Strong Spirits [Spirits 01]

by Alice Duncan

  In my heart of hearts, I knew better times were coming, but with my husband a ruin of himself, my cousin and uncle both dead, and so many of my friends and relatives similarly bereaved, I couldn’t have made myself wear bright colors even for money, which was a distinct change for a Gumm.

  Billy didn’t like how I brought home the bacon, but he was unable to work at all. Neither his legs nor his lungs worked any longer. Telling fortunes and conducting séances was the only way I could make a decent living. Sure, I could have worked as a housekeeper at the Huntington or Green Hotels, or cleaned houses as I used to do with Daphne, but spiritualism paid more.

  I don’t mean to whine or anything, but.

  I really do think my policeman friend might have been a little kinder to a poor young woman who was only trying to make a living when we first met. It wasn’t my fault Mrs. Kincaid’s daughter liked to think of herself as a member of the “lost” generation. And it certainly wasn’t my fault that Mr. Kincaid was a louse. Heck, before my spiritualist business took off, my family was so poor we could scarcely keep food in the cupboard, much less skeletons.

  Then again, my policeman friend might possibly have had a valid point when he claimed I’m too darned nosy. He’s wrong to suggest I attract these things, however. I swear to you, none of this was my fault.

  At any rate, my life’s work has been interesting, even if it’s also been a little bumpy in spots.

  Chapter Two

  “Don’t go, Daisy.” Billy grabbed my hand before I could pick up my hat. “Stay here, with me.”

  I held on to my patience and Billy’s hand because I knew his pain, both physical and psychological, drove him to say these things. He’d once been a happy-go-lucky fellow and one of the human race’s cheerier specimens. His experiences in France and the results thereof had changed all that.

  “I have to, Billy. You know that.” I smiled at him to let him know everything was ginger-peachy, even though we both knew better.

  He didn’t mean to be fussy. I kept telling myself that in order to keep my temper in check. The truth of the matter was that I got tired of his whining at me all the time about leaving him to go to work. I didn’t think he was being fair to me, although I also didn’t think I had any right to think so, if that makes any sense. After all, life hadn’t been fair to poor Billy. Indeed, it had dealt him a wicked blow. And anyhow, he was a wounded war hero. I was only a woman.

  But blast it all, somebody had to make a living for us, and I was the only one left. That this was so only because Billy had run off to fight the Huns wasn’t either of our faults. We’d both been swept up in the fervor of the moment, and we’d both thought his had been a noble sacrifice for a just cause.

  Besides, it made me sad to look at him. He used to be so young and straight and strong. Now he was like the shell of himself. A human ruin. A blasted-out husk of a once-proud young man. When I didn’t want to cry about it, I wanted to rush over to Germany and shoot Huns. Never mind that the war was over and that most of those German soldiers had believed their cause to be a just one. The war wasn’t over in our house, and what the Kaiser’s men had done to my husband was unforgivable in my book.

  When he’d left for France, Billy had been nineteen years old. I’d been seventeen. Now he looked a hundred and ten, and I felt at least that old.

  Another terrible truth that I didn’t often feel like facing was that exhaustion and worry had very nearly depleted my supply of love for poor Billy, although my devotion to him remained unswayed. I couldn’t afford to be swayed. I had too darned many people to support.

  Which brought me back to leaving our house so that I could toddle over to Mrs. Kincaid’s and pretend to raise the spirit of her dead nephew, Bartholomew Septimus Withers Lilley (rich people give their kids far too many names sometimes), from the Great Beyond, wherever that was.

  Every time I thought about doing a séance, I had to fight hysteria. For some reason I envisioned those poor dead people rising from their graves, still swaddled in their burial finery, dripping dirt, and looking skeletal, except for who were still in the process of rotting. Especially when it came to the soldiers who’d lost their lives overseas, the visions were hideous and bloody and made me feel sick to my stomach. They were unpleasant mental images, but I couldn’t help it that they invaded my mind’s eye any more than I could help Billy.

