Passage

  Because it was. It wasn’t just an assortment of ship-related images dredged up out of long-term memory. There was a reason it was the Titanic. Mr. Briarley had slapped the book shut and dropped it on the desk and said . . . Joanna stared at the answering machine, trying to remember. It was foggy out, she thought, and had a sudden image of a snowy, sunny day, the light from the icicles flashing, glittering . . .

  You’re confabulating, she told herself sternly. Maybe she should take a different tack, not try to remember that particular incident, but what she knew about the Titanic, and maybe that would trigger the memory.

  All right. She knew about the ship going full speed ahead, even though there had been dozens of ice messages, and about the men calmly playing bridge in the first-class smoking room after the boats had gone, about Mrs. Straus, who’d refused to leave her husband, and Benjamin Guggenheim, who’d gone below and put on tails and a white waistcoat. “We’ve dressed in our best,” he’d said, “and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” And about the Californian, who hadn’t seen the Morse-lamp messages the Titanic was sending, hadn’t understood that the rockets it saw were distress signals—

  “Dr. Lander?” Tish said, knocking on the door. “Dr. Wright said to tell you he’s ready to begin the session.”

  “He is?” Joanna said, glancing at her watch. Good God, it was nearly ten.

  “Sorry,” she said, “be right there,” and scrambled to collect her minirecorder, a new tape, and her notebook. “Is Mr. Sage here?”

  “Yes,” Tish said. “Talkative, as usual.”

  Joanna grinned, shut the door, and locked it, just in case Mr. Mandrake came snooping around. They started back toward the lab.

  “But at least Mr. Sage doesn’t have his head in RIPT scans like some people I could name,” Tish said sarcastically, “and he actually listens to you when you talk to him. The reason I came to get you,” she said, leaning confidentially toward Joanna, “was to tell you I’ve given up on Dr. Wright. He’s all yours.”

  “He doesn’t listen to me either,” Joanna said, thinking of their conversation at Taco Pierre’s.

  “That’s because he spends all his time thinking about NDEs. And I mean all his time. Do you know what he said when I told him I’d rented that Tommy Lee Jones movie that we’d talked about?”

  That you talked about, Joanna thought.

  “And that I’d bought steaks and made a salad? He said he can’t, that he’s busy tonight. Probably staring at his scans.”

  This is probably not a good time to tell her about Dish Night, Joanna thought.

  “He’s completely obsessed with those scans. If he doesn’t watch it, he’ll start believing NDEs are real, like Mr. Mandrake.”

  “Somehow I can’t see that happening,” Joanna said and went in the lab.

  Richard was at the console, staring at the scans, his hand up to his chin. “See?” Tish mouthed to Joanna.

  Joanna went over to the examining table, where Mr. Sage was sitting, his hospital gown on. “Good morning, Mr. Sage,” she said. “How are you this morning?”

  Mr. Sage thought about it a good forty seconds. “Okay,” he said. Tish gave Joanna a significant look.

  At least his account won’t take long to record, Joanna thought, watching Tish prep Mr. Sage. Ten minutes for the session and another fifteen to pry out of him the fact that it was dark.

  She was wrong. After two minutes and forty seconds in non-REM sleep, he went into the NDE-state. And stayed there.

  After ten minutes, Richard asked, “How long was he under last time?”

  “Two minutes, nineteen seconds,” Joanna said.

  “Tish, how do his vitals look?”

  “Fine,” Tish said. “Pulse 65, BP 110 over 70.”

  A minute later, Richard asked, “What about his vitals now?”

  “The same,” Tish said. “Pulse 65, BP 110 over 70. Is he in non-REM sleep?”

  “No,” Richard said, sounding bemused. “He’s still in the NDE-state. Let’s stop the dithetamine.”

  Tish did, but it didn’t change anything. Ten minutes later, Mr. Sage was still in the NDE-state. “Is there a problem?”

  “No,” Richard said. “His EKG’s fine, his vitals are fine, and the scan patterns aren’t showing any abnormalities. He’s just having a long NDE.”

