Your loving sister,
Leah
Leah is fanning herself against the August heat when the first scream comes. She drops the fan. At the second scream she rushes down her hallway. A crashing alike cymbals hurled. A silence. Leah presses her ear to the closed door of the second parlour, the one Katie has taken over for her séances. Hears a muffled commotion. And then: “Fiddle-dee-damn. Leave, then. Leave! The spirits want you gone.”
Leah thrusts open the door, then yanks the chain on the Edison bulb. Light floods over the séance attendees. They blink owlishly at the sudden glare. Stare in shock at Katie. Katie ignores them. Ignores Leah.
“Oh, Henry, darling,” Katie cries. “Mother’s here. Hush!”
Henry, slight and pale, stands by an upturned chair. He holds his jaw and whimpers, “It was Ferdie’s idea.”
Hs brother stifles a laugh. At twelve Ferdie could be mistaken for sixteen. No spirit lights stream from his eyes these days, Leah notes. Only the light of pure mischief.
The sitters rush to leave. A woman jams an old-fashioned bonnet on her silvered hair. “My person has never been so offended!”
“Hah, that I really doubt,” Katie says. “Anywise, you need not have kicked my poor Henry.”
“Then the brat shouldn’t have been under the table.”
“He’s sickly. It was only in fun.”
“Fun? Fun! He grabbed, my, my very … oh, I cannot say.”
“Your ankle?” Leah offers.
The woman blushes. Her grey-beard husband takes her elbow. “I shall not recommend this establishment to a single soul.”
“It is not an ‘establishment,’ sir,” Leah says coldly. “It is my home.”
Katie pulls Henry onto her lap as the sitters are ushered out, as Ferdie goes off to terrorize the birds in Leah’s aviary. “Here, sweet, would you like your favourite rhyme? Would that be a comfort?”
Henry nods, his thumb in his mouth.
“Sitting in the garden,
In her cloak and hat,
I saw Mother Tabbyskins,
The real old cat!
Very old, very old,
Crumplety and lame;
Teaching kittens how to spit and swear—Was it not a shame?
…
Very wrong, very wrong,
Very wrong and bad;
Such a subject for our song
Makes us all too sad.
Old Mother Tabbyskins,
Sticking out her head,
Gave a howl and then a yowl,
Hobbled off to bed.
Very sick, very sick,
Very savage, too …”
Leah listens with disapproval. Katie treats Henry as if he were toddling still. And she never allows either boy out of her sight. Will not let them attend public school. Has hired a tutor instead. Does she think merely keeping them in view is what keeps them safe? Certainly she is deaf to Leah’s advice on the many ways to keep tabs on children. You can always spy on them, for example, or read their scribbling, or nonchalantly question their friends.
“Such a funny rhyme, don’t you think, Henry, darling?” Katie asks.
Henry nods.
“Now, I am going to tell you a story, my love, about the Czarina.”
“Yes! She was so pretty.”
“Not this again,” Leah puts in. “It is mere fancy, Henry.”
“Hush. It isn’t. Henry was there. He remembers everything.”
Henry pops his thumb out of his mouth. “Yes. She was beautiful and dressed all in blue silk with diamonds and pearls.”
Leah humphs at this. Katie ever insists that she and her boys were whisked off to the court of the Russian Czar not long after Henry’s death. As evidence she has a painted egg and a wooden doll that harbours smaller and smaller ones within, but this “evidence” could have been purchased in any Manhattan trinket shop. Katie’s stories grow grander at every telling—the Winter Palace hung with chandeliers the size of carriages. People skating on streets of ice as natural as if walking. The gratitude of the court for Katie’s assurance that the Czar would not be assassinated like his predecessor. “But do be careful whom you trust” was the spirits’ savvy advice.
Leah says, “Mark me, Henry, dear, royalty, which is the mere fortune of birth, should not be confused with reputation, which can only be earned.”
Katie whispers to Henry, “That’s twaddle-dee-dum. Your Aunt Leah has never been given an audience of royalty. She’s jealous, that’s all.”
