In my sophomore year of college I came down with mononucleosis, the scholar’s disease. I had a case of hives along with it, an unusual symptom that puzzled the doctors at the hospital. Every day of my week’s confinement they gathered at my bedside with a group of medical students and interns, watching the progress of my blisters. They aired a number of theories right in front of me, some of them alarming, as if I were a cadaver in anatomy class. No one spoke to me, not even a “Good morning” or a “How are you feeling,” although one of the younger ones winked at me as they were filing out.
My present situation was no different, except that I was ambulatory and my keepers and minders were novices who made up their strategies as they went along. Ruth Hiram carried around a pile of musty books, the last word, she maintained, on the subject of supernatural assault. She read quotations from them when she was losing the conversational initiative. At tea, Jane Shufelt proposed a fitness program for me—two sessions of calisthenics, morning and evening. “Exercise is good,” she said. “Keeps her in the body.” “Too hot to exercise,” said Walter. “Massage would have the same effect.” Ruth picked up one of her books, a psychic self-defense manual, and thumbed through the pages. “When there is a threat of supernatural attack,” she read aloud, “it is important to get back to the physical plane and stop there resolutely.”
Ruth looked up from her book, expecting a vote of confidence, but her audience was listening to Walter. “We’re lucky Cora isn’t the dreamy type,” he said. “We’d have our hands full if she was a meditator.” “Not me,” I said, filling his cup too full, so that tea slopped into the saucer. “I don’t have a mystical bone in my body.” “Cora likes company,” offered Emily. “Hannah was the solitary one.” “Forget about exercise,” said Henry. “She’ll get plenty doing the cooking and the housework.”
“Is there any more cake, Cora?” asked Jane. “I’ll go cut some,” I said. Jane picked up the cake plate. “Drink your tea, dear. I’ll do it.” Ruth intervened. She took the plate away from Jane and handed it back to me. “That’s a perfect example. Cora doesn’t need rest; she needs bustle. We shouldn’t try to spare her.” “But we’re Cora’s guests,” Jane objected. “Guests ought to do their part.” “This isn’t a social situation,” snapped Ruth. “Rules of etiquette don’t apply.” “I agree with Ruth,” said Walter. “Cooking and cleaning fill the bill two ways. They keep her body moving and her mind focused on mundane things. Cora’s natural skills are her best protection.”
I drifted out to the kitchen, unnoticed, where I sank onto a chair and applied my natural gifts to staring at the walls, the cake plate on my lap. Perhaps I was alone ten minutes before I heard a commotion of footsteps and Walter’s voice raised in panic. “We let her get away. Where is she?” In a moment they were all around me, peering and pawing at me, taking my pulse and checking my pupils for signs of dilation.
“Her hands are cold,” said Jane. “I don’t like her color,” said Walter. “I’m tired,” I said. “I want to lie down.” “I’ve explained all this, Cora,” said Henry. “We can’t let you sleep in the daytime.” When I stood up to cut more cake, I could see they were reassured. By now the tea had grown cold. I asked Jane to fetch me the pot while I boiled fresh water. I decided to play by their rules and bide my time. Sooner or later they would be discussing me so intently they’d forget I was there. Then I could give them the slip and steal another interval of solitude.
Henry wanted to keep me awake around the clock, but Walter dissuaded him. The lower my stamina, the greater my vulnerability to psychic attack. The ban on nighttime sleeping had been lifted, as long as someone watched beside me, observing carefully any signs that my sleep was being disturbed—any muttering, twitching, or, most particularly, pelvic motion. Who was more entitled than Emily to be my night nurse? She had seen me through my childhood diseases—measles, chicken pox, mumps, and whooping cough.
Emily had another qualification besides the maternal one. She needed very little sleep. It made no difference to her welfare when she got it. If she went to bed at ten, she was up again at midnight, reading or roaming the house in winter, gardening by flashlight in the warmer weather. At some point in the small hours she went back to bed, or napped where she was sitting. Once I found her outside in a deck chair, covered by a tarp.
