Текст книги "Illusion"

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chapter

42

The lady stared back at her. “How do you do that?” She looked at Terry. “How does she do that?”

“Mentalism, right?” said Terry, delighted.

Mandy smiled at what she was doing to herself. It was a great show, good enough to sit and watch. “Sure, what the heck. And I suppose I got it right?”

The lady nodded. “Yes. My name’s Joanie. This is so weird.”

“Joanie Gittel, right?”

Now Joanie shifted backward, more than astonished. “How did you know that?”

Even Terry was crinkling his brow. “She hasn’t been Joanie Gittel for thirty-nine years.”

Mandy had no ill will against these nice folks. How could she when she was the one who created them? It was just the whole dumb situation, just being a total loon that made her start playing around with it. She looked carefully at Joanie, as if plumbing the depths of her mind. She even waved her hand in little hypnotic circles in front of Joanie’s face. “I see … I see … Coeur d’Alene High School … and Coeur d’Alene Junior High, and before that, Baker Elementary. Right?”

Joanie was really stunned now, and that face, boy, it was the same face she made in Mr. McFaden’s class when she heard Kennedy was shot. She could only nod.

“Oh, wait! Now I see a big gray house on Howard Road—except it’s green now and it’s a real estate office.”

Joanie pointed at her, getting a spark of an idea. “You must be from Coeur d’Alene!”

“Sure. Born in Spokane, raised in Hayden, went to school in Coeur d’Alene.”

So they all laughed and said, “How about that?” and enjoyed the amazing coincidence and how small the world was.

“But,” Joanie double-checked, “you’re not Mandy Whitacre.”

Mandy arched a wizardly eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

“Well, I mean, the one I knew.”

“Well …” She went all mental again, closing her eyes as if seeing visions, wiggling her fingers as if picking up vibes from the great beyond. “That big gray house … your father had a ’57 Ford in an old garage next to the place, and there was a Gravenstein apple tree in the front yard, and you used to wait at the bus stop and catch the same school bus with Mandy every morning. You and Mandy were in the same class together in fifth grade … the teacher’s name was … Mr. Fleck, and, and, and … you and Mandy got in a fight once over who was going to marry Tom Burnside.”

Joanie could hardly speak. “This is scary. You’re scaring me.”

“We must have a mutual friend,” Terry suggested.

Mandy kept going. “Mandy gave you her brunette Barbie, with a spring outfit …”

Joanie shook her head. “Now, that I don’t remember …”

“It had big flowers on it and came with a watering can and a little green shovel.”

Joanie lit up. “The, the gardening outfit! You—Mandy felt sorry for me because—”

“Because your dad ran over your Barbie with the lawn mower.”

Joanie fell silent, visibly shaken. Terry slid into the booth and sat beside her, his arm around her. They were all eye-to-eye.

“You went to NIJC in 1969,” said Mandy. “You weren’t sure, but you thought you wanted to major in business administration. And Road Runner was working in the business library, and that’s how you met.”

The waitress came by. “Hi. Can I get you folks anything?”

“Uh …” Terry asked Mandy with his eyes and she shrugged and smiled a yes. “Maybe a couple coffees,” said Terry. “Got any pies?” To Mandy, “Want a piece of pie?”

Whoa. Hold on a minute. Time-out.

Mandy dropped the mentalist routine. She looked around the room for anything weird, from another time, another place, anything nutty. She looked at the waitress. It was the same one, with Lisa on her name tag.

Lisa looked back and said, “We have apple, blueberry, cherry, and pumpkin.”

“Wait a minute,” said Mandy with a side glance at Terry and Joanie. “Can you … ?”

Lisa perked an eyebrow, waiting.

“Can you … see them?”

“See who?”

Mandy pointed at Terry and Joanie so directly it was probably rude. “Them.”

Lisa looked at her funny. “I don’t get it.”

Sigh, a little sad. “It’s nothing. How about a piece of cherry?”

“Cherry it is.” Then she looked at Terry.

“Apple,” he said.

She wrote it down.

