His fist thudded on the table. “Why can’t somebody else help them?” he thundered. “Why does it have to be you?”
Before I could answer, the fork dropped from his hand, and he rose abruptly to his feet. I turned to see that my mother had entered the room.
“Good morning, Evelyn,” said Father.
“Good morning, dear.” She floated into her seat at the opposite end of the table and poured herself a cup of tea from the pot Katie had set out for her. “Were you able to get any sleep?”
“About an hour’s worth, before Biggs arrived,” he said, sitting down again. Mr. Biggs, our neighborhood barber, was more regular than Grandpapa’s hall clock, arriving each morning at precisely 7:35 and departing exactly fifteen minutes later to reach Mr. Burden’s house by 7:55. “What about you?”
“Too keyed up, I’m afraid. I’ll just wait for my afternoon nap.” She sipped her tea, her eyes moving from Father to me. “I didn’t interrupt anything, I hope?”
Father began stabbing at his eggs again, while I stared down at my plate.
“Genevieve was just explaining to me how she’s going to rid the world of unhappiness,” Father muttered.
I lifted my chin. “What I said is that I’m hoping to lead my patients back to some semblance of normal functioning.”
“And how long will that take?” Father asked, addressing me directly. “A month? A year?”
“What difference does it make?” I exclaimed, gesturing in frustration. “Why can’t you be a little patient?”
“Genevieve,” murmured my mother, nodding at my elbow.
Following her gaze, I saw that I had dragged my sleeve across my buttered toast. “Oh, damn,” I said, swatting at it with my napkin.
“Genna!” gasped Mama.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I had picked up swearing from my male classmates in medical school and was finding it a difficult habit to break.
“It’s not a matter of my patience,” Father continued. “We have to think about the board of Mount Pleasant Hospital. They may not be as willing as I to wait.”
“Listen to you. You’re already assuming that I’ll fail,” I fumed, giving up on the sleeve, “and that I’ll have to accept their offer in the end.”
“What other outcome can I possibly expect? You’ve given me no rational basis for believing that this project of yours will succeed.”
I tried to swallow the lump that was growing in my throat. I had truly believed, when I conceived of my class therapy project, that it would make my father proud. “I don’t understand why you’re being so pessimistic. You, of all people! You’ve always been such an innovator; I should think you’d be all for it!”
He leaned toward me across the table. “What do you want me to say? That I think it’s wonderful you’re passing up the chance to do real healing so that you can waste your time on some untested nervous cure? That I think this is the best possible way for you to use your talents?”
Yes, I thought, that’s exactly what I want you to say. “Persuasion therapy is not untested,” I retorted. “Neither is the class treatment approach. You might at least keep an open mind. Better yet, you could just trust my judgment and wish me luck.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” he snapped, “but your judgment hasn’t always been the best, now, has it?”
My breath left me as completely and painfully as if I’d been kicked by a horse.
“Hugh,” my mother said with a sigh.
I struggled for air as the two great sins of my life loomed up before me: my brother’s death, massive and overshadowing, and six years down the road, its smaller, fainter shadow—the Incident with Simon Shaw.
My cheeks were stinging with hot blood. It wasn’t fair. Couldn’t my father see that I had changed, that I was no longer that impulsive, self-centered girl? I thought of all the times in medical school when, through sheer force of will, I had controlled my natural inclinations, remaining silent when I felt like screaming, or smiling when I wanted to cry. Had I complained when my “gentlemen” classmates put cow eyes in my lunch pudding? No! I’d just spooned them out and polished it off. And when my professor asked me to describe the male ejaculatory function in front of the entire class, I hadn’t run from the room—although the thought had certainly crossed my mind. I’d stayed and answered without protest or hesitation, even drawing an anatomically correct diagram on the board for good measure. I’d become so adept at disregarding my natural feelings and reactions and doing what was required that I’d graduated third in my class—and yet here my father was, still treating me like an irresponsible child.
“All I’m asking is that you reconsider,” Father said wearily. “We fought for your medical degree together, you and I. You’ve achieved what few women dream of. It’s no small honor for a female physician to be offered a position on a hospital inpatient ward. But if you don’t take their offer now, there’s no guarantee it will come again. You’ve seen what’s happening; there’s a backlash against women doctors out there, and it’s getting worse. You and I may know it’s because the men don’t like the competition, but that’s not what the critics are saying.”
I knew very well what they were saying. It was the same old nonsense all over again: that the intimate workings of the human body were too graphic for the sensibilities of decent young women, and that females were too intellectually limited, or too prone to hysteria, or just plain too sentimental to become competent physicians. One prominent author was even seriously contending that higher education enlarged the brains and stunted the bodies of female students.
I supposed we should have suspected that the prejudice against us had never really died. The only reason Johns Hopkins agreed to admit women in the first place was because a group of female donors promised to give it $500,000 toward the new medical school if it would do so. Once this prestigious institution opened its doors to women, other medical schools had felt forced to follow suit. And women had responded, filling a third or more of the available seats and garnering a lion’s share of the honors. For a few years, things had looked very rosy—so rosy that the handful of all-female medical colleges had closed down, believing they were no longer needed in the new, coeducational age.
