She was in Papa’s room now. When Papa and Clara got her back to the boardinghouse, she was on fire, and they found Euphora shivering in bed. Papa and Mrs. Purcell shuffled both her and Euphora into Papa’s bed, closed the door, and told Clara and Billy they couldn’t enter the room.
This tall man who had awakened her smelled of lemon, mint, and something else. A chemical of some kind.
“Are you a minister? Are we going to die?” Her throat burned as she eked out the faint whisper.
“No, you both must have lucky stars about you. You are not going to die, not right now anyway and I’m not the minister, I’m Doctor MacAdams. Mrs. Purcell called for me night before last and I have been back to see you twice.”
She had no recollection of his visits.
“I was going to take your pulse just now. May I have your wrist back?”
As she lifted her hand and offered it to the doctor, she tried to swallow, but the pain was so severe she stopped before fully gulping. From his blue waistcoat pocket he retrieved a watch and stared at it while he gently pressed his fingertips into the soft side of her wrist. His long brown eyebrows curled up toward the ceiling and his square chin was marked on the right with a purple scar.
Mrs. Purcell went to the washstand, picked up a towel, then sat near Euphora and placed the cloth across her forehead.
“You both are going to survive and be fine,” she said.
“You’re a spiritual medium, I hear,” the physician said as he studied his watch. “How long have you and your sister been Spiritualists?”
“A few months.” The words cut her like a knife twisting inside her ears.
He let go of Izzie’s wrist and returned the watch to his pocket.
“You’re much better. Your pulse has slowed a bit. Your temperature is a little lower. How does your throat feel?”
“Terrible.”
“Putrid sore throat disease. You two really are very lucky. I’m leaving Mrs. Purcell with Winslow’s Baby Syrup. The morphine in it will soothe your throat and help you sleep. She’ll give you that as I have prescribed, but the most important thing is water. You and your sister must drink two gallons every day until you are well. And hot wet compresses on your neck. Mrs. Purcell will do that for you every half hour. She’s already been doing it since you fell sick and added her own compound tincture to the cloths— capsicum, myrrh, lobelia, and I don’t know what else.” He glanced at Mrs. Purcell. “She’s in charge of that. I want you to drink the water. I should think it will be three weeks or so.”
Putrid sore throat disease. Diphtheria. They might have died. Children died of it all the time. She remembered a few winters ago one family down the street back in Homer losing two little boys.
She looked at her sister. “Is she really going to be all right?”
“She’s asleep now, but she was awake earlier.” Mrs. Purcell leaned over Euphora and patted Izzie’s hand. “Go ahead and rest. I made a big pot of red pepper and golden seal tea. You are to drink it weak and gargle it strong. That’s my own remedy and the doctor agrees to it.”
“She knows far more than I do.” Doctor MacAdams chuckled and stood. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
Bag in hand, the physician strode across the room and ducked slightly to make it through the door. As he pulled the door closed, he nodded at Mrs. Purcell and then was gone.
<><><>
A FEW DAYS LATER, Izzie could swallow without excruciating pain, but she was too weak to walk across the room. She hadn’t seen Papa since the night she fell sick. Mrs. Purcell told her that as soon as the physician told Papa what she and Euphora had, he took off and hadn’t been back since.
The tall physician came by twice more and asked if they were drinking all of the two gallons of daily water. He took Euphora’s pulse, then hers both times, but on the last visit, Izzie thought he held on to her wrist a very long time.
He said, “I hear from Mrs. Purcell you read all the time down in her library.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Perhaps when you are well, you can tell me what I should read.” He patted the back of her hand, then stood to go.
Izzie laughed nervously. What could she possibly know about books that a physician didn’t know?
<><><>
FOR THE NEXT WEEK, Mrs. Purcell took care of her and Euphora like she was their own grandmother, attending to them all day long. Just when Izzie was feeling miserable and starting to long for Mamma, Mrs. Purcell would appear with another glass of water or beef broth or some red pepper, golden seal tea to drink. She’d hold a pan for them to spit into and made them gargle with different concoctions, some with salt and cayenne; some with sage, vinegar, or honey. She’d put flannel cloths on their necks, some with her special compound, others with sweet oils and mustard seeds.
She kept their feet warm with plain hot cloths as well, and she washed them right in the bed with towels and bowls of lukewarm water. She emptied the chamber pots many times each day. After the second day of offering the Winslow’s Baby Syrup, she took it away. “You might start thinking you need it even when you don’t,” she said. It had been wonderfully soothing and Izzie did want it again, though she didn’t ask for it.
