Norma cleared her throat. “I do hope you will come for a visit,” she said, her back stiffstraight, her eyes averted then darting up.
“Ahh, I see,” Isabel said. Everything was fake. Friendship, family, happiness. Her dress hung over her and held to her like a lie; when she wore a suit she knew that was a lie, too, and if there were no middle ground in life, no way to halve the distance between two lies to find the truth, then—well, she was left as the biggest lie of all, wasn’t she?
“Iz,” Norma said.
Isabel used her napkin on her lips. “This is ridiculous, Norma,” she said. “A young lady cannot run off to Europe by herself and hope to leave all her problems behind. She will only find new ones. And worse ones, at that. I am nearly twice your age, my dear, and I can assure you I know about such things.”
“Iz, dear,” Norma said, her eyes soft. “Please listen to me. You are a great friend—the best friend I have ever had.”
“Pah,” Isabel snorted.
“You may believe it or not, as you choose,” Norma said, sitting back. “But I know—from you, of all people—how constricting this town can be. How constricting it is. That a woman cannot breathe here, literally strapped to her neck in a corset.”
“So don’t wear one,” Isabel said.
“That isn’t the point.”
Their voices had risen, so they quieted, letting the hum and conversation of the room soften the space between them.
“I remember so well your telling me, on one of our walks,” Norma said quietly, “when we had only just met, that there are things in life one must do for oneself, almost regardless of what the effect on others might be. Do you remember?”
Isabel remembered very well. “Not another word,” she said.
“Do you remember the part about the—how did you say it? The new age, the new century—that finally people would be freed from—oh, I put it so awfully and you put it so well.”
“Freedom of self,” Isabel said.
Norma looked at her brightly. “Yes, that’s it. Freedom of self.”
“Which you apparently took to mean freedom to be a spoiled brat, whatever the cost to others.”
Norma’s chin shook. “Don’t say that, Iz,” she whispered. “I can’t bear for you to be mean about this.”
“You are a spoiled little girl,” Isabel said. The waiter approached and she told him to go away, her eyes on Norma. “A flighty little thing too full of herself to realize what’s important.”
“Please,” Norma said.
“Please what? Am I to tell you only good things about yourself? Am I to lie, too?”
“If you must, to be kind. When you know as I do that it would be even worse for me to lie to you now.”
No, Isabel thought. It would not. She pushed her plate away and waved the waiter over.
“You may clear now.” She waited while the man gathered their plates and then said, “So how will you finance your trip?”
“I don’t know,” Norma said softly. “I suppose I will go to New York and—and find a way to save money.”
“Ahh, I see,” Isabel said. She leaned to one side, reaching under the hem of her skirt to pull a fold of bills from her shoe. She counted five bills on to the table and stood up.
“Where are you going?” Norma asked.
“You came here to get money from me,” Isabel said, nodding. “Well, there it is, then. You may pay for our supper and keep the rest, but be assured you are right now every bit the whore New York would have made of you.”
“Iz!” Norma gasped.
Isabel walked away from the table in the bright lights, not noticing the fat red faces suspended around her, the narrow beaks under wide hats; the moistened lips, talking and talking.
Norma put her face in her hands. When the conversations around her had washed away the sound of Isabel leaving she took the bills from the table and tucked them in her purse.
You absolutely will not cry, Isabel thought. Around her the air was humid with the smells of too many people living in close quarters: garbage, stale smoke, frying meat; even the pink light around the almost-set sun seemed filthy.
Norma, she thought. In Europe. She spat on the street, hoping someone would see her and be disgusted by a lady behaving so. As she reached Hank’s the sun was gone and the humidity gave her a shiver, as if someone could hide in it.
“Hello, hello,” she said, pushing the door open. It occurred to her that she shouldn’t be there, dressed like this—out of costume, as it were. Or in costume, she thought.
“Hello,” Hank said from behind the bar, squinting in the dim light.
Isabel took a seat and smiled.
Hank nodded. “What’ll it be?” he asked.
“Something cold.” Isabel frowned.
“Right away, Miss,” Hank said.
