The Impossible Girl

by Lydia Kang

  “Nazy cove! You were just as drunk! Your breath smells like the Old Brewery! I’m the only one who drinks in this house, and I drink enough for both of us!”

  “Well, that’s true,” Cora said, chuckling.

  “Enough,” Alexander said, silencing them both. “How could you let your guard down like that, Cora?”

  “But I was Jacob, not Cora!”

  “It matters less, but it still matters,” Alexander said. “Charlotte would be furious if she knew the risk you just took. Don’t ruin the sacrifices she made for you. You mustn’t forget what’s at stake. Not now, not ever.”

  “I know what’s at stake.” Cora had let her voice rise to her normal pitch, and took her hat off, mussed her hair, and unbuttoned her top collar. “I made a mistake. But nothing untoward happened, and I came out with a deal with Theodore.”

  “You’re calling him Theodore now?” Alexander said, eyes even.

  “Is that a crime?” Leah said. “She might get married someday. Have a family. He’s going to be a doctor, and they do well enough. They might move away, and she’d have a new name.”

  How odd. Leah never, ever seemed much interested in having Cora married off, and now twice in two days she’d raised the topic. Oh, why had Cora spoken Flint’s given name aloud? Tiredness, no doubt.

  “Flint,” she corrected herself. “Leah, let’s have no more matchmaking when there’s work to be done. Coffee, please.”

  Leah stomped to the kitchen hearth and poured a cup of boiled black liquid, and set it before Cora alongside a warm, sweet loaf speckled with raisins. Cora took a ravenous bite, followed by the bitter brew.

  “It was worth it. We’ve a deal to work on the next several resurrections, and I’ve found out some information about Hitchcock.”

  “Hitchcock? The fellow you dug up a few days ago?” Alexander waved at Leah. “My goodness, Leah. Stop ruffling your feathers, and eat with us.” He stood up to pour her a small glass of port, despite it being nine o’clock in the morning, and pulled out a chair. Leah sat down with a thump.

  Cora explained the findings of the dissection, and also the disappearance of Ruby with the tail. Alexander and Leah listened gravely. Cora saved the worst for last.

  “Flint spoke of rumors of another unique specimen to be had. There have been murmurs of a girl with two hearts. From Frederick Duncan himself.”

  Leah and Alexander both went still, Leah with her port in hand and Alexander with bun halfway to his mouth.

  “Are you sure?” Alexander said.

  “Yes. Flint was drunk when he said it, which is why I believe it. He’d been holding it back.”

  Leah’s hand trembled. “But he didn’t—he didn’t—”

  “No, Leah. He gave no sign whatsoever that I was the girl. He said it was too hard to believe. But if enough people repeat an unlikely rumor, it becomes real.”

  “I haven’t heard the curator mention it once. This must be very new.” Alexander looked out the window, where the sun had disappeared behind a haze of smoke from a bonfire down the street. “We knew that Dr. Grier continued to speak of you after we left Gowanus. He may have spoken to many physicians in New York.” He looked Cora straight in the eye. “Maybe you should take advantage of what you know. Leave New York. Go to Philadelphia, or west, to Ohio or Iowa.”

  “I could,” Cora admitted. “And yet, these last five years, I’ve made connections I’m loath to leave. I have skills that make good money now.”

  “Which you’re short on. Rent is due in two days, Cora,” Leah reminded her. “And by the end of the hour, I’ll piss away the last few drops of port.” She looked forlornly at the empty bottle.

  “I can pay your rent,” Alexander said.

  “No. You’ve already done so much for us, Alexander.” Cora stood, smoothing down Jacob’s wrinkled shirt. “I know it’s been a dry last few weeks, but there’s more work ahead. We’ll finish our next few jobs. Tighten our belts. And then I’ll leave New York and start over. Perhaps become a teacher somewhere. Leah, you’ll find better-paying work without me.”

  “I’ll not leave you, Cora. I shan’t.” The words were sweet, but there was something in Leah’s eyes that betrayed her. Cora understood the temptation. She could be the maid for a wealthier family that actually owned a house. When Leah followed Charlotte into poverty years ago, it was because she loved Charlotte, almost like her own child. But being poor wears on a person, even with bountiful supplies of love.

