by Lucy Finn
“Yes, can I help you?” I said, opening the door a crack and feeling a bit annoyed at the interruption in my day.
“Are you Ms. Ravine Patton?” he asked, his dark eyes lively in a suntanned face.
I told him yes, and he told me his name was Mohamed Meghaou, the youngest son of Ali Rachid Meghaou, and the grandson of El-Mohamed Rachid Meghaou. He also apologized for getting to me late. He was supposed to arrive on Christmas Day, but his trip from North Africa was delayed.
When I heard the words “North Africa” my knees started to wobble, since that’s where Gene’s plane had crashed during the war. The first thought that came into my mind was that the authorities had found his airplane or even his remains. But why would they be contacting me? Remembering my manners, I belatedly asked him to come in.
“You can call me M&M,” the young man said as I motioned for him to sit down on one of the chairs in front of my desk. Then I asked if I might get him a cup of coffee or tea.
“No, thank you, Ms. Patton,” he replied with great politeness. “I have only a moment to stay.”
“All right, Mr.—er, M&M, won’t you please tell me what this is all about?” I sat on the edge of the chair next to his, my hands clasped tightly to stop their shaking.
M&M reached into the inside pocket of his beautifully tailored topcoat and took out a small envelope. He said that before his grandfather died, in 1974, he gave this envelope to M&M’s father with the instructions to please get it to me on Christmas Day of the past year.
I tried to make sense of that and couldn’t. I wasn’t even born in 1974, and I couldn’t imagine how M&M’s grandfather could possibly know my name. I said as much to the polite young man.
M&M answered me with great solemnity. He didn’t know, but his grandfather did many things nobody could explain. He had taken thirty-five wives, and he was a great practical joker.
Naturally, I asked M&M what was in the envelope. Naturally, he didn’t know. He said it had always been sealed.
“Baba, my grandfather, didn’t divulge its contents; he just said it would ‘put things right.’ According to my father, Baba also began to laugh and said, ‘I do not have very good luck when I play dice. Maybe I have better when I play God.’”
M&M handed me the envelope. It had my name and address neatly handwritten on the front. The paper felt cool and smooth in my hands, but I could feel the bulge of something hard inside it.
M&M stood up and apologized again for the delay in delivering it. He also apologized for his haste in leaving, but he had to catch a flight to Atlanta from the Wilkes-Barre–Scranton Airport and had a taxi waiting in the driveway. I accompanied M&M down the path outside my office and watched him as he walked to his cab. He turned around and gave me a rakish grin. I swear there was something familiar about it.
Holding the envelope in my trembling hand, I went to my office, sat at my desk, and looked at the three-by-five-inch rectangle again. My name and address, printed on it before I ever existed, looked back at me. I picked up a letter opener and decided to find out what it held.
Inside was a piece of paper and a small red cardboard packet, about two inches across and three inches long. On the outside of the packet it said MINER’S BANK, WILKES-BARRE, PA. Inside the packet was a key. The note said, “This is the key to my heart. Love, Gene”
I recognized that the silver key belonged to a safe deposit box. I also knew that the Miner’s Bank no longer existed. I guessed that Gene had found a keep-sake or something for me after he returned to the Sahara in 1942 and somehow convinced the caliph to stash it away in the most prominent bank in the Wyoming Valley during those war years. I had no idea what Gene had gotten me, but since it was supposed to have been delivered on Christmas, a few hours after he disappeared, I figured it had to be my Christmas present.
I held the packet tightly in my palm. This key proved that Gene didn’t die or vaporize after my third wish. He had survived and made it home. How bittersweet it was to realize he had thought of a way to get the key to me, and how frustrating to know I might not be able to use it. A desperate yearning overcame me to get to that box, wherever it now was.
It was time to pick up Brady, so I put the key in my jacket pocket and drove to Peggy Sue’s. Over a new section of her house a colorful sign announced, SUNSHINE AND LOLLIPOPS DAY CARE. I had been impressed by how professionally she set it up, and Brady loved his mornings there.
