The Lace Reader (21 page)

“Do you mind if we don’t talk for a few minutes?” he asked. Towner seemed relieved not to have to make conversation. Instead she sat in the bow, hands holding the sides. She was turned away from him, looking ahead, north toward the black water, never back at where they’d been.

It might have angered another woman. The not-talking thing. But she seemed comfortable with it.

They fell into the rhythm. The wind. The swells. There was something hypnotic about it, and something in the moving air that made it easier to breathe.

He knew she felt it, too. This date was already better than the one last night. It was better when they didn’t try to talk. Somewhere past Manchester he lost all vision. Partly it was the darkness. At first he thought they were off course, much farther out to 188 Brunonia

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sea than they were. But then he heard the gulls and knew they were near land. He had never before lost his vision so completely. Usually it was just one side or the other, and you could see nothing by directly looking at it; you had to look past to see what was right in front of you.

He didn’t know if it was the darkness or the migraine. All he knew was that he couldn’t see. Postphasic, he thought. Usually the visuals came first. They had come first in this case. Then gone away as the headache came on. But then the visuals returned. The worst he’d ever experienced.

“Are you all right?” He heard her voice.

“Migraine,” he said. “I can’t see. You’re going to have to take over.”

He stayed low in the boat as they traded places. He was dizzy.

“You want to head back?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

Twenty minutes, he thought. Twenty minutes to a half hour. That’s how long the visuals lasted. He would time it. If it went on any longer, he’d think it might be something worse—a stroke, maybe. Rafferty sat facing her, his back pressed into the bow.

“You get a lot of migraines?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

She sailed easily. The wind was against them on the return trip, but she was skilled. They weren’t moving as fast as coming out, but she was keeping a good clip.

“You take anything for them?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” he said.

He found himself counting. Realized it was silly. By the time they passed Beverly Harbor, he took his hands down. It was fading. He could see the lights along the shore—intermittent and ringed, but there. He made himself breathe.

“I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night,” he said when he could speak The Lace Reader 189

again. “And I drank too much coffee.” He said it aloud as much for himself as for her. The sound of his voice seemed stupid. He wished he hadn’t said anything.

By the time they reached Salem, his vision was back. The pain was mostly on the right side.

“You’re better,” she said.

He wasn’t sure how she knew. He hadn’t moved much.

“Yeah,” he said. He leaned forward, rubbing his neck.

“Do you want to sail her in?”

“No,” Rafferty said, pointing. “Take her in toward Shetland Park. The mooring’s back there.”

She nodded.

He sat in the stern and watched her sail. The harbor was full, a slalom course of boats. She moved among them like a skier, confident enough to cut it close.

“You sail in California?” he asked.

“Not even once,” she admitted.

He could see it surprised her. How familiar and easy it seemed.

“Like riding a bicycle,” he said, and she smiled. He kept his eyes leveled. She would have been embarrassed if she thought he could see, but she wasn’t. He watched her shift. He watched the muscles in her arms.

It occurred to Rafferty that his senses had never been this acute. He could smell the air. Smell the citrus on her. From Eva’s sweater. Her hair moved independently in the breeze. Some things in it. Shapes. A shell, a sea horse. Migraine images. Phosphorescence trailed behind the boat, marking their course.

“Which one’s your mooring?” she asked as they got close.

“There,” he said. Starting to get up. He realized that it was a trick question. She knew he was watching her. She’d probably known it all along.

She grabbed the mooring in one pass.

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They sat in silence for a minute. “Thanks for sailing us in,” he said finally.

“No problem,” she said.

He had no idea what else to say to her. He reached over and grabbed the horn. Gave it three quick blasts to summon the launch. They sat another minute, neither of them speaking. Then he heard the sound of the launch as it was approaching.

“How’s your head?” she asked.

“Hurts like a son of a bitch.” He tried to laugh.

“Poor baby,” she said.

He didn’t know if she meant it or if she was making fun of him.

“Are you okay to drive?” she asked as he held the passenger door to let her in.

“I’m okay,” he said.

He took her to the house. He walked her to the door.

