The Lake of Dreams (7 page)

“Your secret admirer?” I asked when my mother finished.

“Andrew,” she said, flipping the phone closed. “He’s very jovial this morning.” My mother put the phone down so she could pick up a leaflet.

“It’s okay if you want to have dinner with him tonight.”

She looked up and smiled, amused. “I know.”

“Okay with me, I mean. You don’t have to entertain me twenty-four- seven, that’s all.”

“I know, sweetie. Thank you.” She went back to the pamphlet. “My goodness—this was published in 1913.”

“Interesting, isn’t it? I found these in the cupola this morning. Stuffed away in a window seat.”

She met my gaze, her eyes pale gray and curious. “I didn’t realize any of those seats opened.”

“There’s a little keyhole below the lip of the seat facing the lake. With the cushions gone, you can see it. Dad’s tools are still on the ring.”

“Ah—you picked the lock?”

“I did. First try.”

She smiled, her expression suddenly wistful. “Your father would have been very proud.”

I looked out at the lake until I could speak again. “Mostly, that’s why I tried to open it—just because he’d taught me how. Nothing inside but dust, though—and these.”

We sat at the table and leafed through the papers, drinking our coffee. It was an eclectic collection. There was an obituary for the last passenger pigeon in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1914, and beneath a drawing of her was the word
extinct
. There was a page listing all the births in the county in March and April 1911—I scanned it, but none of the names seemed familiar. I found the wedding announcement of my great-grandfather to Cora Evanston, who was noted in the article to have shaken hands with Teddy Roosevelt when she was five years old. She was the widow of my great-grandfather’s cousin, Jesse Evanston. The rest were pamphlets, most published in New York City between 1911 and 1914, though there were a couple of flyers from much earlier, and some from other cities. Two little magazines were devoted to the work of women artists. One flyer, more intense in tone, advertised a rally in support of the right to vote for women, to be held in Canton, New York, in May 1914, with Carrie Chapman Catt as the featured speaker. “Just think,” I said, handing that one to my mother. “Maybe a suffragette lived right here in this house.”

“Maybe so,” my mother said, pulling a pair of reading glasses from her pocket. “Well, this was certainly the area for that sort of thing. I’m trying to remember—I think the house was built in the 1880s, and then fell into disrepair for a while.” She waved her hand at the verdant chaos in every direction. “Not unlike now, perhaps. That’s how your great-grandfather got it for a song, or so the story goes. I think he bought it around 1925 and set about restoring it.”

At the bottom of the stack, several more newsprint articles were held together with a rusty paper clip, the paper so brittle it crumbled at the edges, the type blurry.

“Listen to this,” I said, touching my mother’s hand. “From 1913. It’s hilarious.

“ ‘Fortunately, we have come to realize that healthy outdoor play is as good for the little girl as it is for the little boy, and the ideas of our grand-mothers’ day—that boys were to play ball, ride horseback, swim, shoot, etc., while the girl’s play was restricted to sedentary pursuits, such as sewing, doll-playing, etc.—have been placed on the relic heap, and the girl today keeps pace with her brother in physical freedom and activity.’ ”

My mother laughed. “Well, I’m glad I was born when I was,” she said. “No way could I have made you play with dolls all day, Lucy.”

“Imagine living in this house and not being able to swim in the lake.”

“I bet they snuck out and swam anyway.”

“I hope so.”

Between the last two articles I found a small envelope, square, made of heavy paper, the size of an invitation. The flap was tucked, not glued, and inside was a single sheet of paper, folded once. A dried flower, mostly brown but faintly purple in the center, slipped out and crumbled into fragments as it touched the glass-topped table.

The handwriting was faded, pale brown, the letters slanted, sharp, and certain.

21 September 1925

If Iris is to leave your household, Joseph, then I beg you, do not have her go to strangers, but have her come to me, or if she will not, send her instead to the address I enclose, to Mrs. Alice Stokley, a friend of my friends here, who will provide her with schooling and employment suitable to her age—she is only 14.

