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July 1993
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AS SOON AS I got home, I took the box from my purse and put it back in the desk where it’s lived for the past twenty odd years. I was suddenly afraid of it. What if the professor was right and the disc was as important as he said? Of course, it was more likely that he was delusional, but what if? What if indeed? I half expected whirling emanations, awakened spirits, and ancient spells to begin seeping through the drawer. The whole thing creeped me out. I couldn’t wait for Tom to get home from work so I could talk with someone sensible and grounded.
I had work to do, but I couldn’t concentrate on layouts and copy edits, so I went into the laundry room and sorted sheets and towels. Still feeling unfocused and overwrought, I cleaned out the refrigerator. The remnants of an old casserole, some slimy greens, and a half-eaten apple went into the trash. I was about to discard an open bottle of Chardonnay, well past its prime, when I had second thoughts and poured it into a water glass instead. I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking awful wine and listening to All Things Considered when I heard Tom come through the door.
He picked up the pile of mail I’d dropped on the kitchen counter then came and sat beside me at the table. “So, how’s Nick? Any idea when he’ll be discharged?”
I took a swig of the wine and made a face. “They’re only keeping him a few more days, but he’ll need months of therapy. With luck he’ll be in good shape by hockey season.”
“Poor kid, there goes his summer. I don’t know what he’s going to do with himself until the fall.”
“He’s bummed out, but he’ll be OK, and we can still spend August at the cottage. I have him signed up for out-patient therapy in Kingston.”
“Good work.” He tore open an envelope containing an advertisement for replacement windows and threw it in the trash. “So, how’d it go with the professor? What did he say about your relic? Does he think it’s real?”
“Oh, yeah, he thinks it’s real all right. In fact, he thinks it’s the second Rosetta Stone. He wants me to photograph it and then, after he shows the photos to some other archaeologists, I’m supposed to go to the university with him to let them examine it in person. It needs to be authenticated before we can sell our house and move to a mansion in Rosedale.”
“A mansion in Rosedale? Well, then, we’re set for life.” Tom was grinning as though I’d just told a good one.
“No, seriously, that’s what he said. Well, he didn’t mention mansions, but he did think it was valuable. The question is whether he’s in his right mind. I mean Arcas used the thing as a paperweight. If it’s that extraordinary, wouldn’t someone have noticed it before now?”
“Maybe not, we never thought it was anything but an old curiosity. If he’s right, that was some going away gift Arcas left you. What are you going to do with it?”
“Wait and see. Part of me thinks there might be something to it, but another part is saying, ‘Don’t be a schmuck. The old guy’s demented.’” I got up and poured the rest of the wine down the sink. “What do you think?”
“I’d give him the photographs. If he’s off his rocker, it doesn’t cost us anything, and if he’s not, things could get very interesting.”
“OK, I’ll set up the lights and take a few shots later tonight. But the poor man’s so frail he could be in a nursing home before the film gets back from the lab.”
Two hours later I was in the basement snapping photos of the disc against a black velvet cloth that would have made a bent fork look like a museum piece. I was thinking of framing a couple of the prints even if the thing turned out to be a hoax when the phone rang.
A moment later Tom called down the stairs, “Amy, it’s Nancy, she’s calling from Greece.”
I glanced at my watch. It was just passed seven in Toronto, so it was two in the morning in Athens. I ran up the stairs and grabbed the phone from Tom’s hand. “What’s wrong, Nancy? Are you alright? Why are you calling in the middle of the night?”
“I’m fine, I just couldn’t sleep, and I figured this was a good time to reach you.”
I relaxed a bit as I stretched the cord over to the kitchen table and sat down while Tom hovered behind my chair. “It’s good to hear your voice, but what’s up? This call must be costing you a fortune.”
“It is, but something really weird happened a couple days ago and you need to know about it.” There was a long pause. I heard her swallow and then she said, “I’ve seen Arcas.”
