We found a reference to a time machine that could be built (theoretically) using sets of parallel metal plates generating powerful electric fields. Some researchers speculated that black holes had the potential to become time machines themselves, assuming one could learn to manipulate them. Others hypothesized that a wormhole could function as a passage connecting a black hole at one place and time with a black hole in another place and time — or, at the same place but at different times. This was interesting, but not especially helpful. Occasionally, a writer compared time to a river, not unlike the metaphor we hatched up earlier. Somewhere we even came across a description of a theoretical electromagnetic device that could create a “rip in the fabric of space-time.” Leave out the word “space” and the description was almost identical to our own. All too often (from our point of view), researchers seemed to associate time travel with passage through the universe, as if Earth itself was not a likely venue for slipping through the centuries.
But the bottom line was that we barely understood any of this. In fact, the only potentially useful information we found were the names of the institutes, laboratories, and scientists who specialized in this sort of research. They were the experts, and on Thursday afternoon, the Colonel eagerly made up a list of them, beginning with relativist Kip Thorne of CalTech, and ending with the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics. Then he threw down his pen.
“What have we learned?” he asked.
I figured this was a rhetorical question, but I pursued it anyway. “Apart from that list of experts?”
“Apart from that.”
“We’ve learned what we don’t know.”
“Even more than that. We’ve learned what the experts don’t know.” He looked at me. “They merely theorize that time travel is a possibility. Someday. Perhaps.”
This was not good news, but I tried to find the bright side.
“We know who the experts are,” I pointed out. “If we approached someone and told your story, then maybe … maybe one thing would lead to another. The right physicist could apply what he knows to what he learns from you, and, um…”
I was fumbling, and the Colonel knew it.
“ …find a solution,” I went on vaguely. What I didn’t add was that by the time anyone found a workable solution, the Colonel would long since lie buried in a twenty-first century graveyard. And so would I.
“Now tell me what you really think,” the Colonel said, as if reading my mind.
I glanced at him, and for a long moment he held my gaze.
“Then I’ll say it,” he said. “It’s time for your Plan B.”
Chapter 20
Plan B, you may remember, was Twenty-first Century 101. We’d bring the Colonel up to speed with the current century and in the meantime perhaps the trap door business would sort itself out, rather like a problem you can’t quite solve only to have a solution hit you like a cinder block in the middle of the night.
Accordingly, I drove to the drugstore, leaving the Colonel at home with our printouts, and I gathered up every magazine and newspaper I could lay my hands on. As I made my way to the cash register I heard someone call my name.
It was Phillip Olson, a case of Cokes tucked beneath his arm.
I pretended to be thrilled to see him. Phillip, it appeared, had been to Hatteras, doing watercolors at the Cape. “Truth is,” he went on, “I was thinking about stopping by to find out how you’re doing. Then I could tell your mother that I saw you.” He smiled a little self-consciously.
Just what I needed — a Lila-surrogate. “That’s sweet of you, Phillip,” I said. “But I’m doing just fine. Really.”
“Getting caught up on the world?” he asked, nodding at my newspapers.
“I suppose so,” I smiled. “Truth is, I haven’t seen a paper in days.”
“You haven’t missed much,” he told me. By this time I had paid for my purchases and Phillip had paid for his, so together we headed out to the parking lot.
“Let me show you what I did today,” he said. “I was pretty happy with the light.”
Actually, I really was interested in seeing his work. I tossed the magazines and newspapers into the Accord and followed Phillip to his blue Grand Cherokee, where he lifted a shallow box from the passenger seat. Stacked inside the box were several eight by ten sheets of watercolor paper, each secured with paper tape to a nine by twelve piece of cardboard. He picked one up and handed it to me.
Lila may be a writer but Mae-Mae was a reasonably facile amateur painter and I learned enough over the years to understand how deceptively difficult it is to paint well in watercolors. It is an unforgiving medium, allowing no retakes. You get it right the first time or you don’t get it right at all. Phillip, I saw, got it right. He captured the sky and water of the Cape in transparent, breathing hues and tints, transcribing the roll of surf, the sweep of beach, the flight of gulls onto paper with deceptive ease. But it was his use of light that I found so extraordinary. It sparkled on the water, glittered off the beach and breathed luminous color into the sky.
“Oh my,” I whispered.
“You like it, then?”
I glanced up into Phillip’s expectant face. “Oh yes,” I told him. “The light, Phillip. It almost shimmers in my hands.”
“Yes. I was pleased with it, too.” He lifted another one from the box. “I got several done before the clouds moved in,” he went on, showing me the second painting. I marveled at his work and on my own lifted out a third painting and then a fourth. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen your watercolors before,” I told him. “I’ve always admired your oils, but these are … these have a life of their own.”
We chatted for a few more minutes, Phillip obviously gratified by my praise. “I haven’t done much with watercolors for a long time,” he told me, gazing at a rendering that almost glowed with the gold of sea oats and sand, “and I wonder now why I ever got away from it.”
He didn’t expect an answer and I didn’t try to give him one. Instead I began stacking the watercolors carefully back in their box when something rolled against my knuckles.
