The Spirit Room

by Paul, Marschel

  He jigged and jagged Euphora like he was a wild dog trying to break a squirrel’s neck. Her sweet little freckled face drained to ashen. The second he released her, she burst into tears and ran out.

  “You’ve been up here all day doin’ nothin’. You should have had two or three ladies’ circles by now. You’re doing somethin’ to keep them away.” He scuffed at the hopscotch game with his boot, smudging and ruining it. “Clean up this dang mess.”

  “Papa, there’s no one to keep away. No one even asks about what we do anymore.”

  “You think you’re a little angel in that white dress? Well, you ain’t. You’re makin’ them stay away so you won’t have to do anythin’ but sit around and play games.” Spit sprayed from his mouth. “How is this family supposed to get by? Huh? Answer me that.” He jammed his spectacles back against the bridge of his nose, then strode toward her. Looming over her, whisky on his breath but hands steady on his hips, he didn’t seem completely drunk, just half-shot.

  “Papa. I’m doing my best. I’m doing everything you taught me. Honest.” She felt her heart crumple like a piece of paper in a fist.

  “If this is your best, you’re worthless, worthless.” He glanced around the room. “Not even that. Less than worthless. We’re payin’ the rent on this Spirit Room and gettin’ nothin’ back.”

  “I’m sorry, Papa.” Tears bursting, Clara looked down at his dusty boots, then covered her eyes.

  “Snivelin’ ain’t goin’ ta help. If you don’t git some customers by next week, we’ll let the room go and you can sew your fingers off or clean some rich house on your knees all day. You ain’t goin’ ta sit around playin’ girls’ games, I’ll tell you that.”

  Clara sobbed. “I don’t know what to do, Papa.”

  He walked to the open door and turned back toward her a moment.

  “You better figure it out.”

  After he disappeared, she stretched out on the floor and cried for a long while. “Worthless.” He called her worthless. How the blazes was she supposed to figure anything out about anything? She couldn’t get the customers back. They weren’t interested in her antics anymore. Isaac Camp saw to that and besides, her spark was gone. It wasn’t the same without Izzie.

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  THE NEXT MORNING, dressed in her white séance dress, Clara went to the Spirit Room as always, and as always, no one came by. She stood, leaning into the sunny window and looked down at the wooden sidewalk near the street door to their stairs. Perspiring slightly in the heat of the sun, she started to nibble on her thumbnail and soon had eaten it down until her thumb bled at the fingertip. Then she went on to her little finger until that nail was so short that the tender pink skin was showing. How could she get people to come back to her séances? If only she could just get the chance to dazzle again, she could make Papa see she was still his angel.

  In their light summer clothes, cottons, linens, and calicos, people ducked in and out of shops. Now and then women, lucky women, went into Mrs. Beattie’s downstairs and came out with hatboxes, packed, Clara imagined, with the new summer bonnets that had been on display in the window. Cooks and maids came out of the baker’s across the street with packages wrapped in paper and string. Next to the baker’s, the Dayton & Smith produce market had their full summer fare out on the sidewalk—flat wood crates perched on top of barrels, full of splendiferous things; strawberries, blueberries, peaches, melons, carrots, squash, onions and cucumbers. There were plenty of people about spending money and making money.

  How could she get them up to the Spirit Room? She bit down on the nail of her middle finger and tore it straight across. It stung. What the jo-fire was she doing to herself? In her entire life, she’d never bitten her nails. Papa’s face—red, angry and pinched—popped into her mind.

  How was she going to get any of those people down there to come upstairs to a spirit circle? She was empty of ideas, her mind a bucket of water dumped on the ground. But something had better come to her and soon or she’d be sewing stacks of shirts or burning her hands in some fancy person’s hot laundry water. She just had to win back those spirit seekers, spark or no spark.

  Later, when she arrived home, everyone was there except Billy. Mrs. Purcell and Euphora were setting out bowls of fish chowder at each place and passing round a basket of brown bread.

  “Does anyone know if Billy is coming for supper?” Mrs. Purcell asked.

  Clara shrugged. No one else seemed to know, either. Glancing at Papa out of the corner of her eye, Clara pulled out her chair and sat next to him. He hadn’t shaved for a few days. His chin was turning brown with whiskers. Was he growing his beard the way he had after Mamma died? She hoped not. It reminded her of how sad he was then. The front door clicked open and Billy shuffled in. He came around behind her and slid into his chair.

  Mary-mole Carter screeched like a baby hawk and covered her mouth with her napkin. Jane’s eyes got wide and alarmed.

  Clara turned to see what the fuss was. Her stomach flopped. Billy’s face was swollen red from his left brow all the way to his chin and his eye was half-shut, bulging and circled by black, blue, and purple. Since his hair was hanging down over his forehead, she wasn’t sure he was mangled above the eye or not.

  “Bless my soul. What happened?” Mary Carter said.

