Picture the Dead

by Adele Griffin

  “Nothing.” I sit up. “I’m sorry.”

  “Miss Lovell, are you unwell?” asks Geist.

  “No, no, I’m sorry excuse me, I need air.” Quinn helps me to stand, but his hand, gripping bony at my elbow, is no comfort. I shrug him off, but then I am embarrassed, my palms lifted in protest for anyone to follow. I am careful not to look at Aunt Clara as I hasten out.

  Alone in the hall, I untie my collar and fan my cheeks with my fingers. Though my fever ebbs, I have little doubt.

  Will was here. He was in this house, in that room, if only for a moment. But it was as true a moment as I have ever lived.

  On the front hall table rests a small, paper-wrapped package, twine-tied, inscribed with the name Harding. The package is approximately the same size as the plates Geist had inserted and removed from his camera.

  A good spy is never afraid to transgress.

  I look over my shoulder. Nobody is in the hall.

  My heart could take wing, it’s beating so fast as my fingers unpick the twine. The knot gives too slowly. Then I slide a series of identical photos from their wrapping.

  Backed and framed in a cardboard slip, a man sits as grim as a tombstone on the same ornate love seat of Geist’s parlor. Above him hovers a delicate, nearly transparent image. Dressed in gauze, a crown of holly leaves twisted through her pale, streaming hair, the angel appears otherworldly and is more exquisite than my most vivid imaginings.

  For a moment I am struck paralyzed. Here is a real angel, caught and captured in all her radiant glory, for anyone to see.

  Incredible, but true.

  I hold it up to the fanlight for a closer look. There is something familiar in the angel’s profile. I decide to take one of the copies, sliding it into my pocket with the rest of my day’s loot before the family comes to collect me. I compose myself, avoiding Quinn’s eye, my own gaze intent on Aunt Clara’s enormous, bustling skirts.

  In the carriage, when I dare to look across at Quinn, he ignores me with a cool indifference that makes me miss his brother all the more. How is it that Will even in spectral vision, if that’s what it was can appear more vital and vibrant to me than anyone else in the family?

  I don’t look up again for the rest of the ride home, lest anyone see my suffering, which the Pritchetts would only dismiss as a weakness.

  In my attic room the light is weak. I move to the window and spread my secreted photograph on the sill. White winter sky exposes the image. And now I can see the slight protrusion of the angel’s front teeth. I retrieve the other photos from my pocket.

  The drape of Viviette’s Grecian toga makes a lovely angel’s cloak. I find the downcast eyes, that droplet nose, the bird bones of the neck and wrists, as the angel’s identity reveals herself to me. She is Viviette.

  9.

  “Maybe Mister Geist listed it as part of her daily chores!” Mavis snorts with amusement.

  “Oh, certainly.” I tick off the duties on my fingers. “Lay the grates, polish the andirons, dress up in bedsheets and pose as an angel, dust the bookshelves…”

  Mavis presses her knuckles to her mouth so that Aunt Clara won’t hear her giggling fits. We are standing outside Aunt’s bedroom waiting for Madame Broussard to finish taking orders and measurements.

  In days past, after Madame has finished with Aunt Clara she attends to me, and so I am waiting on Mrs. Sullivan’s command. “Madame can’t leave this house without seeing to you, Miss Jennie. Hard to say if your frocks are more disrespectful to the living or the dead,” the housekeeper had clucked.

  It’s the dismal truth. Both of my mourning dresses are threadbare at the elbow and discolored along the seams. Hardly any of my original buttons and neither of my original collars remain. It has been more than two years since I’ve owned anything new, and my old, black-dyed frocks strain against the predictable directions where I’ve filled out.

  Mavis lingers. Madame Broussard is widely thought to be the handsomest woman in Brookline, and Mavis craves a glimpse of her. “That so-said spiritualist is swindling Mister Pritchett worse than a snake oil salesman,” she declares as she stoops to peer through the keyhole.

  “I suppose.” I won’t confide to Mavis the details of my nearfainting spell and how Will had come to me. That entire morning seems unreal, especially in light of Geist’s housemaid hoax.

