Passage

she murmured. “How terrible.”

“It’s not really,” Joanna said. “The visions are very strange. They feel utterly real, but at the same time, you know they’re not.” She looked at Kit. “You’re afraid of what this means in regard to your uncle’s hallucinations, aren’t you?” she asked. “This isn’t the vision the malfunctioning brain normally produces. It seems to be peculiar to me. Most people have a warm, fuzzy feeling and see lights and angels. That’s why I came to ask Mr. Briarley what he’d said in class, because I think my mind saw some connection between that and what was happening in the NDE, and that connection is what triggered this particular vision.”

“But Uncle Pat was a Titanic expert. Wouldn’t he have made the same connection?”

“Not necessarily.” Joanna explained about the acetylcholine, and the brain’s increased associative abilities. “Dr. Wright thinks it’s a combination of random images out of my long-term memory, but I’m convinced there’s a reason for the vision, that the Titanic stands for something.” She looked at Kit. “If you don’t want to be involved with this anymore, I completely understand. I sound crazy even to myself when I try to explain it, and I had no business asking you. Or bothering Mr. Briarley.”

It was a relief to have told her, even if Kit did say, “I’d rather not be involved,” or look at her as if she were an NDE nutcase.

But she did neither. She said, “Uncle Pat would have loved to help you if he could, and since he can’t, I want to. Speaking of which, I still haven’t told you about the engines stopping. I think I found the thing you mean. It’s in Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember. The passengers noticed that the hum of the engines had stopped, and they went out on deck to see—wait,” she said, fumbling in the pocket of her coat. “I brought the book with me so I could read you the part—”

She pulled out a paperback book, and Joanna switched on the overhead light and then looked anxiously toward the house, wondering if Mr. Briarley would see the car and Kit, haloed in the light.

“Here it is… ‘wandered aimlessly about or stood by the rail, staring into the empty night for some clue to the trouble,’ ” Kit read, and Joanna looked at the book.

It was an ancient paperback, dog-eared and tattered, with the same picture of the Titanic that had been in Maisie’s book: the stern rising out of the water, the boats in the foreground full of people with blankets around their shoulders, watching in horror, the picture that was on every book about the Titanic, except that this one was in red, like a scene out of hell: the sea blood red, the ship burgundy, the enormous funnels black-red.

She had seen Mr. Briarley brandishing the book dozens of times, making a point, reading a passage. It was as familiar as her sophomore English textbook had been. But that wasn’t why she stared at it. It had been there, in Mr. Briarley’s hand, that day. He had shut it with a snap and dropped it on the desk. It hadn’t been the textbook, after all. It was A Night to Remember.

But the textbook had been there, too. She could see its blue cover and gold lettering, and a paperback didn’t make a snapping sound when you shut it, didn’t make a thud when you let it drop. But it was still the book.

“ ‘…their dress was an odd mixture of bathrobes, evening clothes,’ ” Kit read, “ ‘fur coats, turtle-neck sweaters—’ ”

“Kit,” Joanna interrupted, “was the First-Class Dining Saloon the only dining room on board?” No, of course it wasn’t, there had to be second-class and steerage dining rooms, too, but the silver and crystal, the piano had to be first-class. “I mean, the only first-class dining room?”

“No,” Kit said. “There were several smaller restaurants. The Palm Court, the Verandah Cafe—”

“What about stairways? Would there have been more than one?”

“Passenger stairways or crew stairways?”

“Passenger,” Joanna said.

“I know there were at least two,” Kit said, turning to the back of the paperback, “and maybe—rats, this is one of those books that doesn’t have an index. I can run inside, and—”

“No, that’s okay,” Joanna said. “I don’t need to know this second. You can call me when you find out.”

“You want to know how many staircases and how many dining rooms?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Specifically, I want to know if there was a dining room with light wood paneling, a rose carpet, and rose-upholstered chairs.”

“And you want to know the other ships the Titanic tried to contact,” Kit said.

Joanna nodded. They’ll turn out to be the Baltic and the Frankfurt, she thought, scarcely hearing Kit’s thanks and good night. I need to see if Betty Peterson’s in the phone book, and if she’s not, tomorrow I’ll look on the Net.

She was in the phone book, and still living in Englewood, and when Joanna called her from the office the next morning, she sounded overjoyed to hear from her. Joanna asked her if she remembered the name of their textbook. “I should,” Betty said. “It was blue, I remember, with gold lettering, and the title began with an M. And there was an ‘and’ in it. M Something and Something.”

But when Joanna asked her about the Titanic, she said, “All I remember about that class is that Mr. Briarley made me redo the footnotes on my term paper four times. Why don’t you ask him?”

Joanna explained about him having Alzheimer’s. “Oh, yes, that’s right,” Betty said, “I remember hearing about that. How sad.”

“Can you remember who else was in that class with us?” Joanna asked.

“Gosh, in that class…” Betty said, considering. “Ricky Inman. Did you know he’s a stockbroker now? Can you imagine?” Joanna couldn’t. “John Ferguson, no, he’s in Japan. Melissa Taylor?”

Melissa Taylor was a possibility. “What about Candy Simons?” Joanna asked. “The one we called Rapunzel because she was always combing her hair. Do you know where she is?”

“Oh, Joanna,” Betty said, sounding shocked. “I guess you didn’t know. She died two years ago. Of ovarian cancer.”

“No,” Joanna said, thinking of Candy, endlessly combing her long blond hair. Her hair would have come out during the chemo, she thought, appalled.

Betty chattered on, talking about various students, none of whom had been in second-period English, and about herself. She worked for a computer company, was married, had three children. “I can’t believe you’re not married yet,” she said, sounding just like Vielle, and Joanna told her she had to go and gave her her number, “in case you remember anything else.”

“I will,” Betty promised. “Oh, wait. I do remember something about the book. It had a picture of Queen Elizabeth on it in one of those ruff things.”

Queen Elizabeth? Not a ship? “Are you certain?” Joanna asked.

“Positive. The reason I know is I remember Ricky Inman drawing glasses and a mustache on her.”

Joanna vaguely remembered that, too, but she also remembered a ship. So did Melissa Taylor, whom Joanna called after lunch. Which proved what? That memory is extremely unreliable, Joanna thought.

Her pager went off, and when she called the hospital switchboard, it was Vielle, saying, “I have a you- know-what for you.” An NDE or another series of questions? Probably both, Joanna thought, and decided to call her instead of running down to the ER, so she could hang up if Vielle started grilling her. But first she needed to call Mrs. Haighton. Her housekeeper said she was at a fundraiser for the Denver Theater Guild.

Joanna called the ER. The phone rang a long time. I’m going to have to go down there after all and talk to her, Joanna thought, and was about to hang up when a man answered. One of the interns, Joanna thought, to whom Vielle will say, “What do you think you’re doing?” in a moment and snatch the phone away from him. “This is Dr. Lander,” Joanna said. “Is Vielle there?”

“Vielle?” the young man said in a tone of blank surprise. Definitely one of the interns.

“Yes, Vielle Howard. Can I speak to her, please?”

“I… just a minute…” Joanna could hear a muffled conversation in the background and then another voice, a woman’s, came on the line. “Who is this?” the woman asked.

“Joanna Lander. I’m trying to reach Vielle Howard. She left me a message to call her.”

“Dr. Lander, hi. Vielle’s not here. She said if you called to tell you she went home sick.”

“Home sick?” Vielle never went home sick, even when she was on her last legs. “Is she okay? Is it this flu that’s going around?”