Eleanor, Alice, and the Roosevelt Ghosts

by Dianne K. Salerni

  Teddy avoids my gaze by cleaning his spectacles. Corinne sheepishly unties the ribbon and removes the bird hat.

  “All the toys should go,” I say.

  “Not the china doll,” Corinne counters. “The ghost is a boy.”

  “Yes, the doll. It could have belonged to one of his sisters.”

  “You can say that about most things in this attic,” Alice says. “Those dress patterns might’ve belonged to his mother.”

  “They probably did.” I pick one up. “Everyone knows I have no sense of fashion, but these dresses look like something from the forties.” The words are out of my mouth before I believe I’ve dared to say them. It’s something Alice would do: throw the words of someone’s unkind conversation back at them. But Corinne shows no recognition. She nods her understanding and starts gathering the patterns into stacks.

  “What about the big things?” Teddy asks. “Like the curio cabinet and the linen press?”

  “We’ll get help for those.” I pick my way around the clothing and boxes strewn across the floor, looking at what we must deal with. “What’s under here?” I pick up the edge of a blanket that’s been thrown over a piece of furniture.

  “A rocking chair.” Alice speaks in a steady voice, but there’s something about her tone that makes me look at her. “The last time I was up here, the ghost sat in that chair, rocking it.”

  “But it’s got a broken runner.”

  “Yes,” says Alice.

  “It definitely has to go.” I drop the edge of the blanket with a shiver. “Teddy, I want you to get paper and pen and list the big things—the furniture, the rugs, the draperies—with as much description as you can. We’ll show the list to Aunt Bye and see if she can’t recall some of the items. If she knows the rugs, for instance, used to be hers, then we don’t have to bother with them.”

  Teddy nods and scrambles down the stairs to fetch a pen and paper.

  “The rest of us will make piles. Things that definitely need to be discarded and things that can stay. See if there are any we can eliminate.”

  Alice points across the room. “There’s a box of letters that belong to the Morrows, and the dates on those magazines are from only twenty years ago.”

  “Good. They can stay.”

  Corinne’s cheeks dimple. “See? I told you we needed Eleanor.”

  Alice kicks a cardboard box. “This should be burned. It looks like everything in here belonged to the Drummonds.”

  “Burned?” The box is filled to the brim with yellowed papers. The ones on top are typewritten and look like legal documents. “Shouldn’t we read them first?”

  “You can if you want.” Alice shrugs. “I’m not going to.”

  It feels wrong to burn important-looking contracts without at least glancing through them. But we need to remove all the belongings of the Drummonds from this house. I test the weight of the box, finding it quite heavy. “We’ll ask Franklin to carry it down from the attic and bring it to my house. I’ll look through the box and burn the papers when I’m finished.”

  Teddy returns and begins to make his list. Corinne puts the toys back in their metal box. Alice and I pick up the scattered clothes, shoes, and hats and shove them into trunks and suitcases, pushing those closer to the stairs in what becomes our “discard” area. We work for an hour or more. Slowly the disaster I walked into begins to look more manageable.

  Alice is quiet, and I wonder if she knows about the telegram on Aunt Bye’s dresser. When Corinne and Teddy start dragging suitcases down the stairs, she says in a voice meant for my hearing alone, “Eleanor, I need to tell you something. Aunt Bye asked me not to, but I think I must.”

  I brace myself, confident that, for once, I know the bad news before it’s delivered. But instead of telling me that her father is going to war, Alice informs me that the ghost has been whispering in Aunt Bye’s deaf ear that her baby will die unless he’s born in this house. My mouth falls open. “Do you think…” I don’t know how to ask Alice if our aunt is losing her mind.

  “I believe her,” Alice says. “Because the ghost spoke to me too. Days ago. I thought it was my imagination at the time, but now I know.”

  “What did it say?”

  Alice looks away. “It was something cruel, and I don’t want to repeat it.”

  “You don’t have to,” I assure her. Things said to a person in cruelty are very personal.

  Then I gasp.

  “What?” Alice demands.

