After Alice Fell: A Novel

by Kim Taylor Blakemore

  “You are a selfish woman,” he said. “You shirk your duties to me. Not to her, of course. Never to Alice.”

  Chapter Six

  Turee, Aug 10

  Dr. Mayhew,

  I wish a meeting to discuss irregularities in the procedures of Brawders House that led directly to my sister’s death. I also request a full accounting of her treatments and the efficacies of each. This will go far to alleviate my concerns, and to stay me from filing a more formal complaint.

  I will call on you directly, this Wednesday, 10 a.m. Should this be an inconvenient time, please respond, otherwise the meeting stands as requested.

  Marion Snow Abbott

  I set the pen to its holder, and then press and rock the ink blotter to the paper.

  Nothing in their explanation fits. It doesn’t fit Alice’s poor, wasted body. Something bites and scratches at my thoughts. I look out the window to the pond, following the course of a dragonfly as it hunts for prey on the gloss of water. The afternoon sun cuts through the western trees; the dragonfly is emerald and black in turns. It lifts and dives, hovers and waits. Patient and careful.

  I fold the letter, open the single drawer, remove my wallet. A few bills, still, that are mine alone. Then I put the letter and the bills in my small knit purse and button it to my belt.

  Cathy sits at her desk in the parlor now. She’s changed from her archery garb, sits with a curved back over the house ledgers. Toby stares from the settee, one foot kicking the leg.

  “I’m going to Turee,” I tell her. “I have a letter to post.”

  “Can I come?” Toby asks.

  “Why?”

  “I’ll buy you an ice.” He pulls his lip down with a finger and taps his nail to his tooth. “I have money. And you’re very sad. Ices help.”

  “Well, I . . .”

  He gives a solemn nod.

  Cathy drums a pencil against her chin, then turns to us. She points the pencil tip to the ledger, then drops it to the pile of receipts. “Come here,” she says to Toby and reaches out, pulling him to her chest and covering his head with light kisses. “You are very sweet to think of your auntie.”

  He pushes against her thighs and squirms, then pecks her cheek. “That’s enough.”

  She rests her hands on his shoulders. “Are you too big for kisses?”

  “I’m buying Auntie an ice.”

  “That sounds like a grand idea.” Her gaze catches mine. “We’ll all go. I could use the walk.”

  “Are you sure? You look busy and—”

  “It’s just the household accounts. They can easily wait.” She plops the ledger on top of the papers and pushes it all to the back. “An ice, and maybe a look at the new bonnets at Mrs. Emmet’s is just the ticket.” With a quick motion, she shuts and locks the desk tight.

  Toby runs ahead of us, the flap of his brown poplin coat waving behind him. He has found a long stick and swings it above his head like a broadsword. Our parasols are more decoration than shade. Cathy’s brought a fan and flicks it in a circle around her face. A deep flush darkens her cheeks and neck. She has overdressed for the heat, a plaid of gray and mustard. Our skirts swing and settle, lifting the dry soil in puffs.

  “An ice in town. We could have shaved a bowl from the block in the icehouse, you know.” Cathy squints and stares through the maple trees to the fallow fields of the Humphrey farm. The farmhouse windows are black. Widow Humphrey’s two boys lost their lives early on in the struggles. Spotsylvania. The black bow remains on the door. She walks out of the barn toward the hen house and lifts a hand to us. We return the greeting. Cathy goes back to flicking her fan. “She should move to town. She’d have an easier time of it.”

  “Do you think she’d leave the land her boys were born on?”

  “She has their pensions.”

  “It’s not enough to give this all up. There’s barely enough to cover food. You know that. I give you Benjamin’s. You do the books.”

  “Don’t be so sharp.”

  “Don’t make foolish remarks.” I dig at the collar of my dress. My nail catches, and I hear the small rip to the lace as I pull it free. “I’ll stop in this week to see if she needs a hand.”

  Toby stabs the hard earth, poking and crushing the cicada shells that stick to the stone fence and the bark of the trees and litter the road.

