Dance with the Devil

 

Stacey Graham

“Get the lights, Betsy.” Marge needed her ambiance. She also needed a vodka martini, but the chance of getting that with these gals dwindled with each serious look and dewy bosom attributed to the excitement of raising the dead. Marge suspected the perspiration was due more to the heat and lack of oxygen in the room than nervousness, since Bernice hadn’t stopped smoking her Lucky Strikes after seeing that ad with Sophia Loren. Now the woman tramped around the room in a low-cut gown, pretending to have an Italian accent.

“I weeell do eet.” Bernice purred. A long, tobacco-stained fingernail twirled the knob of Betsy’s new dimmer switch and the room faded into darkness. Feeling her way back to the Formica-topped kitchen table, Bernice pretended to ignore the sounds of Betsy’s husband in the rumpus room, listening to the game. “I am ready to meet the spirits of our dead ones.”

“Fabulous. Pass me a weenie before Marge gets wound up.” Eleanor had been to these séances before; she knew that when the medium got started, the hostess always forgot to pay attention to details like grumbling stomachs. She’d better load up on the cream cheese-pimento dip while she was at it. Returning to the table with a plate loaded with snacks, Eleanor smoothed her orange and blue caftan over the metal arms of the chair. Averting her eyes from the dried apricot puree of the youngest boy’s supper on Betsy’s pink sweater set, Eleanor settled down to watch Marge go through the ritual of preparing the small kitchen for visitors from the netherworld.

Marge ticked off the list in her head: lights—check, five women—check, candles—check. Tambourine? Left it at home. She needed more room for that bit. She was ready. Her skills might have grown a little rusty after the divorce, but the Palladino family business gave her a cushion. Without a husband to hide her skills from, she made a tidy living off her talents. This city was filled with bored housewives. Meeting Betsy outside of the Piggly Wiggly had been a stroke of luck.

“Ladies, thank you for inviting me tonight. I call out now to the universe in welcome. We have come, spirits, in order to learn from you—to embrace your knowledge and share your secrets. Please, take the hand of the seeker to your left.” In the darkness, Marge guided the women on either side to hold hands with each other, bypassing her own grasp and leaving her fingers free.

“Betsy, I just love this dip,” Eleanor whispered to her neighbor.

“Your seeeeecrets! I implore you to divulge what is hidden from the rest. What is your name, spirit? I command you to speak!” Marge was on a roll. Thirty more minutes of this and she could get back to watching Bonanza with her feet up.

A nervous giggle burst from Betsy. While intrigued at the possibility of a ghostly visitor, she had neglected to mop that afternoon while the boys were napping and she didn’t want the afterlife to think she had been slacking in her housewifely duties. Slipping her foot from its shoe, she grimaced as she felt beneath the table and found the sticky residue left over from an apple juice spill the night before.

“Silence. The underworld speaks in low tones and I must strain to hear them. Concentrate on whom you would like to contact tonight and I shall attempt to rouse them from their slumber,” said Marge. Extracting a small fan from the depths of her pockets, she stirred a slight breeze in the humid kitchen.

“I feeeeel them! It’s like they knew we were waiting!” said Bernice.

“They probably don’t have air conditioning on the other side. Hell, Betsy doesn’t even have it yet.” Eleanor was running out of pimento dip and felt herself sliding into surly like into a warm bath. “Tell that spirit to come over here. I’m having a hot flash and I need a cold spot in my armpit.” Marge obligingly waved the fan the mechanic had given her toward the flushed woman, its cheery reminder to change her oil every thousand miles blanketed in the darkness.

Silently moving across the floor, Marge felt her way around the table with her foot.

“Oh! My chair moved. Someone’s here, aren’t they?” Cherry was a war bride, dumped in the cul-de-sac while her husband of six weeks went to Korea. With a voice as soft as a cloud and demeanor to match, she only came to the circle after Betsy promised there would be nothing to scare her like she’d seen in the movies. With her nervous stomach inspiring fits of nibbling, Cherry was impatient to get through the séance and hit the dessert buffet.

Marge cursed under her breath; she hadn’t meant to hit Cherry’s chair leg.

