The Map in the Attic

by Jolyn Sharp

  Annie and Alice paused to hash out their research plan in the library’s foyer, speaking in whispers so as not to disturb the other patrons. Annie carried a canvas tote bag filled with mystery novels due to be returned. As she glanced around, she saw few open seats in the Great Room; the reference room was only moderately less crowded. For a weekday afternoon the library was fairly busy. With a wry smile she asked, “Who says reading is passé?”

  Alice turned to the two computer terminals incongruously perched on an antique table. “I do miss those old card catalogs, though.”

  Thinking back, Annie could recall that the cabinets for the card catalog had once stood where the table did now, though they took up rather more space and had created a darker atmosphere.

  “I had a game as a kid—” Alice continued, “I would pull open a drawer at random, part the cards without looking, and check out whatever book my fingers landed on. I think I was trying to be the kid with the longest list of borrowed books, but serendipity sure led me to some interesting topics.”

  Frustrated with her wearisome paging through art books, Annie had decided on a new approach. While Alice turned to the computerized card catalog, Annie took out a clipping from one of the newspaper sheets that had been in the box of dishes and approached Grace Emory, the reference librarian on duty.

  Grace was a petite woman with boyish-cut brown hair streaked with blond highlights and piercing blue eyes. She looked over her reading glasses at Annie and then dropped her gaze to the scrap of newspaper in Annie’s hand. Without speaking, she reached out to take the wrinkled clipping and raised her eyebrows questioningly at Annie.

  “Ah, hello, Grace.” Annie shrugged. “I wonder if the library would have old copies of The Telegram on microfilm.” She gestured vaguely toward the paper. “I’d like to see the papers from May and June 1982.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Well,” Annie stammered. “Notices of rummage sales, yard sales, and the like.”

  Grace took off her glasses, letting them hang around her neck on a beaded chain, and stared at Annie for a moment. Then she smiled. “Now you’ve piqued my curiosity. What exactly is it you’re looking for?”

  Annie exhaled and spilled out the story of unpacking the box of dishes and finding the muslin fabric in the old cookie jar. Crossing her arms, Grace stared at a point on the desk in front of her as she listened, nodding occasionally.

  When Annie finished, Grace said, “Two things. I can get you microfilms of The Telegram, and The Point too. Mike Malone’s paper is the place where you usually see the estate sales and auction notices, and those usually carry some sort of description of the contents being sold. But if the dishes in the box were old, it’s possible this piece of embroidery is older still. Have you tried the Historical Society? Or the Maine Folk Arts Center over in West Waring?” Annie shook her head. “The Folk Arts Center typically focuses on lesser- known artists, and they’ve had a few exhibits featuring textile artists from the area over the years. While you get settled, I’ll just run down to the basement and pull those films; there’s the reader over there. Then I’ll get you some information about the Folk Arts Center.”

  Settling in front of the microfiche machine, Annie reached in her purse, pulled out a small notebook, and jotted down Grace’s suggestions. Textile artists, she said to herself, and jotted a note to check some of the finer arts-and-crafts stores in hopes that someone there could point out something about the piece. She was intrigued to learn of the Folk Arts Center, which sounded like an interesting place to visit even if they couldn’t help with the embroidery.

  When Grace returned with the boxes of film, Annie fitted the spools on the spindles and threaded the film before the lens; she began slowly turning through the back issues of the newspaper. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for, and the sheer volume of material seemed a little overwhelming, but she printed out several pages that listed yard-sale notices for a few weeks after the time the box of dishes had been packed.

  As she scanned through, her attention was caught by an article about a couple of “young people” starting their own sheep farm. In the accompanying photograph, a woman in a flannel shirt and a tall, thin young man with dark hair and a scraggly beard stood next to a hand-painted sign that read “Two Ewe Farm.” She read the article that described their small herd of sheep and one female Angora goat. Annie made a printout of the article to show the Hook and Needle Club.

  When Annie didn’t think she could keep her eyes focused any longer, Alice’s melodic voice jolted her awake— as apparently it did a few other patrons. Alice apologized and dropped her voice down to a whisper.