As children we slept in an unquiet house, the stillness broken by the sound of shuffling feet instead of owl calls. We woke in the night to hear the clinking of fire tools, the thud of dropped wood, and from back in the kitchen, muffled by distance, a clatter of pots and pans, slammed cabinets, and running water. During her wakeful hours, she often built a fire or made soup. Fortunately for us, she couldn’t play the piano or use a typewriter. My sister developed insomnia, and my father moved out and set up house in the barn. I learned to sleep deeply, defensively, covering my head with a pillow.
Unlike our friends, who worked in shifts, my mother was in permanent residence. She went home in the mornings to care for her garden but came back by lunchtime. She brought me presents of Hubbard squash and the striped Delicata, as well as baskets of blue-green kale and bunches of September asters—crimson Adela Martin and Korngold’s Pink. We had not seen local produce since the beginning of August. It added zest to my cooking to invent new ways of cooking kale: braised, with bacon and vinegar; casseroled, with Swiss cheese and bread crumbs; in a slaw (far superior to cabbage).
At dinner each night Emily was flattered and cross-questioned, especially by Walter, who seemed to suspect her of some kind of horticultural chicanery. “It’s miraculous, Emily,” said Lorraine. “How on earth do you do it?” Ruth said. “You ought to be conserving water. Aren’t you worried about your well?” “Admit it, Em,” said Walter. “You bought it all at Taft Farms in Raymond.”
Smiling and blushing, she parried their compliments. “I do the same thing every year,” she said. “I mulch with a good, thick layer of salt hay.” “I use squares of old carpet,” Ruth said. “Everybody mulches nowadays,” said Walter. “What’s the real secret?” “I do have some shade cover,” she added. “Most people grow their vegetables in the baking sun.” Walter refused another helping of squash. “I don’t believe a word of it,” he said. “You’re muttering incantations. You’re sprinkling chicken blood on the beds.” Emily averted her eyes modestly, letting Walter’s speculations hang in the air just long enough to make an impression. Jane lifted a forkful of kale, then put it down again. Lorraine patted Emily’s shoulder. “Sour grapes, Walter. Stop teasing her.” When the main course was over, I noticed most of their vegetables were half eaten. They did justice to the apple crumble, however, coming back for seconds and thirds, secure in the knowledge that Emily’s garden contained no fruit trees.
In middle age, we sometimes get a new mother, or perhaps we see the old mother differently. The Emily of my childhood, tentative but determined, patient in her suffering, had changed in later years into a woman who took some knowing. The shift in my perspective was appropriate. I was an adult, very different in turn from the child she had mothered. I seemed as unfamiliar to her as she often did to me. “You’re so brusque/sure of yourself/opinionated, Cora,” she lamented, when she saw me running a meeting of quarrelsome church festival workers or answering questions after one of my food talks at a local women’s group. She couldn’t recognize certain features of my character, any more than I remember noticing, as a youngster, her tendency to coyness, that air of mystery so at odds with her self-effacing ways. She wanted to attract attention almost as much as she tried to evade it, a conflict that distorted her behavior. Believing she had no right to self-expression, she expressed no emotion naturally or directly.
Lately, Emily had been picking up the phone but no one answered. This series of hang-ups convinced her my sister was trying to reach her. “I know in my heart she is desperate to come back,” Emily told me, and there it was—that lowering of the eyes, that tilt of the head, that pursing of the lips, body language that imparted self-complacency rath
er than deep feeling. Her manner so annoyed me that I nearly told her Hannah had been sighted all over the county, from Gray to Standish and as far west as Kezar Falls, where her high school art teacher was part-owner of a gallery, open during the tourist season. In Emily’s fantasies Hannah was still being prevented by some outside agency from being at her mother’s side.
We could count on Emily in the present emergency, since Hannah was gone from the neighborhood. When I went up to bed, my mother was already settled on the chaise with a pile of fall nursery catalogues on her lap, marking her selections by turning down the corners of the pages. I undressed in the bathroom and put on a cotton nightdress in the interest of modesty. “You’ve got the Beaulac figure,” said Emily. “Hannah is slender like the Whitmans.” The standing lamp would be lit all night to accommodate Emily; it was unlikely to disturb my sleep. I was tired out from fetching and carrying, too tired to be afraid of assuming a recumbent position. I took care to lie on my side, but otherwise the memory of the experience that required Emily’s presence at my bedside had all but faded. Around the edges I was apprehensive, but not frightened. I didn’t want it to happen again; it had been too depleting. If my mother could grow vegetables in a desert, she could surely defend me against the crafts and assaults of the underworld.
