Authors: Noëlle Sickels

The Medium (7 page)

BOOK: The Medium

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Lloyd was out of the hospital in a week, walking without crutches or cane after six weeks. He still got headaches sometimes, but less and less often. Mrs. Mackey said he'd probably be dead if he didn't have such a hard head, but that it was his hard head that got him in trouble in the first place. Hadn't she warned him over and over about that intersection, and wouldn't he always tell her not to be a worrywart?

In the excitement that day, no one except Emilie had wondered how Helen knew about the accident so soon. Helen explained that she'd heard the squeal of tires, and having just spotted Lloyd leaving on his bike, she'd feared the worst and run out to see. It was the first large lie Helen had ever told.

Helen watched Lloyd's homecoming from her bedroom window. Billy went down the walk to meet the Checker cab, while his older sister held back Linda, who was trying desperately to get to her mother inside the big, exciting yellow car at the curb. Lloyd emerged slowly, hotly refusing the cabbie's offer to carry him. Billy stayed beside his brother as he struggled with his crutches, but made no attempt to assist him. Mrs. Mackey circled her sons like a collie herding sheep.

Lloyd had the air of a wounded soldier. It was the effect, mainly, of the bandage around his head, but also of his gallant insistence on making it under his own steam. At least, that was how soldiers were presented in the history books at school, as men who did not act hurt when they really were, men who did
not ask for special consideration just because they'd had bad luck.

Helen thought repeatedly of Lloyd as a soldier in the weeks that followedâwhen she saw him in a chair in the backyard with a blanket on his lap, or shuffling up and down the driveway trying out his cane, or running his hand gingerly over the long red scar that curved across his shaved scalp. If she let her eyes go a bit out of focus, Helen could see again the shimmering light she'd noticed around him the day of the accident. There was always a narrow, milky band close to his body, and one or two layers of color around this. The colors changed from time to time. Orange occurred most often. It was the right color for Lloyd, Helen decided, a confident, proud color.

Sometimes at school, Helen would look up from writing out spelling words or plotting graph points, to scout the lights around one of her classmates. It worked best if she didn't stare directly at her subject, but off to one side.

Each individual had a characteristic color that was almost always present and others that came and went. In trying to understand the colors, it helped to know a person's basic nature, plus his or her immediate circumstances. Brown all the time apparently denoted a liar, yet someone who was outlined in brown during a history test was probably just confused. Rosie's main color was a happy, lively pink, but when fat Ron tripped her, the pink was shot through with angry red. Red could also mean someone was afraid, just as bright yellow seemed to say someone was having fun making something, like during art period, while dull yellow said someone was being selfish, like when Mary Steltman wouldn't let Ginny Taylor try her new jacks, even though everyone knew Ginny was the best player in school.

Helen's father had said he wouldn't allow her to go to any more seances, and she didn't regret it. She didn't like the hungry way people looked at her, even people she'd known all her life,
like Mrs. Durkin and Mr. Grauer. She supposed seeing the lights was linked to what Nanny called her “gift,” but it felt more like a knack, like how Rosie could wiggle her ears. Helen considered reading the colors simply a game. It didn't get anyone excited because it was a secret. The one time she had put it to use, that first time with Lloyd, it had enabled her to help Billy not feel so scared.

Once Helen had worked out a system of meanings for the colors, she sought out the lights less frequently. For one thing, her interest was flagging, and for another, Miss Thompson kept reprimanding her for not paying attention. She'd even had to stay in at recess one day to write “I must not daydream” a hundred times on the blackboard. Occasionally, she'd still perceive a glow around someone when she wasn't trying, most often the red spikes of anger or fear, or the green shimmer of beginning illness, but after the blackboard humiliation, she resolved not to get distracted again.
November
1937

During the week before Thanksgiving, Miss Thompson foreshortened afternoon lessons so that the eighth-graders could collect decorations from all the classes and put them up around the school. Hallway bulletin boards and the auditorium windows were decked with construction paper Pilgrim's hats, leaf rubbings, hand-print turkeys, and cornhusk dolls. A huge papier-mache cornucopia graced the counter in the principal's office. The whole of Wednesday morning was given over to weaving baskets out of strips of shirt cardboard and attaching tissue paper carnations to the handles. The Women's Club would fill the baskets with walnuts and tangerines and peppermint candies for the County Home for Orphans.

Wednesday night, Rosie and Helen were playing Scrabble on Helen's dining-room table. Spicy aromas of pumpkin and apple pies curled in from the kitchen.

“Nanny made these for you girls,” Emilie said, putting down a plate of baked pie crust trimmings that had been folded into triangles filled with cinnamon, sugar, and melted butter.

“And when you're done with your game, I want you to take a pie across the street to the Steltmans.”

“Is Mrs. Steltman still sick?” Rosie asked.

“I'm afraid so. I saw her yesterday, and she's as thin as a stick. Her sister's coming to make their dinner tomorrow, or they wouldn't have any, likely.”

Emilie turned to go back to the kitchen, then paused in the doorway.

“Why don't you ask Mary over to play?”

Rosie, whose back was to Emilie, rolled her eyes at Helen. They didn't much care for the company of Mary Steltman, who had strong tendencies to whining and telling tales.

“Mary doesn't like Scrabble,” Helen said quickly.

“Well, you might think of something else to do,” Emilie replied, but her tone of voice said she wasn't going to push it.

It was dark when they crossed the street to the Steltmans'. Helen carried the warm, heavy pie wrapped in a clean dish towel, and Rosie held a jug of whipping cream carefully upright.

When Mary opened the door, she didn't look especially pleased to see them. But when her mother called in a husky voice to ask who it was, she had to step back and let them in. They followed her into the living room.

