Yesternight (7 page)

I raised my eyes to Mr. O'Daire's. “‘Friendly, Kansas'?”

He pressed his lips together and nodded. “I know—it sounds like a make-believe town. She's talked about Friendly ever since that day Rebecca first wrote about it, though. And she'll fly into a fit of crying whenever we tell her we can't take her there.”

“Have you checked an atlas to see if such a place exists?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

He shook his head. “I've never found it on any map or in any book stocked in our nearest library. Although, to be fair, Gordon Bay is also too puny to appear on most maps.”

I flipped through more pages of the notebook, still chewing on that nail, still worrying that a multiple personality was at work in the mind of such a small child. The farther I traveled into the journal, the shorter and more succinct the notes grew.

       
November 22, 1921—Today Janie claimed that she clearly remembered the drowning dream. She described seeing the man from the other house watching her struggle in thick underwater grasses that yanked at her ankles and skirts.

       
January 17, 1922—Today Janie asked if I enjoyed calculating square roots. She turned three and a half last month! Nobody in this house—not my husband, not I, not her visiting grandparents or aunt—has ever discussed mathematics much at all, aside from perhaps mentioning the cost of a bill. Square roots!

       
May 4, 1922—Janie spoke of her drowning dream again this morning. “Why do you think you drowned?” I asked. She lifted eight of her fingers and said in a voice
that made my blood run cold, “Eight. Eight. Eight. Watch out for the number eight!”

       
June 23, 1922—Janie's fourth birthday. When I asked what she wished for after she blew out her candles, she stated, “I wish someone would take me back to Friendly. My other family must be worried sick.”

       
December 25, 1922—Michael asked Janie to make a Christmas card for me. She signed it “Violet Sunday.” Oh, how tired I am getting of hearing about Violet Sunday! Janie's eccentricities are starting to remind me of Mother's, and I am frightened this queerness will continue forever.

       
When I questioned Janie about the mistake on the card, she told me that signing that name came naturally, although the Sunday part was a mistake, now that she thought about it. She told me she wonders what the man in the other house would think of her signing her name that way.

“What do you make of this somewhat sinister-sounding ‘man in the other house'?” I asked Mr. O'Daire with another lift of my head. “Janie speaks of him so frequently, and yet he seems to remain an unnamed mystery in the journal. Unless . . .” I thumbed ahead to the second half of the notebook, where I discovered a completely different set of handwriting, one more linear and slanted, more rushed. The dates ranged from August 1923 to the present year. “Whose handwriting is this in the second half of the book?”

“Mine,” said Mr. O'Daire.

“Why did your wife stop writing?”

He rubbed the back of his neck and winced, as though the forthcoming answer caused his muscles to ache.

“Mr. O'Daire?” I asked, and my stomach sank, for I thought once more of Miss Simpkin's insistence that this was all a swindle. “Why didn't she continue the journal herself?”

“The idea of writing down anything that would make Janie sound insane started to sicken her. When Janie was five years old, Rebecca's mother was . . .” He lowered his hand from his neck and picked at a rough spot on the table's wood. “They had to commit my former mother-in-law to an asylum.”

“Oh.” I swallowed. “Oh, I'm so sorry. May I ask why?”

“Severe melancholy. Rebecca and her sister couldn't even convince their mother to get out of bed sometimes. She'd want to—and she once even tried to”—he scratched at the wood with one of his nails—“take her own life.”

“Did their mother demonstrate these symptoms from an early age, do you know? Or did they manifest as she got older?”

“Rebecca always told me she grew up fearing her mother's dramatic shifts in moods. Her father was the captain of a whaling ship and traveled out to sea for long periods of time. They lived in a remote house to the south, and every time Captain Simpkin left, according to Rebecca, her mother would simply . . .
unravel
.”

“Hmm . . .” I smoothed out a curled-up corner on the bottom right-hand side of the page. “It sounds like prairie madness.”

“How's that?”

“Many of the pioneers who settled in the Great Plains couldn't tolerate the loneliness of such an isolated way of living. They turned melancholy . . . and sometimes violent.”

Mr. O'Daire shifted in his chair and crossed his right leg over his left.

“Is Captain Simpkin still alive?” I asked.

“Yes. And still sailing out to sea.”

“Did he ever come close to drowning? Could the risks of his occupation perhaps have led to this fear of drowning in Janie?”

Mr. O'Daire shook his head. “I've never heard of him experiencing a brush with death. Janie has never expressed concern over his safety either. A ‘tough old barnacle' is what she knows him as.”

I smiled at that comment and flipped through more pages. “Was your mother-in-law ever left alone with Janie?”

“She never harmed anyone but herself, if that's what you're wondering.”

“Yes,” I said. “It's precisely what I'm wondering. As I said about prairie madness—”

“No one has ever hurt that child, Miss Lind. I swear. I wouldn't let them.”

“I just want to make absolute certain.”

“Everyone loves that girl. Everyone's always fussing over her and making sure she's safe and content, including my parents and Rebecca's parents.”

“I'm glad to hear that.” I softened my voice. “Janie hinted that her other grandfather, your father, is no longer alive. Is that correct?”

“My father died of cancer the same year we institutionalized my mother-in-law.” Mr. O'Daire placed both hands, palms down, flat on the table. “It was . . .” He laughed—one of those coughing types of laughs that rattles out of a person when he's astounded by his own rotten luck. “It was an awful year. Rebecca grew to hate me for wanting to get a professional's opinion of Janie. I caught her with a fellow who had been her first sweetheart—someone who was purportedly consoling her over her hardships with me. I inherited this hotel and moved out of my own home. Tillie moved in with
Rebecca to help her with Janie. And . . . now . . .” He shrugged. “Now, here I am, spending my evenings entertaining other lonely saps. Still desperate to prove that Janie once lived another life as a lady mathematical genius.”

