The Christmas Eve Letter: A Time Travel Novel (15 page)

Eve looked at the little girl again, lowered her voice and smiled.  “Does Evelyn’s mother live here?”

The little girl nodded.  “Yes, on the fourth floor.”

Eve passed Millie a look of relief.

“Do you know the apartment?”

“Three.”

“Thank you so much,” Eve said, giving the girl a warm smile.

Eve reached into her pocket for some money, but Millie laid a hand on her wrist to stop her.  She shook her head.

“I wouldn’t, Miss.  Not here.  There are many eyes watching, if you know what I mean.”

Eve reluctantly obeyed.

Eve led the way into the apartment building that was cold and foreboding.  It was a place of shadows, trapped earthy smells, human sweat and dim lighting.  They mounted the squeaking wooden stairs, using the rickety banister sparingly, afraid the thing would come apart. 

On the fourth floor, they strolled along a dusty, thread-bare carpet until they came to a door that had a tarnished tin number 3 nailed to it.

Eve felt a hitch in her throat and she gulped it away.  She could be close to finding her way back home, if the lantern was inside.

She knocked lightly.  There was no sound.  She knocked again more forcefully.

The door swung open so swiftly that it startled both girls.  Standing before them was a thin, pale woman, with crinkled gray hair and dull gray eyes. Her hair was tied up in the middle and secured in back with a bun.  Her shoulders were wrapped in a blanket and Eve thought the woman looked so sad and forlorn that she probably hadn’t smiled in years.

“Yes, who is it?” she said, in a low, scratchy voice.

Eve stepped back, instinctively.  “My name is Eve… Eve Kennedy.  I am looking for Evelyn.”

The woman’s frosty eyes didn’t blink.  “She’s not here,” she said, curtly.

“Do you know where I can find her?”

“No, I don’t.  She moved out.  I don’t know where.”

“Do you know anyone who might know?” Eve asked, softly, wishing she could enter the place and look around for the lantern.

The woman’s eyes flamed.  “If I knew that I would have told you, wouldn’t I?”

Eve lowered her voice.  “Are you Evelyn’s mother?”

The woman waited, looking over Eve’s shoulder into the dim light, staring at nothing. “Yes, I am.”

“Is Evelyn still working for Western Union?”

Mrs. Sharland’s lips trembled.  She looked away.  “Did you work there with her?”

“No.  I am just a friend.”

Mrs. Sharland’s eyes cleared.  The anger melted away and the woman began to soften. In that instant, Eve saw that this woman and Eve’s father had similar noses and chins.  It was startling.  Eve could actually see some of her father in this woman.  This was, after all, a relative—a very distant relative.

“My daughter is sick…” Mrs. Sharland said, sorrowfully.  “She moved out to protect me.  I told her not to.  I told her I didn’t care.  I told her I’d take care of her, but she didn’t listen.  She left and she wouldn’t tell me because… Well, as I said, she didn’t want me to catch it.”

Millie stared down at her shoes.  Eve suddenly felt great compassion for this woman, living alone in a broken down tenement in a cold, gray room.

“If I may ask,” Eve said, “Do you know what illness your daughter has?”

“Tuberculosis.”

Millie gasped, a hand covering her face.  She turned and moved down the hallway as if she’d seen a ghost.

Eve stared at the woman, seeing her quiver in the cold, numb with distress.  Her heart opened in sympathy. 

“I have to go,” Mrs. Sharland said.  “I have a lot of work to do.  I’m a seamstress and I’m behind.”

Eve wouldn’t be able to enter and look around.  The lantern probably wasn’t there anyway.  Evelyn had probably taken it when she moved, or maybe it was never there.

Eve took a five-dollar coin from her purse and offered it to Mrs. Sharland. 

The woman looked down at it, strangely, as if she didn’t understand.

“Please take it, Mrs. Sharland.  Please.  Evelyn would want you to.”

Mrs. Sharland’s trembling hand lifted to take it, then she stopped.  “Who are you?”

“Just a friend.  I will try to find Evelyn and help her if I can.”

Eve pressed the 1885 five-dollar Liberty Head Half Eagle gold coin into Mrs. Sharland’s hand.  Mrs. Sharland’s eyes misted up as she stared down at it.  She tried to speak but she faltered.

“If I find Evelyn, Mrs. Sharland, I will let you know.”

Eve gave her a reassuring smile, then turned and walked toward the stairs.

