The Dark (34 page)

“Won’t this be a smacking surprise?” Lemira whispers to Maggie.

“Well, yes, I’d say so,” Maggie whispers back, and gathers her defiance, squelches her fear. Fear of what? She is near grown, can make her own decisions. Hasn’t Lemira said so? Hasn’t Lemira said women are as capable as some men?

“Dear people,” Leah calls out, from where she holds court on the settee. “Before the spirits come forth I would like my dear associate Calvin Brown to read the latest edition of our learned Mr. Gray’s illustrious newspaper, the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
.”

Maggie shifts for a better view of Calvin as he stands and clears his throat and holds up the newspaper. Reads:

Calvin finishes reading to claps, faint cheers. Only now does Leah begin her séance, shutting her eyes and tap-tapping her fingers, as if to heavenly music. The drapes are drawn, the lamps and candles doused.

Rap. Knock. The sounds are faint. Even pitiful. Leah’s cheek twitches. She grimaces. Maggie grimaces herself, albeit inwardly. Fortunately no one else in the murky room has Maggie’s high standards for knocks. Instead the callers listen with awed concentration while Calvin works the alphabet board. Seems the spirit holding forth is Benjamin Franklin, that old standby.

Calvin calls out the letters and words. As he does, a man dressed all in black, like some ambulant obelisk, copies them onto a slate.

“Did you get that, Mr. Gray?” Calvin asks.

“I have, blessed be the spirits,” Mr. Gray replies, then reads from the slate:
“Ruth. Lies. Led by Burr.”

“By Spirit Land!” Leah cries. “Does Mr. Franklin have more to say?”

The taps laboriously spell out:
Burr. Fraud. Court. Sander
.

“Sander? Who is—” Leah asks.

“Perhaps Mr. Franklin meant ‘slander’?” Calvin suggests, and pats his mouth with a handkerchief. “As in, he is slandering Leah and should pay for it.”

Katie pinches Maggie’s wrist. Maggie stifles her giggle. They are both excellent nowadays at stifling and so the giggle is the barest sound, alike the rustle of a crinoline.

Leah’s head swivels. “Girls? Margaretta? Katherina? Is that you, dear children?”

Lemira ushers them forth. Someone draws the drapes and the afternoon spills into the room. The sitters make a commotion.

“Here are the famous little girls themselves!”

“Now the spiritual battery will be boosted.”

“Greetings, sweet girls.”

Sweet girls?
Little
girls? Katie, though close on fifteen, might still be called a girl. But Maggie? She is nearly eighteen. Beaus will soon
be dropping at her feet like so many apples. In fact, she and Katie talk of little else but beaus these days.

“And you, Lemira, what a pleasant surprise,” Leah declares, though it is not surprise at all that registers in her voice. “And where is my dearest mother?”

Lemira says, “Mrs. Fox was utterly exhausted after her sojourn at the Greeleys’ and so we, that is Amy and Isaac and I, thought it the very best if she rested in Rochester for a time, and that I accompany the girls instead.”

“
You
thought? My spirits, how considerate of you all.”

Once the sitters have left, Leah, in a sparking fury, paces round and round. A card holder catches her sleeve and tumbles to the rug. Calvin gathers up the calling cards. Offers a nervous smile that Leah ignores. Maggie holds tight to Katie’s hand. Maria and little Charlie hasten out with the sitters. Calvin now excuses himself, claiming exhaustion. And Lemira? She nods and nods as if Leah is being entirely reasonable and not shouting:.

“Bringing the girls to Cincinnati, Lemira? You alone? Honest to … I cannot believe that you would do this, a friend. Are you not a friend?”

“I am. I am a most excellent friend, Leah. That’s not the point—”

“It
is
the point. It is! I am betrayed.” Leah stands in front of Maggie and Katie. “By you, Margaretta, but mostly by you, Katherina.”

