Besides, she wasn’t wrong. The face was loosely sketched, and the forms were implied more than strictly pronounced. “I think it looks like a face,” I insisted.
“So what if it does?” She flapped her hand again and shifted her weight on the sturdy old door. Felipe gave a little yap of impatience, but she did not yet release him.
“So what if it does,” I repeated. I did not have an answer.
I bid her good night, and I retreated inside. A few minutes later I heard Felipe shoot free from the house like a tiny white firecracker—barking his foolish little head off, rather than pissing outside and returning immediately to his mother’s loving bosom as intended.
I didn’t mind the noise. It was not late, and Mrs. Vasquez would collect him before he made too much trouble. Maybe he’d scare off a snake or two. Maybe he’d get bitten by one. Life is a terrible gamble for all of us, two-footed and four-footed alike.
• • •
I made myself a cup of tea from water that smelled only faintly yellow, and I flipped through my collection in the Edison cabinet. It’s a new model, a phonograph and radio receiver combined—but there’s very little broadcasting for me to tune it to. There’s talk of a station coming to Tampa any day now, and I hope it’s true. Living voices would be better company than my records, and far less trouble than a house pet.
My collection of music is diverse but not expansive. I dismissed the albums one by one. I didn’t want a waltz or a foxtrot, for I had no partner and the music would only remind me. The Latin dances and Spanish crooners were too dramatic for my mood, and as far as I can tell, the European composers either are all excessively bombastic or aim to bore the listener to sleep. I only wished for relaxing distraction and something unrelated to wartime patriotism. Was that asking so much?
I made my selection based upon a single song—“Love’s Dream After the Ball,” by Elizabeth Spencer, for it is sentimental but not overly maudlin. I placed it upon the player and set the needle down.
I took my tea to the couch by the large west-facing window and pushed the curtain back so I could see outside. The last of the sunset pink, as soft as the inside of a shell, had fallen into the water of the bay. The sky was dark, but electric lights were popping on inside houses all over the neighborhood. The city may not pay to light the streets, but we see to our own abodes.
• • •
EVELYN made no effort to resist progress, and as soon as electrical service was offered, she saw to the wiring in our house. It happened while I was away, and she wrote to tell me all about it. She described the new fixtures with wonder and delight: They were so vivid, and not nearly so hot as an open flame. (Just like the phonograph, the glass bulbs were also by Edison, who must have invented everything new, for the entire generation.)
Electricity and Edison and Evelyn. God, every train of thought comes back around to her. Someday, perhaps, it won’t. But no day soon, I fear.
• • •
AS vowed, I would visit the electricians in the morning, but I was not at all confident that the wires in the walls had caused the fires.
The first little blaze had occurred in the trash, and I’d discovered it almost immediately. The smell had wafted to my nose from the kitchen, where the tall wicker bin held mostly butcher’s paper and fish bones, inedible bits of fruit and greenery, and some rice I’d regrettably overcooked. There was nothing within it that might spark any flame—no matches, no cigarillos or anything else. It was easily ten feet away from the stove, my only source of fabricated heat, and at that time, the stove had not been in use for hours.
Then came the fire in the washroom, sparked on a towel and my drying socks, which had fallen off the shower bar and into the tub. The towels and the socks had all been damp, last I’d seen them. How they’d caught fire remains a mystery, but in that fire I noticed what looked like . . . Well, not a face, no. But neither was it some random streak of wayward ash.
There was a distinct symmetry to the greasy mess of soot left behind.
• • •
HERE is my secret, which I have told no one (for whom would I tell?): I thought it was a handprint, left behind on the tub’s white enamel. I would happily swear with one hand on a Bible and the other on a cross that it looked like someone had tried to climb out of the basin. Some hand had reached up and grasped.
Out from the ashes. Out of . . . who can say?
• • •
AND now there has been this third fire, because things come so nicely in threes. This one was larger than the previous two and much more dramatic. This one left me a face splashed upon the wall in its wake. It is a woman’s face, smeared and dragged and staring at nothing—but as true and clear as the work of one of the modern painters for whom Mrs. Vasquez has no fondness. I tried not to think about it. I could not think of anything else.