“What?” I covered the mouthpiece on the phone and whispered to Tom, “She says she’s seen Arcas.” He rolled his eyes, but I was worried. Nancy wasn’t the type to see ghosts. Was she tripping on something? Was she having some sort of break down? “Oh, sweetie, that’s not possible. You must have seen someone who looked like him. I know how that can happen. For years after Arcas died I imagined that I saw him everywhere: on busses, in cafes, walking into shops. Your mind plays games with you like that. Being in Greece must have triggered a lot of old memories and—”
“No, Amy,” she said. “He turned up at a political rally I was covering for the paper. You should have seen his face when he realized who I was. He tried running away, but there was a crowd, and he couldn’t push through fast enough, so I caught up with him. He’s been living on his family farm all these years.”
Tears pricked my eyes, but I didn’t know if they were tears of joy, or sorrow or rage. I literally couldn’t talk. I handed the phone to Tom who listened with a clenched jaw. He didn’t have much to say either. We were both in shock.
“Why? Why would he do a thing like that?” he asked. There were a few mumbled comments punctuated by long silences as he listened to Nancy’s story. “That’s no excuse . . . the bastard . . . serves him right . . . what about the note? Unbelievable . . . what did you tell him? OK, we’ll talk when you get back. Thanks for letting us know.”
“No, let me have the phone.” I grabbed the phone and asked the one question that really mattered. “Did you tell him about Cady? Does he know he has a daughter?”
Nancy hesitated a moment. “I told him you had two kids, twenty-one and seventeen. I didn’t say that Cady was his, but I’m sure he did the math.”
“Damn.” I didn’t mean to swear at my old friend, but I was enraged. “No, no, Nancy, I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you, it’s just that . . . oh my God. I could kill him. I think I could actually kill him.”
Nancy tried to calm me, but what could she say? We’d taught Cady to idolize her heroic, martyred father, and now this. It was too awful. I hung up the phone and stood staring at the wall barely able to contain my rage.
For once, I was glad that Cady was staying with her boyfriend. I couldn’t lie to her, but how could I tell her the truth? Tom was all for forgetting the whole thing. Why rock the boat? If Arcas wanted to be dead, let him be dead. The deader the better. At last, I conceded that Tom was right. What was the point in telling Cady that her father was a bastard? How would that make anything better? I went back to my office and put the disc back in its box. It was suddenly just a lump of old clay. All the magic had gone out of it. If it weren’t for the professor, I’d have smashed the thing against the wall. The archaeologists could have it. I didn’t want it in my house.
That night I lay in bed trying to reconstruct every moment I’d spent with Arcas. There must have been clues I’d been too stupid or naive to pick up. There were those trips back to Greece to visit his sick father. Those were probably a cover for whatever he was up to—or maybe he wasn’t up to anything. Maybe he’d just gotten tired of me, or maybe it was Karmic retribution for what had happened to my sister. I turned over in bed and looked at the clock. It was almost one in the morning. Tom was snoring happily, untroubled by nagging doubts or a guilty conscious while I was obsessed with the idea that every bad thing that happened was a just punishment for killing my sister.
“Oh, Joanie,” I murmured as I touched the small pendant I’d worn since I was twelve, the talisman of our eternal twinship. “Where are you? I really need you now.” But she didn’t answer.
The following afternoon I drove back to the hospital with a container of fried chicken for Nick on the seat beside me and the clay disc for the archaeologist tucked into my purse. I was in a terrible mood. After so many years, why did I even care whether Arcas was alive or dead? But I did. I cared a lot, both for myself and for my daughter. Poor Cady, what could we tell her to soften the news? I pulled into a parking space still feeling dazed and angry. The only thing I knew for sure was that the son of a bitch might have hurt me, but he wasn’t going to hurt my daughter.
I put on the cheeriest face I could muster and walked into Nick’s room, waving the Tupperware container in front of me. “Meals on Wheels. Hope you’re hungry.”
“What’s the matter? You look awful.” He furrowed his brow and examined me closely. “Did something happen?”
“No, why would you ask that?” I wondered what had given me away.
“You just don’t look right. Your hair’s a mess and you . . . I don’t know. You look kind of wild eyed. Are they going to have to amputate my leg or something?”
“Of course not, it’s nothing like that. In fact, you’re being discharged in a couple days.” I put the food on his bedside table and kissed his cheek. “I didn’t sleep very well last night, that’s all.”
