The Spirit Room (38 page)

A little nervous
. That was the understatement of the nineteenth century. Her plan to get her hidden dollar and run was foiled. Now she was stuck. How could Papa do this to her? People didn’t always understand him like she did. But now she didn’t understand him either. This thing with Sam Weston couldn’t possibly be anything right. Did other fathers make their daughters do these things? What would Mamma say? What would Izzie say?

She settled into one of the chairs. She was being punished for not making enough money as a Spiritualist. That’s what it was. Papa had relied on her for that. She’d let him down. Now he was punishing her. Plain and simple. That’s all the sense she could make of it. If she couldn’t be famous like the Spiritualists Cora Hatch or the Fox Sisters or Mrs. Fielding, who traveled around and were in the newspapers, she’d have to do this horrible thing. It was her fault for not being good enough with the hoax trances.

Weston sat next to her and touched her hand. “You’ll call me Sam now. I’ve asked you before and you haven’t granted my wish. I insist.”

“
Sam.”

“
Yes. That’s right.” He took off his dark brown bow-tie, folded it neatly, then draped it over the top rung of his chair.

After he told her three or four times how happy he was that she had agreed to be his paramour and how ravishing she looked, he talked for a while about a canal contract that had gone his way. His bid had come in just right and he’d signed the papers that morning. She didn’t understand all of it, except that he expected to make a lot of money. All the while he was talking, he kept rubbing his right knee. Eventually she became so annoyed by this, she wanted to pound his hand with a hammer to make him stop.

When he had finished his story about the canal contract, he mentioned how the room seemed warm enough. He got up and drew her by the hand over to the red sofa where he picked up a folded bed linen and offered it to her like a platter. As he leaned toward her, she smelled his over-ripe apple pomade. A swirl of memory rushed through her. That night. The undressing. Him pushing inside her, hurting her. Feeling a little dizzy, she took the folded white linen and plopped down onto the sofa.

“
If you would lay this over the sofa, it will keep it clean. It is an exquisite piece and we’ll enjoy it more as time goes by, if we keep it clean.”

Looking up into his hollow, pale brown eyes, she rose to do as he requested. She had the oddest sensation, as though she was watching herself spread the white linen over the red silk. The shrouded sofa looked far away and ghostly, not bright and elegant.

She sat on the white linen. Kneeling at her feet, Sam unlaced her boots and slipped them off her feet. Then he took off her stockings. After that, he reached around her head searching for hairpins and began to pry them out one by one until her hair fell around her shoulders.

“
I’m a fortunate man. I have you as my paramour. I’m going to make a pot of money this month. I don’t pray very often, but I’d like to say a nice prayer right now. Would you pray with me, Clara?”

This surprised her. She’d never thought of Sam Weston as a church-going man. She never thought of any of Papa’s friends as church-going. But it was something other than undressing so she nodded.

“
Come down here on your knees by my side.”

She knelt next to him facing the linen covered sofa. She’d never prayed to a sofa before. Of course she knew from Mamma that one could pray anytime, anywhere. It didn’t have to be in front of an altar or a crucifix.

He closed his eyes. She closed hers, then felt his arm come around her shoulder.

“
Dear Father, You have blessed me this day with Your almighty goodness, and I thank You, dear Lord. This young woman, Clara Benton, brings joyfulness to my life. I thank you, dear Lord, for her exquisiteness.”

Then he was silent a moment. His breathing was full and long. Finally she opened her eyes. He was looking at her.

“
I don’t want to say more than that because He knows I am not in church enough to be deserving of His time, but I had to speak to Him as I am bursting with gratitude.” He put his arms around her waist, pressed his body against hers, and kissed her fiercely with thin, dry lips and wiry beard and mustache. He was all teeth and bristle. The apple pomade smell was thick, mixed with a touch of whiskey and soap. She didn’t pucker to kiss him in return, but let him squash her mouth down.

When he was done kissing, he settled back on his heels. “We’ll have splendid times here on Fridays, Clara. Fridays will inspire me. My heart tells me that. Are you ready?”

No, she wasn’t ready. She would never be ready, but she knew that the sooner he got what he wanted from her the sooner she could go home. That’s what she wanted—to go home to seven whole days without Sam Weston. On her knees, she inched her way around to present her back and her dress buttons to him. He began his business of undressing her one garment at a time, starting with her indigo dot and white dress. As he had before at the hotel, he seemed to like the black mitts on her hands and the black neckband and left those on.

By the time she was naked, she had fixed her thoughts on the slats of a single ladder-back chair at the séance table. She could hear his voice, but it sounded like he was talking to someone else on the other side of the room. When he guided her up off the floor and laid her down on the sofa, she was ripped away from the distant rungs on her plain sturdy chair. Turning her head sideways, she dug her mind into the folds of white linen draping down against the back of the sofa. He was up above her pushing her legs apart. Then his prick was inside her, pushing, pulling, pushing. It didn’t hurt quite as much as the first time. She wished with every part of her flesh that she could make him go completely away. She stared at the folds of white until she knew nothing but the three folds of linen near her face, a wide fold coming down from the left and two smaller folds coming down from the right.

When he was finished, she thought he would quietly leave as he did at the hotel, maybe give her another gold dollar. Shifting onto her side and drawing the lower part of the bed linen up around her, she faced the back of the sofa and her three white linen folds and listened to him putting himself back together. She waited for the sounds of the door, the latch, the hinges, but they didn’t come. Instead, there was the sound of the fire iron poking at the coals, then footsteps, then one, two, three, four brisk clunks on the table, then liquid pouring.

“
Wrap yourself in that linen and come sit with me.”

