16

BOOK OF MY DAY

Ellis sat on the back porch of Summersend, the paintbrush motionless in her hand. The canvas rested secure on the easel before her, but no paint had stroked the surface in some time. The colors on her palette were drying in the afternoon breeze. The lighthouse remained only sketched on the surface, vague lines yet to be defined.

Beyond the easel, the porch, lawn, shore and water lay the lighthouse itself terribly close and impossibly far away.

Ellis saw nothing of any of them.

She did not trust anything that she saw or heard.

“Ellis?”

The voice was soft and gentle. She knew the voice but could not be certain it was real.

“Ellis, dear, please talk to me.”

Jenny’s gnarled right hand closed clumsily over her own. Ellis stared at it for a while, wondering at it. The fingers were broken in multiple places, she observed. The proximal phalanx and middle phalanx of the index and second fingers had healed improperly due to the shattering of the bones, which looked to be comminuted. There appeared to be some distress of the tendons—flexor digitorum profundus—and the metacarpal bones may have been fractured as well. None of them looked to have been properly set.

Ellis drew in a deep breath. How do I know all that? And what kind of doctor was Uncle Lucian that he could not have taken care of her injury when it happened? And if that was the extent of his medical knowledge then what kind of treatment am I receiving at his hands?

“See, Ellis,” Jenny continued. “I brought you a rose—a white one from the garden. You like white roses.”

Ellis turned slowly toward the rose, her eyes fixing on it. It took her at once back to her own bedroom, the shadowy man who had become real among the cloud of moths. His touch, his longing, his despair all drawing on her soul until fear burst out of her and scattered him into the storm of the night. He had brought her a rose just as white with thorns just as sharp. It had been a nightmare that proved too real the next day on her bloodstained stocking.

Hold still and everything will sort itself out. Hold still and the dust clouds will settle.

“What am I to do with you?” Jenny sighed. “You’ve been this way since we returned from the quilting society. I thought your paints might have brought you out of this. Where are you, Ellis?”

Where am I? Do I know?

Jenny knelt down in front of Ellis. She took the paintbrush from her with her left hand and carefully set it down at the base of the easel. She winced once from the pain in her leg but continued despite the discomfort.

“Ellis, what if I were to show you something special?” Jenny whispered as though the breeze might carry her words across the bay waters and into town. “Something secret … something I’m not supposed to show to anyone?”

Ellis tried to focus on Jenny’s large eyes.

“Something I’m especially not supposed to show to you?”

Ellis parted her parched lips, managing somehow to force out the mirrored words. “Not supposed to show me?”

Jenny smiled, encouraged by the thought that she was getting through to Ellis. “Yes! Would that please you?”

Ellis paused for a moment and thought, What are they hiding from me? They must be hiding something. “Of course, Jenny. What do you want to show me?”

A moment of uncertainty crossed Jenny’s features, but she continued, “Well … we have to go inside. The workroom, perhaps, would be safe enough.”

Jenny stood up slowly and then moved quickly through the screen door into the breakfast nook. The door banged shut behind her as she moved quickly into the labyrinthine interior of the house.

Ellis stood up, her focus returning outward as she wondered what Jenny could possibly produce that was supposed to be kept secret especially from her. She pulled the screen door open and stepped inside.

She moved through the archway into the Grand Salon at the back of the house. The double doors to the rotunda were open at the top of the landing. Jenny stood in the archway holding open one of the odd bookcase doors that led into the workroom.

“Come, Ellis, this way,” Jenny whispered, although Ellis could hardly think that anyone was within shouting distance of the house. Ellis took the single step up onto the landing and moved quickly through the double doors and behind the bookcase beyond.

The workroom was as Ellis remembered it, pristine and fresh as though no work had ever been done in it. She heard Jenny swing the door quietly closed behind them.

“Cover your eyes, Ellis.” Her cousin appeared as nervous as a cat.

“Honestly, Jenny.” Ellis shook her head in puzzlement. “What is so mysterious that—”

“It’s important, Cousin,” Jenny insisted, her eyelids blinking quickly as she spoke.

“Very well.” Ellis shrugged, putting her hands up to cover her eyes. “But I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about.”

Jenny moved about the room. There was a scraping sound and a high-pitched squeal as though metal was being dragged across the floor. A few more scraping sounds followed.

“Open your eyes, Cousin!” Jenny murmured.

Ellis looked.

The room was identical to how she last remembered it, perfectly ordered, with all the cabinets shut. Jenny stood before her holding an object out with her trembling hands.

