Amber House: Neverwas (40 page)

in line separately and boarded the train without raising an eye-

brow. We sat in different cars, but after about ten minutes, I

went and plopped myself down next to Jackson.

“Hey,” he said. “I thought we agreed.”

He was smiling slightly. Just that turning-up-the-corners

thing he always did. I needed something light and airy to toss at

him, to hide behind. “I don’t think I
agreed
to anything. But if you’ve got something in writing —” I half lifted from my seat.

He cocked his head, amused. “I think they call it ‘consorting

with criminals.’ ”

I sat back down firmly. “When you put it that way, you make

it pretty irresistible.”

264 O

“If they come after me, I don’t want you hauled away too.”

“The thing is, J . . .” I got stuck again, tongue-tied. I made

myself keep going. “If they stop you, then we’ll just have to find

some other way. Some other time. Because I can’t do it without

you. So I think we should just stick together.”

He regarded me. I felt measured. I felt seen-through. He nod-

ded. “We’ll stick, then.”

We talked about nothing things, stuff we had done together

as kids, trouble we had gotten into, reliving the past, pretending

for a little space of time that the future wasn’t coming at us with

the speed of a train. We also worked out a story for me to tell my

folks.

All the while, I watched him from the corner of my eye and

saw him like a stranger. Noticed how he greeted the ticket taker

and thanked him. Noticed how he held himself still when he

talked, until suddenly some bit of story would catch hold of him

and make him paint pictures with his hands. Noticed again how

much his hands were like my father’s.
A surgeon’s hands
. I wondered if Helen saw these things about him.

I wished —
wished
— I had the guts to say something to

him. Something meaningful. Something
true
about the way I

felt. But I was gutless. What if this Jackson just couldn’t feel

this way about me? What if this Jackson was so used to seeing

me as his little friend, he’d never be able to see me as any-

thing else?

At Penn Station, he pointed me toward a pay phone. “Call

your mom and dad. Tell them the story we came up with. Get

ready for tonight.”

“Where’re you going?”

“I’m going to check out the museum, make sure I got it right.

Then I’ll find some place to rest and get cleaned up. Don’t worry.

Everything’ll be all right.”

I smiled a little. That seemed to be Jackson’s refrain.

o265

N

The man behind the front desk at the Park Hotel eyed me dubi-

ously as I walked through the lobby between my parents. I

wondered if I had any leaves stuck in my hair.

Mom was still peppering me with questions. “What town in

Pennsylvania? Where did you stay? Why didn’t you call? How’d

you pay for it?”

I stuck to the story Jackson and I had worked out together. I

got on the wrong train, which took me west toward Pittsburgh.

I made it back to Harrisburg, but missed the last train to New

York. So I spent the night and took the first train out in the

morning. I hadn’t called because I couldn’t remember the name

of their hotel. It seemed to satisfy my parents, even though I

could see a glint of doubt in my father’s eye.

Mom was still obsessing as the elevator doors slid open. “We

waited and waited for your call. We thought you’d been mur-

dered or something.”

A large group of people disgorged themselves from the eleva-

tor car, but one man snagged my attention. He had his hat on and

his face tipped down and away, his hand touching the brim, hid-

ing his features. Still I knew the blond hair lying with straight

precision in a blunt cut just above the collar. The Reichsleiter.

My parents, the crowd waiting for the elevator, swept me

through the doors and he was gone.

Our hotel room was a beautiful suite of golden tones, curving

furniture, and satin fabrics. Utter luxury everywhere you

looked. I wondered where Jackson had ended up.

I took a shower and shrugged into clean clothes from the lug-

gage my parents had brought for me. Then I took a nap. My

mother woke me after an hour — I had an appointment in the

salon downstairs. “But first I want you to come across the street

and see how nicely everything turned out.”

266 O

She grabbed her coat and purse and went to the table near the

door. “Tom? Did you move the exhibit key?”

My dad came out of the left bedroom. “No, hon. Last time I

saw, it was there.”

She looked in her purse, then looked at me. “You didn’t move

it, did you?” I shook my head. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter

for now. The museum is open. We can get a security guard to let

us into the exhibit.”

A key
, I thought.
The key Jackson said we’d need?

The museum stood on a rise in the park across the street.

As we climbed the front stairs, I realized I had been to the

Metropolitan before, but it hadn’t looked like this. It had been an

entirely different building, yet still called the Met. I guessed as

far as New Yorkers were concerned, in this time or any other,

their city was
the
metropolis.

We found a helpful security guard who led us past the entrances

to other exhibits, other wings: Ancient Egypt, the Impressionists,

Modernists, Old Masters. The last name caught my attention. I

remembered it written in Jackson’s scribbled, blood-grimed

notes. I turned to look in. Jackson was there, sitting, watching

me. Our little group continued on past him, but I gave him a

tiny nod.

The guard let us into the still-closed exhibit, using a plastic

card with an embedded metal strip.
The key.

We descended a flight of stone steps to the museum’s central

atrium. Its long rear wall of arched windows looked down on

the gardens below the museum. The space was high and hol-

low and echoed queerly. It reminded me of the conservatory

back home.

The exhibit itself
was
gorgeous — the rich wood tones of

stray pieces of furniture mixed with quilts and needlework,

paintings and photographs. Three hundred and fifty years of

artifacts. Three hundred and fifty years of family clutter. All

o267

of it spread out against freestanding ells of stenciled walls, set up mazelike to force people to meander. Here and there the trees

that lived in this garden room poked up above the walls, remind-

ing me of a dream I’d had the first night we’d returned to Amber

House.

