Shadows in Summerland

by Adrian Van Young

  About my ears the buffeting of claw-tipped black reprieveless wings.

  Hannah Expectant

  May, 1861

  Alone at night. The studio. Alert in a darkness the texture of waiting. Arms parallel to my legs. Hands on knees. The back, the structure, very straight. Peering in an anguished way to see something there in the dim. To hear something.

  Some nights he would be out till three. And nights I waited, limbs outflung. Listening for drunken steps.

  Meanwhile, the giggling. The bright swatch of purple. Trailing a brightness I saw in the dark. Hid in not-shadow, the loveliness of her. Scampering around my bed.

  Grace would help me raise it, surely. Grace would cool its little heels. It would smile with its gums while Grace flitted around it and then, when she got in too close, it would sneeze.

  And so I waited. Would it hurt—yes the man was my husband my husband my husband—my face averted when he came. My body splayed and darkly open. Watching the window, its limning, its sounds. The rapping, diminishing ones of the traps, and the drunken, diminishing ones of the revelers, and the screams of the horses under winch, and the snuffles and snorts of the ones in the stables. I watched the sounds—how could it be unless Kate Fox could see them too—and I watched them along with his footsteps approaching—how could it be how could it be—and I watched them and tried to connect them—to Grace—until he was there at the side of the bed.

  A creak of unbuckling. A sloughing of pants.

  A wavering of gritted teeth.

  He moved in me and then we lay. But we did not lie there alone.

  There was: the policeman. The blue chambermaid. The pair of sailor-suited twins. The man with a collar of blood on his shirt.

  “Won’t you light a bloody lamp? I daresay, sir, you’re used to gloom?”

  “Seen a queer sort?” said the copper. “Swarthy and big-boned, his arm in a sling?”

  “Where is Clem?” The fair-haired twin. “My one and only brother lost?”

  “See here, Hannah,” said someone, adjusting what seemed to me very real weight.

  Willy, my husband, was speaking to me. Looking at me sideways, mildly.

  I lay apart from him, curled up, as I’d been instructed to do by my mother.

  “Are you happy here, Hannah?” said Willy again. Had asked me this upwards of several times now, I could hear in the high-ish end note of his voice.

  “Happy, oh yes. Very grateful,” said I.

  “But how can you be happy, really?”

  “We’re safer here,” said I. “There’s that. And we have our own rooms. And there is steady money in it. And you, sir, are the most—”

  “—not that. That is not what I am asking.”

  Picked up a cheroot from next to the bed. His broad, whiskered face in the flare of the match.

  “Did it make you happy—the thing that we did?”

  “I hadn’t yet done it before, Mr. Mumler.”

  “You needn’t call me that, you know. You’re Mrs. Mumler now,” he said. “You expect me to give you a child, I suppose?”

  “I would like it,” said I, “but I do not expect it.”

  “To expect without fear is to truly be happy. I’ll do my best to grant you that.”

  “It’s kind of you,” said I. I smiled. “I want to be that, in the way that you say.”

  I rose from the bed altogether and pale and went to stand before the glass. So rarely, if ever, in only my skin. Even by myself at night. This heightening along my flesh. The dwindle of this man in me. I knew his name but who was he.

  The jeweller’s cheroot jewelled and dimmed, reflected in the pane of glass.

  “I am always most happy,” said he as he yawned, “when I am looking at the sea. My parents would take me when I was a boy. The North Shore, Hannah. We might go. Yes, we might bring your mother there. And then when I say I am happy,” said he, “you both will know the thing I mean. In the summer it turns to the colour of sea-glass. But the glass, it melts inward, absorbing your foot. You see, it seems solid, but then you approach it and find that it couldn’t be softer, more warm. And that is why it makes me glad. To know it can be both, at once.”

  “Can’t you feel it pressing down? Won’t you help a girl to breathe? Would you be a dear,” said Grace somewhere in the shadows behind Willy Mumler, “and see my Godey’s book stays dry?”

