The Lace Reader (37 page)

“I came to say good-bye,” I say.

342 Brunonia

Barry

I look around the island. I see the women who make their homes here. They are walking back and forth doing the chores of daily living. This is their life now, all of them working together. Living together.

I look up, and I see Auntie Emma walking back to the house with her basket of vegetables for tonight’s meal. I can picture it. All of the women and children cooking together, sitting together at May’s big table. An odd sense of longing overtakes me.

“You can stay here,” May says. “You’ve always known that.”

We both knew it wasn’t true. Still, I was glad to have the words.

“I can’t.”

She nods.

For a moment it is all I want. All I’ve ever wanted, I realize. Everything has changed, and nothing has changed. And yet the only way to make it stop is to leave this place.

I know that I should go up and say good-bye to Auntie Emma, but I just can’t do it. For some reason the sight of her gets to me—

walking back to the house with her vegetables in the basket, moving forward into what is now her life. It is too much to bear. And I can’t make myself go to her. May can read it on me. All this emotion. She can tell it has immobilized me. And I can tell that she understands.

“Will you say good-bye for me?”

She nods and says, “When the time is right.”

We stand in another kind of silence.

“I don’t expect you’ll be back,” she says, “now that Eva’s gone.”

“No,” I answer.

She hugs me. It is out of character for May to do this and for me to allow. We hold on to each other for a long moment.

“Take care of yourself,” she says as I finally pull back. And I can tell that it really matters to her.

Byzy is sitting at the top of the dock, just looking at me, with his head cocked, wondering what’s next. What will our next great ad-The Lace Reader 343

venture be? I realize I have to leave now if I’m ever going to do it. I turn and walk toward the Whaler.

“Sophya?” May says.

I turn back for just an instant and say, “Yes?”

I can tell she thinks about it for a second time, maybe even a third, before finally deciding to say it. “I couldn’t have loved you more if you
had
been my own daughter,” she says.

Chapter 30

Open ocean. Fog. Hand shaking with the vibrations of the motor. Judging the distance by the echo of gulls. Judging direction by the air. It wasn’t foggy a minute ago, but that’s the way it goes in this part of the world. Fog doesn’t roll in here. It drops in patches—not like a blanket, like a feather pillow. It can smother. I can’t breathe for the thickness of it. No, that’s not it. I’m hyperventilating.
I couldn’t have loved you more if you had been my own daughter.
Hands tightening, going into spasm, hyperventilation. I am smothering. Dying.

No paper bag. Nothing to breathe into. I cup my hands. Useless. I look in all directions. There is no place to go. I cut the engine. Peel my hands off. Sit, putting head down between the knees. Then I remember the Stelazine. In case of emergency, break glass. I swallow it dry. It sticks. I swallow again. Cough.
I couldn’t have loved you more . . .

I find myself standing, rocking the boat crazily. Force myself to sit.

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This is the fog from the dream. I squint my eyes. I expect to see Eva or Lyndley, expect to be led. But there’s nothing. I sit low in the boat. I’m afraid of standing again. Afraid I’ll do it without knowing. I don’t trust myself.

No sound now. No birds. No air. Only the pattern on the water, a dark lace.

Then, for a moment, I think I see the sea horse. My first instinct is to look away, but I am dying. I feel like I have in fact died.

Just get back to the house. The plane. Just get to the plane and get back to California.

I start the engine. I cannot move.

I am pinned. Unmoving. Cal is here. Cal is on top of me. Cal is suffocating me. Then the shape-shift and the face changes. This is not Cal. It is Jack.

I am crying. Just let me get back. Please. Just let me go. I put the engine in forward. Then I see the body parts. Floating in the water up ahead of me. An arm, a leg, a torso. Life-size, it seems, until I come upon them. Then no, not life-size, tiny. Plastic? No. Ceramic. Religious. Ceremonial. I’ve seen them in L.A., on Olvera Street. I follow the trail of floating
milagros
until the fog clears and I can see the curve of Salem Willows dead ahead. I make myself think. I make a list. Get to L.A. Call Dr. Fukuhara. Get help. I can do this. I have to believe I can do it, or I’ll die right here. Get to L.A. Call Dr. Fukuhara. . . .

