The Medium

by Noëlle Sickels

  “I’m no general,” Private Horn asserted in his Minnesota accent, “but attacking across the English Channel still seems like a better idea than heading to Germany through Greece or Italy, like Churchill wants.”

  “There are generals who agree with you,” Walter said. “But we won’t have men and supplies enough for a Channel crossing for at least a year, and the British don’t want to wait.”

  “We’re going to have to cross the Channel some time,” Private Horn repeated. “And with troops in North Africa now, it’ll take even longer to build up for it.”

  “I have a friend in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps,” Helen said. “She said they’re rushing WAAC training so more men can go to combat units and the invasion won’t have to be delayed too long.”

  “That’ll help,” Private Horn said. “The Army’s expanding so fast right now, some of us had to train with wooden rifles, and we still haven’t been issued winter uniforms.”

  “I say we ought to beat the Japs first, put all our muscle in the Pacific,” Private Ryder said. “Before they can get even stronger.” Ryder was from Chicago, with the hard instincts of a city boy. “After we whip Tojo, we can concentrate on licking Hitler.”

  “Well, the Navy’s certainly working on that,” Emilie said.

  Helen thought of the boys mentioned at her graduation who’d been lost in the Pacific. Unlike the Sullivans, they’d gone unheralded to war. Of course, someone knew them. The name of every person killed was being cherished by someone somewhere. At least, she hoped that was so.

  “But why pick North Africa for our first fight against the Nazis?” Terence asked.

  “The English, as usual, are worried about their colonies,” Franz said. “They’re afraid Rommel will capture Suez.”

  “There’s Stalin, too,” Emilie added. “Wasn’t there some worry that he might pull out of the alliance if the British and Americans didn’t move against German forces soon? To draw some of them away from Russia?”

  “All those things are true,” Walter said, “but I think that Roosevelt simply wanted to get into the thick of things quickly. He’s trying to keep up morale. For the troops and for the folks at home.”

  “Keep up morale?” Marie scoffed. “How does men dying keep up morale?”

  “Marie!” Walter said sternly, casting apologetic looks at the two soldiers. Camp Kilmer was a staging area. Men stationed there were on their way overseas.

  “Fighting keeps up morale, ma’am,” Private Ryder said. “Waiting and doing nothing doesn’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” Marie stammered, blushing furiously. “I didn’t mean that either of you might …” She nervously picked up and put down her teaspoon, making a loud clink on the saucer. “And on top of everything, we can’t even find out what’s happening to our friends in … in Europe … or whether any of them are …”

  “No offense taken, ma‘am,” Private Horn said. “We know the risks. I believe we’re ready for ’em.”

  “I think you’re both very brave,” Teresa said admiringly.

  Private Ryder laughed. “I was drafted,” he said.

  “I still think you’re brave,” Teresa insisted.

  “Isn’t it kinda exciting, too?” Terence asked. “Risks and all?”

  The soldiers exchanged glances.

  “Sure,” Private Horn said.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Private Ryder said. “Just because I was drafted doesn’t mean I’m not gonna give it everything I’ve got. And I plan on coming home, too. Promised my little brother I’d bring him a Luger.”

  At the word “home,” it hit Helen that the two soldiers would, indeed, survive. She turned to the pimply young Chicagoan sitting beside her.

  “I’m sure you’ll do just that,” she said. Glancing across the table at Private Horn, she added, “I know you’re both coming home.”

  Walter cast a quick glance at Emilie, who pushed her chair back from the table.

  “Helen,” she said brightly, “why don’t you and your cousins show our guests the river? Cold air is good for the digestion.”

  “But we were gonna go see that new picture, Casablanca. It’s opening at the Oritani,” Terence said.

  “There is time for that, too,” Ursula told him.

  “Care to walk with the young folks, Franz?” Walter suggested. “When we get back, we may even find room for another piece of pie.”

  Franz assented, and everyone was set in motion, either getting coats or clearing the table. Ursula drew Helen into the empty living room.

