A Deadly Affection (4 page)

The breakfast bell sounded downstairs.

“You'd better not keep Katie waiting,” Mother said, laying the catalog on the dressing table.

“Aren't you coming?” I asked when she made no move to get up.

“Soon. I want to get through the rest of the mail first.”

I rose reluctantly. “Is Father up and about?”

“I expect so,” she replied, already back to her sorting. “You know your father.”

I stifled a sigh. Running a hand over my hair, I returned a loose strand to its pin and went downstairs alone to face him.

He was seated at the head of the table, reading the morning paper.

“Good morning, Father,” I said lightly, taking my usual seat on his left.

He glanced at me over the paper. “Genevieve,” he responded with a nod.

I never would have guessed he'd been up most of the night; he looked fresh as the morning dew. But then, he always looked primed for action, as if underneath his ruddy skin, he was all springs and rubber, rather than flesh and blood like ordinary mortals.

“Mother tells me you had trouble with the motorcar,” I said as Katie poured my tea.

“Mmph,” he replied into his newspaper.

Katie muttered something behind him, which neither of us asked her to repeat. I stirred a spoonful of sugar into my tea. “Perhaps you should have taken Cleo and Anabel,” I teased, referring to our carriage horses. “They've never been known, as far as I know, to break down in the middle of the road.”

He lowered the newspaper as Katie landed a dollop of porridge into his bowl with a splat. “It wasn't the engine's fault,” he retorted, eyeing her with misgiving. “It started right away, every time. It's the damned tires; the tubes keep getting pinched between the casing and the wheel rim.” He gazed out over the bowl of narcissus on the center of the table, his eyes growing pensive under his straight black brows. “There must be some way to protect them…”

I sipped my tea, wondering if this was going to become another of his projects. Father was, first and foremost, an improver; once a thing bothered him sufficiently, he set out to fix it. Thanks to an ample inheritance, he had the time and money to do so, usually by finding and funding enterprising young minds. Tires, though, were outside his usual sphere of interest. Since my brother's death, he had focused almost exclusively on medical implements: first, an injectable heart stimulant, and more recently, an artificial breathing machine.

“I gather you had plenty of time to think about it last night,” I said as Katie served me my porridge, hoping that if I kept up a light banter, we might get through breakfast without a scene.

But it was not to be. As soon as Katie had cleared the porridge, served us our eggs and toast, and bustled back to the pantry, he put down his paper and turned to me. “So, how was your ‘therapy class'?” he asked, mouthing the last two words as if they'd been soaked in quinine.

I returned my cup to its saucer. “No one walked out,” I answered with a smile.

He raised an eyebrow. “Is that cause for congratulations?”

“You have to understand that the concept of mental therapy is foreign to these women.”

He snorted. “Now that, at least, I do understand.”

“I believe I caught their interest, though,” I continued, determined not to be provoked. “One patient was particularly responsive. I think I may be able to help her.”

He stabbed a piece of butter with his knife tip. “Help her in what way?” he asked with exaggerated politeness, lashing the butter against his toast.

“Why, to feel better, of course. As I believe I've explained to you before, these women are all suffering disorders that are linked to emotional shocks in their past. My goal is to return them to more normal functioning.”

He mashed a bite of toast between his jaws. “Did it ever occur to you,” he asked when he had swallowed, “that unhappiness may be a normal part of life? That it is, in fact, the natural state of man?”

Here we go again, I thought in dismay, lowering my fork to my plate. “There's a difference between unhappiness and a functional disorder, Father.”

“Yes. The difference is that some of us get up and get on with our lives, while others wallow in self-pity.”

“These women aren't weak; they're in terrible pain. It takes strength for them just to stay alive, day after day.”

This only seemed to irritate him further. He bit off another chunk of toast, glaring at me while he chewed. “This is what they taught you in medical school?” he asked finally.

“Oh, Father, don't you see? Accusing them of malingering is no better than blaming mental illness on evil spirits! This is the modern age; we know better! The key to curing mental disturbance lies in the principles of physics and chemistry, not in identifying moral defects. All we have to do is determine the underlying causes of psychic pain, and we can master it.”

