Shattered Echoes

by B. A. Shapiro

  “Ghostly antics! Ghostly antics! Maybe there were none last night, but I think I actually partook of some on Monday!”

  “Do me a favor and don’t tell me about it.”

  “I have to tell you—otherwise, how will we know if it’s true?”

  “Believe me, it’s not true.”

  “Well, I called about eight,” Babs said. “Wanted to see if you were up for doing something. And it was really strange …” She paused and looked expectant.

  “All right, all right, what was ‘really strange’?”

  “Well, the phone rang a couple of times—” Babs pressed her hands together “—and then it was picked up!”

  “Did anyone say anything?”

  “No.”

  “You probably just had the wrong number.”

  “That’s what I thought!” She clapped her hands in delight. “So I called back. And guess what.”

  I didn’t want to guess. I turned and stared out the window at the overdressed churchgoers and the underdressed joggers. The two groups eyed each other warily—or not at all—clearly incredulous at the other’s strange obsession. I envied them both the clearness of their passions, the simplicity of their concerns.

  “You’re supposed to be guessing!” Babs demanded.

  I looked at her blankly. “Guessing?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Never mind—I’ll tell you: when I called back, the line was busy! Obviously the work of the ghost!”

  “Oh, Babs,” I sighed, still as exhausted as I’d been before going to bed; I felt as if I hadn’t slept at all.

  “Oh? So you tell me: If it wasn’t a ghost, then what was it?”

  “It was probably just me. I can’t seem to remember anything I do anymore.” I dropped my head to my hands. “I must have taken it off the hook and forgot to put it back.”

  “Not so! Not so!” Babs crowed. “It was ghostly antics! Ghostly antics! I know it, I know it!”

  I looked up. “Babs, this isn’t a joke—this is my life falling apart here. You’ve got to stop looking at this like it’s some great adventure.”

  “But it is an adventure!” She grinned. “An adventure into uncharted waters!”

  “Please.” I dropped my head back to my hands.

  “Okay, kiddo,” she said seriously. “I can appreciate why you’re upset. No one really understands this stuff, and it can be kind of scary—out of context. But maybe I can give you a different way to think about it, a way that will make it all easier to comprehend.”

  “Memory and comprehension don’t seem to be my long suit these days.”

  “Look—it’s like Henry James said.” She put her hand lightly over her heart and assumed the stance of an orator. “‘Why may we not be in the universe as our dogs and cats are in our drawing rooms?’” I must have looked blank, for she added, “Why can’t we be a small piece inside of something bigger? Something so beyond our realm of understanding that we can’t see it or comprehend it? Remember those late night college discussions about the world just being God’s dream?”

  “This isn’t helping.”

  “Okay, the God’s dream stuff is a bit much. Okay, I’ll try something else.” Babs waved her apple in the air. “Take this apple! Think dimensions!”

  “Babs …”

  “Look!” Babs placed her napkin between us on the table and then licked a point on the bottom of the apple; she pressed it to the napkin. “What do you see?” she demanded.

  “A spot of spit.”

  “Correct!” Now she licked the entire bottom of the apple and pressed that to the napkin. “And now?”

  “Four spots of spit.”

  “Correct again!” She held the apple toward me. “And now what do you see?”

  “Babs, this is stupid. What’s your point?”

  “What do you see?” Babs repeated.

  “All right, all right, I see an apple. A Red Delicious apple, to be precise. What’s your damn point?”

  “My point is this: You saw an apple each time, but you only recognized it as an apple the last time.” She grinned and waved the fruit under my nose. “An apple in one dimension is a dot, an apple—or the bottom of a Delicious apple—in two dimensions is four dots, and an apple in three dimensions—” she paused dramatically “—is an apple!”

  “And from that I’m supposed to believe that life in four dimensions is a ghost?”

  “Or five, or six, or whatever.”

  “So how does that help? How does your dimension ridiculousness help me?”

  “Sorry, kiddo, but nothing’s going to help you if you refuse to open your mind. Why can’t there be another dimension we don’t know about?”

