by Jim Nelson
Cynthia’s grip maintained a steady pressure on her mother’s arm. “You were drunk when you left Grandpa’s house.”
“I wasn’t drunk—”
“Drunk,” Cynthia said. “Three glasses of wine. Swerving off and on the road. And you got us here four hours late. Grandmother is sick and should have been in bed, but instead, she was up waiting to serve us a nice dinner. You blow in at midnight without even stopping to call her and let her know. Did you even apologize to her?”
Hanna tugged to be freed. Cynthia was unyielding. “Don’t you talk to me like that.”
“She was worried sick while we drove through the dark,” Cynthia said. “We could’ve been dead in a ditch.”
“Your grandmother doesn’t work herself up about anything.”
“She only looks like she doesn’t. I mean, look at you! I’m away for an hour and you’re racing down the road worried to death. We’re four hours late and you think Grandmother doesn’t care?”
Hanna finally yanked her arm free. She knew Cynthia had released her.
“You’ll start listening to me and stop blowing me off.” Cynthia placed her palm on her belly. “If I’m going to go the distance, you owe me that.”
Hanna rubbed her wrist, stunned at the hurt Cynthia had put on her. Cynthia’s eyes blazed, but otherwise, her demeanor was calm, almost imperious.
In one clean motion, Hanna slapped Cynthia across the jaw.
“You’ll never touch me like that again,” Hanna said. “Understand?”
Cynthia touched her face. She appeared unfazed.
“Do you understand me?” Hanna shouted.
“I heard you,” Cynthia said. “Let’s get in the car.”
Hanna, not used to being ordered around by her bridge daughter, stood her ground, confused.
“It’s time we got back to Grandmother’s.” And Cynthia opened the car door.
—
“Piper had a motorcycle,” Cynthia explained as Hanna navigated Old Jachsen Road.
“Where did she get a motorcycle?” Hanna said, alarmed.
“I think she stole it.”
The image of Cynthia on the back of a motorcycle made a fountain of acid in Hanna’s stomach. No helmet, no riding leather, Cynthia’s bridge dress the only protection in a crash.
Hanna asked, “How did she find the farm?”
“I don’t know,” Cynthia said. “I didn’t ask her. But I think Ruby may have told her at some point.”
Hanna thought back over the day Piper hitched a ride. Did one of them mention going to a farm outside of Mill Valley? There were not many farms in the hills of Marin. Most properties were cabin retreats for the rich and off-the-grid hideaways for nature lovers. Hanna wondered if Piper had asked around town, perhaps gotten directions at a store or a gas station in Mill Valley.
Hanna’s grandmother had a reputation around these parts, a single mother of two living off the earth on the edge of nowhere. Back in the day, Ma Cynthia painted nudes and developed her own photographs of the same in the barn. Ma Cynthia grew her own weed. If Piper had met an old-timer in town, at a diner or a bar, he would’ve known about the farm. Even after she died, people around Mill Valley still called it “Ma Cynthia’s place.” And Piper was looking for a bridge daughter named Cynthia.
“She was hiding in the woods,” Cynthia said. “She’d come visit us at the house when you weren’t around. We’d talk through the window in the bathroom. Sometimes she wanted to talk to Ruby by herself. Sometimes she talked to me by myself. It was weird,” Cynthia reflected. “She told me secrets and told me not to tell Ruby. I don’t know why though.”
“What did she tell you?” Hanna asked.
“Piper kept saying she would take me to the airport,” Cynthia said. “Whenever I asked a question, she said, ‘You’ll understand when we get to the airport.’”
Airport? A girl who had to steal a motorcycle could afford plane tickets? Why would a girl facing a sentence for dereliction of life walk into a high-security zone like an airport?
“Were you going to fly somewhere?”
“She said there would be a Shur Spring there.” Cynthia paused. “Do you know what that is?”
“I do,” Hanna said. “Do you?”
Cynthia nodded. “I read about it on the Internet.”
After a quarter mile, Hanna said, “You didn’t meet Piper on the Internet, did you?”
“No,” Cynthia said, mystified.
“You didn’t arrange to meet her, right?”
