The Undertaker's Assistant

by Amanda Skenandore

  Effie smoothed the flyaway hairs about her temples and adjusted the gardenia at her breast. Through the half-opened door, she could see into the parlor, where several guests lingered by an unlit fireplace carved of dark green marble. Others sat on velvet-upholstered chairs and at a small, polished-oak tea table.

  The servant returned, and with him Mr. Chauvet.

  “Mademoiselle Jones, such a pleasure to see you again.” He didn’t scowl over her dress and frazzled hair the way his servant had, but took her arm and ushered her in. “But you’re meant to be in St. James, n’est-ce pas?”

  He nodded to her travel bag and his servant reached to take it, but Effie waved him off. “I don’t mean to stay. My apologies for intruding at all. Our trip ended early and I’d hoped to speak with Adeline a moment.”

  Mr. Chauvet held fast her arm, despite surely noticing the dust rubbing off onto his sleeve. “She’ll be delighted to see you. She’s always her best self around you. But you must come in, at least for a moment, and have some champagne and hors d’oeuvres.”

  Reluctantly, Effie laid her bag beside the lacquered hall table and strode with him into the parlor. Looks of curiosity and surprise flickered over the faces of his guests. A frown, a knit brow, a puckered mouth. But none let their smiles lapse for long.

  “I hope it wasn’t some misfortune that cut short your trip,” Mr. Chauvet said, handing her a flute of champagne from a passing tray. “You look rather upset.”

  “No, only tired.”

  They passed from one room of the double parlor to the next. Silky red drapery festooned the windows, and plush carpet cushioned her step. The stark contrast to the modest cabins in St. James, where flannel rags covered the windows and spiders crawled through gaps in the unfinished floorboards, made Effie dizzy.

  The champagne didn’t help. Nor her dizziness nor this unshakable feeling of guilt.

  “Adeline was here but a moment ago.” He looked around the room and through the French doors into the sunlit loggia. “Perhaps out back in the gardens.”

  A waiter passed bearing a silver tray with clam fritters and tiny beefsteak pies. Mr. Chauvet grabbed a fritter and Effie did likewise to be polite. She tasted parsley and nutmeg and the slightest sweetness of cream. The rich food churned in her empty stomach.

  “Your friend Mr. Greene is here too,” Mr. Chauvet said, leading her toward the garden. “Having some political set-to with Monsieur Rousseve in the study, I believe. It was providence making his acquaintance at the cemetery, if one might say such a thing without being indelicate—”

  The clank of shattering stoneware from somewhere within the bowels of the house stopped them in the loggia. A toppled vase in the parlor, perhaps. The urn in the hallway.

  “Soirées,” he said, shaking his head.

  “You don’t enjoy them?”

  “Sincèrement, I’d just as soon a quiet afternoon in my study.” He let go her arm. “Excuse me just a moment, mademoiselle.”

  Effie liked him all the better for his answer. If Adeline must marry for name and money, Mr. Chauvet was a worthy choice. Kind and frank as he’d been, Effie itched to be gone from this place as soon as she’d seen Adeline.

  She wandered through the garden. Save for staff bustling to and fro from the kitchen, the courtyard was empty. She wound her way back through the loggia and parlor, leaving her half-drunk glass of champagne among several empty flutes on the marble-topped tea table. A waiter passed with more food, but though the aroma wafting from his tray made her stomach rumble, she’d settle for cold ham from Mrs. Neale’s larder.

  Across the wide center hall was the study. Bookshelves lined the walls. A fat, polished desk with legs curved like S’s sat to one side. Cigar smoke curled through the air. Several men lounged within, but no Samson. He and Mr. Rousseve must have taken their discussion elsewhere.

  At the far end of the center hall curved a staircase. Effie hesitated, then ascended the steps. The noise of the party diminished as she climbed, the music and the banter, the footfalls and clatter. She walked down another hallway to a door leading to the front balcony. Light, colored pink from the sunset, spilled in through the flanking windows.

  For the first time since arriving, Effie relaxed enough to draw breath into the bottom lobes of her lungs. Gardenia perfumed the inhale, heavy and fragrant, though the edges of the petals had already begun to brown.

