Jane Was Here

by Sarah Kernochan

  “Who are the people in this painting?” Jane asks.

  Elsa joins her beneath the portrait, gazing up at the seated man. He is gaunt, with fierce deep-set eyes and a flat head, dressed in black cutaway, tall standing collar and flowing cravat. “My great-great grandfather Philip Graynier, who founded the glass factory. Indeed, he created the whole town.”

  “And the lady?” A handsome woman stands, dressed in a lace cap, capacious skirts and leg-of-mutton sleeves, her hand resting on her husband’s shoulder.

  “That is Evelyn Graynier, my great-great grandmother.” Elsa bustles to a glass cabinet to remove some antique ledgers, leaving Jane to stare up at Evelyn Graynier.

  Jane’s eyes are fixed on the woman’s lace collar. A brooch is pinned at her throat.

  A gold wreath, fashioned of two roses.

  Dust flurries up as Brett pages through the slim volume of the census: only about 5,000 county residents in 1850. Running his finger down the list of names, he marvels at some of them: “Alpha Daniels,” “Submit Fowler,” “Worship Hale.” The columns beside each name list age, sex, color, profession, date of birth, property numbers, as well as the answers to such questions as: “Married within the Year?” “Over Age 20 & Unable to Read & Write?” “Deaf & Dumb, Blind, Insane, Idiotic, Pauper or Convict?”

  At the P’s, his finger pounces on an entry. “Got it. Pettigrew, Benjamin L.”

  “I just found him, too!” Elsa calls from the corner, an open ledger on her lap. “He was the superintendent of Graynier Glass. Quite an important position after all.”

  Jane tears her gaze from the painting and listens attentively. Brett slides his index finger across the columns. “Age: 51…Place of birth: Canaan, Connecticut…Number living in house: 4. Him, two daughters, and a ‘female servant.’”

  Jane approaches, peering over Brett’s shoulder as he drops his finger down to the next name.

  “The first daughter was ‘Pettigrew, Rebecca, age 21.’ She was born in Canaan, too. Wonder what happened to the mother. The second daughter’s name—”

  Suddenly Brett wheezes desperately for breath. His chest is tight, as if the weight of a great stone is pressing on his lungs.

  “Dear!” Elsa looks up in alarm. “Is something the matter?”

  Frantic for air, Brett rushes out the door.

  Jane follows him outside, where she finds him leaning against a tree, thumping his lungs and gasping.

  After a few moments, the pressure on his windpipe eases. “Allergy—dust—gotta run home—my inhaler—be right back.”

  Elsa is removing the census book from the reading table when Jane goes back inside.

  “If you please,” says Jane, “I should like to study it a while longer.”

  Her long hair grazes the paper as she turns the pages, until she finds where Brett stopped.

  Pettigrew, Benjamin.

  Pettigrew, Rebecca.

  Pettigrew, Jane.

  Marking the name with her index finger, she gropes for her notebook with her free hand.

  Pettigrew, Jane. Date of birth: March 2, 1833. Age: 17.

  Sex: F. Color: W. Place of Birth: Graynier, Massachusetts

  She copies the information into her notebook. Then, as she turns back to the census, her gaze accidentally falls on something. She lets out a cry of surprise.

  “Find something?” Elsa bustles over.

  “This.” Jane’s finger presses hard on a name directly under the P’s, among the Q’s.

  Elsa leans over to read it, pushing her reading glasses up on her nose: “Quirk?”

  Jane moves her finger across the columns. Quirk, Efrem. Profession or Trade: Farmer. House Lot Number: 141.

  “Where is this lot?” Jane asks, trying to still the tremor in her voice.

  Elsa is puzzled. “I thought you were looking for Pettigrew.”

  “I need to find this property. It’s exceedingly urgent.”

  Elsa sighs. “I’ll have to pull out the early maps, I suppose.” She crosses to an architect’s cabinet of wide, shallow drawers, opening one after the other, while Jane waits anxiously.

  “Here’s a surveyor’s map from 1848,” Elsa says at last, pulling out a wide sheet and smoothing its creases on the table. “That’s just a couple of years before the census.”

  Jane bends to study the finely drawn demarcations, the ant-sized names and numbers fading into the brown-spotted paper. Elsa fetches a magnifying glass.

