The Lace Reader. Brunonia Barry
can reach (eighty-five years old or not), the same way she washes them every April when she does her spring cleaning. She gets to all the first-floor windows and the insides of all the upper floors. The outside windows of those upper floors remain filmy and salted, because Eva has the frugality of an old Yankee and refuses to pay anyone for services she thinks she should be able to perform herself. When Beezer and I lived in town with Eva, we offered to wash the windows, but she wouldn’t buy a ladder and said she didn’t want us climbing up on ladders anyway, so Beezer and I got used to distortion and haze. If you wanted to see clearly, you had to either look out the first-floor windows or climb all the way up to the widow’s walk.
The perfect line of first-floor windows gleams back at me from the winter porch. I catch my reflection in the wavy glass, and I’m surprised by it. When I left here, I was seventeen. I haven’t been back for fifteen years. I knew my reflection in the glass when I was seventeen, but today I don’t recognize the woman I see there.
The hours of Eva’s tearoom are posted on the front door. A sign that reads SORRY WE ARE CLOSED leans against one of the side panes.
A young girl sees me walking to the house. “There’s no one there,” the girl says, assuming I’m one of the witches. “I already checked.”
I nod and walk down the stairs. When she’s out of sight, I walk around to the back of the house, figuring I’m going to have to break in and not wanting to be seen.
When we were kids, my sister, Lyndley, and I could break into any house. I was a master at picking locks. We used to break into people’s houses just to sit in them—“like Goldilocks tasting porridge and sampling beds,” Lyndley used to say. For the most part, we limited our break-ins to the summerhouses. Down at the Willows one time, we broke into a house and actually cleaned it. That’s the kind of thing only a girl would do. Outlaw certainly, but homemaker, too.
I walk around the back of the coach house to a less visible spot half hidden by the garden. There is a small pane in the door, bull’s-eye glass, already cracked. Once I’m inside the coach house, getting into the main house is a snap. I pick up a rock, wrapping the sleeve of my shirt over it. A quick tap and the crack spreads. I pull the glass fragments out carefully and wedge my hand through the small space, twisting the dead bolt that has been the only thing holding the door in alignment. Either because the lock is so rusty or because I am, I don’t anticipate the way the door heaves as it opens. It pulls my arm with it, cutting through my cotton shirt, drawing blood. I watch the blood pool. It’s not too bad; there’s not very much of it, not after what I’ve gotten used to anyway. “Just a flesh wound, Copper,” I say aloud in my best Jimmy Cagney. Then, ridiculously on cue, a police cruiser actually pulls up, and, even more ridiculously, the father of my first boyfriend, Jack, climbs out of the car and walks toward the house. This is strange, since Jack’s father is not a cop, he’s a lobsterman. I’m having one of those moments when you’re pretty sure you’re dreaming but you don’t want to count on it. I regard Jack’s father as he approaches me, his face screwed up into half concern, half joy, looking stranger than anything in my dream life ever did.
“You should have called the station,” he says. “We have a key.” It is not Jack’s father’s voice but his younger brother’s that I finally recognize.
“Hi, Jay-Jay,” I say, getting it, remembering now that Beezer had told me Jay-Jay was a cop.
He hugs me. “Been a while,” he says, thinking, I’m sure, how bad I look and running through a list of possibilities in his head. I fight the urge to tell him I’ve just had my uterus cut out, that I almost bled to death before the emergency surgery.
“You’re bleeding,” he says, reaching out for my arm. The cops here aren’t as scared by blood as the cops in L.A. are.
“Just a flesh wound, Copper,” I say too loud. He leads me inside and makes me sit down at the kitchen table. I’m bare-armed now, holding a paper towel to my forearm.
“You need stitches,” Jay-Jay says.
“It’s fine.”
“At least get some Neosporin on it. Or some of that herbal crap Eva sells.”
“I’m fine, Jay-Jay,” I say, just a little too sharply.
A long silence. “I’m sorry about Eva,” he says finally. “I wish I had something new I could tell you.”
“Me, too.”
“That Alzheimer’s stuff is all crap. I saw her a week before she disappeared. She was still sharp as a tack.” He thinks a minute. “You need to talk to Rafferty.”
“Who?”
“Detective Rafferty. He’s your man. He’s the one who’s handling the case.”
He looks around the room as if there’s something here, something he wants to say, but then he changes his mind.
“What?”
“Nothing…. I’ll tell Rafferty you’re here. He’ll want to talk to you. He’s in court today, though. Traffic court. Whatever you do, don’t drive with him. He’s the worst driver in the world.”
“Okay,” I say, wondering why Jay-Jay thought driving with Rafferty was even a possibility. We stand there awkwardly, neither of us knowing how to follow that last thread of conversation.
“You look good,” he says finally. “For an old lady of…what? Thirty-one?”
“Thirty-two.”
“For thirty-two you look great,” he says, and laughs.
I don’t go into the main part of the house until Jay-Jay leaves. As soon as I open the door, I realize that everyone has made a big mistake.
Eva’s right here in this house. I can feel her. Her presence is so strong that I almost run after Jay-Jay to tell him to call off the search, that she has come back, but the cruiser has already turned the corner, so I’ll have to call the station.
But first I have to see my Aunt Eva. She must have gone on a trip and not told anyone. She probably doesn’t even know the whole town’s looking for her.
“Eva?” I call to her. She doesn’t answer. Her ears aren’t very good, not anymore. I call again, louder. Still no answer, but I know she’s here. She’s up on the widow’s walk or down in the root cellar mixing up a new kind of tea, something with bergamot and kumquat essence. Or maybe she never left, is what I’m thinking, though I know that’s not possible. They must have searched the house. At least I assume they did. Didn’t anyone come in here, for God’s sake? Didn’t May? No, she wouldn’t, damn her. But the cops would. Or my brother. Of course Beezer would have looked. Of course that’s the first thing they would have done. Eva wouldn’t have been reported missing unless she actually was missing, right? But now she’s back. It’s as plain as the nose on your face, I think, laughing out loud because I’m still channeling Eva’s clichés.
“Hey, Eva,” I call to her, knowing how deaf she’s gotten, but giving it a try anyway. “Eva, it’s me.”
I’m not sure where to start looking. I stand there, in the foyer. Ahead are two matching parlors with black marble fireplaces facing each other from the ends of the long rooms. One of the rooms is closed off; that’s the one Eva uses as her tearoom. I enter the other one. It’s more like a ballroom than a parlor. The fireplaces look empty with neither flames nor Eva’s usual arrangements of flowers in them. Chairs are placed symmetrically and strategically, like pieces on a chessboard. I look at the huge suspended staircase. I know that my next move should be up, but I decide to check the tearoom first, then the other kitchen, and the root cellar, where she blends the teas. I’m calling to her, talking as I go, speaking loudly so that she’ll hear me. I don’t want to sneak up and scare her into having a heart attack or something.
She’s probably upstairs. I’m not supposed to be climbing stairs yet, but I’m yelling to her now, and I realize I’m going