“Wait!” said Mandy.

“Apple,” said Joanie.

“Wait,” said Mandy. “You can see them?”

Lisa was flustered, detecting some kind of gag, but said, “I don’t get it.”

Mandy dug out her cell phone and checked the time. “What time is it?”

Lisa had a watch. “Eleven-oh-five.”

Exactly what her cell phone said.

Terry smiled at her, his usual likable self. “I think we’re all missing something here.”

Mandy reached and gave his hand a little poke. Then she reached and poked Joanie, and finally Lisa.

“She’s a magician,” Joanie explained, now eyeing Mandy warily as if expecting the next routine.

“I …” Mandy couldn’t see through them either. They looked as solid as they felt. She forced a nervous little laugh. “Well, uh … may I have some decaf coffee?”

“You got it,” said Lisa. She left.

Joanie. Terry. Sitting right there, right in front of her, and the right ages for 2011.

“You all right?” Terry asked.

“You really are Terry and Joanie,” she said. “I mean, it’s, uh, it’s the, the mentalism thing, I was playing around, I didn’t know …” Struck speechless, stopped cold, she could only smile and give an apologetic shrug.

“Well,” said Terry, “it was an amazing demonstration.” He gave Joanie a comforting squeeze. “You were so accurate it was disconcerting.”

Joanie was disconcerted, all right. “Is this … is what you did really a trick?”

Terry held her close. “Yes, of course it was.” Then he smiled at Mandy to show he wasn’t mad or anything. “I’m just amazed at the extent of homework you had to have done, and … I’ll never figure out how you knew we’d meet you tonight. It’s a real craft you have there!”

No!Mandy cried out inside. It wasn’t a trick. She put her hands in her lap so the trembling wouldn’t show. “Could …” Her voice trembled. She drew a breath to steady herself. “What can you tell me about the Mandy Whitacre you knew?”

Lisa brought coffee cups and filled them. Then she talked about the apple pie and how it was fresh from the oven, and then she talked about where they were from: Joanie, Terry, and Mandy were from the Spokane/Coeur d’Alene area; Joanie and Terry still lived in Coeur d’Alene; Lisa grew up in Hawthorne, Nevada, and was studying at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Finally, Lisa left.

Where were they?

Joanie looked puzzled. “What do you want to know?”

Terry broke in, “I thought you were supposed to tell us.”

Well … she could blow them out of the water by telling them, but that wouldn’t prove Joanie and Terry were real friends from then, the life she couldn’t possibly have lived but did somehow … Oh, Lord, help me, don’t let me freak out.

“Sweetheart, are you all right?” Joanie asked.

What can I say, what can I say?“I … I might know you, I mean, kind of like a trick and kind of for real. It’s hard to explain.”

They looked at each other.

“Could you tell me … what was her father’s name?”

Joanie tilted her head. “You don’t know that?”

Terry said, “So … what? We’re doing mentalism in reverse? How’s this work?”

Oh, please, just tell me!She was desperate but wanted with all of her being not to look crazy. “Uh, okay, let’s do this: let me try a little mentalism on Mandy and we’ll see how I do.”

They perked up, Terry ready to be amazed, Joanie still nervous about it.

“Uh … she … she …”

Lisa brought the pies. “Apple for you, apple for you, and cherry for you. Can I bring you anything else?”

Terry thought he might like some cream for his coffee. Lisa then recalled she had a cousin in Spokane but hadn’t been up there to visit since high school. Was the weather still cold up there? Yes, that was why Terry and Joanie thought to spend some time in California and then Vegas. So, could she bring them anything else? No, they were fine.

“I know!” said Mandy. “Why don’t you ask me some questions?”

“Ask you … ?” Joanie faltered.

“About Mandy, anything you want.”

“Who’d she marry?”

Ohhh … Her mind froze. She didn’t know the answer to that. She didn’t want to know, she just couldn’t bear it. “Sh-she got married?”

Lisa popped by again. “Oh, I forgot to ask: is this on separate tickets?”