“How could I?” Cynthia said. “You decided to stop at the fruit stand.”
Hanna relaxed, realizing she was sounding paranoid. Piper couldn’t have known either of the girls until she met Ruby at the stand. Who knew how long Ruby and Piper spoke there and what passed between them?
The remainder of the drive back to the farm was in silence, save for the roar of the air-conditioner keeping the car interior icy cold. Hanna was sticky with perspiration, both from rushing about all afternoon and the concomitant adrenaline rush. The air conditioner made the stickiness on her skin colder than the surrounding air, a welcome luxury after the events of the day.
When they reached the gate, Hanna shifted the car to Park and cracked open the driver’s door. Cynthia spoke before she exited.
“I’m going to do the right thing,” she said. “I promise. I’m not going to be like Dad and abandon you and Ruby.”
Hanna gripped Cynthia’s hand and squeezed a little loving shake. “You’re a better person than your father. I know that.”
The gate was closed but not latched as it should have been. Hanna chalked it up to her feverish scramble to find Cynthia. She swung the gate open and kept it in place with a cragged rock kept beside the gate for just that reason. When she returned to the car, she heard a faint braaat in the distance, the distinctive sound of a motorcycle speeding away. Hanna said nothing to Cynthia, who was oblivious due to the roar of the air conditioner.
After pulling forward and closing and latching the gate, Hanna piloted the car down the jutted lane. She guided it carefully over the bridge.
At the farmhouse, Hanna twisted the ignition off. She faced Cynthia to speak before leaving the car.
“I wish it could be different,” she told her. “I really do. But this is the way of the world.”
Cynthia attempted a smile, appearing disappointed all the same. “I’m hungry.”
“Your sister has soup and sandwiches going,” Hanna said, pushing open the car door. “Let’s have lunch and put this behind us.”
They heard the shouts before they reached the front door. Inside, they discovered Dian in her ratty purple kimono, hair a mess, face pale and waxy. She leaned against a hallway wall for support.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Hanna said, rushing to her.
“Some girl was here,” her mother said, wet voice crackling with phlegm. “She took Ruby and now they’re gone.”
Sixteen
Dr. Victor Blanchard brought up all the lights in his examination room. He stoked the fire in the black pot-bellied stove and tossed in another log. He hung his jacket on the coat stand in the corner, removed his sweater vest, and gingerly rolled his shirt sleeves up past his elbows.
Violette entered the room carrying a stack of stark-white linen. She snapped open a sheet and draped it over the examination table. She triangled the corners of the sheet and folded each under the examination table mattress, ensuring all edges were tight. She unfolded a pillow case, white and crisp like the sheet, and slid inside a thin pillow.
Meanwhile, Dr. Blanchard erected a contraption of poles and stands on rollers. Without a word, he assembled the pieces and wheeled it to the end of the examination table.
He turned his attention to a steel tray on a metal stand, it too on wheels. Violette folded a short white cloth in half and laid it across the tray. Dr. Blanchard removed surgical instruments from the autoclave built into the examination room wall. He announced each by name as he placed it on the t
ray.
While doing so, Violette removed a bottle of mauve-tinted liquid from a locked glass medicine case. She verified the amount with her father before drawing enough to fill three hypodermic needles, each a gradated glass tube with brass fittings and a long steel needle. She placed each on the tray beside the surgical instruments, softly saying, “Gefyrogen.”
Denis Doisneau and his bridge daughter Paige watched the preparations with intense but helpless interest. Denis had never watched his friend at work. He had brought Paige to his friend’s office countless times over the years. Once Dr. Blanchard admitted her, Denis always took his leave in the waiting room while his friend examined Paige. He rationalized it was the proper thing to do. He did not hug his bridge daughter—he did not touch her at all—and he certainly saw no reason to watch her disrobe and be examined in a womanly way.
Violette asked Paige for her assistance and the bridges exited the room together. Violette returned with a shallow porcelain basin, a bar of medical soap, a hand scrub, and two folded white towels. Paige entered after her with an oversized copper kettle, a feather of steam issuing from its spout. At Violette’s instruction, Paige filled the blue basin with the hot water and returned the kettle to the kitchen.
