He told me of his adventures in Patagonia, with its January summers, tenacious settlers, and man-made irrigation ditches that made the desert bloom. He said nothing of the broken engagement that sent him to the edge of the known world. I regaled him with stories of finishing school that made him double over with laughter, steadying himself on my arm to catch his breath, which always sent a sharp thrill through me. No one else in the world but Phoebe had listened to me with such interest, valuing my thoughts and opinions, but there was also a crackling energy between us that had nothing to do with intellect.
We’d been strolling in the garden in the company of Mrs. Bisland, a distant cousin of my mother’s who she’d hired as our paid companion, to serve as a ready chaperone. Mrs. Bisland tended toward leniency, and in the Sidwell garden, she walked a few steps ahead of us to allow for a pinch of privacy. I was grateful to her. I lived for these moments. I had admired a nearby rosebush in bloom—see how lovely each blossom is, how perfect—when Henry made his pronouncement, and it was everything I wanted, and I could not look him in the eye.
And then he was touching my face. We stopped walking. I could not help turning my face slightly, into his touch, and he turned his palm then, to cup my cheek. His touch was warm, his fingers rough but tender. My gaze drifted, as it always seemed to do, resting on the spot along his neck where his beard began. I could see the faint twitch of his pulse in his throat, and I felt the warmth of wanting him begin to spread through my body like a wave.
“Roses are lovely,” I murmured, a bit of nonsense to extend the moment. I had no idea what else to say. I could barely form a coherent thought, as close as we were and drawing closer.
“None so lovely as you,” he said, his voice a whispering, throaty match for mine, and I felt the warmth of his body suddenly as he closed the space between us, his hand still on my cheek, holding me in place.
“I’m only a girl.”
“You’re the girl,” he said. “The only one I want.”
I wanted to ask him what he wanted me for, but I would have been devastated to hear him answer wrong, and I could not chance it.
Instead, I waited in the silence, savoring his warmth, holding still, hoping the moment would never end. I raised my eyes to his. His gaze held mine for a long moment, steady and strong. Then he looked down, focusing on my mouth, and the blood rushing up into my head made my ears roar as if I were standing on the lip of the ocean.
Then another sound, short and clear, wiped the ocean away.
“Charlotte?” called Mrs. Bisland. Her voice was distant, annoyed.
I looked up and realized she was barely in sight anymore, her black skirt brushing the ground yards and yards ahead of where we stood. I’d broken the spell. Had we touched like this while walking just behind her, she could have pretended to see nothing. So far behind, the separation required a response. I would’ve cursed myself out for it—what would have happened, what could have happened, without her interruption?—but I was so grateful and thrilled with the moment as it was, I chose to let go of what might have been.
“Coming,” I called to her, looking into Henry’s eyes, trying to say everything with my gaze that I had no confidence to say aloud. Whether he could read my message, I had no idea.
“Shall we?” he asked, extending his arm to me, his gaze not leaving my own. We moved forward in perfect unison. The rest of the visit, we remained well within Mrs. Bisland’s orbit, and he bid me good day with the perfect formality of a gentleman.
That night, when I snuck into Phoebe’s room and breathlessly recounted the day’s events, she said, “You should run away with him.”
Such a bold thought had never even crossed my mind. “Phoebe!”
“Well, why not? You’d be happy together, and what else matters?”
“We’d be poor,” I said, “for one thing.”
“How bad could that be?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never been poor. Have you?”
She sprawled across the bed carelessly, her bare feet dangling just beyond the fringed edge of her rose-embroidered coverlet. She said, “But it would be so romantic. Running away! An elopement!”
“An elopement like Aunt Clara’s?”
“Oh, they don’t all end up like that.”
“Some do.”
“And some are dreams made flesh.” She gave my shoulder a little push. “I think you should be with Henry. I think that’s what you want.”
