The Map in the Attic

by Jolyn Sharp

  While Laura made tea in the kitchen, Mary Beth went about setting out the throw pillows and coasters. Then she hollered back to the kitchen, “I’m just going to take down these sheets you have in the front windows and hang up these curtains.”

  Laura returned from the kitchen carrying a tray of mugs of hot water, an assortment of tea bags, and paper napkins. She and Annie exchanged looks of recognition. Mary Beth was a powerhouse.

  “I can’t believe you went to all that trouble for us, Mary Beth, but my, it makes a difference, doesn’t it?”

  “It was no trouble, dear. You know, just about all of us have had some sort of upheaval in our lives, and we got through it with a lot of leaning on friends. Friends are one of the gifts the universe gives you.” Mary Beth had one end of a curtain rod in her lap, and she was threading the curtain loops onto it.

  “Mary Beth, I never knew you were so mystical,” Laura said, laughing a little, if partly at herself for being so emotional.

  “Well, that bit of wisdom just came to me on the spot,” Mary Beth said, setting aside the rod and curtain, and stirring a little sugar into her tea. “My point is, we all want to help you in whatever way you need us, and someday, someone you know, or know of, will be in a bad way, and you’ll be there to help them.”

  “Well, Mary Beth, I hope you’ll come to us when you need a friend’s support.”

  “Count me in that, too, Mary Beth,” Annie added.

  “Done!” And the three women tapped their mugs together.

  The three sat around a low coffee table in desperate need of refinishing. Annie and Mary Beth sat on a soiled love seat, while Laura settled in a wing chair whose brown fabric was so dark no dirt would have shown. Laura’s long brown hair was pulled back in an austere ponytail, accentuating her slender neck and the fine features of her face. She was doll-like in her graceful movements, and though a little emotional at the moment, Annie sensed in her a core of strength and purpose.

  After a sip of tea, Mary Beth picked up the rod and again resumed threading the curtain onto it, allowing the far end to rest in Annie’s lap.

  “I do believe, though, that our environment has a tremendous effect on how we go about our daily lives,” continued Mary Beth. “We need sunlight and cheer and comfort, we do.” Though with the windows now completely uncovered, the sunlight falling against the unadorned wall struck Annie as rather harsh. Even such a boon as light, she thought, sometimes needs the moderating influence of human ingenuity.

  Mary Beth stood to carry the rod and curtain to the window. As she did so, they heard the rumble and plaintive moan of a large vehicle braking to a stop in the parking lot. Laura said, “That will be the school bus.” Mary Beth, who had started to lift the rod to the brackets, lowered it again with a smile of delight and looked down into the lot to watch the arrival. She gazed out for several moments, and Annie saw a frown of dismay suddenly darken her features. Mary Beth drew a breath as if to speak, but before she did so, the chaotic clumping and banging and chatter of Megan and Martin announced their progress up the stairs and into the living room.

  “Mary Beth!” they shouted at once, running over and accepting a hug. For a moment, they were enfolded by the still unhung curtain.

  Martin had been half out of his shoes when he entered the living room, and turning from Mary Beth, he sloughed them off and tossed them to the corner. Laura coughed, reminding the children that they had company. Martin and Megan both stood still and shook Annie’s hand when Laura introduced them; then Martin giggled and tromped sock-footed into the kitchen in search of a snack. Megan sat ladylike on the edge of a wooden chair. She seemed shy in Annie’s presence and uncomfortable making conversation, but she was grown up enough to sit quietly and respectfully with the older women.

  “I’ve heard that you are becoming a fine knitter,” Annie said to Megan, hoping to draw her out of her shell, but the girl blushed deeply and bowed her head. Why do young girls go underground when they hit twelve? Annie wondered, recalling how she had suddenly become intensely self-conscious and self-critical during her own painful adolescence.

  “She sure is!” Mary Beth had finally hung the curtain, and after admiring the sight for a moment (and taking another quick look out the window), she resumed her seat. “I even have one of her scarves on display at the store. It’s in green heather wool with a checkerboard pattern.”

