by Cat Winters
By the time Miss Simpkin dismissed the students, rain fell by the bucketful, and lo and behold, there was Mr. O’Daire again, breezing through the front door with his green umbrella fountaining all over the floor, offering to drive home the children who normally walked instead of riding the autobus. Miss Simpkin was so busy helping children squeeze into coats and mittens to pay any heed to his offer, or to his presence in general, and I busied myself with assisting one of the five-year-olds to simultaneously blow his nose and stuff his feet into boots. In my peripheral vision, I saw Mr. O’Daire standing there in that black coat of his, his blond hair slightly mussed from the cap he had just removed, his posture erect and confident. He jumped in and attended to the students who needed help with scarves and gloves, and then he opened the door for the mad dash to the automobiles. Mud squelched beneath shoes, wind yanked at umbrellas, and children shrieked and whimpered, but we managed to cram twelve of them into the vehicles, while a handful of older students jogged off into the storm with their satchels shielding their heads.
As soon as the men closed the car doors, Miss Simpkin and I ran back into the schoolhouse and gasped for air inside the cloakroom.
“Again,” she said, “I’m so sorry about our weather.”
“Please, don’t apologize. It isn’t as though we never get any rain or wind in Portland.” I closed the black umbrella I had borrowed and nearly got walloped in the elbow from the front door opening beside me.
Mr. O’Daire poked his head inside the cloakroom. “Do either of you ladies need a ride?”
Miss Simpkin shook her head. “I’m still working for at least another hour.”
“I need to finish some business with the tests,” I said. “But thank you.”
“How did you like the boardinghouse?” he asked with a lift of his eyebrows.
Miss Simpkin and I exchanged a look.
“Well . . .” I slid my coat off of my shoulders. “I actually didn’t stay there last night.”
“Oh?” He stepped farther inside. “Where did you stay, then?”
Miss Simpkin turned and clip-clopped into the classroom.
“I . . . um . . .” I lobbed the coat onto a hook. “I slept here.”
Mr. O’Daire slammed the door shut behind him. “You what?”
“I decided, after hearing horror stories about the boardinghouse from both you and a waitress, that I would stay here instead.”
His gaze darted about the cloakroom. “On what, for Pete’s sake, did you sleep? The floor?”
I cleared my throat, my face burning with humiliation. “Well . . . yes.”
He balled his hands into fists. Before I could ask him to refrain from getting upset, he marched into the classroom.
“Tillie!”
Miss Simpkin plopped into the chair behind her desk. “What?”
“What’s wrong with you, making a woman—a respectable psychologist who’s helping your pupils—sleep on a filthy schoolhouse floor?”
“Oh, Christ, leave me alone, Michael.” She wrestled her cigarettes out of the desk. “If Rebecca ever learns you were housing Miss Lind, she would think you were the one who brought her to this town, and that’s not going to help anyone.”
“Don’t punish Miss Lind for Rebecca’s paranoia.”
“It’s not paranoia. Something’s wrong with Janie, and we all know it.”
A knock came from behind me. I gasped and spun around, terrified I’d find Janie reeling over her aunt’s blunt words.
When I opened the door, I instead encountered a bundled-up young man no older than some of our teenage students. The oily-faced chap wore a dripping-wet cap with a Western Union messenger badge pinned to it. A red bicycle rested against the railing at the bottom of the steps. Mr. O’Daire’s automobile full of children waited several yards behind the fellow, rain pecking at the black roof, heads bobbing about beyond the closed windows.
“May I help you?” I asked the boy.
He wrestled a tan envelope out of a leather bag that was slung across his chest. “I have a telegram for Miss Lind.”
My mood perked up. “I’m Miss Lind.”
“Here you are, ma’am.”
I took the paper, the edges now damp. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Good day.” He maneuvered down the slick steps to his bicycle, and I ensured he didn’t slip before I attended to the message.
“Is it from your sister?” asked Mr. O’Daire from the classroom behind me.
“I assume so, unless it’s a message from the Department of Education.” I turned away from the door and the rain. “Whatever the case, please don’t get your hopes up.”
