The Impossible Girl

by Lydia Kang

  “You can’t tell anyone!” she whispered. She felt the blood drain from her face, her stomach sinking low in her belly, as if it might drop down to the wet soil of the island. She had stopped disguising her voice, and even for Cora, it was a terrifyingly strange thing, speaking in her feminine voice in her rough, grave-digging clothing outside of her home. “You cannot. Oh God. How did I let this happen?”

  “Come inside with me,” Theo said. “Come with me. We’ll talk. I want to know. And I want to apologize for what I said the other night. I can’t stop thinking about it. I was wrong, and I was treating you like some sort of horse breeder. I’m so sorry.”

  Cora shook her head. But Theo stayed immutably silent for several minutes. Finally, he said, “I’ll tell you what I know. And you can tell me what I don’t.”

  She wanted to bolt, but sooner or later, she had to know how he’d seen beneath the ruse, learn how she should have done better. And she had to know whether he’d taken Dr. Grier’s journals, whether he planned to expose not just one of her secrets, but all of them. She had to know. So, when Theo went to the boardinghouse door and knocked, she allowed it. The matron of the house had thrown on a haphazard shawl and let them in. Theo murmured something about his cousin staying over, and that was that. Upstairs, he locked his door behind them. Cora leaned against the door and waited, staring at her boots.

  She wished to run, run, run all the way to Irving Place, but she knew running wouldn’t erase the fact that Theodore Flint knew. So, she didn’t move her booted feet, only listened, frozen as wide-eyed as a rabbit in the tall grass when a shadow passes. Only, this shadow wasn’t flitting away. It weighed her down, like a tombstone.

  “I haven’t spoken my thoughts to anyone,” Theo said. “I guessed that Alexander knows, and your maid, of course. And no one else. Because I noticed, the first time I met you as a lady, that you wore wigs. I could always see that little line between your forehead and the hair. My mother wore them, so I used to think of it as a game—to see which women wore switches and such. And last week—you wiped your face makeup with your hand. I’ll bet you never let anyone close enough to notice, but I did.”

  Cora couldn’t help it. She pushed away from the door and tried to walk away, but he grasped her hand gently and didn’t let go. He pulled her close and held her upper arms, still talking. Cora looked at the floor, at the ceiling, at the papered walls, anywhere but Theo’s face.

  “You and your brother, you never were in the same place at the same time. And your boots—Jacob’s boots—they always looked odd. The heels were too big and blocky. They make you taller when you aren’t. And when we went to visit your cousin yesterday, neither of you said a word about Jacob. Because he doesn’t exist.”

  “Good God, Theo. Just say it,” Cora said miserably.

  “Say what?”

  “Say what you haven’t been saying.”

  He let go of her hand, and his fingertips brushed the fabric of her jacket, just above her right ribs. She shivered and shut her eyes tighter.

  “I know about your second heart.”

  With that, Cora sank to her knees and covered her face.

  He knew. He knew everything. And it was her stupidity, her carelessness, that had brought this truth into their midst. Her desperation to earn more money had forced her into Theo’s world, a world that pulled him so close that he could smell that she wasn’t a man, see that her hair wasn’t real, feel that her second heart was always there, beating incessantly and irreverently where it oughtn’t.

  Cora didn’t cry, because Cora never cried. But she kneeled there for a minute, just dissolving in her mistakes. The alcohol had nearly dissipated from her body, and everything was sober and blank and raw. Theo simply waited. And when he grew tired of standing, he sat beside her on the floor, nary an inch away, and folded his arms on his knees. The moonlight shone in two rectangles on the floor, and as time passed and the angle of the light changed, still Theo said nothing.

  It must have been around four o’clock in the morning when Cora fell asleep. She awoke an hour or so later, feeling warmth against her cheek, a cramping in her spine. Her eyes fluttered open, and she found that Theo had wrapped his arm around her back, and she had used his broad shoulder as a pillow.

