Jane Was Here

by Sarah Kernochan

  Exhausted from her long trek, she doesn’t immediately notice the car parked at the corner, the man waiting inside, his elbow resting on the open window. Her gaze slides absently to the license plate: Virginia.

  She stops abruptly, sucking in her breath. The man’s eye appears in the side view mirror, glancing at the street behind.

  Jane ducks into a narrow alley between houses, hoping he didn’t see her. Skirting backyards, she hurries to the wrought-iron gate behind her home.

  Her mind races: perhaps the car from Virginia was nothing but a coincidence.

  Or can it be they have found her?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Hearing the back door open, Brett bounds barefoot down two flights, arriving at the kitchen doorway to see Jane bending over the letter on the table. Her grimy shirt clings to her skin in damp patches; sweat gleams on her face.

  She looks up. “How did you get this?”

  “From a private investigator your parents hired. He traced you here—wants to talk to you.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him. And they are not my parents!”

  Brett shoves his hands into his pockets to hide his nerves. “You were adopted?”

  “There is no time for explaining.” She moves past him, heading quickly down the hall.

  “Caroline!” he calls after her. Her shoulders tighten at the sound of the name, but she doesn’t break stride, running up the stairs to her room. Brett finds her on her knees, tugging her pink duffel from under the bed. “You’re Caroline,” he says, aggressive now.

  “I have been called that. But it’s not who I am.” Standing, she loops her bag over her shoulder. “I will go out the back.”

  “No.” Brett blocks her exit.

  “I must go!”

  “You don’t have to run away. The detective said your parents might leave you alone, so long as they know you’re okay.”

  “I have no reason to believe it. Tell him I have had a change of heart and gone back to Virginia. I’ll stay somewhere nearby here, and then come back when it’s safe.”

  “You expect me to take that on faith? When you’ve totally lied to me?” Brett towers over her, glaring angrily.

  “I haven’t lied. You must forget everything he said,” she pleads. “It will only confuse you.”

  “Put down the bag. You’re not leaving and you’re going to tell me the truth.”

  She drops the duffel, but is far from daunted. “I will say nothing if you force me to stay. Believe me, I know how to be silent.”

  In an instant, her eyes become dim and distant, her face slackening as a low hum issues from the back of her throat. She brings her palm up to her empty gaze, jerking her elbow back and forth so that her hand flops like a dead appendage. As she increases the rhythm, her hum rises, punctuated by giggles.

  “Stop,” Brett whispers, horrified.

  Her arm lowers and the hum dies. With an impersonal smile on her lips, she turns her head to the doorframe, thumping her skull against the wood.

  “Stop it!” Brett pulls her from the door. The flesh under his fingers feels curiously leaden, as if she is an inanimate thing in his grasp, with an oblique, painted stare. “Jane—Jane!”

  As swiftly as she left, she is back, her eyes returning to his frightened face with their full spark. “That was Caroline. Have you had enough of her company?”

  “Please,” he releases her, “just tell me what’s going on.”

  “I shall try to help you understand. But after, you must promise to let me leave.”

  “YOU HAVE ASKED for the truth. You have asked for facts. They are not the same. Caroline’s life consists only of facts, but of truth there is none.”

  Jane sits very erect across from him at the kitchen table, hands in her lap. Intermittently her eyes dart to the back door.

  “Here is your first fact. I was the baby born from the union of Bill and Karen Moss. I spent my first months in the natural daze of an infant, but soon I felt a certainty that I was in the wrong place. I remember how loudly I screamed when I saw my room was not my own, and the two people who hovered over my crib were not my mother and father. Even the name they gave me, ‘Caroline,’ was false.

  “The facts of their world were not the truth of mine.

