The Spirit Room (39 page)

“
Next week, or the one after, I think.”

“
But our schedule. I need you here. We must open in three months. We’ve discussed this over and over. Each day is critical. Each hour is critical.”

“
I’m tired of hearing that. Two days, Mac. I’ll go one day and come back the next. I have to see my sister.”

“
She hasn’t mentioned any more confrontations with Billy in her recent letters. I’m sure Clara would tell you forthrightly if your father was making them miserable.”

“
He’s always made us miserable. I need to know whether he is harming them physically.” Her stomach sickened at her words.

Mac’s eyes widened. “But she doesn’t write that.”

“
No.” Turning toward the shelf, Izzie picked up her writing materials. “I must go, Mac. There’s nothing more to say.”

“
Please, dear. At least finish getting the institute’s kitchen ready. The stoves and sinks are to be delivered Wednesday. The pantry supplies must be ordered, the utensils, all of that, and we need the vegetarian recipes collected.” He gripped the top of her shoulder. “I can spare you then.” She twisted enough to get him to release her. He reached his hand toward her again and stroked her hair.

“
How long do you think all that will take?” she said.

“
A couple of weeks, no more. Now come back to bed. You’re chilled.”

The bed would still be warm. He would be warm. She glanced longingly toward the foyer and stairs. But she couldn’t. She’d fall asleep in that sweet comfort and then the voices would come mumbling again and hound her.

“
I’ll write to Clara first, then come up.”

“
Come now. You can write tomorrow by the fire.” He took her arm and tried to nudge her along.

Once again, she twisted free. “No, I want to write now.”

His brow furrowed. “Suit yourself, then.” He turned his back and, in the dim light, his tall figure disappeared through the parlor door and his footsteps softly thudded away up the stairs.

<><><>

THE NEXT NIGHT, heart thumping, Izzie bolted up in bed, covered her ears with her hands, and pressed hard. The voices had never sounded this angry before. “Listen now, listen now,” a single male voice clearly rose above.

“
No. I won’t.”

Mac stirred.
Damn
. She had wakened him. Slipping from the bed, sweat bursting at her temples, she found her robe where she left it every night on the straight back chair by the door, and descended the stairs. Using her heel to feel the edge of each step, she made he way down the pitch-dark stairwell.

“
I won’t listen. I won’t listen. I won’t listen,” she whispered on her way down.

In the parlor, she groped for matches next to the oil lamp on the marble tabletop. When the lamplight broke the black, the voices faded, almost whining as they dissipated. She continued her chant. “I won’t listen. No voices.” In a few moments her heart slowed. She stood alone in the cold parlor, shuddering in the damp of her sweat.

Outside the front windows, the night glowed. She walked to the front door, opened it, and stepped onto the stoop, closing the door behind her to preserve whatever warmth was left inside the house. Illuminated by the light from her parlor windows, snow flurries drifted down. Goose bumps ran up her back into her neck. Across the street, at the Mead’s house, something clicked, breaking the snowy silence. Then there were scuffling sounds, a door shutting, and male voices. She could just make out Mr. Mead and a Negro couple emerging onto the street. Mr. Mead handed the man something. They shook hands, then the couple walked west.
Lawk-a-mercy
.

Izzie bundled deeper into her robe. Mead was part of the Underground Railroad after all. Turning to go back inside his house, Mead stopped and appeared to look toward her windows. Although it was hard to know if he could see her on the stoop in the shadow of the door, she waved slightly. Even if he couldn’t see her, perhaps he could sense her approval. He didn’t respond, but gazed after his charges once more, then disappeared around the side of his house.

Suddenly her own door opened behind her and Mac stood silhouetted in the parlor light.

“
What the devil are you doing out here? It is bloody freezing. You’re in your night robe, for the love of God.” He clutched her arm, dragged her inside, and slammed the door. “What is it?” He snapped his fingers three times in front of her eyes. “Are you awake?”

She slapped his hand away. “Of course I am awake.”

“
I thought you might be in a state of somnambulism.”

The back of Izzie’s hands prickled. “Like my mother, you mean.”

He was silent a moment. “Perhaps.”

She felt her face crumple up as she tried to hold back tears.

“
Come, let’s light the coals in the parlor.”

At her rocker, he picked up the gray blanket, wrapped it around her shoulders, then eased her into the chair. Her weight set the chair rocking. Squatting at the fireplace, Mac struck a match to the kindling under the coals, then bent over and blew on the small flame. Taking the bellows from its hook, he rose and began to pump air at the fire.

“
You’re down here every night. How long has this been occurring?” He kept his head down and eyes on the flames.

Locking her knees, she stopped her rocker.

“
A good while,” she said.

“
It’s not occasional as I thought at first. This is why you are tired all the time now, why you are looking haggard.” He puffed with the bellows, sending a spurt of orange up into the coals. “Did you think I wouldn’t ever notice?”

“
I didn’t want to disturb you.” The truth was she didn’t want this moment to come, didn’t want his finding her out, his interrogating her.

He shifted away from the fire and onto a wooden footstool near her. “I may be able to help you. That is, if you tell me what troubles you. In case you hadn’t noticed, I am a physician.”

