Big Lies in a Small Town (ARC)

by Diane Chamberlain

  “We had to be very quiet,” Mama Nelle said. She lifted a shivering finger to her lips. “Shh.”

  “You had to be quiet while she painted?” I asked. “So she could concentrate?”

  “No, not then,” Mama Nelle said. “We couldn’t let nobody know nothin’ ’bout her.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “I tol’ you, honey,” the woman born in 1950 said. “Half of what she say these days don’t make no sense, so don’t worry ’bout it.”

  I barely heard her, my attention on Mama Nelle. “Would you like to see a picture of the mural?” I asked her, leaning to the side so I could pull my phone from my jeans pocket.

  “Her eyes ain’t so good,” another of the women warned me.

  I swiped the screen of my phone until I reached one of my first pictures of the entire mural. I held it up in front of Mama Nelle.

  “What’s that?” Mama Nelle asked.

  “A picture of the mural Anna Dale—Miss Anna—painted,” I said. “Though it’s been in storage and is very dirty. Probably very different from when you last saw it.”

  Mama Nelle frowned. “Jes’ a big ol’ blur to me,” she said.

  “Let me see it,” the 1950 woman said, and I held the phone in front of her.

  The woman laughed. “That’s a big mess, that’s what that is. How you expect her to make anythin’ out of that?”

  I looked at the picture myself. I supposed to someone not accustomed to seeing the damaged mural every day, it did look a mess. To me, though, it was becoming a source of fascination.

  I sat with Mama Nelle a while longer, asking her questions about her and Jesse’s childhoods, and that seemed to be where the old woman’s dementia had not yet taken its toll and her memories were the happiest. At one point, Mama Nelle took my hand and held it on her bony knee, and I felt touched by the gesture. I liked sitting there, talking to her. Even though she didn’t mention Anna again, it didn’t matter. She had known the living, breathing Anna. We couldn’t let nobody know nothin’ ’bout her. Why not? I wondered. What was that all about?

  By the time Lisa came to hustle me out of the sitting room, I found it hard to tear myself away.

  In the kitchen, Lisa introduced me to a stunning woman who was setting candles into a large chocolate-iced sheet cake. Happy Birthday, Mama Nelle was written in yellow icing on top.

  “This is my cousin Saundra, Mama Nelle’s daughter,” Lisa said. “And Saundra, this is Morgan Christopher who’s helping out in the gallery.”

  Saundra set the last candle into the cake, then smiled at me. Everything about her face was symmetrical, from her perfect eyebrows, to her high cheekbones, to her straight white smile. “Lisa tells me you’re restoring a huge, musty ol’ mural for Uncle Jesse’s gallery,” she said.

  “Yes, and Mama—your mother—remembers the artist, which is so cool.” I heard the enthusiasm in my voice. It felt good to be excited about something. “We know next to nothing about her,” I added.

  “She does?” Saundra shook her head with a chuckle. “That woman. You never know what she’s going to pull out of that memory bank of hers.”

  “Don’t make so much out of it,” Lisa said in the cool voice she often used with me. “Mama tends to make things up these days.”

  “Oh, I think a lot of what she remembers is at least partially true.” Saundra stood back to admire her handiwork with the candles. “But oh Lord, I’m such a bad daughter!” She laughed. “I wish I’d written down everything she’s said over my fifty-five years. She has all the family history locked in that brain of hers and we’ve lost it because I’m lazy.”

  “You’re the least lazy person I know,” Lisa said, patting her cousin’s arm. She looked at me. “Saundra is superintendent of schools in Elizabeth City.”

  “Wow,” I said, trying to sound polite, but I wished I was back in the sitting room, picking Mama Nelle’s brain.

  “Mama is the repository for the family history,” Saundra said. “She has land deeds and letters and all sorts of what-not from ancient times tucked here and there in her bedroom, and I know I’m going to have to be the one to sort through all of it when she passes.”

  “You could just toss it,” Lisa suggested.

  “You’re evil,” Saundra said, then she looked at me. “She was always the evil cousin.”