  Cathy loops her arm through mine and nudges my shoulder. As if we are close, as if she could jostle Lydia’s memory out of the way, kick it into the grass. She looks at me and blinks, and she knows I think her an interloper. Perhaps I should judge less. Give her a nod for stepping in (so easily, so blithely) to rescue Lionel and Toby. I will care for this little family, she’d written not long after Lydia’s funeral. You keep to your cause.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s hot. You know that makes me tiresome.”

  “You’re forgiven.” She tips her parasol to the sun so the flowered pattern repeats on the road. She peers up through the lace and ribs. “I should have worn a hat.”

  “You can buy one at Mrs. Emmet’s.”

  With a shrug, she lets her fan drop and swing from her wrist. “You could do with a new one. Although the straw suits you. Even if it is black.”

  The trees thin out, leaving the dirt road bare to the sun. A row of clapboard cottages line the edges, laundry hanging on ropes between the houses. Petticoats and undershirts and children’s dresses. A wicker basket sits by a pole and awaits the folding. On the right, the mill pond is glassy green. Terrence Markam’s house reflects like white stone in the water. The image is solid enough it seems one could step onto it and glide to the millworks on the other side. The water slips over the mill gates to the canal beyond, and the rush of it gives us a spray of cool mist as we walk by.

  “Nothing’s changed here.”

  “The train went to Harrowboro. And where the train goes, the industry follows.”

  There is the Congregational church, bright white, black door, as if it knows the souls of men contain both. A chestnut horse lolls his head from a stall at the livery. He stares across at the steps of the church, then swings his head and whinnies.

  We stop at the general store, its porch and stairs boasting tin tubs and rakes and a hand plow. Mrs. Emmet’s is the next door over. A cat, matted and soot gray, settles in the shade of a washboard. It hisses once at Toby, then pushes its head to his palm.

  “Don’t touch that.” Cathy hurries to catch up to him. She grips his wrist. “Now you’ll have to wash your hands.” She pulls him to the water pump near the store’s siding, forces his hands under the spigot, and then levers the pump until the water belches and flows. “You can die from touching a cat like that. You don’t want to die from that, do you?”

  I pick up the stick he abandoned for the poor cat and bring it near. Toby’s scarlet now, his mouth a line of white.

  “Oh, don’t go into a snit.” Cathy steps back from the pump and shakes water from her skirt. “You know what happens then.”

  He blinks. Holds his arms straight to his side and waggles his hands. “I’m not in a snit.”

  Cathy smiles. “Good.” She takes his hand. “Put the stick down, Marion. He doesn’t need it.”

  Toby trails after her, waits on the landing as she opens the screen door.

  “Go on.” She keeps the door swung wide and looks at me. “Are you coming?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  The post office is just two doors down and the letter quickly delivered. Across the street, in a small square park, three women huddle, bonnet to bonnet, then separate and point at various spots on the grass. Another woman lifts a triangle sign and moves it from one spot to the next, obeying the directives of those pointing fingers. She blows out a breath and pulls in her lip, nods and jogs from one spot to another. The sign remains in one spot long enough for me to read. Honor Your Brother: Future Home for the Statue of the Fallen Soldier, Donations to Orinda Flowers.

  “They’re asking for a statue and a fountain.” I startle at
Cathy’s voice just behind me. “Here.” She hands me a waxed paper cone of lemon ice, then lifts her own to her mouth and shaves off a bite with her teeth. She pastes on a smile and waves.

  The women look but none comes closer; they return to their huddling and pointing.

  “I could pay for it all and they’d still be like that.” Cathy takes another bite. She turns to me, studying me with those dark eyes. “We have a table. Near an open window. We can watch the fat hens cluck and flap about their statue. And you can tell me about the letter you posted. So secretive.”

  “It’s not. I’ve requested a meeting with Dr. Mayhew.”

  “Why? It’s done, Marion. The matter is done, except for the trunk. You could have just asked for that.”

  “But I didn’t. You saw her, Cathy . . .”

  “Yes. I can’t stop seeing it.” She crosses back to the general store. Her shoulders pinch, as if she has armored herself.

  I follow her and sit at the table while Toby swings his legs and kicks my shins. Cathy glares out the window. Her ice is forgotten, melting and dripping from the paper and over her fingers.

