Silent Echoes

by Carla Jablonski

  “My father was beside himself,” Lucy said. Lindsay thought the girl sounded nervous, agitated. “I’d never seen him so thrilled. It was as if he were delirious!”

  “Sounds like something good happened,” Lindsay said.

  “There it was, big and bold. Three columns wide. ‘Lucy Phillips predicts.’ Big block letters. He hadn’t even been to the newspaper offices yet. Somehow the advertisement appeared anyway.”

  Lindsay felt somehow satisfied that the tables had turned and it was Lucy who was freaking out. For a change.

  “I’m to appear at the Lyceum on Friday night and make more predictions. My father believes everyone in New York City will be there because the predictions must come true.”

  “Well, it’s what happened. At least according to the newspaper.”

  “My father wants to know if I am a success,” Lucy asked.

  “How can you not be? You’ve kind of got the inside track.”

  “He wants more newspapers. The performance is scheduled for tomorrow evening. He wants me to make more predictions so that people will come back every week.”

  Lindsay stared out the window, her arms crossed over her chest. This was the thing Tanya had worried about when they met up at the library yesterday. Changing history. She and Tanya had gone around and around in dizzying circles until they were both so confused they gave up trying to figure out what was right and what was wrong. But if there was an ad about Lucy in a newspaper from the future, then didn’t the future include giving her the next batch of newspapers?

  “Okay,” Lindsay said. “I’ll go back to the library. Then I’ll leave them in McSorley’s tonight.”

  “Thank you,” Lucy said softly. Lindsay had the distinct impression the girl was on the edge of fainting.

  It was only six o’clock. She had plenty of time to get to the library, but she had a long night ahead of her. “Hey, did you get that Dickens book?”

  “Oh, I nearly forgot. Mrs. Van Wyck gave me Oliver Twist. Is that all right?”

  “That’s great!” Lindsay opened her backpack. She dug through the change of clothes Tanya had brought her and pulled out the four volumes that made up the Collected Works of Charles Dickens. Picking up the one containing Oliver Twist, she settled onto the bed. “I have it right here. Do you want to start your lessons?”

  “Well, all right. But I can’t stay long. Neither can you.”

  “I know. I have to get the newspapers. Don’t worry. Just a half hour or so.”

  “What do I do?” Lucy asked.

  “To start, just open the book to the first page and follow along while I read.”

  Lindsay propped the book up on her knees and began. “‘Chapter one. Treats of the place where Oliver Twist was born, and of the circumstances attending his birth.’”

  Lindsay read for nearly an hour, with Lucy stopping her frequently to ask a definition, then exclaiming indignantly, “Well, why didn’t he just say so?” Lindsay had a feeling teaching Lucy to read wasn’t going to be as easy as she had thought, partly because Lucy wasn’t that interested.

  “We should stop,” Lucy said with a yawn. “All these words are giving me a headache. And don’t you have to get to the library?”

  “Oh, right,” Lindsay reluctantly agreed. Even though she couldn’t see Lucy, she was certainly a presence, and Lindsay welcomed company in that dingy, lonely room. “Come back after the performance. I want to hear everything that happens.”

  “All right,” Lucy promised. “But I really must go now.”

  “Okay. Bye for now,” Lindsay said. She felt their connection close, then sighed. Knowing Lucy would return made the emptiness between their visits bearable.

  The next day, Lindsay felt ready to face anything. She was clean, clean, clean! As soon as she arrived at her old school in Brooklyn, she and Tanya went straight to the gym so that Lindsay could shower. She didn’t even care that she had to use Tanya’s gym clothes to dry off or that she had to shampoo her hair with crusty old leftover bar soap. Seeing her old teachers, her old friends, even eating the tasteless cafeteria food filled her with an extraordinary sense of well-being. She knew she was taking a huge risk being at the school, but she just didn’t care. She couldn’t spend another whole day just sitting around waiting for Lucy.

  After the last class of the day, Tanya and Lindsay entered the library. “What are we looking for here?” Lindsay asked. “The school doesn’t have the old newspapers I need for Lucy.”

