The Lake of Dreams (31 page)

“But he said he would marry me. He promised”.

“I went to him like a beggar”, Joseph said. “You might at least be grateful”.

And then I remembered. In the plaster wall behind his bed, Joseph had hidden the few coins he’d gathered, saving for his dream. I’d seen him pull them out, holding them like small silver moons in his palm. I’d seen his longing.

“So. Now you have your dream”, I said.

He was silent for a long time.

“You can’t go to America alone”, he said at last.

“I don’t want to go to America at all”.

Maybe it was in this moment, as my words drifted off into the dusk, that I came to understand how small I was. The manor house across the fields was like a great ship, and somewhere inside, in a beautiful room full of light, Geoffrey was laughing, shaking loose his napkin and sitting down to have his dinner.

“I’ll go to him myself”, I said. “I’ll go right now. I’ll walk right up the front steps, and I’ll wait until he sees me”.

Joseph’s next words were low and hard, like rocks.

“He said he doesn’t even know you, Rose. That’s what he’ll say again”.

“He gave you the money, didn’t he? That’s proof, I’d say”.

Joseph caught my arms and made me look straight at him then.

“Who would believe you? Your word against his?”

“It’s true!”

“It doesn’t matter”.

“You’d lose your chance if I spoke out”.

“Yes, I would. But Rose, don’t you see? So would you”.

And so I followed him home.

I went about my days in a kind of disbelief, watching myself scrub and sew as if I were outside my own body. I did not see your father again. We heard he had gone to India. They prayed for him in church.

The night before we left I slipped from the house and walked through the vineyards and then the orchards. The shadows in the moonlight wove patterns on my skin. It was October, chilly, and leaves crunched beneath my feet. At the top of the hill I turned to look back. The manor house stood at the edge of the village, faintly outlined, distant and impassive.

I could unlock the oak door to the church just as well as Joseph. The metal whispers a language of its own. The rows of pews fell away into the shadows and the high, arched windows caught a faint light. I had polished every pew and swept every corner, and my stitches were woven into the white cloths on the altar. I sat down in the velvet-covered bishop’s chair. Always before I had sensed something beyond the familiar in this place, something silent and just out of sight but present, welling up. But that night I was so heartsick I could feel nothing else.

I stayed a long time. Slowly, more light came into the church. The stained-glass windows began to come alive. The silver chalice and plate, set out for communion, were visible, like faraway planets, two silver circles, small and large. I had prepared the altar often enough to know what they said on the bottom: “A Gift from the Wyndham Family”. I stood and picked up the chalice. It was heavy in my hands. I ran my fingers lightly across the letters, scratches in the silver. Passage to leave he had given me, yes, but nothing else, and nothing for our child, for you. The silver rim of the chalice caught the faint light. It would be nothing to them, I told myself, to replace one cup. And so I added one more mistake to those I had already made. I slipped the cup beneath my apron, and I walked out the door.

This letter ended abruptly, with no signature, no drawing. I sat back on the window seat. I’d been so engrossed that I hadn’t noticed the dwindling light, but the sun had begun to dip behind the opposite shore and there was a faint coolness in the air. I gathered up my papers and carried them down to my room, where I spread them out on the painted floor—Rose’s letters in one pile, Joseph’s in another, the photocopied documents and the pile of papers from the cupola in the third.

I was so moved by Rose’s letter that I read it again rather than starting another, imaging her waiting on the dusk-covered lawn outside the grand house while the negotiations that would determine her life went on without her; imagining her loneliness in the church, and the chalice heavy in her hand. It made me think of the days right after my father died when I’d felt the same lost way. I was remembering the window in Keegan’s studio, too, the Joseph window, which had a chalice hidden in the sack of grain, and the crowd full of unnamed women, trying to puzzle out how it connected to the letters Rose had written. I’d looked up the story about Joseph and the coat of colors out of curiosity. He was tossed into a pit because his siblings were jealous of him. He ended up in Egypt, in exile, interpreting dreams. When a famine came, the brothers who had thrown him into the pit came to ask for food, not knowing who he was. He gave them grain, but he also tricked them by having the cup he used for divination hidden in their sacks; when they came back to return the cup, he accused them of theft. Interested, I’d also read Grail stories, and the bones of both narratives seemed very close—disharmony, a land in famine, a quest for healing, and a silver cup or bowl.

Maybe that window was personal, I realized, thinking of Rose sent into an exile of her own, starting a new life in a strange country, exiled again by some sort of scandal, forced to leave her daughter. Maybe that’s why it had never been installed. I couldn’t know exactly where she saw herself in this story or what, if anything, she had meant to say by choosing it. Maybe it was just the image of the chalice she had liked. I wondered what had happened to the one she’d taken. I wondered what had happened to Rose.

I opened the next letter, dated April 11, 1938. It was from Frank Westrum.

My darling Rose,

The windows progress so beautifully, and my only regret is that you are not here to see them. Dearest, I think they would please you. I have taken all your suggestions about the passages to illuminate, and I have made the border and many of the windows exactly according to your design. Nelia visited yesterday and gave her enthusiastic approval of all we have done. Indeed, she called it a masterpiece. Well, I do not think so. But it has given me great pleasure. First the pleasure of working by your side, all the moments we have shared together all these years somehow woven into this final venture, so close to both our hearts. But there is the pleasure of the glass, too, the days in the glassworks blowing and shaping the sheets, the careful cutting and piecing together. Your templates are quite handsome, Rose, the windows, too. I will come to you on the 30th unless you are well enough to come home. Meanwhile, I send all my love.

