Embers

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Meg made her way down a side path through the garden and slipped a key into the bright new padlock strung through the hasp on the shed door, then opened it and let herself in. The late-morning sun slanted through newly scrubbed windows and came to rest like a rainbow on the gabled roofs of the miniature Eagle's Nest. The dollhouse was still there, still real, still hers.

  She didn't yet believe it, despite her frequent forays out to the shed to pinch herself. The house was so terribly beautiful at every time of day. As the light changed, it changed: its aura was alternately gray and mysterious, or twilit and brooding, or sunny and serene. This morning it looked like the summer house that ordinary kids can only dream about; the kind you biked past quickly before the dogs got wind of you and ran to the property's edge, barking furiously, letting the world know you weren't their people.

  She walked around the house with the careful, scrutinizing eye of a fussy socialite, checking the rooms she'd already furnished. Yes. Every piece was exactly where it belonged; of that she was certain. She'd rolled out the foot-long Oriental rug in the dining room, placed the Chippendale-style table on it, and set the table for twelve, just the way she'd seen it in Orel Tremblay's house. She'd hung the mauve brocade drapes, set out the silver salvers, used a tweezers to set the candles in the chandelier, all without having to think twice about any of it.

  In the library, it was just the same. She knew where the porcelain clock should be on the mantel, and the twin red vases, and the blue-patterned porcelain lamps. She knew that the portrait of the woman went on the right side of the fireplace, the portrait of the man on the left. Knew that the needlework pole screen stood behind the smaller of the kid-covered armchairs. Even the books — maroon and green leather jackets on the upper shelves, tan on the lower — even those, she remembered where to place.

  The maids' rooms had taken her two minutes to arrange. The nursery, not much longer. Unpacking the precious furnishings, each piece a new and precious gift, had gone necessarily slowly. But putting each piece in its proper place, as enjoyable as the task was, had taken no time at all.

  And that was what frightened her.

  How could she possibly have remembered the house in such detail after only a few quick glances into it at Orel Tremblay's place? Granted, some people had photographic memories and were very visual; but Meg wasn't one of them. Meg remembered flower fragrances and birds' songs, not which way a club chair was oriented to a sofa. It wasn't a skill she possessed.

  And yet she knew every location of every item at the Eagle's Nest. It didn't seem possible. She reminded herself that the rooms she'd unpacked so far were the rooms that she'd stared at the longest; the furnishings that still lay wrapped in boxes were from rooms she'd barely seen. The house had eighteen rooms. Today would be a real test of her memory— or of something else, she didn't know what. She resumed her unpacking.

  One by one the guest bedrooms filled up, each with its own coordinated color scheme. After that she arranged the sleeping and dressing rooms belonging to the mistress of the dollhouse, done in a classic sunny treatment of green-and-white stripes and rose chintz. They were cheerful rooms, the rooms of a gardener. Meg had no doubt that in the original Eagle's Nest, they looked out on roses and perennials and flowering shrubs.

  She opened the next unmarked box and unfolded a bundle of white tissue. Inside was a massive little headboard, elaborately carved from dark teakwood in a serpentine, Oriental design: without question, it was from the master bedroom.

  Meg held the headboard in her hand for a long time, paralyzed by a sense of dread that had absolutely nothing to do with any fear of dropping it or breaking it. Her hand began to shake, but still she stood, clutching the headboard, fixed to the spot. She was overcome by an irrational sense of fear and revulsion that left her faint. Her heart was hammering out of control in a wild, uncountable beat. Her chest hurt. She couldn't breathe. Worse, she couldn't get past the fear, couldn't make her feet turn and head for the house.

  I'm going to die was her only thought. Right here. Right now. I'm going to die. I can 't believe it.

  "Meg! Here you are," came her sister's happy voice from outside the shed.

  Meg wavered and dropped the headboard after all as Allie rushed through the doorway with a look of radiance on her face. "Oh, Meggie," she said, encircling her sister in her arms. "Thank you thank you thank you," she gushed.

  The embrace of her sister was a restorative to Meg. She bent over and picked up the headboard, which wasn't damaged. "You're welcome," she said wanly. "What did I do?"