  “Today we’re not researching the past,” Tanya declared. “Today we’re researching the present.”

  “What do you mean?” Lindsay sat at the computer terminal next to Tanya.

  “You can’t live like this for the rest of your life, Lindz.”

  All the good work the shower had done that morning started to unravel, as if fear and anger were dirtying her skin and clogging her pores.

  “Your money isn’t going to last that long,” Tanya continued. “Then what? And it’s going to get cold soon. And what about college?”

  Lindsay covered her ears.

  Tanya’s face clouded. “Lindz, I’m not saying this stuff to scare you.”

  “Then stop.” She stared at the blank computer screen.

  “Listen, I’ve played it your way so far. No parents. No adults of any kind. Lindsay, I’m so worried for you I can’t sleep,” Tanya whispered.

  “All I can do is get through each day.” Lindsay’s effort to keep herself from shouting at Tanya for her complete stupidity made her feel like she was being strangled. She coughed a few times in the barbed silence that rose between them.

  “Don’t be mad,” Tanya said quietly.

  “It’s just hard,” Lindsay said finally. “Your life is still normal. Mine’s all…” She searched for a word and couldn’t find one. “I just don’t know what could help me.”

  As if given permission, Tanya started clicking the computer keys. She opened web pages, read, frowned, opened more. Lindsay got up and wandered into the science section, pulling down old favorites, rereading familiar paragraphs the way other girls might cling to teddy bears.

  Hearing the bell, she rejoined Tanya. She didn’t like the discouraged look on her friend’s face. “So it’s all as dire as I thought, right?”

  “Well, according to these agency web sites, if you told a teacher or someone about the violence at home, they wouldn’t let you go back. You’d be up for foster care.”

  “I’ve heard enough about that to know I don’t want that to happen.”

  “You were right about the hospital thing too. Once you’ve been diagnosed, they’d send you back until they feel you’re stabilized.”

  “Oh, joy.”

  “But Lindsay.” She turned and looked at her with pleading dark eyes. “What if you went back and explained—”

  “No!” Lindsay barked.

  “Right.” Tanya looked down at her lap.

  Lindsay and Tanya sat in silence for a moment. Outside, Lindsay noticed, the setting sun turned the parked cars into hulking ominous shadows, the basketball hoop a strangely elongated shape on the still-rain-damp pavement.

  Tanya’s face brightened. “Next time we’ll figure out who you can tell about Lucy. Some paranormal society or something.” She faced Lindsay and grabbed her wrist. “We will make this better, I swear.”

  Lindsay nodded but didn’t turn her head.

  Finally Tanya stood, gathering her papers. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go. My mom is taking me to the dentist.” She slung her backpack over her shoulder and shifted her weight to one tapping foot. Lindsay knew this wasn’t impatience; it was what she did when her brain was whirring. “You could probably hang here for a while,” she suggested.

  “Yeah, I think I’ll do that,” Lindsay said. “It’s not like I’m on a schedule or anything.”

  “Right.” Tanya still stood there.

  “Go,” Lindsay said. “Your mom will freak if you’re late.”

  “True.” Tanya started to go, the
n turned back. “Oh, shoot. I forgot to tell you. I won’t be around this weekend. We’re going to Philadelphia. Some stupid family thing.”

  “Ah.” Lindsay forced herself to shrug. “So, I’ll see you Monday?”

  “You bet. I’ll meet up with you at that library again. The minute I get out of school.”

  “Deal,” Lindsay said.

  Worry flickered across Tanya’s face, but she pulled herself away. At the door she turned and gave a little wave, then vanished into normal life, where Lindsay couldn’t follow.

  Twenty

  Lucy peeked out through a sliver in the heavy velvet curtains. Just as her father predicted, the Lyceum was packed. The tantalizing predictions he’d selected from the newspaper had of course come true. The discovery of gold in Alaska, the top ticket price sold at auction for Lily Langtry’s American debut, the young scion of a prominent family named corespondent in the divorce case of an older socialite, and the death toll in a terrible accident when a Harlem Railroad train struck a New Haven train in the Hudson River tunnel. “Death, money, and scandal,” her father had said gleefully. “Gets ’em every time.”

