“They got the wire from the Red Cross this afternoon,” Helen's mother was telling her father at dinner the next evening. “It seems Will and some other men were sleeping in the warehouse. It's a miracle they were saved. The firemen weren't looking for anyone to be in there.”
“Will Mackey has no business being away from his family,” Helen's father said.
“I guess he thinks it's best.”
“He is coming home now, Emilie?” Helen's grandmother, Ursula, asked.
“I don't know.”
That her vision had proved true excited Helen, but her stomach churned with worried guilt, as if she had broken some rule and was bound to be found out. Even so, she was curious about the details of Mr. Mackey's ordeal.
“Was Mr. Mackey burnt?” she asked.
Her mother was slicing another piece of meat loaf. She placed it on her husband's plate.
“Gravy, Walter?” she asked. He nodded and she passed him the gravy boat.
“I don't think so, Helen. They only kept him overnight in the hospital because he had breathed in a lot of smoke.”
“Was it black smoke?”
“I don't know. Any kind of smoke from a big fire like that is bad for you.”
“Was he wearing a plaid shirt?”
“What kind of question is that?” Helen's father interrupted. He preferred quiet dinners or ones in which he led the conversation.
“Why do you wonder such a thing, Helen?” Ursula said with genuine interest.
“No reason.”
Helen shoveled a large piece of meat loaf into her mouth. She wouldn't be expected to say more with her mouth full.
“Helen, don't take such big bites,” her mother scolded. “Really, you're too old for me to have to tell you that.”
Helen tried to keep her cheeks from sticking out as she chewed the soft wad. She stared at the row of steins on the sideboard in order to avoid her grandmother's quizzical gaze.
Helen's parents had already forgotten her odd question and poor manners. They were on to the familiar topic of “hard times.” Though the Schneiders had lost their savings when the bank failed a few years ago, and Walter's job as a bookkeeper had been cut back to three days a week, at least he still had a job. Household economies like buying day-old bread, coupled with Emilie selling vegetables from her garden and Ursula contributing the fees she got for seances had enabled the family to weather the worst years of the Depression without being subjected to hardships suffered by so many others.
Shocked at first, Helen had gotten used to seeing people living in their cars, businessmen in suits digging sewer pipe ditches, schoolgirls wearing dresses made from feed sacks, and idle men loitering in parks and libraries to postpone the shame of going home empty-handed. Now, thanks to federal assistance, people could get rent money and shoes and food from their local townships. Just last winter, Helen had helped Billy and Lloyd pull home sleds loaded with free turnips, potatoes, and cornmeal for the Mackey family. The Schneiders hadn't needed food
hand-outs, but Helen was aware that the adults often ate less so that she was sure to get enough.
Helen expected her grandmother to press her about the plaid shirt when they were alone together in the kitchen getting dessert ready, but Ursula was all business, scooping noodle pudding into glass dishes, skimming cream from the top of the milk bottle to pour on Walter's serving, steeping the tea. Helen scraped the dinner plates and stacked them in the sink. They exchanged only a few utilitarian comments. Helen was so relieved that she didn't even mind not knowing if she'd been right about the shirt.
But her relief was short-lived. After dessert, Walter and Emilie went to the living room to listen to the radio, while Helen and Ursula, as usual, cleaned up in the kitchen. Helen was drying the last platter when Ursula finished sweeping the floor and came to stand beside her. Helen felt an eruption of nervousness.
“Mr. Mackey,” Ursula said. “He was lucky, no?”
Helen nodded yes to the rhetorical question.
“Did you see him, Helen?”
“See him?”
“Did you see him in that fire?”
“No. No, I didn't. How could I?”
“
Ach
, there's no answer for that.”
Ursula shook her head slowly.
“When I was a girl, near your age,” she said, “I had a dream about an avalanche. A man from our village was in it. Our baker. I saw his skis go over and over down the mountain. My Papa said I only dreamed so because I knew the baker was away visiting in Austria. But a few days later, we learned there was an avalanche, and he was killed in it.”
Helen waited for her grandmother to go on, but she didn't. A lump burned in her throat.
“I was thinking about Mr. Mackey,” she finally whispered. “And I kind of saw him.”
“It was my first time,” Ursula said, as if Helen had not spoken. “Dreams is how the spirits start you sometimes. To get you used to it.”
She patted Helen's shoulder.
“But, Nanny, I didn't see him in a dream. It was daytime. I was awake. And I just knew.”
Ursula raised her eyebrows.
“Then,
Liebling,
I can not help you so much. You are already past me.”
Helen came home from the park one Wednesday afternoon two weeks later to find her grandmother in the kitchen ironing one of her Sunday dresses. Usually, this was done on Saturday. Not curious enough to ask about it, Helen merely said hello and headed for the cookie jar.
“Go take a bath, Helen,” Ursula said, sprinkling water on the dress's pique collar. “And wash your hair.”