  Mavis straightens. “Don’t pay him a penny when you go over tomorrow oh, bon jer, Madame.”

  For the door has opened and now the striking dressmaker stands before us. Her jet hair is accessorized by tortoiseshell pins, and her dress is the color of claret. In contrast, I feel as shabby as a dormouse.

  Mavis is unabashedly delighted by Madame, and for a moment, I, too, feel a shy desire to dip a curtsy. And yet it wasn’t very long ago that Madame Broussard had presented me with gown sketches for the annual Boston Cultural Society Dance, an event that Will and I had attended to celebrate his entrance to Harvard, and where I’d taken my first sips of champagne and danced my first waltz. How can my very own memories feel as if they don’t belong to me? They seem so extravagant and carefree. Who was that pampered girl in French silk who believed in only happy endings?

  Madame nods and moves to step past.

  “Please, Madame,” I falter. “If you’re not late for another appointment, I’m in some need…” I pluck at my skirt, which tells the sad story.

  Her fine, dark eyes are guarded. “Mais, Mademoiselle Lovell, your aunt has made it clear to me that you won’t be fitted for anything new this season. When I asked, she gave me the impression that your present wardrobe is more than adequate.”

  Though one look at my dress refutes this point. It’s hard to say who is more pained by the discomfit of the moment. “Yes, now I remember.” I hasten to fill the pause. “Excuse me. I’d forgotten that I’m having two dresses made over secondhand from Aunt.” I imagine Aunt Clara smirking from her chaise, and my face burns with shame and rage.

  “Madame Pritchett has more than enough material to take in,” agrees Madame, too quickly. “So that is a fine solution. Très simple.”

  I step back to let her pass.

  She lingers a moment. “Ma chère,” she says. “My heart breaks for your tragedy. Your brother, and then Monsieur William… il est tout trop tragique.” The press of her hand to my cheek is more comfort than I have received from any of my kin. Her fingers stop to pick up the edge of my collar. “Such very delicate work.”

  “It’s Miss Jennie did it herself,” Mavis bursts out. “She’s a grand talent with lace. She fashioned me a fancy collar, too, but I only wear it Sundays. I got a knack for mending, but Miss Jennie has such patience for the details.”

  “Impressive,” says Madame, with a sincerity that makes me blush.

  I accompany her to her carriage. Outside, Quinn strides along the garden wall. He is bundled into his overcoat and muffler, yet his face isn’t so obscured that I cannot see his lips move. Of the two brothers, Quinn had cut a finer figure in society, where his good looks and quick wit served him better than Will’s raw enthusiasm and tendency to speak his mind. But without a captive audience, Quinn is a lonely soul, and time has taught me that he never wants company on these garden walks.

  The garden paths were Quinn’s retreats whenever he and his brother quarreled. Will, outspoken and fiery, never stayed at Pritchett House, but took his temper elsewhere, either into town or deep into the country, where I might find him skipping stones or rowing across Jamaica Pond, churning up its waters, exhausting himself.

  In contrast, Quinn simply froze in place when he was angry. Housebound, he brooded in his room or haunted the grounds like a lost pup.

  He is frozen still. Madame’s point of vision follows Quinn as he marches along, locked in battles from which his mind can’t escape.

  “Poor boy,” she murmurs. “So the stories are true.”

  “What do you mean?” I can hear my own voice strain.

  Her glance at me is both sympathetic and faintly pitying.
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  And though I wish she wouldn’t, Madame continues to observe him through the window until her carriage rolls away.

  10.

  I’m late for the next afternoon’s appointment. Geist is waiting in the foyer, and he greets me with coltish energy. Viviette, eyes averted, collects my damp cloak. I’m annoyed to see her. If I don’t know the difference between one of heaven’s own angels and an ordinary housemaid, then how easily might I be fooled again?

  “You don’t have to be so coy,” I tell her. “I recognize your face.”

  In answer, she stares up at me with eyes hard and dark as coal, and I realize there’s nothing shy about Viviette at all.

  “Miss Lovell,” says Geist. “At last.”

  “Please excuse my delay,” I say. “Ice on the tracks put the trains off schedule.”

  Geist shrugs. “At least you are here in one piece. This way, please. There is something I want you to see.”

