Eleanor, Alice, and the Roosevelt Ghosts

by Dianne K. Salerni

  Helen holds up a finger and darts from the room, returning ten seconds later brandishing two cast-iron frying pans to close the distance. “This ought to do it.”

  Franklin frowns. “And this won’t prevent the ghost from reaching the pendulum?”

  “I don’t know if it’ll prevent the ghost from doing anything,” Helen admits. “It’s supposed to stop physical manifestations from reaching into the circle and”—she grabs Corinne by the shoulders, causing her to jump and scream—“throttling someone.”

  “Are we ready to start?” George asks.

  Alice can see no reason to delay, despite her uneasiness. Aunt Bye has excused herself, wanting no part of it. She joined them at dinner and tried to appear cheerful for the sake of her guests, but Alice could tell she wasn’t having a good day. Mother Edith had many similar days, especially in her last pregnancy.

  With a sigh, Alice produces Eleanor’s notes. “Eleanor thinks the progenitor is one of these children. I think it’s one of the boys.”

  “Based on?” Helen prompts.

  “Based on a shadow I saw in the attic.”

  “Oooh.” Corinne clasps her hands together and squirms. “This is going to be spooky.”

  “Is Eleanor coming?” Franklin asks. “Should we wait for her?”

  Alice hesitates. Eleanor left without telling anyone this morning, probably because she was too shy to meet Helen’s friends. Alice could have introduced Eleanor to the group—should have introduced her. It would only have taken a few seconds of her time and would have been a kindness. But she didn’t.

  She also should have sent Eleanor a note telling her they were conducting the séance this afternoon. She meant to, but forgot.

  “No,” she tells Franklin. “Eleanor’s not coming.”

  He shoves his hands in his pockets and nods, acknowledging her answer but not liking it. “Let’s begin, then.”

  “Wait,” says Corinne. “There’s one more thing we need.” She disappears for a minute and returns holding a pan full of ash from Aunt Bye’s stove, which she pitches all over the dining table.

  “Corinne!” Helen gasps.

  “I read this in a book,” Corinne explains. “If the pendulum moves, it’ll leave a track in the soot as a record.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Alice says. “Except for the part where Maisie and Ida kill you.”

  “I’ll clean up when we’re done,” Corinne promises.

  “That’s what you said when you and Teddy tried to make a sandbox in your mother’s sun parlor,” Alice reminds her. “How did that turn out?”

  It had not turned out well. Franklin and Helen laugh at the memory, and Corinne sticks her tongue out at Alice.

  There are two exits from the dining room—one to the hallway and one to the billiards room. Alice steps over the circle of iron and chooses a seat that provides an easy path to both doorways. One by one, her cousins and George select their own places and extend hands to one another.

  Helen casts her eyes toward the ceiling like a preacher in church. “We are gathered here this afternoon to contact the ghost in this house,” she intones solemnly. “We welcome communication with you. If you are here, give us a sign.”

  Corinne starts to giggle but stops abruptly as the air freezes around them. Everyone holds their breath in shock. Then Alice slowly exhales. Ice crystals hang in the air.

  “You’re here,” Helen says, exhaling her own icy cloud. “Thank you for coming. Can you tell us your name?”

  The pendulum remains motionless.

  “Alice, read the names on your list.”

  Casting her eyes at Eleanor’s precise handwriting, Alice picks out the names of the boys most likely to have died in this house as children: “Edgar Drummond. Charles Brown. David Drummond.”

  When the silence continues without a break, Helen calls out, “Are you one of those boys? Can you tell us your name?”

  Glass tinkles. Alice jerks her gaze up to the chandelier, where the hanging crystals are rattling together. The pendant shivers on its string.

  “Do you see it?” Corinne’s whisper hangs in the air.

  “See what?” Helen asks.

  Corinne’s head jerks left and right, the bow in her hair bobbing. “The shadow in the corner of your eyes.”