“You don't think that's presumptuous? Believing we can master pain?”

“Presumptuous? Why? Look at all the advances we've made against physical disease—antiseptics, antitoxins, x-ray machines! Why shouldn't we do the same for emotional pain? Professor Bogard says it's the new frontier. He says that as we bring modern scientific methods to bear on problems in abnormal psychology, we're bound to see extraordinary results.”

“I suppose this professor of yours agrees that you can help these women?” Father asked, pushing a forkful of scrambled egg around his plate.

I hesitated, choosing my words with care. “He believes it's an exciting possibility—”

“A possibility!” he barked.

“—that deserves to be explored.”

He said nothing more, but his jaws were clamped as tightly as a clothes wringer beneath his neat mustache.

“Look, Father, I know this isn't what you wanted me to do,” I entreated, “but I really believe I could be good at it. Just think of all the people I could help! People who are truly suffering—”

His fist thudded on the table. “Why can't somebody else help them?” he thundered. “Why does it have to be you?”

Before I could answer, the fork dropped from his hand, and he rose abruptly to his feet. I turned to see that my mother had entered the room.

“Good morning, Evelyn,” said Father.

“Good morning, dear.” She floated into her seat at the opposite end of the table and poured herself a cup of tea from the pot Katie had set out for her. “Were you able to get any sleep?”

“About an hour's worth, before Biggs arrived,” he said, sitting down again. Mr. Biggs, our neighborhood barber, was more regular than Grandpapa's hall clock, arriving each morning at precisely 7:35 and departing exactly fifteen minutes later to reach Mr. Burden's house by 7:55. “What about you?”

“Too keyed up, I'm afraid. I'll just wait for my afternoon nap.” She sipped her tea, her eyes moving from Father to me. “I didn't interrupt anything, I hope?”

Father began stabbing at his eggs again, while I stared down at my plate.

“Genevieve was just explaining to me how she's going to rid the world of unhappiness,” Father muttered.

I lifted my chin. “What I said is that I'm hoping to lead my patients back to some semblance of normal functioning.”

“And how long will that take?” Father asked, addressing me directly. “A month? A year?”

“What difference does it make?” I exclaimed, gesturing in frustration. “Why can't you be a little patient?”

“Genevieve,” murmured my mother, nodding at my elbow.

Following her gaze, I saw that I had dragged my sleeve across my buttered toast. “Oh, damn,” I said, swatting at it with my napkin.

“Genna!” gasped Mama.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I had picked up swearing from my male classmates in medical school and was finding it a difficult habit to break.

“It's not a matter of my patience,” Father continued. “We have to think about the board of Mount Pleasant Hospital. They may not be as willing as I to wait.”

“Listen to you. You're already assuming that I'll fail,” I fumed, giving up on the sleeve, “and that I'll have to accept their offer in the end.”

“What other outcome can I possibly expect? You've given me no rational basis for believing that this project of yours will succeed.”

I tried to swallow the lump that was growing in my throat. I had truly believed, when I conceived of my class therapy project, that it would make my father proud. “I don't understand why you're being so pessimistic. You, of all people! You've always been such an innovator; I should think you'd be all for it!”

He leaned toward me across the table. “What do you want me to say? That I think it's wonderful you're passing up the chance to do real healing so that you can waste your time on some untested nervous cure? That I think this is the best possible way for you to use your talents?”

Yes, I thought, that's exactly what I want you to say. “Persuasion therapy is not untested,” I retorted. “Neither is the class treatment approach. You might at least keep an open mind. Better yet, you could just trust my judgment and wish me luck.”

“Well, I'm sorry,” he snapped, “but your judgment hasn't always been the best, now, has it?”

My breath left me as completely and painfully as if I'd been kicked by a horse.

“Hugh,” my mother said with a sigh.

I struggled for air as the two great sins of my life loomed up before me: my brother's death, massive and overshadowing, and six years down the road, its smaller, fainter shadow—the Incident with Simon Shaw.