I couldn’t have loved you more if you had been my own daughter.
Chapter 31

Angela took down the
MILAGROS
and wrapped each of them in toilet paper, winding them, then placing them inside pieces of her clothing for protection, one in a sock, one double-wrapped and placed into a running shoe.

She folded the black lace mantilla and threw it into the trash. Cal hated lace. He wasn’t fond of the picture of the Virgin either, but she left that up. When they got back here, she’d be living in Cal’s trailer; the next person who lived here might think it a pretty picture. She had stopped to tell the rest of the Calvinists the good news. That she was going to have the baby, Cal’s baby. That he’d finally admitted the baby was his. That they were going to Las Vegas to get married.

“Reverend Cal would never go to Las Vegas,” Charlie Pedrick said. Angela refused to call him John the Baptist even though she’d heard a rumor that he was trying to legally change his name.

“Reverend Cal hates Las Vegas,” one of the women agreed. “That and San Francisco.”

“You can get a marriage license any time of the day or night in Las Vegas,” Angela explained.

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“I will pray on it,” Charlie said.

You do that,
Angela thought, and started moving her things into Cal’s trailer.

John the Baptist called a prayer meeting. Fine. They could do what they wanted. Let Charlie call a prayer meeting; she had a lot to do before Cal got here. She had to get both of them packed and ready to go.

She filled her backpack, throwing in a change of clothes for Cal and his best Armani suit for the wedding. She thought about calling her parents and telling them the good news—her mother, not her father. But there wasn’t time. She had to find out the ferry schedule. She had to get airline tickets.

She took Cal’s wallet and some credit cards, then remembered she didn’t have any underwear for him. It was odd choosing underwear for Reverend Cal. She grabbed his comb, looked for his toothbrush. She didn’t know what else of his to take.

The backpack was heavy as Angela stepped off the metal stairs to the grass below.

They were all waiting for her—Charlie, the women, and some of the others, the ones Cal referred to as his bodyguards.

“What’s up?” she said, thinking it would be nice if one of them could at least help her with the backpack.

“I just have one question,” Charlie said.

“What’s that?”

“Could you please recite the Lord’s Prayer for me before you go?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

He smiled at her.

“He’s kidding.” She turned to the others for confirmation. A nervous shiver ran through the crowd. No one spoke.

“Come on. You don’t need me to recite the Lord’s Prayer for you. You know the Lord’s Prayer.”

“I do. I was just wondering if you did,” Charlie said. The Lace Reader 349

“This is ridiculous,” Angela said.

“She doesn’t know it,” one of the women said.

“She doesn’t know the Lord’s Prayer.”

“Of course I know it.”

“Please recite it.”

“No, I won’t recite it, this is ridiculous. And Reverend Cal isn’t going to like it when I tell him how you’re treating me.”

“I prayed on it, and the Lord answered. . . .” He leveled his eyes at Angela. “Reverend Cal would never set foot in Las Vegas,” he said.

“Well, he’s going there with me. Tonight.”

“I don’t think so,” Charlie said, stepping in front of her.

“Your baby does not belong to Reverend Cal,” one of the women said.

“Your baby belongs to the devil,” Charlie said. Angela laughed at that. “Right,” she said. “The devil.”

Some part of her still thought they were kidding.

“She has the mark,” one of the women said. Another of them fainted.

This couldn’t be happening. Angela’s eyes darted, searching for an escape route.

Charlie grabbed her quickly, slamming her face into the side of the trailer. Angela reeled, saw the blood.

“Name yourself, demon!” Charlie roared.

One of the women picked up a rock and heaved it. Angela dropped the backpack and took off down the other side of Waikiki Beach toward the rocks and town.

“Get the witch!” one of the bodyguards shouted.

“Get her!” Charlie ordered.

Roberta saw everything from the booth. She got on the phone quickly, calling Rafferty first, then, when she couldn’t get him, she called 911.

Chapter 32

The fog clears as I enter the harbor. The
milagros
disappear, and the water goes deep blue. The air is warmer here. I can see Derby Street. Just get to the house.

I see two police cars in the parking lot at Winter Island as I pass. Instead of slowing, I speed up. It’s getting late. I have to make that plane.

