The Spirit Room (6 page)

Mrs. Purcell frowned at Mamma’s empty seat for a lickety split and it made Clara picture Mamma there for a moment. She felt a pinch in her heart.

Untying her apron behind her back and removing it, Emma Purcell glared at Izzie. “I’ve got a substantial amount of food here. I made two apple pies. I wish you or your father would tell me when he and Billy won’t be here for a meal.” Her voice shook a little. Mrs. Purcell was going to find out sooner or later that Papa liked to wander off, and since Mamma died, his liquorizing was getting much worse.

Since the night of the checkers game Papa was drunk many more times, and each time, Billy had to fly out and stay out in the cold. On top of that, it looked like Papa was returning to his old ways, staying gone for a night or two or three. Things were unquestionably on a downhill slide around here, Clara thought. What if they got booted out of the boardinghouse? Then what?

Everyone’s head turned toward Izzie standing near her chair. It was dandy not to be the oldest. If Papa wasn’t around, Izzie always had to answer the questions and make the decisions.

“Papa left town this morning to look into a business arrangement.”

Izzie was good at being the oldest. She had that sure-as-rain tone and knew not to mention certain things, such as Billy and two other boys being chased from the back door of a saloon yesterday by the sheriff for some betting scheme they had going on with the men inside.

“What about Billy?”

“I’m not sure. I apologize for both of them, Mrs. Purcell. Your meals are wonderful. I think we are the luckiest family in the world to be staying with you.”

Mrs. Purcell’s face relaxed.

“Well, it’s just red flannel hash. We can have it again tomorrow.”

The two silver-haired Carter spinsters leaned their foreheads together and said something to each other with their nods and eyes. They were always doing that. Clara still didn’t know which one was Mary Carter and which one was Jane Carter. She had simply started calling them both Mary Jane to herself and if she asked them something she’d say, “Miss Carter” and one or the other would answer.

Mrs. Purcell left the table, put her apron on the hook on the back of the kitchen door, and came back to sit in her chair. She had a nice grandmotherly shape—a bit plump, like she’d made ten thousand apple pies over the years and had a good part in eating them. She picked up a large white bowl heaping with sauerkraut and passed it to the Miss Carter on her right.

“Euphora, I’ve spoken to your father. You are going to help me with the cooking from now on. I’ll teach you how to cook and you’ll assist me with whatever needs to be done in the kitchen.”

Red hair down her shoulders, nose pinched, Euphora blinked several times, then looked at Izzie who nodded in agreement.

Euphora gave her freckle-faced grin. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Well, you’re eleven and that’s quite old enough to learn. You gain something from it. I gain as well, a fair exchange. I’ll teach you to be a domestic. You’ll have a skill.”

Then Izzie, who for some darn reason still wasn’t sitting yet, stepped away from her usual seat, placed a hand on the top rung of Papa’s vacant chair at the end of the oval table, and Holy rolling Moses, she sat down erect and broad-shouldered like it was her own place. Clara clenched her teeth. What had come over Izzie? She was acting like the Queen of Geneva.

“Dear, how long will your father be away?” One of the Mary Janes raised her silver gray brow, then squinted at Clara.

“He always comes back,” Clara said, “even if he takes a while.”

Clara looked past the Mary Janes to the windows and lace curtains to the winter night behind them. Not always. He didn’t come back last summer after his gristmill burned to the ground. Looking down at the bits of potato, red beet, and stringy meat piled high in a discombobberated mound, Clara felt her hunger dwindle.

That’s why they were here in this house with these spinsters and Mrs. Purcell. That’s why they had to travel from Homer for an entire month with that rickety old horse and that creaky buckboard wagon in the pouring rain. She shivered as she recalled the chilling downpour soaking her like a piece of laundry in a tub. Papa would have come back to them in Homer if they’d given him half a chance. They left Ohio too soon. Mamma was too impatient. He would have come back. He didn’t truly run away. It was all the confusion about his gristmill and the insurance and his partners.