  Shivering, Alice glances around the room. At first, she sees nothing except the things she expects to be there. But when she holds herself completely still and concentrates on the periphery of her vision, the extreme edge of what she can see, she realizes there’s another person in the room. Flitting among the shadows, hiding in the corners and edges and folds.

  “Look at the pendulum,” Franklin whispers.

  Alice’s attention snaps back to that crystal. It swings toward D, cutting a path through the soot, then toward A, followed by V and finally Y.

  “Davy,” Helen announces.

  George asks, “How did you die?”

  The temperature in the room drops even further, and Alice’s teeth chatter.

  With a glance toward Helen, George clears his throat and repeats his question in a more commanding tone. “How did you die?”

  “We know its name,” Franklin murmurs, frowning. “Perhaps we should end here.”

  “Don’t be a goose, Uncle Franklin,” Helen says. She calls him that when he tries to put a damper on her fun. “Let’s find out what we can while we’ve got it here.” She raises her voice. “The toys Alice found in the attic. Do any of them belong to you?”

  Corinne shrieks. Everyone looks at her and then, following her gaze, at the center of the table. A few inches away from the pendulum lies a huge brown rat with an eight-inch naked tail. Its eyes are glassy, its feet splayed stiffly in the air.

  The circle of hands stretches to a breaking point as people recoil and start to rise from their chairs. Tightening her grip on Corinne’s and Franklin’s hands, Alice calls out, “You like playing pranks, don’t you, Davy?”

  The entire room pauses.

  “A snake in the attic,” Alice continues. “A rat in the dining room. I bet you liked scaring your sisters.” She glances at the list. “Susannah and Mary Isabel. Did you play tricks on them? I once put a toad on my sister’s pillow. And my brother got blamed for it, which I consider killing two birds with one stone. Don’t you?”

  The dead rat vanishes. By the lack of indentations on the soot Corinne threw across the table, it was never really there. Everyone eases back into their seats.

  “He likes you, Alice,” Helen says. “You ask the questions.”

  Franklin shakes his head. “We have the information we need. We should stop.”

  “Davy,” Alice says loudly—defiantly, because she’s tired of this ghost getting the better of her, “what else do you want to tell us?”

  Silence follows. Pressure builds in her ears, as if someone has stuffed cotton into them—and keeps stuffing and stuffing. The china in Aunt Bye’s glass cupboard shudders. The crystals in the chandelier join the clamor, clanking together while the pendulum swings in a straight track across Corinne’s alphabet circle.

  T…T…T…T…

  Alice’s stomach cramps in a bout of sudden nausea. Across the table, Helen makes a retching sound and breaks the circle to clasp both hands over her mouth. George groans. Corinne pales.

  “I’m ending this!” Franklin jumps out of his seat. He catches the pendulum in midswing and yanks on it, snapping the thread. “Everybody out of the room!”

  He doesn’t need to say it twice. They push back their chairs and rush for the doorways, kicking the iron safety circle out of the way. Alice ends up in the billiards room with Franklin and Corinne, while George follows Helen into the hallway.

  Slowly, the chandelier stills, and the rattling inside the china cabinet ceases.

  Alice places a hand on her stomach, but her nausea is gone
as suddenly as it came.

  Running a hand through his blond hair and leaving it disheveled, Franklin peers through the doorway across the dining room at George and Helen on the opposite threshold. “Told you we should’ve stopped after getting the name.”

  Davy Drummond.

  Alice draws in a deep breath, wanting this ghost out of the house more than ever.

  February 15, 1898

  Darling Sissy,

  Thank you for your lovely letter confirming your arrival at your aunt’s house. It was so well written and sweet, I thought at first that Eleanor must have written it for you. I am happy to see your aunt’s influence on your manners already.

  Your brothers and sister miss you. Teddy is quite morose, although he has distracted himself by nursing an injured flying squirrel back to health. It seems our menagerie has expanded again, despite the subtraction of one snake.

  I am wiring money to Bye for your dress expenditure. You need good clothes while you are there, and I would not have you looking as forlorn as Eleanor in her makeshifts.