“Open it, please,” he said.
I trod toward the two of them in the classroom while opening the envelope with the nail of my right index finger. Mr. O’Daire’s breathing quickened. Miss Simpkin released a gust of smoke out of one side of her mouth with the whoosh of a deflating tire.
I drew out the paper from within and, indeed, spotted the name BEATRICE LIND, typed on the sender’s line. “Yes, it’s from Bea!”
“What does it say?” asked Mr. O’Daire.
My sister had addressed the telegram to “Nell”—an old nickname she’d been calling me for as long as I could remember.
My jaw went slack at the rest of her words:
YES MY DEAR NELL FRIENDLY IS A NE KANSAS TOWN
“Well?” Mr. O’Daire staggered toward me with his hands braced against the sides of his head. “You’re killing me with this suspense, Miss Lind. What does it say?”
I drew a breath and raised my eyes to his. “It says that Friendly, Kansas, is real.”
Miss Simpkin choked on smoke.
Mr. O’Daire collapsed to his knees on the floor and beamed as though I’d just announced the birth of a new child.
My mouth opened, but no further sounds materialized—not even a feeble gasp or a gurgle.
“Oh, God.” Mr. O’Daire struggled to stand back up. “Does this mean you’ll consider it, then? You’ll consider reincarnation?”
“What do we do?” asked Miss Simpkin, still coughing. “What on earth do we do now?”
“Give . . . please . . .” My brain and mouth failed to coordinate. I pressed the telegram to my chest and tried to remember how to properly breathe. “Give me a day or two . . . to collect my thoughts. I need to think. I need to think before I can say anything more. This could mean nothing.” I peeked at Bea’s message again. “It could mean everything. I don’t know. Give me time. I must have time.”
CHAPTER 10
The telegram inspired further questions.
My notes, jotted down in the cloakroom after Mr. O’Daire drove away in a dazed state of wonder, read as follows:
If Friendly—a town in northeastern Kansas, unknown to anyone looking at the maps available in Gordon Bay—truly exists, how did Janie know about it? Did Mr. O’Daire meet someone from Friendly while in training for the war? Did he meet a family with the surname Sunday, by chance?
What is the meaning behind Janie’s strong desire to travel to Friendly, Kansas? Is it make-believe? Is it a wish planted in her head by a parent? Has she been there, even though everyone insists that she hasn’t?
Would Janie be able to name other towns in the area of Kansas surrounding Friendly? According to my memory, larger cities in the northeastern section of the state include Kansas City, Topeka, Lawrence, Leavenworth, and Manhattan.
Perhaps make a list of towns that exist throughout Kansas—Hutchinson, Marysville, Oakley, Independence, Liberal, Goodland—and ask her to point to the ones that sound familiar. Throw in some made-up names to test if she’s pointing to the words at random. Make notes of her mood as she surveys the list.
“It can’t mean anything, can it?” asked Miss Simpkin, emerging in the opening between the cloakroom and the classroom. She held the frame of the entryway for support, and her face lacked its usual pinkness. “Someone had to have told her about Friendly. Hadn’t they?”
�
��I was just wondering the same thing.” I read through the notes I’d just written. “Did Janie’s mother ever investigate whether the town actually existed?”
“Of course she did. When Janie first started speaking of her other life, we all tried to find the place. The name sounded so silly and childlike, though.” She leaned her right shoulder against the doorjamb. “We felt foolish going to any great lengths. And we certainly couldn’t seek the help of any libraries as well-equipped as the one in Portland.”
“None of the men who were involved in the war ever came across a fellow from Friendly, did they?”
“I don’t . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed at the lids. “I suppose Michael could have.”
“Or . . . what about Sam?”
A flash of pain seized her face. She opened her eyes. “How do you know about Sam?”
“I saw him in town when Mr. O’Daire first drove me out here.” I rolled my pencil between the balls of my right thumb and middle finger. “Did Sam ever come in contact with Janie?”
