The Jewel and the Key

by Louise Spiegler

  “Nope. I’d better get moving.” She patted Addie's shoulder. “Thanks, you two.”

  After Addie and Whaley said their goodbyes and Mrs. Turner had left, they followed Mrs. Powell back out into the hall. Though she still moved slowly, she seemed a bit more energetic now. “The dressing rooms were there,” she told them, pointing at the first two rooms by the back door. ‘And the manager’s apartment. The costume shop and the mechanical room were down at the other end of the hall.” She thought for a moment. “But the auditorium and the lobby will be the most important for renovation. Come on. I’ll take you out there.”

  She led them back up to the stage, pointing out the damage, speculating on how it might have looked in its heyday. “But it’s just so hard to tell.” As they walked, Whaley ran his hand along the walls, peering into corners, pressing on squeaky stairs. Addie smiled—he was such a fixer-upper.

  Down in the orchestra pit, Mrs. Powell stopped suddenly. “Now, that’s definitely original.” She pointed. “Do you see that piano back there?”

  Half hidden in the shadows behind a big trash can was a black upright. Its keys were yellow and cracked, and cobwebs drooped from it. A white marble bust rested on the top.

  Whaley went over and blew the dust off the keys. “Do you mind?” he asked Mrs. Powell. She shook her head and he sat down and started to play, pulling faces at the sound of the out-of-tune keys. Addie came up behind him to get a closer look at the bust.

  Then she froze.

  It was, without question, Becky Powell.

  Not the Becky Powell who stood leaning on her cane nearby, but the other Mrs. Powell. Reg's mother. The beautiful woman Addie had met the day of the earthquake, whom she had expected to see here today.

  Her carved head was demurely bent to hide an irrepressible smile, and her hair was rolled into an elaborate up-do, the same way she’d had it arranged on Sunday. All her liveliness and grace shone through the curves of the marble. The only thing the sculptor couldn’t do justice to were her eyes. They were cast down. When Addie bent to see their expression, they were as blank as the stone they were carved from.

  Whaley was still hammering away on the keys, but Addie hardly heard.

  She closed her eyes, as if doing so would shut out the fear that was washing over her like a cold tide.

  “That’s the stride piece Cam was showing me,” Whaley said, lifting his fingers from the keys. Addie forced herself to open her eyes, to try to act normal. “Oh,” she said faintly.

  Whaley swung around on the piano bench to face her. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Nothing. Just ... that statue...”

  “Emma Mae?” Becky Powell stretched out a hand to touch the marble. “Isn’t she lovely?”

  Addie said, “Who is Emma Mae?” Her voice was shaky.

  “Emma Mae Powell. Her husband built the Jewel. But he died in a boating accident after the first season, so she took over and ran the theater. Really an amazing woman.”

  “But I thought you said the Jewel had been closed a long time.”

  Becky Powell leaned against the piano. “Of course. What’s that got to do with it?”

  “I’m confused. You just said that Emma Mae was the manager,” Addie pressed.

  “Owner and manager,” Becky Powell said thoughtfully. “Now she’d be the ideal person to renovate this old wreck.”

  Addie hesitated, almost dreading to hear the answer to her next question. But she had to find out. “Why don’t you just ask her, then?”

  Mrs. Powell threw back her head and laughed. “What a terrific idea! I only wish I could, Addie. You don’t know how much I’d love her help. There’s just one problem.”

  “What?”

  “Look at the base of the statue, the year it was carved.”

  Addie looked down where she pointed, to the numbers etched in the stone: 1919.

  That couldn’t be right. Her head swam. Her heart was racing. And yet somewhere deep inside, she realized she’d already known.

  “Too bad, eh?” said Mrs. Powell. “If we really wanted Emma Mae Powell to bring the Jewel back to life, I’m afraid we’d have to bring Emma Mae back to life as well.”

  10. A History of the Theater

  It was a blow straight to the chest.

  Her head filled with echoing darkness, and for a moment she was the only passenger in an elevator that was plummeting down. 1919!

