Balm (10 page)

“Ist
everything
Ordnung
?”

The barkeep extended a hand. Michael took it, the man's cool skin inching back and forth, reptilian. His hairline formed a crooked M.

Why had Michael come to this place? For relief. But he'd found none.

“Ja,”
he clipped.

He put on his coat, walked outside. A hand on his arm. A woman. He wrenched himself from her grasp. She lost her balance and stumbled. He suspected the barkeep had sent her out after him. The street was empty. Earlier, he'd sent his driver home. Somewhere beyond the buildings stretched that impenetrable dark lake.

He squatted in the alley. His feet planted on the dirt floor, he leaned into the wall, succumbing to the fog of alcohol in his head.

I
T WAS
M
ICHAEL
'
S SUGGESTION THAT HE ACCOMPANY
Sadie during her entranced talks. He had been faithfully visiting the parlor for several months, and she'd grown to trust him. At least he was respectful, avoiding her eyes when he could. Besides, the spirit was his brother. If anyone could help her, Michael could.

While Michael spoke with the audience, Sadie peeked out from a side room, blowing at her upper lip to cool her face behind the veil. Madge stood beside her.

“It sure is a lot of them,” Madge whispered.

“I think I'm going to be sick.”

“I'd be scared, too.”

Michael spoke over a din of noise. “Is there anyone here who would like to select the topic for tonight's lecture?”

The doctor paced back and forth, picking man after man. One, two, three. You there. Gentleman in the brown hat. You with the red
beard. You. You. In the back there. Down they came, settling into two rows of chairs set out front. Ten men conferred, murmuring. Their words floated in the air. Politics? Religion? Literature? Finally, the botanist among them convinced them to settle upon his specialty for a topic. The man would confirm the veracity of her facts. He'd taught at Oberlin. His books were well known. The others assented, clapping each other's backs as they anticipated victory. It struck Sadie that none of them cared about speaking to loved ones on the other side. They only wished to celebrate her demise, prove her fraudulence. She was an actress, and they would be the ones to expose her. The selection of a jury ensured that her speech was not prepared.

Sadie's business had flourished. Her residence just north of the river allowed those who lived south or west to seek her out. They need only cross a bridge. Many paid her. Others kissed her hands, blessing her, fingering wooden rosaries around their necks as they prayed their gratitude. Others left gifts: fruit, coffee, potatoes. They came to hear a word from the fallen, widows hoping anxiously to hear from dead husbands, mothers bringing children to hear a father's voice. Although spiritualists had existed before the war, Sadie discovered that the time generated an even greater thirst for her services. They had marched into her parlor, searching uncertainly for the right words, the right memories to uphold their families, the widows carefully appraising their prospects, this new, untested autonomy like an ill-fitting dress. Within the vast city, the manlessness of wartime had lain them bare. Thousands of casualties meant that death had become more than a personal grievance: it required an entirely new way of thinking. Scores of mediums claimed to physically manifest spirits: pale faces, arms appearing from cabinets in dark corners. Others used planchettes. Some rapped out messages. Sadie gained prominence as a trance speaker, her voice offering something more than the others. The bereaved hungered for the specificity of words, assurances from the mouths of loved
ones. A succession of the aggrieved stumbled out of their nests and answered her call. Many came to her parlor in widow's attire, relaxing at the sight of her own dress, the central portrait of Samuel in his uniform. At first the women told her little, sat erect in the chair as if to say:
Prove it. Prove to me you are what you say
. And Sadie responded, first with a hesitancy of her own, and then with more successes. One woman lamented upon sitting at the table that she had lost four sons to the war. Another woman lost her first husband to cholera in '54 and the second to the war. Before she spoke, Sadie saw the woman's fate plainly written on her threadbare clothing. Impoverished by the second husband's death, destitution was imminent.

Go talk to the landlord. He will allow you more time.

Although she still thought of herself as Sadie, she became known as the Widow. She rotated her black mourning dresses and was never seen in public without a veil. While walking down Booksellers' Row or shopping on State Street, it was not uncommon for people to stare. The city was constantly regenerating, but newcomers quickly learned of her reputation. “Why, that's the Widow!” a seasoned city dweller might knowingly declare. Even those who swore never to pay her a visit, loudly proclaiming she did the work of demons, stepped out of her path. Some even compared her to that famous medium, Cora Hatch.

