Strong Spirits [Spirits 01] (10 page)

      
You could never be quite sure in those days if the call was for you, since there were so many other people sharing the line. Even though every family was supposed to have a distinctive number and length of rings, a person wasn’t always paying attention. When I hiked over to the phone on the wall in the kitchen and lifted the receiver, I heard a duet of “Hello’s” before I added mine and made it a trio.

      
“Mrs. Majesty, please,” came a masculine voice over the wire.

      
“This is Mrs. Majesty,” said I.

      
I heard one of the party line members hang up her receiver. I knew who was left. “Mrs. Barrow?” I said it sweetly, although there were times I wanted to holler at our snoopy neighbor. She was from New York City, a place called the Bronx, and she talked like nobody I’d ever heard before. “This call is for me. Will you please hang up your wire?”

      
“Oh,” she said, clearly disappointed. “Sure.” The receiver on her end landed in the cradle with a sharp smack. I sighed.

      
“Mrs. Majesty?” the masculine voice said once more.

      
“Yes, this is she.”

      
“This is Harold Kincaid, Mrs. Majesty, and I wanted to talk to you about what we discussed last night.”

      
Crumb, what had we discussed last night? “Oh! A séance. Of course, I remember.”

      
“Can we talk about it?”

      
“Um, sure.” I glanced out at Billy, who appeared to be absorbed in the newspaper. “Absolutely.”

      
“Would you like me to come to your house so that we can discuss arrangements?”

      
Brother, wouldn’t Billy just love that? “No, no. I’d probably better meet you at your house, if you don’t mind. Or somewhere else.”

      
“If that’s what you’d prefer.” Harold clearly didn’t understand. I’d have told him, but the circumstances didn’t lend themselves to explanations. I could just imagine Billy’s reaction if I told Harold Kincaid that my husband might be jealous if a strange man came to the house, even to talk about business.

      
“Yes,” I said, “I’d prefer that.” For the same reason as the aforementioned, I hoped like heck Harold would suggest a meeting place so I wouldn’t have to. Even though Billy seemed to be immersed in the local news, I didn’t want to chance ruining his perky mood. Since he’d come home from France, he’d been sensitive to what he perceived as my longing to escape a hopeless marriage. I guess our marriage was pretty hopeless, but I’d never desert Billy.

      
“Why don’t I pick you up,” Harold suggested, although not as helpfully as I’d hoped. “I can take you to lunch at the club.”

      
Bad idea, Harold
. “Um, I don’t think I can do that, but I’ll be happy to meet you at Mrs. Kincaid’s.”

      
Sure enough, Billy’s paper lowered, and he squinted at me. Darn it. I smiled, hoping he’d think it was one of Mrs. Kincaid’s friends on the wire.

      
“Mother’s house?” Harold paused. “Um, I don’t think that’s a good idea. If you don’t want me to pick you up, can you get to Kress’s on Colorado?”

      
Kress’s was a drug store. It also had a soda fountain, which Billy and I used to visit all the time before the war, when he could still walk. Meeting another man there felt like a betrayal, although I knew that was silly. “Certainly. That would be fine.” And even though I didn’t like the notion of meeting a man other than Billy there, it was also a relief, since I didn’t have to suggest another meeting place with my husband listening.

      
“Good. Can we meet in an hour? I have to drive to the set in Mojave this afternoon.”

      
Mojave? Good heavens
. “An hour would be fine.”

      
“Great. See you then.”

      
“Good. Good-bye.”

      
Harold hung up, and I was rather more pleased than not with the conversation. In all probability it meant another séance, which meant more money, which was a good thing. I went to the ice box and removed the eggs and ham. “I’ll have breakfast fixed in a jiff, Billy.”

      
“What was that all about?”

      
I knew he’d ask, although I wished he hadn’t. “I think it’s going to be another séance at the Kincaids’.” It was only a little fib, and one that was spoken out of kindness. Oh, very well, it was also spoken out of a disinclination to argue.

