Alias Mrs Jones

by Kate McLachlan

  At our entrance, all six looked at us, but they did not act surprised or stir themselves to greet us except for the man at the window. He approached us, and I thought there was something peculiar about him. He looked familiar to me. His face was flushed, and he had ginger curls about his scalp. Did Adelaide have a brother? I noticed a long braid down his back, and realized the truth. It was a woman! It was Adelaide!

  She stared at me as if Grace had brought an orangutan, and I suspected my expression must mirror hers.

  “Grace,” she hissed, not taking her eyes from me. “What is she doing here?”

  “I brought her along,” Grace said. “I knew you were too shy to bring it up.”

  “No.” Adelaide shook her head. “No, she’s not one of—oh good Lord.”

  I glanced beyond Adelaide at the others in the room. They watched us curiously, though still none of them moved, and I realized it was not what I’d thought. There were no men in the room. They were all women, but half were dressed like men.

  “Mabel, I’m so sorry,” Adelaide said. “Grace is wrong. She assumed something she shouldn’t have. She shouldn’t have brought you here.”

  “Oh dear,” Trissie said. “I wondered, but Grace seemed so certain.”

  Adelaide scowled. “Grace is always certain, but she is also quite often wrong.”

  Grace didn’t hear her, though, for she had slipped through a door beside the stairs and closed it behind her.

  “Is it a play?” I asked, for we had performed plays at Barnard, and girls always had to dress like men to play the male parts.

  “No.” Adelaide’s cheeks flushed a darker red. “It’s not a play. We just—well, yes, in a way it is. We gather here like this now and then. These clothes, they’re just for fun. We like to, well, it’s just that sometimes women would rather not be with men. Sometimes women want to be with other women.”

  “I know.” It was why I had wanted so badly to come to the salon, after all.

  “I mean, some women prefer to be with other women.”

  Trissie nodded. “It’s true.”

  “There’s no harm in it,” Adelaide said, “but people wouldn’t understand. It mustn’t get out that we dress like this sometimes.”

  The door beside us opened and Grace emerged, but she was nothing like the Grace I knew. She was dressed completely like a man, in oxford shoes, gray checked pants, vest, coat, and collar. She had unfastened her hair and tucked it down the back of her coat so that it appeared short. She carried a cigar in one hand and wrapped her other arm around Trissie’s waist.

  “Well, Mabel, what do you think of me? Quite the change, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed it is.”

  “I know Trissie likes it,” she said, and Trissie smiled.

  “You’re just going to have to change back, Grace,” Adelaide said with a scold in her voice. “You have to take Mabel home.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. The evening was strange, but it was interesting, and I certainly didn’t want to go home to sit all alone in my room. “Don’t make me leave. I won’t tell.”

  “‘Course she won’t tell,” Grace said. “Why would she? Did you get any of that good whiskey, like I asked, Adelaide?” She moved away without waiting for an answer, guiding Trissie to a sideboard where bottles and glasses were laid.

  Adelaide remained by my side, frowning at me as if trying to figure out what to do with me.

  “Truly,” I said. “I don’t care how you dress. Besides, I’ve already seen you. What good would sending me home do?”

  Adelaide didn’t answer. Instead, she put a hand to my forehead and used a finger to lift the curl I had arranged over my black stitches. She examined them with a physician’s eye, seeming more professional in trousers than she had in skirts. “Uncle does good work,” she said. “I doubt you’ll have a scar.”

  “He told you about it?”

  “Yes. He assured me he wasn’t trying to steal my patient.” She half smiled. “When I first moved here, I could hardly get any business at all. I was barely able to even pay my rent by handling the emergencies that came along when Uncle was too busy. Now it’s the other way around. I’m the one who’s busy, and he’s not taking on any new patients at all. Except for those who refuse to be seen by a woman. There are always some of those, of course. I’m sorry I wasn’t home when you were hurt. How’s your wrist?”

  I showed her my arm.