Yet while her presence drew respect in public settings, the social invitations ceased. She was ostracized from the society her wealth had previously afforded. In her own neighborhood, women refused to greet her or look her in the eye. Dozens of people visited her parlor each week, but Sadie was lonely. She missed home, especially her mother, and she often wondered how a city with over a hundred thousand people could feel so empty.

“When I can't figure what's wrong with somebody, I just go all quiet inside,” Madge whispered.

“Then what?”

“Then I wait. Sometimes you got to wait on it.”

The room quieted. Michael's voice echoed. “I introduce to you—the Widow.”

He held her hand as she emerged, guiding her to the lone chair on a platform at the front of the room. He whispered he would be right there if she needed him. Her veil cast the room in a haze. She pulled it back to see them better, this room of skeptics. When he left her side, she turned, thinking they should end it right then. She could see Madge's face in the shadows. The sight comforted her, and the strange noise coming from her stomach slowly settled down.

“I—I . . .” It was Sadie speaking, but they wanted James. She thought of her mother, the daily walk into that place of sickness, her tools tucked into a bag. The men in this hall did not want to be healed with letters. This was a tour of conversion. First, they required a glimpse of the miraculous, a painless proof. To bring forth the dead was to remind them of something dark, so instead they chose the natural world.

Her eyelids fluttered within her reddened face. She tapped her feet, shaking. Her movements slowed.
Wait on it
, Madge had said. Sadie breathed slowly, in and out.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Private James Heil and I was a soldier in the Fourth Illinois Cavalry of the United States Army. I died during a victorious battle at Shiloh led by General Grant, leaving behind all the sweet memories of my young life.

The widow's eyes remained closed, hands cupped in her lap. She was so perfectly motionless, seeming to take only the occasional breath, that it was quite easy for them to imagine another speaking through her—the mouth moving of its own accord, the face impassive even as the voice inflected.

When I was a boy, I spent many a spring afternoon with my brother climbing the horse chestnut tree behind our house. My father, tired of the
scatter of spiked fruits in the yard, the animals sickened from eating them, decided to cut it down. When my brother and I saw the ax dangling from his hand, we begged him not to do it. We loved that tree, its broad leafy branches, its delicate white flowers.

The crowd murmured.

So when my father lifted his arm to deliver the blow, my brother grabbed him. The ax fell, hitting the trunk and sticking there, but the angle was off, not strong enough to bring it down. My brother and I were sent to bed without supper that night, but we rejoiced, having saved the tree. The next morning, we went out to say hello to our old friend, and we saw the ax had chipped away a large piece of the tree's trunk at the base. Now as you know, the epidermis of a tree can be quite delicate. It can develop infections or suffer a parasitical invasion. Each day we checked on it, watching as suberous tissue developed over the wound. The blow had not reached the tree's medulla, so it healed by closing up, a corklike substance growing over it. Those botanists among you will understand that this tissue consists of parenchyma cells. They are tabular, compactly organized, and they form a kind of callus. It is not unlike a scab that grows over a human wound.

The widow licked her lips. A door slammed as a latecomer entered.

Even then, I found it interesting how plants repair themselves differently than animals. If a lizard loses its tail, it grows back. A plant, however, creates something entirely new. It is not regenerative. When a tree's leaves die and fall in autumn, new ones return. My father did not destroy the tree, but he did damage it. The cut was done and, though it healed, the scar remained. It remains, I presume, if the tree still stands, to this very day.

A pause, and James continued.

You want to speak of botany so you can avoid talk of the terrible conflict that consumed this country, but there is no escape. This war did not just make a superficial gash in our skin. How are you making sense of the sacrifices we have made? I see you. I see you all. A room of men struggling for the sense to make sense.

