Distant Waves (9 page)

I want to write to you.
Six simple words. But there was an unspoken multitude of words that could spring from them.

On a day when I felt I'd lost so much, suddenly I had a brief glimpse of something being gained.

Spirit Vale was so small that any letter addressed to me there would arrive at my house, and I told him so. "Would you really write?" I asked hopefully.

"I'd like to," he replied. "I've enjoyed talking to you, and it would be good to keep it up, even if it's only through letters."

"That would be great," I said.

"You'd write back, wouldn't you?" he checked.

"Of course I would. With Mimi gone I'll really need someone to talk with, and I also find it easy and interesting talking to you."

We stood there a moment, smiling at each other like two fools. For all our talk of talking, we were romantically speechless.

The train broke the spell by sounding a warning blast. "All aboard for Albany and connecting points on the northwest corridor," a conductor yelled.

"You'd better go," Thad said.

"I suppose so." It was so hard to leave.

We began walking together toward the train. "How did your interview with Tesla go?" he asked. 

"Wonderful. It should be a great article," I told him, climbing up the metal stairs to the small platform between train cars. "And the most amazing thing happened -- he remembered me from all the way back in 1898! Can you believe it? I was only four at the time."

The train's engine chugged and a white mist of smoke rose up around me. "Better take your seat, miss," a conductor advised.

Thad jumped nimbly onto the train, grabbing hold of the railing between the cars just as the train moved forward.

I gasped -- but with a touch of delight at his daring. "You'd better get down," I cautioned.

"I have a few minutes before it leaves the station," he said.

The train slowly chugged, blowing its whistle as it inched up the tracks.

"Wait! Did you say you were only four in 1898?" he asked.

I nodded. "Why?"

"I just assumed you were older."

The train continued moving forward, slowly picking up speed. Thad leaped easily to the ground.

I wasn't prepared for how wrenching his jump away from me would be. I'd felt so safe with him. Now it was as though he'd jumped out of my life altogether. I was abruptly on my own again.

He waved, but an uneasy expression played on his face, and mine probably mirrored it.

"Don't forget to write," I called back to him, waving as the train carried me off.

He waved back but did not say anything.

A conductor came to the doorway. "You must take your seat, miss. It's not safe to stand here."

With a last wave to Thad, I stepped inside. I slumped into the seat, despondent. Tears once again wet my eyes.

The grim reality of my dismal situation -- which had momentarily been cushioned by my delight at Thad's arrival -- surged back on me with full force. I was on my way to a certainly angry mother and sisters who would probably be bewildered and feel caught in the middle. Would they all blame me for letting Mimi run off as she had? How could I face it all without her?

And now I worried that the one bright spot I had to look forward to -- letters from Thad -- would not arrive. The last three minutes of our time together had, I feared, completely changed his view of me. In a second, he had gone from seeing me as his contemporary to viewing me as a child! Why couldn't I ever keep my mouth shut?

The train was now running at full speed, racing into the blackness of a tunnel that would carry me away from this exciting city -- and away from Thad. Shutting my eyes, I lost myself in the motion of the train carrying me 
forward. What would it be like to travel on and on and never arrive, simply to keep moving with no endpoint?

I remembered what Tesla had said about traveling into the future, but for the moment, I was in no rush to get there. The future would be fully upon me the moment I arrived back in Spirit Vale.

***

SPIRIT VALE, 1911-1912

M
y recklessness in taking off for New York was almost forgotten in Mother's shouting and weeping over Mimi's departure. Why hadn't I stopped her? How could I have let her go? I must not have tried hard enough to talk sense into her. It was as if I had been the older sister and could have somehow controlled Mimi. Mother decried the terrible loss of Mimi as "irresponsible" of me.

The entire town took up my disgrace. Aunty Lily said I had been the one who tricked her into driving us to Buffalo, when in actuality it had been Mimi's idea. Princess Running Deer did a Native American spirit ceremony to try to contact Mimi's living spirit to make sure she was safe. When no response came, Mother went into fits of distress, crying for days, certain some harm had come to her.

Amelie and Emma provided unexpected comfort in a weird sort of way. One night at dinner, Emma suddenly stood up at the table and began to rock slightly as a faraway 
look came into her eyes. The same strange distance appeared in Amelie's expression.

"I have found her," Emma spoke in a trancelike voice, softer and gentler than her own normal tone.

