The Dark (2 page)

“But who sent you? How ever did you find me out?”

“The tenement landlord, duck. We’re busy about these wretched tenements, as you might guess, and so the landlords know us well.” I chanced, then, a look at the tome she had set aside on the bedclothes. It was
Arctic Explorations in Search of Sir John Franklin 1853,’54,’55
by that Dr. Elisha Kent Kane. The book, though battered as if from constant reading, was beautifully bound and heavy with
plates. “I recollect this. It was all the rage in its day. I can’t claim I’ve read it, mind.”

“I’d like you to leave now, Mrs. Whom-ever. Or vanish. I’m not particular.”

I kept my temper in check, but only with effort. “I was just making a little small talk. A little small talk often helps ease into an acquaintance. Anywise, I’ve no interest in your silly book. Why must everyone search for the famous when
they’re
lost, when
they’ve
died. It’s not as if their lives are worth more. God sees even the fall of a sparrow. Surely He does. Everyone says so … everyone.” I cleared my throat.

My patient studied me then in much the way a seamstress does when measuring one for a new fit-out. “If everyone says so, then, behold, it must be true.”

“And all that searching for him, that Sir Franklin, why it was wasted effort. He and all his men were dead as hobnails by the time that glory-hunting Dr. Kane even started on his expedition. He had no hope of bringing Franklin back from those Arctic wastelands, nor any of Franklin’s men.”

“Indeed? Well, that ‘glory-hunting’ Dr. Kane was my husband, no matter what in tunket you’ve heard. And so if you require a name, then you may have
Mrs
. Kane and none other.”

At which I realized just who I had in my care. “You’re one of the Fox sisters! From the heyday of all that Spiritualism. The one, yes, the one the papers set up with Dr. Kane. You’re a recognizable.”

“A
celebrity
, that’s the word. Or I was once.” She reluctantly admitted herself then to be Margaret Fox Kane, the middle sister of the three. “Ever in the middle between Katie and Leah. And now I am the last.”

“The last?” I said. And then I recalled how perhaps five years past there had been a lot of brouha among the Fox sisters three: public accusations and public confessions. Betrayals and recriminations. Reputations assaulted. Familial bonds rent asunder. That sort of thing. “Do not take offense, duck,” I continued. “But I think your Spiritualism is all chalk and nonsense. The dead are dead, the living live. And I, for one, would no more ask the dead their opinion than knock on the door of a rich man’s estate and
demand to partake in his luncheon. Because, really, who can bear to know what the dead think of them?”

She studied me again, all kindness now. She had the most candid brown eyes and gave the sense that if the truth ever escaped her, it was only because she allowed it to do so. “Well, that proves it.”

“Proves what?”

“That you’re not the angel of death. Nor one of his minions. I was convinced you were when you appeared in the vestibule, all in your black garb and haloed by that sulphurous Edison bulb.”

I was fleshy in those days, as I am now, and of good height, and I have this broad pink face from my Irish kin and a mass of crinkled hair, coppered at youth, silvered by then. And I wasn’t wearing black. I was wearing my best fit-out of Bismarck brown, and over this I had tied my work apron, which was white as cloud and abulge with on-hand supplies: bromide pills and iodine ointment, bandage wads and catgut ligatures. As well, certainly, a stethoscope and pocket mirror for the gauging of life and breath. And two guides, one on the etiquette of mourning, the other on the etiquette of dying (people may call them whimsical, outmoded tomes all they like, but they do offer succour. I have them even yet), by which I mean I scarcely looked like the angel of death.

“Do I have a scythe?” I demanded. “Am I of the masculine persuasion? Am I gaunt? Boney? Do I have a grim leer?” I was peeved, to be frank, and so I added there were worse things that could visit.

“Oh, the good grief, like what?” my patient asked, and then she laughed. She had a delightful, chortling laugh. Infectious.
We are all part of a universal prank
was what that laugh suggested. I asked then if I might examine her. She said no. I said I would not leave until I did so. “I must. It is for the records,” I explained. “The records are ever demanding.”

