The Dark (67 page)

Maggie arrives in England that November to find Katie distraught from grief. She does her best to console her. Gently reminds Katie that at least she will spend out her days as a wealthy widow, surrounded by her children and her memories, or so Henry promised should he exit the mortal earth first.

In truth, Henry’s financial affairs make Horace Greeley’s look like child’s arithmetic. The mourning year passes and then four more. And when Henry’s finances are untangled at last, it seems there are heavy debts, non-transferable foreign properties, and that Katie will receive two hundred pounds. Not a penny more.

“Y
ou know what Elisha told me once?”

“To
put on your mitten, you silly kitten
?” I laughed at this. My patient did not.

“No, this was about the Hindoos and how they believe that one’s soul returns in a different body. If you’re good in one life, you get to be rich and happy in another. That’s what Elisha said.”

“What chalk and nonsense … and if you’re bad, what then?”

“Then you return in a poor and wretched body, obviously.”

“Ah, what did I do?”

“I’ve not a glimmer.”

“With the yarn, I meant.” I showed her the cover-all, the lax lines, the uneven ridging. “I suppose I need start all again.”

“That would be the practical thing.”

“Yes, and I need better light,” I added, and turned up the medical lamp. My patient blinked at the bright dance of flame.

“What-ever did you do that for, Katie?” she said, and looked past me.

Katie
? I looked to where my patient was looking, which was the vestibule (no Katie-shape was there) and then at the bible box, which was by her side, as it ever was by this time.

Leah is fanning herself against the August heat when the first scream comes. She drops the fan. At the second scream she rushes down her hallway. A crashing alike cymbals hurled. A silence. Leah presses her ear to the closed door of the second parlour, the one Katie has taken over for her séances. Hears a muffled commotion. And then: “Fiddle-dee-damn. Leave, then. Leave! The spirits want you gone.”

Leah thrusts open the door, then yanks the chain on the Edison bulb. Light floods over the séance attendees. They blink owlishly at the sudden glare. Stare in shock at Katie. Katie ignores them. Ignores Leah.

“Oh, Henry, darling,” Katie cries. “Mother’s here. Hush!”

Henry, slight and pale, stands by an upturned chair. He holds his jaw and whimpers, “It was Ferdie’s idea.”

Hs brother stifles a laugh. At twelve Ferdie could be mistaken for sixteen. No spirit lights stream from his eyes these days, Leah notes. Only the light of pure mischief.

The sitters rush to leave. A woman jams an old-fashioned bonnet on her silvered hair. “My person has never been so offended!”

“Hah, that I really doubt,” Katie says. “Anywise, you need not have kicked my poor Henry.”

“Then the brat shouldn’t have been under the table.”

“He’s sickly. It was only in fun.”

“Fun? Fun! He grabbed, my, my very … oh, I cannot say.”

“Your ankle?” Leah offers.

The woman blushes. Her grey-beard husband takes her elbow. “I shall not recommend this establishment to a single soul.”

“It is not an ‘establishment,’ sir,” Leah says coldly. “It is
my home
.”

Katie pulls Henry onto her lap as the sitters are ushered out, as Ferdie goes off to terrorize the birds in Leah’s aviary. “Here, sweet, would you like your favourite rhyme? Would that be a comfort?”

Henry nods, his thumb in his mouth.

Leah listens with disapproval. Katie treats Henry as if he were toddling still. And she never allows either boy out of her sight. Will not let them attend public school. Has hired a tutor instead. Does she think merely keeping them in view is what keeps them safe? Certainly she is deaf to Leah’s advice on the many ways to keep tabs on children. You can always spy on them, for example, or read their scribbling, or nonchalantly question their friends.

“Such a funny rhyme, don’t you think, Henry, darling?” Katie asks.

Henry nods.

“Now, I am going to tell you a story, my love, about the Czarina.”

“Yes! She was so pretty.”

“Not this again,” Leah puts in. “It is mere fancy, Henry.”

“Hush. It isn’t. Henry was there. He remembers everything.”

Henry pops his thumb out of his mouth. “Yes. She was beautiful and dressed all in blue silk with diamonds and pearls.”

Leah humphs at this. Katie ever insists that she and her boys were whisked off to the court of the Russian Czar not long after Henry’s death. As evidence she has a painted egg and a wooden doll that harbours smaller and smaller ones within, but this “evidence” could have been purchased in any Manhattan trinket shop. Katie’s stories grow grander at every telling—the Winter Palace hung with chandeliers the size of carriages. People skating on streets of ice as natural as if walking. The gratitude of the court for Katie’s assurance that the Czar would not be assassinated like his predecessor. “But do be careful whom you trust” was the spirits’ savvy advice.

Leah says, “Mark me, Henry, dear, royalty, which is the mere fortune of birth, should not be confused with reputation, which can only be earned.”