  Joanna looked down at Mr. Sage. What if he can’t find the passage, or the tunnel, or the whatever it is where he is, back? she thought. What if he forgot to wedge his tennis shoe in whatever door or gate or barrier he went through, and it swung shut behind him and locked?

  At twenty-eight minutes and fourteen seconds, Richard said, “All right, that’s long enough,” and told Tish to administer the norepinephrine and bring him out. “One good thing,” he said, watching the scans finally shift to the non-REM and then the waking pattern. “Mr. Sage should have plenty to tell us.”

  But he was as noncommunicative as ever. “It was dark . . . ” he said, pausing forever between phrases, “and then there was a light . . . and then it was dark again.”

  “Were you there longer this time?” Joanna asked.

  “Longer?”

  I honestly think he’s dimwitted, Joanna thought. “Yes,” she said patiently. “Did it feel like more time had passed?”

  “When?”

  “In the dark,” Joanna said, and when he looked confused, “or in the light.”

  “No.”

  “Were you in the same place?”

  “Place?”

  She tried for nearly two and a half hours to get something, anything, out of him, to no avail.

  At least his account won’t take long to type up, she thought, and I can run over to Blockbuster, but when she ran the transcript up to Richard, he asked for any and all references to elapsed time in her NDE interviews and any information on the actual time, if documented, of the clinical death. That took all afternoon. Halfway through writing it up, Richard knocked on her door. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it to Dish Night tonight,” he said. “I’m not done analyzing Mr. Sage’s scans, and I’ve still got the neurotrans-mitter analysis to go.”

  “What time is it?” Joanna asked, glancing at her watch. “Oh, my gosh, it’s a quarter to six,” she said, hitting “save” and grabbing her coat. She was supposed to pick up Kit at six-thirty. And she still hadn’t gotten the videos.

  “Tell Vielle I’m sorry. Maybe next time,” Richard said as she searched for her keys.

  “I will,” she said and took off for Blockbuster. All right now, she told herself, skidding into the parking lot, just go in, grab a couple of movies, and go get Kit. Easier said than done. Glory was checked out, and so was Jumpin’ Jack Flash, and when she browsed the aisles, the first movie she picked up was a Woody Allen, the second starred Kevin Costner, and everything else seemed to have been made by demolitions experts.

  “Are you finding everything?” a short kid in a blue-and-yellow shirt said.

  No, she thought. Do you know where the Grand Staircase is? Or why I’m seeing the Titanic? “Can you suggest a good comedy?” she said.

  “You bet,” he said, striding purposefully down the New Releases aisle and picking up a box with a photo of Robin Williams made up as a clown on the cover. “Die Laughing,” he said. “It’s about a man who’s dying of a heart condition.” Joanna shook her head. “Or how about this? Missing Link. It’s a comedy about a man with amnesia who doesn’t know who he is or what his name is—”

  “What about Julia Roberts?” Joanna said. “Do you have anything with Julia Roberts in it?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said and walked over to the drama section. “Dying Young. Julia Roberts and Campbell Scott. It’s about a young woman who’s a caregiver for a man dying of leukemia—”

  “I meant a Julia Roberts comedy,” Joanna said desperately.

  He frowned. “Her new one’s all checked out. How about Runaway Bride?”

  “Great,” she said, snatching the blue-and-yellow box from him, and w
hen he started to walk away, “Nobody dies in this, do they? Or loses their memory?”

  He shook his head.

  “Great,” she said and began rummaging for her Blockbuster card. She knew Dish Night was supposed to be a double feature, but there was no way she could live through another round of this. One would have to do.

  There was also no time. She’d promised she’d pick up Kit at six-thirty, and it was already twenty-five after. She took Runaway Bride from the outstretched hand of the short kid and ran, hoping her being late wouldn’t give Kit time to change her mind about going, but Kit met her at the door with her coat on. “Hi, come on in,” she said. “I’m almost ready to go.”

  “Where are you going?” Mr. Briarley called sharply from the library.

  “I’m going out, Uncle Pat,” Kit called back. “With Joanna. We’re going to watch a movie.”

  “I’m sorry,” Joanna whispered. “Should I have waited for you in the car?”