My heart aches to write this. I understand the expenses you list of clothes, books, and housing, but I cannot see how the money has not been enough. I have sent all I have. If you say it is so, then it must be, though today I cannot sign this note with love, R.

I read the words over and over, trying to puzzle out a meaning, my image of a well-dressed suffragette quickly fading. Joseph must certainly be my great-grandfather, the dreamer, who had climbed the church tower to view the comet. But who was R, the writer of this note? And who was Iris? The letter was forceful, intimate; this was no passing acquaintance.

“Do you know who these people are?” I asked, handing my mother the paper.

She read the note, shaking her head, while I wondered about the author of this note, and who had saved it. Was it perhaps Cora, my great-grandmother, who had hidden these papers? Maybe she had even attended this speech by Carrie Chapman Catt. We knew very little about Cora—only that she had married my great-grandfather Joseph Jarrett after her first husband died in a fall. Like so much of the rest of the family, she existed largely in the shadows cast by my great-grandfather’s unremitting light, so it was exciting to consider her inner life, to imagine her sitting in the cupola, reading avidly, sliding her pamphlets into the window seat if footsteps started up the stairs. “No. I’ve never heard them mentioned. There are so many Jarretts here and there and everywhere, maybe I’ve forgotten—but no, I don’t think so. I’ve never heard those names.”

“Poor Iris,” I said. “Whoever she was. Being sent off to work at fourteen.”

“That’s what happened in those days, though. It happened to my grandmother, too. Relatives took her in when she was orphaned, but not out of kindness. They needed an extra pair of hands. I don’t think she was treated very well.”

“I wonder if Iris was orphaned, too?” I said softly.

“I wonder.” My mother was thoughtful. “You know what? There’s a note I found, years ago, that might be connected to these papers. Let me get the key, and I’ll see if I can find it. It’s packed away upstairs in the trunk.”

“Everything’s open,” I said. “I unlocked all the rooms.”

“Did you?” She considered this, an expression of sadness and then annoyance passing swiftly over her face. I knew I’d crossed a line. “Well. I suppose I’ll have to look at that stuff sometime, won’t I? Anyway, hang on a second. I’ll be right back.”

Her footsteps sounded lightly on the steps. I wondered how many years had passed since she’d been up there, what she’d feel to find the rooms all open again. I went through the articles, reading more carefully. A slip of paper, inscribed with the same sharp, slanted handwriting of the previous note, fell out from between the pages.

I have read these pages so many times. I have to write it down, how I feel. No one has ever spoken about these things, not in my whole life. We had no mirrors in my parents’ house—my own body, and I had never seen it. So I locked the door. There is a mirror on its back. I took off my jacket and my skirt, and folded them on the bed. And then my shift, my drawers, my stockings.

I think I am thin, my skin is so white. Am I beautiful? I cannot say. The room is very dim. I seem to collect all the light.

My cheeks, my collarbones, like wings. Those drawings show wings inside the body, too, a mystery. My body has a pattern. I did not know. Oh, I knew so little, I knew nothing at all! The air was so still and hot, and the door was so far away. I wanted to leave but I did not want him to hate me, and I was afraid. In that strange light he walked around me, his eyes never left me, saying beauty my beauty, I’ll marry you, I will. And I believed him.

I read the brief note twice, caught up in its anger and loss and passion, which stood in such contrast to the factual articles in which it had been hidden.

My mother came back out, the screen door slapping shut behind her, holding in her good hand a small package wrapped in dark blue paper and tied with light blue grosgrain ribbon. She put this on the glass-topped table and took her seat again.

“Here’s the card that was with it,” she said, handing it to me. “Years ago, when I redid that old trunk, I found the package behind the lining. I think the handwriting is the same.” The faint scents of cedar and lavender and must floated up when I opened the envelope and took out the single piece of cardstock.

Dearest, this was fashioned for you with love.

I studied the sharp slant of the letters, the loops of the
l
and the
e
almost collapsing on themselves. “Yes, I think it’s definitely the same writing. That’s really interesting, because while you were gone, I found this,” I added, showing her the scribbled note. “It’s the same handwriting, I think, though the tone is really different.”

