In the Blink of an Eye

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “I’m coming,” he calls, running his hand through his shock of white hair as he rises from his swivel-bottomed leather chair. He hurriedly puts aside his checkbook and the stack of monthly bills and glances at the clock. It’s nearly five-thirty; time to start dinner—after he tends to Nan, of course.

  He makes his way through the quiet, orderly house to the small back bedroom adjacent to the kitchen.

  There, lying in the hospital bed he rented for her months before it became necessary, his wife is propped against several pillows. Though he spends almost every waking hour at her side, he is struck anew by the drastic recent changes in her appearance. Some part of him clings stubbornly to the image of Nan before cancer had ravaged her, leaving her body shriveled and skeletal, her nearly bald head concealed by a turban, her face swollen from the drugs that can’t save her now.

  Nobody has come right out and told him how far gone she is. But he suspects.

  No . . .

  He knows.

  “What do you need?” he asks gently, walking over to the bed and touching her thin arm through the blanket

  “The bathroom,” she says weakly.

  “Emergency?”

  She nods.

  He reaches for the walker near the bed. It would be far more efficient to carry her than to allow the painstaking excursion across the room and around the corner into the small half bath off the kitchen. He longs to haul her into his arms the way he used to so many years ago; then out of playfulness and not bitter necessity.

  He takes care of himself, and these aging bones are strong. Strong enough to lift her—or so he keeps telling himself, and her. But she won’t listen. She’s stubborn. She needs to do this—all of this—on her own terms.

  He helps Nan out of bed and into her robe that hangs on a hook behind the door. Not the pink cotton summer robe she’s always worn at this time of year, but a newly purchased dark-colored fleece one. Despite its weight, he suspects that it fails to keep her warm enough on a day like today. After less than a week’s reprieve of summerlike weather, today again feels more like autumn than June. The windows are closed and he won’t be surprised if the furnace kicks on tonight.

  Rupert has never minded the harsh climate of western New York, choosing not to leave Lily Dale in September with almost everyone else. He and Nan have always stayed on, cozy together through the snowy winter months, preferring the forced isolation, really, to the more temperate but fleeting warm-weather season when Lily Dale is packed with tourists.

  But now, seeing her thin shoulders shiver, he wonders if it might have been good for Nan to spend some time in the southern sun.

  Maybe in September—

  No. It’s too late for that now.

  Nan is restless, yes.

  But she doesn’t want to go South.

  She wants to go home.

  “You okay?” He holds her elbows for a moment to steady her as she grips the walker.

  “I’m fine.” She offers him a wan smile that breaks his heart. “When do I see Doctor Klauber again?”

  “Saturday. Day after tomorrow.”

  “Good.”

  No. Not good. Rupert doesn’t want to hear what the oncologist has to say.

  They begin the tedious journey toward the doorway, Rupert a step behind her, his hands outstretched, hovering at her hips, to catch her if she sways. Her walker thumps rhythmically on the hardwood floor.

  “One good thing about this house—you don’t have to climb steps,” he comments, for something to say. He instantly regrets it, unable to see her expression from his position, but sensing her dismay.

  It’s been just over three years now since they moved from the house where they lived the better part of the last four decades. If it were up to Rupert, they would never have moved, but he’d done it for Nan, thinking it was best.

  When the rigorous chemotherapy had weakened her hipbones a few years back, she struggled to make it up and down the stairs several times daily. Rupert couldn’t stand to watch her suffer, and finally decided it would be best to move to a smaller, single-level home. Within a year of their move to this one, on Green Street, Nan had two hip replacements. The surgery bought her more quality time. She was able to get around more easily until her health began seriously failing just after the new year.

  Nan desperately misses their old place; still calls it home, unable to adjust to this one-level lakefront house. She never did feel comfortable in the master bedroom where Rupert now sleeps alone in their full-size bed for the first time in their married life.

  Moving her to a different bedroom was her oncologist’s idea, not his. But of course Dr. Klauber was right. The master bedroom is much farther from the front and back doors.

