Midnight at the Electric

by Jodi Lynn Anderson

  “Cathy.” He leaned his forehead against mine, ran his nose down the side of my neck. “What’s gotten into you?”

  I wanted to tell him, but I also wanted to hold the secret of Mama’s letters to myself for a while longer. “Come with me,” I whispered, against his cheek. “We have to go.” He pulled his head back to look at me, kissed me on the lips, still groggy. “I can’t make it through another storm,” I said. “Beezie can’t make it through another storm.”

  His eyes glittered in the dark as he studied me. He swallowed hard, and his voice was uneven when he spoke again. “I could never go. Going is a mistake. Cathy,” he said, propping himself up, more and more alert. “We’ll take Beezie to a different doctor. We’ll figure out something better to cover the cracks in the house, so the dust won’t get in.” He swallowed nervously. “Don’t pin your hopes on something out there that doesn’t exist,” he said, “or some ball of light or anything else. Pin them on me.”

  I didn’t reply. I laid my head against him. His heart was pounding fast inside his chest. We lay there in the dark, and my mind kept racing. If I don’t go now, I kept thinking, I never will.

  I stayed there till his heart slowed and his breathing grew even. After a while he fell asleep, but my heart kept pounding. I slipped away.

  Back in my room now, and I still can’t shake the feeling I could leave tonight. I thought if I wrote it down it could help me choose, but it only stirs up my confusion more. Dawn is still a long way off, and there’d be time to go before Mama woke. Nobody would stop us.

  All this time I’ve lived in Canaan, even at the darkest moments and even when I’ve disagreed with her, I’ve always believed in Mama’s word, and that what she wants is what we want, and that we all belong to each other.

  But it isn’t true.

  LENORE

  PART 1

  MARCH 2, 1919

  Dear Beth, you can’t imagine how you’ve shocked me!

  I walked into the foyer yesterday after work, fingers stained with ink, hair in all directions, and found—sitting on the mantel by the door—your letter. It may as well have been Bluebeard’s treasure, I was so surprised to see it—it’s been so many weeks since I heard from you. And then I read what was inside.

  You! Engaged!

  I nearly fell off my feet.

  Who is this man who’s swept you off your feet so unexpectedly? You barely say anything about him. I’m thrilled of course, but I need more. What does he do? Where will you live?

  You asked me to tell you how I’m doing. Everyone says remarkably well, given the circumstances.

  Mother says the best cure for grief is to keep busy. I wish she’d take her own advice. I avoid them all as much as I can: Hubert and Gordon in black suits all the time, Vera and Ruth moping around the garden, Lawrence riding Star around the estate like the fourth horseman of the apocalypse. All any of them talks about is TeddyTeddyTeddy.

  Only Father and I have stayed sane. We go off to work together and walk home together, and Teddy never comes up. Though Father has gone and bought the biggest memorial stone you’ve ever seen, to replace the one we had on the grave temporarily. Hubert says it cost a fortune, but I suppose we made so much money in the war that it doesn’t matter. Remember how we used to be rich? Now we’re ten times that.

  Will the suffocating gloom ever lift from this house, Beth? I feel like Rapunzel, locked up in my tower by a witch, only the witch is everyone’s sadness. I know if you were here, you’d save me. Without you, I’m trying to save myself and doing a poor job of it. The house is a tomb, and I am buried inside.

  Compared to so many people, we’ve had it easy. (Mrs. Douglas lost all three sons. All of them, Beth!) Vera says that kind of logic doesn’t matter. She says that since Teddy was closer to me than anyone, I should be feeling the loss the most. But I refuse to let the sadness sink me like it’s sunk them.

  The only thing, and I’ll admit this only to you, is that I don’t sleep well. And every once in a while I feel like I’m not myself. Things like: I look at my own hand and can’t believe it’s attached to my wrist. Or I sometimes feel like everything I see happening around me is a film instead of real life.

