The Spirit Room (11 page)

“
Dear husband, you are afraid you will not raise a strong son without me.” Clara’s voice quavered softly.

Camp waited a few ticks of the clock. “Yes.”

“
You will. He will be a fine man, a kind capable man, like you are.”

A tear escaped his eye and disappeared into his long sideburn. Clara lifted her head a moment, kissed his hand gently, then pressed her face to his hand again. Now Clara’s other hand, still held by Weston, was visibly shaking, but it didn’t appear to be Clara’s doing. It seemed to be Weston’s. Izzie looked over at Weston’s other hand held by Mrs. Mullen. It too was shaking. He was overcome by Clara’s daring. Her little sister had better finish up here. This was too much. She had one man trembling, and the other crying. It was brilliant, but terribly risky. These antics could end badly. Izzie glanced over at Papa. He was swaying and looked like he was half in heaven and half in shock.

It was extraordinary that Clara didn’t lose her concentration on Camp. She didn’t look at Weston or his shaking hand. Without letting go of Camp’s or Weston’s hands, she stood up again and at that very moment, ding dong ding. The clock.
Lawk-a-mercy
. The clock chimed. Mrs. Mullen gasped. Barnes chuckled.

“
Isaac, I must leave.” Clara lured everyone back to her. “Clara isn’t strong enough to carry me to you any longer. Come back to the Spirit Room again.”

Camp looked like a poor lonely dog, longing to be patted on top of his head. Releasing the men’s hands, Clara hit her forehead on the table with a stiff bump.

“
Clara is exhausted,” Papa finally said. “There won’t be any more communications tonight.”

That was her line, Izzie thought. Why had Papa taken her line? Suddenly, she felt there was a spoon stirring her mind like a big kettle of soup. Papa rocked from side to side. Everyone was looking over at Clara and swaying. The table, the windows, the walls, all swaying.

“
The red rose on my pillow, Isaac.” The woman’s voice was clear, faraway and near at the same time.

Izzie looked around at the swaying seekers. Who spoke? It wasn’t Clara. It wasn’t Mrs. Mullen. Hands tingling, Izzie covered her ears as she felt herself slide from her chair towards the floor.

Nine

BILLY SPLASHED HIS WAY ACROSS THE CREEK and handed Izzie the wadded, soaked cloth. Water splattered onto the ground as she unfolded it. It was from the hem of Mamma’s everyday dress, from Mamma’s own homespun flax. Looking afraid, Billy pointed north along the lakeshore, “That way. There’s a capsized sailboat, but no sign of her.” He spun around and ran ahead to where he had just pointed. Izzie followed.

The shocking cold of wading across the freezing creek sent chills up through her legs, up into her chest and arms, then her head and neck. Drawing the cloth to her face, she breathed into it, but it wasn’t Mamma that she smelled—it was the lake, its fish, its murky underwater plants.

“
Show me where! Show me where!” She tried to yell to Billy, but the words stayed locked in her throat.

She arrived at a cove just behind Billy. An overturned sailboat’s hull rocked and slapped in the lake’s waves. It’s broken mast and sail floated near the shore twenty feet beyond them. There was no sign of Mamma except that more of her dress, stuck to the rudder, drifted in the water.

Billy called out, “Mamma, are you here?”

Izzie forged into the lake toward the hull, reached into the icy water, grabbed the side of the boat and, with all her strength, hoisted the hull far enough to look underneath. Nothing. She let the boat crash back down into the water. Glancing north, she tried to see farther along the shore, but pine trees and shrubs blocked her view. She began to slosh and run through the shallow, chilling water.

She tried to call, “Mamma! Mamma!” but she could only eke out a whisper. She crawled through a tight opening in some shrubs and arrived at another small inlet. At the far end was Mamma’s shape in the shallow water, face down, in her gray dress. Her long hair floated around her head like a silver fan.

“
Mamma!” Again, just a faint whisper.

