A Deadly Affection (3 page)

Again I was struck by how innocent—and how very vulnerable—she appeared. “Good luck, Eliza.”

Her smile brightened, and then she turned and vanished around the corner.

She wasn't gone two seconds before the professor's words started circling in my head:
The therapist's extraordinary power within the therapeutic relationship must be carefully exercised; the impact of his words and behavior on the patient cannot be overestimated…

I was aware, of course, that Eliza's story had affected me on a personal level, and in more ways than one. But I didn't believe I had allowed this to influence my conduct. After all, it was she, not I, who had suggested questioning the doctor. And looking at it objectively, I couldn't say that this was an inappropriate course of action. She'd been so riddled with guilt all these years that she'd never been able to speak up for herself or even acknowledge her tremendous loss. Asserting herself with Dr. Hauptfuhrer had to be a move in the right direction. She needed to regain faith in herself, to learn to respect her own rights, and to recognize the injury that had been done to her before she could move on with her life.

I returned to my desk to gather my things. In all likelihood, the doctor would be either unwilling or unable to disclose her daughter's current whereabouts, so there was little chance for complications on that score, whatever my feelings on the subject might be. Eliza would be disappointed, of course—but in the process of asking, she'd be taking her first step toward recovery. And that, I told myself as I pulled on my coat, was all her psychotherapist could ask for.

I emerged from the parish house to find that the sky had clouded over and a few light snowflakes were falling. Pulling up my collar, I retraced my steps north through the bustle of Yorkville and west across Ninety-Second Street toward home. By the time I reached my block, the snow was coming down steadily, stirred by gusts off Central Park into little funnels that sifted up under my skirt and into my shoes. Already it had blanketed the tan and cream town houses that lined my street, transforming them into a storybook gingerbread village. I spotted the glowing bay windows of number 7 beckoning up ahead and hurried toward them. Propelled by a final, bone-rattling shiver, I dashed up the steps and burst inside.

I stashed my hat and coat on the hallway rack and followed the sound of gasping bellows to the sitting room, where Mary, our parlor maid, was stoking the fire. I stood beside her on the hearth, holding my palms to the flames.

“Are they back yet?” I asked.

She turned her flushed face up to me, her white cap askew. “Not yet, miss. Katie says we probably shouldn't expect them until dinner.”

I could feel the tension seep from my shoulders. Father had left early that morning to bring my mother back from a flower show in Philadelphia, and with road conditions so unpredictable, I hadn't known when he might be back. It was a relief to think I might have a few more hours of peace before his return.

Grabbing an apple from the pantry, I marched myself upstairs, determined to finish the journals Professor Bogard had lent me so I could return them at our meeting the following morning. I shut my bedroom door and sank into the armchair by the window with the first of the three journals opened on my lap. But while normally I might have found “The Appreciation of Time by Somnambules” a riveting bit of analysis, I couldn't keep myself from glancing out the window at the street below or listening for the sound of the front door. I adored my father, but he was a stubborn man, unaccustomed to my disagreeing with him. We'd had quite a row over dinner the night before, and I didn't expect our next encounter to be any less contentious.

When the dinner bell rang, I was less than halfway through the second volume and remembered very little of what I'd read. Laying the journals down in defeat, I descended the stairs to the dining room and took my usual place at the side of the table. Katie was standing by the sideboard, whacking brussels sprouts around a chafing dish with the back of a spoon, looking more than usually severe in her black evening uniform and stiff white apron and cap. I took in the absence of other place settings with a mix of concern and relief.

“I guess they're not going to make it,” I concluded as she carried a platter of roast chicken to my side.

She forked a chicken breast onto my plate. “No, miss,” she said, her Irish brogue thick with indignation. “I expect they're in a ditch somewhere, praying a farmer will come along to pull them out.” She pushed some stray gray hairs back from her steam-dampened cheeks with her wrist. “A good dinner ruined, and for what?” she grumbled, returning to the sideboard. “I don't see why they couldn't have taken the train.”

I took no offense; Katie had been with my parents since they were married, and her devotion was rather fierce. “Why don't you leave it all on the warmer?” I suggested as she returned with the sprouts. “They can help themselves when they get back.”

“
If
they get back,” she muttered, dumping a spoonful of limp sprouts beside my chicken. But she hoisted the chafing dishes from the sideboard and carried them into the pantry, where I heard them land with a resounding clang on the warmer.

