We sipped our wine in silence, perfectly comfortable. I think James and I could never say another word to each other and still be content in each other’s presence.
“Do you want to get married, Lenore?” he suddenly asked.
I choked on my wine.
James propped himself on his hands stiffly and laughed. “No, no, not to me. I’m taken, you saucy minx.” He shoved my leg with his foot. “I just mean in general. Someday. In the future.”
I couldn’t answer for a long time. “I don’t think about it, really. Beth and I always used to talk and tease about marrying film stars. But now I don’t know. What about you? Will you and your fiancée have lots of babies?”
He picked at his trousers, got those shifty eyes again. “I don’t know. I want us to be free to do what we want and go where we want.”
I ran my hands along the branches.
“I never said thank you,” I said. It seemed the right moment.
“For the roof? You can say it now.”
I shook my head. “No. For the war. For being in it.”
He looked off at nothing. “Don’t thank me.”
I took another sip of wine.
“Okay. Well then, thank you for the roof,” I finally said.
“Thank you for letting me share your house.”
“Well,” I said, “if you really want to thank me, you can go with me to the Fair of Lights. I don’t know the city very well, and I can’t stand anyone else. Come on an adventure with me. Let’s go be young somewhere for a while. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re young.”
He studied me, making a face that was exaggeratedly exhausted. “But my aching back,” he said.
So it’s official. I’m going to see the great wonders modern man has to offer with my friend who thinks there’s nothing wondrous about man’s achievements at all.
And I haven’t told you the biggest thing, Beth. I’ve purposely been sly and saved it to the very end, without any warning whatsoever. So here it is.
I’ve reached an important milestone in my savings. I reached it three days ago.
Yesterday morning, after my late night on the roof, I got up early and went downtown on a special outing. I walked into the ticket office. And I bought my ticket to America.
After a five-day sail, I’ll arrive in New York in two weeks exactly, on June 20.
And I’ll make my way to you from there.
I’m sure I’ll write you again before I come.
This is really going to happen, Beth.
Love, Lenore
JUNE 7, 1919
Dear Beth,
I’m not sure if I’ll send this letter or not.
I woke up last night thinking the room was shaking, but it was me. Once, before we met—I must have been five or six—I got food poisoning from bad fish, and before I knew I was going to vomit, I thought it was just that I was going to shake apart into a million pieces. That’s what it felt like last night. It seemed to me that I couldn’t go on being anywhere, in my bed or my room or anywhere else. So I got up and, in my pajamas, I hurried down the stairs and outside, and because it still felt that way—like I couldn’t be in the yard either—I kept going, into the woods and all the way to the cottage, and pounded on the door, and when James pulled it open, confused from sleep and blinking at me, I made him open his arms so I could push into them.
He seemed to know what to do, and without any questions he wrapped his arms around me tight, and leaned against the wall.
“I can’t breathe,” I rasped. I could feel his bare, scarred chest against my cheek, feel the way his skin matted up in thick wrinkles and lines. “I miss him so much it’s impossible to go on being a person.”
“I know, Allstock.”
And then I just cried on him for what seemed forever, and he patted my back saying, “Shh,” which is all I really wanted to hear, even though it’s meaningless.
I can’t stand it when people try to tell me there’s some meaning to Teddy dying: that God wanted him in heaven or that he died for the greater good or whatever else. I think maybe “shh” is the only thing you can say for sure without lying.
“Lenore, I don’t know anything about anything,” James whispered. “But the important things don’t leave us.” That I was less sure of. But I didn’t protest.
Before dawn I was wiping my face and getting myself together and walking home. James came with me to the edge of the pasture, out of the woods, and then I waded home through the tall grass on my own.
Beth, I’ve made a discovery, and it’s that grief isn’t like sadness at all. Sadness is only something that’s a part of you. Grief becomes you; it wraps you up and changes you and makes everything—every little thing—different than it was before. I remember the me before we got the telegram saying he was gone, but it’s like I’m remembering someone else. It feels like an earthquake has gone through me, and the earthquake is that Teddy is gone. And I’m only just beginning to realize it.
And it makes me think about you and me. And how I’ve wanted so badly to be the person you remember. And how I’ve hated everyone for their sadness because mine is so big and ugly and hungry inside me that I can’t let it catch me.
I’ve been up all night. I’m lost but I also want to tell you, I’m not hopeless. I can hear the birds waking up, and a line of pretty yellow light is falling into the room, and I feel alive like I haven’t in a long time, but also aching. It feels a little like waking up from a fever. Like I’ve been asleep for months, or a year.
But I can’t promise you that I’m unaltered. And I’m not sure anymore that I want to be.
Love, Lenore
JUNE 14, 1919
Beth,
I have so much to tell you that I don’t know where to start. Everything has changed. Or more specifically, everything has disappeared.
I keep thinking, should I tell you about the fair? About everything that was wonderful about the night? Or should I skip right to the end, to the parts that really matter?
I suppose it’s always best to start things at the beginning, isn’t it?
