The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish

by Allan Stratton

  He’d keep the light on. There’d be no getting back to sleep. If he was awake. If this wasn’t another of his damnable dreams.

  He checked his watch. Four in the morning. Best to work. To keep busy. That was the way to keep those dreams at bay. To keep that shadow out of sight. With the size and grandeur of his estate’s other fifty-six bedrooms, he knew folks wondered why his own was a measly eighteen by twenty feet. He never told them, but the truth was that the bigger the room, the more nooks and crannies there were for shadows and bogeymen to hide in.

  Hearst wrapped his thick terry-cloth dressing gown over his toasty, cream flannel pajamas, slipped his feet into his lined lambskin slippers, and called his secretary from the desk phone.

  Joe Willicombe answered on the third ring.

  “Can’t sleep. Off to the study. About the papers —”

  “Still laid out, W.R. Would you like me to join you?”

  “No, I’m fine. Restless, that’s all.” God bless Willicombe. “Sorry to wake you.”

  “Any time.”

  Hearst hung up. He’d reward Willicombe for his patience. Maybe get him an inlaid sandalwood box to display his favourite shells. He lumbered his solid frame across the hall to his pink marble bathroom, splashed his face with cold water, watched the water empty down the gold-plated drain pipe, patted his face dry with a towel monogrammed in gold thread, and padded his way to the study, taking care to turn on each of the tall, delicate torchères along the passage, each refitted as floor lamps with shades created from the pages of Gregorian chant books.

  He wished Marion was home. He could sleep then. She made him feel young, not like an old trout set to wash up on some riverbank. Dear Marion. What did she see in him? Not the money. She’d made her own dime with Ziegfield and the silent flickers. Hearst wished her career was doing better, but the joy of her company was one advantage of the recent slowdown. Louis B. Mayer, that fat toad, said her stutter didn’t work in talkies. What did he know? Jack Warner had been only too happy to have him move Cosmopolitan Pictures onto the Warner lot — Marion’s twenty-room dressing room, servants, and daschunds along with it. She’d be the nation’s top star yet, no two ways about it. He — Hearst — would see to it. All she needed was the right property. The right part.

  At the entrance to his study, Hearst paused to catch his breath, enjoying the burnt oranges, rusts, and reds of the antique Spanish ceiling; the intricate grillwork of the Florentine bookcases filled with rare treasures spined in silver, ceramic, and ivory; and of the Camille Solon arches with their murals of Biblical and mythological tales. He removed his slippers. These wouldn’t be needed on the warm Bakhtiari carpets.

  It was time to begin his ritual. Laid out across the study’s carpets were the latest editions of the hundreds of newspapers in his publishing empire. He’d already been over them with Willicombe. He’d go over them again, turning their pages with dexterously boney toes, scanning the headlines, the placement of the photographs, searching for that special detail to make his day complete.

  He remembered the excitement of the old days. His reporters had doubled as amateur dicks, dishing up sleaze for a public keen on private dirt. His favourite stories? That trip with Sarah Bernhardt to the opium den in Chinatown. Or the one about the masseur of a Turkish steam bath found bobbing headless in the Hudson. Or the lollipop who broke marriages when she leapt naked from a pie at the Pooh Bah Club.

  Above all, he relished his dispatches on the sinking of the Maine. Sure, his stories should’ve been filed under fiction. But they started a real-life war with Spain that had left America the sole power in the hemisphere and propelled Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill to the White House. Starting wars and electing presidents: if that didn’t prove the power of the press, what did?

  But where were the stories now? Where was the power they gave him? Since the Crash it was nothing but grim Depression, enlivened by dance marathons and the funnies. Papers were turning into billboards, just another space to place an ad. What was the point of that? No wonder he felt old.

  A chill ran down his spine. Someone else was in the room. “Willicombe?”

  Silence.

  “Who’s there?”

  A high, girlish laugh like his own, came from the mustard wingback at the far end of the mahogany conference table. The wingback faced the wall, its occupant hidden from view. “You own the world, but I own you.”

  Hearst swallowed hard. “Who are you?”

  The wingback rotated. Seated before him was a young man who looked exactly as he had looked over fifty years ago: a young man with a lean face, hair slicked and parted in the middle, a lush mustache waxed at the tips.

