Woman's Own

by Robyn Carr

  “Let’s go down to the library and--”

  “Right here!” she demanded, stomping her foot. “Right now!”

  The man sighed patiently. “I see. Then at least lower your voice. I am Dr. Wissel,” he said, making a short bow at the waist. “I came directly from my clinic hospital in New York when Mr. Montaine wrote to me, describing his wife’s symptoms. I’m supervising her recovery from melancholia. I have developed a method of treating the disease that has enjoyed wide success.”

  “Dale, this is nonsense! What have you done?”

  “I couldn’t let her get any worse,” he said, shrugging. “Not after what happened to Andrew’s wife! Don’t you understand? She only gets worse all the time, just as Brenda did. I can’t live with that kind of madness!”

  Lilly knew as much as anyone about Brenda Devon. Emily had visited her and had heard from Andrew much of the story of Brenda’s tragic life and then retold the story to Lilly and Amanda. Patricia’s circumstances bore absolutely no resemblance.

  “Miss Armstrong,” the doctor attempted, “there is certainly no reason for hysteria. The treatment is very simple, very neat. A quiet, darkened room, no stimulus to excite the patient, no disturbances or distractions--no books, writing materials, paints, needlework. Complete, extended rest and absolute silence. It quiets the spirit and allows the mind an atmosphere of contentment in which to reappraise all former complaints and discontents. After a month of rest and silence, I provide a schedule that will slowly and carefully reintroduce the woman to her wifely domain, and I assure you--”

  Lilly had to think only a moment to know that such a cure would drive her insane. Even Patricia, as unmotivated as she seemed to be, couldn’t possibly benefit. “Dale! What the devil is he talking about? Where is my sister?”

  “Lilly, she’s upstairs, in bed, and quiet. She has to become quiet before she can--”

  “Good God! Where is your father?”

  “Father has been gone over a month. You knew that. He has taken Deanna on a tour.”

  “And you took that opportunity to bring this lunatic into your house to do this to my sister?”

  “Madam,” Dr. Wissel said, stiffening, “I assure you I have been in the finest homes, with the finest families, creating an entirely new--”

  “Lord,” Lilly grumbled in complete exasperation, whirling around and moving toward the stairs that would take her to the third floor.

  “Miss Armstrong! You may not disturb my patient!”

  “Lilly! Lilly! Please don’t interfere in this!”

  But Lilly was far ahead of them. She lifted her skirts and went up the stairs two at a time. Behind her the two men scrambled trying to reach her before she got to the door. When she tried to throw it open, she found it locked. She rattled it and pulled, but it was secure. Inside she could hear soft, distant weeping. “Patricia!” she called, pounding on the door. “Patricia!” But the crying did not become any louder, nor did Patricia respond to the sound of Lilly’s voice.

  She turned around, her back against the door and faced Dale and the doctor. “Two choices, gentlemen. Unlock this door now, or I will return with twenty men and the law. Don’t put me off and don’t argue with me. I mean it.”

  They looked at each other, Dr. Wissel sighing wearily. “You may well be making cure impossible with this interruption,” he said, reaching into his pocket for the key.

  “Lilly, you’ve got to understand, she is impossible to please, impossible to live with. She won’t hold the baby, she won’t take her dinner in the dining room, she locks her door against me. She constantly complains and-- I wrote to the doctor because she’s only getting worse. And Brenda Devon--”

  “Brenda Devon is a poor, war-weary, abused woman who is sadly out of her mind!” Lilly ground out. She stepped aside so that the door could be unlocked. “My sister is a spoiled brat and no worse than you!”

  The door swung open, and Lilly saw her. Patricia sat in the center of a four poster hugging her knees. Her sheets lay on the floor, torn into strips. There was no furniture in the room save a chamber pot, and the two small windows had been painted black. A few streaks of light came through, but the room was like perpetual dusk. She wore only a nightdress, her hair uncombed, her face pale without any cosmetics. She looked like a ten-year-old girl.

  Lilly’s steps toward the bed were slow, the shock so great and the disbelief so profound that she could hardly grab hold of anger. “Patricia?” she asked, hoping to find her sister still with a shred of sanity.