Separate, they told her, Mandy on one, Joanie and Terry on the other.

Terry asked, “What was her favorite animal?”

Mandy was still working on the fact—was it a fact?—that she got married. “Uh, animal?”

Terry helped her out, “She had some pets.”

“Doves?”

They affirmed that but didn’t seem too impressed. Joanie countered, “She was a magician. Easy guess.”

Mandy groped for the right suggestion, the right way. She finally tried, “Now, what if I asked you some questions?”

Terry said, “Well, how are we going to know whether you know our answers are right?”

Joanie offered, “Well, if we give a wrong answer and she says we’re right, then we’ll know she doesn’t know.”

He crinkled his face.

“Uh, back and forth, back and forth,” said Mandy. “I’ll ask one, you ask one. Let’s try that.”

“Okay,” said Terry, “you asked what her father’s name was. It was Arthur.”

“Where did Mandy live?”

“No, you tell us,” said Joanie.

“Hayden, on a ranch. What was the name of the ranch?”

“Wooly Acres. What did they raise there?”

“Llamas and some horses. What were the names of Mandy’s doves?”

Joanie scrunched her face. “Um … Bonkers was one. What were the names of the others?”

“Lily, Maybelle, and Carson. What big, significant thing happened to Mandy in the ninth grade?”

Joanie balked a moment, then answered, “Her mother, Eloise, died of breast cancer. What was Mandy’s favorite card trick in junior high?”

“Flipping the Aces. Who was Mandy’s favorite Mouseketeer?”

Joanie was reeling from the question and from knowing the answer. “Cubby.” Then, mustering strength, she sang an advertising jingle they learned in their childhood, “If you need coal or oil …”

“Call Boyle,” Mandy sang back. “Fairfax eight-one-five-two-one.”

Joanie’s hands went to her face and she gazed over her fingers at Mandy. “My God!”

Yes,Mandy thought. Silence. It was her turn. “Um …” She didn’t want to ask. “Is … is Arthur, Mandy’s dad … is he … ?”

“You mean, is he alive?” asked Joanie.

“Yes.”

Joanie seemed to sense the game was getting serious. She spoke as if bringing bad news to a friend. “He died from a heart attack in 1992. I think he was about eighty-three.”

Mandy’s hand went over her mouth. She shouldn’t have asked. She should have known she would believe the answer, that an old sorrow-in-waiting would take its opportunity.

Daddy …

This was not a dream she could wake up from, a delusion she could excuse away. There were no other worlds she could run to, no other places or times in which to hide. There was only this corner booth in the Claim Jumper restaurant at twenty-two after eleven, and all of it, including the couple sitting there, was real. She looked away as the tears came. She couldn’t hold them back.

Game over.

Terry sighed. “Well, it’s been very interesting.” But Lisa had not brought their checks yet.

Mandy tried to recover, couldn’t shake it, signaled she’d be okay—it was a lie—put a napkin to her eyes.

Joanie reached and touched her. “Sweetie, I don’t know what just happened. Is there some way, any way I could understand this?”

What other way was there? “Joanie …”

Joanie stroked her shoulder to comfort her. “Just help me understand.”

“I’m … What if …” She stepped off the precipice. “What if I really was Mandy? What if I really was born January fifteenth, 1951, and I really did go to school with you and we were friends and … well, what if that could really happen?”

Joanie’s gaze lingered. Did she believe? Did she?

Terry fidgeted and looked for Lisa. Joanie …

Mandy could see her words had fallen to the ground. Joanie’s eyes, though sorrowful, were perplexed and disbelieving. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry, but that just can’t be. My friend Mandy … is dead.”

Dane was back at the ranch where he could wake up in a plain and simple life, think without distraction, believe most everything he saw or heard, and live in the world as it was, not as it was dressed up to be. From this vantage point he could handle things with a reasonable perspective—things like the letter he got in the old-fashioned U.S. Mail from Jerome Parmenter instructing him to call Parmenter at such and such a time at such and such a number and be sure he called from a public pay phone of his own random choosing.

