Charlotte’s Story (28 page)

Her hands were like nervous alabaster birds. When she took a long drag from her cigarette, she blew the smoke out forcefully, as though in a terrible hurry. I’d never seen her so earnest, and it made me wonder if I knew her at all. Did Press really know her? What did he see in her? Perhaps it was her sophistication he craved. I knew, at least, that she had no hesitation about performing a certain sex act that I found tedious if not distasteful.

“Terrified. I was terrified. We weren’t even at home, but were spending the summer at my grandparents’ farm in Arkansas. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t home, and I’m sure that’s why Fancy was so on edge. She just wouldn’t stop bucking and crying. We were both scared to death.” One of her busy hands rested gently against one ear as though she wanted to keep out the screams.

“John jumped off of King and threw himself at us. I had no idea what he was doing, and if I had I don’t know that I could have stopped him. Hell, I didn’t even really see him until he was right there. Right
there
.”

“What happened?”

It was just a flash of a look in her eyes, but I was sure I saw cunning. How could that be? It was quickly gone, and the anxiety reasserted itself.

“He was killed, of course.”

I put my hand to my mouth. “He was only twelve?”

“He didn’t die right away. Fancy swung around and kicked him in the chest, puncturing his lung. She didn’t mean it.” Her cultured voice had slowly been sliding into a drawl as she spoke. “Our daddy wanted to put Fancy down right then and there, as soon as he heard.”

I saw the boy lying in the green grass, broken and desperate for breath. Not knowing what the pony looked like, I imagined it cream-colored and squat, with a firm belly and short legs. Not elegant, but sturdy, its black lips pulled back in terror.

“Sometimes I remember those minutes, when I couldn’t get off and Fancy had knocked him to the ground, and it was all I could do to hold on, praying that she wouldn’t trample John.”

“How did you stop?”

“I couldn’t do anything. She just kept dodging, and then her legs gave out and she started to roll onto her side, which shook me loose. I hadn’t done anything. John hadn’t done anything. Fancy just ran off.”

I waited, and J.C. took a couple more drags from her cigarette. She seemed to be thinking.

“It took him a week to die. They wouldn’t let me see him.”

It was hard to imagine the long-limbed, elegant woman sitting in front of me as a child. Even in her sorrow, there was nothing vulnerable about her. She stood up.

“What I wanted to tell you wasn’t the story of John’s dying.”

“No?”

She bent over my chair, and as she spoke I smelled the menthol of her Salem cigarettes mixed with coffee on her breath.

“He’s with me all the time, Charlotte. He talks to me. He tells me things. What it’s like there.”

“I don’t understand.”

Her shoulders sagged. “Oh, honey. Of course you do. You know exactly what I mean. I can see it in your pretty, pretty eyes.” She touched my hair with the same hand in which her cigarette burned. “John can bring your baby to you. Eva is here, Charlotte, and we can bring her to you. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what any mother would want?”

A log in the fireplace snapped, startling me, but J.C. didn’t move.

Chapter 27

The Séance

Watching Press at the head of the dinner table, J.C. beside him, leaning conspiratorially on her elbow, her lips moving in a faint murmur, I saw how well they looked together. No one seeing them would doubt that, as lovers, they were perfectly suited.

A crescent of black hair slipped from the rhinestone (perhaps diamond?) clip at the side of her head and hung across her cheek. They were absorbed in conversation, laughing and teasing. Press’s face was flushed with wine and his forehead wore the faintest sheen of perspiration. Once, if I had been as close to him as J.C. was, I might have touched my napkin to his head lightly, playfully, leading Jack to joke about my effect on my husband. Was it J.C.’s effect on Press, or the warmth of the fireplace behind him where a bank of not-quite-seasoned wood popped and spat, that made his ruddy face glow? He was smiling. So much smiling. I could hardly bear it. Their smiles were as sharp as knives.

