“Not if she wants to keep her position. And if Emily were to leave us, I don’t know what I’d do. No,” she sighed. “I can only coax Cassie into behaving like the good and obedient child I usually know her to be. To encourage her by example, I suppose.” Josie’s tongue tasted sour in her mouth. Was she as much of a priss as she sounded?
nobody can be good all the time josie—the pointer spelled out. its up to our parents to be fair to us even when we arent good—
Alec’s mother had never locked him in a closet all day. She’d never let him go hungry, or call him an imbecile, or turn him away when all he wanted was her arms snug around him. Josie knew all this for certain.
Future Perfect
18.
There was something ever so slightly familiar about Dr. D’Amato—or Alonzo, since he insisted upon first names—as if Alec had met him once before, in one of those dreams that actually have a plot. Alonzo was as tall as a pro basketball player, he laughed more often than Alec would have expected from a psychiatrist, and his beard was so black it almost looked as if the man had drawn it on with a Sharpie. There was a little ceramic bowl with burning incense in the waiting room, and an enormous canvas above the sofa that looked as if the artist had played a few rounds of paintball.
Mrs. Frost came in and sat with them for the first few minutes, and Alec knew she was trying to get him to feel as comfortable as possible before she left to run her errands. When she went out, Alonzo turned to a fresh page on his yellow notepad and said, “Your mom is pretty cool, huh? I bet you’re happy to be stuck with her.”
Alec grinned in spite of his nerves.
“All right,” Alonzo said. “Time to get real. Do you think there’s something you could have done to prevent your parents’ breakup?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“Nope.”
“I mean, I know the answer’s supposed to be ‘no.’”
“Is it?”
“Are you one of those shrinks who turns everything back into a question?”
“I don’t know. Do all your shrinks ask too many questions?”
Alec laughed.
“Don’t read too much into it. Is there anything you feel like you could have done or done differently?”
Alec hesitated. “No.”
“I’m asking because a lot of the time kids feel like there must be some way they’ve been inadequate. Unconsciously, of course. Like if they were more lovable their parents would be trying harder to stay together, even though that’s totally not rational, right?”
“I guess.”
“What’s happening to your family now, these tectonic shifts, all this goes well beyond the realm of ‘rational.’ Your head can be telling you one thing while your heart’s feeling something else.” The doctor opened his top desk drawer. “Would you like to play a game?”
Alec gave the doctor a skeptical look, and Alonzo laughed. “I’m not conning you, I promise,” he said as he drew out a pack of playing cards. “This really will be fun. Fun for me too, actually.” Alonzo slid the cards out of the box, shuffled them a few times, fanned them out and offered them to Alec. “Pick one and leave it face down. Don’t look at it yet.” Alec chose a card. “Okay, now turn it over. Take a few moments to look at it, and then I want you to tell me the first thoughts that pop into your head.”
Alec flipped the card and frowned. This wasn’t a deck of ordinary playing cards at all. Instead of diamonds or spades the card had a color illustration of a small boy leaning out an open window, reaching for something beyond the confines of the picture. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong here,” Alec said.
“Where would you rather be?” Alonzo asked. “Where would you belong?”
Nineteen fifteen, he wanted to say—but if his mother hadn’t told Alonzo about the talking board and Josie’s letter, he wasn’t about to bring it up. They already had plenty to talk about without Alonzo having to wonder if Alec was out-of-his-mind crazy. “Not somewhere else,” he amended. “Some other time.”
“Do you ever imagine what your life will be like in the future?” Alonzo asked.
“How do you mean? Like in high school, or when I’m grown up?”
The doctor smiled. “Either one. Both. It’s fun to think about, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
The therapist waited for him to elaborate. “Do you think about it, Alec?”
He opened his mouth to explain that the present was awful enough without taking all the terror of the future into account, too—that the past was the only place where things still made any sense—but he didn’t know how to put words around it.
“Let me reframe the question,” Alonzo said. “Imagine a year has passed. You’re in seventh grade. Your dad has been doing his own thing for a good while now. You and your mom are used to your new life.” He paused. “Do you think it will be easier to be happy—to have optimistic thoughts about the future?” Alonzo wagged his finger. “And don’t just say ‘I guess.’ I really want you to imagine what life will be like.”
Alec stared through the carpet, trying to picture himself two inches taller and generally quicker to smile. He knew he would grow older, taller, wiser, in theory, at least; yet the future still felt highly improbable somehow, like a country too dangerous to visit.
Two nights later Alec told Josie all about the session with Alonzo. “It was actually kind of fun,” he said. “We played a card game, and he got me to talk about my feelings and stuff.”
are you ever lonely alec?
“I guess I am, sometimes. But I don’t really know what else to compare it to.”
do you ever wish you had a brother or sister?
“When I talk to you, I do,” he replied, but his own words sounded out of tune somehow. He liked Josie better than he could imagine feeling about a sister, even a fun sister like Cass.
