The Ghost of the Mary Celeste (3 page)

My sister has dreams she thinks are visions. In the dead of night she sees our cousin Maria wandering and wailing outside her bedroom window. Her hair and skirts are dripping seawater, and she cries out, “Help me, help me. I’ve come home. I’m cold, I’m hungry.”

“She wants to come inside,” Hannah told me.

“She’s with God,” I said. “Why would she want to be here?”

“She wants Natie,” she replied. “She’s come back for her little son.”

Little he is and not well. His mother may have him soon enough. He has hardly grown these eight months. His skin is like milk, and his dark eyes set in dark circles, his downturned mouth, his fits of sobbing, as if he knows his parents drowned and he was left among the bereaved; all these trouble our hearts. His grandmother is stalwart. In her view God knows what must be and what must not be and it is ours to bear it with faith in His wisdom. But she must be suffering, for Maria was her only daughter and dear to her. No one could make my aunt laugh like Maria.

Maria was named for my aunt’s sister, who died in childbirth and so did the child, leaving my uncle, Captain Nathan, a widower, first to mourn his loss with his sister-in-law and then to marry her. When their daughter was born there was no question that she would be named for the wife and sister whose untimely death had brought them together. Now of their six children they have lost two, both at sea. The first, Nathan, named for his father, was taken by fever on a brig off the coast of Galveston, his body committed to the Gulf of
Mexico; the second, Maria, was swept overboard with her husband, Captain Joseph Gibbs, when their vessel was struck by a steamer as they sailed out from Cape Fear. That was eight months ago.

Our families, the Cobbs and the Briggs, are intimately, even intricately, connected. For a time, when Captain Nathan’s shore business failed, my aunt and her children lived in our house while he went back to sea to recover his fortune. My mother was fond of her sister-in-law and it was her idea that we should pull together as a tribe. Those were happy times; with two mothers and so many children in the rectory we slept three to a bed. Briggs children called my mother Mother Cobb and Cobb children called the Briggs mother Mother Briggs. Hannah hardly remembers those days. She was just a toddler when Captain Nathan, having recovered his losses, built their big house, with its piazza and terrace, and the trellises of roses so lush and fragrant all summer long that it came to be called Rose Cottage.

When our mother died, Hannah formed an attachment to Maria Briggs, who returned her affection with great kindness. Since Maria’s death, Hannah has devoted herself to the orphaned babe, which activity both my father and Mother Briggs encouraged, as they thought it would be a comfort to Hannah, and so she spends several nights a week at Rose Cottage, helping Mother Briggs and sleeping in the poor orphan’s room at night. But Hannah takes the baby’s frailty for a judgment against her caregiving. His fretfulness keeps her from both sleep and reason.

My uncle has written to the constables in all the shore towns where the remains of his daughter and her husband might have washed up, but to no avail. They have been swallowed by the sea. If we could lay them to rest, with a service and a stone, Hannah might recover her good sense, but as it is, she’s convinced herself their souls are yet adrift.

This morning Hannah had a conversation with Father in his study, which left them both tight-lipped and grim. I was working on the sleeves of a dress when she came into the parlor and threw herself down on the sofa in a huff.

“That didn’t go well, I take it,” I said.

“He doesn’t believe a word I say,” she replied.

I ran the needle round the curve of the cuff, raised the pressure foot, and cut the thread. “Well, how could he, dear?” I asked. “He’s committed to believing otherwise.”

“I don’t see why. Jesus raised the dead.”

“Oh my. Did you tell Father that?”

“I did.”

“What did he say?”

“He said Jesus did it only once and anyway I’m not Jesus.”

“Those are good points,” I observed.

“No, they’re not. What Jesus did just proves the dead can return. He didn’t have to do it more than once to make the case. And I’m not trying to raise the dead. That’s the furthest thing from my mind.”

“Surely you understand why such talk is disturbing to him.”

“I can’t help that. I can’t pretend I don’t know what I know or see what I see.”

