Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain

by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

  “I have a headache,” Edith complained.

  “From the prison, no doubt,” Elizabeth said and, after her daughter turned her back and headed to her room, added, “She is only moping.”

  The doctor sat beside his wife and son and chewed a sugar cookie, which tasted no sweeter than gruel. His girl was resilient. She would recover her good spirits without his help.

  Still, he slept poorly that night — his sleep torn with nightmare — and he woke before dawn to an overcast sky and a dampness that ached in his joints.

  He was surprised when Edith, dressed neatly in a mustard dress, joined him for an early breakfast. He’d hoped to see her looking well, but he hadn’t anticipated the bounce in her step or the cheerfulness in her voice when she said, “Good morning, Father.”

  She poured herself coffee with sugar and cream and drew up a chair beside him.

  “You look lovely,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She smiled and looked down, almost flirting. “I thought I’d go for a stroll this morning.”

  “It’s going to rain,” he said.

  “If I left now —” Edith sipped her coffee, set down the cup, frowned. “Mother must need something from the market.”

  Willis Steenwycks was a doctor and a businessman. He could sense a lie as fast as his tongue recognized whiskey. “You aren’t going back to that prison,” he said.

  “I,” Edith began. “You can’t —”

  From the doorway, still dressed in her nightgown, Elizabeth interjected, “As long as you live in my house, you’ll do as I say.”

  “You might be a bit more gentle,” the doctor said to his wife. “She’s —”

  “We’ve been far too gentle for far too long.”

  The doctor nodded, the way he often did at work, when clients spoke of stomach pains or swollen joints and he only half listened. He could spend hours in conversation and remember very little, a habit he relied upon to carry him through till evening when he could retire to the dining room and the comfort of dinner and a few stiff drinks.

  However, that night’s dinner brought no pleasure. At six o’clock Edith refused to emerge from her bedroom. While the doctor and his son ate freshly baked meat pie, and Elizabeth, complaining of an upset stomach, nibbled on yesterday’s sugar cookies, Edith stubbornly proclaimed her independence: “You can’t order me to eat,” or “You can’t order me to listen” or, when her voice grew tired, simply screeching periodically to disrupt the meal.

  “Headstrong,” Elizabeth sighed.

  At last the girl tired, for she remained silent when the knock came at the front door. The doctor set down his ale and rose to greet the newcomer. From behind the coatrack, his son peered up at him, wide, mischievous blue eyes reminding the doctor that the boy had left the table without excusing himself and ought to be sent away to school to learn discipline.

  The night air was chilly and damp. Pressed close to the wall so the eave would shelter him from the drizzle, George Stuart stood on the doorstep, the scent of the prison still rough on him. He looked even smaller than he had the day before, and oddly threatening.

  “I’ve come for Edith,” George said. “She left this at Newgate.”

  From beneath his jacket, he produced a damp copy of Mary Wollstonecraft’s memoirs, which he presented almost as if it were a great gift. From between the pages, the top of a neatly penned note protruded. “Dearest Edith,” it began, though the doctor could not read further without betraying his interest.

  “She’s sleeping,” the doctor said. “Quite exhausted, poor child.”

  “Will you tell her I called?”

  A gracious man would have invited the warden inside. But Doctor Steenwycks did not want to wake his daughter, and he was certain that George Stuart’s presence would anger his wife, who’d already blamed the evening’s outburst on Newgate Prison.

  “I’m sure she’ll be delighted,” he said. He closed the door behind the warden and returned to the table, where Elizabeth examined the book and proclaimed it rubbish.

  “She must not learn that he called,” she decided. “Having too many men around — particularly unsuitable ones — can bring only trouble.” Elizabeth nodded knowingly.