  "Brought Tom to his senses! You were right about him; it turns out that his wife was practically the only woman he'd ever known well, and they couldn't communicate at all. He thought that when she said no she meant no. It caused endless confusion. Plus he's so standoffish anyway, which of course is his great charm, and — Meg! You're white as a sheet," Allie said suddenly. "What's wrong?"

  Meg, still a little shaky, shook off her sister's concern. "Too much caffeine," she lied, placing the headboard carefully against the wall of what she had no doubt was Gordon Camplin's bedroom.

  "Caffeine, hell," Allie said. "What's wrong?"

  "I ... don't know, Allie. Honest. I'm a little lightheaded, that's all. I haven't eaten." She laid one hand casually over her heart — it felt okay — and took the next parcel out of the box and began gingerly unwrapping it. It was the carved footboard to the bed.

  "Well, eat something, then," Allie commanded. "The dollhouse can wait. You're almost done here, anyway, it looks like."

  Allie took the footboard from Meg and turned it this way and that. "Pretty," she said admiringly. She nudged her sister with her shoulder. "Doesn't it give you a kick to know that you own this and Gordon Camplin doesn't?"

  Meg laughed weakly. "You bet."

  "Are you sure the dollhouse was Orel Tremblay's to give?"

  "I told you, Allie: Gordon Camplin's mother gave it to Mr. Tremblay after he saved one of her dogs from the fire. She didn't want to be reminded of Eagle's Nest, anyway. She assumed he'd sell it, and that would be that. It was a very generous thing to do, even in '47. But it was definitely his, Tremblay's lawyer said. The papers that prove it are part of the probate file."

  "Think how galling it would be if Gordon Camplin sent his lawyers after it," Allie said thoughtfully. "God. I'd burn it first! Well, gotta go," she said, falling back on a phrase that Meg had heard often in the last ten years.

  She headed out the door, then turned back around. "Oh! The most important thing of all," she said. "Tom's moving out."

  "What?"

  "He just told me. He has a pal in Chicago who owns a log cabin just outside of town. It's been rented but now the tenants are breaking the lease and moving out. There's no phone; the owner can't even get in touch with the tenants. I guess the owner's completely fed up. He's losing his shirt on it. It was supposed to be such a great investment, but you know how that goes. Anyway, he wants Tom to arrange for a realtor to list it, and for any repairs it might need. It all just happened."

  "How long is Tom planning to stay there?" Meg asked, trying to make the question sound offhand.

  "It's up in the air," Allie said. "I guess this trip is a combined convalescence and vacation, only Tom says I'm not letting him convalesce, so he's going to have to call it vacation. He has tons of unused vacation time."

  Allie added with a roguish smile, "As far as I'm concerned, the real vacation starts the day he moves into that cabin. Bye."

  She waltzed out of the shed, leaving Meg with a sudden, fearful sense of emptiness.

  A cabin in the woods. Private, quiet, away from the Atwells hullaballoo. A cabin in the woods. A dream place for the right man with the right woman. For one brief, unique second, Meg hated her sister.

  Jealousy! The realization took her breath away.

  With a shudder, she forced herself to pick up the next tissue-wrapped bundle. She had no heart for it: If the frame of the bed had filled her with such dread, what on earth
would the mattress do? But the bundle turned out to be a refectory table, much longer than it was wide, and it belonged in the kitchen. She sighed with relief.

  After the table Meg opened a box containing a mother lode of treats: teeny-tiny appliances for a kitchen that was already fifty years old in the 1940s, everything from a coffee grinder to a toaster to a tabletop radio in a cathedral-style case. She placed the utensils in the glass-fronted cabinets, and after she unwrapped the step-back cupboard, she filled it with the set of stoneware dishes and the collection of pewter, copper, and majolica teapots that she'd found. It seemed so obvious to her where everything went, and yet the more she realized it, the more frightened she became.

  Meg unwrapped another flat, rectangular piece, an exact miniaturization of a bedspring, made of intricately looped metal coils. The next thing she discovered was the mattress. It was down filled, with a too-bizarre, too-authentic mark that looked like a small bloodstain on it. She shuddered again with a reluctance that bordered on loathing as she covered the mattress with white linens, then spread a little rustic coverlet of dark fur over it. Something about the feel of the soft fur sickened her, physically sickened her. It was almost worse than the runaway heartbeat, this nausea.

