Releasing Izzie altogether, Mrs. Fielding slid between her and Clara. Then, placing a palm on each of their heads, she was silent except for the sound of inhaling and exhaling big, noisy breaths. Scalp warming under Mrs. Fielding’s boney hand, Izzie started to feel giddy.
With eyebrows raised high on her forehead and biting at her lower lip, Clara looked a little panicky. Izzie winked at her, trying to let her know they were all right. If Mrs. Fielding was trying to anoint or baptize them in some way, or cast a witch’s spell, she wasn’t going to succeed. After a seemingly endless moment, Mrs. Fielding’s breathing quieted and she lifted her hand from Izzie’s head.
“Do you swear yourself to secrecy, Clara?”
Clara’s face opened into a smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Very well. And you, Isabelle?” Nostrils flaring, Mrs. Fielding looked down at her.
Izzie had no idea what this promise meant because she didn’t know what she was about to learn. Was she joining a secret society or simply agreeing to not spill the beans about the tricks? She glanced over at Anna who was nodding and grinning at her, egging her on.
“What about Papa? He’s going to hound us about it all,” Izzie asked.
Mrs. Fielding clasped her hands together, wrung them a moment. “Yes. Yes. You will have to confide in him, but no one else. Not a soul.”
Izzie nodded, but her heart wasn’t in agreement at all.
Mrs. Fielding joyfully clasped her hands under her throat. “Now, before we go any further, I think we should have refreshments while I learn something about the both of you. Anna, will you bring in the tea?”
Anna glided from the room. Something was so very odd about this pair. They were both altogether too happy, thought Izzie.
“Tell me, Clara, what do you know about séances?” asked Mrs. Fielding as she took her seat again.
“Are there ghosts?”
“First of all, they are not ghosts as you are thinking of them, Clara. They are as real as we are. They’re the spirits of people who once lived on this earth with us. They’re just in another sphere now, a sphere of eternal spring. It is harder for them to talk to us from there. That’s why we need mediums. Do you think you might have the medium’s gift?”
“I don’t know.”
Mrs. Fielding looked into Izzie’s eyes and held her gaze a moment. “What about you, Isabelle?”
“No.”
“Well, why take the lessons?”
“My father insisted. He wants to make money and thinks Clara and I could conduct circles like you and Anna do. He wants us to become the famous Benton sisters, even more famous than the Fox sisters.”
“Yes. He is ambitious, isn’t he. He led me to believe that you might have some ability.”
“No. It’s not true.”
In her plaid bloomers and flashing that hideous radiant smile, Anna appeared with a tray and set it on the green tablecloth, then began to pour steaming tea from a silver pot.
“He told me your mother had visions and spoke with spirits frequently.”
Izzie felt as though she had been punched in the chest. As far as she was concerned, Mamma’s spirits had killed her mother, drowned her—ultimately betrayed her.
Mamma had talked to those spirit voices her whole life. Just two months before this, Mamma had dragged her, Clara, Clara’s twin, Billy, and their little sister Euphora by wagon from Homer, Ohio in pursuit of Papa. He had been charged with arson in Homer and fled the family and the town leaving no word of his destination. But Mamma had always listened to her voices and they told her to go to Geneva, New York where she and Papa had lived long before. To no one’s surprise, Mamma and her voices were right and she got their Benton family back together.
But in the short time they had been reunited with Papa in Geneva, it seemed Mamma began to lose herself and that the spirit voices took her over more and more each day. She had disappeared four times overnight. On the fourth time, she had somehow gotten hold of a small sailboat in the dark and taken it out on the lake all by herself. Mamma knew nothing about sailing or boats, but Izzie was sure it had been the voices that led her each step of the way.
Seneca was a deep lake with powerful currents fed by springs. It was dangerous and it swallowed Mamma and her boat up and spit them both out not far from the Seneca Indian graveyard. After a two day search with Papa and some of the sheriff’s men, she and Billy were the ones who found Mamma tangled in her gray homespun dress stuck between those boulders at the water’s edge.
