“Euphora, I’ve spoken to your father. You are going to help me with the cooking from now on. I’ll teach you how to cook and you’ll assist me with whatever needs to be done in the kitchen.”
Red hair down her shoulders, nose pinched, Euphora blinked several times, then looked at Izzie who nodded in agreement.
Euphora gave her freckle-faced grin. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Well, you’re eleven and that’s quite old enough to learn. You gain something from it. I gain as well, a fair exchange. I’ll teach you to be a domestic. You’ll have a skill.”
Then Izzie, who for some darn reason still wasn’t sitting yet, stepped away from her usual seat, placed a hand on the top rung of Papa’s vacant chair at the end of the oval table, and Holy rolling Moses, she sat down erect and broad-shouldered like it was her own place. Clara clenched her teeth. What had come over Izzie? She was acting like the Queen of Geneva.
“Dear, how long will your father be away?” One of the Mary Janes raised her silver gray brow, then squinted at Clara.
“He always comes back,” Clara said, “even if he takes a while.”
Clara looked past the Mary Janes to the windows and lace curtains to the winter night behind them. Not always. He didn’t come back last summer after his gristmill burned to the ground. Looking down at the bits of potato, red beet, and stringy meat piled high in a discombobberated mound, Clara felt her hunger dwindle.
That’s why they were here in this house with these spinsters and Mrs. Purcell. That’s why they had to travel from Homer for an entire month with that rickety old horse and that creaky buckboard wagon in the pouring rain. She shivered as she recalled the chilling downpour soaking her like a piece of laundry in a tub. Papa would have come back to them in Homer if they’d given him half a chance. They left Ohio too soon. Mamma was too impatient. He would have come back. He didn’t truly run away. It was all the confusion about his gristmill and the insurance and his partners.
“He’ll return soon then, won’t he?” The Mary Janes both smiled. The one who spoke had a small black mole on the side of her chin with a few spunky white hairs growing out of it. She decided this one was Mary. The mole would be her marker. Mary mole. She could remember that.
Izzie was pushing the hash around her plate in that polite way she had, but she probably wasn’t hungry either, thought Clara. Izzie never cared about Papa being gone, so it had to be that she was missing Mamma. Clara took a bite of her hash. It was warm and soft in her mouth, but she didn’t want to swallow it. She chewed it for so long that it became thick like glue. She had no choice. She gulped it down.
“I find it interesting that a man, who doesn’t allow his daughters to go to school because he thinks it is worthless for girls to spend their time with books and doesn’t allow a son to go either, because a boy’s place is work, would pay money to give his daughters special Spiritualism lessons.” Mrs. Purcell shot the spinsters a look, as if Papa not letting them go to school had been talked about in private, maybe more than once. “Clara, why don’t you tell us about the lessons you two had this week with that famous medium?”
The Mary Janes nodded and chimed, “Yes. Yes. Did you levitate anyone?”
Suddenly, all eyes turned toward Clara. She took a deep breath and sat up.
“We had four lessons. Then Mrs. Fielding and her assistant, Anna, had to go to Rochester. They’re on a tour of nine cities and towns. In the first lesson, Mrs. Fielding explained the usual ways spirits communicate.” Clara enjoyed the way the large word rolled off her tongue. “They speak through things around us. They tip tables, ring bells, rattle things, or rap or knock on something hard.” Clara knocked on the table for effect.
One of the Mary Janes chuckled and drew a hand over her mouth. Clara took a bite of hash and swallowed it quickly.
“Could they tip this big table?” Euphora asked.
“Maybe. It depends. Mrs. Fielding said when mediums are just beginning to develop their skills they sometimes have to fix things to happen in case the spirits aren’t able to perform as hoped. Even if they are advanced, sometimes tipping things just doesn’t go right.”
“Clara, we swore not to speak of the mechanics,” Izzie said.
Double rot. That was right. She’d forgotten.
“Isn’t it all a hoax?” Mrs. Purcell asked.
“No, it’s not. Mrs. Fielding said you just can’t overdo the effects because it hurts the reputations of all Spiritualists everywhere. She said one has to be reasonable, that’s all.”
“That’s enough about it, Clara. We promised,” Izzie said.
“Mrs. Fielding says it’s only a hoax if they go too far like The Davenport Brothers.” Everyone was watching Clara, not Izzie. Izzie was pure sour grapes tonight. “The Davenports make fiddles, guitars, and banjos fly about the room and the instruments play music by themselves.” Clara danced her hands in the air. “Mrs. Fielding says they’re downright liars and hoaxes. One day they’ll be found out and it will be bad for true mediums like her and Anna.”
“How do they make the instruments fly?” Euphora asked.
“They darken the room and use special lightweight ropes and pulleys. Helpers hide in the room and operate everything.”
“Do you think Mrs. Fielding and Anna are true mediums, Isabelle?” No-mole Jane asked.
“I don’t know what a true medium is exactly,” Izzie said.
Then Izzie got the grumps all over her face and started stirring her food around again. She didn’t want anyone asking her anything. That was darn sure.