“I hear them! And they’re vulgar,” Bernice said.

Pulling a length of cheesecloth from her brassiere, Marge dragged it gently across Cherry’s shoulder, then hurried to regain her seat.

“It’s got me! The beast has me in its grip!” Cherry wailed.

Marge rolled her eyes in the darkness and bellowed, “Unhand that woman! Come to me and show me your fury!” She could sense the women’s unease, so she weaved pressure between them with a name.

“Marcus? Your name is M-m-marcus?” she asked.

“Martin? Oh god, no. I hope it’s not my husband Martin. That man never would leave me alone. ‘Eleanor, get me a beer. Eleanor, get me my socks. Eleanor, put down that axe…’ Blah, blah, blah.”

“I need a friggin’ cigarette.” Bernice’s voice lost its Italian sway and returned to its Long Island roots, betraying the cultivated sophistication of Madison Avenue’s influence.

“No. It’s Marcus. Now hush.” Marge had to get things back under control before the women wandered off in search of the bourbon she suspected Betsy had hidden.

“Marcus, what do you want from us?” Extending her foot under the table, Marge nudged it up at the center, making it raise just a smidgen off the floor.

“What was that? A sign from beyond?” Her voice rose over Betsy’s husband’s, as he cheered a goal in the other room.

“Harry! Turn that thing down. We can’t hear the dead people, Honey!” Betsy called out. “Men, they just don’t know when to dial it back a little. I saw that movie with Rock Hudson and Doris Day the other night and he just kept on comin…”

“Betsy! For the love of Pete, we’re trying to figure out who the hell Marcus is.” Irritated, Eleanor wanted nothing more than to wrap this up and get more dip.

“Oh, yes. Sorry, Marge.” Nodding for the older woman to continue, Betsy closed her eyes.

Expelling a small breath, Marge shook her head in exasperation. Shooting her leg out beneath the table once more, she lifted the table a half an inch off the ground and dropped it back to the yellowing linoleum floor with a clatter.

“Good God Almighty! He is here! Martin! I didn’t mean it. My hand just slipped. Okay, it slipped that rat poison right into your beer, but could you blame me?” Eleanor kept babbling. “Night after night of listening to you go on about how the bus company was trying to shift you to another route. Jay-sus, Martin, it wasn’t like you lost an eye.”

Oh crap, Marge thought. Grandma Eunice didn’t cover this part before she left town.

“You killed Martin? How could you?” Bernice’s voice cut through the dark. “He was going to leave your dip-loving ass and we could finally be happy!”

“Ladies, ladies!” Marge fought to keep control, knowing this could never end well. “Keep holding hands. Let us not break the circle of trust and love that we have built!”

“I think that ship has sailed, Marge.” Cherry’s voice slid through the rising keening of Martin’s women as they assessed their new roles of mistress and murderess.

“What the Sam Hill is going on in here? Betsy? Why are the lights off?” Harry’s voice cut through the shrill tones as he turned the dimmer to high and watched the women blink into the glare. Eleanor and Bernice still held hands while Marge sat between them and smiled, her back to the man.

Betsy rose from her chair, hands flat on the table, and stared hard at her husband. “Harry, go back to your game. We have business to discuss here.”

Harry moved to the refrigerator, extracting a beer from its belly and barely glancing at the women. “I don’t know why I have to put up with this. Tom said his wife goes to bridge every Wednesday. I have kooks who sit in the dark and yell at each other.” He returned to the gold-patterned rumpus room and the noise of his television. He called from the other room, “Betsy, this dang television isn’t working again. Get me some tin foil and a screwdriver, would ya?”

Ignoring her husband, Betsy’s voice shook slightly as her eyebrows met in a deep V over her nose. “Marge, we’re going to try this again. This time with the lights on.”

Eleanor and Bernice broke free from each other’s hands and clasped Marge’s in their own, keeping a level eye on the woman they had trusted to bring forth the voice of the dead.