  “Your plan sounds reasonable,” Alexander said. “If all goes well, you might leave New York in one month’s time. Well before those rumors lead to anything.”

  She nodded and yawned. Leah pushed an envelope toward her.

  “Don’t forget about these.”

  Cora withdrew two poisonously hued orange tickets.

  CASTLE GARDEN THEATRE

  JENNY LIND, SEPTEMBER 11, 1850

  Oh. This was the Jenny Lind, the marvelous singer whom P. T. Barnum had wooed from across the ocean for a reported $150,000. The “Swedish Nightingale” had created a mania everywhere. New York was awash in Jenny Lind snuffboxes, gloves, fans, paper dolls, and other items in the stores along Chatham Street.

  She’d almost forgotten she’d purchased the tickets. Unlike a Philharmonic Society event, or at the scandalous Astor Opera House, still reeling from the riot there a year ago, this concert would bring in not only the best of society but those who would normally stay at home. It was a concert not to be missed.

  “I’d nearly forgotten. Leah, would you like to come? Or Alexander?”

  “I don’t have the stomach for the theater these days,” Alexander said. “Perhaps Leah can go with you.”

  Leah nodded with a grin. She loved the theater, when she had a chance to go. Castle Garden was one of Cora’s favorite places. She would attend regularly to scout out ailments, occasionally before the persons themselves even knew they were sick. She didn’t always want to wait for the good doctors to bring her cases. She’d found one gentleman who had an oddly tall stature and elongated fingers that had escaped his own doctor’s notice, and a woman with a cancer eating through her cheek; she’d attended in her regular theater box nearly half-asleep on laudanum.

  But even as Cora looked forward to the opportunity to scout for new specimens, she wondered if others were scouting for her. Had Flint felt her extra beating heart beneath his hand last night? Did he suspect she was the phantom girl with two hearts?

  Even more frightening was that she had the terrible urge to tell him her secret—which made no sense at all.

  CHAPTER 9

  Cora wore an evening dress of cream and pale-green silk, her wig parted down the middle, its poufs secured with matching green ribbons. Leah dressed in a sober black satin, her best. The driver took them down Broadway toward Castle Garden, just beyond the Battery, where scores of onlookers stared at the bulwarks and vast rigs of ships from China and England. Theatergoers were already in lines along the narrow bridge connecting Castle Garden to the rest of Manhattan, as if the round building were too fine to touch the commonplace island. Leah gaped as they found the line for orange ticket holders.

  “They said there would be thousands of tickets sold,” Leah said. “Look at all of us!”

  “Yes,” Cora said, not really listening. She was already scouting the crowd, assessing the bodies as if she could see through their vestments. This one had a limp and a cane, likely a result of some rheumatism—common enough. That one had a facial palsy, hidden cleverly with a black lace veil. Another had a skin color that was not quite right—rather jaundiced. Could be too much drinking and a sick liver, or else a tumor. She recognized another member in their group—a Mr. Ellington, whose dropsy had been cured by a healthy bloodletting last winter.

  “Cora, let’s go into another line. This one is altogether too long.” Leah impatiently danced from one foot to another, a telltale sign of discomfort that Cora recognized. Perhaps her garters were too tight.

  Cora frowned. “This is the
line for the orange ticket holders, Leah. We must stay here. And I see a fellow with a very odd limp and gait. I ought to seek out his name. The family is close by.”

  “I don’t like the way this crowd stares at you, or me. Let’s move off to the side, just for a while.”

  Staring? Who was staring? Cora carefully looked about. Usually, she was the one staring, and as she did so, people often felt her gaze and drew away. Something about her foreign features and her imperturbable stare gifted her with a slightly otherworldly air. Cora had a booted toe halfway in the world of the dead, after all.

  That shadow gaze heralded a finite end that she feared herself but had never felt. Until now. So, when Cora searched the crowds being slowly inhaled by the open doors of Castle Garden, she searched for a steady pair of eyes preying upon her person, looking for a physical sign that betrayed her secret. But those weren’t the kind of eyes she found.

  Instead, she found the blonde woman. The very one from the Grand Anatomical Museum. Once again, she was accompanied by the Schermerhorn gent. They were in a line full of green ticket holders, and when the line advanced, the woman remained fixed in place, staring with open hostility at Cora and Leah.

