Chapter VIII #2
Maybe smiled. “That sounds so nerdy. Ancestors.”
“Just more succinct than saying my great-great-great-great-grandmother.”
“What was her name?”
“Blanche.”
“Well, I’ll tell Blanche she did a great job, if she pops up tonight.”
My sisters came around the corner from the kitchen, and Clara gave a little wave. “Hi, Maybe!”
“Hi,” Maybe said. “We should do this in the hearth of the home. Usually that’s the kitchen or the living room.”
“The attic,” Bernadette said without hesitation. “For us, it’s the attic.”
“Right on,” Maybe said. “I like your hair.”
Bernadette, who’d spent not a single moment of her life flustered, looked a bit flustered now. Her hand fluttered up to the nape of her neck and she stammered a thanks as Maybe looked up the first flight of stairs.
“Shall we?” Maybe said.
Evelyn raised the Swiffer WetJet she was holding. “Let’s do this.”
Clara led the way, followed by Maybe, then Evelyn, then me, then Bernadette.
“Dang,” Bernie whispered.
“Kindly shut up,” I whispered back.
In the attic, Maybe dropped a big black tote bag on the hardwood floor and said, “There’s definitely some energy here.”
(Teaching Henry how to play Miss Mary Mack, reading Alice in Wonderland side by side on the couch, watching endless reruns of Bewitched and I Dream of Genie and MASH on late-night cable. Yes: some energy indeed.)
We had already set up a folding table with five chairs and brought up all of Maybe’s requested items. She withdrew a bundle of small, neatly cut sticks from her bag, then a metal lighter. The aroma of cedar filled the room as the sticks caught and started to burn. She handed the bundle to Clara.
“First we cleanse,” she said.
Clara’s face settled itself into an expression of utmost sincerity. She walked around the perimeter of the room slowly, letting the smoke rise up from her hands.
Next, Maybe withdrew a corked glass bottle from her bag. She carefully poured the concoction into the Swiffer and handed it back to Evelyn.
“Open the windows,” she instructed. “Clean.”
Evelyn did as she was told.
Maybe tossed the lighter to Bernadette. We’d put a dozen or so candles on the table already. Maybe nodded her head toward them, and Bernadette began lighting.
Maybe picked up the olive oil next, said something softly over it, moved her hand, then handed the bottle to me.
“Anoint the open windows,” she said, “then close them again.”
The whole thing might have had the danger of veering into the corny, but Maybe prevented that from happening. She was serious and stoic, calm and precise, and under her direction, we felt protected. Confident. Like maybe this would … work.
When Clara was done with the cedar, Maybe went over the space again with palo santo, which had a deep, woody smell with a hint of something sweet underneath it, like black licorice. Then she stepped back, considered everything, and nodded her head.
“Take your seats, please,” she said.
Maybe sat at one of the ends of the table, Bernadette and I sat on one long side, and Clara and Evelyn sat on the other.
Evelyn was across from me. She was doing better, blinking less, less slow with her reaction times.
I had found the dress she’d returned in shoved into the back of her closet, crinkled into a tight ball.
She was quiet now, and I knew she was trying so hard not to get her hopes up.
We were all trying so, so hard not to get our hopes up.
I thought of the priest, suddenly, and the quiet, full silence of the Bleecker crypt, lit by candles, like the attic playroom was now.
I thought of the gravel floor, of pleading with Henry to answer me, of saying Evelyn’s name like an invocation.
I thought of sending Henry away. I thought of a morning last year when Evelyn and I had walked across the park in springtime and she had stopped to pick up a dandelion, closing her eyes so tightly as she made her wish, scattered the seeds with her breath.
I knew what she had wished for then and I knew what she would wish for now, had she found another dandelion in the frozen ground. I would wish for the same thing.
“Are we all settled?” Maybe asked, and her voice had shifted, from shopgirl to séance leader.
“Clear your minds,” she continued, and I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, very aware that there was no way in hell I was going to be able to clear my mind.
I was always thinking of at least ten useless things at a time. But I tried. I really tried.
I opened my eyes again when I heard shuffling.
Maybe had taken a small handmade contraption out of her tote bag and was assembling it on the table.
It was made of wood and looked almost like (morbid, but) a miniature gallows.
From the top of the device, Maybe hung a thin, braided piece of rope with a crystal attached.
She placed her hands on either side of the device.
“My left hand is no,” she said. “My right hand is yes. We are contacting the spirit world tonight in an attempt to reach someone very close to us.” She looked toward me, expectantly.
