Yesternight

by Cat Winters

  Nothing aside from the claim of drowning in a lake led me to any more clues about a trauma in Janie’s real past.

  Once I felt satisfied with my notes, I packed up my belongings and left my hotel room with the leather journal and an envelope filled with three dollar bills to cover the rate for one night’s stay, whether Mr. O’Daire wanted my money or not.

  “For you,” I told him down in the basement, handing him the book and the envelope. My luggage waited upstairs in the lobby.

  He took both of the items without any particular hurry. “Are you certain I can’t persuade you to stay?”

  “It would be far easier if I obeyed Miss Simpkin’s wishes.”

  “Easier for her, not you. She still gets to sleep in a comfortable house.”

  “If I learn anything about Friendly, Kansas, I’ll contact you immediately.”

  He sighed and rubbed at his chin. “Let me at least drive you to the boardinghouse.”

  “No, you’ve been far too kind already. And, truly, I’m used to taking care of myself.”

  “You’ve never been married?”

  “I’d prefer to stay single until I get myself more established in my field. It wouldn’t be fair to drag a husband around to all of these little Oregon towns.”

  He cast me a sidelong glance, as though debating whether I teased about dragging a man around the state.

  I wasn’t.

  I pulled my gloves over my fingers. “Good-bye for now, Mr. O’Daire. Enjoy selling your ‘soda pop’ to townsfolk this evening.”

  “Enjoy the smell of your fishermen housemates.”

  I chuckled, even though the idea of sleeping in close proximity to such men left a sour feeling in my stomach.

  I ENJOYED A bowl of clam chowder and a thick slice of sourdough bread at a shadowy little table in a corner of Gordon Bay’s only open restaurant. The place smelled of fish and sawdust, with a whiff of despair, and no other customers joined me in the dining room, which was roughly the size of a shack.

  After dining, I asked the waitress for directions to the boardinghouse.

  She pointed to her right with a sturdy arm squeezed into a sleeve the color of mustard caked on a bottle cap. “Head north for two blocks and turn right. It sits on the edge of town, butted up to the creek.” She dropped her arm to her side. “I hope you’re not lodging there.”

  I forced a smile. “Is the place truly as atrocious as everyone’s making it out to be?”

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “And you ain’t got anyone to stay with around here?”

  “Well, I’m here for work, actually.”

  “Work?” She placed a hand on a hip. “What type of work takes you to the flophouse?”

  “Well, I’m a—”

  “Honey, if you say ‘whore’—”

  “No!” I jumped, I was so startled at her accusation at first, but then the question made me snicker. “Do I look like a prostitute?”

  We both glanced down at my plain brown sweater and the little teacup-shaped lumps for breasts beneath.

  “Not really.” She snorted. “You look like a schoolmarm.”

  “You’re close—school psychologist. I’m here for a week to evaluate the local schoolchildren.”

  “Can’t you stay in a hotel? There’s a nice place around the bend called the Gordon Bay Hotel. It looks like a castle on the edge of a cliff.”

  “Hotels cost too much for my budget.” I fussed with the collar of my sweater, pretending that my neck wasn’t sweltering over the idea that the local “schoolmarm” had banned me from said hotel because of her ex-brother-in-law. In fact, Miss Simpkin’s lack of trust in me was starting to grate on my nerves—to remind me a bit of my middle sister, Margery, begging me to keep my “panties on in the future” after I stupidly confided in her about a late and painful menstrual period I knew to have been a miscarriage.

  The waitress took my empty bowl of chowder. “How about staying with the schoolteacher if you’re a school psych . . . psychia . . .”

  “Psychologist. Miss Simpkin didn’t invite me to stay with her.”

  “She lives in a house on Fourth. Shares it with her sister and niece.”

  I raised my chin with interest. “Do you know Miss Simpkin and her family?”

  “Oh, everyone knows everyone in this dinky place, hon. Tillie Simpkin used to be engaged to a boy here in town, the son of a good friend of mine. But”—the waitress fetched my bread plate with a hefty sigh—“the poor fellow came home from the war not right.”

  “Shell shock?”