  Billy lowered his head. “I had an accident at the tree nursery last night.” He cleared his throat. “We were unloading some heavy timber fence posts off a wagon. I was on the ground and two boys in the wagon were handing the posts down to me.” He raised both hands near his shoulder to demonstrate. “I lost control of one and it flew right into my face.”

  He was lying, she thought. Lying like a snake.

  “Billy, why didn’t you come to me for an ointment or poultice?” Mrs. Purcell lightly thumped the table with her palm. She stared at Papa with a worried look.

  “I didn’t want to bother anyone. It was late.” Billy fixated on his bowl of chowder.

  Papa glared back at Mrs. Purcell. “Be more careful next time, son.”

  “I’ll make up an ointment with white lily, wormwood, sarsaparilla. Come home right away after work today and we’ll apply it. No dawdling.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Billy’s puffy, raw face looked thunder awful. It had to hurt like the devil. What was he lying about? Her flopping stomach suddenly died flat. It was probably Papa that hit him.

  “I’ll bet you were in a fight,” Euphora said as she took a piece of brown bread from the basket.

  “I wasn’t in any fight. It was a timber post.” He snatched the basket away from her.

  Mary and Jane Carter proceeded to tell stories of accidents they’d known about over the years in Geneva—fires, sunken canal boats, barn-raising mishaps. There was the servant girl who jumped from the third floor of the Geneva Hygienic Institute a couple of years back during a fire. Everyone thought she was saved at first, but she died later because her fractures never healed properly. Then there was the time their neighbor was knocked senseless when he was thrown from a Lewis & Colvin Stage Coach as it tipped over on a turn, but he revived. Seven times exactly throughout her stories, Jane said, “The world is a dangerous place. One has to be careful.”

  Finally, Mrs. Purcell said, “My own brother died in an accident with a threshing machine on a wheat farm.” Tapping the end of her knife on the table and looking forlorn, she stared at Papa.

  The whole supper went by and there wasn’t any more from Papa, not a word the whole time and Billy never looked over at him either, not once. Clara was going to have to find out more about this supposed timber post because she was dang sure there wasn’t any timber post. Here she was sitting between Billy and Papa and they weren’t speaking and they weren’t looking at each other. She jammed her thumbnail between her teeth and began to gently gnaw on it. She needed a moment alone with her twin. She didn’t see much of him these days. He was always out, either working or in the evenings roaming with his friends. She’d surprise him and walk
up to Maxwell’s Nursery at the end of the day, maybe walk him home to make sure he got the ointment on his bruises.

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  AT THE END OF THE AFTERNOON, Clara slipped out of her séance dress at the Spirit Room and into her dark blue checker calico. She walked out of town and up along Castle Street toward the nurseries. It was one of those sticky humid summer days, heat peaking around five o’clock in the afternoon. She kept thinking about Billy’s bruised face. Trying not to bite any more of her fingernails, she made her hands into fists and buried them in her dress pockets.

  As she made her way slowly along the road and got closer to Maxwell’s Nursery, and the Smith Nursery across the road, the smell of roses grew strong. It was a syrupy smell, almost like some kind of drink. It tickled the back of her throat and made her sneeze several times in a row.

  There were acres and acres of trees—apples, plum, pear, peach, and shrubs of all kinds as well, laid out in rows, neat and countable, snaking across the rolling hills. Billy probably knew the number of rows and the number of plants in each. There were buildings, barns, and greenhouses along narrow roads running up and down and across the endless lines of plants. She passed through a gate, walked around two waiting carriages, and entered a house-like building that had a sign over the door: Office, T.C. Maxwell & Bros.

  A man in a tan greatcoat and a woman dressed in pale yellow and full crinoline were studying a catalog at a central counter. Lawky Lawks, that woman must be about to pass out from the heat in that dress and crinoline, thought Clara.

  On the other side of the counter was a fellow with curly brown hair, beard, mustache and sideburns, all beginning to gray. He watched his customers with friendly eyes.

  “Are there any of these summer apple varieties ripe now? We’d like to see and taste the fruit on the tree,” the woman said.

  “There are quite a few that ripen next month, August apples, but right now there’s just one called Early Harvest. It’s a very nice apple. Do you want take a look? It’s a bit of a ride up the hill, or you could come back in a few weeks. We’ll have at least five or six varieties ripening then, Early Joe, Early Harvest, Golden Sweet, Early Strawberry, and… Sweet Dough, I think.”

  The couple looked at each other, but didn’t speak. Then the man told the bearded fellow they’d return and thanked him. As they walked out passing her, Clara stepped forward to the counter.

  “My brother, Billy Benton, works here. Do you know where I could find him now?”

  The friendly-eyed man called out toward the open door behind the counter. “Joshua, do you know where young Benton is?”

  A voice from an open door behind him called out, “He’s right back here, sorting through some orders. I didn’t want him out digging or hauling with that injury.”

  Billy appeared in the door. Even though his ragged, stinky black wool cap was pulled low over the hurt side of his face, the frightful swollen, purple flesh still showed. She clenced her fists inside her pockets.

  “Will you be finishing soon? I’ve come to walk you home so Mrs. Purcell can put that ointment on your face.”