  “You mean like a dimension where all my lost socks are?”

  “Listen to me, Lindsey,” Babs begged, her expression earnest. “Why can’t some other world be going on simultaneously with this one?”

  “Because someone would have discovered it by now.”

  “Maybe we’re discovering it.”

  “I can’t believe that and I don’t believe that.” I stared defiantly at Babs. “Clay is in his grave, and he’s going to stay there!”

  “We’re not talking about Clay.” Babs tilted her head to the side and looked at me steadily.

  “So I’m supposed to believe that some woman who lives in another dimension is here? That she’s answering my phone and hanging up my clothes and that last night she turned down my bed? Why the hell would she be doing all this stuff? How am I supposed to believe this?”

  “Well,” Babs said, “I don’t know about the phone and the clothes, but you don’t have to believe that she turned down your bed.”

  “I don’t?”

  “Nope.” She shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “Truth be told—I did that.”

  9

  It was cold and dark and well past my dinnertime. De Matteo’s was even more crowded than usual, and I was famished. The tough pebbles of a tweed jacket pressed against my cheek and stunk of cigarettes. The old geezer was in his stupid bow tie, growling his usual insults. And there wasn’t any linguine. A deep voice to my left, its soft drawl vaguely familiar and quite sexy, said, “So I see you’re giving the old gent another chance.”

  “Hunger has no scruples.”

  “You didn’t let hunger stop you the other night.” He was tall—well above my requisite six feet—and had a nice face. The nose was perhaps a bit large, and those glasses had to go—but aside from that, the guy was cute in a lanky, gangling kind of way.

  “I was cranky.”

  “A cranky—but heroic—act.” His southern accent was great.

  “Yeah, and well worth it too. Listen to the guy—he’s rude as ever.”

  “No upbringing at all.” He shook his head sadly.

  “How do you suppose he keeps this job? Married to the boss’s daughter?”

  “He’s the owner.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” I was amazed.

  “Who’s next?” barked Mr. De Matteo. “What? Speak up!” he snapped at a short woman trying to make herself heard over heads and noise. “Open your mouth or lose your place!”

  “Christ,” I said, “I wish that guy would get what’s coming to him. I wish everyone would just walk right on out of here and force him into bankruptcy. Or, in lieu of that—I looked at the row of bulky plastic jars standing shoulder to shoulder on the shelf above and behind De Matteo “—how about some of those pickles falling on his head?”

  “Quite the vindictive soul, aren’t you?” He raised his eyebrows above the rims of those god-awful black glasses.

  “Wouldn’t you just love to see it raining pickles?” I giggled. “Wouldn’t garlic-scented, pee-colored pickle juice running down his immaculate white shirt be a lovely sight?”

  “I must admit, it would be interesting.”

  We smiled at each other and turned back toward the counter. As we stood, impatiently waiting our turns, a teenage clerk slipped behind Mr. De Matteo and reached up to retriev
e a carton of paper towels from the shelf above his boss’s head. The boy’s hold on the box was precarious and he lost his grip, sending the carton downward toward the pickles. The box hit the container with enough force to topple it and pop off the top; pickles rained all over the old man. Garlic-scented, pee-colored pickle juice ran down his immaculate white shirt.

  I heard, from afar, the crowd collectively gasp. When it become apparent that nothing but Mr. De Matteo’s pride was hurt, a few snickers reached me, echoing as if through a long, hollow tube. The deli counter listed to the left, and the edges of Mr. De Matteo’s wet hair were fuzzy. I blinked and the scene righted itself.

  “Amazing—just amazing!” gasped the tall man. “How did you do that?”

  I forced a smile that felt twisted and ugly. “I don’t know. I, ah, I can’t believe this—this coincidence.” The glare of the fluorescent lights seemed to intensify and my head began to pound. It was very warm. “I’ve got to run.” I stumbled toward the front door. For the second time, I left the store without my dinner.

