Читать книгу The Lace Reader - Brunonia Barry - Страница 6

Each Reader must choose a piece of lace. It is hers for life. It might be a pattern handed down through the generations or a piece chosen by the Reader for its beauty and familiarity. Many Readers prefer the handmade laces, particularly those of old Ipswich or the laces made today by the women of Yellow Dog Island.

—THE LACE READER’S GUIDE

Chapter 2

WHEN THE PHONE CALL COMES IN, I am dreaming of water. Not the warm blues and greens of the California beach towns where I live now, but the dark New England Atlantic of my youth. In my dream I am swimming to the moon. Like all dreams, it seems logical. The idea that there is no pathway between sea and moon never occurs.

I swim my own combination: part breaststroke, part drownproofing: slow and purposeful, a rhythm remembered from another lifetime. The movement is all efficiency, with just nose, ears, and eyes protruding above the water, mouth submerged. With each forward stroke, tiny waves of salt enter my open mouth, then recede again as I slow, mirroring the larger surrounding ocean.

I swim for a long time. Past Salem Harbor and the swells. Past any sight of land at all. I swim until the sea becomes still and clear, too calm to be any real ocean. The light from the full dream-moon etches a clear path on the black water, a road to follow. There is no sound save my own breath, slow and steady as I swim.

This was once my sister’s dream. Now it is only mine.

The rhythm of movement gives way to a sound rhythm as the telephone rings again and then again. This is one of the only phones that actually rings anymore, and part of the reason I agreed to take this house-sitting job. It is the kind of phone we might have had on our island. That’s the one interesting thing about what has happened to me. I am encouraged to rewrite my own history. In the history I am writing, May actually has a phone.

My therapist, Dr. Fukuhara, is a Jungian. She believes in symbols and shadows. As do I. But my therapy has stopped for the time being. We have come to an impasse, was the way Dr. Fukuhara put it. I laughed when she said it. Not because it was funny but because it was the kind of cliché that my Aunt Eva would use.

On the fourth ring, the answering machine picks up. The machine is old also, not as old as the phone, but the kind where you can screen calls and hear a little bit of the message before you decide whether it’s worth it to actually speak to a live person.

My brother’s voice sounds tinny and too loud.

I stretch to pick up, pulling the surgery stitches that are still inside me, the ones that haven’t yet dissolved.

“What?” I say.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” Beezer says.

I remember falling asleep on this couch last night, too tired to get up, hypnotized by the smell of night-blooming jasmine and the sound of Santana playing over the hill at the Greek.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I wouldn’t have called you, but…”

“But May’s in trouble again.” It’s the only time Beezer ever calls these days. At last count, May has been arrested six times in her efforts to help abuse victims. Recently my brother informed me that he’d put the number of the local bail bondsman on his speed dial.

“It’s not May,” he says.

My throat tightens.

“It’s Eva.”

Dead, I’m thinking. Oh, my God, Eva is dead.

“She’s missing, Towner.”

Missing. The word has no meaning. “Missing” is the last word I expected to hear.

Palm fronds clatter against the open window. It’s already way too hot. Clear Santa Ana sky, earthquake weather. I reach up to pull the window shut. The cat runs scratches across my legs as it lunges for the freedom of the canyon, leaping through the window as it slams, catching just a few tail hairs, the last trace of what was here just moments ago and is now gone, that fast. Immediately the cat scratches on my legs begin to welt.

“Towner?”

“Yeah?”

“I think you’d better come home.”

“Yeah,” I say, “yeah, okay.”