The Spirit Room (30 page)

“
I am sure I could spend a few extra hours when I return and we would still be on schedule, Mac. You shouldn’t worry so about the opening.”

He banged his tight fist on the table. “None of it can wait. Your sister can wait. Your place is with me. When the kitchen is entirely ready, you can go.” He grabbed the napkin from his lap, dropped it on the table, and stood, his brown eyes glaring down at her. “Izzie, I am offering you an opportunity to share in my professional life, my sphere. I thought you’d want that.”

She hadn’t seen him rile in the entire time she’d known him. They’d been married three months and this was the first outburst he’d had. But she was used to outbursts. She’d been raised on outbursts.

“
I’m going next Wednesday, Mac. That gives me, you, and Fox Holland a week to finish the financial transactions, take delivery of the materials, and for me to make arrangements with the kitchen suppliers. And if none of that happens, I’m going anyway.”

“
You’ll go when I say it is all right to go. We have everything at stake, Izzie. You must see that. The opening means everything to a successful beginning.”

Her impulse was to stand and scream back at him, as she would have with Papa, but instead she picked up her water glass, took a sip, then another and another, then returned it to the table. The water calmed her.

“
You’ll see,” she said. “You’ll stay on schedule and I will go and make sure my brother and sisters are all right.”

His shoulders came down a little. “Even if I change my mind, my word is the final word.” He strode to the front of the house, then tromped upstairs to their bedchamber.

She took another bite of the sweet stew. Perhaps she had been too firm with Mac. He was under a great deal of pressure, with his credit on, then off, then on again, and then delays with builders. And he was offering to make her a partner in his medical life. He had been dreadfully worried about raising money for his institute and then when Holland nearly backed out, he was afraid he had thrown them into debt he would never be able to get out of. Still, she had to go back to Geneva soon. Wednesday. She tapped the stem of her fork on the table.

“
I’m sorry, Clara.”

Twenty-Three

IZZIE WAITED FOR MAC UNDER THE QUILT while he undressed at the armoire. He came naked to bed and put his nightshirt and a French Safe on top of the covers, then crawled in with her. Izzie felt a glow flood through her at the sight of the India-rubber safe, but Mac never reached for it. He was chattering on and on about Dr. Trall’s genius. Finally he fell asleep after one delicious, lingering kiss. Izzie was disappointed, but she too was tired from sewing all day and fell asleep quickly.

Sometime later she woke to loud voices mumbling together, a crowd of voices. She bolted up in bed. It was a dream. The voices would subside in a second, she thought. Where was she? The Blue Room with Clara and Euphora? She stuck her hand out across the bed. Mac. He was there. She took a deep breath. She was in her home in Rochester. Leaving her hand on Mac’s hip, she waited for the present to pour into her.

But the voices mumbled on. She shook her head trying to shake them off. She shook again, swatting at her ears. Maybe there was a crowd outside, a drunken mob looking for runaway slaves hidden in the neighborhood. Didn’t Mrs. Mead, her neighbor, talk about the Underground Railroad every time they met? But this was Corn Hill, a quiet neighborhood, not a place for mobs.

Concentrating on the noise, she tried to listen for something specific. Her heart thumped. “My God. No!” They were here, with her. Nowhere else. Not outside. She was wide awake. Light the lamp, she thought. Light the lamp. In search of matches, she swung her arms around, hit the match holder, then heard the little sticks scattering over the floor. “Those are your voices, Mamma, not mine.” Scrambling toward the floor, she landed painfully on her knees. She groped in the dark for a match and found several. Rising up on her aching knees, she lunged toward the bedside stand. Her wrist hit the oil lamp. It tipped, then crashed onto the floor, glass breaking, oil spilling, fumes reeking. She coughed.

“
Izzie? What’s happening?”

She felt the bottom of her sleeping gown grow wet with whale oil. “I knocked over the lamp.”

“
Here. Let me get a candle lit across the room. He rustled about while she knelt in the pool of oil. The voices were silent. Somewhere during the chaos, they had gone.

The light of a candle lantern illuminated Mac’s narrow, tall naked shape. Leaving the candle on the straight back chair by the door, he came to her, stood in his bare feet in the thin puddle of whale oil, and took both her hands.

“
Your hands are bleeding. They may have glass in them.” He led her away from the breakage several steps. “Take off the gown. It’s dangerous.”

Raising her arms up over her head, she felt his hands take the cotton gown and lift it up and off her. Naked, hands bleeding, she stood trembling. Mac left her, went to the armoire and returned wearing his brown wool robe. He helped her into a clean shimmy.

“
Let’s go downstairs and turn on the gaslights. My medical bag is in the foyer.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist, guided her to the chamber door, picked up the candle lantern, and led her downstairs. The house was chilly, but Mac’s side against her was warm. As they descended, she began to calm. She couldn’t tell him about the voices, couldn’t tell anyone. They were here. They were with her. She prayed they wouldn’t come again.

“
It’s time we got you a proper robe, a lady’s robe.”

She nodded.

“
I heard you shout. Did you have a nightmare?”

“
Yes. It was about Mamma.”

<><><>

THE NEXT NIGHT, LYING IN BED WITH MAC, Izzie realized he wasn’t going to come close or hold her. He was immersed in his
Water-Cure Journal
. After he extinguished his oil lamp, he shifted onto his side and faced away from her.

Determined to go to Geneva as she had pronounced, in the evening, she had brought up the prospect of visiting. Once again, Mac was firm about her staying with him and working, but she was equally firm about going.