“He’ll return soon then, won’t he?” The Mary Janes both smiled. The one who spoke had a small black mole on the side of her chin with a few spunky white hairs growing out of it. She decided this one was Mary. The mole would be her marker. Mary mole. She could remember that.

Izzie was pushing the hash around her plate in that polite way she had, but she probably wasn’t hungry either, thought Clara. Izzie never cared about Papa being gone, so it had to be that she was missing Mamma. Clara took a bite of her hash. It was warm and soft in her mouth, but she didn’t want to swallow it. She chewed it for so long that it became thick like glue. She had no choice. She gulped it down.

“I find it interesting that a man, who doesn’t allow his daughters to go to school because he thinks it is worthless for girls to spend their time with books and doesn’t allow a son to go either, because a boy’s place is work, would pay money to give his daughters special Spiritualism lessons.” Mrs. Purcell shot the spinsters a look, as if Papa not letting them go to school had been talked about in private, maybe more than once. “Clara, why don’t you tell us about the lessons you two had this week with that famous medium?”

The Mary Janes nodded and chimed, “Yes. Yes. Did you levitate anyone?”

Suddenly, all eyes turned toward Clara. She took a deep breath and sat up.

“We had four lessons. Then Mrs. Fielding and her assistant, Anna, had to go to Rochester. They’re on a tour of nine cities and towns. In the first lesson, Mrs. Fielding explained the usual ways spirits communicate.” Clara enjoyed the way the large word rolled off her tongue. “They speak through things around us. They tip tables, ring bells, rattle things, or rap or knock on something hard.” Clara knocked on the table for effect.

One of the Mary Janes chuckled and drew a hand over her mouth. Clara took a bite of hash and swallowed it quickly.

“Could they tip this big table?” Euphora asked.

“Maybe. It depends. Mrs. Fielding said when mediums are just beginning to develop their skills they sometimes have to fix things to happen in case the spirits aren’t able to perform as hoped. Even if they are advanced, sometimes tipping things just doesn’t go right.”

“Clara, we swore not to speak of the mechanics,” Izzie said.

Double rot
. That was right. She’d forgotten.

“Isn’t it all a hoax?” Mrs. Purcell asked.

“No, it’s not. Mrs. Fielding said you just can’t overdo the effects because it hurts the reputations of all Spiritualists everywhere. She said one has to be reasonable, that’s all.”

“That’s enough about it, Clara. We promised,” Izzie said.

“Mrs. Fielding says it’s only a hoax if they go too far like The Davenport Brothers.” Everyone was watching Clara, not Izzie. Izzie was pure sour grapes tonight. “The Davenports make fiddles, guitars, and banjos fly about the room and the instruments play music by themselves.” Clara danced her hands in the air. “Mrs. Fielding says they’re downright liars and hoaxes. One day they’ll be found out and it will be bad for true mediums like her and Anna.”

“How do they make the instruments fly?” Euphora asked.

“They darken the room and use special lightweight ropes and pulleys. Helpers hide in the room and operate everything.”

“Do you think Mrs. Fielding and Anna are true mediums, Isabelle?” No-mole Jane asked.

“I don’t know what a true medium is exactly,” Izzie said.

Then Izzie got the grumps all over her face and started stirring her food around again. She didn’t want anyone asking her anything. That was darn sure.

“The next lesson we learned how the spirits speak through letters and words. Anna showed us something from Paris called a planchette. It’s shaped like a heart, has a pencil sticking out of it, and little tiny wheels on the bottom. If a medium touches it properly, it writes on a paper beneath it.” Clara demonstrated with fingers suspended gently over an imaginary planchette. “I hope we can get one. Mrs. Fielding says it is hard to get them. But, you don’t have to have one. You can use an alphabet and just let your hand drift over the letters until the spirit tells your hand to stop.”

Clara could feel how curious everyone was. The more she spoke, the more excited she got remembering Mrs. Fielding’s words and demonstrations. She glanced at Izzie to see if she was going to rile, but Izzie was staring at her hash and seemed to be off in her own sad thoughts.