“Of course I want that. But now isn’t the time.” I pulled myself up to a sitting position, folding my legs to the side. “Once you get married, Mother and Father won’t care at all about who I marry, and then I think Henry will ask.”
“Oh,” she said, and I was struck by the depth of the sadness and regret she invested in that single, short word. She sat up and tucked her knees toward her chest, growing somber. “I think we both know I will not be married.”
“You could.”
“Burdick was my last chance,” she said. “He was no great catch. You don’t think Mother has tried, again and again, to find a good family that would welcome me? The Armsbys. The Newhalls. The Gaskills. Neither of the King sons would take the bait, and she couldn’t even pawn me off on the Clayton boy, the one who’s pale like he’s never seen the sun. None of them will have me. I don’t even have to give them the mitten; they never get as far as asking.”
“They’re fools,” I said fiercely. “You’re a treasure. Any family would be lucky to have you. Ours is.”
“Even our family knows there is”—her voice caught in her throat then, but she pushed on—“something wrong with me. How I get too sad. And maybe too happy sometimes. Too . . . everything.” She’d never spoken so baldly about her spells before. What she said wasn’t wrong, but it was still hard to hear. I did not rush to agree or disagree but let her speak. “I know you love me, but it’s the truth. Other girls, they’re not like me.”
“They’re not my sister,” I said fiercely. “I love you as you are.”
“I believe you’re the only one who does,” she said and wrapped her arms around me, and I felt the shoulder of my nightgown gradually wet with her tears, though she cried in silence.
* * *
I came back to myself in the soap workshop at Goldengrove, having rubbed the velvet rose petal between my fingers until I’d ripped clean through. Roses weren’t meant to withstand such rough treatment. And neither were Phoebe and I, I knew.
We’d been here too long already. The woman from Polyhymnia next to me, the one who never ate, was reaching into the pile of petals with her fragile, skeletal arms. I took it as a bad sign that I no longer saw her body as a terrifying cautionary tale; it simply was, because she simply was, and I knew her. The longer I stayed in the asylum, the more normal it all seemed, which was as good as sign as any that I desperately, overwhelmingly needed to get out.
His delivery complete, the driver slammed the gate of his wagon shut and hastened back to his post. I noticed how eager he seemed to be gone. The forewoman hustled us back to our work. We dragged our feet, and she called us ungrateful hussies. The bergamot and lemon oil, which I had found lovely before, now seemed to burn my eyes.
But as we set back to our task, I saw something new in how we worked. I looked at the women around me, women who would likely never even speak to one another on the streets of San Francisco, moving in concert to accomplish our shared task. We might not be powerful, but we were not powerless.
I’d been asking questions, yes. But answers weren’t coming quickly enough. By my reckoning, two weeks of my allotment were already gone. Tomorrow, I would have one month left, to the day. It was time to tell someone my secret.
Who could help me? Certainly not the matron, who gave no indication of humanity. I hadn’t the faintest idea how to locate the mythical superintendent, even if I was willing to try. Not a doctor, not a nurse, not an attendant. Another inmate, then, but who?
The name sprang to mind in an instant. Then, it was only a matter of opp
ortunity.
Chapter Ten
They woke us in the dark, as always, but I’d long been awake. I needed to angle myself carefully for the right spot on the line. If I missed the chance to speak to her on the hike, I’d have to try to position myself near her at a meal, which wasn’t always easy. Now that I’d chosen to unload my secret, I didn’t want to bear the weight of it another hour.
I found my spot on the line behind her and gripped on. A light rain was falling. By the time we reached the hilltop, our coral dresses would be plastered to our skin. The exhausting hikes of Terpsichore were often unpleasant, yet I would still never have traded them for the benches of Thalia once in a century. I was in the best place I could be, considering the available options; I could ask no more. The Muse of dance, however mistakenly I had landed in her care, was the right Muse for me.
