A White Room (45 page)

“Sit down, bitch,” the deputy shouted.

I jolted, frozen in place.

“You’re not going anywhere.” His nostrils flared and his nose crinkled.

Carmine looked back at me, her eyes wide and her lips parted.

He grinned back at her. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

She swallowed and moved toward the cell door. After she stepped out, he quickly relocked it, as if I might try to scramble out like a wild animal.

Carmine’s breath quickened.

“Where are you taking her?” I asked.

“Ay!” He hit the cell bars with his baton.

I flinched.

He pointed at me with it and gritted his teeth. “Didn’t I tell you to sit your ass down?”

I slid down the wall, terrified for Carmine.

“A pretty little thing like you would never be involved with a witch like that, would ya, honey?” He leaned in close to Carmine’s face, and she squinted with the obvious effort it took to not recoil. “Somebody’s”—he held the “s” too long—“daddy’s here.”

Carmine closed her eyes and exhaled. He bowed and motioned toward the exit as if for a queen. Carmine scurried out without looking back.

I sat and wondered if my father would have come for me. Then I realized that Carmine’s father knew. What would he think? What would he think of James? Would he tell the Dorrs? They would tell my mother. My gut twisted into a hard knot. Everyone was going to know everything.

For a long time, I remained sitting for fear that the deputy would come back and yell at me again, but eventually I stood and paced. As the day went on, the heat and moisture grew in the cell, and flies buzzed in circles, occasionally landing on my bloody garments. I had been thinking all day about the expression that had been on my mother’s face when my father died…the expression she would have when she learned what I was. I prayed that Carmine’s father would help James but feared he would blame my brother. I wondered if John was with the Bradbridges or Lewis. He hadn’t even lifted his eyes when Marcellus dragged me out. I would understand if he turned me in, but what about everyone else? No one deserved punishment other than me. Would John abandon my brother? What about Lottie? What had happened to her? Was she alive?

The deputy sauntered back in to check on me. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall with his top lip crinkled as if he were offended by some awful stench.

“Could I have some water?” I asked.

“You don’t deserve it.” He stood there scowling at me for a minute. “You think you can get whatever you want ’cuz you a lady? You ain’t no lady anymore. You ain’t no better than a whore.” He pushed off the wall with his foot and walked out.

I collapsed to the floor, overwhelmed with the heat and buzzing flies around my head. My mouth felt dry and my stomach ached for nourishment. Sweat dripped down my brow and moistened my back and under my arms. The blood had gone from a dry, crusty state to a deep brownish orange and I swore I could smell it, or was that my body’s own stench? Eventually, I removed my boots, pulled off my stockings, and hiked up my dress to cool myself. I leaned against the wall and pressed my cheek against the rough but cool stone.

And that was how Ida and Margaret found me.

“Well, well.” Margaret’s raspy voice ripped me from an unsteady sleep.

I instantly coaxed my petticoats and dress down and jumped up. Ida peered in at me as if I were a rat.

“What’s happened to Lottie? My brother?”

Margaret cocked her head at Ida. “She doesn’t even ask about her husband.”

“Please. Please just tell me. Are they all right?”

“No,” Ida said. “They’re not all right, thanks to you.” She folded her arms. “Nevertheless, we’ve come to help you.”

“Is that so?”

“I am a powerful woman and so is Margaret. I know we’ve had our squabbles, but I didn’t realize the seriousness of your condition. Margaret witnessed it herself. We cannot assist you unless you admit you are not well. If you do, we will see to it you are treated and not punished for your actions.”

“I am perfectly fine, thank you.”

“Ha!” Ida snorted.

“There’s no need to deny it,” Margaret said, fluttering a lace fan. “We can help you. You won’t go to prison if you’re ill, but you have to admit it.”

Why were they trying to get me into an asylum? Marcellus had told me what they would do to me there. “I will not claim madness when I am not at all mad.”

Margaret shook her head. “I should have known. She’s so out of her wits she can’t even recall her hysterics. What I witnessed should be proof enough. She obviously manipulated Walter. She tried to lure him into sin.” She fanned faster. “If my son is ruined because of your madness, I’ll—”

What was she fretting about, I wondered. His reputation? She would have me locked up in an asylum to prevent rumors? I pursed my lips and stepped closer to the bars. “Your son doesn’t need me to ruin the Bradbridge name.”

“Don’t bother me with your ravings.” She waved her fan at me as if shooing a beggar.

“Don’t you know?”

She simpered at me, unimpressed.

“Oh.” I looked at Ida. “She doesn’t know.”

Ida narrowed her eyes and shifted her weight.

“Well, Ida,
you
should know.”

She stared at me with her face pinched tight.

“What?” Margaret shot her eyes at Ida and back at me.

“Well, if you know everything about your son…” I cocked my head with a little shrug.

“Tell me.”

“She doesn’t know anything, Margaret,” Ida snipped.

“I know plenty. I know who he is courting in secret.”

Margaret’s eyes widened.

“You know her.” I raised an eyebrow.

“Who?” Margaret stepped forward and snapped her fan shut.

“You won’t like it.”

She hit the bars with the fan. “Damn it, who?”

I spoke slowly so she wouldn’t miss a single syllable. “Miss Olivia…Urswick.”

Margaret’s left eye twitched. “You’re lying. He wouldn’t.”

“Oh yes he would. Why else would he have recommended her to sit with me when I was bedridden? You remember that.”