  I can believe it, I thought, but I only smiled.

  An older, gray-haired woman suddenly blew into the room. She was big boned and smelled strongly of some sweet perfume and she swept Lisa into her arms. “Baby,” she said. “How are you, honey? Come talk to me!”

  I watched Lisa get pulled away by the woman as if she were a small child obeying an elder, and Saundra turned to busy herself with a tray of small pastries. I thought I should offer to help, but instead I excused myself. I wanted to go back to the sunroom and Mama Nelle, where I’d felt a strange comfort. Even if the old woman could remember very little of the past, we shared an interest in the dusty old mural. For Mama Nelle, it was a memory. For me, the here and now. Yet we did have one thing in common, I thought, and that was Anna Dale.

  Chapter 22

  ANNA

  January 8, 1940

  From the United States Treasury Department, Section of Fine Arts

  Special 48-States Mural Competition

  January 3, 1940

  Dear Miss Anna Dale,

  Thank you for sending your sketch for the Edenton, North Carolina, mural. You mentioned that you will be using models for the cartoon and I implore you to do so. While the figures in your sketch were competent, they lacked a realism that can only come through the use of live models. Similarly, I’d reconsider the color choices of the frocks on the women in the central portion of the sketch. To my eye, those particular shades of purple and blue clash against one another. Also, I would not have known the Negro woman was holding peanuts in her apron had you not told me, but I’m sure you’ll take care of adding more detail in your cartoon. I do applaud your liberal use of reds. Few of the artists have been so bold with color.

  With these slight changes, the Section believes your final mural will be a success and we are enclosing a check for your first payment of $240. Please send a photograph of the full-scale black-and-white cartoon as soon as possible.

  Sincerely, Edward Rowan, Art Administrator, Section of Fine Arts

  Anna read the letter three times to be sure she understood. Her sketch had been accepted, and she’d actually been paid for her work. She could barely believe that doing something she loved could result in so much money. Mr. Rowan hadn’t found the sketch perfect, but perfect enough, and that was what counted at this stage. Anna had been told that he was persnickety and always had to find something he wanted corrected. That was fine. She would happily address his concerns. She already had the roll of cartoon paper. Now she could move forward.

  She needed to find her models, though. Three women for the Tea Party. A Negro woman for the peanut factory. A white man for the lumber yard. There were no people in the painting of the Cotton Mill Village, and the men in the fishing boat were at such a distance that she didn’t need to see them in detail. So she needed five models in all. She hoped she wasn’t biting off more than she could chew.

  On Friday, she’d spoken by phone with the art teacher Mayor Sykes referred her to at Edenton High School and asked if she might have a couple of art students willing to help her in the warehouse.

  “I won’t be able to pay them,” she’d explained, “but the experience should be illuminating to them as future artists.”

  The teacher called her back to say there were two students, a boy and a girl, who would work for her a couple of hours every afternoon for school credit. Anna was relieved. Not only did she need the help, she would also be glad to have some company in the spooky warehouse. She called the mayor’s office to give him the news and asked if he’d had that key made yet, but he said he’d thought it over and a key didn’t make sense, since the large garage doors had no
locks.

  “Why bother to lock the door, then?” he’d asked. He assured her that her supplies would be perfectly safe. She was disappointed, but she had to trust that he knew his town better than she did.

  As soon as she set down the letter from the Section, she called the art store in Norfolk and ordered her canvas and paints, both in tubes and cans. She would have a great deal of canvas to cover. She hoped Pauline had been serious about going to Norfolk with her to pick up the supplies. Then she called the lumber company and ordered the wood she’d need for the stretcher. So much wood! It made her nervous to imagine the work she had ahead of her, building that stretcher, and she hoped and prayed she had the measurements right.

  She took a photograph of the approved sketch to the post office to show Mr. Arndt. She was nervous, of course, knowing her plans for the mural didn’t line up precisely with the suggestions of the “movers and shakers” in town, but Mr. Arndt studied the photograph with a smile on his face.