  “That’s impossible....”

  “Yes, unfortunately,” Becky Powell agreed. She sat down on the piano bench next to Whaley. “Time has a way of depriving you of great companions. I would love to talk theater with Emma Mae Powell. But then, I’d love to have tea with Igor Stravinsky and catch a dance performance of Isadora Duncan's, too!”

  Isadora Duncan. The floor seemed to pitch beneath Addie’s feet.

  “I’d—I’d better go,” she choked out, and was happy that these were the words that actually came from her lips. Because the words in her brain were I’m not crazy. I’m not.

  “Hey! What’s up with you?”

  But she hardly registered Whaley’s question.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Mrs. Powell asked. “You’ve gone pale.”

  “I’m fine.” She mustered a faint smile. “I just ... I think maybe I’d better get going.”

  “Wait a second. Don’t you want to see the rest of the place?” Whaley asked.

  “You can tell me about it later.” She had to get out. Now. “I just remembered I—I told Almaz I’d get to her game. I’m late already.”

  Whaley looked at Mrs. Powell and shrugged.

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Powell,” she managed as she made her way to the stage. “I’ll come back tomorrow.” It was all she could do not to sprint into the wings cackling like a madwoman.

  Once out in the rain again, she had to wrap her arms around herself to stop trembling. She wouldn’t run. She would walk, slowly, in control, like any other sane person, to the bus stop. She would find an explanation for this.

  That night, Addie huddled in her bed with the patchwork quilt pulled tight around her. She wanted to talk to Whaley, but he must have gone straight to Enrique’s from the Jewel and he hadn’t come home yet. A few times she picked up her phone to call Almaz, but each time she hadn’t even pressed the button. It had been hard enough to talk about all this with Whaley. How could she bring it up with calm, logical Almaz?

  Again and again she tried to close her mind to what had happened, to the marble bust of Emma Mae Powell gazing down serenely from the piano, where it had no doubt rested since it had been carved, nearly a hundred years ago. But she couldn’t do it anymore. It was like the moment in Peer Gynt where he’s wandering on the moor and he runs into the Boyg—the thing that is shapeless and inexplicable and can’t be seen no matter how keen your eyesight. You can’t go around it. You can’t go through it. It won’t budge; it demands you recognize its presence and resists any attempt to be reasoned away.

  Well, if she couldn’t bury the thought, at least she could take her mind off it. She picked up a collection of Shaw’s plays and started reading an old, familiar one—Saint Joan. She loved Joan with her shining sword and her certainty and her good common sense. So reassuring.

  But the image of the marble bust wouldn’t leave her alone.

  The idea that the people she had visited the day of the earthquake had been alive so long ago was impossible, she knew. But once she suspended her disbelief, it did make some of the pieces fit. For example, why Mrs. Powell and Reg hadn’t met her at the Jewel. Why Reg hadn’t believed her about the earthquake. The way they were dressed—strange how relatively normal it had seemed; she must have willfully ignored it. And what war was it, exactly, that Reg was so eager to go fight? If she had somehow stepped into the early twentieth century it must have been ... the First World War? And—the red, white, and blue bunting— America had just entered the war. So it must have been—oh, my God—1917.

  She let Saint Joan slip from her hands. No. She didn’t want
it to make sense. Because if it did, then Emma Mae was dead. And then Reg was dead too, and Frida, and the doctor, and the people they were having over for dinner, and the guy who sold them the chicken they were going to roast, and ... a shudder jerked down her spine: And I just spent a whole afternoon visiting them.

  “No! No, no, no, no!” She jammed the pillow over her head, shaking from head to foot.

  Then, with every ounce of control she could muster, she threw the pillow across the room and forced herself to sit up again. Furiously, she swept off her covers and jumped out of bed. She strode out of her room, went downstairs into the kitchen, and grabbed the keys to the bookstore from the table.

