Connie Willis - Passage

“I thought you said calling upset him,” Joanna said.

“I know,” she said uncertainly.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

“No, that’s okay,” she said and sat back down. “I’m sure he’s okay. And Mrs. Gray said she’d call if there was a problem.” But as soon as they finished the movie, she insisted on leaving. “This has been great, but I think I’d better not stay too long,” she said. “It’s tempting fate.”

“I hope you’ll come again,” Vielle said. “We promise next time we won’t talk about work.”

“Or embalming,” Joanna said, and Kit smiled, but when they got in the car, Kit said seriously, “I have a question to ask you.”

“About embalming?” Joanna said, starting the car.

“No,” Kit said. “About your research project. If that’s okay. I mean, I know you have a rule about discussing work.”

“Which we obviously don’t follow,” Joanna said, pulling out of the parking lot. “And, besides, Dish Night’s officially over.” She turned onto the street and started toward Kit’s. She explained the way the project worked. “It’s not Flatliners, if that’s what you were going to ask.”

“No,” Kit said. She was silent for almost the length of a block, and then, as Joanna stopped at a light, said, “What does the Titanic have to do with your project? Do you think it’s what you’re seeing when you have these near-death experiences?”

You don’t have to tell her, Joanna thought. You can tell her the results of the project are confidential. But, like Maisie, she’d already figured it out, and, like Maisie, she deserved a straight answer.

She wished Kit had asked the question the way Vielle had, so she could say no. But I do think it’s what I’m seeing, in spite of the First-Class Dining Saloon being the wrong colors, in spite of the officer naming the wrong ships. And it has something to do with what Mr. Briarley said. He, and Kit, are my only chance of finding out what.

“Yes, I think I’m seeing the Titanic,” she said, and Kit sucked in her breath. “But I don’t know for sure, and if I read about the Titanic to find out—”

“You won’t be able to tell if reading about it is what made you see it. The Titanic,” 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 Café—”

“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?”