He chose the pay phone outside the Conoco Quik Stop on Highway 95, and for an added touch, he wore his cowboy hat and kept his coat collar turned up to obscure his face.

Parmenter got right to it. “I’m going to ask you a question from out of the blue, all right? Please don’t ask me to explain it, it would take too long and I may be off my nut in the first place, all right?”

“All right.”

“You’ve obviously seen Mandy time and time again as the young girl, we know that.”

“Yes.”

“But she was always quite real, solid?”

“Yes. She worked for me. I saw her shovel and move and clean things …” I also kissed her.

“Right, right, right. Now, was she always the same age?”

“What do you mean? She had a birthday in January.” I missed it.

“No, no, uh, try a different age, a really different age, specifically … well, how old was she when she was in the accident?”

“Fifty-nine.”

“Ever see her at fifty-nine?”

“You mean, after I met her again, after she, after I thought she’d died?”

“Yes. Thank you for the clarification.”

“No, I …” Hold on.

“Hello?”

When it happened he thought it was a flashback or a drug reaction, but now his whole world was changing and another impossibility had to be reconsidered as possible. “I may have.”

Now there was a pause at Parmenter’s end. “You may have? Well, I need to know: did you or didn’t you?”

“Well, that’s been a pretty big question all along, hasn’t it?”

“No, Dane, no! Now you know you aren’t crazy, you aren’t seeing things, so please be honest with me. Did you see Mandy at the age of fifty-nine?”

“I don’t know what age she was. She was older. She looked pretty much the way she looked when I lost her.”

“But you saw her after the accident; that’s the first big fact I need to establish.”

“Yes, it was after the accident.”

“Where?”

“In my house.”

“In your house?!” Parmenter’s excitement-o-meter was actually beginning to register something. “When?”

“Well, a few months ago.”

“No, no, not ‘a few months.’ I need to know the exact date and time, as close as you can get, down to the second if you can!”

Oh, brother.“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

“Do. Find out, as precisely as you can, and get back to me. Do you know exactly where she was when you saw her?”

“Yes, I do know that. She was upstairs, looking out the east windows.”

“Ahhh! Excellent! That’s half the battle right there. Was she solid or transparent?”

“I would say she was solid. I could have touched her. I could smell her hair.”

“Ohh!” He sounded as if he were having his own little Parmenter version of a fit. “All right, all right. Here’s what I need you to do …”

This was where a stable mental platform was necessary. Sometimes—like now—Dane felt he was playing the clueless, cooperative sidekick to Parmenter’s mad professor, shades of those old Back to the Futuremovies. He listened carefully, taking notes.

Date and time, date and time. Dane pored over the calendars on his kitchen wall, in his computer, in his cell phone, and on the wall in the loft, trying to remember. He saw her in the house right before he saw her running across his pasture, chased by the beat-up and mysterious Clarence. So when was that? Two weeks after Arnie took him to see Mandy—Eloise—perform at McCaffee’s and he walked out on her. That was November 7.

Hold on.Did the fire department keep logs?

He got the number from the phone book and spoke with the dispatcher, a cheerful lady named Maureen. Yes, they did keep logs. He told her somewhere around mid-November, she looked, and bingo! There it was: “Okay, we got the call from the McBride Ranch—Dane Collins is listed as the caller—at ten-forty A.M. on Monday, November twenty-second.”

“Bingo! That’s it!” Then it hit him. “Huh. That’s the date Kennedy was shot.”

“Well, I guess you’d know,” she said. “I wasn’t born yet.”

Right. Who was anymore?

So he called 911 at ten-forty; he called Shirley right before that, brought Mandy into the house before that, rescued her before that … saw her running in the pasture … right before that saw her standing at the window … couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes. Okay: November 22, 2010, (close to) 10:20 A.M. PST. He wrote it down.

Now to call Parmenter. Hmm—which phone do I use this time?

chapter

43

Mandy closed her three-week run at the Orpheus on Wednesday, February 16. The next day, she arrived at the Spokane airport, where Seamus met her.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there,” he said as they drove I-90 eastbound through the city.

