Passage

Code alarms and Victory gardens and scraping snow off her windshield, and somewhere a fire, burning out of control, sending up billows of black acrid smoke. And the smell of fresh paint, the sound of Amelia Tanaka’s voice, saying, “I was in a tunnel.” A tunnel, Joanna thought, looking down at the water she was sinking into, the narrowing darkness.

But there was no light at the end of this tunnel, and no angels, no loved ones, and even if there were, she would have forgotten them, fathers and grandmothers and Candy Simons. Would have left the memory of all of them, relatives and friends, living and dead, behind in the water. Guadalupe and Coleridge and Julia Roberts. Ricky Inman and Mrs. Haighton and Lavoisier.

She had been falling a very long time. I can’t fall forever, she thought. The Titanic hadn’t fallen forever. It had come finally down to the bottom of the sea and settled into the soft mud, surrounded by chamber pots and chandeliers and shoes.

Will I be surrounded by shoes, too? she wondered, and could see them in the darkness: the red tennis shoe, jammed in the door, and Emmett Kelly’s huge, flapping clown shoes and the tiny shoe in the Monopoly game, and the abandoned shoes of the sailors, lined up along the deck of the Yorktown. The Yorktown had come to rest, too, and the Lusitania and the Hindenburg, and Jay Yates and Lorraine Allison and Little Miss 1565, having forgotten everything, even their names. Rest in peace.

What was the Latin for “Rest in peace”? “Eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani,” she thought, but that wasn’t right. That was the Latin for something else. She had forgotten the Latin for “Rest in peace” and the words to “Nearer, My God, to Thee” and “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and “The Sound of Music.”

Everything she had learned by heart fell away from her, line after line, unraveling into the dark water like tape from a broken Blockbuster video, “The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,” and “At a time like this, it’s every man for himself.” “Houston, we have a problem,” and “Oh, don’t you remember, a long time ago, there were two little children whose names I don’t know.”

The words trailed away into the water, carrying memory with them, of trailing electrode wires and lifejacket ties and yellow “Do Not Cross” tape. And yellow afghan yarn, yellow sneakers like the ones Whoopi Goldberg wore in Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Jack in the Beanstalk, Jack Phillips.

And that was important. There was something important about Jack Phillips. Something about a lab coat, or a blanket. Or a heater, shutting off. They’re shutting off, she thought, the receptors and transmitters and neurons, and this is just a symbol for it, a… but she had forgotten the word for metaphor. And for disaster. And for death.

Had forgotten the taste of Cheetos and the color of blood and the number fifty-eight, forgotten Mercy General and mercy everlasting, zeppelins and kissing, her dress size, her first apartment, where she’d put her car keys, the answer to number fifteen on Mr. Briarley’s final, the sound in the tunnel and her 1040 form.

My taxes. I didn’t send in my 1040. They’re due April fifteenth, she thought, and remembered that the Titanic had gone down on the night of the fourteenth. All those people, she thought, they didn’t file their income tax returns either. No, that was wrong. They didn’t have income tax back then. That was why they were all so rich. But there were other things they hadn’t done that they had intended to do: meet friends at the dock in New York, send a telegram announcing their safe arrival, marry, have children, win the Nobel Prize.

I never learned to play the piano, Joanna thought. I didn’t tell Mr. Wojakowski we couldn’t use him in the project, and now he’ll pester Richard. I didn’t transcribe Mr. Sage’s NDE.

It doesn’t matter, she thought. But I didn’t pay the gas bill, she thought. I forgot to water my Swedish ivy. I didn’t get the book from Kit. I promised I’d go pick it up. I promised I’d go see Maisie.

Maisie! she thought in horror. I didn’t tell Richard, I have to tell him, but could not remember what it was she had wanted to tell him. Something about the Titanic. No, not the Titanic. Mr. Briarley had been wrong, it wasn’t about the Titanic. It was something about Indians. And the Rio Grande. And a dog. Something about a dog.

No, that wasn’t right either. Fog, she thought, and remembered standing in the walkway, looking out at fog. It was cold and diffuse, like the water, like death. It blotted out everything, memory and duty and desire. Let it go, she thought, staring at nothingness. It’s not important. Let it go.

Progress reports and delivering the mail and regret. They aren’t important. Nothing’s important. Not proving it’s the Titanic or having a hall pass or avoiding Mr. Mandrake. None of it matters. Not Mr. Wojakowski or Mrs. Haighton’s never returning my calls or Maisie.

That’s a lie, she thought. Maisie does matter. I have to find Richard. I have to tell him. “Richard, listen,” she cried, but her mouth, her throat, her lungs, were full of water.

She kicked frantically, reaching up with her cupped hands, her arms. I have to tell him, she thought, clutching at the water as if it were the railing of a staircase, trying to pull herself up hand over hand. I have to get the message through. For Maisie.

She willed herself upward, kicking, stroking with her arms, trying to reach the surface.

And continued to fall.

54

“My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

—Jesus’ last words from the cross

“Boy, just like Ismay,” Maisie said when they told her what had happened with Carl. “How crummy!”

Leave it to Maisie to sum things up. Richard wondered if, clambering into the lifeboat, Ismay’s hands had been as white and clenched as Carl Aspinall’s, his face as sodden-looking.

“So what do we do now?” Vielle asked. She had called them on the way back, demanding to know what they’d found out, and Richard, unable to stand the prospect of telling it twice, had told her to meet them in Maisie’s room.

“We could talk to the lab technician who saw Carl and Joanna,” Richard said. “He may have heard what they were saying.”

“He didn’t,” Maisie said. “I asked him. He said they stopped talking when he came in the room.”

“He may have overheard something as he was coming in,” Richard said, “or leaving. Or he may have seen someone else going in. If there was a lab tech in the room taking blood, there may have been other staff going in to take tests,” he said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “Or nurses. Who was the one Mrs. Aspinall mentioned?”

“Guadalupe,” Kit said.

“I’ll talk to Guadalupe and the rest of the staff on five-east. Vielle, you keep looking for people who might have seen Joanna in the hallways, and don’t limit it to the professional staff. Talk to the volunteers and the kitchen help.”

“That’s supposed to be my job!” Maisie said, outraged.

“Your job is to rest and get strong so you’ll be ready for your new heart,” Richard said.

Maisie flung herself back against the pillows. “That’s no fair! I was the one who found out about Mr. Aspinall. Besides,” she said, “if I don’t have anything to do or think about, I’ll start worrying about my heart and how much the operation will hurt, and dying and stuff, and I might code.”

She was good, he had to admit that. “All right,” he said sternly, “you can help Vielle,” and she immediately said, “I had another idea who to ask, Vielle. The painter guys. I bet they see a lot of people. And the breathing therapy lady. Should I page you when I think of other people?”

“No paging Vielle all the time,” Richard jumped in. “She works in the ER, which is very busy. She’ll come see you when she can, and when she does, no stalling.” He turned to Vielle. “If Maisie finds out something, she’s not going to tell you the whole story of how she found out, because she knows you have to