I worked hard at the memorization, but my finishing school education had merely glanced in the direction of the nine Muses, and I found myself confusing Euterpe with Erato more times than I could count, among other errors. Admittedly, classics had never been my subject. At Miss Buckingham’s, I had been a true prodigy at forming wax flowers, for all the good it did me now.
I searched and studied until it seemed hours had gone by. My stomach growled its displeasure. I almost considered nibbling at the dinner roll. Instead, I tucked the map back exactly where I’d found it and rifled the last few beds. There was half a chocolate bar under Jubilee’s pillow, broken off unevenly. I broke it off farther down at the same angle and relished the taste with a moan Damaris would’ve prayed over me for.
At long last, I heard the heavy thunk of the bolt on the door sliding aside, and I was lying atop my cot by then, pretending to have slept.
The younger nurse started when she saw me. “Goodness! Have you been here all day?”
“Yes,” I said, because I couldn’t imagine another answer.
“Well, we’ll have to sort you out tomorrow,” she said. It must not have been such a sin. She seemed a stickler for rules, and had she truly regretted abandoning me, she might have shown at least a flicker of remorse.
I waited until after the room had darkened to find out more. The breathing of my fellow inmates was slow and even. I could barely see, but I didn’t need to. I rose from my bed, knelt next to Nora, and placed my hand on her shoulder through the thin sheet.
She opened her large eyes, seemingly unperturbed, and said, “Yes?”
“Where did you all go?”
“Some to the benches. And some to work.”
“Work? Where?”
Nora propped herself up on her elbow with a sigh, understanding she’d have to start from the beginning. “All over. The kitchen, the yard, the halls. There’s a cleaning crew that scrubs everything with vinegar, women who hang the carpets and beat the dust out, and a group that weeds the garden where the vegetables grow. A group that mends the dresses and linens, a group that carries water. It changes as the year changes too. Sometimes, there’s lavender to be harvested and hung up for drying or grapes to be brought in for wine. Olives for oil. Lots to be done. You just need to ask. They won’t assign you unless you ask.”
“Why not?” I said.
“It’s a test. They figure if you’re not smart enough to ask, you’re not smart enough to do what needs doing.”
I hated to hear this, because clearly, the idea of working had never occurred to me. Not because I was foolish or mad. Just because I didn’t know what was possible. I’d never worked a day in my life. How would I have thought of doing it here? I could have so easily found myself back on the benches, tortured and suffering, just for not knowing something I couldn’t have known.
“Hey. Hey. Come back,” said Nora, and I realized I must have fallen silent and staring.
Ashamed, I said, “Work. What do you do?”
“Kitchen duty. We do some of the preparation for the meals, and then we make jams and jellies for sale.”
“Can I do that?”
“No, it’s a full crew. I have an idea what you might like, though. Have you ever made soap?”
I thought of the soap I’d used back at home, lovely lavender bars with a refreshing scent and a soft, tallow feel. So different from what they dared call soap here, harsh carbolic lumps that smelled of the coal tar used to make them.
“We make decent soap? And they rub us with that . . . rubbish?”
She laughed flatly, without humor. “The soap we make is to sell. They’re trying to make money on us, not spend it. At least they still let us eat some of the vegetables, though honestly, most of them go to Clio.”
“Clio?”
“The ward for the East Coast rich girls.”
“I thought the whole idea was that rich and poor women suffered alike?”
“That’s the idea,” said Nora with clear derision.
I blushed at my own naivete. But if work would bring me into contact with women from other wards, I had no choice but to pursue it. I was equally unsuited for any type of work—Mother had ensured that we were taught many things, none intended for earning a wage—so it seemed wise to go along with Nora’s suggestion.
“Right, then, soapmaking it is. Do I just ask to be assigned there?”
“No, because you’re not supposed to know what the positions are. Let me talk to someone.”
I never saw who she talked to, but after the next day’s hike and lunch, when we were separated into groups, Nurse Winter pointed to the line of women in front of her and said, “Ninety-nine. Siren. You, here.”
So I became a soapmaker. It wasn’t nearly as romantic as it sounded, but I didn’t complain. Complaining wouldn’t have done me any good, anyway. It put me outdoors for a brief period each day, which I enjoyed, breathing fresh valley air as we walked to the outbuilding where the shop was located. A few minutes walking across the grass and down the gravel path made me glad, at least in that moment, even if the whole time, I could still see the black iron of the six-foot-high fence.
Even on the first day, I learned a great deal about soapmaking. Unpleasant tasks went into the production of such a lovely thing. If you leaned too far over the lye, it felt like burning in your lungs and eyes, so you learned exactly how far to bend. You learned to keep your hands far away from the hot mixture and never to let the liquid fall on your clothes, where it would burn through everything until it reached the tender skin, then keep going. I liked my hands the way they were.
