Part 16 (2/2)

I parked in the gravel lot behind Dream Master, ignoring all the NO TRESPa.s.sING signs. It was closed for the day, and a kind of stillness had settled around it. I slid the binder beneath the seat and locked the car, pus.h.i.+ng down the chrome b.u.t.tons and checking twice to make sure I still had the keys. The gravel was rough under my feet, and heat rose from all the tiny stones. I thought of going to see Keegan, but I'd see him Wednesday, after all, when we went to view the windows in the chapel. He'd be busy now, either with work or with Max, and if he wasn't he'd be stretched out on the sofa or his open bed, a fan clicking in the high ceiling. As I imagined that, I imagined myself there with him, how he might turn to me in that s.p.a.ce, as he had so long ago, learning about each other amid the ruined machines as the light faded from the windows. It shocked me, the strength of the image, the desire I had to see if it might happen this way-though I couldn't tell if it was really desire in the present or left over from the unfinished past. Not just the past with Keegan, and a desire to know what might have happened between us if I'd stayed, but the more uncomfortable past where I kept on leaving-countries, jobs, people I loved. I kicked at the gravel and walked to the back of Dream Master instead.

There was a loading dock there. It used to seem so high, we used to jump from it on a dare. There was the old c.o.ke machine, too, empty now, its long vertical door ajar. I climbed up the steps to the back door. The locks here hadn't been changed since Art had sold the lock-making business decades ago. The wire I always carried was in the bottom of my bag and it took me only a minute or two to work the mechanism inside. There was nothing fancy here, nothing tricky. The door swung open into the warehouse room. Boxes were stacked on the shelves and light flowed in through the paned windows and a skylight far above. I let the door fall shut behind me; the aisles were wide enough for forklifts, my footsteps echoing against the walls.

The door to Art's office was open and I walked in, as I had walked in so often as a child, freely, as if the building were our playground. Once I'd hidden in these cupboards, which had been in my father's office, during a game of hide-and-seek. I'd been crouched in the dark, listening to distant voices calling my name, when the office door opened and my father came in with Art. Their voices were sharp; I closed my eyes and imagined the words as knives slas.h.i.+ng at the air, and when I opened them again, the darkness was still present. I was afraid, huddled in that small dark s.p.a.ce, too scared to move even after the argument ended and Art's footsteps receded. Blake was crying somewhere and my father swore and left to help, the door falling shut behind him. I crawled out then, blinded by the light in the room, my hands tingling, numb.

Now I opened a cupboard door-the shelves were full of papers, files, ledgers-and let it fall shut again. On the easels by the window were the plans for The Landing; on Art's desk was a folder with estimates of costs. I picked this up, let it fall, too. The office was so silent, sun slanting in and making rectangles on the desk, and I wasn't sure if the feelings of apprehension and betrayal, so stirred up within me by the memory of that lost afternoon, had their source in the present or the past-or if it was even possible to draw a line between them.

I left the offices and went to the stairway at the back of the building, climbing up into the factory s.p.a.ces on the second and third floors, which were empty now, the high paned windows dusty, all the machines long gone. Once, workers had streamed into this place day after day, pressing keys, and more keys, forming the components of the locks, their secret lives going on within them, their actions so familiar that they didn't have to think. In 1919, the year Dream Master was established, my great-grandfather sat below in the same office Art used now, overseeing everything. It was nearly five years after Rose left. Four years before they bought the house on the lake. Six years before my grandfather was born and Iris went away.

I walked over to the window that overlooked the village. The masts of the boats anch.o.r.ed at the pier bobbed in the distance. The air in the old factory was hot and still. I wrote my initials in the dust of a windowpane, then rubbed them out. The Impala sat in the parking lot, a bright bird from another era. I stayed for quite a while, moving from window to window, watching people come and go from the renovated buildings across the street, laughing, careless, as if no other time existed or ever would, oblivious to all the other lives that had been lived over the generations on this very same spot.

