Papa wandered about the room, tapping on the blue and green striped wallpaper, speaking loudly, then softly, saying, “Hallo there spirits,” and “Dead people, come here.” Clara laughed. He said he was “scrutinizin’” the way his voice resonated. Then he got on his knees and pounded with his fist on a few of the floorboards.
Suddenly he shot up like a firework and started rattling off instructions to Billy. Go down to the waterfront. Get this. Get that. When Papa had finished giving orders, Billy raced back and forth from the Spirit Room to the foundry, the carriage maker, the cabinetmaker, the blacksmith, and even the shipwright, and each time he returned with an assortment of things—pliers, a drill, iron rods, hinges, levers, screws, and other odds and ends, mostly metal.
Papa was going to rig up a secret knocker. He wanted the sound to come from some place in the room far enough away from where the table would be that people wouldn’t think about the rap noise being made by her or Izzie. So he came up with the idea of removing a floor plank and running a long pole out of sight underneath.
He stood near the imagined table. “You or Isabelle will sit here. You’ll step on a pedal under the rug.” He stomped his foot down onto the floor. “The pedal will be hooked to a long rod by a hinge and a spring. It’ll have extra punch, like the trigger on my old Colt Walker.” He held up his hand up, finger pointing, thumb flexing, like a pistol. “Bang. The metal plate on the far end of the rod will hit the floor joist way over there.” Smiling like he just shot a wild turkey, he blew at the tip of his finger, then pointed toward the three windows. It was surely the cleverest thing Papa had ever come up with.
Papa was full of sunshine those few days of fixing up the Spirit Room, not drinking at all as far as she could tell, and singing and whistling like the old days while he cooked up his ideas and tried them out. When he found out that Mrs. Beattie, the milliner landlady from downstairs, had some extra wallpaper, he dug a small hole about shoulder height in the wall near the back of the room and then carved out a skinny tunnel from the hole straight down to the floor. He installed a sweet little bell in the hole, hooked it to a black cord, and ran the cord down the tunnel and then under several floorboards. It ended up at the very spot where he said he would stand during séances. He tied it to his boot, crossed his arms, and just moved his foot a little. Then, ring, ring, ring.
“The spirits’re chimin’ away like boys in a choir,” Papa said.
Then he pasted a fresh strip of the green and blue striped wallpaper over the damage he’d done to the wall. He and Billy swept up some dust and blew it off the palms of their hands and made it look just as dirty as the rest of the wall.
Every time something went right like the bell, he’d grin and slap Billy on the shoulder. Then, every time something didn’t fit right or do what he wanted, he’d blame Billy somehow and cuss at him.
Papa’d say, “You got the wrong damn one,” or “I told you the smallest,” or “Why ain’t you smart like your sisters?” Pulling back her pen from the alphabet paper, Clara clenched her teeth each and every time, waiting for something awful. But just when Billy looked like he was about to yell something back or throw a tool on the floor or maybe stomp out, Papa would break out his grin again and say, “Come on then, my Billy boy, we’ll get it right.”
It was a good thing Papa didn’t kick up too much of a stink, because Billy had been different since they’d come to Geneva. He wasn’t as likely to cast his brown eyes down and wait for Papa’s storms to pass over him, unless of course Papa was pickled, then he just skedaddled. But now, if Papa wasn’t liquorized, Billy’d raise up his face and look right into Papa’s eyes and stare at him.
Mamma always said, “A father and son have to work out between them whether the father is going to let the son be a man and sometimes it ain’t easy.”
Between Billy, who must have finished with being a boy on the road between Homer and Geneva, and Izzie, who had her own mind about just about everything, there weren’t too many quiet times when Papa was around.
Clara slowed her hand as she darkened a letter. She wanted it to be perfect and handsome. And besides that, she didn’t want to go back to the sewing. Those few days of getting the Spirit Room ready were like summertime in the middle of winter. Even though Izzie wasn’t there, the famous Benton Sisters were being born. A new beginning for all of them. It was just what Papa needed. As soon as Izzie saw how clever the secret knocker was, she’d come around. Papa was right about that. Papa was mostly right about everything. Except Billy, anyway.