As I started back to the house, I kept thinking of ways I could trace the safe deposit box. There didn’t seem to be any quick way to accomplish it. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to stop at the bank in Bowman’s Creek and see what the tellers there thought I should do.
Carrying Brady on my hip, I walked into the bank and went up to Mary Ann’s window.
“Hiya, Ravine,” she said. “You haven’t been in for a while.”
“Hi to you too,” I answered, smiling. “I don’t have a deposit today—wish I did! But I was wondering if you could give me some advice.” I slipped the red packet containing the key into the tray under the security grate at her counter. “I received this key as part of—umm, part of an inheritance. Do you think it’s possible the safe-deposit box and its contents still exist?”
Mary Ann looked at the key. Two of the other tellers came over and crowded around her to look. She asked if I had noticed that the safe-deposit box number was written on the little piece of adhesive on the key.
I had seen the adhesive, but I wasn’t sure until now that the number was the box number. Mary Ann assured me it was. “But of course Miner’s Bank is gone,” she said.
“That’s what worries me.” I sighed.
“The safe-deposit boxes aren’t gone though,” she added. “As far as I can remember, Miner’s Bank was sold to United Penn Bank, which was sold to Mellon Bank, which was sold to Citizens Bank. Isn’t that right?” she said to the other women. They nodded in agreement. She explained that nothing had really changed in the bank itself except the management and the name. The building stayed the same and the safe-deposit boxes didn’t move. She asked if I thought somebody kept paying for the box.
“I can’t be positive,” I answered, “but I think it would have been paid either with a big sum up front or regularly throughout the years. At least I hope it was. Had to be, since the person who obtained the box knew I wouldn’t be taking possession until Christmas last year, at the earliest.”
“Well then, I don’t see why you can’t go down to Citizens Bank and get whatever it is in there. Of course, it’s none of my business—what you inherited, I mean,” she said, dying of curiosity.
“I really have no idea what’s in the box, Mary Ann. If it’s anything interesting, I’ll have to come by and show you.”
“Another thing to consider,” Mary Ann mused as she put the little red packet containing the key into the tray on her side of the grate and pushed it through where I could pick it up. “Do you know what name the box is under? You might have to get power of attorney in order for the bank to open it.”
“I don’t think that will be needed. I’m guessing the box is in my name. But thank you so much for your help.”
“No thanks needed. It’s the most excitement we’ve had since the bank robber came to the drive-through last year,” she said.
Everybody yelled, “Good luck!” when Brady and I went out the door.
I asked my mother to take care of Brady and told her I had to go to Wilkes-Barre, but I didn’t tell her why.
“You’re nervous as a cat in a roomful of canaries, and you’re all dressed up. Carrying your briefcase too. Are you meeting a new client?” she asked as I put Brady into her arms.
I told her I had some business at the bank downtown, the one with the big windows that used to be Miner’s Bank. I promised her that I wouldn’t be very long. She told me to take my time. She and Brady were going to be baking cookies. Then Cal was coming by and the three of them were going over to look at the building I had wrangled out of the township for the charter
school. Since we had agreed to improve the building, the deed was ours for the sum of one dollar.
“We’re going to have lots of fun, aren’t we, little man?” she said to Brady, picking up a chubby hand and nuzzling his palm.
“I love you,” I said and kissed her cheek. Since nearly losing her on Christmas Eve, I made sure I told her I loved her every day.
“Love you too,” she said gruffly. “Now you get along. Brady and I have work to do.”
My nerves made the half-hour drive to Wilkes-Barre an ordeal. I had to keep reminding myself to focus on the road and not think about Gene or what he put in the box. I would treasure forever whatever I found there, but the note and the key had made my grief at losing him return with a stabbing pain. But then again, he was letting me know he had gotten back, and he had survived—and that gave me comfort, for as much as I needed him in the here and now, I wanted him safe even more.
