by Kim Edwards
“Lucy?” Avery said, offering me the pistachios. “Earth to Lucy? Did you want some of these? Some more tea?”
“No, thanks.” I smiled. “Sorry to be so spacey. I guess I’m still a little jet-lagged. I should probably get going, actually.”
“Well, it’s good to see you. Can I give Blake a message?”
I shook my head, imagining the sort of message I could leave: Discovered lost ancestor, please call ASAP. “That’s okay. I’ll track him down eventually.”
Upstairs, I lingered on the deck, thinking about Yoshi, about loneliness, mine and Blake’s and maybe everyone’s. It was still a clear day, but low clouds were scattered on the horizon and the wind had come up; the lake was decorated now with whitecapped waves. The fire siren sounded; it was noon. Even though I didn’t want to go to Dream Master, I did want to tell Blake what I’d discovered, and so I left the pier and crossed the main road, following the outlet away from the center of town.
For all his talk of progress, Art had let Dream Master go quite a bit. The plate-glass windows were filmy, and one of the gutters on the third floor was hanging askew. The brick needed tuckpointing, too, and the grass in front was long. It struck me that maybe Art’s hiring of Blake was less an act of generosity than it was of desperation. There was something weirdly comforting about that thought—there seemed to be some sort of balance in the universe as long as Art was doing poorly—except that now Blake was involved. I took a deep breath, cut across the gravel parking lot, and climbed the concrete steps. A little bell rang when I opened the door, just as it had in my childhood. I paused on the threshold, taking in the scents of metal and paint and sawdust, the underlying odor of dust.
Aisles of locks and hardware and tools—hammers and saws, planes and screwdrivers—ran the length of the store. There were bins of nails in addition to the prepackaged kinds. Wooden rulers and yardsticks sat beside tape measures in their flashy yellow cases. Dozens of different light fixtures hung from the ceiling.
I took a step and called out, “Hello.” Nothing. “Hello?” I called again, louder, but no one came.
I walked up and down the aisles, noting the little changes. Art had put gray speckled linoleum down over the planked floor I remembered; he’d taken down the old flypaper strips, probably long ago. The offices were still there, though, off a corridor that ran behind the storefront, still paneled in dark wood. My father’s, at the end of the hall, was completely changed—the rolltop desk gone, the windows shaded with plastic blinds, and a new conference table set up in the middle of the room, shiny black laminate, with sleek black chairs around it. A nondescript gray carpet covered the floor. I looked hard for the room where I’d played with Blake and Joey, the room where my father had unlocked so many secrets, but I found no trace.
“Lucy?”
I hadn’t heard Art coming, and I started. Tall and broad-shouldered, he blocked much of the hall. Again, he looked so much like my father that I found it difficult to speak.
“I was looking for Blake,” I said.
“I sent him to take an order in Union Springs. He should be back pretty soon.”
“Oh. I see.” There was an awkward silence. “Do you have a minute, then?” I asked. I realized I hadn’t really spoken to Art in years—even at my father’s funeral we’d exchanged only the most formal of condolences—but maybe my mother was right and he’d be able to shed some light on the discoveries I’d made.
He glanced at his watch. “A few minutes,” he said. “I’ve got to meet with the zoning office. But come on in, why don’t you, and sit down.”
I sat in a leather chair with wooden arms. It would spin, I remembered; we used to play on it when we were kids.
“So, Lucy,” Art said. “It’s been a while. What’s on your mind?”
“It has been a long time, hasn’t it? Well, I guess I just had some questions.”
He put his elbows on the desk, made a tent with his fingers, and nodded.
“Happy to help if I can,” he said.
I was still carrying the papers from the church. Rose Jarrett would have been Art’s great-aunt; Iris would have been some kind of cousin. Yet I found myself reluctant to mention Rose, the discovery of her existence still too new for me to want to share it. Instead, I explained about the papers and pamphlets I’d found in the cupola and asked if he knew anything about them.
