We Hear the Dead (22 page)

“What is it that you think I do, Ly?” I demanded. “The lady was nearly prostrate with grief! I gave her what comfort I could.”

“What comfort can you provide?” he challenged me in return. “The train derailed. The child is dead. Can you change any of that? Will knocking out some bogus message—
Dear Momma, do not grieve for me
—will that make any difference? She needs to muster her dignity and look toward her husband, not the grave!”

“Our messages are not bogus.” Kate spoke quietly from the corner of the room. Mother was fetching tea for the doctor and taking rather a long time of it. It was just as well, because she would have been greatly shocked by his opinion.

Elisha turned with some consternation to my younger sister. “Miss Incomprehensible Kate, you need not protest your innocence to me,” he said. “I will not argue with you over the origin of your peculiar knocks. But I wish your sister to understand one thing. She has long insisted that her spirit messages do good in the world.” He turned back to me. “I strongly disagree. To wallow in death, and to fixate on the dead, that only leads us away from the world. We waste life, precious moments of it, when we scrabble after something we can no longer have. Maggie, I know that you think you are helping people, but you must see that you are doing more harm than good.”

I was stung by his words. Hurt, I moved away from him and sat down, struggling to keep my composure. I had so looked forward to his visit and had told him so proudly of my sitting with Mrs. Pierce. I had not counted on this criticism raining down upon my head.

Elisha checked his timepiece. “I cannot stay more than an hour,” he said. “Somehow I managed to commit myself to speaking at a new museum downtown, and I have to leave for Philadelphia by tomorrow noon. But Maggie—”

He got down on one knee beside my chair. I turned my head away, not wishing him to see my tears. “I am going to leave my secretary, Morton, here for the duration of your stay. I have rented a room on the top floor of this house. I do not like the idea of you three alone in this city, and I will rest easier knowing Morton is here. If you need to reach me at any time, he will know how to do so. Maggie, I need you to make a choice soon. If you do not…”

I expected him to say that if I did not choose the path he had selected for me, he would break off our relationship. When he did not say this, and when the silence continued, I finally turned to look at him. He was staring at me in sincere anguish.

“Maggie,” he whispered brokenly. “I
need
you to choose…me…over this life.”

Maggie

Kate was furious with Dr. Kane.

“He is every bit as insufferable as Leah said,” she raged. “How dare he moralize on our work? He spends small fortunes in search of new frozen bits of wasteland to name after himself! What good does that do for the world? Has he ever
met
Mrs. Pierce? She
needed
to talk to us!”

The president's wife had spent an hour brokenly recounting to us every abhorrent detail of the train wreck that had taken the life of her son. She had shared every sight and sound until we could almost smell and taste the smoke of the wreckage.

“No one else would listen to her,” Kate reminded me urgently. “They told her not to dwell upon it. But she needed so desperately to speak of it, to express her horror and her grief. And yes, she
did
need to hear it wasn't her fault that she couldn't save the boy.”

“But was it us who gave her that absolution—or was it her son?” I countered.

“Does it matter?” Kate said.

I used to think not, but Elisha had shaken my faith.

Washington quickly went from bad to worse. We lasted only three days past Elisha's departure, three miserable days culminating in a visit from a party of twelve congressmen who had come with their own “spirits” and were as drunk as they could be. They made mean, low remarks and plied us with the wine they had brought. I only pretended to sip at my glass, imagining what Elisha would say to find Kate and me and dear, silly Mother entertaining a crowd of drunken senators. To my horror, Kate drank right along with them until she was shrieking with laughter at their crude comments and flirting shamelessly. Mother looked on uselessly, distraught by the situation but unwilling to give these so-called guests any offense.

Finally, in desperation I sprang from my chair and fled the room. I lifted my skirts and took the stairs two at a time to the top of the boardinghouse, where I pounded on the bedchamber door of a man I had never met.

William Morton, Elisha's assistant, proved to be a thin, soft-spoken, bespectacled boy scarcely older than myself. My first impression was that he would not be up to the task, but his practical efficiency proved me wrong. Mr. Morton ejected our drunken guests by the simple expediency of sweeping their supply of spirits off our table and depositing them in the street outside. The men themselves followed, grumbling and complaining. Then, recognizing Kate's condition with a single glance, young Morton dispatched himself to the kitchen to prepare a restorative tisane.

I rounded on my mother. “We are finished here, Mother. We shall return to New York by the soonest train we can manage.”

“What will Leah say?” my mother worried.

“If Leah had been here, those men would not have dared to insult us. They would have been escorted to the door in the first half hour.” I was so angry I paced the room in agitation. Passing by my sister, I plucked the half-full glass from her hand and removed it to the sideboard. “Your behavior was atrocious!” I chastised.

