Chapter Ten

The next morning was Tuesday, the day of the second séance.

Violet begged off a group picnic to the lighthouse and tennis club in favor of trying out the Index typewriter which Alva had sent over from Marble House the afternoon before. While Sadie and the other ladies wore their tennis whites with pleated skirts, Violet was dressed for work in her favorite shirtwaist and navy-blue skirt.

The Index typewriter sat in the center of the morning room table, as intimidating a piece of machinery as she had ever seen. It was breadbox sized with a strip of lettered keys along the front, a roller (with a piece of paper already rolled into it, thank heaven), and a variety of mysterious shiny levers on the side.

You can’t break it, Alva had said. Well, Violet thought, she might as well put that to the test. She took a seat and began with the paper roller, trying every knob and clasp. Then she moved to the letter keys, and quickly discovered that the letter keys did nothing unless she followed them up by pressing the shiny bar that ran across the top. After a long stretch of hunting out the right letters, she managed to type the first four letters of her name.

At the sound of footsteps, she turned. Charlie stood in the open doorway.

“Have you come to see what racket I’m making?”

He walked cautiously into the room, not speaking until he reached the table. “Yes. For a minute there I thought we were under attack.”

He said this lightly, but something in his face told her that she’d given him a real fright. “Say, I’m sorry. Alva asked me to learn this typewriter of hers so we can have typed agendas for our meeting next Monday. I hadn’t thought—it does sound a bit like gunfire, doesn’t it?”

“Not at all.” He felt around the table for a chair. “May I join you? I’ve wondered about typewriters. A doctor in France said blind patients there sometimes use them to write.”

“Yes, I can see how you could. Once you memorized the letters and the keys, you’d be off and running. Sorry to say, the keys are not in alphabetical order.”

“No? What order are they in?”

“Hmm. X, J, K, M, V—do you want me to go on?”

He shook his head. “That’s plenty for now, thanks. X, J, K, M, V. Not the most popular letters, are they? Except the V, of course. Clearly that’s a very important letter.”

That made Violet laugh. She pecked out Charlie’s name, then The Breakers. She tried a few numbers and some punctuation. “I think the more commonly used letters are toward the middle.” She felt ready to roll in a fresh piece of paper and type her first agenda.

“What’s your meeting about—the one next Monday?”

Violet sat back. “Alva’s an important member of the CU, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. On the twenty-ninth, next Monday, the leaders will vote on the structure of a proposed National Woman’s Party. Whatever our group puts together will be taken to Chicago the following week. Out there, the women of the western states—the ones who already have the vote—will vote on what we’ve written. A party of our own could be just what the movement needs. If we can get enough supporters in Washington, we can pass the federal amendment.”

“The CU—but I feel I’ve heard of another group.”

“Sure. The NWSA. They’re the old guard, you might say. The group Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony started. National Woman Suffrage Association. They’re working primarily on the states. The CU is focused on a federal amendment.”

He leaned forward. “What are the tactics for that sort of thing? Getting friendly candidates elected from the states where women can vote, I see that. But who brings a federal amendment to a vote? Can the president do it? Or does it start in Congress?”

This led to a pleasant hour in which Violet’s cheeks grew warm with excitement and Charlie asked question after question. Goodness, no one ever asked her about the movement. Not even Sadie, who said she’d be as excited to vote as anyone but didn’t want to know how the sausage was made.

“It’s good of you to listen to all this,” she said. The niggling reminder of Crystal Eastman’s challenge popped up in the back of her mind, but she pushed it away. She still had seven days left. Plus a few hours.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “It’s the most interesting thing I’ve heard in months. Thank you for telling me. It finally helped chase off the specters from my nightmares this morning.”

“Dreams about the war?”

“Not really. But, yes, it’s always there in a way. A shadow that takes the color out of everything.”

She pressed her hand flat on the table and slid it toward his, not close enough to touch. Just to be near. Waiting to hear if he would say more.

“I was an ambulance driver,” he said at last. “A pack of us from Harvard volunteered and sailed over. My parents thought it was foolish. I was a semester short of graduation. But—well, I never really thought I’d get hurt. None of us did. We were green idiots. It only took a few runs to the front lines for me to see how expendable human flesh is. The French fellows were no younger or dumber than we were, and they died by the heaps.”

Violet watched him carefully, trying to gauge whether she should ask the obvious question. She took a breath and plunged in, keeping her voice soft. “What happened to you?”

His face was immobile—a sheet of marble. “A few things almost happened. A shell hit the road beside my Model T, and it flipped. I might have died then. We were shot at a handful of times, and it was pure luck that I wasn’t killed.” He hesitated. “When fellows died in the ambulance, we had to dump them on the side of the road. Cover them with a blanket and move on. I think I dream of that more than anything. A blanket going over a face. That and the dead horses.”