“Isabelle.” Like a black-haired angel, Anna was leaning over the table and offering her a cup of tea. “My mother was very gifted as well. What was your mother able to do?”
Blazing like a relentless, scorching August sun, Anna passed her the cup. Perhaps Anna was intoxicated with something, Izzie thought. Laughing gas. Opium. No one smiled this much.
“I’m not sure exactly what she did. She’d drift away from us and then tell us she’d been speaking to her spirits. I never understood it exactly.” Hoping the conversation would turn elsewhere, Izzie took a sip of warm tea.
Mrs. Fielding set her cup down, then rose and approached Izzie.
“What do you think she saw or heard?” Her voice was gentle.
To tell these strangers what she truly thought about her mother, that she was somewhat touched, perhaps even loony, would be disloyal. Izzie wanted to yell at Mrs. Fielding and Anna, “The rotten voices killed my mother!” But instead she looked down from their gaze and waited. The fire crackled, spitting sparks at the screen. Clara and the others kept their attention on her. Izzie could feel them waiting for her answer. No, it would be better not to talk about Mamma outside the family, even to these two.
Izzie stood, suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to leave. “Perhaps we can talk about Mamma later.”
“Of course, dear. I apologize. I know you are mourning.” Mrs. Fielding patted her shoulder. “Let’s have the ginger cake, Anna.” Mrs. Fielding beckoned to Anna with a wave of one hand and, with the other, pressed down once again on Izzie’s shoulder, more gently this time. Izzie gave in, sinking back into the chair.
“Perhaps we should go now,” Izzie said, wanting to flick Mrs. Fielding’s hand away.
“Clara, would you like to continue with the lessons?” Mrs. Fielding asked.
Having just taken a large bite of ginger cake, Clara chewed for a long moment, then looked up toward the glass chandelier over the table and then gulped down her cake. She glanced over at Izzie and squinted again. That squint was a bad sign. Clara was afraid of something and wanting something at the same time. Clara looked at Mrs. Fielding.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Oh
,
rubbish and rot
. Clara wanted the lessons, ghosts and all. Well, that was going to make getting out of Papa’s scheme a lot harder.
“And why is that, dear?”
Clara fidgeted in her seat. “I want to learn something new.” She grasped the edge of the tablecloth and began to twist it. “And I want to help our father. He needs us.”
Papa’s girl again. Clara needed some talking to. Papa had run away from them. He had deserted his family. Why wasn’t she angry at him for that?
“That’s very noble dear, but this is special work, sacred work. I’m sure you and Isabelle can find other ways to help the family.”
“There’s something else,” Clara said. “I think Izzie is like you and Anna.”
Mrs. Fielding, blue eyes sparkling, examined Izzie.
“Papa got you thinking that way. It isn’t so.” Izzie shoved her teacup and cake plate away. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Izzie says things sometimes that no one else knows. When someone knocks on the door at our rooms, she always guesses who it is.”
“That’s nothing, Clara. I just know how people knock. Mrs. Purcell knocks three times firmly. Miss Mary Carter and Miss Jane Carter both knock very lightly but Mary keeps going and Jane is short with it.”
“Girls, I can return your father’s money to him or we can continue and see if your transcendent powers develop. It may very well turn out that neither of you have a gift. If we go on, I expect your utmost dedication and concentration on the exercises.”
Egging them on with nods and smiles, Anna rose and stood by her fancy tea tray. These women certainly knew something extraordinary. Whether it was about religion or theater or death or artful deception, it wasn’t entirely clear. Izzie clenched her hands together in her lap. If they got their money back, Papa could return it to whomever he borrowed it from and there would be less chance of trouble later. If they went on with the lessons, she and Clara would be mediums, either true ones or charlatans, as soon as Papa set them up.
Mrs. Fielding stroked Izzie’s hair lightly.
“Isabelle, I think this is up to you.”
