by Sara Donati
To be clear, I never heard of him walloping anybody, not with hands nor switch nor anything else. But a voice raised in anger can do as much damage, and he had a voice like an ill wind, blowing death and doom and hellfire for every woman he came to in her time of need. When the midwife Savard came to the neighborhood we all breathed easier, and that’s the God’s truth.
No, I can’t tell you much about Dr. Cameron’s family except he had a wife called Addy and a daughter called Ruth. The daughter ran off and we all thought she must have married somebody her parents didn’t approve of. Years later a granddaughter came to stay, that would be Nora. Nobody saw much of the girl until Addy died, and Dr. Cameron took her on to train as a nurse. A quiet thing when she was young. Uncommon quiet. I saw her coming and going every day, going about her errands. She never looked anybody in the eye, never stopped to talk. Some say she wasn’t so much shy as full of herself, but truth be told, I think he forbade it.
She was his nurse until he gave up his practice just a year ago, so maybe twelve years. I heard say she was a good nurse, exact but not mean like her grandfather. And my weren’t we all surprised when she up and married the Smithsons’ oldest boy and went over to the apothecary. But her grandfather was frail and what was there for her to do once he gave up his practice? Go for a doctor herself? So she married.
She’s not so quiet as she once was. Right sharp with the clerks and with customers, too, when she’s feeling the need to preach. I’ve heard her once or twice, talking to a servant girl in a tone that would make the devil hisself cry pardon.
I’ll tell you the way I see it, families have got personalities just like people. The Donovans are healthy stock and stubborn, and prone to holding a grudge. The Sparrows see the humor in everything and like to laugh even when it’s bound to upset more serious-minded folks. The Joyces down the lane are always in trouble because the men can’t keep their trousers buttoned and the women are just as bad, loose-natured, if you get my meaning, and then jealous on top of that. There are families like the Bullocks what can’t help but draw tragedy out of thin air and wrap themselves up in it, and others so dim, it’s no surprise when they end up in the poorhouse. That’s a name I’ll keep to myself out of pity. And then there are families who wallow in discontent and meanness of spirit, and that would be the Camerons of Jefferson Market. And now I’ll have to confess for being mean. But it’s true, nonetheless.
Sophie read the whole statement through and then sat back with the file on her lap. “I take it they interviewed Nora Smithson about her grandfather.”
“Oh, yes,” Anna said. “Many times. It’s possible that she could solve the case, but she refuses to cooperate. A rare failure for Oscar. I’m sure she haunts his dreams.”
Sophie considered. “But what could possibly happen if I went into Smithson’s to buy supplies? No one there has any cause to associate me with the police or the investigation into her grandfather’s affairs.”
“You will ask to have your purchases delivered to you, won’t you? And you’ll have to give them your name and directions. Maybe you don’t realize how well known you are still, given the reporters’ fascination with your history.”
The newspapers. She sometimes succeeded in putting them out of her mind completely, but then she was still vulnerable to the kind of malicious speculations that did so much for sales.
“You think Nora Smithson will recognize my name from the newspapers and turn me away from her door because I married outside my race.”
Anna looked truly surprised. “I suppose she might, but really what I was thinking was much simpler. Your last name is—was—Savard. You are the niece of Amelie Savard, and Nora Smithson considers Amelie to be the incarnation of all evil in the world. She called her a ‘vile abortionist’ to my face and compared her to Madame Restell. Sophie, it was Nora Smithson who reported Amelie, our Amelie, to Comstock. And before you ask, I don’t know anything else of that story. I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of it forever.”
“Well,” Sophie said, closing the file. “This is all very instructive, but my supplies will not magically replenish themselves. I have to find a new apothecary.”
“But not Smithson’s,” Anna prompted.
“Probably not Smithson’s,” Sophie said grimly. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”
31
WHEN ELISE SET out, finally, to take care of her errands, she walked north and crossed over into Washington Square Park. With the weather so fine and clear the air itself seemed to shimmer with color. Everything was in bloom: crabapple and cherry, quince and dogwood, azaleas and viburnums. She reminded herself that today she didn’t need to hurry. It took some effort, but she slowed her pace and turned her attention to the world around her.
With that she realized how much she missed walking just for the sake of it, and how entertaining it was to watch people going about their days. At home a stranger was a rarity and in the convent the only new faces were the postulants who were admitted twice a year, but here unfamiliar faces were the everyday. All around her was a river of women she had never seen before out to do their marketing and errands. Elise let herself be swept along behind two just about her own age, listening to them argue the quality of this year’s spring lamb and whether Long Island eggs were really worth twenty cents a dozen, twice the cost of Connecticut eggs, and wonder what fruit might be had at a reasonable price at this early date.