As the incline got steeper, I leaned into the motion, eager to speak. I waited another minute until I knew Winter had fallen into position at the very back of the line. Then I reached up toward Nora’s familiar, rounded shoulder, tapping gently and saying, “I need your help.”
She continued walking forward but bobbed her head so I knew she was listening. “What makes you think I can help you?”
“You always know what to do,” I said, noncommittal, not wanting to reveal my knowledge of her secret unless it was necessary. A soldier would have called it keeping his powder dry. Fletcher had taught me the phrase in the brief visit between his third and fourth voyages, having sailed to Ceylon under a captain who served with distinction in the Boer War. I had so few memories of him from those last years, each was like an insect trapped in amber, preserved and precious.
“Fire away, then.” A small stone broke from the ground, loosened by her feet, then struck by mine. It rolled down the hill behind us, off to parts unknown.
“You know I’m not insane,” I began.
“Of course.”
“I mean it. I’m not.”
She sighed, but I couldn’t tell what she meant by it. I wished I could see her face. Perhaps I should have waited to speak with her at lunch, but the Rubicon had already been crossed.
Somewhat more forcefully, I said, “I feigned insanity to get here. On purpose.”
“And do tell me that purpose.”
“To free my sister. My parents sent her here. Because of me.”
Nora’s silence was long. I heard only our breath and our footfalls. I watched her shoulders bob with the effort of climbing, the pale skin of her neck between her collar and the dark coil of her hair moving ahead, ahead, always ahead.
At last, she said, “And she’s sane too?”
I hesitated before settling on an answer. “She doesn’t belong here.”
Another silence, more climbing.
“And what do you want from me?” The question was dry, without emotion, as if the answer held no interest for her, whatever it might be.
“I haven’t yet seen her. So where is she?”
“How the devil should I know?”
“I don’t expect you to know, exactly. But I’d bet hard money you could find her. You know everything. Everyone. You’re the only one who can help.”
She showed no reaction to the flattery, but I felt by instinct I’d hit home. She said, “I might know some things about some things. Are you sure she’s still here?”
A cold chill ran through me. “She has to be.”
Nora clucked her tongue. “Wishing doesn’t make it so.”
“Well,” I said, scrambling, “that’s one of the things I’ll need your help finding out. Whether she’s here and where.”
When I’d devised my plan—which I now understood had been naive, clumsy, slapdash—it had never crossed my mind that Phoebe might return home from Goldengrove before I’d even arrived. Our parents had been very clear that her banishment was permanent. But what if remorse had overcome them after I’d left? My father, I thought, would be more susceptible. I’d known him to forgive a servant for pocketing a pair of silver cuff links and a ship’s captain, in an extraordinary circumstance, for putting in at the wrong port; his own daughter would have at least as much leeway, wouldn’t she? Still, I rejected the thought. If Phoebe was free, that was a blessing. I was not. I couldn’t leave this place until I was absolutely sure one way or the other. Nora could help me be sure.
She bobbed her head again. “Well, you did tell me you didn’t expect to be here long.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised by her good memory. The favoritism of Dr. Concord wasn’t the only thing that made her an expert in navigating the asylum, though I was certain it helped.
At last, the ground leveled out under our feet. We’d arrived at the summit. The rosy fingers of the sunrise reached out beyond us, but I barely looked in that direction. I was studying Nora’s profile. Would she keep my secret? Would she help me? Had I made entirely the wrong decision?
The whole time we stood on the hilltop, she kept me in suspense.
When at last the stone-faced Nurse Winter turned us around to head down, I felt Nora’s hand on my shoulder. She said, not loudly, “I have an idea.”
The relief swept through me like a surging river and left me light-headed. I wasn’t too light-headed to ask, “What is it?”
“I’ll tell you when the time is right,” she said.
Though I couldn’t see her face as she followed me down the hill, I knew her wicked smile, and I wondered what, exactly, I’d gotten myself into.