Ellis almost laughed. She had steeled herself to anticipate something unexpected, but the utterly ordinary quality of the object took her aback.

“It’s a scrapbook, Jenny,” Ellis said with a nonplussed look.

“It’s my book,” Jenny said, her eyes bright though her lips were trembling. “This is the Book of My Day.”

Ellis reached out, taking the book. It left Jenny’s hands reluctantly. The cover was cloth over the boards and binding, a canvas that looked as though it might once have been from a sail. There were shells affixed to the cover around a fading print of a ship fighting her way through rough seas. Bits of rough rope edged the book cover. These held a burgeoning, thick set of pages that threatened to split the binding.

“I don’t understand,” Ellis said, handing the thick book casually back to Jenny.

“Well, let me show it to you.” Jenny snatched the book back, a confused look crossing her face. She set the book down on the table next to the sewing machine, carefully opening the cover to the first page. “See, here is Gamin … the whole bay and Curtis Island Lighthouse, too. That’s where we’ll start out.”

The pages open before them were nearly overflowing with snippets and decoration. There was a central print of Gamin that looked as though it was looking out from somewhere on the waters of the bay. A three-masted ship had been cut out and pasted on top of the picture so that she might look as though she were sailing. There were cutouts of people, too, who were set as though they were standing on the shore, their heads replaced by woodcut portraits of Merrick, Martha, Ely and Silenus. The forms of two women in dresses were pasted to the back of the ship, each with cutout photographic prints of Ellis’s and Jenny’s heads set atop them. That area of the ship’s image was rough as though something had been pasted there before and had been replaced by the images of the two women. The size and perspectives were all wrong and the effect was both comical and somewhat unnerving.

“That’s us,” Jenny said proudly. “We’ll lead everyone out of the harbor and to the open water beyond and go anywhere we want!”

“That sounds wonderful,” Ellis said cautiously, uncertain as to where all this was leading. “And where would we go?”

“Oh, here!” Jenny breathed, her eyes shining as she turned the thick page to the next spread. “We would sail on the open waters to amazing places.”

Ellis looked down to the page before them. A waving ribbon of blue had been affixed across the page. There was another print of a ship here, this one from a painting. Another pair of grossly exaggerated figures representing Ellis and Jenny were glued to the back of the ship. Pieces of muslin clouds swept across the tops of the pages. The ocean shone back at Ellis as a thin scrap of brushed tin. Seagulls cut from snippets of feathers rode the implied breeze above the masts. Smaller figures, again disproportionate, stood in the front of the ship.

“These are Merrick, Martha, Ely and Silenus.” Ellis pointed toward the figures standing in the ship’s bow.

“Yes.” Jenny nodded with a thoughtful smile. “They’ll be coming with us.”

“And the others?” Ellis asked quietly. “Where are they?”

Jenny’s smile fell, her brows knitting slightly at a memory. “They come on a different boat. When it’s my day then I’ll have it the way I want it.”

Jenny turned the page again. As she did the metallic ocean seemed to move and Ellis thought for a moment she could smell a fresh sea breeze, but the new pages were already before her. Page after page swept past Ellis. Absurd pirate ships attacking without reason or result, islands with three trees and filled with people calling for help, treasure hunts among cannibals … it was all a child’s view of what lay beyond the horizons of Penobscot Bay. Ellis found it both charming and disturbing that her cousin should know so little of the world beyond Gamin.

“And where will we stop?” Ellis asked with a gentle tone.

“Oh, anywhere we want!” Jenny replied cheerfully.

“But where would you like to stay?” Ellis urged.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Jenny smiled. “Just so long as I have my day.”

“What about, say, Boston or Halifax or even Bristol?”

“The city?”

Ellis blinked. “Yes, wouldn’t you like to see a city? We could sail there on your ship.”

“Oh no.” Jenny shook her head. “I’m not ready for the city … not yet. That’s what Captain Walker says anyway. Of course, Merrick doesn’t want me to go to the city at all.…”

“Captain Walker?” Ellis asked.

“Yes, he brought his own ship into Gamin a while back.” Jenny nodded. “He came on a storm like the one we had the other night—Oh, I’m sorry, Ellis; I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s all right,” Ellis assured her. “What about Captain Walker?”

“Isaiah?” Jenny beamed. “His ship was driven aground against Curtis Island a few years back. Sank there with all hands lost save him only. He said he came from a terrible place across the water and that he was glad to have made the harbor here in Gamin. He told me all about the sea. I used to listen to him for hours even though none of us were supposed to talk to him.”