"Who are you?" Mother asked cautiously.

"It's me, Mother. Amelie."

We all looked to Amelie, but she gave no indication of being aware of us. Why had Emma said she was Amelie?

We shifted back to Emma. "Mimi is over water. It's night where she is," Emma said, still in her trance state. "She is staring up at the moon. She is in love."

"In love!" Mother cried and jumped up so forcefully that her dinner plate fell to the floor. "With whom is she in love?"

The commotion had the effect of breaking Emma's trance. Her eyes blinked rapidly and lost their distant gaze.

"Whom is your sister in love with?" Mother demanded.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Emma replied. "Who is in love?"

We looked to Amelie, but she had rested her head on the table and was now snoring lightly.

"You said you were Amelie," I told Emma. "Why?"

Emma shrugged. "Did I? How odd."

This news that Mimi was safe, derived from
wherever,
comforted us all, except for Mother, who seemed to think 
that this impending romance simply upped the level of peril involved. Every time she looked at me, she seemed reminded of it anew and shook her head darkly.

Only Blythe, recently turned thirteen, thought Mimi was brave and adventurous. "She would have been an idiot not to have gone," she stated boldly to us one night when everyone was in the parlor and Mother was once again engulfed in tears and recriminations. This took everyone by surprise, since Blythe was not usually one to buck the tide of prevailing opinion. "We're not rich. There is no wealthy young man for her to meet in this town. The only young men at all are ones who have died and speak through other people. When else would she have a chance like this to see the world and find romance?"

"Don't you go getting any ideas, Blythe," Mother chided. "Your sister is involved with scandalous people. Who knows what this will do to her reputation or to her chances of making a suitable marriage -- not some shipboard fling with who knows what manner of man."

"What do you care what people think?" Blythe spoke to Mother with unforeseen defiance. Her words seemed so at odds with the cherubic face that it made me see her in a new light, as a surprisingly independent person, no longer a child. "Most people think everyone in this town is crazier than a loon," she continued. "And they're probably right! That doesn't seem to bother you."

"Crazy ... why ... craz --" Mother cried, sputtering incredulously. "No one thinks that. People flock here for guidance!"

"Crazy people," Blythe insisted.

For being so insolent, Mother banished Blythe to her room, punishing her for the first time any of us could recall. She then confined me to my room, simply because I had brought all this on in the first place.

This blame did not relent, making that autumn of 1911 one I did not particularly enjoy. But, like waves, events roll in with a crash-bang, then recede, leaving the waters calm -- at least until the next wave comes along. That's what I discovered in the weeks of being constantly confined to my room, a confinement during which I worked on my article about Tesla while thinking about Thad unceasingly. After a while, Mother stopped crying and quit noticing whether Blythe and I were in our rooms. The townspeople gave up looking at me with condemning glances.

Late that November, teams of workers descended on Spirit Vale in flatbed trucks loaded with timber. It seemed that nearly the entire town came out each day to watch them work as, in a remarkably short time, giant poles were erected along Main Street. The workers then scrambled up the poles and strung great lengths of telephone cable between them.

Once again, as with the electric lighting, the Spirit was the center of our first experience of the telephone. The first words spoken over the telephone cable in Spirit Vale were voiced by Aunty Lily. She was proud to be the one to speak them in front of a fascinated crowd that included Mother, Blythe, Emma, Amelie, and me, as well as many of the other resident mediums. "Hello," she said. "Is this the Buffalo police station? It is? Well, we are pleased to report that all is calm here in Spirit Vale. Thank you."

When Aunty Lily hung up, Madam Anushka lifted the tall, black metal phone, turning the speaker piece in her hand. "I vonder eef de spirit vorld can be contacted in dis way?" she pondered aloud.

"It is a mite like talking to a spirit," Aunty Lily remarked. "There's this voice talking at you, but no body."

"What if Hiram called you up one night?" Blythe suggested with a touch of mischief.

"Now why would he do that when he's right here?" Aunty Lily asked. "He is still here, isn't he, Maude?" she checked with Mother.

"Yes, and he says you were very intelligent to have this phone installed," Mother reported.

Aunty Lily beamed proudly.