  Otherwise, life is slowly returning to normal in Forest Row. There are things to buy in the shops now, and plenty of food, though not as much as before the war. I do payroll and administrative work at the factory, and being the boss’s daughter pays well, which means saving money for my ticket to America. (I haven’t given up the idea, Beth!) You’d laugh, watching me take orders. You always said I was good at giving them.

  I’ve started taking long walks again. The other day I went looking for our Cave of the Cup—where you used to tell me the Holy Grail was buried, remember? But it must have grown over with thorn bushes because I couldn’t find the way in.

  I kept following the creek until long after I knew I must have passed the opening and I kept going and going. I never found it, but I did find something that took me by surprise.

  It’s a stone house—or what’s left of one. And it’s old: stone floors and stone walls, half crumbled in. A collapsed stick roof. I can’t tell how recently, but it’s clearly abandoned now. It’s shrouded in bushes, which is why you and I and Teddy must have missed it all these years on our walks.

  I went in, pushing the cobwebs and branches out of my way. There was an old table, half standing, and a bowl and a plate set as if some person years ago had just gotten up and left right before dinner. There was a mantel above the fireplace, still intact, chimney and all.

  If we were still little, we’d say it was haunted by the ghosts of dead Germans and claim it for our hideout (Teddy would sneak around and throw things in through the window to scare us). Now it’s just an empty house.

  As you can tell, there isn’t much to do. At first when someone dies, you feel so surrounded by everyone telling you how sorry they are. Then that all fades away and you’re left—not with all that noise and activity anymore—but just with one less person in your life than you used to have.

  Don’t worry, Beth, when I finally make it to you in New York, I’ll be the girl you remember. I won’t let the war and everything that went with it crumple me up. I’ll live next door to you wherever you end up, and help with all your babies when you have them. It won’t be quite what we used to picture as children, where we get married in a double wedding to famous actor brothers, but it’ll be good enough. I promise you, I won’t change.

  P.S. Here’s the book I promised you, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the one we scribbled all over, though I’m a little nervous putting something so sentimental in the mail in case it sinks on the way over. Also just to prove we’re grown-ups, I’m sending Dubliners, though I only half understood it.

  P.P.S. Did I ever tell you that sometimes I look east and imagine that, if there were no trees and no curve on the Earth, I’d be able to see you? Do you ever do silly things like that?

  Send more news when you can.

  MARCH 16, 1919

  Dear Beth,

  I was so excited to get your letter! I can’t believe you’re moving to Kansas. People say you can plant anything in the ground in the American West and it grows. I have to admit, I never saw you as a farmer or a farmer’s wife, but I’m very happy for you.

  There’s a parade in town today, to remember the soldiers. I decided to stay home . . . for one because I have something strange to tell you, and for another because I can’t take another parade where everything centers on the dead and we all act as though we may as well be dead too, even though we’re not.

  On Sunday we had several families from around the village over for a dinner. Mother said it’d been too long since we’d all gotten together, but really I think she sees any gathering as a chance to marry us off. Matchmaking is the only thing that stirs her to life anymore. Maybe if we were all permanently out of the house, she wouldn’t have to get dressed in the morning. She wouldn’t have to breathe. She could lie down at Teddy’s headstone and never get up.r />
  The boy she picked out for me (for some reason, she focuses mostly on me) was too boring to even write much about. He’s a coward, for one thing. He watched all his friends join up before he finally got conscripted when boys like Teddy were joining up first thing. And he was so unforgivably serious: I’msorryforyourloss this and that.

  My face hurt from pretending to be interested while shooting annoyed glances at Mother, who didn’t notice. (It’s like she wants someone to come along and plug a hole inside me. She doesn’t see that there is no hole.) She says marriage and motherhood is everything. “I nearly died giving birth to Gordon,” she likes to say, “but it was worth it! Then of course I went on to have five more children!”