Hell-fire
. She sat up, bringing the sheet up around her shoulders. The fabric felt cool and wet near her hip. In his shirt and trousers now, he was settling himself by the fire with a whiskey. There were two different bottles of liquor out on the table and one empty glass. This wasn’t fair one bit. It was over. He should leave. She’d done her duty. Now he should go. Why couldn’t he just go?

She dragged herself over to the fire, her tongue running back and forth over the raw sore inside her mouth where she had chewed at herself.

“
I put a dollar in the pocket of your cape.” He smiled and looked her in the eye. “That’s your dollar to do with as you please, not your Papa’s.”

“
Thank you, Sam.”

She glanced toward the end of the room where the bandbox was buried under the floor. She’d put it there as soon as she could. Two dollars now.

“
I have something you might like.” He bounced up from his chair and poured from one of the bottles. “It’s Old Peach brandy. It takes a little getting used to, but you’ll like it.” He brought the glass to her.

She stuck a hand out from under her sheet and accepted it. It looked like whiskey, but it smelled like peach jam. She took a tiny sip. It was sugary like syrup, then it grazed the back of her throat with a gentle burn. It was heavenly. She took a bigger sip. Peaches exploded in her mouth. When she took the third sip, it was smooth all the way down, sweet and delicious. Wrapped in her white linen, she sat and listened to Sam as he told her stories about growing up in Philadelphia and his strict mother. By the second glass of Old Peach brandy, she almost forgot he was there. By the third glass the sore in her mouth, and the sore between her legs, was soothed entirely and Sam Weston was miles and miles away, clear across Seneca Lake.

Suddenly he materialized like a spirit visiting from Summerland. What was he doing? He was gesturing at the table. Then he was speaking loudly, “It’s French. French.”

She wasn’t sure what his blurry looking figure was talking about. The French?

The next thing she knew, Papa was waking her up. She was wrapped like a package in the bed linen on the sofa. Her tongue felt fat and her stomach queasy.

“
Get dressed,” Papa said.

Then he left her to go and sit by the remnants of the fire. He kept his back to her while she dressed. She could only fasten the two bottom buttons on her dress, but she wasn’t going to ask him for help so she put on her black cape and bonnet and went over to him.

“
Here.” He picked up a small bottle from the table and handed it to her. “Perfume from Sam.”

That’s what Sam had been saying. French Perfume. She snatched it from him and slid it underneath her cape.

In the cold fog, Papa escorted her home. Unable to walk straight, she didn’t feel like herself, thudding and weaving along. Everything looked shadowy and strange in the glimmer of the gas streetlights. Thank goodness Papa was with her.

He led her to her bed in the Blue Room where she crawled, boots and all, in next to Euphora. Room spinning round her, she was just drifting off to sleep when she heard her little sister’s voice. “You smell like whiskey.”

Twenty-Nine

THE VOICES HAD INTRUDED ON IZZIE’S SLEEP many times during the autumn and now winter had come. Shivering was the worst part of sitting alone in the parlor night after night. Even with a wool blanket around her in her rocking chair, Izzie was cold at three and four in the morning. Sitting up in the light of a burning oil lamp was the only way she could silence the voices. She’d wake to the rattling of voices, heart pounding, slither out of bed, tiptoe downstairs, light her lamp, and after a while, settle down enough to read one of her books or the
Rochester Union and Advertiser
that Mac brought home, or sometimes one of Mac’s
Water-Cure Journals
. It wouldn’t be long before she’d read every word in print in the house.

The coal fire was set, black chunks piled neatly, but she dared not light it. Not only could they not afford to use the extra coal, but Mac would then certainly surmise she had been awake and downstairs during the night. She didn’t want him to discover she was regularly assaulted by voices. She drew her icy hands inside the gray blanket. If only she could talk to someone, to Clara. She was at a boiling point. She’d write to Clara tonight and tell her she’d visit as soon as Mac could spare her help on the Upper Falls Water-Cure. But she had promised this too many times. Mac had always found some urgent deadline he wanted her for—receiving something, meeting someone, writing to someone, rushing to the bank, always, always, urgent and so she had not taken the rail cars down to Geneva.

She walked to the bookshelf where she kept a small stack of writing paper, pen, and pewter inkbottle. She’d tell Clara about the voices, just Clara and no one else.

“
What are you doing awake down here at this hour?”

Izzie yelped, spun toward the voice. In the doorway, Mac stood lanky and sleepy in his brown robe.

“
You scared me.”

“
I’m sorry. What is it? Are you restless?” He came to her and stood near.

Her mind raced for a second. She wanted to tell him the truth. Locking her jaw a moment, she waited for the impulse to pass. Clara. She’d tell him about her concerns for Clara again, not the many, many nights of coming down in the dark.

“
Yes. I couldn’t sleep. I came down to write to Clara.”

“
But this isn’t the first night. You’ve been gone from bed often.”

Even though he hadn’t let on, he had indeed missed her in bed. She nodded.

“
Are you worried about something?”

Yes, that I am a lunatic like my mother
, she wanted to say as she looked away from the warmth of his brown eyes. “I am worried about Clara. You know I promised her I’d return if things were bad with Papa. I made a pact with her, Mac. I shouldn’t delay any longer. I should see for myself what is going on. I’ve let you hold me to the work deadlines too long.”

That wasn’t a lie. Every night, once she turned off the damn voices and had finished worrying about herself, she’d worry about Clara and Billy and Euphora.

“
It’s a sense I have. Something is wrong,” she said. Reaching up toward his face, she smoothed his bushy eyebrows with a forefinger. They were always messy when he woke. “Go back to bed. I’m going to write Clara and tell her I’m coming to visit.”

“
When?” He shifted his weight back a little.