Second Sight

by David Williams

  “Jennie,” he said, “I love you. I only want you to be all right. Can’t you see that?”

  She buried her head against his chest. “Yes, Michael, I know. I’m sorry. It just upset me, the coincidence. I know you love me. I do want to get better. I so wanted life in the country to be good for us.”

  It was full dusk now; the shadows were growing darker in the room. She closed her eyes, trying to feel grateful to him, trying to believe that he was right, that it was all a terrible coincidence. But inside, in her mind’s eye, she could still see that intense, moody man—the somber face, the coal-black hair, those brilliant blue eyes. David, she thought, tasting the name on her tongue, David Reynolds.

  • • •

  Dr. Salzman discounted Mrs. Bates’ story, though he seemed very interested when Jennie told him about it. It was difficult under the best of circumstances to read his expression, but even from the corner of her eye, in the dim light of the single lamp, he seemed genuinely startled. But he discouraged any attempt to read into it more than a simple coincidence would support.

  “I think we’ve made definite progress in explaining these irrational episodes you’ve been having,” he said. “This coincidence does not in any way make our analysis less accurate or less valid. But your suggesting it might is, I think, important.”

  Patiently, he led her to admit that deep down she still wanted to believe her hallucinations were real. And that, he said, was an indication of how dangerous this coincidence could be. Something in her wanted to escape into hallucination. The question was—what did she want to escape from? What she had to do was delve into the roots of her sickness. It was a sickness, she shouldn’t lose sight of that fact. Painful as it might be, she had to confront her real attitude toward Michael and her marriage.

  She didn’t discuss her problem with Michael anymore. Dr. Salzman discouraged it, and anyway they had come dangerously close to arguing. And her marriage certainly needed no added fuel for conflict. But that left little for them to talk about. It was as if the problem were an obstacle between them, and in avoiding it they had closed themselves off from each other.

  To avoid thinking, dreaming, fantasizing, she tried to lose herself in work on the attic room, but working with her hands only freed her mind, increased the impulse to dream. And so before she knew it, she would be remembering that horse and buggy clop-clopping toward her along that narrow dirt road, or herself luminous and shimmering in that painting on the wall, or Mrs. Bates’ rambling voice describing how David Reynolds had seen his bride appear before him in the very dress in which she had died. I’m a figure out of his dreams, she would think; I must seem very eerie to him. What was he like, a man who knew the Paris of Zola and Cézanne, who had never seen a movie or an airplane, who lived in a world that had never known world war or hydrogen bombs? Each time she remembered his face she would feel again that stir of warm and passionate excitement. And she would remember then that he was fated to die very soon, and she could not escape the feeling that, somehow, she was meant to save his life. She had been told the story of his approaching death, she was being propelled back into his time, to him. Surely all that had a purpose, surely she was being sent back to change history, to ensure that he would live.

  These thoughts stayed with her all day long and pursued her into sleep, until sometimes she woke in the night uncertain whether the dream she had just emerged from was real or a hallucination or just a simple dream; and it was then, waking, examining her dream, that she believed most strongly that the “hallucinations” were real, because they so overpowered these pale imitations she recognized, under examination, as simple dreams. She would stir and turn then, trying to go back to sleep, but increasingly sleep refused to come and she would lie awake into the long dawns, restless, trying to avoid the inescapable truth: nostalgia for that other world loomed in her mind, and no amount of psychoanalysis was going to dispel it.

  The urge to go back was on her as strongly as the need of an addict for his drug.

  11

  * * *

  ON THE FIRST THURSDAY after she finished the attic room, she went back.

  She hadn’t planned it. She woke that morning in an unfamiliar daze, lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. Michael, up early to catch the train to the city, urged her to stay in bed; he would make himself breakfast. She heard him puttering about in the kitchen, the squeak of the faucet as he filled the pot for coffee, but her mind seemed locked in thought, preparing itself for something beyond her control. When she heard the station wagon ease out of the driveway, some instinct got her out of bed. In the bathroom, unseeing eyes stared back at her from the mirror. She dressed and went downstairs.

