Time After Time (10 page)

Liz eyed the ransacked box
of Dunkin' Donuts. "You didn't want this last chocolate one, did
you?" she asked, lifting it out. "I'm feeling very insecure right
now."

Their kaffeeklatsch was
strictly hit and run. Liz had some photocopying to do and dozens of
jokes and riddles to assemble for the Taco Bell birthday gig. After
that she had to pick up Susy from kindergarten because she'd
promised her that Mommy, not Gramma, would go with her to the
dentist for her cleaning. And after
that,
she had to retrieve her party
gear from East Gate.

But for now, Liz was
bursting, after a night of tossing and turning, to finish her tale
of fear and woe.

"You brought the pin?" she
asked unnecessarily. It was in plain view, on Victoria's frilly
white blouse. "Can I have it? I want to try something."

Victoria gave her friend a
puzzled look but said nothing as she unfastened the pin and laid it
in the palm of Liz's hand. Liz frowned, studying the bauble
intently, listening all the while for strange heavenly sounds. She
felt and heard nothing. It wasn't surprising; she had as much
psychic ability as a potato.

She took the red-lacquered
box that was sitting next to the Dunkin' Donuts box and slipped the
garnet pin back into its black velvet lining. It was, she supposed,
a vague attempt at being scientific. But the results were
disappointing; she could not induce the maddening sound, no matter
how many times she opened and closed the lid.

Liz shook her head and
swore under her breath. "It must be like some kind of genie," she
muttered. "Once it's out, you can't get it back in." She removed
the pin and handed it back to Victoria.

With a look almost of
relief, Victoria pinned the gold heart through the fabric that lay
over her own heart.
"That
had nothing to do with Caroline's birthday
party," she said shrewdly. "What's going on, Liz? You're as tense
as a cat in a kennel."

Liz sucked in a lungful of
air, then blew it out through puffed-up cheeks. "It's too dumb to
tell, really," she said.

She meant it. With
sunlight pouring through the big uncurtained windows, and a warm
west wind fluttering through the lofty, spreading branches of the
leafed-out trees, and the sweet-smelling promise of summer wafting
through the screen door — on a morning as gloriously normal as
this, it was embarrassing to remember how she'd trembled with
terror in her bed just a few eerie, foggy hours earlier.

But remember it she did.
"I ... um ... think I may have seen a ghost," she confessed, gently
closing the lid of the red-lacquered box.

"Excuse me? As in
Casper?"

"He wasn't nearly so
cute." Liz shuddered and closed her eyes; she could see it all so
well. "His clothes were spattered — with blood, I
think."

Liz was able to describe
in detail the fleeting apparition that she'd seen by the
grandfather clock in the entry hall of East Gate, but she had
infinitely more trouble explaining the chiming sound that she'd
first heard in the locksmith's shop.

"It's like a ringing in
the ears," she said, struggling with the concept, "but it's a more
beautiful sound — enchanting, even. I think the sirens' song in
Greek myth must've sounded something like it."

"But the locksmith
couldn't hear it? And no one at East Gate?"

Liz shrugged. "I guess
not."

"What happened
after
the
chime-sound?"

"Who knows? I shot through
the doors like a bat out of hell.''

"This is
wonderful,"
said
Victoria, clapping her hands together. "You hear about these ghosts
in Newport mansions all the time, but you never know what to
believe. If
you
saw a ghost, though, then all the other stories must be true
as well," she concluded cheerfully. Apparently she meant it as some
kind of compliment.

Liz shook her head,
bemused by her friend's logic. "Could I have a multiple-personality
disorder, you think?"

Victoria laughed and said,
"Can you afford more than one?"

Suddenly it hit Liz: What
if someone decided she was unstable? Would they take Susy away? The
thought was more horrific than anything Liz had experienced so
far.

"This is all pure fantasy
on my part," she said emphatically. "I was tired. I was
upset
."

"Not in the locksmith's
shop, you weren't," said Victoria with a crafty look.

"Stop it! You know what
these old houses are like. East Gate is no exception. Their
personalities are so
intense
. I think we project all that
atmosphere into some kind of human form ... we create the ghosts
ourselves," Liz said in desperation.

Victoria merely smiled. "I
see. So after what you considered a bloodletting of a social event,
you came up with a bloodied ghost. Interesting. But you still
haven't explained the chime-sound."

"Oh, just ... stop it,"
said Liz tersely. She began stacking the cups and saucers. "I'm
sorry I said anything."

She decided to shift the
subject from
her
neurosis back to Victoria's. As she loaded the dishwasher she
said, completely without irony, "Have you learned anything more
from the letters besides the fact that you and Miss St. Onge share
a fear of snakes and a love of chocolate?"

She resisted the impulse
to add, "And by the way, who the hell doesn't?"

Happy to be asked,
Victoria promptly answered, "As a matter of fact, I played the
piano last time, too. I'm probably Frédéric Chopin's oldest fan.
And I had a green thumb; I'm willing to bet that I planted some of
those peonies you gave away."

From one surreal
conversation to another. Liz gave silent thanks that no one from
the Department of Children, Youth and Families was overhearing
this. The one thing she had to do was keep Susy out of it. This
would pass. All of it would pass.

But if it
didn't?

Liz found herself running
water to fill the sink, despite the fact that the dishes were now
sitting in the dishwasher.

"Victoria—I know that
asking you if you believe in ghosts is like asking Queen Elizabeth
if she believes in monarchy. But tell me this," she said, turning
off the water and facing her friend. "You claim to be a
reincarnated spiritualist. Have you actually ever ... seen a
ghost?" she asked in a voice humbled by fear. "Either time
around?"

