Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [42]
DURING FRANK’S ABSENCE—WHICH HAD NOW GONE ON FOR A MONTH —Fay’s psychic business got up and running again. Much of this work was what Fay called “daytime spiritualism”: card reading and fortune-telling for those who were worried in love or desperate in business. These clients needed assurance and counseling as much as anything, and Fay was savvy at providing it. In the evenings, Fay did the serious stuff: séances, summonings, materializations. These were the occasions when she gathered those who were anxious to contact a loved one who had gone on the dark side of the veil. Usually, Fay attracted about a dozen people for these sessions, though sometimes she had as many as forty participants sitting in her parlor. Most of these were older folks, around Fay’s age. They were eager to reconcile painful misunderstandings with people they had loved and lost. Or they were desirous of the departed one’s crucial advice on one secular matter or another. Or they simply wanted some sign that there was life and deliverance beyond death. They found these signs in Fay’s living room, under her guidance. Familiar voices came out of the dark, or from Fay’s mouth, in those moments when she would allow herself to be a conduit for the dead. The hands and breaths of the dead brushed up close against the faces of the living, and strange sounds thumped along the floor and the walls. Sometimes, luminous faces floated in the dimness, like an apparition breaking free into the real world.
My mother would not stick around when Fay invoked the spirits. She was uncomfortable with the atmosphere in the house at those times, plus she was uneasy with what these events implied. Either Fay’s clients were pathetic and needful people who were being duped, or Fay was the genuine article—somebody who could reach into God’s proper realm and talk to the dead—and for Bessie, the latter notion was more disturbing than the first. On the nights of the séances, Bessie would often go visit Robert, who lived in a small room a few blocks away. She had come to like this son of Frank’s, who was now nearly a man in his own right. He was shy and polite, and damn handsome to boot. Plus, the longer Frank’s absence stretched on, the more she began to feel she had in common with Robert, since they had both, in a way, been abandoned by the same man. Bessie could tell there was a deep and confused hurt in Robert. He had been raised in a world of weird psychic shadows, and he had hungered to be claimed by his father. But all he knew of his dad was that he was a man who had grown up in vaudeville and the circus, and who could not come for Robert because some great mystery kept him away. But the idea of the secret mystery didn’t help Robert much. The truth was, Frank Gilmore had found it terribly easy to leave his son, without once calling or writing him. Robert still wanted to get close to his father, but he wasn’t finding it easy.
Bessie and Robert spent many evenings talking about these and other matters, while the spirits held court in the night at Fay’s house.
HALFWAY THROUGH FALL, after a six-week absence, Frank returned home. Bessie saw him coming up the walkway to Fay’s and, despite all her agitation, something in her heart surged. He had a way that got to her, something that told her he was the only man she was ever going to really love. Still, she had to let him know that she wasn’t happy being left behind, and that she had learned a few details about his life. She told him that Fay had told her about his other wives and many names. She told him that she had figured out that Ehrich Weiss was his father.
Frank took all this in without showing much in return. Just like his mother, Bessie thought.
“What else did Fay tell you?” Frank asked.
“Nothing else. She told me that if I wanted to know any of your other secrets, I’d have to ask you.”
Frank seemed relieved by that. He gave my mother a look that told her that revealing anything more was the last thing on his mind.
Bessie decided to push a little. “Frank, where did you go? What were