Press had insisted that all the downstairs fireplaces be lighted, though it wasn’t even quite cold enough to turn the central heating on. “Atmosphere,” he’d said with a laugh. “If only we could order up a storm to encourage the family ghosts. Wouldn’t Mother be scandalized if she knew we were going to have a séance?”

It had been J.C. who had broached the idea with him, telling him that it would give both him and me a sense of peace about Eva’s
passing over
. I hated the phrase, but it did speak to me of a sense of Eva being in another, safer place.

I had made sure Shelley knew to keep Michael in the nursery. He was probably already asleep.

“Honey, are you absolutely,
completely
sure you want to do this?” Rachel covered my hand with hers. She’d insisted on sitting to my right even though a proper arrangement around the table would’ve meant that Hugh, who made up six at the table, should be there. “I know I said a long time ago that we should do a séance here, but I was joking, really. It’s just too creepy, don’t you think? I mean, Eva isn’t going to come back, Charlotte. And Olivia coming back would be an even worse idea.”

I couldn’t tell her that they had both returned. I had been a witness.

Rachel, too, seemed to glow along with the candle- and firelight. Everyone around me was vital and flushed. Even Hugh, who was usually so pale, with his light brown hair and boyish freckles. But I was cold, and felt as though all the life, all the blood had been sucked out of me. I sipped my wine, hoping to take on some of its red warmth.

“It’s all in fun. Press says so.” I glanced at Press, who, as though he’d heard me from far at the other end of the table, turned slightly from J.C. and winked—also conspiratorially. Were we all conspirators? And in what? I looked away from him.

“It just seems mean, somehow.” Rachel also glanced toward the other end of the table, where Press had turned back to J.C.

“My mother consulted mediums all the time. She took me with her.” Rachel and I both turned to Hugh, surprised.

“Really? Why?” I could hardly imagine Hugh, with his stiff collars and slightly too-wide ties, as a boy, let alone as a boy who visited mediums. He was a member of the theater group, but rarely appeared onstage, preferring to do lighting and staging. Though he’d lived in the U.S. since he was a teenager, his gentle Scots accent was still pronounced.

“Hugh seems very intuitive,” J.C. had said when she suggested that he be invited. “I’m sure it comes from his Celtic roots.”

“My mother was very jealous. My father died in the arms of another woman when I was just a boy. She was keeping tabs on him.”

Rachel burst with laughter, but when I saw how serious his face was, I was immediately embarrassed for Rachel and him both.

“That must have been terrible for you.”

Then he smiled. “Ah, the medium—Mrs. Strum—she cared nothing for my mother. Only her weekly money. To hear her tell it, my father was dallying with a new dead woman every month or so. I wish I could say it was harmless fun, but she was constantly distraught about it. Rachel is right to laugh. It was a strange deceit, but also cruel.”

“So you’re not a believer, then.”

Hugh shrugged. “J.C. doesn’t seem to be looking for any money. It can’t hurt.” He looked steadily into my eyes, making me feel self-conscious. “Are you expecting to talk to your little girl, then?”

“Is everything ready, Terrance?”

I confess I was relieved at J.C.’s interruption. She was looking in my direction; I turned to see Terrance standing just outside the dining room, in the hall.

He nodded.

We sat around the library’s circular games table, which Press and Terrance had placed directly beneath the chandelier in the hall. J.C. had arranged half a dozen lighted candles near the walls, livening the faces in the surrounding portraits; a single candle flickered in the center of the table, washing the six of us in muted gold.

Rachel giggled and squeezed my hand. “We should be able to have wine while we’re doing this.”

“I think you’ve had enough wine.” Jack said it quietly, but the openness of the hall magnified his voice. “That baby’s going to be born with a cocktail glass in his hand.”

Rachel started to argue, but J.C. shushed us, saying we needed to close our eyes and listen to her instructions. Press breathed a heavy sigh, and I wondered what he really thought of what we were doing. He had to be thinking of Eva. Would she speak to him? Would he ask her forgiveness?

