The Spirit Room (67 page)

“
Damn it, Papa! Damn it! No!”

He grabbed her wrist and yanked her arm up between them. “Don’t ya dare talk to me like that. I’m your Papa. I came here to make things right.”

“
I won’t go with you, Papa.” Trembling flooded through again, but she stared right into his sad stone-gray eyes.

His grip tightened. It burned. She felt her wrist might break in two.

“
Tell me where Euphora is.”

The doors crashed open. Mary Johnson, pointing a small derringer pistol right at Papa, and with a crowd behind her, marched in. Hannah, Abbie, Lettie, Carlotta, and Mr. Singer, Hannah’s bigamist, were all there, staring right at Papa.

“
Mr. Benton, these are my witnesses in case something happens with this gun I’m holding.” Her voice and hand were steady.

Papa dropped Clara’s wrist and stepped back.
Hell-fire
, was Mary Johnson really going to shoot him?

“
Wait,” Clara said.

“
Mary Johnson kept her eyes on Papa. “You have two choices, Mr. Benton.”

“
You must be the madam.” Papa smirked, looking at her right down the barrel of the little four-barrel gun and ignoring the others. “This is my daughter. I got rights to my daughter, not you.” Papa took one half-step toward her.

“
I said you have two choices. You can leave now and never come to my house again. Because if you do, I’ll shoot you down as an intruder. Or you can stay a few more minutes and leave with the police who will take you back to the sheriff in Geneva. I understand he’s looking for you.”

Papa looked away from the gun at Clara. “I meant what I said. Come with me. Please, Little Plum. You’re my sweet luck.”

“
No, Papa.”

“
Come on. We’ll get Euphora, find the gold, and have an easy life, not like here. This life will ruin you, your good looks, your sugar plum spirit.”

Clara shook her head. Papa quickly glanced around at everyone watching him, then grabbed his soaked hat off of Mary Johnson’s desk and shoved his way through the group. As he left through the front door, the sound of the rain pouring down burst in.

Mary Johnson let the gun down. “All right everyone. That’s over now. Get back to what you were doing.”

Clara ran to the office windows. Head bent against the rain, Papa crossed the street and walked briskly to the north. Two policemen, with Lettie’s husband James, were on their way toward the parlor house from the south. Papa was getting away. He snaked his path through passers-by on the sidewalk until he was out of sight. She sighed. Good. Now go find your gold, Papa. She hadn’t told him where Euphora was and if he came back, she still wouldn’t tell him. Mary Johnson’s voice drifted in. She was at the front door telling the policemen that the man had left and no one was hurt.

Papa had his train tickets. The gold would draw him like a magnet. Clara looked down the street where he had disappeared. He wouldn’t be back. She’d never see him again, maybe never in her life. She was no use to him now that she couldn’t make money for him or give him Euphora.

“
We heard everything,” Hannah said. “He said Izzie was looking for you. Will you write her husband now and find her?”

“
Yes. Yes.” Clara embraced Hannah and rested her face a moment on Hannah’s shoulder.

“
We still have time for breakfast and the matinee,” Hannah said.

Taking Hannah’s arm, Clara walked with her to the kitchen. Abbie, Carlotta, and a few of the other girls were prattling on wildly about Mary Johnson and the pistol. The room smelled of sausage and coffee as before, but now also baking bread and cinnamon. The girls circled Clara and began asking a hundred questions. Was she scared? Was she sad? Did she know Mary Johnson had a gun? Where did her father go? Would he come back?

Meanwhile Lettie set out coffee and tea and cinnamon rolls and sausages on the big table. Even though she wasn’t hungry, Clara stayed with the girls in the kitchen a long while talking. Eventually Hannah suggested that they lie around in the rear parlor and forget the hack and the theater because the rain was so dreadful. They drifted into the parlor and sprawled and lounged, some girls dressed, some in shimmys and robes, and they continued asking Clara about her father and mother and Billy and Izzie and Euphora and Sam Weston and John Reilly and Mrs. Purcell and Mrs. Beattie. The afternoon passed with Clara sitting snuggly on a sofa between Abbie and Hannah. Clara patted her friends’ knees and, in turn, they patted hers as she told stories and more stories about spirit circles and burning gristmills and her mother’s voices and her brother’s bruises and then how her father got her to screw Weston and Reilly for money and how she longed for her sister Izzie to come back and save her from it all, but finally how Mrs. Purcell helped her run away.

Then, after some time, the light grew dim and Mary Johnson came in and clapped her hands sharply. “Time to get dressed for the evening, girls. Get upstairs now.”

Forty-Seven

“IZZIE!” MAC’S VOICE BOOMED OUT
from down the hall.

Alarmed, she shot up from her rocker, dropping the new issue of the
Banner of Light
.

“
Izzie, Izzie. It’s a letter from Clara. In today’s post. A letter from Clara!” Arriving at her door with envelope in hand, he skidded to a stop.

Breathless, Izzie tore it from him. It was in Clara’s tidy hand. The return address said “Clara Benton, 75 Green Street, New York, New York.”

“
New York City, Mac. I was right.” With shaking hands, she tore open the flap of the envelope, slipped the paper out, and unfolded it. She read aloud.

June 15, 1860

Dear Izzie,

I have not written you before this because I was hiding from Papa and was afraid he would find me and Euphora too. I couldn’t take the chance that, if you knew where we were, he would find us by pressing you for our whereabouts. He found me anyway, though I still refused to tell him where Euphora is living. I believe Papa has now gone to Pike’s Peak in Colorado in search of gold. Euphora is living not far from me and is a domestic for Mrs. Purcell’s cousin, Mrs. Hogarth. I see her most Sundays. I assume you have heard about Mrs. Purcell’s terrible death and that the Geneva Sheriff suspects Papa. We are doing the best we can on our own here and at last we are free of Papa.