Elise got so caught up in this discussion that she followed the women across Sixth Avenue and into the Jefferson Market, where they stopped to talk to the old lady who sold spices and tea from a pushcart. They wanted to know how fresh the nutmegs were and where they came from, and could that be right, the sign saying five cents for a half-dozen dried vanilla beans. Vanilla beans at that price must be dipped in stardust, one of them noted. The old woman pretended to be deaf.
Elise told herself that the sensible thing would be to go back to Sixth Avenue and the elevated train; there was nothing she needed here, after all. But the air itself was alive and the smells were enticing, and really, she asked herself, what difference would another half hour make?
She wandered up and down the aisles, passing the coffee grinders and tobacco merchants, pausing to admire fresh vegetables she hadn’t seen over the winter: cucumbers, asparagus, cauliflower, and even early tomatoes, all of it from Florida or Georgia or the Carolinas and brought up by steamer. There were strawberries and most surprising of all, bananas, at the breath-taking price of twenty cents a half dozen.
As she came around a corner Elise almost walked into a flock of geese and ducks hung up by the feet over stacks of chicken crates. As far down the aisle as she could see were poulterers and beyond them the butchers, men with red faces, bloody aprons, and big-knuckled hands calling out pork bellies, pork bellies! and round-steak twenty cents the tasty pound! and head-cheese if you please the best in town! All singing out, most in broad German accents.
As she turned down the next aisle, Elise caught a glimpse of a familiar face. She ducked back, but Grace Miller’s slight figure had already disappeared. Her nightmare, coming back to her at odd moments.
The churches began to ring the hour. Nine o’clock already, and half the morning gone. With renewed resolve she started back to the el station, but before she even got to the staircase that would take her to the platform someone called her name.
“Elise!”
She turned to see Sophie Savard—Sophie Verhoeven, she corrected herself—coming toward her, smiling sweetly. The chance to spend time with Sophie, who had been so kind and done so much for her, was not something to be squandered.
“How nice to see you,” Sophie said. “Come have a cup of coffee with me, won’t you? Or do you have an appointment?”
Nothing to do but resign herself to never quite getting to her errands.
* * *
• • •
THE LITTLE COFFEE shop with t
he blue door on the corner was always crowded, but they had some luck: a table by the window that looked out over the intersection of Waverly Place and Sixth Avenue had just come free.
When they had ordered Sophie sat back and looked around herself. “This is one of Anna’s favorite places. She came here with Uncle Quinlan when she was very little.”
“Didn’t you come too?”
She looked surprised for the briefest moment. “I forget how short a time you’ve been on Waverly Place. There’s no way for you to know all the stories. No, I only met Uncle Quinlan once, when he came to New Orleans, and I don’t really remember that visit. I couldn’t have been more than four. By the time I came here to live he was gone.” She looked closely at Elise. “Don’t you know about this, either?”
“Not really. Just that Dr. Quinlan died in the war.”
“That’s not quite it,” Sophie said. “You’ve seen the portraits of Anna’s family, and you know she had an older brother, Paul? He was wounded very early, at Bull Run. Uncle Quinlan was a retired surgeon, so he went down to see about bringing Paul back here. But Paul died of his wounds, and Uncle Quinlan caught typhus while he was searching for him. So both of them were lost.”
Elise drew in a breath. “Oh. That is—”
Anything she might say in response to such a horrible loss must sound silly or insincere, and so she said nothing. Sophie seemed to approve, because she put a gloved hand on Elise’s wrist and squeezed, gently.
“A good doctor knows when to talk and when to listen. A lesson you have already learned, I see.”
“I’m trying,” she said. And after a pause: “I was wondering if I might ask you a question about a patient who died yesterday, of kidney failure. Or rather, it’s about her children.”
Elise had all but convinced herself that it would be wrong to bring the Parry children’s dilemma to Sophie. There were so many needy children in the city, and Sophie was just one person. Her finances were not bottomless, though her goodwill seemed to be. And still, the story poured out of her. Mr. Parry’s death on the construction site, Mrs. Parry’s worry for her four young children, the fact that there was family in England who wanted them.
Sophie listened closely, her expression giving little away. Now she said, “How do you know Mrs. Parry’s family would take the children in?”
Elise dropped her gaze. “Because I visited the cousin who is looking after the children and talked to her about the possibility of taking them to England.”
What a smile Sophie could bestow. Elise thought of being praised by a teacher as a little girl, and how much pleasure that had brought her.
Sophie said, “The cousin is really ready to return to England?”
“She is,” Elise confirmed. “She has an infant of her own and she’s not happy here.”
“Very well,” Sophie said. “I have a secretary now, did you realize? I’ll ask him to get the details from you and to arrange passage for Parry children and the cousin. They’ll need money for expenses as well. Will you send word to the cousin?”