  “Denton’s Balsam?” the man behind the counter asked.

  “No, homemade with white lilies and wormwood,” Clara said.

  “Well, he needs something. You can go, Benton. You’re lucky to have a pretty sister looking after you. You need to be more careful when doing those chores at home. Get your father or someone to help you if things are too heavy for you. And don’t be cocky about your own strength. That’s how boys get into trouble. You’ve got to learn your own strength.”

  Chores at home? Ah, tarnation. Billy was lying every which way about his smashed-up face.

  He darted a hard brown-eyed “don’t you dare say a thing” glance at her, then drew his cap down even lower over his brow and headed outside. “Yes, sir. Goodnight, sir.”

  Clara thanked the man and followed Billy out into the thick, hot, rose-smelling air. When they got outside the gate and started along the side of the road, at first they walked in silence, Billy with his hands plunged in his trouser pockets, Clara with hers in her dress. Wagons and carriages rambled by in both directions, kicking up dust. After they had walked a short distance, Billy turned right on Brook Street. As town and home got closer, her private time with him was running short. The dang silence had to be broken.

  “What happened, Billy? You weren’t hurt at home. Your weren’t hurt with any fence post.”

  Billy kept on in silence, his eyes on the ground. They reached the little bridge that crossed over Castle Creek, but instead of walking onto the bridge, Billy climbed down the embankment to the stream. Squatting on a couple of large stones at the water’s edge, he took off the skanky cap and dipped it into the water, sloshed it around, drained it, then set it aside. He splashed handfuls of water onto his sandy hair, then combed it back with his fingers. Clara scrambled down to the creek and perched next to him. With his hat off and his hair slicked back, she could see he’d been hiding a huge black and blue and yellow mound above his eye.

  “Billy, you’re swollen the size of a ham hock.”

  He shifted onto his knees on some flat stones, leaned toward the water, noisily sucked in air, pinched his nose closed, and shoved his whole head into the stream. He stayed under water a good long moment, letting the current swirl by. When he came up, he gulped in more air, and went down again, then up and down several more times.

  When he finished dunking himself, he put his cap back on and sat back next to her.

  “You know, Clara.”

  “I know what?”

  “You know.” He strung out the word “know” as if the longer he made the word sound, the more she would understand him.

  And she did know. That was all he had to say. That was all he could say. It was Papa that hurt him. Papa had done something horrible and cruel beyond anything he had ever done before and then made Billy promise not to tell. She did know.

  “How could he do that to you? What did he do?”

  Billy scratched at the earth, picked up a pebble and tossed it into the creek.

  “I might have to leave, Clara.”

  “What? What do you mean?” She got up and walked straight into the creek. Her feet and ankles were instantly soaked and shocked with cold. “You can’t leave. You’re not leaving.”

  “I might have to.” He dug up another pebble and tossed it downstream.

  Annoyed, she kicked water at him, spraying his white shirt. “Where would you go?”

  He raised an arm to shield his face. “Hey!” Grabbing his wet shirt, he lifted it away from his skin. “Two of the boys from Maxwell’s are going to Kansas to fight with the Free Staters, maybe find John Brown. I might join them.”

  “You can’t do that. You’re too young. You’ll get killed. If you have to leave, just go and live with Izzie in Rochester. Why do you have to go off and do something dangerous?”

  “I just said might. Nothing is for certain. But I want you to know in case one night I don’t come home. I don’t want to leave you and Euphora, but I’ve got to save my own life…” He didn’t finish, but looked downstream toward the town and the lake. The water was rushing, burbling and it seemed for a moment that Billy went with the creek, all the way to Seneca Lake and beyond. A tear slipped from her eye.

  He picked up another pebble and pitched it further downstream.

  “I don’t want you to leave.” She kicked again at the flowing water, but not enough to splash him, then sloshed her way out of the stream and sat down next to him again.

  Billy was frozen still a long moment, then she felt his arm rest over her shoulders. She let herself cry then and, after a while, he took his red bandana from a trouser pocket, dipped it into the water, wrung it out, and offered it to her.

  “Here, wipe your eyes with this. It’s nice and cool.”

  She took it with both hands and covered her face with it. It was soothing. How was she going to do it? Live every day without Mamma, Izzie, and now Billy, too? Ever
yone was leaving her. Why did they all have to leave her?

  “Let’s go get Mrs. Purcell’s herbal concoction,” he said.

  She looked up from the wet bandana. Smiling down at her, his cap on, brim askew, he offered a hand. She grabbed it and hauled herself up. They walked over the Brook Street bridge, and headed for home. When she gave him back his damp bandana, he pressed it against the beat-up side of his face.

  “At the Nursery, do you know the number of rows of every kind of plant and the number of plants in each one?” she asked.

  “Almost, but something changes every day. Someone buys something or we plant new ones, take out sick or dying ones.”

  “How many Early Harvest apples?”

  He looked down at the road, concentrating, smiling. “Seven rows, fifteen trees each row, one hundred and five trees.”