  I walked up Beacon and down Marlborough, up Commonwealth and down Newbury. I wished. It happened. I wished. It happened. My thoughts clicked like a train over tracks, keeping time with the tap of my high-heeled shoes on the cold pavement. I wished. It happened. I wished. It happened.

  Out of nowhere, fat snowflakes began to swirl in thick curtains, smothering me inside their white cocoon. The heel of my shoe caught in a sidewalk crack and I lurched into a building facade. The bricks were rough and cold under my cheek; I ran my finger along the pebbly grout and tried to force more air into my lungs. But I couldn’t; I choked and wheezed. I wished. It happened. I wished. It happened. Holding the brick wall for support, I turned the corner.

  The street tilted and I lost my balance; I clutched blindly for something, anything, to break my fall. Icy cold metal cut into my fingers—I held on and managed to remain upright. I blinked and looked down into an overflowing garbage pail, full of malodorous horrors. I vomited into the trash. Isabel Davenport was really here. Was Clay here too?

  I wiped my mouth and hands with a tissue and felt a little better, a little calmer. At least I wasn’t losing my mind; I was able to take a deep breath, and the street was level once more. I thought of checking into the nearest hotel—but what was the point? If Isabel Davenport could follow me to De Matteo’s, she or Clay could surely follow me to the Hilton. I headed home. I didn’t know where else to go.

  As I stood in the vestibule of my building, stomping the snow from my shoes and looking out at the early winter blizzard the weatherman had not predicted, I remembered how warm it had been that morning. How I had left my windows open and the heat turned way down. Damn New England changeable weather! The apartment was going to be freezing and full of snow. I dragged myself up the stairs, picturing curtains billowing as frigid winds blew through the rooms, little pyramids of snow pushed up in the corners and on the window ledges.

  But when I walked through my door, I found the windows closed, the heat turned up, the apartment toasty and inviting. My living room light glowed warmly, and the sweet smell of lavender drifted through the air.

  “So do I have a brain tumor?”

  Naomi tapped the single-spaced medical reports with her glasses. “Doesn’t appear that way.”

  “Clean bill of neurological health?” I looked down at my feet and frowned.

  “Well, not exactly …”

  I looked up. “Not exactly what?”

  Naomi looked at me strangely. “You’re pushing at the boundaries again.”

  “Same as before? But now it’s my brain that’s at the edge of the envelope instead of my mind?”

  She smiled. “An interesting way to put it.”

  “Okay, let’s hear the gory details.”

  “First the EEG.” She perched her reading glasses on the end of her nose and look at me over the rims. “You understand that an EEG measures brain waves? And that Dr. Smith-Holt was looking for some kind of unusual electrical activity in your alpha and beta wave patterns?”

  I nodded.

  “Specifically, he was looking for spiking in the temporal region of the brain. That would indicate some type of lesion or scarring.”

  “Did he find any?”

  “Well—” she looked down at the papers on her lap “—he found some abnormal slowing in nonfocal areas—seems to be clustered in the posterior parts of the brain …”

  I tried to laugh, but it sounded like a sick dog barking. “Could you please just tell me what it means?”

  “Sorry,” she said, smiling. “Occupational hazard. The truth is, it doesn’t mean much of anything. It’s slightly abnormal, just like the bit of spiking that showed up. But ten to fifteen percent of the general population displays similar abnormalities.” She shrugged. “Dr. Smith-Holt said it’s just not enough to be conclusive.”

  “So we can forget the EEG?”

  She nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “What about the MRI?”

  “Again, it’s unclear.” She sighed and turned to the next page. “He found no actual tumor, but did detect some increased tissue density in the right temporal lobe.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “No, he said it probably means nothing.” She paused and checked another sheet. “The tests did indicate a mild atrophy in the drainage areas, and show the ventricles to be slightly enlarged. Also, as might be expected from the EEG, there is some scarring—in the right temporal lobe.”

  “But I don’t have a brain tumor?”

  “No, you don’t have a brain tumor.”

  “But there is something wrong with my brain?”

