Midnight at the Electric

by Jodi Lynn Anderson

  James was in the clearing, sawing sticks for the roof.

  “Is this really what you do with all your time?” I asked.

  He let out a laugh. “It occupies my mind,” he said, straightening up and letting his saw drop onto the ground. (There are things I hadn’t noticed about him at night—the veins of crinkled skin stretching across his face and down his neck look like the roots of an old, gnarled tree.)

  “What’s new, Allstock?” he asked, straightening up and walking toward me as he shoved his hands in his pockets. I told him how two people in town have the Spanish flu but are recovering, and that I’d been to the cinema twice, but only with Hubert and Gordon.

  “Mostly anything anyone talks about is the Fair of Lights,” I added.

  “Are you going?” he asked.

  “Everyone’s going.” I picked up one of the sticks he’d sawed and rubbed my fingers over its rough edges carelessly. “One has to go.”

  “Why does one have to go?” he repeated.

  “Well, I don’t know.” We were being playful, and it felt nice. The sun was sparkling and the air was soft and it felt good to be smiling with someone. “To see what there is to see. You know, ride the rides. See the magnificent inventions. Witness the miracle of industry,” I repeated an advert I’d seen in the newspaper in a booming voice.

  “Industry made the war,” he said with a shrug. “Industry is the world’s great evil.”

  “How ridiculous,” I retorted. “People made the war.”

  “You need to read your newspapers, Allstock. It’s all about inventing better ways to destroy things. It’s about money. Welcome to the violent industrial age, Lenore. You don’t even know you’re in it.”

  “It is miraculous,” I said finally. “And I don’t care if you agree.”

  James was still silent and unconvinced, and because I didn’t want to argue on such a beautiful day with the only person I really wanted to see, I nodded to the rocks he’d lined up on the windowsill of the cottage.

  “If you’re interested in finding some real treasures, I know where the Holy Grail is buried,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Well,” I offered, “at least I know a really good cave.”

  All along the way, James collected things—rocks of course, pieces of moss, a mushroom, a snail shell. Some things he pocketed, and some things he threw back. He held out a shell to me.

  “Some snail didn’t think it was worth keeping, so why should you?” I said.

  He looked down at the shell, disappointed. “No reason,” he said, and chucked it.

  This time, because I was determined and had an extra scout at my disposal, I found the entrance that last time I couldn’t find. It was grown over, just as I’d thought, but nothing that a little bush-beating didn’t reveal.

  Inside, the cavern is just as you’d remember it. Narrow at the opening, then widening into a big, jagged circle. We hadn’t brought a candle so we just had to go by the dim light filtering into the entrance.

  We sat down on a boulder at one side, next to each other, listening to the drip, drip of the water running somewhere nearby. James broke a stalactite off the stone ceiling sloping above us.

  “Every inch takes about two hundred years to grow,” he said. “Here.” He handed it to me, and I turned it over in my hands. “These are more miraculous than any Grail,” he went on. “They’re truly ancient.” I began to break it apart, piece by piece in my hands.

  “Beth said she’d already found the Grail,” I mused, “and put it back in here somewhere. She was always telling me things like that—that she’d run into a celebrity on the train, or found ten pounds on the street—silly things I was so jealous of. She said she couldn’t remember exactly where inside the cave she’d buried it. I was surprised because Beth was scared of the dark. She was timid.”

  I pointed toward the small crevice shaped like a skull high in the back, above a particularly treacherous ledge. “That’s where she said she thought she’d hidden it. We kept coming back, and I kept climbing up to look for it. Beth was never a climber.” I leaned back against the spiny wall behind me. I ran my hands through my hair. For some reason, being in the cave reminded me of what it felt like to be in my body when I was younger, everything closer and more vivid. (Since Teddy died, I barely notice my senses at all. It’s like my body is far away from the rest of me.)

  “Jesus’s cup . . . right here in Forest Row. How did it all end up?”

  I smiled. “Badly. I broke my arm falling off the ledge. We weren’t allowed back here after that.”

  “Must have smarted a bit.”

  I thought back. I remember it so clearly, Beth. I wonder if you do too.

  “I wanted to cry. But I couldn’t. Beth often said I did things for attention, and I think she was right. So I kept pretending to laugh. I wanted to prove her wrong. I told her it tickled.

  “Anyway, the following summer the war was on. And she left. It was awful. We both cried our eyes out when we found out she was leaving. And I promised that if she stayed in America, I’d follow her. And that’s what I’m planning on. That’s what I’m building my life around now.”

  “She sounds . . .” He trailed off. “Like a character.”

  “Well, not around most people. She’s very quiet and shy. But much kinder than I am. We both always knew that.”

  We sat for a while longer.

  I studied him, now more seriously. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Oh God. I don’t know, Lenore. It’s going to do with my hideous deformity, isn’t it?” He dropped his face into his hands, with a sort of laugh/cry expression.

  “Sort of,” I admitted. Since he seemed to be willing, I faltered on. “What did your fiancée say when she saw you the first time, after . . . ?”

