The Ghost Orchid (11 page)

When they come out of the niche, Mrs. Norris is standing in front of the statue of the river god, holding up a lantern to light her mistress’s way into the grotto. The light etches deep grooves into the housekeeper’s face, making it look as fiercely weathered as the face of the Indian brave representing the Sacandaga.

“Will you be attending the séance, Mrs. Norris?” Corinth asks, addressing the housekeeper directly for the first time since she’s arrived at Bosco.

“She’ll be standing outside,” says a voice from behind Corinth. Turning, she sees that it’s Mrs. Ramsdale, leaning on Tom Quinn’s arm as she comes down the steps. “So that we’ll be certain that the séance is uncorrupted. I suggested as much to Mrs. Latham.”

Corinth bows her head to Mrs. Ramsdale. “An excellent idea,” she says. “We wouldn’t want the circle corrupted.” She gestures for the novelist to precede her into the grotto, but Mrs. Ramsdale suddenly realizes she’s dropped her vial of smelling salts and enlists Tom Quinn to look for it. As she crouches on the ground Corinth catches once again Mrs. Ramsdale’s peculiar scent—a combination of Aqua di Parma, laudanum, and something else that Corinth recognizes as the reek of death—a corruption that springs from the woman’s womb and spreads outward in a miasma so thick Corinth is overwhelmed by it and feels herself growing faint. Frank Campbell puts out a hand and steadies her as she precedes him and Signore Lantini into the grotto.

A table has been set up so that the stone bench serves as one of the six seats. Corinth sits there, directly across from Aurora Latham, and the men take the chairs on either side of her. When Frank Campbell is seated, he crosses his hands on top of the table and it immediately begins to rock.

“Ah, already the spirits make themselves known!” Lantini exclaims.

“I’m afraid it’s a waste of your engineering talents, signore,” Aurora says, “but perhaps you can find some way to steady the table.”

“Certo!”
Lantini flashes a quick smile and disappears beneath the table.

Corinth turns to Frank Campbell. “I hope you don’t mind being seated next to me, Mr. Campbell. Sometimes the vibrations of the spirits are felt strongest by the sitter closest to the medium. There was a gentleman in Naples—a prince, in fact, of an old Neapolitan house—who complained that his hand was numb for a week after our séance. I wouldn’t want to interfere with the progress of your marvelous portrait of Mrs. Latham.”

Campbell’s eyes cut across the table to where Mrs. Ramsdale is being helped into her chair by Tom Quinn, but she doesn’t meet his look. Quinn does, though, with a curl of his upper lip as if he were amused at the medium’s brazen attempt to frighten Campbell.

“Nonsense,” Campbell says, his voice echoing in the domed space. “I am only afraid that my hands will be rough to you. The solvents I use to clean them are not very gentle . . .”

“Here, Mr. Campbell,” Mrs. Ramsdale calls from across the table. “I promised you a bit of my hand cream when we spoke earlier.” She passes a small jar to Lantini, who passes it to Campbell. When he opens it, the grotto is instantly filled with the odor of roses. Instead of using the hand cream, though, he reaches into his pocket and squeezes a dab of white paint on his hand. When he looks up, he catches Aurora staring at him. It was foolish to write the letter, he realizes. Aurora is a proud woman and doesn’t like her plans put into question. He only hopes that after the medium is unmasked, she will see that he was right.

“Mrs. Norris will stand guard at the entrance to the grotto so we won’t be disturbed, Miss Blackwell,” Aurora Latham announces. “Are we ready to begin?”

Before answering, Corinth lays on the table the pink and green ribbon, the bone arrowhead, and James’s quail-feathered arrow. “Now, if everyone would please extinguish their candles—except for yours, Mrs. Latham. We can leave that one at the center of the table.”

Aurora places the antlered candelabra at the center of the table—now steady, thanks to Lantini’s adjustment to its legs—extinguishing all but one of its candles, which spreads a circle of light that just reaches the fingertips of the twelve hands spread out on the table. The rest of the grotto—the domed enameled ceiling, the rock walls, and the faces of the men and women seated around the table—recedes into the shadows.

“We’ll join hands now,” Corinth says, her disembodied voice seeming to float on the still air. “Remember, whatever happens, do not break the circle.”