  Whaley and Dad had been steadily cleaning, but the store was still a mess. Addie picked her way through the piles of books waiting to be reshelved and went to the drama section. The bookcase still hadn’t been pushed back against the wall, so she had no trouble getting into the closet and picking up A History of the Theater from where she'd left it on the bench for safekeeping.

  Back in her bedroom, she plopped down and opened the book. Her fingers were so cold she could hardly turn the pages.

  But the reading lamp cast a circle of warm light onto her bed. The quilt was thick and comforting. She heard a little creak and saw the flick of a white tail through the crack of the door.

  “Magnesium!” she called, making the tutting noises that the cat liked. Magnesium leaped onto the bed and turned three times before settling in a furry circle next to Addie’s leg. He was always friendliest when you had a book on your lap. Especially if it was an old one with that musty used-book smell to it. Addie flipped through to the index, found the page number, and, with a quick intake of breath, turned to it.

  The photograph of Isadora Duncan took up a third of the page. Addie examined the dark-haired dancer standing in an arbor wearing a diaphanous gown that hung in folds straight to her ankles. She looked like a Greek nymph or a goddess. A thin band circled her head, and laurel leaves were wreathed in her hair. Her hands were raised like a ballet dancer’s. But the pose was more relaxed than a ballet pose, and she had a full, glowing smile on her face.

  Slowly, Addie got up and lifted the silver mirror from her dresser. She brought it over to the bed and laid it down beside the photograph.

  The dresses of the three dancers on its back matched the dress of the woman in the photograph, stitch for stitch.

  Addie’s skin crawled, but she just gathered the quilt more tightly around her shoulders.

  So what? she told herself. A Greek robe is a Greek robe is a Greek robe. It didn’t necessarily mean anything.

  Except—except that Mrs. Powell had mentioned Isadora Duncan as if she was someone she knew. She shoved the mirror away and forced herself to look at the words on the page.

  The heading read: IsadoraDun can: 1878–1927.

  She exhaled slowly.

  Both she and Emma Mae had been right.

  Isadora Duncan had died when her scarf caught in the wheel of a car. But in 1917, she was still alive and dancing.

  11. The Scottish Play

  Addie was back on the loading dock behind the Jewel the next day after dropping off her backpack at home. She’d told Mrs. Powell she would help look through the theater’s old records, and she felt guilty about leaving so abruptly yesterday. Plus, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about this place, about whether she’d find evidence of the Jewel as it had been in Emma Mae’s time.

  Whether the place was haunted.

  And—really, the most key—whether she had gone completely and seriously insane.

  She hesitated before opening the letterbox.

  When exactly had it happened? It must have been when she stopped in the park on the way to the Powells’. She remembered the sudden warming of the air. The open flowers. It had somehow ceased to be this cold, rainy spring; she had stepped into another spring, a warmer spring from long ago. That was why the statue of the angel was missing, of course. It hadn’t existed.

  But what had made it happen? She had racked her brain about this. Was it because she was wearing that antique dress from the crate? But she’d been wearing that dress before the earthquake hit. And how ridiculous, anyway—“magical thinking,” Almaz would call it. She wore vintage clothes a lot; it didn’t usually suspend the laws of time.

  Still, she couldn’t help glancing down nervously at the skirt she was wearing today, one of the pieces Mrs. T. had let her keep. It fell just to midcalf in a slim line. She wasn’t sure what era it was from. She just knew that it looked good with the cropped velvet jacket she’d found at Value Village.

  No. It wasn’t the clothes. Was it something to do with the statue? Or the mirror? For the hundredth time, she wondered whether she’d bashed her head and it had all been a vivid hallucination. At least that was rational. Something she could say to Almaz without feeling like a lunatic. If she ever mustered the courage to tell her. She ran her hand over her scalp, feeling for bumps and bruises. But just like every other time, she found nothing.

  Was it something to do with the earthquake itself? Of all the supernatural explanations, at least that felt believable. If the earth could shake a whole city and make it roll on its foundations, why couldn’t it shake time out of joint? The time is out of joint. Where had she heard that before?

  It was a line from Hamlet, wasn’t it? How did it go?

