Victoria Frankenstein, III: Part 11

 

Nine

            Right then I was close to being absolutely certain of something—that I was dreaming. Or … that I was completely insane. Would the unsmiling men in white coats be arriving soon? With straitjackets and a court order to transport me to … to … to wherever?

            Here I was, gathered together in Buffalo, New York, in a café with no electricity, with a custodian from my old school in southern Ohio, with a woman who’d last been spotted being sucked up into a tornado (and appearing to like it!), with a man who’d been dead for more than 150 years, and with a kid from my current school, a kid I hardly knew at all.

            “You’re not dreaming,” said Aunt Claire.

            “And you’re not insane,” said Mr. Leon.

            I smiled but thought: Oh, yeah? Then how are you able to read my mind right now?

            But I decided to play along. Maybe I’d wake up in my own bed—very soon—or in an insane asylum. Either one would be far more comfortable than dealing with all this confusion swirling around me.

            William Godwin looked at me and smiled, then said, “I understand that we’re somewhat related.”

            I looked. Is he serious? “Well,” I said, “I’m related to a character in your daughter’s novel—though I don’t know how such a thing is even possible.”

            “All is possible in fiction,” he said.

            “Is this fiction?”

            “Fiction is a story. Our lives are stories.”

            This was getting way too heavy for me. “I see,” I said, though I felt totally blind. Then I added, “What are you doing here?”

            “I have no idea,” he said. “But let’s see how the plot unfolds …”

            Now that I could agree with.

Mr. Godwin looked around him—and surely did not recognize anything at all—so totally different from his early nineteenth-century world.

But he just shrugged and smiled—as if he figured this was some kind of fantasy or dream and decided he might as well just go with it.

“What’s our next move?” I asked the group.

We all looked at one another. And all of them said (all of them but me): “Niagara Falls.”

***

            I clearly saw I had no vote, so I said nothing. We all headed out to the Karmann Ghia, where I said, “There is absolutely no way we can all fit …”

            But we did.

            I looked around—we were not all there. “Where’s Aunt Claire?” I asked. “And John?”

            Mr. Leon said, “She has … other ways … of traveling. And John, as you well know, has a play to perform tonight.”

            “But how will he …? And about our motel rooms?”

            Here came the fog again—in the atmosphere, in my brain. And when I emerged from it, I could hear the surge of the river, the Falls, and I knew I was once again at the site of my life’s greatest horror.

            We got out of the car in the lot near the spot where I’d seen Gil go into the river and disappear. As we drew closer, I felt someone squeeze my hand and say, “I’m with you.”

            I looked. It was Harriet Eastbrook, my best friend from middle school.

            I nearly passed out and fell into the river myself.

            Which would have been appropriate: I already felt as if I were being swept along in a torrent of events that I just did not understand.

            “I won’t even ask how you got here,” I said to her. I didn’t really care how she got there, to tell the truth. She was the best friend I’d ever have, and seeing her there—feeling her hand—erased any true questions I had.

            “I’m actually glad you don’t understand,” she said. “Because I have no idea. I was back at our house, practicing some cheerleading moves in the back yard, and—”

            “Let me guess,” I said. “A fog settled in, and when it cleared, you were here.”

            “You always were the smart one,” said Harriet.

            “And you were always the one I loved most.”

            Mr. Leon interrupted us. “Vickie,” he said, “this is where you saw—”

            “Yes.”

            “Did you see any sign of Harriet’s father? Of Dr. Eastbrook?”

            “I didn’t,” I started to say.

            “But I did,” said Harriet. Everyone looked at her. “Or thought I did, anyway.”[i]

            “And we both saw you,” I said to Mr. Leon.

            “We’ve talked about that,” he said softly. “I told you: I got here just moments after—too late to stop Gil.”

            I looked at Harriet, who nodded at me. I was about to share something only she and I had ever talked about—and, as usual, Harriet knew what I was going to say before I said it.

            “And, Mr. Leon, when you were here, did you see … it?”

            “I did.”          