  “What a masterful job you’ve done,” he said finally, looking up at her from his desk chair. “I wish I could see the colors.”

  “It is quite colorful,” Anna said, glowing from his compliment. “You’re all right with the Tea Party being so central to the composition?”

  He laughed. “Oh, I knew you were going to get those ladies in there one way or another!” he said. “Can I keep this?” He lifted the photograph. “Hang it up on the post office wall? That okay with you?”

  “Of course,” she said, relieved that he liked it well enough to show it off.

  She celebrated by taking Miss Myrtle to dinner at the Albemarle Restaurant that evening. Miss Myrtle laughed when Anna ordered the Yankee Pot Roast.

  “Well, that figures!” the older woman said.

  Everyone in the restaurant seemed to know who Anna was and several people approached their table to talk to her about the mural.

  “I can’t believe you’re paintin’ somethin’ that’ll take up that whole wall in there!” one of the women said. Another told her she’d seen the photograph of the sketch hanging on the post office wall just that afternoon and couldn’t wait to see it in color. But then, a woman with angry eyes and a permanent-looking sneer on her face walked over to their table.

  “Wipe that smug look off your face,” she said to Anna. “It’s very unbecoming.” The woman turned and marched through the restaurant and out the door, while Anna sat stock-still with her mouth open, utterly speechless.

  “Ignore her,” Miss Myrtle said. “Don’t let small-minded people ruin your good fortune.”

  Anna pressed her lips together, looking down at her plate. She felt both embarrassed and misunderstood.

  “Come on, now.” Miss Myrtle tapped the back of her hand. “That gal is no doubt friends with Mrs. Drapple and she had to say her little piece and now you have to just forget all about it.”

  Anna let out her breath and offered Miss Myrtle a stoic smile. She would change the subject. “Will you be one of my Tea Party models?” she asked.

  “Me?” Miss Myrtle looked flustered, a blush coming to her cheeks. “Don’t you think I’m a bit too long in the tooth?”

  Yes, she was, and she and Anna both knew it, but Anna could take some of the gray out of the older woman’s hair and soften the lines around her mouth. She loved the idea of having her landlady in the mural.

  “I think you’ll be perfect,” Anna said. “Maybe Pauline will agree to be another.”

  They talked about the people they knew who might be willing to model for the mural. Miss Myrtle thought the mayor’s wife was a good choice, but the idea made Anna cringe as she remembered Pauline’s comments about Mayor Sykes’s treatment of his wife. She felt as if she knew far more than she should about the poor woman and her life.

  “Or perhaps Ellen Harper,” Miss Myrtle said. “She’s a salesgirl at the Patsy Department Store.”

  “Could you ask her for me?” Anna said. “And what about Freda for my peanut factory worker?” She would have to darken the gray in Freda’s hair, as well, but Freda otherwise had a pretty, youthful face that Anna would love to capture in the painting.

  Miss Myrtle chuckled. “I bet Freda would get a real kick out of that,” she said.

  “Then I just need to find a willing gentleman for the lumberman and I’ll have my four women and one man.”

  Miss Myrtle laughed again. “It’s going to look as though Edenton is run by women,” she said.

  “Yes, I suppose it will.” Anna smiled to herself, wondering again what Mr. Drapple had proposed in his sketch.

  Chapter 23

  MORGAN

  June 23, 2018

  More and more, I welcomed the daytime hours when I could lose myself in cleaning the mural. I was working faster now that I had faith the paint wouldn’t flake from my touch. It was incredibly satisfying to see colors and details emerge from beneath the grime. Today, one week into the cleaning, I finally reached the central figures of the mural: the three Tea Party women. Their dresses were beautiful once they were freed from the muck that had coated them. Anna Dale had had no fear of color and it excited me to see the vibrancy of the mural emerge with each square I uncovered.