  “Mm hmm. Sometimes you’ll see him roaming around out there.” She nodded toward the darkened road beyond the window to my left. “He just sort of mutters and whistles to himself, lost and confused, nosing around for booze.”

  “Are you talking about Sam?”

  “Yeah, ‘Simple Sam.’” She shifted my bowl to her other hand. “You’ve met him?”

  “I’ve seen him.”

  “He’s not the only local doughboy who’s had troubles from the war, but he’s about the worst, poor devil.” She knitted her thick eyebrows. “And poor Tillie Simpkin getting stuck a spinster because of him.”

  I studied the empty street bathed in the fluid shadows of night and remembered Mr. O’Daire slowing his car and calling out to Sam when the fellow tottered on the edge of the curb. I wondered if they’d all been chums when they were younger, he and Sam and Miss Simpkin and her sister. Another thought—a disturbing one—stabbed at my gut like the tip of a knife. Perhaps Sam was the source of Janie’s fear of drowning. Perhaps the O’Daires had allowed him into their house after he returned from the war a broken man, and Sam had harmed the girl . . .

  “Do you know Mrs. O’Daire and Janie?” I asked the waitress.

  She shrugged. “Not well. But I do know Rebecca had a fling with the mayor’s son, Harry Grady, a glassblower, of all things.” The woman gave a dramatic roll of her eyes. “It made the local newspaper. And, oh, how the jokes soared about Harry’s talented lips luring that redhead away from Mikey O’Daire.”

  I picked up my coin purse from the floor, not wanting to pursue that line of questioning with a person who clearly delighted in gossip.

  “How much do I owe you?” I asked.

  “A dollar fifty.”

  I pulled out two dollars and laid them on the table. “Thank you for the chowder. It was divine.”

  “You’re welcome. It’s not every day I get to serve a hoity-toity psychologist.” The waitress sauntered away while clanking my dirty dishes together. “Sorry I called you a whore, sweetheart.”

  “You’re not the first,” I murmured under my breath, and I slipped out the door.

  Gordon Bay proved to be a town so apparently safe that a person could leave a schoolhouse unlocked and unattended late at night. I discovered this information after running up to the silhouette of the school building with my bags jostling by my sides and my gaze periodically flitting behind me for signs of “Simple Sam” or drunken fishermen. Without as much as a strand of moonlight to guide me, I squeaked open the schoolhouse door and sidled inside the empty cloakroom like a cat burglar—like Irma Vep, scampering across Paris rooftops in a skintight black suit in an old serial film that my sisters and I adored when we were younger.

  “Oh, dear God,” I said to myself, peering around at the darkness. “What has happened to your life?”

  Nothing other than a stark and chilling blackness responded.

  After much fumbling and tripping and bruising, I stumbled upon Miss Simpkin’s desk and managed to procure a candlestick and a box of matches. Neither Sam nor fishermen—nor any mice or raccoons—inhabited the schoolhouse, thank heavens, so I lit a fire in the stove and curled up on the floor beside it, pulling my coat over my shoulders as though it were my beloved Pendleton blanket that waited for me at my parents’ house. Amid the scents of chalk and dust and the lingering stink of dirty feet and wet socks, I lay with my eyes wide upon, my head pro
pped upon my leather briefcase with all those hard and bulky testing supplies bulging against my left cheekbone. I thought of untimely deaths and a Kansas lake and Janie and Michael O’Daire. I thought how ridiculous and dangerous to my career it would be to pursue the preposterous theory of reincarnation.

  My mind also wandered to the two young men I had slept with in graduate school—dark-haired, green-eyed Tommy Morris, who shared both his umbrella and his bed with me, and blond and athletic Stuart Ayers, who had led to that short scare of a pregnancy after he failed to pull himself out, as promised. Tommy now pursued his PhD at Columbia. Stuart zipped off to Johns Hopkins straight after obtaining his master’s—just like his father, whom he told me he loathed. Neither of my former lovers shivered on a schoolhouse floor, worrying what to do about a seven-year-old girl who claimed to be a dead woman, or the father desperate to save her.

  CHAPTER 9

  What on earth are you doing down there on the floor, Miss Lind?” asked a voice that sounded vaguely familiar.

