petals and ferns from the hard New England granite that was so different from the soft marble they were used to. They are great stonecutters, if not great spellers, and I won’t have Anya saying anything bad about them.
I walk down the rows of Whitney markers. When I get to Lyndley’s, I stop and stare. Lyndley’s name is spelled wrong, too. They got the last name right, Boynton, but they spelled her first name with an s instead of an l (“Lyndsey” instead of “Lyndley”). I feel a bit sick, standing here. And dizzy.
When I get back to the group, Anya is holding Auntie Emma’s arm. She has remembered herself and has stopped ranting.
Dr. Ward is reading prayers at the graveside. He keeps glancing at Auntie Emma as he reads, directing the reading to her. But she doesn’t seem to notice. She is not looking at the minister but at the piles of dirt by the open grave. Still, I don’t think she has any idea that we are burying her mother today. The day I arrived, she seemed to know. But today she seems oblivious. Her eyes remain fixed as we recite the Twenty-third Psalm. She does not appear sad or even terribly curious about what we all are doing here.
The ceremony is over now, and some of the people are leaving. But none of us wants to leave Eva here aboveground, not with the protesters still out there below. So some of us stay behind, waiting until she is lowered, each taking a ritual handful of earth or flowers and putting them down with Eva.
And then, when it finally is over, when we all turn to go, there is a gasp from one of the red-hatted women. I reel around in time to see one of Cal’s disciples walking toward the cemetery. He’s robed and sandaled, and his hair is long and flowing. He has a beard. Even Dr. Ward cannot help staring. Then I see Rafferty step in front of him, blocking his way. The group of protesters moves in, and the police cars converge. I can see Rafferty’s face all twisted up as if he’d just tasted bad fish or something
“Jesus Christ!” the pastel woman says.
“Hardly,” says one of the Red Hats.
“That’s not Jesus, that’s John the Baptist,” another Red Hat chimes in.
“And that’s Cal Boynton,” says a second in a far less jocular voice. She gestures to a man wearing a black Armani suit.
“How dare he!” says one of the other Red Hats.
The crowd goes still as Cal passes. He stops in front of my aunt.
“Hello, Emma,” he says to my aunt. She stiffens. “And hello, Sophya,” he says to me without turning, without having to look at me. “Welcome home.”
The ground spins, and Beezer grabs my arm.
Before I can think what to do, Rafferty is there. “Move along,” Rafferty says to Cal, who doesn’t budge.
“Relax, Detective Rafferty,” Cal says. “I’ve just come to pay my respects like everyone else.”
Anya has taken Auntie Emma’s arm and is leading her away from the crowd. “Come on,” Anya says. “It’s over.” Beezer looks at me. He stays by my side as Anya walks my aunt down the other side of the hill and out the back gate of the cemetery toward the harbor.
Beezer gestures for me to go ahead of him. “Let’s go home,” he says.
Rafferty stays behind, keeping an eye on Cal, making sure he doesn’t follow us.
At its peak, there were six hundred women making and selling Ipswich lace, which was shipped out of the town harbor to ports all over the world.
—THE LACE READER’S GUIDE
ANYA ACCOMPANIES AUNTIE EMMA back to Yellow Dog Island. When Anya gets to Eva’s house, she goes directly to the pantry and pours herself a drink. Besides May and my aunt, Dr. Ward is the only one who doesn’t come back to the house. He sends his apologies via note, explaining that he’s not feeling very well and promising that he’ll stop by later in the week to see me. All the rest of the mourners show up at the house, including all the witches. The Calvinists might just as well have shown up themselves, because they are everyone’s main topic of conversation. The nerve of them, everyone says, showing up like that at the cemetery. I’m still stunned by the whole thing, and I can tell that Beezer’s angry at me for it, or at least frustrated. He keeps insisting that I shouldn’t be surprised about this. He says I knew about Cal and how he had all these followers who dress up like the apostles and think he’s the Second Coming. Even though it was shocking and sick and everything, Beezer said, it really shouldn’t surprise me that much, because I knew about all of it already. We had talked about it more than a year ago, he said, and I’d told him it didn’t bother me.
I have no recollection of any such conversation, and I tell him so.
“Remember Eva sent you all those newspapers?” he said, as if that should do it. “She sent them to you because they had articles about Cal in them.”
I’m still looking at him blankly.
“For God’s sake, Towner, it was ATH.”
That’s how Beezer and I refer to my history. BTH was “before the hospital,” and ATH was after. When I first got out, Beezer helped me reconstruct my memories. A lot of the stories and images I have come directly from my brother, his own memories superimposed on the thin skeleton of my own. He came to California that next summer, on his school vacation, and he tried to help me. He was even thinking of staying out there for college, applying to Caltech, but then one day the whole thing got to be too much for him, and he had to leave. He only had a week left before he had to go back to prep school. He told me that Eva wanted him to come back early to get ready. I could tell he felt bad about it. I could also tell that it was a lie. Remembering was a difficult process. It got worse as it went on, especially when we started to talk about Lyndley. I remember suggesting that maybe we should have known about the abuse, or known at least that Lyndley was in trouble, that maybe we could have helped her. There were signs everywhere, I told him: the bruises, the precocious sexuality, the acting out. I could see Beezer’s face tighten as I went on and on about my sister. I could see him shutting down from it. This wasn’t something he could talk about; it was too much for him, as it might have been for any healthy person, anyone who wasn’t obsessed with the whole thing the way I was. I wanted to let it go, but I was powerless in the face of the scraps of memory I did have. I clung to them as if they were a life raft, and it was just too much for my brother to handle.
Beezer is very patient with my BTH lapses, but he cannot tolerate any lapses ATH. I had no shock therapy ATH and no more extended hospitalizations, with the exception of my recent surgery, but that was physical, not mental (although my ex-shrink might be the first one to dispute that point). The newspapers, the ones my brother kept referring to as proof that I knew about Cal’s new vocation, were the ones I had never opened. So Beezer’s proof meant nothing to me. I don’t remember talking about Cal with my brother at all. It is starting to piss me off, actually, the way Beezer keeps telling me how I feel and that it doesn’t bother me. I know he needs me to be okay with it, and I respect that, but come on. For God’s sake, I think I would have some recollection of being told that my uncle, Cal Boynton, was a fundamentalist preacher whose followers believed he was the new Messiah. I think I would have remembered something like that.
When the crowd thins out a bit, Beezer goes down and raids Eva’s wine cellar, coming back with some sweet sherry, a dusty Armagnac, and some amontillado.
“Oh, goody,” Anya says, “how very Foe.”
The pastels and the Red Hats are glad to see the sherry, and they pour tiny glasses for everyone. I put on some tea in Eva’s honor, and people settle around the little tables with their lace doilies as if it were a regular day at the tearoom and not the day of Eva’s funeral. I’m thinking I should make cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off,