The old-fashioned grandeur of the Miner’s Bank with its marble floors, twenty-foot-high arched windows, and three-story-high ceiling created the awe of a cathedral and reduced all talking to hushed whispers—despite the cheery, green, modern logo of the present owners.
I approached a buxom, middle-aged bank clerk and asked to open “my” safe-deposit box.
“What number?” she asked.
“One nine four two four two,” I read from the adhesive on the key, suddenly realizing that I had said “1942 for two.” It seemed like it should mean something but I didn’t know what.
The teller consulted a file and pulled out a form. “My oh my,” she said. “I think this is one of our oldest accounts.” Smiling, she pushed the form toward me and pointed at the line where I needed to sign. Then she led me into the vault, found box number 194242, produced her key and turned the lock. Then she took my key and turned the lock again. After that she slid out a long, deep, metal box. The process seemed to go on for hours, although I’m sure it took less than a minute.
“Come right this way,” she said, leading me to an adjoining room. She put the box on a table. “Press the buzzer when you’re finished, and I’ll let you out,” she added.
I waited until she had shut the door behind her before I lifted the lid.
I looked in.
A bulbous amber bottle sat in the bottom. I snatched it out.
Even as I lifted it out of the box, I could see a figure inside. It was Gene, jumping up and down and waving. Something tiny was flashing in his hand. He was pointing to the cork.
I nearly dropped the damned bottle.
But I couldn’t let him out. I had walked in here alone; I had to walk out alone or all hell would break loose. I put my finger to my lips and then tried to signal one minute. I opened my briefcase and plunged the bottle into its depths, slammed the lid shut on the safe-deposit box, and started pressing the buzzer like a crazy person.
The teller flung the door open. “Is everything all right?” she said, looking concerned.
“I’m claustrophobic,” I gasped, hoping I was putting on a convincing act. “I’m about to have an anxiety attack. Can you hurry and get me out of here?”
Reversing the same lengthy process, she did hurry, and I thanked her as I fairly ran out of the bank and jogged all the way to the Park ’n’ Lock garage where I had left my red Chevy Avalanche. I threw myself into the driver’s seat and tore open the briefcase.
I got the bottle out and popped the cork. A sinuous stream of white smoke trailed up from the mouth of the bottle and slowly took form.
Chapter 20
As soon as the smoke became Gene the genie, I launched myself like a one-hundred-and-ten-pound missile across the console into his arms. Pressing him against me as tight as I could hold him, I was convinced he was solid and real. I couldn’t stop touching him, kissing his face, crying and laughing all at once like a wild woman.
“Don’t disappear. Don’t disappear,” I kept saying over and over.
Finally, my sobs subsiding, I became calm enough to ask, “How? How did you get back here? How did you get in the safe-deposit box? Ohmygod, have you been there for sixty years?”
“Sweetheart,” he whispered, holding me on his lap, “I’m here. I’m not leaving you. Not ever, as long as there is breath in my body, not ever again. And this ring is not going to disappear again either.”
Then he produced my diamond ring and slipped it on my finger. “Will you marry me, Ravine?”
“As soon as we can get the license.” I laughed. “Now tell me the story of how you got back.”
“I guess you do need to know, now don’t you,” he teased and kissed the end of my nose. “To answer that first question you asked—I’ve only been in the box for a couple of months. The plan was for you to come get me on Christmas, you know. And as to how I got here, you should be very thankful I am a gambling man.”
“Explain,” I said, kissing him on the lips very thoroughly. “But please be quick in explaining, because I’m not sure how long you’re going to feel like talking,” I murmured, reluctantly pulling away.
Then he gave me what he called “the short version.” One minute Gene was in the hospital room; the next he found himself back in the caliph’s palace in the Sahara. The crafty old magus was standing right there, shaking his head, demanding to know what Gene had come back there for. He told Gene that most genies figure out how to break the enchantment same as Gene and I did, only no other genie had waited more than sixty years before doing so.
