by Megan Chance
Daisy nodded. “Or something of the sort. I understand he wrote some brilliant paper, though there are some—Harry, for one—who say he’s a charlatan. He has some new theory—Ella explained it all to me, but you know how I am, I can hardly grasp these things. Mesmerism or phrenology or something.”
“Those are hardly new,” William said.
“Well, then something like them.” Daisy glanced back at the doctor. “He does seem to work miracles, though. And I suppose he’s very charming. Why, look what he’s done for Ella Baldwin—she was an invalid the entire summer, but you’d hardly know it now.”
I hadn’t known that Ella was ailing, but it was certain she was no longer. She was smiling brightly at the doctor, hanging on his every word, and with dismay I felt William’s sharp interest in this man.
I touched his arm. “Darling,” I said softly. “I’m quite parched.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said, forcing his eyes away from Dr. Seth, patting my hand. “Let’s find you something to drink.”
We left Daisy, and William’s fascination with the doctor waned and disappeared as we made our way to the buffet. He was cornered by Richard Martin, who involved him in a conversation about bonds, and I was relieved.
We sat down to dinner so late that my head was spinning. It was the first time since we’d arrived that William and I were separated from each other, and even then there was only the width of the table between us. He had been seated next to Daisy Hadden, while I had to suffer the cruelly dull Hiram Grace, with his overgrown graying mustache and his ceaseless talk of Western Union, where he spent his days making so much money that his four daughters were perpetually dressed in Worth gowns. Dr. Victor Seth sat a good distance down the long table, involved in conversation. Far away from William, I was glad to see.
There was wine. I sipped until I no longer felt the pressure in my chest, despite William’s warning glances.
“I hear you’re about to join the others on Fifth Avenue,” Hiram Grace said to me between the lobster bisque and the roasted partridge.
I reached again for my glass. “Ah yes. How quickly word spreads. William has decided to build. We’ve a plat on East Sixty-third.”
“Hmmph. Going to tear down those shanties, is he?”
“I imagine so.”
“You’ll have a time of it, won’t you? All that stuff females love: upholstery and paint and statuary and such.”
“Oh yes.” The damask tablecloth wavered before me as I set my glass down.
“So you’ll leave Washington Square to your father?”
“It is his home,” I said. “Though lately you would not know it, he spends so much time at the club.”
“Got to give the newlyweds some room, don’t you know.” Grace lifted his glasses and wiped at his rheumy eyes. “Still and all, no doubt he’ll sell that, too, before long. He’s getting along in years, isn’t he? Seventy or so?”
“Seventy-three,” I said.
“Ah. I tell you, it makes me sad, all these good men passing on.”
“Papa will outlive them all,” I said.
“No doubt you hope so,” Grace said. I did not attempt to enlighten him. “Even he can’t stave off the march of progress.”
“None of us can, Mr. Grace.”
“That’s so, that’s so. They just keep coming in, don’t they?”
“I’m not sure I take your meaning.”
“Well, look at what happened to Lafayette Place and Tompkins Square. Nothing but immigrants. The Germans have settled only a few blocks from Washington Square—they’ll take it next, you mark my words. We keep moving uptown to get away from ’em, and they keep following.”
Gwen Sanders, sitting on Grace’s left, chimed in. “It’s bad enough to have to hire them. Why, Daisy was just saying that she already feels overrun with Irish! But what can one do? It’s impossible to keep a maid longer than a few months, and to find a decent girl—”
“It’s not in them to be reliable.” Grace seemed unperturbed as he wiped at his mustache with a damask napkin. “No point in asking the impossible. They have smaller skulls, that’s a proven fact. The Negroes and the Irish and all the rest haven’t got the brainpower.”
William spoke up from across the table. “All one must do is see how they live. Had they our intelligence, certainly they would better themselves.”
My glass was nearly empty. I signaled for the serving girl.
On William’s other side, Harrison Everett said thoughtfully, “Then you don’t believe that all this talk of slum reform will make a difference?”