“The next lesson we learned how the spirits speak through letters and words. Anna showed us something from Paris called a planchette. It’s shaped like a heart, has a pencil sticking out of it, and little tiny wheels on the bottom. If a medium touches it properly, it writes on a paper beneath it.” Clara demonstrated with fingers suspended gently over an imaginary planchette. “I hope we can get one. Mrs. Fielding says it is hard to get them. But, you don’t have to have one. You can use an alphabet and just let your hand drift over the letters until the spirit tells your hand to stop.”
Clara could feel how curious everyone was. The more she spoke, the more excited she got remembering Mrs. Fielding’s words and demonstrations. She glanced at Izzie to see if she was going to rile, but Izzie was staring at her hash and seemed to be off in her own sad thoughts.
Clara stood up next to her chair, sliding Billy’s empty seat away so she had room.
“There’s deep trance and light trance. In a deep trance, a spirit can take over the medium altogether and speak with her voice.” Clara closed her eyes. “I am here to visit my great great granddaughter, Euphora.” Clara opened her eyes half way to see Euphora laughing hard, then opened them all the way and laughed along with the ladies. Izzie still had the grumps and was now scowling at her. “But I don’t think I’d like that to really happen to me. And in a light trance, it’s more like you are listening to the spirit and reporting back what they say.”
She fully closed her eyes again. “Euphora, your great great grandmother is here. She says “hello” and something else…” Cocking her head and pretending to listen, Clara waited a moment. Everyone was silent. “She says you will travel the world.”
The Mary Janes applauded.
“Anna Santini can do both kinds of trance. Izzie asked her if she ever worried about being insane. But Anna just gave Izzie a kiss and told her hearing spirits was absolutely the most wonderful gift a person could be blessed with. She said, ‘Izzie, never for one minute in my entire life have I worried about sickness of the mind. My purpose on this earth is to help people reunite with their loved ones.’ ”
“Clara. That’s enough,” Izzie said.
Izzie looked strange, like she was about to vomit or freeze to death. She rose and excused herself politely, saying she was not feeling her best. As she turned to leave the table, she took one last look at Mamma’s chair then left with a rain cloud over her head that Clara could almost see.
Trying to ignore Izzie and her rain cloud, Clara went on describing the third and fourth lessons, how she and Izzie could become true mediums, how they’d behave with the seekers, how they could go into trance by draining their minds and breathing deeply. While people finished eating, she told everyone how to organize seekers in circles using the principles of electricity with men positive and women negative, how to use trances for large audiences, and how to help just one person at a time, and finally, how some mediums could look inside a person’s body and actually see their ailments.
She’d been standing and talking for a long time and no one had budged or spoken or even looked away from her. They weren’t even eating their hash. So she went on.
“During the final lesson, Mrs. Fielding did nothing but talk for two hours without stopping. I thought she was practicing for her lecture in Rochester. She strode about the room.” Clara began to march around the table, imitating Mrs. Fielding and trying to make her voice vibrate. “Spiritualism is the only religious sect in the world that recognizes women as the equal of men. Mediums communicate the divine truth because they can hear what the spirits say to them.” She stopped behind the Mary Janes. “Every time Mrs. Fielding said ‘divine truth’ her voice quivered like that. Divine Truth.” She continued around toward Mrs. Purcell. “Spiritualism itself is proof of the immortality of the soul and because the proof is spreading far and wide,” Clara shot her arms straight up, “...the entire world is on the cusp of a new era.”
Clara returned to her seat and tried one more time to make her voice quiver like Mrs. Fielding’s. “Divine Truth!”
She bowed. Everyone was smiling like sunrises at her.
“After the lecture, Mrs. Fielding gave Izzie a journal called The Spiritual Telegraph and told her to subscribe to it when we made enough money and Izzie said, ‘Even if we believed in Spiritualism, wouldn’t Clara and I be just like the Davenport Brothers if we practiced being mediums but had no gift?’” Clara pretended to be Mrs. Fielding again. “‘Not if your gift is forthcoming, my dear, and you are preparing for that day.’“
“Mrs. Fielding told Izzie she could come to New York City and observe their circles and maybe even go on a tour with them someday. They didn’t offer all that to me.”
“But you said they thought you might both be true mediums didn’t they?” Mary Mole asked.
“Mrs. Fielding said if I used my intuition, I would be able to more or less know what the spirits might say rather than actually hear them say things. She said I would be good at that.” Clara grinned. “Like a gifted actress.”
“Yes, I believe she was right about that,” Mrs. Purcell said. “Would anyone like apple pie?”
Six
CLARA POINTED AT THE HATS in the milliner’s window. “This is the place. Papa said upstairs, above the hat shop.”
A black flat-rimmed bonnet with a large bow the color of over-ripe cherries held Clara’s attention. Then she glanced at the others—the blue silks, the red velvets, the shining delicate brown feathers. There were twelve in all. She longed to go inside and try every blessed one of them on.
“Come on, Clara. Papa is waiting for us. I’m freezing.” Arms tucked under her plaid shawl, Izzie had gone ahead to the stairwell door and was leaning against it, holding it open.