For one long week after that, whenever she wasn’t drinking water or one of Mrs. Purcell’s teas, Izzie lay thinking about the voice she heard before she fell off the chair. “The red rose on my pillow, Isaac.” Was it delusion caused by fever? Was it the spirit of Jane Camp? Was it the beginning of lunacy? Was it like the “Susan” she heard at Mrs. Fielding’s spirit circle? Would she hear more? She wrestled with these questions until she was too tired to worry any more about them. Then she would sleep. She decided one thing though, while she lay there for days and days. She would find a way to put an end to being one of the famous Benton Sisters as soon as she could.
Ten
BEFORE IZZIE FULLY RECOVERED HER STRENGTH, Papa had returned and insisted they conduct spirit circles every night except Sundays. Most often, Papa let Clara mimic a trance. She was quite an actress and even if people didn’t believe her, her twirling and swooping and trembling enamored them. Afraid of hearing more voices, Izzie’s throat was tight for the duration of every spirit circle, but several weeks went by and, to her great relief, she didn’t hear anything odd.
Izzie found out from Mrs. Purcell that Papa was not intending to pay Doctor MacAdams for his visits. He’d said to Mrs. Purcell, “He’s just a quack like all physicians. It was you that healed Isabelle and Euphora with your compresses and teas and gargles. We don’t owe that quack a dang penny.”
When she heard this, Izzie was angry and was ready to fight Papa for the money to pay Doctor MacAdams, but as luck would have it, that very night Papa missed the spirit circle and Izzie collected the money from the seekers herself. When Papa wasn’t there, Izzie had strict orders to put the money in a box in Papa’s room as soon as she got home. But this time, Izzie had enough money for Doctor MacAdams’s fee and she decided that, in the morning, she would pay the physician before Papa came home from wherever he was.
At breakfast, Mrs. Purcell told Izzie she could probably find Doctor MacAdams at the Geneva Hygienic Institute. And so, with a gold dollar gripped in her fist, Izzie set off the short distance to Pulteney Park and the Hygienic Institute.
Surrounded by a painted-white wooden fence, the town green, Pulteney Park, was a square oasis kept free of the cattle that were often driven through town. At the western edge of the park, the Geneva Hygienic Institute, standing three stories high with pillars running from top to bottom, looked like a southern plantation home.
Izzie smoothed the skirt of her dress and stepped inside the tall doors. Along the walls, gas light sconces illuminated a huge hallway. At the far end of it two women in identical long white robes were talking.
Izzie went in the first door on the left marked “reception” just as Mrs. Purcell had explained. A young, fair, clean-shaven man, neatly dressed in a white shirt, fitted light trousers and a shiny black w
aistcoat stood near the door. He was putting on a wool coat.
“Good day, miss. I’m just going for supplies. May I help you?”
“Yes. I am here to see the physician MacAdams.”
“For hydrotherapy?”
“I have a fee for him.”
“I am in a hurry. You may see him yourself.” He quickly turned and led Izzie past a high counter on the left, then through an empty waiting room. They approached a door with translucent glass and black painted letters reading “Dr. A.B. Smith, Director.” The young man knocked.
“Come in.”
The fellow opened the door and leaned into the opening.
“You have a visitor, sir, a young woman says it’s about a fee.”
“I’ll see her.” The voice lilted in a welcoming way.
The clean-shaven man pushed open the door, let Izzie in, then vanished.
Doctor MacAdams stood up from behind a spacious oak desk at one end of the room and smiled broadly. He was lanky and rather towering in his black greatcoat.
“You’re well. I’m very pleased. And your sister, Euphora?”
He swung around the desk and strode toward her. His excitement seemed odd, as though there was some mistake, as though he thought she was someone else.
“Euphora is herself again.” Izzie pointed at the door. “It says Dr. Smith on the door?”
“Smith. He’s the director here. Gone for two months. I’m keeping the ship afloat while he’s away. Please sit.” He gestured eagerly toward one of two curved-back Windsor chairs.
She sat and browsed the room. Shelves, interrupted by two tall windows, lined one entire wall of the office. They were crammed with small, labeled bottles of either clear or blue glass. Along the opposite wall, bookcases supported rows and rows of thick medical books and stacks of journals. Behind the desk was an open door revealing the end of a high table covered by a pristine white sheet.
MacAdams returned to his desk chair, the noontime sun washing over his papers.
“Well, Miss Benton, tell me how I may be of assistance. You are feeling well?”
“Yes. I brought you the fee.” She placed the gold coin on the desk and slid it across the smooth oak.
He left it sitting there without reaching for it. “Tell me about your recovery. Did you have any setbacks?”
“I was very tired. My father wanted me to conduct séances with my sister before my throat felt entirely well.”
“Ah, yes. The Benton Sisters. You’re the talk of the town. Do you really hear spirits?” MacAdams tapped two fingertips on the purple scar on his chin.
“May I ask you something?” Izzie said.
“Of course.”
“When one is feverish, is it common to have delusions?”
“Delusions?”
“Voices. To hear voices.”
“Fevers can create dream-like states. This happened to you?”