Helen took two fruit shortbread cookies out of the jar and went to the Kelvinator for milk.
“Is someone coming for dinner?”
“No one for dinner. We go out afterwards, you and me.”
“Out?”
“I have some people at Mrs. Durkin's.”
A seance, then. When Helen was younger, she often had to accompany her mother and grandmother to seances. At Mrs. Durkin's, she got to wait outside under a huge weeping willow. At other homes, she was required to sit quietly in a boring kitchen while the grown-ups met in another room. But Helen had not been to a seance in almost a year. Her mother felt she was old enough to stay at home alone during the day, and in the evenings her father was always there, except when the
Sängerbund
met. As one of only three baritones in the singing society, Walter didn't like to miss meetings. But Wednesday was not their night.
“It could be you can help a little tonight,” Ursula said, not
looking up from the ironing board.
“Help?”
Ursula slipped Helen's dress onto a hanger.
“You'll wear this,” she said. “And we make your hair into nice, shiny braids. So you look like the sweet girl.”
“But what am I going to do, Nanny?”
Ursula shrugged. “We will see.”
Â
Helen was glad to encounter in Mrs. Durkin's living room several familiar faces. Mrs. Durkin herself, pillow-bosomed and round-faced, gave Helen a hearty welcoming hug, as if it had been years since she'd seen her, though she'd passed Helen's yard only last week while walking her collie. Old Mr. Grauer made a courtly bow in Helen's direction. Miss Simmons from the dentist's office smiled at her. It was strange to see her without her white uniform. Instead she wore a red blouse with a pleated plaid skirt and red ankle socks and loafers. Her hairy calves seemed mildly indecent absent the accustomed white stockings.
Mrs. Durkin, Mr. Grauer, and Miss Simmons were all “regulars.” Tonight, Miss Simmons had brought her young man, Mr. Howard from the Esso station. He put out his hand for Helen to shake. It was thick and hard, black grease outlining his cuticles. When her hand touched his, Helen caught a momentary image of a violin.
There were two other people, a man with thick bifocals that made his eyes look as round as those of the fish on ice at Dohrmann's market, and a stylish woman wearing two red fox pelts over her tailored suit, each fox grasping the tail of the other in its pointy mouth. It was an unusual costume for August, even though the evening was cool, the air freshened by a promise of rain. These strangers stood apart from the others, at opposite sides of the small room. It was, overall, a rather large group.
Perhaps, Helen thought, that's why her grandmother had wanted her along, though she still didn't know how she could help.
Mrs. Durkin led the way to the adjoining room, lit only by four candles in a silver candelabra in the center of her circular dining table. A squat vase of dark red roses sat beside the candelabra, and there was a row of potted geraniums and violets on the windowsill.
The man with the thick eyeglasses sat across from Helen. Candle reflections danced on his lenses. Ursula sat on Helen's right, Mr. Grauer on her left. The old man smelled of Old Spice and shoe polish.
Although the ages of the people around the table entitled every one of them to wield authority over her, Helen somehow did not feel subject to them. In a quick series of glances, she detected in each person some degree of wishing or wanting. It was in the eyes, or in the nervous, foraging movements of hands and fingers. In some, it had grown into need. And she saw that it was their wishes and their neediness that had diminished their power. It was a novel feeling, a bit disconcerting, but interesting, too.
At a nod from Ursula, the group placed their hands flat on the table, the pinky fingers of neighboring sitters touching.
“May the Divine Spirit and the Spirits of the Universe guide us this evening,” she said.
Staring at the candles, Ursula asked if anyone had a particular spirit they wished to contact. The regulars didn't answer. They were content to accept whomever came.
Mr. Stewart pushed his thick glasses up higher on his nose. “My daughter Dorothy,” he said hoarsely. “She was just a little girl when ⦠Is that all right?”
Ursula made no sign of having heard his question, but Mr. Grauer sent him a reassuring nod.
“My late husband,” said the lady with the fox pelts. Her voice was crisp and challenging.
Mrs. Durkin handed Ursula a Bible.
“This belonged to Mrs. Vole's husband,” she explained.
Ursula placed the book next to the flower vase and rested her hands in her lap. Helen was just wondering if she ought to stretch her right arm toward Miss Simmons to bridge the gap in the circle when her grandmother tapped her elbow, indicating Helen was to place her hands in her own lap. Copying her grandmother, she crossed her wrists left over right. At a nudge from Ursula's foot, Helen also crossed her ankles. When her grandmother shut her eyes, again Helen copied her. She heard Ursula breathing loudly and deeply beside her.
The noise of the breaths slowly grew softer, as if her grandmother were walking away from her, until Helen couldn't hear them at all anymore. The perfume of the roses filled her nostrils, the flowers warmed by their nearness to the candle flames.
