The Dark (35 page)

“The midnight sun came out over the northern crest of the great berg, kindling varioulsy coloured fires on every part of its surface, and making the ice around us one great resplendency of gemwork, blazing carbuncles, and rubes ad molten gold … In this we beat backward and forward, like China fish seeking an outlet from a glass jar, till the fog caught us again; and so the day ended.”

Elisha Kent Kane
,
ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS IN SEARCH OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN

“A brawl between rival crews that began at the basin and spilled into the Four Corners in 1829 was certainly seen if not heard by the citizens of South Fitzburgh. So were the transgressions of one Erastus Bearcup, a steersman arrested for shouting obscenities at ladies on a passing boat.”

Paul E. Johnson
,
A SHOPKEEPER’S MILLENNIUM:
SOCIETY AND REVIVALS IN ROCHESTER
,
NEW YORK, 1825-1837

“W
hy-ever so disgruntled, Mrs. Mellon?” my patient asked the instant I arrived this day.

I did not think my moods were so well-writ on my countenance, and told her this fact.

“They are. Now, where-ever have you been?”

“Why do you ask? Am I a dawdler? A laggard? A johnny-come-lately?”

She replied no, I was as punctual as ever (a queer thing to say considering she had no timepiece). “But your hem, Mrs. Mellon, it’s sopped with wet, and you have a tired gait, thus you must have been walking longer than usual, and you look, as I said, disgruntled, as one does when an errand is thwarted or goes awry.”

I reminded myself to compose my features better before arrival. “I’m not disgruntled. I’m rag and bone tired. I have trooped up and up these tenement stairs twenty-odd times now. And I am amazed, to be frank, that I have not yet keeled over from exhaustion. And if you must know, I’ve been to the Spiritualist Society.”

“The Spiritualist Society? Why in tunket did you do that, you busy-bird? I asked you not to. I did!” She thumped her fists as she was wont to do when in a temper.

“Oh, don’t get all-afret, they refused to lend any help. Not a name. Not a nickel for your funeral, not even advice on the rites of you Spiritualist sorts.” I should add that I usually abide closely by my
patients’ requests, but her tellings had given me a scattered sense, an uncertainty even, of the specifics of my duty. And then I could not get that sorry bird of yesterday out of my head. Indeed I had slept not a jot from hearing over and over (in my imaginings) the soft thud as the little creature hit the window, and from visioning the benumbed and helpless fashion the bird hunched on the ledge over vasty space.

She looked over, her expression rueful, even contrite. “I’m not terribly surprised they refused to help, given all my confessions and accusations and all my tell-alls. And then, of course, there was the recanting, which confused all and sundry even further. And so, what did the Society’s gatekeepers have to say of me?”

I busied myself with portioning her medicine. “This, that and the other.”

“Come now, I am past concerns, tell me ‘the other,’ at the least.”

I banged down her medicine bottle. “Ah, so now you want to hear from me, the busy-bird?”

“Yes, and I apologize, I do, for calling you that.”

“Then, then, if you must know, they said that you lie. They warned me not to believe a syllable you utter. A beet-faced man, he called you a sot and said you would do anything for a drop of laudanum. What gentleman would say such a thing? Then this woman, oh, she was homely as a stone fence, she sneered that you were vengeful and that ‘dear’ Leah had only been trying to help her wretched sisters. And this woman, she insisted, too, that your marriage to Dr. Kane was ever in question and that you only wanted to wallow in his grand fame and be celebrated alike to him.”

“Damn-it-all, my marriage to Elisha was true and legal. We were—”

“And I said it was a nonsense religion, your Spiritualism. All-up superstition. One may as well believe in fairies or hobgoblins.”

“I see and—”

“And then I said good-day cool as an icebox, and told them that
Mrs. Elisha Kent Kane
and I would manage cracking-fine on our own.”

My patient looked past me to the garret vestibule, at the Edison bulb crackling there. “Elisha,” she said, as if the man himself had strolled in, and at an expected hour.