  “Who is that lady?” Cora asked.

  “I don’t know,” Leah said. “I don’t like the way she looks at you. We should leave.”

  But the lines began to move more quickly, and soon the woman was forced to advance until she was lost in the crowd before them.

  The concert itself was something of a disappointment. Barnum had been touting the brilliance of Jenny Lind to the point where people thought she might be a celestial being on earth. Nearly thirty thousand had welcomed her when she disembarked her steamship. So, when Jenny Lind opened her mouth to sing, Cora was expecting music in the form of transcendent fairy dust to spew forth—but it was nothing of the like. Very good singing, and that was all. It gave her more leave to use her brass opera glasses to observe the patrons for signs of morbid illness. There was always a treasure hiding among the healthy.

  It wasn’t until intermission that she had the opportunity for an introduction, though it was not with whom she expected. As Leah complained over the cost of a punch and Cora silently cursed the choice to wear her most painful pair of heeled slippers, someone touched her elbow.

  Cora turned. It was the woman from the museum—but not the blonde one, the one who’d been arguing with Drs. Tilton and Goossens. Dr. Blackwell, wasn’t that her name? She was accompanied by another woman as modestly dressed as herself, albeit in richer fabrics of silk poplin and garnishes of ribbon.

  Now that Cora could really examine Dr. Blackwell, she found that the woman possessed a mix of qualities that didn’t stir well together, like vinegar and butter. She was slight of stature, only five feet tall, but with keen, dark eyes. However, the telltale nonparallel gaze revealed one of her eyes to be artificial. Her clothes were dun in color and simple, and she was practically throttled in wool, she was so modestly dressed. Poufs of hair fell against her smiling cheeks, but her smile was as sharp as a blade.

  “Hello there. I confess, I don’t know many people in this city as yet, but I know you!” Her voice was comforting and low, without being syrupy. “I saw you at the museum the other day, did I not?”

  “You did,” Cora said, caught off guard by the abrupt and somewhat improper introduction.

  “I am Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.”

  “I am Cora Lee, and this is Leah O’Toole.” She looked left, but Leah had disappeared in pursuit of a refreshment. She loved that punch a little too much. “Ah. Well, that was Leah. Please forgive me, but is it quite true? You are a doctor?”

  “I am, indeed. Newly graduated from Geneva Medical School upstate.”

  “And did you study anatomy? To its fullest extent?” Anybody could call themselves a doctor after paying for a few classes. A true physician, however, took the pains and paid the price to study anatomy from a cadaver.

  “I have. Goodness, the head and neck anatomy was most challenging. The genioglossus! Styloglossus! Hyoglossus! Do you enjoy the anatomic arts? I believe they let ladies into the lectures these days.”

  Palatoglossus, Cora added silently. “I do,” she said aloud, warming up to the woman.

  “Well, I am searching for a position, and the dispensaries won’t speak to me. I have already opened up a practice on Union Square.”

  “Oh! I haven’t seen your sign as yet.”

  “The landlady refuses to let me hang out my shingle. Says that it’s disgraceful. She seems to think that a woman doctor’s office is akin to a brothel.” Dr. Blackwell laughed at this, but “Mmm” was all Cora could manage. A woman doctor was an anomaly.

  “And what do you do?” Dr. Blackwell asked imperiously.

  “I beg your pardon?” Cora said.

  “You seem sharp enough.” Which was a compliment, because Cora had hardly said anything as yet. “Have you had a proper education? Have you a profession? You know those physicians, I dare say. Are you an apothecary?”

  “Goodness, no,” Cora said. “Certainly, I’ve had an education, but . . .”

  “Oh, come now. Foxglove. Do you know what it is? What it’s used for?”

  “Dropsy,” Cora said, without thinking. Oh, she should have said the wrong thing. But her mouth continued to speak, almost without her permission. “But it’s not always so useful. It’s a poison, if you give too much.”

  “You do know a bit! Now, see that fellow there. He has dropsy.” Dr. Blackwell nodded in the direction of a man whose legs looked like tree trunks, tightly encased in plaid wool pants. “Pale face, jugular vein bulging at the neck. He needs my help, but I have no introduction, so I shan’t foist myself upon him.”