They spoke for hours, if you could call it speaking. It was only fair that she should ask most of the questions. Tell me about your mother, your grandmother, your father, the house as it is then. Tell me how you’ve decorated it for Christmas. What color is the house now? Yellow? In our time it is dove-gray, with dark blue trim. He told her about Grammy Sal’s gingerbread men and the sweater she was knitting for him, and all about Harry Potter, because of course Josie didn’t know what a Weasley sweater was.
oh—how i would love to read all the good books yet to be written—
When he wrote this down in his notebook he added an exclamation point. That was how she must have said it.
A Fancy Word for “Witch”
19.
Josie waited until the house was still—past eleven, by the chiming of the hall clock—and crept down the kitchen stairs to the reading room with her notebook and candle, a blanket slung over her arm as usual. She laid down the blanket to block the light and went to the cabinet. So intent was she on speaking to Alec that she’d brought the board to the table, settled herself in her chair and opened the notebook to a fresh page before she noticed she wasn’t alone in the room.
Her mother sat in an armchair by the window. She might have been waiting there for hours. “What are you doing?” she asked in an even tone.
Josie’s heart raced and her mouth went sour with the knowledge that nothing would be the same now. Everything was spoiled. Why, why, why hadn’t she stayed in bed?
Mrs. Clifford rose and came into the light, wearing that look Josie now thought of as the sorceress’s smile. Mrs. Gubbins says ‘sorceress’ is just a fancy word for ‘witch.’ Had there ever been a time when her mother hadn’t gotten exactly what she wanted?
“Answer me, Josephine.” There was no sternness in her voice, only satisfaction.
“I should think, Mother, that the answer to your question is self-evident.”
Mrs. Clifford seated herself at the table opposite her daughter. “Then by all means, con
tinue.” She laid the glass pointer on the question mark, rested her graceful tapered fingertips upon it, and nodded to the open notepad on the far end of the table. Josie picked up the pencil without looking her mother in the eye. If she did, she might be too tempted to spit in it.
“Now then,” said Lavinia Clifford. “Let us converse with your friend Alec.”
“But how . . .” Josie sputtered. “How do you know his name?”
Again, she smiled that horrible smile in lieu of an answer.
It was excruciating, the hour that followed. The pointer sprung into motion, directed to HELLO before spelling her name, as it always did. Josie opened her mouth, but her mother shushed her.
“Good evening, Alec. I understand you are alive and well in the twenty-first century. I have been anticipating this conversation for quite some time.” Again the pointer began to move.
this isnt josie—
“Alec, I’m here. But my—”
Her mother reached across the board and slapped her hand. “I believe that we have been granted this chance to communicate for a higher purpose, Alec. I wish to share this miracle with the world. Will you help me in this noble work?”
please maam—id like to talk to josie—
“Josie has been using the talking board without my permission. I will not allow her to do so again.”
please just let me talk to josie—
“I will permit you to speak to her once you have answered certain questions to my satisfaction. Will you co-operate?” Slowly, reluctantly, the pointer moved to YES.
Alec answered all the questions she asked him. A temperance bill would pass in 1919, though people would go on drinking as much as before, and national women’s suffrage would pass the following year. America would enter the war, and win, and President Wilson would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Josie began to wonder if he were reading from his history book. It was so much to remember, and she knew she herself couldn’t have described in such detail the political events of a hundred years before.
Soon her mother grew impatient with the near future, finding it too much as she had expected. She wanted to hear of the flight industry, and the trip to the moon, and all the presidents yet to be born. Have the people of the future found the way to world peace? No? Then how many more wars would there be in the next hundred years? Where, and why, and who would prove victorious?
Josie wrote everything down, alternately stunned by the future taking shape beneath her pencil and itching for the moment she’d be able to apologize for her mother’s behavior. Mother will ask him just one more question, she kept thinking, and then she’ll allow me to talk to him.
ive answered your questions mrs clifford—now will you please let me talk to josie?
“Some other time, perhaps.” Lavinia Clifford lifted the pointer and moved to pick up the board.
Josie brought her hand down on the wooden panel. “But you said I could talk to him once you’d—”
Mrs. Clifford slid the board out from under her palm and brought the pieces back to the cabinet. “I said some other time, Josephine. Now go up to bed.”
* * *
Mrs. Clifford was still in bed the afternoon after her latest session with Dr. Jennings. On the morning of the doctor’s departure they saw Mrs. Pike bring up the customary tray of tea and broth, and Josie resolved to take advantage of the situation.
“I want to talk to Dr. Jennings,” she whispered across the dining table. Emily opened her mouth to reply, but Josie went on, “Not here. I want to talk to him where she can’t hear us. At the hotel.”
“Why do you want to talk to him?”
“I want to tell him about Alec.” There was more to it than that. Perhaps the doctor could advise her on this new problem of her mother’s interference.
Emily nodded, and when the housekeeper came in to clear the breakfast dishes she told Mrs. Pike that they were going for an early walk.
The girls put on their coats and went out into the blustery morning. The Manningford Inn had a porch that wrapped around all four sides, and it was by the front railing that Josie met Mabel Foley, in a circle of girls all in the green uniform of the Day School.
Josie’s heart beat queerly, as if she had committed some wrongdoing and had just been found out. “Why, hello, Mabel.”