  He wasn’t cursing out this strange girl with stranger parents and her eccentric insides. He wasn’t running to Frederick Duncan to sell her body. He had stayed.

  Oh God, they had kissed. What would Leah think? What would Alexander say? Leah would be elated, and Alexander? Theo had made a horrible first impression. She could imagine Alexander and Leah fighting while Cora covered her ears, embarrassed. She wanted to laugh, but she remembered her life was currently a tragedy, and that Theo was now part of her tragedy as well.

  Her back cramped a little, and she was forced to sit up. Theo glanced down at her face. Her short hair was falling slightly into her eyes, and he brushed it to the side so he could see her better in the predawn darkness.

  She thought about kissing him. In her mind, she imagined it—leaning forward, turning her face upward, breathing his exhalations and letting their lips touch. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t.

  And just as she decided that she would not, in fact, kiss Theodore Flint again, and that she should get up, go home, and go sleep in her own bed while she figured out what on earth had happened tonight, Theo spoke.

  “Hello there.”

  “Hello,” she said, not knowing what else to say. Because there wasn’t much that could be said when you faced a person who knew everything you didn’t want him to know. When you felt the explosive combustion of utter relief and anxiety at the same time, and when the person who seemed to recoil at who you were a day ago now cradled you on his shoulder.

  “Have you forgiven me yet?” he asked.

  “I can’t really think straight, to be honest.”

  “I can wait.” He went silent after that. For a very long time.

  And in the absence of saying anything, she had to do something.

  So, Cora leaned in a fraction. She closed her eyes. And she kissed him.

  It was different from the first kiss.

  The first had been nothing but shock. It had been abrupt and strange and terrifying.

  This was slower. Warmer. Just as Cora thought, I ought not to be doing this, Theo slipped his hand around her neck and threaded his fingers into the short hair above her nape.

  He was gentle, and he was patient. It was just a kiss, but all the rum and spirits had long since dissolved away, and it was only them. Theo was patient, unlike his usual self, always with a toe inching toward the future, trying to stay ahead of Cora. Theo wasn’t running right now, and Cora had stopped fleeing. The stillness in her mind was alien and dizzying.

  After what seemed like an hour, but was only moments later, Cora broke the kiss.

  “Is that what it’s like?” she asked, blinking.

  “Yes.”

  “And how many girls have you kissed before, Theo?”

  “Not many. You’re the first person I’ve ever kissed who wasn’t wearing a dress, for that matter.”

  “Oh.” Cora had stopped listening and had leaned in to kiss him again. Before long, she had let him unbutton the top of her shirt and see her underclothes, padded with leather to bulk herself up. He didn’t exclaim in surprise; he didn’t remark upon the painstaking efforts of her deceit. In the thin darkness, because Cora could not have tolerated light in this moment, she allowed him to pull her boots off, unfasten her trousers, unwind the covering around her breasts. He brought her to his narrow bed and shed his clothes. Cora covered her face with overlapping hands, but she peeked through the apertures of her fingers and watched him as he lay next to her and pulled her waist closer.

  Not once did he ask about her heart.

  Not once did he search for it, unasked.

  They had an hour before dawn, and they spent it without saying a word, without needing to.

  CHAPTER 18

  As soon as daw
n broke, the spell was also rent.

  Theo and Cora still hadn’t spoken about what Cora was building up in her mind as the all-encompassing why—why she had played two lives and lied all these years. She took her head off his shoulder, which had been her pillow for the last half hour, and he kissed the top of her head.

  “I must go,” she said, and he nodded. “Turn to the wall.”

  Theo obeyed, and Cora quickly dressed. She was sitting in a chair and tying her boots on, when Theo turned around and propped himself against the wall, his bedsheet tangled around his waist and legs.

  “When shall I see you again?” Theo asked.

  “Soon.” She didn’t know what to say. The less the better.

  “That’s not soon enough.” He began dressing, and Cora turned around to face the door, wishing she could watch but not letting herself. She listened to fabric rustling, shoes being put on, and the steps behind her. Theo slipped his hands around her waist and kissed her cheek. “I have two lectures this morning at the university. Come with me.”

