Authors: Noëlle Sickels

The Medium (37 page)

BOOK: The Medium

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“Did he?”

“He wanted to know if you'd be in for your next scheduled session, or if he ought to tell the people you work with that you'd be absent.”

“Yes, I'll go in,” Helen said. She took a gulp of soda.

“Sip!” Ursula instructed from across the room, where she was putting away dishes.

Emilie came into the kitchen carrying the sheets she'd stripped from Helen's bed. She deposited them in the back room, where the washer was, then returned and sat down at the table with her daughter.

“Bed's all ready with clean linen,” she said smiling. “Don't sit up too long.”

“Sit up?” Walter said. “She's already planning to go back to work!”

“What?” Emilie said.

“I'm not due there for two more days,” Helen told her parents. “I'm sure I'll be in the pink by then.”

“Hmph,” Ursula grunted loudly. Helen gave her a quick glance, but the old woman was reaching to a top shelf with her back turned.

“Nanny thinks that you've been overdoing it,” Walter said to Helen. “Whatever exactly it is that you do. That that's why you fainted and fell ill. Your mother and I agree with her.”

“So we don't think it would be a good idea for youâ” Emilie began.

“It was the terrible heat is what I think,” Helen said carefully, watching her grandmother's back for any signals she was about to contradict her. “The same thing might have happened to me here, or on a stuffy bus, or somewhere else.”

Ursula, having completed her task, came to stand behind Emilie's chair.

“I did do â¦ I was trying something new when I fainted,” Helen continued hesitantly, “and it was a bit difficult, so maybe that
plus
the heat â¦ But you all don't have to worry. I won't be doing that kind of thing again.”

“Are you certain of that?” Walter said. “Because, frankly, Helen, it may be Katie-bar-the-door, but I'd prefer you call in today and resign. Heat or no, any job whose demands are enough to make you ill is not a job I want you to have.”

“But, Papa, I
need
to go back. I need to see if I â¦ that is, I should at leastâ”

“Perhaps, Walter,” Ursula put in, “Helen wants just to make her ending there the right way. It's how you raised her, to be responsible and fair.”

“Yes, that's it,” Helen said. “I can't just all of a sudden walk out on them. And if it turns out I'm able to work like before and feel fine doing it, then I'd rather not walk out at all. I'd like to stay on.”

Emilie looked anxiously at her husband.

“I don't like it,” she said to him, and turning to Helen, she
repeated, “I don't like it one bit.”

Helen was aware that her mother wouldn't have appealed to her father unless she'd perceived he was leaning Helen's way. Helen couldn't read his inclinations, but she knew her mother could.

“I promise, Papa, that if I feel at all weak or sick, I'll quit immediately,” she said.

“Walter?” Emilie attempted.

He cleared his throat loudly.

“Helen knows better than we do, Emilie, what the work entails and how she's feeling.”

“You didn't see her when she came in yesterday,” Emilie said, getting up in agitation.

“I saw her last night when she was so dead asleep I couldn't rouse her to say hello. Is there something else I should know?”

The question was coated with annoyance. To Helen's father, the matter had been settled, if not to his total satisfaction, then at least to a point that begged off further debate.

“No, of course not,” her mother quickly answered him.

“I saw Helen when she is just home yesterday,” Ursula said soothingly to Emilie, “and I didn't like, either, but tonight I see she is herself, and she has made the good promise to her father, so I tell myself it must be all right.”

“Very well,” Emilie said reluctantly. “I can't argue you all down. It's true the symptoms were consistent with simple heat exhaustion.”

She turned to Helen. “But I still don't feel easy with you going back there.”

“Nor do I,” Walter said. “I'm trusting you to be smart about this, Helen. And one last thing â¦”

“Yes, Papa?”

“Don't let yourself get carried away with any foolish notions that the war can't be won without you.”

“Yes, Papa.”