His kindness swept into her. She wanted to tell him about the cage she lived in, but if she did, the voices would be reality, her insanity would be truth. She took a long slow breath and let go a sigh. She was tired to death, her mind, heart, body, everything worn down. She didn’t want to drudge through another day pretending all was well, another night reading and shivering alone in the cold parlor. Mac fidgeted with the bellows. Izzie began to rock slowly. There was the excuse of worrying about Clara. She could talk to him about that again and it was certainly true. Where did worrying about Clara and worrying about her own lunacy start and end? These twin worries were slowly eating away at her soul like wood being devoured by a swarm of ravenous termites.

“
I’m going to sit here,” he said. “And wait until you are ready to tell me what troubles you, until tomorrow, or the next day. I want to help you, Isabelle.”

The first waft of warmth from the fire reached her face and hands. She rocked faster as she silently rehearsed what to say to him…I’ve heard one voice one time…I almost thought I may have heard a voice that wasn’t real, but it may have been the neighbors…I’m not like Mamma because the voices don’t really talk to me. They just mumble on and on. I can shut them up anytime I want…It’s just nerves.

She stilled the rocker again. The fire was beginning to comfort her. Stretching a hand toward the back of Mac’s head as he sat facing the fire, she ran her fingers lightly down his wavy hair. He was a patient angel waiting for her confidence, offering his help. And he was a physician. He was the one she spoke to about Mamma in the first place. She was being a fool. If there was anyone who could help her it was Mac and here he was at her side asking if he could. He wouldn’t put her in an asylum, would he?

The mantle clock chimed five times. Clenching the edge of her blanket tightly, she shoved back and began to rock and to weep quietly.

“
Will you promise me something?” she asked.

“
Anything.”

“
You won’t stash me away in an asylum?”

His shoulders rose and fell as he sighed, but he still didn’t turn to face her. “I promise.”

She looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “I hear a crowd of voices every night. They wake me up. I come down here and light the lamp. Then they go. It’s the only way I can shut them off.” Her voice shook inside her throat as tears streamed down.

“
When did it start?”

“
September.”

“
That’s months! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“
I was afraid.”

“
Of me?”

“
Of myself. That I’m insane.” Her chest began to heave, her heart flutter.

Mac turned to her, braced his hands on the rocker and brought it to a standstill. His dark eyes were serious and tender.

“
You are not insane.”

“
What am I then? I am. I’m like Mamma. I have to admit it. Some night I’ll hear the voices clearly and they’ll lead me out into the black night and kill me.”

Then she sobbed for what seemed like a long while. Mac stroked her hair until she finally calmed.

“
What do they say?”

“
Nothing. They aren’t clear. It’s like Corinthian Hall before a lecture when it’s full of excited people. Indistinguishable voices together, high, low. Sometimes angry, but not always.”

He took her hand. “Do you believe they are spirits as your mother did?”

“
If they were spirits, they wouldn’t torture me like this.”

“
We can rid you of them. The water-cure can do it. I am sure of it.”

“
I don’t see how, Mac. This isn’t a pain in my back or a disease of my liver. It’s my mind that’s gone awry. I’m in terrible danger.”

“
Even a year ago I would have given you laudanum to calm you and make you sleep, but I’ve changed my views. I have seen amazing cures, heard about incredible cases that have all been resolved with nothing but pure water.”

His grip on her hand tightened.

“
It’s hard for me to believe that a bath can expunge these voices.”

“
Harmony. It can bring you harmony. It’ll take time, undoubtedly months. I’ll get advice from Russell Trall, from the Taylor brothers. I’ll write them all.”

“
But you won’t tell them the advice is for me.” She wiped the tears from her face with her free hand.

“
No. No, of course not. We’ll make history. It’ll be a groundbreaking cure. I’ll take meticulous notes on the methods I use and write up the results for the
Water-Cure Journal.
” He was smiling, sparkling, the way he did when he was excited about innovative ideas.

At least she would not be alone anymore whether he succeeded or not. She would not be alone with the voices.

“
All right. Let’s try,” she said.

<><><>

THE VERY NEXT MORNING AFTER IZZIE HAD CONFESSED to Mac about the voices that had been haunting her, she was with him in the back yard preparing for her first water-cure treatment. Mac held one end of a soaking wet linen sheet twisted like a rope. Izzie held the other. With aching cold hands, she rolled one way, he the opposite. Water streamed down in beads onto the dirt path that led to their kitchen garden, now hard with winter and dusted with snow.

“
Don’t twist too much. We want it wet, just not dripping wet.” Mac pulled back, stretching the sheet tight.

According to Mac, the water-cure regimen would heal her mind. He wanted her to start right away—thirty minutes wrapped in the wet sheet every morning, and again, every evening in addition to a cool plunge bath after each session. The idea of lying still like a mummy enshrouded in a clammy wet sheet and covered by a couple of wool blankets twice a day would be uncomfortable at the least, and dreadfully time consuming. When would she get all her daily tasks done?

“
Are you sure I won’t be too chilled?”

“
Perhaps a little. We don’t want the house to be cold when you do this. When the Upper Falls Water-Cure building is further along, you can take the treatments there, and it will be a lot simpler.” Mac smiled at her. “There. That should do it.”

They went into the parlor where Mac had spread out the gray blanket from her chair, and another spare one, by the coal fire on the floor. He directed her to fold the wet sheet in half length-wise with him, then they placed it on top of the blankets.

“
All right then, take off all your clothing and lie down.”