  Give my love to Bye and greetings to your uncle. Your father sends his love but is busy with work so you must not expect a letter from him, although you may write to him at any time for your letters always cheer him.

  Fondly,

  Mother Edith

  February 15, 1898

  Dear Sissy,

  Washington is very boring without you. Even worse, with you gone, I get blamed for everything, even when it is not (entirely) my fault! For instance, Ethel is the one who broke Mama’s cookie jar (after I convinced her to climb on my shoulders to reach it). But, unfairly, I was the only one punished.

  Do you know what a rat king is? I read about it in a book. If you guessed “king of the rats,” you are wrong. A rat king is a group of rats whose tails have become tangled together so badly that they cannot separate themselves. They live in a giant knot, which grows bigger every time another rat gets tangled with them.

  I wish you were here because I am certain, if we were together, we could think of a way to make (or fake) a rat king and scare the maids. Plus, you would get the blame! Ha, ha, ha!

  It is very unjust that you get to live in a house with a newly erupted Friendly ghost and I have to be stuck here in Washington. The little ones tattle too much. Mama fusses over the baby (who stinks), and Papa is at work all the time. I wish I were with you.

  Your unfairly treated brother,

  Teddy

  Febuary 16, 1898

  Dear Elanor Eleanor,

  Thank you for your letter and for sending me the pikchure of you and me and Papa and Elliott. And the one of Mama. She was so pretty! I put them in my room so I feel like they are looking down on me from heven.

  I made some freinds and am not so lonly no more. But sometimes I wish I could come home. Then I remember cold supper and no lights on til 7 and wish you were here with me insted.

  Please send me more letters. And cake. The choclet kind.

  Love,

  Gracie

  14

  ELEANOR AND FRANKLIN

  MY punishment ends as quietly as it began. In the morning, when I find a breakfast plate set for me at the dining table, I take my seat and wish Grandmother good morning. She greets me as if nothing ever happened.

  “I trust your cousins are well,” she says, revealing, I think, the reason for my reprieve. She doesn’t want to miss out on any Roosevelt family gossip.

  She’s going to be disappointed because I don’t intend to spend much time with my cousins. Their visit is spoiled for me. I’ll have to go back to Aunt Bye’s at some point while they’re here; otherwise Aunt Bye will press me for the reason why, and what happened was so humiliating I don’t want to tell anyone. But I won’t see them any more than I have to for common decency. Corinne laughed at me. Helen didn’t speak a word in my defense.

  How long have I been a subject of their jokes behind my back?

  I thought that with them, I could be myself and not be judged for my lack of fashion and my awkward way of behaving. My heart aches with the loss of something I never had to define until it was taken away.

  That afternoon, while I’m darning a pair of stockings in my room, Rosie sticks her head in the doorway. “You have a visitor, Miss Eleanor. He’s in the front parlor with Mrs. Hall.”

  He? My mind goes to one particular person, but I make up my mind not to hope one way or another.

  When I enter the parlor, it is Franklin sitting with Grandmother. “Yes,” he’s saying. “Father’s health is precarious, and Mother is quite worried, as you would expect. Still, he tries to keep his spirits up.”

  “That is all one can do,” Grandmother intones with an air of doom. Her eyes jump toward me. “Eleanor, your cousin Franklin is here.”

  “So I see.” I hide my smile behind my hand, for when Grandmother turns in my direction, Franklin crosses his eyes. I believe that conveys his feelings about their conversation so far. I move to take a seat, but Franklin jumps to his feet.

  “Mrs. Hall, with your permission, I’d like Eleanor to accompany me on a walk this afternoon.”

  My heart flutters in surprise.

  “A walk?” Grandmother frowns. “Without a chaperone?”

  Franklin tips his head and looks deliberately puzzled. “Why, I’ll be her chaperone, Mrs. Hall.” Before Grandmother can adjust to that idea, he goes on. “A brisk walk is good for one’s health. If my father were strong enough, I am sure that regular perambulation would restore his health in no time.”

