Opium and Absinthe: A Novel

by Lydia Kang

  “Lucy,” she mumbled.

  “May I fetch you something, Miss Tillie?”

  It wasn’t Lucy’s voice. They weren’t Lucy’s words. Tillie opened an eye, which took effort. Her eyelids were pasted together with a gluey substance. Her vision was blurry, but she saw an orange-haired figure hovering at her bedside.

  “It’s me, Miss Tillie. It’s your Ada.”

  Her maid. A comfort, but not her sister. Ada was arranging her bed linens, a gentle smile spreading under her small snub nose.

  “Where’s Lucy?”

  “Never mind your sister. How is your pain? Will you sit up and eat some porridge? Or toast? I have some beef tea for you, too, if you’d like. The doctor says you must eat something.” Ada went to a table near the foot of the four-poster bed. On it sat several brown bottles and crystal glasses, a bowl, a ewer and basin—the old-fashioned kind they never used now that they had a proper washroom—and a stack of soft white cloths. There was also a small tray of toast, a teacup of broth, and a bowl of creamy porridge. Ada busied herself adding a spoonful of sugar to a glass of water and mixing in drops of a brown liquid. Her cap was neat and frilled, apron perfectly ironed, and she smiled kindly at Tillie. But the hand holding the medicine shook. The brown liquid quivered at the tip of the dropper, and a splash fell on the cloth laid out beneath the glass, spreading like muddy water on a clean petticoat.

  “Where is Lucy?” Tillie repeated.

  “Drink this, and I shall bring your mama. But not before you come with me to the bathroom suite to wash and tend to yourself.”

  “But Lucy—”

  “She will let you know where Lucy is,” Ada said.

  The pain was beyond oppressive, so Tillie acquiesced. She drank the draught, noting the bitterness and the sugar’s inability to mask the opium’s presence. Then, Ada brought her to the room next door, where she relieved herself and let Ada bathe her puffy eyelids and wan face. Only after Tillie was back in bed, with a half piece of toast in her stomach, did Ada fetch her mother.

  By the time her mother arrived, Tillie was growing drowsy from the medicine. Victoria Pembroke entered with a pause and a sigh. She seemed disappointed that Tillie was awake. Her mother’s graying hair was tucked beneath the fine Parisian lace of her cap, and beneath her curls her eyes were piercing and lapis blue. Tillie’s father’s eyes had been a burnt-brown color, possibly a sign of his rumored Chinese ancestry. Now that he had been gone for over ten years, she supposed she’d never learn if the rumor was true—her mother abruptly changed the subject whenever Tillie asked. Tillie would far prefer to ask a lion to stop chewing on a gazelle carcass than query her grandmother on the subject.

  “You’re awake.” Her mother smiled as she leaned forward to kiss Tillie on the cheek and grasp her unbound right hand.

  Tillie pulled her fingers away. Her mother was never demonstrative. She did not embrace or kiss or squeeze hands, gloved or not. The break in routine alarmed Tillie.

  “What’s wrong, Mama?” she asked. The medicine had made her head cloudy. “And where is Lucy?”

  Her mother brought a handkerchief to her mouth and turned away, unable to look at her second daughter.

  “Lucy . . . Lucy is missing.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer—both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.

  —Van Helsing

  “Missing?” Tillie asked. Her hands trembled on her coverlet. “What do you mean?”

  Her mother took in a breath. “She went with Betty—ugh, I never liked that maid—to Dr. Erikkson’s office. A good doctor, finally!” Tillie’s mother was always looking for a better doctor, one who would open his doors to the family upon immediate request. So many other doctors were always out, delivering babies—so utterly inconvenient!—or attending to the rest of their rich clientele. Dr. Erikkson maintained an office and stayed there. “Betty said that afterward Lucy wished to go to the museum at the park for an hour. And Betty just let her go! Unaccompanied! I knew that woman was troublesome. Ada thinks she saw her stealing an entire box of groceries from the pantry the other day.”

  “Stealing? Lucy’s last maid was let go for taking linens from the closet.” She tapped her lips, thinking. “I know why Lucy wanted to go to the museum. To see the Joan of Arc painting.”

