Sixteen
IZZIE PRESSED TOWARD THE TRAIN WINDOW to get the widest view she could. Red oaks, tulip trees, chestnuts, and sweet birches robust with green leaves sped by, no longer the yellowish green of early spring. Fields of wheat and rye, wide and rolling, flowed by one after the other. This morning she had been Izzie Benton. By noon she’d become Mrs. Robert MacAdams. At three, she had kissed the tear-soaked, sullen faces of Clara, Billy, and Euphora goodbye at the train depot. By this evening she would reside in Rochester, New York.
“It’s my first train ride.”
“I know it is, my sweet.” Mac, studying a copy of the Water-Cure Journal, didn’t look up.
Closing her eyes a moment, she let her mind drift over the day. If she re-lived it enough times, she would hold it forever in her heart, never forget it. The rotund high-voiced Reverend Hubbard Winslow had married them at the stroke of eleven in the morning in Emma Purcell’s parlor. She and Mac had been surrounded by Emma, the Carter spinsters, Mrs. Beattie, the milliner, Sam Weston, Papa, her sisters and Billy.
When Izzie had glanced around the room at the wedding group, she had hoped to see Mamma somehow. It seemed wrong that Mamma wasn’t there with her long silver braid and stiff upright stance. Why should Papa be there, but not Mamma? Mamma’s absence was the only thing that wasn’t perfect about the morning.
Even though there weren’t any fresh orange blossoms to be had for her hairpiece, or a bouquet, Mrs. Beattie made her a head wreath of white silk blossoms and told her she could keep it as a gift. Mac’s voice trembled slightly and his hands shook as he spoke his vows. She had never seen him be anything except confident. His jitters were surprising but endearing. After the vows, the Reverend Winslow kissed her with pudgy lips, then Mac bent over to kiss her, his mustache brushing the skin around her mouth. The minister handed the wedding certificate to Mac and then they all had sweet wine and a special wedding cake made by Emma Purcell and Euphora. It was plump with currants and raisins, flavored with nutmeg and brandy. And butter. It had more butter in it than Izzie had ever seen in Emma’s kitchen.
Even though Mamma would have loved to see her in the pretty white séance dress Papa had given her after she was ill, Izzie couldn’t wait to take it off and change after the wedding party. It was the last four hours she would ever wear that dress. She would shed it, then leave it behind for Clara, for Euphora—for anyone who wanted it. It would no longer be hers. At long last.
After the cake and wine, Emma Purcell, eyes misty gray, presented Izzie with the wedding quilt she and the spinsters had made with Clara and Euphora. It was a lovely quilt of pinks, greens, and blues. It was the only thing in Izzie’s wedding chest.
During the party Izzie watched Papa whenever she got the chance to see if he would take wine. But he never touched it. He looked at it many times, but never touched it. This was the best wedding gift he could have given her.
“Got some business to take care of. Write us a letter, Isabelle,” he said as he put on his new straw hat. Without another gesture or word, he walked out of the house, the first one to leave the party. She had the feeling she wouldn’t see Papa for some time and it gave her a sense of great relief.
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STILL ENGROSSED IN READING his Water-Cure Journal, Mac sat close to her. She gently touched his coat sleeve.
“The train is thrilling,” she said.
Letting the journal flop onto his lap, he raised his eyes to meet hers, smiled, and shifted toward her.
“See those sheep?” He pointed out the window. “That’s a bit like Scotland. Fields and fields crawling with the silly things.” He pressed his shoulder against hers. “I came to America with my father when I was seven. Both my mother and sister died in childbirth in Glasgow. Not long after that, my father wanted a new life in a new land. The loss of my mother and sister is how I came to be a physician.”
“We’ve both lost our mothers, then.” She took his hand and held it a quiet moment. “Tell me again about the Rochester house.”
Izzie had asked three times already on the train ride, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to hear about it a hundred times.
“Again?” Mac took her hand and laced his long fingers through hers.
“Again.”
“Well, let’s see. It’s a white frame house, two stories in the neighborhood they call Corn Hill. We’re just on the edge of it, Edinburgh Street. I couldn’t resist it with the street being named Edinburgh.”
Izzie squeezed his hand. She’d never lived in a neighborhood that had a proper name.
“Not far, a block or two away, there’s the stately brick houses, and then in another few blocks, there’s some really grand homes. The kings and queens of the Erie Canal live there.”
“Which direction does ours face?”
“North and it has a little porch to keep you cool in the summer. Your first task is to furnish it. It’s bare except for our bed and the work table in the kitchen.”
“I don’t know about purchasing furniture,” she said.
“We’ll have a meager budget. You’ll find the basic things easily. Rochester has everything there is to have.”