Art listened closely. “In the cupola, you say? What sort of papers?”
“Oh, a hodgepodge, really. Old newspaper articles, some magazines. I was interested in them because they looked like they had to do with the women’s suffrage movement. I thought they might be historical. I thought you might know.”
His lower lip jutted out slightly as he thought, and he shook his head. “Doesn’t sound at all familiar. Before my time, of course.”
“Right. I thought they might have belonged to my greatgrandmother—your grandmother. Cora, wasn’t that her name? The dates seem about right for that. I never knew her, of course. I don’t even remember hearing stories about her.”
I’d found the key; he relaxed back into his chair.
“My grandmother was a lovely person. At least as much as I remember her. I was only about ten when she died. She loved children, doted on us. She made beautiful pies, too; it seemed there was always a fresh one on her kitchen counter. That was in the house you lived in, which was where I grew up, too. We moved in after our grandfather died; Grandma Cora was a widow by then and not in good health. She slept in the big room at the front of the house—I think you’ve got the piano where her bed used to be—and my mother took care of her until she died. Now, my mother—your grandmother—she was a wonderful woman, too.”
I nodded, remembering the story my mother had told me about what had happened while my father was in Vietnam. My grandmother had died when I was seven, and all I could conjure of her was a fluttering sleeve of a polyester print dress, her eyebrows arching as she laughed, and the fleeting dark red color of her fingernails.
“She didn’t like to swim,” I remembered, suddenly.
“No, she did not. She made sure we learned, though, me and Marty.”
“You know, the strange thing is, there was a note with these articles. It seemed like it had been written by a member of the family—it was written to your grandfather, in fact—but it wasn’t signed. It was passionate, though. A note about a girl named Iris, being sent away.”
He didn’t answer for a moment, and when he spoke, it was slowly.
“Well, I suppose it’s no secret that every family has its skeletons; you know that by now. There was some sort of scandal, way back when. My grandmother’s sister, maybe? I’m just talking from what I’ve gleaned, growing up, overhearing a bit of this or that. It’s probably as much conjecture as truth. But something did happen that got hushed up. Had to be hushed up, that’s how I understood it, for the sake of the family. It never interested me much, to be honest. I’m much more concerned with the here and now, with what’s right in front of my face.”
I thought about what was right in front of us, this building with its layers of the past, and all the things that had gone unspoken for so many years.
“What happened?” I asked, the words slipping out despite my best intentions. “What happened between you and my father?”
When Art finally met my eyes his face was anguished, grief welling up, the creases on the side of his mouth deepened, his eyes darkened with pain.
“I will not speak ill of the dead,” he said. “That is one thing I will not do. But I’m sure you’ve heard only one side of the story. Your father was a good man, but he wasn’t easy. He especially wasn’t easy for me. Maybe I wasn’t easy for him, either. I don’t think we’d have gone into business together if it hadn’t been expected of us from the time we were born. Still. What I did back then, while he was off fighting the war—it was wrong. I can’t undo it. But I can make a place here for you and for Blake. I was—I am—absolutely serious about that.”
I didn’t
know what to say; his impassioned remorse caught me off guard. I wanted both to defend my father—against what, I didn’t quite know—and to comfort my uncle, who seemed consumed by the past in ways I hadn’t ever considered. My emotions were so intense and so conflicting I didn’t realize right away that he hadn’t really answered my question, not at all.
“I can’t work here,” is what I finally said. “If that’s what you mean. I appreciate the offer, I suppose.”
He nodded once, ran his hand through his bristly gray hair.
“Just think about it, Lucy. There’s always a place for you here. Remember that.”
I told him I would and then I stood up, saying good-bye, touching the papers I’d found, just to be sure they were still in my bag.
“Don’t be a stranger, Lucy,” Art called as I left, and I waved.