  The time is out of joint—O cursed spite,

  That ever I was born to set it right!

  She wrinkled her brow. Was she supposed to set something right?

  There was only one thing she could think of that she really needed to set right, and it didn’t involve the past at all.

  Guiltily, she reached into her pocket and curled her fingers around a folded sheaf of paper: Whaley's enlistment forms.

  She did feel bad about stealing them from his desk before school this morning. So bad that she couldn’t quite manage to throw them away. But she wasn’t going to put them back, either. She had to do something to stop him from ending up in some strange country with a gun in his hand.

  Stupid. Because of course he could always download the forms off the Internet again. But she had to try. And she’d have to get rid of the papers before he showed up here to help her.

  Sighing, she pulled the key from the letterbox, fitted it in the lock, and opened the door.

  The hall seemed even darker and danker than it had the day before.

  Her eyes burned, and she rubbed them unhappily. She’d gotten two hours of sleep last night, total. Then, when she’d finally fallen asleep, she’d dreamed. And that was worse....

  Okay. Come on, she thought. Pull yourself together. Whaley was going to show up at any moment. If he saw her looking so worn-out and nervous, he’d know something was going on.

  Quickly, she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the silver mirror, hesitating before she raised it to her face. It didn’t look very sinister. But it certainly looked magical. Oh, stop being so ridiculous! Just get some makeup on. With her free hand, she pulled out a tube of lipstick, applied it, and dropped it back in the bag. Then she took a look in the glass. For a moment, her eyes lost their focus and she felt dizzy. She blinked. Better. She ran her fingers through ringlets and knots in her hair. Now she looked okay. Good enough to be going to a rehearsal, actually. Despite the fear that hadn’t quite departed since yesterday’s shock, she felt a pinch of disappointment. If only she could have kept that appointment and seen the Powells again. She’d really been looking forward to that. After a final critical glance in the mirror, she shoved it back into her pocket and stepped over the threshold, letting the door close behind her.

  She fumbled for the light switch and flicked it.

  Lights blazed against honey-colored walls, little glittering bulbs in bright silver sconces.

  Well, this was an improvement. Now, instead of the dank smell of the hallway, she breathed in the tang of fresh paint.

  How was it possible? So fast! In amazement, she t
urned about, taking in the transformation.

  A thumping piano rag, like the stride Whaley had been playing yesterday, pounded through the ceiling. The smell of furniture polish prickled her nose.

  “Whaley?” Could he have fixed this up? It looked incredible! But he couldn’t have done it all himself. Maybe he’d gotten some of his friends to help. She smiled to herself, thinking that maybe, with enough determination and enthusiasm, they could help Mrs. Powell bring the place to life.

  But as she went along the hallway, passing doors with brass nameplates that read LADIES' DRESSING ROOM, POWDER ROOM, her smile faded.

  No one could have done this all in one night. Not even Whaley with a bunch of his friends.

  A heavy fire door swung open, and Addie nearly collided with a girl carrying an enormous tray.

  “Oj-då!” the girl exclaimed and swung neatly away.

  “Sorry—my fault,” Addie said. And then she took in the girl’s gray calf-length dress and white apron.

  It was as if she’d been drenched in icy water.

  The shock was so sudden that for a moment she thought she would faint.

  “Some tea jumped out of the spout is all. No harm done,” the girl said with a gap-toothedg rin.

  No, Addie thought. It can’t be. No.

  “Just push that door open for me, and I’ll get a rag from the apartment,” she continued.

  “Apartment?” Addie said faintly, holding the door for the girl.

  “Funny, in a theater, I know,” the girl said. “But the lady who owns the place likes to have somewhere to stay after a late night. And there’s a kitchen, so I bake in there, or even cook a dinner sometimes.”

  Blinking, Addie did as the girl said. She followed her into a small, warm kitchen with walls that were papered a pale olive-leaf green. Muslin curtains on the window over the sink blocked out the ugliness of the alley. She could see a small bedroom through a half-opened door.