Dr. Blanchard dipped his wide, hair-covered forearms into the hot water, one at a time. Violette added four drops of iodine to the water. Dr. Blanchard began vigorously lathering his hands and wrists, working the soap up to his elbows.
“Paige,” Dr. Blanchard said. The bridge daughter had returned to her position behind her father Denis. “Paige, I wish to speak to you. Are you listening?”
“Yes.” She spoke from the corner of her mouth.
“I love Violette,” Dr. Blanchard said to her. “My wife and I, quell her soul, we could not have been more blessed than with Violette. She is like a daughter.”
He scrubbed his wrists and arms with the stiff bristles of the hand brush. He scrubbed under his nails, he scrubbed between his fingers, he scrubbed up past his wrists. Denis watched with fascination his friend’s near-manic activity at the basin. The men had fished together, smoked together, played cards, and drank together. Denis had never witnessed his friend as anything more than a gentle physician of the district’s bridge daughters. This professional display was new and novel.
“I am practicing my speech,” he told Paige. He smiled for her and returned to his scrubbing. “I’ve practiced this speech before Violette too. Haven’t I?”
Violette nodded. “Many times.”
“And what do I say now, at this moment?”
Violette watched her father’s preparations with a sharp eye, knowing the steps as well as he did. “At this point, you profess your belief in Jesus, or insist you are a good Roman Catholic,” she said. “You remind of your duty as a doctor and your oath to do no harm.”
Dr. Blanchard completed the scrubbing. Violette whisked the basin from the room.
He held his dripping arms out before him, careful not to touch anything. “It sounds bolder when I write my reasons out,” Dr. Blanchard told Paige. “When I speak them—cold soup.” He shrugged. “It sounds as though I’m making excuses.”
Violette returned to the room with the basin, now empty. She refilled it with more hot water and stood at attention.
“My wife was consumed inside-out by the Devil’s disease. My medical training was useless.”
The doctor motioned about the examination room. On the walls hung medical illustrations of thirteen-year-old girls with their midsections sliced open to reveal the gemmelius within.
“My practice is bridge daughters,” he told Paige. “What do I know of consumption? Of tuberculosis?”
Denis did not believe his friend, knowing he could speak with erudition on just about any subject. The bitterness in Victor’s voice, the red-hot flush of his face, this Denis believed.
“Violette was born bearing our child,” Dr. Blanchard said. “You were born bearing your parents’ child, Paige. Every bridge daughter shoulders this mighty responsibility, all the way back to Hagar in the Bible. You know of Hagar?”
“She ran away from Sarah,” Paige said. Bridge daughters could not read, so the story was read aloud to them. In her home, Madame Doisneau had taught all her bridge daughters to memorize the story of Hagar. Paige could quote it chapter and verse. “She gave birth to Abraham’s son in the desert. And for her sin, all bridge daughters die at their finality,” she summarized.
“There will be no running away today,” Dr. Blanchard murmured. “God gave man intellect, Paige. He gave man the faculties to make the world a better place. And,” he sighed, “he gave us the ability to forgive. To forgive each other.”
“And to forgive ourselves,” Paige said, uncharacteristically speaking without permission.
Violette stood at the cooling basin, plump and pregnant, with a resolute chin and sharp, unblinking eyes. She held a stark-white towel with a single yellow band across the bottom trim. “Father,” she commanded. “Rinse.”
“I cannot cure consumption.” Dr. Blanchard spoke to Denis now. “I can cure my daughter of her burden and guarantee she lives a full life.”
“You don’t need my blessing,” Denis said jokingly.
Dr. Blanchard returned to the basin. He alternated his slick, soapy hands through the clean water. Violette laid the towel over his outstretched hands. He methodically dried them wishing for just one more Gauloises before beginning.
—
Violette lay across the table in an examination gown. She’d changed into a surgical gown behind the Japanese screen in the corner of the room. Her legs were spread and her feet held fast in the clampwork Dr. Blanchard had assembled. Her chestnut hair was fanned across the pillow like a painter’s brush pressed hard against the canvas.