  It’s hard enough as it is for her to cover the short distance from the back bedroom to the driveway, and she refuses to let him rent a wheelchair and install a ramp at the back door. Partly, he suspects, because she can’t face the harsh reality that her health is rapidly, and irrevocably, deteriorating. But also because the ramp would mean they’re here to stay.

  Until this summer, he’s assumed that they are.

  Now, in the wake of Iris Shuttleworth’s sudden death, their old place—a rattletrap Victorian several blocks away, on Summer Street in the heart of the village—stands vacant once again.

  Should he tell Nan his idea? He’s tempted to blurt it out—to give her something to look forward to, maybe something to fight for.

  But no. He can’t tell her. Not until he knows for certain. And he won’t, not until after Iris’s granddaughter and her father arrive from California. They should be here any day now, according to Howard Menkin, the attorney for the Shuttleworth estate. Then Rupert will approach the young man—who isn’t even Iris’s son-in-law, because he had never married Kristin Shuttleworth—and see about the house.

  Paine Landry is an outsider. Why would he want to settle in a remote lakeside village devoted to clairvoyance and psychic phenomena?

  Of course he won’t.

  If all goes as planned, he’ll turn over Iris’s cottage to Rupert, and he can bring Nan home to die. He only hopes Paine Landry doesn’t take long to make up his mind, because he knows in his heart that Nan doesn’t have much more time.

  “You okay?” he asks her around a lump in his throat as she inches the walker forward.

  “I’m fine.”

  No, she isn’t.

  Everything hinges on a stranger’s decision. Everything.

  He only hopes Paine Landry makes the right one.

  AS JULIA STEPS onto the porch of her small cottage, a bell tolls loudly, reverberating through the village.

  Knowing instantly what the chime means, she turns to glance up at the sky. Sure enough, gray clouds that have hung low over the lake all afternoon now look threatening. The bell signals that the regular five-thirty services will be held in the auditorium instead of in the usual spot, at Inspiration Stump. The secluded spiritual retreat sits at the very edge of the community, surrounded by the towering trees of Leolyn Woods. There, the audience assembles along rows of park benches in the open air. Facing them, a handful of mediums gather beside the historic tree stump now encased in cement to protect it from the harsh western New York elements.

  On days like today, however, services are held in the antique auditorium nearby. It’s a shorter walk for Julia, but she prefers the more reverent outdoor setting to channel the fragments of spirit voices that fade in and out of her head like a wavering radio frequency on the verge of being consumed by static.

  She has been a practicing psychic medium for almost a decade now, having passed the rigorous requirements necessary to become registered at Lily Dale.

  There was a time, when she was growing up, when she thought she would ultimately leave this place. Just as Kristin swore she would never end up in her father’s profession, Julia never expected to follow in her mother’s and her grandmother’s footsteps to become a medium.

  When she was in high school, facing the grim
reality that her mother couldn’t possibly afford to send her to a four-year university, she had taken secretarial classes, thinking that she could maybe move to Buffalo—or even New York City, and work for one of those rich businessmen you see in the movies.

  After graduation, with that goal still in mind, she had attended Jamestown Business College. But gradually, the voices in her head—the voices that had always been there on some level, she later realized—became louder, demanding to be heard. It was Grandma who, when Julia finally confided in her, explained what was happening—and what to do about it. Grandma said Julia had a gift, and that she shouldn’t throw it away.

  So, she learned shorthand and computer skills by day.

  And by night, under her proud grandmother’s tutelage, she developed her talent for communicating with dead people.

  As it turned out, it is her calling. And once she got used to it as a profession rather than a hobby, she realized that it’s like any other job. It has its bad points, but it certainly has more good—most importantly, that Julia is able to help people. The part of her that has always needed to nurture others is almost entirely fulfilled by the nature of mediumship.

  The only part of her that isn’t fulfilled, in fact, is the part that remains restless after all these years—still dreaming that there might be more to life than this shabby little lakefront community that is, like Hollywood, a one-industry town.

