Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict (5 page)

I can hardly begin to marvel over these trees when we pass colossal structures, rectangular metal armatures on four legs which are connected to one another with giant cords. I cannot imagine the purpose of such behemoths.

Is this what the world looks like in 2009?

I feel eyes upon me and realize that I have spoken the words aloud. Paula glances at me through the mirror, her brow furrowed. Anna glances at Wes; they both look at me and nod.

I cannot bear the pity on their countenances. I close my eyes and let the wind wash over me. Either I am dead—or mad—or somehow I am in a future time, as someone else.

Could this be what the Society of Asiatic Studies meant in their essay on the Hindu belief in the transmigration of souls? But that, if I understood rightly, was a transfer of the soul of the deceased into a newly born babe. Yet here I am, another adult person.

If my soul has transmigrated, then everyone I know must be long dead—dear sweet Papa, shall I never see you again? If it is indeed 2009, then my dearest Mary, I shall never look upon your sweet countenance again, nor that of your brother—at this moment I cannot feel the slightest bit of resentment towards Charles Edgeworth, for he must be at least a century and a half in his grave. Dear Mama, I was never to you what my sister and brother were, yet you were the only mother I knew. And you, too, are dead. Hot tears gather behind my eyelids. And Barnes—dear sweet faithful Barnes—who will mourn you now but I?

Wes’s hand patting my arm rouses me; his gray-blue eyes are gentle. Anna leans over her seat to wipe away my tears with something softer than the finest linen.

“We’re almost there,” Paula says.

I may be insane, I may be dead, I may have a transmigrated soul, but I shall be mistress of myself. I force a smile to prove it to my traveling companions, and their countenances show what appears to be relief.

Paula’s car turns off the endless, inconceivably wide expanse of road onto a smaller, slower road, and then we are before an astonishingly tall and massive building with hundreds of windows.

We come to a stop and disembark onto a vast coach-yard filled with stationary cars. “I feel better already,” says Paula, and points in the direction we are to walk.

Suddenly I am seized with laughter, which simply bubbles out of me and shakes my frame until I am nearly bent over with it.

Wes, Paula, and Anna’s countenances are anything but mirthful. “Oh, no,” says Anna, a fretful tone in her voice.

“Are you all right?” Wes says.

The laughter subsides into unladylike snorts and giggles, and finally I manage, “Oh, yes. Like Paula, I feel better already. Who would not feel better after racing a thousand cars to a destination where a thousand cars stand still? Who would not feel better after learning that everyone she knows has been dead for at least a hundred and fifty years?”

I look around me at the field of cars, the building looming with its glittering windows. “If they are dead, then so must I be.”

“Do you really feel dead?” says Anna, her eyes full of concern. “Because you’re not. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. I know it doesn’t feel that way right now, but it will. I promise you.”

“I—” But I cannot finish the thought, for a pair of white butterflies are suddenly dancing in the air between Anna and me. And, as suddenly, they flutter away and are replaced by a lone orange-and-black-spotted butterfly, which promptly lands on my arm and appears to be looking up at me. I want to laugh with delight, but I dare not frighten it. I move my hand as if to touch it, but Wes gently stops my hand with his.

“Its wings are too fragile to be touched.”

I know those words—I remember this moment, this very moment. But how?

And all at once the butterfly takes flight and the sun comes from behind a cloud and the tingling of my skin where the butterfly just stood and the glow of the sun on my face and the wisp of citron scent from Wes and the touch of his skin on mine are more vivid, more present, than any sensations I have ever known.

And all at once I know that I am alive; indeed I am more alive than I have ever been before. Impossibly and undeniably alive. In this body which is not mine, with these people I do not know, in this far distant time, in this faraway place. Impossible, inexplicable, yet it is so. One moment I was riding Belle through the woods. The next moment I was here.

I should be frightened. I should question my sanity. But I cannot.

I smile. At Wes. At Paula. At Anna.

Anna takes my arm and squeezes it affectionately. “I believe that each of us has the power to create heaven or hell, right here, right now.”

