Shattered Echoes

by B. A. Shapiro

  She watched me silently.

  “This is ridiculous—I can’t believe I’m telling you this stuff. I’ve never told anyone but Paul about ‘watch the letters.’”

  She smiled slightly. “Not even Herr Doktor Stieglitz?”

  “Especially not him. I’m not exactly the bare-your-soul-type, and I’ve never trusted shrinks.” I paused. “Is that rude? Am I not supposed to call you a shrink?”

  “You can call me whatever you like.”

  “Can I call you Naomi?”

  Her smile broadened. “Sure beats Herr Doktor Braverman.”

  I rocked and looked at the broken cuckoo clock. “I don’t think this is going to help.”

  She nodded and rocked.

  I stood up. “I just don’t see what will be accomplished.” I sat back down. “Do you think I should talk about Clay?”

  “Clay was your husband?”

  I nodded.

  “If you think it’s important.”

  “It has to be, doesn’t it?”

  “Do you think it is?”

  “This throw-back-my-own-question stuff just isn’t for me.” I stood up again. “I’m really sorry to have wasted your time.”

  “Lindsey,” she said, her voice simultaneously stern and soft, “you are, of course, free to go, but please, please sit down for one more moment.”

  I shrugged and sat down.

  “Lindsey, I can hear you’re in pain—”

  “I’m really fine.”

  “I think there are a number of things we could try.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “I’d like you to have a few tests. I’d like to arrange for some projective tests and some neurological tests—”

  “What for? To see if I’m crazy?”

  “Mostly to rule out any organic basis for your symptoms.”

  “What symptoms?”

  “Your memory lapses, your daymares, your headaches—”

  “You think I have a brain tumor?”

  “That’s highly unlikely. But I’d like to be sure that everything is fine physically before we move on.”

  “And just how do we ‘move on’?”

  “We work together to explore your feelings, to try to discover the causes of these feelings and how they relate to your daymares and nightmares and headaches.”

  “And then they’ll all magically disappear?”

  “I make no promises. But I can assure you that if you’re hostile to the process, nothing will come out of it. Why don’t you go home and think this over? Don’t make any quick decisions—think it through slowly and carefully. Then, if you decide working with me might be of some help, then you can call and we can start.” She stopped rocking and leaned forward, her hands clasped on her lap. “But I’d like you to seriously consider the tests—the symptoms you present could be indicative of a serious problem. And this might be one of those situations where early detection makes a big difference in prognosis.”

  “If I have a brain tumor, for example?”

  “An unlikely, but not impossible, example. You need to see a neurologist to be sure either way.”

  “And see you too?”

  “Yes, because if it’s not physical—and I suspect that it’s not—then maybe between us we can figure out what’s making you so unhappy.”

  “I never said I was unhappy.”

  She nodded and rocked.

  I stood up too quickly, and my chair veered into the wall behind me. “Sorry,” I mumbled as I returned the chair to its original position. Herr Doktor Braverman was taking this far too seriously. I grabbed my coat and left her office.

  I kept seeing flatworms and shiny frogs with their chest cavities held open by tiny pins; I smelled the sharp odor of formaldehyde. I wasn’t going under any psychological microscope. No way was I going to play “interpret the ink blots” or let them probe my brain with electrodes.

  So I went to the library and researched parapsychology. I wandered through occult bookstores and even went to an upscale fortune teller on Newbury Street. But nothing satisfied; everything I read seemed absurd, and the fortune teller told me I’d become a politician. So I gave up.

  I went to work, I went food shopping, I even renewed my driver’s license. But I knew it was all facade; I knew I was on the edge.

  Finally I called Babs. “I don’t believe Nathan gave you any boxes,” I said.

  “So why are you bothering me about them?”

  “To catch you in yet another one of your oh-so-cute practical jokes.”

  “It’s no joke, it’s real.”

  “If it’s real, prove it.”

