Keeper of the Doves Read online

  Pert as a schoolgirl well can be.

  Filled to the brim with girlish glee.

  Two little maids from school.”

  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.

  chapter ten

  Jekyll, Hyde, Abigail, and I

  “Jekyll and Hyde.”

  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.

  “But the words were hardly uttered before the

  smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by

  an expression of such abject terror and despair,

  as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen

  below. They saw it but for a glimpse, for the window

  was instantly thrust down; but that glimpse

  had been sufficient. . . .”

  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.

  chapter eleven

  Keeper of the Doves

  “Keeper of the doves?”

  “Mother, please lower your voice. I am not deaf.”

  “But a dove keeper?” If anything, Grandmama’s voice got louder. “You never mentioned that before. What does a keeper of the doves do?”

  Unnoticed by Grandmama or Mama, Abigail and I sat down on the steps. Abigail glanced at me and mouthed the word Tominski. But I had already sensed the conversation was about him and found myself relieved it was not abou
t me.

  “Nobody needs a dove keeper!”

  “Mother, please.”

  “If the man’s got to keep something, why not bees? At least you would get honey out of that.”

  “Mother, I don’t want Albert to hear this.”

  “Albert’s gone to the lumber mill with the Bellas. That’s why it’s so quiet around here.”

  “I wouldn’t say it was quiet, Mother.”

  “Well, I’d really like to know what the man actually does.”

  I had wondered that most of my life.

  “Mr. Tominski is a harmless old man, Mother. The connection goes back to Albert’s childhood. He’s part of family history.”

  “Albert, like Pauline, dwells too much in the past. They should—”

  “I know, Mother, turn their faces to the future.” Mama spoke as if she had heard this phrase many, many times.

  “But what does he do? Answer me that. Everyone should do something, even a harmless old man—if indeed he is harmless.”

  “Mother!”

  “Well, I’ve never laid eyes on the man. How can I judge whether he’s harmless or not.”

  She took a deep breath and slapped her hands on the arms of her rocker. Plainly a decision had been made.

  “And I think it’s high time I saw the man and his famous doves.”

  Grandmama turned and noticed us for the first time.

  “Girls!”

  “Yes, Grandmama,” we said. For once Abigail and I were as in unison as the Bellas.

  “Do you know where these famous doves are?”

  “Yes, Grandmama,” Abigail said. “The cages are at the old chapel.”

  “He keeps doves in the chapel?” Grandmama made it sound like blasphemy.

  “Behind the chapel, Mother.”

  “Still . . .” Grandmama stood. “Take me there!” she ordered.

  “Albert doesn’t like for the children to bother the doves.”

  “Children bother doves?” Grandmama made it sound like the most ridiculous thing in the world.

  “Come, girls.”

  Grandmama swept down the stairs and took the pebbled path through the roses. We followed.

  I, still troubled by my nightmare, came more slowly. I glanced back at my mother. The setting sun cast its final rays on her face, and she lifted her hand and touched her forehead, as she sometimes did to ward off a headache.

  We skirted the orchard—Rome apples, Bosc pears—and then moved past the kitchen garden. Past the herb garden, the names of the herbs as lovely as their scents—rosemary, tansy, caraway, thyme. For once Abigail did not pause to crush a few leaves and rub the scent on her arms.

  We continued. Not being one to explore, I had never ventured beyond the gardens before.

  As we moved along the small overgrown path, I seemed to remember the Bellas had warned me about the woods, but except for the fact that Mr. Tominski lived here, I could remember no details. Still, the air seemed to have thickened around me.

  The chapel took me unawares. It was a wooden building, quite small. The door stood open, and inside we could see a potbelly stove and furniture that seemed to have been made from pews.

  We heard noise behind the chapel. In silence Grandmama led the way. At the back of the chapel she stopped, and so did we.

  Mr. Tominski sat on a stump with his back to us. In the trees were doves, dozens of them. He called out something in a foreign language, or maybe it was a familiar word made foreign by lack of teeth.

  One of the doves flew toward him. Mr. Tominski held up a shiny object, and the dove took it in its beak and flew back to the tree.

  Another foreign word. Another dove.

  Finally the trees were filled with doves holding these shiny pieces of metal.

  Then there was one final cry and the doves flew to him. They circled his head, round and round, with the shiny objects glinting in the sunlight. Mr. Tominski threw back his head and cried with joy, “Hee! Hee! Hee!”

  Grandmama noticed something on the ground, bent to pick it up, and with an abrupt tug on our shoulders, turned us around. We walked quietly around the chapel.

  When we were out of earshot, Grandmama said, “Well, I am at a loss for words.”

  Then she disproved the statement by continuing immediately with, “Those were pennies, see?”

  “Pennies?”

  She held one of the pennies in the palm of her hand. “The man flattened copper pennies on the railroad track, drilled a tiny hole in them, and strung them up like ornaments.