It was a small room, crammed with overstuffed furniture covered in floral chintz. A fire blazed in the fireplace, and to Helen, fresh from the crisp November night, the room felt overheated, the air stale and vaguely sour. Mrs. Steltman sat in an easy chair with afghans around her shoulders and across her legs. The thinness Emilie had described was evident in her caved-in face and in one bony hand fidgeting with an edge of the lap rug.

“So thoughtful,” she said, when Helen explained their errand. She was smiling, but she looked sad and terribly tired.

Mary received the bundled plate from Helen, and after letting her mother lift a corner of the towel to admire the pie, she took it to the kitchen at the back of the house. Rosie accompanied her, valiantly chattering about whether the pond might freeze this weekend and if Mary had gotten her skate blades sharpened yet and how she would have to use her brother's old hockey skates again this season but was hoping for figure skates for Christmas.

At Mrs. Steltman's insistence, Helen sat on the end of the couch near her chair. There was the usual exchange about how she was liking school and how her family was, and then they fell quiet, both of them directing their gazes to the fire, whose occasional crackles kept the silence from feeling awkward. When Mrs. Steltman sighed audibly, Helen turned to look at her.

The woman was still staring into the flames, either unaware of Helen's attention or ignoring it, and around her glowed the lights. They were different from any Helen had encountered before, sky blue with silver sparks, and there was a hole in them near her stomach. As Helen was puzzling over this, she sensed the presence of someone else in the room. Twisting around, she expected to find Mary and Rosie, but instead an old man was standing at the hall door. He was looking at Mrs. Steltman, and his eyes shone with kindness and concern. He took two steps forward and stopped. Helen checked on the sick woman, but she continued to watch the fire, obviously sunk deep in her own thoughts.

Suddenly, Helen knew who the old man was, as certainly as if he'd spoken. He was Mrs. Steltman's father, and he'd come to help her die. His being was so gentle and loving, Helen felt no fear at this knowledge. To the contrary, she saw that Mrs. Steltman had been suffering for a long time, and that death
would be a release for her. Helen knew that Mary and Mary's father and Mrs. Steltman's sister would be very sad when she left them, but surely they would come to see that it was better for her than living on in pain and discouragement.

At the sound of Rosie's laughter from the hallway, the old man disappeared and Mrs. Steltman looked away from the fire.

“Sorry, dear, I guess I dozed off for a moment,” she said, though Helen hadn't seen her eyes close.

“Did you dream?”

“Dream? I don't know. I suppose maybe I did.”

“Did you dream about â¦ about a person?”

Mrs. Steltman appeared briefly startled, then she shook her head slowly.

“What a queer child you are, Helen.”

Mary and Rosie burst into the room, both giggling. It was hard to get Mary to laugh at the best of times, and since her mother fell ill six months earlier, she'd been even more somber. Helen guessed that after seeing Mrs. Steltman's condition, the soft-hearted Rosie had made a real effort.

“Go on, you silly girls,” Mrs. Steltman scolded jokingly. “Let a person have some peace.”

“Want to go out back and watch for shooting stars?” Mary offered.

“Sure,” Rosie agreed.

Helen was the last one out of the room, and when she glanced back, she saw that Mrs. Steltman's father had returned and was standing closer to her.

There was no moon, so the sky was populous with stars. The Milky Way was clearly visible through the leafless tree branches. Mary had brought out a couple of old, moth-eaten blankets. She spread one on the ground, and when they had all lain down, Rosie in the middle, they arranged the other blanket over themselves, with much tugging and good-natured squabbling.
Once settled, they lay scanning the sky and listening to the wind brush through the tall pines at the end of the yard. The top blanket was scratchy under Helen's chin, but she rather liked the cozy setup. She was almost able to forget the tough times ahead for poor Mary. If only there were some way to reassure her in advance.

“My mother says a shooting star is an angel bringing someone an important message,” Rosie said.

“That's daffy,” Mary scoffed. “Everyone knows shooting stars are
meteors.”

“It's not daffy,” Rosie bridled. “It's a pretty story, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or the tooth fairy.”

“Baby stuff,” Mary insisted.

“Stories aren't just for babies,” Rosie countered. “Stories are fun. Or sometimes they're exciting.”

“Or sometimes sad,” Helen put in. “But sad in a good way.”

“Sad in a good way?” Mary said scornfully.

“Well, sometimes when you feel sad, you can feel glad at the same time. About some other part of something. Oh, I'm not explaining it very well.”

“You can bet on that,” Mary said.

Rosie twitched her legs, and Mary complained she'd pulled the blanket off her feet. All three had to shift around to make it right. Helen sensed Rosie's forbearance waning. After a few immobile minutes, Rosie sat up abruptly, bringing the blanket up with her.

“Hey!” Mary complained.

“Bah, I don't think we're going to see any
meteors
anyway,” Rosie said.

Mary rose to the bait. “Yeah, I guess the
angels
don't have any messages tonight.”

Rosie stood up and marched off, heading back to Helen's. While Mary folded up the blanket that had covered them, Helen
shook out the bottom one to get off bits of dried grass.

“You know, Mary, maybe it's not from angels, but there are messages that can come from the other side.”

Mary hugged the folded blanket to her chest.

“My mother told me, Helen, never to talk to you about stuff like that. You know, about your grandmother and those nutty people who believe in â¦ in all that.”

Helen's temper flared momentarily, but she quelled it. Mary was only obeying her mother, after all. A mother she'd shortly have to mourn.

“Well, your mother might think differently after she's on the other side herself.”

BOOK: The Medium

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