Go talk to the landlord. He will allow you more time.
Although she still thought of herself as Sadie, she became known as the Widow. She rotated her black mourning dresses and was never seen in public without a veil. While walking down Booksellers’ Row or shopping on State Street, it was not uncommon for people to stare. The city was constantly regenerating, but newcomers quickly learned of her reputation. “Why, that’s the Widow!” a seasoned city dweller might knowingly declare. Even those who swore never to pay her a visit, loudly proclaiming she did the work of demons, stepped out of her path. Some even compared her to that famous medium, Cora Hatch.
Yet while her presence drew respect in public settings, the social invitations ceased. She was ostracized from the society her wealth had previously afforded. In her own neighborhood, women refused to greet her or look her in the eye. Dozens of people visited her parlor each week, but Sadie was lonely. She missed home, especially her mother, and she often wondered how a city with over a hundred thousand people could feel so empty.
“When I can’t figure what’s wrong with somebody, I just go all quiet inside,” Madge whispered.
“Then what?”
“Then I wait. Sometimes you got to wait on it.”
The room quieted. Michael’s voice echoed. “I introduce to you—the Widow.”
He held her hand as she emerged, guiding her to the lone chair on a platform at the front of the room. He whispered he would be right there if she needed him. Her veil cast the room in a haze. She pulled it back to see them better, this room of skeptics. When he left her side, she turned, thinking they should end it right then. She could see Madge’s face in the shadows. The sight comforted her, and the strange noise coming from her stomach slowly settled down.
“I—I . . .” It was Sadie speaking, but they wanted James. She thought of her mother, the daily walk into that place of sickness, her tools tucked into a bag. The men in this hall did not want to be healed with letters. This was a tour of conversion. First, they required a glimpse of the miraculous, a painless proof. To bring forth the dead was to remind them of something dark, so instead they chose the natural world.
Her eyelids fluttered within her reddened face. She tapped her feet, shaking. Her movements slowed. Wait on it, Madge had said. Sadie breathed slowly, in and out.
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Private James Heil and I was a soldier in the Fourth Illinois Cavalry of the United States Army. I died during a victorious battle at Shiloh led by General Grant, leaving behind all the sweet memories of my young life.
The widow’s eyes remained closed, hands cupped in her lap. She was so perfectly motionless, seeming to take only the occasional breath, that it was quite easy for them to imagine another speaking through her—the mouth moving of its own accord, the face impassive even as the voice inflected.
When I was a boy, I spent many a spring afternoon with my brother climbing the horse chestnut tree behind our house. My father, tired of the scatter of spiked fruits in the yard, the animals sickened from eating them, decided to cut it down. When my brother and I saw the ax dangling from his hand, we begged him not to do it. We loved that tree, its broad leafy branches, its delicate white flowers.
The crowd murmured.
So when my father lifted his arm to deliver the blow, my brother grabbed him. The ax fell, hitting the trunk and sticking there, but the angle was off, not strong enough to bring it down. My brother and I were sent to bed without supper that night, but we rejoiced, having saved the tree. The next morning, we went out to say hello to our old friend, and we saw the ax had chipped away a large piece of the tree’s trunk at the base. Now as you know, the epidermis of a tree can be quite delicate. It can develop infections or suffer a parasitical invasion. Each day we checked on it, watching as suberous tissue developed over the wound. The blow had not reached the tree’s medulla, so it healed by closing up, a corklike substance growing over it. Those botanists among you will understand that this tissue consists of parenchyma cells. They are tabular, compactly organized, and they form a kind of callus. It is not unlike a scab that grows over a human wound.
The widow licked her lips. A door slammed as a latecomer entered.
Even then, I found it interesting how plants repair themselves differently than animals. If a lizard loses its tail, it grows back. A plant, however, creates something entirely new. It is not regenerative. When a tree’s leaves die and fall in autumn, new ones return. My father did not destroy the tree, but he did damage it. The cut was done and, though it healed, the scar remained. It remains, I presume, if the tree still stands, to this very day.
A pause, and James continued.
You want to speak of botany so you can avoid talk of the terrible conflict that consumed this country, but there is no escape. This war did not just make a superficial gash in our skin. How are you making sense of the sacrifices we have made? I see you. I see you all. A room of men struggling for the sense to make sense.
The widow quieted. The crowd sat mute and frightened. She was, indeed, a woman possessed. How else could this woman, so young, dressed in a color so dark and unnatural for one her age, face framed by schoolgirl ringlets, speak to them in such a way? Some whispered she sounded like both man and woman. The next night, she impressed another crowd, spoke of yet another botanical subject. And on the third and final evening the crowd overflowed into the street. Inside, the room erupted into shouts after she discussed the effects of fire on some trees. She’s a fraud! That’s no spirit! They stomped, the noise thundering like a stampede. A man ran toward her before she’d fully awakened. Michael burst from the side room, reaching for her. The stranger had her by the wrist and was pulling up her sleeve to prove his presumption of hidden writing on her arms. Madge pulled at her other arm while Michael restrained the man.
