June, 1861
A seventh guest at dinner, then. Not beside or across but above the oak mantle.
Portrait hanging, huge and solemn: Mr. Livermore’s dead wife.
A handsome lady for the house. Painted eyes so dark they gleamed. A great swirling collar of hair at her shoulders. Estelle had been her name in life. In death just a portrait of oils, staring down. She seemed to wonder: husband’s study, husband’s desk at Webster Bank. Half-distracted by some dream of where the thing would one day hang.
The conversation was just sounds. Ring of glass and scrape of fork.
But Livermore carved at his lamb as if he could not eat it faster.
Mashed artichokes. Small potatoes. Fresh cream. Bordeaux ferried up from his personal cellars.
Wine was a thing I’d developed a taste for. Katherine Fox took only sherry.
One moment I thought, looking at her sidelong, that Livermore had given her her own private bottle, but then he poured himself a glass and used it to chase down the last of his lamb.
Her plunging face. Her small, coiled ears. The living quickness of her throat.
Livermore was saying something: “Who the devil are they then?”
“Devil only knows,” said Willy. “Devil of a thing, I’ll say. The irony, of course, is this: Hannah can’t control what comes.”
Wiped my mouth and glanced at them.
“I reckon that is so,” said I.
“The dead,” said Willy, “are profuse. They are untamed. They go nowhere. Or nowhere willingly, that is. You ask me who are they, these unlucky strangers? Why have they chosen my portrait to lurk in? I say to you: Rejoice!” he cried. “It is only a matter of time until…”
Paused. Then looked above us at the portrait.
“Matter of time till Estelle,” said the banker. “That was my wife’s name: Estelle.”
But I no longer listened to what they were saying.
This was because of a man standing near. Just right of the curtain that closed off the kitchen.
He was not a footman. He was not a waiter. He stood with his hands hanging down at his sides.
The serving girl carried a load through my sightline.
“From what I am given to understand, sir, not possessing a medium’s gifts myself—and Hannah, dear, you might chime in,” I could hear Willy Mumler addressing the banker, “the medium draws with her magnetic sense whatever spirits are to hand and these, well, accumulate, sir, thereabout her, in the manner of iron shavings, say, in course of which she sorts them out to find the spirit that is sought.”
“Draws the spirits?”
“Ropes them in.”
“She importunes their sympathy. So let me understand,” said he. He placed his napkin on his lap. “Hannah accumulates spirits around her in the same way that Sumner accumulates zealots, raving on the Senate floor.”
“A touch less provocative, maybe,” said Willy. “Yet just as momentous, I think you’ll agree, provided that we are at war.”
“Of course,” said Livermore and drank, “our Mr. Sumner has a point. It is by compromise, he claims, that human rights have been abandoned.”
A shift of discomfort from Bill, chewing slowly
“Gentlemen,” said Katherine Fox, not reproving in the least, but rather as though to assemble the table like five hungry plants round the light of her voice. “While Spiritualism, gentlemen, has vouched itself political, we must all of us here at this table remember that spirits themselves have never been. They follow no dogma like our Mr. Sumner. They merely go where they will go.”
“Quite right. Quite right,” said Livermore. “We all can agree that your spirits are sound ones.”
Made up drastically tonight. Or drastically, at least, for her. Bit of pencil at the eyes. Twin blush spots upon her cheeks. Northern light streaks in her hair or was it just the candlelight.
Still: this hangdog, standing man. His two pale hands like ghostly fish.
He was no longer standing just out of my sight but behind William Guay. Standing over him. Watching. Expression myopic and strange on his face. The mantle of blood at his neck, down his shoulders.
“A wonder he can chew and gulp with outright murder on the stomach? A wonder that he doesn’t retch his tubers, lamb and all?” said he.
His cranium not right at all. A boneless disuse to the way that it tilted. And a leached shade of blue to the skin on his face, as thought it were partially drained of its humours.
“Hannah,” said Willy, “are you quite all right?”
For Livermore was staring, too.
And that is when I rose, with violence. Chair keening back as I pushed it from me.
