The Ghost of the Mary Celeste (18 page)

When asked, most people will tell you they don’t believe in ghosts. I know this, I’ve asked. I also know that with a little pressing it emerges that everyone has a ghost story. In an otherwise ordinary life of toil and struggle there intruded in this house, in that room, on that night, something extraordinary, inexplicable, something not of this world. One heard something: footsteps on a stair, a child crying, whispering voices in the hall; another saw something: a curtain rustling in a closed room, the impress of a head upon a pillow, a locked window standing open, a shadow stretching across a floor and up a wall. There was an oppressive atmosphere of sadness or malevolence, sometimes associated with a crime or a tragedy that one sensed upon entering the scene. Even the most thoroughgoing materialist has some little anecdotal evidence, some moment of doubting all, now easily recalled, and eagerly dismissed.

Ghosts. Great Caesar’s. Hamlet’s father. Christmas Past.

Violet was right. My mother died in a cold, dark little room in a scarcely respectable boardinghouse not far from the old Philadelphia station. We could hear the engines, like tired cart animals, wheezing and coughing at the end of their runs. We had once had better lodgings, but as the money ran out and her illness wasted the flesh from her bones, our options had dwindled. I wrote pleading letters to distant relatives, but as we kept changing addresses, I could never be sure there had been no reply, so I wrote again, reminding them of the new address.

In exchange for our miserable room and two meals a day, I did
the washing up, assisted the laundress, cleaned the downstairs parlor, and ran errands for the proprietor, a blowsy, furious Irishwoman who could never be satisfied. That night I came in, exhausted from a run halfway across town in the bitter cold with only my cloth coat to protect me from the chill. I lit the lamp and carried it to the bed stand. Mother lay on her side, her breathing labored, her eyes wide and staring at the open door of the wardrobe. I stroked her forehead, which was damp and cool, arranged her blanket, and spoke reassuringly of the bread and cheese I’d saved from my dinner, though I knew she’d lost interest in food and was unlikely to be tempted. She seemed not to hear me or even to be aware of me. I turned away to pour some water from the pitcher into the glass, and when I looked back she was moving her legs under the blanket, flailing her arms as if she intended to rise from the bed, which I knew she hadn’t the strength to do. My effort to capture her hands was stymied when she suddenly gripped both my wrists hard, pulling me closer. I tried to break away; I was truly frightened by the power and fierce animation that had come over her. She raised herself from the pillow, moving her dry lips, her eyes burning with the urgency of her message. “I want to stay here,” she said. “I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here. I must stay here.” The effort to say this much—she had scarcely spoken for several days—exhausted her and she fell back, releasing my wrists. She lay panting while I looked down at her in the gloom, trying to think what I should do. Water, I stupidly thought, and turned away again. I heard a long intake of breath, followed by a quick plosive puff of air, like a child making a wish as she blows the fuzz from a dandelion. When I looked back her sunken eyes were closed, her mouth ajar, and I knew at once that she was gone.

She who had wanted, in spite of our poverty and friendlessness, to stay here.

I went to the door, stood there, but couldn’t open it. Something heavy and adamant stayed my hand. I approached the bed again, noting with a shudder that Mother’s eyes were now open, lightless and sightless. I crossed to the wardrobe—why, I asked myself, had
it been left open? I could hear my own heartbeat, but otherwise the stillness in the room was confounding.

I stretched out my hand, laying my palm flat on the smooth wood of the panel. “Phoebe,” Mother said, in the exhausted, petulant voice I knew so well. “Don’t close the door.”

With a shout, I darted to the hall door, threw it open, and rushed out onto the landing. Mr. Widener, a fellow boarder, stood on the stair gazing wonderingly up at me.

“Sir,” I cried. “Please help me. My mother has passed away.”

I was fifteen years old.