  I opened my eyes to find Miss Simpkin gaping down at me, her curls dangling across her milky forehead in a striking contrast of red against white. In fact, all of the colors in the schoolhouse looked wrong—too bright, too saturated and blinding. Sunlight poured through the windows and rendered the muted palettes of the room unrecognizable. Even the chalk letters and date on the blackboard glowed with a phosphorescent shine. Never before had I witnessed the classroom in full sunlight.

  Miss Simpkin removed her gloves with jerky movements, her fingers snagging inside the wool. “You didn’t sleep here last night, did you?”

  “Yes, I did.” I pushed myself up to a seated position and winced at a crick in my neck, as well as a chalky layer of grime coating my tongue. “Everyone kept warning me that foul-smelling fishermen would force themselves upon me in that boardinghouse, so where else was I to go?”

  “Oh, Lord.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I didn’t mean for you to leave the hotel to become a hobo.”

  “Not a hobo. Just a woman who’s trying not to get herself embroiled in a family squabble.”

  “You sound angry.”

  “Quite frankly, I’m beginning to feel like a pawn in your family’s game of chess.” I pushed myself to my feet. “I seem to be both desperately needed and viciously unwanted.”

  “I can assure you, it’s not a game, and you’re not unwanted.” She unbuttoned her coat and turned her face toward Janie’s empty desk. “This is all simply a bit overwhelming for me. Before this past September, I never thought I would ever be placing Janie in front of a psychologist.”

  I brushed chalk from my skirt and understood why my mouth felt as though it had consumed dust all night long.

  “Do you know about the journal that Mrs. and Mr. O’Daire kept?” I asked.

  Miss Simpkin wiggled her shoulders out of her coat. “My sister kept that journal for a while, and then Michael took it from her, against her wishes, after she decided to stop recording Janie’s stories.”

  “What did you think of the journal before your sister stopped writing in it?”

  She hung the coat on a hook behind her desk and plumped up her curls, now darkened by the shadow of the American flag hanging beside her. “The Violet Sunday tales always struck me as odd, naturally,” she said. “It didn’t make sense that a child would claim so desperately to have lived so far away, so long ago.”

  “Did you ever witness firsthand Janie talking about her life as Violet?”

  “Yes.” She lowered her head and rubbed the back of her neck. “I still do, although not as frequently as before.”

  “How does Janie typically sound when she’s telling such tales?”

  “A little dreamy. Sometimes angry and desperate, if I’m not reacting as though I believe her. I’ve asked her directly if her father told her to say such things, and she staunchly defends him.”

  “Hmm.” I nodded, not at all surprised, considering most seven-year-olds’ devotion to parents who treated them well. “And you’re one hundred percent sure no one has ever hurt her in the past?”

  “I am.”

  “No other relatives or friends of the family have ever struck you as suspicious?”

  She shifted her face away, still cupping her hand over her neck.

  I thought again of her former fiancé, Sam. Her shoulders stiffened, as though detecting my suspicion.

  “I’m positive,” she said. “Violet Sunday seemed to emerge completely out of the ether. I don’t want to think of Janie as a liar, and I don’t truly want to imagine her father putting her up to this behavior. But above all, I’m terrified she might be—” Her voice caught in her throat. “You see . . . I’ve seen the inside of an asylum, Miss Lind. I would rather die than send Janie to a hell like that, and so would her mother.”

  “As I told you yesterday, I don’t believe an asylum would be needed.”

  “I know about multiple personalities. I know that’s what might be wrong with her.”

  “The field of psychology is rapidly changing.” I stepped forward with my hands squeezed together. “First and foremost, we strive to get to the source of a patient’s problem through psychotherapy. We’re learning more and more about the role of memory and the ways people become prisoners of their pasts if they don’t seek help.”

  Miss Simpkin’s eyes moistened. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers and breathed as though crying, although no tears spilled.

  “Janie is still so young,” I told her in the voice I used to soothe the most anxious of children who took my tests. “If we help her now, while her earliest memories are easiest to reach, before they’ve damaged her relationships and her psyche, then she can still lead a normal and successful life.”

  “How do you propose helping her?”

