The toes. Not the fingers. They’re snapping their damnedo toes!
Chauncey hurls the bowling ball. It glides alongside the gutter and knocks over near every pin. He raises his fists. “Eureka, eh, Hemano! So says Archimedes and so say I.”
CHAPTER 16.
“And Chauncey was right?” I asked my patient, though I had guessed the answer.
“Oh, yes. Eureka,” she said, at which there came a loud tap-rap. It seemed to come from beneath the bed, the bedclothes even. She looked at the three linked windows of the garret, and I did also, and the raps sounded again, though now they seemed to emanate from there.
“A genial magic,” I said, and wondered how anyone could have thought it otherworldly, or anything more than the rattle-clack of one’s skeleton in a room. “However did you keep it up?”
“We didn’t ‘keep it up,’ ” she answered, all-tetchy. “The secret became its own creation. I’ve said that. Have I not? It took on its own life, as golems do, after the right incantations are said. Or that monster out of Mrs. Shelley’s novel, after the right amount of electricity was applied.”
I asked her then if it was not a dreary thing to be ever surrounded by ghosts, monsters, golems, call them ever what you will, if it did not give her pause? She did not answer exactly, but began to talk about the Greeleys’ house, or “Castle Doleful,” and what she came to understand while visiting there.
MAGGIE PEERS OUT the carriage window as they draw up to the Greeleys’ home on Turtle Bay. The house is not far outside of New York, but might as well be in the western regions of the country, Maggie thinks, what with the autumn-fired woods all about, the bay aglitter and empty of boats. The house is good-sized but plain in its lines and as sparsely ornamented as any factory or school.
“I’m real glad you can stay a while, Mag,” Katie whispers as Horace Greeley steps out of the carriage to hand them both down. “I don’t like fetching up spirits on my lonesome.”
“I know,” Maggie sighs. Leah has allowed her to accompany Katie to the Greeleys’ but she can only stay for two weeks. Then she must be back in Rochester to assist Leah at the sittings there.
“You’d think Leah doesn’t want us being alone together,” Katie said before they left. “As if we’ll think up our own plans or something.”
“That’s not the case,” Maggie replied, but thought, Of course, that’s it exactly.
“Miss Maggie? Miss Katie?” Horace peers into the carriage. “Come, please. Mary waits for us.” As she does, and on the veranda.
“About laggardly time you arrived” is what Mary Greeley says straight after the introductions. She wears a creased mourning fit-out of dullest bombast, and a nightcap though it is midday. Her skin is sallow, her hair tattered from overwashing, and her nose spidered with lines. Unhappiness wafts off her, along with the smells of camphor and lanolin. Maggie has met her sort aplenty by now. People who wear their misery like a badge, who make mourning a full-time occupation. Still, Maggie suspects this woman will take the biscuit.
“Is my Pickie here?” Mary cries. “Is he? Horace, you said these girls can talk to him. You said that.”
Horace gives a resigned shrug.
Maggie says, “He needs … needs time to feel at ease with us, ma’am. Spirits can’t be hurried so much.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” Mary’s eyes dart suspiciously over Maggie’s head, and then Katie’s, as if they are the forerunners of an ambush. She says, “Horace! Talk to the cook. She scalded the beans. I can’t abide scalded beans. You know I can’t.”
Horace nods and moves off gratefully.
“Come, don’t dilly-dally, you two,” Mary says. “I’ll show you Pickie’s favourite places. You need pay rapt attention.”
Maggie assures her they will.
Mary shows them the tree where Pickie loved to play smash-the-ants, the stair where he carved his name five times and which Mary cannot allow to be sanded over, not ever. Now she leads them through the wide hall. “And he dismantled this all on his own.” She points to a grandfather clock, plain as a pauper’s coffin, with a smashed casing and broken pendulum. “He was so curious. He could have been an engineer and made proper monuments. He wasn’t going to scribble for the rabble like his father does. I was going to send him to school. I was. Don’t let Horace tell you different. But I wanted to wait. Such influences at schools. Children of farmers and hack drivers and blacksmiths and, oh, other incorrigible sorts.”
“Blacksmiths?” Maggie says, thinking of her father at his forge. She smiles quick at Katie. “My, but their children are the most grievous incorrigibles.”
“Ghastly,” Katie agrees.