They climbed the dim stairway to the first floor landing. What on earth did Papa have to show them? Clara wondered. While Izzie knocked, Clara rose up and down on her toes. She felt like a kettle about to boil over. On the way here this afternoon, Izzie had told her she was afraid Papa was up to no good and he’d spent even more borrowed money on some surprise. “He’ll get us all in trouble,” Izzie had said. She might be right, but maybe not. She never gave Papa a fair shake. If only Izzie and Papa could get along, everything would be more cheerful.
The door opened and there he was, standing tall and smiling like he had just caught the biggest trout in Seneca Lake. His coat was brushed off and tidy, his spectacles wiped clear of smudges, and his sideburns trimmed neat. He looked like he did the day his gristmill had opened for business in Homer. He and his friends had celebrated by drinking ale inside and outside the mill building all day long. He got so tipsy and silly that Mamma finally came and dragged him home to bed. Before he finally went to sleep, he sang to her for an entire splendiferous hour.
“Come in, my two peaches.”
Stepping away from the door, Papa swung his hand out into the room and bowed, welcoming her and Izzie like they were two princesses coming to court. Two peaches. Bowing like that. He had something big in mind, all right.
The winter sun spilled brilliantly in through three tall, narrow windows on one wall. The room was longer than wide, smelled a little smoky, and was warmed by a fire blazing in a hearth opposite the door. The wood of the mantel was fancy, carved with ribbons, bows, and bunches of grapes. There wasn’t any furniture at all except for the empty ceiling-high bookcases along the walls to their right.
But what was the surprise? There was nothing here except cleaned-up Papa, and a fire. She looked at Izzie to see if her sister understood what Papa was up to, but Izzie was like an iceberg stuck at the door. She hadn’t even stepped inside yet.
An odd smirk on his face, Papa watched them carefully. Suddenly he strutted across the room and leaned on the fireplace mantel, stretching an arm along the top. He held still for a long moment, like he was posing for an ambrotype. Tarnation, what was it?
“Well, girls.” He swept his arm around. “This is where you’ll become famous mediums. This is where the spirits will come and visit all those who enter. It’s your very own place. We’ll call it the Spirit Room.”
“Just for us, Papa?” Clara spun around. “Izzie, we’re going to be famous mediums!”
But Izzie, still the iceberg, wouldn’t budge.
“Where did you get the money for this, Papa?” Izzie asked.
“None of your business. You ought to be proud I’m backin’ you, givin’ you a real chance to do somethin’ with yourself besides marryin’ the first thing in trousers that asks.”
Clara cringed. That did it. They were both going to rile now and, just like night comes after day, a yelling fit was about to explode. Clara turned her back to them and walked toward the windows. She’d wait it out over there where she could see the comings and goings below on Seneca Street. But before Clara even got half way to the window, the door slammed.
She swiveled around. Izzie was gone. Papa stood still, his mouth hanging open a little. He kept his pose at the mantel, almost like Izzie had never been there at all nor said anything at all. He stayed like that a moment, then, shoving his hands into his black frock coat pockets, he rambled across the bare floor to her. “Your sister will come around. I’ll bet my boots on it.” Breaking into his Papa grin, crooked teeth showing, pewter-gray eyes clear, big ears rising up, he pointed back toward the fireplace. “Come back over here, Little Plum. Let me tell you what I have in mind.”
<><><>
A FEW DAYS LATER, Clara sat with Izzie and Euphora at their pine table in the Blue Room. After Clara had finished the fifty shirts, she got a new tall stack of seamstress work from the tailor. They were going to be sewing for at least a week, attaching petticoats to chemise tops and ruffles to the bottoms of pantalettes. When they left Ohio, Mamma decided to leave their spinning wheel behind. She said, “My girls, the days of spinning flax are coming to an end. That’s the future. But the days of sewing will never end. Women like us will sew until we’re too old and too tired to lift another needle, but then our daughters will sew and when they are too tired, their daughters will and on and on.”
Clara was already tired of jamming the needle over and under, over and under, over and under. Fifty-one ruffles done. Sixty-one still to go.
Papa burst into the Blue Room. “I need Clara down at the Spirit Room. Billy’s already there. Isabelle and Euphora, you keep at the sewin’.”
Flying out the d
oor behind Papa, Clara felt like a parakeet let out of its cage. When they got to the Spirit Room, which was a short walk from their boardinghouse, Papa took a few items from the bookcase. Gray eyes twinkling behind his spectacles, he presented them to Clara.
“Billy and I are goin’ to work on some mechanical things. This is what you’ll need to make the alphabet sheet like Mrs. Fielding had.”
He handed her a small stack of folded papers with a few inkbottles and metal tip pens sitting tentatively on top.
“There’s some handbills the letterpress man gave me that you can trace over to make the letters look nice. Can you put them in an arc like Mrs. Fielding did?” He drew a curve in the air.
Splendiferous, thought Clara. This was much better than sewing. She smiled and nodded at him, then looked around at the vacant room. Hands in trouser pockets, Billy was stomping with his boots lightly on different spots on the wood floor, like a square dancer, but slower. She carried her materials near the center window, settled herself on the dusty floor in a warm patch of sunlight, and began to unfold the papers.
The Spirit Room Page 5