Outside, Eve and Millie walked for a time in silence.  They walked past sagging houses and gray dilapidated neighborhoods and they saw men sleeping on fire escapes and in doorways and hiding out in alleys, looking back at them with gaunt, hollow eyes. 

They soon arrived in a cleaner, safer-looking neighborhood and Eve relaxed her shoulders.

“What kind of work do these people do?” Eve asked.

“Store clerks, wagon drivers and factory workers.  A little of whatever they can find.  Some are employed by the Manhattan Gas Works and the Turpentine distilleries.  Some work in the saloons.”

The air smelled of coal oil, resin and pine sap.

“This is not the city I thought it would be,” Eve said.  “Not that I thought about it all that much.”

Millie looked long and steadily at her.  “So you planned to come here, Miss?”

Eve chided herself for confusing Millie once again.  “Don’t listen to me, Millie.  My head is still messed up.  Sometimes I don’t know where I am.  Sometimes I don’t even know who I am.” 

A dark cloud covered the sun and the wind swept in sharply, rustling the leaves.  One crimson maple leaf sailed down and stuck to Eve’s coat.  She grabbed it and held it up to the sky, studying its intricate vein work to see if it was real, as if she were still trying to prove to herself that she was living and breathing in 1885.

“I am sorry for what I did back there,” Millie said.  “It’s just that the word ‘tuberculosis’ brought back such terrible memories about my mother.”

“I understand.  It was a shock.  It wasn’t what I’d expected either.  I thought she had typhoid fever.  I’ve got to try to find Evelyn, and fast.”

Millie turned.  “Why did you think she had typhoid fever, Miss Kennedy?”

“I don’t know.  I just didn’t think she had tuberculosis.”

“She won’t survive, Miss,” Millie said, softly.  “I am sorry to say that, but no one seems to survive that awful illness.  The coughing is terrible.”

Eve lowered her head, lost in stern concentration.  These were the days before penicillin.  It wouldn’t be widely used for infections until the early 1940s.  So there were no antibiotics and no sulfur drugs.  Nothing.  How did physicians treat tuberculosis in 1885?  By doping people up on Laudanum?  Eve recalled seeing only one case of tuberculosis when she was in school, during her clinical hours.  The doctors had prescribed Isoniazid and Rifampin, and the patient had been taking antibiotics for six months.  So was Millie right?  Was Evelyn doomed to die? 

During their walk, Eve occasionally stole glances over her shoulder.  Once she was sure she saw the man following them.  But he was skilled, like a flickering shadow.  There one minute, gone the next.  He was starting to irritate her.  What did he want?  What was he looking for?

They hailed an Omnibus pulled by four horses, and climbed aboard.  Eve deposited two nickels in the fare tin box and the two women sat down on a wooden bench as they started their journey uptown. 

Millie became the tour guide, pointing out places of interest, but Eve was too engrossed with her thoughts to pay much attention.  At 42nd and Park Avenue, Millie pointed to the Grand Central Depot.  Eve nodded, seeing the three story red brick and white stone structure, but it meant nothing to her.  At West 39th Street, Millie indicated toward the Metropolitan Opera House.  Eve nodded, distractedly, hearing the endless clatter of wheels on cobble, and the neighing and whinnying of horses prancing for the right of way. 

Eve was surprised to see that up here, in a nicer neighborhood, a stout policeman dressed in a tall helmet and white gloves was directing the flow of traffic with a thin baton, as if he were an orchestral conductor.

At the Croton Reservoir at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, they exited the Omnibus and approached the massive, 50-foot granite walls that surrounded the above-ground reservoir.  Eve was amazed by the edifice. 

“This supplies the city’s drinking water?” Eve asked. 

Millie nodded.  “Yes.  You haven’t seen it before?”

“No.”  Eve kept glancing back over her shoulder, looking for their shadow.  She didn’t see him.

“It’s a man-made lake,” Millie said, looking up.  “Along the tops of the walls are public promenades that offer pleasant panoramic views.  I’ve walked them several times.  Shall we walk, Miss Kennedy?” Millie asked, seeing Eve was lost in thought. 

On the way uptown, it had occurred to Eve—for the first time—that she could have already altered the natural course of history, albeit in some small way.  Her presence in this time could have some impact that could dramatically, or not so dramatically, change the future.  Wasn’t this the problem all science fiction and time travel stories dealt with?  She recalled watching the movie
Back to the Future
with her ex-husband, Blake, as well as his favorite episode from the original
Star Trek
series,
The City on the Edge of Forever
. 