“I’d invite you in, but . . .”

Rafferty put up a hand. “I’ve got to get home,” he said, gesturing at his head. He was disappointed as hell, but there was nothing he could do about it.

She nodded. “I hope you feel better,” she said.

“Twenty-four hours,” he said. “Or a good night’s sleep. Whichever comes first.”

He started down the steps. Halfway down he turned around. He walked back.

“I need to tell you to lock your door,” he said.

“What?”

He was standing too close. It made him dizzy trying to look at her this close. And it scared her a little; he could tell it did. He stepped back down a stair. “Cal is going to try to see you. Sometime. I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just telling you to keep your door locked.”

The Lace Reader 191

“Okay,” she said. Her voice cracked slightly when she said it.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” he said again.

“Okay,” she repeated.

Rafferty waited on the step until she was inside and he heard the click of the lock.

He wondered if he had any Imitrex left. This was going to be a bad one.

It is important to ask the right question of the lace. This may
be the Reader’s greatest responsibility.

—T H E L AC E R E A D E R’ S G U I D E

u

Chapter 19

I lean against the door to steady myself, waiting for the rush of adrenaline to fade. Rafferty wasn’t trying to scare me, but he did. I know he’s right. Cal will try to see me. I’ve seen it in my dreams a thousand times. My nightmares. I know how it will go. The scene has played through me so often that it seems almost rehearsed. It may not freak me out anymore, not on a daily basis anyway, but it’s a bad place for me to go.

I’m not all that disappointed that our evening ended early. Though I feel bad that Rafferty has a headache, the truth is that I’m not feeling all that great myself. I can’t tell if it’s physical or psychological, but I make a mental note to call my surgeon in L.A. and have him set up some kind of postsurgical follow-up with someone in Boston.

It takes me a few minutes to realize that I’ve left Eva’s sweater in Rafferty’s car. I hear the sound of the engine starting as I race down the steps. By the time I reach the brick walkway, the cruiser is rounding the corner. I climb back up the front steps and turn the handle of the front 194 Brunonia

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door. It spins but doesn’t engage. The door is locked. I can see the key on the front table where I dropped it.

I could pick the lock. It’s an easy one. All I need is a hairpin, something wiry. I look around the porch for something, anything. But it’s too dark, a moonless night, and the porch is trellised and ivy-covered. I’m too tired to spend a lot of time looking. If I’m going to have to break in again, I figure I should walk around back to the window I’ve already broken. Why add another window repair to the Realtor’s list?

The iron gate of the garden creaks open. I close it behind me and step into the formal gardens. My footsteps crunch on the pea stones and crushed shells of the path to the back door. I am halfway across the garden when I feel his presence. It jumps down on me like a cat into a baby’s crib. It is thick and oppressive, and it steals my breath.

I reel around.

The figure of a man sits motionless on the bench. Hunched over. Illuminated by the reflection of the streetlights through the barred iron fence. Only the eyes are moving. I can feel them on me as I walk.

My legs are nightmare heavy. I am stuck.

Rafferty’s warning comes back at me.
Cal is going to try to see
you.

I can hear him breathing.

I cannot move.

I close my eyes and try to summon the dogs. In the nightmare—

or the hallucination, as my doctors insisted on calling it—there were dogs. But my nightmare takes place on Yellow Dog Island, not here in Eva’s garden. There are no dogs here to help me. For the first time in my life, I hope I’m having a hallucination. I close my eyes. When I open them, he will not be there. Slowly, so slowly, I open my eyes. He is still there. This is real. The Lace Reader 195

“What do you want?” I try to growl the words.

His eyes burn into me. I have been here before.

“Go away,” I say. But the growl is gone, and my voice sounds thin, tinny. I have already lost.

The world stops. We are suspended. When I finally hear the voice, it shocks me.

“Sophya,” his voice says. It is barely a whisper. I am surfacing through water. I am being pulled out of something dark. I can breathe.

“Jack,” I say.