I sank into the chair beside Nick’s bed. It was only three-thirty in the afternoon, but I was exhausted. Arcas must have cost me more sleep than I’d realized. I kicked off my shoes and put my feet up on Nick’s bed. “Did Dad tell you what happened at his office two days ago? He practically got mugged by a mob protesting his agency’s immigrant impact report. Who knew being an economist could be so dangerous?”
“You’re kidding, who cares about some agency report? It’s just a lot of statistics.”
“A bunch of white supremacist thugs, that’s who. I doubt they even read the thing, but they heard it says immigrants are an economic driver and a net benefit to the province. They wanted a report that said immigrants are all on welfare or in jail. That would have made them happy.”
“Did they actually get violent?”
“Mostly they just screamed ugly things at people coming out of the building, but there was a physical confrontation between the racists and some counter-protesters. Dad was pretty shaken when he got home.”
“I’d have been there if I’d known about it.” Nick was suddenly animated.
“And if you weren’t seventeen and laid up with a broken leg. You were better off safe in this bed. Those things can get ugly.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it yesterday? Was it on the news?”
“I meant to tell you, but I was too preoccupied with this.” I took the box holding the clay disc out of my purse and put it on the bedside table beside the fried chicken. “Your archaeologist friend thinks my little gift from Arcas might belong in a museum. He wants to show it to some people at the university.”
“Wow, aren’t you glad I made you talk to him? I bet it’s worth a mint.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. It’s more likely that he’s confused and imagining things, but I’m going to leave it with him anyway. It means more to him than it does to me at this point.” I bit my lip. That wasn’t what I’d meant to say.
“What do you mean? I thought it meant a lot to you. I know it means a lot to Cady.”
“Well, the other possibility, the one that’s more likely, is that it’s a replica from a museum gift shop. Dr. Kanter wasn’t sure which, and frankly I don’t know how much we can trust what Dr. Kanter says.”
“He seemed fine when I saw him in PT. I don’t know why everyone thinks he’s senile.”
“I had a nice conversation with him too, but I guess these things can be subtle. We’re not doctors so we don’t know what to look for.” I picked up the box and put it back in my purse. “Why don’t you work on that fried chicken while I talk with Dr. Kanter.”
“OK, let me know what he says.”
Nick pried the lid off the Tupperware, and I watched as he devoured a drumstick in two bites. This was the boy I had to coax to eat by making faces out of raisins and bananas in his oatmeal. I kissed him again then headed to the door.
“Mom,” he said, his mouth full of chicken. “Can I really go home in a couple days? I’m going crazy in this place.”
“That’s what they tell me,” I assured him, then headed down the hall to Dr. Kanter’s room.
His door was wide open, but his bed was empty. I felt foolish for expecting him to be available whenever I stopped by. Then I had a new thought and something inside me lurched. Was he already gone? Had he been moved to a nursing home overnight or worse, had he died?
I was standing in front of his door clutching my purse and staring stupidly at his empty bed when I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, he’ll be back shortly. He’s just gone down to radiology.”
The touch startled me, and I turned to see who was there. It was the nurse I’d met on my first visit, the one who knew Cady and Nick. “Thank you, I just came by to show him that piece of Greek pottery I mentioned yesterday. I can come back later.”
“No, no, please have a seat. He’ll be back in just a minute. I know he wants to see you.”
“Really?” Had Dr. Kanter told this nurse about the disc? I looked at her more closely. She looked back at me with a warm, sympathetic smile.
“Maybe I’ll go back to my son’s room and wait for Dr. Kanter there.”
She beamed broadly when I mentioned Nick. “Now that’s a fine boy you have there. We’ll miss him when he leaves us. Not many boys would take time to talk to an old man, but Nick’s special. You should be proud of him.”
“Yes, we are, although I don’t think talking to Dr. Kanter is all that remarkable but thank you.”
“Trust me, I know a good soul when I meet one and . . . oh, here comes Dr. Kanter now. Why don’t you wait out here while we get him settled? I’ll call you the moment he’s ready for visitors.”