“Jealous? Jealous? And what of Mrs. Pierce? The First Lady of our nation? What of all the people of high station and respectability whom I call friend? They make up, well and truly, for one borscht-eating royal of dubious descent. Have you read my memoir? Well, have you, Katherina?”
“Her memoir?” Katie says to Henry. “Hah. She may take the credit but it was ghost-written, as everyone knows.”
“A ghost wrote it?” Henry asks in faint alarm. He slides from his mother’s lap and edges towards the door.
“It’s an expression, my darling,” Katie says. “People who can’t be bothered to put pen to paper will hire someone else to do so, and then swallow up all the credit for themselves.”
Leah glares at her sister. Feels that staccato-throb at her temple. Henry makes his escape. Katie tries to follow. Leah grabs her arm. How is it that Katie, little Katherina, has changed so? Motherhood has made her stubborn. Widowhood—of all things—has made her bitter. Her rancour fills the house. Distresses her boys, distresses both Leah and Daniel no end. Leah sniffs discreetly at Katie. Smells no brandy or rum, only that cloying perfume that Katie claims was given her by the Duke of Wellington’s son for her wedding to Henry Jencken those fifteen years ago. Well, the bottle must be magicked to last so long, because Katie smells so every day.
“Please, dear sister. It is just that I worry. I worry that you fill Henry’s mind with poppycock.”
“Well, I’m not going to remind him and Ferdie about the rotting cabbages and the dead peasants in the ditches, am I?”
“You should not have taken the boys. They could have died in that cold.”
“I thought you doubted my Russian adventure. Never mind, fiddle-dee-damn, it hardly matters where we are. They’re safer with me. They’re always safer with me.” She shakes off Leah’s hand and hurries off, calling for Henry. Calling for Ferdie.
Leah collapses into a tasselled chair. Feels the force of her seventy-two years. Tears drip hotly from her eyes. She has tried and tried. She insisted Katie and the boys stay at her home in hopes of a reconciliation and a return to the fine old days. Indeed, if only Katie would read Leah’s memoir, The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism, she would recall the jolly fun they had in their heyday. The Missing Link avoids all those distasteful family squabbles. Avoids all mention of alcohol and accusations. Emphasizes how the world was against the Fox sisters three; but how they continually triumphed with the support of good and worthy people. Tells of the astounding evidence of the spirits: the tables levitating, the objects flying about like the very birds, the pealing bells, the spirit writings, the glowing full-form manifestations, the satisfied clients one and all. Leah sent a copy of her memoir to Katie when she was still in England. She sent one to Maggie also, though she had not spoken to Maggie in years. Surely that was a peace offering to Maggie, if anything was. But not a syllable has come from Maggie in response. And neither has Katie ever mentioned the book. Leah would rather hear their criticism than their silence. Silence is a giant maw, hungering for bad thoughts, and another reason Leah insisted Katie and her boys stay with her and Daniel. The supply of young relatives has been run through. All are grown. As for her daughter, Lizzie … Where does she live now? The Catskills, yes, which is still too far to ever visit her own mother, apparently. Thus Leah has only the chatter of her birds and the chewing sound of Daniel’s jaws for company.
She dabs expertly at her eyes. Stands with her old vigour. For the next three days she is unfailingly kind to Katie. She refuses
to rise to any argument. Does not criticize the boys’ presence at séances. She is kindness and understanding itself. This only seems to make Katie more cantankerous.
On the fourth day of Leah’s new tack, she wakes to find the boys pottering about the kitchen in their nightshirts and Katie gone. There is an upended bottle in Katie’s room and a scrawled note: Going on home to Rochester.
CHAPTER 41.
I was late arriving this day—the first of March, according to my pocket calendar. I had been out searching for gin and laudanum and had lost my way in the Manhattan streets. Buildings spring up so quickly. The streets and signage change. It is a wonder, to be frank, that anyone gets to anyplace.
Up and up. I was already proclaiming my apologies and thudding down my satchel when I stopped. I could not believe what I saw, by which I mean nothing. The bed was empty. The garret was empty. My patient was gone.