My chief wish, as I closed my eyes, was that my home no longer be a guesthouse. Our friends were enjoying the sensation that something might happen. Why else were they here, unless to witness an exceptional incident? Several nights running, I awoke to an exchange of murmurs, one or the other of them peeking in to check with Emily. “Everything O.K.?” they asked. “Just fine,” Emily would answer. “She’s sound asleep.” “Nothing at all?” they persisted. Her response was inaudible, a finger to the lips or a shake of the head. “We’re right downstairs if you need us,” they said, sounding disappointed.
I was roused more than once during the night, though not by spirits. Emily was beside me, before me, behind me, on my right and on my left, all around me. Her watchfulness enveloped me. Her ceaseless ministrations steered me through the underground waters of sleep past the rocks of nightmare. If in my oblivion I grumbled, whimpered, or knit my brow, she whispered reassuring suggestions into my ear, like stories for children. “You are in a meadow blooming with flowers. The sun is shining. The air is filled with clear bright light. You are basking in the light.” If I ground my teeth, I felt her hand massaging my jaw. When I flopped over to lie on my back, she turned me gently on my side. When my nightgown crept up around my hips, she drew it down again.
Half awake while she rearranged me, I sometimes heard sounds from below, footsteps and laughter. Ruth and Walter were night owls. I heard Henry walking past our bedroom to his office, where he was sleeping on a daybed three inches too short for him. When Jane was in the guest room diagonally across the hall, she kept her radio on all night with the volume low, tuned to the classical music station in Portland. How did I manage to sleep with so many disturbances? Luckily I was not like Henry, who thought the only good sleep was an uninterrupted sleep. If he woke up once, he complained of a restless night. In the mornings I felt quite refreshed. It was the days, not the nights, that tired me. My rest was in my mother’s hands. She had never cared for me so well since I was in arms. I enjoyed waking up to feel her caressing my hair, shifting my position, soothing me. Surely I was wrong to believe she had room in her heart for only one of us. A mother’s love, by definition, was bottomless.
Five days into the vigil, Sally Bissell was invited to spell Jane Shufelt. Burridge Academy had opened its doors for the forty-fourth year, with an enrollment of seventy-five out of a normal one hundred. On the first day of orientation, Nurse Shufelt would be weighing and measuring both old and new girls, inspecting their tongues, testing their reflexes, and taking their temperatures—“nipping an epidemic in the bud” was how she put it. Jane offered to come back when her day was over, around nine or ten p.m., but Henry thought it was too hard on her. He called a council of war at lunchtime to appoint a substitute.
I had laid out a buffet of cold chicken and kale slaw, a basket of sliced bread, a bowl of apples, and the rest of the peanut butter cookies. For once I was sitting in the dining room with the rest of then, eating in peace. My presence at the table inhibited them not at all. Walter was grumbling. “Why do we need a replacement for Jane? She’ll be back tomorrow.” I agreed with him, and said so. A new person for the night meant extra laundry. “I want six people in the house,” said Henry. “Why not eight? Or eighteen?” asked Walter. “Six is a perfect number,” Henry said. “A number of harmony.” Walter stared at him. Ruth thought it was funny. She snorted when she laughed, amusing herself tremendously. They seemed to think that setting traps for spirits was a perfectly sensible project, while applying numerology to bait the trap was irrational.
