The Medium

by Noëlle Sickels

  “Is Major Levy here?” she asked.

  “Yes, he is,” Boddington replied, “But you’re not scheduled to see him until his next visit. We’ll have more for him to review by then.”

  “I’d like to see him today.”

  Boddington regarded her curiously.

  “Very well,” he said. “I’ll go see if he’s available.”

  Helen was alone in the room for fifteen minutes before Levy showed up. In that time, she stood at the window staring at pedestrians and traffic far below, sat down and got up, walked around the table twice, sat down again, folded her arms on the table, and rested her head on them.

  It was gone. Her mysterious, unearned, sometimes onerous, sometimes exciting gift was gone. Boddington could tut-tut all he liked, Nanny could advise waiting longer, but Helen knew. She just knew. It had felt good to say so out loud and unvarnished to the startled lieutenant. It was like admitting a guilty secret. She felt disencumbered and heady, and at the same time off-balance and anxious. She didn’t try to parse her emotions. That would have been like trying to dissect the wind.

  When she heard the door open behind her, she lifted her head and turned in her seat.

  “Miss Schneider?” Major Levy said in an apprehensive voice. “You’re not feeling well?”

  “I was just resting.”

  “All right, then,” he replied awkwardly.

  He shut the door and walked to the table. Helen expected him to take Boddington’s place across from her, but instead he sat down in the chair next to hers and leaned slightly towards her with an inquisitive look in his eyes.

  “I wanted to let you know,” she said in an official tone, “that I’m leaving the project. I won’t be back.”

  Levy raised his eyebrows and straightened up in his chair.

  “That’s your prerogative, of course,” he said.

  As leery as Helen had felt about the intimacy of Levy’s attitude when he’d first sat down, now she regretted its evaporation. She hadn’t known how it would feel to see the major again, but the formality they’d both adopted was definitely dissatisfying.

  “I should caution you,” Levy continued after a pause, “that strictly speaking, your … performance … the other day was part and parcel of your work for the Army, and thus classified information, not to be shared with anyone outside the project.”

  “My performance?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “So, Major, as it was part and parcel of my work, I assume there’ll be a full account shared within the project. To whom should I report for de-briefing? The Army is bound to want someone other than you to interview me.”

  A wish was lodged beneath Helen’s sharp words, a wish that she and the major could move together onto more open, more honest ground. But at the moment, she had no interest in shaking off her justifiable pique. She couldn’t help but feel gratified that Major Levy looked truly miserable.

  “I seem always to be putting my foot in my mouth with you, Miss Schneider,” he said dejectedly.

  “When you’re not trying to put it on my neck.”

  Levy threw up his hands.

  “I had that coming, and more,” he admitted.

  “Don’t worry,” Helen said curtly, “I only told my grandmother, and she won’t tell anyone else.”

  Levy tapped his fingers irresolutely on the tabletop.

  “The truth is, Miss Schneider,” he finally said, “that you flat out scare me a little, and even a little fear can make a man say and do stupid things.”

  Helen sighed. She’d wanted the formality dispensed with, and now she’d have to rise to the occasion.

  “That seance was scary for me, too,” she confided. “The fainting part.”

  “But you have fully recovered, haven’t you?” Levy said with genuine warmth. “You really are all right?”

  Suddenly, as when Boddington had looked so disappointed, Helen felt close to tears.

  “Physically, yes,” she answered shakily, “but … I seem to have lost my abilities.”

  Levy made a disbelieving grimace.

  “Lieutenant Boddington told me you had some problems today, but lost them? How?”

  Helen waited to speak until she could trust her voice to be steady.

  “Because you grabbed the spirit and you touched me while I was in trance.”

  “What?” Levy jerked his head back as if he’d been struck. “My God, if I’d known, I wouldn’t have—”

  “It’s only technically your fault. I shouldn’t have been trying to show off.”

  “But can’t you get your abilities back?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  Levy looked towards the window. The view was of a shorter office building across the street and a stunning band of blue sky. A pair of pigeons flew by, their heads iridescent in the sunshine. Levy returned his gaze to Helen.

  “And I’ve been worried about the hell there’d be to pay if my superiors ever find out,” he said, shaking his head ruefully.

  Acknowledging his imprecise apology with a nod, Helen stood up and retrieved her hat from the end of the table. She took it to a small wall mirror and began pinning it on. Major Levy came to stand some feet behind her. His reflection spoke to hers.

  “I’m glad it happened,” he said quietly.

  Helen’s hat was in place, but she continued to face the mirror.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t answer that completely yet,” he said. “Something that I know is impossible nevertheless occurred. I don’t expect ever to understand it. But I won’t be able to insist anymore that there’s only one way the world works, only one ‘right’ way to describe it.”

  “My spirit guide …” Helen began, then paused to see if Levy would scoff. When he remained attentive, she went on. “My spirit guide says that we’re not supposed to understand everything, because understanding doesn’t have an end or a top, it just keeps going.”

  “I’ll have to chew on that one a while,” Levy said with a sincerely self-deprecating smile.

