The Spirit Room (19 page)

Euphora scrambled up and took off to the back door of the brick house with her basket nearly empty.

Izzie stood. “Morning, Papa.”

She searched his face, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. She knew he wouldn’t apologize for the slap. Even though he didn’t hit her often, he never did apologize. But she did want to know if he would give her permission to marry Mac. Behind his spectacles, the whites of his eyes were white, not red, and he didn’t smell like whiskey. His shirt, top button open at the neck, wasn’t as wrinkled as it was the nights he slept in it. That was good too. There was a chance. A chance.

“
Mrs. Purcell give you one of her poultices for that bruise on your face?” he asked.

She touched the side of her face and nodded.

“
You’re like me, Isabelle. You want to do everything your own way. You’re stubborn as a mule. You’re always wantin’ to kick me like a blam’d mule, too.”

Rot
. He wasn’t going to give her permission to marry and he was going to make a speech about it, expecting her to appreciate his rationale.

He anchored his hands on his suspenders. “Even when you were little, you came and went as you pleased. You ‘bout moved in with that Julianna friend of yours with all the books. We called you home, but you only came when you pleased. You took those folks for your family and there wasn’t nothin’ we could do so we just let you stay with them. Your mother always fought me on it.”

He took his unlit pipe from his pocket and looked into the bowl. “She wanted them to teach you what they knew. I always thought that learnin’ you got yourself would come back and bite us. Hell-fire. It has been bitin’ us all along.”

Izzie’s shoulders stiffened as she remembered the thrashings with Papa’s strap when she didn’t come home for too long. If he was bringing all this up now, she truly didn’t have a chance.

“
Yesterday I went for a long walk all the way down to that place, Kashong Point, where you found your mother in the lake. I tried talkin’ to her about your marryin’. I said, Almira, if you could turn yourself into one of them voices, I’d appreciate hearin’ what you have to say about Isabelle.” He sniffled, scratched a sideburn with the stem of his pipe. “Waited some time. But I didn’t hear any voice. I guess I didn’t think I would, but I never doubted your Mamma’s abilities that way. Then, I left the lake and started walkin’ home. After a few miles, a thought struck me like lightnin’ and I knew what you was goin’ to do. Because ya see, you are like me. You was goin’ to run off with him. Sure as heck. You was goin’ to run off with him. That’s right, ain’t it?”

She nodded slightly.

He blew a puff of air out the side of his mouth. “Knew I was right.” He watched her a moment.

But she didn’t say anything else. She had the feeling anything she said would get her deeper in trouble with him.

“
I decided if you was set on runnin’ off with him, maybe I could stop it by scarin’ that MacAdams away. I walked straight into that Geneva Hygienic place, barged into his fancy office.”

“
You saw him?”

Now, it was over. No marriage. No Rochester. No freedom from Papa and the Spiritualism hoax.

“
Acted all pleased to meet me. Mr. Benton this, Mr. Benton that. Sorry for my wife’s death. I nearly spit at him.” Papa turned his head away and spit into the garden as though he had stored it up for Mac and still needed to expel it. “Told him to stay away from my daughter.”

Izzie wanted to slap his face, slap it as hard as he had slapped her and knock him down. Holding her right hand stiff at her side, she was trying to not let it fly out.

He pressed his spectacles back against the bridge of his nose. “Don’t know how he did it, but he kept me there a long time, I mean a long time, talkin’. Finally, we come to an understandin’.”

“
What kind of understanding?”

“
Well let’s say that is between us men. You don’t need to know the details, but you can go and marry him, if you have to, and if you don’t have to, stayin’ here is fine.”

She felt the fire in her slapping arm die out. He turned his back and walked toward the kitchen door, then stopped and turned again to her, poking his pipe in the air. “He ain’t the best one for you as far as I’m concerned, not even almost the best one, but I can see you’re goin’ no matter what I say.” Then he disappeared into the kitchen.

Izzie plopped down on Emma Purcell’s wood bench at the end of the garden. She sighed. It was money. Mac had offered him something to fill the gap for a while, to compensate for Izzie leaving the Benton Sisters and Papa had accepted it. Papa was smart. He had realized she would go with or without his approval but then he figured out he wouldn’t have to be empty-handed. How much had Mac offered him? What was enough to get Papa to change his mind? She slumped against the back of the bench. She had just been sold like a commodity, a barrel of flour or sugar on the dock, an item on a bursar’s list,
Izzie Benton. Sold, a daughter. Purchased, a wife
. If only Papa could have let her go because she wanted to, without the “understanding.”

Papa had nothing at all to send her into marriage with, not one stick of furniture, but Mac wanted her anyway, and not only wanted her without a dowry of any kind, but was willing to help Papa—help her family. Mac’s money would, after all, be better for the children. They would have something besides Clara’s séance fees and Billy’s earnings from Maxwell Nurseries.

She looked up at the blue sky. She could go. She would be free. She would be with Mac, wonderful Mac. And no more being a humbug medium. No more chance of real voices creeping into false trances. Free. She closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and felt the sun on her face and breathed in the fragrance of grass and apple blossoms. A fly buzzed by her ear. In the distance, in the harbor, a ship horn blasted three times.

Sixteen

IZZIE PRESSED TOWARD THE TRAIN WINDOW to get the widest view she could. Red oaks, tulip trees, chestnuts, and sweet birches robust with green leaves sped by, no longer the yellowish green of early spring. Fields of wheat and rye, wide and rolling, flowed by one after the other. This morning she had been Izzie Benton. By noon she’d become Mrs. Robert MacAdams. At three, she had kissed the tear-soaked, sullen faces of Clara, Billy, and Euphora goodbye at the train depot. By this evening she would reside in Rochester, New York.

