Keeper of the Doves (4 page)

“Mine too.”

He sighed. “Come here.”

He took me on his lap. “Maybe a poem doesn't have to rhyme. I'm no expert.” His long fingers gestured over his desk. “So you were trying to write down your poem.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“That makes sense. Would you like some help?”

“Yes, Papa.”

Papa took a clean sheet of paper. He took my hand in his. We picked up the pen. We dipped the pen in ink. We wrote my poem.

“We'll put your name down at the bottom.” We did that.

Papa handed me the poem and took out his pocket watch. This was always his signal that the interview was over.

Grandmama's story was over too. She laughed in a kind way at the thought of my poem.

“How long ago was that, Amen? I lose track of time.”

“Two years. I'm eight now.”

“And do you still have the poem?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you must show it to me. I'd like to see it. And do you remember what I called you?”

“I could never forget that, Grandmama. It was the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.”

“What was it?” Augusta asked.

Grandmama said, “I called her my little wordsmith. You know, like a goldsmith works with gold and a locksmith works with locks. My little wordsmith.”

 

My sisters Abigail and Augusta were singing for Grandmama. It was Sunday evening. Normally we were not allowed to have music on Sunday, but Grandmama had begged for the rules to be relaxed, “just this once.”

The Bellas and I sat on the horsehair sofa. I was trying not to slide off as I seemed to do on real horses.

This particular song had been written by and was at the request of Aunt Pauline. She stood behind the piano, her hand on a brooch at her neck. This pin contained the hair of a man Aunt Pauline had loved and who had died during the war. A lock of his hair was twisted with a lock of hers, and it was all she had left of Frederick.

Augusta had told me that while Frederick had died “during the war,” he had died of chicken pox. I was never, never to mention this, especially not to the twins, who would probably cackle like chickens every time his name was mentioned.

My sisters started on the chorus.

One of the Bellas was amusing the other by tugging the top of her hair and mouthing, “E—E—E.”

Suddenly the Bellas gasped. They did this exactly together, and I looked from one to the other. Their eyes were turned to the window, and I saw it.

A terrible face was there, grinning. The front teeth were missing, and the eyes beneath low, dark brows had an animal shine.

Instantly I was back in the classroom and I wanted to run and hide in the closet. I could not do this, of course—the parlor had no closet—but I began to whimper with fear.

Aunt Pauline gave me one of her worst frowns. Her nose touched her upper lip. She was the only one allowed to show emotion during “In Memory of Frederick.”

My singing sisters, seemingly unaware of the frightful face at the window, sang the final “May we walk arm in arm as before.”

Aunt Pauline's fingers tightened on her brooch. She sighed.

I looked back at the window. The face was gone, but it was branded on my mind, the way the image of the sun lingers on the eye. My heart pounded in my chest.

Grandmama said, “Could we have something a little more cheerful, girls?”

Abigail said, “This is from
The Mikado
, Grandmama. It's supposed to be ‘Three Little Maids from School,' but Miss Printis lets us say ‘Two Little Maids' because that's all we are. Is that all right with you, Grandmama?”

“Indeed! I like children who can adapt.”

Abigail struck a chord on the piano.

Augusta was busy playing the piano, but Abigail was snapping her imaginary fan like a Japanese lady.

I only half watched my sisters. My other half was concentrated on the window.

When, at last, the singing was over, the Bellas and I left the room. I trailed after them—still tormented by the face at the window.

“Anyway,” one of them was saying, “if Frederick and Aunt Pauline do meet on that heavenly shore, he's going to run for his life. He's going to be young and handsome and she's going to be old and ugly, isn't that right?”

“Right,” said the other Bella.

I did not mention that he might be slightly disfigured with chicken pox and therefore glad to see anybody—even an elderly Aunt Pauline.

I touched the backs of the Bellas' pinafores with trembling hands.

“Was that him?” I said, my voice trembling too.

“Who?”

“You know. Mr. Tominski?”

“Of course. Who'd you think it was? Santa Claus?”

“What happened to his teeth?”

“He broke them off eating children.”

I gulped with shock. “That's not true.”

“Yes, it is!” they said together. They never contradicted each other.

“I don't believe it.”

“Well, it's true.”

“Even if he saved Papa's life, Papa wouldn't let him stay if he did that. He wouldn't let Cook take him his meals. He wouldn't—”

“Don't believe us then. We don't care.”

