“Last summer,” she said softly, “a lightning-rod salesman came through town.”
Jesse knew better than to prompt her with a question. He let her silent thoughts play out against the homely sound of birdcalls, a barking dog, children playing somewhere out of sight. Wind chimes were suspended from the ceiling of the porch, but the breeze was so gentle that they gave out only the occasional bright ting.
“I don’t know if you can understand how it seemed to me, Mr. Cullum. How it was for me before I came here. I was raised in a relatively wealthy family. My father owns a chain of automotive-supply stores. And I married a man who is even more successful. So my life has been good, by conventional standards. Home in Manhattan, a vacation house in Malibu. My husband was a decent man, is a decent man—often out of town, maybe something of a philanderer, sometimes photographed with women he refuses to talk about, but we liked each other well enough. It’s just that he didn’t understand my … nostalgia.”
“Nostalgia?”
“That’s the word I use. Can you be nostalgic for a place you’ve never really been? Well, I was. Strange as it sounds. It started after we were married. I began to read history compulsively—I guess you could say obsessively—long before August Kemp started selling tickets to it. American history, I mean; America before the Internet, before television, before cars, before electric lights. I read history books and old novels, books out of print for a century and half.” She smiled, not happily. “I collected stereoscopes and daguerreotypes. Scenic views of New York and Boston. My husband called it unhealthy—I made the mistake of wondering out loud whether I was actually channeling a past life. I thought about seeing a psychic; he wanted me to see a shrink.”
“And did you?”
“I looked up my family genealogy instead. What I found was the usual assortment of European immigrants, most too recent to be interesting. But my maternal grandfather’s line went way back. Like a golden thread. Old New England stock. The names of people, the places they lived—it all seemed familiar to me, like something I had once known and forgotten. Sometimes, when I closed my eyes, I could see it perfectly clearly. Another world. Church steeples and wooden sidewalks and women in bustle skirts, all clean and simple and bright and new. Do you have even the faintest idea what I mean?”
Jesse’s father had once given him a children’s book—probably left behind by one of Madame Chao’s inebriated clients—in which there was a fanciful drawing of a pirate’s cave strewn with jewels. On more than a few nights Jesse had imagined himself into that cave, a private kingdom where rubies rubbed shoulders with emeralds and no one was ever startled awake by the simulated ecstasies of hardworking whores. The cave had seemed real enough in his mind, occasionally more real than the world around him. “I think I understand.”
“Of course I was fascinated by the idea of August Kemp’s resort when I heard of it. The idea seemed so compelling and at the same time so implausible. I still don’t understand how it works. Leaves of the past pressed together like the pages of a book. Absurd. But true.”
Jesse nodded. The nation’s newspapers had reacted to the advent of the City with the same incredulity. The claims made on the City’s behalf could not possibly be genuine, but reporters sent to debunk the fraud had come back converted, bearing photographs of the flying machine in which they had been permitted to ride.
“I tried to put it out of my mind. The cost of a week at Kemp’s resort wasn’t trivial, even for us. Almost like flying into orbit for a vacation. Which was what my husband said when I raised the question. It would be a titanic waste of money. I was disappointed, but I could hardly contradict him. So we flew to Switzerland that winter. An awkward trip. There were arguments. Skiing bores me. The time passed slowly, as it does in marriages that have decayed into friendships. I think Terrence sensed that.”
“Terrence is your husband?” Is or was or will be, Jesse thought: time travel caused those ordinary words to tangle up like shoestrings.
“Yes. And he genuinely wanted to make me happy, and he knew he wasn’t succeeding at it. So for my thirty-sixth birthday he conceded the point and booked us the full tour. It was a wonderful surprise … though I knew, even then, that I wanted to leave him. And not just him but the world we lived in. I knew I’d take the chance if the opportunity presented itself. I knew it without ever really admitting it to myself, if that makes any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“We signed on to the ‘Springtime in New York’ package. Very exciting, going through the Mirror, and especially when we left Futurity Station on the special train, watching the old America slide by the window, all those sleepy depots and smoky little towns, cities without skyscrapers. New York, of course. They took us to see Adelina Patti at the Academy of Music. Dinner at Delmonico’s. That was the night I made my run. Delmonico’s invented Lobster Newburg, did you know that? But as it happens, I hate lobster. So I excused myself and found my way out of the building. It was the Delmonico’s on Broad Street, a fine June evening, and there I stood on the street corner, all by myself, dressed in my period clothes, the kind they give us so we don’t shock the locals, Velcro instead of buttons and stays—do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And money in my purse, because I had made preparations. And a whole world in front of me. It felt … wonderful. For a short time. I learned better very quickly. An unchaperoned woman in New York is liable to be mistaken for a prostitute. Renting a room, buying a train ticket, even shopping for clothes, all much more difficult than I had anticipated. I learned to pass myself off as a widow. Because, God knows, the Civil War left no shortage of widows. But it’s a difficult lie to maintain. So I refined the story. I told people I had been engaged when my betrothed was killed at Waynesboro. Or I said I’d been traveling with my brother when he was taken ill. I told all sorts of lies, a lie for every occasion. Eventually I arrived here. I had convinced myself that this town would be different. I chose it because I have relatives—I suppose you could say ancestors—here. Not that I would dare introduce myself to them. I planned to make my own home here, on my own merits. I would join the church, I would be absorbed into the community. I had no better plan that that. It seemed sufficient.” She gave Jesse another smile with no discernible trace of happiness in it. “Do you know the story of the painted bird?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I read about it in a book. A man catches a bird and paints it different colors and releases it. The painted bird tries to go back to its flock, but the flock doesn’t recognize it anymore—the other birds turn on it, kill it. Well, I haven’t been killed. But otherwise, Mr. Cullum, I am that bird. I dress incorrectly, no matter how hard I try. I’ve been told I have a peculiar accent, that I talk like a sodbuster or a Negro. I don’t defer to men exactly as I should. I stare when I ought to cast my eyes down. I say the wrong words at the wrong time. In a thousand subtle ways, I am that painted bird. Which is why I live alone in a rented room. Which is why I’ve nearly run out of money and can’t find decent work. Which is why I have no friends to speak of.”
Jesse waited for her to go on. Three women strolled past the house, twirling sun umbrellas. Their conversation was a tangle of tenor voices fading in the warm spring air.
“One of the tenants here has a tumor on his face. It covers most of his right eye. Where I come from, it would have been treated and removed. So I find myself thinking, what if I get sick? Something as simple as appendicitis could kill me. A fever could kill me. I’ve had all the shots, but what happens when the vaccines wear off? As for the charm and innocence I hoped to find—it exists, it really does, but consider what it’s buried in. Racism. Misogyny and homophobia so absolute as to be nearly universal. Hatred of the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese—not that many of them are seen in these parts. Europe is as far away as the moon, Asia might as well be Mars. And—did I mention the lightning-rod salesman?”