“I’m all right.”

“You look like—”

“I said I’m all right.”

“Well, if you need to unwind a day or two, that’s no problem.”

“Are you gonna help me or not?”

“Peace, peace. I’ve talked to the head of maintenance at the fairgrounds. He’ll be there to let us in if that’s what you want to do.”

She let out a breath and tried to calm herself. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. What you’ve been through … I leave you for just a few days and …”

“Yeah, I know. So how’s the practice?”

“Oh, we’re current. I have some court dates next week, have to do some depositions tomorrow. Pamela’s helping me juggle everything, which reminds me: Vahidi and I talked yesterday and had a very nice conversation. They’re offering the big room.”

That news was as good as it was big and it did thrill her—to an extent. She had to crawl out from under her preoccupation to tell him, “That’s wonderful, Seamus, it really is. I’ll be more excited about it, I promise.”

“He wants to open next month, but I want a bigger budget than they’re offering. We’re going to need a whole new sound track, and with that bigger stage you’re going to need some stage extras and some movable sets, something eye-catching and classy.”

She winced. “Are we going to have enough time for all that? We don’t even have a show designed.”

“Don’t worry, your industrious manager is on it—but that’s all for another day. We have today’s business to think about.”

The Spokane County Fairgrounds were a different sight on a cloudy day in February: dead quiet, deserted, coated with snow and slush. Only a quarter of the parking lot was plowed clear and in use for the three-day Home Design Show in the main exhibit hall.

Mr. Talburton, the maintenance guy, let them in through a gate in the fence and gave them two security passes to wear on lanyards. Apparently he and Seamus had already discussed the agenda for the visit and any applicable fees. Talburton produced a map of the grounds and marked key sites: the carnival area, the food court, the Rabbits and Poultry Building, and the Camelid Barn. He scribbled a phone number along the top of the map. “Here’s my cell number if you have any questions.”

They set out, braving two inches of slush between patches of bare pavement wherever they could find it. Mandy took Seamus’s arm. “Thank you for doing this.”

“You’re very welcome. Try to talk to me. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

They were nearing the carnival area where Mandy, Joanie, and Angie overindulged on the stomach-turning rides. Except for the permanently built roller coaster and the shrouded carousel—Mandy could recall the music it played—there wasn’t a ride in sight. The game pavilions were boarded up. There was a flat, slushy expanse where rows of craft and souvenir booths had stood. Mandy indicated a general area. “I bought an anklet from an old Indian guy right about there, and …”—she peered through a grove of trees to another empty space in front of the livestock barns—“over there, that’s where the Great Marvellini was going to do his show at two. There was a stage and some bleachers …”

And now there was nothing. It was eerie, and brought back the same old fear she’d borne for months, that she was out of her mind, imagining things. Where she remembered carnival rides, there was nothing. The old Indian who sold her the anklet could have been a dream. The Great Marvellini? It was only her memory that placed a stage and bleachers in that spot.

“That would have been the North Stage,” said Seamus, pointing at the map.

Mandy studied the map. The North Stage was there, at least. “I’m so glad.”

“So there is a lot of fact here. There really is a fairgrounds, the locations are all the same.”

“Yes, at least now, in this time, they are.”

“But let me be sure now: what you’ve described so far took place … in 1970?”

She looked down at the snow, feeling so strange, so afraid.

“Come on, now, let’s just work it through. Just show it to me. Go through the process. The point is to get it right out on the table where you can see it, own it, take charge of it. If it’s yours, you can do what you want with it, but as long as you hide from it, it’ll keep chasing you.”

“It was September twelfth, 1970. Joanie and Angie and I were just about to start school again, our sophomore year at NIJC.”

“And this was the same Joanie you met last Friday night?”