A few customers had entered the store and were browsing in the aisles. To my surprise, Blake was behind the counter, listening intently to a woman describing the kind of plumbing supplies she needed. When he finished filling her order he came over, smiling, rolling his eyes a little at the situation. I thought of Yoshi, who had been so pleased when I told him about Blake’s impending parenthood. When we’d talked of children it had always been in an abstract sort of way, and now I found myself wondering what Yoshi would be like as a father.
“What’s up?” Blake asked.
“Yoshi says hello,” I said. “He’s going to try to smuggle in some rambutans.”
Blake laughed, and I told him briefly about the letters in the cupola and the windows in Keegan’s studio and the church. Again, I didn’t mention Rose. Blake was interested but distracted, too; he kept glancing around the store to see if there were any customers in need of help. Then Zoe came in, ringing the little bells on the door, and when she saw me she ran over and hugged me with the exuberance of early adolescence, then started talking a mile a minute about a play she was in. She’d grown so tall since I’d last seen her, and wore dangling earrings, and once in a while she spoke of herself in the third person—“Zoe is so excited!”—as if she were posting on Facebook and not talking to me in person. She looked a lot like Joey, with the same intense Jarrett eyes, her dark hair. Blake smiled, raised his eyebrows slightly, and drifted off.
I promised Zoe I would see her again before I left and she said she was coming to the solstice party with her parents. Then I left Dream Master and walked back into town, got a sandwich and drink from the grocery store, and sat on a bench by the outlet while I ate. Light made dancing patterns on the water and a few seagulls hovered on the concrete seawall, waiting for crumbs. I tossed them little pieces of bread, thinking about my discoveries at the church and my conversation with Art.
When I finished eating, I wadded up my lunch papers and tossed them out, pausing in the shade of an oak tree to look at the pictures I’d taken of the Wisdom window on my phone. The resolution wasn’t very good, but still the imagery was vibrant, striking. Had Rose designed them? And who had she been?
Yoshi had sent several messages regarding his flights. I didn’t call because it would be after midnight there by now, but I went to my saved messages and played the two he had left, telling me about a job he’d heard about, one I might like, and that my students missed me and he did, too. I closed my eyes and played them again, listening to the cadence of his voice.
Keegan had left a voice message, too, about the windows in the chapel. I tried to call him back, but he didn’t pick up.
When a break came in the traffic, I darted across the street and slipped into the library, which had once been a private home. Built of gray stone, it had a deep front porch facing the lake and a wooden screen door that creaked and slammed shut behind me, causing the librarian, a young man with short hair, to glance up. I passed the bulletin board thick with flyers: lost cats, town meetings, a poster from the white deer consortium, an open meeting of the Iroquois coalition. I sat at one of the long cherry tables where I used to do homework. Now there were computers at every seat. I typed in “Frank Westrum.” To my surprise, several articles appeared. Though I couldn’t trust them all, I read the first entry with some excitement anyway. Westrum had existed, clearly, and as more than a local artist who’d faded obscurely away.
Frank George Westrum, 1868-1942. Glass artisan. Associated with the studios of La Farge, where he apprenticed 1894-1901. Married Beatrice Mansfield in 1896, and in 1919 moved from New York City to Rochester, New York, to open an independent glass studio. Consultant to Corning Glass. Two children, Marcus Westrum b. 1896 and Annabeth Westrum b. 1897.
At the end of the article there was a link to the Frank Westrum House in Rochester. A photo came up of a stained-glass window, a simple sphere in shades of ivory against a dark square background. A long-stemmed tulip followed the inner curve of the sphere, the leaves fluid, as if floating, the single red flower blooming. The patterns did not match the border pattern on the windows in Keegan’s studio or the church, but stylistically the resemblance was clear. Below was a single paragraph.
Home and studio of glass artist Frank Westrum from 1920 until his death in 1942, this house contains 27 striking examples of his stained-glass work in wide variety, from the grand windows in the stairwell to modest transoms. Sold to private owners in 1945, this dwelling was purchased by the Frank Westrum Preservation Society in 1968, on the 100th anniversary of his birth. The Society is dedicated to the collection and preservation of his body of work, which exemplifies the resurgence of the art of stained glass and the influences of William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and the Art Nouveau movement. Open May through September, Tuesday and Thursday, 2-5.
