“Are you all right, Isabelle? I do apologize.”
“I’m fine. Perhaps you will tell me more sometime about the women and the water-cure.”
He had called her Isabelle, not Miss Benton.
“You’re curious about things, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Always.” She glanced down the hall, then at his face. “I prefer Izzie.”
“Isabelle is a beautiful name, though.” His mouth curved into the slightest of smiles.
“But Izzie suits me better, I think.”
“Well, then, Izzie, you’ve never been to a seminary? A school of any kind?”
“No, but I’ve read every book I could ever get anyone to lend me. I had a friend back in Ohio whose family had a great many books. She taught me to read when I was only four, then over the years, I read everything in her house.”
Leaning back, Mac laughed. “I knew you were a reader, but indeed, you are an entirely self-educated woman. I thought as much.”
A woman. Mac referred to her as a woman. Even though she was old enough to be married, she still thought of herself as a girl. Women had husbands and children and they weren’t forced by a father to learn how to be mediums and trick people out of their money.
“I suppose I am self-educated. I never thought of it that way. I just enjoy reading, that’s all.”
“Well, that’s how it happens.” He half-smiled. “What precisely are some of these books you’ve read?”
“Novels, Stowe, Bronte, Fern, Dickens, Warner, Flaubert, Austen. A little poetry.” While she spoke, he kept nodding his head, hooking his index finger over his chin and hiding his purple scar. “And history and biographies. Let’s see. I enjoyed Frederick Douglass’s narrative of his life that you mentioned last week, and some political things, and some science.”
Mac’s smile fell and his eyes widened. “Science too?”
“Not really too much of that. I read a book about meteorology by someone named Wilkes.”
“Did you understand it?”
“Not all of it. I had no one to ask questions of.”
“Why didn’t your father send you to school?”
“I don’t think he wanted his daughter to know more than he did. I could know what he was willing to teach me, but no more. The romantic novels infuriated him. He said they would ruin me, make me want things I couldn’t have.” She felt an ache behind her eyes and looked away from him. Maybe Papa was right. There was so much she wanted.
“He told me women with too much knowledge would disrupt the proper balance of nature. Once he tore one of my friend’s books from my hands, Jane Eyre. He ripped it from me with the most hateful look on his face, then threw it into the wood stove and watched it burn. After that, I tried not to read when he was nearby.”
“What about your mother? Did she mind?”
“She thought the Bible was the only book worth reading, but she watched him burn Jane Eyre. The next morning after he had gone out, she gave me a dollar to buy a new copy of the book and return it to my friend. She said, ‘Don’t fuss about Papa.’ I have no idea how she had saved that dollar.”
“Hmm.” Mac began to walk again, drawing her along gently by the elbow. When they arrived at the end of the hall, he opened a door as big as one in a stable. She expected to see the outdoors, but instead there was another hallway.
“This is the addition with the bathing rooms. There are four large rooms, each for different water-cure treatments.” He pointed at one of them. “Come along, here’s one not in use.”
When they reached the bathing room, they stood together a moment in the entry and Mac waited while she looked in. The windowless room was a tall pine and white tile box smelling of fresh cut wood. It was empty except for a bar at waist level running straight across, three burning gaslights on one of the walls, and a huge water tank high above them braced by heavy wood crossbeams. The floor was white tile with a drain in the middle to carry water away.
Mac was grinning ear to ear. “This is what is called the douche bath. It uses the force of gravity. Let me show you.”
He strode across the wet floor and over to a cord that ran from a spigot on the tank to a hook on the opposite wall. He untied it and gave it a strong tug. In a huge burst, water flowed in a two-inch stream from twenty feet above. It crackled, pounded, splattered and swirled off into the floor drain.
“The patient stands naked under the stream of cold water and braces himself on the bar.”
Izzie could scarcely hear him over the smacking of water on tile.
“It must hurt!”
“It does hurt, but the impact is necessary to eliminate the body’s morbid matter!”
She cringed as she imagined being pummeled by the water.
Mac looked up at the stream. “We usually only use this treatment at the end of a series of sweats, and hot and cold baths. Every step is designed to rid the body of impurities.”
Mac walked across the wet floor toward Izzie and untied another cord. He pulled it slowly and the spigot above closed, reducing the stream to a trickle, then a few drops. The room became quiet again.
“What do you think of it?” He looked at her eagerly.
Did he want her to try it?
“I think I’d rather keep my impurities and get my peace and quiet on a canoe ride.”
Running a hand through his wavy hair, Mac laughed. “You shouldn’t judge something until you’ve tried it for yourself.”
“Some things one doesn’t have to try…and some things one isn’t permitted to try, come to think of it.” She chuckled at her own joke and Mac laughed with her, but she couldn’t wait any longer. Now she was sure. He definitely wanted to experiment on her.