Listening to Mac’s breathing deepen into sleep, she picked up
Blithedale Romance
with her bandaged hand and read. She had read the book once before and was coming to the end. The men, Coverdale, Silas, and Hollingsworth floated on the river in their small boat plunging a rake into the water looking for Zenobia’s drowned body. Zenobia had killed herself for love. Such a fool, thought Izzie. But the scene in the novel reminded her of Mamma’s body, swollen and blue, at the edge of Seneca Lake. She let the book drop down at the sharp stab in her heart, then pushed the thought out of her mind.

Later that night Izzie woke to a chaotic sensation. She shot up in bed, blood pulsing in her head. She had been dreaming of a dozen people arguing, all ranting at once. They were disturbed and angry, every one of them. She could feel their frustration. Then, even though she was fully awake, she realized the voices were still arguing and strident. She threw her hands over her ears.

Mac was asleep on his back. She wouldn’t wake him this time. Pressing against her ears as hard as she could, she slid swiftly from bed. She grabbed Mac’s robe from the armoire, raced downstairs and stumbled outside into the night.

By the time she was sitting in the moonlight on the hard brick of her front steps, the voices had disappeared. Leaves rustled on their branches in a breeze that sent a chill through her. Here and there a leaf drifted down in the silver light, then landed in the street or a yard. She wrapped her arms around her knees and buried her face. “No voices. No voices. Please.” Shivering, she looked up and pulled the collar of Mac’s robe tight around her neck. Tears welled in her eyes and streamed down her face. There were no lights in any of the houses on her block. It was very late. A pale-colored cat appeared at her front gate, sensed her presence, and froze, staring at her. Izzie stared back through the fog of her tears. After a little while it slinked away.

Drat
. She was doomed to be like Mamma, she thought. How could she deny it one more day? She was like Mamma. Maybe she could keep the voices out somehow. She didn’t have to talk to them like Mamma did. Mamma beckoned them. She’d refuse them. She was strong enough to do that.

“
You might as well give up now, voices,” she said, gazing up at the full moon. “I won’t talk to you.” She wouldn’t. She’d just repeat, “No voices. No voices.” She’d drown them out with her own true voice, her own anger.

She wouldn’t be Mamma. She wouldn’t disappear from Mac or the children she’d have someday. Time after time, Mamma abandoned her family for the world of her voices. Izzie would never do that. Mamma used to rock in her chair or wander about the house talking and listening to her spirits and when she did, she didn’t know if Izzie and the others were even there. Sometimes when Izzie and the children were hungry, Mamma was off in her spirit world. They’d give up on waiting for her to cook something, split up, and go around the neighborhood begging for food. It was only luck that, when very young, Izzie had met Julianna and her parents. They always had something in the kitchen for her.

Izzie twisted the robe collar until it made her cough. She still missed Julianna. What gifts her friend had bestowed on her. Izzie wiped her eyes with her sleeve. The first time she’d seen Julianna, Izzie was only four and Papa was nowhere to be found. Mamma had been rocking so relentlessly in her chair that Izzie had begun to whine and whimper. No matter how she pleaded, Mamma wouldn’t answer. The twins were just babies and they were hungry. They began to squeal, then cry for hours in their cradle, and they were no more than a few feet from Mamma.

Izzie had decided to find some milk for them and something for herself to eat. She walked a long distance to a neighborhood where the houses were large and people had horses and carriages. She knew they’d have food. She stopped at a large white house on a corner with a wide, covered porch wrapped around three sides. In a yellow dress, a beautiful young woman and her daughter who wore blue and was about seven or eight years old sat on a swinging bench. The mother was reading a story out loud. Izzie slowly tip-toed up the stairs. The woman lifted her golden brown eyes a few times and smiled at Izzie, but she didn’t say anything to her. She kept on reading. It was the first story from a book Izzie had ever heard.
Oliver Twist
. She sat on the top step and listened. It was exquisite. It was heaven.

When the woman finished reading, she asked Izzie her name and where she lived.

“
I’m Isabelle Benton. I live down there.” She pointed in the direction of their house. “The twins and I are very hungry.”

From then on, Julianna’s family took her in whenever she needed to be taken in and she always had her fill of books and food.

A screech pierced the night. Izzie flinched. Then another screech ripped through her. Then another. Then she realized it was just the cat she’d seen at her front gate.

One day, when she had her own daughter or son, she’d take care of them. She’d listen to them, feed them, and teach them. She’d never make them wander the streets and beg. She would not talk to these angry voices that had found her, not ever.

Twenty-Four

TWO MONTHS HAD PASSED since Sam Weston had pinned Clara in the corner of the Spirit Room and given her the new blue dot dress. Autumn trees had exploded into orange, red, and purple, then faded to brown. Almost every week Clara received a letter from Izzie explaining why she couldn’t come visit. It was always the same. The Upper Falls Water-Cure was behind schedule. There was much to be done and Mac required her help.

Every Friday afternoon Sam Weston came to Clara at the Spirit Room with flowers, then candy when the flowers were gone for the season. Sometimes he brought a small gift—a cameo brooch, silk hair ribbons, a black neckband, paper and envelopes to write to Izzie with. A few times he brought something fancier, like the bonnet he promised and he was always cleaned up and brimming with kind words.

On each visit, he asked Clara to do something simple like wear the indigo dot dress he had given her but slip the off-shoulder neckline down lower than she normally would, or let her hair hang down, or sit up on the table just in front of him. His favorite was the corner though. He kept coming back to the corner and all this time he never actually touched her, not even her hair when it was flowing down over her shoulders.

Fridays were ghastly, but she gradually got used to them and even started to look forward to the gift that would always come. If she picked something in the room to stare at—a crack in the ceiling, the clock on the fireplace mantel, the wall sconce—she could make Sam Weston disappear, even the sound of his voice. It was like reading a story and going far off into the adventure, closing everything else out of her mind.

Papa told her that Weston paid him three dollars for each visit. He said the five dollars for the first time was more because that’s just how it was. Men paid more for innocence, he’d said.