“But they would have radioed more than one ship,” Joanna said. “They said both ships were too far away to help. They might have been two out of a dozen they tried to reach.”
“There’s also the staircase. I know,” he said, putting up his hands defensively, “you said the memory didn’t come from the movie, but one thing the movie did show was the staircase outside the dining room, with the fancy winding stairs and the big skylight—”
“The Grand Staircase,” Joanna murmured. He was right. The stairs leading down to the First-Class Dining Saloon had been marble, with filigreed gold and wrought-iron balustrades and a bronze cherub on the newel post, holding an electric torch, and at the head of the stairs a huge clock, with two bronze figures placing a laurel wreath atop the clock face. Honour and Glory Crowning Time.
I must have been on another staircase, she thought, but there wouldn’t have been two stairways next to the First-Class Dining Saloon, would there? And there was the empty deck and the deserted bridge. “So, what do you think?” Joanna asked. “That I’m seeing some other ship?”
“I think it’s possible. Nothing you’ve described would eliminate it from being the Lusitania, for instance.”
“Except that the Lusitania sank in broad daylight. And nobody stands around calmly asking what’s happened when a torpedo hits them.”
“Or some other ship you’ve heard about from Maisie,” he continued imperturbably. “Or from Mr. Wojakowski.”
“The Yorktown was an aircraft carrier,” Joanna said. “This was an ocean liner. I saw the funnels.”
“Correction,” he said, consulting the account again. “You saw a large black looming shape. The central island of an aircraft carrier would be a large black looming shape, wouldn’t—” and looked up at the kid from behind the counter, who was standing over them.
“We’re closin’,” he said and continued to stand there, his tattooed arms folded across his chest while Richard disposed of his coffee cup, and Joanna put on her coat.
They went out into the freezing darkness. It had started to snow while they were inside, a wet, sleety snow. “How long did Vielle say the passengers could survive before they got hypothermia?” Richard asked, blowing on his hands.
“It wasn’t an aircraft carrier,” Joanna said, starting the car and heading back to the hospital. “Aircraft carriers have flat decks, and they don’t have dining saloons with crystal chandeliers and grand pianos.”
“And this ship doesn’t have a Grand Staircase,” he said, “which makes me think it’s an amalgam of ships and ship imagery stored in your long-term memory. You said yourself it might be the Mary Celeste.”
“The Mary Celeste was a sailing ship,” she said, but he was right. There were discrepancies. The deck had been empty and deserted, and there had been no one on the bridge.
She pulled into the parking lot. “Where’s your car parked? Oh, wait, you’ve got to go get your coat.”
“Yeah, and I want to look at your scans again.”
Joanna pulled around by the north entrance and stopped. “Thanks for rescuing me from the clutches of the Evil One,” she said.
“I hope he isn’t still crouched outside the lab, waiting.”
“I hope Mrs. Davenport isn’t really telepathic.”
Richard laughed and got out, and then leaned back in. “You said before you know it’s the Titanic. Is this sense of conviction you have the same as the one you had when you first recognized the passage as being on the Titanic?”
I know where this is going, Joanna thought wearily. “Yes.”
He nodded. “That could be it. The temporal lobe rather than a memory out of long-term is what’s producing the spurious feeling that it’s the Titanic.” He slapped the roof of the car. “I’m freezing. Good night. See you in the morning.” He shut the car door.
I hope you succumb to hypothermia, Joanna thought as she drove away. It isn’t a spurious feeling. It’s the Titanic.
The phone was ringing when she got home. It’s probably Mr. Mandrake, she thought, leaving his fourteenth message. She let the answering machine pick up. “Hi, this is Kit Gardiner—”
Joanna snatched up the phone. “I’m here, Kit, sorry, I just walked in the door.”
“I know it’s late,” Kit said, “but I found something. Not the textbook,” she hastened to add. “You said you were trying to remember something Uncle Pat said about the Titanic. Well, this afternoon I found all his Titanic books, and I thought what you were trying to remember might be in one of them and I wondered if you were interested in looking at them. Or I could look it up for you, if you like. You said it was something about the engines stopping and passengers being out on deck in their nightclothes.”
