The Summer We Lost Alice (17 page)

"Except that it spouted blood as if a grenade had gone off in my sinus cavity," Ethan said.

The doctor said, "Yes, except for that. But we can't find any underlying cause. No polyps, no excessive dryness, you aren't on any blood thinners or drugs—" He looked at Ethan as he made this last remark, as if adding, "—that you've told us about." When Ethan remained silent, the doctor continued: "No high blood pressure, colds, or allergies. No known exposure to influenza, Ebola—"

"There must be something more you could do. Some test."

"There's no end of tests, but your insurance won't cover it. If you want to pay for an MRI, I could schedule one, but it's a waste of money in my opinion. Your symptoms have disappeared, you're in no discomfort. There's nothing to treat."

"And you have no idea what caused it."

"Well, absent any sort of physical blow—it could be psychosomatic."

"All in my head, so to speak."

"So to speak."

"Like stigmata."

"There are cases of wounds opening on a person's body for no apparent reason. They're extremely rare. Dismissing outright fraud, they tend to involve people who are severely psychoneurotic. Most stigmatics—well, they function at a low level, if at all."

"They're crazier than me."

"Oh, by far, if I'm any judge. It takes a particular kind of sanity to do what you do. You have to be able to see situations very clearly in order to—" The doctor's voice trailed off as he looked for the polite phrasing.

"Exploit people," Ethan said.

"Function in your line of work."

"You're a kind person.
Condescending, but kind. So, in the final analysis, what's wrong with my nose?"

The doctor closed Ethan's file.

"It was just one of those things," he said.

* * *

The candle between them flickered in its cheap, green glass votive. From their seat by the window they could see the traffic stumble past on Burbank Boulevard, its noise masked by the din of conversation and the clatter of cutlery against restaurant china. The dinner rush was starting and the
maître d'
wanted the table. He glared at Ethan and Heather as Ethan emptied the last of the wine into his glass and motioned for another bottle. Ethan realized that he had consumed most of the first one and that Heather was still nursing her first glass, and he didn't care. Something inside him had stirred and, for once, it wasn't just in his pants.

"I don't know what happened out there," he said. "The reading was going so well and then I just lost it. What's that phrase the Brits use? 'It went all pear-shaped.' That's a delightful phrase, isn't it? But even as I lost it, it seemed as if I was getting it—truly getting it—for the first time. Everything snapped into crystal clarity. I said the most outlandish thing
that popped into my head, that business about 'who are you?' I don't know where it came from, but it was dead on the money, wasn't it? It frightened you, it was so on the money."

Heather nodded
. She swirled the wine in her glass. She raised the glass and whet her lips, but she didn't drink.

"Tell me more," she said.

"The call-in—the second one, I mean—was my Aunt Flo back in a little Kansas town called Meddersville. There's a boy missing."

"You should call her back."

"It's two hours later back there. After ten o'clock."

"It isn't getting any earlier," Heather said.

She was right. He'd put off the call as long as he could. He'd escaped Meddersville and had no interest in being drawn back in. Still, Flo had reached out to him. Ignoring her plea for help would weigh on his conscience, a fragile thing that couldn't take much abuse.

He
called Suzette to get the number from her all-knowing laptop. She had a boozy, post-coital slur to her speech that made him glad he hadn't called fifteen minutes earlier.

He dialed the number
. The phone rang but no one answered.

"No answer," he said.

"Don't they have voice mail in Kansas?"

"Maybe she's on the phone to another psychic and doesn't want to flash m
e through. Well, that's that." Relieved, he tapped off his phone. He returned his attention to Heather. He held up his glass for a toast.

"To the spirits," he said.

"The ones across the veil, or the ones that come in wine glasses?"

"Both. Both are
... wonderful."

They
clinked glasses. Ethan took a long draw from his, then topped it up.

"
You remind me of someone from Meddersville," he said.

"Who
?"

She leaned forward and cocked her head like a puppy. How could he say no to a puppy? He started talking
. Once he started, he couldn't stop.

He told her all about that summer, right down to seeing the old woman he was convinced, at the time, was his cousin Alice. He (or was it the wine?) told her how it had propelled him on his quest for Truth and his exploration of the Unknown. He knew he was drunk because he spoke the words as if they were capitalized. He hadn't thought about either concept in capital letters in a long time.

He told her about his cousin Alice and how he had loved her even though they were so different and he was just a stupid kid from Wichita who didn't know anything about anything.

"You don't have to know much to know you're in love," Heather said. "Love isn't about age or wisdom. It just is. Did you go back, after that summer?"

"A few times, with my parents. I barely remember those visits. I know that Catherine broke up with Sammy, the sheriff's boy. Had some relationships that fizzled. Eventually married a soldier, settled down to raising kids.

"Uncle Billy—you know, I've heard the phrase 'a broken man' before but I'd never seen it—that was Uncle Billy. He still joked and tried to be his old self, but then I'd catch him staring into space, or he'd go to play some tune on the squeeze box—"

"The what?"

"Accordio
n. Polka tunes. And—I don't know, maybe it was just me—but it was like he was going through the motions. He used to feel the music before. It meant something to him. Now it was as if he was playing out of habit, like a mental patient who used to be a virtuoso but can't remember when. That sort of thing."

"And your aunt?"

"She'd always been stern. Formidable. She was always so sure of things and happy to tell you where you should be and what you should be doing. She really clamped down."