      
Billy grunted, not noticeably gratified by the prospect of money. I didn’t understand why he was so opposed to my job. It was a good job, as jobs went, and helped the family enormously. He said no more on the subject, though, and went back to his paper, so I breathed more easily.

      
After breakfast, I told Billy I had to dash out to talk to a Kincaid about séances. This was true. The fact that it was Harold with whom I planned to discuss séances was neither here nor there. At least, that’s what I told myself.

      
“I’d hoped we could take a walk after breakfast,” Billy said. “It’s a pretty spring day, and we hardly ever get to be together anymore.”

      
He sounded sulky, but I didn’t really blame him. “I’d like that, Billy. Can we do it after I get home?”

      
“I suppose so.” He didn’t want to do it after I got home; he wanted to do it now.

      
I didn’t blame him for that, either. I’d much rather stay home and be a wife to Billy than have to hoof it all over creation pretending to talk to dead people.

      
Such was my lot in life, however, so I changed out of my pretty pink house dress and put on a day suit. I hadn’t sewn this one by myself, but had bought it at J. C. Penney’s Department Store. More and more ready-made goods were being sold since the war, and some of them were even worth buying.

      
I liked this suit, which was a springy number in a gray-checked cotton-and-wool blend with black trim. The skirt ended a discreet six inches from my ankles, which was considered proper. The Stacy Kincaids of this world might think they were being bold and dashing by raising their skirts almost to knee length, but some of us preferred good old American modesty.

      
Besides, modesty and mystery were closely linked, and I needed both for my job. This suit filled the bill perfectly. I still felt as if I were exuding spiritualist vibrations, but it wasn’t a stuffy outfit, especially when I put on my wide-brimmed black straw hat. It was a simple hat, with only a band of gray encircling the brim. I considered the ensemble rather elegant, actually.

      
When Pudge Wilson wasn’t in school, he generally turned the crank on the Model T for me. That way I didn’t have to hurtle from the crank into the car to press the pedals before it could stall out. At present Pudge was under the jurisdiction of Miss West, so I had to set the spark and throttle levers, turn the crank myself, reach inside to adjust pull the spark lever down, then leap inside the too-tall-for-me car, and press the low-speed pedal. I got it right eventually, eased out of the driveway, and started on my way up Marengo to Colorado Boulevard, the main east-west street in Pasadena.

      
The little old Model T chugged gallantly to Colorado. Like most automobiles of the day, the Model T was open. My hat brim got caught in the wind generated by a speed of almost twenty miles per hour, and I had to pull over and remove the hat, which put me into a peevish mood. I was sure I could never replace it on my head at the same perfect angle at which it had sat originally. I also knew the wind would mess up my hair. I’d wanted to look so professional, too. Stupid car.

      
If my business remained good, I aimed to by a closed car one of these days. Maybe a Hudson or a Buick. Something not too expensive, but less open to the wind and weather. The Kincaids and people of their ilk drove around in chauffeur-driven Daimlers and Pierce Arrows and so forth, but I’d be happy with a Chevrolet or a Hudson.

      
As I approached Kress’s, I saw a long, low-slung, sleek and sporty, not to mention bright red, Stutz Bearcat residing at the curb. I had a hunch it belonged to Harold. It just looked like the kind of car he’d drive. A spiritualist could never get away with owning a machine like that; nobody’d ever take her seriously. But a man who worked in the pictures . . . Well, that Bearcat was definitely a picture-person’s automobile.

      
It took me a minute to get my hair under control and to replace my hat, and I wasn’t sure I’d done a good job of either. In an attempt to see what I was doing, I squinted at the store window (in those days most cars didn’t have rear-view mirrors). But my reflection wasn’t clear enough for me to judge very well. Anyhow, I didn’t want to look as though I were preening if Harold was watching from inside the store, because I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea, if you know what I mean. With a sigh, I decided I’d done the best I could under the circumstances and exited the Model T.

      
I’d no more than approached Kress’s door when it was pushed open, hard, from inside, and I saw Harold standing there, holding the door and smiling at me like an elf out of a fairy tale. There was something so likable about Harold; it was difficult to feature him and Stacy coming from the same parents, although I’m sure stranger things have happened.

