A White Room (48 page)

Lottie lifted herself a little to see and then blinked rapidly and looked back at me with an open stare. She lowered herself back down. “Am I all right?”

“I think so.”

“I feel it, I think.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I figure you’d find my feelin’ betta a good thing.” She grinned.

I gave her an apologetic frown.

“Don’t—please. I shouldn’t of asked you. I never thought all this would come of it.”

“Me neither.” I huffed, thinking of it all again.

“You did me a great kindness.”

I shook my head. “I could have killed you. I thought I had killed you.”

She stared off. “Those men act like you was the devil. They don’t know nothin’.”

“Don’t they?”

She fixed her eyes on me. “No.”

I pushed my hair back from my face and threw the long locks behind me. “Can I tell you something?”

“Course.”

“I’ve never told anyone.” A sense of dread crept up from my bowls and swelled in my head. She waited, unblinking. “I’m a murderer.” The swelling in my head started to tingle and made me feel dizzy with shame, and I couldn’t bear to look at her. “I killed my father.”

She didn’t react. She didn’t move.

“He had stomach cancer, and he asked me to do it, to end his suffering, and I killed him. He’s dead because I killed him.”

She didn’t say anything, and I felt ashamed that everyone had done so much for me when I was a guilty, evil thing.

“You should probably sleep more,” I said and pushed myself up off the floor.

“Emeline?”

I stopped on my hands and knees, expecting to be told the awful truth about myself.

“I don’t know all about right and wrong, and I don’t know about God or the devil, but what you did for me—I think you a godsend.”

“No.” Tears welled up and curdled my voice. “You almost died, Lottie. I shouldn’t be doing this, not even the nursing. I—only physicians should. It’s selfish. I’m selfish.”

She raised her voice a little. “But the doctors don’t.” She stopped, realizing the volume of her voice, and whispered again. “You—you doin’ sometin’. You helpin’ people. You doin’ good.”

“I don’t think I did good with you.”

“I’m your best friend. It’s different.” She grinned, teasing, even now.

I couldn’t help but laugh just a little.

“You don’t care ’bout money or what anyone say. You help people who need helpin’, and you helped your daddy, too—you helped him in the most unselfish way.”

I shook my head.

“You could only hurt after helpin’ him like that. You got nothin’ but pain from it. That was all for him. You
sacrificed
your own self for him…and for me.”

I thought about what she’d said and a tear slid down my nose and onto the floor.

“Helpin’ someone when you gotta live with a terrible pain for doing it—that don’t sound like a devil kind of thing. That might well be the kinda thing God forgive people for. If not, well, I’m sure your daddy talked to him for ya.”

Forty-Six

1902

Labellum, Missouri

T
he house was alive. Everyone was running around. It was one of those spring days when the sun seems light and the air is at just the right temperature. All the doors and windows were open, so the cool breeze came in and made my white chiffon dress flow behind me whenever I moved.

“What about this one?” Francis pointed to an end table with swirling appendages and decorations.

“Yes.” I wrote it down in my little book.

“And this?” Annie held up the tree lamp that clutched the little dewdrop.

“Oh, yes.” I wrote it down.

Francis stopped and eyed her mother, who was sitting on the green chair with the high back drinking tea and making notes. “Mother, how about you join us?”

She waved her hand. “Darling, presidents don’t do such things. I am supervising.”

“Seems you’re relaxing to me,” Annie said.

“And this?” Francis pointed at the chair Ella sat on.

“You know”—my eyes bounced from the muscle-bound chair and the conjoined love seat to the owl bowl and other figurines—“there’s nothing I really need here.”

Ella lifted her chin at Francis. “I’m not getting up.”

“Oh yes you are.” She playfully put her hands on her hips.

“Is that so?” Ella lifted her chin at me. “I’m going to buy this chair.”

I smiled. “All right.”

She beamed at Francis. “There. Now I can do whatever I please with it.”

