The Dark (12 page)

Leah sits at the parlour organ with her sheet music. She plays a churchy chord, then stops. “My heavens, an F? A yellow? Here? What was Mr. Bach thinking?”

“Well, you know best,” Lizzie says tartly.

Katie sighs and looks meaningfully at Maggie. Indeed. What
is
with Lizzie and Leah? They used to giggle together like intimate friends. Be of one accord. When Katie and Maggie groaned about their dithering and distracted mother, Lizzie would boast about her competent and gifted one. How Leah could have played piano for royalty if not for baby Lizzie (not that Leah ever minded, Lizzie insisted). Indeed, Maggie once wished Leah were her mother too. Not any longer. Now Maggie and Katie are quite happy with their own. Mother Margaret makes ketchup whenever they wish it, though it takes half the day. She sings to them lullabies when they cannot sleep for trepidation about the future. And she has purchased a lodestone, a small but costly item that she presses to their foreheads to draw out nightmares and any malignant forces that might be attracting the ghosts.

Lizzie tosses her wool to the floor. She looks at Calvin with exasperation. “Why don’t I like the ghosts? Why?” She speaks loudly, as if intending Maggie and Katie to hear. “Crumb, because there’s plenty of alive people to talk to, that’s why.”

“They don’t always come when commanded, Liz,” Calvin says. “You know that. They’re not pets, or, or recruits.”

“Is that why you and Ma go walking in the cemetery and study gravestones? To help the spirits in case they forget when they up and died? Oh crumb, and, and
merde
too, it’s a farce, is what.”

“Everyone goes strolling in the cemetery,” Calvin points out. “And, honour bright, the spirits, they don’t forget, it’s just—”

“It’s courting damnation, that’s what. I knew it when our Ella died.”

“Elizabeth Fish!” Leah calls over. “Whatever are you arguing about?”

Lizzie gestures at Maggie and Katie. “My sweet little aunts. These two, it was all their idea and—”

Leah crashes the organ lid shut over keys. “That is enough! I cannot say I like your tone, Elizabeth Fish. No. I cannot.”

Katie leaps up. “Play for us, Leah. Please. We all need cheering. It’s such a bleak ole day. Let’s dance a bit.”

Leah eyes Lizzie, and then stretches her fingers. The tune begins simply enough. Katie’s unbound hair capes her shoulders as she
dances. She kicks off her slippers. Turns in her red stockings, faster and faster yet. Leah watches Katie instead of the music sheets. Her tune quickens to match Katie’s dancing. Though, it is not really a tune, Maggie realizes, more like the rainstorm come within. Katie flails her arms and stomps and twirls and laughs and claps. Maggie can’t stop herself. She stands and claps and sways.

Calvin follows suit. Mother looks up, worried. “Oh, but this is unseemly, isn’t it?”

“Katie!” Lizzie shouts. “All of you. Stop this, for Christ’s sake.”

Leah ceases midway through a crashing chord. Calvin jolts as if stabbed. Katie stops dancing and breathes harshly into the sudden quiet. She draws her hair away from her face.

Lizzie hurls her sewing basket to the floor. “Listen. All of you. Listen. The spirits have to go away.”

“The
spirits
will not be going anywhere,” Leah says. “What is this, my girl? And how dare you curse. I did not raise you to speak so.”

“Someone will be hurt. Katie will be, with these, these ghastly fits.”

“I wasn’t having a fit at all. I wasn’t!”

“No? Then you’re behaving like you’re … like you’re possessed. Don’t any of you worry about damnation? Aren’t you terrified about being called a fraud and having to live in utter disgrace?”

“Take care what you say,” Leah says mildly. “You might well offend the spirits.”

“Crumb, I’m not afraid of your stupid little ghosts. And I won’t go to the Grangers’ tomorrow for a stupid sitting-around-thing. I won’t, is what!”