The bed. They’d share it tonight. She clenched her teeth and felt her stomach flutter. It was their wedding night. What would it be like with him? Would she like it? Would it be pleasant? Painful? Would she become pregnant right away? Was she ready to have a child? And another? And another? To scrub, wash, clean, sew, mend, cook, heal, teach, scold?
The train conductor walked by them. “Next stop Canandaigua!”
Mamma never did cook much and never taught her, either. Suddenly she envied all that Euphora had learned from Emma Purcell about housekeeping and cooking. Would she ever have time for anything besides housekeeping, even reading a book? She leaned her head against Mac’s shoulder and gazed out at a distant farmhouse. But at least she wouldn’t be a hoax medium anymore. That was the important thing.
The rocking of the train and the monotony of the churning wheels began to lull her to sleep. She hummed Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, the notes vibrating inside her throat and ears.
Mac began to snore softly. Izzie picked up her satchel and found the copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass Mac had given to her as a wedding gift and she began to read.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me
as good belongs to you.
Seventeen
WHEN IZZIE AWOKE TO THE SOUND of loudly trilling wrens outside her new house in Corn Hill, Mac was gone from the bed and the room. He wasn’t gone from the house, though. Someone was clanking and rattling in the kitchen downstairs and she assumed it was Mac. That should be her, the wife, rattling around down there, cooking breakfast for him. It was her first married morning and she was failing faster than she could say Mrs. MacAdams.
Not owning a night robe, she had nothing to throw over her shimmy. Under the bed linens, she felt her bare hip. The feel of her skin brought back the long night to her. Mac had been naked just hours before, on top of her, underneath her, next to her, his curly-haired chest pressing against her bosom. A surge of warmth flooded through her.
She slid toward his side of the bed, dove into his pillow and breathed in. There he was all over again, the plain soap smell of his skin and his lovely sweat. How happy she would be if she could carry that feather pillow around all day strapped to her front, endlessly breathing him in.
His pushing inside her had hurt a little, but not much. She was surprised how playful he had been and how eager to know if she was experiencing passion as he was.
“I’d like to know what hurts you and what gives you pleasure,” he’d said.
She was shocked that he spoke at all, much less about their love-making. He’d touched her gently, firmly, gently again. Once in a while, he’d ask her, “Pleasure or not?” She was so flustered at first, she kept nodding yes, but after a while she told him, “The o
ther was nicer. Go back to that place before.”
“Which? This?”
“Yes. That.”
It was outrageous and yet he seemed so kind and eager to please her. And that sheath he put on himself! Explaining that it was a new invention made of India rubber, a new sort of French Male Safe, which had always been made from animal intestines, he slid it on himself. Giggling at the memory of it, she rolled over on her stomach and buried her face. Lawks, that was horribly embarrassing. There were going to be things about being married to a modern physician she hadn’t expected or even considered in her wildest imaginings.
Dressed in a white night shirt to below his knees, Mac appeared in the door looking sleepy and disheveled with a tray in his hands.
“It’s our one day honeymoon. No Niagara Falls, I’m afraid. But I made you coffee. I broke the rules and entered into your woman’s sphere first thing.”
“I broke the rules and let you. I heard you down there tearing things up, but I didn’t rush down to stop you.”
He looked around for somewhere to put the tray, but there wasn’t any furniture yet except the bed and the armoire. Squatting, he balanced the tray as he sank down and laid it on the bare wood floor.
“I’m sorry, but I have to get out to the building site today. Construction on my Water-Cure Institute starts this week. Maybe in a few months we could go up to Niagara Falls.”
He poured a cup of coffee and held it up. “A few basic items on loan from the neighbors across the street. You’ll like them. Very kind, the Meads, a man and wife and three children.”
After he poured a second cup, he brought it to her. The aroma was delicious. She started to sit up, to lean against the brass frame, but stopped when she remembered she was naked. She grasped the bed sheet and started to pull it up over her.
“Don’t be modest for me, unless you want to.”
“Have you no inhibitions at all?”
“I lost them long ago. It’s much more interesting without them, I find.”
“What about in your work? Are you polite during your examinations?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, yes,” he laughed. “My Lord, of course.”
This seemed the best moment to end the modesty discussion. Just now, she was afraid to know more. She’d have time to find out about Mac and, after last night, their wedding night, she had a looming sense there was a lot more to know.
As she drank her coffee, he told her how excited he was about his new water-cure establishment. Setting his cup and saucer on the floor, he stood close. The place would be small to start, nothing like Geneva, he told her. There would be private rooms for twenty-five at first, but there was plenty of acreage and plans for another wing and a gymnasium if he could get more investors. Currently, he only had one man, a Fox Holland, backing him. There would be four different bathing rooms and enough equipment to perform all the latest techniques.
A dining room and kitchen would serve mostly vegetarian meals and there would be a lovely big parlor for quiet social activities or reading, a kitchen garden, a flower garden, and paths to walk along—a true retreat from the bustle of the city.