  When Kristin was here three years ago, and Julia was pumping her for exciting stories of life in L.A., she had insisted that it wasn’t the least bit glamorous once you got used to it. Acting was just a job, like any other job.

  Being a medium is the same for Julia. How can it not be, when she grew up in a family of mediums and lives in a town dedicated to spiritualism?

  She enjoys her life, and if she spends the rest of it right here where it started, in this gated community on the shore of Cassadaga Lake, she will probably be content.

  It would be nice not to spend it alone, though. Now that Grandma has been dead for almost two years and Mom is retired in Florida, Julia can’t help feeling lonely. Especially during the long winters.

  She figures the time will come when she heads South with the others as soon as September rolls around. But she isn’t ready for that yet. She has always liked the change of seasons, the snow, the icy gray days when you don’t feel guilty curling up on the couch with a book from morning until night.

  Not that she enjoys that kind of weather in June.

  She inserts her ancient key into the front door lock and turns it, then, shivering in the unseasonal chill, buttons a red cardigan over the long floral-print dress that drapes her petite frame. Descending the three steps from the porch, she notices that the small patches of grass on either side of the walk need mowing, and the sign that dangles on a chain from the peeling white post near the street is askew. She straightens it.

  JULIA GARRITY, REGISTERED MEDIUM.

  Julia starts down the narrow, tree-shaded street lined with close-set gingerbread cottages similar to hers, many fronted by signs that announce the spiritual counselors in residence. All of the homes display classic 1880s architecture: pillared porches with spindled rails; ornately carved wooden overhangs; fish-scale shingles; bull’s-eye windows under the eaves. Some are in good repair, freshly painted in authentic colors, their tiny yards green and immaculate, bordered by neat flower beds and dotted with birdbaths and benches. A few—like Julia’s—show their age. Blistered paint, sagging steps, rotting wood.

  The town bell chimes again as Julia reaches the end of the street, where it intersects with Cleveland Avenue, Lily Dale’s closest claim to a main drag. A trio of tourist types are on the corner, consulting the visitor’s pamphlet. One of them, a grossly overweight woman wearing a straining purple polyester pants set and a black windbreaker, turns to Julia.

  Huffing slightly, her face florid as though it were ninety degrees out instead of barely sixty, she says, “Excuse me, do you know where Inspiration Stump is?”

  “It’s down that way, along a path,” Julia tells her, pointing vaguely to the left. “But the services have been moved to the auditorium because it looks like it might rain. That’s what the bell means.”

  “Where’s the auditorium?”

  Julia points to where the historic white wooden building is visible ahead. She considers, then dismisses, an offer to escort them. It isn’t far, and she’s headed to the same destination. But she isn’t in the mood to chat with strangers. Iris’s death less than two weeks ago still hangs heavily over her.

  Julia notices the camera slung over the woman’s chubby arm, and a gold ring—a wedding band?—on a chain around her neck.

  A younger woman with her asks, “So what happens at these services? People just show up and the fortune-tellers do their thing?”

  Julia wearily summons her patience, reminding herself that the summer season will soon be under way and she’ll have to do this often now that Lily Dale is overrun with outsiders. Most of them uneducated about the community’s origins, and more than a few are skeptics.

  “Mediums aren’t fortune-tellers,” Julia explains.

  “So it isn’t like a seance?” asks the purple-clad woman, obviously disappointed. “I was hoping to contact my husband. A friend of mine was here and she said—”

  The obese younger man with them interrupts. “Ma, get it through your head: you ain’t gonna contact Dad. This is just a waste of money.”

  “It was only six bucks each to get in the gate,” says the girl, obviously his sister. “And she paid for all of us, so what do you care?”

  He rolls his eyes and looks at Julia. “You ever met one of them mediums?”

  “A few.” As she speaks, she hears something.

  Her mind’s voice, a garbled rush of sound. She automatically focuses, straining to interpret it.