  On the table were the remains of Michael’s breakfast: an egg-smeared plate, knife, fork, a half-emptied cup of coffee. Methodically, she carried them to the sink, washed and dried them, returned them to the cupboards. Moving dully, as if in a trance, she went through the living room, plumping pillows, returning magazines to their racks. When there was nothing left to do, she removed her apron and went slowly back up the stairs.

  In the bedroom, she took the dress from its hanger and laid it across the bed, glowing white and beautiful against the dark bedspread. She brought her boots from the closet and placed them beside the bed. Then she undressed and folded her clothes in neat squares, as if that were very important. At the dressing table, she began putting up her hair, mechanically fixing it atop her head. Then she went to the bed and began putting on the dress.

  When she had buttoned up the last button at the back of her neck, she stepped to the full-length mirror. The image reflected back at her was itself like a painting: a slender woman in a shimmering white dress, standing out in stark relief in the shadowy room, her hair shining like dull burnished gold, her face soft and mysterious in the dim light. Through her haze came a tremor of apprehension: she was offering herself to the unknown, submitting her will to a power she did not understand, for a purpose she could not be sure of, and for an instant a surge of fear struggled to free itself inside her, then was stifled again in the grip of that trance-like haze.

  Still moving as if in a trance, she went out along the hall and started down the stairs. The house was eerily silent. Sunlight streamed in through the windows along the dining-room wall; the panes of the windows seemed clear as icy air. At the foot of the stairs, she paused, waiting. Nothing happened. She went through the dining room and into the kitchen. Again she stopped. Again nothing changed. The coffee pot still stood on the stove. Through the window, she could see her red Volkswagen shining in the sun. Still in that strange daze, she picked up her skirts and went out through the kitchen door.

  Outside, the sky was a clear and brittle blue, and the sun came almost blinding off the stones of the patio. The trees bordering the opposite edge of the patio stretched trembling shadows toward her. The only sound was the insistent, monotonous singing of an insect somewhere up in the trees. Tense, expectant, she took a step out toward the patio. Another. And another. And then she felt it: the faint beginnings of the ache at the back of her neck, growing very rapidly into an intense band of pain running from her shoulder up into her temple. She closed her eyes against the pain, feeling the rush of dizziness, the welling of nausea in her stomach, and now the fear surged up, sweeping through her, violent and uncontrollable.

  And then the pain was gone. The fear still beat inside her, like the wild rhythms of a warning bell, but even with her eyes still closed, she was immediately aware of the change. The trance-like haze had abruptly dropped away, her mind was sharp and clear. She felt a damp wind on her face, with a smell of earth on it, a smell of animals.

  She opened her eyes, and the change took her breath away. The patio was gone. The trees on the other side of the patio were gone. The sky was gray, dark clouds scudding along beneath a higher layer of overcast. A cool wind rattled the leaves of four big oaks standing in a row along a rail fence directly across the yard from her. The garage was gone, and in its place stood
a kind of carriage house, with a slanted roof. The Volkswagen was gone from the driveway, and the driveway was different: a simple dirt path looping into a turn-around beside the house.

  The wind kicked up a little dust devil in the dirt where the drive passed in front of the carriage house. The leaves rustled again in the trees. And then, from around the corner of the carriage house, she heard it: the chink-chink-chink of a hammer striking metal. Excitement boiled up in her. She waited, tense, the wind damp and cool on her face. It came again—chink-chink-chink: someone working with a hammer behind the carriage house.

  She realized her hands were trembling. She pressed them to her face and felt her whole body quivering. Every nerve in her body seemed awake, waiting, so that she thought she could detect each separate tingle on every minute bit of flesh, could hear the air molecules striking against the drum of her ear; the thump of her heart was a convulsion, a desperate writhing to escape the confines of her chest; and, suddenly recognizing the extent of her panic, she forced herself to think: each time before, it had been the panic which had broken the spell, had plucked her out of the past back into the present. This time she would have to fight it, would have to keep herself under control.