That night, even Madge’s tea did not help Sadie sleep.
WHENEVER SADIE LEFT THE HOUSE built by the cold mind of her husband and warmed by the healing hands of Madge, it was as if she were being set adrift at sea. The house would never feel like it belonged to her, but when she traveled it sounded a siren calling her back. She believed it was the soul of the building—its joists and posts and girts—that strengthened her. Outside of it, she looked to Michael for support. He had become a fixture, always waiting patiently in the carriage, doing everything he could to lessen the inevitable obstacles she encountered as a traveling medium. When she stepped into the carriage to sit beside him, she entered another world.
Despite this unmooring, she continued to board train after uncomfortable train, rarely sleeping in those well-worn cars. Their attempts to resemble a home were woeful: dreary landscape paintings, stained carpet, cramped washrooms. Amid the worrying noise of itinerant salesmen, shouting newsboys, buzzing flies, she tried to learn to welcome the call of the next station, the blast of wind when the doors opened; before long, passes over unsteady bridges did not unsettle her as they once had. Soon, she looked forward to the arrival in each new city: the momentary disorientation as Michael sought the driver who was to meet them. While he sorted things out, she read the faces: we are all Americans, for better or for worse. She couldn’t help but romanticize those town centers, picturing fair merchants and robust families, her deepest affection lying with the rugged, the faith-filled, their dusty shirts as wrinkled as elephant skin.
It was in those towns where Sadie fully understood the gravity of her mission. She traveled through a nation mourning. The country’s thirty million souls pulled at her, and she could feel the tug of hands at her throat. A Texas of lament. Her father had produced hardbound copies of his handiwork. She bound oral messages. Fully maturing out of her shyness, she moved into a recognition of her purpose. When she entered the cleared saloon, the swept parlor, the dusty storehouse, the cold barn, she saw only the chair, a seat waiting to transport, and she sensed the tension of the people: their foreheads creased like paper, their doubtful rumblings.
The conductor walked through the car, ann
ouncing they were two hours from Chicago. He stopped at their seats.
“Are you comfortable, sir?” He addressed the question to Michael who turned to her. She nodded.
She studied his square face as he read his book. When he entered a crowded hall, he revealed an expression meant to inspire trust, the one he must have once used at a sick patient’s bedside. On trains and in lodging houses, that face focused on her, saw to her comfort. Who was he? She knew the death of his brother troubled him. He never talked at all about patients, and she wondered more than once about the size of his wealth. She did not pay him, and he did not ask.
He squinted. After days of travel, his face grew a more wearied shadow. At least she had grown accustomed to his moods and inflections. At that moment, his skin was gray. He did not look well. She wished Madge were there to tell her what was the matter with him.
“How are you feeling?”
He kept his eyes on his book. “As well as can be expected. Thank you for asking.”
She thought of what would make her father happy, what would bring about peace. And as she pressed her palm to Michael’s, watching as his eyes jumped to the front of the car and back to hers again, the book slipping into the cushion, she considered a life with him, the ins and outs.
“You know you have been a great friend to me,” she said.
All the times he had taken her arm, the meals they’d shared, the late evenings sitting together going over the night’s lecture had been so comfortably normal. She reached to touch his cheek.
As they left the rail depot, she thought of what her father would think. There was no denying it: she was no longer dutiful nor dignified. She was not the daughter he’d married off. Then again, maybe she should just give in and do what everyone expected of her.
An oval hearse stopped beside them, topped by six carved wooden urns. Black and white curtains hung at the windows, framed by gold fringe and tassels. She ran her eyes over its glass front, the gleaming steel tires. Had she been born with hands like her father, she might have built hearses, she thought, poring over the details. The clarence fronts. The fluted moldings and swollen sides. On top, it read: “The house appointed for all living.”
He moved closer as they rode into the North Division. She looked up at his face again, saw that he had momentarily lost his pale color and taken on the slightly flushed look of a man captured by a woman. His hand rested on hers. How different this would be from her marriage to Samuel. Here was a man who would never curtail her freedom, who inspired her to follow her own mind.
Yet when he looked over at her, wearing the expression she easily recognized as his most genuine, she had an uneasy feeling that she was making a terrible mistake.
14
SADIE COVERED HER MOUTH WITH A HANDKERCHIEF, looked upward at a slice of sky between the buildings, stepped down and then up and then down again on the uneven boards. A man burned trash in a barrel, and the heat passed over his face in a wet bath. A dray rumbled by carrying stacks of freshly sawed lumber. A red-haired dog, its dark tongue hanging like a piece of rotten flesh, sat beside its owner. Somewhere, she believed, were the wives of these men, waiting for the pittance that would allow them to buy one more bag of meal, a sack of potatoes, an extra bolt of cloth.
