MISS BRETT'S FOR WOMEN
DEEP BOOMS AND SHARP CRIES. STRANGE SOUNDS ERUPTED IN Lena's dreams. She bolted up from her bed, heart hammering, and found herself in a strange room filled with gray light. A cool, thick fog had crept in through the window and with it the lonely boom of a foghorn warning ships off the rocky coast of Knob Knoster. Hungry gulls screamed and squabbled for breakfast, and Lena realized that if she didn't hurry, she would miss hers. Miss Brett had said seven a.m. With no time to bind her hair in a braid, she ran her tortoiseshell comb through the knots and pulled on a pair of pale thin gloves.
She was the last guest to arrive in the small dining room. There was only one seat empty, next to an old lady with a horn in her ear, which suited Lena fine. Perhaps there would be little conversation about her hands. As expected, no one else in the breakfast room was wearing gloves for the meal. Lena hoped that the pale color she chose would draw little attention and that anyone who did notice would be too polite to remark on them.
At the next table, Lena recognized her companion from the train-the lady with the firm jaw and red poppies on her hat. She was wearing the same hat, Lena noticed, not even removing it for the meal, as would have been proper. The woman next to her, the one Lena had seen at the station, shared the same thick profile. A pink carnation blossomed on the front of her stiff black dress. Lena smiled at the ladies in recognition, but they were too engaged in conversation to notice her.
The china teacups were delicate, covered with a pattern of blue forget-me-nots. Lena reached a trembling hand for the teapot. Her fingers wrapped around the thin handle. With practiced concentration she maneuvered the teapot with only one hand, steadying her cup with the other. Her long fingers made it much too easy to drop one of the tiny cups. By the time she had poured her tea and reached for a roll, a thin trickle of sweat had run between her shoulder blades.
"It's the fog, Mrs. Fetiscue." Poppy Hat's voice carried across the room. "It would drive anyone mad." She lowered her voice. "It's a cover for evil."
"Once," her companion replied, "the fog didn't lift for three weeks. Imagine that, Mrs. Fortinbras. You couldn't hardly tell if it were day or night. That's when the lot of them came slinking over the border. Killed a family in their own beds and then disappeared back to where they come from."
"Evil, Mrs. Fetiscue, pure evil. I don't know how a God-fearing woman like yourself could have lived here so long."
"You know, sister, that ever since our husbands died-God rest their souls-I've counted you as my closest friend and ally. It's how I've bore living in this heathen place."
Mrs. Fortinbras leaned across the table and patted her sister's hand. "There is no friend like a sister, Mrs. Fetiscue. I'm glad to have been some encouragement."
By now everyone in the room was listening. Miss Brett entered from the kitchen carrying a steaming tray of eggs. "The fog is natural to all sea towns."
"It's wicked!" declared Mrs. Fetiscue. "People do things under the cover of darkness they would never do in the light of day. Fog provides them the same benefit."
Mrs. Fortinbras nodded so vehemently that her poppies shook.
"Are you saying the people of Knoster are wicked?" Miss Brett set the tray of eggs down with a thump.
"No more than the average. But living so close to the borders of a land thick with heathens…" Mrs. Fortinbras's voice trailed off, but the point was clear. "My sister and I are traveling into Scree to convert the heathens. We'll have to get used to such things."
Miss Brett peered down the length of her nose.
Lena couldn't help herself. "Do you believe there are Peculiars in Scree?" she asked.
"Oh, there are Peculiars, all right. But we won't be concerning ourselves with them, dear. Peculiars do not have souls. Nothing to convert."
The rest of breakfast continued with subdued conversation. As soon as she could politely escape the dining room, Lena fled. A strange hollowness had filled her at the missionary's words. Perhaps this is how it feels to be soulless, she thought. Could one feel a soul? Lena concentrated very hard, focusing her attention on her rib cage. Surely that was where the soul would be encased. Nothing, except the anxious fluttering of her heart.
Lena tried to put her unease aside. It was time to be businesslike, time to focus on the reasons she had stopped in Knoster. She drew a thick shawl over her fitted jacket and took her second-best purse out of her luggage-the first-best having been the one lost on the train. As she prepared to leave, she had two purposes in mind. The first was to stand on the shore and touch the sea. The second purpose required more courage: Find a reliable guide into Scree, one whom she could afford now that her circumstances were considerably reduced.
All roads in Knoster wound down to the harbor. Foghorns beckoned, and Lena kept a good pace, although thick fog still obscured most of the view. Tall, crooked houses brooded like ghosts over the cobbled streets. Miss Brett had predicted the fog would burn off before noon and then Lena would be able to see some of the glories of Knob Knoster. The promise of a steam carousel near the boardwalk quickened Lena's steps.