“Immediately,” Elise said. “I hardly know—”
Sophie raised a hand to stop her. “Money may be the root of all evil, but I am determined to put what I have to good use. No need to thank me. Now where is that waiter? I need more coffee.”
Elise turned to look for the waiter’s bald head and instead caught sudden movement outside on Sixth Avenue. A crowd was gathering around a peddler’s cart, where an older man had climbed up on a barrel in order to entertain potential customers.
“That’s Mr. Austin,” Sophie said, following her gaze. “He’s an institution.”
“What is he selling?” Elise turned a bit to get a better look. As she craned her head the crowd cleared and shifted, and the face she had glimpsed earlier showed itself. Grace Miller.
Not twenty-four hours ago she had been dreaming about this girl, and now she was just a few feet away, on the other side of a window. She held a basket in one hand, so heavy that it dragged her shoulder down and hovered just over the sidewalk. It was near to overflowing with packets wrapped in butcher’s paper and tied with red and white string. Not enough to feed some thirty children, but certainly the makings of a few fine meals for the Reverend Crowley and his mother. There was a punnet of strawberries and two bananas peeking out as well.
Sophie was saying, “Mr. Austin sharpens knives and scissors and scythes, but he sings a song about it that makes the housewives blush. Knives and sheaths and so forth. And here’s our coffee.”
But Elise found it hard to look away from the girl called Grace, whose expression was composed while her whole body managed to radiate discomfort. The other woman was obviously unhappy with her, leaning close to speak, so close that the brim of her hat almost touched Grace’s forehead. Their hair was the same shade of blond, but where Grace was very thin, the woman she was talking to was tall and the very image of well-nourished good health.
She handed Grace an envelope and then turned so abruptly that her very fashionable cape flapped open just long enough to show the curve of a pregnant belly and her face in profile. It struck Elise then that she had seen this woman before, too, not so long ago.
“Who is it you’re looking at?”
Elise jolted. “I apologize, that was very rude. I just saw someone—” She recalled at that moment that she could talk to Sophie about Grace, and in fact that she might want to know.
“That very pale girl, just there, the blond one with the gray shawl? That’s the maid I mentioned to you, the one at the Shepherd’s Fold. Her name is Grace Miller. Odd.”
“Why should it be odd?” Sophie asked. “This would be the closest market for them.”
“I meant odd because I rarely see anyone I know on the street, and within a half hour I see three people.”
Sophie put down her coffee cup. “Three? You’re counting me and Grace, who is the third?”
“Grace was just talking to a woman I recognize, from the apothecary across the way.”
Sophie leaned forward, very slightly. “You mean, from Smithson’s?”
Elise nodded but was suddenly unsure of herself. “Yes, right there. That’s where Mr. Bellegarde bought some supplies when we were taking his son to his mother in French Town. Mrs. Smithson was closing for the day, but she let us in. I think because she is expecting herself, she felt the need to help.”
For a moment she had the sense that Sophie hadn’t heard her, but when she looked up, there was something new in her expression.
“Do you know the Smithsons?”
Sophie blinked. “I know the apothecary, of course. It was one of the first places they took me to, just a few days after I got here from New Orleans. It was a bit of a shock, to tell the truth. Not what I expected.”
Elise tried to look interested but not eager; this was a story she wanted to hear, but it was also a very personal matter, and clearly significant to Sophie.
“You have to understand,” Sophie began slowly. “I grew up in a charity clinic. The Dispensaire de Bienfaisance on the rue Dauphine was founded by my great-grandfather in 1805. My grandfather Ben was born just outside New Orleans, but moved to New York State in 1815, and the Savards and families associated with us have been migrating back and forth between New Orleans and New York ever since.”
“Your father?” Elise asked.
“Yes, my father is an example of this. He was born in Paradise but sent to New Orleans to study medicine when he was seventeen. On my mother’s side my grandfather Freeman went to New Orleans when he was just twenty to become an apothecary. He married there and all his children were born there, including my mother. That branch of the Savard family would be in New Orleans still if not for the war—” She pushed out a noisy sigh and shook her head, as if her own story were a burden.
“It’s still very real to me, my home. Three buildings around a courtyard, with the k
itchen house on the fourth side with the stable behind it. The clinic and surgery and apothecary were on the ground and second floors, and our family apartment was on the top floor.”
Elise said, “This subject is difficult for you.”
Sophie smiled. “It is, but sometimes I like to talk about home. You know that people who have had a hand or foot amputated sometimes still have the urge to scratch? That’s what it’s like, being homesick for a place that doesn’t really exist anymore.”
It was an odd way to think of it, but it struck Elise as very likely. “It does make sense. If you’d like to tell me, I’d certainly like to hear about it.”