  “I don’t know why you can’t get a normal job.” Billy let go of my hand and hunched in his wheelchair. He could walk a few steps at a time, but his lungs were so bad from the mustard gas, and his legs were so badly damaged from grapeshot, that he couldn’t walk like he used to walk: forever and ever without even thinking about it. Or run. When we were kids, we used to run everywhere. He’d pretend to find me annoying because I liked to follow him around, but I didn’t believe him then. I believed him now. Nevertheless, his tone of voice riled me. Still, I tried to keep my anger from showing.

  “A normal job wouldn’t pay as well as this one.” I’d pointed out this trenchant fact before, but Billy didn’t buy it. Or maybe he did and just didn’t want to admit it. Sometimes I felt as if I didn’t know anything for certain any longer.

  “Money’s not the only thing that’s important in this world, you know,” Billy said in the strange, querulous voice that seemed to belong to someone other than the Billy Majesty I’d known all my life.

  “Maybe not, but money keeps food on the table and clothes on our backs.” Every now and then, when I remembered how his rich laugh and deep baritone voice used to thrill me when I was a starry-eyed bride, I wanted to cry. At the moment, I wanted to shove his wheelchair down the front porch steps and save us both more pain and grief.

  “It’s sinful, what you do.”

  “What?” It was too much. I snatched up my handbag and whirled around, my fists planted on my hips, and glared down at my poor, destroyed husband. “What I do is not sinful, Billy Majesty. What I do is called work. I can’t help it if you don’t like it. It’s all I know how to do, and it pays a lot of money.” I hated that I had to pass the back of my hand under my eyes to catch tears. “Besides, it helps people, whether you want to believe it or not.”

  “Hunh. You’re only fooling yourself, Daisy. It’s wicked.”

  “It’s not wicked! What I do gives comfort to bereaved people.” That there wasn’t a darned thing I could do to comfort Billy was a fact that seemed to shimmer in the air between us. I wanted to stamp my foot and scream.

  His bitter expression didn’t alter appreciably, even in the face of my fury and well-reasoned arguments. He ignored my impassioned speech. Sometimes I thought he ignored all of my impassioned speeches because he knew it was the best way to hurt my feelings. I knew I was being unfair to both of us.

  “Who’s going to be there?”

  I turned around, slammed my handbag on the dresser since I hadn’t meant to pick it up in the first place—these arguments always rattled me—and picked up my elegant black cloche. I tried to keep my hands from shaking as I settled the hat over my knot-in-a-pouf hair-do. The style was a little old-fashioned, but I was afraid I’d look like Irene Castle if I got my hair bobbed. I’d have liked to get a bob. It would have been so free and easy or simple, especially since my hair was thick would have taken to the “do” with relative simplicity. But then, nothing in my whole life was free and easy any longer.

  As you can probably tell, every once in a while I’d get to feeling sorry for myself no matter how much I tried not to.

  “How should I know who’s going to be there? I’ll probably see Edie.” Edwina “Edie” Marsh was one of my friends from high school. She worked as a housemaid for the Kincaids, and we always had a good time trading gossip when I conducted séances the mansion. “And I’m sure there will be some of Mrs. Kincaid’s rich friends there. Oh, and her sister, Mrs. Lilley, I guess, since it’s her son we’re trying to reach.”

  “That’s horrible,” Billy said in a low voice.

  It was, kind of. I’d never say so. “M
aybe, but it pays the milk man and the grocer.”

  Without another word, Billy pushed his chair around and rolled out of the room. I turned and watched him go, my heart aching. Thanks to my work, we’d managed to get him one of those newfangled chairs with wheels big enough so that Billy could maneuver himself around without help. That was some kind of blessing, I guess, because he felt helpless enough without having to have an attendant push him every time he wanted to, say, go to the kitchen or, worse, the bathroom.

  Not for the first time, I was glad America had climbed aboard the water wagon. I could envision poor Billy, bitter and incurable, turning to the bottle for escape. Life was hard enough for us already. We didn’t need the Demon Rum living with us, too. I worried a little about the morphine the doctor prescribed for him, but without the drug his pain was too great to bear. In other words, there wasn’t any happy solution to the Billy problem.