Katie whispers to Henry, “That’s twaddle-dee-dum. Your Aunt Leah has never been given an audience of royalty. She’s jealous, that’s all.”

“Jealous? Jealous? And what of Mrs. Pierce? The First Lady of our nation? What of all the people of high station and respectability
whom I call friend? They make up, well and truly, for one borscht-eating royal of dubious descent. Have you read my memoir? Well, have you, Katherina?”

“
Her
memoir?” Katie says to Henry. “Hah. She may take the credit but it was ghost-written, as everyone knows.”

“A ghost wrote it?” Henry asks in faint alarm. He slides from his mother’s lap and edges towards the door.

“It’s an expression, my darling,” Katie says. “People who can’t be bothered to put pen to paper will hire someone else to do so, and then swallow up all the credit for themselves.”

Leah glares at her sister. Feels that staccato-throb at her temple. Henry makes his escape. Katie tries to follow. Leah grabs her arm. How is it that Katie, little Katherina, has changed so? Motherhood has made her stubborn. Widowhood—of all things—has made her bitter. Her rancour fills the house. Distresses her boys, distresses both Leah and Daniel no end. Leah sniffs discreetly at Katie. Smells no brandy or rum, only that cloying perfume that Katie claims was given her by the Duke of Wellington’s son for her wedding to Henry Jencken those fifteen years ago. Well, the bottle must be magicked to last so long, because Katie smells so every day.

“Please, dear sister. It is just that I worry. I worry that you fill Henry’s mind with poppycock.”

“Well, I’m not going to remind him and Ferdie about the rotting cabbages and the dead peasants in the ditches, am I?”

“You should not have taken the boys. They could have died in that cold.”

“I thought you doubted my Russian adventure. Never mind, fiddle-dee-damn, it hardly matters where we are. They’re safer with me. They’re always safer with me.” She shakes off Leah’s hand and hurries off, calling for Henry. Calling for Ferdie.

Leah collapses into a tasselled chair. Feels the force of her seventy-two years. Tears drip hotly from her eyes. She has tried and tried. She insisted Katie and the boys stay at her home in hopes of a reconciliation and a return to the fine old days. Indeed, if only Katie would read Leah’s memoir,
The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism
, she would recall the jolly fun they had in their heyday.
The Missing
Link
avoids all those distasteful family squabbles. Avoids all mention of alcohol and accusations. Emphasizes how the world was against the Fox sisters three; but how they continually triumphed with the support of good and worthy people. Tells of the astounding evidence of the spirits: the tables levitating, the objects flying about like the very birds, the pealing bells, the spirit writings, the glowing full-form manifestations, the satisfied clients one and all. Leah sent a copy of her memoir to Katie when she was still in England. She sent one to Maggie also, though she had not spoken to Maggie in years. Surely that was a peace offering to Maggie, if anything was. But not a syllable has come from Maggie in response. And neither has Katie ever mentioned the book. Leah would rather hear their criticism than their silence. Silence is a giant maw, hungering for bad thoughts, and another reason Leah insisted Katie and her boys stay with her and Daniel. The supply of young relatives has been run through. All are grown. As for her daughter, Lizzie … Where does she live now? The Catskills, yes, which is still too far to ever visit her own mother, apparently. Thus Leah has only the chatter of her birds and the chewing sound of Daniel’s jaws for company.

She dabs expertly at her eyes. Stands with her old vigour. For the next three days she is unfailingly kind to Katie. She refuses to rise to any argument. Does not criticize the boys’ presence at séances. She is kindness and understanding itself. This only seems to make Katie more cantankerous.

On the fourth day of Leah’s new tack, she wakes to find the boys pottering about the kitchen in their nightshirts and Katie gone. There is an upended bottle in Katie’s room and a scrawled note:
Going on home to Rochester
.

I
was late arriving this day—the first of March, according to my pocket calendar. I had been out searching for gin and laudanum and had lost my way in the Manhattan streets. Buildings spring up so quickly. The streets and signage change. It is a wonder, to be frank, that anyone gets to anyplace.

Up and up. I was already proclaiming my apologies and thudding down my satchel when I stopped. I could not believe what I saw, by which I mean nothing. The bed was empty. The garret was empty. My patient was gone.

I hollered her name. Twirled about. There was nowhere to hide a mechanical, as I have said, never mind a body. I discovered her, at last, on the far side of her bed and was amazed I had not spied her straightaway. “Oh, Maggie, do come on now.”

“She’s gone.”

“What are you talking about? Oh, never mind,” I said, and tucked her in and apologized a good dozen times (I was getting well practised at this apologizing). I gave her the laudanum, my hands ashake.

“And so I went to Rochester,” she said, after a time, and told me all about that.

I should mention that she was confusing herself with Katie by this time. An unsurprising thing, considering how entwined they were. Considering how near she was drawing to her mortal end.