  The first square I worked on after lunch showed a small mirror in the hand of one of the ladies. The woman held the mirror up to her face as if to powder her nose, but now that I’d cleaned the grime from the mirror’s glasslike surface, I could see that the reflection was not of the woman’s face at all, but rather the tiny image of a man. The figure was so small against the shimmery gray background of the mirror that I’d thought it was a crack in the paint at first. But no. It was definitely a man—a red-haired man wearing a brown jacket and cap, leaning against a lamppost. Another one of Anna’s bizarre anomalies. I couldn’t wait to show it to Oliver. I’d gotten into the habit of zipping through the gallery to his office after every square and dragging him back to show off my handiwork—or Anna’s handiwork, at least.

  “Here she comes again,” one of the construction guys would say.

  “Another hundred and forty-four square inches down!” another would add.

  Oliver seemed to get a kick out of my enthusiasm, too, stopping whatever he was in the middle of doing to join me in the foyer and stare at the newly revealed block of color.

  I found him in his office, hunched over a spreadsheet on his computer. He held up a hand to keep me quiet as he moved figures from an invoice to the spreadsheet and I stood patiently, waiting for him to finish his task before I disturbed him. From the speaker on his desk, a sweet-voiced woman sang a song about paving over parking lots. Watching him, I couldn’t help but smile. Intense blue eyes focused on his task. That faint, perpetually rosy look to his cheeks as though he’d been outside in the cold. I felt like bending over to give him an affectionate hug. I’d known him all of ten days, but I already had tender feelings toward him. He seemed like the sanest person in my life, which, I had to admit, wasn’t saying that much.

  He finished at the computer, then swiveled his chair to look at me. “Whatcha got?” he asked.

  “Something intriguing.” I nodded in the direction of the foyer.

  He followed me back to the mural and I showed him the mirror with its little red-haired man. He climbed onto the ladder for a closer look.

  “Wow,” he said, a sparkle in his eyes as he looked down at me. “So now we have a motorcycle. A bloody ax. And a dapper-looking fellow in a mirror. We’ve got a real puzzle here, don’t we?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Unless Jesse was right and she was simply out of her mind. But she looked and sounded so sane in that old newspaper article you have.”

  “She did,” he agreed. He pulled out his phone and snapped a couple of close-up pictures of the mirror.

  I had a sudden idea. “Would that newspaper be online?” I asked. “The one that article was from? Maybe there were more articles about her.”

  “Tiny, small-town paper?” Oliver shook his head as he climbed down the ladder to the floor. “I
doubt it. You could try the library, though. I bet they have old copies.”

  “Maybe.” I looked toward the mural, nearly half clean now, and felt a smile cross my face. “I like this part of restoration,” I said. “The cleaning part.”

  “The easy part, you mean.” He grinned at me.

  I sighed, my smile gone. “Everything I read about how to inpaint and … all of it … makes me feel so ignorant. It’s overwhelming.”

  “Step by step,” he said patiently, motioning to the mural as he headed back to the hallway. “Let me know what other bizarre stuff you find in the next square.”

  Instead of walking to Lisa’s house when I left the gallery that evening, I headed to the Edenton library to see what I could find in the local paper from 1940.

  The old editions of the Chowan Herald, all on microfilm, were located in the small, cramped, and quiet second story of the library. I was the only person up there, and it took me thirty minutes to figure out how to operate the microfilm machine. I was frustrated by the time I loaded the reel for 1940 and even more frustrated when I realized there was no indexing—no way to search for Anna’s name. I began running through the papers week by week, studying the crude images with the dodgy machine, finally finding a photograph in the February 15 edition. The large but grainy picture appeared to have been taken inside the warehouse—Mama Nelle’s “big barn,” I felt sure. Anna and her very cool haircut stood next to an empty canvas … or at least, it appeared empty until I enlarged the shot and saw the faint but clear pounce lines that covered the surface. I understood immediately what I was looking at. Anna Dale had created a cartoon of the mural and pounced the image onto the canvas. A thrill ran up my spine, knowing that the canvas I was looking at was the very canvas I was working on, and I had the out-of-body feeling that I was there, with her, in that warehouse. I squinted at the faint, grainy image. I could see no pounce marks for the motorcycle, although it was hard to make out much of anything on the canvas.