Miss Emily (23 page)

“It doesn't bother me, miss.”

“That may very well be the case, Ada, but Mother might not have you prepare food if she knew of it.”

“I am vigilant, Miss Emily. And Mr. Austin is taking care of me. He says I must see a doctor in Boston, and so I am going there.”

“Very well. That is to the good.” She put her arm across my shoulder. “You know you can speak with me, Ada, of anything that troubles you.”

“Yes, miss,” I said, but I would not like to darken her heart with things she does not need to know.

Boston City Hospital is brand-new. It looks like the Four Courts in Dublin with its high green dome. Broad steps lead up to the
hospital's entrance; I stand at the bottom of them and consider not climbing them at all. Then I remember the wad of Mr. Austin's letter to the doctor in my bag and know that I must. Mrs. Dickinson thinks I am visiting cousins in Boston; Mr. Austin and Miss Emily thought it wiser to keep the truth of my trip from their parents.

The air in Boston is different to the air in Amherst. It has that wideness that city air holds—it must gather so much to itself: huge buildings, the river, all of its people and, beyond the bay, the whole of the Atlantic Ocean. I stand and breathe in the city, both afraid of and exalted by it. I wish that Daniel were here to see it; I had hoped for a few lines from him on his travels, but he has been gone two weeks now and there is no word yet. It may be that he is in the wilderness and does not get to any town.

I start up the steps and present myself at the hospital's counter. The clerk takes my letter and reads it. He looks at me, and his mouth creases into a sneer. I follow his directions down corridors and up staircases to the place I am to wait to see the doctor.

I sit for a long time. I feel I will go gray with the waiting. There is a peculiar smell like clean on top of dirty. There are two other women seated with eyes cast down to the floor. It is not a place for chatter. I look around, but there is nothing to see; I am sorry that I did not bring Mrs. Child's book with me for company. I think about what Mr. Austin said: the French disease. I always thought that things that came from France were good, like the Alençon lace that trimmed Mammy's wedding veil. Or Bernadette Soubirous, the French girl who had visions of Our Lady when she was gathering firewood. Even the priests' vestments at home in Dublin came from France, and they had “the approbation of the archbishop of Paris” according to our parish priest. But to
have a disease from France—
the
disease—is no good thing. And what of the other thing he mentioned—the clap? What can that mean?

I push the thoughts away and try to clear my head. But while I am stuck and idle, my mind wanders of its own accord. There is only one place it ends up these days—it is the same when I am on the edge of sleep—and I fight to pull myself away. But my thoughts have their own will, it seems, and I am back in my bed, with Crohan grunting over me, pushing himself inside me and muttering obscenities. When I try to shove him off, he slaps me hard in the face and bites my lip with his teeth. I shut my eyes and ears to him as best I can and drag myself away from the pain and the high, horrible stink of him. But when he spills himself into me with a strangulated cry, my eyes fly open, and I see his eyes swivel in their sockets and a wayward, stunned look come upon his face.

I slap my hands to my ears and shake my head, as if this might remove the pictures from my brain once and for all.

“Miss Ada
Con
-cannon!” The voice stumbles over my surname. “Miss Ada Concann-
on.
For Diseases of Women!”

I stand and hold up one hand. “Yes, I am here.”

“This way,” the nurse says, and I follow her into a cool, white room. “Undress to your petticoat, behind that screen.”

My cheeks roar with heat as I unpeel my clothes, then come to stand before the doctor. The room is huge, bright and cold, and I feel small and lost. The doctor reads Mr. Austin's letter and bids me to lie on the examining table. I shiver at the touch of his hands. He opens my legs and holds me open with his fingers; he pokes at me with a steel implement. It doesn't hurt much, but I feel bad to think of his eyes on me down there.

“Venereal. From the Latin
venereus,
which concerns sexual
desire. ‘One night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury.' Are you familiar with this phrase, Miss Concannon?”

“No, sir,” I whisper.

He pushes my legs together, and I keep my knees tight. “You have contracted gonorrhea, Miss Concannon. A common disease of the immoral. You probably know it only as ‘the clap.' I will prescribe calomel—a mercury salve—and you will take Daly's Sarsaparilla and Nerve Tonic. The great Mr. Daly assures us that his tonic permanently cures the disease you carry. I am not as confident as he, but you will take it anyway. It will help.”

“Thank you, sir.” I sit up, and the doctor studies me.

“Quicksilver and sarsaparilla. Have you not got the most tuneful of remedies, Miss Concannon?” He points to the screen, and I get up to dress.