I studied her a moment, considering her argument and her character. She’s always had a dreamy side. As a child she talked to trees and made up stories. She wrote sweet poems about the dew being dropped from the drinking cups of fairies, or enchanted woods where elves had tea parties using mushrooms for tables. It was charming, my sister the fabulist, and I encouraged her in her fantasies because she worked them out so prettily and it gave her such pleasure. She struck me as fairylike herself, with her dark hair and light eyes, her slender limbs, the liveliness of her step, as if she could scarce bear to touch the ground. She is of a capricious temperament, and now this loss of our dear cousin has lifted a latch that was never tightly fastened and a dark wind has swept in, carrying all before it.

She sat up on the sofa, resting her elbows on her knees, her forehead on her hands, the picture of despondency. “Do you believe me, Sallie?” she said.

“What does it matter?” I asked.

She lifted her face from her hands and fixed me with a look of puzzlement.

“Supposing it
is
true,” I said. “What does it matter who believes you? What can anyone do about it?”

“You mean I should just give Natie up to her?”

This response made me impatient. “You knew Maria, dearest,” I said. “Who knew her better? Was she ever cruel? Did she ever hurt anyone?”

“She was lively and clever,” Hannah said at once. “And she was fearless. She wasn’t afraid of anything.”

“Then who is this woman you see weeping and complaining? How can that be Maria?”

As I spoke I had a clear image of Maria in my mind. She was on the lawn at Rose Cottage, whispering some drollery into her young husband’s ear, her arm linked through his, leaning into him, raised up on her toes, for he was several inches taller than she was. And then the light in which memory bathed this moment of sweet intimacy went out, and I saw that my sister was sweeping tears from her eyes with her fingertips. I held out my arms to her and she lurched across the floor, collapsing at my feet. “I miss her so,” she sobbed, clutching my waist, hiding her face in my skirt. I stroked her hair back from her throbbing temples, muttering soothing words, letting her have what she has sorely needed these long, lonely months: a good cry. “It’s all right,” I said. But even as I spoke, I felt a stab of fear that nothing would be all right for my poor sister anytime soon.

After Hannah returned to Rose Cottage, Father emerged from his study, his eyes darting about the room nervously, as if in expectation of a swarm of insects.

“She’s gone,” I said. I’d finished the sleeves and was kneeling over the pattern on the floor, cutting out the bodice.

He approached and took the chair at my sewing machine. “Advise me, Sarah,” he said. “I’m at a loss with all this spookism your sister has manufactured.” I had pins in my mouth and when I
sat up, Father laughed. “What a dangerous enterprise sewing is,” he observed. “Aren’t you afraid you might swallow one of those?”

I removed the pins solemnly, planting them in the cushion. “I need another hand,” I said.

“So you do,” he agreed. “But you’ve looked to yourself and utilized what you do have, which is the mark of a resourceful and industrious nature.”

I smiled. Industry is Father’s cardinal virtue. His name could be the Reverend Industry Cobb. It would suit him well.

“If only your sister had your temperament,” he concluded.

“She’s grieving,” I said. “She’s young. She’s only thirteen. And she worshipped Maria.”

“You think she’ll get over this maudlin fantasy, that time will cure her?”

“I don’t know that, but I hope it will.”

“She’s not steady,” Father said.

“She says you don’t believe a word she says.”

“Nor do I,” he confirmed. “Do you?”

“I believe she believes she has seen Maria.”

“I could insist that she stay home,” he suggested.

“And leave Natie? She would pine for him.”

Father clutched his beard, considering my argument. “It’s this insalubrious craze for talking to spirits: it’s loose in the world. The next thing we know old Abigal Spicer over in Mattapoisett will set herself up as a table-knocker.”

“Abigal does talk to people who aren’t there,” I agreed.

Father gazed at me, bemused by the world and its ways. “So your view is that I should do nothing.”

“If Natie thrives, life will bring Hannah back to life.”

“And if he perishes?”