  Helen turned around and took a long look at the major. She wanted to remember his face, especially his face at this moment. He withstood her scrutiny patiently. Maybe he was harvesting her face, too. It was unlikely they’d ever meet again. Finally, a hint of official demeanor returned to his expression. It was time to go. Helen tucked her clutch purse under her arm.

  “The Army appreciates your service, Miss Schneider,” Levy said, extending his hand to shake hers. He held on a moment. “For myself,” he added, “thanking you doesn’t seem exactly the right thing for what you did the other day, but … Let’s just say I’ll never forget it. And I hope it turns out you’re wrong about losing your gift.”

  Helen moved towards the door. Levy stepped ahead of her to open it. Before passing out of the room, she paused close by him.

  “All my life people have called what I can do—what happens through me—a gift,” she said. “But maybe, Major, it was only a loan.”

  CHAPTER 45

  When Helen came back from New York, her mother and grandmother were in the living room listening to The Cisco Kid. Emilie switched off the radio and urged Helen to take off her shoes and lie down on the sofa. She propped pillows under Helen’s head and feet and gave her a tablespoon of cod liver oil, as if she were a sickly child. Helen didn’t resist.

  “You need to take things more slowly,” Emilie said, recapping the cod liver oil bottle. “Next time, go in for half as long.”

  “I’ve quit,” Helen said dully.

  “What?”

  “I’m not going back.”

  “Oh, darling,” Emilie exclaimed, “I’m so glad. Your father will be, too.”

  “The job, it is finished?” Ursula asked.

  “For me it is.”

  “Well, I’m going right to the butcher’s for a roast for dinner,” Emilie announced, plumping the pillow at Helen’s head. “It’ll fortify you.”

  She bustled happily out of the room. Helen closed h
er eyes.

  “Helen,” Ursula said quietly a few minutes later, “you aren’t sleeping?”

  “No,” Helen replied, opening her eyes, but holding her gaze to the ceiling.

  “What did you find out?”

  “I found out that you were right,” Helen said in an adamant whisper. “My abilities are gone.”

  “The work today didn’t go well?”

  “The work didn’t go at all.”

  “And you think it would be the same another day? That it would be the same, too, at the home circle, or in solitary trance?”

  “I know it would.” Helen irritably kicked the pillows out from under her feet and onto the floor. She sat up.

  “I could probably still go into trance,” she continued, “but I wouldn’t receive anything. Or anyone.”

  “Not even Iris?”

  Helen shook her head.

  “I think she tried to come through a couple of times, but it was no use. I guess now she’ll be moving on. No sense knocking her head against a brick wall.”

  “She is your guide,” Ursula said. “She will stay. You maybe won’t see her again, but she will stay.”

  “If I can’t see her, what good is that?”

  “Whenever you know, deep inside, what to do, where to go, there will Iris be.”

  “Like some kind of puppeteer?” Helen snarled.

  “Did she ever feel so?”

  Helen would have liked to be able to make another negative comment, but she felt too drained and deflated.

  “You are not a puppet, Helen. If Iris brings a desire, it is your own desire she shows you, your right place. And you are free to ignore.”

  Ursula bent over from her chair to pick up the pillows Helen had kicked off. She tossed them back onto the sofa.

  “You remember you asked once about my guide,” she said, “and I told you he didn’t come so much?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was a little Flunkerei, a fib. He hasn’t come at all since I was only a bit more than your age. And I can blame only myself.”

  “Why?”

  “I hold the hands, but I read the faces. I am a good guesser. Sometimes, too, there is a small trick here or there, for the little excitement. To have the people come back.”

  “And that’s why your guide stopped coming?”

  “Ja, I think so. Yet I feel him sometimes, like he is right here.” Ursula pointed to a spot six inches above her left shoulder. “And when, once in a while, true spirits come to sittings, I believe it’s Gerard who brings them. Iris, maybe, will do the same.”

  “But why should I ask her to, Nanny? So people can get their puny questions answered? So they can stop feeling afraid and guilty and lonely?”

  “These are not puny things, Helen.” Ursula hesitated a moment, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. “And there is yourself, too.”

  “Myself?”

  “You were on the way to being a great medium, someone people will seek out and reward. This you can still have.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You say the gift is gone. But you remember what it was like. You do not have to wish Iris will help. You already know what to say, how to act.”

  Helen had never used gimmicks to court clients. She’d never felt the need to make excuses or reparations when a seance “failed.” She could be almost haughty to clients who complained of too meager results. But now her grandmother was showing her an alternate path, crass but definitely inviting. She could still be special. She could still feel powerful. But it was such self-importance that had lost her her gift.

  “Nanny,” she said at last, “I can’t … cheat … like that. I know you’ve said that telling people what they want to hear can help them, and I’ve seen it, but I just couldn’t. It wouldn’t bring back Iris or my boys or any of it, and it would be like … like spitting on them, like … like spitting on myself, and on you.”

  Ursula let out a long breath redolent with melancholy, and yet, she was smiling.

