“This is the essence of human life,” the Colonel said, taking the jar from Opal and setting it back down. “It may unsettle some, but the brain houses the human mind and personality. What lives here during one’s life, if I’m correct, can survive on the astral plane.”
“The Other Side,” Opal murmured. She moved along the table and picked up another jar. The brain contained the same folds, the same deep crease down the center of it, the same weight—threepounds, according to the Colonel. “Do you know who they were in life?”
“I have record of their names, occupations, cause of death. This one, right here,” he said, picking up the smallest jar among them. “Wallace Quinn. A farmer. Influenza.”
“What about this one?” she asked, pointing to another, the largest jar. “Who is he?”
“She. Margaret Beard. Mother of five. Consumption.”
Opal lifted the jar and held it close to her face, peering into the liquid. The contents looked not too dissimilar from the pickled pig’s brains she often saw at the market, and this thought made her queasy.
He took the jar from her once again and set it gently on the table. Clearly, he thought tenderly of its contents. “Structurally, at least, it seems to be an unsexed organ. Dr. Harvey Cushing—an Ohio man as well—has made a career of stimulating the brains of patients with epilepsy, meningitis, or injury, to locate which parts of the brain are responsible for what. Someday we’ll know for sure. Science is moving along at a rapid pace. In a decade hence we’ll understand it completely.”
But what would that change?
She imagined her own brain, which she’d never see. Would he someday point to the organ and say,This was Opal? And what wasthis? Who wasthis?
The Colonel drummed his fingers on his cabinet. “An impressive performance the other night. You convinced some of us,” he said.
“Only some?”
“Some men are suspicious of the spirit realm,” he said. “It makes them feel impotent, small, so they look for ways to overcompensate, to display strength. That’s what the bell was all about. Not about you—but about them.”
“I should say thank you.”
“They don’t understand how it works.”
She observed the shape of his face, the cut of his shoulders, broad and square. He was a man that Oren would never grow to be.
They returned to the hearth room, and Opal took a seat.
The Colonel moved behind her chair. She was aware of his hands so near to her shoulders. He struggled to find the right words. He cleared his throat. Nervousness. “There is someone I wish to reach, someone I’ve been trying to reach for the better part of a decade,” he said.
A log snapped on the hearth. “Shouldn’t you consult the committee?”
“This is a personal matter,” the Colonel said.
“This person you wish to reach, she’s a woman, is she not? A relation.”
“Yes,” he said. He cleared his throat again and moved to stand by the fire. “Technology will soon allow us to communicate with those who’ve crossed over.”
“Make a spirit incarnate. Capture it forever,” she said. “Like a photograph.” She wondered if he already knew about the Spirit Machine.
“Exactly,” he said. He flicked his eyes toward the portrait above the hearth, then steadied his gaze on Opal. Perhaps that was the pull she felt toward him, the recognition of his grief that dwelled inside him like a living being.
“Your wife,” Opal said.
“Hazel.” He said her name like a sigh. She’d died in childbirth and took with her their child. What a tragic way to succumb, while pushing life into the world, as though one’s whole purpose is to flower, then fruit, then die.
Opal faced the man. He held his palm to his chest, then he touched his scar. What would Opal’s life have been like, had Oren lived? Would they have married? Would he have danced with her still? On the riverbank, when they’d finally dried off, Madame de Fleur had lain in the grass, her skin a pale lake, a body of water beside the shore. Now when Opal conjured Oren she conjured the woman, that lake, the dark.
Opal envied Hazel in this moment, Hazel whose portrait still hung above the hearth, whose very name made the Colonel’s eyes dewy.
The best the Colonel could produce for Opal was a small chess table and a kerosene lamp. When they sat across from each other, their knees bumped, and Opal felt warmth at all her contact points. She tried to ignore the unusual nervousness she felt. She asked him to draw the shades and extinguish the fire and hold her hands. The room cooled.
He closed his eyes. She closed hers. If all relationships are transactional, she must transact. One gives. One receives. She’d done this with Jagr before—anticipate his needs so she wouldn’t be asked for it. In this way, she could pretend she gave herself freely.
The Colonel gripped her hands as though she might slip away. Sitting there, Opal imagined herself someone else. A different marriage. A different life. She thought of Jagr and Oren and the baby and Madame de Fleur and all that had transpired since she’d run away. She was tired. She longed for a resting place, and maybe that made her weak. Maybe that made her a woman.