  “Lilly,” she said, her voice hoarse and her eyes spilling over tears onto chapped cheeks. “Lilly, they’re trying to kill me.”

  “Miss Armstrong, of course that’s absurd. We’re trying to help her. It’s a difficult process, true, but the results…”

  Lilly pulled one of Patricia’s hands away from her knees and looked closely at the bitten nails and the chafed wrists. “What is this?” she asked with calm that took effort.

  “It sometimes becomes necessary to restrain and medicate the--”

  “Come darling,” Lilly said to Patricia. “Come now--you’re coming with me now.” She pulled her to a sitting position and helped her to stand.

  “Miss Armstrong, you may not take the patient out of the room! That’s the worst possible thing to do now! You must not defy her husband; he has absolute authority in this!”

  With an arm around Patricia’s waist, Lilly calmly walked her toward the door. She briefly considered leaving her sister’s side long enough to fetch that chamber pot and hurl it at these men. She used enormous strength to contain her fury. “Please Doctor, Dale…resort to physical force against me. I beg it!”

  “Never mind, Merlin,” Dale said in frustration. “You did your best.”

  “I warn you, Miss Armstrong, you’re making a terrible, terrible error. I have references! I have evidence of cures! Many fine families--”

  “Lilly,” Patricia softly entreated as they went down the stairs, “will you take me home?”

  “Yes, darling. It’s all right.”

  Lilly wore no cloak; the weather was too warm. She had not paused long enough in the Montaine house to gather even a wrapper for Patricia, but walked her calmly out the front door to her waiting coach. Barefoot, in a stained bedgown, her hair gnarled, Patricia looked as though she had escaped from Bedlam. Lilly instructed the driver to take them to the rear of the hotel rather than the portico or stables. The driver was then sent to the sixth floor for a blanket and Elizabeth. Patricia was wrapped up and carried to Lilly’s apartment.

  Lilly couldn’t risk putting Patricia in one of the hotel suites where any guest might have access to her. She worried that Dale would find some legal recourse and remove her. She settled her sister in her own bed and left Elizabeth in charge.

  Rather than looking for her grandmother and mother, Lilly quickly found stable hands and took them back with her to the Montaine household. They followed her carriage in a wagon, enough muscle to make her intentions very clear.

  She was surprised but extremely relieved to find that Dale stayed behind closed doors and did not interfere with her when she arrived, as if he knew it was futile to argue. The nurse and doctor were not visible, and the maid stood aside, mute and nervous, when Lilly told the nanny to pack belongings for herself and Katherine. She then searched her sister’s bedroom for clothing and accessories. The thing she was really looking for was difficult to find, but Lilly had past experience in nosing through Patricia’s things. She found journal books and letters in the bottom of the armoire beneath shawls and scarves. Easily two hundred letters!

  She packed a trunk and carpetbag and had them carried out. The nanny and baby were in the carriage, and Lilly was about to leave when she heard his voice.

  “Everyone thinks I’ve wronged her,” Dale said, his voice rather quiet and weary. She turned to look at him. He leaned against the sitting-room door frame some distance away, his shirt collar opened, sleeves rolled up. He held a glass of gin. At the moment
he spoke, the maid skittered away, head down. “I did in the beginning…but--”

  “Oh, Dale, don’t even begin all this!” Lilly gritted out angrily.

  “But it has to be said, Lilly. I took advantage of her flirtation--but it has been much the opposite since.” He took a sip of his drink, closing his eyes. “She’s refused me everything--she won’t be my wife.”

  “Do you even bother to pretend you want Patricia as your--”

  “I didn’t want to marry her any more than she wanted to marry me! No, we didn’t love each other--is that a surprise to you? Christ, Lilly, I was a failure enough before Patricia--but don’t you know how hard she’s worked to create a worse monster?”