For a long time the only sound is the sound of water falling from the fountain above and around the grotto and lapping into the small pool inside the grotto. It’s a sound, though, that contains a multitude of sounds within it. One could imagine voices, footsteps, or even music in the melodic gurgle and rush of the water . . . or a drumbeat, which the sitters, one by one, begin to hear above the sound of the water . . . a sound that seems to arise out of their own heartbeats, hardly noticeable at first but then drowning out every other sound. Then the beats grow louder and are joined by a high keening cry—like that of an animal or a woman in pain.

It is joined by another voice, coming from the place where Corinth sits, but unlike the medium’s natural voice. “We are looking for the spirits of the three children. James, Cynthia, and Tam. They may have lost their way home. Their mother is waiting for them here; she wants them to know they can come home now.”

“I won’t be angry that you were hiding from me,” Aurora says. “It’s all right to come out now.”

The sound of drums fades, and a wind rises in the
giardino segreto
outside the grotto, a high wind that whistles through the hedge maze and sounds, at one moment, like laughter, and the next, like weeping. Beneath that sound: a halting beat, not drums this time, but footsteps . . . only they’re faltering, like the footsteps of someone whose feet have been bound.

The sound strikes such terror into Corinth’s heart that she feels her spirit beating up against the walls of her body, like a firefly trapped in a jar, looking for a way out. She squeezes Tom’s hand until the china shard embedded in her glove digs into her palm, but she doesn’t even feel its point. She is rising above the table, passing through the domed ceiling of the grotto and moving through water, like a trout swimming upstream, fighting the current of the fountain . . . and then she’s free, rising above the garden. Looking down, she can see the fountain allée and the terraces, the marble statues of the Muses glowing in the moonlight . . . but something is different. The clipped yews have burst out of their trimmed shapes, the ilex has grown wild and covers the hill in a thorny mass. The statues lie broken and what she thought were statues are actually ghostly shapes walking along the paths—the shades of Bosco’s future artists that Aurora’s little speech in Egeria’s niche has summoned forth. She can see a pair of figures, pale and insubstantial as fog, walking through the maze, only the maze has turned into a thicket; the roses have gone wild and twined themselves into the shaggy boxwood hedges, twisting themselves into the shapes of women struggling to free themselves of their bonds . . . and she sees that they’re all the same figure: the bound Indian girl who’s limping along the overgrown paths, trying to find her way out.

“Ne’Moss-i-Ne,” Corinth whispers, pulled back into her body by something brushing against her lips, something light and feathery as a kiss.

A strange giggle bubbles out of Aurora Latham. “It can’t be. I made her up.” But then something brushes against Aurora’s face and her laugh turns into a scream.

Whether made up or real, dead or alive, something is moving through the hedge maze and getting closer. A gust of wind rushes into the grotto and blows out the candle. Like a trapped creature the wind scours the walls, shrieking into the niches set into the rock and scraping the tiles down onto the table.

A dampness spreads on the back of Mrs. Ramsdale’s neck and slithers down her dress.

Something pulls Signore Lantini’s mustache.

Frank Campbell feels hands all over him, tugging at his pockets. Once, when he was a student at the Academy in Rome, a band of child pickpockets assaulted him as he strolled through the Pincian Gardens, swarming over him just like this—like rats! Later he was ashamed to tell the carabinieri that he’d been robbed by children and instead made up a story about a gang of street thugs, knowing full well that the police officers knew he was lying. He feels that same shame now as the insidious fingers work their way down his waistcoat. He tries to fend them off, but his left arm has gone entirely numb. One of the little hands slides between his legs and, first gently, and then not, squeezes his testicles.

He opens his mouth to cry out, but the sound dies in his throat as a searing pain pierces through his chest.

All the while, Aurora Latham calls out, “James, Cynthia, Tam,” repeating the names of her dead children like a prayer.

Then something flashes in the darkness. A match is struck, a candle lit, and a pool of light spreads out from the candelabra, which Tom Quinn is holding over Corinth. At first her eyes seem unfocused in the glare of the candlelight, but then, slowly, she comes back to herself and recognizes him.

The look she gives him makes his throat go dry.

He turns away, moving in a slow circle to shine the candlelight onto the grotto walls, but nothing is there. No one is in the grotto but the six sitters, all of whom, except Frank Campbell, who is leaning forward with his hands covering his face, stare back at him with glassy, frightened eyes.

“My God, look at the ceiling!” cries Signore Lantini.