Paula disengages Anna from my arm and steers me towards the building. “Anna, the last thing this girl needs is a steaming pile of your new-age crap.”

I look round at Anna, whose cheeks are flaming, and say, “I believe I like your thought.”

She glances at me, then glares at Paula’s back. “I happen to have read that in a book, Paula. A reputable book. Twenty weeks on the
New York Times
bestseller list.”

“Let’s get you inside,” Paula says to me, pointedly ignoring Anna.

Anna is apparently undaunted. “
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy
.”

Paula rolls her eyes. “If she’s not spouting the received wisdom of some creepy guy channeling an ‘ascended master,’ then she’s showing off her MFA in theatre.”

I give Anna an encouraging smile. “I happen to be quite fond of Shakespeare myself.”

We reach the building, and Wes holds open an enormous door that is all glass—such a huge pane of glass I have not seen before—and I am whisked into a box of a room with doors which open and close of their own accord, but not as normal doors do; it is as if they disappear into the walls when they open.

Paula presses one of the many numbered circles on the wall next to the strange doors, which are now closed, and the room gives a little shudder. A few moments pass, and the doors disappear into the wall again, and outside the room is a scene entirely different from the one which had previously been there.

And in that moment I realize that the tiny room we are standing in has actually moved! We have actually ascended from the ground to an upper floor. Has the room literally flown upstairs? Laughter begins to bubble inside me, and I force myself to keep my countenance. How can the people around me maintain such solemn expressions when they stand inside such a conveyance? I can only assume that such wonders are daily occurrences in 2009.

A quick walk down a checkered tile passageway, and Paula motions for us to seat ourselves in curiously shaped chairs which are orange and seem to be molded of some kind of hard substance. Paula speaks to an attendant who sits behind a windowed wall, then rejoins our party. A disheveled man of about thirty years, his complexion nearly as gray as the drab garments he wears, takes one of the chairs in the row in front of us and immediately twists round in his seat, fixing his bespectacled eyes upon me. “Are you here for the facts? Are you here for the facts? Here for the facts? Here for the facts? Are you here for the facts? Are you here for the facts?”

He continues spewing this nonsense at me, getting more agitated with each repetition until the gray in his face turns pink, then red, and Paula is shouting at the woman behind the windowed wall to do something about him, and Wes is urging him, in gentle tones, to desist, and Anna grips my arm, her face in an attitude of fear, and the man continues to fix me with his gaze, the light winking off his black-framed spectacles.

The light—yes, the light—another wonder. There are no candles anywhere, yet there is glowing light behind glass in the high ceiling, emanating from a lamp beside the bank of chairs, shining upon the woman behind the windowed wall.

“Are you here for the facts? Here for the facts?”

I stand up and gaze into the upturned face of the suffering man. “Indeed. I cannot imagine anyone more eager than I to know the facts.”

Six

T
he man halts in mid-rant, his mouth open, his eyes wide behind the spectacles. And slowly, the O of his mouth shapes itself into a broad grin. “God bless you,” he whispers. “God bless you.”

“Miss Stone?” A lovely Chinese woman in a rose-pink bodice and matching trousers is speaking to me. Is my name supposed to be Miss Stone?

I turn towards Anna, who is nodding her head at the Chinese woman and pointing at me.

“Miss Stone, Dr. Menziger will see you now.” The Chinese woman’s English is perfect, though also not in the accent of my country.

Wes rises from his seat and lightly touches my arm. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Paula fixes him with a baleful eye and takes my arm. “She needs help, you idiot.”

An older man and a woman, he in a gray coat and trousers and a crisp white shirt, she in a relatively modest dress of dark blue that falls to her calves, make their way down the passageway in front of us. They are supporting between them a young man of no more than sixteen years, long black-brown hair falling into his face, the rest of it sticking up as if he were a child roused from slumber, his eyes half closed, stumbling between these two more capable-looking adults, their faces lined with anxious care for their charge, the young man saying, over and over, “I won’t do it again. I promise. I won’t do it again.”

Wes sweeps his arm in a gesture that takes in the unfortunate threesome and the man who has seated himself in front of us. “You call this help?”