Kate just giggled. “Leah's spirit is speaking through the medium!” she said and put her head upon the table.

When Mr. Morton returned, I informed him of my decision. “We will be leaving for New York tomorrow. Would it be possible for you to telegraph Dr. Kane and let him know our plans? I have a personal message to send him as well.”

“Absolutely, Miss Fox,” Morton said with a smile. “I'll be happy to make the travel plans for you. It was Dr. Kane's wish that I assist you in whatever needs you might have until you are safely home.”

We waited until Morton had left, then Mother and I took Kate by the arms and helped her to bed. Once she was safely tucked between the sheets and already dozing, I turned with a sigh to my mother. “I am finished with this, Mother.”

“Yes,” she sighed, “we will leave tomorrow.”

“No, I mean I am finished with the spirit business. Dr. Kane wishes me to give up rapping and has offered to send me to school for a lady's education. I have decided tonight to accept.” Having spoken the words, I suddenly felt the weight of my decision, the release from my burden of deception.

Mother gasped. “Margaretta! What will Leah say? How can you turn your back on the spirits after all they have done for us?”

“I have given my whole life to the spirits for five years. I think I have done my part,” I said to her wearily. “And I am tired. Look at what happened here this evening. Look at Kate. Is this how I should live the rest of my life? Dr. Kane has urged me to engage myself to better things, and if I do so, he will make me his wife.”

“You are over the age for schooling, and I should think you've had enough.” Mother's lack of education had never concerned her. She truly did not conceive what there was in the world to learn.

“It's a finishing education he wants,” I emphasized, “the kind that young ladies of fine families receive. Music and languages and manners, I expect…the sorts of subjects that will make me a fit wife for a doctor and scientist of his standing. You cannot imagine, Mother, that Dr. Kane's family would like to see his wife taking clients into his home for spirit rapping?”

“No, I guess not,” she admitted. “They are a different sort of people.”

“All I ask of you, Mother, is that you give your blessing to this, no matter what Leah has to say.”

“If your mind is made up, Margaretta, then I will support your decision.” Mother took a long, apprehensive breath. “No matter what Leah has to say.”

***

Kate cried when she heard my plans during the train ride home the next day. She was pale and foul tempered, reaping the rewards of her flagrant overindulgence the night before. “He has turned you against us, that wretched man!”

“No, Kate, he hasn't.” I tried to reason with her patiently, but I knew there was little use in her current state. “I am a grown woman now, and I have my own life to lead. If I am going to be a wife and a mother, I cannot continue in a calling that consumes my time and my energy. Marriage must be my new calling. When you meet your future husband, you will understand.”

“If you were leaving us to get married, I could accept it,” Kate said bitterly. “But he is sending you to a debutante's school. He thinks we are beneath him, and he wants it forgotten that you were ever a spirit medium.”

Mother clucked her tongue at Kate. “It is only right that a wife should put aside her own interests for those of her husband,” said the woman who had left her own spouse to follow her daughters into the spirit-rapping business. “Dr. Kane has no grief with our family. He is a devoted spiritualist himself.”

Kate turned and gave me a sullen, knowing look while I frowned a warning at her. If Mother knew what Elisha really thought, I would lose her support.

Finally, Kate lay back upon the compartment bench and covered her eyes and aching head with a cool cloth. “I suppose Maggie will do whatever she wants, just as she always does,” she said dismissively.

If that wasn't the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what was.

***

We had apprised Leah of our early return by telegraph with only the briefest mention of the cause. Upon our arrival at her house, we found her anxious and worried but not angry. She was relieved to discover that we had strengthened our ties to General Thompson and Senator Tallmadge and was thrilled to hear that we had hosted a private sitting for Mrs. Pierce. But, considering the unruly nature of the balance of our visitors, she agreed it would have been unwise for us to remain any longer.

“I blame General Thompson,” she said. “He should have screened your callers for you.”

Leah's sympathy quickly vanished, however, when Mother abruptly announced the rest of our news. “Margaretta is done with the spirit rapping,” she said, avoiding my eyes and speaking quickly, as if the decision was a burden she was eager to hand over. “Dr. Kane wants to send her to a finishing school, and she has agreed.” This said, she and Kate promptly vanished, my sister with her migraine and my mother to nurse her.

I had rather hoped for a stronger show of support.

“I've been expecting this,” Leah said, her voice calm but her eyes flashing irritation, “ever since that first letter of his. I am surprised and disappointed, however, that you would abandon us now, with Calvin so ill. Surely you can wait a few months.”