  She’d passed several rooms on her way to the windows, all quiet and closed. Adeline wasn’t up here, but Effie lingered a moment more in the rosy light to bolster her nerves for another pass through the parlor before giving up and going home.

  Then, from one of the rooms, Effie heard laughter, soft and tremulous, a timid intrusion into the silence. She followed the sound to a door, not fully closed as she’d thought at first pass, but cracked a hairsbreadth open. More laughter. Familiar now that she was up close. Adeline’s.

  Effie raised her hand to knock, but another sound, a voice, deep and rich, stayed her knuckles.

  “That’s all you do? Strike these keys and the corresponding letter is printed on a piece of paper?”

  Effie flattened herself against the door and peered through the crack. This room looked similar to the study below. More bookcases, another desk, but this one smaller and more modestly appointed. Mr. Chauvet’s private office, perhaps? Adeline and Samson stood side by side gazing at a contraption on the desk. It reminded Effie of a sewing machine, with painted paneling and boxy shape, but a roller sat atop. Samson leaned over and pressed a button, one of many seated at the near end of the machine. A clicking sound and movement atop the roller.

  “Bully! That’s something,” Samson said. “How does it work?”

  Adeline shrugged, her expression half as animated as Samson’s. “Je ne sais pas.”

  He took a step closer, turning from the machine to face her. “What’s it called again?”

  “Typing machine, typewriter, something like that.”

  “Have you tried it?” He moved behind her then, so close her bustle flattened against his legs, and guided her arm toward the machine.

  Adeline gave another weak laugh. “Really, monsieur, I’m sure I can manage on my own.” But she didn’t wriggle away.

  Together, they struck another key. The sound made Effie start.

  Adeline turned and batted his chest. “A crackling fire is more impressive.”

  He moved nearer still. “It might not be the most impressive thing in the room, but it’s close.”

  “Oh?” Adeline fluttered her lashes and bit her bottom lip.

  Effie’s brain struggled to process the disparate evidence presented her. Samson and Adeline disliked the other. Both had made a point of telling her so. He met none of her criteria for a suitable beau. And she hadn’t the slightest care for politics and progress—the very things he lived for. But they were standing so close, the pupils of their eyes wide and hungry.

  Samson planted his hands on the desktop, caging Adeline between his arms.

  Downstairs, the mandolin player started up a new tune. Someone joined on the piano. Effie’s knees seemed to have lost all cartilage and wobbled bone upon bone. No amount of rationalizing could change what lay before her.

  Samson leaned in and brushed his lips along Adeline’s jaw.

  “Mr. Greene, please.” She hit his chest again, but this time with even less force than before. “Think of Effie.”

  The sound of her name stopped Effie’s heart mid-squeeze.

  But not Samson. His lips moved from her jaw to her mouth. For several slurred-together seconds, Adeline stood like a porcelain doll within his embrace, unmoving and rigid. Her eyes strained toward the ceiling and squeezed shut as if she shared in Effie’s pain. Then a sigh. Resignation? Desire? Her lips livened and she kissed him back. Effie turned away.

  The lush hallway carpet silenced her footfalls. She walked slowly at first, each step a labor. But by the time Effie reached the stairs her feet couldn’t move fast enough. She had to get away. Away fro
m the sound of their lips meeting and breath quickening. Away from the sight of their bodies pressed one against the other. Away from that feeling of having been gutted like the bodies of old and filled with sawdust.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she nearly collided with Mr. Chauvet.

  “Mademoiselle Jones, are you quite well?”

  “I . . . I have to go.”

  “But I haven’t yet found Adeline for you. I know she’s—”

  “Upstairs.” Effie swallowed the taste of nutmeg and bile. She grabbed her travel bag from the floor and started toward the door. Before leaving, she turned, squared her shoulders, and looked Mr. Chauvet dead in the eyes. “Upstairs kissing Mr. Greene.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Yellow jack arrived with the summer, striking all parts of the city, but paying special favor to the immigrant slums. Barrels of tar and sulfur burned on the street corners to stave off the poison’s spread, leaving the air sharp and smoky.

