Chapter Sixteen

chapter sixteen

September 28, 1929

Lanesborough, New Hampshire

The entire town came out for the fall foliage festival! People from surrounding towns, too! There were so many automobiles that they had to start parking in Loomis’s meadow. The weather was perfect: the air cool and tinged with the scent of moldering leaves and woodsmoke from chimneys. Bands played all day at the bandstand, and there was a grassy area where people danced the Charleston and the fox-trot. Some ladies even took off their shoes and danced in stockinged feet! The older Sunday school children sold lemonade for a nickel a glass. The town green was full of games, and young and old took turns throwing bean bags and trying to get rings around the necks of bottles. The yard in front of the church was filled with long rows of tables for the dinner.

The children were bobbing for apples, the adults sipping hot cider laced with bootleg rum from hidden flasks. Tom Flannagan, the town constable, pretended not to notice and might have even had a nip or two himself! Dwight Miller was pulling a hay wagon with his old Ford tractor in careful loops across the meadow. There was a small pen on the south side of the green where Everett Jaquith was giving pony rides for the children, walking them round and round in circles.

Catherine Delaney hurried past me carrying the leaf garland the Sunday school children made to decorate the tables with, all reds and oranges and yellows, the fiery colors of fall. “Quarter to five,” she said, as if I weren’t watching the time. Fifteen minutes before we started seating people for the chicken-pie supper, the first of three serving times, staggered forty-five minutes apart.

I was on my way into the kitchen in the basement of the church when Myrtle approached, face flushed, eyes wild. She had a newspaper pressed against her chest, cradled like a wounded bird.

“Myrtle,” I said. When I’d seen her earlier, judging the pie-eating contest, she had seemed fine. “Whatever is the matter?”

She took me by the arm and led me into the alcove inside the back door of the church. “The Brandenburg Springs Hotel. It’s gone. Destroyed.” She pulled the newspaper away from her chest and held it out for me to read.

I froze, feeling my heart slam inside my breast. The baby turned inside me.

STRAFFORD DAILY NEWS

September 27, 1929

FIRE DESTROYS THE BRANDENBURG SPRINGS HOTEL, KILLS 15

A fire swept through the Brandenburg Springs Hotel and Resort in Brandenburg, Vermont, on Wednesday night, killing fifteen people. The fire was discovered by a bellboy at eleven thirty p.m. The Brandenburg Volunteer Fire Department arrived just before midnight to find the building fully engulfed. Water was pumped from the springs on the property to battle the blaze, but the flames, driven by wind gusts, could not be brought under control despite departments being called in to assist from Clearwater and Bainbridge. Two firemen were hospitalized.

It is believed the fire started in the suite of Mr. Benson Harding, the owner of the hotel. Mr. Harding lost his wife, Eliza, in a drowning accident on the property only two weeks before.

A photograph showed a large group of firemen standing among the wreckage, smoke still rising from the charred timbers on the ground. The fountain out front had survived, and was still running, which seemed wrong somehow.

The news took my breath away. I could almost smell the smoke, feel the heat from the embers making my face flushed and sweaty. I felt dizzy and sick.

“Didn’t you say you and Eliza Harding exchanged letters? Did you know the poor thing drowned?” Myrtle asked, studying my face.

I looked away.

The springs exact a price equal to what was given.

Please tell me, my darling friend, did you get your wish?

I smoothed the folds of my dress over my belly, kept my hand there, as though trying to keep the baby from hearing what had happened, to protect her in some way.

“No,” I lied. “It’s too awful for words.”

Hannah Edsell came toward us carrying a tray full of plates heaping with chicken pie, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and green beans. “Food’s ready!” she said.

I had the newspaper still in my hands. Ruth Edsell came up behind Hannah with an equally heavy tray. “Could you ring the bell, Ethel? Start getting people seated?”

“Did you tell Will the news?” she asked.

I’d been busying myself with the supper, not allowing myself even a moment to think about the fire. I’d put it in a little sealed-up box at the back of my mind.

He raised his eyebrows. “What news is this?”

“The Brandenburg Springs Hotel burned down,” Myrtle said.

“Oh, I heard!” said Mr. Miller, who was sitting beside us at the long table. “So many killed.”

“Fifteen guests,” Myrtle confirmed. “The entire hotel was destroyed.” Her face was pink and sweaty, as though feeling the heat from the fire.

“How terrible!” Will said. “We were just there back in June. Weren’t we, Ethel?”

I nodded, my mouth as dry as ash. Dancing with Will in the dining room, walking out to the springs. The peacocks. The heady scent of Eliza’s rose garden.

“And you’ve been expecting Mrs. Harding to come visit, haven’t you?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came. I opened and closed it, like a fish out of water gasping for breath.

“Dead, poor thing. Drowned in the pool two weeks ago,” Myrtle said.

“My God,” Will said, setting down his fork and turning to me. “Did you know about this?”

I shook my head, took in a deep breath, closed my eyes.

I am Mrs. Monroe. Chairwoman of the fall foliage committee. We are all sitting down to dinner. My husband is beside me. I am going to have a baby in the spring. A healthy baby girl.

I dug my nails into my palms, then opened my eyes, looked down at my untouched food. I picked up my fork, took a bite of chicken pie, the gravy thick and too salty. The biscuit turned to tasteless paste in my mouth. But still, I chewed and swallowed, moving my own body the way one controls a puppet.

“My aunt Irma lives in Brandenburg,” Mrs. Miller said around a bite of cranberry sauce that stained her lips bright red. “People come from all over the country to visit those springs. And something terrible always happens.”

