The major was baffled for a moment, then he worked his wedding band off and gave it to her. She placed it in the palm of her hand and closed her fingers around it. The thick gold circlet was still warm from his body.
She closed her eyes.
“May we be put in touch today with good and helpful spirits,” she intoned.
“Uh, must I close my eyes, too?” Levy said.
Helen shook her head no.
“You need to be quiet now, Major,” she said. “You may get a chance to ask questions later. I’ll let you know when.”
She began her deep breathing. She passed quickly through the state where her body felt as if it were swelling and her mind raced with rapidly tumbling thoughts, into the phase where all activity was suspended and she felt as if she were a reed swaying in the wind. As her grandmother had taught her, at this point Helen took one quick, short breath, propelling herself into the phase where she was open to the spirit world.
This was the time to ask what she wanted to see or know. Often, at this moment, Iris appeared. Helen usually confined herself to summoning the specific spirits her sitters wanted to contact. At more general seances, she simply remained open to whatever messages might come. But Helen had learned—not from her grandmother, but from her own experiences—that now was also the time when she could insert her own requests. She’d never exercised this possibility, but she’d known for a while it existed, and she knew, as well, that if she were to exercise it, she would have to do so fearlessly.
A brightness radiated behind Helen’s closed eyelids, and Iris came into view against a white background. As always, the guide’s face was hidden within her deep hood, but today Helen thought she could make out two glittering spots. Iris’s eyes?
“I want you to bring a spirit for this man,” she said silently to Iris. “An unmistakable spirit entity. And I want to hear and see everything, and to remember all I see and hear.”
“Tell yourself to see and hear, and you will see and hear,” Iris replied. “Tell yourself to remember, and you will remember. As strong as is your desire, that strong will all the consequences be.”
Helen nodded.
The whiteness behind Iris dispersed like clouds thinning. A figure seemingly made out of fog was forming beside the guide. Though Helen’s eyes were still closed, she saw a stream of bluish gray vapor moving along the floor of the room towards the vague figure. She beheld, in fact, the whole room—the drawn shades, the empty chairs, the incredulous face of Major Levy. He was staring, awestruck, not at Iris and the coalescing vapors—Helen understood that he couldn’t see them—but at her.
She felt a stinging around her lips and nostrils, and realized that the vapors forming the spirit presence were emanating from her. They were sliding down her chest and lap, onto the floor, and across to the spirit, who was beginning to take the form of a bent old man. At the sight of the vapors flowing out of her, she felt the prick of panic, but with an effort of will and the aid of Iris, who at that moment floated nearer, she quelled it. As soon as Helen’s fear was gone, Iris moved back and slipped behind the old man. As he gathered substance, she faded, first her colors draining away, then her shape.
Levy continued to stare at Helen, his body tensed towards her like a cat about to spring. He was gripping the edge of the table, as if to hold himself back. He was a man of action, after all, and he must be considering what he ought to do about the placid young woman exuding mysterious vapors within easy reach of his hand. He seemed to decide she was all right for the time being, because at last he let his gaze slowly follow the trail of the vapors. When he let out a strangled cry and got up from his chair so abruptly it fell over, Helen knew he could see the materialized spirit.
The old man wasn’t as clearly delineated as Iris had been, and his clothing, skin, and hair were the same bluish-gray as the vapors, his long beard and his large, liquid eyes somewhat darker. The fringed shawl around his shoulders was almost white. His gnarled hands were clasped loosely together at his waist. He was looking affectionately at Major Levy.
Helen received the name Efraim. She knew from signed documents she’d seen that Major Levy’s first name was Sid, but the old man was clearly communicating Efraim, and he was directing it towards the major. Ursula had taught Helen to report exactly what she saw and heard without trying to make corrections.
“Efraim,” she said.
“What did you say?” Levy demanded.
“Efraim, don’t you know me? Don’t you know your zaida?” Helen said, voicing the words that were swimming into her mind from the spirit.