Walter and Emilie left the room, Walter pausing at the doorway to let Emilie pass through first. Helen doubted there'd be any more discussions between them on the decision, at least not tonight.

“So,” Ursula said, “you think to make that work into a test, no?”

“I can't simply wait for time to tell.”

Helen carried her plate and glass and silverware to the sink. Ursula followed and reached past her to turn on the tap.

“I'll wash,” she said. “You go back to bed.”

“Thank you, Nanny.”

“It's nothing.”

“No, I mean thank you for helping me with Mama and Papa, and for not saying anything about â¦ anything.”

The old woman shrugged.

“It is yours,” she said. “It is for you to decide, and for you to live.”

CHAPTER 44

SEPTEMBER 1944

Helen didn't get back to the remote viewing project as soon as she'd hoped. She'd conceded to her mother's wish that she wait until the heat wave broke. An unenterprising weather system, it had stagnated over the region for nearly two weeks.

The day she finally went into the city was beautiful, the sky peacock blue with racks of immaculately white cumulus clouds as bulbous and buoyant as a child's drawing. Infected by the beauty and the lenient air, New Yorkers, stylish and purposeful, strode briskly along the crowded sidewalks. Everything and everyone looked bright, freshly made, optimistic. But Helen was too nervous to be cheered by the day's fineness or invigorated by the busy flow around her. As she approached the building where the Army had its three floors of offices, she looked up, trying to pick out the window of the room she usually worked in. What was going to happen there today?

During the sluggish waiting period, Helen had had no dreams, at least none she remembered. She hadn't dared to call Iris or go into trance. Once, outside a theatre where
Arsenic and Old Lace
was opening, she'd tried to see the auras of people waiting in line, but nothing had appeared. The remote viewing exercises would be a better trial, she'd told herself. They were orderly, supervised, scientific. Yet now, literally on the threshold, she hung back.

She'd gotten used to living suspended, like someone waiting for a very late train that might never come or whose whistle
might be heard around the bend in the next minute. She was neither here nor there, nor even on the way somewhere, and she was content to be because she'd trusted it was a temporary state.

Helen had taken to gardening very early every morning, as soon as light showed in the sky. It was the only cool time of day. Most of the neighborhood was still asleep, so it was quiet except for the dawn chorus of birds and, briefly, the clink of the milkman's bottles in his metal basket and the crunch of the paperboy's bicycle on the gravel driveway. It amazed her that her mind didn't wander in such stillness and solitude, but it didn't. She found herself utterly absorbed in where on a stem to make the best pruning cut, or whether she'd thoroughly routed the weed roots she was digging up.

For two hours, sometimes three, she gave herself over totally to the garden, like a pig in a mud wallow, and each night she was able to fall quickly to sleep, without useless mulling over what might have befallen her psychic abilities and how long it might last. But now, the intermission was over.

Yesterday, American troops had crossed the German border for the first time. Thinking of them, Helen entered the building.

Her monitor, Lieutenant Boddington, was pleased to see her. But was that wariness she saw in his expression, too? Wasn't he observing her more closely than usual? And they hadn't even begun to work yet. He asked how she was feeling, which he'd never done before, and there was a pitcher of water and a drinking glass on the table. That, too, had never happened before. Stop it, Helen chided herself. It was highly unlikely that Major Levy had disclosed the full story of their remarkable afternoon, but her having fainted was probably common knowledge in the office. The lieutenant's apprehension and the precautionary water were only natural. He'd always been a bit of a mother hen.

After Lieutenant Boddington had made sure Helen was comfortable and ready, he gave her a set of sealed envelopes. In each envelope was the name of a city. Helen was to open an envelope at random, read the city's name, and describe its current weather conditions. The lieutenant then called someone in that city to check her accuracy. Out of five cities, Helen correctly described the weather in only one of them, was partially correct in another, and substantially off in the other three.

