The Lace Reader. Brunonia Barry

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СКАЧАТЬ body for instance—he muttered something about it being very difficult and about “crustaceans.” I knew if I wanted to know more, I’d have to ask him, point by point, but I was put off by his choice of words and decided I didn’t want to know.

      This morning Beezer and Anya are sleeping in, but the rest of us are here, in the red schoolhouse, waiting for the minister to get here to meet with us and make arrangements for the service at the Unitarian church where Eva was a member. Dr. Ward will be arriving by water taxi. He has come out of retirement for Eva’s funeral. They were friends, those two. For a number of years. We can see the boat, still far away, but getting closer.

      No one’s talking except for two small children, a boy and a girl, who are seated on the schoolhouse floor in the far corner, playing jacks. The floor is tilted with age and disrepair, and every time they bounce the ball, it rolls away from them. The kids find this very amusing. They giggle and scramble to reach it before it rolls out the door.

      A nervous young woman, presumably their mother, watches them do this two or three times before the sound of the bouncing ball begins to grate on her nerves. Unable to stand it any longer, she walks over and takes the ball away. The little girl begins to cry; this in turn makes the mother cry. Seeing this, the women of the Circle move in, comforting the young mother, surrounding her.

      “Let them play,” one of the older women suggests. “Play is good.” The woman takes the ball from the mother and hands it back to the little girl, who looks at it suspiciously.

      Then one of the women spots the water taxi at the float and someone getting out of it. I recognize the minister immediately, even after all these years, but this woman doesn’t, and I see her tense.

      “It’s okay.” May puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. “He’s here to see me.”

      The nervous young mother lets herself be led back to the Circle. The women are talking to her quietly now, saying things I can’t make out, until they finally coax a smile from her. The little girl doesn’t resume playing but puts the ball down intentionally and watches it roll slowly toward the open door, where it stops momentarily, then bounces down the granite steps, popping up twice before it disappears out of sight. The only picture left in the frame of the open doorway is that of May hurrying toward the dock to meet the minister.

      May thinks it’s better if we bring Dr. Ward to the main house, away from the women, who are skittish (at best), plus “they’re working on the lace anyway, and we shouldn’t interrupt them with our business.” When we get to the house, Beezer and Anya are finally up. He’s had his coffee and now gets some for the minister. Anya doesn’t help, but she is attached to him, as usual. He compensates for it, like someone with a disability does, learning to move with her, forgetting after a while that this isn’t the way he has always walked.

      “We’re thinking of a change of venue,” says Dr. Ward, stirring in another teaspoon of sugar, clinking the sides of the cup with his spoon. “Probably move the funeral down the street, to St. James’s.”

      “Why would we do that?” asks May.

      “Because there are just so many attendees. The Catholic church is the only place that can accommodate so many people.”

      “How many people?” May has a bad feeling about it already.

      “We think about two hundred,” he says, “give or take.”

      “Two hundred people?” Anya is amazed. “I wouldn’t get two hundred people at my funeral if I died.”

      “Give or take,” he says again.

      I can almost see May’s skin crawling at the thought of so many people. She can’t stay seated but gets up and starts to move around.

      “Two hundred people,” Anya says again.

      “Eva had a lot of friends,” Beezer tells her, partly to shut her up. “All those etiquette classes.”

      “All those witches,” May says, frowning.

      The minister shifts uncomfortably. Some people, certainly the Calvinists, would consider May to be one of “those witches.” Even more so now that they call themselves “the Circle.” He remembered it from when they’d changed their name, their business name, officially from “the Island Girls” to “the Circle.” He hadn’t liked it then, and he’d told Eva so. It had a certain connotation, that name, and he thought they should stay away from it. He’d always wondered—well, everybody wondered, really—what actually went on out here. Some people would consider these women a coven. It was logical, with witches everywhere in Salem now, to consider any group of women a coven, especially a group that refers to itself as “the Circle.” Eva had laughed at him when he’d told her that, telling him to get with it, that it wasn’t named after witches but after the old-time ladies’ sewing circles that women used to have. Still, he thought it could be misinterpreted. “Career-limiting” were his actual words, but they went ahead and did it anyway. And as far as he could see, it hadn’t been limiting at all. Eva had started to sell the lace made by the Circle in her tearoom shortly after that, and it had been selling well ever since. Well, you’d have to be crazy, wouldn’t you, to take business advice from a minister? Still, he was sort of relieved now, to realize that not only was May not a witch herself but that she didn’t seem even to like the witches. In that way, he thought, she was like the Calvinists.

      “Who are the Calvinists?” I ask, unaware until I say it that I have been reading him. He startles. Dr. Ward’s mind is so easy to read, so open, that I can’t help it. That’s the way it is sometimes with holy people. Their thoughts are right out there for the world to see, not guarded like the rest of ours.

      May was really agitated now. I thought at first that maybe she was angry because I was reading the minister without being invited; that was another of Eva’s etiquette rules. You don’t read anyone’s mind unless they invite you—it’s intrusive, like trespassing. But I knew that if I could read this man so easily, then May could read him as well; we are all readers to some extent, although May won’t admit to it. She will acknowledge that she’s incredibly intuitive, which I would argue is almost the same thing. So either she is still angry about the witches, which I don’t understand at all, or she is angry at me for reading the minister. In any case, her anger is palpable. Even he can feel it.

      “What do you think?” Dr. Ward is waiting for an answer.

      “You already know what I think,” May says. “I don’t think we should have a funeral at all.”

      “I think Eva would have wanted some kind of a ceremony,” Dr. Ward says.

      “A ceremony would be nice.” These are the first words that Auntie Emma has spoken.

      “Eva was quite religious, you know,” Dr. Ward offers.

      “Eva? Religious?” May laughs out loud.

      Although I’d rather side with Dr. Ward than May any day, even I have to agree with my mother on this one. Eva was a church member, but she wasn’t what anyone would call religious. In the summertime she did the flowers for the First Church. And she could debate Scripture with the best of them. But she seldom attended services. She told me once that her idea of spirituality was working outside in her garden or swimming.

      “Well, I think she would have wanted something,” Dr. Ward says. His voice has a bit of an edge to it, which he quickly hides under СКАЧАТЬ