He was nearly breathless, talking rapidly, his thin hands flying about in the air. Then all at once his hands came to rest. He picked up his coffee, then looked intently into his cup. One of the two windows opposite the bed was wide open and a slight breeze sent a cool waft of air over Izzie’s naked shoulders. When she shivered, Mac noticed, and without saying anything, he walked to the window and closed it.
When he came back to the bed, he stood again at her side looking down at her. “I should tell you something about my work that I haven’t told you before. You could be surprised if you hear about me in town or when we are at social occasions and I don’t wish you to learn about my medical practice from people who may not appreciate my efforts.”
She didn’t know what was more intriguing, that he had some dimension to his work that he had held back from her or that there was the presumption of social occasions. She imagined these occasions to be different from what she had known as a girl in Homer—barn raisings, picnics at the town square, and dances accompanied by three or four fiddlers.
He sat by her. “I’ve lied to you, or at least held something back.”
The sheet still tucked under her neck, Izzie slid down into the bed. Oh no. A rotten cruel thing was coming. He had won her heart, married her, taken her from her sisters and brother, bed her in the most delightful way, and here, on their first morning together he was going to confess something dreadful. She groaned.
“Go on then, tell me.”
“Recently I have been developing an expertise, besides the water-cure, that I should have told you about.”
“Are you going to try surgery like Charles Bovary and ruin some poor fellow’s foot?”
He didn’t laugh, or even smile. She should keep her mouth shut. That was a silly thing to say. He had a confession to make. Maybe he did want to become a surgeon.
“I mentioned a little something to you at the Falls that day. Women’s physiological systems.”
“Midwifery?”
“I mean the study of pregnancy, birth, female disease.”
“Are you going to sell preventative pills through the mail like Madame Restelle?” She laughed nervously. “My husband is to be Monsieur Restelle?”
“No, I think not. I am writing a book for women and men about preventing conception using water-cure and other methods.”
There wasn’t anything truly awful about his pronouncement. It was daring really. She was to be the wife of a sexual advice physician. She sighed. She’d have to learn to get used to that.
“Something like Charles Knowlton’s The Fruits of Philosophy?” she asked.
“How do you know about that book? Have you read it? Here I thought I plucked a young unripe peach from the tree.”
“Some of it. My friend Julianna, back in Ohio, found a copy in her parents’ bedchamber when I was about twelve. We took it to her basement with a candle and read and read for hours. We scarcely understood it. It was a small paperbound thing, very tattered from use. Julianna’s mother came down and caught us, though, and scolded us, and we were never able to find where her parents kept it again.”
Mac laughed, then a grim cast veiled his face. “Are you angry that I delayed confiding in you?”
“I wish you hadn’t delayed. You won’t again, will you?”
Smoothing down a sideburn, he blinked several times, then took her cup and his to the coffee tray on the floor and replenished them. He had something else to tell her. She could feel it in his silence.
“There is more.” He handed her the white cup and saucer, fragrant and full of coffee. Then he sat near her. “I want to have the kind of marriage that is a sanctuary from the world…a place, a home, where there is love and quiet and rest and trust.” He leaned far over toward the floor, depositing his coffee cup with a rattle, then shifted himself on the bed near her and reclined against the headboard next to her.
“Mac, if you tell me everything now on our first day, we can go ahead, man and wife, knowing the things we need to know about each other.”
“Yes. That is what I hoped for.” He paused, staring out across the room toward the windows.
Her hands were trembling now, jiggling her cup. Was it the coffee making her shake, or his pronouncement?
“Izzie, please don’t think I am evil.” He pinched back his shoulders. “I would like you to go along with my pregnancy prevention ideas as part of my study.”
The cup and saucer drooped in her hands, then settled at an angle. A small splotch of coffee spilled onto their new wedding quilt, her gift from Mrs. Purcell and the others.
Mac swooped up her cup and saucer, placed them on the tray on the floor, then came back to her. Rot. Her beautiful quilt was stained. She glanced around the room for something to absorb the coffee, but of course there was nothing.
“I have a couple of towels in my trunk downstairs. Shall I?”
He leaned forward, ready to go.
“No, it’s too late. Too late.” She squeezed the square with the moist stain. How could she have done this on her first morning as a wife?”
“I’m sure it can be saved.” He took her hand from the quilt and held it. “You’re shocked. I should have told you before we married.”
“Once again, I am not sure whether you want a wife or someone to experiment on.”
He was silent a moment. “My work will be important to thousands of men and women all across the country. I believe my theories and their influence will be significantly greater than any children we may or may not have over the next few years. We have many years ahead for children. I want you to be by my side in this, perhaps even help me with the book.” He cracked an expectant smile.
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