“
It’s my first train ride.”

“
I know it is, my sweet.” Mac, studying a copy of the
Water-Cure Journal
, didn’t look up.

Closing her eyes a moment, she let her mind drift over the day. If she re-lived it enough times, she would hold it forever in her heart, never forget it. The rotund high-voiced Reverend Hubbard Winslow had married them at the stroke of eleven in the morning in Emma Purcell’s parlor. She and Mac had been surrounded by Emma, the Carter spinsters, Mrs. Beattie, the milliner, Sam Weston, Papa, her sisters and Billy.

When Izzie had glanced around the room at the wedding group, she had hoped to see Mamma somehow. It seemed wrong that Mamma wasn’t there with her long silver braid and stiff upright stance. Why should Papa be there, but not Mamma? Mamma’s absence was the only thing that wasn’t perfect about the morning.

Even though there weren’t any fresh orange blossoms to be had for her hairpiece, or a bouquet, Mrs. Beattie made her a head wreath of white silk blossoms and told her she could keep it as a gift. Mac’s voice trembled slightly and his hands shook as he spoke his vows. She had never seen him be anything except confident. His jitters were surprising but endearing. After the vows, the Reverend Winslow kissed her with pudgy lips, then Mac bent over to kiss her, his mustache brushing the skin around her mouth. The minister handed the wedding certificate to Mac and then they all had sweet wine and a special wedding cake made by Emma Purcell and Euphora. It was plump with currants and raisins, flavored with nutmeg and brandy. And butter. It had more butter in it than Izzie had ever seen in Emma’s kitchen.

Even though Mamma would have loved to see her in the pretty white séance dress Papa had given her after she was ill, Izzie couldn’t wait to take it off and change after the wedding party. It was the last four hours she would ever wear that dress. She would shed it, then leave it behind for Clara, for Euphora—for anyone who wanted it. It would no longer be hers. At long last.

After the cake and wine, Emma Purcell, eyes misty gray, presented Izzie with the wedding quilt she and the spinsters had made with Clara and Euphora. It was a lovely quilt of pinks, greens, and blues. It was the only thing in Izzie’s wedding chest.

During the party Izzie watched Papa whenever she got the chance to see if he would take wine. But he never touched it. He looked at it many times, but never touched it. This was the best wedding gift he could have given her.

“
Got some business to take care of. Write us a letter, Isabelle,” he said as he put on his new straw hat. Without another gesture or word, he walked out of the house, the first one to leave the party. She had the feeling she wouldn’t see Papa for some time and it gave her a sense of great relief.

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STILL ENGROSSED IN READING his
Water-Cure Journal
, Mac sat close to her. She gently touched his coat sleeve.

“
The train is thrilling,” she said.

Letting the journal flop onto his lap, he raised his eyes to meet hers, smiled, and shifted toward her.

“
See those sheep?” He pointed out the window. “That’s a bit like Scotland. Fields and fields crawling with the silly things.” He pressed his shoulder against hers. “I came to America with my father when I was seven. Both my mother and sister died in childbirth in Glasgow. Not long after that, my father wanted a new life in a new land. The loss of my mother and sister is how I came to be a physician.”

“
We’ve both lost our mothers, then.” She took his hand and held it a quiet moment. “Tell me again about the Rochester house.”

Izzie had asked three times already on the train ride, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to hear about it a hundred times.

“
Again?” Mac took her hand and laced his long fingers through hers.

“
Again.”

“
Well, let’s see. It’s a white frame house, two stories in the neighborhood they call Corn Hill. We’re just on the edge of it, Edinburgh Street. I couldn’t resist it with the street being named Edinburgh.”

Izzie squeezed his hand. She’d never lived in a neighborhood that had a proper name.

“
Not far, a block or two away, there’s the stately brick houses, and then in another few blocks, there’s some really grand homes. The kings and queens of the Erie Canal live there.”

“
Which direction does ours face?”

“
North and it has a little porch to keep you cool in the summer. Your first task is to furnish it. It’s bare except for our bed and the work table in the kitchen.”

“
I don’t know about purchasing furniture,” she said.

“
We’ll have a meager budget. You’ll find the basic things easily. Rochester has everything there is to have.”

The bed. They’d share it tonight. She clenched her teeth and felt her stomach flutter. It was their wedding night. What would it be like with him? Would she like it? Would it be pleasant? Painful? Would she become pregnant right away? Was she ready to have a child? And another? And another? To scrub, wash, clean, sew, mend, cook, heal, teach, scold?

The train conductor walked by them. “Next stop Canandaigua!”

Mamma never did cook much and never taught her, either. Suddenly she envied all that Euphora had learned from Emma Purcell about housekeeping and cooking. Would she ever have time for anything besides housekeeping, even reading a book? She leaned her head against Mac’s shoulder and gazed out at a distant farmhouse. But at least she wouldn’t be a hoax medium anymore. That was the important thing.

The rocking of the train and the monotony of the churning wheels began to lull her to sleep. She hummed
Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair
, the notes vibrating inside her throat and ears.

Mac began to snore softly. Izzie picked up her satchel and found the copy of Walt Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass
Mac had given to her as a wedding gift and she began to read.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me

as good belongs to you.

Seventeen

WHEN IZZIE AWOKE TO THE SOUND of loudly trilling wrens outside her new house in Corn Hill, Mac was gone from the bed and the room. He wasn’t gone from the house, though. Someone was clanking and rattling in the kitchen downstairs and she assumed it was Mac. That should be her, the wife, rattling around down there, cooking breakfast for him. It was her first married morning and she was failing faster than she could say Mrs. MacAdams.