The Virgin Cure (41 page)

“I did nothing wrong,” I heard Mae say.

“You’ve ruined a whole night’s business for me,” Miss Everett replied. “Every appointment was put off or interrupted by your folly.”

“I’m not to blame,” Mae protested.

“I’ve heard otherwise,” Miss Everett said. “Turn out your pockets and your reticule.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do it.”

Through the crack where I’d pressed my ear I heard coins hitting the floor, so many of them I lost count.

“What have you done?” Miss Everett threatened. “Where did a girl like you get so much money, and all in one night!”

There was a shuffling about, and then the sound of a hard slap. “That’s mine!” Mae wailed. “You can’t have it.”

“You’ve cost me enough.”

“I’m not to blame.”

“Aren’t you now? I wager you knew exactly what you were doing, and had been planning it for some time.”

Mae’s voice was strong now, her words indignant. “I brought you two girls, just as you asked, and I’ve never gotten what I was promised.”

“You would’ve gotten your reward after tonight.”

“Before you sent me away?”

Miss Everett did not respond.

“I knew you were meaning to keep Alice,” Mae complained. “Missouri told me so herself.”

“Foolish girl.” Miss Everett’s voice did not soften. “I meant to keep you both.”

Footsteps came near, and I rushed away down the hall. When the parlour door flew open, I turned to see Miss Everett holding Mae by the arm, her face angry and tight.

“Cadet!” the madam called.

He appeared in an instant from his post outside the front door.

“Put this one out in the street,” Miss Everett said through her teeth.

Wailing, Mae begged Miss Everett to let her stay.

“I don’t wish to look on you again,” the madam said.

Mae spotted me and cried, “Ada, tell her I’ve done nothing wrong!”

I stared at her in disbelief. She’d ruined Alice for her own profit, and she might well have been planning to do the same to me. The girl I’d thought had rescued me from the street had only been out for her own gain. I watched with sadness and relief as Cadet finally took her out the door.

Miss Everett came to me the next day and said that Mr. Wentworth had sent word to say he’d enjoyed our evening at the theatre and wished to move things forward with me in the near future. “He’s had to leave town for a holiday retreat, but he’s assured me that he’ll be back to see you before the first of the year.” This time, Miss Everett explained, there would be no going to the theatre. The evening was to begin and end in Rose’s room.

“He’s offered a substantial reward for you, my dear,” she said with a smile.

“How much?” I asked, wanting desperately to know.

“I don’t discuss the exact sum with my girls,” she said, wagging a finger at me. “It makes for bad blood between you.”

I thought of the night Mrs. Wentworth came to Chrystie Street and the small purse she dropped on the table for Mama. The question of how many coins it contained had stayed with me all this time. No matter Miss Everett’s reasons for not sharing Mr. Wentworth’s offer with me, I wasn’t about to be left wondering.

“I won’t go with him unless you tell me,” I said, challenging her.

“Don’t be foolish, Ada. Knowing that he’s willing to pay what I think you’re worth should be enough.”

“Please, I want to know.”

She finally said, “It’s more than Rose fetched, and until now, her bounty was the highest prize I’d ever been offered for a girl’s first time. Don’t you dare mention this to anyone else.”

“I won’t.”

“You’ll never fetch this much again in one night, but if all goes well, he’ll favour you and there will be gifts and perhaps a future with him, and that will make it all worthwhile.”

Two weeks after Alice was attacked, a chancre appeared where Mr. Samuels had forced himself on her. It blossomed into a shiny button of a sore. Wearing rubber gloves, Dr. Sadie applied a calomel salve to help it go away.

“I’m afraid things will only get worse from here,” she confided to me. She’d been expecting a chancre might appear and was now certain a fever would soon follow. “She’ll break out in a terrible rash that covers her whole body, even the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet.” Dr. Sadie had been stubborn about Alice’s care from the start, coming nearly every day to bring her medicine, comfort and sympathy. “There’s not much more I can do.”

Christmas came soon after that, and Miss Everett, in an attempt to return a sense of rightness to the house, made certain that the day was not forgotten. She postponed all regular business and turned the front parlour into a banquet hall, everything sparkling from top to bottom. Even the fruit on the table—the apples, pears, grapes and persimmons—glittered with sugar and candlelight.

Rose made a surprise visit from the Fifth Avenue Hotel, dressed in sable and diamonds, and both Missouri and Emily fawned over her, begging for the details of her new life. At dinner, Cadet, being the only gentleman in the house, sat at the head of the table, carving knife in hand.

Alice took it in with wide-eyed wonder, her eyes welling up with tears.

The day after Christmas, Miss Everett and Dr. Sadie went round and round about what should be done with Alice. Dr. Sadie had wanted to take her to the infirmary on Second Avenue, but there were no beds there for those with such diseases. The madam complained that she’d already let Alice stay at the house longer than she felt she should. She was worried that if anyone were to get word of the girl’s condition, her business would be ruined. In the end, Dr. Sadie dressed Alice in cloak and veil and took her from the house in the middle of the night, escorting her on the long trip to Charity Hospital on Blackwell’s Island. Cadet went along to say his goodbyes.

I was not allowed to go with them, so I bid Alice farewell at the door.

“Take care,” I said, my own eyes wet.

“Be well for both of us,” she replied.

Dr. Sadie accompanied me the following day on a walk to the pharmacy on Thirteenth Street.

“She’ll live, won’t she?” I asked her.

“Yes, most likely.”

“Will she ever be well?”