Once Knoster had hopes of becoming the major port city in the West. Trade boats arrived from across the sea. Whalers set forth on the spumy waves, and a fishing fleet flourished. Miss Brett's father once owned a large fishing boat with a crew of twenty. But it had proved difficult to transport the necessary supplies for a town into Knoster. Train tunnels had not yet been excavated through the basalt cliffs, forcing the price of goods higher. And then there had always been the rumors.
As the coastal town mushroomed, news of its superior harbor drew investors despite the high cost of supplies. But then animals began to disappear: a merchant's horse, the dairy farmer's best milk cow, neighbors' dogs. Then a handful of the new citizens of Knoster gave credence to rumors about the wild lands to the north. Old stories of Peculiars resurfaced, and with the rumors fear blew in like a persistent wind. People saw Peculiars in every misfortune. The final blow came when the Whittlestone Mining Company withdrew its plans for a base of operations in Knoster. The new and still fragile economy collapsed. Houses were sold cheap, farms abandoned. Only the hardiest people remained, along with a few eccentrics who found that the isolation of Knoster suited them.
Now only a small fleet of fishing boats and whalers remained, and every year their numbers grew smaller. The weather and tides were too capricious to allow them to compete with those from more southerly ports.
The town had a faded glamour. The opera house, still the largest building in town and the only one made out of brick, had once offered performances by the likes of Ida Fincher, the Western Star. It was now reduced to a glorified grange, advertising town hall meetings and displaying a tattered poster for a salon steam carousel known as the Pleasure Dome. On the poster, men, women, and children rode on painted wooden ponies or pigs while others glided in gold-leaf gondolas circling a carousel organ. Lena stared at the poster for a long time. She had always dreamed of riding a carousel pony.
Like the poster, everything in Knoster had grown tattered with time. Nothing could stand up against the relentless salt wind. That wind was stirring now. Lena watched the fog swirl in tendrils across the sky. The dampness made her hair curl, and beads of moisture clung like tears to her lashes. Her anticipation quickened with her pace. She had never been to a beach before. As she wound her way down the hill, the train station appeared suddenly on her left, and she heard more distinctly the slap of water and the roar of waves. Dark pilings pierced the fog, and she set them as guideposts to the harbor. Suddenly, the sidewalk ended and stone crunched beneath her feet.
As a child, Lena had pored over pictures of tropical beaches in faraway lands, beaches where sand lay smooth and warm as a blanket. Those were not the beaches of Knob Knoster. She sifted crushed rock, bits of shell, and glass through her fingers. Everything around her was muted in shades of gray-water, sky, and land. She breathed in the distinctive smell of fish and tar. Waves licked the stony shore of the harbor and crashed against the riprap of a jetty. And Lena found that she was listening, as if the wild call of the ocean was familiar. It filled her with strange longings for adventure, longings Nana Crane would say no civilized girl should ever have. Her heart beat faster. Lena tried not to listen, afraid the ocean might call her name.
She was not sure how long she stood in the harbor listening, and not listening. It was long enough that the sun began to fight its way through the remnants of fog. And with the sun, the wind whipped in, salty and sharp. And the landscape emerged. Lena was surprised to see she wasn't alone on the harbor beach. A wizened man with a pipe in his mouth stood looking out to sea not more than a few yards away. Not wanting to disturb him, Lena averted her eyes and looked down at the ground around her feet, hoping to discover shells. She jumped. Instead of shells, strange brown snakes crisscrossed the rough beach. Long and bulbous, they sprouted tufts of green hair but lay completely still. Lena bent closer. Cautiously, she poked at one with the pointed tip of her alligator boot. It didn't move.
"Bull kelp." The man wore a squashed bowler hat and mumbled his words around the pipe between his lips. "Some folks say it's mermaid whips, used to tame the sea horses." His laugh was rusty, creaking like something exposed too long to the sea air. From under the hat deep-set eyes twinkled. "Not from here, are you?"
Lena shook her head and recovered her voice. "No, it's my first time at the ocean."
"Thought so." He nodded and chewed his pipe.
The man, Lena noted, was barely taller than her shoulder. He looked like one of the craggy boulders come to life. "Do you live here?"
"Came here with my father's fishing boat 'fore this town was anything at all, and I'm still here now that it's nothing again."
"You're a fisherman?" She could see five or six boats bobbing not far offshore now that the fog had cleared.