  Doctor Steenwycks gazed at his wife’s nose to avoid her glare. Her skin was as rosy as it was the day he first met her at the seaside retreat, where she cleaned laundry and he vacationed. He’d loved another woman at the time, a curly haired girl named Madeline whom he courted daily with passionate letters. He sent flowers and candies, tried his hand at poetry, proposed numerous strolls. He even turned to Elizabeth for advice, took her into his confidence one afternoon when she appeared to collect his linens. She replied with the sense he grew to rely upon: a good marriage is built on mutual sympathy, companionship, and trust, not transient passion or base desire. How quickly she convinced him with her sound judgment and tongue to change the object of his desire — much too quickly he soon realized, but by then it was too late.

  “We discussed Wollstonecraft at my philological society,” he said curtly, and turned to fill his cup yet again. “I find her work quite compelling.”

  • • •

  THREE NIGHTS PASSED, and for three nights Doctor Steenwycks felt as weightless as a falling leaf, blown forward and back between the wills of Elizabeth and Edith. He saw no good solution. He failed to sleep at night, and morning light made his thoughts no clearer.

  “Willis,” Elizabeth said to him, her hair still mussed from her pillow, “I think she needs a doctor.”

  He fastened a dressing gown over his nightshirt and poured a long measure of water into the porcelain washbowl. Edith had drawn him from his bed no less than five times last night, and the memory of her screamed demands — “Let me work!”, “I am suffocating,” and once, a foul word he could not bear to repeat — still ached in his head.

  “I’d hoped it would pass,” he said.

  “She hasn’t eaten in days.” Elizabeth combed her hair, pulling out tangles without so much as a glance to the mirror. “I’m afraid it’s more than willfulness. She’s hysterical.”

  The girl had always been headstrong — insisting on joining her father when he entertained colleagues in the back parlor, or thrusting her opinions of England and monarchy upon those who still felt fondness for the king — but she’d also always had a healthy appetite.

  “I’ll examine her tomorrow.”

  “I think you should see her now. Even Edmund is concerned. He came calling and I had to send him away, poor lovesick boy. He’s more alarmed than the girl’s own father.”

  Again the doctor nodded, resigned. “I’ll see to it right away.”

  Elizabeth led her husband to Edith’s bedside and pointed at the girl as if Doctor Steenwycks could not recognize his own daughter. Pale and listless, the child looked so delicate that he could not resist the impulse to bend and stroke her hand. He stepped forward, knocking into the bed frame. The lace blanket Edith’s aunt had knit slipped off the bed, revealing several volumes of political philosophy taken from his study. Elizabeth shook her head.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. His father had sent him abroad to study at the finest institutions, yet Willis never felt comfortable diagnosing his wife and children. He preferred to believe that his proximity alone prevented disease, that his family was immune to the complaints common patients brought.

  Edith ignored her father as he bent to listen to her heartbeat and brush the hair back from her forehead to feel for warmth. She refused the water he offered, and she did not protest when Elizabeth took the books from the bed.

  “Let me see your wrist,” the doctor said, and she shook her head. When he grabbed her hand and pulled it toward the light, she murmured softly that she needed air. He pulled a jar of smelling salts from the bag he usually kept in the parlor.

  “She’s quite ill,” Elizabeth determined. “Hysteria. Poor child. I know it. She’s forgotten most of her English no doubt.”

  “She was fine last week,” th
e doctor said, almost defensively.

  “I believe she’s been self-polluting.”

  “Of course not!” Doctor Steenwycks began to redden. The uterus was such a troublesome organ, and false stimulation — especially after childbearing age — could cause the womb to wander. “She knows better than to —”

  “A girl like Edith must have suitors.”

  “She’s in no condition to receive suitors,” Doctor Steenwycks said, impropriety’s blush still hot in his cheeks.

  “You must help her receive them then.” Elizabeth took the smelling salts from her husband and waved them beneath Edith’s nostrils. The sharp scent of ammonia and peppermint filled the air. “These should revive her long enough to meet gentlemen friends.”

  The doctor watched his unresponsive daughter. His role in her illness loomed dark in his thought. Elizabeth had been right, though it pained him to admit it. He should have intervened long ago, insisted that the girl heed her mother, find a husband, settle down. But how could he have known? He had no womb of his own, no uterine furies.

  “It’s good you finally went to her,” Elizabeth said. “It’s not too late — if I manage it — to find a husband.”