Mabel cast a glance to her friends on either side before returning the greeting. “Good morning,” she said, and immediately pressed her fingers to her lips. A moment later, when their party of three had passed through the front door, Josie understood why: peals of laughter rippled through the group, followed by a chorus of whispers.
As they entered the hotel lobby she took Emily’s other hand, and squeezed it hard. “Don’t give them another thought,” her tutor murmured. “Sometimes your mother is right.”
There was a crimson velvet borne sofa at the center of the hotel lobby, the novelty and elegance of which Cass could not resist. Emily and Josie left her sitting quietly, running her hands back and forth over the plush velvet seat, Mrs. Gubbins in her lap.
They found the doctor in the dining room, absorbed in the newspaper over the remnants of his sausage and eggs. “Aha! Miss Clifford!” he said, though he didn’t seem at all surprised to see her.
Emily laid a hand on Josie’s shoulder. “May we join you, Doctor?”
“It will only take a minute,” Josie rushed to add. He gestured to the two empty chairs across the table, and the girls seated themselves.
As she took her chair, Emily made certain she could see Cassie through the doorway. “We heard you are leaving for the city this morning, Dr. Jennings.”
“I am, indeed. Miss Whipple went by the early train.” The doctor folded the newspaper and laid it on the table beside his plate.
“But you will be back?”
“Oh, certainly. Mrs. Clifford and her coterie of spirits have not finished with me yet.” Dr. Jennings hailed a passing waiter. “Tea, for my guests,” he said. “Now, to what do I owe this delightful surprise?” He smiled as he poured himself what was left of the coffee in his carafe.
Josie stared at him. Then she blurted, “I hide in the back hall so I can hear everything. I was there when she told you about Viola.” She regretted saying as much as she watched the smile fall from his face, but there was no help for it now. “I can’t manage it every time you come, but I have seen and heard things very few people would believe. Including myself,” she added, “and I did see it.”
Dr. Jennings looked to her tutor and raised an eyebrow. “And you permit this, Miss Jasper?”
Emily gave him a wry little smile. “My purpose is to encourage her curiosity, sir—in whatever form it takes.”
The doctor echoed her smile and turned to Josie. “Was there something you wished to ask me? About something your mother said in trance, perhaps?”
“Not exactly. Dr. Jennings, I have been making my own . . . how shall I put it . . . experiments into the true nature of the spirit world, and you are the only person I can think of who might understand.” The doctor nodded, and she continued. “I have been using my mother’s talking board to converse with someone I believe to be living in our house a very long time from now.”
The doctor frowned. “Someone living in your house—in the future?” Josie nodded. “And what has this entity communicated to you, to allow you to think so? You are utterly convinced, I can see that.”
“He knows things about our family, things even I didn’t know. My mother isn’t exactly forthcoming.”
Again the doctor nodded, with a faint smile of amusement. “And how did he claim to know these details about your family?”
“He says he has been to the public library, that there is an archive there. A box of materials relating to my mother’s mediumship. That’s how he knew about you, Dr. Jennings. He read about you in one of the Spiritualist magazines.” She remembered Baldassar
e’s prophecy, and felt a pang of sadness as she met the doctor’s eye. “I know that doesn’t sound like proof of anything, but he told me those magazines are falling to pieces. They’re a hundred years old.”
Dr. Jennings stroked his beard as he listened. “I see. What other evidence did he offer?”
The waiter brought the tea and poured them each a cup as Josie told the doctor about the newspaper of November 28th. “He told me every single caption, two weeks in advance,” she said. “Not a word out of place.”
“Extraordinary,” murmured the doctor.
“Oh, please don’t say it like that, sir.” Josie picked up her teacup, paused, and set it down again. “You must admit that even if he’d merely predicted them, as my mother is wont to make predictions in her trance state, they are never as detailed as a word-for-word headline.” She took a sip of her tea. “Not even the most gifted prophet could be so precise.”
“And you believe the most rational explanation is that they were not, in fact, predictions at all.” She nodded, and the doctor leaned back in his chair, staring at a point somewhere above her head. “I must say, Miss Clifford, this is downright fascinating, and I assure you I am not merely saying so to indulge you. Does the gentleman purport to be from the twenty-first century?”
She nodded. “From the year two thousand fifteen. And he’s just my own age.”
“And he claims he is living in your house?”
She nodded. “He says the great cabinet in the reading room is still there, and that he found the talking board in the drawer.”
“I have never heard the like of this. It is a fantastic story, and if it is true then it changes absolutely everything we know of the nature of time. We must always employ scientific methods in our investigations, however, and guard against the pitfalls of wishful thinking.”
“Oh, but I didn’t wish he WAS from the future,” Josie replied quickly, and Emily gently tapped her hand. She was speaking too loudly. “At first I thought he was a restless spirit,” she whispered.
“I must admit it seems unlikely you will gather the empirical evidence needed to prove your hypothesis beyond all reasonable doubt,” he went on. “I imagine, though, that if it is true, your friend from the future has ample evidence on his side of things.” He chuckled.
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