“When I find you a new tutor. Really, Josephine, you can be so tiresome.”
From the doorway Cass piped up, “Can’t you write to Emily and tell her it was a mistake?”
Mrs. Clifford flashed her younger daughter one of her Looks. “It was not a mistake.”
Josie tried again. “Couldn’t we go to the day school?”
“And spend your time gossiping with Mabel Foley and her silly friends? I think not.”
“They’re learning more than I am at the moment.” Those precious lively minutes at the birthday party had shown her just how isolated they truly were. They must go to school, even if Mabel Foley went on laughing at her, and even if they did not learn any more than they could have at home.
“I sent away for those lectures, and Cassandra finally has her precious elocution exercises,” Mrs. Clifford pointed out. “Don’t you stand there telling me I won’t let you learn anything.”
“I can’t ask questions from a book of lectures,” Josie said. “Besides, it’s difficult to concentrate on my reading with Cass always speaking aloud.”
“You make me glad all over again for having dismissed Miss Jasper,” her mother replied coolly. “You two are the most exasperatingly undisciplined children.” Lavinia looked at her younger daughter, and sniffed. “Honestly, some days I can’t even tell what Mr. Berringsley sees in you.”
Josie cleared her throat. “If all that’s true, then isn’t it all the more reason to send us to school?”
“You are already aware of my position on that subject.” She took a fresh sheet of paper from the stack on her desk and loaded it into the typewriter.
“We can’t live like this.”
Her mother raised an eyebrow. “Live like what, Josephine?”
“Cooped in this house. You never allow us to go anywhere, not even for a walk in fine weather.”
“I do not allow it because I recall what happened the last time you were permitted out of the house on your own.”
“You could walk with us,” Cass pointed out.
Her mother laughed, as if the idea were patently ridiculous. “I have a book to finish.”
Josie folded her arms. “You go for walks with Merritt.”
“That, my dears, is my precious serenity-time, without the likes of you encroaching upon my addled mind—as you are doing now, I might point out.”
“This isn’t fair!” Josie cried. “We are like two figures in a dollhouse, only making an imitation at living.”
“That’s very poetic,” her mother said dryly as she made a show of looking over the page she’d just finished typing. “Perhaps you should try your hand at free verse. You might become a famous hermit poetess, like Emily Dickinson, and everyone will say how my cruelty inspired your very best work.”
“How long are we to go on living like this, Mother? Where shall I go when I am grown? What shall I do? How shall I be of use to anyone outside this house?”
“Heaven knows, as you are precious little use to anyone inside it.”
Josie knew she could not pause to contemplate this remark or the hurt would eclipse her resolve. “Will you ever let me leave this house? Will you permit me to go to college, or to marry?”
“You are twelve years of age. So no, I shall not permit you to marry.”
Josie’s last scrap of dignity finally deserted her. She stamped her foot. “Don’t mock me.”
“What did you say?”
“You are mocking me, Mother. I may be only twelve years of age, but I will not stand to be mocked.”
Mrs. Clifford smiled that disdainful smile. “I did not invite you in here to mock you. You invited yourself.”
* * *
“Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran,” Cass said, careful to enunciate each and every consonant. “Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran!”
Josie looked up from her copy of Brown University’s Lectures in Natural History, Volume One. “Do you have to say the same line quite so many times?”
“I’m supposed to say each line twelve times before I go onto the next,” Cass replied matter-of-factly. “Mrs. Gubbins says not to worry if I irritate you now, because someday you’ll be terribly proud of me.”
Josie rolled her eyes before making another half-hearted attempt to comprehend the densely-worded text in front of her. She cradled her chin in her palm, wondering if anyone would notice or care if she crept back to her bed at three o’clock in the afternoon. Then—through the soft rhythmic scratching of the needle against the lock groove, beneath her sister’s tedious recitations—she thought she heard a voice.
Josie?
She cocked her head this way and that, like a bird.
Cass?
“Shh,” Josie said. “Stop for a moment. Do you hear that?”
Cass stopped speaking, and her eyes went saucer-wide as the voice came through the phonograph horn again:
Josie, are you there?
“You’re not recording on that cylinder,” Josie said slowly.
The girls paused, waiting. I can hear you! said a boy’s voice. Through the phonograph horn!
“It’s Alec!” Cass cried.
Josie felt her heart thudding against her blouse. “It can’t be!”
Josie? Cass? It’s me! I’m here!
Cass stuck her head into the phonograph horn. “What are you doing in there, Alec?”
They heard him laugh. You sound just like I thought you would, Cass.
And Josie knew then, beyond all earthly doubt—since she had already heard Alec’s voice once before—that Lavinia Clifford was at least half of what she claimed to be. “How did you ever . . . ?” Josie began faintly. “I never thought I’d speak to you again. And speak—truly speak! How have you managed it?”
You wrote me a letter telling me what to do.
Josie frowned. “But I . . .”
You haven’t done it yet, but you will. You see? The future you wrote to the me from the past. Doesn’t that blow your mind?
