The Marriage Bed (15 page)

"No, boy, I don't think you do."

He didn't suppose that Neil had taken the book, after all.

They ran into the house together, running between the raindrops and then shaking themselves like wet dogs in the middle of the parlor.

Josie laughed at their antics, as Spencer had expected she would. Louisa grimaced. That, too, was no surprise. She was a surly child, no two ways about it. But the smell that was coming from whatever it was she had on the stove was worth all the scowls she wanted to throw his way.

"Supper almost ready?" he asked.

"Aunt Liv said I should serve it at five-thirty," she said, checking the clock on the mantel.

"The woman's not even here and she's running my life," he said. "Well, I don't suppose anybody's gonna tell her if we break a rule or two while she's gone, do you?"

He let the fragrance from the stove lure him closer and then lifted the cover from the pot.

"I think it's done," he said, and reached above the sink for the dishes that still sat in the draining rack where Livvy had left them.

"It isn't five-thirty," Louisa snapped at him, and tried to get her arm between him and the pot in order to replace the lid. At least he supposed that was what she was trying to do. Instead, she gasped and leaped away from the stove clutching her arm.

"Oh, Jeez. Let me see it," he said, reaching for her arm, which she held tightly against her body.

"It's all right," she said, tears flooding those dark-brown eyes of hers that looked so much like Livvy's he could imagine that she was Liv's own daughter. "I'm sure it's not really burned."

"Neil, get some lard from the cabinet." He picked the girl up, surprised that she weighed so little for a child who threw her weight around so much, and plopped her on the counter. "Let me see it," he said again, this time making it clear she was not free to refuse.

She untied the ribbon that gathered her sleeve and pushed it up. Big tears fell first onto her skirt, then on her shoulder as she averted her head, each drop making a dark circle on the pale blue calico.

"It's all right," he crooned as softly as he could, all the while thinking that Livvy was going to kill him for letting this happen. If he didn't kill himself first. Letting a girl Louisa's age take care of supper . . . what was he thinking?

He sucked in his breath at the red mark on her forearm. It didn't look too bad and surely would never leave a scar, but it must have stung, nonetheless. "Hurt much?"

She shook her head and refused to meet his gaze.

"Looks all right," he said, spreading a bit of lard on the inflamed area and returning the small limb gently to her side. "No permanent damage."

He pulled her against his chest and rubbed her back gently, feeling her sobs as if they were within him. The fabric was soft and through it he could feel her tiny backbones, like some sort of delicate bird. She hadn't much more meat on her than her brother or sister. She just seemed to carry herself more proudly. He supposed that was because Marion had had more time with her.

"Pretty dress," he said, wondering if Livvy had made it. The sprigs of embroidered flowers made him think she had. The sobs stopped and she was quiet in his arms. He stepped back, one hand steadying her on the counter, and studied her face, trying to decide how badly she'd been hurt. She looked past him, biting furiously at her lip.

There was something, he couldn't say what, some feeling that made him want to take a step back from her. Some silent voice begging him not to touch her, yet she didn't pull away. Quickly he helped her down and then purposely ignored the silent plea and swatted her gently on the behind, steering her toward her room. "You go pull yourself together," he said. "I'll see to dinner."

She went silently into her bedroom, twice peeking over her shoulder at him and looking quickly away when her eyes met his.

He tried to lighten the mood at supper, but even Josie was subdued, and he longed for the chatter his wife always seemed to so easily provide.

"Wonder how your Aunt Liv is doing in Milwaukee," he said cheerily, only to produce even more sullen faces, if that were possible. He was sorry he'd brought up her name when Josie's lip began to quiver and her eyes filled with tears.

They agreed to make it an early night. Louisa took Josie off for bed while he and Neil saw to the dishes.

"You need to talk about anything else?" Neil asked Spencer as he dried the plates. "You know, boy talk?"

Spencer couldn't help smiling at the child. He had a hundred questions he wanted to ask, all of them about Julian Bouche and what he'd done to these children that made Neil so eager to please, Josie so wild to escape, and Louisa so afraid to be touched. "You ever seen a baseball game?" he asked instead.