The widow quieted. The crowd sat mute and frightened. She was, indeed, a woman possessed. How else could this woman, so young, dressed in a color so dark and unnatural for one her age, face framed by schoolgirl ringlets, speak to them in such a way? Some whispered she sounded like both man and woman. The next night, she impressed another crowd, spoke of yet another botanical subject. And on the third and final evening the crowd overflowed into the street. Inside, the room erupted into shouts after she discussed the effects of fire on some trees. She's a fraud! That's no spirit! They stomped, the noise thundering like a stampede. A man ran toward her before she'd fully awakened. Michael burst from the side room, reaching for her. The stranger had her by the wrist and was pulling up her sleeve to prove his presumption of hidden writing on her arms. Madge pulled at her other arm while Michael restrained the man.

That night, even Madge's tea did not help Sadie sleep.

W
HENEVER
S
ADIE LEFT THE HOUSE
built by the cold mind of her husband and warmed by the healing hands of Madge, it was as if she were being set adrift at sea. The house would never feel like it belonged to her, but when she traveled it sounded a siren calling her back. She believed it was the soul of the building—its joists and posts and girts—that strengthened her. Outside of it, she looked to Michael for support. He had become a fixture, always waiting patiently in the carriage, doing everything he could to lessen the inevitable obstacles she encountered as a traveling medium. When she stepped into the carriage to sit beside him, she entered another world.

Despite this unmooring, she continued to board train after uncomfortable train, rarely sleeping in those well-worn cars. Their attempts to resemble a home were woeful: dreary landscape paintings, stained carpet, cramped washrooms. Amid the worrying noise of itinerant
salesmen, shouting newsboys, buzzing flies, she tried to learn to welcome the call of the next station, the blast of wind when the doors opened; before long, passes over unsteady bridges did not unsettle her as they once had. Soon, she looked forward to the arrival in each new city: the momentary disorientation as Michael sought the driver who was to meet them. While he sorted things out, she read the faces: we are all Americans, for better or for worse. She couldn't help but romanticize those town centers, picturing fair merchants and robust families, her deepest affection lying with the rugged, the faith-filled, their dusty shirts as wrinkled as elephant skin.

It was in those towns where Sadie fully understood the gravity of her mission. She traveled through a nation mourning. The country's thirty million souls pulled at her, and she could feel the tug of hands at her throat. A Texas of lament. Her father had produced hardbound copies of his handiwork. She bound oral messages. Fully maturing out of her shyness, she moved into a recognition of her purpose. When she entered the cleared saloon, the swept parlor, the dusty storehouse, the cold barn, she saw only the chair, a seat waiting to transport, and she sensed the tension of the people: their foreheads creased like paper, their doubtful rumblings.

The conductor walked through the car, announcing they were two hours from Chicago. He stopped at their seats.

“Are you comfortable, sir?” He addressed the question to Michael who turned to her. She nodded.

She studied his square face as he read his book. When he entered a crowded hall, he revealed an expression meant to inspire trust, the one he must have once used at a sick patient's bedside. On trains and in lodging houses, that face focused on her, saw to her comfort. Who was he? She knew the death of his brother troubled him. He never talked at all about patients, and she wondered more than once about the size of his wealth. She did not pay him, and he did not ask.

He squinted. After days of travel, his face grew a more wearied shadow. At least she had grown accustomed to his moods and inflections. At that moment, his skin was gray. He did not look well. She wished Madge were there to tell her what was the matter with him.

“How are you feeling?”

He kept his eyes on his book. “As well as can be expected. Thank you for asking.”

She thought of what would make her father happy, what would bring about peace. And as she pressed her palm to Michael's, watching as his eyes jumped to the front of the car and back to hers again, the book slipping into the cushion, she considered a life with him, the ins and outs.

“You know you have been a great friend to me,” she said.

All the times he had taken her arm, the meals they'd shared, the late evenings sitting together going over the night's lecture had been so comfortably normal. She reached to touch his cheek.

As they left the rail depot, she thought of what her father would think. There was no denying it: she was no longer dutiful nor dignified. She was not the daughter he'd married off. Then again, maybe she should just give in and do what everyone expected of her.

An oval hearse stopped beside them, topped by six carved wooden urns. Black and white curtains hung at the windows, framed by gold fringe and tassels. She ran her eyes over its glass front, the gleaming steel tires. Had she been born with hands like her father, she might have built hearses, she thought, poring over the details. The clarence fronts. The fluted moldings and swollen sides. On top, it read: “The house appointed for all living.”