“How could it?” William asked. “These people haven’t evolved enough to understand the consequences of vice. If you clean up the tenements, they will fall back into degeneracy. As Hiram said, it’s in their nature.”
Harrison persisted, “But if they were given jobs and decent places to live—”
“How can a change in environment possibly counteract generations of heredity?” William asked.
“Why, I’m not sure it can. But as the superior species, shouldn’t we be expected to protect those less evolved?”
William laughed. “Good God, Harry, don’t tell me you’re one of those radical humanitarians.”
Harrison smiled thinly. “I’m afraid so. You should be careful, Will, it might rub off on you if I stand too close at the next Glee Club practice.”
“Gentlemen.” Gwen put her long fingers to her forehead. “You’re quite spoiling my appetite. Can’t we discuss something better suited to such a delicious supper?”
William smiled at her, then at me—a smug, self-righteous smile cloaked in civility and refinement. “Forgive me,” he said. “Perhaps we should change topics, gentlemen. We can’t expect the ladies to participate in such indelicate conversation.”
“I was finding it all quite interesting,” Antoinette Baldwin said. She lifted her chin as if expecting a challenge and flushed the rosy pink that only the young can. She reminded me of myself at her age, forever wanting more, making myself heard, thinking I could change the world and my place in it. I was sorry for her and horribly sad for all the ways she would be shoved into silence, and the emotion overwhelmed me so that I dropped my newly filled wineglass, splashing wine all over the tablecloth, sending droplets scattering across the table to dot William’s pristine white shirt like blood.
“Oh my, I’m so sorry.” I got to my feet and wiped ineffectually at the spreading stain with my napkin.
The servant pushed in beside me. “Please, ma’am,” she said, and I stepped back to let her clean it up. The wall was too close, and I crashed into it. I saw the doctor look up, his dark gaze sharpening; the others were staring at me oddly, the conversation fallen into disrepair. I shoved at a loosened hair and tried to smile.
“How clumsy I am.” I tried to laugh, but the sound came out like a snort. I felt ridiculous tears start at my eyes, and I couldn’t stop them. “And after such a lovely evening . . .”
Dr. Seth began to rise. “Madam, are you quite all right?”
William took his napkin from his lap quite deliberately and stood. “Thank you, sir, but I think it best if my wife and I excuse ourselves.” Such a calm, even voice—I was quite sure no one but I heard his underlying disappointment. “Forgive us, James, for interrupting your supper. Lucy has had a headache all evening. No doubt we should have taken ourselves straight home from the opera.”
James Baldwin nodded shortly. “Of course. I confess I’ve come home with more than one headache from this season’s program.” He glanced at me. “Do get some rest, dear Lucy.”
I nodded, but I seemed unable to move from the wall. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and I could not find other words as William came around the table and unstuck me by putting his arm around my shoulders. I felt the doctor’s gaze, unwavering, starkly curious, and then William was leading me away from the solicitous murmurs as he would a child. At the door, he took my cape from the butler and wrapped it around me. He shrugged into his own coat
and hat, and we went out into falling snow.
I paused on the steps, feeling the snow melt on my skin, such a delicious cool, so that I lifted my face to it. “It’s snowing,” I said. “Oh, look, William.”
“You’ve had too much wine,” he said, pulling me down the steps and out to the waiting carriage, bundling me ungently into the dark, cold cocoon. He got in and sat silently, disapprovingly beside me.
The carriage jolted to a start, and I was flung against him. I could only burrow into his side, into the warmth of his sleeve. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, too weary to move, wanting nothing but to fall into a deep, abiding sleep uninterrupted by midnight yearnings and vague dissatisfactions. What did that even feel like? Why could I not remember?
William sighed. “Ah, Lucy. What am I going to do with you?”