At one time, she believed black protected her from the worst of the place, the stares of the indecent driven off by the color’s solemnity. But now that her father had written to say that he was coming for a visit, she would shed the black dress, wear fanciful hats, puffed sleeves, gauntlet cuffs. She would order an entirely new wardrobe. She would indulge, wear color again, order a dress in a brilliant shade of orange. She was ready to move on from this illusion of grief. She marched the block, searching for Michael’s apartment. There was a relief, she realized, that came with clarity of vision, an assured certitude. Spiritualism had nurtured her, opened up a new way of thinking. Once, she had lived as a bird who does not know what wings can do. Now she would do things her way. The thought propelled her.
She had no idea what the doctor would think of her proposition. Obviously, he was captivated by her, but marriage was a much more serious topic. Her opinions of most men had been formed during her travels. Men proved themselves to be just as fanciful as women. Hopefully, the doctor would understand that she proposed rationality over romance.
His apartment sat just above a smoking lounge. An open door revealed a steep set of stairs. She climbed them, her skirts brushing both walls of the narrow corridor. He opened the door for her with a surprised look on his face. The rooms smelled of smoke. He had prepared hot water for tea, and the thought of him taking tea alone saddened her.
He did not look at her as he poured for the two of them. She studied the apartment. For a man who lived alone, the place was comfortable. There was even a piano. Of course, he played. He was the kind of man with hidden talents. She sat in a faded armchair, its coils digging into her backside.
“It isn’t mine. The rooms came furnished.”
“What?”
“The piano.”
“Oh.” She sipped, stalling. “I want to be honest with you, Dr. Heil. Surely you agree that honesty is the best course.”
“Yes. There is never a bad time for sincerity.”
He was speaking in that measured way she found maddening. For a moment, she met his serious tone with a similar humorlessness. “We live in an era where the call for earnestness is most urgent. The war has reminded us of the brevity of our time.”
“As a doctor, I was not trained to believe in the broadness of truth,” he said.
“And you think differently now, yes?”
He paused. “I would say, yes. You have taught me otherwise.”
“I realize this visit is unorthodox.” She cleared her throat, hardly believing what she was about to say. “I apologize for intruding upon you.”
“Your company is never an intrusion, Mrs. Walker.” He looked at her expectantly.
“Please call me Sadie.”
“Very well.”
“You see, I want to be completely clear with you.”
“Of course,” he said.
He was so earnest. It struck her that the man never smiled. He walked the streets as if doomed. Still, he was one of the few people she trusted. She needed him.
“I have something to say,” she said.
“It would seem so.”
Her cup clattered into her plate, tea spilling over its sides.
“Forgive me,” she whispered.
“I’ll get something to clean it up,” he said, hurrying out of the room.
When he returned with a cloth, his hand shook as he wiped up the tea. Their partnership had subverted more than one societal rule, and she was aware how much the subterranean quality of their dealings simulated the thrill of criminality. Perhaps she had momentarily confused that feeling with fondness. The truth was that the doctor barely seemed to feel anything outside of his love for his brother. He was more corpse than man.
Say it. Say it.
He tilted his head down, the light catching the red in his hair. When he looked up, there was a pained seriousness in the way he looked at her.
“Please know, Mrs. Walker, that by bringing my brother’s voice to me, you have provided so much. I am forever grate—”
“I wish you’d call me Sadie.”
“Oh yes. Then call me Michael.”
“I came here to propose marriage, Dr. Heil. A marriage of convenience, of course. An arrangement between you and me. We could just draw up the necessary documents.”
She heard the desperation in her tone, and it shamed her. “You don’t have to answer right away,” she whispered as she stood up. She looked around for the door.
“Marriage?”
The sound of her skirts muffled his voice.
She moved down the narrow stairwell so quickly that she nearly tripped and tumbled.
MICHAEL HEIL LAY IN BED, missing his brother. The widow had announced her strange marriage proposal just th
e day before, but before he could seriously consider it, the gloom had returned. So he searched, as he did each morning, for a way to shake it. Get out of bed, that was first. Pull on trousers, that was second. A shirt. Adjust the socks until they were level. Shoes. Put on the frock coat before leaving the bedroom. He clasped his hands together and shook his head to clear it. After he’d straightened his necktie, he picked up the empty medical bag.
Outside, he walked past the open door of a butcher where the carcasses of lambs hung by their feet, past buildings covered in sign-boards, a closed saloon, a lawyer’s office, a furniture factory with the name E. P. Huntington painted directly above the entrance. It was the time between breakfast and the midday meal, when work still carried its cheerful notes, and he, a doctor without a single patient, dusty medical satchel at his side, walked one direction and then the next. He paused to take a small cigar from his pocket, lit it with a match, continuing on, smoking and walking, exhaling the smoke until the foot of it burned his finger. He threw the stub into the street, a glowing eye. He came upon a row of women selling fruit out of wooden carts. Behind them, a gang of dogs awaited an opportunity, eyed a hill of plums. One of the women had a large growth on her cheek—darker than a birthmark, fleshy as a mole. Michael squeezed a tomato, threw it up and caught it, drawing a frown from the marked woman. He turned from her, shaded his eyes with the side of his hand.
Balm Page 10