They all look up at the domed ceiling above their heads. It’s covered with white marks.

“They look like handprints,” Tom Quinn says, climbing up onto the chair that he vacated and holding the candelabra as close as he can to the ceiling. Then he climbs down and moves to the back wall, where a trail of handprints snakes down to the stone bench.

“Look at her hand!” Mrs. Ramsdale cries, getting up from her seat and coming around the table on unsteady legs. She grabs Corinth’s hand and holds it up so that everyone can see the smear of white paint on Corinth’s glove. Tom reaches across Mrs. Ramsdale and takes Corinth’s hand from her, pulling Corinth toward the wall and placing her hand next to one of the painted hands. He can feel her hand trembling under his and he can smell the rose water she uses to rinse her hair as she leans against him for support.

“The prints are much too small to be made by Miss Blackwell,” Signore Lantini says. “They appear to be children’s hands.”

“
My
children’s hands!” Aurora says.

“I don’t know about that,” Tom says, “but I think I do know where the paint came from.” Tom turns and holds the candelabra over Campbell’s head. “It’s no good, Mr. Campbell, I saw you dabbing your hand with paint when you were pretending to put on hand lotion.”

Campbell remains motionless in his chair.

“The poor man’s fainted,” Mrs. Ramsdale says, her voice trembling now, not because of the fright the séance gave her but because she can see that Tom Quinn is still holding Corinth Blackwell’s hand. And because she saw the look that passed between them before.

Lantini steps forward and grabs the painter’s shoulders, giving them a firm shake, while Mrs. Ramsdale leans forward with her little vial of smelling salts. Campbell’s head falls back limply, and Mrs. Ramsdale, dropping the vial to the floor, screams.

A tuft of feathers protrudes from the lapel of Mr. Campbell’s evening jacket. It looks oddly decorative until Lantini moves the jacket’s lapel aside to reveal the blood-soaked waistcoat underneath. The homemade arrow—James’s arrow—-has been driven clean through his chest.

Chapter Nine

With November the skies over Bosco grow heavy and gray and the gardens draw in on themselves. In the overgrown hedges, seed pods, like small bells, rattle in the cold wind that sweeps down out of the north woods. The dried brush, instead of seeming sparser, feels thicker—a thicket of thorns woven by a malicious fairy to insulate us from the outside world. There are no phones in the main house, only in the office in the old gatehouse, and so our only contact with the outside world depends on the phone messages taken by Daria Tate.

The pink slips that haphazardly find their way into our lunch boxes, though, might as well be written in Sanskrit. I receive a message from my mother that reads, “The keys are in the alarm,” which makes no sense because my mother owns neither an alarm system nor a car and there aren’t even locks on the doors to her house. David gets a message about a job opening at the New York Botanical Garden a week after the job has been filled. Bethesda learns that her cat has been taken to the vet for “his yearly dairy injection,” and Nat gets a pink note with a smiley face informing him that Oprah has picked his book for her book club. When he calls the number on the message, though, he reaches his agent, who tells him that her aunt’s book club in Boca is reading his book and would he answer a few questions for them on the speakerphone?

The strangest message, though, is the one that comes for Zalman from his Russian grandmother. The message, translated from the Russian (a language, Daria explains, she picked up from a Russian muralist her mother once dated), is that she has fallen and broken her leg; the problem is that Zalman’s grandmother has been dead for thirty years.

“Which means I was on the phone with a dead woman,” Daria tells me when I come into the office to pick up my mail.

“I’m sure you just got the name wrong,” Nat, who’s come up behind me and is helping himself to a ream of Bosco stationery, says. “Like you thought my agent was Oprah.” He rolls his eyes at me. “Sheesh, like I’d even consider going on
Oprah.
” But he would have. I have a sudden image of the suit he’d planned to wear. A Hugo Boss he’d gotten on sale at Barneys last year. I can even see in my vision how handsome he looks in it.

“Yeah, well, actually it wasn’t as weird as the callers I get who want to tell their stories to the writers,” Daria tells us.

“You’re kidding,” I say.

“No, I get a couple a day.” Daria holds up her right hand, thumb and pinky extended to mimic a phone receiver. “ ‘Hello, is this the place that has all the writers? Well, go get one, ’cause I’ve got a story to tell they’ll pay good money for.’ ”

Nat laughs, but I’m thinking of how lonely those people must be. “Amazing,” he says. “If they think that’s all it takes, why don’t they write it themselves?”