“No. Sam isn’t quite right in the head anymore. No one would have brought Janie in contact with him. Unless . . .” She stiffened. “Unless Michael allowed him to be with the child. They were close friends, before the war. I don’t think . . .” She shook her head. “No, I don’t think poor Sam has anything to do with this.” She hesitated in the doorway, blinking, wrinkling her brow. Then she slipped back into the classroom.
I massaged a dull ache in my forehead and read through my notes again, my eyebrows pinched, my elbows planted on the table. I debated writing to the postmaster of Friendly, Kansas, and asking him to deliver a message to the family of a woman named Violet Sunday. I pondered if Michael O’Daire might be in cahoots with a family named Sunday, the members of which would promptly send me a letter in reply.
But why would Mr. O’Daire go to all of that trouble? I asked myself. Why? The benefits reaped from such a con game—a game in the works for the past five years—would not outweigh all of the effort and the risks involved with plotting with a family that lived two thousand miles away. So far, Mr. O’Daire had gained seemingly nothing from this so-called ruse.
Miss Simpkin’s footsteps again pattered my way. She came around the corner, her arms crossed, a lit cigarette tucked between the middle and index fingers of her right hand.
“You can stay with us tonight,” she said, still pale, her voice fluttery. “But, as I told you, I’ve sworn to my sister that you’re simply a test administrator, not a true psychologist.”
“When I first met Mr. O’Daire, he knew that I’m a psychologist and said as much.”
Miss Simpkin took a smoke and twisted the upper half of her body toward the window.
“How did he know if your sister didn’t?” I asked.
She withdrew the cigarette from her lips and exhaled smoke from flared nostrils. “Michael overheard me discussing your arrival with the local truant officer earlier this week. I had been stressing to the officer how important it was that all of the children attend school while you’re here, and, without me realizing it, Michael showed up to fetch Janie out here in the cloakroom.”
“I see.” I swallowed, my throat dry. “And he didn’t breathe a word about my credentials to his ex-wife, I assume?”
Miss Simpkin shook her head. “If he had, Rebecca would have kept Janie home from school the entire time you’re here. He must know that.”
I put a hand to my lower back and stretched my spine with an audible crunch.
She cringed. “Oh no! That’s from sleeping on this awful old floor, isn’t it?”
“Well—”
“Please, let me compensate for last night by hosting you. I absolutely detest thinking of you curled up on the ground in here. Children tromp into this schoolhouse after working in fields and horse stables and . . .” She shuddered. “God, when I think about the filth that’s dragged into here on the bottoms of shoes . . .”
“I don’t know . . . Your sister would watch me like a fierce mama bear.”
“Don’t mention your university degrees. She’ll feel at ease once she gets to know you.”
“But—”
“Please, Alice,” she said, her eyes imploring. “Stay with us. I feel terrible about booting you out of the hotel when you’re working so hard to help us.” She took another smoke. “May I . . . did you mind that I called you Alice? I’m not much for formalities.”
I cast my eyes toward my notes and debated whether it would be wise to allow myself to be drawn any farther into this family.
Miss Simpkin brushed aside a red curl that had coiled across her right cheek and rubbed her lips together. She watched me with eyes wide and eager—eyes framed in heavy copper lashes—and I couldn’t help but feel that everyone involved with Janie was seducing me into joining their own side of the mystery. My eyes even strayed to the way the bodice of Miss Simpkin’s green dress opened just above her collarbones to expose her bare, white throat. She smelled of smoke and jasmine perfume and reminded me a little of a girl I once kissed, while drunk, one lonely winter as an undergraduate.
“Well . . .” I said, my mouth dryer still.
Miss Simpkin continued to rub those plump lips together.
“I suppose . . .” I nodded, unfolding my hands and spreading my fingers across my notes. “All right, yes. As long as your sister isn’t put to any trouble, I would be pleased to stay at your house.”
Miss Simpkin slid the cigarette into her mouth and smiled. Her fingers shook.
WE WALKED THROUGH the rain-soaked streets of Gordon Bay beneath a twin pair of black umbrellas, each of us lugging one of my suitcases. Lamps glowed in a weak yellow haze along the darkening roads. Storm clouds and twilight bleached out all other colors in the neighborhood. The plunking of raindrops against our umbrellas, as well as the heels of our shoes striking the sidewalks, proved to be the only sounds.