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WHEN THE SPIRIT ROOM was finally fixed up for their circles, Clara showed it to Izzie. Papa had told her it was her mission to get Izzie to agree to go ahead as the Benton Sisters, talented mediums. He could make Izzie do it, he’d said, but if Izzie was too ornery she wouldn’t be a charming medium and charming was important. He said that the medium business was the only way he could figure to make money for now and she and Izzie had to do it. Clara had to convince her sister to go along.
After Clara gave Izzie a demonstration of Papa’s floor knocker and the secret bell and showed off her alphabet, she stood with Izzie at the window looking down onto Seneca Street. It was bustling with walkers, horses, wagons and carriages. Except for a patch here and there, snow and ice had melted in the recent warm spell. Fidgeting with a dirty red and white checkered hair ribbon that she held in her hands, Clara leaned against the wall facing Izzie. The wind blew against the window, forcing cold air in.
“We have to work anyway, Iz. Papa has no income. We can do more seamstress work or be chambermaids or maybe shoe binders, but we would have so much more fun and money doing the spirit circles. What are we going to do if not this?”
Izzie was quiet a moment then looked at Clara. “But what if I start hearing voices like Mamma? I heard someone say the name Susan that evening at Mrs. Fielding’s séance. I heard it clearly, but you didn’t and Papa didn’t. What if that was the beginning of being like Mamma? Maybe insane. Loony. Wouldn’t it be better to do something dull and necessary, something honest?
And what if we both could do better than being seamstresses? I could get a governess position with one of the families on Main Street or even up in Rochester or Albany.” Izzie gazed out the window. “Back in Homer, you know my friend Julianna’s family educated me beyond what any girl’s seminary could have. I know I could find a governess position. I should at least try. The hoax shenanigans might turn real for me and make me like Mamma.”
Down on the street, everyone heading into the wind had a hand on their hat and was bent forward. Everyone going the other way was bent back.
“Izzie, you’re nothing like Mamma. You’re smart and strong and can do whatever you want to. You’ll never buckle to anything. That’s the way you are. I don’t want to be a seamstress either. Never ever. I want to be an actress and maybe travel the world.”
Izzie chuckled and looked at her. “You have a lot of growing up to do. If that’s what you want, you better marry above your station then, Clara, and I don’t mean a little above. I mean quite well above.”
“Why don’t you find a wealthy, smart gentleman and I’ll marry his brother?” Clara laughed and slid closer. “There!” She pointed outside. “What about those two?” A bearded man wearing a fine greatcoat and holding a stovepipe hat and cane climbed into a plum-colored runabout hitched to two dapple, gray horses. He leaned over the side of his carriage and spoke to another man on the walk who was also well dressed in a fitted black coat.
“You saw them first. Go ahead, Clara. Which one?”
Clara shook her head and twisted the ribbon around her finger. “Not yet.”
Izzie looked down. “I’m afraid of that spiritual world. Why did Anna Santini say those things about me?”
“Are you sure you don’t have a gift for spirits?”
“I don’t. I don’t.”
“Well then, see, you don’t have to worry about being like Mamma or Anna. Besides, we won’t have to always be m
ediums. Just for a while. If we’re good at it, we can make money like Mrs. Fielding and travel to different cities. The Benton Sisters of Geneva. That sounds just as good as the Fox sisters of Hyde Park. You won’t be like Mamma, Izzie. You won’t.”
But Clara knew there was something for Izzie to be at least a little afraid of. Izzie sometimes did know things in a mysterious way and Mamma used to tease her when she was little and tell her she would have spirits visit her when she got older.
Clara wrapped the hair ribbon she had been playing with around Izzie’s wrist and tied it with a bow.
