The Lake of Dreams (15 page)

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 been 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.

Here’s the recipe for my grandmother’s rhubarb pie, and a little something I thought you might like. My regrets about this evening, I’m sorry I can’t come. Will call, my fond regards, Andy

I shifted the groceries inside and put them in the refrigerator—the plump chicken breasts, so unnaturally huge, as large as whole chickens would be in other parts of the world, the numerous bottles of wine and sparkling water. I left Andy’s note and the red package—it was light and soft—on the counter where my mother would see them right away. Then I went back outside to get the books I’d checked out from the library and the photocopies I’d made from their microfilm collection, souvenirs of my afternoon journey to the past.

The librarian had been very helpful, directing me to some histories of the feminist movement in the general collection, as well as to a local history of the village, all of which I’d checked out. He’d also showed me how to pull up periodicals on their rather ancient microfilm machine, and I’d spent a couple of hours scanning old editions of
The Lake of Dreams Gazette
. Finally, in the reel marked 1938 to 1940, tucked between articles about the threat of war in Europe and reports of local crop yields, I found a brief article about the dedication of the chapel in Appleton, the small village that had later been razed to build the depot. There was even a photograph of Frank Westrum standing outside the arched doors, bearded and thin and dressed in a suit, looking seriously into the camera. The rector, Rev. Timothy Benton, stood with his wife, and an unidentified woman was by his side. Though the donation of the funds for the windows had been made anonymously, in a later article the
Gazette
reporter had discovered that the patron was local, one Cornelia Elliot of The Lake of Dreams, widow of a prominent doctor and a veteran of the fight for women’s suffrage. “A sensibility which will perhaps explain,” the article, written in 1938, stated archly, “the very unusual—indeed, the quite droll and eccentric—nature of her gift.”