As instructed, it was Jane’s dresser—a woman named Hany who plainly disapproved of what was going on but whom Jane regarded as trustworthy—who brought the Fox sisters to her door.
“Thank you, Hany,” Jane said.
Hany was stout in the legs, lithe in the arms, black, and wore wire spectacles so tight they pinched the flesh at her cheeks and temples. She was not excessively warm or conversational, but Jane found her a comfort in their encounters. There was a patience in Hany—an understanding extended to her own imperfections, to Jane’s—that was communicated through small shakes of the head or a chit sound she made between her tongue and the roof of her mouth.
“You may leave us,” Jane said, and Hany pulled the door closed with a grimace.
When it was just the three of them Jane saw how young the girls appeared for their ages. Kate especially. There was something wounded about her, as if she’d spent the last hour being shouted at. It didn’t seem to Jane that the older sister, Maggie, would be the one to do the shouting. She looked to be hardly aware of her sister, let alone angry at her. The elder girl observed Jane with undisguised frankness. Jane tried to believe it was part of Maggie’s professional approach to measure people in this way, so that she and her sister could customize their methodology to each client. Yet it left Jane with the distinct impression that she was only gauging how much she could get away with.
“The White House,” Maggie said, and sucked at her teeth. She heard the sound it made and straightened herself in exaggerated humility.
“Welcome.”
“We’ve been reading up since we got your letter. Our condolences.”
“Thank you.”
“I must confess I never thought we’d find ourselves in this place,” Maggie said, a strained formality to her speech as if acting the part of a cultured lady and, in doing so, mocking cultured ladies. Mocking Jane.
“Your accomplishments have been widely celebrated,” Jane said. “I suppose there are many who would wish an audience with those who have left this life too soon.”
“Oh, you can be sure of that, Mrs. Pierce.”
“Well then. I don’t want to hold you here any longer than you need to be. Is there a way we ought to seat ourselves?”
Maggie looked at the three chairs set around the table in the middle of the room as if for the first time. “Mr. Pierce won’t be joining us?”
“No.”
“That’s unfortunate. I’m sure he has some interesting spirit friends.”
“The hour is getting rather late. Would you mind if we—”
“Please, we mustn’t rush things,” the girl interrupted, winking. “This isn’t like getting your future on a scroll at the penny arcade.”
“Of course.”
Maggie walked around the room, inspecting perfume bottles and powders on the bureau top and pouring herself a glass of ice water from the crystal pitcher next to the bed.
“Is there someone in particular you wish to contact this evening, Mrs. Pierce?” she asked once she’d returned to stand next to the table.
“My son.”
“Bennie.”
“His name was in the papers you were reading?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I didn’t know a child’s death is worthy material for public gossip.”
“With respect,” Maggie said disrespectfully, “it’s not just any child’s death when the father is the president.”
It had taken Jane more time than it should have, but she saw now that Maggie was drunk. She held her liquor well, which was part of why it eluded immediate detection. She also had a way of adapting her inebriation into an attitude, one that vacillated between amused and bored, so that one found oneself tempted to try to hold her attention by saying or doing something outrageous or aggressive.
While Jane could see how such a charm could work on others, she was immune to it. She wasn’t offended that a woman of Maggie’s age had chosen to present herself aglow with liquor at the presidential mansion. It was the lack of seriousness she brought to her extraordinary vocation. If Jane could do what it was said Maggie Fox could do, she would devote herself to refining her powers, not dulling them with gin. It angered Jane to think of such squandering—she could speak with Bennie now, herself !—so she tried not to. Yet within minutes of Maggie stepping into her room she found herself seething with jealousy. This cheek-painted, smirking harlot? She had the power to communicate with her Bennie, her poor father too, with all who had passed and left the ones who loved them cratered by loss? It filled Jane with an urge to slap the child’s cheeks redder still.
“I’d like to begin now,” Jane said.
She sat in one of the chairs at the table and smoothed the lace over its top. Maggie seemed to consider making another provocation, but whether she couldn’t think of one or she considered the risk of losing their double-the-usual fee, she held her tongue and took her seat. A moment later Kate did the same.
“It’s done through rappings and knocks,” Maggie said, launching into what was her standard explanation of the procedure. “We’ll ask the spirit a question, and they will answer by choosing letters of the alphabet according to the number of raps. One is a, two is b, and so on. A pause between means a new letter. Are you ready, Mrs. Pierce?”
“Yes.”
“Then what is your question?”
Jane had been speaking with Bennie in her mind, writing letters to him, dreaming of him for so long that now that she had the chance to address him directly she didn’t know what she wanted to know first. Was he in pain? Would he wait for her so they could be together when her time came? Did he know that she loved him, would always love him?
All these queries and others jostled to be front of her mind. But there was one piece of knowledge she dreaded the answer to, yet was most desperate to know.
“Bennie?” she said. “Can you see me?”
The sounds came right away.
… pop, pop, pop, pop…
Hollow raps in a steady sequence that none of them counted aloud, but Kate silently mouthed the number to herself. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five. A pause.
“Y,” Maggie announced. Then the raps started again.
It was so plainly one or both of them cracking a joint in their legs—an ankle or knee under the table and therefore undetectable—that at first Jane almost laughed. Pop, pop, pop, pop. Her piano teacher at Catherine Fiske’s Boarding School for Girls made a bigger noise bending back her fingers to “open the knuckles” before attempting Bach’s French Suites. It was astonishing that anyone seated farther back than the fifth row in the theaters these two had performed this trickery in could detect any sound at all.
“An e,” Maggie said, feigning excitement.
Jane listened to the raps start up again as if from a great distance, her disappointment pulling her out of her body, out of the room.
“And a s. That’s yes! Mrs. Pierce, I believe your child is present with us!”
I believe you’re a vulgar charlatan, Jane wanted to say but didn’t.
This was now an occasion, like so many in her life, that she had to make it to the other side of. Throwing these children out after being scolded by the First Lady wouldn’t do any good, and might end up insulting them enough to report the episode to the press. Despite their assurances that this session was to be kept confidential, and the extra money paid to ensure it, Jane had little doubt that Maggie Fox was the sort who would break a promise if she felt she’d been crossed.