  Lucy scrunched the curls created by Madame Ogilvie, then smoothed the front of her simple cream silk gown. She would have preferred a more-colorful dress with bows and flounces, but her father insisted on something ethereal, and Mr. Grasser concurred.

  Colonel Phillips strode up beside her. “Ready?” he asked.

  Lucy nodded, too nervous to speak. This wasn’t like her audience at Mrs. Van Wyck’s or the crowds she and her father would drum up to sell their patent medicine to. This was several hundred staring eyes, many wishing her to fail or to be caught out as a fraud.

  And somehow, now that she was able to know the future, a terrible sense of dread accompanied her all the time, made her self-conscious, as if her every movement, every utterance, could affect the entire world in unseen, unknowable ways. Normally she’d be eager to step out onto the large stage, the gas lamps illuminating her to her best advantage, rows of glittering eyes all trained on her. But something had changed. Maybe being forced to contemplate the future made the present carry more weight.

  Colonel Phillips appraised her coolly. “This is the big time, dearie dear. This is not the time to falter.”

  “Are you trying to make me nervous?” Lucy asked, annoyed.

  “You can’t miss, you know that,” Colonel Phillips assured her. “Not with your special source. Now all you have to do is put on a smashing show.”

  Lucy nodded.

  “Here we go!” Colonel Phillips said. He helped Lucy up onto the small platform where a velvet armchair and a harp stood. The harp was rigged below the platform with rods so that at pertinent moments it would seem to play by itself, thanks to the enterprising Peabody. The chair was set for the moment in the show Lucy would grow faint.

  “Remember our codes?” Colonel Phillips whispered.

  “I do,” Lucy said. “Do you?”

  He grinned. “Nerves make you a mite snappish, don’t they?” He kissed her forehead and carefully replaced the dislodged curls.

  Lucy flushed, shut her eyes, and took in a deep breath. Concentrate, she told herself.

  Somewhere behind the scenes Mr. Grasser gave the signal to raise the curtain. Lucy knew that stagehands all around her were hoisting ropes, Peabody was probably pacing and cracking his knuckles, and the men who handled the lighting effects were standing about waiting for their cues. She and her father, however, stood in perfect stillness, she on the platform, he just beside it, his hand on her shoulder.

  They held for a moment, and Lucy felt all eyes upon them. She’d learned from her father to allow the audience a moment to take her in, to give them the chance to gape, to whisper to their neighbors.

  As the room quieted—and before anyone began to stir or cough—Colonel Phillips stepped forward.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced in his most ingratiating voice. “I am pleased to see so many of you in attendance.”

  Of course you are, Lucy thought, fighting a smirk. We get nearly a dollar for every one of those backsides crammed into those seats.

  He ambled across the stage, taking care to stay in the pools of the most flattering light, seeming at ease. “You are all here, no doubt, because you were amazed when the visions my daughter, Lucy, had of the future did indeed come to pass. Truth be told, so was I.” He gave the audience one of his warm, conspiratorial smiles. The audience responded with laughter. “But let’s not dwell on the past. We’re interested in the here and now. And the future.”

  Lucy straightened up, as if hearing the word “future” had captured her attention.

  “First,” Colonel Phillips said, “I’m sure you wonder at my daughter’s abilities, want demonstrations of her skills.”

  A low murmur began. Lucy quickly ran over the code again in her head.

  “I believe, as I’m sure many of you do, that my daughter’s gifts come to her from the realm of the spirits. That she has guides in all things, that these visitors, shall we say, reveal to her all that she then repeats to us mere mortals. But I know there are skeptics, doubters. Mr. Grasser, please.”

  Mr. Grasser stepped out of the wings and with a flourish brought a black handkerchief out of his pocket.

  “To prevent any doubt, Mr. Grasser, can you ask that lovely lady in the front row in the fetching blue costume to examine the handkerchief?”

  Mr. Grasser crossed to the front of the stage and held out the handkerchief to a buxom woman in the front row. She took it quizzically.