My eyes clear, or adjust to the darkness, and I see him for the first time. My childhood love. Inside, a few minutes later, under the harsh electric light, I will see the years on him. The anger. The betrayal. But here, lit only by moon and stars, he is eighteen again.

The beginning Reader must resist the urge to interpret the
images seen. These images belong entirely to the Seeker.

—T H E L AC E R E A D E R’ S G U I D E

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Chapter 20

I awaken in a sailing ship. Floating on open ocean with no land in sight. My skin cracked open from sun. Tongue thick with dehydration. I am dying. I try to clear my head. I have been here before, dreamed it at least.

I force myself to sit up.

What is real?

Force of will clears my head.

What is real?

I am in a room. Eva’s room. I have been staring up through the lace of the canopy. I jerk my head away, and my vision fades, leaving traces along the walls as it disappears.

What is real?

Eva’s bed sits dead center in the room, a sailing vessel surrounded by open ocean. Its four carved posts lift upward like the spires of a miniature cathedral. The mahogany was brought back as ballast on one of the Whitney ships that traveled the Madagascar run. It was then carved by a Salem mast maker who was more aspiring artist 198 Brunonia

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than shipwright. The headboard is rough-hewn, but as the posts ascend, they curve and twist in symmetrical perfection, lifting to the billowing canopy, which Eva fashioned from rounds of bobbin lace she made over the years, then patched together into a crazy quilt of lace. The bed hovers somewhere between cathedral and sailing ship, but more of the latter, because there is definite movement to it, as much from its canopy sail as from its four masts. I realize I’ve been staring up through the canopy. The pictures I’m seeing are in the lace.

My head hurts. Not just my head. Every muscle in my body aches. If this is a hangover, it is a bad one. I am not a drinker. At least I wasn’t until last night.

We finished the bottle, and then one from Eva’s cellar, before Jack had the courage to say what he’d come here to say.

“I am a dead man,” he said.

“No,” I said, mistaking his anger for grief.

“It wasn’t Cal you killed,” he said, his eyes burning into mine. “It was me.”

I had gone to McLean Psychiatric Hospital because I thought I had killed Cal. That was a hallucination. A wish-fulfillment fantasy is what the doctors called it. Seeing Cal Boynton ripped apart by dogs. But Cal was still very much alive. I may have wanted to kill Cal for what he’d done to my sister and my aunt, but my aim was off. It was Jack that I ended up hitting.

While I was in McLean, Jack had come to see me almost every day. He had driven his father’s truck, lobster traps in the back. He parked in the back lot, away from the other, fancier cars. When they started the shocks, I began to lose memory. The Lace Reader 199

“She may not know you,” the doctors told him. “Sometimes the short-term memory disappears for a while.”

He waited for me to ask for him. The weather got cold. Still he waited.

He walked against the wind, his collar up, head down, coat drawn tight around him. I watched him coming through the trees. He came every day until the first snow. Until the night his father got drunk and totaled the truck on some black ice.

“He won’t be coming back,” Eva said. I turned my head toward the wall and stared at the trees. For weeks I stared. I stared at them as the leaves finally fell away and they revealed their lacy black branches underneath. I looked for Jack in the web of lace. He wasn’t there. I looked for Lyndley, too, but she was nowhere. There was one leaf left on the tree, one still hanging on to the very end of a branch, and I watched that leaf, too, until I woke up one morning and found that it had released its hold. I walked to the window and looked down, thinking I would know the leaf in the pile, that I had stared at it for so long I would be able to recognize it anywhere. But it was a leaf like any other now. Browning, dying. Soon they would come and burn it with the others.

I saw Jack just one more time after that. Almost a year later. It was the day I was leaving for UCLA. They had released me from McLean only because I had a plan. I had submitted my stories to UCLA and been accepted into their writing program. Everyone seemed to agree that it was a good thing to do. Everyone except Eva. I stood in the Whaler as Beezer cast off. Jack’s boat was pulling in as we pulled out, both of us standing as we passed each other. He was trying to read my face, looking at me for signs of recognition. I looked back at him, trying to keep my expression blank. I held my breath. I actually thought I had fooled him. Until last night. u