I dropped my fork, and it clanged against my plate. “Something terrible?”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Miller went on. “The springs help a blind man see again, but two months later all his cows die. Or his brother is struck by lightning. There’s always bad to go with the good.”

Please tell me, my darling friend, did you get your wish?

I felt myself floating away again, drifting up away from my husband, friends, and neighbors.

“Absolute bunk,” Will said, stabbing a fork full of green beans. “It’s terrible.” He shook his head. “Those poor people. It was such a special place. It’s an awful bit of news—both the fire and the death of Mrs. Harding—but bad things happen, and when they do, we have to let them go and move on. No sense in giving in to superstition.”

I wanted to tell him how the springs and hotel and our baby are all connected, how the fire was a kind of sign, a bad omen.

But I said nothing. I just floated up and up until they were all little specks down on the ground, and me… I disappeared right into the clouds.

November 11, 1929

The stock market has collapsed, and banks are closing all over. I fear we’re in for dire times. Will tells me not to worry, that we’ll weather the storm, that everyone always needs a doctor and we’ve got plenty of savings. But still, it worries me to bring a baby into the world when things seem so grim.

I do my best. Try to stay calm and happy and always with a smile on my face.

I am Mrs. Monroe,I tell myself. My husband and I will weather the storm.

Closer to home, Myrtle’s husband, Felix, has taken a turn for the worse. It began with a backache and progressed rapidly. He was soon unable to walk and is now in a wheelchair. Myrtle says he’s in terrible pain.

Other than giving Felix laudanum for the pain, Will wasn’t able to help. He found Felix’s spine and hips profoundly damaged. “I’m amazed he’s been able to walk at all considering the damage,” he told me. “He’s got a bullet still lodged in his spine. He should have been crippled for life.”

Myrtle has confided in me that she is going to go back to the springs to get water for Felix. Her eyes are ringed with dark circles now and her face is thinner, more lined than when last I saw her. Her husband’s illness is taking its toll.

I tried to talk her out of it. “There won’t be anything there,” I said. “Just ruins.”

“The hotel may be gone, but the springs must still flow,” she said.

“It might be dangerous,” I told her, remembering the newspaper photo of the cellar hole, the still-smoking remains of the hotel.

“I have to try,” she said. “It’s the only hope for my poor Felix.”

She left yesterday morning in the auto she barely knows how to drive.

I find myself staring out at the gray sky, the bare trees like angry stick figures trembling in the cold November wind, and worrying over her. Did she find her way to Brandenburg? What did she find there?

Despite being a churchgoing woman, I am not much for praying. Not in the traditional way, at least. Still, I lit a candle for Myrtle. “Please keep her safe,” I whispered. Then I went into the bathroom, took out my pin, and scratched a little M just above my ankle.

November 12, 1929

Myrtle arrived on my doorstep bundled up in a heavy coat, a wool hat, and a thick scarf. I was so relieved that I threw my arms around her and kissed her cheek. She stood still as a statue and seemed to stiffen at my touch. I led her inside and we settled in the kitchen with a pot of tea and some fresh apple cake. The kitchen was cozy, but she kept her coat on. “I can’t get warm,” she insisted. She gave me a glass jar of water from the springs. It seemed to glow in the jar—only a trick of light, the way the gas light overhead hit the glass, but still, I felt I was holding a jar of stars. A little “Ooh!” of joy escaped my lips.

I had a thousand questions: Was any part of the hotel left? What about the gardens? The peacocks?

Then Myrtle told her story. “The pool was untouched by the fire. There was a fence around it still standing, and it was left locked, but someone had broken the chain. The front gate was open when I arrived,” she said. She paused. “And there was someone there, in the water.”

Her hand trembled as she held her teacup. “Ethel, if I tell you what I saw, you mustn’t think me mad.”

“Of course not,” I said, laying a hand on her arm. I got a chill; cold was coming off her, as if she was her own north breeze.

“There was a woman in the water,” Myrtle said, setting down her cup, the untouched tea spilling over. “She was naked. Splashing around like it was the height of summer. Like the cold did not bother her one little bit.”

“A woman?”

She did not answer, and I was sure she’d decided against finishing her story. And part of me was glad! Some part of me did not want to hear.

I thought, of course, of Eliza’s story of seeing little Martha in the water.

The kitchen, which moments ago felt bright and warm, was now full of shadow and damp.

“Yes. A woman in her thirties. Dark bobbed hair, dark eyes. She had a scar under her left eye,” Myrtle said.

My body grew cold. My heart seemed to stop for two seconds, then three. The baby moved inside me, a soft flutter.

I bit my tongue to keep from letting out a cry.

It wasn’t possible! It couldn’t be.

Myrtle’s face had gone gray. “She helped me fill my jars with water.”

I looked at the jar on the table, the water inside darker now.

“She encouraged me to join her in the pool,” Myrtle said. “To take a dip myself. In fact, she was rather insistent.” Her jaw tensed and her breathing quickened.

“I declined, saying I had to hurry back to Felix. And I thought… no, I was sure—that if I got into that water, I’d never come back out again. It wasn’t just the cold. It was her.

“ ‘Maybe next time,’ the woman said. And then she smiled at me and went under.”

I remembered being in that pool, how stunningly cold it was. How my whole body screamed with it. And that feeling, that feeling of fingers touching me, hands reaching out of the darkness to take hold of me.

“She went under and did not come back up again,” Myrtle said. “There were no bubbles, no splashes. What person leaves no trace like that?” Myrtle’s chin began to quiver. “I stayed and watched until it began to get dark. I told myself I should move, should go in after her or go tell someone. But I just sat, frozen there. The woman did not surface.”