"Used to be." He rubbed his hand across the stubble on his face. "Now I just help out on the boats, some."
Lena thought quickly. If he'd been here that long, he might be just the person to ask. "I want to hire a guide. Perhaps you could tell me whom to talk to?" She wasn't prepared to reveal too much about her reasons for coming to Knoster.
"Fishing guide? That's the kind of guide most tourists want." He squinted out toward the open water.
"No, a travel guide." Lena scuffed the toe of her boot in the grainy sand. "I'm not really a tourist. I need a guide into Scree."
The man turned toward her, his furrowed face scrunched tightly as a raisin. "You don't look the type to have business in Scree." He sucked his pipe thoughtfully as his eyes traveled from the pointy toes of her boots to her dark, windswept hair.
Lena attempted to appear dignified. "Nevertheless, I am here on business. And I'm willing to pay."
Overhead a seagull whirled and screeched as it dropped a clamshell to smash against the rock. In a sharp dive the bird dropped and swallowed the exposed animal in a gulp.
"They're clever that way," said the man. "Know how to get what they want." He tapped his pipe against his leg and pulled out a pouch of tobacco. He took his time refilling the pipe. Lena waited.
"Looks like you know what you want too. Name's Milo. If we're going to talk business, we'd best introduce ourselves." He shuffled toward her and extended a brown-clawed hand.
"Lena Mattacascar." She held out her gloved hand, which he took and shook without comment.
"Well, Lena Mattacascar-it just so happens you asked the right man. There's only two folks I'd trust to take me into Scree. Two folks who really know the land and can help you find whatever it is you're looking for." He paused, waiting for her to say just what she was looking for. When she didn't, he continued. "And I suspect it's not the usual tourist curiosity. But it'll cost ya."
She nodded.
"Margaret Flynn-you can find her down at the Parasol." He nodded toward the row of shops lining the harbor. "And Mr. Tobias Beasley. But he don't do that kind of thing much anymore. Lives in a big house outside of town."
Lena started at the name Beasley. "Is that the Mr. Beasley with a library?"
"You've heard of him. Yep, that's him, all right. Used to be a practicing medical man. Gave it up a few years back. But I can say this for him: He helped out some of those poor folk living in the forests up there. A shame the way they been treated. Beasley and Flynn're both strange folk, I won't deceive you. But they know things about Scree others don't." He turned back toward the sea, nursing his pipe, hands buried deep in his pockets.
"Thank you. Thank you very much." Lena looked up the narrow harbor lane, wondering just how far it was to the Parasol. "There's one thing more."
"Go on."
Lena could feel her face turning red. "Does Knoster still have the Pleasure Dome?"
Milo nodded. "Fancy carousel. Still runs on the weekends, hoping to draw in tourists. Not far from the Parasol. You can't miss it. The front's covered with cupids and doodads."
"You've been very helpful, Milo."
"Not often I get to help folks looking to go into Scree." Lena wasn't sure, but she thought she caught the muttered words "a fool's errand" as she walked away.
EAVESDROPPING LENA AT FIVE YEARS OF AGE
Late at night. Banging on the front door. I sit up in bed, and in the darkness there are shadows cast from the gas lamps outside my bedroom window. Creeping into the cold of the upstairs hallway, careful to avoid the squeaky floorboard, I seek out the listening grate. All day Mother's been sharp, hardly talking, even when she tucked me into bed. And there had been no story.
Nana Crane watched with her birdlike eyes but held her tongue. I haven't seen Poppa for two days. I wonder where he's gone. But I'm afraid to ask.
I can hear the bolt slide open on the front door and the mumbling of a male voice. Is it Poppa? No, another man's voice. Mother invites him into the parlor. Good, I can hear the words more clearly when they come from the parlor. It's freezing outside. I put my ear to the grate and wrap my icy feet in the hem of my nightgown.
"Your husband's down at the precinct in lockup. Started a fight in a bar last night and gave a fellow a nasty blow to the head. Sent the gentleman to the hospital. Far as anyone could see, it was unprovoked. Same thing last month, Mrs. Mattacascar."
Mother's words are too low to hear. I wonder what a precinct is.
"I understand, ma'am, but bail's going to be larger this time. Here's what the judge has ordered."
Papers rustle.
"I'll pay it, of course, I'll pay it. First thing in the morning."
In the morning, before I finish breakfast, Mother hurries out. Nana Crane pours a glug of tea into my mug of milk.
"Your father has bad blood. Nothing your mother does can change that."
I stir the milk, wondering what makes some blood bad.