  “I’ve checked out a few books on textile arts in Maine, but really, I couldn’t find much on the history. Mostly it’s ‘how-to’ books. And here—” Alice pulled from the bottom of her stack an oversized picture book. “Just because it was so beautiful, a book of photos of the Maine shoreline.”

  “And a few mysteries, I see,” Annie added.

  Alice smiled. “I got you the latest Donna Leon. They said it just came in.”

  The two of them moved to a table, and Annie had just started flipping through one of the oversized volumes when she was interrupted by a trio of boisterous girls who burst into the reference room, filling it with giggles. They were quickly shushed by the librarian. With a damper put on their fun, they turned around and marched back out as noisily as they had come in. As the door shut, Annie could hear a faint echo of self-absorbed, exuberant chatter. She looked around and briefly locked eyes with another girl who’d been quietly reading in an overstuffed chair. In that moment, Annie noticed her uncombed brown hair, her gray, oversized long-sleeved T-shirt and faded jeans, and her intense, unsmiling gaze.

  Alice then spoke softly in Annie’s ear, “Over there in the chair … that’s the Coyne daughter.”

  4

  Being thorough, Grace Emory had seen to it that Annie had all the information she needed about the Maine Folk Arts Center, including the key person to talk with, its hours of operation, and driving directions. She had also found and copied for Annie a few scholarly articles on topics such as cotton-fiber production in the Maine mills. All this, along with the mystery novels that Alice had picked out for her, left Annie with more than enough reading for the weekend, though in the end, she didn’t get to much of it.

  Though the weather Saturday morning wasn’t quite warm enough for setting out new seedlings and transplanting plants, Annie was eager to get her hands dirty in the garden. Her errands that day included a stop at the nursery to get mulch and other gardening supplies. When she returned to Grey Gables, she noticed the crocuses were dotting the edges of the front walk, and tulips and daffodils were just starting to push up. Gazing out the kitchen window, Annie could imagine what the yard would look like when the buds finally burst out into full color.

  After lunch, she donned her Windbreaker once more and stepped out into the breezy sunshine. Turning her back on her beloved view of the ocean, Annie critically surveyed the house’s exterior and yard, and then took an inspection tour around the old Victorian. Her examination revealed a number of things that needed attention: a clogged gutter too high up for Annie to comfortably reach by ladder, peeling paint, and perhaps a little wood rot close to the ground. Annie sighed: With old houses—and with new—something always needed a handyman’s TLC. Plus there were the usual spring-cleaning chores: raking the yard, picking up sticks, washing the windows. Though she was pushing the season a bit, Annie decided to swap out the storm windows for the screens.

  That night she called Freddy Johnson, a neighborhood twelve-year-old and budding entrepreneur who was always ready to earn some cash by doing chores. Yes, he was available to come by on Sunday for some general cleaning and sprucing up. She got to work on a list.

  All weekend, however, Annie’s thoughts kept drifting back to the Coyne girl that she’d seen in the library— Megan, her name was. There was a lonesomeness in that look of hers, but Anni
e also sensed strength or stoicism. She recalled a favorite saying of her father’s: “This too shall pass.” Her father, a missionary, had seen a lot of trouble around the world, and yet the resourcefulness of the people he worked with constantly amazed him, he had said. Human beings soldiered on somehow in the face of tragedy. They found hope and resources to start over.

  As Freddy bustled about on Sunday afternoon, sweeping the porch and washing the windows, Annie thought of asking him about Megan; they must be about the same age and perhaps knew one another from school. His cheerful animation seemed a sharp contrast to Megan’s quiet seriousness, however, and Annie decided that asking about the girl would seem too much like prying: kids were always suspicious when adults started quizzing them about their peers. But though she kept her questions to herself, she couldn’t get the image of the girl in the library chair out of her mind.

  ****

  Tuesday morning, Alice came over to ride with Annie to the Hook and Needle Club meeting. She had to remind Annie to bring the embroidery.

  “You won’t be very popular if you forget that!” Alice remarked.