“Hank. It’s me, Isabel South. Jacob.” She stopped herself from saying “Norma’s friend.”
Hank tipped his head to one side. “Yes,” he said, smiling. “So it is. I didn’t recognize you in that getup.”
Isabel’s mouth pinched. “I have come dangerously close to crossing my selves, haven’t I?” she said. She moved the corners of her lips as if to smile.
Hank put a glass of beer on the bar for her and wiped his hands on a white towel hanging from his dirty apron.
“Hey, Jamie,” he said to a small person sitting at the end of the bar. “Look here, a real society dame come to Hank’s. What do you make of that?”
“That’s fine,” Jamie said, nodding. “I remember you.”
Beyond him, in the sitting area, two figures in dresses hunched toward each other over a small table.
“Have we—oh yes,” she said. She recognized the small pink face as that of the young man who had caused such a scene when she had been—when she had been in, so long ago.
Isabel sipped her beer. It was not very cold and left a sour taste; she felt constrained by her dress to take small sips.
“A pleasure,” Jamie said, raising his glass slightly.
Isabel raised her glass to her lips, tipped her head back, and drank the beer in several long swallows. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Something stronger,” she said to Hank. “And a refill for Mr. Jamie, if he’s so inclined.”
“I am so inclined,” said Jamie, handing his glass across the bar. He moved a seat closer to Isabel.
“Where’s Norma tonight?” Hank asked, pouring.
“I don’t care,” Isabel said. “She’s in France. England. The Swiss Alps.” She raised her glass to Jamie. “Shall we drink to not caring?” she asked. “Or to disloyalty, selfishness, and spite?”
“Not caring,” Jamie said, toasting.
“Fine,” Isabel said. She drank down the whiskey Hank had given her and banged her glass on the bar. “’Nother,” she said. She stared at Hank’s plump, hairless fingers as he poured.
Laughter came from the back of the room, and someone called Hank’s name.
Isabel waited for Hank to get to the table in back. “I should not speak ill of the dead in front of their friends,” she said to Jamie, watching Hank as he stood over the table.
“Dead?” Jamie asked. “Your friend—”
“Not my friend,” Isabel interrupted. “And so, dead to me.” She clenched her teeth.
“Spite,” Jamie said, holding up his glass again.
“Spite,” Isabel agreed. She swallowed her drink and coughed. “Do you know, Mister… Mister….”
“Hammond,” Jamie said.
“Good. Do you know, Mr. Hammond, what I shall do next? I have killed my father, driven off my family, and been forsaken by my friends. Do you know what I shall do next?”
“I have no idea,” Jamie said, leaning towards her.
“Yes, well,” Isabel said, her forehead almost touching his. “I am very rich. That comes with killing your father. Or it did in my case. In any event, I am very rich, and I love dogs. Now, tell me, what do you think I will do next?”
“Buy a dog,” Jamie said.
“I see you are a very perceptive young man,” Isabel said. “And you are halfway there.” She motioned for Hank to pour another round.
Jamie downed his beer and slid the glass at Hank. “Buy two dogs!” he cried.
Isabel grunted, then laughed in her throat. “You are both perceptive and good at maths,” she said. The lines of bottles behind Hank sparkled; she stared them down as if they meant to fly at her. “I shall buy ten dogs, or twenty, and shall build a kennel for them on my own property.”
“That’s fine,” Jamie said.
“Are you familiar with the Clumber Spaniel?” she asked. “No? A noble breed. And handsome. You’ve not seen a finer looking dog in your life.”
“That’s fine,” Jamie said.
“And you, Mister JamieHammond,” Isabel said quietly. “Have you more of the dog or the man in you? You look much like a dog, but I suspect from—from the boots on your feet and the way you sit at this bar that you must be of that less honest and trustworthy species, man.”
“Nobody ever called me a dog before, that meant well by it,” Jamie said.
“Which tells you all you need to know about men,” Isabel said. She thought of Norma’s hand, of the sunny Public Garden last spring; of the look on Norma’s face in the restaurant that evening. She put her face in her hands.