  He looked over at me for a long moment. “How can you possibly be comfortable asking that?” He was wry but his hands shook a little, and I felt guilty.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He shook his head, put both hands on the ceiling of the cave as if he might pull himself into a chin-up, and then let go. “I was scared, you know, to see her. I almost preferred never seeing her again to having her see me like this.” He tapped his hands together. “I made her wait months, till I was out of the hospital. I wanted to be on my own two feet when we met again, not in some bed, in a hospital gown. I didn’t want to look like I was completely helpless, just mostly helpless. I went to her house. We picked a time. I stood on the front porch and knocked and waited, and it was the most frightening moment of my life.”

  “And?”

  He looked up at me, then far away. “She opened the door. She looked at me for a long while. She took my face in her hands and kissed my cheek, right on one of the scars. She told me, ‘You’re a beautiful sight.’”

  Beth, is that not the most romantic thing you’ve ever heard? Though I’m sure your husband’s proposal was so stunningly romantic that it tops even that. Please tell me the details.

  Love, Lenore

  P.S. I wasn’t going to write this. But I’ve been sitting here for almost twenty minutes now and I’ve decided I have to.

  I need to ask if you have left me behind, Beth? Is that why you haven’t written?

  Maybe James the Giant is right, and you’ve changed more than I know.

  I’m glad for you that you’re going forward in life. I just hope that wherever you’re going, I’m going too. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

  Fifty-two pounds saved (I need seventy plus money to live on once I get there), and I’m still planning to come unless I hear otherwise. I hope that I’m still invited.

  Love, Lenore

  MAY 15, 1919

  Beth,

  You can’t imagine how relieved I was to get your letter. And how happy I am that everything is not only all right but rosy in your world. Your farm sounds magnificent and so does your life. Though the letter was too short and didn’t give enough details. I forgive you.<
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  You sent your letter before you got mine, and so I just want to say that you should please ignore the last postscript. It was a moment of weakness. I know you’re still waiting for me and counting on me. I know you and I know us and I’m sorry that for a moment I lost my faith.

  Since I last wrote I’ve been out on three dates with I’msorryforyourloss (real name Christopher, apparently). I know what I said about him, but he’s very nice and harmless and it makes Mother happy. And everyone’s spirits have seemed to lift in recent weeks since the official end of mourning—we had a family game of badminton in the yard last Friday, and I even hear Vera and Hubert laughing together sometimes. It’s odd, because I find that while everyone’s getting better, I’m about the same.

  I spent all weekend helping James with the roof. It’s strange: we see each other rarely, and some days we’re delighted to spend time together and laugh and joke around—especially about inappropriate things like “limbless Larries” (how James refers to the men at the convalescent home, whom Mother visits with baskets of food). Other days, I have to admit, we can’t stand each other. I get in these unpredictable angry moods, and I think James gets angry too.

  Sunday was one of those days. I’d come to help. The work is hard, and I have my doubts about whether repairing the roof of a house no one will ever live in is the best use of our time. James was having a lot of pain, which always makes him irritable.

  He was barking orders at me to lay the sticks this way and that, as if he’s any better of an architect than I am, and his loud raspy breathing was getting on my nerves even though I know that technically he can’t help it and I’m an awful person for feeling that way.

  I felt like taking a jab at him, so I decided to steer the conversation to his parents and why—if they’re traveling all over the world doing things he also loves doing—they didn’t take him with them. I wanted to fluster him and get him to be truthful for once, but he didn’t seem flustered at all.

  “I did go with them once,” he answered, “when I was a little boy, for a two-year voyage. When I came back I had no social skills.”

  “That explains so much,” I said.

  “Allstock, we both know I’m charming.” He was serious, and he said it so matter-of-factly it annoyed me. “Anyway, I’m going with them on the next one.”

  “And what does your fiancée think about your plans to leave her for the other side of the world?”

  Suddenly, I knew I had him. He paused, startled, and stared up at the roof where he’d been preparing to climb. He let out a small, slow breath. “She’s patient,” he finally said. Then he offered a jab of his own. “What’s new with you? Has your imaginary friend offered a reason for all her silences? I suppose it’s hard to tell someone you’re not writing to them because slowly you’re forgetting them.”

  Long story short, I ended up telling him about when we became blood sisters. Do you remember this, Beth?

  We were about eight or nine. We were both going to cut our hands, then let the blood mingle together, so we’d be related to each other forever. It was my idea as usual, because I was always the one putting us up to ridiculous things. I’d gotten a knife from the kitchen. You were supposed to cut first, but at the last moment, you got squeamish and sick to your stomach, so we didn’t do it.

  Then, a few weeks later, we were out one afternoon racing with Teddy on the gravel path into town, and you fell and cut your knee. And with sudden inspiration, I ran into the house and came out with a knife.

  With Teddy looking on in disbelief, I sliced the knife down the center of my palm before I could let myself be afraid, and then I made you lie still so I could stick my hand onto your knee and squash all the blood in. I still remember the look on your face, though I couldn’t read it. Were you put off by my crazy determination?

  “Beth always said I could be bossy,” I admitted to James.

  “I think she must have meant fearless.”

