Opium and Absinthe: A Novel

by Lydia Kang

  Had she really written so much of it in a fog that she had forgotten how she’d done it? But it didn’t matter. The article was in print, and she was a writer. A journalist! If she could only get out of Keeley’s Institute.

  Tillie considered escaping during the night, but the lack of money kept her trapped. Good behavior and time were the only other option. Every day, she thought of Ian and the newsies. She begged for information about the strike from Mrs. Ricker, even Dr. Millspaugh, but got only scant details. The date of the newsies’ rally loomed closer, arrived, and passed, without Tillie being able to do a thing to help Piper, Sweetie, and Pops. Were they eating enough? What had happened at the rally?

  It was so unfair that she was trapped here. But as her hours filled with staring at the dull wallpaper and watching men line up for shots, she thought more about why that was. It was fate, was it not, that she possessed a constitution that needed morphine? Or was it her choice?

  She wasn’t sure. Her body had needed the medicine. But she had chosen to increase the doses. Placing the blame on her choice or her constitution—both answers led to discomfiting thoughts. What was she able to do, or unable to do, when it came to her own destiny?

  And at the end of it all, she was still stuck here.

  James returned, but several days later than he’d promised. He arrived with a warm kiss to her cheek. The more she saw him, the less she was alarmed by Lucy’s words about James striking her. Those accusatory words were being diluted by James’s repeatedly sweet behavior. Today, he wore a smirk like he was hiding a surprise. Which he was.

  “I have a solution for you, Tillie.”

  “To what problem?” she asked. On the veranda, the staff had brought out tea and toast with a scant bit of butter. They were so very mean here with the plain food. Drs. Millspaugh and Keeley must think marmalade was poison.

  “Your morphine habit. You’ve been taking the medicine here, correct?”

  “I have. I’m not sure it works, to be honest. They won’t tell me the ingredients.” This, despite having questioned the cook, Mrs. Ricker, Dr. Millspaugh, and the manager, Mr. Brown.

  “I think I have something better. It’s a scientific miracle. They say it’s not addictive at all, and you only need a fraction of the dose, compared to morphine.” He produced a tin from his pocket. Inside were tiny white tablets.

  “What is it?” Tillie lifted a pill between her thumb and forefinger. Such an itty-bitty thing. It looked like a saccharin tablet.

  “It’s called heroin. My doctor says it’s perfectly safe. Take them.” He handed Tillie the tin. She read the top.

  BAYER PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTS

  HEROIN—HYDROCHLORIDE

  1/12 GRAIN

  A SEDATIVE FOR COUGHS

  BRONCHITIS

  PHTHISIS

  A cough medicine. That seemed safe enough. She popped a chalky tablet in her mouth, let it dissolve, and smiled.

  “You take that and stop those Keeley medicines. When they see you feel fine without them, I’ll discuss with your family, and we’ll have you discharged.”

  “Oh. That sounds lovely.” How could her sister possibly have felt so terrible about being married to James? She simply couldn’t imagine James hitting anyone or anything. “You’re brilliant!”

  “I’d like to be more than brilliant to you, Tillie.” He stood and reached for her hand. After Ian’s irritability, James was a balm. She squeezed his hand back.

  She understood well enough from the parades of grooms and brides before her that marriage was a maneuver, a dance between warring sides; sometimes it was mortar for joining walls to be built higher. She remembered someone saying—was it Dorothy?—that the union between their families would be one of the century. She thought of everything that James had been to her, done for her. He did not chide her for her habits; he did not seem so scandalized by her writing. Her heart was molding itself to fit what seemed so very fitting.

  James left, and Tillie dutifully took her tablets every few hours without saying a word to Catspaw and Mrs. Ricker.

  Not only did the pills keep the pain at bay, but she felt impervious. The tablets wiped away all bitterness, regret, and anger that had ever existed. The oppressive heat of summer didn’t bother her; she simply noted it and blotted the sweat from her upper lip. If she wasn’t careful, she would close her eyes to ponder something and find herself waking up half an hour later. She indulged and took two tablets at bedtime and found she drifted off to sleep on a wave of velvet irresistibility. She was tempted to take double doses during the day but decided not to chance it. She couldn’t be caught looking intoxicated.