  “This world in which I found myself a castaway was all wrong; yet it insisted it was right, with Bill and Karen always trying to touch me, to teach me, to bend me. Being helpless I could only pull back inside myself, as far away from them as I could manage. I refused to look at them, or to speak. I flapped my hands and spun in circles to keep them from touching me. I learned what behavior they hated, like loud humming and slamming myself against walls, and I stuck to it resolutely until finally they stopped trying to take control of my being.

  “I was called autistic. So much the better. It got me away from that house and those people to a place where I was left alone, the Saint Albinus Residence in Deer Run. Fortunately for me, the staff neglected its patients, and if anyone tried to force a connection with me, I presented them with Caroline Moss, who stared into space, or spun in circles, or banged or hummed, until they gave up.

  “There were a few others like me in the residence, those who simply would not cooperate with the world. We were called autistic, but we didn’t see ourselves as the ones who were impaired. On the contrary, we were unusually strong. It took great self-discipline to maintain our remove. Now and then I would hear another one like me laugh, and I would laugh, too, because sometimes it struck us as so funny, normal people thrashing about in their complicated dramas, which seemed as nonsensical as dreams. But we couldn’t look at each other and give ourselves away. The doctors wouldn’t have appreciated the joke. It was really best not to speak at all.

  “I cannot explain it, but from an early age I knew how to read, write, and speak. Perhaps I was born knowing. I concealed my abilities, and the staff believed me ignorant. But I was learning all I could about life on the outside from eavesdropping and from the television.

  “Thanks to my spying, I discovered I could live independently as an adult when I reached the age of 21. I had a long time to wait, but it is nothing…to wait. When you have rejected that fabrication they call real, you enter a sphere without time. It’s as though you find yourself suspended in pure sky, so that you lose all sense of up or down, forward or backward. The idea of time, of years passing, seems ever so quaint.”

  Though Jane is speaking precisely, thoughtfully, Brett feels more lost than ever; he can make no sense of it. Only a little while ago, he held power over her, blocking her escape: now he is once again limp in the filaments of a web that has held him since she arrived on his doorstep.

  “Still, when the time came,” Jane continues, “where would I go? Where did I belong? I was puzzling this question one day as I stood near a group of aides, when one of them showed the others a glass bowl she had bought for a dollar at a rummage sale. Turning the bowl over, she showed them the raised letters on the bottom: ‘GRAYNIER GLASS.’ She had done some research, and thought it might fetch a good price, as the bowl was probably from the 19th century. She said it was manufactured by a long gone company in Massachusetts, in a town called Graynier.

  “The instant I heard the name, I knew it was where I came from. I stepped in and snatched the bowl. They tried to wrest it from me, but I held fast, and as my hands touched it a second name came to my mind: ‘Jane.’ How happy I felt! I found myself shouting it: ‘Jane! I am called Jane!’

  “I had never previously spoken. Naturally they were very shocked, even more astonished when I asked, ‘How old am I?’ They never bothered to celebrate the patients’ birthdays in Saint Albinus unless parents were visiting. I asked this question loudly, over and over again.

  “I was led into the doctor’s office, all the while crying, ‘Tell me how old I am, at once!’ When she began to prepare a syringe to calm me down, I immediately quieted, explaining as reasonably as I could that I had woken from my ‘sleep’ and cared to know a few details
of my identity. After the doctor was persuaded to open my file, I learned that I was 23. Two extra years wasted! I demanded to be retested for autism.

  “It occasionally happens that an autistic miraculously ‘emerges.’ I convinced all the doctors that I had recovered and could function perfectly well in all respects that mattered to them. So they telephoned my alleged parents.

  “All the while I hid from everyone my most urgent desire: to be entirely myself. I wanted to be Jane. All the years I had taken refuge from ‘the world,’ I had dismissed emotion and pain. Because these belonged to Caroline. But now I wanted them: Jane’s feelings, Jane’s suffering, to speak in Jane’s voice, I—what is it, dear? Am I not explaining it well?”

  Brett is pressing his hands to his temples. “I’m trying very hard to understand you. But it sounds kind of psycho.”