“Mac, why did you want me to see the Hygienic Institute? Do you want me to be part of an experiment somehow?”
Like a doused candle, Mac’s smile disappeared abruptly. He took a step closer to her.
“No, Izzie, but you’re right, I do want something.”
“What is it, then?”
“I want.” He paused, glanced aside, then down, then directly at her. The skin just under his eyes twitched slightly.
What on earth was it? She locked her jaw down.
“I want you to be my wife.”
“Your wife?” Izzie stumbled back, nearly tripping on the hem of her dress.
“Yes.” He pressed forward, toward her. “That moment when I saw you in the bookstore, and you were well and yourself again, I knew I wanted to marry you.”
“I don’t understand. You can’t mean what you are saying.”
“I saw something in you I had been waiting years to see in a young woman.”
Izzie laughed nervously. She held her gut, feeling her face flush hot. What an idiot she had been, thinking he was going to lay magnets across her abdomen or pummel her with a jet of water. He wanted to marry her. Marry her.
She kept laughing. It was like one of those silly jokes very late at night when she was tired in bed with her sisters. One would start a giggle and they all would go on and on and not be able to stop. Then she realized that even though Mac was smiling, he wasn’t laughing with her.
“Do you think I am ridiculous to tell you so soon in our friendship?”
“I’m not sure. I thought you were going to perform strange experiments on me.” She wiped her temples, moist with tears of laughter. “I am relieved.”
“I’m sure I could try something out on you, if you wanted me to.”
“No. No.” Finally she took a deep breath, straightened up, and exhaled slowly.
Mac was standing very still, very close to her. No man had ever stood so near to her, his feet almost touching the hem of her skirt.
He steadied his earth brown eyes on her. “Will you marry me, Izzie?”
She sighed. She had no idea what to say. She looked away from him to the glistening wet floor, then into his eyes to see if he was truly sincere. He wasn’t even blinking, not even breathing. Not a muscle on his face, or in his entire body
, flinched or shifted. He was entirely serious.
“I would like some time to think about it, Mac.” She stepped back. “You haven’t spoken to my father, have you?”
“No. I have to admit, I didn’t expect to propose to you today. My heart was racing so fast that I couldn’t slow myself down.”
Racing so fast. Had his heart really been racing with the idea of her? She felt a smile rush onto her face. Oh, but there was Papa—Papa who hated physicians, Papa who couldn’t earn a living wage without the Benton Sisters.
“Is a week enough for your consideration?” he asked.
“I hardly know you. I need longer. I don’t even know your given name.”
“Robert, and we can see each other, and get to know one another, as much as you like, at least until I go.”
“Go?”
I’m afraid I don’t have much time to court you and take things in a proper stride. I’m leaving soon to build my own Water-Cure Institute in Rochester. I want you to come with me. Come as my wife.”
Rochester was a bustling city, much bigger than Geneva. The thought of it excited her. But could she leave the children with Papa? Could Clara handle being a medium alone? If she said no to Mac and he left, things would be simple, at least, and she could keep an eye on Papa and the children. If she said yes, she would go on to a whole new city life and be free of being a humbug medium. No more humbug.
“When will you leave?”
“A month or two.”
“Well, I will see you until then, and if my father agrees, and that is a great uncertainty, I will give you my answer before you depart.”
He beamed at her, his hands restless at his sides. It seemed he would reach for hers, but he didn’t move.
“Mac, are you sure you didn’t plan to propose to me here?” She glanced up at the tank.
He laughed loudly, the sound echoing off the bare walls.
“No, I promise you I didn’t.” He leaned toward her and offered her his arm. “May I walk you home?”
They left the Geneva Hygienic Institute and walked in the dusk toward Mrs. Purcell’s boardinghouse. The wind had not settled down. She held the strings of her bonnet and he held the rim of his stovepipe hat the entire way. As they walked, he told her about his plans for his own Water-Cure Institute. Rochester was about fifty miles west, far enough that, if she went with him, she’d have a completely new life. His proposal in the douche room was strange, but she would consider it. There was something about this tall water-cure physician; something she wanted.
Thirteen
“IT’S LIKE ICE.” Squatting at the water’s edge, Clara yanked her fingers from the lake water and shook them. Along Seneca Lake’s shore, trees were budding with hundreds of shades of spring green. Even if she tried, she could never count all those shades. Izzie wandered away from her along the water’s edge.
The warm sun soaked into Clara’s shoulders through her dress and shawl. She bent over and picked up one, two, three, four, five small gray stones and crammed them into her dress pocket. Then she walked along the mud and pebbles in Izzie’s direction.
