A Curious Tale of the In-Between (17 page)

Pram’s eyes began to fill with tears as she spoke. “Clarence’s mother died, so we went to a spiritualist to try to find her. Then we both thought that if his mother was lost forever, at least we could find my father because he was still out there somewhere.”

“That’s an awful big undertaking for two children,” Aunt Dee said, wiping her misty eyes. “Honestly, Pram, we had no idea.”

Pram sobbed. It wasn’t just that she hadn’t found her father, but also the memory of her mother sitting in that asylum while Lady Savant handed out pills, and Felix disappearing, and Clarence being left to drown in that lake, and all the souls that died in those jars. It was over now, all of it, and Pram very much needed a good cry.

The aunts couldn’t bear it. They cried, too, and they held her hands and kissed her cheeks, and they thanked what ever god sat in the heavens that she had come back to them.

CHAPTER

25

P
ram wasn’t allowed to have a proper visit with Clarence as long as she was in the hospital. Every day for the rest of that week, he brought her a flower he’d folded in that day’s newspaper, and the aunts stayed in the room and made sure that Pram did not discuss The Madwoman Incident—as it had come to be called. So Clarence told her about what she was missing in school and how chilly it was outside, and Pram could see in his eyes that there was more he wanted to say. He could see it in her eyes, too.

The first moment Clarence and Pram had alone was the day she returned home. She was sitting in her bed, rereading
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, and he appeared in her doorway, holding a tray of soup and toast. “Your aunts asked me to bring you your lunch,” he said.

The
moment he set the tray on Pram’s desk, Pram threw her arms around him. “I thought you drowned,” she said.

“I thought you were gone forever,” Clarence said, hugging back with just as much gratitude.

After a very long time, Pram stepped back and looked at him. “How did you get out of the crate?”

“I didn’t,” Clarence said. “I tried to open it, but it was nailed shut. The water was very murky and it was dark.”

Pram’s chest felt tight.

“And then a boy swam down to me, and the crate broke apart, as though it wasn’t nailed at all, and the boy brought me to the surface. I think I blacked out after that. He wasn’t there when I woke up.”

“What did he look like?” Pram asked.

Clarence thought. “It’s kind of fuzzy, but . . . he had dark hair. And he was wearing a ripped white shirt, and he was skinny, and I know this sounds silly, but he glared at me as though I was getting on his nerves.”

Pram was smiling. “You saw Felix.”

Clarence blinked. “I did?”

“You must have been dying,” Pram said. “That’s the only explanation.”

“I read about that happening,” Clarence said. “Sometimes a near-death experience can make one see a ghost. It had me considering some foolish things when I was looking for my mother’s ghost.”

“
Have you seen any other ghosts since?” Pram said.

“Not a one,” Clarence said. “I’m back to being ordinary, I guess.”

“I don’t think you’re ordinary at all,” Pram said. “And I’m glad you’re alive.”

“I’m glad you’re alive, too,” he said. “I didn’t know what Lady Savant was planning. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“You almost didn’t,” Pram said. She closed her door, and in a hushed tone, she told him everything.

“And you haven’t heard from Felix except for that one time when you were waking up at the hospital?” Clarence said.

“No.” Pram frowned. “And I don’t know if it was really even him, or just a dream.”

“But I saw him in the lake,” Clarence said. “So that must mean Lady Savant didn’t help him to move on after all.”

“Adelaide told me that no one can help a spirit move on,” Pram said. “It has to be their own idea. But Lady Savant must have done
something
to keep him from reaching me.”

“To keep him from warning you about her,” Clarence said.

Pram chewed on her bottom lip. “Maybe,” she said.

“Clarence!” Aunt Dee called from the bottom of the stairs. “Your father is here to take you home.”

Pram
opened her door and looked out over the banister. “But he just got here,” she said.

“You should be in bed eating your lunch,” Aunt Dee said. “Your friend can come and visit another time.”