  “Oh, yes, I saw that,” Annie said. She exchanged a smile with Megan.

  “Her daddy gave her a hard ribbing about that, Mary Beth,” Laura said. “He thought he’d get to wear it before summer rolled in.”

  “Well, now he’ll have it for next winter,” Mary Beth reported. “That’s the thing about New England. Winter comes ’round every year, whether you want it to or not.”

  “He used to wear a red one that I made for him,” Megan clarified, “but it burned. I also want to make him some fingerless gloves to wear when he’s at work. The garage gets real cold. Even in the summer, it’s cold.”

  “That sounds like a good project for using up leftover yarn,” Annie added.

  “Oh, I almost forgot this,” Mary Beth said reaching for another box. “Look what we found … and thought you might like.” She pulled out the clown cookie jar and delicately set his hat in place.

  Laura reached for the cookie jar and gave it a close inspection. “Mary Beth, I can’t take this from you.”

  “Of course you can. It’s from Annie.”

  “I mean, it’s a collector’s item. See?” Laura set the hat on the table and turned over the bottom of the jar to show Mary Beth and Annie the maker’s mark on the bottom. She set it down and covered her mouth again with her hand, starting to cry a little. Megan edged over to put her arm around her mother. “You see,” Laura said, “I—I had a book just on this type of pottery.”

  Mary Beth reached over and placed a soothing hand on Laura’s knee. “What this fella needs is someone who appreciates him, and we all felt that would be you and Megan and Martin and David. He’s yours.”

  “I’d really be very pleased if you’d take the cookie jar,” Annie added. To give Laura a chance to compose herself, she told again the story of finding it.

  Laura took a calming sip of tea. “Oh, me.” She smiled a little and dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve been up and down since the fire. Crying one moment, laughing hysterically the next.”

  “Daddy won’t let her talk about it,” Megan ventured. “We’re not allowed to use the word fire when he’s around.”

  “He’s just trying to keep us sane,” Laura said. “speak of the devil,” she added, hearing a car door slam.

  There was a hush in the room while they waited for David to enter, but the wait seemed to stretch a little longer than it should for him to cross the parking lot and climb the stairs.

  Mary Beth had taken up another rod and was busily threading another curtain. Finally, she looked up at Laura and said, “Will you help with this?”

  With a puzzled look on her face, Laura stepped over to the uncurtained window, which also looked onto the parking lot. Her puzzlement changed to something harder and darker as she looked out, but she didn’t say anything. Since both Mary Beth and Laura had now seen something through the window that they clearly didn’t like, Annie was intensely curious. Trying to behave as casual as possible, she stood and drifted over to the window herself. “I always like curtains for windows,” she said in an effort to further justify her action, but she was barely able to stifle a gasp when she looked out.

  Two men were holding an animated discussion in the parking lot. One she took to be David Coyne; he looked vaguely familiar, as if she’d seen him around town. The other was the tattooed and goateed driver of the van with Massachusetts plates.

  She turned quickly to find that Mary Beth was watching her intently, but as soon as she moved, Mary Beth jumped up with the second rod and curtain in hand and approached the second window.

  “Here we go, then,” she said br
ightly, hanging the rod on its brackets. “Now they match again.” Annie took her cue and said nothing about the strange, goateed man.

  Soon enough they heard David’s heavy steps climbing the stairs. He paused at the door, took a breath, and exhaled heavily. “Mary Beth,” he said with exaggerated heartiness. “Always good to see you!” He bent over and kissed Laura on the head, and feigned injury when Martin, rushing in from the kitchen, bulldozed into him.

  “Honey, this is Annie Dawson, a friend of Mary Beth’s from the Hook and Needle Club,” Laura said. David sat down in the spot where Megan had just been.

  “And look what the ladies made for us, Dad,” Megan burst in excitedly.

  “Yup. Very nice.” David was laconic by nature, but he listened with interest and his eyes smiled gently as Megan and Laura showed off the projects from the Hook and Needle Club. He was tall and big, with muscular hands that still bore traces of black oil. “And who’s this fellow?” David started to reach for the clown, but Megan and Laura both lurched, and Laura edged it out of his grasp.