  “I’m dreaming,” Hearst said. “This is a dream.”

  The young man smiled. “What’s real and what’s not? Sometimes things can be real and not real at the same time. Sometimes things that aren’t real can make things real. ‘Remember the Maine!’”

  “I’m going to wake up now.”

  “Are you? Maybe you’ve fallen asleep and you’re never waking up again.”

  Hearst pinched his hands. He slapped his cheeks. “I’m waking up. I’m waking up!”

  “You own the world, but I own you.” The young man smiled, and suddenly he had no eyes, no skin, no hair. He wasn’t like young Hearst at all. He was a gaping death skull.

  Hearst screamed. The next thing he knew, he was alone in his study, sprawled on the floor where he’d fallen asleep reading yesterday’s Journal-American. The phone was ringing in the alcove by the wingback. Hearst stopped screaming. He lay on his warm Bakhtiari carpets unable to move, gasping for breath. The phone continued to ring.

  Someone was running up the stairs, now, too hurried to wait for the elevator. “W.R., are you all right?” It was Willicombe.

  “I’m fine,” Hearst called out. He scrambled to his feet, made it to the phone, adjusted his robe, and slouched in the wingback as Willicombe hit the study. “What’s the matter, Willicombe? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I heard screaming.”

  “Oh?” Hearst laughed. “And here I thought it was the telephone.” He motioned Willicombe to a chair, and picked up the receiver. “The Chief here. What’s up?”

  The call was from one of his syndicates, King Features. Hearst listened as the senior editor told him about a young staffer, name of Doyle, who’d just confirmed a whopper. Apparently some Canuck gal had resurrected the dead.

  “What?”

  “Exactly what I said. Some tyke from Kansas. Tell it to Toto, I says. But Doyle, he swears he talked to the kid, a preacher, and others. They’ll swear to the deed on a stack of bibles.”

  Hearst’s heart skipped a beat.

  “So what do I do?” asked the editor. “Run it? Bury it?”

  Hearst gripped the phone. His voice spiralled into the stratosphere. “Front-page banner. You hear me? Every day. All week. And more! Get me more! I want more!”

  On the Case

  K.O. Doyle rolled back to The Ceeps at sunup, mighty sore at falling for Floyd’s midnight con. A trip to the London lockup had confirmed that the evangelist hadn’t hauled the doll anywhere near the joint. He flopped on his bed for some shut-eye, but within minutes the desk clerk was at his door with a cable from his editor.

  THE CHIEF IS HOT TO TROT. HAS SENT METROTONE CREW. ARRIVAL TWO THIRTY. GET THE KID. GET THE GIRL. GET GOING.

  Christ on a pogo stick! Hearst’s Metrotone crew cranked out newsreels for Bijous coast to coast! It could be his big break! Doyle scribbled a toothbrush across teeth and tongue, splashed his pits with aftershave, flew to the downstairs greasy spoon, inhaled a Maxwell House, fished ice cubes from his water glass and pressed them against his temples as he ran to the curbside cab.

  Aunt Grace set aside a batch of muffin batter to answer the front door. Who could be calling at 7:00 a.m.? If it wasn’t that scrawny little weasel with the lemon sours. What could he be up to? By the smell of him, no good.

  Doyle apologized for th
e hour; it couldn’t be helped. Perhaps she’d heard of Mr. William Randolph Hearst? He was Hearst’s representative come to make arrangements for a newsreel on Timmy’s resurrection. If it’d be convenient perhaps, he could shoot a scene of the family in the front parlour at three?

  The doughty Presbyterian tilted her chin. As a matter of fact, it would not be convenient. Her Timmy was convalescing, her husband was indisposed with sciatica, and she was baking muffins, following which she’d be visiting shut-ins. In any event, neither she nor hers would ever consent to parade themselves for the newsreels. Movie houses were nothing but dark, dingy holes of temptation leading the unemployed to indolence, youth to ruin, and lovebirds to hell in a handbasket. So, no, it would not be convenient to be filmed in her front parlour this afternoon, or on any other, come to think of it, and she would thank Mr. Doyle to remove himself from her property forthwith and henceforward.