***

            “It,” of course, was the creature. The one that Mary Shelley had described in Frankenstein. Her creature—or something very much like it—had actually rescued me—pulled me from the Niagara River after Blue Boyle had pushed me in. Then … the creature disappeared over the Falls.

            William Godwin came over to stand with us. “Niagara Falls,” he said in awe. “I’ve never seen it.” He looked at me. “You probably know that Mary wrote a novel that has an important scene here.”

            “Yes,” I said. “I’ve read Lodore.”[ii]

            “Not one of her best novels,” said William Godwin. He saw disappointment in my eyes. “But,” he added, “I was near the end of my life—only about a year left, in fact.”  He stepped away a little. “She’d never actually seen the Falls …” And he wandered off.

            “Who is that?” asked Harriet. “And why is he dressed like some guy in an old movie?”

            “You won’t believe it,” I said.

            “Try me.”

            “That is William Godwin.”

            Harriet just shrugged—she had no idea who that was.

            So I told her. “Mary Shelley’s father.”

           “You’re right,” said Harriet. “I don’t believe you.”

***

We all headed down below the Falls to look around for any sign of anything—anything that might give us some sort of clue about where Dr. Eastbrook might be—where Blue Boyle might be—where Father might be.

And while we were down there, William Godwin gave us a hint of where we might look next.

He was talking about the Falls that roared above us, and then he said, “There was my daughter’s use of the Falls in her novel, but thinking about that has reminded me of another good novel that has a falls in it.”

Everybody looked at him.

“Not this falls,” he said, “but another one.”

“And the novel you mentioned?” I asked.

“The Last of the Mohicans,” he said.

Mr. Leon was dismissive. “That’s nice,” he said, “but what does that book have to do with anything?”

“Probably nothing,” he replied. “I was just … musing, I guess.”

“Did you know James Fenimore Cooper?” I asked.

He looked at me with surprise. “You’ve heard of him?”

“Yes, and I’ve read that novel—as well as those others in his Leatherstocking Tales.”[iii]

“Amazing,” he said. “I’d always heard that young people in America were pretty much illiterate.”

“Well,” said Harriet, “you heard wrong. Maybe in your day it was true, but no more. And Vickie, well, she’s read everything!”

“That’s a bit much,” I said.

I turned to Mr. Godwin. “Did you know Cooper?” I asked. “I mean, you were alive for much of the same time.”

“I did know him,” Mr. Godwin said. “We met and talked on three separate occasions in London in 1828 when he was in the city for a visit.”[iv]

“1828,” I said. “He’d published The Last of the Mohicans in 1826.”

“Absolutely right,” said Mr. Godwin. “We talked about that book, too. Oh, and Mary also liked his books—she called him ‘Leather-Stockings.’”[v]

I was starting to get excited. “I think I’m beginning to understand why you’re here,” I said to Mr. Godwin.

“I’m glad someone does,” he said.

“My father reads all the time, too—and he loves those Cooper novels about Natty Bumppo—about ‘Leather-Stockings’.”

Mr. Leon said, “I’m starting to see where you’re headed. You think your father has somehow left for you a subtle clue about his whereabouts. A clue that exists only in your memory—and hopes?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think you’re absolutely right.”

A fog descended on the river, and when it lifted, moments later, William Godwin was gone.

 

From Blue Boyle

I did not push you. Into the river. Not on purpose. Somebody made me do it. I … I … I am not sure why?????

---

[i] Vickie mentions this in Part 2 of her Papers.

[ii] Mary Shelley published this novel in 1835.

[iii] In The Pioneers, Cooper tells us what this means: “On his feet were deer-skin moccasins, ornamented with porcupines' quills, after the manner of the Indians, and his limbs were guarded with long leggings of the same material as the moccasins, which, gartering over the knees of his tarnished buckskin breeches, had obtained for him among the settlers the nickname of Leather-Stocking” (Library of America edition, 21).

[iv] This is true.

[v] Again, this is true—although Mary did not meet Cooper. In 1832 she did publish a book review of his little-known novel The Bravo, and in it she praised the Leatherstocking Tales; she liked The Last of the Mohicans.