The Spirit Room

by Paul, Marschel

  “Evening. You’re Benton, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m McCormick. This is Emerson.” He swept his hat off and smiled at Clara. “And who is this young lady?”

  “This is my fine daughter, Mr. McCormick.”

  “Daughter? Down here at night?” Winking at his friend, he tapped his cane twice.

  Clara lowered her eyes. Jo-fire. Did they think she was a girl of the night, Papa’s whore? She took a step back. She wanted to run, run to the black lake just around the corner, wanted to steal a sailboat like Mamma did and sail it far away.

  “Clara’s my daughter, gentlemen. She’s a well-known medium. Has a true gift. We’re on our way to a private spirit circle.”

  The cane tapped twice again on the crusty ice. “Ah. Yes. Yes. I’ve heard about you. The Amazing Miss Clara.”

  She didn’t look up at him, kept her eyes down. Why couldn’t they all just go? She wanted to be done with this moment forever, to get it over with, to do the other thing with Weston if she had to, then go home, go home to her bed in the Blue Room, to sleep the night and wake up tomorrow and celebrate Thanksgiving day and eat turkey and pumpkin pie. She bit down on the inside of her mouth until it hurt. The two men and Papa spoke a little about someone’s line of canal boats going up for sale, then finally, they shuffled on.

  “Good evening to you, Miss Benton.” The skinny one tipped his hat again as they strolled away.

  When they were out of sight, Papa glanced in every direction. “All right, Little Plum, go on. I’ll be right here. I’ll walk you home when you are done.” He looked off into the shadows, past the end of the street lamps, away from the hotel, away from her. “I’ll be right here.”

  Wrapping her shawl tightly over her shoulders, she crossed the street. Everything seemed still. Even the wind had died down. When she got to the hotel door, she paused, took a deep breath. In a few hours, when she left this gray building, she’d be a woman. She looked back at Papa. He waved her on with both hands. Feeling his push, even from down the street, she bit down so hard on her mouth skin that she tasted blood. She grasped the doorknob. It was bitterly cold, even through her black lace mitt. She held it without turning it. This was her chance to run. Papa was far enough away. He might not be able to catch her. But where would she go? She couldn’t really steal a sailboat. It was freezing and getting late and she didn’t have three cents in her pocket.

  She noticed Papa was starting toward her so she opened the door and scuttled in. The small foyer was lit by a simple gaslight chandelier, had a red carpet, pretty pink and blue striped wallpaper, three tall, carved wood chairs, a grandfather clock, and an umbrella stand. To her left was a Dutch door, top open. The room behind it was brightly lit. To her right were closed double sliding doors and in front of her, a stairway with more red carpet.

  “Hello, are you Clara?”

  Clara flinched. Arriving behind the half door was a woman with black hair and brown eyes, wearing a royal blue taffeta dress with low neckline and lots of flounces.

  “Yes.”

  “My name’s Minnie. Minnie Stewart. He’s already upstairs.”

  Clara squeezed a taste of blood from the wound inside her mouth and swallowed.

  “Do you need anything, for during or afterward?” Minnie asked.

  “No. I mean, I don’t know.”

  Reaching down, Minnie opened the half door and came out, her blue hoop skirt rustling. She rested a hand on Clara’s shoulder. “Sam told me it was your first time. If you want to, come and see me when you are done with him. Come to this door. If it is closed, knock loudly. I’ll wake up if I am dozing.”

  Clara nodded half-heartedly.

  “Yes? You’ll come and see me?”

  But what for, Clara wondered. To talk of womanly things? Even though she nodded again, and this time with more force, she knew she was too ashamed now, and would be even more ashamed later to talk with this Minnie woman, owner of the private hotel.

  “Room sixteen. It’s on the right. It’s our best room. Sam wanted the best for you.” She leaned toward Clara, put her mouth close to Clara’s ear, and whispered, “If you bleed on the linens, don’t worry, it’s normal. Sam promised to pay for new ones if they’re badly sullied.”

  Bleed? Hell. She felt like a knocked-over glass of water. What was this woman talking about? No one had ever said anything about bleeding. What was going to bleed? How? Why? She tried to swallow, but her throat got so taught that she couldn’t.

  “You look faint, dear. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just something that happens to some girls the first time.” She gently squeezed Clara’s elbow. “You’ll be fine. We all survive it. Sam’s a decent man. Be glad of that.” She stepped back and smiled. “Room sixteen, on the right.”

  As she climbed the stairs, she untied her bonnet and removed it. If it were tomorrow, this would be over and Papa would have the fifty dollars Weston had promised and be happy again. She was close to tears as she followed the door numbers along the hall. She could slip out a back door without being seen. There had to be a back door. No, she wouldn’t cry. No matter what. Room twelve. She wouldn’t let Sam Weston know anything that was in her heart. Fourteen. She wouldn’t show him anything, wouldn’t give him anything. She’d do what she had to for Papa. That was all. Sixteen.