"I saw a practice once, in Chicago," Neil answered, his face glowing.

"Maybe one day we'll go see a game," Spencer said, surprising both of them. Now whatever, he wondered, had made him say that?

By eight o'clock the house was quite. Neil was asleep on the couch, where he had been sleeping every night since Miss Lily's fart that rocked the world, and there was no noise coming from the girls' room.

Spencer got out of his clothes and stretched out on his bed with his pipe and a new story about that clever detective with the deerstalker hat, enjoying the luxury of having the whole bed to himself. After a few minutes he decided to see if Livvy's side was any softer.

It wasn't.

He rolled back to his own, now cold, side. He fluffed his pillow, folded it, and put it against the headboard. He took Livvy's pillow and tucked it closely to his side. He lay on his left side, but the lamplight wasn't bright enough to read so he turned to his right, where the light shone in his eyes.

Guilt. That's what it was. His impatience had gotten the better of him and a little girl's arm was burned as a result. Maybe it wouldn't scar her skin, but he had a feeling it would scar his conscience. As if that didn't have scars enough.

After rising from his bed, he paced his room for a minute or two wondering what Livvy would do if she were there, then picked up the lamp and soundlessly made his way to the girls' room to take another look at Louisa's arm.

The room was dark, the girls both asleep. He looked first at Josie, noting that her thumb was stuck in her mouth and that even as she slept she sucked on it. Then he turned to Louisa.

The covers were around her neck, and he peeled them back gently, hoping not to rouse her. He found her arm and unbuttoned the cuff of her nightdress with a dexterity he was surprised he possessed. Moving the lamp so that he could see her arm, he then raised the sleeve of the gown to reveal the shiny patch of skin that was still coated in lard.

He touched it gently to check its warmth, and Louisa stirred and pulled away from him.

"Oh," she said, her voice so quiet he could hardly hear her. "Please, Papa, no."

At least that was what he thought she said. But when he held the lamp up so that he could see her face, her eyes were closed and he wasn't sure she had even awakened.

He rolled down the sleeve of her nightgown and tucked her arm back under the quilt. "Louisa?" he whispered. She nestled deeper into the covers, her features taut, not those of someone who was truly lost in sleep.

He put a soothing hand on her brow and then stood, his knees cracking as he rose. "It's just me, Miss Louisa. Just Uncle Spence. Go back to sleep now," he said softly. Then silently, with another look at each of the girls, he left the room, shutting the door behind him.

It turned out to be a long, long night.

The night had been interminable for Livvy. She'd tossed and turned for hours on the small cot at the YWCA where Charlie had left her and Bess. She'd played
what if
in her head until she thought it would explode.
What if the doctor said she could never have children? What if she needed some sort of operation? What would she tell Spencer?

She'd made eight trips to the bathroom, each one commented upon by the two other women occupying their warm, windowless room. They'd whispered about her and speculated on what she was doing there, guessing one outlandish reason after another. That she was pregnant and seeking to get rid of the child was her favorite. She nearly laughed out loud.

But the night and all her imaginings weren't half as bad as the cold hard truth of sitting across from the gray-haired, steely-eyed Dr. Roberts, whose glasses sat perched at the end of a pinched nose as she studied the piece of paper that reduced Olivia's life to one unfulfilled wish.

"Only married three years?" the doctor asked her suspiciously. "What took you so long?"

Livvy shrugged when no ready answer came to mind.

"I only ask," the doctor continued, "because I wondered what you might have done before your marriage that may have resulted in this condition. No pregnancies before this marriage?"

Livvy shook her head. "Of course not. I've never had any children."

The doctor removed the glasses from her nose and rubbed her forehead. "Honey," she said rather dispassionately. "You wouldn't be the first woman to have made a mistake and tried to rectify it only to have to pay for it in the end. You'll save us a lot of time if that's the case and you just say so."

"Oh!" Livvy gasped when she realized what the doctor meant. "I never . . . oh! No . . . I . . . "

The doctor shook her head and waved away Livvy's words with her hand. "Okay. We can rule that out then. Your husband—he has erections regularly, maintains them, ejaculates appropriately?"