“Not your best showing,” said Lieutenant Boddington, “but perhaps you're a bit rusty, eh? I shouldn't have started with a new test. Besides, even weathermen get the weather wrong sometimes. Notorious for it.”

Lieutenant Boddington believed deeply in the remote viewing project and wanted to see the Army adopt it as a permanent program. He was perpetually concerned that Helen not lose confidence in herself. He tended to minimize her misses and make much ado over her hits. Major Levy was right to worry that monitors might inadvertently give viewers leading information.

The nervousness that Helen had felt on the street ratcheted up. It was not so much that her score had been poor. It was that the experience had felt so different from other times. The “pop” she'd told Levy about was absent. She'd had some vague notions, but she couldn't honestly attest that they weren't simply guesses dressed up as perceptions.

“Maybe it's like beacon work,” she said hopefully to the lieutenant as he was writing on his notepad. “Maybe this just isn't my cup of tea.”

Lieutenant Boddington smiled at her.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” he said. “Let's move on to something with more meat, shall we? Something familiar. The old tried and true, as my mother used to say.”

He produced a stack of index cards. Helen took one and
turned it over. Printed neatly on it was a series of four numbers, indicating a target place. The numbers had been randomly selected and assigned to the target. They weren't geographic coordinates, as had been used when Helen first started remote viewing.

Helen stared at the numbers a minute, turning off her intellect and her everyday reliance on the conscious mind. She closed her eyes and waited for signals from the target. A rippling surface came to her. A lake? She cast out that idea. A rippling surface, period. Too early to name it. Besides, the image felt like it was coming from her imagination, not from the remote site. It didn't have that distinct mental flavor that true signals did. She tried to elaborate on the elusive surface, to see its edges, its color. Nothing. She strained to hear sounds from the site. Nothing.

She wasn't completely discouraged yet. It wasn't uncommon to spend an hour on one target, gradually obtaining information, making sketches, giving Lieutenant Boddington verbal descriptions. Always, in a successful session, there came the thrilling moment Helen called “dropping in.” It was as if she'd been taken somewhere blindfolded and then had the blindfold removed. She was, then, in two places at onceâat the table with the lieutenant and alone at the remote target. Often, after Helen felt securely “in” a place, Boddington would direct her where to look.

As minutes passed and nothing more than the unidentifiable ripples appeared, Helen began to feel impatient.

“Anything?” the lieutenant said softly from the other side of the table.

“A rippling surface. A lake maybe?”

“There's no lake at the target,” the lieutenant said. “Nor nearby. No bodies of water at all. Try drawing it.”

She opened her eyes. He slid a pencil and sketchpad across
to her. She drew rows of wavy lines. They could have been interpreted as water, cake frosting, ridges of windblown sand or snow, an animal's curly pelt.

Helen knew Lieutenant Boddington was disappointed, but she didn't care, as she would have in the past. Today, she only cared about how he could serve her quest to evaluate the state of her abilities.

“Let's do another one,” she said.

It was what they didâmove on to a new targetâwhen she couldn't make a connection, but it was Lieutenant Boddington who decided when. He looked a little taken aback by her suggestion, but he didn't object. He respected her talents too much.

Helen took another card and stared at another four-digit number. Again, she closed her eyes and waited. Nothing. Not even an ambiguous image.

“How're we doing?” Boddington asked after ten minutes.

Helen shook her head and opened her eyes. The sight of the lieutenant's crestfallen face nearly tipped her over into tears.

“I'll tell you what,” he said sunnily. “Let's try front-loading.”

Helen hadn't needed to be front-loaded since her second session. All he'd give her was the name of the remote place. She'd still have to rely on her psychic abilities to describe it, especially if Boddington asked her to zero in on a particular neighborhood or building. But it was a crutch nevertheless, a beginner's tool.

“Ever been to Detroit?” the lieutenant asked.

“No.”

“All right, then, let's do Detroit. My hometown, by the by.”