“It’s just up ahead,” said Miss Simpkin, nodding toward one of the shadowed homes in a row of five Victorians.
I readjusted my grip on my luggage and the umbrella. My heart sped up in anticipation of whatever unknown scene awaited behind the closed door of whichever house we would approach. I envisioned Mrs. O’Daire as a stouter version of Miss Simpkin—a woman who would scream at me to leave her and her child alone, the veins in her forehead bulging, a fireplace poker hoisted in the air like a weapon. My brain even hurt from all the imagined shrieking and fuss. I also braced myself for the distinct possibility of finding Janie engaged in a morbid style of play—perhaps pretending to drown her dolls in the kitchen sink or creating more pictures of blue ladies with anguished faces, floating underwater. She might lash out in violence if anyone expressed doubts about her stories, maybe even pelt people in the head with blunt objects, just like . . . like . . .
Like you, Alice, I heard my sister Margery say inside my mind. Like you as a child, beating defenseless children with a stick as though you wanted to smash their little skulls. What was wrong with you, Alice? What dark demon possessed you? You terrified me.
I stopped for a moment to catch my breath.
“Are you all right?” asked Miss Simpkin with a peek at me from beneath her umbrella.
“I’m simply tired.” I readjusted my grip on my suitcase. “Exhausted, actually.”
To the west a door opened. I looked up and spotted the figure of a little girl in the doorway of the next house over. A light from behind the child illuminated short red hair that looked to be Janie’s, as well as a midnight-blue dress with a hem that grazed the tops of her knees.
“Aunt Tillie?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s me, Janie.” Miss Simpkin gestured with her head for me to follow her. “Come along. Let’s get you warm and fed.”
“Thank you.” My feet clopped after her through a pathway of puddles that led up to the house, and we climbed three porch steps, up to where Janie stood.
Miss Simpkin brushed her fingers through the girl’s short locks. “I’ve brought a special guest
to stay with us, Janie. Where’s your mother?”
“In the kitchen.” Janie peered up at me with her wide turquoise eyes. “It’s Miss Lind from the school!”
“It is, indeed.” Miss Simpkin closed her umbrella. “I’ve offered her a room with us for the rest of her stay. What do you think of that?”
“I could show her my bedroom.”
“No!” cried her aunt.
Both Janie and I startled.
Miss Simpkin cleared her throat and parked her dripping umbrella on the porch swing. “I mean, we’ll have to speak to your mother before we give Miss Lind any tours of the house.”
Oh, my, I thought. How that bedroom now intrigues me.
Miss Simpkin wiped the bottoms of her shoes on a doormat. “Come inside, Miss Lind. I can feel the heat of the fireplace already.”
I placed my umbrella beside the other one on the swing, wiped clean my own soles, and followed the schoolteacher and her niece into a home that resembled most other middle-class houses I had entered, with no signs whatsoever of supernatural phenomena, ugly divorces, or grandmothers whisked away to asylums. Everything looked clean and dusted and cheerful, from the golden-orange wallpaper the color of Monarch butterflies to a menagerie of porcelain forest animals perched on a table in the entry hall. Nothing made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The only unpleasant feature was a trace of dankness—an odor which I assumed to inhabit most of the houses on the coast.
I lowered my bags to the floor, and Miss Simpkin and I removed our coats and hung them on a rack next to the front door. Miss Simpkin then promptly grabbed my hand and steered me down the hall toward a kitchen that smelled of roasting chicken.
“Rebecca,” she called, her fingers sweating against my palm. “We have a guest I would like for you to meet.”
“A guest?” called a female voice that sounded far more hospitable than I would have expected. From around a bend strolled a slender woman with finger-waved, strawberry blond hair, cut just below her ears. She had a nose that turned down a little oddly at the tip on an otherwise pretty face, and the long and graceful neck of a ballerina. She dried her hands on a dishtowel and smiled, but her movements slowed as she took in the sight of me. “Hello,” she said, her voice still welcoming, despite the stiffening of her face.
