My Name Is Mary Sutter (9 page)

“I wanted to be a surgeon,” Mary said.

“No woman is a surgeon. Besides, how can you think about a thing like that when we are losing a brother and I am losing Thomas? You are too cool, Mary.”

Too cool
. Cool about everything but achieving her goal? Perhaps everyone viewed her that way, even Thomas.
No woman is a surgeon.
Mary smoothed her skirts and tucked the stray curls of her hair back into a comb, tired now, the full weight of the day’s disappointment bringing tears to her eyes. She felt like a failure. Wanting to become a surgeon when she couldn’t even take proper care of Bonnie. Believing she could sow intimacy again with her sister, when they were unalike as twin sisters could be. From the lying-in room came the mewling sounds of the baby, needing to be fed.

Rising, Mary said, “You could help sometimes, you know.”

“I don’t want anything to do with babies,” Jenny said.

“You might someday,” Mary said, though she hated acknowledging the prospect, for it seemed a prediction.

In the glimmer of light from the sconce, Jenny smiled shyly. “When I do, then you will be here to help me, won’t you?”

But Mary didn’t answer her, only turned her back and headed for the lying-in room door.

Chapter Four

James Blevens sat at his desk in his surgery pondering what to write so that Colonel Townsend, the newly appointed commander of the 25th Regiment from Albany, would choose him over the other physicians applying for the position of regimental surgeon. Time was short. The North was rallying, troops were assembling. That very morning, Wednesday, April the seventeenth, the Sixth Massachusetts, the first regiment to venture southward in defense of the Union, had set out from Boston for Washington City.

James Blevens dipped his pen in the inkwell and began to write.

Dear Colonel Townsend, I am offering my services as Regimental Surgeon for the 25th Regiment. My credentials are impeccable. I studied medicine for one year at Bellevue Hospital in New York, repeating the requisite six-month course of lectures to enhance my understanding. I then moved to Albany, where my surgery is located on Washington Avenue. I am well acquainted with serious fractures and their repair. The most recent fracture I set was on a boy who’d been run over by a wagon.

Mention of this accident reminded James of Thomas Fall’s parents. He had inquired around, learned the details. Had the policeman called him instead of that drunkard Fin McDonnall more than a year ago, he was certain he could have saved them, setting their broken limbs on the street before they were even moved, unlike McDonnall, who’d let them be picked up and hoisted into the wagon bed, where they had both died. In his care, Thomas’s parents might have lived, and he would have visited them often, and perhaps encountered Mary, who would no doubt have been sitting at their bedside, stalwart and useful. Mary would have been curious about the fractures; he would have answered her questions: “You see here is the break of the femur. It’s important to splint it strongly so that it can’t move. In this case, I used a plaster with a splint and assigned them both to bedrest. Rest is very important. How long have you been interested in medicine?” Cast as the hero, the indulgent pedagogue, he might have held a different position in Mary Sutter’s eyes. It had been five days since he had eaten dinner with the Sutters, and he had not been able to stop thinking about her. With difficulty, he pushed her from his mind and again dipped his pen.

The injured boy walks now without a limp. In addition, I am conversant in all manner of violent injuries sustained in factory accidents. Albany being a great manufacturing hub, I have attended victims of the ironworks, tanneries, lumber district, and railroads, learning skills that I believe will be appropriate to the situation thrust upon us all. Please return your decision at your earliest convenience. I am yours most sincerely, etc., James Blevens, Surgeon.

“’Scuse me?” A young man was standing at the threshold of James’s surgery. Dark brows over large eyes gave the impression of thoughtfulness, though his pants hems were ringed with dirt and manure, and his skin was sallow. James could not remember having left the door open after dismissing his last patient an hour before. With some degree of certainty he recalled at least latching it. He had not heard the rasp of the catch, nor a knock, and he wished now that he had shuttered his window so that the candle burning on his desk would not have alerted passersby to his presence.

“Are you sick?” James asked, squinting at the doorway.

“I’m Jake Miles. Bonnie’s husband.”

James could have passed him on the street and not recognized him.

“I’ve come to claim my wife,” Jake said. He waved the note from the door that James had posted nearly a week ago and said, “Can you show me where Dove Street is?”

In the foyer of the Sutters’ home, James removed his hat and introduced Jake to Mary Sutter.

