Picture the Dead

“Jennie, yes. Come in.” No, not Amelia’s last image, which I had folded into my book years ago with a delicious shudder, but a tintype of Will taken last year, to commemorate his acceptance to Harvard. He’d been there only a few months, though, before yielding to Quinn’s belief that one shouldn’t hide from military duty.

I take the print hungrily and resolve to add it to my collection once Uncle Henry is out at his office. Will looks so alive that I cannot believe he isn’t anymore. I remember precisely the expression on his face when he used to kiss me, the way his eyes had searched mine, those lips on my skin, his fingers tracing the outline of my chin and neck, sketching my body. Even the memories can turn my insides molten.

Uncle Henry breaks my concentration. “Jennie, I am obliged to ask a favor of you.”

“Yes, Uncle?” I wait, vulnerable. At the mercy of whatever this request might be.

“A delicate matter.” He reaches for his drink, his fingers clumsy. “So delicate, in fact, that I cannot make inquiries at the bank, or even the club.”

I nod as he drains the glass, though this couldn’t be good news. What sort of task would be beneath Uncle Henry but proper for his sixteen-year-old niece?

“There is a photographer in Boston. Not the usual sort, this gentleman.

He goes by the name Geist,” says Uncle. “He claims that he can conjure images of the departed. A medium, I think he is called.”

Photographing spirits. “I’ve heard of this.” From Rosemary Wortley, actually. She is fascinated by séances and likes to show off her invitation to a meeting she attended last summer while visiting her Milford cousins. Where, she claimed, she had helped to raise the turbulent soul of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Why would Uncle want to speak with me about such a matter?

“Quite. And I suppose that your father, my late brother-in-law, with all his daft ideas, might have had his hand in something like this. Didn’t he have some like-minded cronies who all gathered at that church on Irving Street?” Uncle strokes his bald patch and continues. “Jennie, with your late father’s connections, I’d like you to make some further inquiries.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Although I am quite sure that I do.

Uncle turns and squashes my hand into his. His palm is damp, his eyes bulge with entreaty. “For God’s sake, listen to me, girl. Imagine if Mrs. Pritchett and I could glimpse our son again. Or commune with his spirit, just once more, before we die!”

For all of Aunt Clara’s caterwauling, I suppose I hadn’t given much thought to how Uncle Henry has been affected by the loss of his eldest child. Certainly Uncle was always puzzled by Will, whose tender warmth stood in contrast to both parents’ stylized graces. But Uncle never struck me as the sort to keep company with Spiritualists. Did he and Aunt Clara devise this plan together?

In the pause, Uncle Henry’s fingers tighten, pulling me so close I smell the whiskey on his breath. “We have suffered so much already. And we have been kind to you, haven’t we, Jennie? Frankly, I think it is the least you could do while you remain here at Pritchett House, reaping the benefits of our hospitality.”

Heaven above, he is threatening me.

Spiritualists have no place in upper-class, conservative society. Possibly, neither do I. And so I am the correct choice for this matter.

“Yes, Uncle,” I say. “I will do what I can. I promise.”

8.

Heinrich Geist is a large, bewhiskered man, younger and stouter than I’d imagined. Under caterpillar eyebrows, his eyes are blunt as bullets. I imagine those eyes staring at us now through his camera lens, and a chill creeps up the back of my neck.

Crammed onto one side of the gravy-brown love seat in Geist’s sunlit parlor, which serves as his studio, with the perfume of Aunt Clara’s oiled ringlets sticky in the air, I wish I’d had a bite to eat this morning. But I’d simply been too nervous. I was ten years old the last time I sat for a formal photograph. Even now I can almost feel the press of Toby’s hand slipped into mine, for comfort.

“Chin up,” he’d told me. “A weak chin is the sign of a traitor.”

“Another minute,” commands Geist, his voice muffled under the drop cloth.

I hold my chin high.

Standing behind me, Quinn exhales through his nostrils, signaling his displeasure.

Today is January the eighteenth in the new year of 1865. “A significant date,” Geist had assured us as he’d ushered us into his sunny parlor, “for communing with our departed.”

Quinn had snorted at that, too.

“Your folly surprises me,” my cousin had rebuked when I’d first approached him. “Photographers are opportunists. Like cockroaches on the battlefield, scurrying for their capital on the dead.

A boy’s face for sale to his grieving family makes a tidy profit.”

“Mr. Geist is more than a photographer. He is a medium.” I’d shown Quinn the business card Geist had enclosed with his reply to my letter. “And Father’s friends at the Swedenborgian church aren’t charlatans they were kind to me when I asked about Mr. Geist. I’m sure he’ll be a gentleman as well.”

“Perhaps.” Quinn’s lips had tightened to signal his doubt. “But most mediums are frauds who’d steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.”

“Yet the movement has believers,” I’d insisted. “And Mr. Geist writes in his letter that the more family I bring, the better our luck. Come with us, please?”

“It’s nonsense that Mother and Father agreed to such claptrap. But I’ll do it for you, Jennie. Know that.” His silver eyes had been steady on mine, and in a tingling moment I knew that Quinn hadn’t forgotten that kiss after all.

Blushing, I’d dropped my eyes to study the laces on my shoes. “Thank you, Cousin.”

In the end, I rationalized, he’d probably relented only to relieve his boredom. There are only so many trips around a garden that a young man can make. I hoped it was a good sign that Quinn was looking to become more sociable again.

My own reservations have more to do with money. Five dollars seems like an extravagance for a single portrait seating, and Geist had requested that we pay five more when we are delivered a photograph. I can’t help but think of the warm winter cloak, new hat, and boots I could have enjoyed for the same price.

Services will be Promptly rendered, but with no Assurance of Spiritual