Keeper of the Doves (5 page)

“K
eeper 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 about 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.”

 

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.

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 Mama 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.

M
ama 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.