I listened to Miss Spencer sing her heart out, and I sipped my tea. I cracked the window open and let the gulf breeze wash into the parlor, where I never entertained anymore.
Since coming back from England I’d had no guests at all, except for the dark-haired ladies with their condolences and cakes, and their husbands shifting nervously back and forth beside them as they murmured how sorry they were to hear about my Evelyn—and how glad they were to know that I’d returned home safely.
There’s etiquette to grief, and I was glad for it. Old manners gave me appropriate things to say and proper responses to the scripted sorrows and sad eyes. I do not know what I would’ve done with myself if I’d never had the rituals to guide me.
Probably, left to my own devices, I would have drunk myself to death or drowned in the tub upstairs, long before the fire had any chance to blossom there.
• • •
I closed my eyes and thought of my wife, with her lovely profile and copper brown eyes, her high cheeks and smooth brow. I surrendered and indulged the ridiculous possibility: The image outside might represent any woman, and therefore, it might represent Evelyn.
What a peculiar hope it gave me—the notion that the fires might be some unnatural missive from her very own soul. She might remember me, in whatever far-off realm she’d found herself upon closing her eyes that final time. But if these harmless flames bore messages, then where did they bear them from? Surely it was no celestial place with saints and clouds and a choir of angels. Surely if she makes such an effort to reach me, she does so from nowhere safe and pleasant.
Yet still, I hope it’s her. Even if she calls me from the flames of hell.
And that’s a terrible, black hope indeed.
5
ALICE DARTLE
Cassadaga, Florida
MY HANDS WOULDN’T stop quivering and I couldn’t keep my feet from fretting back and forth across the floor of my pretty, modest hotel room. I was hungry, for one thing. I was impossibly nervous, for another—and the cup of stiff, unsweetened coffee provided by Mr. Rowe did nothing to make me feel less like I was about to explode from pure terror.
A second nip of brandy might’ve done the job—or better yet, a third. I hoped nobody could smell the first nip, the one I took on the way out the door.
But as I stood in the lobby of the Cassadaga Hotel and trembled, beside me, a woman in a long, plain, dark dress looked me up and down while she waited to use the telephone. Her hair was red, fading to silver, and her eyes were the color of cinnamon. She gave me a wink and said, “I can only smell it a little, and only because I know what I’m sniffing for.”
I was too appalled to respond. I sputtered, flailed, and tried to guess her accent.
“Dublin,” she said, even though I hadn’t managed to ask. “That’s what you hear. Good heavens, child. Get a grip on yourself. You’ve only just arrived, and you’re already falling to pieces.”
“I need to brush my teeth.”
“You’ve already brushed them twice.”
“Stop tellin
g me about the things I’ve done!”
“I’m trying to tell you something else.” She gave me a gentle elbow, so she must’ve been halfway joking with me. “If I know what you’ve already done, you can trust that I know what you’re going to do. And you’re going to do just fine.”
I did my best to obey her and compose myself, but I was afraid—of the tests, and of this tiny Irish woman with her pretty voice and trickster smile. God, what if everybody knew as much as she did? All the time?
A man who was using the telephone finished up and moved along. The woman smiled at me. She said, “Dr. Floyd is coming. She’s right on time, as always. Buck up, girl. Pass your tests and come join us. There’s work to be done. You, my dear . . . oh, I think you’re going to be very helpful.” Then she took the receiver and asked for Daytona Beach.
“Miss Dartle!”
Well, Dr. Floyd had found me. The odd little woman had been right about that, too.
The pastor was smiling brightly beneath a fine hat with a brim I would’ve found too wide for my own round face, but it suited her gloriously. She wore white gloves with tiny pearl buttons, and close-toed shoes with a modest heel. They matched her dress, a lavender-gray affair that made her eyes look even more stunningly blue than they’d seemed the night before.