  “What about the dissection? The lady we just dug up?”

  “This afternoon. Do you want to go?” Theo asked.

  Cora wrapped her hands around her arms and shivered. “No, I don’t. But I have work too. I have to go home and change.”

  “Don’t. Come with me. And then in the afternoon, you can go home and work. I’ll tell my schoolmates you’re looking to enroll.”

  “I can’t.”

  “It’ll be safer for you not to be alone,” Theo said. He rubbed his stubbly cheek against her soft one. “I could keep you company for a little while.” He gently bit the cartilage of her ear instead, and she laughed and laughed, and finally rumpled his hair.

  “All right! You win. I’ll come.”

  And so they left. Even though the sun had barely risen, the street was already awake, with people opening up their storefronts and sweeping the dirty sidewalks. But to Cora, the whole city was somehow brighter, fresher.

  As the boardinghouse keeper hadn’t yet begun cooking breakfast, they paid a few pennies for a crusty loaf of bread, tore it in half, and chewed on it all the way to the new university building. Students were already spilling through the doors, and at the sight of the light-colored building, Cora stopped.

  “Do I look all right?” she asked him, adjusting the hat on her cropped hair. “I’ve no makeup on to hide my face.”

  “It’s all right. You just look younger; that’s all. Very boyish. I’d kiss you to show that I meant it, but that wouldn’t go over well, would it?”

  Cora hid a smile, but then frowned. “I saw your name,” she said, forcing down her last swallow of bread. “In the library there.”

  “Yes, I was there a few days ago.”

  “What were you looking up?” she asked.

  “Dr. Grier’s journals. Duncan’s claim about the woman with two hearts seemed so outlandish, I had to know if it was true, or a rumor. I mean, maybe Dr. Grier’s assessment was wrong, but it’s there. He saw what he saw.”

  “You weren’t the only person looking,” Cora said. “Frederick Duncan’s name was in that log too.”

  “But he’s been there several times,” Theo said. He waved her forward, and they went inside to the upstairs operating theater. “He sometimes has books taken out so his artists can copy the drawings for his displays. It doesn’t mean he was looking at Dr. Grier’s journals.”

  “I suppose so.” She paused. “Is there a student or doctor here with the surname Swell?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?” Theo asked.

  “I saw it in the books. It’s not a real name. Did you write it?”

  “Goodness, no.”

  Cora paused. There was another question she had to ask. There was no putting it off.

  “Theo. You said some things to me, that night we went to see my family.”

  Theo’s face went white, and he looked at his shoes. “I said and asked things that were ungentlemanly. Cruel. You aren’t inferior, and I didn’t mean to imply that I agreed with those who think so. I don’t. Your parentage has nothing to do with the fact that you are a superior creature to me in every way, Cora Lee.”

  Contrition and sincerity weighed on his shoulders, but she felt light, lighter than a speck of ash rising into the sky. There was so much relief, more than she’d felt in ages. “Let’s go in. I forgive you, Theodore Flint. If you forgive me for lying to you about who I’ve been.”

  Theo beamed. Nearly all the students had gone in, while they were speaking in the corner of the hallway. They entered the surgical theater. Once again, they took the highest seats. Two of Theo’s fellow students, Strawtick and Snout, recognized Jacob. They curled their nostrils at the sight of him and turned pointedly away. As Cora and Theo sat watching the operation (a poor fellow who needed a walnut-sized bladder stone removed), they whispered to each other about the lithotomy position, and whether the surgeon would work anterior or posterior to the perineal muscle, and all the while Theo kept surreptitiously finding Cora’s hand and covering it with his own.

  One lecture on arm anatomy later (Cora fell asleep until Professor Draper slapped his pointer stick against his table before him—she wasn’t the only one who had fallen asleep), they were off to walk the short few blocks to Cora’s house at Irving Place.

