The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [49]
The screen porch door was unlocked. I pulled it open with my foot and dropped the bags on the wicker sofa, searching in my purse for the key. A package wrapped in dark red paper was propped against the main door to the house, and a note was taped to one of the windowpanes.
Here’s the recipe for my grandmother’s rhubarb pie, and a little something I thought you might like. My regrets about this evening, I’m sorry I can’t come. Will call, my fond regards, Andy
I shifted the groceries inside and put them in the refrigerator—the plump chicken breasts, so unnaturally huge, as large as whole chickens would be in other parts of the world, the numerous bottles of wine and sparkling water. I left Andy’s note and the red package—it was light and soft—on the counter where my mother would see them right away. Then I went back outside to get the books I’d checked out from the library and the photocopies I’d made from their microfilm collection, souvenirs of my afternoon journey to the past.
The librarian had been very helpful, directing me to some histories of the feminist movement in the general collection, as well as to a local history of the village, all of which I’d checked out. He’d also showed me how to pull up periodicals on their rather ancient microfilm machine, and I’d spent a couple of hours scanning old editions of The Lake of Dreams Gazette. Finally, in the reel marked 1938 to 1940, tucked between articles about the threat of war in Europe and reports of local crop yields, I found a brief article about the dedication of the chapel in Appleton, the small village that had later been razed to build the depot. There was even a photograph of Frank Westrum standing outside the arched doors, bearded and thin and dressed in a suit, looking seriously into the camera. The rector, Rev. Timothy Benton, stood with his wife, and an unidentified woman was by his side. Though the donation of the funds for the windows had been made anonymously, in a later article the Gazette reporter had discovered that the patron was local, one Cornelia Elliot of The Lake of Dreams, widow of a prominent doctor and a veteran of the fight for women’s suffrage. “A sensibility which will perhaps explain,” the article, written in 1938, stated archly, “the very unusual—indeed, the quite droll and eccentric—nature of her gift.”
I thought of the Wisdom window, with its rich colors and harmonious design, its human figures reaching upward, hands turning into leaves, into language. Extraordinary was one word that came immediately to mind. Vivid, lush, and gorgeous followed, but not droll or eccentric. I wondered what the rest of the windows looked like—a chapel full of such art would have been stunning, I imagined. I’d gleaned from the librarian and a few more references he’d found that Frank Westrum had been hugely out of favor in those years, his work finding its way into thrift shops and jumble sales, so maybe that explained the comment, and also why the church had left the windows when the chapel was closed. I looked closely over the next months and years, hoping for something to elucidate the article, but found nothing.
After a couple of hours my eyes ached from scanning the tiny type, so I took a break and went back to the desk to ask the librarian about Cornelia Elliot. He started nodding in recognition before I’d even finished, asked me to wait a minute, then unlocked the special collections room, which was no more than a closet behind the stairs. He came back with a brown booklet, the paper cover brittle and stained, the title in sharp black: Recollections of a Dangerous Woman, by Cornelia Whitney Elliot. Cornelia—who went by Nelia, he explained—had been a well-known and controversial figure locally at the time. She had self-published only fifty