The night of the fair, James showed up at the door at a quarter to seven.
I wore a new turquoise silk dress from Mother, and I knew I looked quite nice (you know I’m not humble). I opened the door and sucked in my breath, because James was in a gray suit and tie, and looked actually nice himself, though I wouldn’t have been able to see it before, even if he’d been dressed like that when I first met him.
Mother certainly couldn’t. She came up behind me asking about our plans when she brought herself up short at the sight of him, then recovered herself.
“Nice to meet you, James,” she boomed with an artificial smile, heartbreaking pity in her eyes, then led us into the drawing room. Father’s eyes widened but otherwise he stayed composed, stood from his chair, and shook James’s hand.
“Well usually I’d say we’ve heard nice things about you, but we’ve heard nothing about you, nice, bad, or otherwise,” he said, then cast me a look. “Where did you two meet?”
“We met each other in town,” I lied quickly, having rehearsed. “James was looking for fossils. I helped him a little.”
Father looked at me suspiciously. “Lenore helps you find rocks?”
“I talked her into it,” James said confidently. If he was self-conscious at all, he didn’t show it.
We all sat down to chat for a few minutes, and it was strangely like a breath of air in the house, because James was making jokes and giving little compliments about the house, and Father was talking about jobs. And everyone looked happy and relieved—as if I’d finally come to my senses.
“It’s nice to have a soldier in the house,” Father said. “The others were too young to serve, but you know we lost our own son to the cause.”
“I do know, sir.”
By the time we set off, Father was patting James on the back as if he were his newfound son-in-law. It was a harmless hope, and I didn’t try to signal him otherw
ise.
We reached the train station with our hearts in our throats—in the crowd, even James seemed to have caught the excitement of where we were headed. The train rocked toward London agonizingly slowly, and the closer we got, the more crowded it became, until it was jammed full of people: laughing teenagers like us, parents and children, old ladies who weren’t going to miss their chance to see the sights.
Whenever the train lurched forward, James and I reached to steady each other and laughed.
Getting off at the station, the fair gleamed up ahead of us like a beacon. Even with the throngs of people streaming in around us and through the gates, people were too wrapped up to barely glance at James, and he seemed so at ease it was easy to forget it was crowds that, for months, he’d been wanting to avoid.
He chatted to me as we walked, pointing things out (he has excellent manners when he decides to use them). He even seemed to forget about his face—no touching his lips and his ears or scratching at his cheeks. And I was proud of him, proud to have a hero by my side.
We’d stopped at a booth to gaze at the rows of candy apples, and James had just dug in his pockets to buy us one, when a woman pushed in behind us and said, breathlessly, that they were about to turn on the Hall of Lights. Everyone broke apart as we hurried toward the main plaza, hoping we wouldn’t be too late. We weren’t. We got there in time to see the lights go on—what they call the great illumination.
I don’t care what James says about the industrial age and how it’s hurt us just as much as it’s helped us. At that moment, when the plaza went up like a flame all around us (so bright that I kept thinking the moon could probably see us just as well as we could see it), I felt sure that everything that’s been invented is all completely perfect, and that human beings are incredible to dream up such things and bring them into being. Aren’t we a little like tiny gods? To reach up from the ground for the sun, and then when we can’t reach it, to make it ourselves?
We strolled up and down the promenade afterward, in and out of booths. We ate until we felt like we would explode. We rode a Ferris wheel (have you ever been on one?) until I wanted to vomit. And then, it was time to go home. My curfew was one, so we had to leave before the midnight finale.
We dragged our feet all the way back to the station, then caught the first train out feeling both giddy and dejected at the same time. The cars were almost empty, and we were feeling sorry for ourselves despite the fantastic evening, when suddenly there was a ruckus at the back of the car, people pointing and whooping. We followed their gazes out the windows to the sky above London, where bright fireworks had just begun to unfurl themselves. We had one of the best views in the house.
“They’re to commemorate the fallen,” someone said, and everyone took off their hats.
LATER—
I just took a break, but I’m back. I’ll get to it now, the part that I don’t want to write.
The trains were so much faster coming than going that James and I got back to Forest Row with plenty of time to spare. It was a beautiful night and we were both wide awake, so I decided I’d walk him home along my way.
We stomped into the woods laughing and talking about everything we’d seen. It was a bright night even under the trees, and we barely had to watch where we were going.
Once we got to the cottage, James told me to wait for a second while he ran behind the house to get the lamp for me to take (I knew I didn’t need it, but he insisted). I sat inside the room waiting for him, on the edge of his bedroll on the floor. He must have had a hard time finding the lamp, because I waited for a long while, and finally I noticed his rucksack was slightly open, and that a small frame was poking its way out the top. The photo of his fiancée.
I pulled it out to get another look at her. She was just as pretty as I remembered from seeing it the first time—dark-black hair, dark-brown eyes. The inscription on the bottom said: For my one and only James.
