The Spirit Room (21 page)

“
My shimmy?” She pointed at her undergarment draped across the bed’s brass foot rail.

Smiling sweetly, he brought it to her and placed it on the quilt over her lap. “I’ll give you instructions on the douche now, then we’ll dress and go into town. We’ll shop for necessaries for the kitchen and a piece or two for the parlor. You need a reading chair, my darling.”

He leaned over and kissed her, his mustache bristly around her lips, his breath warm and smelling of coffee. She reached for his shoulders, letting the bed sheet fall down to her waist.

He stood upright. “Or perhaps we could postpone town for a while?”

She nodded, the warmth of a blush flooding into her face.

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IZZIE SPENT THE REST OF THE MORNING embracing, kissing, and caressing Mac, his body so much longer and narrower than hers, and discovering that he knew a good deal about women’s sensitivities. He had aroused her gradually, off, then on again, for what seemed like hours until she felt a crescendo of waves spread up through her back, chest, and throat, and down through her legs all the way to her toes. She released something between a sigh and a groan that rumbled on like a joyful growl. He couldn’t have learned all these things from advice guides, she thought.

He rolled away from her and removed the French Male Safe made of India rubber, the second one he had used. Did he have dozens of these tucked in his trunk? She had known about the Safes because Papa used to get them by mail for five dollars a dozen and years before, on more than one occasion, Clara and Billy had opened the packages and played with them not knowing what they were.

Propping himself up on his elbows and grinning at her with crinkles around his eyes, he said, “I’ll show you the water douche now.”

“
You want me to do it now? Wasn’t your French Safe enough?”

“
Yes, it should be, but the sooner we start you on the water method the sooner I can disband with the Safes, except during your most receptive times. The Safes impede my pleasure considerably.”

“
And when are my most receptive times?”

“
Twelve days after your menstruation ends.” He got up and moved back to the foot of the bed where the small box still lay.

Izzie felt her jaw slacken. Her mother had never told her any of this. If Mamma had lived even a few more months, she would have met Mac, would have known the man she married. And if Mamma had lived longer, she could have offered Izzie marital advice, mother-daughter marital advice—not something from a book or a doctor, or even a husband-doctor. Her heart ached a little at these thoughts. Still, it was hard to imagine Mamma’s advice would have been as thorough as Mac’s.

Maybe someday she would have a daughter and teach her everything she knew about life. Her daughter would go to school, to college, maybe be a physician like Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to study at Geneva Medical College.

Mac laid pieces from the polished walnut box out on the quilt. A long rubber tube with a bulb inserted in its middle stretched across the bed like a slithering snake digesting a rather large prey. Near it was a short, slender piece with a rounded tip, about the length of a pen.

“
Do you really want children, Mac? I mean, eventually?”

“
Of course.” He pumped the bulb a few times, air hissing out the tube ends. “I had this made to my specifications, bulb and tube in one piece. I’m thinking of applying for a patent.” He looked around, scratching the back of his neck. “I’ll go down and get water.”

After he’d left, Izzie crawled into her shimmy. The bright sun was gone from their eastern windows, but the light was clear and the sky blue outside. It was afternoon already and she was ravenous.

If Mac’s prevention system worked, she wouldn’t have children for a while. She sighed. She was only eighteen. There were many years ahead to have children. She could keep up the household and still have time for other things—for Rochester, neighbors, friends, books. She could go to hear lyceum lectures, concerts, maybe Jenny Lind or the Christy Minstrels, and theatre productions and exhibitions. And Mac said he might want her to help somehow with writing a book. It would all be far more exhilarating than the school she never went to.

Glancing down at the syringe, she leaned over, picked up the bulb, then squeezed it in her hand. It sucked and hissed. Mac’s introduction of preventing conception did seem abrupt. Shouldn’t a man and woman discuss these things in a thorough manner? The timing of having or not having children surely should be something she as the wife should have a say about. He had simply presented this experiment to her, hadn’t really asked if she thought it was a good idea or not. She compressed the bulb again and held it. Hearth and home and the raising of children. That was her sphere, wasn’t it? As she released the bulb, air drew back in to inflate the oval shape. Still, she had to admit she liked the idea of postponing children.

When Mac’s footsteps got close on the stairs, she replaced the syringe to its spot on the quilt.

“
Here we are.” He appeared with a pitcher and a large bowl. “I got into my trunk.” He set the bowl and pitcher on the floor and picked up the rubber tube. “There’s nothing at all to this. The clamp prevents any water from getting out before you are ready. You snap it closed like this.” He flipped a small metal lever on the tube between the syringe and the bulb. You need only suction and gravity. You want the water higher than you, that is, higher than your birth canal.” He cleared his throat as he looked around for a high place, but they didn’t even have a washstand yet. “I’ll hold it up. You operate the bulb. Moderate pressure. Now stand over the bowl.”

As she stood in place, he picked up one end of the tube and put it into the pitcher of water, then handed her the syringe end.

She laughed nervously. “You’re quite odd.”

He lowered the pitcher and tube. “Am I? I’m sorry.” At first his eyes looked disappointed, but finally he smiled and laughed with her.

“
All right. All right. But if you must stand there with the water pitcher, please turn away. A young woman needs a shred of modesty on her honeymoon. She held up the rounded syringe. “This goes in all the way?”

He nodded. “But not to the point of significant discomfort.”

“
When I know you better, I’ll ask how you know all these things. Don’t tell me now.” She held up her palm toward his face fearing that he would begin rattling off explanations. “Look that way, toward the windows.”

