The sound of his voice faded away. But Jack wasn’t ready to give up. He took another step into the room and looked around. It was empty except for a pair of old wooden ladders lying on the ground. “Is anyone here?” he asked.
“Can I help you?” Jack started and looked up. A woman floated just under the ceiling, staring sadly at Jack. She floated down and hovered in front of him. Everything about her was familiar—her long brown hair, the tiny scar above her eyebrow. “This is my haunt,” she said when he didn’t answer.
Jack had imagined this moment so many times—how he would shout in recognition, how he would run toward her. But now that his mother was actually in front of him, he stood frozen in place. He scanned the room, numbly taking it in. Cobwebs festooned the iron bars where the ticket window must once have been. “I know it’s not much,” his mother said with a shrug as she followed his eyes, “but it’s mine. So unless there’s anything I can do for you ...”
“It’s me—Jack,” he whispered.
His mother drifted closer to him. “Jack?”
“Mom,” he started to say, but before he could finish, she had enveloped him. Her arms cradled him as her hair pressed against his face. He held on to her, no longer caring about the sunrise, whether he was alive or dead. For years he’d thought he’d never see her again, that she was gone, that no one in the world existed who was exactly like her. But he’d been wrong, she’d been somewhere in the universe all that time, the same old mom, unchanged and beautiful—his.
Too quickly, she pulled away and studied his face. “You shouldn’t be down here. You’re still alive.”
“I’m not sure I am,” he said.
“What do you mean? Of course you are. I can see it in your eyes. But why did you come to the underworld?”
“I had to find you.”
His mother looked concerned. “Is everything all right? Is your father taking good care of you?”
Jack nodded. “Everything’s fine. We live in New Haven, at Yale.”
“I thought Louis might return there,” his mother said with a sigh. “Are you sure you’re okay? Nothing is wrong?”
Jack thought about his father crying at night, his lack of friends at school, how much he wished she wasn’t dead. There was a lot wrong, but Jack couldn’t explain it to her. “I just wanted to see you.”
His mother watched him closely as if she sensed he wasn’t telling the whole truth. But she didn’t probe. After a moment, her face softened. “So, are you studying Latin?”
“How did you know?”
“I told your father I wanted you to study it,” his mother explained. “I was a Classics major in college.”
It made sense now why his father had insisted he study Latin. With a shy smile, he opened his backpack and handed her his copy of the
Metamorphoses
. “I’m up to Book Ten,” he said. “I’m helping the head of the Classics department at Yale on her new translation.”
Jack noticed his mother quickly wince before she camouflaged it with an approving nod. “Orpheus and Eurydice.”
“It’s my favorite myth.”
“Mine too.” She handed back the book and tousled his hair. “So you just missed me, huh?”
He opened his mouth to say yes, but he was afraid he would cry, so instead he leaned against her. “Oh, Jack,” his mother said as she cradled him. “It’s okay. I’m right here.”
He began to sob. She rocked him back and forth, but then he pulled away. “Why did you leave me?” His voice cracked.
His mother gripped him by the shoulders. “I didn’t mean to leave you, Jack. It was an accident. . . .”
“I know, the scaffold fell on you. But you’d already come back to life once! I found the records, so I know you did. Why didn’t you just do it again? Why did you leave me?”
“Is that what your father told you? A scaffold hit me?”
He nodded as the tears streamed down his face.
His mother took his hand. “That’s not what happened, Jack. There was no scaffold. It was a mistake. I made a horrible mistake.”
“What are you talking about?”
His mother’s voice began to shake. “Your father and I had a fight. He wanted me to get out in the world more, but I told him I still didn’t feel comfortable being there or with other living people. Then he said—and I know he didn’t mean it—that perhaps it had been a mistake to bring me back. I was so angry with him that I ran out of the apartment and into the park, to Bethesda fountain. Your father chased after me, calling my name, but before he could catch up to me, I dove into the fountain.”
“And left me?”
“I wasn’t planning to leave you for long. It’s just that being alive again was harder than I’d imagined. I wanted to go back to the underworld for a little while. I didn’t know . . .” She started crying again. “I didn’t know I couldn’t do that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your father had brought me back to life, but what we didn’t realize was that there were conditions. If I went back to the underworld, even just for a little bit, I would have to stay there forever. I didn’t know that, though, and neither did he. To this day he probably thinks I just didn’t want to come back. . . .”
“But didn’t Dad try to get back in?”