  The moment she rapped on the door, it swung open as though Sam Weston had been standing right there inside with his hand ready on the knob. Smiling ear to ear, he was dressed like a perfect gentleman in a purple silk cravat, purple satin vest with a grape vine pattern and black wool trousers. His pale brown square-cut goatee and mustache were trimmed up. He’d been at the barbershop no more than three hours ago, she guessed.

  “Come in, Clara. I hope you didn’t have to wait long outside for the street to clear.” He took her shawl and bonnet.

  The room was pretty with a big four-poster bed covered with a lacey canopy and pillows piled high, all in white. A silver tray with several decanters and different shaped glasses rested on the chest of drawers. Above that was a large mirror reflecting a good part of the room. Weston laid her shawl over the back of a pale yellow-and-blue striped sofa, put her bonnet on a chair, then poured something from a glass carafe into two glasses and brought them to her.

  “Here, sherry. This will take the chill off.” He offered her the small stem glass.

  She took a sip. It smelled sweet, tasted warm and fruity and tingled in her throat as it slid down.

  “Your coming here means everything to me. I am honored.” He clinked his glass of sherry against hers.

  She took another sip with him, but she wasn’t honored. She was selling her virginity. That wasn’t how she thought of honor. Taking another large mouthful of sherry, then another, she drained her glass.

  “You are thirsty.” He laughed a little, took her glass, filled it, offered it again.

  “Did anyone see you come in?”

  “No.” She drank the second sherry down so quickly that she coughed hard.

  Smiling and silent while she hacked away, Weston watched her until she was calm again. He was clean as a whistle, she thought, but he had to hate those waves in his brown hair. Why else would he always use so much greasy pomade?

  While he moved about the room, removing his silk cravat, washing and drying his hands at the washstand, she took a seat on the sofa and waited. Euphora and Mrs. Purcell were probably cleaning up after putting the pies in the oven about now. Finally he returned to her and took her glass once more.

  “Mr. Weston?”

  “Yes, Clara.”

  “May we start now?”

  “Clara, my sweet one, are you eager to know me?” Grinning like someone had just given him twenty-five Christmas gifts all at once, he plopped himself down on the sofa next to her.

  No, Hell-fire, she did not want to know him. She wanted to get out of there. She knew far more about him than she wanted to already. If the fall wouldn’t break her legs to bits when she hit the
ground, she’d jump out the window right now. No, she was just blazing eager to get this evening over and done with.

  “Yes. Eager,” she said, mustering the best smile she could.

  He put her sherry glass on a little side table and rested his arm on the sofa back behind her. “There’s no hurry. The room is ours as long as we like. We can linger.”

  Clara gulped. Linger? Why on earth would she want to linger? He waited quietly for her answer but she said nothing. Then he removed a cufflink.

  “Don’t be afraid, Clara. I haven’t hurt you before and I won’t now.”

  How could he promise that when, according to Minnie downstairs, there might be blood?

  After he slid the other cufflink through its slit, he dropped the pair into his waistcoat pocket. “Clara, if you don’t mind, in a moment, I’d like to undress you, take off everything you have on. I’ve been thinking about this moment a long time. I’ve imagined undressing you slowly, like picking petals from a flower, until there is nothing left but the sturdy simple stem.”

  She looked at the window and thought about jumping again, about the pain of broken legs. When she didn’t say anything about the undressing, he rose slowly and took her glass back to the chest of drawers. He poured another sherry. After returning the glass stopper to the decanter, he looked up into the mirror and caught her eye.

  “Would you like that?”

  Suddenly she felt like she was sinking, sinking down through the sofa, down through the carpet and floor, down to the room below and then down beneath that, and then into the earth. As he presented the glass of golden sherry to her, the room seemed turned around exactly once so that he was approaching her from the door, not the chest of drawers. She shook her head slightly as though trying to unclog her ears of water. Then he was back where he ought to be.

  “May I, then?”

  She took the glass from him. “What?”

  “Undress you.”

  She gulped down half the glass. “Yes. Where do you want me, in the corner?” She pointed with her eyes to the corner between the bed and the green curtains.

  He followed her eyes, then laughed. “Not this time.” He unbuttoned his collar, pulled it off, laid it on top of her shawl on the sofa back, then sat near her and opened the top of his shirt, revealing curls of light brown chest hair.

  “I’ll start with your beautiful brown hair and work my way all the way down to your toes.”

  She swigged down what was left of her sherry and felt a warm flush run through her body. This was going to take all night. Papa would freeze to death out in the cold street. He’d be in a terrible wax.

  Weston took her glass and set it aside. “Turn your back so I can take your hair down.”

  When she shifted away from him on the sofa and stared at the wood door, she was relieved not to see him. First he unbuckled her black neckband and slid it off, then she felt his fingers find the pins in her hair and remove them, then untwist her hair. Once the hair was down her back, he stroked it a few times, then brushed it forward, his hands lingering over, then pressing her bosoms. Her shoulders pinched upward, then she felt both his hands near her neck urge her shoulders back down.