  I have to get out of here, she told herself, exhausted. Whether it was the coffee, the bed, or the gleam in Allie's eye, Meg's mood had plummeted to a depth of depression she hadn't felt in years.

  Suddenly she'd had her fill of the dollhouse. She fled, almost in a panic, not even bothering to lock the shed door behind her.

  ****

  In the kitchen she ran into Lloyd and Comfort, who were in the middle of an unhappy discussion.

  "Repeat? Whatd'ya mean, Terry has to repeat?" Lloyd wanted to know.

  He was washing up in his wife's spotless kitchen, trying without success to scrub car grease from his hefty forearms. Lloyd hated working on cars, despite the fact that the economics of his life made it unavoidable. Wood was one thing; Lloyd loved shaping it, smoothing it, making it conform to his touch. But dirty, greasy, hostile metal — Lloyd hated working on cars. His mood was always foul afterward.

  He was furious about Terry's flunking sixth grade. "terry can't repeat, gahdammit. Timmy'll be ahead if Terry repeats. What the hell, we're not throwing two graduation parties. What does he think, I'm made of money?"

  "No, Lloyd, of course not," said Comfort, rushing to hand him a strip of paper towels.

  Too late. Lloyd had already grabbed his wife's favorite decorative towel, a linen cloth silk-screened with a red barn and a gaggle of geese, and was rubbing himself clean with it. "If Terry fails, he don't get no party come graduation. No party, no presents. Maybe that'll put the fear o' Gahd in him. Gahdanimit."

  "I don't know why he won't study," Comfort said, baffled by her uncooperative son.

  Lloyd handed her the ruined towel, took the paper towels she gave him, wiped his sweaty neck with them, and tossed them into the same bag of trash that held Allie's one gray hair. "What'd the boy flunk, anyway?"

  "Math. And almost English."

  Lloyd gave his wife a dry look. "That about covers it, then, don't it."

  "His teacher did tell me he's very good at sports. Although he's not so good at sportsmanship," Comfort felt obliged to add. "He isn't what they consider a team player. Not that he ever was; you know how he likes to go off with only Coughdrop by his side. Why is that? Why is Timmy so much more outgoing, such a better student? How can they be twins?"

  "What're you asking me for? They're your sons," said Lloyd, disassociating himself from the three of them. He tucked his shirt back into his pants and hitched his pants over his belly, then took out his comb and ran it once through his hair. "When do we eat?"

  "Right now. Sit," Comfort urged. "Mrs. Blethrow says he'll have to have a tutor."

  "Tutor! Forget tutor! We can't afford one. You teach the boy."

  "Oh, Lloyd ... I don't understand this new math."

  "So teach him old math."

  Having settled the matter, Lloyd pulled out a chair from the Formica table and began to leaf through the week's issue of the Bar Harbor Times, licking his left thumb carefully before grabbing the lower right-hand corner and swinging the page in an arc to the left. In a hundred such little ways he reminded Meg of their Uncle Billy, the one glaring exception being that Lloyd hadn't come anywhere close to owning his own hardware store.

  Meg pulled out a second chair. "Lloyd — I'll help Terry with his math."

  Her brother didn't bother looking up from the sports page. "No need; Comfort'll take care of it."

  "You know how he twists Comfort around his finger."

  "He does that," said Comfort ruefully, nodding her head.

  "He needs some one-on-one instruction from someone meaner than Comfort. That's me," Meg said with a bright smile. "Besides, you know I was a teacher's aide."

  "Meg, you mean well," said Lloyd, favoring his sister with a stiff smile. He went back to his newspaper. "Butt out."

  "But why —"

  "I said —"

  "Okay, okay. I heard you. Crabass."

  Comfort gave Meg a look of timid apology, then brought out what was left of the day's breakfast bread and began sawing thick, crusty chunks on Lloyd's new work island.

  The kitchen is both her refuge and her kingdom, Meg thought, leaning her head against the kitchen wall. She loved to watch her sister-in-law prepare food; Comfort was so obviously happy doing it. Almost nothing interested her more than turning out a really fine meal. It was Comfort's not-so-secret dream to own a home-cooking restaurant, and if the Inn Between ever turned a really, really, really big profit, Meg intended to buy her one.