  “Is that so?” Her mother frowned.

  “It’s her favorite. The one by Jules . . . B-something or other. A French fellow.” Lucy had seen it, oh, ten times already since they’d brought it to the museum last year. She’d even dragged Tillie there, who found paintings vastly boring. Paintings did not explain how the world worked.

  “Well,” her mother continued, “Lucy never arrived back home.”

  “Did she take the carriage?”

  “No. She wished to walk, and she had been feeling so much better, so I allowed it. And Betty was supposedly with her.”

  “Such a long walk.” Tillie imagined her sister walking all the way up Fifth Avenue to the museum alone. “Where is Betty now?”

  “Let go, of course. She’ll never set foot in this house again.”

  Tillie paused. Betty was a sweet maid and always doted on Lucy. But a thief was a thief, and one who didn’t care properly for her mistress was intolerable. “When did this happen?”

  “Two days ago, around eleven o’clock in the morning. Around the same time as your accident.”

  “Two days!” Tillie sat up straighter, then mewled a cry of pain at the sudden movement. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? What’s been done? Who’s searching for her?”

  “Lower your voice!” her mother hissed. “Don’t make yourself more ill. We almost didn’t tell you at all.”

  “But I don’t understand. Where could she be?”

  “I said to be calm!” Mama snapped. “You’re not a child anymore. You cannot simply raise your voice at the slightest provocation.”

  Tillie shrank back into her usual reticence. Why wasn’t her mother in absolute hysterics? Her daughter—her favorite daughter, at that—had been missing for two days. But her mother only leaned in and smoothed out the ridges that had formed in the lace coverlet. Everyone was always smoothing away the ripples that Tillie created.

  “James confessed that they had a disagreement the day before she disappeared,” her mother said, more calmly now. “The wedding is coming soon, and Lucy’s nerves have been anything but peaceful. She is likely with one of her friends and ought to return soon.”

  “But . . . ,” Tillie began, keeping her voice dulcet. “We should look for her. We could speak to other families to see if—”

  “We have already made some inquiries.”

  “Then . . . perhaps . . . we could ask more people—”

  “Oh, Mathilda! Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll not shout from the rooftops that she’s gone. The last thing we need is gossip with the wedding imminent. All brides are silly and restless. Lucy will return soon. Tonight, even.”

  Ada had come in, and her freckled face startled in alarm at the sight of Tillie’s strained expression. She went directly to the bottle of medicine.

  “Miss Tillie, I’ll get your drops ready.”

  “I don’t like it,” Tillie complained. “It makes my stomach feel like I’m on the Campania again.” Her only trip across the Atlantic had nearly killed her with the relentless seasickness that would not stop roiling through her. The laudanum gave her the same sense of queasiness—as if her stomach were bobbing incessantly in a steadfast world.

  “She’s in a bad way,” Ada remarked. “Not just the broken bone, you know.” She gave Mama a knowing glance, and Tillie realized for the first time since she’d awoken that her belly felt knotted with pain. Muslin layers swathed her skin beneath her sleeping gown. Oh. Vaguely, she remembered Ada attending to her and realized she’d been bleeding from her monthlies.

  Her mother sighed. “Very well.”

  Tillie said
nothing, just looked toward the window.

  “Drink it. And sleep, Miss,” Ada urged. Tillie knew a maid’s mistress was far easier to attend to when she was asleep most of the day. When Ada pushed the drink toward her, Tillie could not refuse. The pain was returning with a crescendo of inevitability. And her heart was full of Lucy—her absence. Tillie drank the cordial entirely.

  Her mother moved to leave. “Do not worry about Lucy. She will be back. Just like . . .”

  Tillie looked at her mother expectantly, but she did not finish the sentence, leaving Tillie to wonder if her mother had also had a three-day escape before she’d married Papa. Mama had said once, “A woman’s heart is full of secrets.” Apropos of her comment, she had refused to elaborate.