  Her gaze reproves him. “I had planned to tell you the truth at a later time, when you were ready, but you forced me to speak prematurely.”

  He opens his palms in surrender. “Who are you? I listen and listen, and it keeps changing.”

  “Who am I?” Reaching across the table, she places her white, cool hands in Brett’s.

  Suddenly it seems unimportant that she makes no sense, that she is mad. Her touch ignites his craving to own her wholly; let the world turn to ash outside.

  “I am Jane Pettigrew,” she says.

  STANDING OUTSIDE the kitchen, Collin stills his body so the floorboards won’t give him away. He heard Jane and his dad come upstairs (where Collin was exiled to his room after his blowout with Brett). When the two went to the kitchen, Collin stole downstairs after them.

  He peers around the doorframe, careful to stay out of his father’s line of sight. Not that there’s much chance of being discovered, his dad is so hypnotized by the demon across from him, hanging on every word of her ridiculous story. Jane can say anything, and his father turns to candy she can roll around in her mouth and suck on.

  If his dad wasn’t so weak, Collin could love him. He wants to. But as long as the poor man remains in Shaarinen’s thrall, his soul is gone. You can see it in his eyes. Collin is the only one left in this house with his wits about him.

  And he has the goddess’ mandate.

  An idea comes to him. To escape the house without attracting attention, he must prepare himself for invisibility, a mind technique Gita taught him for tracking Jane. You focus the mind on scattering your atoms to merge with the background scenery so that you are present but imperceptible. (It was working pretty well on the road earlier, until Officer D’Annunzio interfered.)

  Slipping noiselessly into the front hall, Collin lets himself out onto the street. He stops to reassemble his atoms, then proceeds toward the out-of-state car parked at the corner. He leans through the open driver’s window, whispering, “Sir, hello?”

  The old man asleep inside jolts awake.

  “Hey there, hoss,” the man blinks.

  “You looking for Jane?”

  The man sits up straight, looking embarrassed. “Is she back?”

  “Yes, sir. She’s in our kitchen.”

  “JANE PETTIGREW?” Brett repeats stupidly.

  “Yes. Benjamin Pettigrew’s younger daughter. This was my home almost two centuries ago.”

  A knock sounds sharply at the front door.

  The two spring to their feet. Seizing her duffel from the floor, Jane bridges the distance to the back door in two steps; right behind her, Brett captures her arm, pulling her to him. Her body is vague and light in his arms as he clasps her tight, feeling the intricate web of her bones.

  “You promised to let me go!”

  She gives up struggling, wrapping her thin arms around his waist and pressing her cheek to his chest. He kisses the top of her head, and she raises her face to offer her lips.

  Joining his mouth to hers, he understands what it was Jane meant: to enter a sphere without time. They seem suspended forever, heart against heart, in a welcoming universe.

  The knock comes again.

  This time Brett lets her pull away. She steps back, hand groping for the screen door.

  “Jane, where will you go? How can I find you?”

  Rummaging in her duffel, she thrusts a folded map into his hand. “Follow Quirk’s wall.”

  Then she is gone, out the back door and crossing the yard at a run. As she vanishes through the iron gate, Brett is struck by a memory. She has left me before. Disappeared. He dismisses it as some kind of déjà vu. Still, the certainty remains, an echo in his cells. She deserted me before.

  Insistent knocking breaks his trance, drawing him to the front door. He knows before he opens it that Fancher will be standing there.

  “You’re too late,” he tells the old man. “Caroline took off. She decided to go back to Virginia. Maybe you can find her on the road.”

  Behind the detective Brett catches a flash of movement; someone else is on the stoop.

  Collin steps into view: his son, the traitor.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Jane makes up her bed by the light of a battery lantern in the shack, covering the hard wood of the floor with a folded blanket she found stored under the bench. Whoever left supplies in the hunting blind will return one day, she knows, so she will be careful not to disturb the placement of things, only using the blanket, the lantern, and the camp stove to boil water from the pond. Her clothing and all traces of her occupancy will fit into her duffel, which she will hide in a nearby tree after she leaves each morning. When hunger insists, she will slip down Rowell Hill to find a house where she can steal food.