I stepped aside as an orderly pushed Dr. Kanter’s wheelchair past me. The professor smiled and gestured for me to wait. He looked tired and somehow smaller and thinner than the day before. Simply going for x-rays must have exhausted him. I waited in the hallway until the nurse opened the door and invited me inside.
“Well, what a pleasant surprise. I didn’t expect to see you back so soon. Please, have a seat.” Dr. Kanter gestured to the chair beside the bed. I sat down as he adjusted his thick glasses and focused his gaze in my direction. There was something disconcerting about his stare. It wasn’t lascivious or suggestive, and yet I felt uncomfortable, as though he were examining me. His expression turned quizzical. “Do you have the photographs already? Can you get them that fast?”
“Oh, better than that.” I opened my purse and pulled out the box. “I decided that you might as well have the real thing. Why don’t you take it and show it to your colleagues at the university? There’s no sense my going with you. I don’t know anything about Bronze Age artifacts. I’d just be in the way.”
Dr. Kanter looked genuinely surprised. “Well, that’s very generous of you. Are you sure? To be honest, it will take time to get a definitive opinion on the piece. They’ll need to keep it for quite a while.”
That’s OK, just let me know what they say once they’ve had time to study it.” The memory of Arcas handing me the disc with fake solemnity roiled my stomach. It had all been an act. The fantasy of a financial windfall suddenly seemed stupid. I couldn’t wait to wash my hands of Arcas and his Minoan tchachka. “If it’s real, maybe I’ll donate it to the university. I haven’t decided yet.”
Dr. Kanter looked surprised. “Now, that really would be generous, but there’s no hurry. In the meantime, let’s store this little treasure someplace where it can’t be lost or stolen. There’s a safe at the back of my closet.” He gave me a sly smile. “Can I trust you with the code?”
I’d never thought about security. I’d always kept the thing in an unlocked desk drawer. Maybe I was being foolish. Maybe I should have consulted a lawyer and gotten reams of signed documents before handing the disc over to this man, but a quick consultation with my gut informed me that I didn’t care. I was glad to be rid of it. “I work undercover for the Mossad. No one will ever get it out of me.”
“Well, then . . . ” Dr. Kanter paused, looking puzzled. “It’s . . . wait a minute, I’ll think of it. It’s my birthday. I was born in May on the . . . How old am I?” He lay back against the pillow and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.” An expression crossed his face that I hadn’t seen before. It might have been fear or confusion or both. “Can you believe that? I don’t know what year I was born.” He tapped his forehead with one finger. “The old noggin seems to have slipped a cog.”
“We all forget things. It’ll come back to you.”
He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Would you call the nurse for me? She can check my chart. How could I forget a thing like that?”
I pushed the call button that was pinned to his pillow. “You look tired. We can deal with this another time.”
“No, please, wait just another minute. She’ll get this sorted out. She’s very good.”
I didn’t know what he thought the nurse could do, but I remained standing awkwardly at his bedside. “Is there anything I can do for you? Would you like a glass of water?”
“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to sit up a bit higher. Could you put another pillow behind my head? There’s one in the closet.”
I’m not a natural nurse and repositioning a strange man felt uncomfortably intimate, but I couldn’t refuse such a simple request. I fetched the pillow and helped him sit up enough to slip it under his head. As I was leaning over him, the small cat pendant I always wore slipped out of my blouse. To my chagrin, he reached up and grabbed hold of it.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, looking more alarmed than when he couldn’t remember his own birthday.
I pulled it out of his grasp as gently as I could. “It’s just something my parents gave me when I was a kid.” I tucked it back into my blouse and stepped back from the bed. The way Dr. Kanter was staring at me gave me the creeps. “Why? Is there something wrong with it?”
“No, no, it’s just that I know someone who has a necklace just like that. It’s so unusual . . . or maybe it’s not. Maybe it was common at one time?”
“As far as I know there are only two in the world, this one and my sister’s. Our parents made them for us when we turned twelve. They had a cat pendant engraved with a line from a poem we liked, then they had it cut in two and gave us each half. You probably saw one of those friendship necklaces girls used to wear. They look very similar.”
He didn’t take his eyes off me as he recited, “errie and eazer had ful way of gether.”