  “No, I can’t stay,” I protest. “I only want to pay the balance and to collect the photograph for my uncle.”

  “A minute, a minute.” Geist pinches hold of my forearm, ushering me down the hall and into the same sitting room where we’d gathered two days before. He points to his ornate French mantel clock, its face adorned with sturdy pink and gold cherubs.

  “Behold!” His voice trumpets.

  I peer closer. “Yes, I see that your clock is wrong. It is stopped at half past twelve, when it must be nearly…three o’clock?”

  He harrumphs. “Thirty two minutes past twelve. And ” He pivots me by both shoulders so that I’m staring into the opposite corner, up at the moon phases and dials of his grandfather clock.

  “Thirty-two minutes past twelve,” I read.

  “Precisely.”

  “I’m not sure how this concerns ”

  “ and I hadn’t noticed it, either, until you all had left. Think, Miss Lovell! Two days ago, at twelve thirty-two, in this very room, you experienced some sort of emotional chaos. It penetrated you so deeply, in fact, that you fainted.”

  I turn from the clock. “You’re telling me that my fainting spell stopped time?”

  “No, no, no.” Geist taps his fingertips together, urging my conclusion. “Twelve thirty-two. The very moment when William Pritchett made contact with you, yes?”

  I freeze. “Sir, you are playing games with me,” I say. “You stopped these clocks yourself.”

  “What?” He looks puzzled. “But why would I do that?”

  “Why, because…because you know I took the Harding photograph. That I recognized your angel, Viviette, and you caught a change in my manner.” I rush on as his chicanery becomes clear to me. “Yes, you saw a change in me as soon as I reentered the room. You knew I’d seen the photograph. And now you’re scrabbling to make me a believer again.”

  “A believer?” He looks baffled. “To what end?”

  “Many of us have lost loved ones to this war. Photographing their so-called spirits makes for easy business. Your reputation is everything. You need to convince us of your worth so that you can run your shop.”

  “Ah. I see.” Geist pulls at his beard. “That would be clever of me. But you are incorrect, Miss Lovell. I didn’t touch either of these clocks. At twelve thirty-two you received an impression of Corporal Pritchett, did you not?”

  “I couldn’t confirm that time exactly,” I tell him. “And Will is always in my thoughts.”

  “Tell me, how did you experience this… thought? In an ice-cold chill? As a bright burst of energy, or perhaps a flash of radiant ”

  “Please, stop.” But Geist seems so certain, and I am so taken aback by his certainty, that I blurt out the very question that has been chasing itself around my head. “Mr. Geist, just say you might be correct. Why would Will’s spirit contact me in your home? A setting that was special to neither of us?” My voice is pained. “I’ve sat for hours in Will’s rooms, walked his paths, and paced the bridge we crossed nearly every summer day. He is nowhere. Nowhere but at rest.” I draw myself to my full height, which is not very much.

  “A spirit cannot choose his domain,” says Geist.

  “On that I think you’re wrong.”

  His shaggy eyebrows lift. He’s listening. I wish my voice were more dependable. “My twin brother, Tobias, alters my perceptions daily. His spirit is folded into mine. He haunts me. I am his domain.”

  I anticipate that Geist, a man who makes his living grasping for spectral signs, will be intrigued by my revelation. But the photographer is dismissive. “Miss Lovell, how did your brother pass?”

  “Of dysentery, a few weeks after he’d joined up.”

  “My sincere condolences.” Geist allows a moment. “But don’t you think you absorb Tobias’s identity because he is already so beloved by you? It’s not that he haunts you. It is that your memory won’t let him go. Simple as that.”

  I shake my head. “But I’m equally unwilling to let go of Will.”

  “Aha. And that is where I can show you the distinction.” Geist rocks back on his heels, adapting a more philosophical tone. “Miss Lovell, have you ever swum in the sea?”

  “Yes.” I feel my body tense, remembering the smell of brine, the chop and tug of the water, my abject fear of drowning, a sensation that can frighten me even today. “A few summers ago Uncle took us all to Nantucket.”

  “And you know the difference between the wave and the undertow?”

  I nod.