“This is interesting,” I said, holding up a metal cylinder about six inches long and as thick as a very fat cigar. When I looked at it more closely, I realized the cylinder was composed of a stack of slim disks.
Phillip looked up from the watercolor he was studying. “Oh that,” he said, taking it carefully from me. “I was playing with it after I packed up my paints. Bet you don’t know what it is.”
“Not a clue,” I agreed.
“It’s a cipher wheel.”
“Like a code breaker?”
“Yes, exactly. This one was manufactured around World War One, but actually, they’ve been around for centuries.”
“Really?” I took the cipher wheel from him and peered at it carefully. There were twenty-six disks and alphabet letters were imprinted in random order on the rim of each one. I touched the disks gently and realized that they could be turned independently. “How does it work?”
Phillip put the watercolor he was holding on the seat of the car, lifted the cylinder from my hands and began twisting the disks until he spelled out a simple message. “And then you code the message by writing out the jibberish above or below the line of coherent text. The person who receives your message sets his wheel to the same jibberish, then looks for the intelligible line. There’s a whole process to this, of course, but that’s it in a nutshell.”
“You amaze me Phillip,” I said, taking the wheel from his hands.
“I have some odd hobbies. Actually, I found this on eBay. Just pick it up at the post office this morning, as a matter of fact.”
“You collect old cipher wheels?”
“Old letters and documents, too, which led to collecting inkwells, pens and all kinds of antique desk implements.”
I gave him back the wheel. “Now all you have to do is to find some old messages written in code.”
“There’s an idea,” he chuckled, wrapping the wh
eel in a length of bubble wrap and slipping it into the Jeep’s console. “Is there a good place to eat around here? Perhaps I could buy you an early dinner—”
I resisted the impulse to scramble for an excuse. “That would be great, Phillip,” I told him smoothly. “But I can’t tonight. Can I call you, perhaps?”
Phillip lifted one of his watercolors from the box and scribbled down his phone number on the back of the cardboard mounting.
“Any time,” he said, handing me the painting. “I’ll look forward to it.”
*****
For the next thirty hours the Colonel and I made our way through a veritable archive of newspapers, books and magazines. Lila’s boombox was tuned to an all-news station, maps and a reasonably recent Time-Life atlas were spread out over the living room floor, and homemade timelines hung from lampshades. The Colonel was a quick study, devouring everything I put before him with remarkable comprehension, but by Friday night we had both reached the point of exhaustion.
I was sprawled on the sofa when the phone rang. Dutifully, I dragged myself to the kitchen and lifted the receiver.
“Kathy Lee, you sound exhausted!” It was Lila, clearly concerned.
“Goodness, no!” I tried to laugh. “I’ve been sunning and reading. I couldn’t possibly be exhausted.”
“Well, you don’t sound like yourself.” Pause. “Are you worried about something, Kathy Lee?”
This was just great. After thirty-two years, Lila gets intuitive. “What could I possibly have to be worried about?” I parried.
“Well, I don’t know, Honey. Selling that house, for one thing. And Cameron, for another. Have you heard from him?”
“Cameron? No. Have you?”
“He called Monday, I think. I should have told you. I said you were in Avon and I had the kids. He didn’t seem to mind at all.”
I chuckled at that. “Are the kids okay? Do they miss me?”
“Don’t worry about the children,” Lila said crisply. “They’ve been just perfect and they’re having too much fun to miss you.”
I had wandered out into the living room, the receiver cradled against my shoulder, and glimpsed Phillip’s lovely watercolor propped up on the mantel. I drew breath tell Lila about it when she interrupted by asking (none too subtly, I thought) if I had heard from my real estate agent. I told her I had not.
“And you’ve gotten some rest?” she went on, probing.
“Lots,” I assured her.
Silence. Then: “I thought you might be driving home this weekend.”
Huh-oh.
“Kathy Lee?”
“I’d like that,” I lied. “I was thinking about Sunday.”
This was what Lila wanted to hear. “That would be great, Sweetie. Let’s have a big, old-fashioned dinner Sunday night. Invite Julie and all. How about that?”
I told her it would be great, just wonderful, knowing that I would never make it. This was Friday night and Colonel could not possibly be ready by Sunday. We needed more time, a lot more time, and I’d have to figure out how to get it between now and tomorrow night when I would her back.
After I hung up the phone I stared at the wall and thought of Sammy and Blythe, and how much I missed them. And then I began to cry. I was so absorbed in my own grief and self-pity that I didn’t hear the Colonel come in until I felt his hand sympathetically touch my shoulder.
“Bad news, Mrs. Finlay?”
I shook my head and sniffled, keeping my back to him. “I feel like…” Truth was, I felt fragile, desolate, lost, and close to helpless. “I feel like the House of Usher,” I finally managed.
“House of…?”
“Usher.” I leaned my forehead against the cool surface of the kitchen wall. “Edgar Allen Poe.”
“Ah, yes. Nineteenth century American writer.” The Colonel sounded dubious.