The heat gathered; sweat trickled down my neck. I went back downstairs quickly, thinking about Rose and her letters locked in the car, about all the layers of the past. On the landing, I nearly ran into Joey. I gasped in surprise, hands flying to my chest, and he stopped dead, too, looking as shocked as I was. He was dressed in cutoffs and flip-flops, carrying a six-pack of beer, his blond hair already going lighter from the sun. A young woman stood behind him.

”What are you doing here?” he asked.

”Looking for Blake,” I said, which was partly true. ”The door was unlocked.”

Joey touched the handle. ”That's weird. It's Sunday, right? We closed at five o'clock.”

”Right. Look, I'm sorry. I just thought Blake might still be here. And then, you know, I kept remembering things from when we were kids. When we used to play hide-and-seek here, remember that? I went upstairs to look around. What are you doing here?” I asked, bolder now that I'd recovered a little. ”Who is this?”

”Yeah, I remember those days,” Joey said, ignoring my questions. ”Hide-and-seek. Seems a long time ago.”

”It was.”

”Well, don't let me keep you, Lucy. I'll check the lock when you go.”

And then I was standing on the loading dock in the full glare of the late-afternoon sun, the door clicking shut behind me.

Chapter 12.

THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY, HOT FROM THE LATE AFTERNOON sun. I was so hungry I ate out of the refrigerator, tearing off pieces of bagel and dipping them into vanilla yogurt; there was nothing else but wilted-looking carrots and an unopened pound of b.u.t.ter. I ate quickly and without really tasting anything, and drank three gla.s.ses of water. Then I gathered all my things, with the rust-colored binder full of letters on top, and made my way upstairs to the cupola. The papers, piled on the window seat facing the lake, fluttered in the light breeze when I pushed open the windows. I'd searched this room carefully for more doc.u.ments and had found nothing but two stray white b.u.t.tons and a pair of small metal scissors. Still, I wanted to read these letters in a place where at least some trace of Rose had existed.

There were seven envelopes of different colors and sizes; some had been mailed and others had only Iris's name across the front in Rose Jarrett's now familiar handwriting. The one on top was addressed to Rose in New York City, the postmark too blurry to read. The letter itself was written on thick white paper, one side faintly s.h.i.+ny, the other porous, so that the ink spread out, blurring some of the letters, which had been written in a heavy, rather awkward hand. When I unfolded the single page, a lock of pale brown hair, tied with a piece of string, fell into my lap.

17 October 1914 Dear Rose, I was on the farm all week. When I came into town your letter was in the silver tray. No one spoke of you, your name is never mentioned. I am happy to know you are safe.

You will be happy to know that Iris is fine. This is a piece of her hair I cut for you. She was playing on the porch, lining up pebbles from the lake from small to large. There were letters made from pebbles, also: R, I, S. I think Cora has been teaching her to spell, she is smart. I hope smart gets her further in life than it has gotten you, that's all.

I am glad you found the money. I will send more if I can. Please send news. Mrs. Elliot goes on here as if nothing ever happened. I do not think she is your friend.

Fondly from your brother, Joseph.

I let the letter fall into my lap and stared out at the lake-smooth this early evening, and deep blue. This brief missive written by my great-grandfather was almost more astonis.h.i.+ng to me than Rose's longer letters had been. He had lived here, had worked on the cupola of this house, perhaps pausing to wipe sweat from his face and gaze out at the ever-changing lake, as I was doing now. His portrait hung over Arthur's desk at Dream Master, and though Joseph Arthur Jarrett had died long before I was born, I'd grown up with that image of him as a middle-aged man, successful and certain, the master of all he surveyed, and I'd filled in the rest through imagination and story. The voice in this letter was as different from my image of the man as Rose's story was from the family legends we'd grown up hearing. Kind, he seemed-there was the lock of hair-but also, by turns, terse and judgmental.