  “You are fine over there at that window,” said he. “But soon you must return to me.”

  And saw below, on Otis Street, an undead legion on the march. Their progress slow, their heads downcast. As if they walked under incredible burdens. Their matted-down and broken pates passing under the window like strange, trackless worlds. And yet for all that they were young. And yet for all that they were boys. All of them clad in the stripe of some army. Some imminent force that had yet to lock step. Thirty, fifty, hundreds of them. Sun-bleached blues and tatty greys. All a-clatter about them, their muskets and cups, their shot-pouches and soldier’s packs. The tassel and the tinsel of them swishing under all the rest. Gouge-headed and missing limbs. Malarial and thin. Scoop-eyed. Grinning though they did not smile. Wordless, tragic. Trudging on.

  Mumler on Carving

  The carving of meat at American tables may seem, on the face, a pedestrian act. And though this may indeed be true—for carving is carving, is supper well-served—in American lands, in American hands, the act is always more complex. And whether it be chubby mackerel, or leg of mutton, flat-side down, or leg of lamb cut to the chine and helped around the group in chops, the method of carving up dinner is vital. The gentleman carver carves only the prime. What bits remain are merely offal, suitable for cats and dogs.

  Guay in the Foyer

  June, 1861

  His Seership proclaimeth: Each day is a blessing. And yet I reckon days are days.

  Two-hundred-and-eighty days since I had murdered Mr. Child I went to have supper at Mr. Five Hundred’s with Mumler—and Hannah—and Bill—and Kate Fox. Though Kate had arrived there some minutes before us.

  The servant was that Hinkley man. I went to him to hand my coat which heavens I got stuck inside yet Hinkley was already on me by that point, patiently twisting the coat off my shoulders.

  “Mr. Guay,” says our host in his sad elegance. “Bienveue, my humble home. Mr. Charles Livermore is my name. Call me that.”

  “Your name isn’t Mr. Five Hundred?” says I.

  “Disappointed?” says our host. “It is”—he smiled wryly—“my moonlighting name.”

  “Charles Livermore,” the Prophet says. “Of Webster’s Bank on Boylston Street?”

  “How ever did you guess?” says he.

  “Your name is on the door,” he says. “I’ve travelled past it once or twice.”

  “So you have,” says Livermore. “And now, my friend, you have arrived.”

  With that we adjourned to the grand dining room with Kate Fox and Hannah already in talks while Bill and I came on behind unsure what to do with our faces and hands.

  The banker’s home was not my home. It branched and tended hall by hall. There were paintings all through it—and bevelled glass panes—and girl-painted screens trimmed with round metal studs. Mr. Five Hundred of Webster’s, or Charles depending on what day you asked, he turned to us along the way and reminded us footmen should eat in the kitchen.

  But then I saw he meant just Bill.

  “That man is my associate,” Mumler says to Livermore and Livermore held up his hand to gaze at Bill with solemn purpose.

  “Force of habit, don’t you know. I hope he does not take offence. I suppose I had better start backing in earnest the men that my clients would back to their deaths.”

  “The Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry?” says Mumler.

  “First nigger outfit in all of the war. But he can stay. Of course he can. Mr. Hinkley, please, a
chair.”

  And I will be a pickled dimwit standing in my unlaced shoes if Bill wasn’t smiling at Mr. Five Hundred not with contempt but with shame and exhaustion. It was less of a smile than a dullness with teeth and then Bill says: “I’m grateful, sir.”

  The firm hot hand of sympathy had closed itself around my heart.

  Hannah at Table

  June, 1861

  A seventh guest at dinner, then. Not beside or across but above the oak mantle.

  Portrait hanging, huge and solemn: Mr. Livermore’s dead wife.

  A handsome lady for the house. Painted eyes so dark they gleamed. A great swirling collar of hair at her shoulders. Estelle had been her name in life. In death just a portrait of oils, staring down. She seemed to wonder: husband’s study, husband’s desk at Webster Bank. Half-distracted by some dream of where the thing would one day hang.

