Secret Summers. Glynda Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ clothes, my heart pounding as if caught out in some grave mischief. Though it was less than an hour since breakfast, Claire had spread a party-colored paper cloth on the table and set out neat little stacks of Oreos, strawberry slices, and glasses of lemonade, which appeared fresh squeezed.

      “Why, thank you, Claire,” Monique said sounding now very grown-up. ”This looks lovely.”

      “Yeah,” I agreed, my ears still reddened from the thought that I’d just invaded Aunt Claire’s attic without asking permission, something that Mom, I was pretty certain, would disapprove.

      Monique kept up a running chatter about local events and persons concerning the identity of whom I hadn’t a single clue and telling me from time to time about all of the fun things there were to do now that summer was here. ”So,” I said when my aunt had left the table for more of something or other. ”Why did you say that I was the one?” She kicked me under the table on my bare shin.

      “I don’t know how much your aunt knows,” she hissed in my ear when the little party was over, and we could be alone for a moment in the living room. ”Look at that girl in the picture.” Monique pointed to the blue clad figure who my aunt had once been. ”I saw a dress just like this in your closet,” she said then. “Let’s go get it and see what Claire says. Maybe she’ll let something slip.” Monique’s voice became even more hushed. ”You know,” she said, “about the ghost?”

      I shook my head. ”A ghost?”

      “Oh yes, she’s been seen often, a little girl about seven years old. She always appears to be looking for somebody, and I’ve had the feeling she’s been looking for that girl in the picture. Why, I don’t know, but you’ve got to admit that you are looking just like her.” Again she pointed.

      A feeling of confusion enveloped me. Then I realized I still had the scarf on and dressed as I was—. It finally became clear. Monique thought I was a girl! I had no urge to delve deeper than I already had, but Monique had a tone to her voice, a stare to her eye, a way about her that made it difficult to tell her no. Soon enough we were back in my room. Monique removed the long blue dress from its hanger. Under her prodding, I took off my tee shirt, leaving on the Bermuda shorts, and she helped me work the musty smelling material over my head, buttoning me up in back.

      Then she spied the suitcase still lying open on my bed and gave a little shriek. ”This!” she said, holding up a pink garment very much like the dress worn in the picture by my mother. Without hesitation, she stripped off shirt and shorts, showing polka dotted underpants for just a moment before she was dressed again and, with some rummaging, found a scarf among the other feminine items in my appropriated luggage. Monique studied herself in the mirror on the back of my door, gasped, looked back to me. ”See?” she demanded. ”We could have just stepped out of that photo!”

      Stealthily we went in search of my aunt. She was in one of the work rooms standing between a potter’s wheel and an old-fashion treadle-type sewing machine, riffling through a card file. Some noise we made alerted her when we were about three feet behind her. Whirling, “Goddess,” she breathed, then laughed uneasily. ”If you two are interested in giving me a coronary, you’re on the right track!” Her face grew more thoughtful then. ”You do look perfect though. Both of you.”

      “Could we wear these dresses to the gathering tonight?” Monique squealed. ”Please?”

      “Well,” my aunt wrinkled her forehead. “Come to think of it, that sounds like a wonderful idea.” To me, she said, “It’s just like a masquerade party.” Monique clapped her hands, but I must’ve looked blank. I’d been doing quite a bit of that lately.

      “A little celebration,” Claire explained, hugging me, “in honor of having my special one here after so long and,” hugging Monique, “my other special one who’s always here.”

      So, I thought, she’s glad to see me, and I’d already figured out Monique was somebody pretty important to her, which was okay all around. I liked Monique and she pretty clearly liked me. Whether that all added up to wearing a dress to a neighborhood picnic, or whatever, was to be seen.

      The Leather-Bound Book

      Back in my room, Monique, seeming very happy with the costume, left it on, and it seemed sort of impolite to spoil her fun, so I left mine on too. We slid the suitcase onto the floor for future reference and sat together on my bed. ”What about this poem thing on that box? What does it mean?”

      Monique shook her head. ”That’s what we’re supposed to find out. I’ve had some ideas but nothing very coherent.”

      “I thought you’d never seen the box before.”

      “Since we saw it last,” she corrected. ”Before we had the lemonade?”

      “Ohhhh.” To do her credit though, she did proceed to quote the entire verse from memory.

      “Wait a minute,” I grabbed for a pencil, then chose an art pen instead, red, fine tipped. I thought that would look more poetic, more proper.

      “’The key to things without is that locked safe within,’” I read. ”Seems that’s just backwards. Isn’t the key usually outside, and isn’t it used to get what’s within?”

      “I suppose,” Monique nodded, “that would depend a lot on what’s being unlocked. It could also mean that whatever’s in the box might unlock a bigger secret or mystery on the outside.” She thought a minute, then said, “Let’s have a look at the second line.”

       The thread that runs, however far,

       Must tie yet end to end.

      ”I’d say,” I said, writing the while, “that no matter how far you have to go to get an answer, you find it close to where you started. That’s usually how my teacher makes it seem when I ask a question.”

      Monique smiled. ”Still … ‘The open hand alone can grasp the things unknown.’ That would mean that we have to keep an open mind in order to understand something very new or mysterious… .”

      “That’s sound enough,” I admitted. And not to be outdone, I finished, “’No question lies upon the tongue with no answer nearby to be shown.’ I read somewhere that if you ask a question right and in enough ways, you can’t help but find the answer to it.”

      “Hmmm,” Monique wrinkled her nose. ”Maybe we’re working it backwards. We have to ask a question as many ways as we can. We have to maintain a totally open mind. We’ll find the answer near to our starting point. We’ll find a key to something important, to something outside, within the box since that’s where the verse is written,” she concluded. ”On the box.”

      “But how do we get inside it?” I persisted. ”Should we break it open or something?”

      “I suspect that would not be correct,” Monique answered gravely. ”I don’t imagine she would approve of that.”

      Again, that assumption that someone else was here, sharing my room with me!

      ”What about taking it apart?” I hazarded again. ”Sometimes there are screws in the bottom or you can take the hinges off.”

      “There’s no …” Monique began, then more deliberately, “I didn’t see any way to open the box. СКАЧАТЬ