Livvy felt her cheeks burn. She bit at her lip and balled a fistful of her skirt within her gloved hand.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," the doctor said, leaning back on her chair and studying Livvy. "You guess so. Is that it?"

She gave a quick little nod at the doctor. "He had two children with his first wife. It's not him that's the problem."

The doctor came close to smiling. "Good. We're making progress now. Pain?"

"What?"

Dr. Roberts sighed. "Pain. Discomfort. During intercourse? When you menstruate? Backaches? Constipation? Tenderness in the abdomen?"

Livvy shook her head but the doctor was peeling an apple deftly with a thin silver knife, the apple's skin falling in a long curl into the wastebasket beside her desk. "No," Livvy said aloud.

"Sorry," Dr. Roberts apologized, gesturing with the apple. "No time for lunch. Your time comes regular? No heavy bleeding? No gushes with fibrous matter?" She cut a slice of the apple, pierced it with the scalpel, and held it out to Livvy.

"No," Livvy said, both to the fruit and the questions.

"You try any of the cures?" There was resignation in her voice, and Livvy didn't know if it was because that was all the hope she had to offer or because there wasn't any hope at all.

"Viavi," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. Even the memory of inserting those pills inside her most private place made her press her legs together more tightly. "The cream and the . . ."

"Yeah," the doctor said. "I know the rest. Anything else?"

"Lydia Pinkham's."

"And?"

"Imperial Granum."

Dr. Roberts groaned. "And?"

Livvy closed her eyes. If only the doctor would reach over and put a hand on her shoulder, If only she would nod once instead of shaking her head.

"The rest of it, Mrs. Williamson. Just how far did you go in your quest for an infant?"

"Wilson's Electric Belt."

The doctor tsked and threw the core to her apple in the garbage. "Well, you must be damn healthy to have survived all those cures. Anything else?"

Livvy shook her head, then raised her eyes to the doctor's. "No, that's not true. Prayer. I've made a hundred promises to the Blessed Virgin and I've followed every suggestion every woman has made no matter how strange it sounded. I've pushed empty carriages, and ones with other people's children in them. I've slapped myself when I've been with women who are expecting. I've put everything under my pillow from a teething ring to a piece of dead fish, and I've lied to my husband and pretended I was only accompanying my sister-in-law when I came here."

From behind her desk, the doctor rose, smaller and stouter than she had seemed. A smile cracked the stern face as she said, "I never heard the one about the fish," and laid a gentle hand on Livvy's shoulder. "You go in there and remove your skirts," she said, pointing to a door with the number "2" on it. "Wrap a sheet around you if you like. I'll be in shortly."

Livvy laughed nervously. The little woman couldn't come any other way.

Her humor died a quick death when she opened the examination room door. The sparsely furnished room was dominated by a wooden table that wasn't nearly as long as she was tall. At one end was a step, above which, on some kind of swivels, were two wooden planks that rose from the table and had notches cut out of them. Standing next to that end of the table was a lamp on a flexible neck that aimed the light right at the space between the two planks.

Against her throat her blood throbbed, nearly choking her.

"Doctor says to remove your corset and loosen your shirtwaist, ma'am," a female voice said through the door. "Will you be needing help?"

No sound came out when she tried to talk.
Baby
, she told herself.
You want a baby
.

"Ma'am?" There was a light knock, and then a young woman's face appeared, tipped slightly so that the small white hat on her head was in danger of falling off as she peered around the door. "Having trouble?"

Livvy could only shake her head. With her fingers trembling uncontrollably, she managed to unbutton two buttons. That seemed to satisfy the girl, who smiled and assured her that the doctor would be in soon, then bustled the rest of the way in and set down a tray with gleaming silver objects Livyy , had never seen before.

"Don't touch anything, please." The nurse—Livvy supposed that-she was one from the white outfit and hat—smiled in her direction and then left the room.

It took forever, or so it seemed to Livvy, alone and covered only by a sheet from the waist down, in the little airless room that reeked from carbolic acid. Footsteps came and went, and with each set her heart sped up until she thought she would choke.