  The conversation went on eternally. People kept arriving, and it got so stuffy and hot in the house, and I was so tired of Mr. Sorryforyourloss that I walked out the back door to get some air, and then just set off across the field. I went all the way to the edge of the woods to the fence that marks off our land, and then I stood there and tried to catch my breath for a minute.

  Then, on impulse, I doubled back to the housekeeper’s shed for a broom, and then climbed over the fence with it, into the woods, and walked all the way back to the abandoned cottage.

  Once I got there I began to sweep. It was like something had taken me over, and all I wanted at that moment was to get the place as clean as possible. I swept out every leaf, every piece of dirt that had accumulated in the corners for God knows how many years. By the time I was finished, the house was still broken, but it was spotlessly broken.

  I didn’t trail home until after the dinner was over and all the guests were gone. No one seemed to have noticed: Vera was sitting on the sofa braiding Ruth’s hair (with black ribbon, of course), and Hubert was in the library, no doubt reading depressing poetry. This is another thing about losing Teddy. When he was alive he was just one of us. Now that he’s gone, he’s the only one anyone thinks about.

  Anyway, over the past few days I’ve been to the cottage several times to clear out more debris from the crevices in the walls, brought down some old pillows and jars and things Mother won’t miss to make it comfortable, and propped up the old table with some bricks that were scattered close by in the ivy.

  I suppose you’ll tell me I’ve lost my mind. I don’t know what to say except that being there and fixing things makes me feel awake, and it’s the only place to be truly alone. Though, as stupid as it sounds, I mostly just sit at this old table (where I am now!) and have imaginary conversations with you. I think of this place as ours. And maybe that’s the strangest part.

  Well, no, that’s not quite right. The strangest part is that every once in a while, when I’m home sitting up in my window where I have a good view of the woods, I swear I can see smoke wafting up from this spot in the trees. So maybe I am losing my mind after all.

  I’ve been doing some counting. Remember how after I fell off the barn roof that one summer I was always getting hurt, I liked to count my broken bones? The clavicle, the sacrum, the tiny bones in the wrist—going over them again and again to pass the weeks I spent in bed recovering? Now I count time.

  It’s been three years and eleven months since they sank the Lusitania and a year and ten months since the first zeppelin bombed London. It’s been four years and thirteen days since you left Forest Row, and by my calculations it will be four more months before I can save up the money to see you again.

  All I do is work and read. Work is fine, though none of the workers seem to like me much. It’s only my first year and I’m only seventeen, but I make more money than most of them, and sometimes I suspect they know it.

  This time I’m enclosing Ethan Frome. Ruth bought it for me. It’s very tragic.

  Love, Lenore

  APRIL 1, 1919

  Dear Beth,

  I can barely hear myself think, my heart is beating so hard as I think about what to write. We’re all going to a workers’ picnic at the factory, and Vera and Ruth are running up and down the hall looking for things to wear. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to get down before I have to run, but something so startling happened last night that I can’t keep it in. I’ll need to explain what led up to it, which is also confusing in its own way.

  The new cinema opened last night, only three train stops and we’re there. I won at drawing straws so Mother took me as her date. The theme is Arabian Nights. It’s full of stars and spires—the kind of thing we would have fainted over when we were little. (Kindly, you would have given me the middle seat. I would have made you give me half your candy.)

  In actuality it was so lovely and perfect, but I have to admit that the whole thing felt a bit flat, like there was no sparkle to any of it. I sat there thinking how the stage lights are just chemical reactions and not magical objects like they might have seemed a few years ago. I kept looking around at all the faces turned so raptly to the screen and wished I could be as absorbed as they were. Though it makes no sense, I always find myself looking for Teddy among crowds—for that aggressive, spiky brown hair of his and that smirk that used to annoy me. It’s a stupid habit, but I can’t seem to break it.