I hollered her name. Twirled about. There was nowhere to hide a mechanical, as I have said, never mind a body. I discovered her, at last, on the far side of her bed and was amazed I had not spied her straightaway. “Oh, Maggie, do come on now.”
“She’s gone.”
“What are you talking about? Oh, never mind,” I said, and tucked her in and apologized a good dozen times (I was getting well practised at this apologizing). I gave her the laudanum, my hands ashake.
“And so I went to Rochester,” she said, after a time, and told me all about that.
I should mention that she was confusing herself with Katie by this time. An unsurprising thing, considering how entwined they were. Considering how near she was drawing to her mortal end.
THE CHILDREN, dirty and shoeless, rush at Katie as if to push her into the canal. They hoot and catcall as she staggers aside. The world, aside from the rat-children, is fine enough, is green-leafed and sun-warmed. Passersby tut their disapproval. Ah, she is coming into Rochester’s Exchange Street. Perhaps she will shop for a hat, one topped with a stuffed bird as is all the rage. Yes, she’ll slaughter all of Leah’s birds and become a milliner. She could use a change of occupation. She swivels and falls to her knees. The children mimic her and howl with laughter. A boy prods her with a stick. A girl snatches at her shawl. The boy comes at her again, his stick held back like a heathen’s spear.
“Cease that! Get thee gone! Wretched, wretched children!” The woman’s voice is blade-sharp. The children scatter like pigeons. Are they flying? No. It is only the leaves in the sky above. Someone, perhaps herself, singsongs as she is taken away.
“ ‘Pray send for a doctor quick,
Any one will do!’
Doctor mouse comes creeping,
Creeping to her bed;
Lanced her gums and felt her pulse,
Whispered she was dead.
Very sly, very sly,
The real old cat,
Open kept her weathered eye—
Mouse! Beware of that!”
“Katherine? Katie?”
At the cautious utterance of her name Katie looks up to see Amy Post standing afore her in her familiar dark dress with its lace cuffs and collars, her familiar kind expression.
“I’m in your keeping room, Amy,” Katie says and with the pride of a child at her lessons. She pats at her badly-pinned hair. Her tartan dress is dirt-streaked and hangs alarmingly at the back, Katie having neglected to wear a bustle. Well, fiddle-de-damn, Amy doesn’t wear a bustle either, Katie thinks, and then recalls that Amy is a member of the Society for Rational Dress. But not a member of any Spirit Society. She has not attended sittings for years now, not even when Isaac died. When was that? A decade or more ago? Yes, and that was when Amy said she knew full well that Isaac was in the Glory; that he was with their beloved Matilda and Henry at last and that she, Amy, would be with them all soon enough. Amy said that those who continually seek confirmation of the beyond are alike drunkards continually seeking their next bottle. At this remembrance Katie looks about for brandy, or sherry; surely there is at least sherry in Amy’s house.
Machteld, who looks nearly as old as her mistress these days, lumbers in with apple cake and tea. She ignores Katie, as she has for over thirty years now. Katie sips the proferred tea and frowns.
“It’s rosehip,” Amy explains. “Stimulants of any kind, might not, might not be of benefit for thee, dear.”
“Thee, me, three,” Katie says, and giggles into her cup.
“When did you arrive, Katherine? How long have you been here?”
“Here? Hah, hah, you mean in Rochester? A day or two or four. I was at the Hotel Brunswick. Oh, the séances were crowded with riff-raffy sorts, but fiddle-dee-dee it’s jim-dandy to be back and having jolly times again. I was going to call on you. I was! Oh, but you don’t approve of us these days.” Katie wags her finger. Amy looks grim. She must be in her eighties, Katie thinks. Who lives so long except the righteous and the good?
Amy sighs. “The policeman was about to arrest thee for public drunkenness, but I dissuaded him and promised to take thee to my home and, for heaven’s sake, where are thy senses?”