  Pressing both hands to my cheeks, I turn around so that I can have a moment of privacy. Alice waits more patiently than I expect her to, but when I face her again, her eyes are direct and piercing. “Two days ago, I was standing at the back kitchen door, and I overheard a conversation between Helen’s friends in the front parlor.”

  “You can’t hear people talking in the parlor from the back kitchen door.”

  “Exactly.”

  Alice’s eyes narrow. “I’m guessing what you overheard wasn’t to your liking, because you left that day without telling anyone and didn’t come back yesterday either.”

  I nod.

  Alice plops to a seat on top of one of the trunks. “This is a strange ghost.”

  I agree. Glancing around the attic, I wonder if it’s watching us now. The air is cold, but not unnaturally so. I can’t see our breath in the air. But does that mean anything?

  “I have an idea,” Alice announces. “The day after the eruption, a woman from the Supernatural Registry board came to the house to collect information. She said that if we found out anything else about this ghost, we should inform her, for their records. We could visit her, tell her what we know and what’s going on. Maybe she can help.”

  “That’s a very good idea.”

  Alice smiles broadly. “Eleanor, wait until I tell you the woman’s name!”

  “Why? Do you think I know her?”

  17

  ALICE CHALLENGES AN EXPERT

  AUNT Bye agrees that the woman from the Supernatural Registry board asked to be informed if they identified the progenitor of their ghost. “But Alice, I think she meant for you to send a letter. Not pester her at her office.”

  Then Aunt Bye looks at Eleanor—who is practically bouncing in her seat—and revelation dawns. “Oh. You want to meet her, don’t you?”

  Ever since finding out that the woman from the Supernatural Registry board is in fact Nellie Bly, female journalist extraordinaire, Eleanor has been grinning from ear to ear. She isn’t even doing that silly thing where she hides her teeth behind her hand.

  Eleanor’s beaming face wins over Aunt Bye. She gives them permission and asks Maisie to hire a cab with instructions to convey them downtown and wait for their return trip. Pressing a few bills for the fare into Alice’s hand, Aunt Bye says, “Don’t take up too much of her time, and don’t be disappointed if she’s too busy to see you.”

  When the cab approaches downtown Manhattan, Alice’s eyes fix on the New York World Building, the tallest skyscraper in New York City and the place Nellie Bly once worked as a reporter. But, disappointingly, the cab stops in front of a two-story building made of dingy gray stone, adorned with a corroded iron plaque that reads: EW YORK CITY S PERN TURAL REG STRY.

  Inside, the girls find themselves in a long corridor with an open room at the end. Eleanor hesitates, reverting to shyness, but Alice strides forward, her shoes clacking on the floor.

  Inside the large room, eight women sit at desks. Their heads are bent to their tasks, typing information onto forms that are then stacked into baskets. Two more women circle the room, collecting papers from the baskets and filing them in cabinets. All are dressed miserably alike in white or beige shirtwaists with no adornment and dark skirts. There isn’t a hint of color in the room.

  The lady at the closest desk looks up. “Can I help you?”

  “Alice and Eleanor
Roosevelt to see Nellie Bly.”

  The woman creases her brow and purses her lips.

  “Mrs. Seaman,” Alice corrects herself.

  “May I inquire what your business is with Mrs. Seaman?”

  “She visited my home after an eruption and asked me to inform her of any additional information we discovered.”

  The woman smiles in an indulgent manner. “You may leave your information with me and rest assured that it will be properly entered into the record.”

  “But we wanted to see her.”

  “We have questions!” Eleanor suddenly finds her voice. “Our aunt is expecting a baby, and this ghost has not been good for her health!”

  “Girls—” the woman begins.

  Another, stronger voice intervenes. “Joan! Let them in.”

  Alice snaps her head around to see Mrs. Seaman standing in a doorway, her arms crossed and one shoulder leaning against the doorframe. Her bright yellow dress brightens the drab room the way the sun banishes a cloudy day. Her eyes are alight with amusement, and her demeanor is that of a cocksure reporter. Whatever she chooses to call herself, this woman will always be the one and only Nellie Bly.