  “I know,” Annie said, “but I’ve been a little distracted. I can’t stop thinking about Megan Coyne.” Annie placed the embroidery in a felted tote bag, a gift she had bought for herself at the Stony Point Summer Craft Fair last year. It was too small to hold groceries or large crochet projects, so Annie was pleased to find a special use for it now.

  “The Coynes are going to be OK,” Alice assured her. “Their luck changed the minute Mary Beth made them her special project.”

  Annie had prepared herself for the Hook and Needle Club by getting a head start on the crocheted shawl she’d planned to make with the Two Ewe yarn. She’d learned from experience that she couldn’t focus on counting stitches or following complex directions when the group was engaged in an animated discussion. It was best to arrive with something already started.

  She found the Two Ewe display reduced to half of what it had been. Settling into her usual chair and looking around at the other women’s projects, Annie understood why. Half the club was making something with the gossamer yarn. The stuff must have fairly flown off the shelves during the week. Annie enjoyed the group’s initial show-and-tell, and she eagerly waited her turn so she could share the newspaper article about the two kids just out of college starting their own farm. Mary Beth was ringing up a sale when Annie showed the printout around, but she was obviously keeping an ear out for what the group was saying, for they heard a resonating “my goodness” from across the store.

  “But you did bring it, didn’t you?” Kate asked. “The embroidery?” The other women nodded and leaned forward in anticipation.

  Annie pulled out the muslin, unfolded it carefully, and spread it out across her lap so the others could see it. There was a moment of silence as it began to be passed around; then everyone spoke at once.

  “Oh wow!”

  “Just gorgeous!”

  “What a fine hand!”

  “My, my, my.”

  “I love the colors,” Mary Beth said at last. “Very saturated, the colors of nature. Maine woods on a rainy day.”

  “Just wadded up, you said?” Gwendolyn reached out for the embroidery piece for a second look. “It seems an odd shape. And those red Xs—eight, nine, ten of them. They must mean something. Hmm …”

  The women were silent again as the piece made another round of the circle. Then suddenly Kate muttered, “Huh,” in a tone that immediately attracted their attention. “Huh,” she repeated. A slow smile of understanding spread across her face.

  Looking up, she met their questioning gazes. “When I first saw it, I thought something about it was familiar,” she began, relishing the suspense. “Not that I’ve ever seen anything like it before, but … it rang some sort of bell.”

  “And?”

  Kate gave a happy laugh. “It’s a map! Or a kind of one, I mean. Of the coastline!” The other women frowned as they tried to apply this idea to the embroidery. “Look here, this is Caleb’s Cove,” Kate continued, pointing to one of the tight curves in the meandering embroidered line that bisected the fabric. “And just south is the harbor and the beach, and this gray circle—” Kate pointed to some small, tight stitches that radiated from a faint yellow French knot.“— this must be the lighthouse.”

  The other women nodded slowly as they tried to visualize their local coastline and then project that image onto the design. Stella pulled the piece over to where she could inspect it closely. “Mary Beth, do you have a map here? A real one?”

  Mary Beth didn’t, but Peggy volunteered to run down the street to the library and bring one back from the rack just inside the door. While Peggy was away, Annie told the group about the librarian’s suggestion of taking the embroidery to the Historical Society or the Maine Folk Arts Center. “She described a few craft movements, if you want to call them that, that might be chronicled more thoroughly in a museum that celebrates the local art and artists.”

  “Movement. You mean like a trend or something? Interesting.” Stella crossed her arms. As she thought for a moment, her eyes drifted over the cubbyholes filled with yarn. “Interesting,” she said again.

  Peggy was breathless when she returned with a cartoonish tourist map of Stony Point, a state road map, and a number of glossy flyers with sites to see along the coast of Maine. “The road map didn’t do much justice to little ol’ Stony Point, so I picked up everything they had,” Peggy explained. Kate set a large plastic storage box in the center of the group, and Peggy spread the maps out on that.