* * *
The effort of forcing myself to reveal the truth exhausted me, yet the day went on. Once we descended to the flat fields near Goldengrove and joined the other wards, we paraded around the green grounds in silence. As always, I looked for my sister’s pale hair and familiar form among the numbered coral dresses; as always, I was disappointed.
And the map was on my mind again. Had I made a mistake, not taking it? Should I chance stealing it—but would I even get the chance? I was never alone in the ward. If Nora wasn’t going to help me, what was my next option?
I could remember the names of the wards now, or at least I was fairly certain I’d remembered them. Clio and Thalia here; Polyhymnia and Erato above, then two more, Melpomene and Calliope. Euterpe on the top floor with another—what was its name? Or was it Calliope on the top floor and Urania on the second? If I could get a minute alone with the map, I could check to be sure. But then what would I do? Visiting them one by one was far too risky. Even if I went to a ward and saw its residents for myself, I might miss my sister by bad luck. What if I happened to visit while she was seeing a doctor or in one of the workstations? If our situations were reversed, how many hours a day would someone visiting Terpsichore Ward fail to clap eyes on me? It was an impossible path. But if Nora failed, it seemed to be the only way forward.
Sitting at the lunch table, poking at a bowl of thick oatmeal porridge speckled with what I hoped were seeds, I was lost in my own thoughts. When I heard a voice right up next to my ear, I jumped.
“What’s your story, then?” said the voice, sharp but not without humor.
Martha. I took a good look at her while I collected myself. Had I not been told of her mixed blood, I might not have recognized it. Was there a word for a girl less Negro than an octoroon? Certainly, she was darker than any girl I’d known, though there’d been malicious whisperings back home about brown-eyed Sarah Walsh, given her father’s blue eyes and the summer her mother spent in Italy. The tint of Martha’s skin and her full lips were hardly declarative, and I did know white women with an unruly bent to their hair. But she had told us her story, and I could not forget it. How her own father had jettisoned her for convenience. Not an unknown tale here, but unlike the others, she didn’t seem like she was going to accept being jettisoned. On another day, I would have enjoyed her spark. Today, like everything else, it fatigued me.
“Does one need a story to be here? Or just bad luck?” I asked.
“We’re all here for a reason.”
“Are we?�
��
Martha cocked her head. “I didn’t say a good reason.”
I scooped a dark fleck out of my porridge and wiped it off on the side of the bowl. It might be a seed, but I wasn’t taking the chance.
I’d told Nora my secret, and nothing had happened. I wasn’t about to confess to someone else.
When I didn’t respond, Martha tried again. “You seem a nice enough girl. Smart too. Seems we could all benefit from a little sharing.”
I slid my bowl in her direction.
She chuckled, low in her throat. “Not what I meant, sweetheart.”
I didn’t reach for it back.
She was about to say something else when Bess leaned in on her other side.
“You don’t want that porridge, you can pass it here, darkie,” she said.
Martha didn’t even bother responding with a word; she simply reached out and slapped Bess across the face.
They tumbled off the bench together. Across from me, the bookish Hazel let out a fierce cheer of encouragement, but before long, their fight was just a series of grunts behind us. No one moved to stop them. No one joined in. I looked up and spied Nora, who was watching the fight with what looked like only mild interest, and I could not catch her eye.
It was all so exhausting. As the two women scrambled and slapped, I reached out to take my bowl back and scooped another spoonful of porridge into my mouth. I looked at my arm, which was growing too thin. I had to make myself eat, or I’d end up like that starved woman from Polyhymnia. Inmates who went without eating too long were force-fed through a tube, and I didn’t want that either. It was said to be torture.
Behind me, Martha had knocked Bess to the floor and knelt atop her arms so she couldn’t rise, then spat once in the other woman’s face. At this, two attendants—Salt and Alfie—grabbed Martha by the arms to haul her off. I hoped she wouldn’t be taken in front of the matron again. Bess’s temper was hardly Martha’s fault. There was a downside to too much spark.
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