“It’s okay,” Clarence said. “Feel better, Pram. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

Before he went downstairs, he whispered, “And Felix will turn up.”

After Clarence had left, Pram ate her lunch and climbed back into bed to finish reading her play.

Aunt Dee knocked on the open door. “May I come in?” she asked.

It was strange of her to ask, Pram thought, but she set down her book and said, “Of course.”

“I thought we could have a little talk, you and me,” Aunt Dee said, and sat on the edge of the bed. She was holding Pram’s father’s compass. “They found this in the snow beside you,” she said. “I’d like to know where you got it.”

Pram hesitated. She had never told her aunts about the box of things her mother hid in the closet floorboard. “May I have it back, please?” is all she said.

Aunt Dee stared at the compass as though it might speak to her. “It’s been twelve years since I’ve seen this,” she said. “Your mother wore it all around the house, as though it was the thing telling her where to go with every step. I thought it was lost for good.”

Pram
looked at the compass, too, wishing she could connect it to a real memory. Before Pram met Lady Savant, all the memories she’d had of her mother were make-believe, and no matter how real they might have seemed, her mother would always be a stranger who knew nothing about her at all.

“Your aunt Nan and I have wanted to protect you from the truth about your parents,” she said. “But we may have done the wrong thing. Neither of us had any idea you gave them so much thought.”

“I thought it would make you mad if I asked about my mother,” Pram said.

“Why would we be mad?” Aunt Dee asked.

“Because she died giving birth to me, and it’s all my fault,” Pram said, guilt knotting her stomach. “And you’ve both had to raise me. I thought that I was old enough to find out for myself where I really belonged.”

“Oh, Pram, no,” Aunt Dee said. “It’s not your fault at all.”

“We wanted to raise you,” Aunt Nan said. She was standing in the doorway, dabbing at her misty eyes with a handkerchief; she’d been weeping a lot since Pram’s return. “We had the adoption papers filled out and waiting before you were born.”

Aunt Dee glared. “Don’t tell her the whole truth,” she said. “She’s too young yet.”

“
She deserves to know,” Aunt Nan cried. “After all the poor child has been through.” She sat on the other side of Pram’s bed and cupped Pram’s face in her hands. “I don’t want you to think for one second that you weren’t welcome here.”

Pram’s eyes hurt with the threat of tears. “But I killed your sister,” she said.

“Is that what you think?” Aunt Nan said. “Pram, your mother—”

“Don’t you dare tell her that part,” Aunt Dee snapped.

“Your mother was very ill,” Aunt Nan said pointedly. “As you grew up, your aunt Dee and I wanted you to have a nice image of her, and so we told you all the good things. We told you she liked to read, and that she was a good swimmer, and we kept that picture above the stairs because it’s the only truly happy photo of her. But that wasn’t everything, and you have a right to know that. Toward the end, before you were born, she was living in a special hospital.”

“An asylum,” Pram said, to prove that she knew the word. She knew more than she usually let on.

“Yes,” Aunt Nan said. “The truth is that your mother was a very sad girl. She died on the day you were born, but you weren’t the thing that killed her, and I won’t have you go on thinking you’re to blame. Someday when you’re older, we’ll tell you the rest of it, but for now all you need
to
know is that she had always been sad, and she spent much of her life in and out of . . . hospitals. Your aunt Dee and I knew she wouldn’t have been able to take care of you. Your mother knew it, too, and we all agreed that it would be best if you were here with us.”

“What about my father?” Pram said.

Aunt Dee looked like she was going to say something unkind. She opened her mouth and then shut it.

Pram’s shoulders dropped. “He didn’t want me,” she said. “Did he?”

Aunt Nan frowned and fussed with Pram’s hair. “He sends money for your upbringing sometimes. Never any letters.”

Pram stared at the compass, which was then swallowed by Aunt Dee’s fist. “She’s too young to be hearing this,” Aunt Dee said.

“Clearly she isn’t too young if she’s old enough to be asking about it,” Aunt Nan said.