Frank

Here it was—proof. She had known him, and she had designed the borders and been integral in the design of the windows. It was such an intimate letter, too, so warm, and it made me feel sure they had been lovers. I wondered how Oliver would react to this news. He’d need to see this letter sometime, though the thought of it made me uneasy. I suspected he wouldn’t like this upheaval in all the careful histories he’d written. For myself, I was glad to know that Rose, stranded in the train station, had somehow ended up all right.

The next letter was on the same thick paper as the very first one I’d read of Joseph’s, and in his handwriting. It was postmarked March 24, 1915.

Dear Rose,

We were up on the barn roof yesterday. A bright windy day. We were putting on new shingles and almost done. Jesse fell. I heard him shout and then he hit the ground. The barn is high and he landed on his back. We don’t know what it will mean but tonight he cannot move.

Your brother Joseph

And then the next, written on the same sort of paper, more than two months later:

25 May 1915

Dear Rose,

I am sorry to tell you that our cousin died yesterday. He has not been right since the fall. The pain is over for him, anyway. Cora does not want people in the house, so hold your visit to a better time. I am sending a picture Iris drew of the flowers in the garden.

Joseph

I checked the envelope again, but there was no drawing inside. Maybe Rose had hung it in whatever place she lived once she finally left the train station.

I heard a car in the driveway and got up to look out the window. It was a slow summer twilight, the shoreline glimmering with tiny lights in the violet dusk. Andy’s headlights flashed white against the worn side of the barn, and my mother got out. After a few minutes she came upstairs and stood in the doorway, holding a bag of take-out food in her good hand.

“I can’t wait to ditch this cast,” she said. “Hungry?”

“Starved.”

She sat down on the floor and spread out the containers, handed me a plate.

“We’re not allowed to eat in the bedrooms,” I reminded her.

She smiled, scooting back so that she could lean against the wall, reaching for the closest box of food. The scent of cashew chicken filled the room.

“I’m mellowing out,” she said. “Getting positively decadent. Most nights I don’t even bother to cook. I’ve lost my interest in it, I guess. Andy knew about this place,” she added, nodding at the food. “We had lunch there earlier this week. It’s good. So we stopped to pick up some takeout.”

“He seems nice,” I said finally, which sounded lame, and too little too late.

“He is. He’s very nice.” Her voice was a little reserved. “You know, I don’t need you to approve, you or your brother. It’s making me a little crazy. You’d both be up in arms if I poked around in your life this much.”

I wondered what Blake had said about Andy, but, chastened, decided not to ask. “So, what did you find?” my mother said after a minute. “Looks like treasure.”

“It is treasure. These are all letters by or to Rose Jarrett. A couple of them are from her brother, the illustrious Joseph Arthur Jarrett. I found them in the Lafayette Historical Society. The boxes that Joan Lowry donated ended up there. They were closing early, so I slipped this binder into my bag.”

“Lucy! You stole them?”

“No, not really. I borrowed them. Though actually, it feels like they belong to us. Or to Iris,” I added, thinking of the lock of hair. “They feel like her letters, actually. Could she even still be alive?”

“I suppose it’s possible. She’d be quite old. Well into her nineties.” My mother put a container down, her chopsticks balanced precisely across the center, and took the letters I handed her, reading through them quickly, shaking her head. “These are amazing to read,” she said, letting the pages fall into her lap.

“Aren’t they? I’ve been captivated for hours.”

She ran her fingers quickly through her short hair. “Are there more?”

“Just one. At least that I have here. There may be more in the last box I didn’t get to see.” I pulled the final letter from the binder, a simple square white envelope, addressed to Iris, dated October 12, 1914, written on lined yellow paper. I read it out loud.

Dearest Iris,

I am here now. I am safe. An attic room, pale yellow wallpaper with a pattern in green. The floor is dark gray. I have a white pitcher and basin, and a narrow bed with a plain white cover. I don’t need more.

They never came for me. I had the address, I asked directions. It did not sound far but it was. Three miles they said, take a carriage they said, but I walked. The satchel was so heavy. I thought my fingers might fall off. Still, I preferred walking to arriving. I stood a long time on the stoop to gather my courage, checking the address again and again. At last I rang the bell.

Her name is Vivian and she is Mrs. Elliot’s sister. She was still talking to someone behind her as she opened the door, laughing, her face turning serious when she saw me. Her skin is pale but not freckled, her hair is the color of oak, creamy brown with a reddish cast and traces of gray, pulled carefully back in a bun. She wore a skirt over softly draping trousers, but otherwise she does not resemble Mrs. Elliot at all.

I handed her the letter.

Her eyes widened. “But you’re a day early! And so pale! Come in, come in!”

So I am here. This house is like no other house. It is very simple, almost bare, with little furniture and no rugs. There are paintings on every wall. And books, too, everywhere. She took me into the kitchen. A man and a woman, Hubert and Jane, were sorting papers. She had me sit and bustled around. Hubert offered me a drink and Jane said nonsense, she’s just a girl, and Vivian said she’s more than a girl, she left her child, give her a drink if she wants it, and put a plate of beef and little egg sandwiches and a glass of warm milk in front of me. I tried to eat it slowly, but could not. They watched me with kind eyes. When I was finished she showed me up to this room. Then I slept all around the clock.

This house has little furniture but it is always full of people. They come and go, there are meetings and suppers and passionate discussions. Some of them do not even knock, they just walk in. And the things they say—Mrs. Elliot is mild in comparison.

The dinners are full of talk and I sit quietly. They are interested in the story of how I came to be here. So I tell them how I used to stand in the hallway when Mrs. Elliot came over and began to talk about the rights of women and the great march she attended in Washington. How I began to slip over to her house when she held her meetings. Cora warned me not to go, but I went anyway. I kept it as quiet as I could. Already my position was in danger; they had not known about you when they agreed I could come. They were sorry for me because they believe I am a widow.