and then bit it back. “How did the fire start?” she asked instead.
Maisie shrugged her thin shoulders. “Nobody knows. It just happened.”
It just happened, Joanna thought. A cigarette, a spark, in sawdust or canvas and, just like that, one hundred and sixty-eight people dead. And probably most of them children, Joanna thought, knowing circuses. And Maisie.
“Lots of kids died,” Maisie said, as if reading her mind. “Do you think it hurts to die? In a fire, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” Joanna said, well aware of what she was really answering. “Probably only for a little while. Most of them probably died of smoke inhalation. I think the worst part would be the being afraid.”
“Me, too,” Maisie said. “When I coded, it only hurt for a minute. I wasn’t afraid either.” She looked at Joanna seriously. “Do you think that’s what NDEs are for, to keep you from being afraid?”
“That’s what Dr. Wright and I are trying to find out.”
“What do you think happens after that, after the NDE?” Joanna had known this was coming, ever since their conversation about Ulla. She glanced at the door, wishing Maisie’s mother would magically appear with a wheelchair and happy thoughts.
“I want to know,” Maisie said. “The truth.”
“The truth is, I don’t know,” Joanna said. “I think probably nothing. When the heart stops beating, the body quits sending oxygen to the brain, and the brain cells start to die, and when they die, you can’t think anymore, and it’s like going to sleep or switching a light off.”
“Like shutting down C-3PO,” Maisie said eagerly.
“Yes, just like that,” Joanna said, thinking that if this conversation was upsetting or frightening Maisie she certainly wasn’t showing it.
“Would it be dark?” Maisie asked.
“No. It wouldn’t be anything.”
“And you don’t even know you’re dead,” Maisie said.
“No,” Joanna said, “you don’t even know you’re dead,” and for some reason thought of Lavoisier.
“How come you said probably?” Maisie asked. “You said probably nothing happens.”
“Because nobody knows for sure,” she said. “No dead person’s ever come back to tell us what death is like.”
“Mr. Mandrake says he knows,” Maisie said, making a face. “When he came to see me that time I coded, he said he knows exactly what happens after you die.”
“Well, he doesn’t.”
Maisie nodded sagely. “He says all the people you know who’ve died are there waiting for you, and then you all go to heaven. I think that’s what he
“No, it doesn’t,” Joanna said. “But just because you want something to be true doesn’t make it not true either.”
“So there might be a heaven,” Maisie said.
“There might,” Joanna said. “Nobody knows.”
“Except people who’ve died,” Maisie said. “And they can’t tell us.” No, Joanna thought, they can’t tell us. In spite of Richard’s and my best efforts.
“So everybody has to find out for themself,” Maisie said, “and nobody gets to go with you. Do they?”
No, Joanna thought. I wish I could, kiddo. I hate to think of you having to go through it by yourself. But everybody has to die alone, no matter what Mr. Mandrake says. “No,” she said.
“Unless it’s a disaster,” Maisie said. “Then a whole bunch of people die all together. Like the Hartford circus fire. They couldn’t get out because the animal cages, you know, for the lions and tigers, were in the way, and everybody kept pushing and they all got smushed to death except for the ones who had smoke…” She frowned, groping for the word.
“Inhalation,” Joanna said.
“All set,” Maisie’s mother said gaily, coming in with a wheelchair. “As soon as the nurse brings in your release form, we can go.” She began helping Maisie into the wheelchair.
“I’ve got to go, too,” Joanna said. “Good-bye, kiddo. Be good.” She started back to the lab. Barbara was in the nurses’ station, filling out paperwork. Joanna looked back down the hall to make sure Maisie and her mother were still in Maisie’s room, and then said to Barbara, “Maisie’s mother said she’s doing better. Is she?”
“That depends on how you define ‘better,’ ” Barbara said. “Her basic condition hasn’t changed, but her heart function’s up slightly, and the inderone seems to be working to stabilize her heart rhythm, though I don’t know how long they can keep her on it. The side effects are pretty bad—liver damage, kidney damage, but, yeah, her mother was telling the truth for a change. She is doing better.”
“Good,” Joanna said, relieved. “You haven’t seen Mr. Mandrake on the floor, have you?”
“No,” Barbara said.
“Even better,” Joanna said. She slapped the counter of the nurses’ station with both hands. “See you later.”
“Oh, good, you’re still here,” Maisie’s mother said, coming up to the nurses’ station. “I just wanted to thank you for spending so much time with Maisie. She loves visitors, but so many of them insist on talking about depressing things, illness and… they just upset her. But she loves to have you come. I don’t know what you two find to talk about, but she’s always so cheered up after your visits.”
11
“Jesus… Jesus… Jesus…”
Joanna didn’t get down to see Mrs. Woollam until after three. Mr. Pearsall had arrived late, and his interview (which went fine) had been interrupted by a phone call from Mrs. Haighton, who was apparently calling from her crafts fair, because she kept shouting asides to people named Ashley and Felicia who were apparently hanging things.
“This week is impossible,” she told Joanna, “but next week—just a minute, let me get my calendar—might just be possible—no, it’s too high on that end.”
Mr. Pearsall was waiting patiently, and Joanna knew the appropriate thing to do was to tell Mrs. Haighton to call back later, but she had the feeling that if she did, she’d never hear from her again. “What times do you have available next Monday?” Joanna asked her, smiling apologetically at Mr. Pearsall.
“Monday, let me see—it needs to drape more—no, the afternoon won’t work, and, let’s see, what’s in the morning? I have an AAUW meeting at ten. Would eleven forty-five work for you?”
“Yes,” Joanna said, even though she already had Mrs. Troudtheim scheduled for eleven. Even taking Mrs. Troudtheim’s oral surgery appointments into account, she could reschedule Mrs. Troudtheim easier than Mrs. Haighton. “Eleven forty-five will be fine.”
“Eleven forty-five,” Mrs. Haighton said. “Oh, no, I was looking at Wednesday, not Monday. I can’t do it Monday after all.”
“What about Tuesday?”
Joanna spent the next ten minutes listening to a litany of Mrs. Haighton’s meetings, in between instructions to Felicia, before finally agreeing to sandwich Joanna in Friday between her library board and her yoga class. “Although I was almost sure I had something else that day.”
Joanna hung up before she had a chance to remember what it was and went back to questioning Mr. Pearsall, who had never had surgery, let alone been near death. “I’ve never even had my appendix out, or my tonsils. Neither has anyone else in my family. My father’s seventy-four and never been sick a day in his life.”
Mr. Pearsall had never met Mr. Mandrake or read his books, and when Joanna asked him whether he
