“If you’ve only come to wish me good night, then good night,” her mother replied. “You know how important this book is to me—it will ensure my legacy—and you are quite old enough to understand how every interruption sets me back.”
How foolish Josie had been to think that tonight, of all nights, she might reach her! If anything she could have done or said would have made a difference, then they would not be going away to begin with. “Good night, then, Mother.”
The clacking of the typewriter resumed as she went out of the study and closed the door behind her. I don’t know when I’ll see her again, Josie thought as she climbed the stairs. It might be months—or years—or never. She locked the door from the inside, and packed her suitcase with one change of clothing along with the books Emily had left behind.
Josie lay awake, worrying of two things: that Merritt would prevent them from leaving, and—if they were able to leave—of their future keep. To Emily they were dear as sisters, but she could not expect her old friend to support them. She pushed from her mind all thoughts of Alec. Leaving her mother’s house was the right thing to do, and she must take as much comfort in that conviction as she was able.
But she ought to have known it wouldn’t be that easy. Sometime past midnight, wiping away tears, she rose and went to the phonograph. “Alec?” she whispered. “Alec, are you there?”
I’m here!
“I can’t sleep.”
Me neither. I don’t know what I’m gonna do without you, Josie. It’s so wrong to be saying goodbye to you like this, when I’ll never see—I mean, speak to you again. He paused. But you’ve gotta go. I know you do.
“I’ll write you.” As she spoke she twisted the hem of her nightgown with trembling fingers. “Wherever I go, I’ll find a safe place, and someday I’ll tell you all about it.”
There followed a moment of silence, laden with all the things he did not need to say: I don’t want any more letters. Letters aren’t enough.
What he said aloud was, I wanted to tell you this earlier, only I was hoping it wouldn’t be the last time we talked. I found out why there weren’t any matches for Cassandra Clifford. She changed her name. That’s why I couldn’t find her before we found the playbill.
Josie cast a glance at the bed across the room, where her sister lay sleeping in the tangled quilts. “What did she change it to?”
Jasper.
“You mean . . . they’ll adopt her?”
I don’t know for sure, but it looks that way. And there’s one more thing. It’s about you, Josie.
“I’m afraid to ask.”
Your articles only go up to 1928. It makes me wonder if you end up doing something else.
Nineteen twenty-eight! She knew it would come eventually, and yet it seemed as likely as a masquerade ball on the ocean floor.
Whatever it is, Josie, I know you’re gonna be amazing.
She almost laughed. “If we can get through the morning I’ll consider it an accomplishment.”
The clock in the hall struck four. I know you have to go.
She swallowed hard, but the lump in her throat would not pass. “I don’t want to.”
I don’t want you to, either.
“It’s easier for you, you know. You’ll always be able to look for me, and you’ll have my letters. But I won’t ever know the first thing about what happens to you from now on.”
I know, Josie. I know. I’d give anything to be able to write you.
“Will you remember me?”
I’ll think about you every day.
She’d been so intent on the conversation that she was startled to notice Cass kneeling beside her, rubbing the sand from her eyes. “Mrs. Gubbins says you’re taking real good care of her, Alec.”
Cass? What are you doing up so early?
“We’re going to live with Emily in the city.”
Josie turned to her, her earlier resolution dissolved in a sudden fit of tenderness. “Alec says you’re going to be a famous actress.”
It twisted at her heart to see the look of pure delight on Cassie’s face. “Really?”
“Shh!”
“Will I do Shakespeare, Alec? Will I be Juliet or Cordelia?”
“Anyone but Desdemona,” Josie quipped.
I don’t know about Shakespeare, but I’m sure you could if you wanted to. You’re gonna be in a play called “The Comet Party.”
“Am I the star?”
You sure are. Your picture’s on the cover of the playbill. It’ll be on at the Century Theatre and it was written by Byron Grimsby.
“Byron Grimsby?” Cassie wrinkled her nose. “What a silly name.”
Someday you can tell Byron Grimsby I told you about his play before he even wrote it.
“It’s time,” Josie whispered. “We’ve got to say goodbye.”
Write me a good long one, Josie. Write me a letter I can always reread.
She made no attempt to wipe away her tears as she slotted the wax cylinder in the box, tucked in the bedclothes, and finished gathering her things. It did not occur to her to leave her bed unmade, for Mrs. Pike would find enough fault with the rest of their actions. On her pillow she left the note she’d written that evening:
Dear Mother,
We have gone to live with Emily. You may be angry with us, but I suspect that it will be a relief to see us go. I will always be grateful to you for my life, and for the comfort and opportunity with which you provided us.
Your daughter,
Josie
“I’m ready.” Cass stood in the center of the room with her suitcase in one hand and Mrs. Gubbins clutched tightly in the crook of her arm.
“What are you doing?” Josie went for the doll, but Cass pulled it out of reach.
“I can’t leave her here!”
“But you can’t bring her, Cass!” Josie pointed through the spare-room doorway. “Don’t you see? It’s already done!”
Cassie paused as she always did—as if she were listening to the doll. “But you’re my friend,” she whispered.