Levy looked back and forth between Helen and the spirit, as if he didn’t know which to answer. He finally chose to speak to Helen, in a harsh whisper seemingly designed to exclude the old man.
“What are you doing?” he hissed. “Whatever trick you used to learn my Hebrew name, that … that thing … over there isn’t my grandfather.”
“Efraim, Efraim, still with the hard head,” Helen said, exactly in the style of an indulgent grandparent. “You remember when you fell out that tree? Oy, how the women fussed! I told to them, better his head than the backbone or the ankles, because in the head our Efraim is strong like a rock, like a young oak. And wasn’t I right? A bump and a scrape you had and not a minute in the sick bed. But what’s good for falling out trees is not so good for making up the mind. On this, also, I am right.”
“Stop it!” Levy shouted. “Lots of boys fall out of trees. Stop it!”
The beginning of this outburst was aimed at Helen. She was gratified to see, however, that before he’d finished, Major Levy had turned and was addressing the old man.
A quietude came into Helen’s mind. Was the major’s grandfather preparing to depart, or was he simply waiting for his grandson to calm down? Breathing hard, Levy stood watching the old man intently, although the spirit wasn’t moving. His face wore the same benevolent smile as when it’d first come into focus. Helen centered her attention on the major’s breathing. When it had slowed, she ventured to speak.
“Do you have any questions, Major, for your … for our visitor?” she asked softly.
“How … ? It’s not possible,” he said, “not possible.”
“Efraim,” Helen said, again picking up a stream of thought from the spirit, “a man can be strong without being hard. A man can carry the weight he must and not let it bend him so low he forgets to look up at the sky. Don’t forget the sky, my boy.”
“He gave me … ,” Levy said, his voice low. “I mean, my grandfather gave me a telescope when I was twelve. It was old, in a cracked case—”
“—lined with velvet,” Helen interjected, “and the velvet was worn threadbare in spots, and he said—”
“—he said, It’s old and stiff like me, Efraim, older even than me, but it can still see the stars.”
Major Levy stepped hesitantly towards the spirit.
“Is it really you?” he said with emotion.
“And who else should I be?” Helen responded drolly on behalf of the old man.
Unexpectedly, the major lunged at the spirit. His hands appeared to take hold of the old man’s shoulders, but the instant he made contact, the spirit evaporated. At the same moment, Helen felt a severe blow to her chest, as if she’d been struck with a baseball bat. The violent pain spurred her to cry out, but the breath had been knocked from her, and she couldn’t make a sound. When the spirit disappeared beneath his hands, Levy wheeled around and in three strides was upon Helen, digging his fingers into her upper arms. A sensation like an electric shock shot through her. Then all was black and blank and hushed.
CHAPTER 43
Helen thought she must be dreaming. She was shuffling down a long corridor, someone’s arm around her waist. With great effort, she turned her head to see who was beside her. It was Major Levy. His brow was covered with perspiration. He ought to wipe away the sweat before it runs into his eyes, she thought foggily, but to tell him that was too intricate a feat, and besides, if he were to
take his arm away, she’d probably fall to the floor. Not that lying on the floor didn’t have its appeal. Why was he making her walk? Where were they going?
She shook her head to wake herself. The action made her dizzy, but she came to enough to recognize that the hallway and the major were not a dream. The smiling, slightly scolding face of an old man came vaguely to mind, like the beginning consonant of a forgotten name. Then Helen recalled everything, most distinctly the brutish thump on her chest and the electric jolt through her limbs. She moaned.
“What is it?” Levy said anxiously. “Do you want the smelling salts?” He fumbled in his pocket.
Helen shook her head no. She had a hazy recollection of the sharp, burning odor of ammonia, and a woman in uniform waving something back and forth in front of her face. When had that happened? Where?
“I’ve arranged for a car,” Levy was saying. “I’ll drive you home myself. You’re going to be fine. Do you understand me? You’re going to be fine.”
“Okay,” Helen said, in order to make him stop talking. His words were like pellets of hail against her aching head.