  She stood for a moment longer, trying to calm herself. Gradually, her heart slowed, her quivering subsided. She took her hands from her face and held them out before her, almost willing the trembling away. Then, resolutely, she began to walk toward the corner of the carriage house.

  She rounded the corner and stopped, her heart suddenly leaping up in her again. He stood with his back to her, hammering at a bolt in the shaft of the buggy parked along the wall. Excitement and panic fought within her again, and in the blur of her mind she was dimly aware of his broad back beneath a gray shirt, long legs in dark trousers tucked into high black boots. Her breathing seemed so loud in her ears she thought he must surely hear it. Her hands were trembling again, violently; she clasped them together at her waist. She felt a quivering in her breast, the tingling of her flesh, and was dimly astonished that within the excitement she felt was something almost sexual.

  He had freed the bolt from the buggy shaft and was turning it in his hand, examining it. Gradually the panic subsided a little, and she felt seeping into her that same tender yearning he had created in her each time she had seen him before, and suddenly it seemed the most natural thing in the world to speak the words that came unbidden from her mouth.

  “David?” she said. “David Reynolds?”

  She saw him start. He stood as if struck by a bullet, one hand, poised to set the hammer down, halted in mid-air. For a long moment, he seemed turned to stone; then, carefully, as if it were something that might shatter, he set the hammer on the floor of the buggy-box and turned.

  His face was white. His eyes were wide, a brilliant blue, staring. She attempted a trembly smile, feeling the panic retreat before that sweet tenderness welling up in her.

  “Pamela?” he said tentatively. “Pamela?”

  Abruptly he threw the bolt in the buggy seat and started toward her.

  The panic rushed back into her again and, involuntarily, she thrust her hands up to ward him off and backed away. “Please don’t. I won’t leave if you don’t frighten me.”

  He stopped, emotions shifting in rapid array across his face.

  “Please,” she heard herself say, “I want to help you.”

  He stood not ten feet away, his high wide collar open at the throat, his sleeves rolled up above muscular forearms. She was dimly aware of a mounting elation rising inside her: she was actually here, talking to him, this man she had seen from afar so many times, to whom fate had sent her back through almost a hundred years, whose life seemed so entangled in her own. Who created in her that lovely, fluttery feeling she was aware of even now. She ventured a step toward him. And then, as she watched, she saw some of the brilliance die away in his eyes, disappointment coming like a shadow across his face.

  “You’re not Pamela,” he said.

  “No.” It was almost a whisper.

  His face was changing, closing over the openness, the hope, that had shown nakedly a moment before. But his eyes were still alive, searching hers—direct, intimate.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Jennifer. Jennifer Logan.” She kept her eyes on his, a small voice inside her pleading: please don’t be disappointed; don’t withdraw from me; I was meant to come here, I know it. “They call me Jennie.”

  “Jennie,” he said, and sank slowly onto the running board of the buggy. “That dress. Where did you—?”

  “I had it made for myself. From a dressmaker.”

  “You don’t know about me? About my—?”

  “I didn’t when I ordered the dress made. But I do now.”

  She was aware now of a horse grazing in the field beyond the fence, the squeal of a pig from somewhere near the barn. Dark shreds of cloud raced eastward overhead. The horizon had become black and ominous. A flash of sheet lightning flickered once through the black and disappeared.

  “Was that you I saw those other times?” he said. “On the road? At the lake?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked away. “I was so sure. So sure.”

  She looked at the buggy—slim metal fenders arching over the high wheels, the tufted leather seat, the long shafts slanting down to the ground. This was the buggy she had seen that day on the road, the buggy he had pursued her in, whipping the horse on, calling after her another woman’s name. It was like encountering an apparition out of one’s dreams.

  “Why did you run?” he said. “You always ran away.”

  “You frightened me. You were so intense, coming at me, calling me Pamela. I didn’t know who Pamela was then.”