I cocked my head at him. “Why do you want to prove this reincarnation theory so desperately?”

He leaned forward, digging his elbows against the table. “If you had a child who screamed in terror most nights because she claimed to have drowned thirty-five years ago, wouldn't you do the same? Wouldn't you do whatever you could to help that child return to the place where she claims she came from—to help her find peace?”

“You believe that if Janie returns to this ‘Friendly, Kansas,' she'll find peace?”

“Why would a child plead to go to a place year after year after year if it didn't mean something vital to her?”

I redirected my attention back to the journal, knowing some rational explanation, miles away from the possibility of a past life, waited to be discovered within all those crinkling pages marked up in lines of black ink.

I circled back to the theory of paramnesia.

“Does Janie ever strike you as being paranoid?” I asked, scanning a page that detailed Janie's fears of bath time.

“No. Only when she's in the throes of one of her nightmares. Why?”

I shook my head, knowing it was far too soon to mention any possible diagnoses to her father. I reread two of the entries that most haunted me:

            
May 4, 1922—Janie spoke of her drowning dream again this morning. “Why do you think you drowned?” I asked. She lifted eight of her fingers and said in a voice that made my blood run cold, “Eight. Eight. Eight. Watch out for the number eight!”

And . . .

            
November 22, 1921—Today Janie claimed that she clearly remembered the drowning dream. She described seeing the man from the other house watching her struggle down in the cold, dark waters while her heart burst to pieces.

I pressed out a crease in the paper. “I don't know what to make of this number eight business, do you?”

“She's always been obsessed with that number.”

“Does she seem frightened of it?”

“Not entirely. She writes it quite a bit, sometimes over and over, especially when she gets into one of her dreamier moods.”

“How interesting.” I turned to the later entries, spotting the words
the man in the other house
yet again. “As I was saying before,” I continued, “Janie seems to fear a specific individual. A man.” I met Mr. O'Daire's eyes. “Can you think of any men in her real life who might have frightened her?”

He clenched his jaw. “For the last time, Miss Lind, no one's ever hurt Janie in her current life. For crying out loud, I wouldn't even let anyone abusive in the same breathing space as my daughter.”

“You're positive? When she was a baby, there weren't any friends or—”

He slammed the heel of his right palm against the table, making me jump. “Her mother and I have done nothing but taken the best care of her. We lost another baby—a stillborn—a year before we learned Janie was on the way, and we swore we would lay down our own lives before Janie would ever face any harm. No one has ever hurt that little girl.”

“I'm sorry.” I closed the book, my heart sinking—clenching,
shattering
—over the idea of a deceased baby. “I . . . I'm sorry for your loss. And for upsetting you. I can tell this entire puzzle surrounding Janie has frazzled everyone's nerves. But you must understand that I, as a psychologist, must seek out rational, behavioral explanations before I can even begin to consider the reincarnation theory.”

He ran the same hand that had just whacked the table through the short strands of hair above his right ear. A gold band encrusted with a blue gem gleamed from his right ring finger—a high school class ring, if I had to wager. His left hand demonstrated no lingering indications of his former wedding band.

“Janie mentioned having a sister,” I said.

“Eleanor?”

“Yes, that's the name she gave.”

“That's Violet's sister.” He bent forward and took the notebook, paging back to the beginning of the records. “Rebecca wrote down several cases of Janie mentioning Eleanor and their mother and father, as well as a little terrier named Poppy.” He scooted the book back in front of me and poked at an entry with his right index finger. “See?”

I looked down and, indeed, read an account of Eleanor.

            
August 19, 1922—When I was brushing Janie's hair this morning, she said that her other mother had “a ghastly time” trying to brush all the curls in her sister Eleanor's hair. “My hair was straight and brown as an acorn shell,” she said, “but Eleanor's was blond and springy and tangled. I used to envy her hair. She looked like a princess after it was brushed. Oh my, how I wish I could tell Eleanor that none of this was her fault. There was nothing she could have done.”

I shook my head and breathed through my nose, continuing to remain perplexed.

“Did you learn about anything like this in your university studies?” asked Mr. O'Daire.

“About reincarnation?”

He nodded.

“No. This is the first time I've ever encountered this particular type of claim.”

He tapped his left fingertips against the tabletop. “Do you have any recommendations—anything at all—for what I could do to help her?”

“Before I can do anything further, I would like to read more of this journal, to obtain a more complete picture of what Janie is trying to say through her Violet Sunday stories.”

Again, he nodded, with some hesitation. “All right.”

“I would also like to investigate the existence of Friendly, Kansas—or a place with a name that strongly resembles Friendly.
I think the sooner we rule out the reincarnation theory, the better it will be for . . .” I stopped and bit my bottom lip, unsure which name to add to the end of that sentence.

“Better for who?” asked Mr. O'Daire, his forehead wrinkling. “For you?”

“I didn't say that.”

“Are you worried about being viewed as a laughingstock if you help my daughter?”

I slid my right thumb across the layer of condensation frosting up the glass of soda pop in front of me. “I'm already considered a laughingstock by some, Mr. O'Daire.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm a woman in a man's field.”

He leaned back in his chair and dangled his right elbow off the armrest. “Is the chauvinism that bad?”

“Every single doctorate program I applied to turned me down, even though my grades were higher than those of most of the male students around me. Those cocky, lucky dunderheads got accepted and moved on, whereas I—” I met his eyes and closed my mouth, realizing I had veered into the territory of complaining. “I'm sorry. I know that's none of your business. The chauvinism I face, however, is one of the very reasons I go beyond the normal duties of a test administrator to help the most troubled of students.”

“Miss Sunday encountered that same barrier.”

I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”