Superstition

37

She didn't have her mobile phone with her, so she stopped off at a pay phone on the way back from the stables. Sam wasn't home, but she left a message on his machine saying that she had to see him urgently. She told him which train she would be on and asked him to meet her at the station if he could.

Fortunately she had told her parents that she would be returning to Manhattan on Sunday evening, so it wasn't a big problem explaining why she'd have to leave a little earlier than anticipated. She made up some story about having work to finish for an editorial meeting in the morning.

Somehow she managed to keep the performance going through lunch, which was just herself and her parents. She talked a lot to avoid having them ask questions, any land of questions. She didn't refer to the morning except to say that she'd ridden well and “blown the cobwebs away.” She didn't mention her meeting with Ralph Cazaubon and only hoped that neither of her parents would run into him by some perverse chance and learn what had happened. She felt that her mother still suspected, as she had on the Friday night when Joanna arrived, that something was not quite as it should be, though she had chosen not to pry. But there was a special warmth and a kind of anxiety in her embrace when they parted later.

“Look after yourself, darling. Come back soon, won't you?”

“Of course I will. It's been lovely. And I'm glad you had such a good time in Europe.”

She picked up her bag and turned to go. Her father was waiting in the car to drive her to the station. She could see him through the open door, but she couldn't get to him because Skip was suddenly there, barring her way by jumping and circling and barking hysterically.

“Skip, what is it, what's the matter?” She reached down to stroke him. He wagged his tail at the contact, but he wouldn't be consoled. Still he barked and jumped and blocked her path whenever she tried to pass through the door.

“Stop that! Come here! Skip!”

The dog ignored Elizabeth Cross's order.

“Skippy,” Joanna laughed, setting down her bag and catching the prancing dog's paws in her hands, “what's wrong with you? I'll come back soon, I promise.”

Her father was out of the car now, holding open the door. “Come on, Skip, you can come with us. Come on-in the back.”

But the dog didn't want to get into the car-didn't want anything, apparently, except to prevent Joanna from leaving the house. Finally he had to be pushed back and forcibly shut in the hall. Even then he continued barking and scratching at the door.

“Separation trauma,” Joanna suggested as she drove off with her father. “He's afraid we're all going to go away and leave him with the neighbors again.”

“Nonsense,” Bob Cross snorted. “He had a better time with George and Naomi and the children than he does at home. I'm getting a Labrador next time, all terriers are nuts.”

When they reached the station, her father got out of the car and walked her to the barrier, carrying her bag the way he always did. When they parted, he looked at her solemnly for a moment and said, “You take care now.” Then he kissed her.

She hugged him, told him she loved him, thanked him for everything, and hurried to her train, which was already waiting at the platform.

As soon as she got off at Grand Central, she saw Sam waiting for her at the barrier. They kissed, he took her bag, and they walked to where he'd parked his car, which he only ever used in Manhattan on weekends.

“So,” he said, “what's the story?”

She sighed, rested her head against the back of her seat, and told him what had happened.

He listened in silence. By the time she'd finished he was pulling into Beekman Place, where he found a spot and parked. He switched off the engine and they sat in silence awhile.

“Well…?” she said eventually, looking at him for some response.

He stared straight ahead through the windshield. “You're going to accuse me of being in denial again.”

“Go ahead,” she said, “I'll live with it.”

“Let's go inside. I wouldn't turn down a large vodka on the rocks.”

Five minutes later he clinked the ice in his glass and stood by the window, gazing out as he brought his thoughts into focus.

“There's a couple of things that strike me. First, you say you've never been in that churchyard before. But you've lived around there all your life, or most of it. Who can say there wasn't some time in your childhood, an Easter service or a family picnic or whatever, something you've forgotten about-at least consciously?”

“But that means I would have had to invent Adam on my own, whereas in fact it was a group thing.”

She leaned back on the sofa and twirled a glass of tonic in her hands.

“Well, maybe this hidden memory of yours was communicated telepathically or by some kind of suggestion to the rest of the group.”

She lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Okay. Next idea?”

“Maybe Adam Wyatt was a real historical figure that we'd all heard of but forgotten about, until he came up from our subconscious when we needed somebody.”