I read this over twice, thinking of the window with its cascades of vines, its animals and swimming fish, its brilliant colors, and its row of familiar lacy moons along the bottom. Rochester was about an hour away; I’d have time to get there. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, making an ever-changing pattern on the glossy table. The librarian gave me an amused, perplexed smile when I asked him what day it was, just to be sure.
“Wednesday, last time I checked.”
So much for making it that afternoon. And anyway, there was my mother’s party.
On an impulse, I went back and typed in “Beatrice Mansfield.” Sometimes I hated the Internet, which made it possible to give in to every momentary distraction or flight of mind. But to my surprise she, too, was listed with a brief entry.
Beatrice Mansfield, b. April 23, 1873, Seneca Falls, NY. Design school in New York City. Married glass artist Frank Westrum in New York City in 1896. Active in the fight for women’s suffrage, corresponded with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Margaret Sanger, early mentor to Vivian Branch. Two children, Marcus and Annabeth. Died April 10th, 1919, of influenza.
Nothing came up when I typed “Rose Jarrett,” however; not a single thing. When I checked the library’s online catalog—the card catalog of my childhood, with its oak cabinet and thick rectangular cards in neat rows, was long gone—there was nothing there about her, either.
I sat back in the chair for a few minutes. The ceiling fan clicked softly above me, stirring the warm air. An older couple, probably retired, sat in stuffed armchairs by the bay window, reading magazines and looking up to chat with each other now and then. A group of teenage girls drifted in, moving together like a flock of beautiful birds. It was so calm and tranquil here, and I considered just staying for the afternoon, finding a good book and a comfortable chair. Those were some of the simple pleasures I’d imagined when I decided to make this visit. Yet the past kept welling up, as persistent as a spring, and my curiosity to know what had become of Rose and her daughter, and how their lives might have helped to shape my own, now became as insistent as hunger. It was partly the pure mystery of it, a desire to put all the pieces into place and solve the puzzle. Yet it had to do with my own life, too, all the scattered fragments that might come into focus if I had a clearer lens. All these years I’d taken such comfort in my wandering life, but really I’d bee
n as anchored to the night my father died as Blake had been, circling it from afar, still caught within its gravity. Now Blake was moving on, and my mother was, too; the feeling I’d been fighting all day, this feeling of being adrift by myself in a vast dark space, engulfed me for a moment.
I closed my eyes, listening to the fan and the squeak of the screen door as it opened and fell shut with a sharp slam, the soft, excited voices of the girls, the rustling pages of the paper. The air smelled of new leaves, leather, and wood and bloomed with quiet. I stayed, finally. I stood up and crossed the room to the librarian, who looked up, smiling, as I started to talk, telling him the story.
Chapter 7
WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE HOUSE, AFTERNOON LIGHT WAS already pouring into the west windows, polishing the lake with a golden sheen. The solstice party would start at seven o’clock and last until the sky faded into blue dusk and then deepened into twilight, revealing its stars one by one. Avery was bringing the salads and dessert and I’d stopped to pick up some groceries, mostly drinks and chicken to grill. I parked near the side porch, hauling the bags up the wide, weather-beaten steps. The grocery store, expanded twice while I’d been gone, had been disorienting, full of artisan breads and cheeses and high-end deli items, with a tank of lobsters, a salad bar, a sushi bar, and a hot-foods bar. Tourists sat at little tables with cups of coffee as I wandered, disconcerted, amid the unfamiliar aisles.
The screen porch door was unlocked. I pulled it open with my foot and dropped the bags on the wicker sofa, searching in my purse for the key. A package wrapped in dark red paper was propped against the main door to the house, and a note was taped to one of the windowpanes.