The magus kept muttering and shaking his head, not knowing what to do with Gene. Gene told him he wanted to go back home to Australia. The magus rolled his eyes and said it couldn’t be done. Then Gene asked him if he could come back to the twenty-first century, back to where he had just been. The magus rolled his eyes again, mumbling and cursing under his breath. Finally he went and got the caliph. Unfortunately, Gene’s return ended up interrupting the caliph in the middle of something he didn’t want to interrupt. His mood when he saw that Gene had come back was not a friendly one.
The caliph told the magus to enchant Gene again and throw the bottle in the sea. Gene started talking fast, spinning a tale about love and honor, disappointment and broken hearts. He told a good story and the caliph was entertained. He thought it would be amusing to leave Gene’s fate up to chance, as in a game of chance. The caliph proposed a game of dice. If Gene won, the caliph promised to get Gene back to Pennsylvania in time for Christmas. At this point, Gene laughed. If there was one thing he was good at, I was to remember, it was gambling. Gene won, of course.
“Hmm,” I said. “As I recall, gambling wasn’t the only thing you were good at.”
As it so happens, in my new Chevy the back windows are nearly black, tinted so deeply that somebody outside the truck can’t see in—not that there was anybody walking around in the parking garage right then anyway. And since Gene really was awfully good at something other than dice, he whisked us with a little genie magic into the backseat, our clothes vanished in a wink, and he used his expertise at pleasing me over and over again.
After a couple of hours, we went to pick up Brady together, and my mother’s face shone with happiness when Gene and I walked through the door. She grabbed him in a hug, and afterward made him drink some milk and eat some still-warm cookies. Before we left, she whispered to me, “I told you that you did not know what Gene could or could not do.”
But despite the whisper, Gene heard her, and after we headed out the door to go home, he said to me with mischief in his eyes, “I’m an Australian. We have the can-do spirit and we can-do anything. Did you think I was going to spend my life in the caliph’s palace, even with its seraglio? Hell no. I was going to get back to you somehow. And lady, I’m an Australian. So I did!”
He also proved his can-do spirit in our bed that night when we did again what we had been doing in the backseat of the Avalanche. And I thought, since the timing was right, that in about nine months, our family would have the perfect Christmas present.
And during that delightful
first night, when all my unhappiness vanished like smoke, Gene told me I had three wishes to make all over again. But I took out the paper where I wrote the wish that I had never made, and while Gene held me in his arms, I made just one.
Acknowlegments
It is entirely true that my own ancestors included Native Americans, but who they were (and there were at least two) remains lost to history. A gravestone for perhaps one of them is in the Noxen cemetery. But the best evidence for their existence is written on the faces of my forefathers, particularly my grandfather who looked unmistakably Native American. As a child I had gotten into my head somehow that my mysterious ancestors were Lenni Lenape. It turns out that is entirely plausible. One of my cousins who is interested in genealogy says he found out that one Native American ancestor came from Canada. But none of us has any evidence to give credence to our beliefs.
During the course of writing this novel, I researched the Native Americans of Luzerne and Wyoming counties, Pennsylvania, at “first contact.” It proved both immensely frustrating—there’s not all that much known—and fascinating. My primary source was the Smithsonian’s monumental work, Handbook of North American Indians, edited by William C. Sturtevant. I spent my time with volume 15, Northeast, edited by Bruce G. Trigger. I also consulted The Ancient Native Americans of the Wyoming Valley: 10,000 Years of Prehistory, by John Orlandini, and Indians in Pennsylvania, by Paul A. W. Wallace, created under the auspices of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The latter book, on page 176, contains a brief description of Chief Kakowatchiky of Shawnee Flats. Readers might find it an eerie coincidence, as I did, since I did not have this information when I created the novel’s plot, that the man who located the ill and dying chief at the end of his life was named John Patton.