When he had craned his neck away from her, she spread her feet on either side of the bowl, slid the smooth shape inside her, and leaving it settled there, took the bulb, compressed it, then released it.

“
I forgot to say one more thing.” Mac said without looking at her.

“
And that would be?”

“
Hold the syringe in place, otherwise the water pressure may bring it out.”

She opened the clamp and pressed the bulb closed again. The water was cool inside her, then dribbled down into the bowl.

“
There, I’ve done it.” She started to withdraw the syringe.

“
Excellent. Now you must irrigate three more times.”

“
Three more times? What a nuisance.”

“
Not as much as an unwanted child.”

“
I thought you said you wanted children?”

“
No, I mean for those in general who do not want another child, this is a minor nuisance in comparison.”

“
If it works,” she said as she inserted the syringe again.

He started to turn toward her, but she glared at him and he looked back toward the windows.

“
I believe it will work. The water will flush the zoosperm out. I don’t believe there is a need for all the elements people use in douches such as alum, baking soda, vinegar, white oak bark.”

As she continued to squirt chilling water into herself he named off a list that was so long she was sure he was going beyond fact: borax, metallic salts, bichloride of mercury, lactic acid, carbolic acid, pearlash.

Dripping over the bowl, she completed the fourth dousing. “Is there anything women don’t put in themselves?”

She removed the syringe and sat on the bed.

Mac turned and faced her, beaming like a bright footlight. “That is precisely my point. It is all unnecessary. Water is all one needs, lots and lots of water. It is pure and gentle. These other things can irritate and damage a woman. Water is the answer to perfect health in every way. It washes away whatever one desires to wash away. I am convinced of it.”

It was an interesting idea, she thought. “Mac, I think we need to go into the city and purchase a washstand so we have something to put our water on.”

He stepped toward her, bent over and kissed her lips slowly, tenderly. She felt aroused all over again, then pulled away from his face and brushed her fingers down his long sideburns.

“
Can we take the omnibus? I’ve never ridden one,” she said.

“
Of course.”

Eighteen

SEATED IN THE CHAIR by the foot knocker and bell ringer, Clara felt downcast. Elbows on the table, she propped her chin with her palms. Sam Weston was there, but where was everyone else? They couldn’t all be late. Was it because Izzie was gone? Yes, of course that was it, she thought. The seekers weren’t showing up because they only wanted to see Izzie.

“
It looks as though I am the only one today.”

Sam Weston had his hands spread flat on the séance table as though he would join up the spirit circle right then and there. Papa stood by the mantle grinding something around in his coat pockets.

“
No one sent messages to cancel. Let’s wait a while.” Papa looked at the clock. He sounded all right, but he was down in the mouth. It was six in the evening, a half hour after the appointed time.

Weston nodded, tapped all ten fingers on the table, and then fell still again. Papa paced to the windows, looked down at the street, then back to the mantel, then windows, mantel, windows, mantel. Nine times. He was twitching nervous. Someone had better come soon or he’d blow like a canon.

Even though Clara had been terrified for the first two or three séances without Izzie, even though her hands quivered like divining rods when she used the alphabet sheet, in the end, she had done well enough. Papa was right there behind her doing splendiferous things with three new hidden bells, tinkling them at just the right moments, and he had started something else since Izzie had gone. He’d say things like, “Silence now while Miss Clara achieves receptivity,” or “please be patient while Miss Clara enters her trance.”

Mr. Isaac Camp had come several times to hear his departed wife Jane and they were expecting him again this evening. Everything she tried was like magic with Camp. When he first came and was terribly sad, Izzie said he was like a lonely poet, or was it a dog? Either way, he got happier and happier each time Clara’s Jane said something kind to him. And that was just her, just Clara. No Izzie. Papa said, “I’m proud of you, Little Plum.” Proud. That was sweet summer cherries.

And not only that, all the seekers who had been at that circle when she tried her very first trance as Jane Camp had returned again and paid the increased price—seventy-five cents. Even cranky old Barnes, the skeptic. It was fun being Jane Camp. Clara, as Jane, could always make her husband Isaac cry, laugh, or get a sentimental look in his pale blue poet dog eyes.

Weston tapped his fingers again. The table wasn’t a dang piano. Did he think it was a piano? Of course Sam Weston was there nearly every day. He was lonelier than Isaac Camp. Didn’t he have any other family or friends or neighbors besides her and Papa and whoever showed up at the séances? And he stared at her too much. If he would just talk to Papa more about their business or whatever it is they did together and talk to her less, that would suit her fine.

“
You look lovely in the white séance dress this evening, Miss Clara.”

“
Thank you, Mr. Weston.”

He always said that. Every time. That or the compliment about her brown hair being so shiny and elegant or the one about her complexion being pure as milk or sometimes all the compliments at once. It was right around the time Izzie left that he started up with the flattery. He had already been bringing the flowers to her a few times each week, but then he added the honey-fuggling. She had to admit, it was nice at first. She blushed when he said these things, but now it was becoming tiresome. When he lingered at the end of the séances and she escorted him to the door, she’d try to guess. Which one would it be today, Mr. Weston? Dress, complexion, or shining hair? Two out of three times, she’d be right. Were all grown men this predictable or was it just that she knew him so well by now?

She had advised Billy, “When you get older and want to compliment a woman, make up something new each time. Otherwise you will become boring to her.”