  “All right, kiddo.” Babs sighed dramatically. “All right, you win. I’ll call Gram and see if we can go over there.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  Within an hour we were at “Gram’s” town house, which was just two blocks up from me, at Beacon and Berkeley. First we paid the call that was proper and obligatory prior to burrowing in a person’s basement—particularly a person of Mrs. Putnam’s age and social standing.

  She greeted us in her upstairs drawing room, a room in the same relative position as my living room, and similar in shape and size, although much more ornate. Where my apartment had wainscot, Mrs. Putnam’s had quartered oak panels covering entire walls; where mine had a waist-high marble fireplace, Mrs. Putnam’s rose to the ceiling, replete with mirrors, elaborately carved Corinthian columns, and marble inlays.

  She was an elegant and fascinating lady; her stories were so enthralling, I almost forgot that speaking with her was not the purpose of our visit. She told us that, with the exception of updating the systems, her house was much as it had been when it was built, and she joked about the discomforts of her grandfather’s plumbing arrangements and the difficulties of gas lighting. The house had been built by her grandfather in 1863; his family and her family had all been born there.

  “Mr. Putnam and I raised our children on Marlborough Street,” she told me, “but after he died, I moved back home to take care of Mother.”

  “It’s a lot like my house.” I said. “But fancier.”

  “Ah yes, Babs told me you are in the Davenport house. Many of the houses of the Back Bay are similar, but I recall that your house and this house are particularly so.” She paused. “Although yours does have a gloomier aspect.”

  “Gloomy? Why gloomy?”

  “Oh, not the house itself—its history and inhabitants.” Mrs. Putnam looked deep into the fireplace. “Poor old Mrs. Davenport,” she sighed. “The stories were all extremely painful.”

  “What kind of stories?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Davenport bore a reputation for strangeness—some say insanity and others say wickedness.”

  “What did she do?”

  “I say that as long as nothing was ever proved, she did nothing. It was all a long time ago, child. A very, very long time ago.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “I saw her only once. When I was a little girl.”

  “What was she like?”

  “I must have been about eleven, and Nanny and I were giving Baby Charles an airing when an old lady came up and took my hand in hers. Her hands were so tiny, I remember thinking it odd that her fingers were not much longer than mine. ‘Is this lovely little girl the daughter of Charles Homans Winslow?’ she asked. The poor soul only meant it as a kindness, but Miss Quint was as cross as two sticks. She wrenched my hand and pulled me from the lady. Cousin Emily told me later that it was old Mrs. Davenport who had been making herself agreeable to me and that I should be on my guard against her.”

  A gasp escaped my lips before I could stifle it, and Mrs. Putnam and Babs looked at me with matching raised eyebrows; the family resemblance was very strong. I shook my head.

  Babs turned back to her grandmother, and her voice reached me as if through a long tunnel. “What did she do that was so terrible?”

  “Nothing of which I am certain.” Mrs. Putnam busied herse
lf rearranging the blanket that covered her lap. “As I was saying, most of the houses bear a strong resemblance to each other.”

  “But, Gram—”

  “The houses were built in a very circumscribed time. Everyone lived in a similar manner—had the same ‘lifestyle,’ as you girls would say—so their houses, the theater of their winter lives, were also similar: the large reception rooms for formal entertaining; the kitchens hidden in the back basement to insure that cooking odors never pervaded the family quarters; many top-floor rooms for servants …”

  “It sounds so lovely …” Babs sighed.

  “Nonsense. I venture to suggest that you would have been a wretched soul, Barbara Katherine, living in those times. It was no place for independent women. And it was definitely no place for a woman who craves excitement. No jumping out of planes. No climbing silly rocks. A woman did what she was told—not as she pleased. She was a possession—treasured and pampered—but always controlled by her father or husband.” Mrs. Putnam patted Babs’s hand affectionately. “But the thought of you in the nineteenth century shall provide my amusement and my company for the remainder of the evening. I know you girls are in full cry after those boxes, and you ought not allow an old woman’s rambling to keep you from your pleasure.”