His mother sighed. “Of course he tried. Every day for an entire week he went to Grand Central and tried to take track sixty-one into the underworld to find me. But he could never find another golden bough. The tunnels seemed to change on him. The staircase vanished behind a wall, and he never found any of the streams that bordered the underworld. I watched him, though he couldn’t see me. He finally realized that it wasn’t fated to be.
“When he finally figured this out, he did something to punish me for leaving. My only consolation after I realized I could never go back was that as long as you were in New York, at night, I could watch over you.”
“You mean haunt us?”
“Call it what you want,” said his mother sadly. “I was able to do it only a few times. Then one night I flew into the apartment and found it empty—no furniture, no Louis, no you. So I went back to this old haunt, and that’s where I’ve stayed. My father—your grandfather—was a subway engineer. He used to take me here when I was a little girl—it was our secret place. When I was twenty-two, I died in a car accident and started haunting this station. After they died, my parents haunted it too. I was hoping to see them again when I returned to the underworld, but while I was living with your father, they moved on. They never did approve of my going back....”
His mother’s voice trailed off.
For a few moments, neither of them spoke. Jack imagined his mother standing on the edge of the fountain, coatless, her long hair whipping across her face, the stone angel standing mutely above her as she pressed palm to palm, took a final breath, and dove. In the early dusk it was likely that no one saw her except his father, frantically shouting her name as he raced to the fountain’s edge, only to find himself staring down at nothing but snow-crusted stone. How could she have done it? He stared at her hard.
“Please forgive me,” she said.
But Jack thought about his father’s late-night crying sessions. “You ruined Dad’s life,” he said.
His mother winced. “Don’t punish me, Jack.”
“Why not? You punished us. You left us. You ruined my life too!” He realized he was shouting but he didn’t care. “If you hadn’t left, Dad would be happy. I wouldn’t be such a freak.”
“What are you talking about, Jack? You’re not a freak.”
“You don’t understand, do you? Everything would have been different if you had stayed.”
His mother bowed her head. “I can’t change that.”
“I know. You can’t change anything. You’re dead. You can’t come back. But can’t I still be angry?”
His mother looked up, her eyes wet and weary. “It was an accident, Jack. I didn’t mean to leave you forever.”
The word “accident” echoed in his head, and for the first time since he found his mom, he thought about Euri. Her death had been as much of an accident as his mother’s had been, which was to say that it hadn’t really been one at all. She had let down the people who knew her as Deirdre as much as his mother had let down his father and him. But was Euri really responsible for making a choice whose consequences she hadn’t fully understood? Was his mother? He thought about the
Metamor-phoses
and the passage he had gone over the last few days. But there were still no answers there, only the same words he had been grappling with; words like
auspicium
and
occidit
, that could be translated in so many different ways. He closed the book and put it away. The only answers he could find were his own.
“I know,” he whispered. “I forgive you.”
His mother closed her eyes and smiled, and for a minute, Jack saw her exactly as she had been when she was alive. He wondered whether it might be his destiny, after all, to bring her back. He imagined how happy his father would be to see her again, how proud he would be of Jack for finding her. Surely the universe would allow a lost family that? But just as he reached out to take his mother’s hand and try to lead her out of the abandoned station, she began to change. Her skin glimmered and light began to spread outward from her through the dingy room. “What’s happening?” he cried.
His mother looked at him in amazement. “You’ve released me, Jack! I’m finally moving on.”
“Wait!” he said. “Don’t leave me!”
“Oh, Jack. I’m not.” His mother began to rise in the air. “I never did. I love you. I’ll always be ...”
He reached for her foot and tried to drag her back down, but she slipped through his fingers. “No! Not yet!”
Her face and body began to flicker. “At least tell me how you did it,” he pleaded. “How did you live again?”
“Your father led me out,” she said as her voice grew fainter. “We had to leave via a special way on your father’s map. It was the only way to get both of us out.”
“What was it?”
A small, dark object was moving by the wall. Jack stepped forward to block whatever it was from taking his mother. The toe of a boot jammed into his foot as Clubber tumbled through the wall. “Freeze!” he shouted. “It’s those eyes. I know you’re still alive!”
“Amnicolaeque simul salices et aquatica lotos!”
his mother whispered. “You’ll be safe once you get inside it. But don’t look back!”
A blinding light filled the room so that even Clubber had to cover his eyes. When Jack opened his, his mother was gone.
Euri’s voice echoed up from the platform. “Jack! Is everything all right?”
“Euri, run!” Jack shouted as Clubber lunged for him. He threw himself off the top stair and flew down to the platform. Behind him, he could hear Clubber flying after him. “I know you’re alive!” he shouted after him. “You won’t make a fool of me again!”