"Sounds depressing."

"I don't mean to make it worse than it was. Everybody would talk and make jokes. Dad and Uncle Billy went fishing. Sometimes I would go. Everyone didn't, you know, glide around the house like silent spirits. Life went on. But it was different. It was noticeably different."

"It had to be. Alice was the spark."

"You have that spark."

Heather took a sip of wine. She stared deeply into the dark liquid long enough for Ethan to regret his words. They sounded like a come-on. He hadn't learned
anything, it seemed, in the last twenty-five years.

"I want you to know, Ethan, that I came on your show to convince myself that you were a complete fraud. I had my story rehearsed. If you bought it, I was prepared to play the part of the grieving widow. I wasn't out to destroy you. I only wanted to know if what I've felt all my life was real.

"I knew the odds were against me. I've been, oh lord, I've been everywhere. I've asked all sorts of sages what's wrong with me. Not just psychics, but all the other 'experts' out there—the doctors, the psychologists, the preachers. Everybody who tries to tell you what life is all about and how to live yours. Nobody, not a single one, got it the way you did. Right out of the blue, you nailed it."

"Nailed what?"

"The truth!"

"In other words, I was the first to tell you what you wanted to hear."

"Maybe. But you don't know what it's been like."

"Tell me."

"It's like, when people get a transplant. A new heart, say. They talk about how it doesn't feel like theirs. It's tucked away in their chest, it beats like their old one, but it feels foreign somehow. People with transplanted hands have even asked them to be removed. It creeps them out.

"I feel that way all the time. Only it isn't my heart or any other part of my body that feels foreign. It's my soul.

"It sounds crazy, I know. How could your soul feel foreign? But that's it."

"Have you considered—not that I'm suggesting it, but—"

"That I'm nuts? Oh, yeah. Every day. But I don't feel nuts. I guess nutty people don't feel crazy, do they?"

"Well, my audience doesn't. And they're downright delusional."

Heather sat back, amused. "How can you say that?"

"Because they are!
They believe in a world where no one ever dies, not really, where death is when you cross a rainbow bridge and sit with Jesus and dance with angels and there's no pain and no drudgery and you're blissful all the time. It's preposterous, really, isn't it?"

"Then how do you explain my situation?
Which, I have to point out, is now your situation as well?"

"I can't explain anything!" He took another in a series of long drinks. "Isn't it a little handy that you'd happen to come to me, the one person who could identify this
... this invading spirit?"

"I told you, you're only one in a long line of people I've turned to. Why shouldn't something draw me to you eventually? Why couldn't there be—"

"A strong spiritual connection?"

"Yes! Yes!"

Heather drained her glass. Ethan filled it and she didn't protest.

"Okay," she said, "there's more that I haven't told you.
Your story—about Kansas. It happened twenty-five years ago, right?"

"Yeah.
Summer."

"Okay, get this. When I was born, I had a heart defect. They were ready for
it, it had shown up in the pre-natal sonograms. I had three surgeries in two years. In the last one, my heart stopped. They massaged it but it was no go. I died, officially. Time of death called, the whole bit."

"You're a very healthy-looking corpse."

"The nurse had barely finished writing down the time when my heart started to beat again. There was no reason for it. It just started up on its own. One of those things. They looked at one another, shrugged, finished my surgery, and stitched me up. I haven't been inside a hospital as a patient since."

She opened her purse and pulled out a well-worn address book. She turned to the last page.

"I wrote down the date and time of my resurrection to keep as a reminder—you know, the 'every day is a gift' thing." She moved the book over to Ethan, swiveled it around for him to read.

"That's more than a month after Alice disappeared," Ethan said. "About six weeks."

"Six weeks after," Heather said. "That means it's possible. If it had been any time before, even a day before, then we'd have to rule it out. Who knows how long a spirit can languish on the other side before it comes back?

"Then there's the other possibility," she added.

"Which is?"

"The old woman.
The one you thought was Alice. When did
she
die?"

Ethan felt the wine rush to his head. The room spun around him.

"Would you like to get some air?" he said.

IT WAS AN effort on Ethan's part not to take Heather's hand. The night was balmy, the moon glowed hazily through the smog. She was cute and he was drunk.

"How's the nose?"

"Fine." He touched it gingerly.

But there was this insane notion in his head that he couldn't
shake, the idea that this young woman somehow harbored the soul of his departed cousin. It would be okay to hold Alice's hand if he was nine, but he wasn't. He was an adult, a fully grown, fully sexual adult. What if one thing led to another? Where would he have to draw the line?

"What do you suppose touched it off? Or were you serious about the 'spirit attack' thing?"

"The spirit attack was show biz. I have a theory, though."

Then again, Alice's soul would have aged along with Heather's body, so she wasn't technically an eight-year-old anymore. If Alice hadn't died, their relationship might well have continued into adulthood. They might have gotten together.

"That summer, I banged my face pretty good at the nursing home when I was wrestling with Mrs. Nichols. I got a nosebleed, a real gusher like this one. Hearing my aunt's voice, learning about a little boy missing in Meddersville, it brought back the whole experience in a rush. Like the doctor said, it was a psychosomatic reaction."

"Sounds reasonable."

If he and Alice
had
gotten together, they'd have had to deal with the whole "first cousin" thing, which wouldn't apply now since they were dealing with Heather's DNA instead of Alice's. This could be a good thing.