“I’ll tell Oliver what’s going.” I glided out of the parlor, chuckling. The front door was open, and I could see Oliver, John, Walter, and Francis’ husband, Richard. They were talking and leaning over some large papers. Oliver called out to one of his children running about the yard to be careful.

I stopped in the doorway. “Gentlemen, everything in the parlor can go.”

John straightened, put a hand on his hip, and gave me a suspicious grin. “Really? I never would have guessed.”

“Well, it is for a good cause.”

“Darling, what do you think about widening the stairwell? It’ll make it easier to get people and supplies up there.”

“Now that’s an idea,” I said jauntily, twirled around, and stepped back into the parlor.

Ella still took notes in the chair while Annie teased her. I had feared that Annie’s experience would alter her, but her gleeful and stately demeanor had returned, the only difference being a hint of maturity that can only come from experience.

“The men will be along in a moment,” I said.

“All right,” Francis and Ella sang simultaneously. Annie said it, too, but just slightly off.

I glided down the hall and passed the empty sitting room. The library remained mostly intact. We had already emptied the dining room, and whenever I saw it now, I laughed, imagining that the utensils and dishes had finally sprouted real limbs, wings, and other appendages and all they had used them for was to scurry off to the woods, where they had always longed to be. That was just in my imagination, though.

I stepped into the doorway and the eldest Schwab girl, Lucy, lifted her head from what she was writing at the end of the table. “Oh. I hope you don’t mind. I borrowed it from your desk. I’m writing Daniel.” She smiled shyly. “He asked me to keep him updated.”

“Isn’t he coming down for the auction?”

“Yes. But, I—I don’t want to wait. I’ll give it to him when he arrives.”

“Use as much paper as you need.”

She beamed and continued.

I continued to the stairs. The stairwell didn’t move anymore, and it almost seemed a little wider. I could hear voices when I reached the landing. I stepped down the hall and peered into the rooms, whose doors were open wide. They had all been stripped of their furnishings except for the basic pieces like beds and nightstands.

As I swept past each room, I remembered the people who were once imprisoned within. After I’d confronted the beast—and my guilt—and after that night with Lottie, I never saw them again. When John and James brought me back from the city jail, the house was different—lifeless. It was as if none of it had ever happened. The inhabitants had just disappeared. I wasn’t sure if it had happened after I confronted the beast, or while I sat in the city jail, or when I confessed my deepest sin to Lottie. Maybe it was everything.

Sometimes, I tried to picture them leaving. They would have stepped out of their rooms, wearing their best traveling suits and carrying luggage. They would have brightened and laughed cheerily, the dead boy not dead but free, the nurse’s work finally complete. The young woman would have walked tall and confident with all her posters and dreams under her arms, the empty bottle of morphine long forgotten. The little girl would have skipped out, dolly in hand, her life ahead of her.

I came to the last room, the one that had housed the beast. The door was open, and I entered without trepidation. The women inside chatted and roamed around.

“There isn’t anything in this one,” Ethel said, holding Jacob in her arms.

“It’s so strange. I thought it was a closet at first.” Olivia cocked her head.

Lottie circled the room with her hand to her chin. “I like it. It’s like a surprise.”

“You want this one to be set up, too?” Ethel asked and set her son on the floor. He quickly scurried to a corner, pony in hand.

I imagined the layout in my head. “We should be able to put two or three in here.”

“Sounds perfect.” Ethel clapped her hands together.

“Those curtains are going.” I pointed.

“We should measure for the beds,” Olivia said.

“The measuring tape is in my room. I’ll be right back.” I patted Jacob on the shoulder on my way out.

I entered my chamber. Everything was still in there. I was fond of the furnishings in that room. John had even repaired the mirror that we had knocked off the wall. I still spent a lot of time there, imagining and dreaming, but my fantasies were different from the ones I’d used to have.