“Yes. And she was real. She was forty years older and she remembered all the same things I remembered from when we were growing up, so she had to be the same Joanie I was with that day, so that day had to have happened, right? She was here with me, she and Angie. We were just having fun at the fair, you know? My dad was showing his llamas over in the … well, there’s a camelid building there now but it was another building then …”

They walked down a wide paved walkway spanning an empty field where rows of food booths on each side once formed a village of junk food eateries. “We didn’t want to eat any of the junky stuff, especially Angie …”

They came to the end of the walkway, where two permanent buildings stood in the shadow of the grandstand. “This one here used to be the Spokane Junior League Booth. I bought a basket of chicken here, but Joanie and Angie wanted to get something else, so we were going to meet …”

The North Lawn was still there. The tables were gone, stored away; the trees were bare and gray against the winter sky. Mandy scanned the area first, imagining the tables, the people sitting at them, the crowd noise, and the pleasant heat of a lunchtime sun. The place looked so immensely different in September … of 1970 and 2010. The big honey locust tree was still where she remembered it. She walked through the snow to the thick trunk, touched the bark, and looked around to get her bearings.

“This is the spot,” she said. “This is where I woke up and it was forty years later.”

Seamus came to her side. “Right here?”

“Right here where I’m standing. I sat down and leaned against this tree in 1970, and the next thing I knew”—emotion choked her voice—“I was sitting in the same spot and the tree was bigger and it was 2010.” She steadied herself against the tree and took in the North Lawn, the empty concession buildings, the vacant grandstand. “And I can’t describe the feeling. Like being a little kid who’s lost. You just don’t know what to do.”

She didn’t know what to do now. She’d hoped that if she could go back to where it all started, some clue might reveal itself. Perhaps a feeling would occur, or a vision. Maybe a portal would open that would take her back.

But there was nothing here, only the cold, the quiet, the gloom of winter—in 2011.

“Do you remember what time it was?” Seamus asked.

“There was a clock on the corn dog booth right over there.” The booth was gone; she pointed to where it was on that day. “It was one-oh-five. In 1970. In 2010 the corn dog booth and the clock weren’t there anymore.”

“That would have been Pacific Daylight Time …” Seamus took a pen and marked the location and time on the map. “Anything else? Just bring it out, envision it. Take command.”

She described the people she saw before and after the jump in time and how things changed from one year to the other: the paint on the buildings, the clothing and hair styles, the sudden advent of strange little gadgets such as iPods and cell phones, the funny cultural shifts such as tobacco-free zones and hand-washing stations.

“And none of it was like a dream, you know what I mean? All the memories are of real things. I remember being in 1970 just as clearly, just as real, as looking up and seeing I had nothing but a hospital gown on and it was 2010.”

Standing against a real tree in a real place, both of which confirmed a real memory, she discovered a new resolve and dared to say it to another person for the first time: “I think … I think there is no crazy woman standing here. It was real. All of it. I can’t explain it, but somehow it was real. Everything I’ve seen, everywhere I’ve been, Joanie last week … it’s all real.”

She looked at him for his reaction, but there was no skepticism, no condescension in his eyes. He simply said, “Take hold of it. Own it, whatever it is.”

She nodded and drank in the scene. It was hers. She’d really been here in both the recent and the distant past, and that was all there was to it. As for explanations …

“I need to find Joanie.”

“You can use my car.”

Parmenter’s supersophisticated GPS-and-then-some arrived by FedEx, and Parmenter’s enclosed list of instructions was clear enough. Dane went upstairs, stood in the exact spot where the mysterious vision of Mandy stood, and switched it on. The screen booted up, some numbers scurried across the LCD screen, and then it was ready. He pressed the Function button, then the Waypoint button, and in seconds he had the numbers.

This time he used the pay phone on the outside of a bank in Hayden and wore a hooded jacket.

“Very good, Dane, thank you very much.”

“So what’s this about?”

“Oh, it’s probably nothing. Then again, it could be everything.”

So close, so close to knowing! Mandy’s hands trembled as she paged through the Coeur d’Alene phone book and found the number for Terry and Joanie Lundin—real names, a real number, proof that the couple she met in Vegas a week ago was not illusory—if the same Joanie answered the phone. Oh, Lord, here goes.