  Lot 141 lies near the top of the map, 126 acres of cleared farmland, its meandering boundary inscribed, simply: Quirk.

  “This is on Rowell Hill. See here…” Elsa points to a tiny amoeba shape near the north border. “That’s Pease Pond.” She traces the southern property line running along the base of the hill. “And here, at the bottom, this is where Old Upper Spruce Lane runs now.”

  Just inside the east boundary, meandering up the hill, is a dotted line. Jane asks, “What does this broken line signify?”

  “A wall. Probably to keep the livestock in.”

  Jane bounces up and down. “Of course! The sheep!” She starts laughing.

  Elsa regards Jane as if she’s a lunatic, then casts an impatient eye on the Ormolu clock. “I’m due upstairs for lunch with my father. May I put away the map now? It shouldn’t be exposed to the air for long.”

  Jane points again to the dotted line. “But—is it possible—if one had a copy of this map, might one find this wall?”

  “I can tell you, there’s no farm there now. The entire hill is woods. The old walls must have fallen apart by now.”

  Jane’s face droops. “Are you certain?”

  “I should think so. I happen to own Rowell Hill.” Elsa draws herself up. “Most of the land in this township belonged to the Grayniers; it’s been passed down through generations. My father left it all to me.”

  Jane steps away from the map so Elsa can remove it.

  “But I’ll make a copy for you anyway,” Elsa says kindly. She spreads the map carefully in the photocopier bed. “I’ve just remembered, last year I gave permission to some hikers to cut a trail up Rowell Hill. It starts somewhere at the end of Upper Old Spruce. The path may have grown over, but it’s worth exploring. You might find portions of your wall still standing.”

  WHEN BRETT RETURNS to the museum, inhaler in hand, the museum is locked for lunch, and Jane is gone.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Propped in a wheelchair on the porch of the Bayh & Bayh Convalescent Center, 97-year-old Iris DeRota is not aware of being on a porch. She is actually sitting in a beach chair beside a wise old clown. Their feet rest in the water of a slow, silver river too wide to glimpse an opposite shore. She looks down at her legs stretched before her: unblemished and well-shaped, as they were in girlhood.

  Iris and the clown converse without speaking. He tells her, as he has many times, that she needs to stay a little longer. The wait doesn’t bother her, but she feels a pang of longing: everyone is waiting for her, behind the sky, and she is eager to see them, to receive their applause.

  Look who’s here, says the clown.

  Iris jerks awake, cracking open an eye: the known world comes into view. It has a flimsy aspect, like the scenery of an amateur production. The Graynier Avenue street sign, the whitewashed porch railing, the bodies and faces passing to and fro on the sidewalk: an insubstantial hodgepodge (or “whatnot,” as Iris would say, if she could talk).

  One of the aides, Googie Bains, calls her “Iris DeRutabaga.” (Sometimes he amuses himself by jerking her nose to see if she’ll yawp.) Today her aide is Brenda, who is inside at the moment, crushing Iris’ meds into a cup of vanilla pudding. Brenda adores Iris, whose distinguishing virtue is being “no trouble at all.” The old lady has the sweetest sparkling blue eyes, which crinkle agreeably whenever anyone smiles or baby talks to her.

  Sometimes Iris stretches her papery lips into a grin, revealing handsome bridges. Though she only takes pureed food, the nursing home had them put in anyway. After hours of denti
stry (which Iris obligingly slept through), the dentist sent a bill three times his normal fee to Iris’ attorney in Springfield. The lawyer, whom Iris’ family put in charge of a large discretionary fund to insure her last years would be comfortable (and who routinely awards himself three times his normal fee), paid the bill without a second thought. By usual arrangement, the dentist kicked back twenty percent to the Bayh & Bayh.

  Born in Springfield, Iris married a man in dry goods. She produced four children and countless tea loaves. After her husband died and her children moved with their families to the West and Southwest, she spent many years at St. Joseph Eldercare in Huxberry Heights. Eventually the family attorney relocated her to a cheaper facility in Graynier. He pays Bayh & Bayh the same monthly rate as he used to pay St. Joseph’s, and Bayh & Bayh kicks back the difference, receiving full reimbursement for such expenses as a dance therapist, flat-screen plasma TV, and cosmetic dentistry. The move may be a mercy, though; at St. Joseph’s they were selling Iris’ blood.