  While she pitied jack’s jaundiced and emaciated victims, Effie welcomed the deluge of work. She might attend two or three bodies a day, trudging home in the dark, arriving long after supper cooled and the parlor lamps had been dampened. When she did manage to return to Mrs. Neale’s before curfew, the other boarders fled to their rooms, afraid the poison had rubbed off upon her. Even Meg, who’d made such progress with her letters, avoided her.

  Effie welcomed the estrangement too. Captain Kinyon had been right. Strict detachment was the best policy—with the dead and the living. Had she followed his guidance, she’d yet be whole and well. For as surely as some Union surgeon like Captain Kinyon had sawed away Tom’s leg, so too had Samson and Adeline gauged out everything between her breastbone and spine, not even bothering to use a well-sharpened blade.

  Both had tried to call upon her. Samson once at Mrs. Neale’s. Adeline several times at the shop. But in this at least chance favored Effie and she’d not been around to turn them away. Their calling cards and missives were easy enough to tear or burn, but had she the strength to dismiss them in person? Could she resist Samson’s voice and resplendent smile? Could she pull free were Adeline to take her arm?

  Sooner or later they would forget her. Perhaps already had. That evening at Mr. Chauvet’s fête proved how easily they could cast her from their thoughts. A feat, for all her inadequacies of memory, Effie would never master.

  Two weeks passed after her trip to St. James Parish and the arrival of yellow jack before Effie found time to slip away to the pharmacy to replenish their supply of chemicals. Though not yet July, the air was positively swampy. A dappling of sweat beaded on her upper lip as she hurried through the streets. Inside was little better. She fanned herself with her hankie as she waited for the pharmacist to measure out the mercury and arsenic.

  Sunshine refracted through the glass show globes displayed in the windows. The water inside was dyed red on account of the epidemic, giving the splintered light a bloody tinge. She browsed the shelves of boxes and bottles—cough elixirs, asthma powder, worm syrup. A leech jar sat on the counter.

  She wandered over to an arrangement of perfumed creams and powders. A shiny tin caught her eye. Leaves with swirling, intertwined stems decorated the label, with the words Crème de Vetiver printed in the center. Effie brought the tin to her nose. Adeline. She inhaled again.

  “Fini,” the pharmacist said, turning from his pestle and scales. He nodded to the tin in her hand. “That too, ma’amselle? It’s a lovely scent.”

  Effie thrust the cream back on the shelf, then, noticing the upside-down lettering, fumbled to right it. “Just the chemicals.”

  Outside she could still smell the vetiver and nearly collided with a carriage as she tried to cross the street.

  “Watch out, darkie!” the driver yelled. She stepped back onto the banquette and waited for a break in the to-and-fro of carts and buggies. Still that smell, not altogether uncommon here in the Quarter. All the more reason to hurry back across Canal.

  “Effie.”

  She turned reflexively.

  Adeline stood in a summer dress of green cotton—likely reincarnated from a previous season as everyone else about town was wearing peach and yellow. And black. “Your friend Colm said I might find you here.”

  “He’s not my friend.” Effie brushed past her and hurried along the banquette in the opposite direction she’d intended.

  “Effie, wait!” Adeline’s shoes clicked atop the bricks behind her, matching Effie’s quickening pace.

  Another busy street halted her, and she spun around. “What do you want?”

  Adeline held her gaze a moment and then looked down. She tugged at the cuffs of her gloves. “I thought we might sit somewhere. Cool off with a soda or some ice cream.”

  “I haven’t time.”

  “You’ve not acknowledged any of my calls, returned any of my letters. Did something happen in St. James?”

  Close up Adeline looked wan. Her hair was pinned in a simple bun with errant strands feathered about her face. Effie caught herself scrutinizing the hue of her skin and whites of her eyes for jaundice and cursed her relief at seeing none of jack’s telltale signs. She crossed the street, heedless of the oncoming wagons, to the opposite banquette. Banana leaves spilled over courtyard walls, and bougainvillea curled down from the overhead galleries. Effie swatted them away. The road she followed petered out beside St. Louis Cathedral into Jackson Square.