Clara stood up next to her chair, sliding Billy’s empty seat away so she had room.

“There’s deep trance and light trance. In a deep trance, a spirit can take over the medium altogether and speak with her voice.” Clara closed her eyes. “I am here to visit my great great granddaughter, Euphora.” Clara opened her eyes half way to see Euphora laughing hard, then opened them all the way and laughed along with the ladies. Izzie still had the grumps and was now scowling at her. “But I don’t think I’d like that to really happen to me. And in a light trance, it’s more like you are listening to the spirit and reporting back what they say.”

She fully closed her eyes again. “Euphora, your great great grandmother is here. She says “hello” and something else…” Cocking her head and pretending to listen, Clara waited a moment. Everyone was silent. “She says you will travel the world.”

The Mary Janes applauded.

“Anna Santini can do both kinds of trance. Izzie asked her if she ever worried about being insane. But Anna just gave Izzie a kiss and told her hearing spirits was absolutely the most wonderful gift a person could be blessed with. She said, ‘Izzie, never for one minute in my entire life have I worried about sickness of the mind. My purpose on this earth is to help people reunite with their loved ones.’ ”

“Clara. That’s enough,” Izzie said.

Izzie looked strange, like she was about to vomit or freeze to death. She rose and excused herself politely, saying she was not feeling her best. As she turned to leave the table, she took one last look at Mamma’s chair then left with a rain cloud over her head that Clara could almost see.

“And was there more?” Mary mole asked.

Trying to ignore Izzie and her rain cloud, Clara went on describing the third and fourth lessons, how she and Izzie could become true mediums, how they’d behave with the seekers, how they could go into trance by draining their minds and breathing deeply. While people finished eating, she told everyone how to organize seekers in circles using the principles of electricity with men positive and women negative, how to use trances for large audiences, and how to help just one person at a time, and finally, how some mediums could look inside a person’s body and actually see their ailments.

She’d been standing and talking for a long time and no one had budged or spoken or even looked away from her. They weren’t even eating their hash. So she went on.

“During the final lesson, Mrs. Fielding did nothing but talk for two hours without stopping. I thought she was practicing for her lecture in Rochester. She strode about the room.” Clara began to march around the table, imitating Mrs. Fielding and trying to make her voice vibrate. “Spiritualism is the only religious sect in the world that recognizes women as the equal of men. Mediums communicate the divine truth because they can hear what the spirits say to them.” She stopped behind the Mary Janes. “Every time Mrs. Fielding said ‘divine truth’ her voice quivered like that. Divine Truth.” She continued around toward Mrs. Purcell. “Spiritualism itself is proof of the immortality of the soul and because the proof is spreading far and wide,” Clara shot her arms straight up, “...the entire world is on the cusp of a new era.”

Clara returned to her seat and tried one more time to make her voice quiver like Mrs. Fielding’s. “Divine Truth!”

She bowed. Everyone was smiling like sunrises at her.

“After the lecture, Mrs. Fielding gave Izzie a journal called
The Spiritual Telegraph
and told her to subscribe to it when we made enough money and Izzie said, ‘Even if we believed in Spiritualism, wouldn’t Clara and I be just like the Davenport Brothers if we practiced being mediums but had no gift?’” Clara pretended to be Mrs. Fielding again. “‘Not if your gift is forthcoming, my dear, and you are preparing for that day.’“

“Mrs. Fielding told Izzie she could come to New York City and observe their circles and maybe even go on a tour with them someday. They didn’t offer all that to me.”

“But you said they thought you might both be true mediums didn’t they?” Mary Mole asked.

“Mrs. Fielding said if I used my intuition, I would be able to more or less know what the spirits
might
say rather than actually hear them say things. She said I would be good at that.” Clara grinned. “Like a gifted actress.”

“Yes, I believe she was right about that,” Mrs. Purcell said. “Would anyone like apple pie?”