  Balling up her duffel for a pillow, every muscle aching from the day’s exertions, she lies down to sleep wrapped in her purple anorak. Sensing her allure, mosquitoes drift through cracks in the walls, singing lascivious hymns through the thin nylon fabric of her anorak after she draws the hood over her face.

  She curls up in the pleasure of reliving her first kiss from only a little while ago. But it was foolish to tell Brett where he could find her; he may unwittingly lead others to her hideaway. She will have to conceal her presence from him, too.

  Perhaps she should have left Graynier, returning another time when they have given up looking for her. But there is more to do here.

  Feeling the billowy shifting of night currents, she hears the soft mincing step of a deer, approaching and receding, in the brush outside. The evening cicadas rattle away, owls hoot, a rabbit shrieks; in the darkness small creatures surrender their lives to the turbulent divinity infusing all that is.

  In the morning she will take the shovel to the stand of white pines, and dig.

  BURIED THINGS AWAIT in the glade, under a carapace of jutting roots and stones. Jane will not have to dig down very deep before she reaches the leather satchel. Inside are letters: tender words on rotting pages, bound up with the ribbon of remorse.

  Dear Mr. Trane,

  We most enjoyed your illuminating lecture last night at Graynier Hall. We should have preferred to congratulate you in person, but there was already such a crowd of comely admirers around you that our father, not wishing to wait, swept us away. Perhaps you noticed two very disappointed faces in bonnets (one blue, one claret) retreating to the door. Nonetheless (and paterfamilias permitting!) we will most eagerly attend your second talk tonight in order to hear more about Gabriel Nation.

  Respectfully yours,

  Miss Rebecca Pettigrew

  Miss Jane Pettigrew

  Dear Mr. Trane,

  We were dismayed to learn of the abrupt cancellation of your second lecture. Had Reverend Duckworth not complained to Mr. Graynier, you would have found an enthusiastic assemblage of the curious, for indeed word of your eloquence has spread fast. We venture to explain that ours is a young town and unaccustomed to receiving speakers of uncommon intellect, tho’ last year we were visited by Abby Kelley Foster who spoke of women’s rights. (All of us women who attended cheered her pronouncement that we should not be kept “like dolls in the parlor” and deser
ve to receive our freedom in the same manner that abolition will one day unfetter all the slaves of our nation!) She, too, was requested to leave, and by the same consortium of backward ministers led by Reverend Duckworth, who rules the sour Presbyterians of our community. He wants nothing to do with modern free-thinking and will only countenance religious discussion as dictated by himself, everything else being apostasy, and therefore your speech espousing a new approach to spiritual union with Almighty God was particularly abrasive to His Reverence. He has succeeded in muzzling you by appealing to the prejudices of Mr. Graynier, who has never been seen in church and detests religion, who regards philosophers and reformers as troublemakers, and who has absolute power to boot them into the next county.

  For truly we live in a little monarchy here and Mr. Philip Graynier is our King. He is owner of the glass factory, and without him there would be no town. Nearly everyone is in some fashion employed by him, even our father who is superintendent of Graynier Glass.

  We hope you will not hasten from our village in spite of such rude reception. There are some here who are not as small-minded as others and who hunger for lively discourse. In our own household we were raised in the Unitarian church, which teaches tolerance and respect toward new spiritual ideas, as all paths must lead finally to God our Maker. Thus we would be honored to receive you for dinner in our home, if you would be so inclined, in this way to continue without harassment our learning about Gabriel Nation and your fascinating mission.

  Please send your response by the same hand that has presented this letter to you, that of our hired girl Letty, a hand which can in addition make an excellent mutton stew!

  Very respectfully yours,