She shook her head without blinking. “I don’t believe you.”

“Who was with him last night? He failed to elaborate, didn’t he? Who was the woman whom he asked to inform Ida’s husband about me? Well, Ida? Surely,
you
know.”

Ida glared at me without denying it.

Margaret clutched her stomach and shot Ida a wide-eyed look.

Ida snarled. “I’m going to see to it that you are thrown into a hole.” She took Margaret’s arm and pulled her a few inches away before Margaret stamped her heel and halted them.

Margaret wrangled her arm away and stepped up to the bars. Her face had turned purple and her eyes were blazing and watering at the same time. “You’ve ruined my son,” she said in a deep seething whisper. “You ruined your own husband…and you killed that woman. You’re a murderer, and you deserve to go to hell.”

I couldn’t blink, and my bottom lip trembled.

Finally, she whirled around and the two women marched out.

My hands fell from the bars. I swallowed and imagined Lottie’s corpse, her belly swollen and her blood on the floor—just like my father’s. I killed her. I had ruined everything and everyone I cared about. I thought of the white room. This was the part where the room collapses, just before the woman is smothered by her own desires. I deserved it, too. I deserved to be punished. I’d known for a long time. The house knew, the wolf and the beast were there to carry it out—they all knew it. I deserved hell.

Forty-Three

1900

The Evans’ Residence

St. Louis, Missouri

“M
other?”

“Hmm?” She glanced up with sleepy eyes cradled by dark circles.

“Why don’t you go to my room and get some sleep?”

She shook her head. “No. I want to stay with him.” She gazed at my father, who snored lightly.

“He’s asleep and he’s fine. You want to be rested the next time he wakes up.”

She had been up all night with him, and she spent half of it crying.

“Just take an hour,” I said.

“I can sleep here.” She shrugged.

“You’ll strain your neck sleeping in that chair.”

She bobbed her head.

“I’ll let you know when he wakes up.”

She sighed and stood up slowly, sewing in hand. “I won’t be long.” She hobbled out of the room, her skirts swishing.

I sighed, realizing how tired I was, too. The curtains blocked the daylight, and the room felt gloomy. I glanced down at my book, but the words blurred. I stared at the wall instead, losing myself in my own thoughts. I still wondered what my father had meant by asking me to make sacrifices. I planned to ask but only when he felt better.

Whenever he woke, a terrible pain tormented him, but he could sleep if given enough morphine, so when he stirred a little while later, I immediately grabbed the tiny bottle from the nightstand. “Father? I need to give you some medicine.” Although Dr. Morris had shown Mother and James how to inject the morphine directly into the vein, the task usually fell to me. I was the only one who didn’t squirm or recoil, and I was glad. It felt good to help in a way no one else could.

He blinked a few times and then opened his eyes wide. “Emeline?”

“I’m here. I’m going to give you some medicine.”

“Still here?” He struggled to lift his head and look around the room. Bright red lines squiggled across the whites of his eyes.

“I’m here. Mother went for a nap.”

He leaned back again. “I meant
I’m
still here.”

I frowned and picked up the syringe.

“No.” He held up his hand and stared at the ceiling.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s unbearable.” He shuddered. “The pain.”

“I know. Let me give you this.”

He waved and tried to raise his voice. “No.” He wheezed a little.

“What can I do?”

“I don’t want this. Not for you or your mother, the girls—”

“But the doctor said—”

His breathing was hard and raspy. He stifled his gags and coughs, trapping the soft barking sounds in his throat. His face crinkled as the effort tugged at the stitches in his abdomen. “I—I know I—” The gagging overpowered him, and I quickly gave him a brown- and red-stained cloth from the nightstand. He held it to his mouth and coughed. When he pulled it away, a sticky bright red blotch moistened it. “I’m dying.”

“Father…” I put the syringe and morphine back on the nightstand. “The doctor wouldn’t have done surgery if he thought—”

He shook his head. “It’s inevitable.”

“You don’t know that.”

“The doctor told me. That’s why I had the family come together.”

“What? When?”

“Operations will keep me in this bed for a time, but I won’t get out of it again, and I will die.”

“No. Maybe he’s wrong,” I practically begged.

“Emeline,…I’m ready.”

I put my hand on his. “Everything will be all right.”

“Emeline, I want—I need you to help me.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked up at me. “Help me.”

“I’m trying to.”

“No. Help me die.”

I pulled my hands away.

He gagged hard and lifted the rag back up. He tried to wipe the blood from his lip but smeared it across his mouth and chin and looked back up at me. “All I do is suffer. Our family suffers. I want it to stop. You promised to take care of them. This is how.”

“Please, let me get Mother.” I moved to stand.

He grabbed my wrist. “This is how you are going to take care of our family. I’m going to die anyway. Your mother—God, I love her—but she won’t stop trying. The longer you keep me alive, the more you spend on doctors and operations, the more my death is going to tear this family apart when I’m gone. You—Emeline—are already going to have to make sacrifices to take care of this family.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“Lillian said something about you wanting to be a nurse.”

I closed my eyes, ashamed. “No, it was silly.”

He reached up and touched my cheek. “You would make a wonderful nurse. You are brilliant, but you aren’t going to be able to chase dreams when I’m gone. I don’t want you to have to forfeight such ambitions, but you can’t take care of other people when I need you to take care of our family.”