  “How can you blame--”

  “She encourages my drink, my whoring--did you know? Then she laughs at my drunkenness and tells my father about my gambling losses. And of course the baby came only because I demanded she be my wife--my father was desperate for another heir,” he said, his voice weakening at the end. He looked down into his glass. “Who can blame him for that, eh, Lilly? When all he’s got is--”

  “Don’t do this, Dale. Don’t--”

  “Once she was pregnant, of course, she’d done her part. Since the day she told me about the baby coming, she’s been damned if she’d so much as speak a word to me. She told me I can have her by force, or not at all. I tried to change, you know. Once I realized we were stuck with each other and there is no alternative. There isn’t any tenderness or tolerance between us--never was. I know I was the one who--Jesus!” He ran a hand through his hair. Tears seemed to be in his eyes. Lilly was astonished.

  “You so deliberately molested her! Lied to her! Raped her!”

  “Rape? Oh, you should have been there. Suppose it was, actually? Why did she force the marriage, hating me? Blaming me? And what do you think it is now? I stopped the drink after Katherine…I asked her if we could possibly treat each other humanely for Kath--”

  He stopped rather suddenly. Lilly felt torn between what she’d found done to her sister and the sudden realization that Patricia had spent much of her time punishing Dale ever since that long-ago night.

  “Go ahead, Lilly. Patricia and the baby are better off with you. No one can make Patricia happy. She’ll be a constant burden to her family. And the baby can’t be raised by a drunkard and a shrew.” He finished his drink and turned the empty glass upside down. One drop fell to the carpet. “In the end I did her a favor, didn’t I? I was only trying to get a wife, a mother for my child. But what she wanted was to go home to her rich grandmother where no man could touch her. So…now she can. It’ll be my fault. Again.”

  Lilly said nothing. She looked at Dale’s glassy, reddened eyes. She noticed he had developed a slouch and a paunchy gut. She turned and reached for the door handle.

  “Take care of her,” he said. She looked at him over her shoulder. “Katherine.”

  By the time she returned to the hotel, Emily and Amanda had discovered Patricia and were with her. They welcomed the nanny and Katherine, and Lilly had a hotel bed moved into her sitting room for herself while Patricia used her bedroom. It was evening before the household calmed down. Still, there was not much to be said.

  “We took too much for granted,” Lilly said. “We waited too long. Despite your good intentions, Mama, Dale is incompetent, and Patricia, I think, will always need a keeper. I suppose it’s going to be me.”

  She never explained how she found out her sister was in trouble, but through the night she read the letters. Tears ran down her cheeks as she read page after page, but not tears of sadness. Shame, shock, bewilderment. She couldn’t imagine what Patricia had written to John; John’s letters were detailed, erotic, passionate descriptions of physical love. There were endearments aplenty, but far more plentiful were the promises of sexual acts that would be committed between them on some future day when Patricia announced that she was finally bedewed with the wetness of desire. “I know how he’s hurt you, darling,” John wrote. “How he has damaged your heart, your mind, your womanly parts. But I will gently kiss those tender, secret places, and you will feel the dew of desire. And what you will beg me to give you next will make that boy you are troubled with ashamed of his weak, blushing wick.”

  Lilly remembered the shuddering thrill of reading of Patricia’s journal. Her first gasp had given way to intrigue--but this! In all her years of reading, all the forbidden books, she had never seen anything to compare with the obscenity! Yet perhaps even worse than the words, worse than the descriptions of body parts, the amazing acts promised, was the deeper message. This was what Patricia wanted. To receive the writings and herself write about these physical things between a man and woman--and at the same time extract a promise that there would be no actual touch against her invitation. “You have my solemn oath that my fingers will not graze your skin. You likewise have my oath that one day that part of you will be reborn and your invitation will become a scream of desire, pledge of pleasure! Oh my darling, that you humbly beg more of my pleasure words to precede our pleasure acts is all I live for! Your letters to me rob me of breath, give my heart pause, create in me an astonishing size.”