On the second day, I asked again to see Dr. Concord. Not because of the danger of the soapmaking, but because I didn’t want to waste time. The other women on my shift were from other wards, which was good news, but Phoebe wasn’t among them, and I worried. Nine days had passed since I left home—all those hours, gone already. I saw how the other days could flee just as quickly, racing, running like sand through an hourglass. I could not let the sand run out before I’d found her. If my parents found out I hadn’t gone to Newport—if my mother sounded the alarm that I was missing—that bell could never be unrung. Without the utmost secrecy, the utmost speed, this would all be for nothing.
It was Nurse Winter who escorted me from the soapmaking room, and we walked wordlessly to the doctor’s office, where another nurse stood outside the door. She held up her hand to halt us. It was the honey-blond young woman who had been there for my first meeting with Dr. Concord, the one who had mentioned the water cure the doctor had scoffed at.
Speaking to Winter as if I weren’t there, the young nurse said, “He’s got a visitor in there.”
“From outside?”
“No, from inside. You know the one.”
“Oh,” said Winter. “I thought their day was Tuesday.”
“Their day is every day,” sniffed the young nurse.
“No!”
With a snide tone, she said, “Whatever day she tells him.”
“Is she so powerful?”
“She looks like his dead wife,” came the whispered response. “He’ll do whatever she asks.”
“Wish I looked like his dead wife.”
“Well, you can’t have this mistress’s lot without taking all of it. Can’t imagine that’s what you’d want,” she said, and just then, the door opened.
The nurses bustled around to pretend they hadn’t been standing so close to the door and in doing so blocked my view for a moment.
But when I saw the coral dress of an inmate receding—the doctor’s mistress was an inmate!—I stepped to the side, peering around Nurse Winter’s back with a darting glance. I couldn’t have been more shocked if my own mother had appeared from behind the door.
I’d have known that shape anywhere. Taller than most and more confident. I saw her in profile as she turned the corner back toward Terpsichore Ward, her hand smoothing her black hair over a large ear, away from her pale, heart-shaped face, her lips rose-red
. The number 10 chalked high on her back only told me what I already knew.
Nora.
Now I understood why she had such rich treats under her mattress. How she got things done. Why she acted as if she weren’t imprisoned at all. She was an exception. She was a doctor’s mistress, and he could give her almost anything she wanted.
I struggled not to let this revelation distract me, despite its importance. Twice, I had requested an audience with the doctor and been granted it. Assuming a third success was folly. I needed to make the most of this audience. I’d studied the art of conversation at Miss Buckingham’s from the imperious Mrs. Dunstable, famed for her dry British wit. She’d trained us to conceal our true emotions behind an amiable smile while always keeping our goal clearly in mind. She never would’ve anticipated the use to which I was about to put her teachings.
“And how are you today?” Dr. Concord asked, tapping his pen against his notepad and looking at me as if he actually cared about the answer.
“Restless,” I said.
“Do you need more exercise? More hikes?”
“I enjoy the hikes,” I said, which was the truth. “But I worry about my future.”
“Your future?”
“I know nothing about where I am, sir. You realize I came to Goldengrove in a daze. For all I know, we could be five minutes’ travel from San Francisco or five days.”
“Well,” he said, and I could tell he was weighing how much to tell me. “I’m not sure the physical details of this place will affect your recovery.”
“But they do,” I said. “I can’t feel safe if I don’t even know where I am. You see?”
“I suppose. And it can do no harm to tell you. We are situated in the Napa Valley, well north of San Francisco. So, San Francisco is your home? For how long?”
He was quick, I had to admit that—finding a way to turn each of my questions into an opening for his own. For answer, I had decided to stick as close to the truth as I could without revealing myself. “I moved there as a child. It is as much my home as anywhere.”
“And yet you were so unhappy there, you were willing to end your life.”
“I jumped, yes, and I wanted to end my life in that moment, but I have been so much happier since. I believe I was not meant to die.”
“I’m glad to hear that. But love drove you to desperation, didn’t it?” He looked at me eagerly, and I could feel the lies shifting inside me, bubbling in my blood with a dangerous energy.
“Yes, it was love,” I said.
“Are you ready to tell me more about what happened?”
How could I explain it? There had been love, yes, I was sure of it. My simmering feelings for Henry, his dizzying, intimate warmth, the evening we spent at the opera hand in hand, the proposal that took my breath away? Everything had changed so suddenly, when I got what I thought I wanted. I couldn’t tell the doctor I was engaged to be married or he would ask about my fiancé, and my story would fall apart like a shortcrust made without butter. Instead, I simply said, “I set my hopes too high, and they were dashed. I imagine many girls like me have felt the same. I see that now.”
“So your deep unhappiness has gone?”
“Sometimes still with me, sometimes gone. Have other patients here been locked up for suicides? No one in my ward seems to have that diagnosis.”
“That is not how we organize the wards.”
“How are they organized?”
“How we see fit.”
It was maddening, but I couldn’t allow myself to be maddened. “But there are patterns, aren’t there? My wardmates all seem to suffer from disorders related to love.”
“Something like that,” he said. “Your illnesses are of the body and heart. Motion is your cure. Terpsichore, the Muse of dance, should be your guide back to health of mind and body alike.”
“And Euterpe?” I asked, thinking of the map.