“Izzie, I’m afraid. I’m afraid Papa will leave us again if we don’t make some money right away. Please, Izzie, for me?”
Izzie looked at her a long moment, then sighed. “Only for you, Clara. Not for Papa, not for Mrs. Fielding, not for Andrew Jackson Davis and his Harmonial Philosophy.” She looked into Clara’s eyes. “If I don’t like it, I’ll quit, Clara. I don’t care what Papa says. I’ll defy him. I’ll leave. I’ll do whatever is necessary to end it if I hate it. I’ll be a governess.”
Clara bounced up and down on her toes. “Oh, Izzie, you’ll see. Being mediums will be thundering fun, much better than being a governess.”
“I swear, Clara, you could charm a fish out of a stream. You’ll certainly be a better medium than a seamstress. You’d be wasting yourself with a needle and thread. Maybe those pompous people who say that reading novels is bad for girls are right. Once we girls have visions of the world outside the home, we’re unwilling to stay put and happily perform our domestic duties.” Izzie gently untied the red and white ribbon, wrapped it around Clara’s wrist and tied it again. “We can’t go back. We’ve already read too many books. Julianna taught me to read. I taught you and Euphora to read. We’re corrupted.”
The plum runabout was on the move and caught Clara’s eye. Slapping his reins on the backs of his gray horses, the fancy man’s carriage began to climb Seneca Street. Clara waved at it.
“Goodbye. We don’t need you now. We’re the famous Benton Sisters,” she said and then she extended her hand to Izzie and they shook like gentlemen partners.
Izzie pushed up her dress sleeves. “This place is foul with dust. Let’s clean it up.”
Seven
CLARA WAS READY FOR THEIR FIRST SPIRIT CIRCLE. This was the most excited she had ever been in her entire life. As Papa drew the new muslin curtains across their three windows, she took her place opposite Izzie at one end of the heavy oak table in the center of the Spirit Room. The room was cozy, lit by a fire in the hearth, the dull glow from gas street lamps filtering in, the candle near Izzie, and two oil lamps on the mantel. Also on the mantel was the small mahogany clock that Clara had found left behind by the previous tenant of the room. It was broken, stuck at eleven o’clock. Dead silent, it added something mysterious to the Spirit Room so they kept it. Izzie’s face was buried from sight behind her small notebook. She was going over what she wrote down the night before, things Papa told her.
Papa’s friends were coming any minute. The spirit circle was going to be a rehearsal, the way actors do in the theater. A “dress rehearsal” Papa had called it.
“You girls have to practice what you learned from Mrs. Fielding before we can charge money,” he told them.
From Papa, she and Izzie now knew something about each of the men coming. He kept her and Izzie up half the night telling them personal things about the men, then making them repeat it back. Sam Weston was a canal contractor. Herbert Washburn owned three canal boats all himself, and John Payne was a barkeeper at Ramsey’s, Papa’s favorite saloon. Washburn and Payne were both married but Payne’s wife died several years ago.
Papa said that Payne being a widower was significant, and she and Izzie should look to fit the dead wife into their trances. Weston never married, but was engaged once. The woman went off with someone else at the last minute before the wedding. Papa had lots more about brothers and sisters and where they grew up, things like that, pieces of a life puzzle.
When Papa and Izzie worked out the plan for the séance, they had decided that Izzie was going to imitate a serious deep trance. She was the oldest, not to mention smartest, but Clara could try out a light trance or a little song about heaven if she felt inclined.
While Papa paced up and down in front of the fireplace, Izzie shuffled and shuffled through the pages of her notebook. What on earth was she looking for?
Trying to get rid of the twitters in her stomach, Clara sighed noisily. She decided to remember the most important things that Mrs. Fielding had taught them. The very most significant thing of all was making people think their loved ones on the other side, in Summerland, were happy as could be. That’s exactly how she said it. The spirits were spirits, not human, not suffering at all. These spirits loved their dear ones left behind and were looking forward to the day when their earthbound family members and friends died and came over to Summerland, although she and Izzie weren’t supposed to say outright that the spirits were eager for the loved ones to die. Lawky Lawk, so much to remember, thought Clara. She stared up at the fine cracks in the ceiling.