A hot wind blew against his face as a subway train whipped through the station. He could see Euri waving him over. “Get on the train!” he shouted to her above the din. He flew at her as fast as he could and grabbed her hand. But the train was moving much faster than they were. Pulling Euri along, Jack closed his eyes and flew straight at it. His body hurled against hard plastic and metal, but then he felt the materials grow porous and soft as he and Euri tumbled onto the sticky floor of the last car.
“Amnicolaeque simul salices et aquatica lotos,”
Jack said as he scrambled back on to his feet and pulled out the map from his pocket.
“What are you talking about?” Euri asked, picking herself up from the floor.
Jack looked at the pocket watch. It was 6:15 a.m. He had just over an hour till sunrise. As the train screeched around a bend and headed back uptown he pulled out the map. “The way out,” he said.
Euri sat down next to him. “What do you mean the way out?”
“I mean it’s how you can live again. I found my mom. She told me.”
“Are you kidding? There’s really a way?” She grabbed his hand. “But wait. What about you?”
“I’m still alive. My mom was certain of it and so were the guards. My eyes give it away. I guess I just have some special powers.”
Euri studied his eyes and looked relieved. “You can say that again. So what does the Latin mean?”
“Amnicolaque simul salices et aquatica lotus,”
Jack repeated. “‘Both the water-dwelling willows and the watery lotus together.’ My mother said they left through a special way on the map—one that got both of them out.
She said I’d be safe once I got inside it. But before she moved on, Clubber appeared, so she gave me this hint in Latin.”
Euri’s eyes widened. “She moved on?”
Jack nodded. “I helped her do it.”
“Well, don’t ever help me do that,” said Euri. “The only thing you can help me do is live again.”
“I didn’t mean to,” he said, shaking his head. “I wanted more time....”
Euri touched his arm. “It’s okay, Jack. She’s at peace.”
“But I miss her.”
For a moment they were both quiet. “I’m going to get you out,” Jack finally said. “Lotus flowers grow in water. Maybe she’s referring to a tunnel by a river.”
Euri nodded. “Willows grow near water too.”
They both bent over the map. “There are dozens of rivers,” he said a few moments later. “It’s impossible to tell which one.”
“There are some willows on the bike path on the Upper West Side,” Euri offered. But then she shook her head. “We’ll never find it and it’s almost dawn. Come on, Jack, you’re still alive. We need to get you to a fountain and back to track sixty-one.”
Jack knew she was right. He let her take his hand and pull him off the train at the Twenty-eighth Street station. As they flew up Fifth Avenue, he repeated the Latin phrase over and over again. It sounded familiar. Below, he recognized the columns and arches of the New York Public Library and a small park beside it. At the western end of the park, a line of ghosts snaked around a granite fountain. Euri floated down to the back of the line, behind a ghost with thick glasses reading a book.
“Wait a second!” Jack said. “That phrase—I do know it. It’s in Book Ten of the
Metamorphoses
.”
He pulled the volume out of his backpack and flipped it open to Book Ten. “Look, here it is. I haven’t gotten this far in my translation yet, but I remember reading it. This section takes place a year after Orpheus fails to bring Eurydice back to life. He sits on a hill and plays his lyre, and all these trees crowd around him to hear him play.”
Euri peered down at the words. “So what do you think it means?”
As the line moved forward, Jack chewed over the story, but he couldn’t figure out what it revealed. Just like with his mother, he didn’t have enough time. The ghost in front of them closed her book and floated onto the rim of the fountain, preparing to dive in. It was 6:21 a.m. Jack looked up at Euri. She was studying the map, her dull hair in a tangled halo, her eyes feverish. “Is your name really Deirdre?” he suddenly asked.
Euri looked up from the map and stared at him hard. “My name is Euri.”
“But at Dr. Brill’s you said you . . .”
“Deirdre is dead,” she interrupted. “Deirdre wanted to die. I’m Euri now, and I want to live.”
Jack watched as she floated up to the fountain’s rim and put her palms together. She deserved a second chance at life. If only he had gotten past line thirty-one in his translation, he could have given it to her.
Just as she was about to dive, he grabbed her around the legs. “Get down.”
“Jack, what are you doing?”
“Give me the map.”
“Hey, what’s the holdup?” a ghost from the back of the line shouted.
Euri floated down off the fountain’s rim and passed it over to him.
Jack traced the street numbers with his finger. “That’s it!” he whispered. “Where can I get a boat?”