Victoria's porcelain-pale
face turned a little more pale. "Not
this
time around," she admitted.
"But
before,
when
I was on the way up in Newport society ... I might have conducted a
séance or two."

"I didn't know Victoria
St. Onge was a social climber," said Liz, surprised. Clearly she
was going to have to read the letters, starting today. "During
these séances, then: did any kind of ... spirits ... ever
appear?"

Instead of answering Liz,
Victoria bit her lip and stared out at the huge copper beech that
flung a deep, wide shadow over the grounds of East Gate. "People
thought they did," she murmured at last.

"People?" asked Liz, alert
to something in Victoria's manner. "What about Victoria St.
Onge?"

Victoria looked back with
eyes brimming with tears. "Oh, Liz — I think we might be a
fake!"

She jumped up from the
little pine table and dashed into the living room with Liz
following in confusion. It was in this room that Victoria had
organized all the attic papers as chronologically as possible
before she ever began to read them. It had taken all week, but
eventually she'd ended up with thirty-seven shoeboxes spanning the
years 1880 to 1911, and then 1931 to
1935.
The first six shoeboxes were
arranged neatly on the bluestone hearth of Liz's brick fireplace;
the rest were taking up a big chunk of her upstairs
bedroom.

Victoria fell to her
knees, pulled out the shoebox marked 1881, and plucked a letter
tagged with a Post-it label. In her softly shirred blouse and gauzy
white skirt, she looked like some New Age secretary to Saint
Peter.

"I hope I'm wrong," she
said fiercely. "Tell me what you think. This was written when I was
— she was — twenty-nine, not so young anymore, but still managing
to make her presence felt in circles that mattered. Victoria St.
Onge had just arrived in Newport for her first summer
here."

Victoria unfolded the
letter and in a faltering voice at first, then more confidently,
read the words which presumably she herself had written over a
century earlier.

"'My dear Mercy,' "
Victoria read aloud.

It is the middle of the
night, and I have only just returned from a champagne feast hosted
by Ambassador Schilling in honor of his "dear friend," the Duchess
de Tino. Before I retire, I must write and tell you everything —
everything! — while it is fresh in my mind.

Let me say at once that
Newport is both the prettiest town, and the most vulgar, that I
have ever seen. It is, quite simply, the perfect place for us. A
mad gaiety abounds here which is much in need of a spiritual
corrective. I think, dear sister, that between us we can restore
the balance.

You must come just as soon
as you can. I have no doubt that my hostess, who suffers the
painful afflictions of rheumatism, can much benefit from your
healing touch. And she has recently lost her third husband, of whom
they say she was fond.

Victoria looked up at Liz
and said, "When I first read this part, I took what she said at
face value. Everyone knows that Newport entertained on a decadent
scale back then. I thought she believed she could do some good. And
Mercy, too — I
do
believe in faith healing," Victoria added with a defiant lift
of her chin.

"As we know," said Liz in
her dry way. "What made you have second thoughts about Victoria St.
Onge?"

"Well, she seems a little
too enthusiastic about the material world for a spiritualist. She
raves about all of it, from the canopied dancing pavilion on the
grounds to the two-hundred-foot-long red carpet they rolled out to
it from the house. And she
loved
the dinner menu — four different kinds of fowl,
six of seafood ... blah, blah. Okay, now listen to this part about
the woman she was actually staying with, the recently widowed Mrs.
Gundrun."

I have it in mind to
reunite, if ever so briefly, Mrs. Gundrun with her dear Eckhard. I
understand that when he was alive, the lady was completely under
her husband's influence and spent her considerable fortune
according to his instructions. We shall see.

Victoria made a funny
little grimace, then said, "How does that sound to you? Snotty or
genuine?"

"I would have to say
snotty."

Victoria sighed. "To me,
too."

"Did she ever get them
together?"

"Well — see what
you
think." Victoria
took out several sheets of stationery from the 1881 shoebox and
handed them to Liz.

The letter was written in
a hurry; the handwriting was annoyingly illegible. Liz curled up in
the wing chair that was too small for Jack Eastman's shoulders and
began to read.

My dear Mercy,

I was disappointed, as you
can well imagine, to learn you have decided to prolong your stay in
Baden-Baden. I cannot blame you, of course. The hot springs there
have great allure for the wealthy infirm, and where they provide no
benefit, surely you, dear sister, can step into the breach. With
whom do you stay? Write me with more care than you have taken so
far. You are much too brief!

As for me, I like my
little Newport very well indeed. After a month here, I have settled
into a pleasant routine. If the weather is fair, some of the bolder
of us head for the shore. I don my silk stockings, my corset, my
pantaloons and my black wool dress, then I slip into my bathing
shoes, put on my largest veiled hat, take up my black parasol — and
voilà! I am ready for bathing at Easton's Beach, a pretty crescent
of white sand that is oriented, praise heaven, to the prevailing
breeze.

It hardly seems fair: no
sooner do we ladies get wet up to our knees, when the flag is run
up signaling us to evacuate the beach so that, beginning promptly
at twelve o'clock noon, the men may have their turn to bathe —
and
they
bathe, I
may add, completely unencumbered!

But the afternoon beach is
perhaps the only thing that society ladies do not control in
Newport. The wealthiest women are very powerful here — indeed, they
can hardly be anything else, since their husbands are away all week
in Boston and New York tending to the families' vast fortunes. If
it is true that Saratoga was created for the amusement of sporting
men, then it is equally true that Newport exists for the amusement
of ladies of high fashion.