The Dark

by Claire Mulligan

  Think ice, she mouths to Katie, who is likewise in a cast-iron sweat. Katie shrugs and dabs at her eyes, which are ash-grey today and red-rimmed from crying.

  Lizzie, seated at the table’s end, prods the remains of her luncheon with her fork tines. Leah taps the table, slow and deliberate, as if hearing a dirge. Mother sniffs and worries at her sleeve. She wears mourning black, as does Maggie, as do Katie and Lizzie and Leah. Three weeks have passed since little Ella died.

  “Dost thou think the spirits will grace us with their presence?” Amy asks Leah.

  “They do prefer our home, but if we carry on as normal, then perhaps they shall grace us plenty.”

  So carry on they do, finishing their plates, making their conversations. Maggie attends all the chit-chat without seeming to, a fresh-honed habit of hers. It has become a habit of Katie’s, too. At last the luncheon guests, fourteen in all, move to the keeping room, avoiding the squares of sunlight as if they are trap doors.

  Maggie surveys the room. There are no tassells or fripperies, no wallpaper. No lamberquin on the windows. All is simple. Functional. Unadorned. The walls are linen-white. The rugs patterned only with lines. And yet the room has peculiar beauty, a soothing aspect. So why am I not soothed? she wonders. The heat, she decides, this damned perpetual heat. Yet it doesn’t seem to trouble Abigail Bush. Abigail, plump and heavy-chinned, sits over her needlepoint, serene as a roosting hen. Her husband, Henry, round-headed and liverish, nonchalantly brushes crumbs from his whiskers. The Bushes are close friends of the Posts. Like the Posts they are Hicksite Quakers. Mr. Bush is in the stove business, Maggie recalls. And Abigail is a suffragette leader. She even presided over that women’s convention in Seneca recently. Such a ruckus that caused, because who ever heard of a woman being chosen to preside over anything?

  Maggie sits next to Katie on the settee. Katie sips her cider. She has been church-mouse quiet since Ella died, and has been all-worried, she admitted, about saying the wrong thing at the right time and the right thing at the wrong.

  “… and the buzzing wouldn’t stop,” Ruth Culver says to no one in particular. “It drove me near mad. It wanted to say something. Something of grand importance, in my opinion. You can ask my Norman here. Norman?”

  “No Man? Noman?” Maggie undertones to Katie, using her cranky Ruth voice. Katie pokes her finger in her cider, doesn’t smile.

  Meanwhile “Noman” slides his thin self over to the melodeon, where Calvin is talking with George Willets. George is a cousin of the Posts. He has spindle limbs, carrot hair, freckles. He is about the same age as Calvin but not a jot as handsome. Maggie and Katie were quick to agree on this.

  “No, no, Cal,” George says loudly. “It wasn’t Horace Greeley who advised ‘Go West, young man,’ but Soule of the Terre Haute Express.”

  “It seems a swell strategy, whoever said it,” Calvin responds. “That’d be an adventure, wouldn’t it? Marching off so far.”

  Norman Culver, eyeing his wife, Ruth, wholeheartedly agrees.

  “And what of young women?” Maggie undertones to Katie again. “Why in tunket can’t we run far off too?”

  “We ain’t—I mean aren’t allowed,” Katie says, as if Maggie had been serious.

  Leah’s voice rises over the general conversation. “The vote, Lemira? Do you truly believe we women shall have it soon? My Good Lord, I cannot believe that women have the fortitude for politics and other manly occupations.” Leah is speaking to Mrs. Lemira Kedzie. Lemira is yet another Hicksite Quaker, and looks, Maggie thinks, like a wood-pecking bird what with her outdated topknot, her long thin nose and small black eyes, her manner of determined nodding.

  “Whatever is Lemira doing here?” Maggie whispers to Katie, lips barely moving. “Or George. Or the Bushes even.”

  Katie’s shrug is so faint it could be shudder.

  Maggie continues, “I mean, spirit talking was to be just for kin and dear friends, that’s what Leah said. Ah, the good grief, our elders are worse than six-year-olds the way they keep on telling and telling. If they don’t heed caution, all of Rochester is going to know that the dead are tromping on back.” She takes a long drink from Katie’s cider. The cider is barely fermented, and tastes flat, almost sour.