  “You saw, didn’t you, Helen?”

  “No. I just knew. But it came too fast, Nanny, to block it out.”

  “I don’t complain about that. I only worry for you to have pain from this.”

  Helen didn’t reply. Pain was unavoidable, wasn’t it?

  “It is lonesome,” Ursula went on. “I cannot do all that you can, and still people stand back from me, afraid I will read their minds, find their secrets.” She gave a little laugh. “Even though they tell me themselves sometimes the confessions.”

  It was the closest Helen had ever heard her grandmother come to asking for sympathy.

  “Now, I make a confession,” Ursula said. “I had, once, envy of your gift. Not anymore. But it made me, perhaps, not always the best guide for you.”

  “Oh, Nanny, don’t say that.”

  Terence, dressed for outdoors, appeared in the doorway to the hall.

  “Aren’t you coming, Helen?” he demanded.

  Helen was reluctant to leave her grandmother.

  “Go,” Ursula said. “I am done.”

  CHAPTER 26

  JANUARY 1943

  Helen’s seances were getting crowded. She didn’t like doing more than two a week, because the whole next day, she’d be listless, as if she’d just come off a fever. The effect was the same with two sitters or twelve, so to meet demand, she convinced Emilie to schedule up to a dozen clients at a time. With a larger group, more spirits came. Sometimes Iris had to act as referee, directing spirits to step forward or back, to speak or to wait.

  The larger numbers of sitters and spirits seemed to create a magnetic force that drew in spirits whom no one at the table had sought. Helen’s boys remained chief among these uninvited visitors, but other spirits were appearing as well, soldiers and non-soldiers, newly dead and long-dead. There was always a connection to someone in the circle. So far, no dwellers had shown up, and Helen was relying on Iris to block any that might try. But though they weren’t dwellers, nor any other kind of troublesome spirit, the interlopers invariably caused a commotion, simply because they were interlopers.

  The first had been the worst. After that, Emilie expanded her warnings to clients. She’d always prepared them for disappointment by saying that there was no way to command spirit communication. Now she also told them they might hear from people they hadn’t expected, and that Helen couldn’t control that, either.

  The first one had come just before Christmas. Helen had found the spirits of four young men for their relatives, when another figure moved forward from behind Iris and silently stood, wearing overalls and twisting a soft, black cloth item in his hands. He didn’t speak, but stray words came to Helen that were definitely from him.

  “I’m getting the name Tim,” she said, keeping her eyes closed to better study the spirit.

  No one had asked to contact a Tim.

  “He’s got something black in his hands. A wool beret.”

  “Does this have meaning for anyone?” Emilie asked.

  There was no reply, though Emilie told Helen later that Mrs. Knudsen, who’d come about her husband, killed on Bataan, hadn’t looked around quizzically like the other sitters, but had remained fixed on Helen. The difference in the young widow was so slight that Emilie didn’t realize she’d seen it until later, after Mrs. Knudsen started screaming.

  “He’s looking for a little girl, a little girl with a big pink bow in her hair and a white dress with a pink sash. He wants her to kno
w it wasn’t her fault.”

  Mrs. Knudsen began to whimper. Helen opened her eyes and looked directly at her.

  “I was wrong,” she said. “It’s not Tim. It’s Tom. Thomas. I was wrong.”

  That was when Mrs. Knudsen had screamed.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” she cried, leaping up and reaching across the table in an attempt to grab Helen. Luckily, it was too far. Emilie moved quickly to the woman, taking hold of her arm. A man on her other side did the same.

  “What are you doing?” she yelled at Helen. “I didn’t ask for him. Not him. Of course it wasn’t my fault. Everyone said so. Everyone.”

  She began to cry then, which made her more docile. Emilie and the man easily led her out of the room. Ursula took Helen, shaking, into the kitchen.