  Leah was perched on the front steps, her face red as a fresh cow’s liver from the butcher.

  Cora would have been happier to see a starving grizzly bear.

  “No note! Another night out! With him? Were you with him again?” she hollered.

  “Shhh! For God’s sake, Leah. Get inside. I have to change.”

  “With him?” She pointed at Theo. “And will Mr. Flint be watchin’ yeh?”

  Pedestrians on the street turned around to stare, and little George peeped out from his window next door to yell.

  “Oi! Jacob! I sent two messages. Don’t let Leah burn them before you read them!”

  Cora nodded to him and turned to Theo.

  “You’d better wait outside. I’ll be . . . Cora will be out in half an hour.”

  Theo opened his mouth to say something, but Leah’s face had not lost its livery color, so he wisely shut it and began pacing up and down the block instead.

  Door closed, Leah let open a tirade that would have made Charlotte proud.

  “Where were yeh?”

  “I fell asleep at Mr. Flint’s house again. After our work yesterday night.” She dug the money out of her pocket, saving five dollars for Suzette. “Here. Enough for part of the rent, and groceries.”

  Leah took the money and shoved it into the crock above the kitchen fireplace, before spinning around. “That’s two times! Never have you ever stayed out the whole night! And are you mad, talking about changing into Cora, in the light of day, for him to hear? Are you drunk?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have carnal relations with that boy?” Leah demanded.

  Cora rolled her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, Leah.”

  “Answer me! I’m as good as your mother, and I ought to know.”

  After a long silence, Cora finally nodded. “Yes.”

  Leah took a rag from the worktable and threw it against the wall. “Well then. You’re engaged. No more going about as Jacob. You can pay your men like you have before, and collect your money, but no more digging. You could be with child, for all we know!”

  “I’m not engaged. And I won’t be with child,” Cora said as patiently as she could. She walked over to the small cupboard where they kept their ipecac and bitters and opium syrup. She took out a brown jar stuffed with a musty-smelling herb. “I have this.”

  Leah put her hand on her chest, and her cheeks went a pasty-yellow color. “How do you know about that?”

  “This tea? The tea you make every month, after you’ve been shopping a little too long at Hiram’s grocery?”

  Leah went silent. Cora had never mentioned the affair, because it didn’t hurt anyone, and Leah deserved some
companionship all these lonely years with just Cora. The tea was some combination of Queen Anne’s lace, pennyroyal, and something else. It was bitter, and acrid, and Leah had never been with child.

  “Make me a cup, will you, Leah? I need to bathe and get dressed.” She exited the kitchen, but Leah followed.

  “But what about Flint?”

  “What about him?” Cora said, turning at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Will you marry him?” She shook the anger off her face and sighed. “Will you? Because I think it would be a good thing for you to settle. To have a child.” She shook the tea. “Maybe . . . you don’t want this tea after all, Miss Cora.”

  “I have other things to worry about,” Cora said. Like survival. “Make the tea, Leah, and let that be the end of it.”

  Cora sponge bathed as quickly as she could, before putting on her undergarments. Leah helped with the rest after bringing her a steaming cup of the tea, which was far less bitter than she’d anticipated. Cora took a moment to write a letter to Suzette, enclosing five dollars, and asked Leah to post it. And she wrote a letter to Conall Culligan too. Warning him that his life was in danger, to watch his food, his back. She did not sign it, of course. Before long, Cora was pinching her cheeks and reaching for the doorknob.

  “Oh! Your other letters!” Leah handed them to Cora. “And we ought to send Alexander an invite for supper or breakfast when he gets back this afternoon.”

  Cora nodded absently, tearing open the envelopes.

  She flipped over the first envelope. One was from Suzette. Already!

  Miss Lee,

  I should like to apologize for our family’s behavior two nights ago. I confess, this is all very strange and new, and I did not expect for you to so willingly undo the unsavory and deceitful actions of your servant.

  I should like to see you again, soon. Perhaps luncheon, or a walk along the Battery?

  Warmly,