“I promise to be careful . . . ”
Emily swung around from the mirror, “I said NO!” Her quick motion caused the gas lantern on the dresser to flicker, just as one of the pages from her papers—“my stories,” as she was fond of calling them—fluttered to the floor.
Suddenly, Clara glanced toward the door and grimaced. “Mama’s coming!” She had just enough time to remove the kitten from her lap, pushing both kitten and bottle under the bed. Her twin bed was on the wall opposing Emily’s. A faint chalk line had been drawn on the floor down the center of the room. Emily lifted a brush from the dressing table and pretended to brush her hair, just as the girls’ mother opened the door. Mabel Stuart was wearing an apron and appeared nine months pregnant. She looked at each of her daughters with suspicion.
“What have you two been doing?”
“Nothing, Mama,” the reply came in unison.
“It’s time for lights out. It’s a school day tomorrow.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Emily made a pretense of pulling the brush through her hair with one final stroke before walking toward her own bed. She pulled back the covers with one hand, while tightly holding Annabelle with the other. After making certain that Clara could see, she kissed the doll on each cheek and then laid it on the edge of her pillow before getting into bed next to it. When both girls were in bed, Mama reached for the lantern to turn off the gas. Suddenly, from under the bed the kitten cried, and Clara frowned.
“Oh, Clara! What have I told you about bringing that barn cat into this house?” With some measure of difficulty, Mabel Stuart got down on her knees and a moment later dragged both the kitten and the bottle out from under her youngest daughter’s bed.
“You’re not using a bottle to feed that cat!” Mabel Stuart managed to rise from the floor, still shaking her head in disgust.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I was just pretending she was my baby.”
“Clara, one day you’ll have children of your own, and it’s fine to pretend but I don’t want the cat in here again. Understand?” She held the bottle under one arm and the kitten by the scruff of its neck. Her free hand moved toward the lantern.
“Yes, Mama.”
“Now it’s time for bed. You both have to get up early tomorrow.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Yes, Mama.”
The lights were turned off and the door was closed, leaving the girls in the darkness of their room. After a moment, Emily whispered from her bed:
“How come you always know when Mama’s coming, or Papa, or Jason, or Benjamin? You’re always right.”
“I don’t know . . . I just know.”
“If she catches you with that cat again you’ll be switched.”
“She won’t catch me.”
“The next time you bring that cat inside, I’m gonna tell.”
With her voice trembling, Clara began to cry, “I hate you, Emily Ann Stuart . . . ”
Emily was unmoved. “I hate you too!”
HUNTSVILLE, UTAH—SUMMER MORNING, 2006
“We wasted so much time, but Emily could be a tough bit of karma for a seven-year-old,” Clara said wistfully. “I don’t think my childish mind could have fathomed how many eons the two of us had been arguing.”
Although Joan still hadn’t taken any notes, she had seemed interested in the story; however, Clara’s words caused her to respond patronizingly: “You still believe in reincarnation?”
“It is not a belief! It’s either a fact or it isn’t. Belief has nothing to do with it. Life either works this way or it doesn’t. The things I’ve seen have made me understand that this is simply a matter of fact.”
“Okay, Clara.” She turned a page in her notebook and wrote ‘HUNTSVILLE’ in capital letters, underlining the word twice. “Tell me about moving to Huntsville.”
Clara nodded and took a sip from the lemonade. “That makes for a fine story. Actually, you know, it was my first day in Huntsville that I saw the present merge with the past with such clarity that I knew for a fact we had all been here before . . . ”
The reporter placed her pen on the tablet and simply listened. The look on her face made it clear that she was irritated with the assignment. Seeing that the story was going to be told Clara’s way or not at all, Joan simply relented. “Okay, Clara, tell me about it.”
Clara nodded, leaned back in the rocking chair and reminisced aloud:
“After I divorced Paul, I took the Southern Pacific down to Ogden and then a cab into Huntsville. I had left Samaria City devastated from that marriage—you know, Joanie, all I ever wanted to be was a wife and a mother. When the marriage didn’t work, I had nowhere to go except for of all places Emily’s. Imagine! My life had taken such a turn for the worse that the only place I could go to was a sister’s I could not stand. It was 1946 and I was twenty-five years old.
“Emily had gone down to Ogden during the War, a couple of years before I made the move. They were hiring seamstresses for all kinds of uniforms, and canvas, and whatnot. She got an apartment here in Huntsville, because it was cheaper. She was quite skilled with a needle and thread and felt like Ogden was a better place to find a man. Unfortunately, what Emily had kind of forgotten was the fact that it was wartime and there wasn’t really a man to be found . . . least not under the age of fifty. Besides, most of the men Emily came across were Mormon and Papa had always had his heart set on a Baptist for each of us. By the time I arrived, Emily was twenty-eight and still single, which was a very sad condition for a woman in those days. I’m not one to judge but by the time I got to Huntsville, Emily was desperate for a man. That was the root cause of the biggest problem between us later on.”
Joan leaned back in her own chair just as she felt the baby kick. The interview was not going the way she had planned, and finishing before lunch appeared out of the question. However, she was determined to finish the interview in one day, as she sure didn’t want to have to make a return trip. The recorder continued taping, Clara continued speaking, and Joan sighed.
“You okay, Joanie? Clara asked, interrupting herself for only a moment. Joan nodded affirmatively, so Clara began again:
“Anyway, I can remember that day as if it was yesterday. I had arrived earlier than expected and Emily was still out. I took a seat in the lobby of her apartment building—it was really the Ambassador Hotel but the hotel also rented out apartments. I was exhausted, and I was depressed. Here I thought my entire life was over and I was all of twenty-five-years-old. Imagine!
“I’ve told you before how I can ‘look sideways’ and see things that others just don’t see. I’ve never known exactly how it works but it’s like looking beyond the obvious. Have you ever looked into a mirror with another mirror behind you, and you can just keep seeing way off into the distance? It’s like looking all the way to infinity. Anyway, it feels a little bit like that.
“That hotel seemed so foreign to a Samaria City girl. I remember sitting there and wondering what had I even been thinking to come in the first place. I was so tired and devastated, that when I felt myself start to look sideways at that big fancy couch in the lobby; well, I was too tired to fight it. I just let it happen.”
Clara turned to her niece with a smile, “That was the first day I saw your Uncle Joe.”