  He held up his hands to show their guests. “Don’t know why the women folk around here are afraid of a little grease.”

  “Well, my dears,” Mary Beth said setting down her tea mug. “Time is moving on, and I need to head back to the store and relieve Kate.”

  Annie stood up and was surprised when Laura stood up with her and gave her a hug.

  “You guys—” Laura said, starting to cry a little again.

  “Mary Beth, Annie.” David shook their hands. “Thank you for everything.” David gestured with his hands at the room and his wife, who was still crying a little as Mary Beth and Annie made their way out the door.

  ****

  “Well,” Mary Beth said as soon as her SUV was back on the road, “I think we did a good turn for the Coynes today, but I don’t know what to think of that man with the tattoos. You saw him, too, didn’t you? Did you see him talking to David?”

  “I did, but it’s no use jumping to conclusions. They will most certainly be wrong,” Annie warned her, but it was clear from her expression that Mary Beth’s mind was running over all possibilities.

  “You’re right. I know you’re right, but I can’t help thinking that that man was harassing David.” Mary Beth’s hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were turning white.

  “Mary Beth—”

  “No, you’re right. I’m letting myself get ahead of the facts.” She slowed to stop at an intersection in the road and stretched her fingers for a minute. Annie craned her neck to scan the road ahead and the crossroad as far as she could see. Despite her admonition to Mary Beth, she half expected to see the battered black van idling off the side of the road, waiting for Mary Beth’s SUV to pass by.

  “Look!” Mary Beth pointed up ahead at a ramshackle farm stand with a hand-lettered sign out front. “Strawberries! Annie, this will only take a minute. Do you mind?”

  Annie followed Mary Beth into the old farm stand. Pints of strawberries lined the rear wall behind a table holding varieties of salad greens and a healthy crop of asparagus. Annie couldn’t resist a quart of berries and even bought some to freeze for later on. But Mary Beth had drifted off to the attached greenhouse to look over flats of petunias and pansies. Putting her purchase in the car first, Annie intended to join Mary Beth, but she espied a forgotten old graveyard through the new spring foliage and the tug of curiosity propelled her forward.

  The small cemetery was overgrown and hemmed in by a dilapidated wrought-iron fence. Lettering above the gate announced the Youngstown Cemetery.

  She stepped over the brambles, and giving the gate a shove to push it over the unmown grass, stepped inside the little enclosure, pulling her legs up and over the thick, tall grass as she did. The slender white marble markers bore little in the way of adornment—no carved doves or evergreens, just thin white marble stones and short inscriptions, many of which were in French. She noticed that a number of markers shared the same year of death, suggesting that epidemics of some sort had come through at different points in this small enclave’s history.

  She kept an eye out for women’s names with the initials YSP, but found none, not even among the child graves, of which, she noted, there were many.

  The wind suddenly died, and Annie found herself in an eerie stillness. She kept marching through the stones, shivering a little in the damp, cool air, until she could take the oppressive atmosphere no more and returned to the car.

  Mary Beth soon appeared in the door of the greenhouse, followed by a young boy pulling a wagon loaded with flower plants. Mary Beth turned and tipped the youngster a dollar, and Annie helped her load the plants into the back of her SUV.

  “Look back there,” Annie said to Mary Beth as she was hustling back into the car. “An old cemetery.”

  Mary Beth cocked her head and nodded. “That’s what’s left of Youngstown.”

  “Oh? So there really was a Youngstown at some point. I thought it was just a name a developer came up with.”

  “There really was such a place, till it was flattened by a hurricane in the thirties. It’s odd how fortune can change so quickly. You think misfortune will never happen to you, and then poof!” Mary Beth started the car, echoing “poof” one more time before pulling back out onto the road.

  ****

  Armed with two quarts of strawberries that needed attending to, Annie was nevertheless relieved to be back home after a long day. The visit with Laura Coyne had been emotionally draining, and she wanted nothing more than to sit on the porch with a glass of iced tea and look out over the ocean in silence.