  Poor Billy. Great God, but I felt sorry for him. Ruthlessly, I swallowed the tears swelling in my throat. I reminded myself that lots and lots of women were in a state similar to mine, with their husbands dead or crippled. I was fortunate, I told myself, because I had a skill I could use to earn a fair income.

  Blast and heck, it was more than a “fair” income! Why, I’d bought a little bungalow on South Marengo Avenue for my family with my earnings. That was more than a lot of men could do, working at their so-called “normal” jobs. It hurt like fire that Billy didn’t appreciate me and how nobly I was contributing to the family’s welfare.

  Father Frederick, the Episcopal priest who often visited Mrs. Kincaid and whom I’d met at her house, had told me to go easy on Billy because he felt diminished as a man. I could understand that and agreed with him, but it sure was hard not to be resentful sometimes.

  I liked Father Frederick, and not only because he was a genuinely kind man who offered helpful advice, such as the above. He also never looked at me askance because of what I did. Some religious folks were scared of fortune tellers. Even more of them were of Billy’s opinion and considered what we did sinful. Although, in fairness, Billy’s criticism wasn’t based so much on religious belief as on bitterness.

  But Father Frederick wasn’t like that. His soft brown eyes always appeared a little sad, as if he wished he could cure the world’s ills and knew he couldn’t. I understood that, all right. Shoot, I couldn’t even cure my own husband.

  Darn, but life was hard sometimes.

  # # #

  The air outdoors was fresh and balmy, the spring evening cool and slightly breezy, and the San Gabriel Mountains loomed large to the north, evoking a majesty that those of us who bore the name Majesty couldn’t come close to projecting. The pure spring weather and the enchantingly sweet aroma of orange blossoms emanating from the tree growing beside the back porch went some way toward soothing my battered spirits.

  Sometimes I picked sprigs from the orange tree and put them in a vase in the living room, even though the blossoms never lasted more than a day. The dark glossy leaves and the tiny ivory flowers, not to mention their intoxicating scent, cheered me in a way nothing else could, probably because they reminded me of my wedding and the days of our innocence, before the War had spoiled everything. I didn’t even mind dusting up the fallen blossoms every hour or so, although my mother complained about the mess.

  I had gotten into the habit of telling the people who hired me that I fasted and meditated upon spiritual matters before a séance, but that was a lie. Or, rather, it was part of the job. The truth was that I went about doing whatever it was I was doing until it was time to leave for a séance. This day I paused on the back porch steps to inhale several gallons of orange-blossom-scented air and decided life was worth living for a little while longer, Billy or no Billy.

  “Gee, Miss Desdemona, you look swell.”

  This reverent comment was delivered in a tone of absolute adoration by Pudge Wilson, the neighbor’s kid. He was skinny as a rail and had more freckles than the Pasadena Fire Department’s resident Dalmatian. I don’t know why or when anybody’d thought to call him Pudge, but Pudge he’d always been, and Pudge he was. And bless his heart, he appreciated me, even when my own husband didn’t.

  “Thanks, Pudge.” I gave him a gracious smile. I had learned to smile graciously as part of my trade. People seemed to be awed by gracious smiles delivered by ladies who conducted séances; don’t ask me why.

  “That’s a real pretty dress.” Pudge had harnessed Brownie, the horse my dad had brought home from work one day several years before, to the pony cart. We had a dumpy little Model T Ford, also delivered by my father. It was one that had been given to him by some now-rich movie star who didn’t need it any longer, but I liked to exercise Brownie when I could. He didn’t appreciate my consideration, deeming exercise as akin to torture. Pudge, holding Brownie’s reins, stared at me as if he intended to fall on his knees and start worshiping at my feet any second.

  “Thanks, Pudge.” I kept the gracious smile going as I handed him a nickel. Pudge was a nice kid.

  He was also correct about my attire. I’d made the dress myself using the new, side-pedal White rotary sewing machine I’d bought for Ma, and it was a stunner—the dress, I mean. The sewing machine was, too, but I wasn’t wearing that. The gown was a long black silk number, and it tied at the side hip with glossy black-satin ribbons. It would have been straight, too, except that I had one or two bulges that marred its sleek lines. On the other hand, I was a woman, for the good Lord’s sake, and women were supposed to have those bulges, whether the prevailing fashion called for a “boyish slimness” in American women or not. Naturally, I bound my breasts, but that didn’t help a whole lot.