Until now no one had challenged Henry’s authority. He was their mentor, anointed by the church, their great white ghost hunter, their St. George. In learning he towered above them, as he did in wisdom. It was hardly a serious challenge—an outburst of sarcasm, not a mutiny. Even so, it troubled me. My safety would be disregarded in a power struggle. The atmosphere was informal enough as it was. To pass the hours between my bedtime and theirs, Ruth and Walter played gin rummy in the living room. They had started with match-sticks, but now they were playing for money, albeit for pennies. When I was settled for bed, I heard doors creaking open and falling to—someone leaving the house at night, against specific orders, for an elusive breath of air. Discipline was slack, and slackest when it counted most, around the toll of midnight. As the week wore on, even Emily seemed restless at her post. Several times I woke up to see her sitting by the window, peering out, or standing in the open doorway, straining to hear the banter of the card players.
The clouds of rebellion dispersed as quickly as they had gathered. Not a peacemaker by nature, Ruth smoothed things over by suggesting Sally Bissell, perhaps because Sally was good at card games. “Haven’t we been through this?” asked Walter. “I thought we’d ruled her out at the beginning.” “You did,” said Ruth. “You said she’d be an attractant.” “I did not,” snapped Walter. “Henry did.” Ruth turned to Henry. “Why would she be more of an attractant than me? Or Cora?” Walter answered for him. “Overt sexuality,” he said. “Race horse temperament.” “She won’t do it,” said Ruth. “She suffered terribly over that episode with Adele.”
Walter rebuffed her. “Let’s stick to the point,” he said. “Since Lorraine has gone to Cliff Island, why not ask Mariette?” “The county fair,” I answered. “They win prizes every year. It’s important for their business.” Walter shifted in his chair. “I’m doing an antiques show in Baltimore at the end of next week. I can’t afford to miss it.” “I have commitments of my own,” said Ruth, “but I’m pleased to help out in a crisis.” “How long is a crisis?” asked Walter. “We’ve been here for five days and we’ve got nothing to show for it.”
Henry had been waiting for an opportune moment to seize the reins. “I wonder,” he began, pausing to capture their attention. “Perhaps we need to stir the pot. Add an unstable element. Call Sally. I think Cora can persuade her.”
Chapter Twenty-five
The Unstable Element was delighted to be asked. “My feelings were hurt when you didn’t call me,” she said, as if we were giving a fancy party and had left her off the list. “Can’t I stay two nights? It would be such fun.”
Henry agreed that Jane could use a furlough, so I got her room ready for Sally—changed the pillowcase, hung fresh towels, arranged some supermarket chrysanthemums in a vase on the bureau. Sally was fond of duck, so I thought I might make a ragout with olive sauce. Sally loved chocolate, too, but she would have to be content with baked apples.
The purpose of our gathering, originally so serious, had gotten blurred, if not lost for good. People in emergencies always reverted to the ordinary. Trapped in elevators, they powdered their noses, quarreled and complained, shared, or refused to
share, their Life Savers. At this stage, Ruth and Walter were here for the gambling and Jane because she hated cooking. Sally seemed to think she’d been invited to some version of a teenage sleepover, the girls making fudge at midnight with their hair in curlers, trying out dance steps and lurid shades of nail polish.
What did Henry think? Was he keeping his eye on the sparrow? I noticed he was rationing the liquor—two bottles of wine at supper, four fingers of whisky, decanted, on the drinks table. The supplies had vanished to the cellar, for which Henry kept the only key. He patrolled the house with a flashlight at two a.m. and at four, the hour of the dead. Between rounds he sat at his desk, writing notes in a journal by the light of an adjustable lamp. What did he find to write about? The days were humdrum and the nights uneventful.
On the morning of Sally’s arrival, I went up to tidy his office while he was out running errands for me. I straightened the cover on the daybed, plumped the pillows, retrieved wads of paper that had missed the wastebasket. There was a plate and a mug on the windowsill, and another mug on the desk, half filled with coffee. Cookie crumbs speckled the open pages of his journal. I held it over the wastebasket and brushed them off. Replacing the notebook exactly as I found it, I began reading entries before I was aware of it. I wasn’t snooping, I reasoned, because Henry would have given me permission if I’d asked for it. It was clear from the entries that Henry was more observant than the rest of us. He had chosen to suppress his observations, confiding only in his journal. I could see why he was keeping mum. Separately, the items were trivial. Lumped together, they yielded no significance.
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