I stared at him, fear and confusion rising within me. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
“It was written on that other necklace, the one that looks like yours. Do you know what it means?”
“You didn’t see that, you couldn’t have.”
“There was a young woman wearing it on the ship where I had my fall. She looked remarkably like you, only younger.”
I’ve never fainted in my life, but my vision was suddenly pricked with stars, a black cloud washed over me, and I began to hyperventilate. The next thing I remember the nurse was shaking my arm and calling my name. I opened my eyes and saw her concerned face shining down at me from beneath a halo of gray curls.
“There now, just sit quiet a minute. What in the world? Have you eaten anything today?” She crooned as I struggled to regain my senses. I shook myself awake and tried to stand up but a small, plump hand held me firmly in place. “Not so fast, young lady. How about some juice? You aren’t pregnant, are you?”
That almost made me smile, but then the memory of Dr. Kanter reciting the words from my sister’s necklace made me woozy again and I doubled over, putting my head in my lap.
“That’s a good girl. Sit just like that while I get you some orange juice.” The nurse patted me on my shoulder and left the room.
Dr. Kanter and I sat in silence for several minutes.
“That other girl, we called her Joanie,” Dr. Kanter said. “She didn’t know what the words on the necklace meant. We spent a lot of time trying to solve the puzzle. It was sort of a game we played.”
“It’s a line from a poem by T.S. Eliot. We . . . Wait, you called her Joanie?”
Dr. Kanter looked as shaken as I was. I could see the Adam’s apple in his thin neck move up and down as he swallowed. “That’s what we called her, but it probably wasn’t her real name. She had amnesia and couldn’t remember anything before coming on board the ship, not even her name. We had to call her something, so we suggested names at random and she liked that one.”
How could a strange woman named Joanie be wearing my sister’s necklace? I searched my brain for a plausible explanation but came up blank. I’d always imagined the necklace around my sister’s neck at the bottom of the lake.
“Do you know who she is?” he asked after a long pause.
“My sister,” I whispered.
“What? I’m sorry I couldn’t hear you.” Dr. Kanter leaned toward me expectantly.
“My sister’s name was Joanie. It’s an incredible coincidence, but I don’t know the woman on the ship. I have no idea who that woman was. I’m sorry, but this is scaring me. I really need to go.”
“She looks exactly like you, or perhaps more like your daughter. Could she be a cousin or some other relative?”
I was rocked by another wave of vertigo. Reality suddenly seemed fluid, floating, receding into the distance. I half expected the walls to dissolve or Dr. Kanter to levitate above his bed. I needed to escape. “I’m sorry about the poor woman with amnesia, but that has nothing to do with me. I really must go.”
“Please, wait.” His voice became softer, more plaintive. “I’m so confused about everything on that ship. If you know anything, please, I need to know.”
I was saved by the nurse barging back into the room with a little box stuck through with a straw. “Now what are you doing standing up, young lady? You were told to stay put until I came back with this juice.”
“Thank you, but I’m feeling much better. I was just leaving.”
“No you don’t. You sit down and drink this first. We can’t have people fainting away in our hallways. Low blood sugar is usually the culprit in these things. I bet you’re dieting, tiny as you are.”
“No, honest, I had a good lunch. I don’t know what came over me, but I’m fine now.” My protests were useless. The nurse somehow maneuvered me back into the chair and stuck the juice box in my hand.
“Now, what can I do for you?” She adjusted Dr. Kanter’s pillows and straightened his bedclothes. “Would you like me to raise the bed a bit, you don’t look comfortable like that.”
“Yes, thank you, but there’s something else. That’s not why we called you.”
The nurse pressed a button on the side rail of Dr. Kanter’s bed, and he was smoothly elevated to an upright position. I felt foolish for fussing with his pillows. If I’d simply pressed the stupid button, he wouldn’t have seen my necklace and I wouldn’t be having a panic attack.
“Why did we call the nurse? What was it? Do you remember?” Dr. Kanter turned to me.
“You wanted the combination to the safe. It’s your birth date. You said she’d have it in your chart.” I sucked on my straw and stared sullenly at the nurse who was holding me hostage.