  Joan sighs and waves them in. Knowing Eleanor as she does, Alice grabs her by the hand to prevent her from wavering under Sour Joan’s disapproval.

  “Miss Roosevelt,” Miss Bly addresses Alice in greeting, then looks at her companion.

  “May I present my cousin Eleanor Roosevelt?”

  Eleanor, poor awkward thing, sticks one foot behind the other and curtsies, like she’s being introduced to royalty. Miss Bly laughs, although not in an unkind way, and beckons them into her office.

  The room contains a desk with two wooden chairs in front for visitors and a cushioned chair behind it for Miss Bly.

  “How can I help you, girls?” Miss Bly asks. “I heard you tell Joan that you’re worried for your aunt.”

  Alice glances at Eleanor and, seeing that her cousin is still struck mute, takes command of the conversation. She names the ghost’s progenitor, along with the date of his death and his age. Miss Bly takes notes. “What manifestations have you experienced?”

  Alice starts with the benign ones, like the handkerchief, and Eleanor volunteers that the ghost made her tea. Then come the less charming phenomena: the snake, the rat, the stacked chairs, and the ransacked kitchen. Finally, Alice describes the events that disturb her: the doom-threatening whispers in her aunt’s deaf ear and Eleanor’s overhearing a distressing conversation at an improbable distance.

  Nellie Bly listens intently. “You have a very interesting ghost,” she says when Alice finishes. “First, there’s an unusually long dormancy between the progenitor’s death and the eruption of the ghost. Forty-seven years.”

  “Is that significant?”

  “Experts disagree. There’s evidence to suggest that secret deaths result in longer dormancies, but Davy Drummond was buried in a cemetery, not under the floorboards, so that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Deaths that involve intense or drawn-out emotional trauma are also thought to cause lengthy dormancies—or sometimes extremely short ones.” Miss Bly turns her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “However, the majority of deaths result in no ghost at all, so there are some experts who claim it’s entirely random.”

  Eleanor sits up at the mention of drawn-out emotional trauma. Alice nudges her cousin’s elbow. “You’ve thought of something. What is it?”

  Eleanor’s cheeks flush when Miss Bly’s gaze turns toward her, but she states her case. “When Davy was a baby, ten people lived in his house. He had parents, brothers and sisters, and a nephew the same age he was. Eleven years later, they were all dead except for his mother. They died one by one, sometimes two in the same year.”

  “You’re thinking there was chronic illness in the family?” Miss Bly asks. “Something contagious that killed them slowly, like consumption?”

  Eleanor nods. “It happened to my family, to a smaller degree.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Miss Bly says gravely. “There is no smaller degree when it comes to bereavement. I’m sure it affected you greatly.”

  “But Miss Bly!” Alice bursts out. “Is this really a Friendly ghost? After all the horrid things it’s done?”

  “What other kind can it be? It’s not an Unaware. It responds to the living. It’s not a Vengeful. It hasn’t harmed you.” Alice starts to object, but Miss Bly preempts her. “While it has played pranks and hurt your feelings, it hasn’t tried to kill you. Nevertheless, the auditory manifestations are unusual. Ghosts sometimes speak, though typically they only repeat things they said in life. They don’t make hurtful comments directed at specific individuals. Has anyone else in the house experienced this? Your uncle, perhaps?”

  Eleanor shakes her head. “Uncle Will was sent to Cuba.”

  But the question makes Alice wonder. She and Aunt Bye aren’t the only people living in the house. What about the cousins, the maids? Has the ghost been whispering to them as well? She recalls yesterday’s spat between Corinne and Helen and how easily Ida burst into tears over one of Davy’s pranks.

  “Your haunting may be out of the ordinary,” Miss Bly continues, “but I don’t think you have reason to be alarmed. The designation Friendly only means that these ghosts thrive on interaction with the living, not that they are pleasant company.” She sighs. “In any case, the ghost is aware of the living activities in the house, and it hasn’t tried to physically harm you. By process of elimination, it must be a Friendly.”