  “That was quite something, girls. And I think—remind me to ask Albert, I don’t dare bring up the subject again with Lily—I think he was speaking Polish.”

  She continued to the porch. “Though I think your papa was right. You should stay away from the chapel.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  As we climbed the stairs, we saw that Mama had gone into the house.

  Grandmama sat in one of the rockers. “I’d like to take a photograph of that man,” she said. She leaned back and set her rocker in motion. Grandmama could always put a flattering light on someone when she wished.

  Just as she had called me a wordsmith, now she said of Mr. Tominski, “The man is a dove magician.”

  chapter twelve

  Leaving

  Leave an i out of said,

  I get sad.

  Leave an e off of made,

  I get mad.

  This was my new poem. I had been working on it all morning. I couldn’t wait to finish so that I could show it to Papa. He would like it because it rhymed. Also it was about words, and I knew Papa loved words too—almost as much as I did.

  Just the other evening he had looked up from his book, as he occasionally did, and said, “Here’s a word for you, Amen.”

  “What is it, Papa?”

  “Lambency.”

  Aunt Pauline had jabbed her needle into her embroidery frame and left it there. “Is that a disease, Albert?”

  “No, Pauline, no. This is Henry James. Henry James isn’t interested in disease.”

  In the silence I repeated the word, “lambency,” enjoying the sound. “How is it used, Papa?”

  He read the phrase—“ ‘a strange mocking lambency which must have been part of her adventurous youth.’ ”

  “I give up, Papa.”

  “It’s a kind of glow, I believe, a radiance.”

  “Lambency. I’ll remember that, Papa.” I enjoyed getting a new word, even one that would be difficult to use.

  I went back to my poem. In the second part, I would put a letter into a word. I had already composed the first two lines in my mind.

  Put an o into bat,

  You get boat.

  Put an o into flat,

  It will float.

  Papa had put a special table in the corner of our schoolroom so that I would have a place to write my poems. I was sitting there, copying the lines onto the paper, when the Bellas came in.

  “What are you doing?” one of them asked.

  “She’s doing her po-ems,” the other Bella said scornfully.

  “You’ll enjoy this one,” I said. “It’s funny. See, I figured out that if you take a letter out of a word, you get another word, like—”

  The Bellas didn’t wait to hear. “Mama wants to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “We aren’t allowed to tell you, are we?”

  “No, we aren’t allowed to tell you.”

  The way they said this alarmed me.

  “Have I done something wrong?”

  “We aren’t allowed to tell you!” they said together.

  “But—”

  “We aren’t allowed to tell you. All we can tell you is that Mama wants to see you.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Where she always is—in her room.”

  My alarm blossomed. I could not remember the last time I had been summoned to Mama’s room by myself.

  I glanced down at my unfinished poem. “Do you suppose Ma
ma would like to see my poem?”

  “She doesn’t want to see your stupid po-em, she wants to see you.”

  “And we aren’t allowed to tell you why.”

  “No, we aren’t allowed to tell you why.”

  Leaving my poem on the writing desk, I walked out of the room and down the hall to Mama’s room. There were eight rooms on this floor, and Mama’s was at the end.

  My steps slowed as I went over the events of the past week.

  The only thing I could think of that might have distressed Mama was Abigail and me going to the chapel where Mr. Tominski kept his doves.

  I had not seen Mama since that afternoon on the porch. My last glimpse of her had been as she lifted her hand to touch her forehead.

  Had Abigail and I caused her pain? Was Abigail being summoned too? I took some comfort in the thought of standing with my sister.

  The door to Mama’s room was open. Crossing my fingers for luck, I stepped inside.

  chapter thirteen

  In Mama’s Room

  Mama sat at her dressing table. I watched from the doorway. Mama’s room was like a garden. Flowers were printed on a fabric called chintz, and the colors were natural colors that you saw in the garden—rose and lilac.

  Mama held a bottle of scent in one hand and with the other she touched the bottle’s stopper behind her ear.

  I was reluctant to go any farther without permission.

  “I wish I smelled good,” I said.

  Mama smiled at me in the mirror and beckoned me over. She touched the glass stopper behind each of my ears. It was cool and smelled so good I wanted it to last forever.

  “Lily of the valley,” Mama said, knowing I liked to know the name of everything.

  “A perfume named for you, Mama.”

  “That’s why your papa bought it. He said, ‘I wish it were Lily of The Willows.’” It must have been a happy memory, for she smiled.

  The top of Mama’s dressing table was rose marble, and on it were cut-glass bottles of scent and silver boxes that held combs and fine face powder. There was a beautiful silver comb and brush set.

  Now I noticed that new to the table were small boxes of pills and brown bottles of medicine. I knew that summers were difficult for Mama because of allergies that I did not understand. Sometimes it seemed I had two mothers, a reclusive summer one and a bright and spirited winter one. Still, I had never seen so many medicines.