Violet held still, afraid that any movement would break the spell. Not that she wanted to picture it, but she longed to go with him to this place. This place she suspected he kept very secret.

“The gas was what destroyed us. I was near Ypres, almost in Belgium, when Germans set off all that chlorine gas. We found whole trenches of dead men. Acid built up in their lungs, and—well. Even the ones that lived were ruined. Their lungs were like paper. But you could see chlorine, at least—it’s green and has a smell you’d never forget. A wet handkerchief over the nose blocks its effect, so we got beyond that. But then, weeks later, we were attacked with phosgene. That was even more brutal, because the men would live for a day, two, and then die. We transported car after car of men who ended up dying back at camp from fluid in their lungs. They drowned to death in their own beds.”

Violet pressed her hands together. It was absurd to sit in this carpeted room, cushioned in silence, while men drowned on their metal cots. But she didn’t want to hide from what was happening. She wanted to know. In the face of this suffering, getting women the vote didn’t feel like such a paramount cause. Though, who knew, maybe when women had the vote, they would put an end to wars.

“I don’t know what gas I got caught in. Sometimes they used a mixture, or it could have been something new. Who knows? I was on a run with my soigneur, hauling wounded men to the ambulance, when the shells hit. One of them must have been close. We tried to run—our gas masks were in the car. But it’s hard enough to carry a man, let alone run while you’re doing it. And the fellow on our stretcher didn’t have a mask either.” He shook his head. “That gas was strange. It made our eyes flood with water, like tear gas, but it was yellow—almost daffodil yellow—with a terrible, sharp smell. It blinded us pretty quickly. We had to drop the fellow we were carrying. Both of us just writhed on the ground, our eyes burning.”

He was breathing hard, his forehead creased with lines. Violet shifted in her seat to remind him that he wasn’t alone.

“Thank God they sent out more ambulances after the gas dissipated. My soigneur, René, regained his sight the next day. But not me.”

Violet set aside her reserve and slid her hand forward until her fingers touched his. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “You must still be grieving it, the loss of your sight.”

He moved one of his fingers, so it tucked over hers. Violet’s hand sagged in relief. He not only didn’t mind her touching him, he seemed to welcome it.

“I am. Will I always, do you think?”

He sounded so frightened that she pressed her thumb against the back of his. “I don’t know. They say people are resilient. But I can’t pretend to understand how awful it is. You must feel very alone.”

“Less—” he started to say. But just then voices floated through the open door. They both sat up and pulled away, too well-bred to be caught holding hands.

–

Less alone when you’re here. That’s what Charlie had been about to say, right out loud, when Flora’s tart voice sounded at the open door, calling Reggie to the telephone. Good god, had he really been about to blurt that out? Sheesh. Forget his eyes. He should have his head examined.

Still, she had touched his hand. Sure, he’d been telling her his tragic life story. But she didn’t have to reach for his hand unless she’d wanted to. It had been a shock to feel her fingers on his—a wonderful, electric shock that almost made him forget what they’d been talking about. Then he’d remembered, and her concern had flowed into his skin like a c sharp note.

Reggie’s voice cut through his thoughts. He must be on the telephone in the library. “Gertrude, don’t you go tattling! Who cares if I do as I please?” There was a pause, and then, “Well, if she’s going to be that way, I’ll just go back to Sandy Point.”

Pause.

“I’m not pouting.”

Pause.

“I guess. I can come after Alva’s bash. I want to be here for the séances.”

A short pause.

“What do you mean, why? To talk to Alfie!”

A longer pause.

“If I didn’t think this woman could do it, I wouldn’t be here. Alva swears by her. Poor Alfie’s there on the other side, cold and gray, and I want to speak with him.”

A jangle of bells meant the receiver had been slammed down. A second later, Reggie’s footsteps pounded the stairs.

“Good night!” Violet whispered.

“If you ever needed proof that money doesn’t buy happiness,” Charlie said, “there it is in the flesh.”

–

Charlie sat alone, thinking impure thoughts.

The feeling of Violet’s fingers clung to him, vibrating like dragonflies’ wings. Now that he was alone, he let his mind walk ahead of itself, doing the things he didn’t dare to consider when others were present. Reaching for her. Pulling her close. Putting his face against her warm neck and kissing her ear. Did her hair smell sweet? Would she touch him back?

If only he could see her face. Just once. Once would be enough to lock it into his memory forever. As it was, her face was a milky smudge in his mind, soft like her voice. But her hands—those he’d touched. Those were real.

In his mind, her hand rested on his leg. It slid higher. He gripped the arms of his chair and sat upright. He couldn’t think in that direction, not now. Not ever. She’s being kind to you, that’s all, he admonished himself. No girls would swoon for him, not now. It wasn’t just his sight—he had no prospects, no direction. Nothing to offer. He needed to put her out of his mind and close the door.