Mary shows them round every nook and cranny of her house. Pickie this. Pickie that. Mentions Ida, her toddling daughter, who is living with kin until she is a more manageable age. She halts up. “Will Ida outlive me? Can you know that? Her at least?”
Katie casts Maggie a nervous glance.
“We’re sorry,” Maggie says. “We don’t know anything about what’s to come. That’s for Gypsy sorts.”
Mary humphs, pushes open a door. “And this is Pickie’s bedroom.”
The bed is rumpled as if he had just risen. His few toys are still set on a shelf. His few clothes still hang on a peg-rail. Poor boy, Maggie thinks, and feels the dread tug of pity. Imagine being stuck here all day with this horrid woman, in this horrid house. For Pickie’s room, though plain, is the most adorned room in the Greeley house, has striped wallpaper, some soft white linens, a red rocking horse. Elsewhere the linens are a coarse brown, the furniture of plain workmanship. Maggie counts only three cushions, four simple pictures, a single braided rug. In all there is a sense of bankruptcy, as if everything lovely and unnecessary for life has been sold. But the Greeleys aren’t bankrupt. They aren’t even poor. Horace makes buckets of money. Maggie is sure of it.
“We’re Grahamites,” Mary explains, as they sit down to black bread, raw vegetables and boiled, tepid water.
Maggie looks at her meal. You’re lunatics, she thinks.
“We met at Mr. Graham’s boarding house,” Horace explains. “Mary and I.” He tells how this Mr. Sylvester Graham sees health as a category of science. Vigorous exercise. No stimulants or alcohol. Plain food. No fripperies about the house to distract the mind.
“You’ll get accustomed to it,” Mary adds.
Maggie, sawing at her bread, doubts that very much.
Horace turns to Katie, “The academy we’ve selected for you is not far off and it is most reputable. You will learn the ladies’ arts—dancing, French, composition and so forth. You might become a writer like our dear Miss Fuller.”
Mary says, “And you’ll come back here right after school. No dilly-dallying or talking to the other girls. Pass the water, Horace.”
“We shall, of course, have to give you another name, Miss Katie. You’re too celebrated now. Have you thought of a name?”
“A different name. Like in a play?” Maggie puts in. She lifts a carrot. Is she to chomp on it like a horse might? She is already yearning for some blood pudding, tripe with ketchup, a glass of claret or champagne, or a toddy. Katie drinks her water, looking all-perplexed. She surely longs for a proper refreshment, too, Maggie knows. I mean, who ever drinks water?
“Yes, exactly, like a play, Miss Maggie,” Horace says patiently.
Katie frowns. “It just seems really devious, doesn’t it? I don’t know if I could carry it off. I’d have to pay attention all the time or something.”
“Oh, fush,” Mary said. “It wouldn’t do if everyone knew you were here. We’d be mobbed by unprogressives. Think of other people, not just yourself, girl.”
“All I ever do is think about other people,” Katie says with a sniffle. It has become her new refrain, Maggie realizes.
Horace puts his hand over Katie’s. “What of Sarah? That was our dear Margaret Fuller’s true, given name.” He looks at Maggie. “Margaret wouldn’t do, as that is your name.”
Ma
ggie agrees it is.
Mary says, “That would suffice, I suppose. I do miss our Margaret, even if she was often so difficult and so masculine in her intellect. Well, you shall take her place, Katherine Fox.”
“Me?” Katie says.
“Katie?” Maggie says.
Horace puts down his fork. “No one can take the place of Margaret Fuller. No one. It is a tribute, merely. Does Sarah suit, then? Miss Katie?”
“I reckon so. I mean, yes,”
Why does Katie have to be someone else? Maggie wonders. And then straightaway regrets the thought. She’d heard how bereft Horace was after the death of this Margaret Fuller, heard how the ship ran aground in a storm, in view of American shores, in view of the salvagers who watched the ship list and crack. None helped. Miss Fuller, her dashing Italian husband, their babe. Gone. Gone. Gone. The papers were chock full with the woeful story. Maggie found it dreadfully romantic, and even more so when she read Miss Fuller and her “husband” had not been properly married. Indeed, Maggie thinks now, the tale is as romantic and tragic and drama-filled as any in a novel.
Of a sudden Mary fixes her lunatic eyes on her husband. “You’re slopping, Horace, you incorrigible slob. Is he here yet? Pickie? Pickie? … Horace, you said these girls talked to him. You promised so!” Mary holds her knife as if to plunge it into Horace’s heart.