If you change the past, do you change the future?

Millie repeated her question.  “Miss Kennedy… would you like to take a promenade along the reservoir?”

Eve snapped alert.  “Yes, yes, of course, Millie.  Let’s go.”

They climbed the great flight of stone steps to the top, where they had an unobstructed view of the river, the city, and the New Jersey Palisades.  Eve looked down a Fifth Avenue that was completely altered from the one she knew.  This was a narrow, quiet street, with magnificent palatial residences.  She stopped walking, shading her eyes from the sun, hoping to recognize the Harringshaw mansion.  Then the thought came to her.  Did John Allister know that Evelyn had moved and where she had moved to?

If she could find Evelyn and if, by some chance, she could save her life, would that change the course of history?  Would it change her own life?

“Miss Kennedy, are you all right?  You look pale again.”

Eve stood there gazing out at the brownstone mansions, transfixed.  She thought she saw Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, but it looked all wrong. 

“Is that Saint Patrick’s Cathedral?” she asked Millie.

“Yes.”

“There are no spires.”

“No, Miss Kennedy,” Millie said.  “The cathedral is not finished yet.”

Eve looked away.  There was no Rockefeller Center or Saks Fifth Avenue, and there was no 42nd Street Library or Bryant Park, because she was standing on the spot where they would appear many years later. 

Eve stared, disconsolate.  Suddenly, she had vertigo.  Everything seemed to be spinning around her.  All that she had seen and experienced—all the conversations, the images, the possibilities and the confusion—was too overwhelming.  Her brain simply could not absorb it all.  She felt exhausted and unstable. 

Millie watched in concern.  Eve was standing absolutely frozen, hardly breathing.

“Miss Kennedy, are you ill?”  She looked at Eve with the eyes of a frightened child.

Eve struggled to find her voice. “I need to go home, Millie.  I just need to get out of here.  Please, I need some water.  I need some sleep.  Just get me out of here.”

CHAPTER 13

Late that evening, Eve lay quietly in bed, staring at nothing, merely resting in the soft yellow glow of the gas lamps.  She listened to the burning logs in the fireplace as they snapped and hissed, and was comforted by the sound of a horse’s hooves clopping across the cobbles.  She had finally come up with a plan.

When she had arrived back at Helen Price’s house that afternoon, Helen had met her in the foyer.  Eve told her she wasn’t feeling well and that she was going straight to her room.  From Helen’s forced empathetic tone, Eve knew she wasn’t pleased that Eve wouldn’t be moving out anytime soon. 

Eve immediately plunged into a deep sleep and awoke at 6:30, just as the cook placed a dinner tray at her door and knocked softly.  Helen was housing and feeding her, despite her own jealousy, strictly following Albert’s orders.  But it was he who was pulling the strings. 

After eating, Eve paced the room for several hours, struggling to fight back mounting fears and quivering irrational impulses to check herself into a hospital and feign illness for a while, just to escape from everything.  But of course that was no solution, because she might be committed to an insane asylum.  She felt lonelier and more homesick than any little girl ever felt at summer camp.

Some time after 9 pm, she slowly pulled herself together and came up with a plan that might allow her to escape Helen Price’s house and establish roots of her own, at least until she could find Evelyn Sharland and retrieve the lantern which might allow her to return home.  She crawled back in bed, hoping to rest quietly until sleep would once again provide a welcomed escape.

She was startled when she heard a soft knock on the door.  She lifted up on her elbows.

“Yes?”

“Miss Kennedy, it is Dr. Eckland here.  May I enter?”

Eve had assumed she’d see him soon, and had incorporated him into her plan. “Yes, Dr. Eckland.  Come in.”

Dr. Eckland entered quietly, standing erect in the glow of the fire, dressed in a black cutaway coat with silk lapels and a winged collar, black and white striped pants, and a black ascot tie.  His black leather medical bag was in his hand. 

“How are you feeling this evening, Miss Kennedy?”

“Much better.  Thank you.”

“Really?  Miss Price told me you looked quite pale this afternoon.  I expected to hear that your condition had worsened.”

“Not at all, Dr. Eckland.  I just needed to sleep.  I am much better.  The outing today did me a world of good, even if it tired me out.”