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 exposed 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.
“If I had any.”
“Poor Fleur!” He smiles.
I smile to hear my old nickname, bestowed by my cousins from my long-ago summertime habit of arranging wildflowers in my hair. Funny, the things Quinn remembers. Of course his mind is as sharp as a nail even now. I curl myself more comfortably in my chair as he deals the deck.
“You seem more at ease these days.”
“Perhaps because I have more to see,” he says, referring to the fact that against the doctor’s orders, he has removed his eye patch. Quinn has a notion that his skin must be exposed to air to heal. I don’t tell him how I wish he’d kept it covered, how unnerved I am by his damaged eye that moves back and forth like a trapped fly behind his puffed, blue skin.
“Or perhaps I’m only grateful that after a month home,” I continue carefully, “you are paying me any attention at all.”
“Not fair, Fleur. We’ve always been close.”
I shrug. Close is not a word I’d have used. Though I suppose he has been closer to me than to anyone else since his return. Before the war Quinn was endlessly pursued by the smart young Brookline and Boston set, but he’s been home for weeks, and has refused to see any friends. Partly I’m sure it’s got to do with his injury, which makes him self-conscious.