I have no Bible. Only the one book sits by my bed, Mrs. Dickinson's
Frugal Housewife.
It is to that book that I turn each night to ward off bad thoughts, as much as to lower myself toward sleep. I am weary after the din of Boston, and Mrs. Child's words settle me. I read her remedies and advice and recipes until my eyelids feel like purses that are forcing themselves shut. She tells me that the buds of the elder bush, simmered with new butter, make a soothing and healing balm. She says that night sweats may be helped by fasting early and late and drinking cold sage tea. I read in her pages about earwax making a useful lip balm and that pearls are best cleaned with torn paper. It is not until the word “almond” leaps from the page that I realize I have been nodding off. That word—and its stink of Crohan—wakes me again and harrows up all my pain. I could cry with tiredness and frustration. Is he, and
what he did to me, ever going to leave me be? Will my mind be forever agitated?

I put aside the book and go to my chest of drawers. I unwrap the calomel and sarsaparilla and stand them on the chest. Mrs. Child says not to tamper with quack medicines, but surely if the city doctor recommended these things, they cannot be the work of quacks? I take the tonic first, a long swig from the bottle. Then I stand with my back wedged to my door and paint on the balm. It is thick and silvery, and it stings my flesh, but my hope is that that means it is healing me.

I am getting better. I will get better. I will
be
better. When I put on my apron each morning, I feel a little whole again. I am getting better. I will get better. I will
be
better.

There is no confessional in Amherst, for there is no Catholic church. I go to my cousin Annie's house at Kelley Square to talk with Uncle Michael. He lives with her now, sharing a room with Annie's boys. He got fed up rattling around his place, all alone, like a specter. He let his house, and now strangers occupy its rooms and sleep in its beds and eat off its tables. I cannot bear to think of them there, shedding their dirt into corners and making scruffy what Auntie Mary always kept so beautiful.

“That's an awful grand coat, Ada,” Cousin Annie says, knowing full well it was her father who bought it for me but preferring a sly compliment to saying what she wants to say. Which is that—in her opinion—he wasted his money on a fine coat for me.

“Thank you, Annie.”

She puts her hands out for my gloves.

“I'll keep them on, if it's all the same to you. I have a bit of a chill.”

“Please yourself,” Annie says. “You will anyway.” She always treats me like an elbow relation, rather than her mother's niece and her own cousin.

Annie leaves me standing in the hall while she goes off, shouting to her father to come down to his guest. She says “guest” as if I am a stranger to her and all of them; it stings me every time. I look at the pictures hung in the hall—cheap landscapes bought at Cutler's. Nothing like the beautiful oils of winter scenes and the watercolors of the sea that the Dickinsons have in their hallway. I look out the side windows at the rain but only see myself in the glass, staring back. Miss Emily could stand at a window for a week, gazing, quiet as a cadaver. I hear footsteps and turn to see Uncle Michael come down the stairs, looking like a cabin of bones holding up scraps of flesh. I am shocked by how bad he appears; it is only a few weeks since I saw him last. I wonder if Annie is feeding him at all.

“Ada, you've come to see me.” He holds out his arms, and I go to him; he feels brittle and small, an imitation of the man he was.

“I have, Uncle Michael. But I am looking for something off you, you won't be surprised to hear.”

He doesn't invite me in, and we sit on the stairs together, a sorry huddle to look at, I am sure.

“What is it,
a leana
? If I can help at all, I will.”

“I need to make my confession, Uncle.” I wind my gloved hands together in my lap.

“You are in luck. Father Sullivan is coming from Holyoke to Mr. Slater's home this next Sunday.”

“I know that, Uncle, but the thing is, I don't want Father Sullivan as my confessor.”

“I see. Well, maybe we could get you over to Chicopee to see a priest in the church there. They have a plan to build a basilica, you know, eventually.” Telling me this animates him; he was always a man for churches and grand buildings. “I will take you myself.”

“Thank you, Uncle Michael.” I hold his hand in my own, and it is rivered with purple veins like the hand of an old, old man. “Are you strong enough, do you think?”

“There's not a bother on me, Ada. Sitting in a carriage won't knock any wind from me, will it? It's a day out for us. We'll take a lunch in Chicopee. How's that for fancy?”

Uncle Michael chuckles to himself, and I am glad that it is to him I turned. I could have waited for Daniel to get back from his travels and gone to him, but I would have had to explain why I didn't want Father Sullivan to hear my confession. I would have to admit to not liking the man—another sin to add to my list of sins—and to why I could not tell that priest about what I had done. No, I cannot let Daniel know I want a blank-faced confessor, a stranger to me and to Amherst. I cannot tell Daniel a thing.