“This is Bonnie’s husband, Jake Miles, who is eager to see his wife and baby.” He was perhaps assigning more emotion to Jake than Jake himself felt. On the ride over, Jake had been taciturn, maneuvering his cart over the cobbles with the deliberation of a farmer unused to carriage traffic. He had not mentioned the child, or seemed all that eager to see Bonnie, either, but it was possible the boy was just uncertain.

“How do you do?” Mary said.

Jake ducked his head in greeting, his hat clutched tightly to his waist. He gestured toward the parlor doors, where a maid had laid tea. There was an iced cake and yellow daffodils in a crystal vase. “I can’t pay you for taking care of Bonnie.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. Payment is unnecessary,” Mary said. “I am very happy to tell you that Bonnie is well, but she must stay with us a bit longer. She’s not strong enough to travel. And certainly not at this hour of the night.”

“But we’ve got to get home,” Jake said. “The ferry doesn’t run past eight.”

“Your wife has had a difficult time. And the baby shouldn’t be out in the evening. Perhaps you could wait until the morning?”

“But in the morning the animals will need me,” Jake said, his voice polite but adamant. “We need to get on.”

Mary emitted an almost imperceptible sigh of frustration, but she called a maid to show Jake up the stairs, his shoes leaving pebbles of hardened dirt on the floor. When he disappeared into the lying-in room, she turned on James and said, “Where has he been?”

James shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“You should have dissuaded him.”

“He is her husband.”

“He is a seventeen-year-old boy who knows nothing.”

They stood in the foyer, opposed. The maid padded down the stairs, her gaze skittering between them before she ducked into the kitchen and told the cook that she had better come listen at the door because Miss Sutter was at it again.

All the way over, James had planned what he would say to Mary in order to put the evening of Bonnie’s delivery behind them. He owed Mary a great deal and wanted to mend the rift, which had seemed impossible only an hour ago. But Jake had given him a legitimate entrée, which he had been eager to take. True, help had been given both ways that evening. Mary had helped with Bonnie’s delivery; he had stopped Bonnie’s hemorrhage. In his mind, the debt was already paid. But this wasn’t completely about a debt. He wanted to help her, as Stipp had once helped him. He gestured with his hat and said, “I was glad that Jake came by, Miss Sutter, because it gave me an opportunity to return. You and I didn’t part on the best of circumstances.”

“No, we did not.”

“I have an offer for you. Why don’t you let me speak to Dr. Marsh on your behalf? I know him; perhaps if I recommend you, he might be inclined to rethink his decision.” He was going out on a limb, because he doubted very much that Marsh would take to it, but it was the help he had to offer. And she
was
skilled. That he himself might not be chosen as Townsend’s surgeon he did not mention. He was going to go to the war no matter what occurred, in any fashion that he could.

Mary regarded him for a moment. “You want to speak for me?”

“Yes, with your permission.”

“The last thing the clerk said to me was that no woman would ever attend Albany Medical College.”

“A clerk is nothing. I’ll talk to Marsh. You could just as easily have asked me to intercede on your behalf as ask me to apprentice you.”

“But Dr. Marsh didn’t even return my letters. Three medical schools have turned me down. Why would he change his mind for you?”

Blevens considered carefully what to say next. He wanted to fully discharge the perceived debt and thereby gain Mary’s trust; here was a way, but not a certain way. He feared her disappointment should he fail, and it was very likely he would fail. “To be truthful, Marsh may not change his mind.”

“Then I do not want intercession from you. It is ungenerous of you to dangle hope when none exists.”

How was it that she stirred both exasperation and sympathy at the same time? In her presence, it was like being at war, arousing simultaneous urges both to fight and to run away.

“Are you always this stubborn?” he asked.

There was a bout of laughter from behind the kitchen door, followed by a stern warning of reprimand as the door flew open and the maids scattered. Jenny and Thomas emerged from the kitchen after them.

“Those maids think they know so much,” Jenny said. “Eavesdropping at the door again.”

“At least they strive to know something,” Mary said, straightening.

