Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille by James van Pelt Page B

whole ghost theory seemed suspect. Certainly the apparition in the window could have been her imagination, and maybe she’d messed up her own clothes in the dresser in the middle of the night. She’d never done that before, but she’d never moved into a house of her own either, nor had she had night sweats.
    Which was Joan’s point an hour later as they hung the bedroom curtains. “There’s numerous medical reasons for profuse sweating. You’re young for it, but it could be early signs of menopause.”
    Joan pushed a hook into the drape’s back while Meadoe held the fabric up. None of the windows were standard width, and the curtains really should have been special ordered, but Meadoe couldn’t afford that. Custom curtains were on the lengthening list of home improvements. She tried to keep her tone light. “Oh, no. It couldn’t be that. My grandmother had a child when she was forty-three.” A medical condition? she thought. Her father spent four months in a hospital dying of colon cancer when she was twelve. She remembered how frail his arms became—how thin his face. Cancer killed her grandfather too. Slow mushroom clouds erupted in his lungs, a part of Hiroshima’s omnipresent past.
    Joan took three hooks from her chest pocket and moved down the drape, pushing each one in. “That’s the benign explanation. Anxiety provoked by severe repression could cause it too—a purely psychological symptom—but night sweats can accompany diabetes, M.S., AIDS, polio and a half dozen other things I can’t think of off the top of my head. First things first, we ought to get your estrogen checked.”
    In Meadoe’s bedroom, Joan examined the wall for a long time, touching some of the pictures, then moving back with her head cocked, as if she were in an art gallery. “Whew! And you think this was all done by a sixteen-year-old?”
    “No more than a month before he died.” Now that Meadoe had seen the pattern that drew her eye to Tokyo Rose, it seemed it should be obvious to Joan too, but Joan didn’t seem to notice it.
    “I always liked ’40s hair styles. They struck me as more . . . deliberate. This low maintenance look we all go for now just isn’t as romantic. There must be a half a can of hair spray on that woman’s head. Oh, look at that.” She had found Tokyo Rose. “She looks a little like you, Meadoe. Did you notice that? She’s beautiful.”
    “We all look alike to you.” Meadoe laughed.
    “There’s more of the west in you than the east, girl.” Joan put a stool under the curtain rod and hung the drapes. “There, now you won’t be wondering about peeping Toms in the shrubbery.”
    Over a glass of wine, Meadoe told Joan about her scare the night before and the dream. Meadoe looked into her glass as she spoke. Remembering the touch on her back raised new goosebumps. She could still feel the fingers over her skin.
    “Doesn’t the timing of these things strike you as fortuitous?” said Joan. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious that the evening I bring up a delicate topic in our session—ask you what you fear most—your subconscious supplies fears. Of course, the face in the window is symbolic in some way. It could be your repressed self looking out at you, or it could be Christopher Towne coming back in your imagination.” Joan laughed. “Or it could have been a funny trick of light. Not everything has a psychological explanation. The dream now, that is interesting. What were you wearing in it?”
    Meadoe shook Casablanca from its plastic box and put it in the VCR. “I don’t know. I suppose a bathing suit. He touched bare skin.”
    Joan settled onto the couch after slipping a coaster under her wine glass. “How do you know that he was a he? You said you only saw feet.”
    “I . . . I don’t know that either. In the dream I assumed it was a man.”
    Meadoe sat on the couch. Joan moved over to accommodate. It was more of a love seat than a proper couch, not large enough for Meadoe to stretch