After Alice Fell(76)

“But not a fountain,” she continues. “Everyone’s finances are so pinched now . . .” Her voice trails away.

“Are you sure Mrs. Abbott can’t join us?” Essa Runyon asks. “Or mayhap I could have a short sit with her?”

“You know how dreadful catarrh is,” Cathy says. “I wouldn’t want it to pass to you or yours.”

Shoving the sheets off, I clamber to kneel at the keyhole. The hall is empty. I raise my hand to hammer the door, to call out to Essa, to any of the women.

“Just catarrh?” an older woman asks. Mrs. Flowers, who passed us by in church. “What a terrible, terrible thing. And in summer.”

The tone of her voice stops my hand. I can see them all as if I were seated just behind them. The quick glances from one to the other and then averting their eyes from Cathy. Stirring milk to tea. Taking a tong to the sugar bowl and so careful to find the smallest lump. Scraping butter to a biscuit. The silence in the room. The curiosity in the pointed indifference to whatever Cathy might choose to say.

“Lionel has sent for a specialist. From Concord.”

The gasp is on cue.

“Consumption?” one woman conjectures.

“One hopes only that.” Cathy’s answer leaves what is unspoken clear. “First Alice, now—”

I kick the door.

A chair rakes the floor. “Pardon me.” Cathy’s voice is louder. She moves into the hall, her hands to the dining room door, her eyes to the ceiling as if she were asking sympathy from God for all she must bear.

“Psst.”

She hesitates, then cuts a quick look toward me.

I drop to the floor. Stick my hand under and crook my finger for her to come.

Her knuckles go white as she grips the knob tighter and tighter. “Pardon me a moment. Have another cake.” She gives a quick smile to the women, shuts the door, and comes toward me.

I tap the floor for her to bend down.

Her green silk skirts billow out as she lowers herself.

I snake the hem in my fingers and twist. “I will break every window in this room if you don’t open the door.”

“If you break every window, you’ll confirm what those biddies are thinking.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Let go of my skirt.”

Instead, I pull it, reeling it under the door. “I know what you’ve done.”

Her knee smacks the frame. “You’re just like her,” she hisses. “They know it. No matter what you do, whether you scream or break things, not one of them will listen.” She yanks her skirt and stumbles back. “Not one.”

Her shoes are sharp, heels harpooning the wood as she returns to the room, lifting her head high as she enters. “I will be happy to provide funds.”

The room constricts around me.

No one will listen.

In the evening, Saoirse slides the tray to me but doesn’t shut the door. She gives a furtive glance behind her, then reaches in to run her palm on the top of my head. “You must regain yourself.”

I wince. “Why do you help them?”

“Child.” Her eyes are weary. She lowers her lids and rattles in a breath. “Leave the milk.”

Then she is gone.

I pull the tray toward me, until the corners meet my crossed legs. A single matchstick. Peas. Bacon. A roll. Green apple slices. The milk, with a whirl of cream floating on top.

I bite a slice of apple. It is tart. Not yet ripe.

The peas are salted and steamed, as I like them, as Saoirse knows I do, so there is that. She does think of me though she is complicit in all of this.

The bacon is thick and crunchy. Three slices.

The milk is poisoned with the opiate Cathy spooned in my mouth when I first returned after the accident to the house. How attentive she’d been then. Each spoon an alleviation of pain and an onset of dreams twisted and chaotic. She’s put it in the water here. To keep me quiet. To keep me pliant.

My mouth dries with all the salt to the meal. I swallow, pressing my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I stare at the milk. Imagine the cool of it down my throat and the way it will cause me to drowse. Imagine then the hellish visions that follow. As they have done every night until I have come unraveled.

I kneel and then stand, and push the tray with my foot to the wall.

I light the nub of candle and pace the room. Count the steps—ten from the mantel and rocker to the bedside table, three at an angle to the wardrobe, five across to the writing desk.

Lionel has sent for a specialist. No doubt Dr. Mayhew has rid himself of the Snow family, so he seeks help further afield. I am certain it is not a doctor with knowledge or interest in catarrh. More likely it is one with an unnatural interest in female unease. In all the various complexities of hysteria and the maladies of our wombs. Why wouldn’t he do so? I have behaved just as Alice, flailing around, deranged, and filled with a self-righteous sense of being unheard. He would see nothing else. All those times he looked at me, the same look we gave each other growing up. Pleading in church to God that it be only her accursed. Only her.

Or so he will say to the specialist.

A paper crumples under my foot. I turn a circle, picking my way around the overflow of the chamber pot, the food I’ve left to stale and rot, the sheets spilling from the bed, the metal springs and bits of the clock I worked free in an effort to find anything that would open the door. There is the hole in the wall and the pasted paper so easily spotted. A room for a madwoman.