“If we take her with us Alec will never find her in the cupboard,” said Josie, shifting her suitcase from one hand to the other. It was fast coming up on five o’clock.
Reluctantly Cass followed Josie into Emily’s old room and watched as Josie opened the cupboard door and placed the doll on the shelf beside the time capsule. “Yes. I understand. Good bye, Mrs. Gubbins. I’ll never forget you.”
Josie closed the cupboard door, and hesitated. Should she take the key? She looked down at Cass, who gazed back with wide somber eyes. Josie dropped the key in her pocket.
At five minutes to five the girls knelt at the reading-room window, peering out at the darkened street. Their pasteboard suitcases were waiting by the door. Josie reached for her sister’s hand and squeezed it hard.
“I hope they come soon,” Cass whispered. “I feel about ready to bletch.”
“I’m sorry about Mrs. Gubbins.”
Cass shrugged and gave her a tiny smile. “She’s Alec’s now.” A moment later Josie watched her face light up. Cass pressed her finger to the windowpane. “Look!”
A motorcar stood idling at the curb on the opposite side of the street. Josie felt herself rising to her feet, taking her sister’s hand, tiptoeing into the hall, and gathering the suitcases before they closed the front door for the last time. It seemed to her that they floated, not ran, to the strange auto waiting at the far curb. Emily, dressed in black, opened the back door and reached for their suitcases.
Josie couldn’t see who was in the driver’s seat; he only whispered something to Emily that Josie didn’t catch. As the motorcar turned the corner onto Hemlock Street, Cass buried her face in Emily’s bosom with a strangled cry of elation. Josie turned to look at the house through the back window. No tall dark figure had followed them onto t
he front walk this time, but a light was shining in her mother’s bedroom, and she could clearly see Merritt’s form like a sentinel at the window, his massive hand holding back the curtain. She felt a cold trickle down the back of her neck. He had let them leave.
Then Emily took her hand, and she turned around and settled herself on the seat. “Josie, Cass: I would like you to meet my uncle Simon, master of intrigue!”
With a chuckle, Uncle Simon took one hand off the wheel to tip his hat. “There’ll be plenty of time for how-do-you-do once we’re back in Manhattan,” he said as they turned onto the road that would take them most of the way there. “Not to mention breakfast. Just wait ’til you see the meal Nora’s cooking up. She’s beside herself waiting to meet you girls.”
“I hope there’s bacon,” Cass whispered, and Emily laughed as Josie shushed her. There was a momentary silence, which Josie filled with an anxious thought for all the trouble the Jaspers were about to take on their account.
Once again Emily took her hand. “Don’t worry, dear. Everything will be fine. I’ve thought it all through.” She sighed. “I wrote you every day for a month, you know. I don’t suppose she ever let you read them.”
Josie shook her head.
“None of that matters now though,” Emily said contentedly as Cass laid her head in her lap. “Well, my dears. We always said one day we would have an adventure.”
There Is More Than One
Kind of Happy Ending
38.
Alec found out after the girls were gone that his mother had bought the phonograph from Mr. Penhallow, and it only occurred to him years later—on a wintry weekday morning, deep in the stacks of a university library—that the version of her future he’d found in the archives was the future he’d helped her make. Everything might have turned out differently had she asked him not to look. After Josie and Cass were gone he went through a period of wanting to find out almost everything there was to know of their lives, and listening to his iPod recordings of their conversations over and over. But all that ended with the discovery of Josie’s obituary.
A wise man once observed that you aren’t aware you have any illusions until they’re taken from you; and until he saw her name along with “died last week at her home” in stark black and white, he hadn’t realized he’d been nursing a wild and ridiculous hope that he and Josie could somehow build a bridge across the years that separated them. All along he’d dreamed she’d come walking out of his closet in her dress with the puffed sleeves, and she would know him instantly even though she had never seen his face.
For what felt like hours he stared at the microfilm screen. Josephine Clifford, 62, author and journalist; previously the secretary and assistant to Dr. Thomas Stapleton, distinguished professor of archaeology at Columbia University and one of the world’s foremost experts on pre-Incan civilizations; accompanied the professor on expeditions in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru; had been engaged to marry the professor when he was tragically killed in an automobile collision outside Lima. Survived by her sister, the actress Cassandra Jasper, and extended family.
This was why he’d never wanted to dig too deep. An illusion may not be real, but it can be awfully comforting.
A recent portrait accompanied the obituary. When she died she’d been only a few years younger than Grammy Sal. Though he could still see the girl he’d known in the face on the screen, he felt himself inching away from her, distracted and confused by all the facts that were unfamiliar to him. Josie, give up her journalism career to follow some stuffy professor all the way to Peru? Josie, engaged to marry a man almost old enough to be her father?
His mother told him people don’t ever really change—but she’d been talking about his dad, and that wasn’t true of everyone. No, Alec thought as he closed the browser window and shut down the computer. They only change when you don’t want them to.
* * *
That summer Alec’s mother started dating a man she’d met at the farmers’ market. At first it felt strange to see her happy again, to realize that there was a whole secret room in her heart that no amount of love from him could open.