  Doyle allowed as he’d respect her wishes and instruct the crew to steer clear. He’d go down the road apiece and talk about Timmy in front of that old tarpaper shack with the oil bin on the front porch.

  “Not the Dickie place!” Aunt Grace gasped.

  Was that the name of it? With the front yard covered in rusty car parts, and the broken windows by soiled bedsheets?

  “Jack Dickie is a good-for-nothing Methodist gone bad. Don’t you dare shoot your story there! Folks’ll be getting the idea it’s our place.”

  They might, he shrugged. Might fancy as well that she and her hubby were the sort to live within — gin-soaked rubes no better than they ought to be — or wonder what sinister goings-on had led them to keep wee Timmy under wraps. Was the lad an American captive in some foreign hicksville hellhole?

  Aunt Grace pursed her lips. Under the circumstances, perhaps an interview in her front parlour could be arranged. So, if he’d excuse her, she’d best be getting the place in order — by which she meant scrubbing the floors, dusting the knick-knacks, waxing the woodwork, wiping the walls, airing the closets, cleaning the stove, tending the icebox, doing a wash, and beating the rugs till they screamed for mercy; for if cleanliness was next to godliness, Aunt Grace was bound and determined the world would see that she lived in the lap of the Lord.

  Doyle still had to ferret out Mary Mabel. Here, he had a break. On returning to The Ceeps, he was handed a letter by the desk clerk, the ink barely dry on the envelope.

  Greetings and salutations in the Lord,

  Pray forgive our reticence on the matter of Sister Mary Mabel. She has been on a spiritual retreat. At sunrise prayers, I put in a word on your behalf. She has agreed to meet you at 9 a.m. at the Twins B&B, 495 Wharncliffe Road.

  Yours in Christ,

  Brother Floyd Cruickshank

  P.S. As for that lassie in the park, after pastoral counselling she has welcomed Jesus into her heart, abjured the Devil, and is presently on a bus to the country, there to repair her soul in the care of her belovèd granny. To God be the glory.

  Floyd had deposited similar invitations for Scoop Jones and Scratch Micallef. To Perce, however, nothing. In fact, before scampering back to the Twins, he hadn’t even popped upstairs to tell his partner where he’d been nor what he was up to.

  If this was rude, it was also business. Floyd’s first thought had been to incorporate Mary Mabel into the existing act, her hope a balance to Percy’s hellfire. Yet the more he chewed on the idea, the tougher it became to swallow. The Great Unwashed, out to see a fetching curiosity, would have no time for the ravings of some distempered preacher.

  At the same time, he couldn’t cut Perce loose. The reverend had an imagination and a mouth. Floyd shuddered at the whole-cloth tales he’d spin from the yarn of a middle-aged man and a teenage girl traipsing about the land unchaperoned “with a suitcase full of rubbers!” It would be a cross Floyd couldn’t bridge, a scandal repelling the public, with denials fanning the flames.

  The showman was stymied, but short-term, one thing was clear: the less Perce knew, the less he’d have to bugger up.

  Doyle skimmed Floyd’s invitation and pocketed it, along with those left for Scratch and Scoop. “I’ll deliver them personally,” he told the desk clerk, a dollar bill putting paid to silence awkward questions. “By the way, I’ve traced that miracle girl, Miss McTavish. She’s holed up at the Salvation Army in Toronto.” He tapped his nose and headed off to the Twins, secure in the knowledge his rivals would shortly be bribing themselves into a wild goose chase to the provincial capital one hundred miles away.

  Transfiguration

  Following her late-night conversation with Floyd, Mary Mabel had been treated to a hot bath spiced with a tincture of rosemary, then given a nightdress and taken by Miss Tillie up the narrow circular staircase to the sewing room at the back east corner of the third floor. It was a cramped, airless affair, filled to the brim with old hat boxes, ends of quaint fabric, and baskets of appliqués, thread, scissors, and yarn, variously stacked and draped over a junk shop of disused furniture as awkward as it was antique.

  “You’d not get a moment’s rest below,” her hostess explained, as she moved piles of dusty dress patterns from the fainting couch to the sewing table by the window. “Me and my sister, we snore something terrible.”