“I needed to hear the truth,” Pram said, her voice weak, as though she’d been punched in the stomach. “Thank you.”

“We’re sorry, Pram,” Aunt Nan said. “Really, we are. If we’d had any idea how much you wanted to meet him—”

“I wanted to know the truth about him,” Pram said. “I wanted to know what he was like, and if he knew about me. That’s all, I guess.”

She
still wanted to meet him, but knowing that he knew where she lived all her life, and hadn’t wanted to visit, lessened her desire. Perhaps one day, she thought, when she was older. Maybe they would both be different people then.

Aunt Dee threw the compass at the wall. It bounced back and hit the floor. Pram and Aunt Nan winced. “If you want to know the truth about your father, he never deserved you,” Aunt Dee said. “He was like a fly that got into the house. Once he met your mother, there was no being rid of him. He’d breeze into town on his little visits from wherever he’d been, and he’d sweep your mother off her feet and get her hopes up, and then he’d leave once he’d had his fun.”

I see your exquisite face at every port. I’ve made a horrible mistake leaving you behind. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.

“But he loved her,” Pram said. All those beautiful letters in that box in the closet, none of them for her.

“Maybe he did,” Aunt Nan said sympathetically. “But he was a nomad and there wasn’t enough room in his life for Lily, or for you.”

Pram stared at the closet door as though her father would somehow emerge from his letters and speak for himself.

“
If you’d like to meet him, maybe we can arrange something,” Aunt Nan said. “I have a PO Box address. You could write him a letter.”

“No,” Pram whispered, still reeling from all the revelations. “Not now, anyway.”

“Can we get you anything?” Aunt Nan said. “Would you like some cake? I think I’ll bake you a cake. Dee, do we have any eggs left?”

“You can’t give her something that’ll rot her teeth every time she’s unhappy,” Aunt Dee said.

As her aunts argued about whether the cake was a sensible decision, Pram stared at the compass that lay on the floor. It no longer meant what she had thought it meant. All that trouble to find him, and he knew where she was; he just didn’t want to visit.

“I don’t want cake,” Pram said suddenly. “And I don’t want to write my father a letter. I want to go back to school on Monday.”

“School?” Aunt Dee said.

“You wanted to protect my mother, didn’t you?” Pram said.

“More than anything,” Aunt Nan said. “We tried everything. The best hospitals. Home care. Chicken soup.”

“And you’ve tried to protect me,” Pram said. “But I don’t want to hide anymore. I’d like to spend more time
in
the living world. I don’t think I need to be protected the way that my mother did.”

Aunt Dee smiled sadly. “No, I suppose you don’t,” she said. “It startles me how much you look like her, but you’ve never been Lily. You’ve always been Pram.”

“Our pragmatic niece,” Aunt Nan said.

Just as the compass seemed different to Pram now, so did the aunts. Pram looked at them and realized how wrong she’d been. All that trouble to find where she belonged, and it had always been here.

That night, Pram couldn’t sleep. She stared at the silhouettes of tree branches on her wall, and she thought of Lady Savant and of her mother, whose paths had only briefly crossed.

She felt the pull of a memory drawing her in, and then her bedroom disappeared, and she was a nurse in a room that stank of mold and metal. The rooms behind her were filled with screams, but the commotion had long faded into a distant malaise. She had learned not to pay it any mind, even when it haunted her dreams.

Instead, the nurse focused on the metal tray in her hands, most notably the slender S-shaped utensil that the doctor retrieved. There had been much debate in the field
about
using it on such a young patient as the girl before them, but the girl’s parents were desperate and they’d agreed.

The girl was bound to her mattress. Earlier she had been kicking and flailing, but now she was weary, and her hands flinched like fish dying on the shore. Her eyes were big and dark and bloodshot from old tears. She saw the S-shaped tool and whimpered.

“It’s going to be all right now, Claudette,” the doctor said, and pressed his palm to her forehead, steadying her. “We’re going to make the ghosts go away now.”