How did I respond to Violet’s unsolicited display of her clairvoyant powers that first morning at Lake Pleasant? I don’t now perfectly remember, but I got past it somehow, probably by employing the journalist’s strategy of failing to acknowledge that anything exceptional has happened. I must have changed the subject, because we were talking about the origins of the Scalpers marching band when there was a sharp rap at the door and Mr. Jeremiah Babin, evidently expected by my hostess, appeared, having come on purpose to make my acquaintance. I recognized him at once as the distinguished gentleman from the café the night before. He regretted that he hadn’t been informed of my presence, as he would certainly have invited me to join their table if he had. It was agreed that I should do just that for the rest of my visit, unless, of course, I had other engagements. Mr. Babin was respectful of my profession and approving of my mission. “I am at your disposal,” he declared. “You must ask me any questions that come to your mind. I am something of an authority on our residents here.”

“He’s something of a legal counsel to half of them,” Violet observed wryly. “But he won’t tell you their secrets.”

Mr. Babin chuckled at her witticism. “Confidentiality is incumbent upon me.”

“I understand perfectly,” I said. “Journalists have ethical obligations as well.” They both nodded knowingly at this assertion.

In the afternoons, Violet had appointments with “visitors” who craved messages from the next world or advice in this one, as it was known that her intuitions were acute in both venues. While she was thus employed, I made my investigations of the camp. I attended a lecture entitled “Summerland Eternal” by Dr. Albert Weevil at the speakers’ “grove,” enjoyed an excellent concert of Strauss waltzes at the Dance Pavilion, visited the bookstore where I bought the local papers—the camp was served by a surprising number of these, with names like
The Wildwood Messenger
and the
Lake Pleasant Siftings
—climbed up to the “highlands” for an ice cream at Gussie’s Tea Room, worked on my notes in the hotel reading room, or passed a pleasant hour catching up on the latest New York and British literary journals with which this bizarre outpost was impressively supplied.

On two occasions Mr. Jeremiah Babin joined me for a stroll around the lake, during which he divulged, at length and in detail, the dramatic story of how he had come to be so importantly connected to the clairvoyant Miss Petra, and how privileged he considered himself to be in that connection.

“I understand she lives in your house,” I commented.

“She does,” he admitted. “And I hope she may never leave us.”

“Then your wife feels as you do.”

“Oh, yes. I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that Miss Petra has rescued my dear wife from a despondency that threatened her very life.”

“How wonderful,” I said.

“Yes.” He nodded, gazing out across the lake at the neat façade of the hotel wherein Violet Petra was perhaps at that very moment rescuing another sufferer. “To have such power,” he mused, “and yet to wear it so lightly.”

I agreed. Violet was a study in contrasts: a lighthearted, silly-headed, fashion-conscious child-woman whose influence was coveted by a bevy of large, prosperous, educated, self-confident men
and women, all of whom willingly entrusted to her—in my view—their sanity.

“Do you think she knows,” I asked her patron, “how much power she has?”

He paused on the path, turning upon me a thoughtful, serious look. After a moment he blinked a few times, as if to disperse an unproductive line of thought. When he spoke, his tone was rueful. “My dear Miss Grant,” he said. “Let us hope not.”

Jeremiah Babin occupied himself chiefly in the administration of his family’s business and real estate interests. The fortune had its origins in the distant past when an enterprising relation cornered the Canadian fur trade, but it was solidified by lucrative investments in the railroad, the manufacture of steam engines, and the acquisition of vast tracts of real estate in the now burgeoning middle of the country. Jeremiah’s wife, Virginia, née Millbury, though of an old and respectable Boston family, had so many beautiful and charming sisters that her dowry was not sufficient to attract any but the most sincere suitors. Given that among these sisters, Virginia was neither the most beautiful nor the most charming—though all agreed she possessed that most winning of female virtues, a sweet disposition—her marriage was widely considered something of a coup. That she adored her tall, handsome, rich husband was a given. The marriage was blessed with two children, a boy, Victor, and a girl, Melody.

Like so many in their set, the Babins moved among their houses from season to season; spring in New York, summers in Maine or Newport, fall at the family’s manse in Philadelphia, and winter in Florida, though Jeremiah was sometimes forced by his business affairs to remain in Philadelphia through the early snows. It was in December during one such delay in the family’s migrations that tragedy struck a devastating blow.