  She ignored the fact that her head felt disengaged from her body or that her mouth was unbearably dry. The discomfort was worse than ever when her dose wore off. She felt profoundly melancholic when she awoke each morning. Her nose ran, and pain resettled into her bones. Yawns nearly cracked her skull open. Before she swallowed her tablet in the morning, disturbing thoughts pressed for attention. Oppressive thoughts that said, I would rather die without these.

  Four days later, two and a half weeks into her stay, she was discharged.

  “I’ve never seen a morphine fien—a person like yourself get over everything so quickly,” Mrs. Ricker said, handing her folded dresses to put into her trunk. “You must not have been a very constant user. Some of our other ladies were likely using twenty times what you had been.”

  Tillie nodded. She had her pastilles in the crevice of her bosom, under her corset. “I would like to buy a bottle of tonic to bring home. Just in case I’m feeling the need to go back to my old ways.”

  “Of course. With your leftover deposit, we can certainly arrange for a small home supply.”

  What she needed now was a bottle of the injectable from Catspaw. Then she could bring them both to Bellevue for testing. But how to get one?

  “Mrs. Ricker. I should like to meet with Dr. Millspaugh one last time. For a final examination.”

  “That isn’t necessary, my dear. He saw you yesterday.”

  “Please. It would satisfy my family, and they are the ones who paid for the treatment.”

  “Very well.”

  Catspaw was upstairs, it turned out, and came by her room. After his brief examination (he simply glanced at her and felt her pulse), she said, “Doctor, if you please, I would appreciate a written note to my family about my full recovery. They won’t believe it from me, but they will from you.”

  “Of course.” He turned to leave, but she pointed to her bureau.

  “A thorough note,” Tillie added. “I have pen and paper here. If you please.”

  The doctor seemed surprised but nodded and put his black bag back on the floor, then turned to the bureau and picked up the pen.

  “I’ll bring my things downstairs. My family is coming for me in about half an hour.”

  Catspaw hardly said anything as his pen scratched the paper she had left there. He pushed a greasy lock of hair out of his eyes, and it promptly tumbled back. She dragged her trunk closer to the door and, behind the doctor’s back, picked up his bag and left the room. He didn’t even notice.

  Downstairs, she opened the bag and saw the bottles of Keeley’s injection liquids—which one to take? There was a clear, a red tinted, and a blue tinted. She’d always received the red one, so she took that. When she was done, she put the bag by the pile with her other possessions in the foyer.

  She waited in an armchair by the window until Catspaw came downstairs, a piece of paper fluttering in his hand. He looked alarmed but relaxed when he saw his bag next to hers.

  “Oh! There it is. How odd, I thought I’d left it upstairs.” He handed her the letter, and Tillie thanked him. It wasn’t long before her carriage came with James inside. In less than a minute, she was comfortably tucked in the back seat.

  “I’d say the heroin was a marvelous success.” James glanced at her disheveled hair and dress. “You’ll look more like yourself with Ada tending to you.”

 
; “Yes,” Tillie agreed, though she wasn’t sure what she was agreeing with. As the carriage drew away, she heard a call.

  Looking back, she could see Catspaw running from the institute, waving his spidery paw. He must have opened his bag and realized a bottle was missing. Tillie took the tin of pastilles from her corset and popped one into her mouth as the carriage pulled farther away. The doctor frowned deeply but then shrugged and walked back to the institute.

  “Did he need to speak to you?” James said.

  “Apparently not,” Tillie said. With her tongue, she pushed the pastille between her molars and crushed it.

  Her mother and grandmother welcomed her home with benign happiness and clasped hands of approval. Her stay at Keeley’s was mentioned as a ritual that some ladies on Millionaire’s Row had to suffer through.

  Tillie was confined to the house again. John had been let go after he’d admitted that she had been running about at night under his nose. This infuriated Tillie. She had no way to contact him and question his behavior with the absinthe. If he had any links to the other murders, that trail was lost.

