In the Shadow of Blackbirds (15 page)

That’s right: Phantom.

When I was ten, Dad and I had a devil of a time finding a mouse that was chewing through the cardboard cookie boxes in Dad’s grocery store. I nicknamed the little pest Phantom, for he came and went in the night like a supernatural entity. None of the traps in the usual places worked. We couldn’t find his means of entrance and escape anywhere. All we saw were the mysterious visitor’s nibble marks and half-eaten cookies.

After a week of fruitless searching, Dad and I became detectives. We lined the perimeter of the store and the
backroom with talcum powder and tracked the tiny footsteps we discovered the next morning. Phantom seemed to be creeping out from somewhere behind the barrel of soap chips. We then used steel bars, springs, and peanut butter bait to build the finest mousetrap a father and daughter had ever invented—much safer than the store-bought ones Dad wouldn’t allow me to set. Once we had put our equipment in place, we captured that mouse the very next night.

Stephen was certainly no mouse, and I didn’t intend to trap him. But he was something to be coaxed out of hiding.

A mystery to explore.

A scientific mind like yours should want to explore the communication between spirits and mortals,
Aunt Eva had said the day I arrived at her house.
It’s no different than the mystery behind telephone wires and electrical currents.

She was right. If I could figure out why I was still able to see Stephen, it would be no different than Thomas Edison discovering how to create electric light out of carbon filaments and dreams. Or the Wright brothers proving humans could fly.

The impossible often turned possible.

Scientific detectives and Spiritualists could be one and the same.

AUNT EVA CAME HOME TO FIND ME DISEMBOWELING HER
telephone.

“What on earth are you doing inside my telephone box?” She plunked a crate of onions on the wobbly worktable at the center of the kitchen and put her hands on her hips.

I blew a stray strand of hair out of my eye. “I’m dissecting it.”

“What?”

“My brain desperately needs exercise. I decided to see how the wires work.”

“Don’t play with any wires—not after shocking yourself to kingdom come.” She slammed the telephone box closed, just missing the tips of my fingers. “Bolt that up and stay out of there.”

I held up the silver bells. “I need to put it back together first.”

“Mary Shelley—”

“It’ll just take a minute. The phonograph took longer.”

“Leave the phonograph alone. It’s having trouble as it is.”

“Not anymore.”

She sighed, pulled down her grease-streaked flu mask, and grabbed two onions from the crate. “While you’re cleaning up your mess, I’m going to make supper.”

I screwed the bells back into place. “We’ve been invited to go somewhere tonight.”

“We have?”

“Julius wants to take us to a séance.”

She let an onion drop to the floor and turned toward me. “A séance?”

“He called about it this morning.” I watched her eyes water with disbelief and excitement behind the round frames of her glasses. “I guess you’re interested?”

Her cheeks flushed scarlet. “I am not interested in Julius Embers.”

“I meant the séance. I already know you’re interested in Julius.”

“He’s four years younger than I am. I’m a recent widow. Don’t be ridiculous.” She pulled a knife out of a drawer and went to work dicing the onions. The back of her neck glowed a radioactive shade of red. “He knows so many worldly people in downtown San Diego. And it’s the night before Halloween.
I bet the séance will be quite the social event. What would I even wear?”

“I have no idea.”

“Wait a minute …” She turned my way with the knife in her hand. “Why do
you
want to go to a séance with Julius Embers?”

Instead of answering, I shut the telephone box and screwed the front cover into place.

“Oh, Mary Shelley.” Her shoulders sagged. “We can’t have another episode like the one at the funeral.”

“You said it felt like I brought part of the afterlife back with me. What if I have? What if I’m not all the way back from the dead?”

“You look alive enough to me.”

“But Stephen—what if he hasn’t made it to the other side? What if there’s a reason he’s not resting in peace?”

“I don’t want you causing another scene. It’s not healthy to refuse to let someone go.”

“Then why have séances? Why have spirit photography? If you think what I’m doing is wrong, why do you support Julius Embers?”

Aunt Eva pursed her lips until she looked far older than her twenty-six years. She resembled photographs of her own late mother, who always puckered her face at cameras like she was sucking on lemons. “It’s just … different. Julius is a professional.” She went back to the onions—
chop, chop, chop, chop, chop.

I grumbled and put the screwdriver back inside Uncle Wilfred’s toolbox, which sat near my feet.

“What time are we supposed to be there?” asked Aunt Eva.

“He’s picking us up at eight thirty.”

She lifted her head. “In his car?”

“I guess so.”

“It’s a Cadillac. I’ve seen it in the garage behind the house.”
Chop, chop, chop, chop, chop.
“A Cadillac ride and a downtown séance.” She whistled and shook her head. “And here I thought onion soup was going to be the highlight of my night.” She rubbed her damp forehead with the back of her hand. “You need to go pick out something nice to wear. I don’t know about Spiritualism in Oregon, but séances are formal events here in San Diego. Or so I hear.”

“Why don’t you let me make the soup, and you go get ready. You’re the one who’s worked in the shipyard all day.” It was my roundabout way of telling her she stank too much to attend a formal social event, but she agreed without offense and hurried off to bathe.

AFTER SUPPER, WHEN THE SUN HAD LONG SINCE SET AND
our gas lamps illuminated the house, I sifted through my wardrobe, pushing aside the nicest dress I owned—the black silk taffeta one I’d worn to Stephen’s funeral. My second best, a navy-and-white plaid wool dress with a lace-trimmed collar, ended up being the garment I wiggled over my shoulders and buttoned into place. A belt made of the same fabric cinched
my waist, and the hem fell mid-calf. I’d have to wear my black Mary Janes instead of my dingy Boy Scout boots. A pair of kid gloves would hide the scaly lightning-burn remnants on my fingertips. I dug around in my doctor’s bag for a little beaded coin purse that had belonged to my mother and stocked it with a portion of the money my father had made me pack before I fled Portland.