I wanted to wander and admire my mother’s work, and to

locate the gun that Claire Hathaway had loaned to the exhibit,

but I needed to make a quick detour. “It’s amazing, Mom,” I

leaned in to say to her, “but I need to run to the ladies’ room.”

“Sure, honey. Hurry back, though. I wanted you to have the

private tour before tonight.” She turned to chat with a museum

worker about one of the displays.

Jackson was still waiting for me in the Old Masters. We sat in

front of a studied domestic scene from one of those intense

Dutch painters. I told him, “I think I know what key we need,

but I don’t know where to get it. Mom’s is lost.”

“You’ll find another,” he said.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. It’ll show up.”

That hardly seemed a satisfactory answer, but I let it go. I had

to trust Jackson. There wasn’t any other way. “How am I going

to find
you
?”

“I’ll be at the party.”

“You need a special invitation to get in.”

He shook his head. “I just need a white jacket.” I gave him

a look, completely confused. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there. I’ll

find you.”

“I gotta get back to Mom. You good for now?”

He nodded. “It’s a beautiful place.” He looked around him.

“The museum. The city. My dad met my mom here. I’m glad I

got to see it.”

He was sounding morbid again. “We’re going to do this, J.”

He nodded again. “Yes. We will. Because we have to.”

268 O

I got a quickie tour from Mom when I returned. We walked

at a near trot, but I veered to every glass case and cabinet, check-

ing their contents for Claire’s gun. And I didn’t find it. “What

about Mrs. Hathaway’s contribution,” I asked Mom.

“Not here yet, but we saved a spot for it.”

“Where?”

“Near the back on the east side,” she said unhelpfully.

Which side
, I wondered,
was the east side?

On the way out, I spotted a photo of Fiona when she was in

her early twenties. Her red hair was piled on her head luxuri-

ously, with curls trailing down her neck. She was caught in that

same frozen pose that all early photograph subjects shared —

but I liked the way the corners of her mouth were curved

up, and the grace of her hand resting lightly on the chair back

beside her.

I walked closer. My mother saw me and called an instruction:

“Straighten those two poems, would you, honey? For some rea-

son, they’re always slipping a little.”

I looked down to the two framed poems. “Otherwhen” and

“Neverwas.” The poems I had found back at the house, the frag-

ments that had started me on this journey. They were Fiona’s

fevered visions of the path to a better place. Directions to follow.

Messages to someone to come.
Me.
But I looked at the words and thought,
Not just to me
. “
A pas de deux
,” she wrote, “
a dance within
the maze.
” Had she foreseen me dancing with Jackson in my

golden gown? “
The hand that pulls us onward in our climb.
” Fiona must have known it would take two.

I nudged the poems parallel to each and perpendicular to the

floor. And realized something else, something I should have seen

before. Fiona had brought “Otherwhen” with her
from the other

time
, the time before. It had leaked through somehow. She had penetrated the déjà vu to keep it.

o269

I’d have to remember to tell Jackson. Who we are continued

from Time to Time.
Different but the same.

N

The hair salon had its entrance on the same level as the hotel’s

lobby, but plunged down below street level. It had once been a

gentleman’s bar — all mahogany and crimson velvet and brass. I

thought it was a space Fiona might have felt right at home in, sur-

rounded by male admirers and a veil of cigar smoke.

Booths had been converted to individual stations, where styl-

ists worked on hair, nails, what have you. Double doors that

must once have led to a kitchen now enclosed a spa. Mom and I

were led to adjacent spaces, introduced to the ladies who would

be overseeing our transformations, and quizzed about our

desired results. For me: loose half updo, please, red lip stain but

otherwise neutral makeup, hide the bags under my eyes, don’t

bother with a manicure or waxing, thank you very much. The

stylist — Isobel — offered to touch up the stray hairs on my

eyebrows, but if everything went according to plan, I figured I

wouldn’t have to worry about those tomorrow anyway.

“I’m growing them out,” I said flatly.

Isobel worked quickly, efficiently, and expertly. I assessed her

finished product in the softly lit vanity across from me. You

could hardly tell I had barely slept in two days. The hair was all

softly curled and discreetly pinned. She’d made a point of tuck-

ing a stark-white camellia in my hair, which she’d evidently

ordered special for her “Southern belle” client. I didn’t have the

heart to tell her I was not, in fact, a native of the South.

My mother looked incomparable, as always. Her auburn hair

was pinned into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, with select

curls seeming to slip naturally from the chignon to frame her

270 O

high cheekbones. Her slanted eyes were rimmed with the haziest

smudge of burnished copper, making her hazel irises glint.

Sometimes, she was so lovely, I had an impulse to stand on tiptoe

to kiss her forehead.

What if Jackson was right? What if
this
mother, whom I loved so much, only existed in this time? What if changing things

made her disappear? It couldn’t be like that. I needed these

people, whom I loved, to be there with me on the other side.

That is, if
I
was there on the other side . . .

It was unbearable to contemplate. I cleared my throat. “You

look beautiful, Mom. So beautiful.”

She blushed. “You’re a sweetie. Thank you.”

“I mean it. I love you, Mom.”

It was one of those moments — tremulous, lit with peculiar

clarity — that would stay etched in my memory. I hoped.

CH A P T ER TW E N T Y-NI N E

K

We took the elevator upstairs and changed into our evening

wear. Mom wore a column of green silk with the Amber House

emeralds; Dad wore a razor-sharp tuxedo with a white bow tie.

“You look like a spy, Dad,” I said. He chuckled and looked

pleased.

Back downstairs, the spacious entrance hall to the hotel’s