“Yes,” Joanna said. “Listen, Kit, could you look up something else for me, too? I need to know what the First-Class Dining Saloon on the Titanic looked like.”
“Sure, I’ll be glad to look it up. Anything else?”
“Yes,” Joanna said, trying to think what would prove the ship was the Titanic. “I need you to find out if they used a Morse lamp to signal the Californian that night. And the names of the ships they contacted by wireless. If that’s not too much.”
“It’s not,” Kit said cheerfully. “When do you need it? Would tomorrow night be soon enough? If your invitation to Dish Night still holds. I decided I’d like to try to come, after all. You were right about the Eldercare program. They are willing to come on short notice.”
“Great,” Joanna said. “Can I pick you up?”
“That would be wonderful. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” Kit said, as if Joanna were the one searching for textbooks and looking up facts instead of her. “What time?”
“Dish Night starts at seven,” Joanna said. “I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”
“Great,” Kit said, “I’ll see y—”
There was a sudden, earsplitting sound. “Oh, my gosh!” Kit said. “Can you hang on a minute?”
“Is everything okay?” Joanna said, but the only sound was the high-pitched ringing. Or buzzing, Joanna thought, wondering if she should hang up so that Kit could call 911. Or if she should hang up and call it herself.
“It’s all right, Uncle Pat,” she heard Kit’s faint voice say calmly in the background, “everything’s fine,” but the sound didn’t shut off. I wonder what’s making it, Joanna thought. It sounded like a cross between a teakettle’s shrill whistle and a code alarm. Or how the funnels on the Titanic must have sounded, she thought, blowing off steam in a deafening roar, and wondered if that, and not the engines stopping, was the sound she’d heard in the passage.
“Most of them didn’t hear it at all,” Mr. Briarley said suddenly into the phone. He must have come into the library while Kit was trying to deal with whatever was making the sound.
“Mr. Briarley?” Joanna said.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Joanna Lander.”
“Joanna Lander,” he repeated, no recognition at all in his voice.
“I’m an ex-student of yours. From Dry Creek High School.”
“High school,” he said. There was a soft clunk, like he’d laid the phone down, but apparently he hadn’t because after a few seconds he said, “It was the sudden ceasing of the engines’ vibration. Jack Thayer heard it, and the Ryersons, and Colonel Gracie, and they all went out on deck to see what had happened.”
He’s telling me about the engines stopping on the Titanic, Joanna thought, clutching the phone. Kit said he sometimes remembers things the next day.
“No one seemed to know,” Mr. Briarley said. “Howard Case thought they’d dropped a propeller. One of the stewards said it was a minor mechanical problem. No one thought it was serious . . . ” He paused, as if waiting for her to say something.
“Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said, her heart beating painfully, “what did you say about the Titanic that day in class?”
“I sometimes think what a grand thing it will
be to say to on
eself, ‘Death is over now; there is not that experience to be faced again.’ ”
—CHARLES DODGSON (LEWIS CARROLL), SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH
FOR A LONG MOMENT all Joanna could hear was the high-pitched scream going on and on, and then Mr. Briarley said, “They speak to us.” Joanna waited, not understanding, but afraid if she interrupted his train of thought she’d destroy it. “Boring, dusty artifacts. That’s what literature is,” he said, and then, impatiently, “Yes, Mr. Inman, this will be on the final. Everything is on the final,” and the scream abruptly cut off.
That’s definitely what I’m hearing in the passage, Joanna thought irrelevantly, listening to the ringing silence. It’s definitely a sound cutting off. “Mr. Briarley,” she said, “can you remember what you said in class that day?”
“Remember?” he said vaguely. There was a long, breathing pause, and then he said, in a tone full of sorrow and despair, “I shall remember it forever.”
I had no business asking him, Joanna thought. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I—”
“Who is this?” Mr. Briarley demanded. “Are you a friend of Kevin’s?”
“I’m an ex-student of yours, Mr. Briarley. Joanna Lander.”