  "Gee, that work island turned out well — didn't it, Cornfort?"

  It was, of course, Meg's blatant attempt to tempt Lloyd back into the conversation. It worked. "Yeah," he said, looking up to admire his handiwork. "It did turn out good."

  Meg nodded her head. "It looks exactly like the one in the Sears catalog."

  "Don't I know it," he agreed. "Right down to the roll-out breadboard."

  "I don't know how you do it. Nothing to go on but a picture."

  "You scale up, is all."

  "Well, it was a wonderful anniversary present. Wasn't it, Comfort."

  "Yes. Oh, yes," said Meg's sister-in-law as she scooped clam-filled ladles of liquid into the family's everyday crockery. "Very nice. Especially the roll-out breadboard."

  She brought a bowl filled rim-high with chowder to her husband and set it carefully before him.

  "Well, someone turns out a chowder good as yours, she deserves a proper place to shuck the clams," Lloyd said gruffly.

  Comfort smiled from under downcast eyes and brought her husband the basket of bread and a plate of butter, and Lloyd slipped his arm around her waist in a quick, light squeeze.

  It passed, in a house with no privacy, for love play. Meg was gratified to see that despite the years, and their failure to have any more children, and Lloyd's on-again-off-again job situation — despite everything, they still loved each other in the low-key, understated way of Down East men and women.

  By the time the meal ended, it was agreed that Meg would tutor the Terrible Twin in math — whatever it took to get Terry to Timmy's graduation party.

  Chapter 10

  Orel Tremblay had left strict instructions that there be no funeral. It was consistent with the lifestyle of a man who'd been known around town as a cranky recluse. But it didn't sit right with Meg. Orel Tremblay had been a good and decent man, and he deserved to have someone mourn his passing, whether he liked it or not. Meg decided to have a memorial service in the shed where his beloved dollhouse sat. Nothing elaborate: no more than an exchange of anecdotes over tea by people who'd known him.

  There weren't many. One of the hospice nurses who'd attended him said she'd come, and Allie, of course, and the cleaning woman who'd come once a week to do for him. Allie wanted to bring Tom Wyler; Meg could hardly say no. But when Allie suggested th
at Zenobia would also be willing to attend, Meg drew the line.

  "We're not trying to summon Orel Tremblay back from the dead, Allie," she said dryly. "The man just got there."

  "Zenobia wouldn't be coming to channel," Allie argued, ignoring her sister's sarcasm. "But she would bring a spiritual dimension to the evening. I don't know why you're so afraid of that. We're not getting together to play Trivial Pursuit or something. We're supposed to be memorializing a man's passing."

  Chastised, Meg agreed to let Zenobia come too.

  Comfort baked an extra pan of apple slices for Meg's gathering and arranged them on a pretty plate for her. After supper, Meg, feeling like a teenager who was hosting her first slumber party, carried the Saran-wrapped pastries out to the shed. The fine weather had turned raw and threatening; the first driving pellets of rain bit into her face as she reached the shed door.

  Meg noted the padlock still hanging idly from a nail alongside the door, and decided that the insurance people would not be pleased by her casual security. Granted, the dollhouse couldn't easily be carried off; but some of its contents might. Yesterday in an antiques guide she'd seen a miniature bureau that was valued at eight hundred dollars. Of course, the bureau had once belonged to a duchess. But still. She ought to be more careful.

  She bumped the door open with her left hip. Almost in answer to Meg's fears, a strange woman hovering over the dollhouse turned sharply around when she entered.

  "Oh! You scared me!" the woman said angrily.

  Meg, also startled, blurted out "Who're you?" People had been asking to see the dollhouse all week, and Meg had obliged them. But this one hadn't asked; Meg would've remembered.

  "I'm Joyce Fells. Orel Tremblay's niece," the woman said, laying vicious emphasis on the last word.

  "Ah. I see," said Meg. She'd been half expecting this. "I'm Meg Hazard."

  "So I assumed," the woman said through compressed lips. Her gaze shifted from Meg's face to the dollhouse and back.