  Kit shook her head. “I tried sneaking out a couple of times so he wouldn’t see me leave,” she whispered back, “but it just made it worse. Come on in. I just need to tell the caregiver something. I found the answers to some of your questions.”

  She led the way into the library. Mr. Briarley was sitting in his dark red leather chair, reading a book. He didn’t look up when they came in.

  A gray-haired woman in a shirtwaist was sitting on the couch. She reminded Joanna of Mrs. Troudtheim. She had the same friendly, no-nonsense, “I can survive anything” manner, and she even had a tote bag full of olive-green-and-bright-purple yarn. What is it with crocheting? Joanna wondered. Do people automatically go color-blind when they learn to crochet?

  “Now, you have my cell phone number,” Kit said to her. “I borrowed my cousin’s till I can get one of my own,” she explained to Joanna.

  “Right here,” Mrs. Gray said, patting the breast pocket of her dress.

  “Do you want Vielle’s number, too?” Joanna asked Kit, and, when she nodded, recited it to Mrs. Gray.

  “And you’ll call me if there’s anything?” Kit said anxiously. “Anything at all?”

  “I’ll call you,” Mrs. Gray said, pulling out her crocheting. “Now, you go have a nice time, and don’t worry. I’ve got things under control here.”

  “Go?” Mr. Briarley said, shutting his book and marking the place with his thumb. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going out, Uncle Pat,” Kit said. “I’m going to watch a movie. With Joanna, Joanna Lander,” she said, presenting Joanna to him.

  He gave no sign of recognition. “She was a student of yours at Dry Creek,” Kit said. “We’re going to go watch a movie.”

  Joanna thought of the steward, repeatedly starting off down the deck, of the young woman in the nightgown, saying over and over again, “It’s so cold.” Was that what having Alzheimer’s was like, being trapped in a hallucination, in a dream, repeating the same lines, the same actions, over and over again? And how about Kit? She was trapped, too, in an endlessly repeating nightmare, though you couldn’t tell by the quiet, loving way she answered him, patted his arm.

  “What about Kevin?” he asked. “Isn’t he going with you?”

  “No, Uncle Pat.” She turned to Joanna. “Ready? Oh, wait, I had a book I wanted to show you before we go,” she said, and ran upstairs.

  At the word go, Joanna looked apprehensively at Mr. Briarley, but he had returned to his book. Kit reappeared, carrying two textbooks. “I don’t think either of these is it,” she said, handing them to Joanna, “but since you’re here—”

  Neither of them was it. Joanna knew as soon as she saw them. “Well, it was worth a try,” Kit said, ran them back upstairs, and came down again, cell phone in hand. “Okay. I’m ready. Good-bye, Uncle Pat.” She kissed him on the cheek.

  “ ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ is not, contrary to the way it is popularly taught, a poem about similes and alliteration and onomatopoeia,” Mr. Briarley said, as if he were lecturing to her second-period class. “Neither is it about albatrosses and oddly spelled words. It is a poem about death and despair. And resurrection.” He stood up, walked to the window, and pulled the curtain aside to look out. “Where’s Kevin? He should be here by now.”

  Kit went over and led him back to his chair. He sat down. “I’ll be back soon,” she said.

  He looked up innocently. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going out with Joanna. We’re going to go watch a movie,” she said and held her cell phone up to show Mrs. Gray, who was contentedly crocheting. “Call me,” she said.

  “Does that happen every time you go out?” Joanna asked as they got in the car.

  “Pretty much,” Kit said, turning on her cell phone. “This was such a great idea. Now I won’t worry that Mrs. Gray’s trying to reach me and I don’t know it.”

  Like the Californian, Joanna thought, wondering how to broach the subject of the questions Kit had said she’d found the answers to. If she asked her now, on the way over, it would sound like she’d only invited Kit to Dish Night to get information out of her. But if she waited, Kit might bring it up in the middle of the movie, with Vielle right there, and Vielle was already suspicious.

  It had better be now. But at least lead up to it, Joanna thought. “I’m so glad you decided to come, Kit,” she said.