My cheeks were stinging with hot blood. It wasn't fair. Couldn't my father see that I had changed, that I was no longer that impulsive, self-centered girl? I thought of all the times in medical school when, through sheer force of will, I had controlled my natural inclinations, remaining silent when I felt like screaming, or smiling when I wanted to cry. Had I complained when my “gentlemen” classmates put cow eyes in my lunch pudding? No! I'd just spooned them out and polished it off. And when my professor asked me to describe the male ejaculatory function in front of the entire class, I hadn't run from the room—although the thought had certainly crossed my mind. I'd stayed and answered without protest or hesitation, even drawing an anatomically correct diagram on the board for good measure. I'd become so adept at disregarding my natural feelings and reactions and doing what was required that I'd graduated third in my class—and yet here my father was, still treating me like an irresponsible child.

“All I'm asking is that you reconsider,” Father said wearily. “We fought for your medical degree together, you and I. You've achieved what few women dream of. It's no small honor for a female physician to be offered a position on a hospital inpatient ward. But if you don't take their offer now, there's no guarantee it will come again. You've seen what's happening; there's a backlash against women doctors out there, and it's getting worse. You and I may know it's because the men don't like the competition, but that's not what the critics are saying.”

I knew very well what they were saying. It was the same old nonsense all over again: that the intimate workings of the human body were too graphic for the sensibilities of decent young women, and that females were too intellectually limited, or too prone to hysteria, or just plain too sentimental to become competent physicians. One prominent author was even seriously contending that higher education enlarged the brains and stunted the bodies of female students.

I supposed we should have suspected that the prejudice against us had never really died. The only reason Johns Hopkins agreed to admit women in the first place was because a group of female donors promised to give it $500,000 toward the new medical school if it would do so. Once this prestigious institution opened its doors to women, other medical schools had felt forced to follow suit. And women had responded, filling a third or more of the available seats and garnering a lion's share of the honors. For a few years, things had looked very rosy—so rosy that the handful of all-female medical colleges had closed down, believing they were no longer needed in the new, coeducational age.

But since my matriculation in 1900, the supply of doctors had begun to exceed demand—and true to form, women were being blamed. Instead of handling the glut by letting the most talented physicians climb to the top, the predominantly male profession was closing ranks, kicking women off the bottom rungs. Female enrollments at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere had already been cut to less than five percent, while postgraduate training for women was becoming nearly impossible to find. I knew what Father was saying was true. But I wasn't interested in crusading for a cause; I had never wanted to fight, only to learn.

“There's nothing I can do about what those idiots are saying.”

“Of course there is,” he retorted. “You can prove them wrong! You can take the job at Mount Pleasant and show them what a woman can do. Make a real contribution!”

No, I can't, I thought, staring at my plate. Not even for Father, not this time. And not just because I knew how unwelcome I'd be in a position I'd only been offered because of his influence. The truth was that I had no interest in general medicine, a fact that I hadn't faced squarely until my last year of school. Conrad was the one who was supposed to be the doctor. I may have taken his place in the plan, but my heart had never been in it.

Traditional psychiatry had intrigued me at first, but I'd soon grown frustrated with its limited reach. I didn't want to spend my life as a custodian for the irreversibly insane or testifying as to the mental capacity of criminal defendants. I wanted to improve people's lives. It was only during my practicum with Dr. Cassell that I'd discovered the fascinating new field of psychotherapy. Dr. Cassell had observed that a number of his consumptive patients suffered from depression, which he believed hindered their ability to get well. He treated this depression not with shock treatment or medication, but by confronting his patients' mental attitude, urging them in weekly group meetings to develop a more positive outlook. And the patients got better. I'd seen it with my own two eyes.

Here, I was thrilled to discover, was something that looked beyond brain injuries and lesions and toxic reactions for explanations of mental illness, something that took life events and emotions into account. The idea that thoughts and feelings could influence body functions had been taken up by a handful of other psychiatrists and neurologists, I soon learned, who'd begun using the persuasion approach to treat a variety of physiological disturbances. By the time my practicum came to an end, I had decided that this was where my future lay. Using the tools of psychotherapy, I would identify what was broken and fix it. I almost smiled now at the thought; perhaps Father and I weren't so very different after all.