But this new life was, in many ways, far better than the old. Steve laughed loudly and often, he helped Alec with his science projects, and, when the time came, he proofread Alec’s college application essays and taught him how to drive a stick. Steve loved the old house on Sparrow Street as much as they did, and he came home in time for dinner every single night.
Alec and Danny remained the best of friends. In eighth grade they started acting classes on Saturday mornings, and in the beginning, Alec passed many anxious moments in front of the mirror in the boys’ bathroom. Danny was a natural, but what made him think he could stand up in front of a bunch of strangers and convince them he was somebody else?
Then he thought of Cass, and Josie, and how brave they had been to follow through on something that at first had felt impossible. He took a deep breath whenever the old fear rose up in him, and while he’d never be as fine an actor as his friend, he was still pretty good, and once he forgot his anxiety he really enjoyed it. When they got to high school they starred together in every fall play and spring musical: Curley and Will, Puck and Bottom, the Tinman and the Scarecrow.
It was this new interest that eventually led him back to the Clifford sisters. Danny was studying theater and art history at NYU, and Alec would take the train down from Syracuse on long weekends to visit his friend. One day, Danny, with that impish air of his, handed Alec an antique playbill. A KISS TO BORROW, at the Century Theatre. Written and directed by Byron F. Grimsby. Starring Algernon Trimble and Cassandra Jasper.
On the cover, a girl in a frothy gown pointed an accusing finger at a surprised-looking man in a dinner jacket. Cass. “Where did you find this?”
“One of those memorabilia stores up around Broadway.” His friend reached out and tapped the name of the writer-director. “They were married. Did you know that?”
“Who—Cass and Grimsby?”
“Yeah. I was wondering why she starred in so many of his plays, so I looked them up. Married forty years, until he died of lung cancer. One daughter.”
In a dark room in his mind Alec heard her say, Byron Grimsby? What a silly name!
“Josie told you she’d write you again. Don’t you want that letter?”
Alec thought of the cupboard key inside the padded envelope, the Upper West Side address printed neatly in a not-yet-grownup hand at the top left corner. Whoever sent it had wanted him to come.
But he couldn’t just take the subway uptown, find the apartment building and press the buzzer. He wasn’t ready for it to be that easy, because the memory of his friend’s death notice threw a chill over his heart whenever he thought of it. So he began with Byron Grimsby, whose family had donated his archive to the New York Public Library. There, on summer vacations and visits to Danny or his father, he read all the plays Byron F. Grimsby had ever written.
Some time later, he and Danny wandered into one of those Broadway nostalgia shops, and were struck dumb by the blue-and-silver poster hanging high above the counter. THE MAN FROM TOMORROW, it said. Written and directed by Byron F. Grimsby. Starring Cassandra Jasper and Bartholomew Stark. The leads embraced at the center of the poster before a backdrop of the constellations. Cass wore a sleeveless, vaguely Grecian gown, and her co-star was dressed in shoulder-to-toe black, with a spiky haircut—so incongruous in the 1920s. “I don’t care what it costs,” Danny whispered. “You have to buy it.”
“That was Grimsby’s most successful play,” said the man behind the counter, who wore thick black eyeglasses and a Young Scrappy & Hungry t-shirt. “Ever heard of it?”
Alec didn’t tell the man behind the counter that he had taken Grimsby’s typewritten manuscript (complete with notes and revisions in red grease pencil) out of a cardboard folio, read it hungrily and traced his fingertip over a crinkly coffee stain on the ti
tle page. He wanted to pretend he was hearing the story for the first time.
Danny understood and shook his head. “What’s it about?”
“The girl meets a guy who dresses and acts and talks a little strangely, and eventually he tells her he’s from the future. She’s all conflicted, right? Is he a time traveler or a lunatic? So of course all her friends and family think he’s nuts, but she begins to believe him. And in the last scene, in her parents’ living room, she disappears with him in a blinding flash of light.” As he spoke the man’s face was transfixed, as if he were recounting the scene from memory.
“If I didn’t know better,” said Danny, “I’d think you’d actually seen it.”
The man laughed. “I wish! Nah, I just read some reviews on microfilm. The really wild thing is how Grimsby imagined the future. There’s no tinfoil or any of the other wacky things you find in those early sci-fi dramas. His hero wears a backpack—just like one from L.L. Bean, you know?—and he’s always carrying this tablet that sounds a lot like an iPad. Way ahead of its time.”
Alec felt the corner of his mouth twitching. “I guess it must have been.”
“Hah.” The man pointed a gotcha finger. “Hah, hah. Right.” He turned, arms folded, and took another moment to admire the poster. “Anyway, yeah. I’ve thought of buying it myself.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’ve pretty much run out of room on my walls. I’m too often tempted, working here.”
It did not matter that the poster cost three hundred and seventy-five dollars. Alec handed over his credit card.
* * *
Every so often he kissed a girl, took her to the movies or out for Indian food, but after a few days he found his heart wasn’t in it. Over time he became the butt of his college friends’ good-natured jokes. One time a guy he wasn’t even close to remarked, “Alec’s looking for the kind of girl they don’t make anymore.” Funny, he thought, how someone who doesn’t know you sees more than you’d expect.
The Boy from Tomorrow Page 18