  “This cast is too loose,” she said. “Not Uncle’s fault. The swelling’s gone down and left too much room in there. It’s not good for healing. I can put some more plaster in it. Let’s go downstairs to the office, shall we? Wait here a minute.”

  I glanced at the divan, where the two women still lounged against each other, the fingers of one grazing the breast of the other. They watched us both. Their positions suggested something more than simple pleasure in dressing like men. I thought of going over to introduce myself.

  Adelaide must have thought of it too. “No, not here,” she said. “Come with me.” She led me into the room Grace had vanished into when we arrived.

  It was a dressing room of sorts, with an upholstered couch, two wooden chairs, and a large wardrobe strewn with skirts and blouses and women’s underclothes. The black skirt Grace had worn earlier lay partly on a chair and partly on the floor beside her shoes. A standing mirror, half again as tall as me, stood against one wall, and another long mirror hung kitty-corner to it.

  Adelaide snatched up a pile of clothing and stepped behind a painted silk dressing screen. It was not a tall screen. I could see her head and shoulders as she undressed.

  “The girls bring their men’s clothes with them and change when they get here,” she said. “Or some, like Grace, leave their clothes here all the time. She doesn’t wear them anywhere else.”

  “Do the other women wear their men’s clothes elsewhere?” I asked.

  “Some do. It’s safer for them, oddly enough, when they’re traveling about town at night. There are even some women, believe it or not, who choose to live their lives completely as men. None of the girls here, though.” She shrugged out of her jacket, loosened her necktie, and removed the collar. She unbuttoned the top button of her shirt, and I watched, curious to see if she wore men’s underwear beneath it, but she bent over then, perhaps to remove her trousers, and it was a few moments before she stood upright again. When she did, she had pulled on a lady’s shirtwaist and was buttoning it up.

  “Do you?” I asked.

  “Wear men’s clothes out and about? No, not often.” She came back around the screen and sat on one of the chairs to tie her ladies’ shoes. She was in a skirt, herself again, though her hair still hung in a braid down her back. “I wouldn’t get away with it. I’m too familiar. Besides, I don’t really need to. People are pretty much used to me riding all over town, day and night.” She rose. “Now let’s go down and take care of that cast.”

  We returned to the large room. While we had been gone, the seven women had gathered around the divan, and when we entered, they all turned to look at us. My cheeks burned. I wondered if they expected me to suddenly be wearing trousers.

  We took the narrow stairs to the second floor. Once there, Adelaide led me down the carpeted hall to another staircase at the front of the house, grander and wider than the back stairs. A fringed table lamp at the bottom of the stairs gave us light enough to descend safely to the front hall. French doors to the right opened into what, in another house, would have been a parlor. Here, it served as a doctor’s office. Adelaide turned on another light, and I saw the room was furnished with chairs, a desk, a bookshelf, a scale, a chest with dozens of tidy drawers, a glass-fronted cabinet filled with jars and bottles, and a long table. There was even an enameled sink against one wall, all plumbed.

  I sat on a chair and watched Adelaide make her preparations.

  I knew of Boston marriages, of course, those close friendships between women that pretended to be, and often were treated as, a real marriage. There were girls at colleg
e who had such friendships. They roomed together, seemed never to be apart, and were invited everywhere as a pair. I had pegged Grace and Trissie as having such an arrangement when I first met them. I had always assumed, though, that Boston marriages were arranged between women who could not attract the attentions of men. The thought had even crossed my mind a time or two that I might be such a woman, before I married Robert. I enjoyed the company of women immensely, and no man before him had ever noticed me. I wondered if any ever would. When he proposed, such thoughts left me, to my great relief. It meant I was not one of those women after all.

  Until now it had never occurred to me that some women might actually prefer a Boston marriage with a woman over marriage to a man. I had never thought of such marriages as amorous.

  I saw again in my mind the women lounging on the divan, the hand of one upon the breast of the other. I thought of the smile on Trissie’s normally pinched face as she leaned into Grace, and Grace’s relaxed swagger in her men’s clothes as she guided Trissie away. I thought of the look the woman at the window gave Adelaide when we left the room.