Papa told me you were here in New York City looking for us. I suppose I am glad you didn’t find me. You will be ashamed of me when you learn how I have made my way, but there were things I had to do. I will tell you about them someday.

Please write to us. Have you had any news of Billy?

Your sister,

Clara

Izzie let her hands fall. “What did Papa do to them, Mac? What horrible thing could he have done to them that made them hide like this?”

Mac took Izzie by the arm, settled her in a chair at her table, and sat next to her.

Izzie glanced over the letter again. “What did he do?
My God
. She sounds so old and distant. How can she think I would be ashamed of her? My own sister... ‘At last we are free of Papa?’… I didn’t protect them, Mac. I didn’t protect them.”

“
She’s safe. They’re both safe. You finally know.”

“
I’m going to go there and bring them back.”

Mac leaned back in his chair, his brown eyes steady on her. She gritted her teeth. Was he going to prevent or discourage her again? He pulled his watch from his waistcoat and studied it.

“
Excuse me, Doctor MacAdams.” Mac’s aide stood in the doorway. “Mrs. Monroe is waiting in your office for her consultation.”

“
Tell her I’ll be right along.” He returned his gold watch to his waistcoat. “You can make the next train. I’ll wire the Fieldings. You’ll bring both girls back here right away.”

Izzie threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. “I’ll have my sisters again.”

He smiled. “They can have the room at the back on the third floor. Now, go pack your bag. I’ll take you to the depot.”

“
What about Mrs. Monroe?”

“
I’ll take care of her. Go get your things.”

<><><>

THE TRAIN SEEMED TO CRAWL. The time between each town was like a long day. Every time the engineer slowed the train, Izzie asked the conductor if something was wrong. What had Papa done to them? What could he have done? But it was over now, whatever it was. She’d get the girls and bring them home with her. Finally. It had been an entire year since she got married in Geneva and left. They’d be more grown, perhaps a lot more grown after surviving on their own in New York City.

The brakes squealed against the tracks. Another blasted stop. What had he done to them? The longer the ride took, the more furious she became.

But the girls would be safe with her now. She imagined Clara and Euphora home with her at the Upper Falls Water-Cure. They could help her in the gardens, with the vegetables, in the kitchen. Euphora could do some cooking for the patients. She imagined the girls teasing and confiding in each other in the little room Mac had in mind for them, but most of all she imagined them safe from Papa, together under the same roof and not on the streets of New York City or in an orphanage or on an Orphan Train heading out West. When Izzie had been searching for them, she imagined them for too long in the grim places she had looked.

Now finally she could replace those pictures with new, gentle ones of her sisters at the Upper Falls Water-Cure.

That evening, when she arrived in New York City, she hired an open carriage and set right off for 75 Green Street. The air was thick and hot and smelling of horse dung. Even though it was nearly nine o’clock, the streets were still busy, and being June, it was just dark.

As her hack arrived at 75 Green, two men were entering the door. Piano music poured out, then cut off as the men disappeared inside and the door closed.

A fancy party? That seemed odd for a boardinghouse. Izzie fumbled for coins in her reticule to pay the driver.

“
Are you a new girl here?” The driver, standing on the sidewalk now, reached for the coins, then offered her a hand to help her down.

“
You mean work here?”

“
Yeah, for Mary Johnson. Girls say she’s one of the good madams.”

Izzie landed on the stone walk, her knees buckling. She caught herself with the help of the driver’s firm grip. “It’s a parlor house?”

“
Sure, lady. Where did you think you was goin’?”

“
I thought it was a boardinghouse. This is 75 Green Street? You’re sure?”

He nodded. “You want me to take you somewhere else?”

Izzie stood for a moment looking at the door and the bright light shining from the windows.
Clara was in there
. She was there, just a few feet away. The sweaty crook of Izzie’s elbow prickled. Was she a prostitute for this Mary Johnson?

A gentleman in a stovepipe hat trotted up the steps and knocked briskly on the door. Once again, the black door swung open. A brunette woman in a bright blue dress opened it. “Hello, Mr. Anderson. Lovely to see you.” The piano music, laughter, and loud voices poured out. Then the heavy door clunked shut. Cigar smoke wafted down to her. She’d come back in the morning when the sporting gents were all gone.

“
Yes,” she said to the driver. “231 West Twenty-Fifth Street. The name is Fielding.”

The driver climbed back onto his seat, snapped his whip, and the gig set off. Izzie stiffened against the jostle of the seat. Could it be? Clara, a prostitute? Maybe not, maybe she was a maid. One of the carriage wheels hit a rut in the stone street and wrenched the vehicle. Izzie’s neck jerked. Of course, Clara could be a prostitute. In the months that Izzie had searched for her sisters, she saw what often became of girls who had no family.

It was all her fault. She should have taken the girls from Papa long before. She should never have left them with him with Mamma gone.

The street was vibrant with people, omnibuses and carriages. They passed a lamplighter climbing down his ladder. With each block the horse trotted along, Izzie felt Clara getting farther away from her.

“
No! Turn around. I want to go back.”

The driver cranked around. “What’s that?”

“
Go back.”

He hauled back on the reins and steered the horse to the side of the street. He twisted around on his seat. “Now you say you want to go back to the parlor house?”

“
Yes. Please.”

“
You sure, ma’am?”

“
Yes. Yes, I’m sure. Please take me back there.”