“No, not completely. You remember Miss Tully, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered, wanting her to leave it at that.

In an attempt to cheer me, she took my arm and told me that Mr. Hetherington had a new perfume oil I might like to try.

“And have you seen his fish?” she asked. “If you haven’t, you really should.”

Mr. Hetherington and Dr. Sadie lingered, chatting at the counter of the shop for at least an hour. He explained the qualities of this oil or that powder, while Dr. Sadie perched on a stool, listening raptly. I stood quietly looking at a fish as the two of them moved on to talk about how much each of them liked to think about thinking. Mr. Hetherington said he did his best thinking after. “After the bolt’s been thrown in the door … after I’ve turned the sign in the window so the world’s closed and I’m open.”

Dr. Sadie said she was much the same, and that every evening she’d ponder such things as recipes, measurements and infusions, honesty, and good scientific practices. “I believe every thought, like the leaves of a plant, holds the essence of truth somewhere inside it.”

Mr. Hetherington beamed at her. “Of course, sometimes I think about things too much and that leads to terrible trouble in my brain. I’ve had to stop going to the Sunday afternoon magic shows at Mr. Dink’s Palace of Illusions because every time I go there, I come away feeling crazy over some trick I’ve seen. I stay up for days at a time, struggling to figure out how it’s done.”

Pulling a jar from under the counter, he presented it to Dr. Sadie. “But lately I’ve been thinking about your carbolic problem and how you said it leaves your hands so dry …”

Dr. Sadie looked at her red fingers and blushed.

“You should give this a try,” he said, opening the jar and holding it out to her. “It might help.”

I could smell the scent of the salve from where I was standing. It reminded me of the cakes from Mueller’s bakery that Miss Everett piled high on her tea cart in the afternoons.

“Thank you,” Dr. Sadie said, dipping her fingers into the jar and then rubbing some of the mixture over her hands. “I’m afraid being devoted to Dr. Lister’s antiseptic practices does take its toll.” She stopped for a moment to examine her skin and then nodded to Mr. Hetherington with approval. “This is wonderful. It’s making a difference already. What’s in it?”

“Almond oil,” he whispered as if to keep it a secret between them. “And calendula and beeswax as well. Working the ingredients together was something of a challenge, but I think it came out all right, don’t you?”

“Oh yes,” she said, admiring the jar before setting it down in the middle of the counter.

Mr. Hetherington pushed the jar back towards her. “It’s for you.”

“I couldn’t.” Dr. Sadie shook her head.

“I insist,” Mr. Hetherington replied. “You were my muse, after all.”

She closed her eyes, her face flushing. She looked just like Mama did when she was remembering how my father had stolen her away on the back of my grandfather’s horse.

As soon as we were out of the shop I asked, “Why can’t you be with him?”

“Who?” she replied.

“Mr. Hetherington. It’s plain to see he’s the man you love.”

She didn’t bother to deny it. Standing under the awning, looking to where a few stray snowflakes had appeared in the sky, she said, “Mr. Hetherington has a wife.”

“Oh.”

She explained that Mrs. Hetherington had been ill for some time with consumption. Dr. Sadie had tried everything she could to help her, but it was a difficult case and the woman was wasting away a little more every day. She and the apothecary had first started spending time together in an effort to find ways to help his wife, but as time passed and her condition worsened, Dr. Sadie had begun to feel drawn to cure the sadness of the husband. It was a constant struggle for her and for Mr. Hetherington as well.

“There’s nothing to be done … for either of us,” she said.

“Perhaps when Mrs. Hetherington is gone …”

“Shh, Moth. That’s enough.”

Waiting at the corner till it was safe to cross the street, Dr. Sadie traced the edge of a low tree-stump with the toe of her boot. “I asked the old pear tree a question once, when it was still standing here,” she said.

“The pear tree?” I asked, my heart racing.

“My father brought me here to see it when I was young,” she said. “Mr. Huber was the apothecary then, and his kindness towards me was part of the reason why I chose to become a doctor. On the first Sunday in June, people came from all over the city, old Dutchmen like my father, mostly, to tie their wishes to the tree’s branches. It was such a shame when the tree came down.”

When the leaves of a pear tree emerge in the spring, they bear much the same colouration as the fruit. Yellow-green, with a blush of pink around the edges, they serve as messengers of the sweet reward warm days and gentle rains are sure to bring.

All the times I’d pictured the tree, it was thriving, older and wiser than ever, still giving magic to anyone who dared to ask for it. I’d hoped one day to stand in the spot my father had stood in with Mama and ask it a few questions of my own.

“Did you get an answer?” I asked.

“I did,” she replied, and then said nothing more.

Crouching close to the stump, I hoped the tree’s voice might come up from the ground. People were passing by on all sides, busy with getting where they needed to go.

“I’m here,” I told it. “It’s me, Moth.” I wanted the dusty, worn-down stump to know me, to welcome me back, to tell me that my father was waiting for me somewhere.

“Come live with me, Moth,” Dr. Sadie said, now holding out her hand to help me up. “I’ll make room for you in my garret, and you won’t have to worry about a thing.”

If it had been her, instead of Mae, who’d saved me from Mr. Cowan, we might already be keeping house together, singing songs as we darned socks or telling stories in the dark at the end of the day. But I knew Miss Everett would make me honour my commitment to her, and I couldn’t ask Dr. Sadie to buy me out—how would she ever afford it? I had no choice but to follow through with Miss Everett’s plan.