  I counted three landings and four changes of direction in the single flight of stairs that brought us to the main floor. “So this is where you get your interest in the history of Back Bay.”

  Babs grinned. “I suppose you could say it’s in my blood.”

  “Blue as that blood may be. You never told me you were one of ‘The Putnams.’”

  “It’s hardly relevant,” Babs said. We walked down another flight of stairs and into a long, low room that was filled with a baffling assortment of memorabilia: glass cabinets and open shelves filled with books and ledgers, and one dedicated solely to outlandish women’s hats; a set of tufted chairs covered in red plush; and, of course, rows of assorted dressmakers’ dummies and framed sepia-tinted family portraits.

  I headed directly for a pile of cartons and began reading off labels. “‘Privately Printed Letters of Charles Homans Winslow, Sr.’ Oh, this one’s great—‘Journals of Katherine Hunnewell Winslow Gore.’ I mean, really—why do you people need so many names?” I quickly found Nathan’s boxes, dragged them onto an open piece of floor, and pulled back the flaps of the top one.

  “Owww, isn’t this lovely!” Babs reached around my shoulder and retrieved a pillbox with a tiny ballerina carved on its broken lid. “This is fabulous, just fabulous,” she said as she burrowed further. “Will you look at these?” She held a handful of unfamiliar coins.

  Although I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, I knew that Babs’s tarnished and cracked treasures were not it. I reached for a stack of newspaper clippings, but as my fingers closed around them, they fractured like thin sheets of crystal and fell back into the box, unreadable slivers of dust and yellow paper. “Anything in that one?” I asked Babs, who had started on another box.

  She carefully unfolded a large yellowed sheet of paper. “I think these are the original piling schedules for your house!”

  “Piling schedules?”

  “The diagrams for the piles that support the foundation—the ones sunk into the landfill.” Babs spread the drawing on the floor. “Fascinating, just fascinating.”

  I stretched over her head and pulled out the sheet music for “The Chattanooga Choo Choo” with a “Kilroy was here” drawing in the top corner. The next grab produced a handful of bent and fuzzy pictures. “Shit—there must have been a flood or something. You can’t even tell if half these people are men or women.”

  Babs took the warped brown and beige pictures. “Here’s one that’s not wrecked.” She handed me a photograph of a tall, plump young woman, her hair parted in the middle and pulled severely from her unsmiling face. “I wonder if this is our ghost.”

  “No.” I handed it back.

  Babs raised her eyebrows. “You seem to have a pretty clear idea about a ghost you’ve never seen and claim not to believe in.”

  “I meant ‘no’ there is no ghost, not ‘no’ this isn’t the ghost.” I reached back into the box. “More boring sheet music. This one’s ‘operatic music for four hands.’ Yuck—opera; that’s even worse than boring.” I leaned over the carton again. This time I discovered some old toys: a silver rattle that chimed with a lovely musical tone, and a set of surprisingly heavy lead soldiers, their faces full of serious dedication. “This is depressing—all we’re discovering is that the Davenports liked music and that they had children. So where’s all the good shit—where’s all the letters and journals and stuff?”

  “In here, kiddo,” Babs said, looking up from the third box. “They’re in here.” She reverently lifted a once white leather book from the box; “The Davenport Family Genealogy” was written in large gold script across its cover. It turned out to be almost completely blank.

  “Wait—” Babs burrowed again “—this looks promising—these things must have belonged to a woman from around the turn of the century.” She pulled out a set of tortoise shell hair combs, a silk bed jacket, Godey’s Lady’s Book, and a small, lace-covered bundle of sachet.

  I took the sachet and pressed it to my nose; the smell of lavender was barely discernible, but it was there. Babs looked at me with a strange smile on her face as I clutched the scented lace tightly in my hand.

  “Looky here.” Babs raised a butter-colored, gilt-edged book from the carton; the numerals “1882” were tooled on the leather binding. She opened it to the first page.

  Diary of Isabel Jessel Davenport

  Given to her by her husband

  Montague Cabot Davenport, Sr.