  She smirks and lifts her chin. “So much adoration of the dead.”

  Toby drops his ice to the wood floor. Cathy tsks and leans down to mop it up. But her ice drips to her skirt, dark round beads of sugar water. She scrubs the fabric with her napkin, leaving me to Toby’s mess.

  “You’re in a snit,” he says, pointing at Cathy.

  “Be quiet.” She’s rubbed the liquid into long streaks on her thighs. Her eyes move from the task to the window glass.

  “I’ll lock you in the icehouse with the spiders.” Toby slaps the sides of his chair and kicks his heels to the legs. He opens his mouth and clacks his teeth.

  “Toby,” I say, “lower your voice.”

  “They’ll bite your toes and tie you up in leathers.”

  Cathy presses her hands to fists. “Be quiet.” She grabs his arm, jerking him out of the chair, pressing his face to her skirt as she grapples her way to the door and down the steps.

  I grab her parasol and come after, reaching for her sleeve. But she jogs down the roadside, Toby’s face held tight against her thigh.

  “Stop it, Cathy.”

  “He’s a bad little boy.” Her jaw is locked; the words come out brittle and sharp.

  Toby goes slack. Arms and legs loose, so he slips from her grip and then sits with a thud.

  Cathy leaves him there and trudges forward, moving only to avoid an oncoming horse and lumber cart.

  I reach for Toby, but he flinches and twists away. “You need to get up.”

  He scratches the ground with his fingers and remains in place.

  Cathy whirls around and strides back. “I’m trying. Can we please just try?”

  He breathes in and out. Three times. Then he puts his hand to his knee and stands. He keeps his gaze to the ground. Doesn’t resist when she takes his hand in hers.

  Her cheeks are stippled red and white. “There, then. We’ve had our ice.”

  Chapter Seven

  Dr. Mayhew has agreed to meet. And Cathy has asked to join me. “I think it best,” she says, tying the ribbons of her silk bonnet. It is pink and edged with lace. Her clothing is as much froth as function. But it is honest. She doesn’t mourn. “Toby will stay with Saoirse.” Then she takes up the buggy reins and urges the dapple mare on.

  The waiting area at Brawders House is empty save for the two of us seated on a bench. It is creams and blues and welcoming here. Great vases adorn the walls, filled with long, curved ferns and a cornucopia of blossoms from the front gardens. The chandeliers are elegant in frosted glass, crystal beads catching the light. The large windows on the back wall are open to the draft. There are no bars here, just metalwork on the windows that is both intricate and sinuous. Shapes of flowers and grasses and birds snake across my shoes. I barely remember this part of the hospital and its polite pretense. But the brick and mildewed stink of the basement is still clear.

  The steward, in long, graying sideburns and impeccable black coat, perches on a stool. He has given his name as Northrup and followed it with a weak handshake before pointing us to the bench, mumbling an apology for our loss. He turns the pages of his ledger, each crinkle caught and echoed in the high-ceiling room, each scratch of pen lingering. He stares at me and blinks.

  Cathy glances up from her tatting. She twists and untwists the loose thread round her finger. “I found the doctors to be very caring. Not indifferent to their patients.”

  “So you did visit?”

  Her face flushes. She bends to the tatting, biting her lip in concentration, feeding the ivory thread to the shuttle, knotting a snowflake pattern. “I’m not heartless.”

  “How often?”

  Cathy’s hands freeze midknot. She frowns and shakes her head, picks at the loops, then abandons them to her lap. “Until she refused me.”

  I hear voices, just up the wide stairs. Muted mostly, as the doors on both sides of the landing stay shut more often than not. But then one will open, and the voices barrel out and around a nurse with her bobbing cap, the orderly pushing up his sleeves, a matron rolling a metal tray. A blare, a babble, then mutters and thumps.

  A door slams above, and a tin or bucket clatters against a wall. I look to the ceiling, as does Mr. Northrup, our gazes following heavy footsteps that come to a sudden stop.

  “How much longer?” I ask. My hands shake. I twist the strap of my bag around a palm, then lace my fingers.