A look flew between the girls, and then just as quickly dissipated. Venomous or sweet, it was difficult to tell which, because Thomas Fall intervened again with news, smoothing the air. They had just been downtown. A phalanx of volunteer militia had arrived on the New York Central Express from Buffalo; the city was filling with soldiers and there wasn’t a room to be had in any hotel. Not even the elegant, expensive Delevan, where they had all greeted Abraham Lincoln at a special levee held there on his way to Washington in February, had any vacancy. And now Lincoln had called for men, and everyone around the state was reporting to Albany to muster in. A crowd had gathered this afternoon at the Capitol, and a band was still playing in the park near the medical school, and the whole of the city was seething with excitement.

“You should have seen it, Mary, it was glorious. I think even you would have declared it a spectacle worth seeing. You might have even learned about something other than midwifery,” Jenny said, and then she and Thomas disappeared together through the French doors into the parlor, apparitions of happiness stirred into deeper intimacy by the threat of Thomas’s imminent departure. Mary held herself very straight; her gaze did not follow her sister and her companion. James Blevens suffered a surprise stab of jealousy, certain that he was right about Mary’s regard for Thomas, but he could not understand the attraction. Whatever affection Mary suffered for Thomas Fall seemed misplaced. She was not the same confident woman when Thomas Fall was near. Or perhaps it was the sister she minded, though they were each so different as not to be in competition at all. Blevens wished very much that he could say, “I have it fixed for you. Dr. Marsh said yes, and you will be admitted tomorrow,” convinced that by saying this he could erase the sadness from her eyes. Through the open door, the lovers could be observed seated upon the divan, familiar but formal. James thought that there was something not quite right. Years of reading people’s bodies had instilled in him an instinct for the hidden.

He said, “I do beg your pardon, but they seem not quite suited for one another.”

Mary said, “Well, they are in love.”

Not even a hint of wistfulness.

“You want something you think you cannot have,” James Blevens said.

Mary looked at him then, startled, and a flare of anger flickered in her eyes before they cooled. “You have brought your charge, and now you must go.”

On the steps outside, James turned to apologize, but Mary had already shut the door.

“Come on, now, Bonnie. Get up. The ferry’s leaving soon.”

Upstairs, Bonnie pushed herself up in bed. She had almost forgotten that Jake would come for her. Her previous life had seemed to disappear, erased by meals in bed and gentle inquiries regarding her well-being. Before Jake had awakened her, she’d been dreaming of feathers, a consequence of five days’ rest in a comfortable bed. “But Jake, I haven’t even been out of bed yet. I don’t know if I can walk.”

“Sure you can. Just get up. I only left you because I had to take care of the animals. You’d ’ave delivered at home if things hadn’t come on so fast. You can’t stay here. We got to get on.” The clock struck seven. They had an hour before the ferry to East Albany was to leave. “Get yourself dressed.”

“But you haven’t even looked at the baby,” Bonnie said.

Jake Miles edged toward the bed and peered at the squashed-up face and pimply cheeks of the boy. “What’s the matter with him?”

“Nothing. He’s just new is all. You’re not used to him.” Neither was she. She held the infant shakily in her arms. She was afraid to go home. She didn’t know enough. Not yet. It was terrifying having a baby. They sucked hard at your breasts and cried for no reason she could understand.

Jake edged closer.

“Don’t you like him?” Bonnie asked.

“Sure. Sure I like him.” Jake sidled up to the bed and sat down. “What’s his name?”

“I didn’t name him yet. I was waiting for you,”

Jake broke into a sheepish grin. “You were?”

“Wouldn’t name him without you. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about Jake?”

“You think?”

“He looks like you.”

“He does, doesn’t he?”

By the time Mary had shut the door on James Blevens, Jake had nudged Bonnie into getting dressed, which Mary reluctantly helped her finish doing when she arrived upstairs. Jake held the boy in his arms, a stunned, marveling expression on his face. His hushed awe had the effect of making Mary a little less worried about the two of them leaving, but all the same, she said, “If you’re going to take him home tonight, you’d better learn a thing or two.” And she made him diaper the child and swaddle him tightly against the night cold. Then she packaged six doses of ergot powder into an empty jar and pressed it into Bonnie’s hands. “This will keep you from bleeding. You must take a teaspoon—twenty drachms—each night until it is all gone. Do you understand?” Bonnie nodded and lifted the smooth round stop from the bottle. A token of loveliness to take home with her. She took a last look at the vacated bed, the flowered wallpaper, the panoply of hot-water bottles, the feather pillows.