The next morning William went to the Exchange, and I laid in bed until noon. I’d instructed Harris that I wouldn’t need the carriage; I was too ill to go calling today, as I usually did. Even when I did get out of bed, I lingered in my room, wrapped in my dressing gown, surreptitiously watching the snow fall on Washington Square from a crack in the rose brocade drapes. I remembered how, as a child, I had raced my nanny to the park despite her calls—“Slow down, Lucy! There’s a good child! This is not ladylike behavior!”—and plopped myself down to make angels in the snow. She had laughed when she caught up with me, but that good humor was not enough to keep her from reporting my lapse to my father, who forced me to stay abed with a copy of Lydia Maria Child’s The Girl’s Own Book that afternoon instead of going with him to visit my cousin Hattie.
“Young ladies do not make snow angels in Washington Square,” he said to me. “How glad I am that your mother is not here to see such a spectacle.”
I could no longer recall the joy of that small defiance. I wondered: Had I felt the cold of the snow? Had I tasted it? Had the dull punishment of social catechism been worth that moment? There must have been joy. Or had I been then as I was now? Had the days always stretched so drearily before me that I could not rouse myself to step outside my bedroom doors?
But no; I remembered Antoinette Baldwin and the dull pain I’d felt at the anticipation of her impending womanhood, the knowledge that I had once been like her. To think of Antoinette, how trapped she was, how her wings beat so futilely against bars she could not see and did not even know were there, made me want to cry.
I turned from the window, too saddened to look at the snow, and my gaze went to the brown bottle on my dressing table. The rush of future days washed over me, the constant threat of Dr. Little’s asylum.
I was hardly aware of going to it, only that it was in my hands, hard and smooth, the satisfying pop of the cork, and then the sweetness of it on my tongue, the bitterness after. I took more than I should have, but once I tasted it, I wanted more—a few hours of peace, surely that was not too much to ask? Only a few more hours.
William came to me through the haze of my dreams. I heard the door opening, more sharply than it should, and his exhalation of disbelief and anger. I felt him pushing at me: Lucy, Lucy, damn it, what have you done? I batted at him with my hands to leave me alone, and then he was gone.
When I woke up, it was the dead of night. There was only a candle, but its dim light hurt. I shielded my eyes and dragged myself from a lingering drowsiness to see a shadow in the chair next to the bed—William, still clothed, asleep.
I must have made a noise, because he roused, and I saw him looking at me with such tenderness and care that I could hardly bear it. He leaned over and took my hand, squeezing it between his soft fingers.
“I’ve talked to Victor Seth, darling,” he whispered. “You’re to see him tomorrow.”
Chapter 4
The carriage wheels jolted and bumped on the settling paving stones as we made our way down Broadway, jerking to frequent stops for the traffic, which was horrible all the time, but particularly so that afternoon. I was nauseated from the night before, and the jouncing only made it worse. I did not think I could bear another doctor—not another suggestion of a cure that gave me hope for too short a time, or worse, another hopeless diagnosis.
“I’d never heard of him before Ella’s dinner,” I said again.
William sat rigidly beside me. Though he had brought the New York Times to read, it stayed folded neatly on his lap. “He’s been given the highest recommendation.”
“Daisy said he was controversial.”
“That’s not always a bad thing, Lucy. Apparently he has some new technique—”
“She said he was a Jew.”
“No one knows that for certain. He did study in Germany.”
“He’s a foreigner, then?”
“He doesn’t sound so.”
“Well, I won’t go,” I said. I reached for the bell cord. “Turn the carriage around. I won’t be examined by some poor immigrant.”
William grabbed my hand before I could pull the cord. His grip was firm, his expression unyielding. “Last year you were willing to have them cut you open to end this. This man could be your salvation. Our salvation.”
I sagged against the seat and closed my eyes. Images of other doctors ran through my mind. “I can’t bear this again,” I whispered. “I don’t know how you can.”
“Because I can’t bear the alternative,” William said. “Lucy, you’ve grown worse this last year. I have no choice but to hope that his new treatment may work. I’m surprised you don’t feel the same.”
“I do. I do. But to have hope dashed over and over . . .”
“We’ve never seen someone like this before. He’s a neurologist.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“A doctor of the brain.”
“Oh, William. The brain? All the others said it was . . .” I could not even say the word.