“Henry,” I said. “We’re trying to reach our … our Henry.”
“Henry, if you are with us tonight, we implore you to make yourself known.”
I looked around the table. Bernadette’s face was impassive, unreadable.
Clara looked a little scared. Evelyn looked sad.
I thought I probably looked annoyed. I felt annoyed, and I couldn’t say exactly why.
Was I annoyed at Henry, for being so hard to reach?
Was I annoyed at Evelyn, for being so melodramatic as to fall in love with a ghost? Was I annoyed at myself (always)?
Just then, a gentle breeze blew through the room. One of the pillar candles flickered and extinguished. A trail of smoke traced its way up to the ceiling.
“We welcome you,” Maybe said.
Clara looked even more scared now. Bernadette a little less impassive. Evelyn more alert, sitting up straighter in her chair.
“We have questions for you,” Maybe said. “But first, will you confirm for us: Is this Henry? Are you here?”
The crystal, hanging from Maybe’s little gallows-like contraption, twitched.
We all saw it. It caught the light of the candles (the ones that still burned) and threw thousands of little pinpricks of light all across the room.
A miniature disco ball. It was beautiful.
I would have spent more time in awe of it had I not been absolutely paralyzed with fear, because the crystal was still twitching, the crystal was moving, the crystal was definitely, unquestionably moving, right toward Maybe’s calm, cool, still right hand. The right hand of yes.
“Thank you,” Maybe said. “We’re so happy you could join us, Henry. Are you safe?”
The crystal twitched back to center, twitched back again to point at Maybe’s right hand.
“We want you to come back,” I said, interjecting before I could stop myself, my voice hitching on the word back. “Can you come back, Henry?”
The crystal returned to center and made a sort of circular movement. Maybe looked confused for a moment, then let out a soft chuckle. “I think that means maybe,” she said. Then, to me: “Also, no more interrupting.”
She returned her attention to the crystal, closed her eyes, took a deep breath.
Across from me, Evelyn shifted in her seat. She was biting her bottom lip so hard I was worried she’d draw blood.
“Henry, will you try to come back?” Maybe said.
The crystal made its lackluster, noncommittal circle again, and Clara let out a noise of deep irritation and said, “Henry, seriously! If Evelyn could do it, you can do it! Persephone’s footsteps made a doorway; you just have to find it.”
Maybe made a little face, like what have I gotten myself into with this family.
The crystal moved to yes.
If I could, for a moment, anthropomorphize the crystal, I would say that the crystal moved to yes rather cheekily, and Clara, mollified, sat back in her chair.
“Maybe he didn’t know about the doorway,” she said reasonably.
“What doorway?” Maybe asked.
“Nothing,” Bernadette said, at the same time Clara responded, “Oh, a long time ago Persephone came to New York to welcome back the spring and wherever she went, her footsteps left weak spots between here and the Underworld, so our sister found one and went down there to find her ghost boyfriend and they got stuck there for three years and then she finally found her way back but Henry didn’t so we’re worried he’s stuck.
He’s a ghost who lives in our attic and then Evelyn fell in love with him and then Winnie banished him.
And also there’s this hole in the sky now, can you see it? ”
A moment of silence and then Bernadette repeated, rather weakly, “Like I said: nothing.”
“A hole in the sky,” Maybe said. “No, I haven’t seen it.”
“That’s what I figured,” Clara said. “Only we can see it, because we’re descended from Persephone.”
“Are you stuck, Henry?” Evelyn asked quietly, looking at the crystal. “Are you stuck down there?”
The crystal moved to yes (anthropomorphizing again: rather despondently).
“Huh,” Maybe said. “You’re all very weird.”
“Yes, well,” Clara said.
“And what’s the hole in the sky?” Maybe asked.
“One of Persephone’s footsteps, the weak spots. We think when Evelyn came back, it sort of ripped it open,” Clara said.
“Right.”
“Maybe if Henry came back—maybe if you would just come back now, Henry!—he would know how to fix it,” Clara said.
“But he can’t come back,” Evelyn said, still staring at the crystal. “We tried.”
“You really went to the Underworld?” Maybe asked.
“Yes.”
“What was it like?”
Evelyn tore her gaze away from the crystal and looked at Maybe. “Horrible. Beautiful. Miserable. Wonderful. Very overwhelming. If I’m being perfectly candid, I tried to get back last night, and it wouldn’t let me through.”
“You tried to WHAT?” Bernadette said loudly.
“The doorway is closed to me now,” Evelyn said.
“You tried to go back?” Bernadette said.