“It crumbled and sank into a lake. Tarn. Something.”
“Crumbled, you say?”
“The house. Crumbled and sank. Just like that.” I tried to snap my fingers, and failed.
“I see.”
But he didn’t. “I miss my children,” I told him, trying without much success to steady my voice.
He turned me around to face him and all at once I was weeping into his chest. If there was anything the Colonel could empathize with, it was the loss of children. I may not see mine for a week or two, but the Colonel could very well never see his again. Suddenly, as he made soft, awkward shushing sounds and patted my back, I felt for him as keenly as I did for myself. For several minutes we stood silently in the kitchen, two lost people comforting each other.
And the truth was, I simply couldn’t remember the last time I had let anyone see me cry.
Or the last time I had ever felt so…safe.
Chapter 21
When the phone rang in the kitchen late that night, I assumed it was Lila calling back with a new and completely unwelcome suggestion to hasten my return to Fredericksburg. I waited until the fourth ring to answer, steeling myself for more deception and lies. Finally, I lifted the receiver.
“Kathy,” said a male voice. “What in hell are you still doing down there?”
It was The Cad. “Well gee, Cameron. How thoughtful of you to call.”
“I want to use the cottage,” he went on, ignoring me. “I cleared some space on my schedule, and frankly, Kathy Lee, I need a break.”
This was a broad hint for me to pack up and clear out, but I refused to take it. “I think that’s a wonderful idea,” I said instead. “You could go by Mother’s and pick up the kids.”
Silence.
“Think of the fun we could have.”
Silence. (Cameron was good at this.)
“And while the children are building sandcastles,” I suggested cheerfully, “you and I can talk about—”
Click.
I stared at the dead receiver in my hand.
“Forgive me, Mrs. Finlay,” the Colonel’s voice quietly broke into my thoughts. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Actually, I was about to excuse myself to the deck.”
“It’s okay,” I said, hanging up the phone. “It was only Cameron. He won’t be down. Sends his regrets and all.”
“How simply crushing.”
I wandered into the living room, flopped on the sofa, and closed my eyes. I should have left Cameron the day I caught him at that restaurant, I thought. I should have packed up the kids and walked out that afternoon.
But I hadn’t, and that had been my first mistake. Later that night, after hours of argument, Cameron convinced me to start over again, and for the next several months, while he labored at his devoted father-and-husband act, I tried to be the wife he thought he wanted. But it was never going to work. Cameron was as edgy and unpredictable as a dry drunk, and I walked on eggshells. After a while I began to think (faithlessly, treacherously) that life had been better back when he was chasing women. So one afternoon at Symington’s I leaned over the table and asked my best friend Julie if she knew anyone who would like to sleep with my husband.
I remembered that we laughed at that. Julie knew I wasn’t serious.
“I’m not serious,” I told her, just to make sure.
“Of course you’re not serious,” she agreed, and ordered us another round of Margueritas.
But a couple of weeks later Julie bumped into Cameron in a pub on Lafayette Boulevard. With her were two attractive graphic designers from a local ad agency whom Julie knew slightly. Cameron’s taste ran toward nurses and physical therapists (the whole town, I think, knew this by now), but he considered the young-and-female qualities of Julie’s companions, asked for an introduction, and pounced.
“He’s good,” Julie told me later. “He could resurrect the dead.”
And in almost no time at all, Cameron’s mood improved. Suddenly he had a heavy patient schedule and a rash of meetings and emergencies. How many emergencies can a plastic surgeon have? I had wondered, and I knew then that he was seeing one (or both) of Julie’s pals. But it
didn’t matter. I was past caring, past hurt. The positive factor here, if you could call it that, was that with Cameron happily occupied, I could make some progress in reclaiming my life. But months later I had gotten nowhere, made no decisions, done little that was productive.
And that was my second mistake.
I lay unmoving on the sofa. Was it one of the Graphic Girls Cameron brought down to the cottage? I mused. Or had he moved on to someone new?
I was pondering that when I heard the Colonel come into the living room. He threw himself into a club chair and regarded me with a mixture of concern and … impatience.
“I don’t mean to intrude, Mrs. Finlay —
I shot him a glance.
“ —but several days ago, I mentioned living apart. And then we realized I had remembered something and somehow we never returned to the topic.”
My gaze travelled to the ceiling. I just knew this was going to be a subject I didn’t want to get into.
“I suppose my question is,” the Colonel went on, “why do you not agree to do that? Live separately, I mean. Set up separate households.”
“Because in this century we simply divorce,” I told him bluntly.
“Divorce?” Clearly, he was taken aback. “Is the meaning still the same? You refer to a legal dissolution of marriage?”
“I refer to exactly that.”
“But … is such a thing worth the scandal?”
“There is no scandal.”
The Colonel leaned forward, closing the distance between us, and rested his elbows on his knees. “No scandal,” he repeated.
“Well, assuming that the parties involved behave civilly,” I amended, “and let no unsavory details slip.”
“So divorce is not unusual?”
“Far from it. In fact, my mother has been married and divorced five times.”
Out of Time Page 14