Not far out on the sparkling water, six fishermen in rowboats waited silently for something to happen. The middle of the day in the bright sunshine was the wrong time to catch fish, even stupid fish. Clara knew that. Even she, a thirteen year-old girl, knew that.
Trailing after Izzie up onto a small dock, she walked behind her sister, feet drumming on the wooden planks. When they got to the end, they sat and dangled their legs over the blue water. The water wasn’t still like this very often on Seneca Lake. It always stirred and churned, churned so hard it had swallowed up Mamma. Gripping the edge of the dock tightly with both hands, she stared straight down past her shadow to the rocks and muck below.
“The lake still makes me sad.” Clara stopped swinging her legs, gazed up toward the horizon. Geneva harbor to the west, hillsides of cleared pasture surrounded by narrow rows of trees to the east, three steamboats and many sailboats scattered on the water as far as she could see. She started to count the sailboats, but Izzie interrupted her at eight.
“That sailboat she took was just over there.” Izzie pointed toward a row of upside down skiffs along the bank.
A tear welled at the corner of Izzie’s eye. Clara was glad she wasn’t the one that found Mamma. It might be the worst thing in Izzie’s life, as long as she lived, finding Mamma drowned like that. She wrapped an arm over Izzie’s sturdy shoulders. It always made her feel small to reach around Izzie. Even when they were old, she would always be the little sister.
A fisherman raised his oars and pulled his craft to another spot closer to shore, probably in hopes of finding a luckier spot. Fool fisherman. The oars creaked in their locks and chopped at the water, scaring a pair of mallards. The two ducks flapped their nut-brown wings and scooted off. Screening her eyes with a hand, Clara followed the birds until they were tiny spots in the sky. She glanced back at Izzie who was also squinting after the ducks. A tear rolled out of Izzie’s eye and crawled down her cheek.
“Papa is better now, don’t you think so, Izzie?”
“I still worry. He’s slowed down drinking liquor before, but then every time he starts up again, he changes for the worse.” Izzie brushed the tear away.
Izzie would never ever trust him, thought Clara. “Why don’t you ever give him a chance? He is trying hard this time. It’s different. He’s trying to make up for Mamma being gone.”
“I want to give him a chance this time, honestly I do.”
Clara took the gritty stones from her pocket and tossed one into the water. It broke the surface, then was sucked down, spreading ripples upon ripples. She began counting the ripples but the way they flowed into and out of each other confused her.
“There’s a special reason I am hoping Papa is stronger this time. Can you keep a secret, just for a few days?”
“What is it?”
“Can you? Between you and me only, not even Billy?”
Clara bit down on the inside of her lip. Not telling Billy was going to be hard. Could she promise that? Izzie never had secrets, though. She crossed her heart then plunked stone number two into the water.
“Clara, do you think you could ever do the séances without me, or with Euphora instead of me?”
Clara squeezed a fist over her remaining stones. She knew it, knew it, knew it. Izzie was starting to hear voices after all and wanted to become famous without her.
“Do you want to be a medium, a real one, by yourself?”
“Clara, when are you going to get that out of your mind? I’ve told you over and over. I am not gifted and I am not going to be gifted.”
“Mrs. Fielding and Anna said you were. I know you don’t want to become like Mamma, but you aren’t Mamma. You’re you. You could use your gift and you wouldn’t be loony.”
Izzie’s throat looked tight, then went red. She was about to yell. Clara braced herself, but Izzie waited a long moment, then finally smiled.
“Doctor MacAdams proposed marriage to me.”
“No. How could he? You haven’t even courted.”
“Yesterday at the Hygienic Institute.”
“What did you say?” Clara ground the damp stones around in her palm.
“I have to think about it and get to know him better.”
“Do you want to?”
“I believe I do.”
Izzie’s gray-green eyes turned clear like the lake. Clara knew that look. Izzie did want to marry him. She had that smart, clear, questioning look on her face, like when she was reading a book and she’d look up from it and stare out at nothing trying to understand what she had just read. Sometimes she’d say something about what she was reading and sometimes she’d turn the page and keep going. But why on earth did she have that clear, smart expression about Doctor MacAdams? He wasn’t very handsome and he wasn’t young. He just plain wasn’t good enough.
“But he’s old, isn’t he, Iz?”
“I like that, actually.”
“I mean too old. You can’t marry an old doctor.” Leaning all the way back, Clara lay back on the dock, the blue sky cloudless above her.
“Well, I might marry him. That’s why I want to know about you and the séances.”
“What does that have to do with it? You could still be part of the Benton Sisters. Lots of mediums are married. Doesn’t Mrs. Fielding have a husband in New York City?”
The Spirit Room Page 11