  Grandmother’s eyes dart between me and my cousin and finally settle on me. “It’s up to you, Eleanor. If you go out with Franklin this afternoon, you won’t have time to visit your aunt later. You have too many overdue chores here.”

  I nod, agreeing to her terms, and she dismisses us. Franklin accompanies me to the foyer and helps me on with my coat. “I’m sorry your father isn’t well,” I say gravely.

  “Oh!” Franklin grins at me and lowers his voice. “Father’s as well as he ever is. But I figured your grandmother would be more entertained by bad news than good.”

  I cover my smile, and the two of us begin our walk.

  “It’s a shame you weren’t able to attend the séance yesterday,” Franklin says.

  I stumble, and he catches my elbow to steady me. I glance at him with mumbled thanks and look away to hide the flush in my cheeks. They held the séance without me? Without inviting me? Another pain lances through my heart because this is not just Corinne and Helen. It’s all of them. “How did it go?” I ask because I must.

  “The ghost gave us his name. Davy Drummond.” He unfolds a paper from his pocket, and I recognize my census list. Franklin, or someone, has circled the name of David Drummond, who was eleven years old when he lived in the house with his mother in 1850.

  Franklin recounts the details of the séance while I pretend that I don’t care I wasn’t included. His description fills me with both longing and revulsion. I’m relieved I wasn’t subjected to the dead rat or the nausea, but I would’ve liked to see Franklin’s clever pendulum and watch it spell out the ghost’s name. “At the end,” Franklin finishes, “the ghost became agitated when George and Alice pressed it with questions about its death.”

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.”

  “I told them. But you know what Alice is like, and this George fellow was trying to impress Helen. Still, no harm done. Except that Corinne is in Maisie’s bad graces because she isn’t any better at cleaning up soot than sand!”

  “Oh, the sandbox in the sun parlor! I forgot all about that.” My aunt was so angry at Corinne and Teddy, and in truth I could hardly blame her. I lift my hand, and, to my surprise, Franklin captures my fingers in his own and swings our hands down to our sides.

&nb
sp; “I wish you wouldn’t do that. Cover your smile, I mean. I like your smile. It lights up your face.”

  My cheeks heat up, but at the same time, I can’t keep the smile from spreading across them. I stare straight at the sidewalk between my feet until I realize he’s stopped walking and we’re standing outside a cemetery. Franklin tips his head at the gate. “I thought we could search for Davy’s grave. Find out when he died.”

  I look through the iron bars. The stones jut from the ground at odd angles, like the snaggled teeth of an alley cat. Or my teeth, for that matter. “You think he’s buried here?”

  “If the family lived in this neighborhood for over twenty years, this cemetery is the most likely place for them to be buried. This one or the one four blocks down.”

  He pushes open the gate. We enter side by side, but on the cemetery path, he lets go of my hand, and by silent agreement we walk in opposite directions, searching for the name Drummond.

  Franklin spots the gravestones before I do. “Over here!”

  I join him in standing before a pair of headstones, one for the father of the Drummond family, Edgar Senior, who died in 1842. He’s buried beside his first wife, deceased eight years before him. Franklin points to the next row, and I see more familiar names. The oldest son, Edgar Junior, lies beside his young wife and their infant son. Lisandra and her baby died in 1841. Her husband died in 1844. Beyond these markers are even more Drummond graves.

  The second son, Benjamin, died the same year as his brother. Their sister, Susannah, died in 1845. Nearby, I find the graves of their stepbrother, Charles Brown, and stepsister, Mary Isabel Brown, buried in 1848 and 1849, respectively. Franklin scribbles the dates down on the paper with their census information.

  Last of all, I discover Davy’s grave, flush with the ground and badly eroded. Kneeling in front of it, I brush away dead leaves and dirt to uncover the dates of his life: 1839–1851. Davy was twelve years old when he died.