  The door shut. Tillie felt some comfort that being ill meant less time spent with her mother and grandmother. There would be no chiding over how abominable her riding was, how embarrassing her fall had been, how weak her constitution was. The medicine churned in her belly, seeped into her bloodstream, numbed the nagging sensation that Tillie was just a splinter in their fingertips in comparison to Lucy. Before five minutes had elapsed, she’d fallen back asleep.

  When Tillie finally awoke from her opium-soaked stupor, her mind was thick like day-old raisin pudding and her bladder uncomfortably full. Her skin itched, her mouth was dry, and her hair was an abominable mess. The pain in her collarbone was still sharp and terrible, but other aches accompanied it.

  She opened her eyes to see Ada laying out a day dress of blue poplin. Her hair was more of a riotous red than usual.

  “Come, Miss. Wake up, and have a little something to eat. You’re to see Dr. Erikkson soon.”

  “Can’t he come here just this once?” Tillie attempted to stretch the stiffness from her limbs and was rewarded with what felt like a sword thrust to her shoulder. She moaned.

  “You know he has an ill child of his own who needs constant attention. I’m to take you.”

  As Ada helped dress her, Tillie’s memory awoke. “Lucy! Is she back?”

  The ensuing silence settled bleakly in the room.

  “I should like to speak to my mother before we go.”

  “Your mother and grandmother are out today. They will be back by supper.”

  She hoped they were searching for Lucy. Tillie felt a rising panic but stoppered it for later, after she could speak to them. Bathing and dressing with her left arm in its sling were immensely painful. Her eyes were dry and scratchy, she ached everywhere, and she wanted only to go back to sleep.

  As she descended the oak-paneled stairway, the usual bustle of their Madison Avenue house was eerily quiet. Normally, there was someone showing flower arrangements for the wedding or visitors discussing whatever Mama’s friends tended to discuss—the latest fashions from Paris, who’d built a new house in Newport, or who was likely to lose their fortune as the new millennium loomed. The absence of Lucy—her quick footsteps, her lively chatter—yawned before Tillie. Ada coaxed her to drink and eat the half cup of tea and triangle of dry toast the cook had set out, and they went to the carriage waiting at the curb.

  The trip to Dr. Erikkson’s was a short one. He occupied half of a modest limestone town house on Fifty-Ninth Street, down the block from the Bloomingdale Brothers’ dry goods store and hemmed in between two much larger houses. Tillie hardly noticed the carriages rolling down the avenue or the pedestrians walking with their canes and umbrellas. She was cautiously extricated from the carriage and leaned heavily on Ada as they knocked on the door. Tillie had never been here before. Their previous doctors had all made house calls.

  A maid in plain black livery answered, her wiry gray hair in a low twist.

  “Miss Mathilda Pembroke, here to see the doctor,” Ada informed her.

  “Of course,” the woman said, smiling. She opened the door farther, admitting them into a small dim foyer. “My husband will be with you in a few minutes. Please have a seat in his examination room, on your left. May I offer you some tea or water?”

  Tillie and Ada exchanged glances; they had both assumed the petite, rounded lady dressed in neck-to-floor black woolens was a servant, not a wife. Mrs. Erikkson smiled again, her eyes crinkling merrily at the edges. She ushered them into a room with a large chaise and a fireplace with a brass brazier sitting beside it. Books lined the shelves on either side. Mrs. Erikkson stoked the fire—the room’s only light, since the curtain over the window was closed—with a poker. “I shall return if you need anything. I need to go check on my boy,” she said brightly and shut the door as she left.

  Tillie was grateful for the fire; she felt a chill despite the warm day. She drew close to one of the shelves and scanned the titles.

  Treatise on the Medicinal Leech

  Surgical Exploration of the Face and Neck

  Illustrations of Syphilitic Diseases

  She reached for the leech book, thought twice (Lucy would have admonished her), and withdrew to the chaise. The door opened, and Dr. Erikkson entered. He was an extremely tall, spare man whose hair was a wheat color admixed with silver. He had light eyes that looked as if someone had pricked them with a hatpin and all the color had dribbled away. He studied Tillie’s shivering and sling, then nodded.