The same Joanie answered the phone, and the same Joanie answered Mandy’s knock on her door. Mandy gave her a weak little smile, a face that said, Well, here I am, can’t help it, think you can help me?

Joanie absorbed the sight of her, then stepped out and gave Mandy a sisterly hug. “I don’t know who you are, kid, but any friend of Mandy’s is a friend of mine.”

They went into the quaint old house that Terry inherited from his parents and remodeled. On the hallway wall were pictures of their children and grandchildren. The kitchen was modernized; Joanie had a latte machine and took Mandy’s request for a mocha.

As the machine ground and tamped the beans, Mandy had to marvel. “Wow.”

“You’ve never seen one of these?”

“Oh, I have, but it seems like everybody has one now.”

“Oh, they’re the thing.”

“All we had was one of those little coffeemakers with the paper filters.”

Joanie caught the rich brew in a small cup. “So … you know about computers and cell phones and … ?”

“I got a cell phone. It still amazes me. And computers? Guy,it’s unbelievable!”

Joanie handed her a mocha in a mug.

“Thank you!” It smelled heavenly.

Joanie reflected, smiled, and said, “ Guy!I haven’t said that in years. Where’d we ever get that, anyway?”

Mandy shrugged. “A take off on ‘gosh’ or ‘golly’?”

“Do you …”

Mandy waited.

“Do you remember Mrs. McQuaig?”

Mandy cracked up and imitated how their third-grade teacher would get so involved in finishing a thought she’d run out of air. “… boys and girls, master these tables and they will always be at haaaannnnd …”

Which brought them around to Mrs. Goade, whose head-nodding mannerism was contagious so that the whole class started doing it.

“Whatever happened to Angie?” Mandy asked.

Joanie shook her head. “I don’t know. Lost track of her after college.”

They sat at the dining table, coffee mugs in hand, and neither seemed to notice how bizarre it was for a woman near sixty to be sharing old times and old names with a girl who’d just turned twenty: the Play Day race that Mandy won two years in a row; Joanie and Mandy doing a tap dance at the talent show in fourth grade; pretending to be Tennessee Walkers out on the playground; Steve Randall turning his eyelids inside out and chasing them; Mandy’s magic act with interlocking rings in the talent show in sixth grade; Dave Leverson being a jerk from the first grade and all the way up through high school; Mandy being King Lear’s daughter—what was her name?—in drama class, and Joanie being King Lear.

At last, Mandy drank down the settled chocolate from the bottom of her mug and asked, “So how are you taking this?”

Joanie thought a moment, gave her hands a little upturn, and said, “Just going with it.”

Going with it.They used to use that term whenever things got freaky. “So am I.”

“You never skip a beat. A lot of things you remember better than I do.”

“Well, for me, they were just a few years ago.”

“I’m not going crazy, am I?”

Mandy shook a pointed finger to emphasize, “No, you’re not, not at all. I’m not crazy so I know you aren’t.”

“It’s just that you being Mandy Whitacre is impossible. Other than that, I’ve got no problem.”

“But that’s the riddle I’m trying to solve. What am I doing here in 2011 when I should be back in … well now it would be 1971?”

“It’s absolutely nuts.”

“Well, what if we just pretended, kind of like we’ve been doing? What if we just assumed that I’m the real Mandy Whitacre?”

Joanie tilted her head thoughtfully and locked eyes with her. “So you were born … when?”

“January fifteenth, 1951.”

“But now you’re only twenty.”

Mandy cringed. “Right.”

“Watergate.” That was all she said, and then she waited.

Mandy was puzzled.

“You don’t remember that?”

“No.”

“What about Karen Carpenter?”

Mandy sang a line of “Close to You.”

Joanie wagged her head. It seemed being amazed was becoming a steady state for her. “So … you only remember things up until 1970.”

“That’s all the older I was, uh, am.”

Now Joanie rubbed her face as if trying to clear her brain. “All right, let’s pretend. How did you get here?”