But since my matriculation in 1900, the supply of doctors had begun to exceed demand—and true to form, women were being blamed. Instead of handling the glut by letting the most talented physicians climb to the top, the predominantly male profession was closing ranks, kicking women off the bottom rungs. Female enrollments at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere had already been cut to less than five percent, while postgraduate training for women was becoming nearly impossible to find. I knew what Father was saying was true. But I wasn’t interested in crusading for a cause; I had never wanted to fight, only to learn.
“There’s nothing I can do about what those idiots are saying.”
“Of course there is,” he retorted. “You can prove them wrong! You can take the job at Mount Pleasant and show them what a woman can do. Make a real contribution!”
No, I can’t, I thought, staring at my plate. Not even for Father, not this time. And not just because I knew how unwelcome I’d be in a position I’d only been offered because of his influence. The truth was that I had no interest in general medicine, a fact that I hadn’t faced squarely until my last year of school. Conrad was the one who was supposed to be the doctor. I may have taken his place in the plan, but my heart had never been in it.
Traditional psychiatry had intrigued me at first, but I’d soon grown frustrated with its limited reach. I didn’t want to spend my life as a custodian for the irreversibly insane or testifying as to the mental capacity of criminal defendants. I wanted to improve people’s lives. It was only during my practicum with Dr. Cassell that I’d discovered the fascinating new field of psychotherapy. Dr. Cassell had observed that a number of his consumptive patients suffered from depression, which he believed hindered
their ability to get well. He treated this depression not with shock treatment or medication, but by confronting his patients’ mental attitude, urging them in weekly group meetings to develop a more positive outlook. And the patients got better. I’d seen it with my own two eyes.
Here, I was thrilled to discover, was something that looked beyond brain injuries and lesions and toxic reactions for explanations of mental illness, something that took life events and emotions into account. The idea that thoughts and feelings could influence body functions had been taken up by a handful of other psychiatrists and neurologists, I soon learned, who’d begun using the persuasion approach to treat a variety of physiological disturbances. By the time my practicum came to an end, I had decided that this was where my future lay. Using the tools of psychotherapy, I would identify what was broken and fix it. I almost smiled now at the thought; perhaps Father and I weren’t so very different after all.
“If I can show that psychotherapy works for symptoms caused by unresolved grief,” I said evenly, “I’ll be making a significant contribution to an emerging field. Isn’t that just as important as what you’re proposing?”
He didn’t answer immediately. His gaze roamed over my face, searching for something. I didn’t know what. “Is it, Genna? Is it just as important?”
“I think so,” I said, uncertain what to make of his change in tone.
His thumb tapped absently on his fork stem. “You’re sure about this, then.”
I nodded.
He sighed and put down the fork. “Very well. We’ll give it three months. I believe I can hold the hospital position open until then.”
“Three months? For what?”
“To see if this project of yours is a viable one.”
Three months—that was no time at all! It had taken Cassell that long just to wean his patients from their medications. “That’s—” I stopped. He was trying so hard to be reasonable; I ought to at least meet him halfway. “Fine. Three months. Thank you, Father.”
He grunted and swigged the last of his coffee. “I’d better be off,” he said a moment later, pushing himself up from the table. “Andre is meeting me at the lab; he’s got a new valve he wants to show me, for the artificial lung.” He strode to the other end of the table and pecked my mother on the cheek before starting for the door.
I swiveled in my seat to call after him. “Father?”
He turned.
“You won’t be sorry. I promise.”
Giving me the merest flicker of a smile, he tipped his head and continued out the door.
• • •
A few minutes later, I was skimming over the icy Madison Avenue sidewalk, buffeted by yet another bitter wind that snaked under my muffler and pushed against the wide brim of my hat. Holding the hat down with one hand and clutching my book bag with the other, I tripped along through the maze of work-bound men clogging the sidewalk with their walking sticks at this hour, buoyed by my father’s concession. I may not have entirely convinced him, but at least I’d opened his mind a crack to the validity of what I was attempting, which was more than I’d dared hope for.
I was halfway to Professor Bogard’s house when the clang of an ambulance broke into my thoughts, growing louder as the vehicle raced up behind me and sped past. I watched the white-coated surgeon sway on the rear platform as the ambulance careened through the traffic and turned left at the end of the block, leaving a tangle of shying horses and honking motorcars in its wake. When I drew up to the intersection, I saw that it had pulled over to the curb some twenty feet up the block, in front of a brick town house. I hesitated, wondering if my services might be required. A momentary lull in traffic decided me, and I ran across the avenue.