  In celebration of the birth of his son

  Montague Cabot Davenport, Jr.

  September 9, 1881

  “This is fabulous!” Babs clapped her hands. “Isabel Davenport has to be the weird old Mrs. Davenport that Gram was taking about! Mrs. Montague Cabot Davenport, Sr., must have been the mistress of the house in the eighteen eighties—probably longer.”

  “Do you think she might have spent a lot of time in the area of the house that’s now my apartment?”

  “Been reading up on ghost lore, have we?” Babs’s grin was as sarcastic as her tone. “Starting to believe the unbelievable, are we?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Whatever your reason—the answer is ‘yes.’ As your apartment was the original principal bedroom and family sitting room, Isabel Davenport would indeed have spent the majority of her time there.” She handed me the diary and bent back over the box. “There’s more!” With a flourish, she withdrew two additional journals. The first was very similar to the diary resting on my lap, but it had “1884” tooled on its binding and sported a tiny lock, now broken. The other was quite different: it was of simple dark leather and had no date; its larger, sturdier lock still held the diary securely shut.

  “I can feel it! I can just feel it!” Babs jumped up, clutching the diaries to her. “Isabel Davenport is your ghost!”

  For a moment it was as if the wind had been knocked out of me; I saw the wispy cirrus clouds floating overhead, just as they had the day I fell from the swing in Linda Feinstein’s backyard. Then they were gone. “This isn’t about ghosts,” I said calmly. “This is about history.”

  “That’s what you think!” Babs threw herself down beside me on the floor and laid the two unlocked diaries next to each other. There was no doubt that the diaries belonged to the same person, that the tiny little letters with long tails were written by the same hand. Unfortunately, the water stains that marred both diaries were the same also.

  “It’s almost impossible to read these,” I said. “The ink’s run everywhere and the words are all blurred.”

  Babs flipped through one of the diaries. “Look, this section isn’t so bad.” She carefully separated some pages. “This is going to be okay—it isn’t all wrecked—there’s enough here to get a good feel
for your ghost.”

  I turned the pages of Isabel Davenport’s 1882 diary. “Listen to this—it’s got a preface! ‘I, Isabel Lyman Jessel Davenport, begin the chronicle of the family of Montague Cabot Davenport, Sr. It shall be my duty, my obligation, and my pleasure to record within these pages the lives of those most dear.’” I had to stop reading. “I can almost hear her speaking—it’s like she’s really here.”

  Babs grinned at me and started to say something; then she changed her mind and looked down at the diary. We read the first entry in silence.

  * * *

  January 1, 1882

  It is snowing fiercely as I sit down at my little desk to begin to write between these pages. Baby Monty, my sweet tiny son, is abed under the watchful eye of Nanny. Montague, my dear husband, has retired to his library to do work which it would be my folly to try to comprehend.

  At one time, Montague thought my desire to write capricious and all scribbling women to be of a vain and silly sort. But Mother Davenport has come to my rescue and assured him that the recording of our family history can indeed be counted among a lady’s accomplishments. I am most grateful to her, for now my dear Montague has presented me with this journal. Writing within it shall be both joy and obligation. I know I shall do my job well.

  I suppose the truest way to begin this journal is to recount the marriage from which the family shall come. Montague Cabot Davenport and I, Isabel Lyman Jessel, were joined in holy matrimony on June 18, 1880. Montague’s father, Lyman Adams Davenport III, and Mama, Beatrice Lyman Jessel, were cousins through their Lyman mothers, and hence my dear Montague and I were fortunate not to have married out of the family.

  It would be dreadful folly not to include the great lady, Wilhelmina Appleton Cabot Davenport, in this recounting, for it is Mother Davenport who contributes the great Appleton and Cabot families to this union.

  September 9, 1881, is the true beginning of the family of Montague Cabot Davenport, Sr. For it was on this glorious day that his first son, Montague Cabot Davenport, Jr., was born. Also my son, my wonderful, precious little boy who smiled at his mama for the very first time today.