  Nearby, Leah, released from Lemira, tells Isaac, “We shall hear Ella in time. It was too soon, you see. Spirits need time to cross over, particularly spirit children, who tend to dawdle. Yes, I am only now discovering how it all works. Truly, it is like hearing the works of a daring new chamber ensemble.” Leah is not trying to command attention, but her voice carries and all attend her.

  Why always her? Maggie thinks, surprised at her own faint jealousy.

  “Yes! Yes,” Isaac cries. “That explains why our Matilda and Henry have not yet made their presence known. They were … are … of such tender years and might have lost their way back. Perhaps thou could guide them? Provide some signpost?”

  “A signpost?” Leah says to Isaac, as if trying out the timbre of the word. “Mayhap.”

  Isaac gives his beatific smile.

  “I’m all-empty,” Katie tells Maggie. She indicates her mug, then rustles without another word over to the cider bowl on the sideboard. She looks, Maggie notes, like a wayward shadow in her overlarge mourning clothes. Maggie wishes her mourning clothes were overlarge, too. Her sleeves chafe her underarms, her stays cramp her breath. She yanks at her cuffs, sees her wrists black-ringed from the dye, sees Ella’s small coffin being lowered into the ground.

  “Your Ella is with us still,” Leah told their sister Maria at the after-gathering. “She is happy now and forever. Who of us can say the same?” Leah tried to raise Ella’s spirit then, but got only silence.

  “Do you sense our dear Ella, Margaretta?” Leah asked.

  “Nope,” Maggie said. It was true. Among all these folk with their well-worn mourning clothes, Maggie sensed nothing but staggering grief.

  Now something brushes against Maggie’s skirts. She catches her breath, then chances a look down. No enormous-eyed face under the settee. No Miss Nettie doll clutched in Ella’s arms. No, because Katie put Miss Nettie in the coffin with Ella. Nothing here. Only the feet of the living jostling for space.

  Ruth sidles up to Maggie. “Our Katie’s hooked an admirer. Well, that’s my opinion.”

  Maggie glances over at Katie, who has found out the cider and is talking closely with Mr. John Robinson, a lawyer friend of them all. He is handsome for a man of years. Has all his teeth and all his hair and wears a natty silk waistcoat. “He’s just being polite,” Maggie tells Ruth, as anyone can see by his automaton nod. “Besides, he’s ancient. Thirty at the least.”

  Ruth—well past thirty herself—sniffs and trundles off. Which is the better gift, Maggie ponders: a knack for raising the blessed of the dead? Or for avoiding the irksome of the quick?

  “Come, Henry, John,” Isaac says. “Thou must see my invention.” He ushers Henry Bush and John Robinson past Maggie, then past Lizzie, who has posted herself by a window. She is watching the sundial in the garden. Has made a paper fan and is fanning herself like the Duchess-of-Where-ever. Since Ella’s burial, Lizzie has been cool with Maggie and Katie, with Leah even. Has been reluctant to join in any kind of game. Would rather occupy herself with French books and sewing notions and with sketching. Still-lifes are what she favours—fruit bowls, flowers, doorways. Indeed, she has declared anything fanciful or fabricated a ridiculous waste of time, an idea Maggie can’t wholly disabuse.

  The grandfather clock strikes four. Isaac and Henry and John return from Isaac’s study. Isaac carries a rectangular board the size of a serving tray. The top of the board is scripted with the alphabet; underneath are the numbers one through twenty; and underneath those are simple words: and, thus, you, her, him, us, them and so on.

  “Invention may be too grand a term,” Isaac tells the men, and with his usual modesty. “This board merely assists the spirits with communication, and allows them to speak for a lengthy time without strain o
r worry. They knock, you see, when the correct letter, word or number is pointed to. It is a far more expeditious than our previous method of spelling words by reciting the alphabet and waiting for a knock when each letter is attained.”

  “Can we expect greater clarity?” John Robinson asks. “Their wording is often vague.”

  “Oh, I am most hopeful the spirits will now give us a complete description of the after-life and of the nature of God and the Heavens,” Isaac says.

  “It is monumental, this dead returning business,” Henry Bush puts in, his liverish face rapt. “A turn-point in history.”

  Listening to this conversation, Maggie’s heart drops heavy as a plumb-bob. The air grows hotter yet. “Forfeits, anyone?” she asks. “Or, or lookabout?”