      
He looked as dapper this morning as he had the evening before. Today he wore a springy seersucker suit and a pink shirt. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a man in a pink shirt, but it suited Harold somehow. On my Billy it would have looked ridiculous.

      
“Good morning, good morning,” he cried, evidently enraptured that I should have come all this way (approximately five short blocks) just to see him. Obviously, Harold had never been poor. We poor folk will do just about anything if someone intends to pay us.

      
“Good morning, Mr. Kincaid.” I spoke in a much more formal tone of voice than he had, since I was supposed to be a medium and spiritualism was supposed to be a serious business.

      
“For God’s sake, call me Harold!” he exclaimed, laughing as if I were the most adorable thing he’d seen in a month of Sundays. He led me to a stool at the lunch counter and gestured for me to sit.

      
I sat. “Thank you. Please call me Daisy.” I spoke stiffly. I also didn’t mean it. I would have preferred that he call me Mrs. Majesty. I preferred that everyone call me Mrs. Majesty, in point of fact, because the formality put a degree of distance between my clients and me. That distance worked to my advantage because it made my work seem more important, it made me seem older, and it added a soupcon of mystery even to my every-day dealings with people.

      
And besides all that, I feared that I’d misjudged Harold’s motive. I would be very unhappy to discover that his show of friendliness meant that his true purpose wasn’t business but hanky-panky.

      
If that turned out to be the case, I would, naturally, refuse him. Then he’d get mad, he’d probably tell his mother I was a fiend and a fraud, and then I’d never be asked into the Kincaids’ house again, and Mrs. Kincaid would tell all her friends I was a miserable seductress who’d tried to ravish her son, and nobody else would ever hire me, and the Kincaids would tell all their rich friends that my family was composed of villains and charlatans, and Ma and Aunt Vi would lose their jobs, and my family would starve to death. Not that I was at all insecure in those days, you understand.

      
“Let me buy you an ice-cream soda, Daisy,” Harold said in his high-pitched, rather piercing voice.

      
I demurred. “No, thank you, Harold.” Darned if I’d call him Harry, as Lieutenant Farrington had.

      
He eyed me as if he didn’t understand my reluctance to be treated to an ice-cream soda. Then, as if the lights had just gone on in his head, he put said head back and laughed. Loudly. I felt my cheeks get hot. Darn, but I hated people laughing at me.

      
After hauling out a pristine white handkerchief and mopping his streaming eyes, Harold laid a hand on my cotton-and-wool-blend arm. I must have stiffened up like a setter pointing, because he removed it again instantly.

      
“Oh, my, I’m so sorry, Daisy. I didn’t mean to laugh like that.”

      
I smiled but didn’t speak, mainly because I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. The destruction of my career and of my family’s happiness loomed large in my mind’s eye.

      
“I wasn’t laughing at you, but at myself.”

      
“Oh?” I didn’t buy that one for a minute.

      
“I know what you must be thinking.”

      
“Oh?” I doubted it.

      
“You’re afraid I’m going to try to do something untoward or make unsavory advances to you.”

      
Since he was right but I didn’t want to say so, I lifted my eyebrows, striving for an expression of neutral interest, if there is such a thing.

      
Harold choked on another laugh. “Oh, my dear, Daisy, please forgive me.”

      
Maybe I would. Maybe I wouldn’t. It all depended. I kept silent. I’d learned in my pursuit of spiritualism that silence could be a woman’s best friend if used wisely. It had been a hard lesson to learn, too, since I love to gab.

      
“Mind you, I think you’re a pippin, and if I were interested in women, I’m sure you’d be my first choice.”

      
What was the man talking about? Since I didn’t know, I remained mute. I did, however, lift my brows even higher, attempting to produce a gesture that was quelling when used by several elderly ladies of my acquaintance. I didn’t think I could quell anything, ever, even with lifted brows, but it didn’t hurt to try.