I folded the page back up and slipped it into the envelope with the lock of hair, remembering Rose's first letter, where she'd talked about her daughter's dandelion hair. The next letter was to Iris again, and I opened it to find several sheets of plain paper, tissue-thin, the ink once black but now fading to brown, the handwriting slanted, strong, and sure. It had no date, and on the later pages the color of the ink changed and grew lighter, then darkened again, as if the letter had been written over many days.

Dearest Iris, I am at the station. People come and go. They did not meet me. I waited on the platform, but no one came. After a long time I found a bench and sat. The lobby is vast and grand and there is a clock in the center. I have an address but they are supposed to meet me and I do not know what to do. I must not weep. I must look calm no matter how I feel. So-I will write.

It is late. The station is cold and I keep my coat on.

I think of you warm and safe beneath the blanket. I hope Mrs. Elliot has given it to Cora and that you sleep beneath it, warm and comforted. I wove it all last winter, in the cold attic at night. Across the street, Mrs. Elliot's lights were often on late. They gave me company. Mrs. Elliot is a suffragette and not afraid to say anything. While she is in the room the other ladies are always quiet, but when she is not some of them whisper that she is too extreme. Cora threw away the pamphlets Mrs. Elliot left, but I took them from the trash. I took them up to our room and read them. They made me feel on fire with ideas. After that I tried to stay in the room when Mrs. Elliot was talking, keeping my expression calm even though I wanted to jump up and agree. I think the ladies who came to tea are safe, so they did not understand. They are safe so the world seems safe to them. But to me the world is different and her words were like lamps.

An hour has pa.s.sed. I am tired, but I must keep writing, that is one way to be safe. When I put my pen down earlier, a man sat beside me and invited me with a wink to share his bed. He shrugged at my outrage.

I am not so desperate.

Not yet, at least.

Oh, I did not set out to be a scandal. To be so alone in a place I do not know.

It is near midnight. I hold myself still. I dozed a little and dreamed of your father disappearing into the bell tower, gone, a silver ghost, and me climbing up and up forever.

He kissed me in the ruins and that moment became like a dream woven into my other dreams, things I yearned for but could never have. I was haunted by his laughter, too. For what he said was true: I could wash and mend the altar cloths or make dinners for the rector or the bishop, but no matter how much I loved the church or G.o.d I could not carry the communion wine or bless it or serve it to the people. No woman could. Not even Mrs. Wyndham in her silks. The more I thought about this, the angrier I got. Anger ate a great s.p.a.ce in my heart. If the rules of the church made me less-less human-then maybe the rules did not apply to me. I was foolish, I know that now. The rules always belong to those who make them. I was foolish, and so young. I worked, scrubbing or mending, my skin growing brown in the fields. I worked, and in my anger I remembered that kiss. It was like flowers opening and it made me confused. Sometimes I shaded my eyes to watch his automobile flas.h.i.+ng through the trees.

On the night of the comet I was fifteen. Our windows were sealed and we were frightened and the air was very still. Everyone was sleeping, but I could not. A sliver of light came in beneath the wool, where I'd left it loose. After a long time I got out of bed and I felt my way in the darkness to the window. When I opened it clean air rushed in, full of the scents of water and the earth.

I crawled out onto the roof to see the comet, soaring like a jewel against the sky, trailing light. Voices rose up and I knew them: Joseph, and another. I hesitated. My hair was loose. I was wearing an old dress I had pulled on, and no shoes. And then I jumped. When he saw me in the garden Joseph's voice turned low with anger.

”You can't come, Rose. Go back to bed”.

”I want to see the comet”.

”You weren't asked”.

”Never mind”, Geoffrey said. He was by the hedgerow. I'd heard his voice, but I didn't see him until he spoke. He was carrying a bra.s.s telescope. ”Let her come, if she wants. At least there will be three in this village who haven't succ.u.mbed to ma.s.s hysteria”.

Succ.u.mbed. I remembered the word. All these years. I looked it up in Mrs. Elliot's dictionary. To bring down. To bring low.

Joseph didn't answer. He could not, since Geoffrey was a Wyndham. But he walked ahead of me, by Geoffrey's side. He pretended I wasn't even there.

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