  No one takes up Maggie’s offer. Not her mother, who is always the first to spot the knick-knack in lookabout. Not Leah, who cannot be beat at forfeits.

  “Charades?” Maggie asks, looking at Katie, because charades is Katie’s favourite. Katie shrugs. Maggie suggests get-a-smile next, thinking of Ruth Culver, who generally wins, having never smiled in all her born days.

  “Be patient, dear,” Amy says in her kind, firm way. “A game may steal our minds from our purpose.”

  Machteld appears. “I pour tea now,” she declares, and does so for everyone but Maggie.

  When Machteld leaves, Maggie follows her to the pantry. She smiles. Machteld scowls in return.

  “You’re not going to … Are you?” Maggie hesitates.

  Machteld smacks down the tea tin.

  A week ago, Machteld had accompanied Amy and Isaac to a spirit-sitting at Leah’s row-home in Mechanics Square. Maggie was in the keeping room below with Katie when Machteld appeared in the doorway.

  Maggie lowered the broom she had raised over her head. “I was … we, I mean, the ceilings get so dirty. And I thought, thought you were above-stairs with Amy and Isaac and … and Leah.”

  Machteld clenched her pudgy hands and glared. “I was above-stairs, and the ghosts, they make knock sounds.”

  “It’s what girls here do, that’s all,” Katie said desperately.

  “She’s right, Machy,” Maggie quickly added. “We make a game out of the cleaning. Better than blindman’s bluff. It’s a lark. Here. Here!” She thrust the broom at Machteld.

  Just then, Lizzie had traipsed in. She surveyed the situation, said archly, “Well, tant mieux. That is to say, so much the better.”

  No, it’s not, Maggie thought. Not “better” in any language. She forced a smile, said, “Machy, we’re going tomorrow to watch Calvin in the militia parade. We’re going to make a banner and everything. Leah said we need to cheer ourselves up after Ella. Come with us. Amy will give you some time free. I know it.”

  Machteld considered this for a long moment, then took the broom from Maggie’s hands. “Here, I show how you clean.”

  Now, in the Posts’ pantry, Machteld says, “After the parade you say, tomorrow we go for a ride in canal boat, and so I come to the canal in my new dress. It is white. Never do I wear white dress. But that day I wear white because I go out with my ‘friends.’ Yes? But my friends not there. I wait at the dock and wait and wait. And the horns make racket. And then I leave.”

  “I confess, Machy, we plain forgot. I’m sorry, I surely am.”

  Machteld mutters something in Dutch and brushes past Maggie with a platter of teacakes. Maggie doesn’t try to stop her.

  Back in the Posts’ keeping room, Maggie nibbles at an apple tart that tastes, of a sudden, like ash. Dandy-fine, she thinks, this will be the way it all ends. Her dread is entwined with relief, a curious dual feeling.

  Behind Maggie, Amy exclaims to Leah, “I am in such joy to learn from the spirits that Hell does not exist. Oh, I had my doubts. Why would a just God damn innocent children merely because they are not baptized? How is this their fault? And why should pagans be tormented by eternal fire for ignorance of the Gospel? Why should the chance for redemption cease with the breath? Why should not the Glory await us, one and all?”

  “Why not, indeed,” Leah says. Then, “Should we try the parlour, dear Amy? The air is much cooler there. Perhaps the spirits shall find that more inviting.”

  “A sensible idea,” Amy says. “Machy, dear, lemonade, please. Unless thou care to join us.”

  Machteld scowls at Maggie and shakes her head.

  The parlour is indeed cooler, and more dim besides. The windows are draped with plain brown velveteen. The oval table is set with a simple candelabra.

  The Bushes sit, followed by John Robinson. Katie takes a seat beside him. Lizzie mutters “Merde” and places herself opposite Katie. Ruth Culver orders her Norman to “sit,” then sits herself. Maggie slides into place between Leah and George Willets. Now they are all around the table and holding hands. One of the Quakers must have suggested the hand-holding because it is becoming, Maggie realizes, like one of their queer services where they wait and wait until the Holy Spirit moves one to speak. Amy says a kind of prayer: “… or the world is God and the Glory is God and everything of flesh and everything of green and God is not one thing, but everything holds its portion.”

  Amen. Amen. Amen.

  Machteld enters with the lemonade. Sets it down on a sideboard. Looks at Maggie. At Amy.

