When he and three women finally did arrive, I was beside myself with excitement and had to work to stay calm enough to eat dinner. I thought the meal would take forever and by the time we left the table I was ready to scream.
For the sake of brevity I’m going to forgo writing how I think New Yorkers and Texans are the same people but with different accents—it’s why they hate each other.
Nora once told me that in order to be hypnotized all one had to do was want to go under. By the time Milly’s regression
ist got started I desperately wanted to see Jamie.
As I stretched out on the Victorian chaise in Milly’s living room, the man, wearing jeans and cowboy boots, said, “Is there a special life you’d like to look at?” His eyes were twinkling in that way that let me know he knew something he’d sworn not to tell but couldn’t resist letting me know he knew. Sweet, well-meaning, trusting Milly sometimes had a big mouth.
“There is…” I took a breath and bucked up my courage. “There is a man I want to see.”
“Ah…,” he said in that smug, all-knowing, all-hateable way men have. They are all convinced that all a woman really wants in life is a man. I guess we women could prove them wrong by running the world without them, but then we’d be a world full of fat, hairy women and who wants to look at that?
I kept my mouth shut as I lay back on the chaise and thought how much I wanted to see him. I wanted to see Jamie. I wanted to see the real Tavistock.
As the man’s voice lulled me into another world, I thought, I want to see…I want to see…Tally.
9
It was a delicious feeling, leaving my body behind and just floating. I’d read a lot about out-of-body experiences and they’d never really appealed to me before, but this did. No worries, no pain, no anger, just sort of drifting along.
I was pulled up short when suddenly there was a bright light and I found myself in a bedroom that looked like something out of one of my books. Or maybe out of one of my dreams of heaven. It was English country decorating at its best: a four-poster bed dripping mossy green silk, walls covered with hand-painted Chinese wallpaper, and furniture that was new antiques—new where I was but old now.
I looked down because I seemed to be hovering up in a corner of the room and I had no body. I was just sort of energy. And I figured the less I thought of that the better. Think of it as a movie, I thought. You’re not crazy, you’re watching a movie.
There were three people in the room, all of them with their backs to me. One was a maid dressed in a pretty little black dress with a white apron. She was silently and efficiently helping a woman standing in front of a long mirror into an Edwardian morning gown, something a lady put on before she put on the other six or so gowns she would wear that day.
To my right was a girl, about fifteen or so, her long chestnut hair hanging down her back, and wearing a cute little dress designed for a child of no more than about six. Truthfully, it was refreshing to see a teenager in something other than black leather and heels.
I wanted to absorb all that I could see. I wanted to soak it up, like getting into a tub filled with hot water and sweet-smelling oil.
But as I was looking at everything, trying to memorize it to use in my next book, the woman in front of the mirror turned and looked straight at me. I didn’t think she could see me, because I didn’t seem to be able to see myself, but she sure felt something.
I held my breath as she looked toward me and I looked at her. Can you imagine what you’d feel if you could see yourself in another time period? Wouldn’t you be overwhelmed with curiosity?
I was.
In the books I’d read about the Marlborough House set, I’d read that Lady de Grey was a great beauty. But what that meant was that she was a beauty compared to the other society women. What about some shop girl who would have made it in a big way if the Edwardians had had high-fashion modeling and movie starlets?
All in all, I was disappointed with “myself.” As a child I hated my looks. I am blonde to the point of being colorless and much to my mother’s very vocal ill temper, I started wearing makeup at about age twelve. Just a bit at first but I gradually increased the amount until I would rather have been seen naked than without three shades of eye shadow, dark pencil, and lots of mascara. Now, I could see that “my” lashes had been darkened and there was a bit of color to this woman’s lips but to my eyes her face was still too pale. Cindy Crawford had no worries.
Oh well, I thought, it wasn’t any of my business. I was an observer and nothing else.
“Catherine?” I heard the girl say, “are you all right?”
“Yes,” the woman who was maybe me whispered, but she kept looking toward where I was and I knew she felt me very strongly.
Where is Jamie? I wondered, because he was the one I really wanted to see. It was all well and good getting to see myself but now I wished she’d leave the room and go see him.
But no one looked as though she was going to move. The maid was staring at Catherine—I thought her name was Hortense—the girl was also looking at her, and Catherine was looking at me, but I couldn’t be seen.
Then, suddenly, several things began to happen at once. A few other people seemed to enter my head at the same time. First of all I could hear Milly’s Texas hypnotist calling me to return.
“She’s really under deep,” I heard him say. “Hayden? Hayden? Can you hear me? Milly, why don’t you call her to come back?”
I heard Milly’s sweet voice entreating me to return, but there was something else in it that let me know that she wanted me to do whatever made me happy. If it had been Daria calling me I would have been back in that Texas living room in a flash. Daria would have said, “Where are your pages!?” and if that didn’t work, she would have said, “Hayden, how about a new contract?” and then, for sure, I would have returned.
But instead, I heard Milly’s voice and I felt no urgency to return. I had come to see Jamie and I meant to see him.