His words were slow and deliberate, and he regarded me with suspicion, but still he spoke. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m not, exactly. I just happen to recall that particular Muse.”
“Ah,” he said. “So you have some education.”
“Some. Enough to remember half the Muses, but no more. You were telling me about the women of Euterpe.”
“They are energetic and rebellious,” he said. “Sometimes violent. Our founding superintendent thought that lyric poetry and music, over which Euterpe reigns, might soothe certain women’s savage spirits.”
“I see. Each Muse offers a clue to the best treatment for that ward’s inmates. So pastoral poetry would be thought to help the ladies of Thalia?”
His expression shifted. “You recall a great deal about the Muses for a girl who says she doesn’t recall much.”
Knowing I’d raised his suspicions, I could ask no more about the wards. “And what other madnesses do you cure here? Weakness of mind? Criminal mischief ? Fits?”
“Your cure is the one that interests me most in this moment. What do you need to feel better?”
“I don’t want to feel worthless anymore,” I said mournfully, and even though I had chosen those words to sound insane, I was frightened to realize they were true. I had been feeling worthless since I came here. Worthless because I couldn’t find my sister, yes, but also because I realized my life back in San Francisco wasn’t worth rushing back to. What was there to enjoy, to relish? Marriage to a man I didn’t care for—didn’t even know, to tell the truth—and a mandatory assumption of motherhood? The drudgery of managing a household, like a medieval chatelaine? To be a mere decoration, a political prop? Whatever awful things were visited on me here, I knew at least that fate could not reach within these walls.
The doctor said to me earnestly, “You are not worthless.”
“Hearing a thing is not the same as believing it.”
He smiled at that. “How shall we help you believe?”
“I’m learning,” I said. “I like having a purpose. I like working.”
“You like your work in”—he checked his pad—“the soapmaking operation?”
I nodded with a smile.
“That’s good. And are you ready to tell me your name?”
“Charlotte Smith,” I said. All told, the truth was easier to carry than a lie. I was already carrying my limit.
“Miss Smith,” he said. “No longer the Siren. Woman 99. I’ll note that in your file. We’ll talk again soon.”
I had so much more to ask, but clearly, he was ready to dismiss me. Only a fool would try to stay.
I was desperate for information, convinced that I couldn’t wait. Yet I would almost certainly have to. What else could I do? Change my behavior again and hope for transfer to a different ward, risking what little security and few friends I had found in Terpsichore? Sneak out looking for Phoebe but with no knowledge of where I needed to sneak to? I needed a new balance between practicality and hope. Already, I could feel the light of hope inside me dimming, just when I needed it most.
He rose to his feet, and I rose to match him. He turned the wedding band on his finger. I thought of Nora. Gossip said he had lost his own Rose Red, a woman with a heart-shaped face, large eyes, skin as pale as milk. Was one such woman just as good as another? Surely, he knew it was wrong to sin with a married woman, let alone an inmate placed in his care. Why were there no consequences for his actions, when she suffered acutely for hers?
He said, “I will speak with you again in a few days. Until then, think about your happiness and how best we can help you to secure it. Will you do that?”
“I will,” I promised, meaning it with all my heart.
* * *
It was Nurse Piper who came to return me to Terpsichore. We strode in easy silence nearly all the way back to the ward, until my attention was caught by a scene that struck a chord with me. I wasn’t sure whether I might be punished for lingering, but whether or not I willed it, my feet slowed down of their own accord.
The matron was addressing a huddled group of new
arrivals. There were three: a heavy woman in brown work boots, shivering; a woman in a gorgeous crimson dress of thick, pin-tucked silk damask several sizes too large for her, likely stolen; and a woman with crossed arms, her skin two shades darker than everyone else’s, ringlets of her ink-black, corkscrewed hair fighting their way out of a topknot. I couldn’t see the color of her eyes, but I could see her jaw knotting where she clenched her teeth, and I knew instantly she would not go down without a fight. Unfortunately, I feared a fight was exactly what she was in for. I heard an attendant’s voice rumble behind me, likely speaking to Piper, “Look out. This one’s a daisy.”
The matron’s voice rang out, echoing down the bare hall, her words familiar. “Whether you were sent here by a loving family who did not know how else to help you, or whether you were rescued from poverty, you will be treated the same. You will be treated for your conditions. If God and science allow, you will be cured.”
The woman with the dark skin said, “How?”
“Pardon?”
“How will we be cured?”
Matron Baumgarten said, unsmiling, “That depends on your illness.”
“And what if we aren’t sick?”
“If you weren’t sick, you wouldn’t be here.”
The inmate raised her chin. She didn’t step forward, and nothing in her manner was overtly threatening, but I was still concerned for her. My gaze flicked over to where the giant Gus stood, and indeed, he eyed her carefully.
Tossing her corkscrewed hair, the inmate said, “Oh, I know why I’m here, and sick’s got nothing to do with it. My father’s new wife didn’t want me around. Reason enough in this world.”
Coolly, the matron said, “Whatever you think the reasons are, I assure you, there are no well women within these walls.”
“Yourself included, I take it?” the inmate answered back.
Woman 99 Page 9