  A one-armed boy winked at me from the row ahead of us (if you toss a pebble in Forest Row you’re going to hit a one-armed boy). I gave him a look to say not a chance. Not because of the lack of limbs, but because I feel like these boys are always asking something like comfort from me, even if it’s just with their eyes. Mother cried through most of the film even though it was a comedy. Then we came home and went to bed. Everything was normal.

  So I couldn’t say why some time around midnight, I woke in a panic. My heart was beating fast like I’d been sprinting. And I couldn’t calm down. I kept remembering—of all things—how Teddy once saved my pet duck from becoming dinner by hiding him in his room—how he called me in in a whisper and showed me, and said, “He’ll live to quack another day.” I couldn’t get it out of my head.

  Finally, I snuck downstairs and pulled on my wool jumper and boots and walked out across the field in the moonlight and the drizzle, and down to the creek and wound my way to the cottage because it was the only place I could think of to get away from myself.

  I was—I admit—a little afraid of running into something scary in the dark, but I was more afraid of staying in my room and having my heart beat out of my chest. It smelled like dew and grass and rain, and I watched the ground for grass snakes as I walked.

  Now that I think about it, I’ve ignored the signs all along. The bowl set neatly on the table. The smoke from the chimney, the half-mended roof.

  I burst inside without a thought, tried to light the candles but my hands were shaking. It was like there was some invisible thread between Teddy saving my duck all those years ago and the ground underneath me, the cells of my skin and my shaking hands. At last I gave up and sank down on the floor against the wall and tried to catch my breath. A moan escaped from my lips, a thing inside that had nowhere else to go but out. I held my breath for a moment, and was surprised to find I could still hear myself wheezing. But, Beth, I’m sure you can guess by now that the wheezing wasn’t mine.

  Mother is outside beating the door down. Sorry to leave you—I’ll have to finish when I get back.

  LATER—

  It’s late, too late to write really, but I need to tell you the rest before I go to sleep. You know how I like to finish things.

  I was squatting there in the cottage, frozen in fear. All sorts of terrifying possibilities were flashing through my mind: everything from Germans who hadn’t heard all year that the war was over . . . to a creature from one of our fairy tales: a witch or the troll under the bridge. But as my eyes adjusted to the light I could see that there was a figure against the far wall cowering from me.

  And in that moment, my humiliation outstripped my fear. I tried to compose myself.

  “Who’s there?” I called out.

  A long pause. I was beginning to think there’d be no answer when a voice snaked out of the darkne
ss. “Kaiser Wilhelm.” A male, English voice, amused but a little blurry, like he had marbles in his mouth.

  There was a long silence, a shifting. I could hear him scratching at his hair, his cheeks, furiously.

  I stood. My hands were steady now. I grabbed the matches from where I’d left them and lit the candle in one try.

  I moved to cast the light toward him, and the flames leapt dimly over his shape. As his face emerged from the shadows, I sucked in my breath. He was missing an ear, and his left cheek looked drippy, like candle wax.

  Beth, I’ve seen other men horribly wounded by the war, and I know how you’re supposed to act: don’t flinch but also don’t pretend, make eye contact, shake hands. I know all that, but I’ve never seen a person look so far from being a person.

  “Lenore Allstock,” I said, thrusting out my hand, but flinching all the same when he stretched up from the floor and let his fingers touch mine.

  “Pleasure,” he said, his voice deep and polite, but with a hint of laughter in it, as he unraveled himself to his full height, either not noticing my flinch or pretending not to. He was enormously tall, at least two feet taller than Teddy. A giant.

  Looking past him, I could see a bedroll in a corner where he must have been lying until I came in, and a rucksack.

  “You’ve been sleeping here?” I asked.

  “For a couple of weeks.”

  “I’ve never seen you . . .”

  “I only spend the nights, and evenings. Also, I clear out when I hear you coming. There’s plenty of time. You walk like a bear.”

  I felt my whole body stiffen. I was suddenly ready to defend that little dingy room to the death. “You’re trespassing.”