  “I want to start by investigating the existence of Friendly, Kansas.”

  “How?” She dropped her arm to her side. “Why?”

  “To rule out the reincarnation theory—to keep that particular path from distracting everyone. Also, if Friendly, indeed, exists, I would like to explore exactly where in the state it is located. That information might allow your family to remember why Janie knows about the region.”

  Miss Simpkin pulled down a box of matches from a shelf mounted on the wall beside the stove. Next to the shelf hung a map of the United States, colored in tea-stain shades of brown.

  “There’s a Finney County, Kansas.” She struck a match and squatted down in front of the stove. “But no map that I’ve ever seen, including this one here, shows a place called Friendly.” She tossed the match into the stove and set fire to a crumpled sheet of paper on the logs. “It’s a made-up town.” She stood up. “The name doesn’t even sound real.”

  “I agree—it’s likely a fictional creation. However, after I tidy myself up, I’m going to send a telegram to my oldest sister, Bea, who works at the Central Library in Portland. If anyone can find a mysterious town that’s hidden in the center of the United States, it’s she.”

  “You won’t find it, Miss Lind.”

  “Well, we’ll simply wait to see what comes of my sister’s Sherlockian skills.” I opened my luggage to scrounge around for a fresh sweater, when I remembered Mr. O’Daire’s collection of Sherlock Holmes novels in his hotel library.

  A glance up at Miss Simpkin told me that, she, too, associated Holmes with Michael O’Daire. With a frown, she grabbed a poker and jabbed at the half-charred pile of wood that sputtered and popped in the stove.

  AFTER I DRESSED and tidied myself, Miss Simpkin directed me to the local post office for my telegram purchase. Another rainstorm attacked, and I sprinted instead of walked to my destination—a little brick building on the edge of town, across from the railroad tracks. Once inside, I peeled off my coat to cease dripping all over the tiles and breathed in the perfume of crisp envelopes and fresh ink.

  To obtain the cheapest rate, I chose to purchase a ten-word telegram. Never possessing much talent for the clippe
d and punctuation-free style of telegraphese, it took me a solid five minutes to decide upon my phrasing. After much consideration, much pencil tapping—remembering my own childhood obsession with Kansas and Bea’s potential concern over my mental hygiene—I settled upon the following sentence:

  URGENTLY LOOKING FOR FRIENDLY KANSAS FOR STUDENT DOES IT EXIST

  I paid extra to allow Bea to send me a ten-word reply, and then I ran off again, back into the cold and splattering rain, back to the schoolhouse for another round of intelligence tests.

  THE CHILDREN ARRIVED. Janie traipsed past me in the parade of pupils that had finished depositing coats, galoshes, and lunch pails in the cloakroom, but aside from a brief, shy smile darted my way, she paid no attention to me.

  In spite of myself, as I stood there, waiting for the students to pass through the room, I pictured the imaginary Violet Sunday as having an actual face and a figure. I envisioned a young woman wearing the style of dress seen on my mother in sepia photographs from the late 1880s, before she met my father—the tapered sleeves, the ruffled skirts, the bustles, the endless buttons, the frills, and the fuss. I imagined dark hair fanning out into the depths of green-brown water like streaks of spilled ink; black eyebrows set against pale skin; bubbles rising to the surface from a prim little turned-up nose that resembled Janie’s herself. In my mind’s eye, Violet Sunday formed into a conglomeration of Hamlet’s Ophelia, a beautiful dark-haired classmate named Emma from my high school years, and a grown-up version of Janie. A mythical creature. A frustrating distraction that kept my mind from focusing on rational diagnoses.

  If I hadn’t been a psychologist—if I didn’t find the idea of reincarnation so absurd—I would have wanted Violet Sunday to exist.

  A female mathematical genius.

  A Victorian female mathematical genius.

  What an absolutely delicious idea.

  ON THAT PARTICULAR day I tested the eight- to eleven-year-olds. No one struck me as needing a remedial curriculum or as suffering from a serious mental abnormality. The children all appeared to be quite ordinary, as a matter of fact. Janie O’Daire had spoiled me. The routine of intelligence testing had never seemed so rote; so dull and uninspiring. I felt unnecessary.