  The next day, Mrs. Knudsen had come to apologize and to tell her story. Thomas was her father, who’d fallen off a roof to his death just at the moment she, a little girl, had rounded the corner of the house and called up to him so that he could admire her new white dress. He hadn’t spoken to her for three days prior to this, as punishment for some childish infraction, a punishment she felt much more keenly than she would have a spanking, for she was his favorite child and she adored him.

  His last words, spoken to his wife, were “I was wrong.” The wife thought he meant he should never have gone onto the roof, because of his clubfoot. She’d wanted to hire someone to make the roof repairs. They’d quarreled about it. Mrs. Knudsen had hoped her father’s dying words meant he was sorry that during their last three days together he’d been silent. But she could never be certain, just as she could never be certain that if she hadn’t called to him, he wouldn’t have turned so quickly, he wouldn’t have slipped.

  “Until now,” she said gratefully to Helen.

  Word got around about the incident with Mrs. Knudsen’s father. Other similar incidents occurred, though thanks to Emilie’s precautions, with less spectacular reactions, and word got around about them, too. There was pressure on Helen to add a third seance to her weekly schedule. But word had also gotten to certain parties who wanted Helen’s activities to diminish rather than increase. This pressure was substantial and official, and it was delivered to Helen through Captain John Fitzpatrick.

  They had just finished supper one icy January evening when the doorbell rang. When Walter opened it, he was surprised to find an Army officer standing there.

  “Captain John Fitzpatrick,” the man said before Walter had recovered enough from his surprise to speak.

  “Yes?”

  “Is this the residence of Miss Helen Schneider and Mrs. Oskar Hauser?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “May I come in?”

  “Certainly. Forgive me.” Walter stepped back to let the captain enter.

  Emilie had come into the hall by then. She took the man’s overcoat and hat and gloves. He kept hold of a flat leather case. Walter sent her to fetch Helen and Ursula while he ushered the captain into the living room. Behind their visitor’s back, Emilie threw Walter a questioning look. He responded with a mystified shrug.

  “I’ll come right to the point,” Captain Fitzpatrick said after everyone was assembled. “And let you get on with your evening.” He flashed a charming smile.

  “We’ve had reports of certain activities that concern us. Meetings, shall we say, at which you, Mrs. Hauser, and you, Miss Schneider, have provided citizens with information that is best left to our government to supply when and how it sees fit.”

  “Information?” Walter said.

  “Information, sir, about servicemen missing in action.”

  “You mean the seances?” Emilie asked. “But those people already know what’s happened to their sons and husbands. They come to us to contact them.”

  The captain pursed his lips.

  “A discussion of fraud is beyond the scope of my orders,” he said curtly, all trappings of charm gone. “I am here to ask you to refrain from giving people details not already in their possession. Where a death occurred, how, when. Even if you’re just guessing. Such details could compromise the safety of men still in the field. It’s everyone’s duty to avoid any action or conversation that might do that.”

  “Fraud?” Ursula said testily.

  “Contacting the dead, Mrs. Hauser?” Captain Fitzpatrick said.

  “Just so,” Ursula replied.

  “Believe what you like, ma’am. But when you trade on the desperate hopes of the bereaved, when you take money under false pretenses, there’s a good case for fraud. And if you refuse to cooperate, we will see that the civil authorities pursue one.”

  “It is only contributions we take,” Ursula said, taken aback. “And my granddaughter spends hers for the war bonds.”

  “I might add, Mrs. Hauser, that as a citizen of an enemy nation, you would place yourself in a highly questionable position were you to continue your activities after the Army of the United States has specifically requested you to desist.”

  Helen’s heart leapt. Did he mean Nanny could be sent to a camp? She reached over and took her grandmother’s hand. The old woman, uncharacteristically, didn’t brush her away.

  “I don’t think threats are called for, Captain,” Walter said. “My mother-in-law’s been in this country forty years. It’s her home. This is where her loyalty lies.”

  “I’m here to present facts, sir, that’s all. And to appeal to the good sense and patriotism of these ladies. Of all of you.”