Picking my way through the bystanders already congregating on the sidewalk, I followed the ambulance surgeon and his two stretcher-bearing attendants toward the town house entrance. A police officer stood watch at the door. As the ambulance crew hurried toward him, he spat out a stream of tobacco juice and advised, “Take your time, fellas. This one ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
I stopped. Apparently, whatever had happened here was over. If I wasn’t needed, I really ought to be going, or I would be late for the professor. I turned and had just begun to retrace my steps through the growing crowd when an explosive backfire brought me around again. A dusty police car had pulled up to the curb behind the ambulance and was sputtering to a stop. I watched as the door opened and a man in an ill-fitting sack coat stepped out. He had wispy red hair under a crumpled brown derby and a long, bony face that put me in mind of an underfed mule. He paused by the car for a moment, taking in the scene on the street, before starting toward the entrance. He came to a stop in front of the policeman.
“Officer Mundy,” he greeted him flatly, scanning the ground at his feet.
“Detective,” the officer replied, inclining his head a fraction of an inch.
The detective gestured toward the ground. “What’d I tell you about spitting at a crime scene?”
I was rather surprised to hear him say it. The men of New York generally chewed, and spat, wherever they liked: in the streetcars, in the theaters, and in the finest restaurants. I knew there was some sort of law against it, but I would have expected a detective to have more important things on his mind.
“Jeez, I don’t know,” the officer replied with a surly smile. “What did you tell me?”
The detective’s expression didn’t change. “You’re supposed to be protecting the crime scene, not contaminating it.”
The officer shrugged. “None of the other detectives care if I chew.”
The detective shook his head as if dealing with a dim-witted child. “What if the perpetrator liked to chew? Did you ever think of that? What if he was standing out here, thinking about whether to do the crime, and left a plug behind? We see that, we’ve learned something about our man. Maybe we even get lucky and find out what brand he uses. But what do we know now, eh, Mundy? Only that you’re a sloppy cop with a bad habit.”
The officer’s smile vanished. “Say, you’re a regular Sherlock Holmes, ain’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” the detective said sourly. “Sherlock Holmes.” His hand shot out and grabbed the officer’s wrist, twisting it palm up. “Now spit it out.”
The cop’s cheeks flamed red. His head swung toward the spectators and back to the detective. For a moment, I thought he was going to punch the detective with his free hand. But at last his gaze fell away, and he spat the tobacco noisily into his palm.
“Put it in your pocket,” the detective demanded.
The officer shot him a look of pure malice, but closed his fist over the wet clump and thrust it into his pocket.
The detective nodded brusquely. “Now, get these people to stand back. I want this area cleared, just in case there’s anything left to find.” Brushing past the officer, he pulled open the entrance door and disappeared inside.
“Yes, sir,” muttered the officer, throwing a mock salute after him. He turned and raised his club in the air. “All right, everyone,” he shouted, “stand back. Give us some room here.”
Reluctantly, the bystanders parted, creating a path between the door and a black patrol wagon that had just joined the other vehicles at the curb. As the driver of the wagon strode up the path, I was jostled farther and farther back on the sidewalk, until all I could see was a row of hats in front of me. When nothing happened for several more minutes, I turned once more to leave.
This time, it was a murmur from the crowd that brought me back around. As the line shifted in front of me, I saw that two more policemen were emerging from the building, escorting a bareheaded woman whose face was turned toward the ground. The woman’s coat was slung unevenly over her shoulders, and there were dark blotches on her pale-green skirt. As the trio continued down the path toward the van, the woman lifted a bewildered gaze toward the staring bystanders.
My feet took root in the sidewalk. I recognized those slumped shoulders and that thin, ashen face. Forcing my legs to move, I pushed to the front of the crowd. “Eliza!” I called. “Eliza, over here!”
She turned, and recognition swept across her face. “Dr. Summerford!” She lurched toward me, reaching out with both hands.
I made it only a step closer before one of the policemen blocked my path.
“Stand back, there,” he warned, nodding to the other officer as he muscled Eliza back on course.
I watched, dumbstruck, as he led her to the back of the wagon and lifted her in.
“You know the suspect?” asked a voice at my ear.
I turned to find the second policeman, a ruddy-faced man with a crooked nose, standing beside me. “What?”
He pulled his domed hat lower as a gust of wind blew past us, slapping grit up against the wagon. “Do you know the suspect?” he repeated.
“You mean Mrs. Miner? Yes. Can you tell me what’s happened? Why are you taking her? She isn’t hurt, is she?”
“What’s your name?” he asked, opening the little black book in his hand.
“Genevieve Summerford.”
He licked the tip of his pencil and entered this laboriously into the book. “Are you related to the suspect?”
“No.”
“How do you know her?”
“She’s a patient of mine.”
He slowly wrote this down as well as the electric wagon pulled away soundlessly from the curb.
“Officer,” I begged, “could you please tell me what’s happening?”
He closed his book and looked up. “You need to come with me,” he said, taking hold of my elbow. “Detective Maloney’s going to want to talk to you.”
Chapter Four
The officer led me past the gawking bystanders to the building entrance. A brass wall plaque beside the door read Herman Hauptfuhrer, MD. Hours 9–12. Hauptfuhrer: the doctor who’d delivered Eliza’s baby. The one she’d told me she was going to visit this morning, to try to determine her daughter’s whereabouts…
A Deadly Affection Page 4