“I didn’t tell old Ruth. I didn’t! I’d remember!” Katie shouts. “How many times have I got to say that?”

Leah wrings her hands at Maggie and Katie—not pathetically, Maggie notes, but as if to hold back from swatting them both.

“I shall telegraph Mother.” Leah declares. “Yes. I shall. You two left without her permission and with this, this woman!”

“Lemira,” Lemira reminds her.

Leah scowls at Katie and Maggie. “Mother shall come and put you to rights.”

“Ma will?” Maggie asks.

Leah takes several deep breaths, then forces out a smile. “Oh, you two do these things and then throw it all on my shoulders. Come
now, this woman cannot ‘manage’ the two of you. Not in any sense of the word. She does not know you as I do.”

Maggie looks over at Katie. The understanding floats between them that perhaps this was not such a swell idea after all. Lemira called on them in Rochester shortly after they arrived there from the Greeleys’. She offered to be their new manager and explained how she had easily gleaned that the spirits often needed a helping hand or two; that they could not always manifest on their own. “But why should clients be disappointed because of that?”

Why indeed? Maggie thought. And why argue with Lemira? She is woman known for piety, devotion, honesty. Is a determined abolitionist and suffragette, just like their beloved Amy Post. And Lemira has none of Leah’s temper. She has even promised that the money will be more equitably divided. Promised them the freedom to attend dances and parties, drink champagne for breakfast if they like, a habit that Leah has been quick to criticize. “And not to worry,” Lemira said. “I’ll wholly convince your sister.”

But she hasn’t. Not yet. The two of them, Leah and Lemira, have been at it hammer and tongs for a good half-hour now. They ignore the girls. What in tunket do they take us for? Maggie wonders, as she and Katie perch on the settee. Part of the upholstery pattern? Pretty, flat-drawn flowers for everyone to sit upon? Good grieving Christ, but she could use a refreshment. The only thing about, however, is a mug of leftover brandied coffee. It is tepid, but better than nothing. She and Katie pass it silently between them.

A few moments later Leah stands over them, Lemira close behind. “Lemira and I have agreed to hear your opinions in this matter.”

“Our opinions?” Maggie and Katie query in unison.

“Yes. Lemira says that you are eager to tour Cincinnati with her. She says that you have no compunctions about leaving me as the solo force against our greatest, most diabolical enemy, that addle-wit Chauncey Burr.”

“I didn’t say that, I—” Lemira begins.

“You are both welcome to go with her, of course. I have no other claim on you except sisterly love and devoted affection. And in all truth, Cincinnati will be a great triumph. It is already chock
with followers and boasts more mediums of its own than any other city. They will welcome the famous Fox sisters—well, the two of them.” Leah looks now to Maggie. “But recall that where many believers reside, an equal number of enemies also reside, those who would like to see us tarred and feathered, or trussed up like a Yuletide goose for slow roasting. And Cincinnati is poorly stocked with police and famous for its mobs. And Margaretta, you know you cannot abide a mob, not after I rescued you from that business in Troy.”

Maggie sips the brandied coffee that is really quite cold, really quite awful.

“I am sorry, Margaretta,” Leah continues. “My spirits, I am. I should not have mentioned a mob. It is just that bad luck follows us when we are discordant. Have you not noted this?”

Eventually it is decided. Katie, who is the most accustomed to giving spirit sittings on her own, will go with Lemira to Cincinnati. Maria and Charlie will accompany them. Maggie will remain in Cleveland with Calvin and Leah, who, as Maggie discovers over the following week, is more interested in consultations with the lawyer Joel Tiffany than in consultations with any ghost.

“What do you say, Margaretta,” Leah asks one sunny afternoon. “Does ten thousand dollars sound a sufficient amount to demand as compensation for Burr’s disgraceful attacks upon our honour? That is the amount dear Joel has suggested.”

Maggie nearly spits out her claret. “Sufficient? Leah, that’s a staggering lot. A fortune. How can you even conjure up that much?”