The Grangers, those Methodist friends of the Bushes and the Posts. Maggie had nearly managed to forget. A pain begins at the bottom of her skull. There is to be some kind of test. A skeptic will be in attendance, a Methodist minister yet.

“You shall come,” Leah says. “And there shall not be another blasphemous word out of your mouth, in any language. Honestly, you are becoming so troublesome.”

“Troublesome! What about Maggie and Katie? They’re trouble incarnate. I’m just trying to save this family from ruin.”

“Please, darling, I need you,” Leah says, her voice gentling. “
We
need you. And this family shall never face ruin or disgrace if we stay as one.” She embraces Lizzie, says into her hair, “You shall put on your best behaviour for the Grangers, then? Make your best manners?”

Lizzie sniffles. Says she will. After a moment of calm, adds, “
Séance.”

“Oh, is that one of your French words, my dear?” Leah asks absently. “From your lessons?”

“Yes, and it’s what you should call your tedious sittings.” Lizzie talks about the Paris salons where ladies once held court, and about long sessions in French government. “And they’re both called séances because they’re about people sitting around and talking about nothing, over and over again.”

How can Lizzie brave Leah so? Maggie wonders.

Leah raises her brows. “Séance? I should think
promiscuous circle
or
spirit circle
are better choices. They sound more American and thus more wholesome. And more … honest.”

“L
IZZIE, POOR GIRL,”
my patient said. “Alas and such. She only wanted to do the right thing. She was brave. Yes. And I was not. I couldn’t fathom defying a hair on Leah’s head. And I suppose I didn’t wish to either. And by the time I did? Well, I was so too far in. What I regret is that Katie was swept along, perhaps more than any of us. Here is the question, Mrs. Mellon: If you believe in something strongly enough, does it then become the truth in some fashion?”

I unravelled a bobble; it would have looked ridiculous on the hat.

“No,” I said. “That is all chalk and nonsense. And bullshit, to boot.”

“Ah, but you are Practicality incarnate, dear Mrs. Mellon.”

“An improvement on being Death incarnate, I suppose.” My patient found this exchange most amusing, as did I on second thought—“Death incarnate” being what she called me when first we met.

“The Grangers’, that was my chance, but I was too much the coward.” She seemed agitated, even angry. I set aside my knitting and measured out her laudanum. More than yesterday; more than the day before. Her tolerance for laudanum, spirits, for stimulants of any kind exceeded, to be frank, any I had ever known.

“Now tell me of this Grangers sitting,” I said, so as to distract her from distress.

T
HE
R
EVEREND
L
EMUEL
C
LARKE
is overlarge, with a glowering eye and a face like a boiled ham. He is a particular friend to Mr. Lyman Granger and he is affronted, he announces, by the mere suggestion of palavering ghosts. “Scandalized even,” he adds, and studies Maggie as if she were a clockwork curio he’d like to disassemble and spread all over the petit point rug.

“How’s your head? Nasty still?” Katie asks Maggie in a whisper.

“Dandy-fine. Sterling,” Maggie replies. She did have a grievous head-pain, but thanks to a cocainated head remedy of Isaac’s, the pain has transformed into a cool, tack-sharp light.

“I’m just real glad you’re here, Mag,” Katie says. “We got to stay together.”

“Well, yes,” Maggie agrees. How could she not come after Lizzie’s strange behaviour? How could she allow Katie to stand alone between Lizzie and Leah and the havoc that is sure to follow? At this thought Maggie looks to where Lizzie waits separate from them all, arms crossed.

“Liz can’t win over Leah. She really, really can’t,” Katie whispers to Maggie.

“Shhh, I know it. I’m considering.”

“I sure wish I could disappear,” Katie says, and closes her eyes as if expecting to do just that.

“Come, Leah, Abigail, girls,” Adelaide says. “Watch the planks and nails. We’re having a larder put in. It’s so costly these days. Worse than robbery.”