Jamie looked at her for a while. Hank came over and they shrugged at each other. Jamie reached out and patted Isabel’s shoulder twice.
“There, there,” he said. “There, there.”
“Soft,” Isabel said. “Soft, soft. Weak.”
“No,” Hank said.
“Come on, Miss,” Jamie said. He drank more beer.
“Soft,” she said again. “Right here.” She patted her belly. “And you both know it.” She turned to Jamie. “Don’t you ever call me ‘Miss’ again, ever? Do you understand me?”
“Sure,” Jamie said. “Sure. I didn’t mean nothin’.”
“Hank knows,” Isabel said. “Even if you’re not weak, even if you don’t want to be, when they look at you they think you are. And then, you know what? You are. You are because they think you are. It’s shameful. It shouldn’t be that way. A person should be anything. Anything. Hank, what’s that address again?”
Hank shook his head. “You can’t go over there now.”
“Have another,” Jamie suggested. “Take the edge off. It’s all right.”
“It’s all right? Pah. They can cut you open, you know. They can cut you open and take out everything that makes you a woman, did you know that? Who says I can’t go over there now?”
“Just relax a bit,” Hank said, motioning as if pushing down with both hands.
Isabel tried to look at Hank in a hard way but her face collapsed and she sighed a long sigh and scraped her fingertip around the rim of her glass. Why should she be angry at him? She had been wronged, terribly wronged, but not by Hank. By father, mother, fat Charles, spineless Teddy… she could be sick from just thinking about them. But her insides were soft. Her own.
“Jamie,” she said. “Hank.”
Hank lit a cigarette and blew the smoke slowly at the ceiling.
“You’re all right,” Jamie said. “There, there.”
An hour later Isabel left Hank’s. She staggered on the uneven sidewalk, moving toward the address Hank had given her, and came to a narrow side street marked with a grimy sign. A fat, wet prostitute held a small child by the hand. A horse, snorting in its tether, tapped a hoof in the gutter. A shop window displayed old dresses; another shop offered tobacco and pipes; a blank brick front with latched door and soggy wooden sign advertised rooms, cheap. She turned in to an alley almost as narrow as the narrowest door. Three buildings in, on the left, a cracked porcelain sign with the words “Camilla Cain, Proprietor” in small blue letters hung next to a stiff arc of doorway. But she would not go in so she walked again. She came to her father’s house—her mother’s, now—and looked at it as if she didn’t live there. She couldn’t go in there, either. She clutched the address and crumpled it and retraced her steps.
Oh God, Isabel thought. Let the air freshen, the clouds part. She thought of Hammond, shy Hammond, cocking his head at her like a bird. Oh Lord, Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses—you are our shelter—
She found the alley and the cracked sign again and this time pushed on the door. It stuck slightly but gave way, rattling a small tin bell. Inside, in a room crowded with bony furniture, a middle-aged woman with a wide head and frizzy blonde hair sat in a low chair shaped like a clamshell. She was dressed in a high-necked, stiff-waisted dress, her skirt descending around her as if in refusal to touch her leg. Her face was pale, her eyes sunken, livid.
“Good evening,” the woman said, following the words with a soft clicking noise of tongue against palate as she reached for a leather-bound appointment book from a nearby desk.
“Good evening. Miss Cain?” Isabel asked. Sweat slid down the nape of her neck, wetting the collar of her dress.
“Yes,” Miss Cain said, thumbing pages in her book.
“I am—Hank referred me,” Isabel said. She felt lightheaded.
Miss Cain paused in her book, balanced a pair of eyeglasses on the tip of her flat nose, and sighed. “So this is your first time?” she asked.
“Yes,” Isabel said. “Hank told me it’s possible—that you can help me. Change.”
“It’s possible,” Miss Cain said. “It is not a pleasant procedure, though. Have you thought it through?”
“Yes, for years,” Isabel said. She felt like crying. “It’s necessary. I can’t—I’ve been—I can’t bear this anymore.”
Miss Cain nodded. “Well, let’s get you downstairs, and we will try to help you,” she said.
