Delivering the Truth

by Edith Maxwell

  I had heard a client refer to Bertie and Sophie as having a Boston Marriage, since the two unmarried ladies lived together without a man. Some used the term simply to describe women sharing a household. Others spoke it in a disparaging tone, indicating the relationship might be a romantic one they disapproved of. I knew Bertie and Sophie, in their own eyes, were as married as any man or woman, and it didn’t bother me one whit. When love was present, who were we to judge if God had let it be so? I was simply glad I had a good friend. And Sophie traveled so much for her work as a lawyer that Bertie and I often were able to grab time together to go for a swim in Lake Gardner or attend a meeting of the Literary Society.

  I said good-bye as I turned away, hoping I would not encounter a fire in progress on my route.

  I reclined on the chaise in my parlor half an hour later. I needed sleep before my first client arrived. Sunlight streamed through the front windows making motes dance in the air. I closed my eyes but rest wouldn’t come for all the thoughts dancing in my brain.

  Ephraim and his anger at being let go from a job he sorely needed. Lillian, with her knowledge that her husband was stepping out on her, or worse. Minnie, who seemed secure in being supported by her baby’s father. William, likely the baby’s sire but also an afflicted factory owner. Not to mention all the grieving families and friends in town, including our own Zeb and the sweet Annie. And now I worried, as well, about Nell Gilbert. I feared she was experiencing the unexpected sadness some mothers feel after giving birth. I’d pay her and the baby a visit later in the day.

  I wished Kevin Donovan hadn’t asked for my help with the case. It was keeping my mind overly busy. I opened my eyes and let out a breath. Sleep was clearly not coming. So perhaps, since I had agreed, I could attempt to organize my thoughts. I moved to my desk and took pen to paper, inscribing all my thoughts in an orderly fashion. I drew lines for columns and rows and hoped to fill in motive and opportunity for setting a fire that had wrecked lives and businesses. But beyond Ephraim, Lillian, and perhaps a competitor to William Parry, I didn’t arrive at much. To even write down Lillian’s name made me feel sick.

  My stomach complained of emptiness, so I left my desk and stoked the fire in the kitchen. I heated a bit of soup and broke a chunk of bread off the loaf. I stood to eat, too restless to relax at the table. From the window at the back of the house I could see the small upholstery factory that faced onto Powow Street. I watched the comings and goings at the business, where they created cloth and leather seats for some of the carriages and sleighs made in town. That had been made in town before the fire, at any rate. A man pushed a cart full of hides onto the premises and stood talking outside with the factory owner.

  The man looked familiar, with his round cheeks, ample belly, and bowler hat. I snapped my fingers. It was Minnie’s brother Jotham. I put down my dinner, grabbed a shawl from a hook, and walked down the back stairs to the low picket fence separating our garden from the factory yard.

  “Oh, Jotham,” I called. I waved my hand. “Hello, there.”

  He glanced in my direction and frowned, but turned away from the owner and walked toward me. “That’s me. Who are you again?” He removed his hat and glared.

  I smiled, hoping to ease the conversation. “I’m Rose Carroll, the midwife. I attended thy sister’s birth last week. We met—”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Birth of a bastard nephew.” A smile crept over his face. “I’ll allow as how he’s a cute one, though.”

  “And at least he’s healthy, and Minnie survived the labor.” I continued, “Not all women do live through childbirth. Thee has much to be thankful for.”

  “I suppose.” He wrinkled his nose. “What’s that funny way you speak?”

  “I belong to the Religious Society of Friends. I’m a Quaker and we call it plain speech.”

  “Well, it sounds odd to me.”

  I nodded. “Has thee seen Minnie and the baby today?”

  “No. My cursed older sister is there lording it over the household. We don’t see eye to eye.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I will stop by tomorrow and pay Minnie another visit.” I gestured at the factory. “Thee works with leather, then?”

  “No. I only deliver it. I deliver anything. Work is hard to come by, and now what with the fire—” He knit his brows and shook his head slowly. “I don’t know where I’ll be getting my next meal.”