  Alice wants to argue the point but knows that if she states her idea outright, it will be rejected. She struggles for a few seconds, then offers up something intensely personal—even though she knows how it will sound to Eleanor, and that it will probably make Nellie Bly regard her with pity.

  “My stepmother says there are two types of girls. Obedient girls like Eleanor, who are loved by everyone. And contrary girls, who will never be respected or loved.” Alice pretends she doesn’t hear the little gasp from Eleanor. Instead she lifts her chin and addresses Nellie Bly. “I don’t intend to fall into either category.”

  “Good for you,” Miss Bly responds without an ounce of pity in her voice. “You’re a girl after my own heart. But you see the difference, don’t you? The ghost categories were established by experts in the field, not a woman trying to coerce her stepdaughter into obedience.”

  “But…” Alice plunges on. “Experts said you couldn’t pose as a patient in an asylum for a week and come out with a story. But you did. Experts said you couldn’t travel all the way around the world in eighty days like Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg. But you did—in seventy-two days.”

  Eleanor pipes up unexpectedly, scooting forward in her chair. “Experts in the Middle Ages said ghosts were summoned by witches, and experts in the last century believed all ghosts must be murder victims. Now experts say there are three categories, but how do we know they’re any more correct than the experts who were disproved? Maybe, fifty years from now, our experts will be called crackpots.”

  Miss Bly rises and paces behind her desk, fingers pressed to her lips. The cousins exchange nervous glances. Just when Alice thinks they are seconds from being thrown out of the office—and Eleanor looks downright terrified that she has offended her idol—a smile bows Nelly’s lips. She faces her visitors again, placing both hands on her desk and leaning forward.

  “Girls, I need to consult someone. An expert in his own way, although many people term him”—she winks at Eleanor—“a crackpot. It’s difficult to capture his attention when he’s obsessed with one of his own projects. But I believe he’ll have an interest in your ghost.”

  Opening a cupboard, Nelly dons a coat—a scarlet bolero with stitched black borders—and snatches up a matching hat with black swan feathers that makes Alice green with envy.

  Instead of dismissing her guests, Nellie Bly
vanishes through the door, leaving Alice and Eleanor to find their own way out.

  18

  ELEANOR DISCOVERS THE VALUE OF A LIFE

  I met Nellie Bly! I almost dance past stern Joan, down the dingy hall, and onto the street. She listened to me. I gave her an idea that made her run out of her office!

  My high spirits are squelched within seconds of boarding the cab that is waiting for us when I ask Alice, “What shall we tell everyone?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?”

  Alice squirms in her seat. “She said there was no danger, remember? We’ll wait until she consults her expert or crackpot or whatever he is, and then decide what to do.”

  “But we just convinced her that the ghost might not be a Friendly. That there may have been a misdiagnosis. And you want to tell Aunt Bye nothing?”

  “There’s nothing to tell her—only that the Supernatural Registry wants to look into our haunting a little more—and if we say even that” —Alice’s eyes meet mine, and to my surprise, they are pleading—“she’ll know I broke my promise to her.”

  “But…” I bite off my objection. Alice broke her promise for the best reasons possible. However, like a shattered teacup, once a trust is broken, it might be glued together, but it will probably never again hold tea.

  “All right,” I agree reluctantly. “As long as you watch over her and—”

  “Of course I will!” Alice snaps.

  Our conversation ends there. That night, after I take a cold supper with Grandmother and regale her with my story of meeting the famous Nellie Bly (“You mean that upstart woman from Pittsburgh who thought her travels were newsworthy?”), I worry that making that promise to Alice was a mistake. Miss Bly admitted our haunting was unusual. What if something terrible happens because we didn’t warn everyone?

  When there’s a knock on the kitchen door the next day, I rush past Rosie to open it in case it’s bad news from Aunt Bye’s house.

  Franklin stands outside in his shirtsleeves, snow dusting his hat and something bulky in his arms. I open the door wider to let him in, and Rosie exclaims, “Goodness, Master Franklin! What are you doing out there with no coat on?”