“Dr. Kane is leaving for the Arctic in a few weeks,” I explained. “He needs to make the arrangements before he departs.”

“What kind of arrangements?” she asked shrewdly. “Is he setting you up in lodgings? How will he pay for the schooling?”

“He has not worked it out yet,” I admitted, “but there will be no hint of impropriety! I have told him that I will not live in a place that he has paid for. I understand perfectly where that would lead, and how it would be perceived by others.”

“I hope that you do! I have worried for some time that your unconventional understanding with this man would lead to the ruination of your reputation. His obsession with removing you from your family has worried me greatly.”

“He is not
obsessed
with removing me from my family!” I objected. “But he wishes me to lead a life of greater respectability. I know you enjoy the respect that you have as a spirit medium, but as you have told me time and time again, it is not an acceptable occupation for a member of the Kane family.”

“Even a hat shop would be an unacceptable occupation for the Kane family,” Leah retorted. “They have no appreciation for the underclass, which makes its livelihood with the work of its hands. And if we did run a hat shop, I could replace you with a hired girl. But we cannot do without your rapping, Maggie. Kate is a talented young medium, but you bring a maidenly grace to the enterprise that is unique to yourself. The spirits are only half the attraction. The clients come because of
you
. Look at me, Maggie! Do you think that anyone would pay a dollar to spend an hour with me?”

My sister held out her arms with frank honesty and let me behold her with the cruel appraisal of my youth. The predilection for stoutness that was so apparent in my mother had begun to catch up with her, filling out her once bony figure. Her complexion, previously so rosy, had grown sallow from long, haggard days of nursing her husband, and her eyes were sunken in dark circles. At nearly forty years of age, she was no longer the “vivacious woman” described in the New York papers back in 1849, and I dropped my eyes with some measure of shame at my own analysis.

“Calvin's illness and the consequent interruption of business have placed us in arrears for this quarter's rent,” Leah continued. “Frankly, Maggie, we cannot afford to have you leave us at this time. It would be better for everyone if you waited until he returned from his trip—better for you, as well. You can't leave your family now, when he is about to sail off on this expedition. He could be gone for years.” She tried to keep her expression neutral, but I could practically read the secret gleeful thought she was keeping to herself:
Perhaps he will never return
.

Anger flared within me that she could wish Elisha harm. “This is all about the money! You're not concerned for my well-being. You don't want the loss of income!”

“That income pays for the dress you are wearing and the roof over your head!” Leah snapped in ire. “What do you think—I'm using it to buy rings for my fingers and bells for my toes?”

“Well, bells perhaps. And collapsible poles,” I returned smartly. “I am old enough to choose my own path. I thought you of all people would understand. By the time you were my age, you had already married and birthed a child.”

“I had also been abandoned by my husband and divorced.” Leah's voice took on the aggrieved tone she always used when speaking about her life. “By the time I was your age, I was struggling not to starve. You have no idea what true poverty means, Maggie. You grew up with a mother and a father, sufficiently fed, living in relative comfort. I did not.”

I held up a hand in aggravation. Weary from the train ride, still dressed in my rumpled traveling clothes, I had no patience for her self-pity. “Please, Leah, spare me the speech about how poor you were. I've heard it all before. I could recite it from memory by the time I was nine years old.” It was a mean and spiteful thing to say, mocking her hardship, and I regretted it almost at once.

Leah recoiled as if slapped, her face registering her deep offense. “What a fortunate child you were that it was only a tedious speech to you!” she retorted bitterly. “I, however, had to live it! You and Kate were never hungry. You never had to worry about where you would live or whether you would freeze to death in the winter for lack of heating. You were never spit upon, taken for a beggar's child.”

“No, but I was shot at, taken for a witch!” I shouted.

Leah paused for a moment before replying, “I have not forgotten. Do you remember who came and fetched you out of there?”

I was struck silent by that, shame creeping upon my face. The truth was, I
had
forgotten how Leah had come to rescue me from that ordeal. And as much as I had tried to forget that torturous ride in the false-bottomed wagon, I knew my sister's embrace and calm, steady voice had kept me from losing my mind.

Leah pressed her advantage. “You are spoiled, Margaretta! You have no idea what I have done for you! You live now in the finest city in the world, having made a name for yourself that secures your invitation to the society of celebrated writers, singers, and political figures. You met the president's wife! You are fashionably dressed; you want for nothing. With the slightest smile of encouragement, you could have your pick of the eligible bachelors of New York. Who do you think acquired this position for you? Who planned it and worked for it? I could have left you in Hydesville, and where do you think you'd be now if I did? Probably scratching out a living on a dirt farm with an uneducated husband and two or three farm brats clutching at your skirts!”