“All right, Betsy. No tricks this time, though you should know the table…”

Betsy cut in. “I don’t want to hear it. You said you could deliver a ghost. Now I want one.” Betsy had never needed a drink so much in her life, but after hiding the bottle from her husband for so long, she couldn’t remember if she’d left it behind the drain cleaner or the lemon-scented furniture polish. Right now, she wasn’t picky if she chose any of them to guzzle.

Marge looked at the women whose lives she’d changed in the last twenty minutes. The aggressive elegance of Bernice was gone as her eyes challenged her lover’s wife across the table. Eleanor bit her lip. She knew she’d said too much about Martin, but he had it coming, even more now that she knew about Bernice.

“Okay, ladies, one more time,” Marge said. “Take hands and let’s see if we can get a ghost in here to calm things down.”

Cherry smiled and lowered her head. This street was a lot more interesting than she had given it credit for. She couldn’t wait to write Ned and tell him about their new, respectable neighbors.

“Spirits, this has been a heck of a night,” Marge began. “Is there someone there who can share with us the secrets of the universe?”

The dome light above the table dimmed slightly in response. Betsy turned toward the light switch to see if her sons were somehow responsible. “If you two boys aren’t back in bed in five seconds, I’ll…” she threatened.

“It’s not the boys, Bets,” Marge said.

“Oh. Well, my goodness.” Betsy waited for Marge to continue.

“What will you tell us that will ease the sorrow from the loss of our beloved Martin?” the older woman began. She knew she’d better come up with something good. She was running out of spirit circles and would have to move on soon.

“Yeah, let’s see if we can get Marty again,” Bernice said. It was bad enough that Martin had keeled over on her, but now she had dirt on the widow. Perhaps she’d learn a little more to take to the police. “I’m sorrowing all over the place, right about now.”

Eleanor forgot about the dip. Her mind raced back to connect the dots before Martin’s unfortunate tangle with the rat poison. “I should have known he had a little tramp on the side. He kept trying to get me to take Italian cooking classes—like good American food wasn’t enough for him anymore. Hoo boy, did he stink. It was those damn cigarettes, wasn’t it?”

“Zip it. Marge, continue.” Betsy had had just about enough of this tomfoolery. She wanted to dance with the devil.

The women fell into an uneasy silence. Closing her eyes, Marge let her head roll back as she summoned the beyond.

“Mmmmm-oooh-mmmm.” With the moan escaping her lips, Marge missed Bernice’s rolling eyes. “Martin, come forth. I command you!”

Shifting in her seat, Cherry felt a slight wave of nausea come over her. She knew she should have eaten before coming, but the promise of pie and a glance at her waistline reminder her to pace herself. Forcing herself to concentrate on Marge, she ignored the tickle on the back of her neck.

“We’ve got a live one, ladies. I can feel it.” A wide smile split Marge’s face. It had been a while since a strong presence had come through. She was ready to poke the dead and see if they giggled.

“Martin…is that you?” Eleanor asked. The evening hadn’t gone off as she had imagined. The other séances she’d been to had had a lot of chanting followed by cocktails. Betsy was so cheap, she wouldn’t break out the good stuff until after they were gone, she reckoned. Now Eleanor was stuck with a ghost who wanted to rat her out and a hostess with anger management issues. Glancing under her lashes at Betsy, she saw the younger woman flush under the dome light. Eleanor wondered if Betsy was part of the show.

“Don’t be silly, Ellie. Marty has better things to do than come back to haunt you.” Bernice’s words whipped across the table. Watching her rival flinch, she felt she had scored one for old Martin. Her eyes straying to the yellowed light above them, she noticed a flicker. “They’re not still doing those brownouts, are they? I thought we got rid of them years ago.” Avoiding Cherry’s eye, she said, “I swear, this ‘police action’ is getting to me. Why can’t we just bomb them all and get it over with?”

“Who ya going to bomb? All of Asia?” Eleanor asked. The news from the conflict filled the papers. She still had a twitch from World War II and wasn’t eager to see another war consume the country.

Bernice shrugged off the comment. “It worked once.” She wasn’t here to argue about wars on another continent.

Cherry wiggled in her seat. “Can we talk about something else?” The pressure in her stomach had become uncomfortable. She wondered how rude it would be to rush out of the kitchen and vomit in the bushes outside. Rubbing the back of her neck, she felt it become hot and sticky beneath her fingers. “Betsy, you really need air conditioning. It’s like a swamp in here.”