  She’d not yet shaken Adeline, but the muggy air conspired with her heavy bag to slow her. A crenelated hedge ringed the square and before she could find a break in sculpted foliage, Adeline overtook her.

  “Ma foi, Effie! What’s gotten into you?”

  “I’ve got to get back to work.” She tried to move around her, but Adeline sidestepped to block her path.

  “You’re going the wrong way.”

  “I know.”

  “Chère, you don’t look at all well.”

  “I could say the same for you.”

  Adeline flinched and smoothed the flyaway strands of hair back from her face. “Mamm is having one of her spells and I’ve not—”

  “I don’t care.”

  “That’s an awful thing to say! Four days in the country and you come back ornery as the devil.”

  Effie spun around and started back the way she’d come. The clickety-clack of Adeline’s footfalls again followed.

  “Come now, chère. Even Samson’s worried after you.”

  The mention of his name hit her like a blow to the ribs. She shambled to a stop but did not turn around.

  “He says you’ve not answered his notes. Haven’t come to any of the club meetings. Haven’t—”

  “Mr. Greene, you mean.”

  “What?”

  “You always called him my Mr. Greene before.”

  “Well, yes, but now that we’re acquainted I thought to take the liberty and call—”

  “Acquainted?” Effie laughed. “That’s a rather ill-fitting description.”

  “What?”

  Effie turned back and closed the space between them, a strange fever overtaking her. “Certainly you’re on more intimate terms than that.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?”

  She shouldered her carpet bag and jabbed a finger into Adeline’s sternum. “I saw you together at Mr. Chauvet’s party.”

  The flush of exertion faded from Adeline’s cheeks. “Mais, you were in St. James.”

  “Was that the first time you snuck off alone as acquaintances, or were there times before and I was just too stupid to see?”

  Adeline rubbed her chest where Effie had poked her and eyed the passing strangers. “Keep your voice down.”

  “I should have known better than to trust a charlatan like you.”

  Adeline opened her mouth to speak. Beneath the narrow brim of her hat, the veins of her forehead bulged. Her hands twitched at her side and Effie took a step back in case she decided to swing. But she did not. She closed her mouth. A sob rocked her shoulders.


  Such a scene—here in the most trafficked square in New Orleans—caught Effie off guard. Hadn’t she wanted those tears? Wasn’t that what she’d tried to provoke? She felt her resolve slipping, but shored it up with the bitter remembrance of the party. Their whispering and laughter. Had Effie been the object of their ridicule? Silly Effie. Strange Effie. Surely she didn’t believe a man like Samson could love her, that a woman like Adeline would call her friend.

  She slung her heavy bag over the opposite shoulder and started to walk away, but Adeline’s voice stopped her.

  “I couldn’t help myself.” Another sob and sniffle. “I know it’s wrong, but I wanted to feel what you felt. Love. Passion. You’ve done nothing these past months but prattle on about how great he is. How handsome, how smart, how brave. I thought for sure you were exaggerating. But then I met him and saw that it was true. I tried to resist. Ma foi, I tried!”

  Effie’s hand squeezed around the strap of her bag. The bottles of mercury rattled inside. Above the leafy treetops of Jackson Square, the pointy masts of schooners docked in the nearby river jabbed at the sky.

  “And then Mr. Chauvet. He fancies himself a wire-puller and thought Samson could be just his ticket. After the funeral, we met him over lunch, purely accidental. The men gabbled of politics and the Louisiana Club. Chère, I tried to ignore him. I did. His smile, the way he fixes you with his eyes such that you can hardly breathe.”

  Effie knew all too well the feeling.

  “At la fête, when he asked to see Mr. Chauvet’s new typewriter, that was the first time we . . . we were alone. I swear on St. Marie.”

  “The first time.” Effie choked on the words, picturing them lying together in bed, the sheets tangled and mattress made lumpy by their lovemaking. She’d not fooled herself into thinking the party had been an aberration, that as soon as their lips parted they’d realized their grave mistake and avowed never to see each other again. But confirmation that their affair had continued, may be continuing still, reopened Effie’s wounds.