“Thank you,” Isabel said, her voice cracking.
They passed from the small front room to a low-ceilinged kitchen, the floor of which was covered with a frayed carpet. A deep sink was filled with soiled glasses and teacups. On a black stove a frying pan crusted with congealed grease rested coldly with a battered coffee pot. Beyond the squat icebox a stairway of smooth wooden planks led to the basement.
“After you,” Miss Cain said, smiling. The fabric of her dress rustled quietly.
The staircase had no railing. Isabel ran her fingertips along the damp stone wall as she descended. From below came a long sigh, the sound of a body shifting on a creaky bed, and a groan.
The basement was lit by two oil lamps, one at the bottom of the stairs and one halfway to the back wall on the right side. The floor was covered with stringy carpet, the walls with muted tapestries. Sheets, brown with age and smoke, hung from clotheslines, dividing the room into private compartments just long and deep enough to hold a bed or low couch and a small wooden table. On the tables were elaborate pipes with brass bowls glowing coal red in the center and long flexible tubes emanating from squat, chubby middles. The room was heavy with sweet smoke.
Isabel glanced with disgust at the occupants of the compartments as she passed: a Chinaman, glassy-eyed, stared blankly at the ceiling; a heavy-set unshaven sailor grinned lewdly at nothing at all; a Negro with his head in his hands moaned; a workman, his filthy shirt unbuttoned, looked up at her and rubbed his jaw, bewildered in the smoke and mutter of the room; a woman with an age-lined, pink face, her eyes closed, her eyebrows raised, held her chin aloft as a small child in a tattered dress held the pipe to her lips.
Miss Cain gestured for Isabel to lie down in the last compartment on the right. Isabel rested her head on a pile of soft, violet pillows and put her feet up on the arm of the sofa.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“Not at all, my dear,” Miss Cain answered, her dark outline retreating, disappearing, returning a moment later to load the pipe and apply a match.
“I shouldn’t—Hank said—”
“The treatment is extremely unpleasant,” Miss Cain said, touching the match gently to the bowl of
the pipe. “Extremely.”
Isabel put the tube to her lips and inhaled.
“There, there,” Miss. Cain soothed, loosening and removing Isabel’s boots. “There, there.”
Isabel exhaled and sucked again; her mind drifted up and out, viewing the city in the spectacular sunlight of her childhood. She remembered the feeling of her father’s stubbly cheek before he shaved, the smooth skin of his hand holding her hand firmly as they walked to church.
“We’ll start the treatment soon,” Miss Cain said.
“Fine,” Isabel said.
Her mind was in the dark cellar again for a moment, fighting upwards already, drifting aloft to the stiff, bristled face of her father; her mother, pinched and stony; a shiny watch hanging from a waistcoat; a dress, a soft hand; aloft: her brothers, whiskers and licked lips. Give us this day our daily bread oh God, yes; a bursting floral light spread and floated back upon her, raining down as she rose up: deep contentment, polished wood, honeysuckle fields and warmth, warmth everywhere. Oh God let us not offend You with our trespasses, may our days be bright and calm, may we strive always to live in the light of Your love—oh God. Amen. Hank. The bottles behind the bar, glinting, brown, clear, blue. Hammond, his eyes floating now as big as balloons and shaky like bubbles.
Isabel smoked more. The flowering purple sparkle of light rushing through her body, relaxing, mellowing, darkening to a sweet soft womb: oh Lord forgive Your affronted sinner, oh God.
She opened one eye slightly. The maternal outline of Miss Cain appeared with a small wooden bowl and a pestle. Isabel listened to the gentle grinding, the faint sound of water being poured and the click of spoon on glass, stirring.
With great effort she raised her head to the glass. Through half-shut eyes she saw in the red hand of the feeder the battered tin spoon, crazy-edged and curved. The pasty water was thick over her tongue, down her throat. She forced it down, gagging on the last swallow, a drop rolling from the corner of her mouth. Someone dabbed it with a handkerchief. She felt a tender pat on her head.
“All done,” Miss Cain said.
THE GHOST DETECTIVE: Boston Page 12