  “So am I,” Kit said, reaching in the pocket of her coat and pulling out a folded sheet of paper. “Okay, the Morse lamp,” she said. “They did use one on the Titanic, to signal the Californian. It was on the port bridge wing, which, according to the map in The Illustrated Titanic, was just in front of the bridge and off to the left. I had to look that up,” she said, smiling. “I never can remember which is port and which is starboard. Port is left as you’re facing the bow. Starboard’s right.”

  In front of the bridge and off to the left. That was where the two men had stood, signaling with the lantern. “Did it say what the Morse lamp looked like?”

  Kit shook her head. “Unfortunately, even though it’s called The Illustrated Titanic, there was no illustration, and no description. I’ll keep looking. Now, about the ships she tried to contact, I’m not sure I’ve got them all. The stuff about the wireless is scattered all over the place, and half the books don’t have indexes, so I don’t know if this is all of them, but the ones I have are . . . ” she peered at the paper in the light from the passing streetlights, “ . . . the Virginian, the Carpathia—that’s the one that picked up the survivors—the Burma, and the Olympic.”

  The Virginian, the Carpathia, the Burma, and the Olympic. Not the Baltic or the Frankfurt. But Kit had said the information about the wireless was scattered all over the place, and the Titanic could have signaled dozens of ships. The books might only mention those that were close enough to help or had responded. The officer had said the Frankfurt wasn’t answering.

  “And of course the Californian,” Kit said, “but you said ‘contacted,’ and they were never able to contact her. Did you know her wireless operator shut down his wireless and went to bed five minutes before the Titanic sent her first SOS?”

  Joanna laughed.

  “What is it?” Kit asked. “Did I say something funny?”

  “You just remind me of somebody, a little girl I know who’s always beginning her sentences with ‘Did you know?’ ”

  “A patient of yours?” Kit asked.

  “Sort of,” Joanna said. “Were you able to find out anything about the first-class dining room?”

  “First-Class Dining Saloon,” Kit corrected. “Yes, there was tons of stuff. It was . . . ” she consulted her notes by the light of the streetlights again, “ ‘a sumptuous dining room patterned after England’s Haddon Hall and decorated in the Jacobean style.’ ”

  Jacobean. Joanna had no idea what Jacobean furniture looked like. She pulled into the parking lot of Vielle’s apartment complex. “Now, I have to warn you,” she said, shutting off her headlights. “We have a rule against talking about work at Dish Nigh
t, so you’ll have to tell me about the rest of this on the way back.”

  “Okay,” Kit said. “Just let me finish this part about the dining saloon.” Joanna nodded and switched on the overhead light. “It was located in the center of the ship, on the saloon deck, next to the Grand Staircase. It was one hundred and fourteen feet long and was capable of seating five hundred passengers at a time. It was painted white and had two rows of white pillars down the middle. The chairs and tables were dark oak, and the chairs were upholstered in dark green velvet with headrests embroidered in fleurs-de-lis.” Kit folded up the paper and stuck it back in the pocket of her coat. “I’ll tell you what I found out about the engines stopping on the way back,” she said, but that wouldn’t be necessary.

  Richard was right. It wasn’t the Titanic.

  “SOS. Come at once—big list—ten miles south Head Old Kinsale—SOS . . . ”

  —WIRELESS MESSAGE FROM THE LUSITANIA

  VIELLE HAD A FIT about Joanna’s having brought Kit. “Are you out of your mind?” she whispered when Kit took the popcorn into the living room. “Letting her near Richard? Did you look at her? She’s beautiful, and guys really go for the fragile, helpless type. If he gets one look at her, you can kiss your chances with Dr. Right good-bye.”

  “Richard’s not coming,” Joanna said. “We had a problem with the session this afternoon, and he needed to—”

  “What kind of problem?” Vielle demanded. “And whose session? Yours?”

  “Dish Night Rule Number One, no talking about work,” Joanna said. “I’ve already warned Kit about that.”

  “Is that why you brought her?” Vielle asked. “So I couldn’t ask you about the project? Or about why you’re so interested all of a sudden in a movie neither of us liked? Or why you don’t want to watch it—?” She broke off as Kit came in the kitchen with her cell phone, studying the buttons on it.