  I felt an almost physical shift in my understanding. Boston marriages were not the virginal friendships I had thought. Grace and Trissie were not simply roommates; the laughter I heard when they bathed together took on new meaning.

  And Adelaide, did she too have an amorous relationship with a woman? With the woman at the window perhaps?

  While I pondered, Adelaide was busy gathering her tools. She laid the bowl of plaster, a pitcher of water, a syringe as large as a turkey baster, and a drill on the table, and pulled two chairs over to it.

  “Come sit here and put your arm on the table. It’ll be easier to drill if it’s on a firm surface.”

  “You’re going to drill my arm?”

  “Not the arm, just the cast.” She lifted my arm, set it on the table, and put the tip of the drill to it. She turned the handle. “Don’t be afraid. I’ve done this dozens of times, and I went to the best medical school there is.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “A school in Maryland called Johns Hopkins. Uncle sent me. He wanted one of my brothers to go so he could pass on the trade in the family, but they weren’t interested, and that left only me. I was eager, and Johns Hopkins was willing to accept women, so off I went.”

  “How many brothers do you have?”

  “Just the two, Howard and Nels.” She stopped drilling and blew plaster dust away. She moved the drill and started on another hole, this one four inches from the first. “Howard married a rich woman and saw no need to waste his time studying. He never enjoyed school anyway. Nels took off for the Klondike ten years ago and didn’t come back. I guess he thought it easier to muck gold out of the ground than to marry it.”

  “Do you have other family?”

  “Just one niece and one nephew, as far as I know. My mother and father died when I was young. Uncle and Aunt took the three of us in, but Aunt died three years ago. It’s only Uncle and me now.” She blew at the plaster dust again. “What about you, Mabel? Tell me about your family.”

  I should have seen that coming. “Ah...” I tried to think of what I knew of Mabel’s family. “My father is a dutiful man, but not very affectionate,” I said, recalling Mr. Chumley’s gruff good-bye on the train. The description applied equally to my own father, I realized.

  “No other family?”

  I had no idea. Why hadn’t I ever prepared for this question? Then again, Adelaide would know nothing of Mabel’s family. I could invent an entire clan for her, and Adelaide would not know the difference. But my mind was blank. I hesitated too long, and she gave me a sharp look.

  “My family is nothing out of the ordinary,” I said quickly. “Not half as interesting as yours. Did your brother never send word from the gold fields?”

  “Come now Mabel,” she chided. “I told you about mine.”

  “Very well,” I said, “if you must know, my mother is rather foolish. I have four sisters, Jane, Elizabeth, Kitty, and Lydia. Jane and Elizabeth are happily married, Lydia less happily, and Kitty and I remain unmarried.”

  “And your real name is Mary, and you play piano, but not well.” She paused in her drilling to give me a knowing look. “I’ve read Jane Austen too.”

  My face burned. “Y-yes, m-mother was a great reader. She named us all after the Bentley sisters.”

  “I have a feeling there’s more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there, Mabel Chumley? I need to drill one more hole on the bottom here.” She moved my arm so that my elbow rested on the table, my hand pointed at the ceiling. “Can you hold it steady with your other hand, like this?” She showed me, and began drilling again. “I’m very good at keeping secrets, you know. You’d be surprised at the stories my patients tell me, and I never share them.”

  I bit my lip.

  “Besides,” she added, “you already know my great secret. You can be certain I would never tell yours, since I have to trust you not to tell mine.”

  It was a familiar bargain. I’d made the same deal with Helen Hennessey, and a similar one with Fannie. I was tempted to take Adelaide into my confidence, but I knew I could not. Just as with Helen and Fannie, I knew the consequences of my secret getting out far outweighed theirs.

  Adelaide sighed. “Very well, don’t tell me, Mabel or Mary or whoever you are, but don’t think you’re pulling the wool over my eyes. At least tell me this. Are you being as honest with me as you can be?”