In the kitchen, where we could heat the curling rod on the stove, my aunt fluffed, knotted, and swirled my long locks into an elaborate style she called a turban coiffure. To be specific, she made me look like I was wearing a fuzzy turban made out of my own chestnut-brown hair. My reflection in her hand mirror didn’t even look like me.

“I really regret chopping off all my curls.” She nitpicked over the last few pins at the back of my head, jabbing my scalp until I winced. “I feel so ugly these days with my short hair and my red, calloused hands.”

“You’re not ugly. Your hair is modern and chic, and your job in the shipyard is admirable, both for the country and the women’s movement.”

Someone rapped on the front door with the metal knocker.

“It’s him!” She grabbed her mask and flew down the hall, contradicting everything I’d just said about her being an admirable symbol of the women’s movement.

Julius stood on our front porch in a chalk-stripe suit and a charcoal-gray fedora—and again no flu mask, which I found to be arrogant. His face looked pale, and the skin beneath his
eyes bulged with bruise-colored bags, as if he hadn’t slept the night before. Taking advantage of one of my new peculiarities, I inhaled a deep breath through my mask and tried to detect the emotions rolling off him.

My tongue went numb.

“Good evening, ladies.” He took off his hat and revealed slicked-down black hair, stiff and shiny with pomade that smelled like a barbershop. “Are you ready?”

“Yes, we are indeed.” Aunt Eva grabbed her handbag and led us out the door. “Thank you so much for inviting us, Julius. How is your mother?”

“Not well. Let’s not talk about that.”

He placed his hat on his head, and we followed him down the front path to a blue two-door Cadillac roadster convertible with a hood that stretched for miles and a wooden steering wheel as large as a ship’s helm. He had parked the car underneath the electric streetlamp in front of the house, and the light shining down through the bulbous globes made the vehicle’s paint glisten as bright as sapphires.

“What type of engine does it have?” I asked.

He opened the passenger-side door for us. “Why don’t you just try looking pretty for a change?”

I was just about to give him a tart reply when a screaming black police department ambulance sailed around the corner and came to an abrupt stop in front of a house across the street.

Aunt Eva froze. “Oh, dear God. The flu has reached our
block.” Her feet skidded on the sidewalk like she was trying to run away on ice, and then she took running leaps back to the porch. “The flu has reached our block!”

“Eva, stop!” called Julius in a voice deep and authoritative enough to keep her from escaping inside the house. “The flu is everywhere. It’s not some big, bad monster coming down the street, knocking at each door. It’s random, and you and your niece smell enough of onions and camphor mothballs to fight off any germ that gets within ten feet of the two of you.”

I watched policemen in high-buttoned green uniforms hustle to the neighbors’ front door while maneuvering a beige stretcher. Their clothing reminded me of army tunics. Soldiers engaging in battle against an enemy they couldn’t even see.

“Come back down here, Eva.” Julius opened the passenger door wider, revealing a plush black seat more luxurious than any sofa my family had ever owned. “We don’t want to keep our hostess waiting.”

“They’re dying right across the street, Julius.”

“Eva—come talk to the spirits. They’ll tell you there’s nothing to fear.”

His words acted as an elixir upon my aunt’s nerves.

Her shoulders lowered. Her chest rose and fell with a soothing breath. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of the séance that way. I suppose you’re right.” She ventured back to the Cadillac and climbed into the middle section of the seat.

I stepped in next to her with my coin purse dangling off my wrist. Julius helped me push the hem of my skirt into the car
so it wouldn’t catch in the door when he closed it, and then he strode over to the driver’s side.

The officers across the street hauled out a body concealed by a sheet. Long red hair swung off the end of the stretcher.

Aunt Eva turned her face away with pain in her eyes. “That was Mrs. Tennell, the woman who found you dead during the lightning storm, Mary Shelley. The poor thing. She has five children.”

I dug my nails into the beads of my handbag. “I should have thanked her for helping me. I should have visited her. I’m too late.”

“There’s nothing you can do.” Julius climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut. “Stop thinking about it.” He brought the engine to life with a roar and steered the roadster southward, to the heart of downtown San Diego.

We traveled past houses and storefronts and more black ambulances. On the sidewalk in front of a home as pristine white as a wedding cake lay three bodies a huckleberry shade of blue, dressed in nightclothes. The corpses rested beneath a streetlamp, as if the living had kicked out the dead like garbage. I bent forward and held my forehead in my hands to stave off nausea.

“I heard the Germans snuck the flu into the United States through aspirin,” said Julius.

I swallowed down bile. “That’s just more anti-German propaganda.”

Aunt Eva kicked my ankle. “Don’t talk like that.”

“I’m not trying to sound un-American,” I said, “but the aspirin rumor is stupid. Influenza is an airborne illness. The only way the Germans could have used the flu as a weapon was if they shipped boatloads of sick German people over here and let everyone cough on us. But the flu kills so quickly and randomly that everyone on the boat might have been dead by the time it arrived in an American harbor, like Dracula’s victims on the
Demeter
.”

“Does she always argue like that?” asked Julius.

Aunt Eva nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“She sounds like my brother.”

A small smile managed to spread across my lips beneath my mask.

Another siren screamed by. That old bully Death breathed down my neck and nipped at my skin, warning,
Don’t waste one spare second of time. If there are things you want to accomplish while you’re still alive, you’d better do them soon. I’m coming.