Heart pounding, Izzie splashed her way to the body and knelt in the water. Grabbing Mamma’s dress near her shoulders, Izzie turned her mother over and propped her against some low rocks. Mamma’s face was blue and white, swollen, empty.

“
No, Mamma, no.”

Weeping, Izzie pulled her mother to her and embraced her. “Don’t be gone. Don’t be gone.”

Then Billy came and helped carry Mamma the short distance to the bank. They gently laid Mamma down on the oak leaves and pine needles, then both cried over her for a long, long time until all around them was quiet.

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IZZIE FELT SOMEONE FIRMLY GRIP HER WRIST and lift her arm away from Mamma. She jerked her hand back from the grasp and snapped open her eyes. A tall, slender man with wavy dark hair was sitting there, right there on the bed next to her. Who was he? Next to her, Euphora lay asleep struggling to breathe. At the foot of the bed, Mrs. Purcell stood watching them. A sad sense of seeing Mamma dead and swollen lingered in her heart as she looked around at everyone in the room. Her face was wet with tears and she was hot and sweating into her chemise, her throat agonizingly sore. Then she remembered being dizzy during the spirit circle and being carried home in Sam Weston’s carriage.

She was in Papa’s room now. When Papa and Clara got her back to the boardinghouse, she was on fire, and they found Euphora shivering in bed. Papa and Mrs. Purcell shuffled both her and Euphora into Papa’s bed, closed the door, and told Clara and Billy they couldn’t enter the room.

This tall man who had awakened her smelled of lemon, mint, and something else. A chemical of some kind.

“
Are you a minister? Are we going to die?” Her throat burned as she eked out the faint whisper.

“
No, you both must have lucky stars about you. You are not going to die, not right now anyway and I’m not the minister, I’m Doctor MacAdams. Mrs. Purcell called for me night before last and I have been back to see you twice.”

She had no recollection of his visits.

“
I was going to take your pulse just now. May I have your wrist back?”

As she lifted her hand and offered it to the doctor, she tried to swallow, but the pain was so severe she stopped before fully gulping. From his blue waistcoat pocket he retrieved a watch and stared at it while he gently pressed his fingertips into the soft side of her wrist. His long brown eyebrows curled up toward the ceiling and his square chin was marked on the right with a purple scar.

Mrs. Purcell went to the washstand, picked up a towel, then sat near Euphora and placed the cloth across her forehead.

“
You both are going to survive and be fine,” she said.

“
You’re a spiritual medium, I hear,” the physician said as he studied his watch. “How long have you and your sister been Spiritualists?”

“
A few months.” The words cut her like a knife twisting inside her ears.

He let go of Izzie’s wrist and returned the watch to his pocket.

“
You’re much better. Your pulse has slowed a bit. Your temperature is a little lower. How does your throat feel?”

“
Terrible.”

“
Putrid sore throat disease. You two really are very lucky. I’m leaving Mrs. Purcell with Winslow’s Baby Syrup. The morphine in it will soothe your throat and help you sleep. She’ll give you that as I have prescribed, but the most important thing is water. You and your sister must drink two gallons every day until you are well. And hot wet compresses on your neck. Mrs. Purcell will do that for you every half hour. She’s already been doing it since you fell sick and added her own compound tincture to the cloths— capsicum, myrrh, lobelia, and I don’t know what else.” He glanced at Mrs. Purcell. “She’s in charge of that. I want you to drink the water. I should think it will be three weeks or so.”

Putrid sore throat disease. Diphtheria. They might have died. Children died of it all the time. She remembered a few winters ago one family down the street back in Homer losing two little boys.

She looked at her sister. “Is she really going to be all right?”

“
She’s asleep now, but she was awake earlier.” Mrs. Purcell leaned over Euphora and patted Izzie’s hand. “Go ahead and rest. I made a big pot of red pepper and golden seal tea. You are to drink it weak and gargle it strong. That’s my own remedy and the doctor agrees to it.”

“
She knows far more than I do.” Doctor MacAdams chuckled and stood. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

Bag in hand, the physician strode across the room and ducked slightly to make it through the door. As he pulled the door closed, he nodded at Mrs. Purcell and then was gone.