  He frowns and digs out his pocket watch. “Dr. Mayhew is on rounds. You are here outside visiting hours.”

  I lean back against the bench, but the curve of wood is not meant for resting. I find myself tilted forward and the edge of my corset digging into the bones of my hips.

  There is nothing to do but wait. Watch the man across from me as he writes in his ledger.

  “Do the patients come through here?”

  He sets down the pen. Stares at me with eyes that are black as night. “This is the vestibule.”

  “I can see that.”

  “For visitors. Such as you.”

  Where, then, did Alice enter this place? With just her trunk and the overwhelming weight of Lionel’s lie? Alice stopped speaking at fourteen. One day nattering on about the new black calf, then next day silent. The week after that, the year after that, mute—save our private language of signs and gestures. How did she impart her concerns and fears?

  My breath is tight, twisting tighter. I jump from the seat, pace to the front door, and then turn to him. “Where are the patients admitted?”

  “Mrs. Abbott—” He lifts a hand and his face glazes into an accommodating pleasantness.

  “Somewhere in the back, then.” There behind the stairs, a round glass window cut into a door and behind it the basement and the morgue.

  “Ah. Mrs. Abbott. Mrs. Snow.”

  I turn to find a tall man standing too near, causing me to look up at an uncomfortable angle. “Dr. Mayhew?”

  “Yes. The exact one.” His voice is syrup and honey. He holds a notebook under his arm and thumbs the corner. His hair is thick, flecked with gray, but his wild sideburns are black. I cannot pin his age. His gray eyes are deep set, shadowed by heavy brows. He has seen life—the lines at the edge of his eyes seem as much from heartache as from laughter. His gaze flicks back and forth, and he juts his long chin toward me.

  “I didn’t hear you near,” I say.

  “Soft soles. Best for the patients.” His thin lips purse, then widen into a smile. “I know why you’ve come.”

  He reaches out a hand. I don’t take it. He curls his fingers back.

  “Dr. Mayhew,” Cathy says. “My sister-in-law needs solace.”

  “Then I shall give it to her.” He rolls his wrist and gestures toward a door off to the right. “Let us talk.”

  The walls of Lemuel Mayhew’s office are thick plaster, yellowed from smoke. They are plain adorned, save a large poster on the wall behind his desk. A
pen-and-ink of a man, his head diagrammed into phrenological parcels and the phrase Know Thyself printed across his neck. A fern lounges on a wide windowsill.

  Mayhew settles in his chair and leans back. The coils squeak. He steeples his fingers and taps them to his lips. “I am as inconsolable as you are.”

  “Are you?”

  “Any loss of life is untenable. But I am glad you’ve come, so I can share the news in person. We’ve done a thorough investigation. It’s all to order.”

  “Then how did she get on the roof?”

  “The roof.”

  I roll my fingers around the chair’s cushion. “She was under your care. You should know how she arrived on that roof. Since you have investigated.”

  “Yes, I do. It is . . .” He shrugs, then reaches across the papers on his desk, sets aside the ashtray used as a weight, and flips open a folder. “Mm. Unfortunate. We were, of course, trying to spare you.”

  “Spare me what?”

  “The reports are public, Mrs. Abbott. We must state for the board the doings of the hospital.” His chair wheels roll back and forth on the wood floor. “And also consider the family. Miss Snow was a troubled young woman.”

  “I would like to see.”

  “See what?”

  “The roof. Her room. Her records.”

  “The report of her death will be public. The treatment records, however, are sealed.”

  “Then anything that can explain to me why my sister is dead.”

  He blows a breath through his nose and closes the folder. “Your brother says you were a nurse during the conflict? Are you still?”

  “No.”

  “Duty for the cause, then.”

  “Dr. Mayhew—”

  “Do you recall some of your patients, how they screamed all night of battle? ‘We just need to take the hill’ or ‘Get ’em again.’ Over and over, that mewling cry.”

  “What does this have to do with Alice?”

  “When they died, did you write their folks of those nights? I don’t think you did. I think you instead gave them succor and told them their son had died in peace.”