  “No,” I shook my head. “I’m afraid of a lot of things.” He raised his eyebrows, wanting me to go on. “But I’m not a coward. That’s one thing I could never be. I’d hate myself. That’s why I could do it, cut my hand like that.”

  James considered that. “Did you ever find out why Beth lied to you about the Cup?”

  It was a strange question, out of nowhere. And I don’t know the answer, and it doesn’t seem important.

  “And what did Teddy think of the whole episode?” he went on, switching the subject back.

  “He thought we were insane.”

  “I agree with your brother.”

  I smiled. It’s strange, but I’m better at thinking of Teddy when I’m with James than when I’m alone. Maybe it’s that I can’t help Teddy (I would give anything to help him; I’d give anything to take part of his death for myself so he didn’t have to be completely dead), but I can help James . . . make him laugh sometimes, even though we often just irritate each other.

  And that’s something. Though I don’t know whether it makes me sad or happy or just uncomfortable. Like something is raw in my chest.

  You can tell by the way he talks about his fiancée how in love he is—even the way he says her name—it’s like he’s holding little bird bones gently between his lips, careful not to break them. I wonder if that’s the way you feel now too, now that you’ve found someone.

  Where are you, Beth? You wrote to me, but it feels like you were absent behind the words. James says that he calls you imaginary because you’re so long gone that I can make of you in my head what I want to. But he doesn’t know that half the time, it seems like I’m imagining even him, even myself.

  Sometimes it feels like you’re the only person who is real to me anymore, even though I never see you. And it scares me that you’re slipping away.

  LATER—

  I’ve just picked my pen up again and now it’s the middle of the night. I need to confess something to you, Beth. I haven’t been completely honest. I know what’s been making me so angry.

  The last few nights I haven’t been able to help it, or push it away like I used to. In my mind I try to follow Teddy into those last moments. I imagine what it’s like to be that afraid. I try to think what he must have been thinking, as if the one thing I can do for him now is to experience what he experienced and feel what he felt. I know you’ll say this makes no sense because I can never know. But I can’t control it.

  And the truth is something I don’t want to admit: it’s been a year since Teddy died, and every day I’m strange to myself and getting stranger all the time. I think I was wrong and that I’m not Rapunzel at all, locked up and stuck away by an evil witch. I think I am the witch. At these times, when I lie awake and I can’t stop thinking about Teddy’s last moments, I’m the one who tries to put Hansel and Gretel and all the good and innocent things in the oven to burn. When I really think about Teddy, when I really let myself think about him, I want to eat people alive.

  And now I’m up and wide awake and my parents are away and I have this whole beautiful empty house to myself, which anyone would be lucky to have. And all I can think is that James’s fiancée doesn’t see his scars at all, while I can’t forget them. And even he—even my friend—seems enragingly lucky to me.

  Despite his courage and all that he’s given up for the greater good, he could be the one who is dead and Teddy could be alive. And then, terrible as it is to say, I would be happy.

  JUNE 6, 1919

  Beth,

  I didn’t hear from you after my last letter, and I can understand why. In this particular letter I will be sane and funny and bright.

  Here’s something completely lovely. James gave me a surprise.

  I came home from work hoping to find a letter from you, but instead there was one from him, mixed in with all the other letters, sealed in an envelope addressed to me, and with—in the return address section—the words The Royal Ladies’ Society of Grail Seekers and Their Lowly Male Friends.

  I opened it with eager curiosity. />
  Surprise for you. Waiting at the cottage. Any night you can get away.

  Though I wanted to, I couldn’t get away until Thursday because we had visitors. I hadn’t given James any notice I was coming, but when I arrived around nine, he had candles going as if he’d been expecting me. He opened the door with a grin and said to my puzzled gaze, “You have the loudest tread known to man or beast of the forest. I’ve told you that.”

  He’d picked up a bottle of wine and poured us two glasses (we have those now), and then he led me outside and around to the side of the house. We arrived at the bottom of the ladder and stood there looking at each other dumbly.

  “Here, I’ll give you a leg up,” he offered.

  I looked up. “Onto the roof?”

  He nodded.

  I waved his hands away. “I know how to get up a ladder.”

  I climbed up ahead of him and then looked around.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Keep going up.”

  “It’ll break.”

  “It won’t. I promise you.”

  I crawled out onto the threaded sticks of the roof. The moon above, as I caught sight of it above the tree line, was enormous and full. The roof held solidly beneath me as I made my way farther out.

  “You finished,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s wonderful,” I said. And then, “Send up the wine.”

  He appeared, coming over the side and then settling to sit beside me, sliding the bottle into my lap.

  We were quiet for a couple of minutes, each taking our first sip as we surveyed our kingdom, such as it is.

  “You did it,” I said. “You fixed an unfixable house.”

  “You helped a smidge.”

  Why I was so excited over this one small victory, I can’t say. I think for both of us, it’s just having something complete.

  I kept trying to think of what the moon reminded me of, and then I realized it: the zeppelin in my dream. Only because it was equally bright, but it felt like its polar opposite. What I’m trying to say is, it felt like the moon might be a beautiful thing sent from God to make up for zeppelins.