<><><>

A FEW DAYS LATER, Izzie could swallow without excruciating pain, but she was too weak to walk across the room. She hadn’t seen Papa since the night she fell sick. Mrs. Purcell told her that as soon as the physician told Papa what she and Euphora had, he took off and hadn’t been back since.

The tall physician came by twice more and asked if they were drinking all of the two gallons of daily water. He took Euphora’s pulse, then hers both times, but on the last visit, Izzie thought he held on to her wrist a very long time.

He said, “I hear from Mrs. Purcell you read all the time down in her library.”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
Perhaps when you are well, you can tell me what I should read.” He patted the back of her hand, then stood to go.

Izzie laughed nervously. What could she possibly know about books that a physician didn’t know?

<><><>

FOR THE NEXT WEEK, Mrs. Purcell took care of her and Euphora like she was their own grandmother, attending to them all day long. Just when Izzie was feeling miserable and starting to long for Mamma, Mrs. Purcell would appear with another glass of water or beef broth or some red pepper, golden seal tea to drink. She’d hold a pan for them to spit into and made them gargle with different concoctions, some with salt and cayenne; some with sage, vinegar, or honey. She’d put flannel cloths on their necks, some with her special compound, others with sweet oils and mustard seeds.

She kept their feet warm with plain hot cloths as well, and she washed them right in the bed with towels and bowls of lukewarm water. She emptied the chamber pots many times each day. After the second day of offering the Winslow’s Baby Syrup, she took it away. “You might start thinking you need it even when you don’t,” she said. It had been wonderfully soothing and Izzie did want it again, though she didn’t ask for it.

For one long week after that, whenever she wasn’t drinking water or one of Mrs. Purcell’s teas, Izzie lay thinking about the voice she heard before she fell off the chair. “The red rose on my pillow, Isaac.” Was it delusion caused by fever? Was it the spirit of Jane Camp? Was it the beginning of lunacy? Was it like the “Susan” she heard at Mrs. Fielding’s spirit circle? Would she hear more? She wrestled with these questions until she was too tired to worry any more about them. Then she would sleep. She decided one thing though, while she lay there for days and days. She would find a way to put an end to being one of the famous Benton Sisters as soon as she could.

Ten

BEFORE IZZIE FULLY RECOVERED HER STRENGTH, Papa had returned and insisted they conduct spirit circles every night except Sundays. Most often, Papa let Clara mimic a trance. She was quite an actress and even if people didn’t believe her, her twirling and swooping and trembling enamored them. Afraid of hearing more voices, Izzie’s throat was tight for the duration of every spirit circle, but several weeks went by and, to her great relief, she didn’t hear anything odd.

Izzie found out from Mrs. Purcell that Papa was not intending to pay Doctor MacAdams for his visits. He’d said to Mrs. Purcell, “He’s just a quack like all physicians. It was you that healed Isabelle and Euphora with your compresses and teas and gargles. We don’t owe that quack a dang penny.”

When she heard this, Izzie was angry and was ready to fight Papa for the money to pay Doctor MacAdams, but as luck would have it, that very night Papa missed the spirit circle and Izzie collected the money from the seekers herself. When Papa wasn’t there, Izzie had strict orders to put the money in a box in Papa’s room as soon as she got home. But this time, Izzie had enough money for Doctor MacAdams’s fee and she decided that, in the morning, she would pay the physician before Papa came home from wherever he was.

At breakfast, Mrs. Purcell told Izzie she could probably find Doctor MacAdams at the Geneva Hygienic Institute. And so, with a gold dollar gripped in her fist, Izzie set off the short distance to Pulteney Park and the Hygienic Institute.

Surrounded by a painted-white wooden fence, the town green, Pulteney Park, was a square oasis kept free of the cattle that were often driven through town. At the western edge of the park, the Geneva Hygienic Institute, standing three stories high with pillars running from top to bottom, looked like a southern plantation home.