“But we checked and rechecked in every possible reference book. There was no mention of an Adam Wyatt anywhere.”

“Not in connection with Lafayette and the French Revolution. Maybe we made that connection.”

“The French connection-because he went around saying ‘Joie de vivre’ all the time, I suppose!”

Sam looked down into his drink, as though half hoping to find an answer there. Failing, he was gracious in defeat. “You're right-I'm in denial.”

She smiled, and tipped her head toward the space on the sofa next to her. He sat down, then leaned over and kissed her.

“I'm glad you're back,” he said.

“So am I.”

They kissed again. Then he leaned back alongside her, his head next to hers, both of them staring at the ceiling. After a while she said softly, “Sam…?”

“Yeah?”

“What the fuck have we done?”

“What we've done,” he said quietly, “is create something- someone — in the past who didn't exist until we thought of him.”

There was a silence, as though he had thrown down a challenge and was awaiting her response.

“You know something?” she said. “Even if it's true I don't believe it.”

He gave a thin smile and pushed himself up from the sofa. “Don't take my word for it. ‘The existence of things consists of their being perceived.’ That's Bishop Berkeley, talking philosophy three hundred years ago. ‘The stuff of the world is mind stuff.’ That's Arthur Eddington, talking quantum physics this century. ‘The past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present.’ That's another physicist, John Wheeler, one of Roger's generation. ‘The universe is an inextricably linked loop.’ That's the astronomer Fred Hoyle. They're all saying the same thing-that there's a connection between consciousness and whatever it's conscious of. When we look at something, we're looking at something we've partly created.”

He was standing across the room now, looking at her, nursing his drink.

She lifted an eyebrow the way she always did when she wasn't convinced by something she was hearing. “That sounds like a pretty smart way of keeping ourselves at the center of everything.”

He gave a brief laugh. “The trouble is, that's where we seem to belong, and there's nothing we can do about it. Without consciousness at the center, there is no universe. If consciousness had not evolved and become aware of everything around it and from which it had sprung, there would have been no big bang, no galaxy formations, no suns, no planets, no earth, no fossils…and finally no consciousness. A loop.”

“Then why doesn't it happen all the time? Why isn't everybody going around reinventing the past, creating people who never existed?”

“Maybe that's exactly what's happening. Maybe we do it all the time, and that's what the past is.”

She thought about this for a moment. “Maybe,” she said, getting to her feet, “I'll have some of that vodka.”

She went through to the tiny kitchen and got some ice cubes from the refrigerator, then tipped a shot of alcohol over them and listened to them crack. She took a sip, letting the sensation brace her, enjoying the instantaneous sense of well-being that it gave, no less welcome for being illusory.

“If that's what we've done,” she said, crossing back into the sitting room, “if we've created someone who never existed before we thought of him,” she looked at Sam, an odd smile playing at the corners of her mouth, “then it's rather appropriate that we called him Adam, isn't it?”

“Maybe we knew what we were doing.”

“Oh, no!” She held up a hand in protest. “I can swallow anything except the idea that we knew what we were doing!”

She took another sip of her drink. “At least,” she said, “we've finally got some concrete proof that paranormal phenomena exist.”

There was something in the way he looked at her that made her think he was about to burst into laughter. But he just shook his head, and gave a resigned smile. “No, I'm afraid not.”

She frowned. “How come?”

“Think about it. To anybody outside our group who finds out about Adam now, it will seem that he must have always existed. How can we prove otherwise?”

Joanna's blood ran cold. She saw so totally the logic of what he had just said that she didn't even for a second question it.

“That's what that old woman said. You're on your own now. Maybe she really did put a curse on me, and this is all part of it.”

“Well, she didn't put a curse on me. Or Maggie, or Drew and Barry, or any of us in this thing with you. So I don't think that hypothesis stands up.”

“Good,” she said, “I'm glad to hear it.” She took another sip of her drink, and was surprised to find that she'd already finished it. “Have you heard any more from Ward?” she asked.

“I forgot to tell you with all this other stuff. He gets in tomorrow morning. I'm meeting him at his apartment at midday-can you make it?”

“Sure.”

“He wouldn't tell me what he's got, but he sounded excited-at least for Ward.”