“Oh, really? Well, let me tell…” Betsy broke off. “Cherry, you don’t look very well.”

“Don’t break the circle,” Marge warned. “It’s just about to get good.” She didn’t need her tricks after all. She hadn’t counted on little Cherry being as much of a medium as she was: untrained and raw talent. Marge saw an opportunity to show the new kid how it’s done.

“Cherry, they’re trying to make contact with you. Or you have a nasty case of food poisoning.” Marge ignored Betsy’s quick frown.

“I don’t know about this. I think I ought to leave.” Cherry tried to break free, but her neighbors’ firm grips held her hands to the cool star-flecked Formica.

“Ask them, Cherry, who they’ve come for,” Marge said.

“Fine. But then I’m going.” Tipping her head back and staring at the ceiling, Cherry asked between little burps, “Is there a ghost in the house? And what the heck do you want with me?” Her face crumpled as another spasm hit her stomach.

Bernice shot Eleanor a quick look and shook her head. She hadn’t signed up for this.

“It’s all right, Sugar. Just let them talk through you.” Marge looked at Betsy. “Betsy, go get us some paper and a pencil.”

Betsy broke free long enough to come back with a handful and plopped it on the table. “I’m sorry, all I could find were crayons and Bobby’s math homework.”

“It’s fine. Ladies, turn Cherry loose. Honey, take the paper and a crayon.” She cut off Cherry’s question. “No, I don’t care which color. And open your mind.” She smiled to reassure the woman that everything was going to be okay. “We’re going to do a little automatic writing. Turn it to the back and start doodling. I’ll ask the questions and you just let your hand do the work.”

“I’ve heard that before,” snickered Bernice. Eleanor’s angry look shut down the woman’s laughter.

Grasping the waxy purple crayon in her hand, Cherry started dragging it across the paper. Shapes and letters emerged in a tangle of violet as her neighbors stared across the table.

Eleanor squinted at the scribbles to decipher any semblance of a message. “It’s an ‘E’. Are we playing friggin’ hangman now?”

Cherry’s hand continued to draw. Broad strokes filled in the edges while delicate wisps of color drew out more letters. Frowning at the crowded images, Cherry began to pick out the message.

“E—N—D. It’s the end? The end of what?” Questioning the message aloud, she didn’t see Betsy’s eyes widen.

“Honey, I think it’s Ne…” Betsy never finished her sentence. A loud pop erupted from the other end of the house. The kitchen plunged into darkness. “Dang it, Harry, you tripped the circuit breaker again!” Finding her way to the emergency drawer, she extracted a long white candle and matches. “Y’all stay here. I’ll be back.”

“I’m getting dip. My nerves can’t take this.” Eleanor scooted her chair back from the table and felt her way to the counter.

“It stopped,” said Cherry.

“What did?” said Bernice.

“The drawing. When the lights went out, my hand stopped.” Frustrated by the lack of light to finish decoding the paper, Cherry laid the crayon back on the table and rose from her chair. “I’m going home. This is too weird for me.”

Betsy’s voice shot through the house. “Good God, Harry!”

The light from her candle reflected Harry’s attempt to get better reception on the game with an overly enthusiastic twist of the rabbit ear antenna—so that it struck the wall outlet.

“Holy crap, what is that smell?” Bernice wrinkled her nose as the scent of the Harry kabob reached the kitchen.

Marge lit candles around the room as Eleanor called an ambulance and comforted Betsy and her sons.

“Marge, come here.” Cherry stood over the scribble-covered paper, next to a large Christmas candle Marge had unearthed in a cabinet. The elves embedded into the wax did nothing to cheer her as she traced the letters she’d written. “It’s not E—N—D. I think Betsy thought it was Ned but the letters traced out D—E—N, don’t they?”

“Ghosts work in mysterious ways, don’t they?” And so does my ex-husband, who insists on fixing his own wiring. Harry never was handy around the house, she thought.

Marge smiled at Cherry. Perhaps it was time to expand the family business.