Helen closed her eyes yet again. She called up everything she knew about Detroit in order to cleanse her mind of it. She banished what she'd read about the huge plane factory at Willow Run now putting out one B-24 bomber an hour, and about the murderous race riots in the city last summer. She saw smokestacks and skyscrapers and dismissed them as suppositions
of how Detroit might appear. She saw federal troops and policemen, smashed store windows, and hate-wrenched faces. These, too, she dismissed as leftovers from newsreels. Her mental canvas finally blank, she waited to drop in.

Time lengthened like a stretching cat. Helen perceived nothing.

“Now, Miss Schneider,” Lieutenant Boddington said gently. “I'm going to ask you to focus on one section of Detroit. It's called Paradise Valley.”

Helen nodded. The image of a green cleft between rounded mountains came to her, but she knew it was just her association with the word valley. Detroit couldn't contain a place as rural as that. She thought, for the briefest moment, that on the far right side there was a razor's edge of glowing purple, but as soon as she turned her attention to it, it was gone, and she couldn't swear it had ever been there at all. That was the last straw.

“I can't do this,” she said, standing up suddenly.

“Please, Miss Schneider, don't be upset. It's your first day back after an illness. You can't expect toâ”

“I can expect better than I've gotten today. I do expect it. And so do you. You know you do.”

“I gave you Paradise Valley because the look of it is so distinctive, so unlike, I'm sure, anywhere you've ever been yourself. Maybe it was a mistake. Too harsh for a young lady. Paradise Valley is a slum. Sixty thousand Negroes in sixty blocks, sewage running in the streetsâ”

“It's not the place, Lieutenant. It's
me
. It's gone. What I had is gone.”

The lieutenant stood up, too. He reached over and laid his hand on the table in front of Helen, patting it soothingly, as if it were her hand he was touching.

“Oh, I don't believe that for one moment,” he said. “A gift like yours doesn't just disappear. You're tired, or I chose inappropriate
materials today, orâ”

“Maybe it can't disappear, but it can be driven out, exterminated.”

He pulled back his hand and straightened up.

“Well,” he said, befuddled, “I wouldn't know about anything like that.”

He started gathering his papers and cards and envelopes. Helen didn't know what else to say, whether to leave. Usually they exited the room together, and he walked her to the elevator. Should she tell him she wouldn't be coming back? She didn't want him to try to talk her into staying with the project.

“Is Major Levy here?” she asked.

“Yes, he is,” Boddington replied, “But you're not scheduled to see him until his next visit. We'll have more for him to review by then.”

“I'd like to see him today.”

Boddington regarded her curiously.

“Very well,” he said. “I'll go see if he's available.”

Helen was alone in the room for fifteen minutes before Levy showed up. In that time, she stood at the window staring at pedestrians and traffic far below, sat down and got up, walked around the table twice, sat down again, folded her arms on the table, and rested her head on them.

It was gone. Her mysterious, unearned, sometimes onerous, sometimes exciting gift was gone. Boddington could tut-tut all he liked, Nanny could advise waiting longer, but Helen knew. She just knew. It had felt good to say so out loud and unvarnished to the startled lieutenant. It was like admitting a guilty secret. She felt disencumbered and heady, and at the same time off-balance and anxious. She didn't try to parse her emotions. That would have been like trying to dissect the wind.

When she heard the door open behind her, she lifted her
head and turned in her seat.

“Miss Schneider?” Major Levy said in an apprehensive voice. “You're not feeling well?”

“I was just resting.”

“All right, then,” he replied awkwardly.

He shut the door and walked to the table. Helen expected him to take Boddington's place across from her, but instead he sat down in the chair next to hers and leaned slightly towards her with an inquisitive look in his eyes.

“I wanted to let you know,” she said in an official tone, “that I'm leaving the project. I won't be back.”

Levy raised his eyebrows and straightened up in his chair.

BOOK: The Medium

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