“Then she will always believe Maria has taken him, and she will come home.”

Father nodded. “Women’s counsel is always patience.”

“We could wish more men would take it,” I said, turning back to my pattern.

Father rose from his chair and went out, his mind more at ease, but mine was less settled. I was thinking about ghosts. Who doesn’t whisper a confidence at the grave of the beloved when the wind rustles the trees and lifts the petals of the roses planted there? What draws the bereaved to seek the departed still in this world? Is it hope, I wondered, or is it fear?

A sunny day. I went to Rose Cottage to visit my sister and to my delight, both Olie and Benjamin were at home. Even Hannah’s spirits were lifted by the presence of our cousins, who could not be more different from each other, yet there is a strong bond between them. Olie is witty, full of jokes and fun, fond of music and singing, while Benjamin is a serious young man, though not unsmiling, and grown strong and handsome this past year when he has been largely at sea. His light blue eyes are like beacons, and when I feel them seeking mine, I’m as flustered as a chicken before a fox. He has command of the
Forest King
and Olie has the
Wanderer
; both are bound next week in different directions, Benjamin to Sicily and Olie to Peru. They regaled us with sea stories, to which my uncle Nathan added the coda from his own vast experience. Hannah came in with Natie draped over her shoulder. When he began his habitual fussing, Olie coaxed her to let him try his hand at consoling his nephew. To my surprise she passed the boy to him. He paced back and forth the length of the parlor, holding the child across his arm with his legs dangling and kicking. In a few moments the sobbing turned to burbling, and then Natie fell quiet, no doubt awed by the wonder of being transported in such a powerful embrace. I poured a cup of tea for my exhausted sister and handed it to her without comment. She sat taking small sips, her eyes never leaving Olie’s progress from one door to the other. Benjamin looked on, his fingertips resting on his lips, from Hannah to Olie and back again. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but oh, I’d like to know.

Today again to Rose Cottage. My uncle has been suffering with a spring cold but, now recovered, declared he wants to dine in a crowd, so we were off at his request to supply the numbers. I spent the morning baking rolls, and made two pies, one custard, which is Olie’s favorite, and one jam, which is Benjamin’s.

Dinah made a potato gallette from a recipe Mrs. Butter brought back from Havre. We packed two baskets, I tucked a few sheets of music into a pasteboard tube, and off we went, feeling we would make ourselves welcome, as indeed we were. Olie met us at the gate with his usual good cheer and at once had my father laughing about a certain lady who described his recent sermon as “a powerful oration,” that made her soul “leap up in terror.”

“I know the lady,” Father said. “She quivers, she grows pale: tears fill her eyes. And all I’ve said is ‘love thy neighbor.’ ”

“But you recommend it so vehemently,” I said, which made us all laugh.

Inside we found my uncle eager to drag Father upstairs for a consultation on the piazza, which Captain Nathan calls the quarterdeck. Olie, having passed our baskets to Dinah, who set off down the stairs to the kitchen, hauled me to the piano, demanding a song. Benjamin was lounging on a chaise near the fire, though it was a fair day. “Ladies love a fire, in my experience,” he said. Hannah proved his theory, bundled up in a wool shawl with Natie drowsing in her lap, her gaze fixed on the flames as if she saw an entertainment there.

“We should all be walking,” I protested. “It’s the finest day imaginable.”

“We’ll walk after dinner,” Olie agreed. “But first a song. Have you anything new?”

I had recourse to my roll. “It’s new to me,” I said, “and very lovely. It’s a duet. We each take a solo verse, then join on the third.”

Olie drew up behind me as I placed the sheets on the music rack. “See how beneath the moonbeam’s smile,” he read. I played the melody while we recited the words, “Yon little billow heaves its breast, and foams and sparkles for a while, then murmuring subsides to rest.” Then the refrain, “Thus man, the sport of bliss and
care, rises on Time’s eventful sea, and having swell’d a moment there, thus melts into eternity.”