Verena recognized the situation but accepted it as inevitable. The dead had such pressing needs—to be listened to, to be understood, to be consoled. She herself was much closer to her husband, Theodore, now that he was dead. At his demand, she had learned how to enter into the trance state, to open herself like a door, so that his disembodied spirit could rush into her like water into a bottle. What resulted was an entwining more extreme than marriage can ever be among the living: his hand moved her pen. Her mouth formed his words. She shook with his laughter and cried with his sorrow.

Under his tutelage, she had set herself up as a spirit medium and done extremely well: her sittings were always full, her spirit lectures crowded. But when she closed her eyes to sleep, she would still see the sitters, her patrons, staring at her, their faces fizzling with emotion like glasses of champagne. They wore black dresses and black veils, and lockets and rings containing sacred remnants: curly locks of hair, nail parings. In their handbags they carried photographs and leather gloves and war medals, to pull out and sniff like posies, to put in their mouths and press against their eyes. The sheer physicality of their worship was awful, oppressive. And then she would remember how Theodore used to fit himself to the curve of her body when he was still alive, how he would press his chest against her back and the tops of his thighs against her legs, how one hand would cup her breast.