“I sold them. I lost them. And I just wanted to see the canals. Our pa was a canaller, you know. Ma says he vanished like the earth swallowed him whole, but he were out working the boats. For ten years he was gone. The canals were the best place for a sinning man, I heard. But then the Great Awakening came along and changed everything so.”
“I shall telegraph Leah so that she may come for thee.”
Katie lurches forward. The tea sloshes on her dress. “Damn, where’s my shawl? Oh, the children. Damn them … What did you say about Leah?”
“That I shall telegraph her so that—”
“No, no, no, not her. She can’t know. She’ll take my boys. She’ll use ’em up. She wants everything of mine. She wants to keep me from Mag too. Oh, but I want my Mag, Maggie! Who else has ever loved me for me, me, me, me? Who? But she’s planning to go back to England, ain’t she? Some rich doctor invited her. She says she’ll make pots of money for us both from Dr. Wadsworth, that’s the whom-ever’s name. That means I’ll be mud-stuck with Leah.” Katie’s voice twangs. Leah’s years of grammar training vanish. “Leah’s sore afraid of Mag ever since Mag walloped her good, that’s why Leah keeps off. She don’t love us, Amy.”
“She does. She must. And I love thee, dear. And the Lord, Our Saviour, loves thee.”
“Does He? And does He say we should be quit of this whole thing? And quick, hah, quite quit quick! Maggie said we gotta.”
“Which … ‘thing’?”
“Spiritualism, ’course. We gotta tell the truth of it to the world, Mag said. I agree. I think I agree or something. Sure I do.”
“Mayhap thou need a different cause. A cause is always a goodly thing to keep one from melancholic thoughts. Isaac would have agreed.”
“Pish, you were always trying to convince Leah, weren’t you? Abolition. Suffragette-ism, or what-ever it’s called. Because, oh, wouldn’t she be a force for any of your causes.”
Amy is quiet, then says coolly, “I shall fix a bed for thee. Thou should bide here, not alone in a hotel and—”
“I’ll tell you why she weren’t biting,” Katie interrupts. “Because that harridan bitch don’t wish for women to be considered nothing but stupid and childlike. She likes it that us females are reckoned passive as straw dolls and without guile at all. Didn’t that thinking serve us right-dandy, though? Didn’t it save us? Mark me, Amy, if we’d been the Fox brothers we woulda been rotting in a jail by now. And we woulda mightily deserved it.”
Amy folds and unfolds her hands. “Thou deserves a rest, that is all.”
17 April, 1888
Dearest Kat,
I attained in England yesterday. I couldn’t find you before I left, not in any of your haunts, and not at your apartment, though I had a nice visit with your Ferdie—who insisted on cooking me up a fine mess of hash—and with your Henry, who was all manner of keen when I promised to bring him back books on the latest continental invent
ions. By the by, I told Dr. Wadsworth, and right there at the docks, that Spiritualism was a fraud. I didn’t intend to. It just occurred. He was unsurprised, though, and admitted that his famed cure-all Wadsworth Own is naught but laudanum with bitters. He said that if one asserts with sincere and utter conviction that something is real and efficacious, then it becomes so. I do like the man. He was a pugilist once and still looks like he could bend iron bars. Anywise, I’m going on with his séances as planned. Peculiar, isn’t it? How one can believe something and not believe it at the same instant. Can’t wait to see you when I get back from England. Stay clear of Her Fatness.
Your Loving Sister,
Mag
“HAVE YOU EVER PLAYED blindman’s bluff, Alvah?”
“Certainly, when I was a youngster.”
“That’s what I was doing. That’s why I fell out of the bed, yesterday—”
“It was just now, not yesterday. It’s the same day, duck, as … today.”
“I just wanted to try again, that’s all. Katie and I played blindman’s bluff often at the Hydesville house. Once, when I was the blinded one, I lost her. I thump-thumped about the room, banging into furniture, and the place seemed of a sudden so very large and not my home at all. I tore off the rag, but I could not see Katie. I looked in every nook and corner. And then I felt a swim of air. I whirled and there she was. ‘Where have you been?’ I cried. ‘I’ve been here all along,’ she said.”
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