly five minutes to break in and get the engine started, and head out of the harbor toward the ocean. Once she passed the confines of Salem, she would open up the engine and point the bow straight out toward Baker’s Island. Later that night she would return the stolen boat.

  There was only one rule. She could never return a boat to the same mooring from which she had stolen it. It was a good rule, not just because it presented an additional challenge but also because it was practical. If she put the boat back on the same mooring, she would be much more likely to get caught. Everyone knows that the last thing any good thief should do is revisit the scene of the crime.

  Usually Zee would abandon the boat at one of the public wharves that lined Salem’s waterfront. Often it was the one at the Willows, the first wharf you came to when you entered the harbor. But when the cops started looking for her, she began to leave the boats in other, less obvious places. Sometimes she would jump someone else’s mooring. Or she would leave a boat in one of the slips at Derby Wharf, which made it easy to get away, since she lived so close.

  Only one time did she mess up and misjudge the fuel level. She was all the way up by Singing Beach in Manchester when the engine died. At first she didn’t believe she had run out of gas. But when she checked the fuel again, her mistake was clear. Fighting the panic that was beginning to overtake her, she tried to come up with a plan. She could easily swim to shore, but if she did, the boat would either drift out to sea or smash against the rocks. For the first time, she was afraid of getting caught. In a strange way, she was grateful that there were no other boats around, no one she could signal for help. Not knowing what else to do, she let the boat drift.

  She looked up at the moonless sky, the stars brighter than she had ever seen them, their reflections dissolving in the water around her like an effervescent medicine that seemed to dissolve her panic as well. Here, floating along with the current, staring up at the heavens, she knew that everything would be all right.

  When she looked back down at the horizon to get her bearings, she found she had drifted toward shore. A dark outline of something appeared in her peripheral vision, and, when she turned to face it, a wharf came into focus and, on the hill beyond it, a darkened house. She grabbed an oar and began to steer the boat in toward shore, catching the onsweep of tide that propelled it broadside toward the wharf. She grabbed the bowline and jumped, slipping and twisting her ankle a little but keeping the boat from colliding with the wharf. She tied up, securing bow and stern, and scrambled over the rocks to the beach. Then she made her way up the road toward the train station, limping a bit from her aching ankle but not really too bad, all things considered.

  Zee wanted to take the train back to Salem, but it was past midnight, and the trains had stopped running. She thought about sleeping on the beach. It was a warm night. It would have been safe. But she didn’t want to concern her father, who had enough to worry about these days. And she didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity of Manchester when they found the stolen boat.

  So she ended up hitchhiking back to Salem. Not a smart thing to do, she thought as she walked to the Chevy Nova that had stopped about fifty feet ahead of her and was frantically backing up.

  It was a woman who picked her up, probably mid-forties, slightly overweight, with long hair and blue eyes that glowed with the light of passing cars. At first the woman said she was only going as far as Beverly. But then she changed her mind and decided to take Zee all the way home, because if she didn’t she was afraid that Zee would start hitchhiking again and might be picked up by a murderer or a rapist.

  As they rode down Route 127, the woman told Zee every horror story she had ever heard about hitchhiking and then made Zee give her word never to do it again. Zee promised, just to shut her up.

  “That’s what all the kids say, but they do it anyway,” the woman said.

  Zee wanted to tell her that she never hitched, that she wasn’t the victim type, and that she had only thumbed a ride tonight to cover a crime she’d committed—grand theft boato. But she didn’t know what other cautionary tales such a confession might unleash, so she kept her mouth shut.

  As she was getting out of the car, Zee turned back to the woman. Instead of saying thank you, she said, in a voice that was straight out of a Saturday-morning cartoon show she’d watched when she was a little girl, “Will you be my mommy?”

  She had meant it as a joke. But the woman broke down. She just started crying and wouldn’t stop.

  Zee told the woman that she was kidding. She had her own mother, she said, even though it wasn’t true, not anymore.

  Nothing she could say would stop the woman’s tears, and so finally she said what she should have said all along: “Thank you for the ride.”

  Of course Zee hadn’t given the woman her real address—she didn’t want her getting any ideas, like maybe going into the house and having a word with Finch. She had planned to hide in the shadows until the woman drove away and then cut through the neighboring yards to get home. But in the end she just walked straight down the road. The woman was crying too hard to notice where Zee went or how she got there.

  TEN YEARS LATER, AS ZEE was training to become a psychotherapist (having outgrown the middle name Trouble), she saw the woman again in one of the panic groups run by her mentor, Dr. Liz Mattei. The woman didn’t remember her, but Zee would have known her anywhere—those same translucent blue eyes, still teary. The woman had lost a child, a teenager and a runaway, she said. Her daughter had been diagnosed as bipolar, like Zee’s mother, Maureen, but had refused to keep taking lithium because it made her fat. She’d been last seen hitchhiking on Rou
te 95, heading south, holding a hand-lettered sign that read new york.

  It was the winter of 2001 and ten years since the woman had lost her daughter. The Twin Towers had recently come down. The panic group had grown in size, but its original members had become oddly more calm and helpful to each other, as if their free-floating anxiety had finally taken form, and the rest of the country had begun to feel the kind of terror they’d felt every day for years. For the first time Zee could remember, people in the group actually looked at each other. And when the woman talked about her daughter, as she had every week they’d been meeting, the group finally heard her.

  The world can change, just like that! the woman said.

  In the blink of an eye, someone answered.

  Tissues were passed. And the group cried together for the first time, crying for the girl and for her inevitable loss of innocence and, of course, for their own.

  BIPOLAR DISORDER HAD RECENTLY BECOME a catchall diagnosis. While it had once been believed that the condition occurred after the onset of puberty (as it had with this woman’s daughter), now children were being diagnosed as early as three years of age. Zee didn’t know what she thought about that. As with many things lately, she was of two minds about it. She hadn’t realized her joke until Mattei pointed it out, thinking it was intentional. No, Zee had told her. She was serious. Certainly it was a disease that needed treatment. Untreated bipolar disorder seldom led to anything but devastation. But medicating too early seemed wrong, something more in line with insurance and drug-company agendas than with the kind of help Zee had trained for years to provide.

  The world-famous Dr. Mattei had long since abandoned her panic group, leaving them for Zee or one of the other psychologists to oversee. Mattei had moved on to her latest bestselling-book idea, which proposed the theory that the daughter will always live out the unfulfilled dreams of the mother. Even if she doesn’t know what those dreams are, even if those dreams have never been expressed, this will happen, according to Mattei, with alarming regularity. It wasn’t a new idea. But it was Mattei’s theory that this was more likely to happen if those dreams were never expressed, in much the same way that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.