  Another man out of work because of the fire. At least he wasn’t at risk of starving anytime soon, not with that belly.

  “I saw thee talking in town with one of my clients, Nell Gilbert. How does she seem to thee?”

  “No, miss. You’re mistaken. I don’t know no Nell.” He turned away.

  So they both lied about knowing each other, unless it was a chance meeting. It hadn’t looked like one, though. They’d been speaking directly for several minutes, not the behavior of a stranger inquiring of directions from another, which of course neither would need, being local residents. I turned away, too, wondering why Jotham put me in mind of an actor instead of a sincere person.

  thirteen

  Baby Lizzy was a round and cheerful child of a suitable size for thirteen months. I dandled her on my lap in the late afternoon, her chubby hands grabbing for my glasses as I tried to speak with her mother. Nell, Guy, and the baby lived with Guy’s parents in a modest house on Summer Street.

  “What is Lizzy eating these days?” I asked.

  A thin and pale Nell shrugged. Her dark hair wasn’t properly done up and she reacted little, even when I placed the baby on her lap. Her hands still rested limply on her legs. She hadn’t changed since I’d seen her on the street.

  Nell’s mother-in-law Josephine swooped in and set Lizzy on the floor. She shot me a look of caution I well deserved. The baby could have fallen off her mother’s lap.

  “Lizzy’s eating porridge, bread, eggs, a bit of applesauce,” she told me. “She’s a hungry girl.” She left the room again, and I watched that Lizzy didn’t crawl near the hot stove.

  “I’d like you to take this tonic,” I said to Nell, handing her a script. “It’s strong in iron.” I knew she needed more than that. I had seen this type of postpartum melancholia before. Some mothers simply outgrew it, but I’d heard one horrific tale from my teacher, Orpha Perkins, about a mother who had methodically suffocated each of her five children, including her tiny newborn, saying God had told her to do so. She was sentenced to live in the insane asylum for the rest of her natural days.

  Nell clutched the script and stared at it but didn’t speak. I scooped Lizzy up and carried her in to be with her grandmother, since she clearly wasn’t safe alone with Nell.

  “Nell is not in a good way,” I said.

  “That she is certainly not. I’m afraid she’ll do harm to Lizzy.” Josephine watched Lizzy crawl to the window and pull herself up to standing.

  “I gave her a prescription for a tonic. Is she eating and drinking?”

  “Very little. But I watch the baby constantly.”

  I thanked Josephine and bade her farewell. After retrieving my satchel from the room where Nell sat, I walked slowly away from the modest house. The sun had warmed enough that a great deal of the remaining snow on the ground was now transformed into rivulets of water running along the edge of the road. The late afternoon light burnished the budding trees with tints of gold. My feelings weren’t so lovely. Nell Gilbert was most certainly ill with melancholia.

  I thought it might be time to pay Orpha a visit. She always provided me with good counsel and I hadn’t seen her in some weeks. She’d lived eighty-two years already, and I couldn’t trust she would always be there to visit, at least in the flesh. Orpha now lived with her granddaughter, a dressmaker, and her husband and children over on Orchard Street, only a few blocks distant, so I headed in that direction. Within minutes I sat in the parlor with a cup of hot tea in my hands and
a plate of shortbread cookies on the table between us.

  “I am right pleased to see you, Rose.” Orpha beamed from her rocking chair. She rocked back and forth with a slow rhythm, her feet on the needle-worked cushion that topped a small stool. A Bible sat on a round table to her right. Her kinky grizzled hair was tied back in a bun. She had once confessed to me, knowing of Friends’ views on equality, that a slave was part of her ancestry. It didn’t concern me, and her facial features didn’t reveal it. I knew some in town would have refused her services if they were aware she harbored even a drop of African blood, no matter that slavery had been abolished decades earlier or that many in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had welcomed escaped slaves.

  “I have missed thy company and thy counsel, Orpha.” I sipped my tea.

  “I miss working with you too, dear. And how is the work lately? No losses of mother or child, I hope?”