  The conversation was just sounds. Ring of glass and scrape of fork.

  But Livermore carved at his lamb as if he could not eat it faster.

  Mashed artichokes. Small potatoes. Fresh cream. Bordeaux ferried up from his personal cellars.

  Wine was a thing I’d developed a taste for. Katherine Fox took only sherry.

  One moment I thought, looking at her sidelong, that Livermore had given her her own private bottle, but then he poured himself a glass and used it to chase down the last of his lamb.

  Her plunging face. Her small, coiled ears. The living quickness of her throat.

  Livermore was saying something: “Who the devil are they then?”

  “Devil only knows,” said Willy. “Devil of a thing, I’ll say. The irony, of course, is this: Hannah can’t control what comes.”

  Wiped my mouth and glanced at them.

  “I reckon that is so,” said I.

  “The dead,” said Willy, “are profuse. They are untamed. They go nowhere. Or nowhere willingly, that is. You ask me who are they, these unlucky strangers? Why have they chosen my portrait to lurk in? I say to you: Rejoice!” he cried. “It is only a matter of time until…”

  Paused. Then looked above us at the portrait.

  “Matter of time till Estelle,” said the banker. “That was my wife’s name: Estelle.”

  But I no longer listened to what they were saying.

  This was because of a man standing near. Just right of the curtain that closed off the kitchen.

  He was not a footman. He was not a waiter. He stood with his hands hanging down at his sides.

  The serving girl carried a load through my sightline.

  “From what I am given to understand, sir, not possessing a medium’s gifts myself—and Hannah, dear, you might chime in,” I could hear Willy Mumler addressing the banker, “the medium draws with her magnetic sense whatever spirits are to hand and these, well, accumulate, sir, thereabout her, in the manner of iron shavings, say, in course of which she sorts them out to find the spirit that is sought.”

  “Draws the spirits?”

  “Ropes them in.”

  “She importunes their sympathy. So let me understand,” said he. He placed his napkin on his lap. “Hannah accumulates spirits around her in the same way that Sumner accumulates zealots, raving on the Senate floor.”

  “A touch less provocative, maybe,” said Willy. “Yet just as momentous, I think you’ll agree, provided that we are at war.”

  “Of course,” said Livermore and drank, “our Mr. Sumner has a point. It is by compromise, he claims, that human rights have been abandoned.”

  A shift of discomfort from Bill, chewing slowly

  “Gentlemen,” said Katherine Fox, not reproving in the least, but rather as though to assemble the table like five hungry plants round the light of her voice. “While Spiritualism, gentlemen, has vouched itself political, we must all of us here at this table remember that spirits themselves have never been. They follow no dogma like our Mr. Sumner. They merely go where they will go.”

  “Quite right. Quite right,” said Livermore. “We all can agree that your spirits are sound ones.”

  Made up drastically tonight. Or drastically, at least, for her. Bit of pencil at the eyes. Twin blush spots upon her cheeks. Northern light streaks in her hair or was it just the candlelight.

  Still: this hangdog, standing man. His two pale hands like ghostly fish.

  He was no longer standing just out of my sight but behind William Guay. Standing over him. Watching. Expression myopic and strange on his face. The mantle of blood at his neck, down his shoulders.

  “A wonder he can chew and gulp with outright murder on the stomach? A wonder that he doesn’t retch his tubers, lamb and all?” said he.

  His cranium not right at all. A boneless disuse to the way that it tilted. And a leached shade of blue to the skin on his face, as thought it were partially drained of its humours.

  “Hannah,” said Willy, “are you quite all right?”

  For Livermore was staring, too.

  And that is when I rose, with violence. Chair keening back as I pushed it from me.

  “Hannah, dear?” said Katherine Fox, rising from her chair in turn.

  “I am indisposed,” said I.

  “I think it is the wine,” said I.

  “I think that I need air,” said I.

  But the man wasn’t focused on Guay anymore. The man was looking at Estelle.

  Stuttering something, the lips. Some avowal. Some question directed at her or her fate.