“Hold Violette’s hand,” Dr. Blanchard patiently told his friend. “She’ll need your support.”
Denis pulled a visitor’s chair beside the bed. “Here?”
“Sit between them both,” Dr. Blanchard said. “Your bridge will require moral support as well.”
Denis’ bridge daughter sat in a thickly-padded leather chair beside the examination bed. It was Dr. Blanchard’s easy chair, normally beside the fireplace in the rear living quarters. Dr. Blanchard had dragged the easy chair and a footstool into the examination room that morning for Paige. She reclined with her right arm extended. Violette had prepared a needle and inserted it in the crook of Paige’s arm. Rich umber blood flowed through a rubber tube to a stoppered bag suspended beside Violette. Another tube allowed the bridge blood to drip into Violette’s outstretched arm. With her father’s hands sterilized, she had to insert the needle into herself. Certainly Monsieur Doisneau was not up to the task. Watching his aghast expression when she inserted it gave her a restrained smile.
Dr. Blanchard rolled a chair to the end of the bed between his bridge daughter’s extended legs. A sheeted tent across Violette’s midsection provided a short cloth wall. Dr. Blanchard inventoried once more the tray of instruments to assure himself all was prepared. Each stainless steel rod, some dull, some razor-sharp, waited their turn.
Dr. Blanchard raised himself from his stool and peered over the tent. “Violette,” he said through the mask, “are you ready?”
“I am, Father,” she said weakly, eyes lowered.
He’d administered a barbiturate to relax her, a dose of Veronal. He dared not put her under. After all, this procedure had never been performed before. He worried that, in her depleted state, he would be unable to pull her from the spell of the anesthesia when he finished. Perhaps if he was assisted by a doctor more familiar with ether’s effects, but what doctor in Rouen did he trust to assist? Even speculating about the existence of such a procedure would result in being reported to the authorities.
The discovery in 1928 of gefyrogen, the bridge daughter hormone, opened many minds to the prospect of a bridge daughter surviving her finality—of giving birth and, miraculously, going on to live a complete life. All reported at
tempts over the past five years had been without success. The fetus and the bridge daughter lived interlocked, neither able to exist without the other until the moment the baby was severed from the surrogate. And then, be it God or Nature, only the baby could survive, the bridge daughter’s sturdy life suddenly fragile.
Dr. Blanchard was not so pompous or vain to believe he was the first doctor to consider the next logical step. He did believe, however, no other doctor had attempted it. If one had, the procedure had gone unreported. He’d discreetly searched the literature for mention of such an operation. He’d found nothing, not even speculation of its possible success or failure.
“Paige,” Dr. Blanchard said through his mask. “Thank you for allowing me to practice my little speech on you.”
“Yes, Doctor Blanchard,” she said.
She looked as frightened as a cat stranded on a rock in the river. He’d not explained the procedure, only offered a long-winded justification for his lack of remorse for the sins he was about to perform. He surmised she had developed a good idea of what was transpiring.
He selected a brass hypodermic of the mauve gefyrogen from the tray. He pressed the needle to Violette’s abdomen and prepared to plunge it within her.
“Today,” he said, “Hagar is forgiven.”
Seventeen
The familiar adrenaline of panic returned to Hanna. She snapped at Cynthia to put her mother to bed, then hurried from room to room in bounding steps calling out Ruby’s name. When she crossed the kitchen to reach the front door, Cynthia caught her by the arm.
“Ruby’s gone,” Cynthia said. “Didn’t you hear Grandmother?”
“She might still be here,” Hanna said. “Your grandmother is sick.”
“She’s not crazy,” Cynthia said.
“Hey—” Hanna stopped Cynthia. “Do you know anything about this? Did you plan this with Ruby?”
Cynthia stepped back, hurt. “I swear I don’t know,” she said. “I thought it was just going to be me and Piper running away. Honest.”
Hanna’s mother lay in bed with blankets up to her chin. Only her arms and wan face were exposed, her swollen eyelids and white lips cracked and crumbling at the corners like aged beeswax.