  That was not to be. First, Boots met her at the kitchen door with a howl. She had not appreciated being home alone all day and was ready for some lap time with Annie. Then, much to Boots’s and Annie’s dismay, their peaceful afternoon was interrupted by a visit from Mike Malone, owner of the hardware store and publisher of The Point, who was doing a write-up on the Historical Society’s upcoming exhibit.

  “Hank Page thinks you’ve got quite a find,” he said, casually resting a foot on the front step. “I gather it’s of particular interest to the old-timers of Stony Point.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Annie said laughing. “But it’s certainly a beautiful piece. The stitch work is amazing. It appears to be a rendition of the coastline of this part of Maine, and the care and detail the maker put into this ‘map’ is just astounding.”

  Mike asked her to tell again the story of finding the embroidery, and he wrote furiously on his notepad as she spoke.

  “And you don’t think Mrs. Holden knew the map was in the cookie jar?” he asked.

  “Well, that’s just a guess on my part, of course, but no, I don’t. I think if she’d known it was there, she’d have done something with it. Perhaps the Historical Society could have had their exhibit a long time ago.” She smiled at the reporter, though she wondered just what her grandmother would have done with the embroidery piece if she’d been the one to pull it from the cookie jar.

  Mike Malone frowned and tapped his pen on his skinny reporter’s notebook for a few moments; then he looked up and winked. “This should do it, Annie, and thank you for your time. Look for it on Thursday. Good day.”

  8

  Light poured out into the warm spring evening from the windows and doors of the Cultural Center as the residents of Stony Point crowded into the Historical Society’s exhibit space for the opening of “Artifacts.” The hum of conversation and laughter spilled out into the street as Annie and Alice approached.

  “My word,” said Annie in a subdued tone.

  “I told you,” said Alice. “Liz throws a great party. She hasn’t had one in a couple of years, but these opening receptions are always the talk of the town.” She dropped her voice and drawled, “It’s the start to the social season, dahling. Absolutely tout le monde will be there.”

  And that seemed to be the case. Annie quickly spotted most of her friends from the Hook a
nd Needle Club, but before she could approach them, Liz Booth had swept up beside her. “Our heroine! Annie, I can’t thank you enough for lending us the embroidery. It’s generated so much interest, and it inspired Hank to outdo himself in assembling this exhibit. It was just the catalyst we needed.”

  Liz took her by the elbow and conducted her on a tour of the exhibit. Around the perimeter of the room was an eclectic assembly of quilts, toboggans, iron cookware, woodsman’s tools, handmade dolls, weather vanes, and other items, each one with some connection to local history, and most with a direct connection to people living in Stony Point, which made the exhibit all the more interesting.

  “Have you heard about the King recorders?” Liz asked, and she drew Annie to a display case filled with the wooden musical instruments in a variety of sizes. “This was a local family,” Liz continued, “and for years their recorders were the best in the country. All handmade by three generations of the family. They were shipped all over the world.” Annie dutifully examined the instruments, along with a photo from the 1930s of an all-recorder marching band.

  Though the Kings were apparently now gone, and their company sold, Annie was pleased to find a number of donor names that she recognized: Besham, Page, Coyne, Pushee. “Yes,” Liz said when Annie remarked on the familiar names, “many families have deep roots in this community, and they’ve been generous in giving or lending us items.”

  One section of wall was devoted to Franco-American recipes from the cookbook of Marie Bishop for dishes such as creton (pork pâté), tourtiere (pork pie), and beignes (doughnuts). This display made Annie’s mouth water, and she turned to the sadly more mundane crudités, celery sticks, and broccoli florets arranged around a bowl of dip.

  Garnering the most interest, though, was a glass display case that showcased Annie’s map, along with some of Hank’s extensive notes. The crowd was thickest here, and Annie could hear many people discussing it.

  “Alice, I don’t get it,” she said in her friend’s ear. “Everything in this exhibit is so fascinating, not just the map.”