  It was the crude cartoon map that most clearly matched the undulating lines of the embroidered muslin. On it the major tourist attractions were highlighted on a colorful map, with business-card–sized ads framing the picture. “See, Caleb’s Cove,” Kate said, “which makes this next one to the north Smith Cove, and then Pemmiteck Point …” The women crowded together over the map, continuing to name the various bays, points, and rivers. They determined that the map represented about fifty miles of coastline, about two-thirds of it to the north of Stony Point.

  When they finished, it was clear how remarkably accurate the embroidery was in its depiction of the coast. “But I still don’t understand what the red Xs are,” Kate said after a thoughtful silence, still glancing back and forth between the embroidery and the maps. “They certainly don’t correspond with the towns on shore. I suppose they might be channel markers? Or buoys?”

  “Lobster traps?” Peggy put in.

  The women continued to speculate about the significance of the Xs, but they were unable to come up with a satisfactory explanation. In the end, they decided the Xs most likely had something to do with fishing or lobstering. There were too few to indicate individual lobster traps, but they might represent productive beds.

  “Annie, you’ve got to find out more about this,” Kate said. “If there’s a chance that Liz Booth at the Historical Society or someone at the Folk Arts Center could throw any light on this, I think you should check it out, or we’ll all just die of curiosity.”

  Several of the women had visited the Folk Arts Center, and they provided Annie with more information about its work and location. They spoke so earnestly and gazed at her so intently that Annie started to feel a little spooked. Finally, after a particularly pregnant pause, Alice intoned, “Annie, you must accept this mission. The future of Stony Point depends on you.”

  Everyone laughed, and Annie said, “OK, I’ll do what I can. But you,” she turned to Alice, “you just may find yourself drafted to play Watson.”

  ****

  On the drive back to Grey Gables, Alice said, “You’ve been out to Caleb’s Cove, Annie, remember? The sea kayaking we did in summer day camp. What did we call ourselves?”

  “The Pointer Sisters,” Annie said.

  “That’s right. And I think we adopted a disco theme song. Do you recall what it was?”

  “Sorry, no. I’ve repressed it, I’m sure. I do remember how s
cary it was to be out on the open water in the kayak, though.” Their talk turned to other things, but once she was home, Annie made herself a cup of tea and sat in her living room, looking out at the ocean and thinking.

  She had never really forgotten the day she and Alice and the “Pointer Sisters” made the trip to Caleb’s Cove. Alice was wrong about it being camp, though. It was a church youth group, only that summer, by coincidence, there had been no boys, so the girls had called themselves the Pointer Sisters, and it stuck. They’d been learning to kayak all summer in a pool and on lakes; they had built up their boating skills and had each passed a water-safety course. The trip on the ocean was the culminating excursion, and it was exhilarating and frightening. Annie remembered being pulled out into the open sea and the calm presence of the instructor as he coached her on the finer points of controlling the kayak in the presence of waves and currents. All the way out to the cove, Annie had felt just on the edge of losing control of her craft, awkward and self-conscious in the bulky life jacket, and alternately overheated and chilled by the sun and the breeze. Once in the cove itself, the water stilled, and the group found a place to debark and break for lunch.

  The beach wasn’t sandy but consisted of pebbles, so the group walked farther in to a shady spot where they could spread out a couple of tablecloths and enjoy the view and gossip and torment their instructor. Annie had been enjoying the feel of the sunshine on her legs when all of a sudden a dense, threatening cloud cover blotted out the sun. The mood of the group responded immediately. The girls quieted down, becoming almost sullen. What had been dappled light under the trees became gloomy shadows. Annie could pick out little bits of trash that had washed ashore, and somewhere she heard a radio, a faint but ghostly reminder that the little cove wasn’t so isolated after all.

  Annie and Alice shared an extra-large beach towel as they waited for the weather to turn. In true Maine fashion, the clouds blew away, and the sun returned within minutes. But this time the sun felt harsh and glaring, and the little cove’s imperfections didn’t remain hidden. The rocks jutting out of the water that she had navigated around in the kayak seemed now to be larger, and more menacing. Then the wind picked up, whistling and howling as if pleading for an escape from Caleb’s Cove. Annie wondered if the out-of-the-way spot was haunted.