“It’s just a little farther to the elevator,” he said. “You’re going to be fine.”
“Shhh,” Helen managed, beginning to shuffle forward again.
The major obliged. Even when they’d reached the street and he had to maneuver her into the backseat of a shiny, black sedan, he did so in silence. Still silent, he got behind the wheel and pulled out into traffic.
Helen felt as if she were covered head to toe with a thick blanket. She heard street sounds, the hum of the car’s wheels, the change in the hum as they were crossing the bridge, and once, the major coughing, but she was too weighed down by the enveloping blanket to stir or speak or open her eyes or care.
Then she was walking again, this time up to her own house. She felt more alert than she had in the endless hallway or the car. The major again had his arm around her, but she was leaning on him less, and she wasn’t shuffling. When they reached the porch, she pushed him away, trying to gather her wits. Levy waited a moment before ringing the bell.
Emilie answered the door.
“Helen?” she said, looking back and forth between her daughter and the strange Army officer. “What is it?”
She reached up with both hands and pushed Helen’s hair back behind her ears. It seemed a strange thing for her mother to do, but then Helen realized that somewhere along the line her hair had come down out of its roll and was hanging around her face tangled and awry. She began to lift her hand to her hair to neaten it, but Emilie took her by the wrist and led her inside. Levy followed, closing the door behind him.
“Mrs. Schneider?” he said. “I’m Major Levy. I oversee the project your daughter is working on. She had a fainting spell. We had a nurse check her over, and she’s fine, absolutely fine, but we didn’t want her to travel home on her own.”
“Fainting spell? Why didn’t someone call us?”
“Mama,” Helen said softly. “I’m all right. I fainted, that’s all.”
She sat down heavily on a bench in the hallway. It was a struggle to keep her eyes open. She wondered how normal she was managing to appear. Not very, she suspected.
“She doesn’t look absolutely fine to me,” Emilie snapped at Levy. “What exactly did this nurse check?”
“Well, her pulse, her temperature—”
“What is all this?” Ursula said, coming into the hall.
“Oh, Nanny, Helen fainted in New York. This man brought her home,” Emilie replied.
Ursula felt Helen’s forehead and the back of her neck, then glared at the major.
“You were there when this happened?” she asked sharply.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What is it she was doing?”
“Doing?”
“What was she doing to make her faint?”
“Nothing, Nanny,” Helen put in. “It was the heat.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Levy said, “but I can’t discuss Miss Schneider’s work in any detail. I thought that had been explained to you when she began to—”
Ursula waved her hand at him.
“Yes, yes,” she said testily. “We were explained to. But there was nothing about maybe a young girl might faint in this work.”
“Major Levy,” Emilie said, “we are fully aware that it’s Helen’s mediumship the Army is interested in in some way. We were content to leave it at that. But when she comes home in this condition, I think we deserve to know what’s been going on.”
“It’s a hot day, ma’am. The office was poorly ventilated. I blame myself for not offering her water, but aside from that, there’s nothing more to say about it.”
“I’m taking Helen up to bed,” Emilie said, helping Helen to her feet. “Nanny, if you’ll see the major out?”
As Helen climbed the stairs beside her mother, she heard the front door open, and in the major’s voice, she heard again the words “going to be fine.”
Helen opened her eyes. She was in bed in her own room. A rectangle of sunshine lit the lower half of her white cotton coverlet.
“Guten Morgen”
Helen looked across the room to find her grandmother seated in the old rocker near the open window. Outside, a mockingbird began its repertoire of trills.
“Morning?” Helen said, pulling herself up into a seated position. “How long—?”
“Your mother sat up the whole night to watch you. I sent her now to rest herself.”
Ursula came to stand beside the bed.
“Almost asleep on your feet you were when that Mr. Levy brought you yesterday.”
There was a glass of water on Helen’s bedside table. She took a long drink.
“I think, Liebling, that you must tell me more what happened.”
Helen wanted to tell. She wanted her grandmother’s help in understanding what had happened. But the little girl in her was afraid of the old woman’s censure. She slid down in bed again.