Suddenly Anna was making a terrible ruckus, her shoulders gyrating, her arms flailing about. Eyes closed and neck craned back, Anna lifted her face toward the ceiling. At first her breathing was belabored, then she yipped piercingly like a wolf cub.
“She’s in a trance,” Mrs. Fielding whispered as she extracted one of Clara’s hands from its grip on the tablecloth and held it, then she reached down for Izzie’s hands and tried to unclench them, but Izzie refused. “I think she is going to speak for her spirit now. Don’t be afraid. He’s a kind gentleman.”
Anna opened her mouth and a low, scratchy voice poured forth. “Clara, Izzie, your mother wants to speak to you.”
Izzie’s heart cramped. She glanced over at Clara who was sitting rigid with thunderstruck eyes. This was certainly an inventive way to get them to take the lessons, but it was cruel.
“She says your life will not be complete until you embrace Spiritualism, Isabelle.” Anna’s voice was sweet and soft again. “She didn’t know how to use her gift. You will. You will learn.” She hesitated a moment. “You will understand. Listen to these women. Learn from them.”
Feeling a cold draft at the back of her neck, Izzie turned to see if a window was open, but it wasn’t. Mamma’s spirit. Ridiculous. Did they think she was a half-wit? If she could show Clara this was a silly act, maybe Clara would see how foolish, how disrespectful, this all was. It wasn’t right to portray Mamma as present in some way. Mamma was lost to them forever. Lost. This is what mediums did—dangle the hope of eternal life at people who were deep in pain. An imaginary, delicious meal set before the hungry. It was plain cruel.
“Mrs. Fielding, may I ask Anna, or her spirit, a question to prove that my mother is really there?” Izzie asked.
“This kind of proof does not always work as one desires, Isabelle. You shouldn’t be disappointed if you don’t receive the message you are seeking. It can take many attempts before the proof, as you say, is satisfactory.”
“I’d like to try.”
“All right.” Mrs. Fielding looked at Anna who still had her eyes closed and head tilted up. “She can hear you.”
Izzie had to ask something that only Mamma could know. The white horse. That hot summer night back in Homer when Clara was little. Clara refused to use the chamber pot in the house and insisted that Izzie escort her to the privy in the backyard. It was a starry night with a crescent moon and just enough light to see by. When they were nearly to the privy, they heard strange, hollow breathing and snorting. Alarmed, they grabbed each other and squealed. Not twenty feet from them, a white horse, luminous and eerie, pounded frantically out of the bushes. It reared up, then darted off, its hooves thundering as it sped around the side of their little house. After it left, it took Izzie until dawn to calm Clara down.
“Mamma, can you hear me?”
“Clearly, like a bird in the early evening, Isabelle.”
“Do you remember that night when Clara was only three and I took her to the privy? There was an animal out there and we scared it just as much as it scared us. Can you tell me what it was so that I’ll know this is really you, Mamma?”
Placing her hands over her chest, Anna stilled. There was no way Anna could answer this question, absolutely none.
“You mean that old white horse that broke loose?”
Every hair root on Izzie’s scalp prickled. The back of her hands tingled. Leaning back in her chair, she noticed that Clara’s precious brown eyes were petrified and she was sitting up so tall it seemed she was going to levitate.
The mean monster horsey was all she talked about for weeks and weeks after that night.
Anna patted her chest lightly. “I love you both. Do not worry about me. I am not in pain. It’s beautiful here in Summerland.”
Izzie was dumbfounded. This wasn’t possible. They couldn’t know about the white horse. Could they?
Clara, whose eyes were now more fearful than surprised, looked up at Mrs. Fielding, who was standing between them and smiling brilliantly.
“Do you see Mamma, Mrs. Fielding? What’s Summerland?” Clara asked.
“Shhh. Wait.” Mrs. Fielding lifted a finger to her lips.
Anna stepped away from the table, then began to pace back and forth. Suddenly she froze and looked straight at Izzie.