Poor Horace, Maggie thinks, just as knocks patter along the table.
With one accord Horace and Mary drop their cutlery and cry out with joy.
In the days that follow Maggie and Katie bring forth Pickie again and again. He is not a difficult spirit to have about. His observations of the world beyond are uncomplicated, given his age of eight. His demands are all reasonable: some cider in the house, some cooked food, some rest for everyone.
Mary Greeley is insatiable, however. Pickie must be about every minute. Often Mary weeps and begs Pickie’s forgiveness for a whipping on this occasion or that. Pickie always gives it, because Pickie, Maggie knows, only wants his crack-brained mother to leave him be. Once, when Pickie is reluctant to talk, Mary screams at Horace, “He won’t manifest because of you. You berated him when he came into your study. You told him to get out. As if your endless scribblings matter at all.”
Horace looks near to tears at this. Then Pickie arrives. Three raps. “It’s a call for the alphabet,” Maggie says. She and Katie draw one up on scrap paper.
“I didn’t mind, Ma” is what Pickie says. “Father is a busy man with really important things to do.”
“Humph,” Mary replies. “You’re taking your father’s side just for spite. You always did.”
It is just past ten o’clock on the last evening of Maggie’s stay at the Greeleys’ and she wanders into the keeping room, unable to sleep, even with the rum toddy finally allowed her by wretched Mary Greeley. Maggie would rather not leave Katie here, but what choice does she have? Our talents are much in demand, Leah wrote. You are needed here in Rochester. Anywise Katie will soon be off at school. And this house, well, it is hardly a place one would want to kick around in for long. Horace’s dear Miss Fuller apparently dubbed it Castle Doleful, and Maggie can’t imagine a more fitting title.
I sure wish I could speak with Miss Fuller, Maggie thinks. They would be great friends, she is sure. Sometimes Maggie catches a whiff of Miss Fuller’s perfume, hears a rustle of her expensive silks, an echo of her knowing laugh, but that is all.
A whispering: “Miss Maggie. Miss Maggie.”
She whips round.
“Apologies,” Horace says. “I did not mean to startle you.”
“You’re home from work so early tonight,” she says, because Horace does often not arrive home until past the midnight hour.
“I felt unwell. How fares Mary?”
“I’ve not seen her today. She’s still abed, I believe.” Maggie smiles her helpful smile. “We gave her some of that new medicine, though, just as you asked.”
“And it eased her? The new concoction?”
“Yes, I believe it did.” A stronger draught of laudanum was all it was, Maggie thinks.
Horace fidgets with the papers in his pocket. “You must know that Molly—Mary—was not always like this. When we met she was a teacher. She had such a love of books and learning. Her students adored her. She was exacting, yes, but gay. And for a woman she had such interesting opinions on worldly matters. And then the babes … and so we thought here in the country she would be refreshed with all the unsullied air and trees and birdsong. There’s a fellow, Thoreau, who has a theory about nature, that it is a tonic for both mind and soul.”
Maggie hears the sagging wind. Sees the dark at the Greeleys’ undraped windows. Recalls Hydesville. That’s flat-out addled, she thinks, people need people, not birds and trees. They need illuminated things and shops and ice-creameries and theatres. Nature’s not a refreshing tonic. Nature’s boring. And doesn’t Maggie just know how boredom can cause all kinds of trouble? She feels a sudden, nebulous sympathy for Mary-Mary-Quite-Contrary who is going mad from loneliness and isolation, her thoughts spin-topping in the quiet.
“It was the second one,” Horace says, sadly. “You hardly expect the first to live, but we had hopes for the second. He came early, that one. And Mary was injured. She might well have recovered but I, well, the wrong doctor was sent for. He operated but made a botch of things. She was never the same. And then the next ones died. Mary Inez was the one before Pickie. She was nearly four. The other three were babes of some months. It’s not unusual, I know, but for someone like Mary, who thought, well, that she had some guidance over things, it unhinged her, you see. We have Ida, I know, but Mary can’t even bear to see her until she’s at a safer age. That is why she’s staying with relations. And it’s just … I was hoping, I suppose, that you could, could … well, not only give her solace about Pickie and the others, but bring her back, Mary, as she was.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Greeley—Horace. Gosh but I am,” Maggie says, near to tears. “I can’t do much for the living. I can only bring back the dead.”
