The Medium by Noëlle Sickels Page B

would choke a young girl as bad,” Walter insisted.
    â€œHe was perhaps only inexperienced in making contact. Suicides do not like to be called.”
    â€œI’m not convinced spirits were involved at all,” Walter replied. “Maybe Helen’s gift, as you call it, is in reading thoughts. Maybe somehow the agonies of that wretched woman emptied into Helen’s innocent mind.”
    â€œMaybe,” Ursula admitted. “But what about Iris?”
    The conversation seemed stalled, so Helen entered the kitchen. Everyone was at the table, though they’d obviously
finished breakfasting. As usual, her father and grandmother had newspapers spread in front of them. Walter gave Helen a nod in response to her “good morning,” then turned his attention to the front page, and Ursula answered “guten Morgen” quite normally before taking up her morning ritual of memorizing obituaries. Emilie smiled at Helen, put down her coffee mug and got up to fix some Wheatena.
    â€œFeeling better?” she said from the stove.
    Helen stared at her mother’s back, unsure how to respond. She did feel differently this morning from how she’d felt last night. Quieter. Cleaner. Was that better? Should she call last night bad? She’d been dizzy on the way home, had leant her head against her mother’s shoulder as they walked, but that hadn’t been bad exactly, only odd, as if she’d just gotten off a fast merry-go-round. At home, her mother had helped her out of her clothes and into bed. Her freshly laundered sheets had smelled lovely.
    And before, at Mrs. Durkin’—to say that she’d felt badly then was not a big enough description. The sensation of choking was frightening, but it hadn’t lasted long. And she’d gotten to see Iris again, which was nice, though now that she considered, she didn’t like that Iris had come unasked. Was the mere act of sitting at a seance table invitation enough?
    Helen rubbed her forehead. No, she wasn’t feeling better. She was muddled and embarrassed and uneasy in her own skin.
    â€œYes, I am better, thank you,” she answered anyway.
    Emilie set a steaming bowl in front of her. Helen watched a pat of butter melt into the brown sugar, which in its turn was melting into the hot cereal. One by one, the three adults exited the kitchen to attend to separate errands, and she was left with only the thrum and drip of the rain to listen to.
    The adults’ careful casualness annoyed her, especially after what she’d just overheard. Suppose she had suddenly sprouted
wings? Would her family fail to mention them as long as she kept them neatly folded on her back whenever she was in the house? Would it be deemed her problem to figure out how to deal with them in the bathtub? Would her mother simply remake her blouses and quietly set a bottle of preening oil on her dresser?
    Helen began to eat. The first few swallows were tight. She wondered what she really wanted. To be sized up face-to-face and fussed over, or to be granted privacy? Probably a bit of both. She sighed. She’d had no preconceived notion of what this business of contacting spirits would be like, but she’d never thought it would leave her lonely.
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    The rain and muted light continued all day, which suited Helen’s slack frame of mind. When Rosie called with a plan to go to a matinee, Helen declined. The idea of a crowd and bright noise and commotion was as unappealing to her today as it would have been irresistibly enticing on any other rainy Saturday.
    By late afternoon, she was contentedly ensconced in the living-room window seat, reading the latest Nancy Drew mystery. Her mother was in the armchair by the fireplace knitting. Her father had gone out for tobacco, and Nanny was napping.
    Coming to the end of a chapter, Helen lifted her head and looked out the window. The movement of someone in a yellow slicker on the Mackeys’ back porch