  Miss Tillie paused to catch her breath, looking through the turret window at the moon. “This used to be my favourite room,” she said. “Father kept us hopping, but given his game leg, he couldn’t navigate the servants’ stairs. So here’s where we’d come to escape. It was such a blessèd retreat, till he took to banging the ceiling below with his cane. Ah well, may he rest in better peace than he ever allowed us.”

  She grabbed the bedclothes, fresh from the linen cupboard, and shook them out with a good deal more force than necessary. “Thank your lucky stars your father’s disappeared,” she observed through the dust cloud. A pause, and she began to make up the couch. “You know, I always wanted a daughter. One of my ‘Things to Do’ that will never get done. Don’t let life slip away on you.” She fluffed the pillow, gave it a quick pat, and headed to the door.

  “Thank you,” Mary Mabel called after, crawling under the sheets.

  Miss Tillie turned. There was a tear in her eye. “Let me tuck you in.” She pulled the covers up under the young woman’s chin, stroked her hair and kissed her gently on the forehead. “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  Mary Mabel hadn’t been tucked in since Cedar Bend. It felt good. Like being six with a brown sugar sandwich. Before Miss Tillie’d left the room, she was fast asleep.

  She dreamed she was sailing on a cloud harnessed by ribbons to a crow. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  The crow turned. It was Miss Bentwhistle, rowing a black boat. Or was it a black coffin? “This’ll teach you to give sass to your auntie,” the headmistress cackled, snipped the ribbons, and flew off. A gust of wind. The cloud blew apart. Mary Mabel fell and fell and woke up gasping for air.

  The room was alive with dust, a rich haze of gold glittering with morning sun. What time was it? Where was she? The last few days skittered through her head. They hardly felt real. She had a sudden terror.

  “It’s all right,” came a voice from the foot of the fainting couch.

  Mary Mabel’s forehead tingled. “Mama?” She sat up. The sun shone in her face. She had to squint, but her heart saw perfectly. Her mama was standing before her, a beautiful angel swathed in white robes surrounded by a shimmering light. “Mama!”

  A sharp rap at the door. “Breakfast’s on the table,” chirped a twin. “No time to dawdle. We’re expecting company.”

  Mary Mabel glanced at the door. “I’ll be right down.” Beaming, she turned back to her mama, aching for a hug. But the room was empty. At the foot of the couch, where her mama had been standing, was a dressmaker’s dummy draped in a flowing white sheet. Surely it hadn’t been there before.

  Am I crazy? she thought. No! I was awake, I know what I saw, I know what I heard. I talked to Mama. And if she’s come
to me this often, I know she’ll come again.

  Ten minutes later, she was downstairs, eating a boiled egg and toast as Floyd crowed about his morning exertions. “At nine o’clock, the top American syndicates’ll be at the door!”

  Mary Mabel sputtered crumbs. “Those men from the fairgrounds?”

  “You got it.”

  “But they’ll recognize me.”

  “Not a chance. People see what they want to see. Besides, last night you were in shadow: seedier than a rotten tomato. Your bath’s already done wonders. By the time Millie and Tillie get through with you, you’ll be unrecognizable.”

  “Ready or not, here we come,” the Twins chimed. In a spritz, the breakfast table transformed to a beauty salon, her hosts brandishing scissors, combs, makeup, and brushes with evangelical fervor.

  “Yank her hair in a bun,” Floyd coached from the sidelines. “Chop out the matts. Pluck the eyebrows. And how about rouge? Lipstick? Eyeliner? Don’t be shy with the blush. And as for that birthmark, trowel on the base.”

  After the paints and powders, the costume. The Twins had laid out a nurse’s uniform, their souvenir of the last poor soul hired to help their father, back in the days when the bugger was spry enough to give chase. “An appropriate get-up, given your bent for healing,” Miss Tillie remarked. “Upon my word, twenty years’ storage has even improved it, for look, it’s turned the most delicate yellow.”

  “And the cap, Tillie! The cap!” Miss Millie enthused, adjusting the headpiece just so. “It’s the crowning touch, set off by those lashes and sparkling eyes! The menfolk won’t know where to look!”