  The clown calls this world the Colony. The other place, where he and Iris meet, is the Realm, although really the Colony is part of the Realm, the way an egg is itself and is separate from the cake but is also in the cake. Anyone who knows how to bake from scratch could understand that.

  Look who’s here.

  She sees the girl. A few feet away from the nursing home porch, the young woman pauses to consult a map, the brim of her straw hat obscuring her face.

  Then she lifts her chin, her gray eyes meeting Iris’ blue ones.

  The street scene fades, all except for the girl, who throbs with color and light. Iris has seen her before, in the Realm. “Jane,” she says, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

  The girl’s eyes slide away; she folds up the map.

  She didn’t hear her name because I’m still speaking in my head. It has been a long time since Iris last spoke. I’ll have to make an extra effort. Her lips form the shape; she takes a breath, concentrating.

  The word comes forth, in a voice as fragile and bygone as dried blooms: “Jane…”

  Too late. The girl has walked on.

  Producing the one word has left the old woman exhausted. Her lavender-tinged eyelids sink.

  My poor Jane. Why does she have to remember? Iris asks the clown. Why wasn’t her memory washed clean like everyone else before she went to the Colony?

  The clown answers merely, An experiment.

  Very soon Iris can come back to the Realm, he promises, and she can watch her beloved girl from there.

  Goodbye, my daughter.

  CRUISING HIS POSTAL truck along Rabbit Glenn Road, Thom Sayre stuffs the last mailboxes: Mueller, Rossi, Gustafsson.

  Hoyt Eddy passes in his pickup, not waving. Thank God Hoyt now rents a post box in town. Thom used to have navigate a mile of ruts to the end of Upper Old Spruce Lane.

  Finishing his route, Thom heads back to the post office, honking at Bern D’Annunzio going the other way in his cop cruiser. They’ll see each other that night at the firehouse, sit around with the other volunteers, cards and hoagies, no wives, no kids, couple of pedestal fans for a breeze. Most nights the alarm goes off at least once, especially in this drought, when everything is combustible.

  He drives past the quarter-acre subdivision where Gil Reynard built that gigantic imitation-stone mansion. It still hasn’t sold; even the bank can’t get rid of it. Thom chuckles: wherever Gil heard there was going to be a housing boom in Graynier, that it was the new “hot” town for Boston weekenders who couldn’t afford the Cape—well, he must have heard it from someone’s anus. Maybe Gil misheard the anus; he’s that dense. Or the drugs have fried him. Gil is hooked on something Thom can’t remember the name of, not crack but something like it.

  Thom knows everything about everybody in Graynier, or near to it: names, addresses, addictions.

  He doesn’t know the name of the girl he’s passing now, but he has seen her often on his rounds. A young slip of a thing, face shaded by a straw hat with a plum-colored ribbon. Betty Haff at Meadowlark Realty told him the girl is staying with one of her renters, Brett Sampson: the tall dude with the mixed-race kid. Chances are she’s Sampson’s girlfriend. Definitely an outdoor nut, likes to walk off a lot of shoe leather, even in this heat.

  He watches her in the rear-view. She’s turning onto Upper Old Spruce. Thom has seen her going up and down so many different streets, she could be a terrorist drawing up a map of bomb targets—if there was anything in Graynier besides Gil Reynard’s house to bomb.

  Not fifty yards behind the girl is the mixed-race kid pedaling a bike that’s too big for him, alongside Gita Poonchwalla on a bike too small. The Poonchwalla girl’s been growing up a storm the past year, getting that sullen look girls get when they’re going through the awkward stage. 62, Thom remembers a time when the town had no Poonchwallas or Alvarezes or Ngs—names with no vowels or too many. There were only Italians and Scandinavians, descended from the immigrant artisans who worked in the glass factory, long ago.

  Thom passes the two kids on their bikes. They disregard his wave, their eyes trained steadfastly forward.

  GITA AND COLLIN hide their bikes in the pines, creeping among the trees to stay out of sight.