  “I am, Adelaide, I truly am.”

  “I suppose that will have to do. There, drilling’s all done, and I didn’t pierce you once, did I?”

  “Not with the drill,” I said, and she laughed.

  She mixed the water and the plaster until it was runny enough to pour into the syringe. She squeezed the bulb and sucked the mixture into the syringe, put the tip of it to each of the three holes she had drilled, and slowly squirted. It was an odd sensation, feeling the drippy plaster ooze along my skin underneath the cast, a tickle and an itch all at once.

  Adelaide used her finger to smooth the plaster over the edges of the holes, and wiped her hands on a cloth. She grasped my cast in one hand and my elbow in the other. “I’m pressing the inside of the cast against your arm to make sure the plaster spreads evenly inside. Let me know if I hurt you.”

  She bent close to me. Her eyes were lowered and fixed on her task. Her complexion was light and clear except for a splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her lashes were light, scarcely noticeable from a distance, but close up I could see they were thick and cast a fringed shadow on her cheek.

  She glanced up, and her cinnamon eyes gave me a jolt. I flinched.

  “I hurt you!”

  “No, no,” I said. “You didn’t. I just...” I shook my head, unable to explain.

  “I’m sorry.” She rose. “I won’t torment you anymore. The plaster’s not going to spread any further.” She moved to the sink and ran water over her hands. “Same instructions as Uncle gave you, I’m sure. Keep it dry, and don’t go banging it about, and it should be all healed in a few weeks. Now, if you don’t mind waiting here, I’ll go upstairs and send Grace down to take you home.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “She won’t want to leave so soon, and I...I don’t mind staying.”

  She frowned. “Some of the girls are drinking spirits, you know.”

  “Yes, and they’re smoking too.” I widened my eyes like an innocent.

  She laughed. “Very well, Mabel Mary, but you’ve been warned.” She turned out the lights, and we returned upstairs.

  I drank no spirits that evening, but I felt an effervescence in my blood that made me giddy. The women accepted me, not quite as one of their own, but as a welcome guest. I had not seen women so lively since college. I’d assumed that it was our youth that made us act so free and wild back then, but now I realized that it might only have been that we were all women. With no men to speak over our voices, we were free to talk. Some women, like Adelaide and Grace, had
no trouble speaking their minds when men were about, but that evening I learned we were all women of strong opinions. Even Trissie. Even me.

  “I’m all for temperance laws,” Trissie said, waving about a glass of champagne. “For the men, that is. They’re the ones who beat their wives and starve their children, not us. Women should be allowed to drink all they like.”

  “And Trissie would be the one to know,” Grace said. “She was married to a drunkard once.”

  “No more.” Trissie giggled and tucked herself into Grace’s shoulder.

  “Corsets ought to be outlawed,” Adelaide declared a while later. “They weaken the spine and obstruct all the internal organs and constrict the lungs. A girl can’t even take a full breath with a corset on. Half the time when a lady faints, it’s only because her corset is too tight.”

  I was conscious of my corset. I’d only fainted a handful of times in my life, I took an experimental breath, which was not very deep. Adelaide saw what I did, and grinned.

  “Have you never noticed that when a girl faints, the first remedy aside from smelling salts is to loosen her corset? It’s so she can get air in her lungs.”

  “What do girls need air for?” Sarah asked, the woman with her hand on her friend’s bosom.

  “I’ve not worn a corset since I was twelve years old,” Adelaide said. “Uncle wouldn’t let me.”

  “You never wear a corset?” asked Caroline, the woman from the window. She had a waist cinched smaller than a gravy boat, and she could hardly keep her eyes off Adelaide.

  “Never,” Adelaide said. “And I tell all the girls on my basketball team not to wear them either.”

  “You have a basketball team?” I asked.

  “Adelaide coaches the high school girls,” Grace said. “You ought to help her out there, Mabel. You’d like it.”