  Ada, thankfully, had kept her job but seemed absolutely heartbroken that John was no longer in the house. She attended to Tillie with a red nose and sniffed into a handkerchief between her duties.

  And Tillie dutifully chewed her pastilles.

  Dorothy visited with Hazel soon after her return. They were talking about an endless supply of busy nothings. Then suddenly, James was there too.

  “Oh. I didn’t even hear the doorbell!” Tillie said, blinking slowly.

  “I didn’t want to disturb you, in case you were sleeping,” he said.

  “We were going.” Dorothy and Hazel stood, and James took Dorothy’s chair. Hazel’s hand brushed James’s shoulder as she passed, and James looked at her with intention. Dorothy was already in the foyer, primping in the mirror. It struck Tillie that they had an understanding, and Dorothy was unaware. Then the moment passed, and just as quickly, Tillie forgot it.

  She had a question for James but couldn’t remember it. He chatted about the weather, the stocks, and how the hunt cup would miss Tillie next week.

  There was a question. What was the question?

  Tillie opened her eyes. She hadn’t realized they’d been closed.

  “Oh! My notes. My papers, from when I was at Keeley’s. Do you know where they are, James?”

  “I threw them away,” James said. His face was neither malevolent nor happy. Just . . . the usual James. A blank expression fixed between a Caravaggio and a Rembrandt. The epitome of a gentleman.

  Whereas Ian blazed his emotions like firecrackers, lit from the slightest provocation. She remembered his words.

  “Don’t give up before you try.”

  “Why?” Tillie woke up a bit. “They were mine.”

  “You didn’t need them. Keeley’s is behind you.”

  “Dorothy said you had collected letters to bring to me. I don’t remember receiving them.”

  “Because you were still taking those dreadful medicines. There’s much you don’t remember.”

  Tillie shook her head. Logic. Where was her logic? The notes. She had been talking about the notes. “But I wanted to write a story. About the medicines, at Keeley’s. I think the paper would buy a follow-up story to what was truly in those medicines. I never saw a single glint of gold.”

  “Don’t be silly. You can’t see the sugar in tea. Stop thinking so hard.” He looked down at her fingers. “I see my ring is back where it belongs.”

  Tillie looked down. His diamond rosette was back on her finger, as tight as ever. She didn’t remember putting it on. There was something else she wanted to ask about. Something that had been nagging at the corner of her memory for days now. Something about the paper.

  “Oh. The strike. I haven’t read a newspaper since I got home. What happened with the newsies’ strike?”

  “What? Good God, I have no idea, Tillie. Let Pulitzer and Hearst worry about that.” He took something out of his pocket. “No doubt you are running low on these. Here. But don’t tell your family. You don’t want to have to go back to Keeley’s, do you?” He handed her a tin box. This one was twice as big as the first one.

  “Thank you.” She covered it with her hand, in case her mother passed by.

  “You ought to go rest. Tomorrow, I’ll come for you. We can take a walk. Perhaps talk about other things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like setting a date. I’d love for this to all be behind us. Start new, and start fresh.” He didn’t even wait for an answer. He walked her to the grand foyer. “Up you go. Have a nap. That’s a good girl.”

  Tillie smiled and went up the stairs obediently. She clutched the tin of heroin, and when she reached her bedroom, she stared at it for a full hour before she succumbed to the small animal inside her that yowled in discomfort, and she plucked one from the tin.

  She stared and stared at it. And it nearly spoke to her.

  It was such a small thing.

  She needed it.

  It was just for coughs; how could it possibly do her harm?

  She lifted it to her mouth, hesitated. If she took it, she knew she would not really be bothered by James’s destroying her notes. She would not really be bothered by being married. She would not be bothered by much of anything anymore.

  If she took the pill, she would not really mind that Lucy was dead. That her throat had been punctured, that her blood had been forcibly taken, that all the good in the world that she had hoped to do was crushed into nonexistence forever.