I ate quickly, realizing that if I retired early, I might be able to avoid another scene with my father until at least the following day. As soon as I finished, I went upstairs to wash up, then climbed into bed with the journals. An article on the use of persuasion tactics to cure chronic melancholia caught my interest, as it appeared to support the program I'd designed for my class. By the time I'd finished reading it a second time, I was so reassured that I felt myself truly relaxing for the first time that day. Perhaps I would show the article to Father in the morning, I thought as I dropped the journals onto the floor. It might help him understand what I was trying to accomplish. Comforted by the thought, I settled lower on my pillow and gave in to the pull of gravity on my eyelids.

• • •

Sometime later, I awoke to the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Though it was still dark outside, the furnace had burned low enough to let frost form inside the windowpanes, leading me to guess it was an hour or two before dawn. I pushed off my bedcovers and crossed to the door, pulling it open just in time to see my parents round the second-floor landing and start up the next flight to their bedrooms. My father was behind Mama, with one hand under her elbow and the other against the small of her back. In the dim light, he appeared to be almost levitating her up the stairwell. I started to call out but stopped, feeling like an intruder. I waited until they had disappeared around the newel post and then softly closed the door.

When next I awoke, it was to the sound of the bread truck door slamming beneath my window. I quickly washed and brushed my teeth and ran shivering back to my room, where I hopped from foot to foot in front of the wardrobe as I decided what to wear for my meeting with Professor Bogard. I finally selected a warm, green plaid suit with a fitted jacket and heavy, flared skirt and laid it on the bed. Stripping off my nightgown, I pulled on my chemise, corset, corset cover, drawers, hose, petticoat, and shirtwaist, shivering a little less with each layer. I stepped into the skirt, buttoned on my jacket, and laced up my boots, then grabbed some pins from the dresser tray and piled my hair into a knot.

Turning to check the total effect in the standing mirror, I saw a large-eyed young woman who hardly looked old enough to be out of secondary school, let alone have a degree in medicine, gazing back at me. The long, straight nose described as “patrician” on my mother, on me had grown only long enough to be called “pert,” while the wide set of my mouth suggested more childish stubbornness than the droll sophistication I would have preferred. I pushed my bangs to one side. If only I could grow out my unfashionable fringe, I might look more my age. But then, of course, the scar would show. I turned away from my reflection and went to find Mama.

She was sitting at the dressing table in her boudoir with her back turned partially toward me, sifting through her mail. I paused in the doorway, struck by the angle of her face, remembering how I used to watch her in just such a pose as she prepared to go out for the evening, years ago when she cared about such things. I would sit on the little tufted stool behind her, giddy with the smells of potpourri and cologne, watching her reflection in the amber mirror like a youthful apprentice witnessing the secrets of some ancient trade. As if it were a scene from one of the flickering moving pictures I'd watched on Broadway, I recalled the quick movement of her head as she slipped on a dangling earring, the illicit dabs of rouge on her cheeks and the hollows of her shoulders—“just a dot,” she'd whisper conspiratorially, eyes shining at me in the mirror—and the sprinkle of white powder over her skin, fine as fairy dust.

Inevitably, just after she'd applied the last spritz of gardenia-scented cologne behind her ears, we'd hear the knock. As Mama swiveled on her chair, the hallway door would open, and into this bastion of femininity would step the tall, dark, cherry-tobacco-redolent figure of my father, his mustache freshly clipped and his high, starched collar pressing against the bath-pinkened skin of his throat. At this moment, I always felt as if two worlds were colliding, sparking a strange, mysterious charge that made me long to dot rouge on
my
cheeks and feel the swirl of satin around
my
legs. Father would pause for a moment on the threshold, his eyes glittering in the lamplight; then he'd cross the room to stand behind Mama, laying his hands on her shoulders and saying, “You'll be the belle of the ball.”

Unable to contain myself, I would invariably prompt, “Do you hope she'll save a dance for you, Papa?” And he would wink at me, and meet her eyes in the mirror, and say he most certainly did. It all seemed a terribly long time ago, I thought now, stepping into the boudoir.

My mother turned and smiled. Although she was still a beautiful woman, life had left its marks on her, like fingers on ripe fruit. Her once proud, high cheeks had softened, and her temples had thinned beneath the twin gray streaks that now ran through her sable hair.

“I was just thinking of you,” she said, resting a vellum card against her chest. “We need to arrange a time for Monsieur Henri to come fit your dress for the Fiskes' ball. He said he has a spot available tomorrow morning, if that will do.”

“Next week would be better.” I was planning to visit Reverend Palmers the following morning to learn more about Eliza Miner's history.