Maggie sighs. Adelaide Granger would tell a grocer her troubles, which are, in fact, considerable. She follows dutifully as Adelaide leads them to her daughter Harriet’s bedroom. Adelaide holds the hand of her other daughter, Betty, a poke-faced creature of ten. Betty is the one who opens the door to Harriet’s bedroom, who shows them the last daguerreotype of her older sister. In the image Harriet
looks peaceful, even thoughtful, propped there in an armchair, eyes shut as if napping. Around this
momento mori
are candles of beeswax, jewellery made of Harriet’s pale hair, her needlework sampler. Maggie peers at this last.
A
is for Amble.
B
is for Baton. Or balderdash, Maggie thinks, which is what I would choose.

Adelaide says to Leah, “I so long to speak with Harriet again. Will she manifest? Her very form? Is such a thing possible?”

“Manifest? No, our spirit friends are not called the Invisibles for nothing. It does no good to look for them. Listening with one’s eyes shut is best. The raps are how our spirits make their presence known. Come, we should begin before the hour draws late. Katie, are you with us?”

Katie doesn’t answer. She is peering at Harriet’s death image. Maggie tugs her elbow. “I’m all here, don’t be a worry-all,” Katie says, though more to Harriet than to Maggie.

Back in the Grangers’ parlour, Leah directs who should sit where around the large cherry table. First it is Adelaide and Lyman Granger and their one living daughter, then Katie and Lizzie and Maggie. Then Mother Margaret. Calvin Brown. Abigail Bush. Leah. The Reverend Lemuel Clarke.

Leah says to the reverend, “I must warn you, sir, the spirits are not interested in those who disrespect them. Indeed, they can be quite silent around those who profess disbelief.”

“Is this true, Leah?” Mother asks. “I’d not thought so, did I? I’d thought—”

“It is true, Mother,” Leah interrupts sharply. Mother falls silent.

“I shall show no disrespect, nor outrage,” Reverend Clarke says. “But my powers of scrutiny are known to many and thus any devils I see may get a thrashing.”

“You have my permission to thrash any devils you find,” Leah says. “Come, let us begin our spirit circle.” She emphasizes the word
circle
and glances at Lizzie.

“Not séance?” Lizzie mutters to Maggie. “
Merde
, she won’t even give me a word.”

“Shush, Liz,” Maggie whispers. “Don’t say anything at all and you’ll be all right.”

“Girls!” Leah calls.

The lamps are dimmed. Lyman Granger sets out the alphabet board, as expectant as a boy at Yuletide. Leah directs everyone to hold hands. “To optimize the spirit chain,” she explains. “Now, we always commence with the Lord’s Prayer. Would you be so kind, Reverend?”

Reverend Clarke agrees to be so kind, but his prayer is cut short by a thump that rattles the candelabra. He snorts. “I am insulted. Offended even.”

“The peddler. He has returned,” Leah says, as one does of an uninvited guest. “I know him by his crude, thumping sound.”

Adelaide asks, “Is Harriet here also? Harriet? Darling?”

Light, womanly tappings now, so different from the peddler’s great thumps.

Adelaide sobs with joy.

“I have a question,” Reverend Clarke announces.

“Please ask,” Leah says.

“Has God sent the spirits? Does he have some grand purpose in doing so?” His tone is accusatory yet hopeful. Hope. Maggie easily senses its presence now. As Katie does. As Lizzie must. And Leah, certainly. Hope; it is ever the Achilles’ heel.

Raps. Loud and rapid. The alphabet board is brought forth. The reverend’s question is found to be presumptuous. He must ask another.

All this takes a long while. Maggie is already getting tired, even with the head remedy working its quotidian magic. Katie, however, is keen and cheery. “It’s like I’m all-threaded with energy when the spirits are about,” she has confided to Maggie. “It’s like I’m more my own self.”

Reverend Clarke musters outrage. “This is a mockery. A travesty even! Turn up the lamps this instance.”