The Lace Reader. Brunonia Barry

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      The women created their own patterns made of parchment, but thicker parchment than for the love letters, more enduring. Pins were pressed into the parchment, creating a pricking pattern that could be used over and over. For the lace making, the pins stayed in, holding the patterns to the pillow, and the lace was woven pin to pin. If there was any limiting factor to the production of more intricate laces, it was the expense and scarcity of pins.

      —THE LACE READER’S GUIDE

       Chapter 5

      IT IS JUST AFTER SUNRISE. I cannot get back to sleep. Placing the braid of hair in the drawer of the bedside table, I quietly make my way downstairs. I start to dial Beezer’s number, then decide to wait an hour. I want to tell him that Eva’s all right. Beezer has been great. He doesn’t need this, not now. My brother and his longtime girlfriend, Anya, are about to be married. As soon as exams are over, they will be flying to Norway, where her parents live. After the ceremony they are going to travel around Europe for the summer. They will be so relieved, I think, both that Eva is okay and that they don’t have to change their wedding plans.

      I’m making mental notes. Call May. Call the cops. Although none of them deserves a call. I don’t know how any of them could be so stupid that they couldn’t find an eighty-five-year-old woman in her own house.

      I let myself into the tearoom, with its frescoed walls painted by a semifamous artist my great-grandfather had flown in from Italy. I can’t remember the name. Small tables crowd the room. Lace is everywhere. Some of the pieces bear May’s company label, The Circle, but most of them Eva has made herself. A glass counter in the corner holds canisters with every kind of tea imaginable—commercial teas from all over the world, as well as several flower and herb potions that Eva blends. If you want a cup of coffee, you won’t find it here. My eyes scan the teas looking for the one she named after me. She gave me that tea as a present one year. It’s a blend of black tea and cayenne and cinnamon, with just a hint of cilantro, and some other ingredients she won’t reveal to me. It has to be drunk strong and very hot, and Eva tells me it is too spicy for some of her older customers. “Either you’ll love it or you’ll hate it,” she told me when she gave it to me. I loved it. I used to drink whole pots of it, winters when I lived with Eva. On the canister it’s called “Sophya’s Blend,” but its nickname, just between Eva and me, is “Difficult-Tea.”

      Behind the canister is a notebook, its cover a poem I recognize, the Jenny Joseph poem that is getting so popular. “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple / With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me….” Stuck inside the notebook are some photos, one of Beezer and May and one of me when I first got to California, my forced smile slackened from the Stelazine I was still taking.

      From the look of things, Eva has a children’s party set up for today. I check the calendar on the wall, but it’s a lunar calendar, not a regular one, and it’s difficult to read. The slivered phases of the moon are printed in shades of gray on the corresponding dates. Just when I begin to think I have it figured out, I spot a different kind of moon, a bright red full moon stuck halfway through the month. It’s a little larger than the other moons and doesn’t correspond to any of their cycles. It takes me a minute to realize it’s not a moon but a hat. I remember Eva telling me about the Red Hats who were inspired by the poem. The ones who wear purple and come for tea and lace readings here at least once a month.

      The tables are already set. Each table has a different pot, with different teacups and saucers set on individual circles of lace. The pots are very fanciful and colorful. If you choose to come for tea on a regular day, one that’s not already booked for a private party, the lace at your table setting, once you use it, is yours to keep. You pay for it, whether or not you have a lace reading done. Many people just take their lace pieces home and use them as doilies. This never bothers Eva, even though I’ve always thought it was a waste, that the lace circles are pieces of art and should be framed.

      Most of Eva’s customers come for tea really hoping to get a lace reading. Eva never does more than two readings a day anymore; she says it wears her out, particularly now that she’s getting older. She does not keep any money from her readings. All the money she collects for the lace and the readings goes directly to the Circle.

      She’ll do more than two readings if she has to. And if she senses real disappointment, or something urgent that the seeker should know, she’ll even do the reading for free. But what she’s most interested in is teaching the women to read for themselves. “Pick up the lace and look at it,” she says. “Squint your eyes.” If you follow her instructions, you start to imagine that you see pictures in the lace, the way Eva does. “Go ahead,” she encourages them. “Don’t be afraid. There is no wrong answer. This is your own life you’re reading, your own symbols.”

      I find a teaspoon with the Whitney monogram and look around for my favorite teapot, which is actually an old china coffeepot that Eva has converted. I warm the pot, then brew the tea. I grab a cup and the lunar calendar and go to the only table in the room that isn’t already set. On the table is Eva’s worn first edition of Emily Post.

      Before my great-aunt opened the tearoom, she taught manners classes to the children of Boston’s North Shore. Kids from Marble-head, Swampscott, Beverly Farms, Hamilton, Wenham, and as far away as Cape Ann came to Eva for refinement. She’d set one of the tables in the parlor for a formal dinner, and the children would arrive in their little suits and dresses to brush up on their table manners. She taught polite dinner conversation, tricks to avoid the shyness that descends on children during such events.

      “Keep asking questions,” she advised. “It gets the conversation going and keeps the focus off you. Find out what they’re interested in and what their preferences are. Offer something of yourself in the question; it’s more intimate that way. For example, appropriate dinner conversation might be to turn to the person next to you and say, ‘I like soup. Do you like soup?’”

      She made the kids practice asking each other if they liked soup, invariably prompting giggles because the question was so inane. But it broke the ice. “There,” she would say after such an exercise. “Don’t you feel more comfortable already?” And the kids had to admit they did. “Now ask another question, and make sure you really listen this time for the answer,” she would say. “One of the secrets of good manners is learning to listen.”

      I drink a whole pot of tea. At seven o’clock I call Beezer. No answer. I make another pot of tea.

      I try Beezer again at eight. Still no answer. I decide to make Eva a pot of tea and take it up to her.

      Someone knocks on the tearoom door. At first I think it’s Beezer, but it’s not. A girl, not much older than eighteen (if she’s that), stands there, backpack across her shoulders, greasy hair parted on the side and hanging shoulder length, half covering a huge strawberry-colored birthmark that runs down the left side of her face. My immediate thought is that this is just another kid looking for a room or a reading, but when I glance out at the common, the festival is over. The only people left out there now are dog walkers and some Park & Rec guys cleaning up. I start for the door, wanting to answer it quickly, to keep things quiet for Eva, but then the teapot screams, and I rush back to silence it, burning my hand as I grab the handle.

      She bangs again, louder this СКАЧАТЬ