  Again she felt that flash of awe and elation, the wonder at the fact that she was actually here in—if Mrs. Bates was correct—in 1899, talking to the man she had for weeks been seeing in what everyone had tried to convince her were hallucinations. The thought sent excitement quivering through her again.

  “But where did you run to?” he said. “I looked for you.”

  “I hid. I hid from you. I was so frightened.” The question made her apprehensive, but her answer seemed to satisfy him.

  “I thought you were a ghost,” he said. “Pamela’s ghost. I even thought, once, I saw her watching me from an upstairs window. But when I ran upstairs there was no one there.” From behind the barn came the squeal of a pig, quick and short, dwindling away into grunting, then silence. “You haven’t been in Chesapequa long then?”

  “No.”

  “How did you learn about Pamela?”

  “A woman in town told me.”

  “They thought I was going mad.” He gazed again across the fence to the field beyond, where the horse leisurely cropped grass under the gloomy sky. “I thought so, too.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t Pamela. I wish I could have been.”

  At that, he turned his passionate gaze full on her face again. Sometimes, like now, when he searched her eyes to read her thoughts, his gaze was so nakedly direct it was almost sexual. It made her own eyes go naked, too, and she sensed the communication passing unspoken between them.

  “What did you mean, you want to help me?” he said.

  “I heard about . . . about what you thought, seeing me. I wanted you to know you weren’t . . . going mad, like the others thought.” And, she thought, I want to save your life.

  He got up from the buggy. “I’m sorry. I’m not being civil. Will you come into the house? May I offer you something?”

  She felt a tremor of excitement inside. “Thank you. That would be nice.”

  He scooped up a jacket that had been draped across the buggy seat and escorted her back across the yard toward the house. She was aware now of bare patches in the grass, a row of hollyhocks growing along the kitchen wall, a large porch running along the front—which surprised her until she remembered the real estate broker had mentioned a porch which had been dismantled
when the house was renovated. The kitchen door was covered by a screen; he held it open and placed a hand on her elbow to guide her through. His touch brought a swift thrill of pleasure deep in her stomach.

  Inside, she stopped, awed. Against the far wall stood a tall cast-iron kitchen range, every inch of its frontal surface gleaming with an elaborate nickel scrollwork of vines and flowers. It seemed equipped with a dozen dampers, grates, and shelves; on its bulbous oven door was inscribed the brand name: Victoria. On the oak table stood a kerosene lamp with three tall fluted chimneys. In the corner was a tall, dark grandfather clock, its long pendulum tock-tocking regularly back and forth. But what caught her eye, what stopped her breath in her throat, was the glass-doored cupboard standing upright in the opposite corner. It was the same cupboard which stood in her own kitchen, in her own time. And the glass doors were broken precisely as her own had been—the left pane completely gone, leaving only jagged splinters around the edges, cracks radiating outward from a large tear-shaped hole in the right. Now she saw that the doors of some of the other cupboards were broken, too—the mantle of the sideboard splintered off, a handle ripped away from a drawer.

  “I’m sorry the room is such a shambles,” he said. “I’m afraid I did it considerable damage.”

  “You did this?”

  “The night after . . . after Pamela died. I was in a rage, I couldn’t help myself. I smashed everything in the room.”

  “A rage—?”

  “At God, I suppose. For taking her.” He smiled, as if apologizing. “It didn’t help.”

  While he made tea, she sat at the table, awed, remembering that night: the sound of smashing glass from the kitchen, her panic in the dark, and following Michael downstairs to discover the doors of her corner cupboard shattered. And here it stood, the same cupboard, its doors smashed just as it was then, in that other time. And here, boiling water at the stove, was the man who had done it. She imagined him as he must have been, mad with grief, venting his frustrated rage on everything in this kitchen; and in her own kitchen, the corner cupboard sitting quietly until, having been struck in his time, it had shattered in hers. Somehow, the strength of his emotion had reached into the future, to her, just as her own emotion, while in the dress, brought her back into the past, to him.