  Gita is distraught. Jane is headed for Hoyt Eddy’s house. Thus evil joins evil, and Gita’s already difficult task is doubled. Spiritual sensitivity is her heavy cross; the ability to know, in every cell, when a malevolence is near. Sometimes the sensation is only a hot tickle at the base of her skull, sometimes a burst of flame in her breast, or under the surface of her skin, brightening like coals when she senses Shaarinen’s presence.

  He can enter and discard forms at will; temporarily inhabit a mortal being to commit his acts of violence, such as entering a black crow poised over roadkill, or the time he entered a punk who jacked cars from the motel parking lot: Gita was the one who caught him and called the police. By the time they came, Shaarinen had exited the kid’s body.

  So she has taken him on before. But the business with Jane is unprecedented; this time, Shaarinen is fully incarnated. Jane is not a borrowed body: this is the demon god himself, walking the streets of Graynier as a frail, demure girl in a straw hat. He is gathering his forces for an apocalypse of some sort. The knowledge is lodged like a fiery spear in the pit of Gita’s stomach.

  What began as a small point of inflammation (in fact, an undiscovered ulcer) has increased sharply since Jane arrived in town. Right now Gita is giddy with pain. She can easily control fear, but not hate. And hatred is tearing up her gut, smoking through her pores.

  Gana, who hates evil, chose Gita to be her warrior for good. Yet just when Gita could bear the burden of constant watchfulness no more, and she prayed for release, Gana appeared at the motel: fully incarnated as the Tawny One, Yenu Krisnu, the predicted savior in a male child form. Gita could cry with gratitude at being chosen to tutor the boy.

  Their mission must be completed before the end of August, when Collin has to leave with his dad.

  By then they will have met their destiny: the cataclysmic showdown between Yenu Krisnu and Shaarinen.

  Gita and the Tawny One advance, crouching, through the woods, to the edge of the clearing where Hoyt’s house stands. Pressing her burning stomach against the cool earth, she commands Collin to lie belly-down beside her on the carpet of pine needles so they can peer from under the tree branches.

  They watch Shaarinen proceed up the driveway toward Hoyt’s bungalow. Collin whispers, “The two of them are definitely working together.” He hears Gita make a gagging sound. In surprise he turns to see her clutching her stomach, a yellow patch of vomit sinking into the earth. The smell of bile reaches his nostrils. “Gita!”

  “Shh!”

  Shaarinen turns and looks in their direction. His female form climbs the sloping lawn, toward the tree line. Flattening themselves against the ground, the children hold their breaths as Shaarinen comes to a stop right in front of their hiding place. His pale gray vacant eyes scan the
woods.

  Gana has thrown her protection over them; Shaarinen cannot sense their abhorrent goodness even three feet away.

  The demon moves off, skirting the edge of the property. He keeps close to the perimeter of the trees, searching for something. Rounding the corner of the house, he disappears from view.

  Collin scrambles to his feet.

  “Stay down!”

  “Don’t we have to see what he’s doing?”

  “Wait ‘til he comes back around.” Gita seems paralyzed, curled up and hugging her abdomen. The color is drained from her face.

  “You’re all white.”

  “I’m being purified.”

  He waits respectfully. Maybe when the war is over, he’ll be all white too, by the grace of Gana.

  After twenty minutes, Shaarinen has not reappeared.

  “Maybe he went in the back door?”

  Gita sends Collin on recon. Staying inside the tree line, he moves toward a position where he can view the back of Hoyt’s house, passing what looks like a dump: old furniture and truck parts chucked into a leaf-filled pit. Could be a portal! Gita says that demons use them to come and go from the Worldunder.

  Completing his circle around the house, he calls, “He’s gone!”

  Gita emerges from their hiding place, looking revived. “I know, ‘cause the pain in my belly’s going away.”

  “But where did he go? We were watching. Unless he snuck into the woods back there. Maybe there’s a trail we don’t know about.”

  Gita eyes the woods behind the house. She does not seem to be feeling the warrior energy at the moment. “Shaarinen wouldn’t have to sneak away. He can dematerialize. It’s one advantage he has over us. You’ll be able to do that too, one day.”

  Collin straightens up with pride. He is coming into his own as an avatar: already taller, braver, filled with purpose.