All that morning, as a light snow drifted down from the pristine white sheet of the sky, the children had pleaded with Miss Jekyll, their governess, to be allowed a sledding expedition in the park. Diligently they worked at their lessons in hopes of the adventure, and at lunch they were rewarded when their mother, smiling at their eagerness, granted their teacher’s request. They had not far to go; the spacious plains of the park began just across the road from the Babins’ big stone house on Chestnut Street. When Victor and Melody were sufficiently wrapped in fleecy hats, scarves, gloves, woolen stockings, and fur-lined boots, and their sleds extracted from beneath the stair landing, they ventured out into the chilly air while their mother looked on indulgently from an upstairs window. The trio stood at the curb, each child holding a sled cord with one hand and Miss Jekyll’s kid-gloved fingers with the other. The traffic was light. A carriage passed on one side; a gentleman on horseback trotted by on the other. When the way was clear, they hurried into the cobbled street. Halfway across, Miss Jekyll’s boot skidded on an icy patch, and as Virginia watched from above, the governess came down awkwardly upon her side. The children dropped their sleds, rushing to her aid; Victor manfully bent over her shoulder to offer his assistance. Melody, standing behind him, looked back at the house, spotted her mother’s anxious face at the window, and waved. Miss Jekyll sat up in the street, adjusting her hat.

From out of nowhere, or so it seemed, though it was actually from around the corner, a cab hurtled into view. The horses were galloping full out, their muscular necks stretched to the limit, their heavy lips folded back over the bits, green with foam. Steam rose from their wet nostrils, their great chests heaved, and the furiously grinding hooves struck and struck the cobbles with the indifference of machine pistons. The driver had braced his boots against the ridge at the front of his box and wrapped the reins around his forearms. He was pulling with such force that his back was nearly horizontal to his seat. His hat was gone, his face crimson with fury and terror, his mouth open wide, teeth bared. His eyes looked down
his face, focused on the surging heads of his horses. He couldn’t see the helpless woman, the attendant children, huddled in the street.

Virginia screamed and threw herself against the window, tearing at the sash, though it was certainly too late. By the time she had pulled it free and the cold air rushed in, carrying the din of the approaching annihilation, Miss Jekyll had risen to her knees and was attempting to push the children out of danger. Melody took one tentative step toward the house; Victor clung to his governess, determined to help her to her feet. The shriek of the wheels against the stone, the pounding of the horses’ hooves like rifle fire in a battlefield, the driver’s shouts, and Miss Jekyll’s anguished cry combined in a deafening, unearthly roar. In the last moment before the hooves struck, knocking the woman flat on her back, tossing the boy beyond her to be trampled before he could rise, Virginia saw her daughter look up, her expression confused but not frightened, and mouth the word “Mama.” Then the carriage wheel struck her from behind and she sprawled facedown before it.

How does a mother recover from such a loss, how pass one night without revisiting, awake or asleep, some detail of that gruesome scene and its aftermath—the crushed, mangled bodies, the bloodied stones, the shards of Melody’s sled found wedged between the rails of the park fence, Miss Jekyll’s kid glove clutched in Victor’s death-frozen hand?

Virginia retired from the world. The window through which she had witnessed the destruction of all her joy was covered by a black drape. She couldn’t bear to leave the house where her children had been happy, yet every room reproached her with reminders of what was not there. She was silent, broken, a specter wandering through empty days in search of a door that would lead her out of her suffering. But there was no door.

“Inconsolable” was her husband’s diagnosis. He shared her grief, he felt it; his children had been infinitely dear to him, but he couldn’t stop living because they were gone. He grieved for the children and for his wife as well. He couldn’t reach her. She, who had been so generous, so loving, so admiring, now regarded him as if he were a stranger who couldn’t be entirely trusted. He longed to comfort her, but she shuddered at his touch.

Three years passed and Virginia showed only small signs of improvement. She went so far as to send brief messages to various well-wishers, but she would neither leave the house nor receive visitors. She wasn’t unkind and she encouraged her husband to take up his ordinary life; she had no wish to enclose him in her personal version of hell. Jeremiah, a lively, impressionable man, thrived on society as a plant thrives on watering, and was much in demand. Once a suitable period of mourning had passed he began to appear, with his wife’s permission, at small social events around the town.