  “You are right, Liebling. But more people than me will ask you to keep having seances. It’s good to wonder here, quiet in your own house, what to answer.”

  “You mean you didn’t really want me to—”

  “I would like it, your company and help. But not in this way, to be eine Fälschung. You make the choice as I had hoped. To lead you to this is my gift to you, and my gift to spirit. To make up for all the tricks I have done, and all the Flunkereien ahead.”

  Ursula stood up purposefully. The topic was unmistakably closed.

  “Your mother will be home soon,” she said. “I’m going to scrub some potatoes and set the oven for our roast.”

  “Nanny?”

  “Ja?”

  “I feel so lost. Like I’ve forgotten my own name and there’s no one around to tell it to me.”

  “Emilie had a boy in her hospital like that,” Ursula said. “His head was hurt, and he couldn’t remember his name or his town or if he has a sweetheart …”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Some pieces, they leaked back in. For the rest, he must figure them out—he ate chocolate ice cream to see if he was a person who likes chocolate ice cream.”

  “Did that really work?”

  “Pretty good, your mother said. Because the same person was still there underneath. That person knew he likes chocolate, and maybe that person is who has the idea to make the test with the ice cream. What you had, Helen, maybe it is not gone forever.”

  “You can’t be sure of that, Nanny.”

  “Just so,” Ursula said with a small shrug of her shoulders. “But it is what I think all the same.”

  Helen slouched down into the sofa, tucking a pillow behind her back.

  “I wonder, Nanny,” she said quietly, “if they’re disappointed in me.”

  “Who?”

  “My boys.”

  “Ach, child, spirits have no interest in such feelings.”

  “I know, but I worry anyway that I let them down, that their stories were wasted on me.”

  Ursula considered her granddaughter.

  “Did their stories change you, Helen? Did they teach you?”

  “Yes. Yes, they did.”

  “And you shared these stories, no? With the home circle, with clients at seances. So, maybe some of those people, they are changed, too. Maybe they learn to live a little bit in a different way, a bigger, more hopeful way. And maybe each changed person meets along his way another person and makes a change there, also. Quietly, with no fuss or hooray. Do you think this is possible?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Then where can be the waste or disappointment? The spirits, they do not have expectations. They only give, and leave us to take it or not.”

  Helen nodded. Her heartsickness softened to wistfulness.

  “It’s so strange, Nanny, to think I’ll never see Iris again, never hear any more stories.”

  “Then don’t think so,” Ursula declared. “Don’t wait for them, but don’t wash your hands, neither. Always there is change. Spirit teaches that.”

  Helen reached for her shoes and slipped them on.

  “Want some help with the potatoes?” It was a halfhearted offer.

  “Nein. I will do by myself.”

  CHAPTER 46

  OCTOBER 1944

  Rosie hadn’t been posted back to Italy after her leave in May, but had been sent, grumbling, to an office in Washington, D.C. After the Allies landed in Normandy in June, overall strength in Italy had been gradually decreased, even though fighting was still going on in the northern Appenines, Americans on mules pushing Germans on mules towards the Po Valley, a crawling campaign of hard-hammered inches according to Rosie’s Arnie. Rosie’s letters to Helen from Washington were as full of news about him as about herself. Now, Rosie was coming to River Bend on a three-day pass. Helen sat in the bus station waiting for her.

  Helen scanned the waiting room. A year ago, there would have been more soldiers. More you
ng women, too, many with babies, on their way to the bases where their husbands were posted. All that had slowed down. There weren’t as many people moving to get to jobs, either. Some defense plants had even taken steps to convert to nonmilitary production. Just today, Helen had seen a poster that showed a crying child and the caption, “Mother, when will you stay home again?” It’d been many months since she’d seen any posters encouraging women to work or praising women workers for doing a man-sized job.

  Despite these subtle changes, the national optimism of the summer was waning. American casualties had so exceeded estimates that the Army, for the first time, was putting boys younger than nineteen into combat units and drafting men over twenty-six. Some people were still hoping for peace in Europe by Christmas, but the Germans were showing no signs of surrender. In fact, they’d recently launched new rockets against England, the V-2s, which traveled so high and so fast, there was no way to warn of their approach and no defense against them. And Hitler was boasting that Germany was at work on even more formidable wonder weapons. American newspapers rumored that these weapons might employ atomic bombs and be capable of crossing the Atlantic.

  Just a few days ago, at Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, the largest naval battle in history had been fought, with the American navy victorious. Among the battleships had been several raised from the mud of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese navy was virtually destroyed, and the Japanese had so few planes left even before the battle that some of their aircraft carriers had entered the fray without a single plane aboard, acting only as decoys. But Leyte Gulf had seen the birth of a shocking new tactic, suicide pilots who flew planes loaded with explosives straight into the decks of ships. The pilots were called kamikaze, which meant “divine wind,” the radio said.

  It seemed the Japanese, like the Germans, were not likely to concede defeat easily. The more sober commentators were positing that the war was likely to stretch until 1946. The Allies’ superior might would win, but doggedness on the other side would drag it painfully out.