As I pull into the channel toward the boathouse, I notice the Calvinists out at the end of Derby Wharf, halfway into the harbor by the tiny lighthouse. They scramble over the rocks that surround the wharf, looking for something.

Two of them sit in front of the boathouse.

I should put the Whaler away, but I don’t want to go near them. And I can’t wait for them to move. Instead I tie up and leave the Whaler at the dock. When I get to the airport, I’ll call May and tell her to have someone pick it up.

I feel sick. Bad idea, probably, taking the pill on an empty stomach. Or at all. But I am here. I am safe. As I walk up the street toward the house, I see more Calvinists. Searching in doorways, behind the Custom House. 352 Brunonia

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I cross the street, trying not to look at them, keeping my eyes leveled. All I have to do is get my bags and call the cab. I’ll relax when I get to the airport.

My hands shake as I unlock the door. I lock it again behind me, go to the kitchen for a piece of bread, put my head over the sink and gulp from the faucet.

Behind me glass shatters.

I stiffen, waiting for another sound. I hear the thump of a body as it hits the floor.

Someone is in the house.

Cal.

I start for the door.

“Help me!” a voice cries.

This is a female voice. One I have never heard in life before, one I recognize only from my dreams.

I reel around to see Angela Rickey. She stands there shaking and terrified. The bruise I mistook for a birthmark has faded now to just a shadow across her right cheek, and new bruises have formed, one across an eyebrow and another, bloodier one where one of her eyeteeth has been pushed through her upper lip.

“They’re trying to kill my baby.” She’s crying now, trembling, trying to make me understand.

“Cal?”

“No.” She shakes her head urgently. “The others.”

I look in the direction she’s pointing, toward the park, and I can see the Calvinists lined up on the sidewalk. They watch the house, waiting. They look like Hitchcock’s birds gathering on the jungle gym at Bodega Bay.

“They think I bewitched Cal. They think our baby is the devil!”

“This is Cal’s baby?” I say weakly. I realize I should have known. It was the one detail everyone was keeping from me. A hand over a mouth. Smothering.
Don’t move, don’t make a sound.
The Lace Reader 353

I throw up. Right on the floor in the middle of the pantry. I see the cracked blue shell of the Stelazine still undissolved. They’re crossing the street now. There are more of them than before. A torch is lit, then more lit from the first. There is noise. And chanting. “Get the witch!”

Angela starts to cry.

I grab the phone, dial 911.

“Oh, God.” Angela freezes in place. She’s staring out the window, still as death.

The 911 operator picks up. “What’s the nature of the problem?”

“I have Angela Rickey here. She’s pregnant and she’s been beaten.”

“Stay on the phone,” the 911 operator orders. “I have your location.”

I can hear her in the background giving directions to the cruisers.

“They’re on their way,” I say to Angela.

She is sobbing.

“She’s hurt pretty bad,” I say.

Angela sobs harder. “My baby,” she sobs.

I see them crossing the street, torches blazing. Traffic stops for them, creating a jam of onlookers. I see the looks of amusement from the tourists. They think they’re watching one of the pageants they’ve seen over and over again in this city.

“Get the witch!” they chant.

The tourists think it’s Bridget Bishop, or one of the other reenactments. They are trying to do their part tonight as well, trying to engage the hysteria, to show they’re comfortable with it. Getting their children involved, too. “Get the witch! Get the witch!” they cry. A woman stops her car, gets out to watch with her children, sitting them on the hood so they get a good vantage point as the Calvinists push by them across the street and into the yard.

“They’re coming.” Angela’s voice climbs an octave. She’s moving all over the room now, unable to stand still anymore. She goes to the window and yells for help. The crowd applauds. 354 Brunonia

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The torches bob endlessly, nightmarishly forward.

“Please,” I say to the 911 operator. “They’re coming!”

“The cruisers are on the way,” she says.

“Oh, God, oh, God!” Angela moans.

“Make sure your doors and windows are locked,” the operator says. She’s well trained, trying not to sound alarmed. Sound of footsteps on wood, as the first Calvinist ascends the front steps.

“They’re on the porch!” I yell toward the phone as I scramble to make sure everything is locked. Using all my strength, I push the hutch in front of the window Angela broke.