  The captain unzipped his leather case and took out some papers.

  “In truth, Mr. Schneider, it’s your daughter we’ve heard more about.”

  Helen’s heart skipped.

  “Heard about?” Emilie said.

  “On three occasions,” the captain said, skimming over his papers, “relatives of servicemen have come to us requesting confirmation of information they obtained from Miss Schneider. Two had questions about details of locale. And one …” He looked up and stared directly at Helen. “One mother wanted to know if it was true her son’s ship had gone down with all hands. The Navy hadn’t notified her. There’d been nothing in the newspapers. Seaman Joseph Fellini.”

  Helen remembered him. He’d been one of the interlopers. Mrs. Fellini had been attending the seance as companion to a friend. She had sobbed at the unexpected news of her son, though she said she’d already felt in her heart he was gone.

  “How did you know about Seaman Fellini, Miss Schneider? Who told you about his ship?”

  “He was all wet,” Helen said. “He was standing there all wet. A ship’s name was stitched on his shirt. His lips were blue, and—”

  “That’s enough, Helen,” Walter interrupted. “What, exactly, is it you require, Captain?”

  “As I said, we want no supplementary or augmenting information provided to anyone on the condition, location, or demise of any serviceman.” He looked pointedly at Ursula. “No matter what the source.”

  He turned his gaze to Walter. “My personal advice would be for all such meetings to stop for the duration.”

  The captain put away his papers and stood up to go. Walter and Emilie also rose, Emilie exiting to retrieve the captain’s outerwear.

  “Out of curiosity,” Walter said, “is the Army making this request of all mediums?”

  “Yes, sir, we are. Even those who practice as part of their religion. The safety of our servicemen and the security of our military plans is of the highest priority.”

  “Naturally,” Walter said.

  “I hope you mean that.”

  “I’m not accustomed, Captain, to having my sincerity doubted.”

  “Doubting is part of my job. So is keeping an ear to the ground and a nose to the wind. Fair warning, Mr. Schneider.”

  After Captain Fitzpatrick’s visit, Ursula decided to cut back to one seance a month, with only her home circle in attendance. Walter and Emilie wanted Helen to quit altogether. Helen herself was of two minds about the situation. She didn’t want to do anything that might put soldier
s at risk, nor did she want to endanger her grandmother’s freedom. But she knew she had a unique ability to comfort grieving people, and it seemed wrong to turn her back on them. She’d be turning her back on the spirits, too. Her grandmother told her they wouldn’t hold it against her, that they were beyond such thoughts, and that, in any case, if they really wanted to communicate with the living, they’d find other avenues. But Helen still felt she’d be abandoning them. The spirits were teachers. They could benefit more people than just their own relatives. What good was a teacher without a class?

  In the end, Helen reached a compromise with her parents. She’d do only one seance a week. Emilie and Ursula would carefully question sitters to see what they knew about the deaths of the men they were trying to contact. If Helen picked up any extra information, she would not announce it. The interlopers would be disappointed, and Helen regretted that, but it couldn’t be helped.

  She’d conducted one seance so far under the new arrangements, and she’d had to ignore one uninvited spirit, a pilot so new to the spirit world, odors of gasoline and smoke still clung to his uniform. She didn’t completely ignore him. She listened patiently to his story and to his request that she comfort his sister, who was at the seance to contact a cousin lost at Pearl Harbor. But she didn’t tell the sister or anyone else about him. She felt glutted with the force of him, as if she’d eaten his story and his wishes.

  She didn’t complain. The war was making demands on everyone. Some responsibilities and burdens were met openly, some privately. Helen wished Rosie were still around. With Rosie, she could show her feelings and not be squeezed to explain herself. And Rosie was bound to come up with some way to lighten Helen’s mood, whether by dragging out their bicycles for a spin, or getting Helen to sing rounds with her, or making a contest of skipping rocks at the river. Helen tried to think like Rosie and then carry out the suggestions her friend might have made. It helped, but she still missed her.