It all felt so strange, as though we’d left Bliss House for some other place. Though the hall was immense, our world didn’t extend beyond the weak light of the candle in front of me.

Then Press’s lips were at my ear. He whispered, “It’s going to be fine, Charlotte. I’m right here.” When he kissed me on the cheek, it chilled me. It was as though he were in a play, acting a part.

How could I continue with him so close? I was no more sure of him than I was of the possibility that our dead daughter would return to us. There was Michael to worry about—I had almost lost
him
as well. And my father.

For the longest time, we sat, silent. J.C. told us to let our minds drift, to acknowledge any worries or sad thoughts and let them pass through us. At first it was uncomfortable to sit there holding Rachel’s small, cool hand in one of mine, and to have Press’s larger hand gripping my other. I could hear the sighs and swallows of everyone around the table. How intimate we were, and how awkward it felt. But soon, indeed, I forgot everyone else and no longer even felt my hands, but was lost in thoughts of my father.
Was he happy? Nonie would be with him at the hospital, making sure he was comfortable and that he had everything he needed. I thought of my old room in our house, with its white curtains and matching bedspread and how I would run my fingers over the spread, counting, counting the rows of tiny knots on its surface with my fingertips, and I was full of wanting for just a few minutes back in that room. How much did I want to run there and be surrounded by the morning smells of bacon and coffee that had reassured me that Nonie was there in the kitchen, waiting for me to come downstairs?

Breathing deeply, I could smell Rachel’s
My Sin
, and I remembered the day we’d ridden the bus downtown to buy it for the first time, and how the saleswoman had sprayed it on both of our wrists, but Rachel was the one who wanted it, telling me that a woman had to have a signature scent, so I had to find my own perfume. The saleswoman had told me that I was a girl for
White Shoulders
if ever she’d seen one.

“Subtly innocent,” she’d said. “In the very best way.”

Rachel had smirked.

I hadn’t worn perfume in weeks because it hadn’t felt right. I’d awakened on the sofa, Rachel staring down at me, and smelled the last notes of the roses’ scent floating through the open garden doors. That was the perfume I would never forget.

Somewhere outside my thoughts, J.C. began to hum tunelessly, but it was a comforting sound. A welcoming sound, like an alien lullaby. I had never imagined something so soft coming from J.C. The song floated through my thoughts, and I felt the tissue of my breasts begin to numb and tighten in the way they did when I was about to nurse one of my babies, and the feeling filled me with melancholy, and I was certain I would never suckle another child.

I can hardly express the depth of that sadness. It was different from the knowledge that I had lost Eva forever. It was like the death of the future. The death of hope.

When J.C. stopped humming, I held my breath.

I wanted to speak, to at least open my eyes, but I was afraid.

“Without opening your eyes, I want you to break the circle and reach for the paper and pencil in front of you. Pick up the pencil and begin to write, letting your subconscious and the spirit world guide your hand. Don’t think of the words or the shapes, but just let the pencil move.”

A part of me felt ridiculous, even in that heightened state of awareness. I was blind, and, except for the scratching of the pencils wielded by the others, I could imagine that I was alone in a very small room. No one could see what I was drawing on the paper. No one cared. I hadn’t felt so free since the last time I’d painted, months before Michael was born. I imagined drawing and painting the animal figures on the ballroom walls, changing the strange and gloomy ballroom into a place of fun. As my hand moved across the page, my lips widened into a smile, and my heart lightened.

By the time I stopped writing, I felt excited and energized, dwelling in a state I hadn’t known existed before. My heart warmed to J.C. and everyone that was close to me. I felt I might even be able to forgive Press. Eventually. I look back on it now and recognize it as the same flush of well-being that one gets from being drunk on good champagne. I have never felt that way again.

J.C. began to speak, asking Jonathan and any spirits who might be around us to be kind, to reach out to us and give comfort to the ones around the table who were in desperate need of it.