Now the ocean on the page was a violent and raging black satin. The ship was different yet again, this one a woodcut print of a two-masted schooner pushed hard over in a gale. The strange figures were again on the ship in exaggerated size, this time represented by cloth dolls. Monstrous creatures made of burlap, seashells, buttons and charms rose up to threaten the vessel while foil lightning crashed downward from a gray linen sky. This time there were other dolls depicted as being in the black water.

“Won’t it be exciting, Ellis?” Jenny smiled as she turned the page again.

The storm from the previous pages continued. This ship was from a different woodcut print but sailing away from Ellis. On the horizon, just peeking above it, was a broken glass button shining brightly against the darkness of the page. Threads of gold reached out from the broken glass like the rays of hope at the end of the storm. The ship, carrying a single figure, sailed toward the light.

“Only one aboard?” Ellis asked.

Jenny flushed. “It’s why I took the book from the Nightbirds society. I needed to fix it before I put it back. That’s why I took it from the literary society and brought it home.”

“You keep your scrapbook at the society?” Ellis was astonished.

“Well, we all keep them there,” Jenny said. “Everyone here in Gamin has one! Everyone wants to have their day. You’ll have one, too, and when you do you’ll—”

A distant knocking froze Jenny midsentence.

“Ellis? Jenny?” The sound was muted by the walls.

“It’s Merrick!” Jenny breathed, terror on her face. “He can’t find out I’ve got my book here! You’ve got to get out and distract him. Send him away, Ellis, please!”

Ellis tried to calm her cousin. “If we just wait quietly, perhaps he’ll go away. Then we can—”

“He won’t.” Jenny was in a near panic. “He’ll come in and trap us in this room!”

“Ellis! Where are you?” Merrick’s voice was growing more insistent. There were other voices, lower and less distinct, that could be heard as well.

“Why did you ever design a room like this!” Ellis fumed. “It’s a trap, Jenny!”

“Me?” Jenny was incensed. “This design was entirely your idea!”

The muffled, distant sound of the front-porch door slamming came through the walls.

“Ellis? Jenny?” Several voices now called out their names. A woman’s voice was distinguished from the men’s.

Jenny was shaking, staring at the patch of blank wall through which she and Ellis had entered the workroom from the rotunda arch beyond.

Ellis stepped over to the section of wall next to it where the second door was located. The latch was still open as she pushed on it. The bookcase swung outward and Ellis slipped quickly into the music room. She hesitated for a moment but was relieved to see that the double doors that led to the vestibule were still shut. Ellis crossed to the doors and pulled them open.

“Mr. Bacchus!” she called out as she stepped into the vestibule. “I am rather surprised to find you in my home, sir.”

Merrick, standing in the arch at the far side of the rotunda, turned from the vase on the bookshelf with a look of puzzled surprise on his face. Alicia and Ely both stood in the rotunda and looked relieved to see Ellis in the vestibule behind them.

“My apologies for not answering you earlier, but I was engaged here in the music room,” Ellis said. “I’m afraid I was carried away in my reveries and did not hear your knock.”

“Of course,” Ely said at once. “Quite understandable.”

Merrick’s gaze fixed on Ely for a moment before returning to Ellis. “We were concerned when you did not answer.”

“Jenny is indisposed at the moment,” Ellis said at once. “I must beg you to leave the house. I do not wish to disturb her rest.”

Merrick stepped away from the bookcase in the archway and strolled casually toward Ellis across the parquet floor of the rotunda. He passed between Ely and Alicia without a glance. “I am sorry to hear Jenny is unwell. Strange, though, that you should have taken ill at the quilting today and now it is Jenny who needs to recover.”

“We have an invitation to deliver,” Alicia said quickly. “Once that’s done, we’ll not trespass on you further.”

“Yes,” Ely said, licking his lips. “Only please say you’ll come.”

“An invitation?” Ellis asked.

“Yes,” Merrick said. He was standing uncomfortably close to Ellis once again, as though he had a right to her space. “Alicia and Ely both feel you are in need both of welcoming and cheering up. They propose a soiree this evening in your honor.”

“There’ll be dancing,” Alicia said, an urgent pleading in her voice.

“And music,” Ely added insistently.

“I have offered the use of my home for the occasion,” Merrick said, gazing down at Ellis. “I trust you’ll save a dance for me?”

“But may I beg the honor of your first dance?” Ely added at once. “Please do not disappoint me.”

Ellis thought of Jenny panicking in the workroom. She had to get these people out of the house, although why Jenny should be so upset over a scrapbook she did not fathom.

“Please say you’ll come.” Alicia bit at her lower lip.

“Of course,” she answered. “What time are we expected?”