Paula ignores him. “Come on, Courtney.” She and I follow the Chinese woman through a door, down a checkered corridor, past white tables and chattering females, brown- and black- and white-skinned females, all uniformly clad in the same rose-pink trousers and short-sleeved bodices, and atop the tables are glowing boxes that remind me of the one in the room where I awoke but which appear to have lines of printed text on them instead of actors, and before I can make any sense of what I am seeing—as if there is sense to be made—I am inside a room without Paula and facing a large, lightly colored wooden table, behind which is a person rising out of a chair and offering a hand for me to shake.

“Welcome, Courtney. I’m Dr. Menziger, Paula’s cousin. Call me Suzanne.”

This sweet, feminine voice is most unexpected, for she has a bristly head of closely cropped, dark-blond hair, broad shoulders, and squarish white teeth smiling in a square face. The hand held out to me is blunt and square as well, with closely trimmed, squarish nails. Her one beauty, her eyes, are azure-blue and sparkle with diamonds, like the sun shimmering on the sea.

Her eyes are those of an angel. I smile my approbation as I shake her hand, though it is an intimate gesture for one I have just met.

I take one of two chairs which face her, and I find my attention seized by a most astonishing picture which sits in a frame atop a light-colored wooden cabinet behind Dr. Menziger. The rendering of a brown-haired woman with a confident smile is as lifelike as the picture in the calendar on the wall of the rooms in which I awakened. I have never seen any artist’s efforts create such likenesses; they are so true they could be mistaken for the original.

Dr. Menziger’s voice recalls my attention from the picture. “Is there anything in particular that interests you about that photo?”

“Photo . . . I have never seen anything so lifelike. It is as if she were in the room with us.”

“That’s my partner, and I’m sure she would be pleased to hear that. She took the picture herself.”

“Indeed.” I cannot begin to imagine why Dr. Menziger would choose to display a portrait of her business partner, let alone why a fellow physician would also be such an accomplished artist. And a lady. But they are both ladies. Lady physicians. What a novel idea.

“Is something amusing you?” Dr. Menziger asks, her expression kind.

“Not at all,” I say, hoping my face does not betray my thoughts. After all, why should women not be physicians? Is it not they who nurse the sick, who nurture babies, who attend to the unwell and unfortunate of the parish?

“Tell me why your friends brought you to see me,” she says, folding her square hands before her and gazing at me, her blue eyes twinkling with the hint of a smile on her lips. “And please understand that whatever you say to me in this room is strictly confidential.”

“All well and good, but will it land me in an asylum?”

“Interesting choice of words, ‘asylum.’ ” She scribbles into a book of ruled paper with what appears to be a pen, though it has no quill. “We are not so antiquated as all that, though if you mean asylum in terms of a safe place, a sanctuary that keeps away harm, then yes, we offer asylum.”

I think of the poor creature outside ranting about “the facts” and that young man practically carried through the corridor by, presumably, his parents, who paid no heed to his pleadings. “Pretty words, but I have no wish to be locked away.”

“It would not be in my interest, or in yours, to keep you anywhere against your will. I’d like to help you.”

“If that means draining me of offensive humors, as my mother’s favorite medical man likes to say, then I respectfully decline your offer.”

“I am not so dogmatic about comedy as all that.”

A hint of a smile plays about Dr. Menziger’s mouth. It takes me a moment to understand her witticism, and I laugh.

She scribbles into her book. Odd; there is no inkpot anywhere to be seen, yet ink continues to issue from her pen.

“So,” she says. “Why do you think your friends brought you here?”

“They think I am Courtney—Stone, is it? But I am not.”

Dr. Menziger says not a word, just gazes at me with her sparkling blue eyes and nods slightly.

“I am Miss Mansfield. Jane is my Christian name. I neither look nor sound like this. When last I went to sleep I was in my own bed, on my father’s estate, in Somerset, and it was the year thirteen. 1813. Not”—and there it is, on her desk, a leather-bound book open to the frontispiece, a calendar topped by the numbers 2009. “It was not 2009. I am not ill, Dr. Menziger. I am simply lost.”