I took the measuring tape off John’s dressing table and I heard a noise outside, a rustling. It reminded me of sounds I’d heard once before a long time ago. I walked to the open window and looked out. John, Oliver, and Richard were unraveling the banner. As they lifted it up, I could see that it read “Auction to benefit The Labellum Medical, Law, & Aid Society.” John’s eyes met mine, and his thumb popped up enthusiastically. I nodded, delighted. I lifted my eyes above the banner to the edge of the woods. I thought of the wolf. I thought of how it must have scampered off—yellow eyes, a turn, and a flash of a tail. I didn’t really see it, though. It was only in my head. I didn’t see anything like that anymore, and I was happy for it.

After the incident with Lottie, John and Walter had become the black sheep of their professions. It was all for the best, though, because not long after, Ella and the church committee had an idea about how to help the poor and ill-stricken. They suggested starting an organization that could pay small salaries to John and Walter for providing their services to people who could not afford medical or legal aid. We even recruited James and Carmine in St. Louis as well as the Nelsons to act as liaisons and help us work with similar organizations there.

We’d decided to put off having a family until I finished nursing school, so John and I offered the house to serve as headquarters and to accommodate those who needed extra care. We decided to auction off the furniture to earn money for the organization. Although certain people went to great lengths to ruin our reputations by exposing me as Mrs. Freeman, it turned out it only rallied support for the society. Even more so after the Labellum Police Department relieved Marcellus Rippring of his position and he and Ida left town. Rumors swirled that he had tortured me when I refused to name my clients. It seemed I was becoming something of a legend, and it was creating a lot of interest in the auction and our society. We even expected Dr. and Mrs. Bradbridge, who, after much negotiation, had recently met their son and Olivia for tea.

Thinking of it made me giddy, and I twirled around in my chamber, admiring all the white. I still sometimes thought of my white room. The white represented responsibility, obligation, and by being in that room, a woman clothed in white supported and maintained herself and everything she loved. Nevertheless, white is a pale thing like a canvas ready to be transformed into whatever the heart desires. She could paint it yellow or lavender or even paste up wallpaper. Walls are not permanent. If she felt like knocking one down, installing a window, or adding a door or two, she could feel free. She could even go outside for a while. Maybe she would invite someone in to help her or just for the pleasure of their company. She might as well make it the way she likes. It is, after all, her room.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Nothing that I have done or continue to do as a writer and artist would be possible without my wondrous husband, soul mate, and best friend, Jonathan Carroll. You read copy. You give critique. You act out action scenes with me. You know the remedy for my writer’s block. You let me cry to you about my characters. You indulge and even praise my psychotic artistic process. I could not write without you. I could not have written this book without you. You give me the strength to get through every step, and every day you sacrifice so that I can pursue my dreams, and for that I am eternally grateful and in awe of you.

I am so very grateful for the Churchill County Library and the Kings County Library. For years, I visited these libraries on a weekly basis to retrieve books that helped me create
A White Room
. I couldn’t have done it without them and their wonderful staff.

I want to express lots of love and gratitude to my supportive friends, family, and test-readers. This novel would not be what it is without you. Thank you Dr. Eileen Walsh, Christy Lattin, Rebecca Taylor, Kelly Cantley, and Barbara Carroll, who suffered through and helped shape initial drafts. I am so grateful for Dorothy Puder, Rene Lynn Miller, Gloria Werner, Laura D. Jones, Benjie Smith, and Barbara Mathews, who provided no-nonsense critique and helped refine the final manuscript. Thank you so much to Virtual Muse authors Lindy Gligorijevic, Steven M. Long, Steve Masover, Dan Berger, Kristina Eschmeyer, Kate Raphael, and Miranda Weingartner not only for your help and support with
A White Room
but also for making me a better writer overall. A special thanks to Andrew Eddy for inviting me into VM, for your keen eye, and for helping me discover habeas corpus. And a big bear hug for the members of the Kings County Writer’s Group.