“Good”—she checked the clock on the wall behind me—“morning, technically. I hope you slept well and you’re ready for your tests.”
“I am as ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, the words running together in my mouth. “I wish I knew what these tests were like. I wish perhaps you’d given me some hint last night.”
“I deliberately elected not to, because you would have only obsessed, and worried, and fretted.” To the woman at the phone, she offered a quiet “Good morning, Francine.” Francine nodded in response but kept most of her attention on the call.
“Yes, ma’am—but you might as well know, I obsessed, and worried, and fretted anyway.” I fell into step beside her. “At least you might’ve left me some way to prepare.”
She put a friendly hand on my shoulder and saw me through the door first. “Oh, there’s no preparing for tests like these—and all that fretting was for naught, my dear. Think of it . . .” She closed up behind us both and led the way out onto the sidewalk. “Think of it as a confirmation instead. Is your family the religious sort? A number of our residents are practicing Christians.”
“My mother’s a Methodist, and my father is a Methodist because my mother says he is. As for me . . . I don’t suppose I have any idea what to believe. If I did, maybe I wouldn’t have come here.”
Soon we arrived at Harmony Hall, an older two-story building in a more traditional style than most of the houses I’d seen so far. I counted six rooms (or living spaces?) on the first floor, and the same on the second—with an open-air corridor between them.
Dr. Floyd and I approached together, and I didn’t falter, pause, or otherwise stall my entry. I refused to behave like a coward.
Inside the corridor I found shade, which was a relief—and I spotted only the fourth telephone I’d ever personally set eyes upon in my whole life. It was mounted into the wall with some semblance of a booth around it, to guard it from the weather; above it was a great red fire bell, and beside it a gaslamp was hung with a sign that read, “Please Speak with Mrs. Handley Before Using Telephone.” Naturally, the sign made me itch to grab the thing and start chatting, but I successfully restrained myself. I didn’t know how to use one, so it was just as well.
Almost immediately, we arrived at the office of Mr. Colby.
Or I thought it must be his office. He was sitting in it, anyway—and several other people were keeping him company in the little flat. There were four other people, to be more precise: three women and a man. They all smiled in welcome, greeting me with a soft chorus of hellos.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Alice Dartle,” Dr. Floyd introduced me. The rest she gestured toward, from left to right. “Alice, this is Sidney Holligoss, our resident physician; his wife, Edella, who you’ll likewise find there as often as not; Mabel Dimmick, one of our most expert and widely known clairvoyants; and Dolores Brigham, a truly outstanding medium who’s been with us since the community first began.” She took a deep breath, to catch herself up. “And finally, of course, this is our founder, Mr. George Colby. Together, he and I will serve as administrators during these three tests.”
“Three tests?”
“Three is a perfect number. It protects, it collects, and it informs.” She sounded so formal, so official . . . like a school principal who genuinely likes you but still is forced to keep you in detention for some silly transgression—like using the telephone without speaking to Mrs. Handley first.
I swallowed hard and tried to look friendly, prepared, and exceedingly clairvoyant. I probably looked like a maniac.
“Come sit over here,” she said, directing me to a round, three-legged table draped with a purple cloth. Upon this table sat several objects: a pendulum on a chain, a folded envelope, a pack of cards, and a bowl that was mostly full of water.
This wasn’t a trial, certainly not a witch trial; that’s what she’d said—but that wasn’t true, was it? For I was a witch, in an approximated courtroom, waiting and praying for a verdict in my favor. I started sweating. My breathing went all shallow and I felt so light-headed, I just didn’t know what to do. I wanted to stand up and run, and I wanted to lie down and die.
“Alice.” The pastor said my name. She put a hand on my shoulder, and I tried to draw some comfort from it. “Relax. Everything will be fine.”
The jurors regarded me kindly, but I felt well and truly wretched. Surely I wasn’t giving them enough credit. They wanted me to succeed—wasn’t that right? I had to trust Dr. Floyd. If I couldn’t trust her, then I couldn’t trust any of them.