“Of course. I know. I shouldn’t have spoken so to you. It’s not seemly.” His voice breaks and he brushes at his eyes. “I’ll leave you now.”
Maggie listens to the creaking of the stairs as Horace ascends to his private bed chamber. She hears the sough of the wind, the shush of the waves in the bay below. Maggie thought Horace spent his days away because he could not abide Mary, not because he couldn’t bear to see what she had become. Maggie imagines them as newly-wed and all the world a possibility. How can I hate her? When she is loved? Is loved even now?
Maggie makes her way along the hall passage, a candle-hold the only light. She passes the grandfather clock, the one Pickie broke and that is now suspended at ten past eight, on a day when Pickie lived. She climbs the stairs and then into bed beside Katie. Her sister stirs awake and they talk for a while, as they always do before they sleep. And what Maggie confides to Katie is that after her conversation with Horace she came to the abrupt understanding that any succour they offer is short-lived. “Gone in a nonce, Kat, like some vaporous cloud.”
“That’s true, all right. What I’ll just never ever understand is how our elders get so fussed and grieved about their children, seeing as when the children are alive they’re just plain old mean to them, or they ignore them, or tell them to be seen and not heard, or just consider them generally vexing.”
“That, now, is a conundrum I guess we can only sleep on,” Maggie says, and douses the candle.
“SO THAT IS WHAT YOU CAME to understand at the Greeleys’? That your succour is only a stop-gap? Surely you knew this before. Surely you didn’t think you could patch up the Greeleys’ household so neatly and so quick. Their griefs were beyond your childish management, duck.” I allow I said this not only out of sympathy for Mary Greeley, but also out of sympathy for Horace, and that this sympathy was unexpected and oddly welcome.
“Their guests were beyond anyone’s management,” my patient said, all pee
vish.
I took my knitting from out of my satchel. “And it is not a conundrum, not at all, what your sister said about her elders. She would understand this if she had her own babes.”
“But she did have her own babes. Years on. Two boys. And then, yes, she understood the fuss and grief all too well, particularly when Leah dared involve the boys in our drama.”
“Boys,” I said, and laid out the yarn skeins.
“Yes, and I helped Katie name her boys. Such a list we considered, names galore: Matthew. James. Paul. John. Robert …”
I purled and knitted smoothly while my patient ruminated on names (if she had said “Rumplestiltskin” I would not have been amazed, so obviously was she trying out names that might be of import to me). “… Michael, Isambard, Alonsis, Cole, Morris and … Your mittens, Mrs. Mellon. They’re conjoined. And big enough for a giant.”
I held up my handiwork. “Mittens? No. This is to be a scarf, a very long one I should think, for winding. And what were their names? Her sons?”
“Ferdinand and Henry. As for me, I never had children.”
“I’m aware of that. Would I not have found them out otherwise? Would not they be here at your side and not me? Kinfolk. No one else can be counted on for help when one is in distress.”
“That certainly is the fiction,” she allowed, then asked me to turn down the medical lamp and fire the candle. Her eyes ached these days, she said, and she had come to appreciate a mellowed light.
LETTER CLUTCHED, Maggie wanders around the Troup Street cottage. It is four o’clock and already downright stygian outside. The sittings are finished until after supper. And then there will be yet another go round the parlour table. How she misses New York. Such a success the Fox sisters were there. Such a nice passel of citizens they met, so modern, admiring, polite. In New York night is a merry time, the avenues lined with gas lamps, the theatres lit with a limey glow, the oyster cellars with their painted lamps casting painted shadows on the sidewalks. And, ah, the Drummond beam atop Barnum’s museum. Such a creation: a man-made sun revolving and illumining both the heavens and all of Broadway, even at night’s darkest hours, at which time the streets are still peopled and noisy. Little wonder Maggie is melancholy now that they’ve returned to provincial Rochester. To make matters worse, Katie is still at Castle Doleful being educated to be a lady. Mother, laden with city gifts, is in Arcadia visiting Father and assorted kin. And Calvin is off on some month-long military drill. All of which means that Maggie has only Leah for company. Not even Alfie is about. Leah terminated his employ back in New York and left the man behind at Barnum’s Hotel. He was stealing from the takings-box, Leah insisted. His tallies were not any kind of square.
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