“Then you’ll sit on this side,” he said, and in the background she could hear Kit say, “Don’t hang up, Uncle Pat. It’s for me.”
“I don’t know who it is,” Mr. Briarley said grumpily. “People don’t give you their names,” and the sound of the phone being handed over.
“Sorry,” Kit said. “Uncle Pat somehow got the kitchen smoke alarm down and the alarm button stuck, and I couldn’t get it shut off. You said you’ll be here at six-thirty?”
“Yes. Kit—”
“Oops, gotta go. ’Bye,” Kit said and hung up.
Joanna stood there, staring at the receiver. “I shall remember it forever,” Mr. Briarley had said, but it wasn’t true. He couldn’t remember it, and neither could she. She felt suddenly bone-tired.
She put the phone down. Her answering machine was blinking. She hit the “play” button. “You have one message,” the machine said. “Vielle here. Did you remember to pick up the videos?”
“No,” Joanna said aloud, “I’ll do it in the morning,” and went to bed. But Blockbuster didn’t open till eleven, she found out on her way to work the next morning. Isn’t anything ever open? she wondered, staring at the locked doors and wondering when she was going to be able to get back.
It would have to be this afternoon. Mr. Sage’s session was at ten, and it usually took a half hour for his session and at least two hours to pry his account out of him. That meant twelve-thirty, and then she had to transcribe his account. At least that won’t take long, she thought. But she also needed to finish the list of multiple NDEs for Richard and try to get in touch with Mrs. Haighton. And talk to Guadalupe. And tell Vielle she’d invited Kit to Dish Night.
She did that as soon as she got to work, hoping Vielle would be busy so she couldn’t interrogate her again. She was. The ER was jammed. “Spring has sprung!” Vielle said, and when Joanna looked confused, remembering the sleet she’d just driven to work in, explained, “Flu season, in force. Fevers, dehydration, projectile vomiting—you’d better get out of here.”
“You, too,” Joanna said. “I just came to tell you I invited someone to Dish Night.”
“Oh, please tell me it’s Officer Denzel!”
“It’s not,” Joanna said. “It’s the niece of my high school English teacher. That’s who I went to see the other day when I borrowed your car. Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said, wondering how she was going to explain why she’d gone to see him. “He has Alzheimer’s.”
“Alzheimer’s,” Vielle said, shaking her head sympathetically. “Didn’t he have a Do Not Resuscitate order? His relatives should definitely get one for him if this happens again. We get last-stage Alzheimer’s patients in here, and reviving them isn’t a kindness,” Vielle said, and Joanna realized Vielle thought that Mr. Briarley had coded and been revived, and that she’d gone over to record his NDE.
Maybe I can let her go on thinking that, Joanna thought, but Kit might say something. And Vielle’s your best friend. You have no business lying to your best friend. But she couldn’t tell her the truth. If she so much as mentioned the Titanic-
“Remember when we were talking the other night about the best way to die?” Vielle was saying. “Well, Alzheimer’s has got to be the worst, forgetting everything you ever knew or loved or were, and knowing it’s happening. Was he a good teacher?”
“Yes,” Joanna said. “He used to recite pages and pages of Keats and Shakespeare, and his tests were incredibly hard.”
“He sounds like a real gem,” Vielle said sarcastically.
“He was. He had this dry sense of humor, and he knew everything, all about literature and writers and history. He was always telling us the most fascinating things. Did you know Charles Lamb’s sister stabbed their mother to death one night at the dinner table with a table knife?”
“It sounds like you paid a lot more attention in English class than I did,” Vielle said.
But not enough, Joanna thought, not enough, because I can’t remember what he said about the Titanic. “He knew everything. That’s why I went to see him,” Joanna said, hoping Vielle wouldn’t ask her to be more specific. “I didn’t know he had Alzheimer’s, and I met his niece, and I had to invite her. She’s his full-time caregiver and she never gets out, the only time she leaves the house is to go to the grocery store, and they never have any visitors—”
“Gilbert and Sullivan try to rescue another drowning victim,” Vielle murmured.
“I’m not—well, all right, maybe I am, but she’s very nice, you’ll like her.”