When she heard a child crying, Helen tried to open her eyes, but her lids felt immovable. Then she saw the child, though her eyes were still closed. It was a young boy in short pants, crying in a corner. Over his crying, she began to discern another sound. Music. The boy raised his face and stopped weeping. The music grew louder. It was a violin, plaintive and lonesome, but at the same time sweet and soothing. Helen felt the desire of the little boy that the playing go on and on. He desired it the way small children do desire things, with absolute totality.
“He wants you to keep playing,” Helen said aloud, not knowing or caring whom she was addressing. The boy's desire was so strong, she just had to communicate it.
“You have a message, Helen?” came her grandmother's voice, distinct but far away.
“Play the fiddle some more, Buddy. Never stop playing,”
Helen said. It was her voice, but the child's words.
“Oh, my lord,” a man exclaimed, also from a distance.
The image of the boy began to fade. The sound of the violin wavered and also faded. Helen was aware, all at once, of the hard seat of her chair and of the presence of other people. Her limbs felt heavy and tired.
“Buddyâthat's what my family calls me,” Mr. Howard was saying excitedly. “It was my little brother started it, âcause he couldn't say Bertie. My little brother that died of the scarlet fever. He was only five. I never thought ⦠I came tonight just 'cause Molly hounded me to. I never thought I'dâ”
“But you don't play the violin, Bertie,” Miss Simmons said.
“I used to, Molly. I used to. And he did think it was swell, too. Only one that did, in fact.”
Helen opened her eyes. Everyone was staring at her with frank curiosity. Mrs. Durkin brought a tall glass of water, and Helen drank half of it down.
“Did you get a little boy?” her grandmother said carefully, as if Helen might not understand her.
Helen nodded.
“Children come more easily to their own,” Ursula explained to the sitters.
“Then my daughter mightâ?” Mr. Stewart ventured.
Ursula raised her hand to cut him off. Then she closed her eyes and bent her head back.
“Yes, now I see the boy. His cheeks are red.”
“From the scarlet fever,” Mr. Howard interjected.
“He wants to thank you for playing for him,” Ursula said. “He remembers it still.”
A small moan escaped Mr. Howard. Miss Simmons laid her hand comfortingly on his arm.
“He has someone beside him,” Ursula continued. “Another child. He's pulling her forward. She has something in her arms.
A doll, perhaps. A rag doll, worn out with use. Does that sound like Dorothy, Mr. Stewart?”
“Dorothy never had a rag doll. But she had a teddy bear she carried most everywhere.”
“Yes, now I see it more clearly. It
is
a teddy bear. With long arms and legs, like a rag doll.”
“That's it. That's my little girl's bear. What does she say?”
“She's holding the bear close to her face,” Ursula said. “She's too shy to speak in front of all these people. She's stepping back.”
Ursula rubbed her forehead.
“There's someone else trying to come through. A man. He's feeling ⦠pleased ⦠. Pleased to see ⦔
Ursula reached for the Bible. She smoothed her hand over its cover.
“He's pleased that his book is here. He watches you, Mrs. Vole, when you take it out and hold it.”
Mrs. Vole leaned forward and scrutinized Ursula, whose eyes were still shut. The tip of a fox tail swung forward and brushed the tabletop.
“Why did he do it?” Mrs. Vole asked, each word hard and singular.
“He says ⦠He says he had his reasons.”
“Oh, Al, why did you do it?”
“He says he didn't ever mean to hurt you.”
Ursula opened her eyes and regarded Mrs. Vole, who remained canted forward. Helen looked at her grandmother. No one seeing that face could imagine its owner able to be prevailed upon a moment longer.
“Let us each quietly thank the spirits who visited tonight,” Mrs. Durkin said, lowering her head as if in prayer.
All the regulars, plus Helen and Ursula, immediately followed suit. The three agitated newcomers felt constrained to
lower their heads as well. When Mrs. Durkin rose, everyone except Helen and her grandmother also rose. Mrs. Durkin ushered the sitters out of the dining room and into the process of retrieving their hats and handbags. Helen heard Mrs. Vole inquiring about future meetings. Mr. Stewart was asking about a private sitting.
“Was there anything else?” Ursula asked Helen when they were alone. “Any
one
else?”
Helen shook her head.
“I should maybe have let you hold that Bible,” Ursula mused.
She smiled, patting Helen on the knee. “No matter,” she said. “There's ways to call the spirits. You will learn.”
“Do they always come?”
“Nein.
They got their own business, just like us. But there's ways, too, to make it look like they come. That you can learn, also.”
It sounded to Helen as if her grandmother's suggestion was very close to, if not the same thing as, outright lying. Her concern must have showed on her face because her grandmother gave her an encouraging wink.
“We keep open the doors,
Liebling.
The doors to the spirit world, and the doors to Mrs. Durkin's house. Because what is the good when the spirits do come, if no one is here to listen?”