The Lake Of Dreams Part 17

I think all my life I will remember that night, and the light. It was a new moon, so the sky should have been dark. Instead, the dirt road, the roofs, the trees, all glimmered faintly, as if frosted. From the roof of the church tower we found the comet, its head like the tip of a pencil and pure white, like an eraser in the darkness. The tail spreading out like tresses of hair.

Geoffrey opened his telescope. We took turns looking. The village slept below. An excitement ran through me.

The same sky, I thought when it was my turn and I found the comet in the gla.s.s. Here or India or America, it didn't matter. The same moon and the same stars, and on this night the same wild light on everything. I felt as if the world were turning and must change. No more sewing, no plucking warm eggs from beneath the chickens, no walls built up against my deepest yearnings. I could study and travel and have adventures and be a priest or anything I wanted, I could give voice to the truest aspects of my nature.

I do not know how long we stood under the spell of the strange light, watching the comet, before birds began to sing in the still-dark trees.

Geoffrey folded up the telescope and looked at Joseph. "You go on", he said. "You go on, Joey. I'll see her home".

"I'll wait", Joseph said.

"No need", Geoffrey replied, his voice reserved, dismissive.

The Wyndhams owned the land. They owned our cottage. Joseph stood for a long moment, his eyes as dark as the sky, before he punched the wall and started down the stairs.

I could not speak. I was as powerless as Joseph. Also, I was full of anger and desire. I was like the bird that senses a cat amid the leaves but can't resist the brightness of the flowers. We started down the stairs, around and then around again, and at first I thought it would be all right, that we would reach the bottom and he'd see me home beneath this comet sky, as he had promised.

But at the landing he caught my arm and pulled me into the bell room with its long windows.

That first time he never touched me, only asked me to stand in that faint light, so he could look at me, he said. Step out of that old dress, he said, I only want to look, and after a long time of hesitating, tears in my eyes, I did. That time he kept his promise, walking around me and whispering oh, my beauty, and he never touched me. My fingers were shaking when I dressed.

When I stepped out of the tower, the shapes of things were starting to come out from the darkness. Joseph was waiting. We never spoke, walking home.

I did not seek him out, but he found me that whole summer long. In a clearing, by a stream, in the dusty barn at the end of the lane. Oh, my beauty, I'll marry you one day. He said this each time. I believed him. I understood nothing, I see that now. I told myself I was the princess in a fairy tale, helped from a silver carriage, unfastening my hair in the tower, even though it hurt my heart to do it. Later, when Mrs. Elliot talked about the rights of women, my face would burn at how little I had cared for myself and what might happen to my one and only life. But I was very young, and I had no power, and I believed this was a fate I could not question.

My phone rang, startling me so much that the papers slipped from my fingers to the floor. I had to dig through my bag for it, and by the time I found it the ringing had stopped. Yos.h.i.+-it was Monday morning there, early, so he must have arrived, it must be before his first day of meetings. I pulled up the number and pressed REDIAL, standing up to stretch and pace in the little room. The lake was as smooth as gla.s.s, a silver gray.

"Hey," I said when Yos.h.i.+ picked up on the second ring. "Where are you?"

"On my hotel balcony. Overlooking a river of traffic. Where are you?"

"In the cupola at the top of the house, watching boats on the lake. I found her letters, Yos.h.i.+. Rose's letters. I'm in the middle of reading them now."

"Are they good?"

"They're amazing. Very moving. I don't know the whole story yet. I wish you were here," I added, though in fact I was riveted by the letters and had hardly been thinking of him at all.

"Why can't I just be there?" he agreed. "Why can't I be there and not here, watching the boats and floating on the water with you?"

"It's just a few more days. How's everything?"

"Not looking forward to the meetings. Otherwise, okay. Look, I have to go, but I've got a break in three hours. Can you give me a call? We can Skype, and I'll fill you in on what's happening."

"Good," I said, "that sounds great. About noon your time, I'll call."

"Are you okay?" he asked. "You sound a little off."

"Just distracted," I said. "It's the letters. That's all."

When I hung up I saw that Zoe had left me three messages, but I was so eager to get back to the letters that I tossed the phone into my bag without calling her and picked up the fallen pages from the dusty floor. I scanned the last paragraphs I'd already read-the comet night, when the whole world changed, the way he'd pursued her all summer long, the way she'd blamed herself although she'd had no real choice-and came to the place where I'd stopped.

It ended when he went on holiday. I stood in the fields as the Silver Ghost pa.s.sed by. My friends, weeding, said I was pale. They made me sit down to rest, they brought me cl.u.s.ters of red grapes. So sweet, they stained my fingers. The blood of grapes, I kept thinking, those verses from Isaiah, that cry against injustice. The blood of grapes.

It was Joseph I finally told. The Wyndhams had returned by then. Grim, he went up to the manor house.

I waited outside. I waited for Geoffrey. I'd been inside the manor house just once, the ceilings so tall and the furniture all beautiful, and the servants scrubbing floors or making food and serving it on silver trays. Soon I would know how it was to live there, to drink lemonade or chocolate all day long.

I was so young. I see that now. Yet he had promised to marry me. I felt so sure that I could hardly understand what Joseph was saying when he came out alone, an envelope in his hand, talking about the new life we would have, both of us. How we could travel to America and start again. How no one would ever have to know. We would help each other-a whole new life.

He had piles of money. Pa.s.sage to America. I touched it, then pulled away.

"But he said he'd marry me".

"Don't be daft. Be glad he gave this money to start your life again".

"Start my life again?"

"A new beginning, yes".

I remembered the silver auto flas.h.i.+ng in the trees, and the scattered stones of the ruins, and the comet.

"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 s.h.i.+p, 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 impa.s.sive.

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 st.i.tches 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-gla.s.s 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. Pa.s.sage 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 ap.r.o.n, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 doc.u.ments 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 pa.s.sages 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 gla.s.s, too, the days in the gla.s.sworks 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 s.h.i.+ngles 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 sh.o.r.eline 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 ill.u.s.trious 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.