“That's right. We don't care. If you don't believe us, just go walking back in the woods. You'll find out.”

I had never been drawn to the woods the way the twins seemed to be. I would often stop at the edge, watch them disappear and return to the house.

That night I dreamed of the toothless face. In my dream, Mr. Tominski looked at me. Blood dripped from his mouth. He licked his lips and grinned.

I woke up trembling.

Abigail turned the book so I could read the whole title.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

I recognized it as one of Papa's books—the brown leather binding, the gold letters. Papa was very particular about his books.

“Did Papa say you could read that outside?”

“I didn't ask. He would just try to get me to read something more appropriate like
Treasure Island
.”

“Why isn't this book appropriate? What's it about?”

“It's about a man with two personalities, and one of them is good and the other one is eeeee-vil.” She smiled.

“Read me a little bit.”

I climbed into the hammock beside her. Abigail always smelled of spices, because she kept little bags of cinnamon and cloves stuck in with her petticoats.

Abigail was our beautiful sister. Her hair was curlier, her eyelashes thicker, her cheeks rosier. She was exactly like a painting of Mama when she was a girl.

In the hammock our faces were close together, and I could see the tiny dimples in the corners of her mouth.

Abigail opened the book to the first page.

“Now, this is a description of a person's face. Who does it sound like?”

Abigail read, “‘—was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty . . . lean, long, dusty, dreary ...'”

“I don't know.”

“Give up?”

“Yes.”

“Aunt Pauline. Doesn't that perfectly describe Aunt Pauline? Cold, scanty, long, dusty, dreary. Except for the last of the sentence, ‘and yet somehow lovable.' ”

She laughed, trying to look wicked. “I'm part evil, like the man in the book.”

“No, you aren't,” I said. No one could look wicked with dimples in the corners of her mouth. “It's true about Aunt Pauline. Her face does look like that.”

One of the things that united us, that made us feel closer as sisters, was a mutual dislike of Aunt Pauline.

“Later on in the book,” Abigail continued, beginning to turn the pages, “these two friends of his are outside Dr. Jekyll's house—Jekyll is the good one. Hyde's the evil one. And they're talking to him. Dr. Jekyll is just a face in the window—and slowly he starts to turn into Mr. Hyde. Let me see if I can find the place.” She found it and read dramatically.

She said, “You know what that reminds me of—a face in the window that ‘froze the very blood'?”

“Mr. Tominski,” I whispered.

“Yes. I saw him watching us sing the other night, did you?”

“Yes. The Bellas told me he eats little children. I said I didn't believe it, but that night I had a bad dream, and in the dream he did eat one, and then he turned and looked at me and he gave me a ‘you're next' look and I tried to run but my legs wouldn't work and I woke up—”

Abigail hushed me by touching a finger to her lips. I glanced around quickly, afraid she had seen Mr. Tominski, but the yard was empty.

“What?”

“Mama and Grandmama,” she said. “I want to hear what they're saying.”

She leaned across me to get a better view of the porch. I inhaled the scent of cinnamon and clove.

“Grandmama has only been here one week,” she reminded me, “and I've already heard her and Mama argue at least three times.”

This was news to me. “What do they argue about?”

“Oh, this and that. They even had one argument about you.”

“Me?” My body stiffened. The thought made me uneasy. “What? What? Tell me!”

“Oh, Grandmama thinks the Bellas are not a good influence. She thinks you are a very bright girl—you must have showed her some of your poems.”

“She asked to see them.”

“Well, she expected to see two or three, and you had how many?”

“Thirty, maybe forty. Was that too many? What else did she say?”

“She said the constant influence of the Bellas was bound to—how did Grandmama put it?—‘dull even a budding genius.' Then Mama said that perhaps, if you were a budding genius, you could raise the Bellas' level of intelligence.”

“Budding genius? They said that?” I added, “Then what?” although I really didn't want to hear any more.

Abigail's voice took on a tone of conspiracy. “Let's go see what this argument is about, want to? Maybe it's about me.”

She marked her place in the book with a red satin ribbon and climbed out of the hammock. “Come on,” she said.

I lay there, unable to move.

“Come on! They might be talking about
you
!”

At that, I managed to stumble out of the hammock, landing on my knees. Abigail helped me to my feet and put her arm through mine. Then, just two sisters enjoying the afternoon, we made our way to the porch.