“He specializes in nervous disorders, Lucy. Especially in women. Ella Baldwin speaks very highly of him. We haven’t tried this before. Perhaps . . .”
The hope in his voice nearly brought me to tears. I watched the respectable shops and hotels give way steadily to the redbrick buildings and warehouse trade of Lower Broadway, the advertising billboards pasted one over the other, layers of fluttering paper—TRY HOBENSACK’S LIVER PILLS, RHEUMATISM CURED IN THREE APPLICATIONS!—and I wished I were naive again, that it was three years ago, when I had faith that a doctor could easily cure whatever ailed me. How long had that hope lingered? When had it disappeared? After the second doctor? After the fifth? I could no longer remember.
William once more covered my hand with his own. “When we’re done, we’ll go to Delmonico’s, and I’ll buy you tea and a cake. Would that make you feel better?”
In spite of the fact that Dr. Seth was the current fashion, he could not afford the better offices in town. I grew more and more nervous, to think of myself walking into one of these side entrances, past iron gates and down narrow stairs to a darkened basement.
The carriage stopped, and this time it was not for traffic.
“We’re here, sir,” called our driver.
Jimson opened the door and helped me out, ushering me through the piles of stinking horse manure and garbage cluttering the street. I hung back until William put his arm around my shoulders and forced me forward. I was momentarily confused—this was no doctor’s office before me but a shop. Its windows were full of handsome trinkets, stained-glass lamps, gilt boxes. A bell on the door tinkled when we went inside the incense-scented room, but no one was at the counter, and no one greeted us.
I hesitated, but William did not, and then I saw he was leading me toward a shadowed door in the back wall. Beyond it were stairs and a dusty, dingy hallway that was in desperate need of fresh paint. The faint light from a window slanted in from a landing above.
Our footsteps echoed up through the stairwell. We rounded the landing and went up another set of stairs that opened onto a long and narrow hallway with doors lining either side. The stairs continued on, but William took me down the hallway to
a door at the very end. On it was painted in restrained black and gilt letters: DR. VICTOR SETH, DOCTOR OF NEUROLOGY.
I hung back and whispered, “Do let’s go, William. We could be home in time for tea.”
He grasped my hand and opened the door. We stepped into another dingy room with a small desk next to another door and an old rosewood settee against the opposite wall, its red-striped floral upholstery frayed at the corners. There was no one there.
William cleared his throat and had stepped forward to knock on the other door when it opened. Out came a young woman with pale hair and eyes. She saw us and stopped midmotion. “Oh . . . hello.”
“We have an appointment with Dr. Seth,” William told her.
The girl went behind the desk and fumbled with a thin book that lay open on the blotter. “Of course. I see it right here.” She gave us an expectant smile.
William reached inside his coat and pulled out his pocket watch. “I believe we’re right on time.”
She checked the book again. “Oh yes, you are. But . . . um, well, the doctor . . . he’s not here yet.”
“He’s not here?”
“Well then,” I said, backing toward the door, “perhaps another time.”
William held me firm. “We have an appointment.”
“He—he had an unexpected visitor,” the girl said. “I expect him back shortly.”
“This is unconscionable,” William said. “I am a very busy man.”
“Yes, of course you are.”
The voice came from behind us. Startled, I jerked around to see a man wearing a heavy coat and a hat that shone wetly in the light. Dr. Seth. He had opened the door without making a sound, though it was impossible that we had not heard him.
He smiled smoothly as he pulled at his gloves. “Forgive me for making you wait. I was unavoidably detained.” He glanced at the girl, who shrank visibly at the sight of him. “Irene, perhaps you could make yourself useful and find some tea for our visitors.”
“Yes, Doctor,” she murmured, leaving quickly.
He went to the other door and opened it, then stood back to usher us inside. I had expected William to continue to be angry, but he was uncharacteristically quiet, caught—no doubt as I was—by the presence of this man. I remembered my sense that I should have felt him the moment I stepped into Ella’s dining room; that feeling was more intense here, in this little office. It was unsettling, the way he took up space, as if something had entered the room with him, something large and intangible.