Daria shrugs. “Too much trouble, I guess. Easier to tell it to someone over the phone like a psychic hotline. Diana tells me to hang up on those calls, but they just keep calling back, so now I have them tell their story to me and I pretend to be writing it all down.”

“Really?” I ask. “But why do you bother?”

“I don’t know; it’s something to pass the time. There isn’t much else to do—I’ve already read all your files.”

We both stare at Daria openmouthed. “Our files? You’re allowed to read our files?” Nat asks.

“Yeah, but—no offense—I’m really more interested in the older stuff. Like this letter I came upon today.” Daria lifts up a delicate sheet of onionskin paper, its surface embossed with the impressions of an old manual typewriter. It’s been so long since I’ve seen anything manually typed that the page looks as antiquated as an illuminated manuscript. “This is from a historian researching Bosco. He says that there’s a local story, supposedly passed down by the Lathams’ servants, that the artist Frank Campbell was shot through the heart during a séance here.”

“I thought he died of a heart attack,” I say.

“That the
official
story,” Daria says, her voice lowering to a theatrical whisper and her eyes widening with delight. I see now why she loves listening to the crank callers. I’ll bet she also loves conspiracy theories, urban legends, and telling ghost stories around a camp bonfire. “The local lore is that the ghost of an Indian shot an arrow through his heart to avenge the massacre of his tribe
on this very spot.
” She punctuates the last four words by stabbing the air with her index finger.

I glance over at Nat to see how he’s reacting to this ghost story and am surprised to see how ashen he looks. But it’s not the specter of slaughtered Indians that has him rattled.

“You’re allowed to read our files?” He repeats his earlier question, but before Daria can answer, Diana Tate’s voice bursts out of the intercom demanding Daria’s presence in her office.

“Gotta go,” Daria says, grabbing a steno pad and a bottle of water.

“I can’t believe that adolescent is reading our files,” Nat says as we walk back to the mansion together. “That means she’s read our letters of reference.”

I wonder why that upsets Nat so much and then I remember that his mentor was Spencer Leland, the director of the famous MFA program Nat had attended. Leland had written a groundbreaking experimental novel in his twenties and then nothing but a slim collection of short stories and an even slimmer memoir in the next forty years. He was famous, though, for mentoring young writers. When he died, seven years ago, of lung cancer, Nat wrote an essay about him in the
Atlantic Monthly
that had brought me to tears. I picture the old teacher, in the donnish English tweeds he always wore, and his trademark shock of white hair, writing a letter, and I
know
what Nat is worried about. He’s always been afraid that Leland’s original letter of recommendation contains some hint of an inner failing in Nat’s writing. Some inner failing that explains why he hasn’t been able to write his second novel. The reason I’m so sure this is what Nat’s afraid of is it’s the same thing I’m afraid of—that the recommendation letter Richard Scully wrote has some similar caveat about my own character and talent.

“I’m sure she’ll keep whatever she reads to herself—” I begin.

“Are you? The girl’s a pothead. She’ll probably post our letters on the Internet.”

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” I say before considering my words. I’m not sure what I’m more appalled at, insulting Nat or using such an obvious cliché combined with an unintended pun. Nat looks genuinely abashed, and I realize he has no idea that we all know he’s been getting high with Daria.

“Nat,” I say, “I’m in the room right next to you. It smells like a Nirvana concert in there.”

“Really? Shit . . . Do you think anyone else has noticed . . . ?” He looks so worried I’m genuinely sorry for him.

“I wouldn’t worry. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to kick you out—”

Nat stops in the middle of the path and looks so pale I’m afraid he’s going to pass out.

“Here,” I say, leading him to a bench on the side of the terrace. “Sit down. I didn’t mean to upset you. You’re Bosco’s most famous writer. They wouldn’t dare kick you out.”

Nat drops his head into his hands and moans. “A writer who hasn’t produced a book in nine years,” he says. “You don’t think they’re all looking over my shoulder every minute of the day waiting for me to fuck up?” He lifts his head and looks down the hill. More than ever the tangle of brush looks like a wall closing in on us—as if the tangled shrubs were growing, encroaching on the house. “God, sometimes I can’t stand this place.” He gets to his feet and starts heading back inside, but then he stops a few feet away and looks back at me. Cocking his head to one side, he manages a weak smile. “Hey,” he says, “do you want to get high?”