“So that was why you tore off like that in my car and were gone for over four hours,” Vielle said skeptically. “To ask your old English teacher a question? About Charles Lamb’s sister?”
“No,” Joanna said. “Is there any particular video you want me to get for tonight? Besides Glory?”
“How about Meet Joe Black?” Vielle said. “About a woman who falls so much in love with Death she nearly ends up dying.”
“I’ll get a comedy,” Joanna said and went up to see Guadalupe, who wasn’t there.
“She’s out today,” an unfamiliar nurse at the charge desk said. “She’s got this flu that’s going around.”
“Oh,” Joanna said. “Well, will you tell her when she comes back that, yes, I’m still interested in having the nurses write down what Mr. Aspinall says.”
“I’ll leave a note for her,” the nurse said, grabbing a pad of Post-it notes. “Still interested . . . nurses . . . write down . . . ” she said, writing, and looked up. “Are you sure you mean Mr. Aspinall? He—”
“Yes, I’m aware he’s in a coma,” Joanna said. “Guadalupe will know what the message means.”
She watched the nurse finish writing the message and stick it in Guadalupe’s box and then went down to Coma Carl’s room. His wife was sitting next to his bed, reading aloud from a paperback. “ ‘ “We got him now,” Buck drawled, reining in his horse,’” she read. “ ‘ “He can’t get through thataway. Even an Apache tracker’d get lost in among them canyons.” ’ ”
Joanna looked at Carl. In the week since she’d seen him he’d clearly gone downhill. His chest and his face both looked more sunken than before, and grayer. The number of bags on his IV stand had multiplied, and so had the number of monitors.
“Dr. Lander!” Mrs. Aspinall said, surprised and pleased. She closed the book.
“I just thought I’d stop in for a moment and see how Mr. Aspinall was doing,” Joanna said.
“He’s holding his own,” Mrs. Aspinall said, and Joanna wondered if she was as much in denial as Maisie’s mother, but it was obvious from looking at her that she wasn’t. She’d lost weight, too, and strain was apparent in her face. “Carl?” Mrs. Aspinall said, leaning forward to touch his arm. “Carl, Dr. Lander’s here to see you.”
r /> “Hello, Carl,” Joanna said.
Mrs. Aspinall laid the book, which had a picture of a galloping horse and rider on the cover, on the nightstand. “I’ve been reading aloud to Carl,” she said. “The nurses say he can hear my voice. Do you think that’s true?”
No, Joanna thought, remembering the silence of the Boat Deck, the darkness beyond the railing. Even if Tish had taken the headphones off and Richard had shouted in her ear, she couldn’t have heard them.
“Sometimes I think he does hear me,” Mrs. Aspinall said, “but other times he seems so . . . Still, it can’t hurt,” she said, smiling up at Joanna.
“And it may help,” Joanna said. “Some patients have reported being aware of the presence of their loved ones while they were in a coma.”
“I hope so.” Mrs. Aspinall clasped his unresisting hand. “I hope he knows I’m here, and that I’d do anything for him,” she said fiercely, “anything.”
Joanna thought of Maisie. “I know,” she said, and Mrs. Aspinall looked embarrassed, as if she had forgotten Joanna was there.
“It’s so kind of you to come see Carl,” she said and picked up the book again.
“It was nice to see you, Mrs. Aspinall,” Joanna said, and, even though she was convinced he was somewhere he couldn’t hear her, “You hang in there, Carl.”
She went back up to her office, also using the back way and opening the door of the stairway a crack before she came out. Mr. Mandrake wasn’t there, but he’d left three more messages on her answering machine. There was also one from Mrs. Troudtheim saying she wasn’t getting the flu after all and when did they want her to come in, but none from Kit.
She’d been half-hoping she’d hear from her, though she’d said tonight, and if there had been a message from her, it would most likely have been her canceling because Mr. Briarley was having a bad day. But she’d hoped Kit would call and say, “The Titanic contacted the Baltic and the Frankfurt,” or “The dining saloon had pink lamps and a rose carpet,” so she could convince Richard it was the Titanic, and not an amalgam.