Maggie sets aside Leah’s letter on the tortoiseshell tray. The owner of the Webb hotel, a gimlet-eyed man with slick-curled hair, brought this tray up to Maggie himself, along with a breakfast of devilled eggs and champagne and an invitation to a Philadelphian soiree that Maggie turned down with the aloof politeness she has honed over the last year in response to all manner of male impertinence.

Maggie takes a drink of champagne, says to the letter, “Now, Leah, as for that Mr. Partridge, I can only hope Kat
does
pry an
apology out of him.” After all, Maggie thinks, Leah was the one who went on about the “greater good” in Cleveland. And this, along with a recent influx of aggrieved spirits has made both Maggie and Katie realize that the needs of the living and dead do not always match up like a pair of store-bought shoes. The living most often want succour, yes. But the dead? They often want justice these days, or at least contrition from the living, an apology or two. And, really, Maggie wonders, why can’t Mr. Partridge just apologize to that burned-up boy, even if he wasn’t to blame for the boy’s death? An apology would show that the man has heart, that he is capable of insight and humility, that he is more than just a moneyed prat. And then, who knows? That poor little ghost might just leave him be.

She finishes her champagne and her devilled oysters, then rises and looks about the table for a napkin; none are in sight, and so she discreetly wipes her fingers on the tablecloth instead. She would have used Leah’s letter for the task, but her sister’s writing paper is too heavy and thick for wiping. Maggie smiles ruefully at this thought, then opens up her book of German verbs. Her first clients are not due until the afternoon, and thus she can enjoy some peace and quiet here at this elegant suite, the bridal suite, as it happens. “Not that a lady need be a bride, with a groom or husband or, well, I mean. Ah, your key!” Such is what the hotel owner stuttered when Maggie and her mother booked in two weeks ago. He roved his gimlet-eyes about Maggie’s person, slicked down his already slick hair. He clearly had no idea where to slot Maggie in his understanding of women. She socializes with upstanding citizens, but she is not a member of high society. She “works” and earns money, but she is not a lowly governess or factory girl. She is celebrated and applauded, but she is not a brazen actress or chorus girl. Oh, Maggie could see him silently puzzling out the conundrum. She didn’t care, not much anywise. She is accustomed to dwelling, as the spirits do, in some nebulous, unnamed stratum.

Maggie looks up as Mother, accompanied by several whom-evers, bustles into the suite. “They’ve just come on a social call, Margaret dear. They know we’re not taking clients until after one o’clock, don’t they?”

They do, and are happy to wait so that they are the first in line to question their dead relations.

“I’ll ring that nice owner and ask him to bring us up some more oysters and tea cakes,” Mother tells Maggie. “Yes, and you continue studying your French.”

“Not French, I gave up on French,” Maggie reminds her, and opens her book and shivers in her dress, an out-of-season white muslin trimmed with illusion (she had meant to wear her brown sateen, but it had been soiled by a claret spill).

“And no more champagne, Maggie Fox. Leah says it wreaks havoc on your constitution, doesn’t she?”

“All the time,” Maggie grumbles, and takes up the book and sits by the suite’s one arched window, in the nimbus of its October light. Warmed now, she peels the undersleeves of her white dress off the pale length of her forearms, then forces her attention to her German verbs, determined to find a pattern within their shifting, unpredictable rules for the past, present and future tenses.
Werde sein. Wirst sein. Wird sein
.

The air thins.

She does not look up. Spies him, instead, out of her eye’s corner. He stands in the doorway as if pole-axed—a slight, handsome man with startlingly blue eyes and extravagant whiskers, and dark hair that hangs to his collar in bohemian fashion. He is obviously of high station, given his fine, all-black suit. And he is obviously staring at her. Maggie often endures such blatant masculine stares; thus she has taken to considering her “self” as dwelling in a private room. She will exit this room when she chooses, no sooner. But this man’s stare is a battering ram. Maggie looks out the arched window to the Philadelphian street, its squeezed-high houses, the red-gold palette of its few trees. The sky is an impossible cerulean blue; the same shade, she realizes, as the eyes of this presumptuous man.

The man apologizes to Maggie’s mother. Claims he has made a mistake. He is looking for the spirit raisers.