“Blow your mind,” she murmured. “Yes, I suppose it does.” She sighed. “I’m so sorry, Alec. I never should have cooperated with her. I should have known how it would turn out.” Again she thought of his voice coming out of her mother’s mouth, and shivered. But it was the best feeling in the world, to call him by name!
There was nothing you could have done, Josie. He told them about finding Mrs. Gubbins and the “time capsule” box in Emily’s old cabinet. We found these wax cylinders, too, you put them in a box for us, and Danny’s dad let us borrow an old phonograph.
“Did you like the peppermints?” Cass cut in. “The peppermints were my idea.”
“Hush up and let him speak, will you?”
“We’ve missed you, Alec,” Cass sighed. “I wish we could hop on a boat and come see you.”
You don’t have to go anywhere, he pointed out with a laugh. You can hang tight, but you’re going to have to wait awhile.
“You know something, Alec?” said Cass. “You talk kind of peculiar.”
Josie nudged her sister. “Don’t be rude!”
It’s okay. You guys talk a bit strange too. It’s the time difference. He laughed.
They talked for two hours that first afternoon: of Emily’s dismissal, and their inability even to go for a walk around the block, and of Alec running out on his dad to watch these things called robots—like mechanical people—sing Christmas carols instead. At one point Josie instructed him to go on talking about nothing important until she told him he could stop, and she went out into the corridor and closed the door. “I couldn’t hear you from outside,” she said when she came back in. “That means we can talk to you all we like and no one will know.”
Mrs. Pike rang the bell for dinner, and they reluctantly said their goodbyes. Josie clasped her sister by the shoulders.
“You must promise not to say a word about this to anyone. And by ‘anyone,’ I mean Mother especially.”
That night they talked again, fielding Cassie’s frequent interjections. “What do you look like, Alec? Are you tall or small? Stout or lean?”
“Cass!” Josie gasped. “It isn’t polite to ask someone if they’re stout!”
“Brown hair or blond?” she went on. “Green eyes or blue? Do you have freckles across your nose? I have a freckle on my nose, and I named it Esmeralda.”
At last the little girl wore herself out. Josie carried her to bed, and turned back to the phonograph. “Could you see me?” She hesitated. “In your time?”
You’d love it here, Josie. Women can do anything they want to.
“Of course you know we can’t vote. It’s the one thing Mother and I agree on.”
You will, he said. I looked it up. Women in New York State get to vote in 1917. That’s only next year. And in 1920 there’ll be a constitutional amendment. Then every woman in America will be able to vote.
“1920 feels like a lifetime from now,” she said. “I wish I could live in the future. Life must be so much easier and fairer then.”
It’s definitely not perfect. We’re making a mess of the planet, and a lot of rotten stuff has happened. Stuff I didn’t tell you much about when your mom took over the board.
“You mean the wars?”
And lots of other stuff you don’t need to know about. He paused. It’s not like you could do anything about it.
“You don’t think we can change what’s to come?”
Not the big stuff, I don’t think. But maybe we can make a difference to each other.
“You already have,” she said softly. “Oh, Alec. It is so good to know the sound of your voice.”
How about this? If you could go anywhere in time . . .
“Besides twenty-sixteen, you mean?”
She could hear the smile in his voice. Yeah. If you could only go backwards.
“I’d go to the library at Alexandria.” She paused, considering. “Of course, I’d have to study all the old languages before I went, so I could actually read the parchments.”
Talking to Alec through the phonograph was the best sort of secret: it hurt no one to keep it, and it made their lonely days much easier to live through. It was like a butterscotch candy that never melted.
Afraid of the Truth
28.
Grammy Sal came and baked enough snickerdoodles to satisfy every sweet tooth in Edwardstown. Alec was happy to see her—not to mention grateful for the treats—but the reason for her visit weighted every lull in the conversation. While he was in school they were going into the city so his mother could sign the divorce papers.
Late that night he went down the back stairs for a cookie before he settled in to talk to Josie and stopped just out of sight when he heard his mother crying. She was trying to speak, but she was so upset that he couldn’t make out any words. “Shh, shh,” murmured Grammy Sal. “I know, honey. I know he did. And there isn’t a doubt in my mind that, at the time, he meant it.”
* * *
I’m sorry about your parents, Josie said.
He thought back over the end of last summer, how everything had haunted him then, and how it felt as if it always would. “It’s okay. I mean, not okay, but it could be worse, right?”
There was a silence on the other end of the phonograph, and he began to wonder if he’d put his foot in it. When Josie spoke again she changed the subject. I wish I knew how to bake. Mrs. Dowd will never let me make anything. Sometimes I feel that I’ll be stuck in this house forever—always a nuisance, always a child.
“It won’t always be like that.” Alec spoke with more certainty than he felt. Logically he knew that they would both grow up, leave this house, and do whatever they wanted—or at least that was what they were meant to do. The tiny gravestone nudged itself back into his thoughts.