  “Then you will understand my metaphor.” Geist speaks with care, as if worried that I might miss a word. “For if memory is the wave that buoys our grief, haunting is the undertow that drags us to its troubled source. I don’t speak lightly when I tell you that William Pritchett reached for you because he has unfinished business in this world.”

  “Mr. Geist, how can you be so sure?”

  “I’ve worked as a medium for many years and have learned some, shall we say, tricks of the trade. This was no trick. Corporal William Pritchett was with us that day, in this room, at thirty-two minutes past twelve. The sensation was very strong and very real.” The air seems to vibrate with his conviction.

  Geist presses his advantage. “Let me photograph you. For I am sure ”

  Another photograph. So Geist thinks I’m holding my own purse strings. That I’m a proper Boston heiress, easily parted with my generous allowance. “Mister Geist, really. I must go. And rest assured, the tricks of your livelihood are safe with me. I’m no gossip.”

  Not quite true, as I have already confessed plenty of Geist’s mischief to Mavis, who is a gossip. Not that she could tell anyone who’d care.

  His lips thin with displeasure, but he leads me to the hall, where he retrieves the brown-wrapped parcel. “These are two albumen prints from the original negative. One is yours. I thought you might want a copy for yourself.”

  “You are very kind.” In my head I am already adding it to my book.

  “Take the time to examine it.”

  I open the packet to examine the cardboard-backed prints, identical but for a slight shift in hue.

  Drained of his rosy pink cheeks and blue-green eyes, Uncle Henry appears bald and dull, whereas Aunt Clara’s jellied bulk affords her a dignity that eludes her in real life. From the way Quinn stands, one hand on the back of the love seat, he could be my protector.

  I stare at my own image and feel as though I hardly know myself. The angel Viviette hovers above us.

  “But how did it happen?” It confounds me. “Viviette wasn’t in the room.”

  “Her image is fixed on another negative,” Geist explains, sheepish and proud at once. “I have many. Some of aged grandmothers, or babies and children, or young men dressed in the uniforms of soldiers or sailors. I tailor to a wide variety of loss. A sitter can be convinced that the spirit in the photograph is an exact likeness of one who has passed. We spiritualists call that “recognition.” None of my Union boys matched your Will, but I suspected your aunt would respond strongly to an angel. And so I simply expo
sed Viviette’s plate briefly through the printing process so that she would superimpose upon the next photograph.”

  Scornful as I am of the gimmickry, Geist’s aesthetic impresses me.

  “We had some luck,” Geist comments, staring over my shoulder. “A cloudless day, a perfect diffusion of light.” He pauses. “Viviette looks ethereal.”

  I have to agree. She is radiant.

  And yet something’s not quite right about the angel maid. I look and look from print to print, but the difference is maddeningly elusive.

  My doubts tug at me long after I have paid the balance and left Geist’s townhouse to begin the long walk from Scollay Square to South Side Station, where I will purchase a ticket for a second-class bench on a train that won’t get me home until dark.

  11.

  With Uncle Henry away, Aunt takes supper in her room. I eat with the servants in the kitchen. The table is full. Uncle has hired on some men to help patch a leak in the roof. Raucous and friendly, they all leave afterward for the village and a few more pints and laughs at The Black Eye.

  “Don’t you ever wish you were a man?” I ask Mavis later, as I’m having my bath in the scullery with Mavis on lookout. It’s our new custom, since it doesn’t seem fair to ask Mavis or any of Mrs. Sullivan’s overworked day girls to haul the washtub plus endless buckets of boiled water up the three floors. Besides, the scullery is almost cozy, near as it is to the overheated kitchen.

  “Not the fighting part, but for the fun of it,” Mavis answers. “Mostly I’d like to roam free and never have to scour pots or have babies or wonder where my husband’s catting off to nights. Now, get scrubbing, Miss. Though by the look of your neck ’n’ nails, by the time I go in the water’ll be gray.”

  On my way to bed, I check in on Quinn dozing in his armchair by the fire, and I accept his unprecedented invitation to join him for a hand of euchre. The game leaves him animated.

  “Let’s play another round. For stakes,” he says as his fingers expertly shuffle the deck.