  “Not a one this year, for which I am grateful, although I had a difficult shoulder dystocia only last week.” I told of her calling for David’s help and then not needing it. When I mentioned David’s name I blushed, and of course she noticed.

  “You are sweet on this doctor. I thought you were looking well. Now I see why.”

  “I am quite fond of him.” I smiled. “But I do worry. He took me to meet his parents yesterday. I survived it, but his mother is a true society woman and I’m afraid she disapproves of his spending time with me.” I twisted my hands in my lap.

  “If you love him … do you?”

  I nodded slowly. This full, warm sensation whenever I thought of him, my respect for him, my genuinely liking him—it couldn’t be anything else.

  “And he you?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Then the two of you will find a way. You know that, Rose, in your heart.” She cleared her throat. “Now, about that birth. Would it be the illegitimate infant I heard word of?” Orpha’s glance was sharp despite her eyes’ watery appearance.

  “Indeed. Minnie O’Toole is the name of the unmarried mother. It’s not that part which bothers me, and she and the babe are both healthy.” I told my teacher of my suspicions about William Parry being the father. “And he’s also about to be a father again. His wife is seven months along.”

  Orpha nodded. She leaned forward and took a shortbread. “The Parry factory was the first to burn.” She took a bite and rocked some more. “What a curious confluence of events in our town. Sad, true, but curious.”

  I agreed. “Minnie’s brother Jotham seems sore aggrieved about the bastard baby, as he put it.”

  “I don’t know this man. Jotham is an unusual name.” She pursed her lips. “It’s biblical in origin. Jotham was a king of Judah who ruled long because he followed the Lord steadfastly.”

  “This one doesn’t look much like a king. He also said he’s likely to lose work,” I went on. “He delivers supplies to the industries that support the carriage factories. But something about the way he talked seemed passing strange to me. As if he wasn’t sincere.”

  Orpha laughed, loud and long. It always surprised me how this frail old woman maintained a hearty guffaw in her.

  “My dear Rose, do you expect only sincerity from the human race?” She wiped a tear from the edge of her eye. “Good heavens above, that will be the day.” She snorted and laughed a little longer.

  “No!” I protested, but I smiled with her. “Oh, never mind. I have another matter I wanted to discuss.” I described Nell’s melancholia and her inattention to her daughter. “She is truly in a bad way. I gave her an iron tonic, but I know she needs more than that.”

  “I have seen this more times than I wished. Have you tried Saint John’s wort?”

  “No. Of course, that has an antidepressive effect.” I should have thought of it myself.

  “Yes. I recommend combining it with chamomile, and then add in portions of peppermint, licorice, and star anise for soothing.”

  “I’ll bring her some at the next opportunity. Now, tell me how thee is getting along.” It had been over a year since Orpha had made the decision to cease attending births or even doing prenatal examinations. I had supported her in her choice. She had grown increasingly wobbly, with her thin legs and hips made stiff from osteoarthritis. The strain of staying up all night accompanying a laboring woman was too much to ask—yet I sorely missed her. She had been generous in making sure her current client list turned to me for their care instead of to another midwife in town, or even the doctor.

  “I am well. I have my books.” She motioned to a well-stocked bookcase behind her and the Bible on the table next to her chair. “And my great-grandchildren keep me young.”

  With that, two little girls ran into the room, the smaller cradling a doll and the older holding a piece of paper.

  “Great-granny, look!” The taller girl, aged about six, pushed the paper into Orpha’s lap. “I wrote a screepipshun for the new mommy. She needs a tonic. Don’t you agree?”

  The younger girl held her doll forward. “She just had a baby yesterday and she’s looking right poorly. Isn’t she?”

  Orpha took the doll and gave her a careful examination. She handed her back to the girl and told her big sister, “I agree a prescription for a tonic is exactly right for a new mama. Very nice work, dear. Both of you, say hello to Miss Rose, now.”

  Each of them curtsied, said their hellos as quickly as possible, and ran out, the doll now relegated to being dragged by one foot.