  Here was Algernon Child, bloody-headed, in love.

  Q

  Inconceivable to me, the séance began. First one in my life that I’d ever attended. But it would happen, here, tonight.

  Positives and negatives and negatives and positives.

  Willy’s large, hot hand on mine. Livermore’s cooler by twenty degrees. A practiced hand. A yearning hand. Practiced in keeping its yearning a secret.

  His face was pale. Embossed moustaches. Long-lashed eyes held firmly closed.

  Across from us there sat Kate Fox.

  “Has Rosa come into the form?” began Kate. “Rosa of the cellar floor? Rosa, after days of digging, come to illumine the way?”

  (Three raps.)

  “Grant us, if you will, a woman, here among patrons, well-wishers and friends. A husband sits here,” said Kate Fox. “Your husband, distraught, who has loved you so long.”

  More rapping noises, slow and steady.

  “The alphabet is motioned for.” And here the rapping sounds increased. Kate Fox smiled, her eyes still closed. “Estelle. It is her name. Estelle.”

  Livermore’s hand pulsed in mine.

  “How do you wish to communicate, Spirit? Do you wish, in the manner of spirits, to speak?”

  (One rap)

  “Music?”

  (One rap)

  “Drawing?”

  (One rap)

  “Writing.”

  (One rap)

  “None?”

  (Five raps)

  “The alphabet again.”

  (The raps ascended rapidly)

  “Let the circle note,” said Kate, “the letter signalled for is T.”

  “Can ladies be true to themselves?” said a voice. Said the voice of a girl—Grace’s voice—in the dark. I tried to cut my eyes and see but the lantern light wasn’t quite hitting me right.

  “Can ladies be true to themselves?” she repeated. “Can they ever really be? And if I am true to myself,” she went on, “will he consent to be my friend?”

  “The letter O. The letter U. Your audience implores: more letters! The letter C,” said Katherine Fox. “T-O-U-C—yes, oh spirit? You wish to speak to us through touch? You wish to cross the borderlands and lay your fingers on our wrists?”

  No raps this time. The sound of steps.

  Livermore’s hand was convulsing in mine.r />
  Called Grace from somewhere very near: “But aren’t they dull and single-minded? Were I to say no farther please then do you think that he would stop? If you must make me drown,” said she, “then hold my head as if you mean it?”

  “Two raps,” said Katherine suddenly, “suggests the spirit cannot answer. Are we to assume that the spirit stands firm? Speak or spell to us your need.”

  A wisp of something. Smoke, perhaps. It rose above the séance table. There was a chill that came up off it. It was coming from under the table. The walls. It blowered hugely through the curtains, sending up a little wind.

  “Lower your heads,” said Katherine Fox. “Mrs. Livermore’s spirit will tell us herself.”

  And that is when someone, a woman in white emerged through the smoke and came on toward the table. She wasn’t Grace. She wasn’t dead. She wore a garland in her hair. The dark little hint of her groin. Her slight shoulders. Slowly approached Livermore, next to me, and leaned in close right by his ear.

  The chilly smoke was thicker now. I started to cough for its richness. Then others. The woman in the gown, she coughed. In the sheer act of trying to keep his eyes closed, Livermore’s face had grown distorted.

  The woman in white stepped away from the banker, white robes clinging to her skin. I might’ve even known her face. Fanny Conant’s friend: Miss Moss.

  Katherine’s coughing fit subsided. Subtly, she cracked one eye and watched the woman walk away.

  “The Summerland has been obliging. Is Estelle Livermore’s emanation still here?”

  “She fades,” said the woman in white, walking backwards. Composing herself as she walked, her voice hoarse. “She fades. And fades. And fades. And fades. And fades,” said the woman, still backing away. The smoke growing thinner along with her voice.

  “Until at last she’s gone,” said she.

  Mumler in the Library

  June, 1861

  To stay for a drink was not only polite, not to mention savvy business, but for both of us essential, especially after the things we had seen.