If I was nervous about being in David’s room—in the back on the third floor—I have all the more reason to refuse Nat’s offer to share a joint with him in the central suite. Although I told Nat that I didn’t think Diana Tate would have him evicted for smoking pot, I’m not so sure about what she might do with me—an unpublished author, breaking the rules of nine-to-five quiet, and engaging in illegal activities. But that’s exactly what I find myself doing. Maybe because Nat had looked so hopeful when he asked me; maybe because anything is better than going back to my room and facing the blank screen of my computer.

We don’t meet anyone on the stairs going up, or in the hallway. After placing a rolled-up towel against the bottom of the door and opening a window, Nat assures me that Bethesda—whose room is on the opposite side of the suite from mine—has no sense of smell and is so absorbed in her work that she would never notice anything. “And she wouldn’t say anything if she did,” Nat says, lighting the joint. “She’s my pal.”

I suspect that if Bethesda knew I was in here with Nat, sitting cozily across from him on the cushioned window seat, our feet almost touching, she’d be less than congenial. I wonder if Nat simply has no idea how she feels about him or just chooses to ignore it.

“You’ve known her for a long time?” I ask, taking the joint from him and inhaling. It’s been ages since I’ve smoked pot and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to keep from coughing, but the sweet smoke coils down into my lungs and stays there like an animal curling into its lair.

“Since college,” he says. “We were in writing classes together. If she hadn’t decided to write criticism instead of fiction, I’d probably hate her by now.”

I laugh and exhale at the same time. It’s the first time since I’ve met Nat that I feel he’s being totally honest. What I wonder is if Bethesda’s decision to write biographies instead of novels had something to do with knowing that Nat wouldn’t have been able to put up with competition from her.

“Well, she certainly doesn’t like me very much. I honestly had no idea
Muse of Water
was her title. I had no intention of poaching on her territory.”

“Yeah, she can be a little crazy that way. That’s the thing about writing biographies: you have to worry no one else is working on your subject at the same time. Bethesda’s been researching Aurora Latham for years now—she’s
invested.
”

“Well, she doesn’t have anything to worry about from me—I’m not writing a biography, and if things go on the way they have been, I probably won’t even finish the novel.”

“Not going well?” Nat asks. I glance at him and see that he’s arranged his features into a look of polite concern, but he can’t disguise the hidden pleasure in his voice. Nothing makes him happier, I realize, than to hear that someone else is having trouble writing. I look toward his desk and see the ream of blank stationery neatly stacked by the side of his ancient Olivetti typewriter, the black Moleskine notebooks arrayed like soldiers next to a green glass bottle that seems to gather all the sunlight in the room into its dark, musty interior.

“I’m a little stuck,” I say. “I’ve gotten to the first séance, the one where the artist Frank Campbell dies, but I can’t figure out what happened. It was supposed to be a heart attack, but he was a young man.” I’m still staring at the green bottle. There’s a smell coming from it, something sweet and decaying, emanating from the bottle like a small black cloud.

“So you think someone killed him?”

I drag my eyes away from the green bottle and see that Nat has leaned forward to pass me the tiny nub of the joint. His face is only inches from mine, so close I can see the shadows his long, dark eyelashes make on his cheekbones and smell the scent of pine needles on his skin. I close my eyes after drawing in the smoke, and the spark of the joint becomes a candle flame burning in the dark. My whole body is prickling, as if hands were moving over my skin, pulling me deeper into the blackness. And then I feel something brush against my lips, a light, feathery touch that could be the sweep of a bird’s wing or a kiss.

I open my eyes and find myself looking into Nat’s eyes, which have turned the same green as the old medicine bottle on his desk, and I can’t for the life of me tell if he’s just kissed me or I imagined the whole thing.

“I’ve got to go,” I say, swinging my legs down from the window seat, too embarrassed to know what else to do. “I’ve just thought of something.”

“When inspiration strikes . . .” Nat says, looking away from me out toward the ruined garden.

“Yeah, thanks . . .” I say, involuntarily touching a finger to my lips and feeling again that sweet, fleeting pressure against my lips. Whether it was a kiss or not, I know that it tugged at something inside of me, pulling me out of the darkness.

“Sure, anytime,” he says, keeping his face toward the window. It’s only from his reflection that I can see the look of disappointment on his face.