By December I had stopped checking the mailbox, continually hoping for a letter from either Mimi or Thad. It had never been easy to secretly check the mail at the box out by the white picket fence. When Mother wasn't busy 
with clients or helping Aunty Lily with her hotel accounts, she was nearly camped there. She and W. T. Stead had begun a lively correspondence. To receive a new letter from him was the greatest pleasure of her life.

I think it was safe to presume that Mother had developed a crush on the noted journalist. He told her of Julia's Bureau, an institution he'd established in 1909 where inquirers could obtain information regarding the spirit world from his spirit guide, Julia. He had on staff a group of mediums who could contact her.

He also sent Mother small gifts: a pack of tarot cards, a crystal ball made of real crystal, clusters of amethyst stone for channeling and focusing energy. Another gift that arrived in early December was a Ouija board, which Mother immediately set about mastering and using with her clients. The plaque in our front yard soon read: MAUDE ONEIDA TAYLOR -- MEDIUM, CHANNELER, VIBRATIONAL PATTERNS INTERPRETED, TAROT READ, CRYSTAL ENERGY FOCUSED, EXPERT PRACTITIONER OF OUIJA BOARD CONTACT.

On Christmas Eve that year, my sisters and I each played a role in Spirit Vale's yearly production of A
Christmas Carol,
held in the town center. As one might imagine, in a population focused on the spirit world, this play about Christmas ghosts and prophetic, transformative dreams was held in very high, nearly worshipful esteem. I had been cast as Mrs. Cratchit. Blythe was the beautiful young woman Scrooge almost married. Emma and Amelie were 
the Ghost of Christmas Past, played as one entity, which was how people were starting to consider them. Aunty Lily made a wonderfully cranky, if somewhat effeminate, Scrooge, and Princess Running Deer was an ominous presence as the Ghost of Christmas Future. Madam Anushka accompanied the scenes with haunting performances on her violin. The final bows were met with rousing cheers. All that was missing was Mimi.

Afterward, snowflakes began to fall as my sisters and I headed across the empty main road toward home. The fast-falling snow required us to flip up the hoods of our woolen capes. The light blanket of whiteness that quickly accumulated added to the quiet beauty of the town, with all its gingerbread porches strung in tiny, white electric lights for the first time ever. "It's so magical," Blythe commented wistfully. "I hope it's snowing wherever Mimi is, and that some handsome fellow is holding her hand."

"Me, too," I answered, picturing Mimi in a Swiss mountaintop chalet with some prince by her side.

The image also made me think of Thad. What was he doing this Christmas Eve? Was he at a party paying attention to a girl -- one prettier than me and closer to his age? Or was he deep in Tesla's laboratory, unaware of the celebrations outside?

When we arrived home, Mother, who had left the show at curtain call, was waiting with hot chocolate and candy canes. She'd put our wrapped gifts under the tree that, 
despite the general embrace of electricity, was still lit with delicate, tinfoil-cupped candles on its branches.

We were about to begin opening our gifts when we heard the new motorized mail truck stop at our box and then move on. "He's arriving late," Mother commented. "He must have an overload of holiday mail."

"I'll go get it," I said, unable to resist, despite the fact that I had convinced myself neither Mimi nor Thad would ever write. I threw my cape over my shoulders and ran out the front door, once more into the snow, which was falling even more heavily than before.

At the mailbox I pulled out a stack of letters, mostly Christmas cards from our neighbors and one from W. T. Stead, sure to delight Mother. But also included in the delivery was a package wrapped in brown paper and addressed to me. Its postmark was from New York City.

With excited, trembling hands, I ripped the paper apart right there.

It was a book. Without even reading the title, I flipped inside, looking for some kind of inscription or note, but there was none.

Closing it, I read the title:
The Time Machine
by H. G. Wells.

It could have come from only one of two people -- Tesla or Thad.

"What's taking so long?" Mother called from the front porch. "Are you all right?"

"I'm all right," I assured her, heading back toward the house.

She waited for me on the porch. "Anything from Mimi?" she asked hopefully.

"No, but Mr. Stead has sent you a card."

"How wonderful," she said, extending her hand for it.

She glanced down at the card, smiling fondly. Then she looked back to me. "Merry Christmas, Jane. What do you say we put all our disagreements behind us and start fresh for the new year?"

"I would like that," I said with a catch in my voice.

"So would I." With her arm around my shoulder, we turned back to the house.

Neither of us had any idea what the new year was soon to bring.

***