  At any rate, where the dress tied at my hip, I’d sewn on a big, scalloped appliqué of shiny black beads and silk embroidery (also created by yours truly) that glimmered in the late evening sunlight. The effect would be truly dazzling by candlelight. Which, actually, was the whole point.

  One red lamp with one candle burning inside was the only light I allowed during a séance. I was fortunate that the cranberry glass through which the candlelight glowed brought out the best in me.

  My hair had darkened over the years from a bright coppery color to a darker, more sedate reddish chestnut. My skin, thanks to my mother strong-arming me into wearing sunbonnets all the time when I was a little kid, bore a few faded freckles, but no more than that. Those few I managed to hide with pale, pearly rice powder. I wore no lipstick, which gave me an interesting pallor. I’d developed a walk that was kind of like a waft, if you know what I mean, and which made people think of spirits even before the séance began.

  Over the years, in fact, I’d polished my act to a high gloss. I was darned good at my job, which made Billy’s complaints and harangues that much harder to take.

  Pudge removed his hat, as if he’d just remembered his manners. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you, Miss Desdemona?”

  “No, thanks, Pudge. I don’t know how long I’ll be, and I don’t want you to stay up too late. You have to go to school tomorrow.”

  He made a face, which made me laugh, which made for a distinct improvement in my mood. “I don’t mind,” he said in a pleading sort of voice.

  It was nice to know that at least one male member of the human race appreciated me, even if he was only eight years old. “I’m afraid your mama would mind, though. Not to mention Miss West.” Miss West was Pudge’s teacher, and she was a true Tarter. I knew it for a certified fact, because she’d taught me when I was in the third grade, and I could still feel that ruler come down on my knuckles; I flexed my hands in remembrance. I’d been a lighthearted girl and not the best-disciplined student in the universe.

  “Sorry, Pudge.” I chirped to Brownie, who grumbled once and started walking. I don’t know what Brownie would do if a real emergency occurred, since his pace was either slow or slower, except when he stopped walking altogether.

  Fortunately, Mrs. Kincaid’s house wasn’t very far away from ours, geo
graphically speaking. Socially, the Kincaids were about as far above my family as the stars were from the earth. Not to mention money-wise. She and her husband and daughter lived in the huge mansion her father had built on Orange Grove Boulevard, the street where the rich people lived. Lots of rich people lived in Pasadena, and not all of them lived on Orange Grove, but nobody who lived on Orange Grove wasn’t rich. They had a son, too, but he didn’t live with his parents.

  I loved visiting the Kincaids’ mansion, and not only because one of my best friends worked there. While I was supposed to be either preparing myself for séances or taking tea afterwards, I absorbed my surroundings and pretended the house was mine. Fat chance. I might make a relatively good living, but I’d need to own a railroad or a gold mine or a South American country before I could have an estate like that.

  Still, it was nice of Mrs. Kincaid not to treat me like a servant. After a séance she always asked me to stay and take tea with her friends. She even introduced me to everyone, and they all talked to me as if I were their equal. Which I was in the overall scheme of American life. But we all know that rich people are different from the rest of us, if only because they can buy stuff we can’t. The truth was that Mrs. Kincaid seemed a little in awe of me, as Pudge was. It might have been laughable if I didn’t appreciate it so much in both of them.

  I drove the three-quarters of a mile to the Kincaid mansion, urging Brownie on with promises of sugar cubes and carrots. Brownie pretty much ignored everything but food, including motorcars and me. The first was a blessing since there were so many more of them on the streets by 1920 than there had been only a couple of years earlier, and the second didn’t bother me since he did what I wanted him to do anyhow. I haven’t met very many horses, but it seemed to me that Brownie was a particularly phlegmatic example of the species. He plodded on, looking like a horse who hated what he was doing but had no choice. Which might have been true, come to think of it.