“Why would I do that? I know my own birthday, May 4, 1908. The combination is 5-4-0-8.”
I slurped up the last of the juice and threw the box in the trash. “Thanks, I’m sorry to have crashed like that, but I have to get home.” I stood up, relieved to find the room had stopped spinning.
“Wait, before you go, may I see that pendant one more time? It’s so strange that you and Joanie would be wearing the same necklace.” Dr. Kanter looked at me with imploring eyes.
I unfastened the clasp at the back of the chain and handed it to him.
He held it close to his face and then at arm’s length trying to make out the words. “I’m sorry, can someone read this for me?”
He handed my necklace to the nurse who read, “Mungoj/ Rump/ had a won/ way of wor/ tog.” She shook her head and gave it back to him. “Now that’s an odd inscription if I ever saw one, but it reminds me of something.” She closed her eyes and dropped her head as she tried to solve the puzzle. A moment later her head snapped back up and she turned toward me, a wide smile brightening her face. “It’s Mungojerrie and Rupelteazer, isn’t it? That’s why it’s shaped like a cat. I love that show.”
Dr. Kanter was nodding. “I’ve heard of them, Mungojerrie and, uh, the other one. But you said it was from a poem not a theatrical production.”
I sighed as I retrieved my necklace from the professor. “It was a poem first, now it’s a musical too. Cats, I’m sure you’ve heard of it.” Dr. Kanter shook his head, still bewildered. “Anyway, there’s this one poem about two naughty cats who are always getting into trouble, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer. It was a family joke. They used to call me Mungo and my sister became Teazer. Actually, we called her Rump for a while, but she didn’t like it, so we switched.” I refastened the clasp behind my neck and tucked the pendant into my blouse.
“Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer . . . something, something. What’s the rest of it?” The nurse was still trying to solve the riddle.
I sighed then begrudgingly recited, “Mungojerrie and Rupelteazer had a wonderful way of working together.” That line had been a secret bond between me and my sister. I didn’t like sharing it with strangers.
That’s it. I know that line. I know all the lines from the show.” The nurse beamed. “Cats is my absolute favorite musical.”
Dr. Kanter seemed to be reconstructing the verse in his head. “errie and eazer had ful . . . Yes, of course, it works. Now I know where it’s from, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. I read it to Michael when he was small.”
“Isn’t that lovely?” The nurse looked pleased. “You’ll have to explain it to Joanie when you see her again.”
My stomach lurched and I needed to leave. I couldn’t even wait for the elevator. I picked up my purse, said a hasty good-bye and raced toward the stairs. I didn’t stop running until I’d left the hospital and was halfway to the parking lot. It had started to rain, but I didn’t slow down or take cover. I would have kept running but I tripped over a curb and went sprawling on the pavement. A nice man with an umbrella stopped to help me, but I assured him I was fine, and he hurried off. I was fine, apart from a rip in the knee of my slacks and bloody scrapes on both my palms. I listened for my sister, expecting to hear her calls for help, but she’d gone silent ever since the dream where I’d been rescued from the water. There was no sound but the pelting rain, the rush of afternoon traffic, and the pounding of my own heart.
I was spooked by the thought of Joanie’s doppelganger aboard a ship somewhere in the middle of the lake. The dead were coming back to haunt me, first Arcas and now my sister. No wonder I was freaking out. Calm down. You never have to think about Arcas again, and whoever Dr. Kanter met out on the lake, it certainly wasn’t your sister. I touched my pendant through my blouse and wondered how Dr. Kanter could have known what was engraved on the other half. Nothing made sense. If there was a logical explanation, it eluded me completely. Tom would know what to make of it. He was solid and sensible. He hadn’t let his sister drown or fallen in love with a liar. His head wasn’t clouded by muddy water.
As I limped the last block to the parking lot, my equilibrium returned and felt like a fool for running into a summer storm without an umbrella or a coat. I brushed a lock of wet hair from my face, got into my car, and started the motor. Nick would be discharged from the hospital in a few days. He’d come home, we’d go to the cottage, and I’d worry about my real, substantial family and forget about old ghosts.