  DOCTOR STEENWYCKS CARRIED Edith to the parlor and laid her gently into the armed rocking chair while Elizabeth straightened the girl’s dress and fussed with her hairpins. Her young brother watched from beneath the sideboard, his face smeared with jam.

  Aside from her pallor and the dark circles beneath her eyes, Edith looked lovely. With her gaze unfocused, she had a new softness, an almost ethereal beauty, much like that of a curly haired girl the doctor had fancied years before. Gently he kissed his daughter’s forehead.

  He turned to light the chandelier, stoked the fire, poured himself a generous cup of brandy. Elizabeth had already set out the gilt-edged china and a tea tray with biscuits, preserves, and fresh cream. The carpet had been swept, the looking glass dusted, the andirons, shovel, and tongs arranged neatly. Between his daughter and the slat-bottomed chair set out for her suitor, a pot of black tea steeped.

  “That must be Edmund,” Elizabeth said, responding to the knock at the front door.

  The doctor retreated to his alcove, where a card table served as a makeshift writing desk. He’d set the table up there so he could chaperon Edmund’s visit, though he did not imagine the young man would misbehave. He was a reasonable man, steady and reliably dull.

  Willis was tired, exceedingly so. He’d slept scarcely three hours since he’d taken Edith home — an insomnia he at first blamed on his daughter’s outbursts, though last night she’d slept silently, while he wandered through the darkened house alone. Twice he was certain he’d seen ghosts: faint glows, unexpected motion around his armchair and near the unswept hearth of his son’s bedroom. On closer examination he found nothing, confirming the ravings of his sleepless thought.

  Still, he had business to attend to — piling receipts and unsigned bills — and a small personal matter: a response to a letter from a recent widow, which he’d kept folded in his pocket since it arrived two weeks earlier, smelling of old lavender.

  “Good day, Mr. Steenwycks,” Edmund said. Fear for his beloved’s health had not stolen the suitor’s appetite, and he looked, if anything, plumper than he had the last time the doctor had seen him. He wore a striped velvet coat with a muslin cravat and white dress shirt, and no trousers, though when the doctor looked closer, he realized that his eyes were playing tricks on him again. Cream-colored trousers stretched tightly around the boy’s middle.

  “My stomach is alive with nervous energy,” Edmund proclaimed, spreading a thick layer of jam over the quick bread Elizabeth offered.

  “She’s been anxious to see you,” she said. “I’m so glad you could come.”

  The doctor watched for signs of recognition in his daughter’s face. He’d administered the smelling salts as prescribed, but Edith only coughed violently and glared. Now she gazed to the wall behind Edmund’s shoulder.

  “I’ll leave you.” Elizabeth smiled and turned toward the kitchen.

  Edmund finished his biscuit and reached for another. “Dearest —” he began. “Darling. I’ve missed you, and your condition is … well, your mother’s explained. I … it matters not to me. I care for you now, just as I —”

  “I despise you,” Edith said.

  Perturbed by the venom in his daughter’s voice, the doctor set down his pen, drained his cup, and poured himself another brandy.

  “I know you are ill, that it’s disease speaking through gentle lips,” Edmund said.

  “Leave,” Edith said.

  “You mustn’t allow passion to interfere with your health.” Edmund stepped forward and bent down to adjust Edith’s blanket. “I’ve come here to help you.”

  “I know why you’ve come. They tell me I’ve lost my reason, that I’m sick. But I know better.”

  Doctor Steenwycks watched, distressed by his daughter’s sudden outburst. She had not spoken coherently in days. Perhaps, he decided, her womb sensed Edmund’s presence.

  “If you truly loved me, you’d leave now,” Edith said.

  “Who else would take you?”

  “Father!” Edith called, though it was Elizabeth who came running.

  “She doesn’t mean it,” Elizabeth said.

  “Perhaps I should call again, when she’s feeling more receptive.” Edmund dabbed the jam from his chin.

  “He’s our only hope,” Elizabeth cried, and the doctor realized his wife now addressed him.