  “There. Lovely. Now the dress.”

  As he began to unbutton the back, she remembered the first time he had given her the white and indigo dot dress and had buttoned it up when she tried it on. Now here he was taking the same dress off of her. Even though it was a light summer dress and it was a winter night, Papa had insisted she wear it.

  “It was a special gift from him,” he’d said. “Now git out of that green stripe one and put on his and wear that black neckband he gave you too and those black mitts I gave you.”

  So here she sat, her back to Sam Weston on a striped satin sofa, everything on her except her undergarments—a gift from either Papa or Weston. Now, because of tonight, Papa had made new promises. “Tomorrow we’ll get you one of them whalebone hoop things you been wantin’ and one of those other things grown up women wear, corsets.” It wouldn’t be long before her entire wardrobe, even her shoes and stockings, had something to do with this paramour arrangement with Sam Weston. Jo-fire, the whole family would soon be wearing the clothing purchased with Weston’s money.

  When Weston finished with the buttons, he got up and asked her to stand and step out of the dress. After that, he laid the dress down so carefully on the back of the sofa someone would have thought he was a tailor admiring his own work. Then he moved around her and unbuttoned her red flannel petticoat. She stepped out of that too and next he lifted her shimmy over her head. All her skin above her waist was out in the chilly air now. He added the shimmy to the growing pile, then set his light brown eyes to traveling all over her, up and down, across and back again. She had that rabbit-in-a-snare feeling again, like the first time in the Spirit Room corner. With her black lace mitts still on, she crossed her arms high over her bosoms, locking a hand on each opposite shoulder.

  “No. Let me look at you. Don’t hide.” He tried to pry her hands off, but she held tight to herself. “Please.” He waited for her to let go, waited with his hands not fighting or tugging, just waiting and waiting. Then it struck her. If she kept stiff-armed like this when he wanted something else, this thing would take all jo-fired night and that wasn’t what she wanted at all. She let her arms drop back to her sides and then he swept her hair around to her back. He stared at her chest, his eyes burning branding iron trails slowly across her skin. Stiffening up her arms again, she looked down at the soft shiny stripes on the sofa.

  Suddenly, with a thud, he dropped to his knees, pulling her attention away from the blue-and-yellow satin stripes. Then, like he was praying to Jesus Christ, our savior, he bent his head down and placed his hands on her hips at the top of her pantalettes. And there he froze. The smell of half-rotten apples wafted up, making her nauseous. That pomade. Just how much of the stuff did he use anyway? An entire tin?

  Then he started whispering, repeating something over and over. She was glad she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Let him keep his dang chanting to himself. Glancing around the room, she searched for something to fixate on in the moments to come. The bedposts would do. There were four of them and they were solid and dark and strong and shiny and upright. She could move her thoughts from one to the other during the evening. Start with one of the far ones, then two, three, four, as things went along. By the time she was at four, it would be over and she could go home to the house that would smell like pumpkin pie. It would be like holding her breath to a very very slow count of four.

  She felt his fingers go to the button on the side of her pantalettes and release it. Bedpost number one, far left. Then she felt the cotton start to slide down her legs, and his hands with it, all the way to her ankles. Cool air hit her belly. Her stomach clenched of its own will.

  “Step out of them.”

  Tearing herself from bedpost number one to look at the undergarment in a heap around her feet, she raised a foot, then the other as Weston, sitting back on his heels now, slid the pantalettes away. Except for boots, white stockings, and black lace gloves, she stood completely naked. He tossed the pantalettes under the sofa and began to unbutton her boots. When he had taken off each boot and each stocking and stuffed them under the sofa, he straightened up into his prayer position, eyes closed, and began to whisper once more. What the Hell was he doing? He was more peculiar than she had ever imagined.

  He tipped his face close to her private place. She cringed, expecting his touch, but he only took a few deep breaths. Was he smelling her, sniffing her like a dog? Was this what men and women did with one another?

  “You are the stem of the flower now, perfect, lithe. Hold still,” he said.

  He stood up, stepped back, crossed his arms over his bunches-of-grapes vest, and began to stare at every inch of her. For a moment she watched him and his brown eyes, until she started to feel the sinking again. She looked away, searching for the bedpost, but she got trapped on the sight of the two o
f them in the mirror, her naked body with her two small bosoms, her young woman hips, his broad back, his billowy white shirt sleeves, his fancy satin vest. Next to him, she looked tiny, like a midget in the circus, even though she wasn’t short and he wasn’t especially tall.

  He noticed that she was looking at them in the mirror. Turning around to face the mirror, he lodged his hands on his hips, and smiling, caught her eye there in the glass.

  “You see? You are perfect, young and perfect. Nothing has touched you yet. I wish I were an artist. I’d paint your picture on a big canvas and put it in one of those ornate gold frames.”

  “Will it be much longer? Papa is waiting out in the cold.”