  “Again”—she took off her glasses—”it’s pretty inconclusive stuff. Dr. Smith-Holt thinks the scarring is the only potentially serious indicator.”

  “I don’t understand.” I put both feet on the floor and leaned forward. “How does a brain get scarred?”

  “It can be from a childhood injury, or a developmental problem, or it can just be some strange anomaly that’s specific to the structure of your brain and doesn’t mean much of anything. Or …” She put the papers down on the table and looked directly at me.

  “Or?”

  “Have you ever heard of temporal lobe epilepsy?”

  Shades of Herr-Doktor Stieglitz. I stared at the cuckoo clock. “No,” I said calmly. “What’s that?”

  “Do you know much about how the brain works?”

  I shook my head. “Probably as much as any layperson.”

  “Then let me tell you a little. The brain is made up of neurons, cells that have unique electrophysiological properties. They interact with each other, causing electrically charged ions to move in and out of the cells. This is what’s meant by brain wave patterns.”

  “What the EEG measures?”

  “Right.” She nodded and smiled like a teacher pleased with her star pupil. “Now, taking this a step further, the assumption is that these brain waves have an effect upon the body—but what effect and where?”

  “Monkey research time?”

  “No, actually, they studied humans—during brain surgery. They electrically stimulated different sites on the brain surface to see what parts of the mind or the body might be affected.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  “Oh, there aren’t any sense organs inside the brain, so it really wasn’t that bad,” she said. “What they found was that when motor areas were electrically stimulated, the corresponding parts of the body moved. And even more interestingly, they discovered that memories—some pretty vivid memories, apparently—could be ‘turned on’ by electrical stimulation to areas of the temporal lobes.”

  “Okay, let’s hear what this whole thing has to do with me.”

  “Epilepsy is an electrophysiological dysfunction of parts of the brain. It has different forms depending on what parts of the brain are firing abnormally.”

  “But epileptics have fits!” I leaned forward in my chair. “Don’t they choke on their tongue
s, and, and drool and pass out and stuff? I’ve never had an epileptic fit! I’d know if I had!”

  She reached over and patted my knee. “You’re jumping to conclusions, Lindsey. No one thinks that you’ve had that type of seizure. You’re thinking of grand mal and petit mal epilepsies. There are other kinds.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Like temporal lobe?”

  She nodded. “When the epileptic focus is in the temporal lobe, one of the things that can happen is something called ‘Lilliputian hallucinosis.’ It usually takes the form of visions—not exactly hallucinations, but close—of little people running around.”

  “Your kidding!”

  “No, I’m not. Sometimes it’s also called ‘Alice in Wonderland syndrome,’ where objects are perceived as either smaller or larger than they really are. People have reported seeing clusters of tiny airplanes or skyscrapers or doors floating in front of their eyes. Some have even reported seeing ghosts.”

  “Holy shit!” I gripped the arms of my chair. The cuckoo clock wavered in front of my eyes. So did Naomi Braverman’s face.

  She nodded again. “But TLE is elusive—it’s tough to pinpoint and even tougher to definitively diagnose. Some doctors think if it were correctly diagnosed, one out of every hundred people might be found to have TLE. That would make it a very common disease.”

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  “There’s also speculation that many great historical figures suffered from TLE: Moses, Mohammed, Julius Caesar, Dostoyevski, and as you might guess, Lewis Carroll.”

  “And, ah, you, ah …” I swallowed and tried again. “You, you and Smith-Holt, you guys think I have it?”

  “Frankly, Lindsey, we just don’t know. There are a lot of symptoms associated with TLE that you don’t exhibit.”

  I swallowed again. “Such as?” I croaked.

  “For starters, you’re functional. People suffering from TLE often display a wide array of maladaptive social behaviors. They’re not usually as productive, or as highly functional, as you are.”

  “What about Dostoyevski? You can’t say he wasn’t productive.”

  She grinned. “Yes, but he might have also suffered from another symptom of TLE: hypergraphia.”