  “So you think this stuff is real?” the guy is saying.

  “What I think doesn’t matter. You’ll have to make up your own mind,” she says, mentally dismissing the intruding spirit voice as she hurries away, toward the auditorium.

  “WHAT DO YOU think? Do you want to go over there and sit in on the readings?” Kent Gilman asks, pointing at the auditorium in the distance.

  Standing beside him on the porch of the peeling two-story clapboard-sided Summer Street Hotel, beneath fluttering American and Canadian flags, Miranda Cleary follows his gaze. A steady stream of people, the vast majority of them middle-aged women traveling in twosomes and threesomes, files through the auditorium door.

  Miranda shakes her head, shifting her heavy blue canvas tote bag to the opposite shoulder and wondering if she should run back upstairs for a jacket. It feels chillier out here than it did when they checked in a little while ago, and the clouds overhead look ominous. She makes a mental note to pick up a local paper and check the weather report.

  “We can skip the readings for now,” she tells Kent. “I’d love to see the mediums in action, but according to the brochure, there are sessions every day. Right now I’d rather use the last few hours of daylight to check out the lay of the land so we’ll be acclimated tonight.”

  “Sounds good.” Kent nods and raises his hand, indicating the steps in an after you gesture. “Let’s go.”

  Miranda hesitates. “Do you think I need a jacket? It’s pretty cool out here.”

  “You can wear my sweater if you get cold.”

  “But what if you get cold?”

  “This is just for show.” Kent motions at the pumpkin-colored cardigan tied around his shoulders, a perfect complement to his pale yellow polo shirt and khaki shorts. “You know I’m always warm.”

  That’s certainly true. Their biggest arguments, since becoming roommates two years ago, have been over the thermostat setting.

  Miranda glances at the sweater. “I don’t know, Kent . . . That color will clash with my hair.”

  “And your freckles. But who’s going to see you here? A bunch of fashion victim tourists and maybe, if we’re lu
cky, a couple of ghosts. And if by any chance a potential Mr. Right appears, remember, eight percent of men are colorblind. Maybe he’ll be one of them.”

  Miranda grins. “Okay, then let’s get going.” She adds, with a shiver, “And hand over the sweater now. There’s a breeze coming off the lake.”

  Kent obliges, holding her bag as she shrugs into the sweater. It’s soft and luxurious, deliciously scented with Kent’s designer aftershave. She raises the cotton to her nose and inhales deeply.

  “Don’t worry, I just took a shower,” Kent says, watching her.

  “It’s not that. It smells great. Michael used to wear this cologne.”

  “Really? Then remind me to toss the bottle into the trash when we get back upstairs.”

  She rolls her eyes. There’s certainly no love lost between Kent and her ex. Michael’s blatant homophobia didn’t help matters much.

  She buttons the sweater. It fits almost perfectly, as she and Kent are almost the same height. And weight, she thinks ruefully, with a glance down at her ample hips. Hopefully she won’t stretch out the waistband.

  “We’re burning daylight, Miranda,” Kent says impatiently.

  “Oh, please, look who’s talking. Didn’t I just spend a half hour waiting for you to decide which pair of hiking boots to wear?”

  “I still think the Timberlands would have looked better.”

  “But they give you blisters,” she points out as they descend to the tree-shaded street.

  “Sometimes pain is beauty, Miranda.” He hesitates, glancing in both directions. “Right or left?”

  “Which way is more interesting? You’re the one who’s been here before.”

  “It doesn’t really matter. The whole place is interesting,” he tells her, and gestures to the right. “Let’s go that way first.”

  Miranda feels around inside the bag to make sure she put in a few extra rolls of 800-speed film. They aren’t beginning the investigation until much later, after dark, but in this line of work it’s best to be prepared for anything at any time. Which is why, in addition to her 35mm camera and film, the bag also contains a notebook and pens, a digital camera, an audiotape recorder, a thermal scanner, and a compass to record shifts in magnetic fields.