“Happy as could be. The departed ones are happy as could be.” Whispering out loud, she churned the rule over in her mind so that nothing could make her forget it. Grabbing the seat of her ladder-back chair, she pulled as close to the table as she could, pressing her chest against the weight of it.
Three loud knocks rattled the door. Clara flinched. Papa stopped pacing and stared at the door. With a smart little slap, Izzie shut her notebook, slipped it into her dress pocket, and then winked at her.
Clara took a deep breath and nodded. In the candlelight, Izzie looked calm and ready for something new. If anything went wrong with the three men, if they got angry or sad, Izzie would steer things the right way. And Papa would be nearby, too. Clara exhaled and put her moist palms on the bare table.
“Here we go, my young mediums.” Papa tugged down on each of his jacket sleeves. He glanced at Izzie and Clara, grinned, and strode to the door. Clara bit down on her lower lip so that the fluttery feeling in her stomach might not turn into laughter.
Papa opened the door and the three men entered bringing in a cold draft with them. The men greeted Papa as Ol’ Frank and laughed about something that had happened on the way to the Spirit Room. They hushed down lickety-click though, when they looked over at her and Izzie standing in their good dresses near the table.
“These are my talented daughters, Isabelle and Clara.” Papa stepped toward the table and the men followed.
He placed a hand on the shoulder of the man next to him. “This is Sam Weston.”
Clara could hear Papa’s instructions in her head. Notice everything you can about every customer. Try to understand them by the things they say, the way they look and dress, the way they move around, and even what their posture is like. It would all come in handy. So, when Weston took off his hat and while Papa was introducing him, Clara noticed that his slicked-down hair had far too much pomade in it. Even from where she stood, several feet from Weston, his hair smelled like over-ripe apples. He was the one whose fiancée had run off. He looked older than thirty years, though, his eyes hollow and tired with dark circles below and the skin on his face sagged like the gravity in his world had more pull on him than other people’s gravity did.
He dressed fancy for being in Geneva. His clothing was like the pictures in those magazines Mrs. Beattie, the milliner, had downstairs. His coat was the prettiest brown color and had a thick, soft look to it. It fit him to perfection.
“This feller is John Payne.” Papa, gripping his lapel like a statesman, pointed at the man in the middle of the three.
This one was the widower, Mr. Payne. Payne beamed like he just won a bet. He was short, but his neck was thick and his shoulders were wide as a wagon and he looked strong enough to pull one if he had to. The top of his right ear was gone. Darn sure there was a story to that, but Papa hadn’t mentioned the ear. Mr. Payne’s eyes were blue an
d his hair light blond like a Norwegian’s, but Papa never said anything about Norwegian either.
“And this last feller is Herbert Washburn.” Now with both hands on his lapels, Papa indicated Washburn by nodding at him.
“Miss Isabelle, Miss Clara, a pleasure,” Washburn said.
This one was polite, but he wore no smile. He was the married one with the boats. He was the plainest of the three, plain clothes, plain hair, plain eyes. Was there anything about him to notice? Clara stared hard at him, but then all of a sudden Izzie stepped a little away from her chair.
“Good evening, gentlemen. Thank you for coming to our very first spirit circle. Will you sit with us, please?”
Holy rolling Moses. Izzie never spoke like that. It was Mrs. Purcell, Mrs. Fielding, Anna and that Jane Austen all in one.
Washburn walked by Clara. He smelled like steaming vegetables, maybe beets. That was the best she could do for now. He went straight for the chair by the fire. Was he cold? Weston and Payne took the places opposite him, with Weston next to Clara and Payne, the little Norwegian, closest to Izzie. Even from two seats away, Payne smelled like his saloon—cigar smoke and ale. Papa smelled just like that many a night.
The Spirit Room Page 6