I swallowed again. I sat down in the chair and scooted forward until the table’s offerings were within easy reach, and I held my hands over them—waving slowly back and forth between the cards, the water, the crystal.
Here was my first test, and here were four objects. They were loaded, each and every one. I don’t know how to say it other than that. They were loaded, as surely as any gun—each with some peculiar energy or history.
I lingered over the pack of cards. “I heard somewhere,” I said quietly, “that the spiritualist church doesn’t approve of the tarot.”
The pastor shrugged. “You mentioned last night that you were good with them. I don’t use them myself, and I’ve seen clairvoyants who are more dependent upon them than they ought to be . . . but there are many paths to the truth. Go on, in whatever manner makes you most comfortable. Take the items and read them.”
Deep breath. Hard swallow.
I held my vibrating hands over the table. “Yes, ma’am, all right. I’ll do my best.”
For no particular reason, I started with the envelope. The paper was good quality; it’d come from a nice stationery set, a lady’s set. I picked it up. I rubbed it between my fingers and held it up to my face to give it a good sniff.
Then I started talking.
“This didn’t come from a girl, but an older woman, in her forties or fifties. I think I can see her, but . . . I’m not very good at guessing how old people are. I’m absolute garbage at it.” Clumsily, I unfolded the envelope. There was an address, but no name. “It says 3234 South Orange Blossom. That’s not a local street . . . it’s to the west of here. In a larger town.” I saw a flat expanse of sandy dirt, with streets laid out on a grid. Trains churning along tracks. A few brick buildings, a few stone buildings. All with flat roofs. “This was a love letter, and an apology. She took a train, to clear her head. She couldn’t make up her mind between . . . between her lover and his brother.” I felt the paper, its soft grain, its lingering odor of perfume—long gone, but I could still sense it. “Something with lilies,” I muttered.
; I looked up, gazing from face to face, hoping to see some acknowledgment that I was doing well. They all remained mildly impassive, except for Mr. Colby. He bobbed his head, but that might’ve meant anything. “And?”
“And?” I looked back down at the table and decided to try the pendulum next. I picked it up by its chain and let it dangle, unsure of how to proceed. I’d only ever used one to ask for yeses or nos, with little silly questions. Would it rain before sundown? Could my father’s favorite boxer survive more than three rounds in the ring?
I held the crystal as still as I possibly could. It swayed back and forth, then into a soft clockwise circle. There was something about the energy it made, the gentle swirling that summoned a hum, or a buzz. I closed my eyes and listened. “The woman who wrote the letter . . . she was too late. By the time she’d made her choice, he’d chosen someone else. It broke her heart.”
The pendulum stopped moving, and the ambient tone in my ears went away—so I turned my attention to the bowl of water. I touched the surface and let the ripples wobble in shaky circles. I saw tears, and bubbles. I heard the rush of a faucet. “She took to drinking, and within a year or two, she drowned in a bathtub. It wasn’t . . .” I frowned, wondering how much I ought to say. But this was my test, and the more information, the better. Or so I hoped! “It wasn’t exactly an accident.”
Dr. Floyd had taken a seat to watch me, but now she rose to her feet. She did it suddenly; the motion surprised me, and I sat up straight. “Ma’am?”
“My turn,” she announced.
“I beg your pardon? Did I do something wrong? Oh God, I did something wrong . . .”
She approached the table and took the cards before I had a chance to open them. “No, no, you didn’t. I’ve just seen enough, and now it’s my turn to read.”
“Read . . . read what?”
Everyone else looked almost as confused as I felt, but nobody stopped her.
She shook the cards out of the pack and shuffled them loosely. I watched them with fascination, feeling the hum come back at the edge of my hearing. I imagined that they glowed, but of course they didn’t. I imagined that they sparked, but that didn’t happen, either. They only combined and recombined between her fingers. I was transfixed by her hands, even when she stopped to lay down a small spread—a modified cross layout that I didn’t recognize.