“In a snap.”

“Or, or, well, spend it?”

Leah now gives her rare, genuine laugh. “That shall be even easier, I need not consult anyone or anything on that score.”

Maggie is mulling over the possibility that, yes, she, too, might easily spend that money on clothes, shoes and lace, when the telegram arrives from Cincinnati. Her hopes for riches are quickly forgotten. Little Charlie has fallen deathly ill.

At this news, Leah takes to her bed. Maggie finds her muttering and groaning, Calvin hovering near.

“Fetch cold water, Cal, a cloth,” Maggie orders. She pats Leah’s shoulder. “Poor sis. You were right. Bad luck happens when we’re at odds. I’m sorry.”

Leah’s eyes spring open. “Charlie must return here. The spirits have said so.”

“Leah, it’s me, Maggie. Margaretta.”

“The spirits cannot be ignored.”

“But that’d be perilous. He can’t travel when he’s grevious sick. It’s not—”

Leah throws off the bedclothes and stands. “Only I can save him.”

Katie, Lemira and Maria rush Charlie back from Cincinnati as Leah orders. Leah bundles Charlie into bed, sends for Cleveland’s finest doctors. “Death is imminent,” these doctors pronounce. Maggie watches aghast as placid, pious Maria tears her hair and screams, “Not again! No! God’s got my Ella. Damn him. Ain’t He satisfied? Leah, don’t you let this happen.”

Let
? Maggie thinks, as Leah vows again that she will save little Charlie. She plies the boy with some willow bark concoction sent by Isaac, refuses to allow even the forlorn hope of bloodletting and hot-cupping. “Benjamin Franklin advises against such antiquated means,” Leah tells Maria. “He considers them poppycock. Mortals require their life fluids. It is something he has discovered in the other realm. Do you not agree, Margaretta? Katherina?”

Maggie dumbly nods, as does Katie.

Days pass and Charlie, to everyone’s astonishment, recovers and becomes his hale little self again.

Leah refuses credit. She tells her family that it was only the spirits working through her. “I am a woman of modest background and little educated. I do not have tremendous intelligence. But the spirits
have
granted me tremendous gifts, and I promise I shall use these gifts only for the greater good.”

What a peculiar thing to say to her intimates, Maggie thinks. It’s as if we’re just another audience, as if we don’t know her at all.

“C
HARLIE LIVED, THEN?”
I asked.

“Indeed, yes. He lives even yet, though far out West.”

“I am amazed. And gladdened,” I said, and in some surprise. For I
was
glad and amazed, and delighted, to boot. For not long past I had only known jealousy at stories of children who survive terrible odds. Not jealousy, perhaps. No. But resentment, I suppose. Why should theirs survive and not mine?

“I am, yes, very glad,” I repeated, but my patient had eased to sleep.

I knitted on for a time. Presently, there came a thud—soft but definite. I suspended my knitting (my patient was still sleeping fast) and rose and looked about until I saw the tiny, cinder-coloured creature on the ledge outside the centre window. The bird was stunned and looked astonished, too, that he could not merely fly on through empty space. That window was the centre fixed one, as I have said, and so I tapped the panes hoping he would rouse himself before a hawk swooped down.

I thought then of my son. When he was five he found a hatchling in the switchgrass. The hatchling was of hideous aspect, bulge-eyed and skinned-looking, as they ever are, and yet my son lifted it up and warmed it by the stove and fed it crushed worms and prayed for its recovery and loved it, in all, as if it were a thing of beauty. When the bird vanished, Mr. Mellon boasted he had eaten it. He made ogre faces and laughed until I threw his supper in his face. A beef dodger, if I recall.

I tapped at the window again. At last the bird shuffled off the ledge and dropped away. I turned at a rustling and saw that my patient was quite awake.

“I’m sorry if I woke you, duck.”

“The hawks are worrisome,” she said, as if I had spoken my thoughts.