My mother read. When she finished, she put the paper gently down on the table.

“This poor woman,” she said. “Imagine never having seen your own body in a mirror. I suppose even reading these articles about physiology would have been scandalous at the time. I think it may have been illegal to publish them. No wonder someone stuffed all this in a window seat.”

I nodded. “So, what’s in the package?” I asked.

“It’s beautiful. Wait until you see.” My mother untied the ribbon and the papers rustled like leaves as she opened them, layer by layer. “I found the famous trunk your great-grandfather made hidden away back when I was first married. It was in the loft of the barn, pretty beaten up, the bands all rusty, everything coated in dust. I had this crazy idea I could fix it up and earn my way into the family’s good will—what a disaster! The trunk was out there in the first place because no one could agree who it belonged to. Your grandfather thought it should go to Art, but your father wanted it, too, and your grandmother took his side for once. After the argument had gotten pretty heated and gone on for several weeks, your grandfather hauled the trunk up to the loft and left it there. He was none too pleased to see it again, let me tell you. But at least the experience wasn’t a total loss. By then I’d found this, tucked behind the tattered lining. Here.”

She caught the edges of a cloth and stood, letting it unfurl, silvery white and delicate—not sheer, but finely woven. A row of circles in a slightly thicker texture floated like overlapping moons along the border, caught in tendrils of woven flowers and vines.

“It
is
beautiful,” I said, reaching to catch its edge, as soft as silk.

“Isn’t it? The minute I found this it felt like mine. I never told anyone about it, except for your father, of course.” She ran her fingers along the edge. “All these moons, these nests of flowers. This was the inspiration for my moon garden, actually. That, and Virginia Woolf.” She smiled and recited, “Every flower seems to burn by itself, softly, purely in the misty beds; and how she loved the grey-white moths spinning in and out, over the cherry pie, over the evening primroses.”

I just nodded. I didn’t want to think too much about my mother’s moon garden, run ragged with neglect. “I wonder who made this. Because it’s hand-woven, I think. A very fine flax, maybe.”

The cloth lifted on the breeze for a second.

“I don’t know. I think of her sometimes, though, all the care she took.”

“Maybe she lived here; maybe she’s the one who collected all these pamphlets.”

“Maybe. Funny that you found these other papers, hidden away all this time.”

“See? You can’t possibly sell the house—not until we know who wrote these.”

My mother didn’t answer, but smiled a faraway smile.

“It was a joke,” I said.

“I know.” She glanced at her watch and sighed. “I really have to get ready for work, much as I don’t want to.”

“What time do you have to be there?”

“In about an hour. Can you take me into town? Would you mind? I’m not supposed to drive with this cast, and I forgot to ask Blake to pick me up.”

“Sure. I’ll take a quick swim first, while you get ready.”

“But it’s so cold, Lucy. June cold, melted-ice cold.”

“Right, I know. I was already in, remember? It’ll wake me up.”

She shook her head, smiling, and carried the coffee pot inside.

I hadn’t thought to bring a bathing suit, but I found an old one of my mother’s in the summer porch where we always used to hang them to dry. I walked across the lawn and out to the end of the dock and dived straight into the water without missing a beat, so the cold shock happened all at once. This was the best way; by the time I surfaced, the water felt warmer than the air. I dived deep one more time, through the layers of water, cold and growing colder, until my foot touched a moss-covered rock on the bottom, and I came back up, shedding memory and desire, seeking nothing but air.

I dressed quickly, collecting the papers in an old file folder and carrying everything upstairs. The cloth was as light as a fragment of mist, as the remnant of a dream. Then I went out to the barn to start the car. The Impala was canary yellow with a white top and chrome trim like arrows along the sides. It had been polished to a gleam and smelled like stale air freshener. I had to pause, getting in, because the front seat was still set for my father’s legs, longer than mine, and I remembered how he’d slide in and turn the ignition with a flourish, and what a treat it had been those rare times I got to ride with him in the front seat, listening to him talk about this or that while we drove into town, meandering, as if we had all the time in the world.