  “Dost thou wish to join us, dear?” Amy asks. “Dost thou need to give voice? Please do so.”

  Damn you, Machteld, not now, Maggie thinks. No voicing. Not with everyone here. Please. Please. Maggie visions the looks of aghast disappointment, betrayal, hatred even, on the faces of these people she cares about. Why-ever had she thought she would know relief of any kind?

  Machteld glances sidelong at Maggie, then tells Amy, “I know … I know I need go to market.”

  “Certainly, dearest,” Amy says, perplexed.

  “Spirits, please join us now,” Leah says as Machteld leaves. They wait in silence until Maggie’s hand—held fast by Leah on the one side, George Willets on the other—becomes hot as a flatiron. Finally, when Maggie can bear it no longer—the expectation and longing, the daggering eyes from Leah—the first faint knock comes and then a faint cheer from around the parlour table.

  “It’s the peddler in my opinion,” Ruth says.

  A strong, single knock. No.

  “Is it someone we know?” Leah asks.

  Two knocks. Yes.

  “A child?”

  Another two knocks. The Posts give joyous gasps.

  Several other names are tried before the correct one is arrived upon: Matilda, the Posts’ daughter. She is all of four, the same age as Ella. Matilda has been dead for three years, yet the Posts sob as if their hearts were freshly broken.

  CHAPTER 6.

  “After the first sitting at the Posts’,” my patient said, “we began our Sunday strolls at the Mount Hope Cemetery. The place was ever chock full on Sundays with folks taking the air and picnicking and children playing leap-the-grave. You recall when cemeteries came into fashion?”

  “Certainly, duck, do you wish to be buried in one? They are costly, but fine indeed.” I smiled, pleased that I might get some direction in my duty towards her.

  “Now, now, don’t try to fish out my wants, Mrs. Mellon,” she said. She was button-bright that day, I should add. Indeed, I was amazed at how she had improved since I began tending her six days past.

  We spoke about cemeteries then, how blessed we were in America to have space aplenty, even for the dead. How there was no need to cram one’s beloveds into a church graveyard where the headstones lean against each other like crooked teeth in an old man’s head. How cemetery meant “sleeping place” in some foreign language, and how that made one think the dead were merely napping. How nice it would be to be buried in a place that looked the picture of Heaven, with sweeping views and winding paths, with scrolled benches and stately trees and with grass, lawned and tended all around.

  I took up my knitting and began work on a decorative selvedge.

  “Katie and
I loved to play among the tombs and angel statues and obelisks,” my patient said. “We’d challenge each other to memorize the most names and epithets and dates of death and such.” As if to prove her stellar memory she quoted some of these names: Jehu Phineas. Absolamon Good. Elijah Smithe. Robert. Frederick. James. Robert. William. Hank. And so on. She quoted also the years of their births and deaths, even, yes, their epithets.

  I tended to my knitting as she spoke, the needles clacking a steadfast rhythm. Then sighed. I gave my son a rare and lovely name. I should like to have seen it carved in marble.

  “Have you decided what it will become?” my patient asked at length (she had finished with her recitation).

  “A hat,” I said after a moment. “And now you might as well tell me more. I have nothing better to occupy my time.”

  NO STROLL THIS SUNDAY. Outside Leah’s Mechanics Square walk-up a late-autumn rain squalls. Inside, Maggie is bored, bored, bored. The dirty weather has kept away guests, denied invitations out. There is only Katie, Mother, Leah, Lizzie and Calvin to help fill the hours.

  “Fiddle-it,” Katie mutters.

  “Fiddle what?” Maggie asks.

  “Can’t you sense it? It’s all sour. A tiff. It’s brew-brewing away.”

  “A tiff? My, that’s spandy-new.”

  A fire draws in the grate. The mantel clock tocks to five. They have just finished guess-the-name. Maggie easily won, as she always does. Now each has retired to a separate occupation. At the organ, Leah puzzles out some sheet music. Mother sweeps the rug. Katie pokes at her sampler. Maggie reads The Secret of the Vicar’s Daughter, and for the third time. She loves how the secret restores the girl’s honour, and not the reverse.

  Katie yawns, her mouth tiger-wide.

  Mother stops sweeping. “Laws, Katherine! Cover your mouth. Do you want a Nasty Little getting in? Do you?”