Izzie nodded. “I heard a woman’s voice just as I was falling ill at our spirit circle.”
“But not a spirit the way you usually do?” His mouth curled into a skeptical smirk.
Izzie squinted toward the sunny windows. Papa had made her and her sisters and brother swear they would never tell anyone the truth about the Benton Sisters. They were genuine mediums and that was that. Blast Papa. She’d had enough.
“We only play at being mediums. For the money. It’s my father’s idea, but you mustn’t tell anyone.”
He smiled, leaned over his desk. “We’ll have a secret then.” Putting his elbows on the desk, he pressed his hands together in prayer position. “People do hear and see things when they have fevers. It can be quite extreme, delirium sometimes.”
“My mother heard voices all the time.”
He leaned back and took a moment. “Did she ever have hysterical fits?”
“What do you mean by fits?”
“Screaming, fainting, thrashing about.”
“No, not like that.”
“Like what, then?”
Izzie’s jaw began to quiver. Hoping the doctor wouldn’t notice, she clenched her teeth a moment and grasped the two ends of her shawl. Then she sighed.
“Since I can remember, she told us she saw spirits and they talked to her.”
He arched a curly brow. “Did you witness this?”
If he was shocked, he was hiding it well.
“She’d start out praying, usually holding her Bible, then sometimes—not every time—she would mumble, or sound like she was speaking with someone, but it only lasted a few minutes. She had a rocking chair and she’d rock back and forth with her eyes closed.” Izzie criss-crossed her shawl over her dress bodice. “She didn’t thrash or scream.”
“Mrs. Purcell told me she died a few months ago. May I ask what caused her passing?”
Opening the shawl again and grasping the corners, Izzie pulled at the wool. “She drowned…in a sailing accident. It appeared that she stole a boat from the north end of the lake one night. My brother and I found her in the water at Kashong Point.” She felt tears form at the corners of her eyes, but took a deep breath and stared at the bright windows to keep from crying. “I believe the voices led her to her death.”
Doctor MacAdams rose from his desk, went to the window, and looked out. “And you are afraid if you hear voices you will die like she did,” he said.
“Yes.”
He turned toward her, his face grave, his wavy dark hair shining in the sun.
“I’ll be honest with you, Miss Benton. I am not an expert in nervous maladies, though some of our water-cure patients come to us with nervous exhaustion and other mental difficulties.” He stepped toward her. “But I am a man of science. I don’t believe in mediums or the tricks of Spiritualists. In all likelihood, your mother probably needed some medical care that she never got.” Touching his purple chin scar, he paused for a moment.
“How will I ever know the truth about her?” Izzie asked.
“We could talk to an expert in these matters. There’s a physician, Dr. George Cook, in Canandaigua. He manages Brigham Hall. It’s a small hospital for the insane. Perhaps you and I could pay him a visit and you could tell him your mother’s history.”
“But how could he truly know about her? She’s gone.” Izzie stood. “Excuse me, I really must go now.”
“No, please, Miss Benton, forgive me.” He came close to her. “I did not mean to imply your mother was insane, merely that Dr. Cook is nearby and has a special knowledge of the human mind and might provide you with some insight or solace.” He was so tall that she had to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. And there was the fragrance she remembered from her sick bed—lemon, mint, and that medicinal smell. “I apologize if I have offended you.” His brown eyes were insistent.
“I must go. I have to prepare for a séance. My father and sister will be waiting.”
He walked with her out to the front door of the Hygienic Institute and they stood looking out at Pulteney Park with its walkways and teeming water fountain in the center.
“I will keep your secret, Miss Benton, and I don’t want you to worry about any voices you’ve heard. I am sure it was your fever.”
She thanked him again and started off for the Spirit Room. He had to be right about the voice she had heard and the fever. He was an educated physician, a man of experience. He just had to be. And that time she thought she heard someone say “Susan,” at Mrs. Fielding’s circle, someone in the room had probably spoken it even though Clara and Papa hadn’t heard it. There were so many people there at that circle and so much commotion. She wouldn’t think any more about it now.
Eleven
A MONTH LATER THE SPRING RAINS BEGAN. Pelted by a relentless downpour, Izzie sloshed down Seneca Street. Her boots soaking up the thin sheets of water on the wooden sidewalk and her gray-and-blue plaid dress wet up to her knees, she tilted her umbrella back slightly and glanced up at the Spirit Room windows above Mrs. Beattie’s Millinery. Papa’s new sign was large and impressive. The Benton
Sisters. Public & Private Séances.
Clara’s dramatic trances were continuing to gain popularity. Papa had been home for ten days straight and in that time had only been out in the evening once and then only for a few hours. Not only had he remained sober, but he had come home with fresh information every day for their séances. If things continued like this, perhaps it wouldn’t be long before Papa and Clara wouldn’t need her.
The Spirit Room Page 9