“Hannah, dear?” said Katherine Fox, rising from her chair in turn.
“I am indisposed,” said I.
“I think it is the wine,” said I.
“I think that I need air,” said I.
But the man wasn’t focused on Guay anymore. The man was looking at Estelle.
Stuttering something, the lips. Some avowal. Some question directed at her or her fate.
Here was Algernon Child, bloody-headed, in love.
Q
Inconceivable to me, the séance began. First one in my life that I’d ever attended. But it would happen, here, tonight.
Positives and negatives and negatives and positives.
Willy’s large, hot hand on mine. Livermore’s cooler by twenty degrees. A practiced hand. A yearning hand. Practiced in keeping its yearning a secret.
His face was pale. Embossed moustaches. Long-lashed eyes held firmly closed.
Across from us there sat Kate Fox.
“Has Rosa come into the form?” began Kate. “Rosa of the cellar floor? Rosa, after days of digging, come to illumine the way?”
(Three raps.)
“Grant us, if you will, a woman, here among patrons, well-wishers and friends. A husband sits here,” said Kate Fox. “Your husband, distraught, who has loved you so long.”
More rapping noises, slow and steady.
“The alphabet is motioned for.” And here the rapping sounds increased. Kate Fox smiled, her eyes still closed. “Estelle. It is her name. Estelle.”
Livermore’s hand pulsed in mine.
“How do you wish to communicate, Spirit? Do you wish, in the manner of spirits, to speak?”
(One rap)
“Music?”
(One rap)
“Drawing?”
(One rap)
“Writing.”
(One rap)
“None?”
(Five raps)
“The alphabet again.”
(The raps ascended rapidly)
“Let the circle note,” said Kate, “the letter signalled for is T.”
“Can ladies be true to themselves?” said a voice. Said the voice of a girl—Grace’s voice—in the dark. I tried to cut my eyes and see but the lantern light wasn’t quite hitting me right.
“Can ladies be true to themselves?” she repeated. “Can they ever really be? And if I am true to myself,” she went on, “will he consent to be my friend?”
“The letter O. The letter U. Your audience implores: more letters! The letter C,” said Katherine Fox. “T-O-U-C—yes, oh spirit? You wish to speak to us through touch? You wish to cross the borderlands and lay your fingers on our wrists?”
No raps this time. The sound of steps.
Livermore’s hand was convulsing in mine.
Called Grace from somewhere very near: “But aren’t they dull and single-minded? Were I to say no farther please then do you think that he would stop? If you must make me drown,” said she, “then hold my head as if you mean it?”
“Two raps,” said Katherine suddenly, “suggests the spirit cannot answer. Are we to assume that the spirit stands firm? Speak or spell to us your need.”
A wisp of something. Smoke, perhaps. It rose above the séance table. There was a chill that came up off it. It was coming from under the table. The walls. It blowered hugely through the curtains, sending up a little wind.
“Lower your heads,” said Katherine Fox. “Mrs. Livermore’s spirit will tell us herself.”
And that is when someone, a woman in white emerged through the smoke and came on toward the table. She wasn’t Grace. She wasn’t dead. She wore a garland in her hair. The dark little hint of her groin. Her slight shoulders. Slowly approached Livermore, next to me, and leaned in close right by his ear.
The chilly smoke was thicker now. I started to cough for its richness. Then others. The woman in the gown, she coughed. In the sheer act of trying to keep his eyes closed, Livermore’s face had grown distorted.
The woman in white stepped away from the banker, white robes clinging to her skin. I might’ve even known her face. Fanny Conant’s friend: Miss Moss.
Katherine’s coughing fit subsided. Subtly, she cracked one eye and watched the woman walk away.
“The Summerland has been obliging. Is Estelle Livermore’s emanation still here?”
“She fades,” said the woman in white, walking backwards. Composing herself as she walked, her voice hoarse. “She fades. And fades. And fades. And fades. And fades,” said the woman, still backing away. The smoke growing thinner along with her voice.
“Until at last she’s gone,” said she.