“I can’t, Nanny.”
“Because of this secret work?” Ursula was scornful. “You don’t have to tell that. Only why you fainted.”
Ursula sat down on the edge of the bed. “If that is what you did.”
“Mama and Papa will be angry.”
“They are too worried to be angry. And because they are worried, it is enough to tell it only to me.”
Ursula put her hand on the coverlet over Helen’s knee. It was a reassuring, encouraging touch, wise, if such a word could be used, so unlike Levy’s electrifying grasp, unlike, too, Emilie’s perplexed tenderness as she’d helped Helen into bed.
“It was not your ordinary work, was it?” Ursula said.
“No.”
“You had another vision? Like the beach?”
“Not exactly.”
Helen sat up, crossing her legs like a tailor. “There was a materialization.”
“Who?” Ursula asked, surprise flashing across her face.
“Major Levy’s grandfather.”
“This is what you are doing? Calling up grandfathers? How is that supposed to help the war?”
“It’s not. It’s like you said—I wasn’t doing my usual work. I was … I went into trance for Major Levy. It was all my idea. I wanted to prove … I wanted him to stop treating me like … oh, I can’t explain it. I shouldn’t have done it, but I did.”
“Hmm,” Ursula muttered, managing to sound, at the same time, both contemplative and disapproving.
“A medium does not collapse like you were collapsed unless someone has interfered,” she said.
Eyes downcast, Helen began twisting the edge of the coverlet between her fingers.
“Everything was going all right,” she said, “until Major Levy tried to take hold of the spirit.” She looked at her grandmother. “And then … he grabbed at me, too. And then I passed out.”
“He tried. He grabbed,” Ursula reiterated. “But did he touch?”
Helen nodded, ashamed at her recklessness, ob
vious now in the telling.
“Then it is no wonder.”
Ursula said this so quietly she could have been talking to herself. She stood up from the bed.
“Please, Nanny, don’t be cross. I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t do anything like that again. Honestly, I won’t.”
“No, you won’t,” Ursula said sternly. “It will be the miracle if you are ever able to call a spirit again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your major seized a materialized spirit, and he put hands on you while you were in the deepest kind of trance. For your gift to survive one shock would be a matter for thanksgiving. But two?” She shook her head slowly back and forth, as if she were receiving bad news.
“How can I find out?” Helen said.
“With time,” Ursula replied. “Only with time.”
Abruptly, the room felt terribly small. It was hot, and too cheerfully cluttered with remnants of childhood. Helen needed to get out, to take a long walk beside the river, or to pedal her bicycle through the peach orchards west of town. She couldn’t begin, yet, to consider in any depth the damage to her powers her grandmother was positing. The notion loomed too large, like a figure in a nightmare. Yet if she stayed cooped up in her room, how would she stop herself thinking about it? She flung back her covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Ursula shooed her back.
“But I’m fine, and I’m hungry,” Helen protested, even as she was obediently lifting her legs back into bed.
“Your body, too, could be hurt or sickened from this,” Ursula said, straightening the sheet and coverlet. “You maybe still will show some harm. Better let’s wait in bed one day.”
The advice was sensible, and was, in any case, not really advice, but an order, however mildly put. Helen’s own folly had landed her in this predicament. She didn’t bother to argue.
Ursula fixed Helen a breakfast of sweet, milky tea and dry toast and brought it to her on a tray. Helen was disgruntled by the meagerness of the meal, but, again, she didn’t bother to argue. It was her grandmother’s standard sickbed fare. And unfortunately—Helen would so have liked to prove the old lady wrong—within an hour of the breakfast, Helen began running a fever. After a quick rise, her temperature leveled off at an intransigent 101 degrees. Neither aspirin nor cool cloths made a dent in it. There were no other symptoms. No aches, no nausea. Her grandmother was willing to let her try eating more, but the fever sapped her appetite. She had to force herself to drink the tall tumblers of watered-down juice her mother brought her every half hour.
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