  “I —” he began.

  “I won’t have him.” Edith tore the bronze pin from her hair. “Tell them, Father.”

  “You will,” Elizabeth said, “if I have to lock myself in my room and starve till you take him — how would you like that, your own mother driven to madness?”

  “Elizabeth,” Doctor Steenwycks rose. For the past few nights, fatigue had prevented him from satisfying his wife’s appetites, and he worried that she, too, might now suffer hysteria’s effects. He considered the red and blue weave of the carpet. When his daughter married, she would stand on this very rug, just as he had stood beside Elizabeth in her parents’ parlor sixteen years before. Elizabeth had looked matronly then in her full brown gown and silver necklaces. She’d promised him guidance and support; he’d promised her comfort and faithfulness. Many marriages survived on less. Perhaps Edith would learn to care for Edmund. Perhaps she would find health and happiness. He tried to picture his girl, his lovely daughter, beside a man he knew she loathed. If she had an affair, took another lover — later, once she’d regained her health — he’d turn a blind eye. That much he could do, he decided, as the warm glow of brandy made it increasingly clear that some marriages were meant to be broadened.

  He did not hear the knock at the front door, only Elizabeth’s order that he receive the guest. Didn’t she realize that Edmund stood before her, drawing inferences about married life? Didn’t she sense that she, not Edith, might frighten the young man away with her sharp, incessant demands? The doctor sipped, swallowed, decided to take a quick stroll and allow the fresh air to soothe his brandy dizziness.

  At the door, a wild-eyed man stood with a half-dozen unkempt companions. They wore faded trousers and spent shoes. “Since Edith won’t come to the prison, we’ve come to visit her instead — to thank her for our rehabilitation,” the wild man said.

  “I’m afraid —” the doctor began.

  “We’d like to thank her for all she’s done for us,” a second man offered through a mouthful of chipped and missing teeth. “We were released today.”

  For a moment the doctor considered. How would his wife react to the bearded man with the scar etched deep in the flesh of his lip? Or the lice-ridden fellow in the stained blue shirt? He stepped aside. “Come in,” he said as the men filed past him. “Turn left to the parlor.”

  “What is this?” he heard Elizabeth demand. “Who are these men?”

  The doctor lingered at the doorway, pondering lov
e and contentment. Or love and joy. Or maybe not love at all, but loathing and compromise.

  “Get out of my home!” Elizabeth shrieked. A table crashed against the floor amidst a clatter of breaking china.

  The doctor stepped away from the door and into the street. The sky threatened rain. But the brandy brought confidence. He wouldn’t just stroll, he’d leave. He was leaving. He had the address in his pocket, the soft-scented note penned in the hand of his old beloved. Scandal, what scandal there was, would trouble Elizabeth more than his absence.

  “One should not decide rashly; one should not allow passion to rule,” he muttered. Elizabeth’s words, not his. Not anymore, though the thought of his wife brought a heaviness to his head. He felt dizzy. He drew a quick breath. His feet moved beneath him without touching the ground. He was stumbling, falling. The cool, damp street caught him, comforted him. He looked up.

  He was facing his doorway, he realized. He’d gotten turned around, or the world had spun. But it didn’t matter. A sudden joy pulled him back to his feet; he stood, transfixed. For there, in front of his house, and not a day aged, stood Madeline, his Madeline. She held a wrapped parcel — clothing most likely — and a leather bag containing her savings. She wavered unsteadily, her gaze upon him, an apparition pulled from the tumulus depths of his dreams.

  “You’ve come to me,” he said, reaching out. “You’ve come just as I was on my way.”

  “I love you,” he said, and added, when the girl remained silent, “Can you forgive me? Can you ever forgive me?”

  And then she was in his arms, delicate, sobbing, grateful for his words, he believed, and he pressed his lips against the top of her head.

  “Darling, darling,” he whispered. “Madeline, my Madeline, my darling Madeline.” He reached for the wall to steady himself, but his hand met only the air. He was in the street, he remembered, the street in front of his home.