“Oh, Genevieve,” she said, her tone gently reproving. “The ball is this Saturday!” She handed me the card.

“Is it really?” I glanced at the invitation. “I'd lost track.” Though the season was only a few weeks underway, I was already growing weary of dinner dances and cotillions and musicales. “I suppose I ought to go.”

“Of course you'll go,” she said mildly, turning back to the mail tray. “We've already ordered your dress. Besides, Bartie Mattheson will be expecting you.”

Was I imagining it, I wondered, or had she been showing more interest in my social life lately? She must have noticed that I was getting awfully long in the tooth and still showed no signs of landing a husband on my own. Poor Mama. I think she'd half expected me to bring one home from medical school. My failure to do so must have stirred some latent sense of maternal duty.

I didn't put up a fuss, in any event, because this was one affair I was rather curious to attend. The courtship between nineteen-year-old Olivia Fiske and the forty-five-year-old Lord Branard was the talk of the town, and I was interested in observing how the two got on. I looked back down at the card. “I wouldn't mind getting a look at this Andrew Clearings Nichol Terrence Williams, eighth Earl of Branard,” I mused, tapping my thumb over the guest of honor's name. “I wonder if he's as stuffy as people say he is.”

“I'm sure Charles and Lucille wouldn't have encouraged the courtship if he was,” my mother replied, shuffling through her mail.

I frowned at the back of her head. Anyone who read the newspapers knew that the Fiskes had been in hot pursuit of the Earl for nearly two years, employing the services of multiple vendeuses to introduce themselves to titled society abroad, entertaining the Earl in Paris, London, and Marienbad, and even building their own yacht to compete against the Earl's at Cowes. He was quite a catch—higher in rank than either Emily Donnelly's baron or Clara Potter's baronet. Not as impressive as May Goelet's duke, it was true, but then impoverished dukes were becoming scarcer than hens' teeth. I couldn't help wondering if, with such a prize at stake, a little thing like conjugal suitability would figure very largely in the elder Fiskes' minds.

But I wasn't about to vex Mama by arguing. “What time did you get back?” I asked instead, dropping onto the tufted stool, which was now quite faded and frayed around the edges.

“It was nearly sunrise. We ran out of patching rubber, and your poor father had to walk miles to find some. I'm afraid Katie waited up for us; she was in a swivet. You'd think your father punctured his tires on purpose, just to upset her.”

“Yes, I know. I was worried she might set out after you on foot, if only to give Father a piece of her mind.”

She smiled faintly and shook her head, dropping an advertisement into the waste basket. “How were things while I was gone?” she inquired, lifting another envelope. “Did you have a pleasant weekend?”

“I spent most of it preparing for my class.”

She looked up. “Oh yes, your class! How did it go? Did the Reverend help you get settled?”

“He had a space set aside for us, just as he'd promised.”

She slid the letter opener through the envelope. “Things got off to a good start, then,” she murmured, scanning the envelope's contents.

“As good as could be expected, I'd say, considering the problems these women are dealing with.” I had an impulse to tell her about Eliza Miner, but it quickly passed. “How was the Colors of Winter show?” I asked instead. “Did you win a prize?”

She admitted to taking a first with her Miss Eloise hybrid and then, elaborating typically little on her own success, launched into an account of the many other fascinating specimens she had seen at the show. Flowers were Mother's passion; the hours other women of her station spent shopping and visiting, she spent in her conservatory, pinching, pruning, fertilizing, and whatever else one did to cultivate new plants. I didn't resent this overriding interest, nor, I believed, did my father. Rather, we were relieved she'd been able to find such an engrossing distraction.

I smiled and nodded as she leafed through the show catalog, stopping to enthuse at length over a rose called Bridget Amalie. I knew that she could go on for some time without any prompting from me. I had little affinity for things horticultural, but then, I didn't have to. My mother's passion was a private, complicated thing. It didn't require or even enthusiastically admit participation by others.

After a while, my gaze wandered up from the catalog, past her shoulder, to the dressing table, settling on a silver-framed photograph that was nestled among the spray bottles and lacquered boxes beneath the lampshade. The photograph was of a young boy, dressed in a square-collared sailor suit and stiff leather boots. He was looking directly at the camera and frowning.

I remembered exactly when it was taken, because I'd been standing in the wings at the time in my red velvet firefly costume, waiting for my turn in front of the picture box. I had warned Conrad just a moment earlier not to blink when the photographer lit the flash. I always wondered if that was why he was frowning—because he was trying so hard not to blink and ruin the picture.