  “Please, my dear,” Colonel Philips instructed, “place the handkerchief over your eyes as if you were about to play an innocent game of blindman’s bluff.”

  The woman, aided by the gentleman at her side, did as the Colonel instructed.

  “Now tell me, dear lady, can you see anything?”

  “Not a thing,” the woman replied in a loud voice.

  “Thank you. Mr. Grasser?”

  Mr. Grasser took the blindfold from the woman and crossed the stage. He tied it around Lucy’s eyes.

  “Now we shall begin. First, we must call in my dear daughter’s spirit guides. Please, I ask for complete silence.”

  An anticipatory hush settled over the large theater.

  “Lucy, my dear,” Colonel Phillips intoned. “Reach out your mind, your very soul, to the far corners of existence. Call before you those dear departed, those who move amongst the angels, to aid you in your vision.”

  Lucy fluttered her fingers and let her head roll slightly back and forth. “Spirits,” she said, her voice soft but audible. “Oh, spirits, join me in this good company. I ask for your help to see what is hidden. To learn what may be.”

  On cue, Peabody worked his invisible magic under the stage. A gasp went up in the audience as the harp seemed to play by itself.

  Colonel Phillips strode to the edge of the stage. “They’re here among us,” he said in a hoarse stage whisper. Lucy knew, in spite of her blindfold, that he held a finger to his lips, indicating that he wished for silence.

  “To demonstrate the presence of my daughter’s unseen helpers,” Colonel Phillips said, “we shall ask her to identify objects from the audience. This is not an act of mind reading,” he added as he trotted down the little steps at the side of the stage so that he could move along the aisles. “She will be informed by those you and I have not the privilege to see.”

  Lucy heard him come to a stop.

  “Honey,” he said. “What am I pointing to?”

  Lucy cocked her head as if she were listening to someone. First word, “Honey.” First letter: H. “A hat?” she said.

  A general murmur went up.

  “What if she’s peeking?” a challenging voice demanded.

  “Lucy, turn around so that your back is to the audience. Then there will be no question.”

  Lucy obliged.

  “And let me give you the object instead of you picking it,” the voice insisted.

&
nbsp; “Ah, a skeptic. Very well. Try to tell me this one, Lucy,” Colonel Phillips said.

  “Tie,” Lucy said quickly, thanks to the t at the beginning of that sentence.

  “You see!” another voice shouted. “She’s real.”

  “We’ll do one more!” Colonel Phillips offered. “Believe me, Lucy, this is one you’ll appreciate.”

  “A book,” Lucy responded. She turned and untied the handkerchief. “Oh, Father, the voices of the spirits were quite clear. Were they correct?”

  “Your friends did not fail you,” Colonel Phillips said, charging back up onto the stage. He faced the audience. “And now, if we can prevail upon your spirit friends, we all would like to know what the future may hold. Is that correct?”

  The audience shouted, “Yes.”

  Lucy wavered on the platform. “Have you the strength?” Colonel Phillips asked.

  “I—I think so,” Lucy replied. She shut her eyes and acted as if she were going into a trance. The harp played again.

  “Are you there?” she asked. “Will you give us a glimpse of what is to come?”

  The harp played again, more energetically.

  “Tell us what you see,” Colonel Phillips asked.

  “I see…I see…” Lucy made her voice breathy, and she peered into the distance. She gave a little gasp.

  “I see…danger. I see disappointment. There is something to do with a park? The park?”

  Colonel Phillips had instructed her to make the visions seem confused. She needed a delicate balance of verifiable fact with enough vagueness that she wouldn’t be accused of creating the very events she was predicting. She was about to tell this audience that the famous Lily Langtry would not appear in her American debut because the theater would burn down the very day of the performance. She couldn’t risk being accused of starting the fire—or of having it set for her just to make her predictions come true.

  “I see a beautiful lily surrounded by flames. A glorious English lady holding a Lily. Lily. A famous Lily.” She paused just as her father had rehearsed with her. Then in a clear, strong voice she declared, “Lily Langtry will not debut.”