  Dropsy. So ordinary. That one wasn’t worth her time. Cora made a small pfft sound before she realized it.

  Dr. Blackwell arched a dark eyebrow. “Do you find this dull?”

  “Oh! No, I just . . . I ought to find Leah. Intermission is nearly finished.”

  “Ah! Hello!” Dr. Blackwell waved her arm in an alarmingly vivid fashion to someone behind Cora. “We meet again. This is a small town! You meet two people in two days, and thence again you see them at the most popular concert of the year!”

  Cora turned and came face-to-face with the blonde woman. The very one who couldn’t keep her malignant stare away. In such close proximity, the lady hardly had time to change her expression from embarrassment (over Dr. Blackwell’s flagging her down) to cold anger (at seeing Cora).

  “It appears that for once, I am allowed the introductions. This is—”

  “I know who she is,” the lady said abruptly. “Cora Lee, is it not? Now I know for sure. I recognized your maid.”

  Cora’s mouth went utterly dry. “Leah? I don’t understand.”

  “You appear to be in excellent health, Miss Lee.” She said this as if it were a crime. Such public words about her health made Cora flush. What was this woman talking about?

  Dr. Blackwell’s eyebrows drew together. “Oh. Miss Lee, have you not been well?”

  “No . . . I mean yes, I am well, thank you,” Cora stammered.

  Dr. Blackwell’s bonhomie disappeared in the presence of the other woman’s dour attitude. “Then I see you’ve met Miss Cutter before.”

  That name. An electric shock ran through her. The name that Cora ought to wield, if she had taken her family name through her mother. She looked at the blonde woman more piercingly. The lady appeared the same age as herself. Charlotte had once mentioned a sister-in-law who’d given birth just after Cora’s mother. What was the name of the child? It sounded like scissors. It was French—

  “Suzette?” Daniel Schermerhorn appeared at her side. “The bells are ringing. Intermission is over. Shall we?”

  “Yes, Daniel.” Suzette Cutter turned on her heel without a curtsy and left the group.

  Dr. Blackwell shook her head. “I do apologize. I had no idea there was a history between the two of you.”

  “Not a his
tory, exactly,” Cora said. She fanned her face.

  “I supposed you’ve had a rift?”

  “Not at all.” How can we have a rift, Cora thought, if I’ve never met her? If I’m not even supposed to exist, since Jacob Lee is the only child of Elizabeth Cutter? And Suzette somehow knew Cora was a girl! And had inquired about her health. Her health, of all things! None of it made sense.

  Leah reappeared, and Cora introduced her to Dr. Blackwell.

  “Did you say you’re a doctor?” Leah, her eyes agog, said, not noticing that Cora was still blank faced with shock. “Why on earth would a woman become a doctor?”

  Dr. Blackwell simply took a deep breath. No doubt it was a tiresome and repeated exclamation.

  “Because a woman can take care of the sick as well as a man can. If only I’d helped that fellow this morning. Do you know, I was outside of the Sixth Ward dispensary inquiring about a position when a poor man was brought in, insensate. He’d been garroted, but his porte-monnaie hadn’t been stolen. They’d held his neck long enough that he’d fainted, but held on too long, alas. And the dispensary wouldn’t let me examine or treat him! It was a shame. He died on the spot, and I might have helped.”

  “How awful,” Cora said.

  “Yes. I’ll never forget him. Had an enormous port-wine stain covering half his face. I’ve never seen one so large before.”

  Cora went silent. There was a man she’d been following for more than a year. William Timothy. He had an enormous port-wine stain on his face, but he was also reported to have six fingers on his right hand, which he kept covered with a large ill-fitting glove. But Timothy was otherwise healthy and robust and rarely checked in with his doctor over on Delancey. Cora had no hope he’d die from an early death unless there was an accident.

  Or something more nefarious than an accident.

  William, Cora thought, what happened to you? Where are you now?

  “When—” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “When did this happen?” she asked.

  “Why, only this morning.”

  The bells signaling the end of intermission rang. Bodies rustling in silk and satin poured back into the theater, encompassed by murmurs of merriment. Dr. Blackwell waved a cheerful goodbye and rejoined her small party, and Cora and Leah were soon left alone in the salon outside the theater doors.