  By the time the sun rose, Lilly had not finished reading; there had been many times she had to set aside a page and breathe deeply, searching for composure. Lilly was not shy of the prospect of coupling--indeed, she longed for the day when she could indulge that deep affection that became a physical expression. It was Patricia who had always dreaded it! These writings, even with the endearments, did not remind her of love, but loveless lust. The things John promised to do with his manhood, the praise for her flushed, pink breasts, the exclamation that they might one day sweat, scream, and claw each other in frenzy made Lilly think only of assault. Many times their faces swam before her eyes: dowdy, small, rumpled John, who fearlessly described his own stiff, dripping manhood; prim, haughty, cold Patricia, who had obviously written him of her damaged pudendum.

  She looked in on her sister in the night. Patricia cuddled a pillow and slept soundly, feeling safe with her family. Small as she was, her long yellow hair braided by her mother for sleep, she looked like a child.

  In the morning Lilly was sitting in a chair before the hearth in her sitting room when Emily appeared, carrying a tray of breakfast to the bedroom to serve Patricia. “Lilly, isn’t it too warm for a fire?”

  “I felt a chill, Mama.”

  “But Lilly, close the window if you’re cold! Heavens!”

  “I will in a minute, Mama.”

  Emily put the tray on a nearby commode and walked over to the window, closing it. She paused beside Lilly’s chair and touched her brow. “You’re flushed! And chilled? I hope you’re not becoming ill.”

  “I’m never ill, Mama, don’t worry,” she said, watching the fire burn. She had left at least fifty letters unread; in three full journal books she had read only fifty random pages. Now there was ash.

  Patricia recovered quickly from her ordeal. It took only a few stout meals, leisurely tubs, sunshine, an unlocked door, and Emily’s constant reassurance. Lilly was a long way from recovering from her sister’s correspondence, a burden she carried alone. She did tell Patricia that everything was burned. “I don’t know that we could expect Mama’s heart to keep pace if she read one page of what you had saved.”

  “You read it then.” It was not a question.

  “Patricia, what purpose could that have served?”

  “I was bored,” she said simply, which wasn’t half the answer Lilly hoped for. Still, she didn’t have the nerve to question any further.

  Quarters became cramped, even in so large a space. A room had to be set up for Katherine and her nanny and Bertie had to be temporarily moved from Amanda’s quarters in order to accommodate them, which made both old women testy. Emily was happy to have greater access to her granddaughter, but was displeased with both Patricia’s indifference to her child and the circumstances that brought them together. Lilly spent more time than ever in her fifth-f
loor office; she found sharing rooms with Patricia more difficult than ever before.

  Lilly was not in the apartments when Dale arrived and was therefore surprised to find him in the parlor with Emily and the baby. Dale looked more beleaguered than Lilly had ever seen him. His eyes were dark and blank; his white, starched shirt looked slept in and had a large spot on it. Lilly could smell the liquor and assumed it must have been Dale’s drinking. She had obviously found them in the middle of a conversation that was taking place over the top of Katherine’s head. Emily balanced the child on her knees.

  “It seems to be the most practical solution,” Emily was saying very kindly. “So long as I’m willing and you’re willing, our most important consideration should always be Katherine.”

  Lilly entered. “Hello, Dale,” she said, as politely as she could.

  He rose clumsily. “Lilly,” he said, nodding and sitting again.

  “Come in, dear. Dale’s come to see the baby and Patricia. However--”

  “She won’t be in the same room with me,” he said.

  “Is that so difficult to understand, Dale,” Lilly said. “After all you did--”

  “Sit down, Lilly,” Emily interrupted. “Dale has a very good explanation for all that. It was all done with the most honorable intentions. Dr. Wissel does indeed have a very strong following. It just wasn’t the time or the cause for his services, but that isn’t a mistake so extraordinary. I know you acted out of genuine concern, Dale.”

  “Dale, you were duped,” Lilly said. “He probably isn’t even a real doc--”

  “Dale and I have discussed all those possibilities already, Lilly. We’re trying to make some decisions about the future now. Dale, I don’t think Katherine can do without you. You’ll have to come often to spend time with her. She needs her father.”

  “Yes,” he said. Lilly’s eyes widened. She couldn’t imagine what her mother was doing.

  “It’s sad the two of you couldn’t come to some sort of agreeable terms. I’m hopeful that can still happen. At the moment, however--”