* * *
Danny had been desperate for a sleepover, but Grammy Sal’s visit had prevented it. Now that he’d finally gotten his opportunity to talk to the Clifford girls, Alec had never seen him so exuberant. The present-day bedroom could not contain his energy, and it flowed through the phonograph horn, where Cass picked it up on the other end and giggled uncontrollably. Don’t mind her, Josie said. She’s laughing at her own farts again.
“Wait,” said Danny. “You say ‘fart’?”
Why, what other word would I use?
“I guess I thought it was a new word.”
Alec felt a flicker of frustration that they couldn’t talk about more important things with Danny here, but then, it didn’t seem fair to be irritated with Danny either. He made an effort to laugh when they did.
As the conversation continued, with Danny gleefully egging Cass on (“a snot-rocket is when you blow your nose, and it hangs down to your chin all yellow and goopy”), Alec could hear Josie’s embarrassment for having to hush her sister. You’ll think I really am the most horrible scold, Danny, but we can’t risk anyone coming in here and discovering this.
“Sorry, Josie,” said Danny, making an attempt to sober himself. “I wouldn’t want to get you guys in trouble. Alec told me how it ended last time.”
“Dude, that was the weirdest, awesomest thing that ever happened to me,” he murmured from the spare room once the girls had said their goodbyes. They’d left the adjoining door open at bedtime so they could talk. “My dad’s starting to ask when we’re giving back the phonograph, but don’t worry, I’ll put him off for as long as I can.”
* * *
The graveyard was a different place by day. The breeze blew through the sycamores, making the leaves shiver audibly. Rabbits and squirrels, robins and sparrows and even a bluejay hopped between the headstones. The whole place smelled fresh and green and new.
In daylight they could also see the stained glass windows inside the mausoleums. They paused at one, marked BERRINGSLEY in the stone above the doorway, and pressed their faces against the elaborate wrought-iron gate. There were dead leaves and animal droppings all over the marble floor. “Doesn’t matter how much money you got,” Danny remarked. “You’re still gonna die, and birds are gonna poop all over you.”
For a while they wandered around the tiny gray buildings and took in the view over Edwardstown, all the Victorian rooftops, tidy streets and towering maples. They’d come to look at the grave again, but, now that they were here, Alec dreaded the sight of it.
Then suddenly it was right in front of them, the mottled little marker a stark reminder of all the things he could not change. In the dark that Halloween night he hadn’t noticed the weeping angel just beyond the tiny grave. WILLIAM CLIFFORD. “Cassie’s father,” Alec said, pointing. His was the only name on the headstone.
Danny took out his phone and snapped a picture. “Whose do you think the little one is?”
“I’m afraid to find out.”
“Alec,” Danny said, and he knew what his friend was going to say. “It might be hers, or it might be someone else’s, but it doesn’t change—”
“I know. I know she’s dead.” He didn’t want to think of either of them lying here under the grass. They didn’t belong here, not when he’d heard their laughter the night before, his name in their mouths. “I know they’re gone,” he managed to say. “But I can still worry about how and when, can’t I? It still matters.” He sat cross-legged in the grass, his elbows on his knees, his fist against his cheek.
Danny plopped down beside him. “Maybe it’s Lavinia’s.”
“No way. She would’ve had a huge stone with a whole flock of sobbing angels.” Alec sighed. “Every other stone that size belongs to a kid.”
* * *
The next day they went to the library and sat down at the terminals. “We should find out if they have any descendants,” Danny said. “Maybe there are some sti
ll living here.”
It was downright weird to think of Josie and Cassie having children and grandchildren, but he needed to know. Alec input the search terms—Clifford, Josephine, 1915-1930—and held his breath.
The results went on for pages. Clifford, Josephine, author. New York Evening Star. The dates ranged from 1921 to 1930. “She’s a journalist!” He was dizzy with delight. He couldn’t wait to tell her. The grave, he thought. It can’t be hers.
“Print, print, print!” Danny chanted, and Alec printed out the first few articles in the list to read later.
“Now for Cassie.” This time he tried a wider date range, since Cassie was younger, but there were no hits for Clifford, Cassandra, Clifford, Cassie, or Clifford, Cass.
“What if you widen the date range?”
Alec shook his head. It was like this: if he were to find out exactly where, when, and how, then he wouldn’t be able to change it.
Instead Danny typed in Lavinia Clifford, obituary. “Wow. She was pretty young.”
Alec craned his neck. “How young?”
“Forty-five.” The medium had died, so it said, of a nervous illness brought on by the stress of her calling. It was a condensed version of the profile they’d read in the Spiritualist magazine, mentioning Horace Vandegrift and William Berringsley, and even the name of her bodyguard. Alec read it over two more times, as if the words could change to tell him what he needed to know. Why wasn’t there any mention of Lavinia Clifford’s daughters?
“That’s weird. The obit always lists children, doesn’t it?” Danny muttered, as if reading his thoughts.
“There’s something else we should check.” Alec opened a new window and Googled child abuse laws history. He clicked on the first link and the boys read the article together. The first federal child protection laws weren’t passed until 1974, it read, although there were independent welfare agencies from the 19th century onward. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded in 1875. Not much, but better than nothing.
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