  Tillie went to the bathroom next to her chamber and washed all the pastilles down the sink. She took the tiny bar of pink rose-scented soap, lathered up her hand, and tugged at James’s ring.

  If he loved her off of the heroin, then it was real love. She would find out soon enough.

  She tugged harder, and the ring flew from her sudsy hands, where it bounced on the wood floor and rolled into a corner behind the porcelain bathtub.

  She left it there.

  It was a dreadful week.

  Tillie’s chamber became a sickroom. Ada was at her side nearly the whole time, cleaning the sick, holding her trembling hand, wiping her skin, which sweated so much she drenched her sheets. A doctor visited—a new one. Dr. Turnbull was a stout older gentleman who bellowed, “Less is more!” Grandmama nodded with approval. There was no mention of Dr. Erikkson, and her body was too weak, too occupied by purging itself of its previous habits for her to demand a different doctor.

  Her insides roiled with spasms, wanting to squeeze every blessed drop of fluid out of her. She shivered so hard her teeth rattled. Any soup that went down came back up. And yet, the spasms and pain, fevers and sweating, chills and recurrent visits to the toilet lessened in increments day by day.

  Dorothy and Hazel visited, occasionally giving Ada a break by holding Tillie’s hand and feeding her water by the spoonful.

  For some reason, these visits always made her feel better. So much better she felt she might finally get through her trials. But then hours later, she would feel even worse than before. It made no sense.

  Once, in a haze of delirium, she could swear that James came to her bedside. Dorothy was nowhere to be seen. Hazel was looking over the bottles of medicine, shaking her head.

  “The opium is all gone.”

  “Well. We’ll see how long that lasts.” James was chuckling.

  Hazel sighed, and he reached for Hazel’s soft face. His hand slid to her ivory neck and thence downward, cupping her bosom over her cambric shirtwaist. Hazel gave a muted exhalation of desire.

  Tillie fell asleep and later wondered if she’d dreamt it all.

  But after several more days, she was sitting up in a chair in the parlor, no longer wearing a soiled nightgown, drinking tea and eating mincing bites of her egg at breakfast. She felt utterly wrung out, but an old and odd sensation had been occupying her body lately.

  Her mind was lucid.

  Be
fore her broken collarbone, she’d lived in a body full of awkwardness and worry. But her mind had always enjoyed its freedom. If she was curious, she would run after a question, like a kite climbing the heights of a grand wind.

  On her medicines, the kite had felt constantly tethered, like it was flying through misty clouds, and at times, through thick syrup. She’d gotten so used to it that she hadn’t even recognized the difference.

  Now, it was as if a smoked glass had been removed from her vision. Now, Lucy’s death loomed larger than ever, as fresh as if it had only just happened. The wound of losing her became brand new, shining and raw. She whimpered at the mere sight of Lucy’s chamber door. Sometimes she wanted to scream in rage over nothing, over bitter coffee or frayed boot strings. Ada cried often. In fact, she seemed as sick as Tillie. There were at least three episodes this past week when Ada had vomited into a bin, while Tillie was vomiting into the bathroom sink. They were twin sisters of raging indigestion.

  Now that Tillie’s worst was over, Ada was still occasionally turning pale and sweaty and darting to the bathroom. At times, she wasn’t even making it all the way to the servants’ quarters.

  Oh.

  Oh.

  That morning, Tillie was in bed, and Ada had snuck in a newspaper. The strike was over. The newsies were still paying the exorbitant sixty cents a bundle, but at least Hearst and Pulitzer were promising to buy back the unsold papers. Kid Blink, the most vocal and the leader of the newsies, had apparently been disgraced after being accused of accepting a bribe. All of this had happened while her body was twisting and turning, ridding itself of its insistent love of heroin. It infuriated her. She had completely missed the opportunity to help Ian and those little scamps.

  When Ada picked up her empty plate, noting the smear of yolk on the china, she lurched and covered up a dry heave.

  “Ada, put that plate down,” Tillie ordered. She took the napkin on her lap and hastily covered the yellow smear. After pausing to be sure no one was in the hallway to hear, she pulled her maid closer. “Ada. Are you with child?”