  “Miss Mathilda. Good day. I’ll see to that break now.”

  Apparently, he was spare of words as well. Ada hovered near as Dr. Erikkson palpated the broken bone on either side while Tillie tried not to cry out. He examined her upper arm and neck, pulled her eyelids down, and looked at her throat and teeth. Had he examined Lucy this way before she’d disappeared? Had her typhus infection fully cleared? The grim expression on the doctor’s visage squashed Tillie’s ability to speak.

  Finally, he felt her pulse for a long time. Tillie surreptitiously stole glances at him. His eyebrows seemed to grow straight out of his face instead of lying flat. It made her think of the greenery on the pathways of their garden. She’d looked the plants up in a botanical book. Creeping thyme.

  “More rest, and walking only inside the home. She must not exert herself,” he said, giving Ada a severe look. “Opium, eight drops, every four hours for pain. Everyone has laudanum or some version of opium tincture on the shelf, so be sure it’s ten percent strength. My own brand is safe and always of excellent quality. If she’s in pain, the muscles will contract, and the bone will not heal well. Wake her up for the medicine if necessary.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. Mrs. Pembroke requests a written prescription, if you may. She explicitly asked, as she is afraid I’ll report the dosage incorrectly.”

  “Very well. I’ll return in a moment.”

  Dr. Erikkson left, and Ada moved aside the curtain to look out the window. “Lord, he keeps it dark in here. There is a large wagon unloading, and the driver moved the carriage. He’s gone down the block. I shall let him know we’re ready.”

  When she was gone, Tillie stood to examine the brass brazier by the fireplace. It was shaped like a wide bowl perched on four squat feet, with a long handle so the entire thing could be placed directly upon the fire. It was etched with a decoration of swirls and flowers—such antithetical beauty for something created to aid in the scorching of human beings. Three cautery irons rested within it. She picked each one up by its wooden handle to examine it. One was shaped like the spade on a playing card, one was pointed, and one had an edge like a tiny ax. She lifted the pointed one and noticed a charred substance on the tip.

  “I wonder if that was a piece of Mr. Carnegie’s festering toe infection,” Tillie said to herself.

  “It probably was.”

  Tillie dropped the iron, and it clattered onto the slate hearth. She turned around, nearly losing her balance, since one arm was still bound to her rib cage.

  A young man stood in the doorway, his shoulders draped in a blanket of gray wool. He was nearly as slight as Tillie. His hair was a mass of sandy curls—the same color as Dr. Erikkson’s must have been before it had grayed. He had pale-blue eyes (though all the color had yet to drain
away), and a muddy maroon shadowed the hollows beneath them. His cheekbones were sharp and angled.

  “I’m sorry I startled you.” His voice was unexpectedly deep and rich.

  Tillie promptly picked up the iron and replaced it in the brazier. She blushed at being caught touching the instruments.

  “I’m Tom. Dr. Erikkson’s son,” he said.

  “Oh! I thought you’d be a little boy, not a grown man.” She blurted out the words before she realized how rude they sounded.

  “My mother would say the same. I will be twenty on September first.”

  “My birthday is September first too!” Tillie said, grinning.

  “Well! It’s like we are already acquaintances somehow.” He leaned against the door, his arms crossed over a large book. “I’m sorry to disturb. I heard the door and thought the room was empty. I was returning this.”

  Tillie followed the tilt of his chin to a gap in the row of books. “May I fetch you a new one?”

  “Thank you. But you’re hurt—I wouldn’t want to be a bother.”

  “I can lift a book with one hand,” she said, smiling. She took a step closer to the boy. There was a playfulness about his mouth. With more food and less illness, he could be quite fine looking. She blushed deeper.

  “Well, then. Here you go.” He handed his tome to Tillie. “I hope it won’t be the death of you.”

  “On the Removal of Tumors Both Benign and Cancerous. That must have quite a plot! What is it like to remove a tumor, I wonder? I hear there can be calcifications. Like cutting into a popcorn ball. Or is it anything like peeling a potato? Cutting a carrot?”