As I reached to stuff it back into his bag, my hands brushed something wispy and soft, and since I couldn’t imagine what it might be, I opened the bag a little wider to see. It was a feather—bundled together with several other treasured things—leaves and such—and bound to some folded papers by a piece of string. I knew I should put it all away, but I thought maybe I could discover who his real family might be. My heart spiked, and I slid the papers out of the string and opened them, glancing quickly at the door. I could still hear James tromping around on the dead leaves behind the cottage.
The bottom page was a wrinkled discharge paper from the hospital six months before, describing his injuries and where they were sustained, which didn’t make sense: by a fallen bomb at Warrington Crescent in London.
The second paper was a correspondence from the Department of War, dated a few months before that, a warning that if he did not arrive at the conscription office within the week, it would be considered desertion and prosecuted as such.
And then, on top, was a third piece of paper—a letter.
James,
I apologize for not responding to any of your letters. You’ll have heard the news by now that I was married on December 10. I am very happy. It would be inappropriate for us to continue corresponding. Please respect my wishes.
Love, Marie
I was sitting there with the letters spread open in my hands when James finally walked in, but I didn’t rush to hide them. He stood still in the doorway when he saw me.
“You weren’t in the war?” I said.
He seemed to droop a little, leaning into the doorway. “No.”
I took a breath, my thoughts moving fast. “You’re hiding here because you don’t want to go to jail?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a coward, then?”
He opened his mouth to say something and then stopped and didn’t say anything.
“Teddy’s dead,” I said flatly, “because he did the right thing. And you’re not, because you didn’t.” I was squeezing the letter so hard it was slowly ripping apart.
He hung his chin to his chest. “I was afraid,” he said.
His words didn’t register then, and if they had it wouldn’t have mattered. I could only feel the blood rushing in my ears.
“I want you out,” I said. “Obviously.”
He stood silently for a while, then said simply, “Okay.”
“By morning.” I laid the letter down at my feet and stood and brushed by him, taking the lamp from his hands.
“Of course.”
I’d gone cold and calm inside. I didn’t look at him, and I didn’t hurry. I just moved out the door and set my feet toward home.
I walked in such a straight line, without moving so much as a branch out of the way, that I was covered in cuts and scratches by the time I got to the house.
I ran the hottest bath possible and now here I am, with this letter to you and a book behind it and a pen balanced on my knees and the hot water stinging all the cuts.
And I keep thinking, of all things—as if it matters—why would James keep all those feathers and leaves with everything else?
The bath has gone cold now, and I have one more thing to write before I head upstairs. Really, it’s more of a question.
I knew a boy once, an otherwise smart person, who believed dragons were real until he mentioned it to a teacher and she laughed at him, and he realized how foolish he’d been. It’s like me and the Cave of the Cup. All these years, I half believed you’d really found the Grail like you said, even when I was poking fun at it. And now I know how silly that was. And I guess my question is, why did you lie to me, Beth? Why, so many times back then, did you like to tell me my faults? Why did you always tell me I was being bossy when I thought I was being strong? I wonder, are you the person I remember? Were you ever?
It doesn’t matter. I’m getting out now to finish packing the last of my things. Bright and early I’ll be on my way to the station and dropping this in the post. I’ll leave from Southampton tomorrow morning.
I don’t
know if you’ll get this letter before I arrive. I don’t know if you’ll be waiting for me or not when I catch the train out west. I have so many questions. The biggest one is, will you be happy to see me?
Love, Lenore
ADRI
PART 2
CHAPTER 4
The bright-orange lid of the sun was just rising over the flat horizon. Bleary eyed, Adri flipped back over the pages of the journal and thumbed through Lenore’s letters. There had to be an ending somewhere she’d missed. The journal cut off so suddenly. And Lenore’s letters were incomplete. Where were the letters that had upset Catherine so much? What had they said?
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she whispered.
She stood, her back aching from sitting for so long. She went and washed her face in the bathroom and then came back, angry and restless. If she’d known she wouldn’t be able to finish, she wouldn’t have started reading in the first place. It was like spending hours on one of those old jigsaw puzzles with the lighthouses or the majestic herd of horses and then finding out the last pieces were missing. Had Lenore made it to Beth? Had Beezie survived? How had the Ortizes ended up with the farm, when they weren’t in the picture at all? Even Galapagos had failed to make an appearance.
Adri rummaged in her nightstand for the postcard she’d found that first night in Canaan, and reread it. After a few moments of going back and forth she realized something wasn’t right there either. The postcard was dated May 7, 1920, almost a year after Lenore’s last letter. How could Lenore have come to America for the first time twice?
She sank back down into the piles of paper on the bed, burrowing into her pillow, wishing she hadn’t stayed up all night for something so pointless. She remembered one of the major reasons she’d always loved her regimen: her runs, her studying, her exhaustive schedule. This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands. You waste your energy on things that don’t matter.
A sudden sound downstairs jolted her eyes open. A loud, raucous laugh. Had she imagined it?
She followed the smell of coffee to the kitchen where, lounged around the table, were Lily and four other women. They were huddled over handfuls of playing cards, and they looked up as she entered.
Midnight at the Electric Page 10