“Are they? Dandy-fine. And then you’ll leave me be?”

“Yes,” I said. I fetched my medical lamp from its safe compartment in my satchel, lifted the chimney glass, trimmed the wick and lit it with my safety matches, then watched the ingenious mantle grow a steady white light, brighter and cleaner even than the light of day.

“Whatever else have you got in that satchel of yours? A gasolier?”

My satchel, though capacious, could scarcely fit a gasolier, and I told her this fact. I then took up her wrist. I discovered a wiry pulse—indicating ossification of the veins—which, along with her yellowed eyes and tender skin suggested a general failing of the organs due to a long dependence on stimulants and alcohol, exacerbated by a complete uninterest in living. After this brief examination I told her I would be visiting her every afternoon.

“But you said you’d let me be. No. This will not do.”

“By which I meant let you be for
today
.”

“But I want to be alone when my last comes.”

“You can’t die alone, duck. It’s simply not done.” I brought out my notebook again and the pencil and a square of Indian rubber. “Now, I will require names. People to contact for your funeral arrangements, that is. And people to hold vigil and record your last words. They can be the same souls, naturally.”

“Ah, but there are no
souls
left to contact,” she replied without the least hint of self-pity.

“Come, duck. You can’t be all stark alone. Someone must be searching you out. Someone must be praying for you, worrying for you every moment. Someone must long to hear your last words. And as like they’re going mad from trying to find you, as like they’ll not ever recover from … and wish that …” I faltered and scrubbed a page with the Indian rubber, as if at some old unwanted wordings. (I own I was thinking of my son just then, and how I never found him on the battlefields of Bull Run, though I searched and searched.)

“Ah, hell and such,” my patient muttered, then sighed as if all-resigned.

Surely she is accepting her fate, I thought. But she maintained there was no one. She was the last of the Fox sisters three, the last of the Fox family even, and she was determined, quite determined, to die alone. “And do not even consider seeking assistance from the Spiritualist Society,” she added. “I am in bad standing with them. I do not want their interference, any more than I want yours.”

I reminded her then (quite firmly, I allow) of that supreme solace: the good death. Of the importance of finding peace with your Maker. Of giving your last words to your loved ones. Of composing your
mortal form for its last envisioning. “Oh, I know the good death is going from fashion, as if death
had
fashions like hats or hems, and that some folks wish to die in their sleep and so pass on without a single thought for others, but that is a dreadful habit, and selfish, to boot.”

“Well, yes.”

“And if there is truly no one, then I will be here for your last. I will record your last words if need be. Such is my duty.”

She gave that resigned sigh again. “Dandy-fine. But you must promise not to go to the Spiritualist Society.”

“Of course I promise. I cannot gainsay my patients’ wishes, even if those wishes are chalk and nonsense.
My
Society is clear, quite clear on this.”

“I’ve no doubt … Oh, and you must bring me some medicine, then—Rousseau’s brand and a whacking lot of it.”

I took a bottle of Dr. Mongar’s laudanum remedy out of my satchel. “Will this suffice?”

She eyed the bottle, all-cheered. “Proclaim the Medico Society sent you all you like. I say you’re God-sent.”

“Many do,” I owned, and poured her a tumbler-full.

“But I should call you Mrs. Mellon.”

“That is better than Mrs. Whom-ever.”

She chuckled and agreed, then drank down the laudanum with practised ease and set the tumbler on the nightstand just aside her bible box. This bible box, I should mention, was clearly made for a large, family bible. On the lid was a pretty bas-relief carving of entwined lilies.

“That is a handsome item,” I said, and indicated the box. “I could read a passage for you. Scriptures are ever a comfort.”

“It doesn’t hold a bible. I doubt it ever did. Only letters and accounts and clip-outs and other such ephemera.” At which she hefted up the box’s oddly thick and heavy lid. I had only a glimpse that day of the bible box’s contents. (For the records, however, I should mention that she eventually bequeathed the bible box to me, and that I have the box and all its contents in my possession still.)

