Chris Adrian - Gob's Grief

“There she is, real as can be!” said Tennie, pinching her as if to make sure of her flesh, then kissing her again.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” said Mrs. Woodhull.

Mrs. Woodhull is a great and good woman, a lady celebrated by spirits. There is a grand plaza here dedicated to her and to her wonderful sister. There are colossal statues made — can you picture them in your mind? — of quicksilver desire. They stand back to back, giantesses looking with a supreme clarity of vision over the whole Summerland. Everybody here labors under a burden of enthusiasm for Mrs. Woodhull, but really her living son is more significant than she, and the small garden dedicated to him, while very beautiful, does not do justice to his importance.

Does it surprise you, that the dead build monuments to the living? Sister, the whole Summerland is stubbled with such monuments. We go to them, as you go to yours, to remember and to mourn.

It was an extraordinary welcome. Mrs. Woodhull said she had known Maci would come to New York, and hinted that her spirit guide, Demosthenes himself, had promised to deliver her, but Maci chose to believe that Mrs. Woodhull was expecting her, and welcomed her so warmly, because she believed that Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly must draw enthusiastic young women inexorably to her side.

She insisted that Maci be her guest, and took her to a beautiful house on Thirty-eighth Street, where Maci was given a room adjoining Tennie’s on the second floor. Tennie was almost Maci’s age exactly; their birthdays were just a week apart. “We are almost twins,” Tennie said, convinced that they must become the best of friends. Tennie was like Miss Suter, in a way, except where Maci had always suspected Miss Suter of being a liar, Tennie was brazenly honest. Certainly it was another punishment, for Maci to have delivered herself into the hands of devoted Spiritualists. Yet these ladies did not share the quality of fear that Maci had sensed in Miss Suter. They were not hiding under their beliefs from the cruelty of the world.

Mrs. Woodhull challenged Maci to help her “abolish hypocrisy and transform the social sphere.” Listening to her, Maci found her delusions easy to overlook. Mrs. Woodhull claimed wisdom from the dead, not through their books, as other people got it, but from direct personal interviews. Yet this was not to say that she did not read books. All through dinner they talked of Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Mrs. Woodhull had a clipping book with seventeen pages devoted to articles by Margaret Fuller. All evening she and Maci sat in a third-floor study, underneath a dome of green glass, and talked. Maci confessed her plan to write something very large — a vindication of Wollstonecraft’s Vindication. “All that obvious truth, written over a hundred years ago,” Maci said. “I look around me at the world and it’s as if she never made a peep.” She brought out her animadversions on Catharine Beecher, and told how she planned to dissect and refute every argument she could find in print which advocated anything but that women should have absolute power over their own lives.

“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Woodhull said excitedly, and paraphrased the Countess Ossoli. “I mean to vindicate the birthright of all women, to teach them what to claim, and how to use what they obtain.” Then she yawned. It was close to midnight. “Perhaps we’ve talked enough for an evening. There’s work for us to do in the morning.” Over dinner, she had made Maci an assistant editor on her Weekly , just like that. It was a thrill to have employment, but Maci controlled herself, not crying out or giggling with joy, only nodding serenely and saying, “I will be very happy to accept your generous offer.”

Tennie took Maci to her room. Mrs. Woodhull’s house was so big she was grateful to have a guide, because she was sure she’d have lost herself among all the stairs and the halls full of doors. Maci was tired, but Tennie wouldn’t let her go to sleep just yet. Maci sat on a stool in Tennie’s room, which featured prominently a silken tent set up in one corner. “My Turkish corner,” Tennie called it. “When we are more intimate, I’ll take you in there and tell you confidential things.” Now she wanted to trace Maci’s silhouette, to add it to a collection. Maci sat very still in the darkened room while Tennie traced her shadow on a piece of paper pinned to the wall. On an opposite wall there were a dozen other silhouettes, framed and hung in orderly rows. “There they are,” Tennie said, when she saw where Maci was looking, “the rest of the family.”

“I’m really rather sleepy,” said Maci.

“We’re nearly done,” Tennie said, and cursed the candle when it flickered. When she was finished she had a wavering outline of Maci’s profile drawn on black paper with white chalk. “There,” she said. “I waste no time obtaining these. Now, let’s prepare for bed.” She groped at Maci, undoing buttons and ties even as Maci tried to direct her hands away.

“It’s something I do for myself.”

“Nonsense!” said Tennie. “It’s what a sister’s for.” When they were both in their undergarments, Maci saw that Tennie wore a thing she had never before encountered: a combination of chemise and drawers.

“Do you like my chemiloon?” Tennie asked, turning around to model it. Maci nodded, because she did like it, and she was immediately presented with one from out of Tennie’s wardrobe.

After she had bound Maci’s and her own hair up in rags to maintain their curls, Tennie began to prepare her night-cream, which, she said, she made fresh every night from a recipe of her mother’s. It would keep a lady’s skin soft, and also drive away evil spirits. Maci watched as she mixed equal measures of white wax, almond oil, and cacao in a small blue porcelain bowl. Tennie painted it on Maci’s face with a sable brush, and did the same to her own face.

“We’ll bounce for a while,” she said. “It makes for a good sleep.” She took Maci’s hands and dragged her up on the bed. Then she started bouncing, insisting, when Maci only hopped a little, that she bounce vigorously. Maci’s rag-bound hair flopped in her eyes.

“Now I’m weary!” Tennie said. “Are you weary, too?”

“Entirely.”

“Well, if you have trouble sleeping, if you wake in the night feeling agitated, you may have a ride on my pony.” Tennie pointed to a rocking horse big enough for an adult, with a piece of red silk thrown over its saddle. “He’s for sharing, that fellow. Indeed, everything in this room is for sharing.” She opened the door between their rooms and ushered Maci through. Someone had already turned down her sheets and fluffed up her pillows. “Good night, sister!” Tennie said, turning down the light and retreating to her room. She shut the door only halfway.

Maci lay in her new bed, smelling like a macaroon. It was true that she was weary, but she could not sleep. She stayed awake watching the blowing white shapes of her curtains as they moved in the breeze. Her left hand was twitching, walking up and down the bed like a scrabbling crab, and pinching at the flesh of her belly. “Stop it,” she said, but it would not stop. There was a writing desk already set up for her, as if to provide for her affliction. She turned up the light and sat down.

Didn’t I tell you they’d be waiting?

“Why now?” she asked. “Why did you let me feel safe, first, before you began this torture?” If her hand had rebelled back when rebellion was popular, five years ago or more, then she might have been better prepared to put it down, stronger and more able in her dealings with it. Complacency had made her weak, and reflecting on the very agreeable time she had spent that day with Mrs. Woodhull, she feared it would only be a matter of days before she succumbed to delusion and declared herself the Apostle of the Left Hand.