  “Training my replacements, I see?” I finished my tea and set the cup and saucer on the table.

  “Why not? Unless you’re planning to have your own daughter take over the business?” She cocked her head.

  “My … what? Thee knows full well I’m not yet even married.” With that, David’s gentle face popped unbidden into my mind.

  Orpha’s voice grew gentle. “And is it not about time you made that happen, Rose Carroll?” She gazed into my eyes. “You cannot let a painful experience in your distant past govern your future, you know. That would be giving it more power than it deserves.”

  fourteen

  When I arrived home, Faith was stirring a pot and Annie worked with dough, her apron front showing smudges of flour. I greeted them and sank into a chair at the table. I took in the warmth and the aromas. I was grateful for the respite from a day of no sleep, an overactive brain, the memory of a depressive Nell Gilbert, and Orpha’s reminding me of my past.

  “You have been busy,” I said. “It smells like heaven in here.”

  “Doesn’t it though?” Annie pushed her hair back from her face with her wrist, leaving a streak of white on her forehead.

  “Beef-potato soup,” Faith said with a smile. “With lard biscuits. Annie’s Grandmere’s recipe.”

  “And treacle cake.” Annie pointed to a rectangular pan full of the moist molasses cake cooling on the table, then pressed an inverted drinking glass onto the dough. She shook out the fat round patty she’d cut with the glass onto a nearly full pan, and popped the biscuits into the oven.

  “It’s good to see thee, Annie,” I said. “How is thee and thy heart?”

  Annie gathered up the remaining scraps of dough. She pressed them into a small loaf pan and added it to the oven before turning to me, wiping her hands on the apron.

  “I keep thinking I see Isaiah around town. I catch sight of a lanky man, walking with energy as he did, and I’m about to hail him by name.” She joined me at the table, her voice trembling. “Then the man turns and I see it isn’t my Isaiah. Of course. It never will be.”

  “No, it won’t.” I laid my hand on hers.

  She wiped her eyes. “But Faith and I, we’re planning our futures, isn’t that so, Faith?”

  Faith looked at us and nodded, her eyes bright.

  Annie went on. “We’re both going to get ourselves out of the mill. She’s going to be a writer. And I want to stu
dy with you, Rose. I want to be a midwife, too.”

  I laughed and clapped my hands. “These are fine plans. I approve. When do we start?”

  “We haven’t quite finished the plan,” Faith said. “We’re saving our money, though. I give half of my earnings to Father to help with the household. But the other half I take directly to the Powow National Bank and put it into my account.”

  “I do the same.” Annie nodded. “Because, if we become apprentices, we won’t be earning as much for a while.” She cocked her head at me. “I guess I should have asked first if I may become your apprentice.”

  “I’ll consider it, Annie.”

  “Oh, good!” Faith exclaimed. “See, Annie? I told thee she would say yes.”

  “In truth my practice becomes busier and busier,” I went on. “And thee has a lovely manner with people. That’s important. Thee might want to start studying a bit. I can lend thee a text to begin with.”

  Annie examined her hands. She twisted the apron between them.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She glanced up with eyes full of shadows. “I don’t know how to read, Rose. I can’t read your text, or any other. My parents took me out of school in St. Hyacinthe when I was seven to move here, and I was just learning to read French. When we arrived here I had to help in the house and then I began to work. I never completed my schooling.”

  “I’ll teach thee, my friend.” Faith gave her a quick fierce hug. “Thee must learn. We will start with Betsy’s McGuffey’s First Reader from last year. Thee’ll be reading Little Women soon enough.”

  “All right.” Annie mustered a smile. “I do wish to learn. But will I need to wear eyeglasses after I learn?” She gazed at mine, which were in their habitual position halfway down my nose.

  I laughed. “No, my nearsightedness has nothing to do with my love of reading, dear Annie. My father wears spectacles, too. Otherwise all I can see is a few feet beyond my outstretched arm, and I like to look far into the distance when I get the chance.”