Now, many of the letters were penned by the immediate Fox family and their friends, such as those reformist-minded Quakers
Amy and Isaac Post, and that infamous newspaperman Horace Greeley. But there was also a pack of love-sopped, demanding letters written to my patient by that Dr. Elisha Kent Kane. These “love letters” of Kane’s caused much brouha, more of which I will relate in good time. Also of note was the quantity of newspaper clip-outs, pamphlets, advertisements and endorsements pertaining to the Fox sisters, and a nearly equal quantity of such materials pertaining to one Reverend Chauncey Burr. He was the Fox sisters’ very own nemesis, and of him, too, I will relate.

The most important and revelatory papers, I need mention, were those penned by my patient’s father, John D. Fox, to his favoured daughter, Leah. These papers are an account of how he deserted his wife and first three children—Leah, David and Maria—and for ten long years. How he was a drunkard who gambled and blasphemed; how he was an all-about failure as a father and husband. How he, to be frank, hung his soul out for the Devil to snatch. And then how and why he returned to his family those ten years later, but as a tee-totalling, God-fearing Methodist (at which juncture he fathered my patient and her sister Katie). John’s conversion was all-thanks to one Brother Able, and as I shall tell in good time, that story is the under-stitching of the one at hand.

To resume. My patient shut the bible box and I put it aside for her. The laudanum was grabbing hold and her face taking on a dreamy cast. I was not amazed when, soon enough, she was laying out the past like a bolt of fine, densely patterned cloth and that, like many who are peephole to eternity, the past seemed as the present, the present of no import. Not that I solicited her story. I surely did not, not at first. All of us at the Medico Society know better than to encourage tales of regret and woe. Such tales become a burden. They hamper one’s duty and lead to melancholic thoughts. At the least they become entwined with one’s own interpretations, filtered through one’s own imaginings. With Mrs. Kane, however, my curiosity soon overcame these reservations. To explain: My patients often speak of the past, but their purposes vary. Some seek absolution. Some a road to comprehension. Some merely like to hear themselves prattle on. But Mrs.
Kane—or Maggie, as I called her by the end—had a more obscure purpose and this purpose, I came to think, had something to do with my own presence.

I should add that my patient spoke of her younger self as if she were some girl she had known intimately, but who had been a separate person withal. Such is what comes, I thought then, from taking on so many voices, and from making so many mistakes, mistakes that are incomprehensible to one’s present self (to this latter fact I can well attest).

“I surely loathed Hydesville,” she began. “My younger sister, Katie, and I both did. Hydesville was naught but a crossroads, a hamlet, the forlornest place in the world, we thought, and didn’t we just surl like wet cats when our parents moved us there from the lit-up bustle of Rochester. We hated being away from our adored sister Leah, who taught music in Rochester, and from her daughter, Lizzie, who was near our age and ever up for jack-fun, at least at first. This move happened in, yes, the autumn of’47. David, our grown brother, lived in Arcadia, near to Hydesville, and he was doing dandy-fine cultivating peppermint. Our father, John Fox, hoped to do the same. He was a blacksmith by trade but failed-up at near everything he put his hand to.”

She paused and reached for the laudanum. I considered, then gave her a measure more. “That Hydesville house,” she continued. “It was one of those little saltbox affairs, all damp and dull and ever strewn with little clumps of dank dirt no matter how we cleaned our shoes, to our poor, fretting mother’s dismay. It had no near-on neighbours and was quiet and dim as tomb within, even in the broad of day. And it was rumoured to be haunted by a murdered peddler. And here begins Spiritualism, Mrs. Mellon, the whole grand shebang of it: those rumours of a haunting, two bored and mischievous sisters, an encounter, and a curse.”

M
AGGIE SHOULD STOP
, turn back, but as always she clambers on past caution, clambers higher and higher up this tree that is older than
reckoning. Past a hangbird’s nest. Past branches sagged with apples of carmine and rose. She clambers as high as she can, up and up, into this azure and gold October day of 1847.