My Notorious Life (37 page)

—I have five hundred dollars from my mother to pay you if you’ll only help me.

—At this late time, I can only help you deliver your child.

—I cannot have a child! I cannot marry that Doctor but if I have this . . . this . . . who else will have me? Nobody. I would soon as kill myself, along with the—

She couldn’t utter the word (baby) but left it hanging.

—There is one other possibility, I said, reluctant to offer it.

The pale Susan leaned forward with desperate eagerness.

—I could help you find a placement for it. I might know a wet nurse who would raise your child up, and be a mother to it, and you won’t never see it afterwards.

Even as I said these words I felt their terrible weight and saw how they hurt her. I had never yet gone so far as to find a placement for a baby. The thought of taking a child from a mother wracked me to the core and brought to mind Mr. Brace. How he sorted us out and gave us up. But now? Now I seen what he was after. The lesser evil and the greater good, &c. How he lived with the complexities, same as me.

To confess, it must be said that in my secret heart I considered a question: Would I take in her child? I admit I thought how I might claim it, raise it up, while Susan looked away from me, gnawing her cheeks.

—I would rather have no child at all than give away mine to a stranger, she wept so bitter. —But there’s no other recourse.

So at last, in great torment, she decided she would surrender her infant. I led her upstairs to a sunny room and told her my terms, the costs for room and board, for midwife service, for a wet nurse. I did not tell her of the quickening of my heartbeat, how already I dreamed it was me and Charlie who took her child in. Not even Charlie heard that idea. I kept it for myself for now, eyes peeled. Was this our chance?

Upstairs, Susan spent many days sobbing. At meals she kept apart from the other ladies—there were two or three other patients during that time—and declined to read the novels or newspapers around the place or even the Bible. I sat with her when I had a free minute and showed her the poems of Elizabeth Browning, but she was indifferent and alone. Though she was raised rich and had the coddled look of a china doll, her troubles was as heavy upon her as the troubles of any barmaid.

*  *  *

While Susan awaited her time, I contracted a wet nurse named Catharine Rider, a fleshly young costermonger’s wife I assisted one recent day at the market when she had gone into labor behind her vegetable stall and delivered a little girl who she named Annie, after Myself. I returned to the market now and found Mrs. Rider and her new Annie sitting amongst the cabbages. She greeted me groveling with gratitude and pressing parsnips into my arms.

—How’s your milk, then, Missus Rider? I asked her. —Are you nursing all right?

—Yes, Madame, she said, and showed off her girl, cooing at it.

I explained my proposition then, that she adopt new Baby Applegate and feed both the infants, for the price of four hundred dollars.

—Four hundred? she cried, in excitement. —Four hundred dollars?

Such a lump was, for her, a half year’s earnings, at the least.

—And Mrs. Rider, I said, —might be we could take the child off your hands when you wean him. If you was agreeable.

She said she was agreeable, for sure, yes, whatever I asked. I did not give her further explanation, but seeing how willing she was, I determined to speak to Charlie after a time, if circumstances proved right, for now here was a chance for a child.

Catharine Rider thanked me, kissed my hand. —A boy would be nice.

*  *  *

Well, it was a boy. —I don’t want to see him, poor Susan wept so terrible, when he was delivered. —Don’t let me see him.

I hardly dared look at him myself for the guilty thought he could be mine one day. Then an hour later Susan changed her mind. She wanted to hold him. —Now, please, bring my son, oh please, Madame.

I brought him to her, and she nestled him down and gazed at him with the look of the Madonna, all wonder and moist eyes and trembling. It broke your heart to know she’d give him up. Despite my earlier fantasy, I myself now wished she would keep him, rather than watch her grief. —You still want to place him out then?

—Give me just two days with him, she said. —Oh please. Two days only.

I looked at the fusty little man there in her arms, and with a sinking heart I said, —All right, keep him a while, and sent the kitchen girl to tell Catharine Rider not to come till Thursday. It would be the worse for everybody, the longer Susan held on.

For a week, Susan Applegate refused to part with her infant, called Davey. She nursed her son and cooed over him. She slept with him swaddled in the bed next to her and sang him a song about bluebirds. She held him up to the window and watched him blink in the sunlight.

Did I shoo her away? Did I insist she surrender the boy? Did I charge extra? No.

Did I RIP THE BABY FROM ITS MOTHER’S ARMS like the
Herald
accused me? No. I stroked her hair and comforted her and we cried over him, the both of us. Our Annabelle came in to visit, for she liked to see the newborns and thought Davey was a big live dolly. She counted his wee toes in her singsong voice. —One, two, four, two, FIVE! Can we keep him for my brother?

Conflicted with sadness and selfish reasons, I didn’t reply. I wavered very guilty. Every day I asked Susan, —Are you sure? and every day she
replied yes, she would give him up at the end of the week. I didn’t sleep. Baby Boy Johnny returned to haunt my nights. Charlie took my hand and shushed me.

—You’re grinding your teeth, he said.

The soul of the midwife must live with the lesser evil
.

When the day came, Susan Applegate handed me one thousand dollars, four hundred for Mrs. Rider and the rest to me for room and board and services rendered. She thrust the money at me with a degree of rage I did not think she possessed.

—Take this from my dear mother and the rest of it is blood money from that wretch Adolphus! You know I hate him! she cried. —I hate him! To him it’s only money. He pays only in money, whereas I pay with—

She stopped, choked on her own dark thoughts, of a woman’s currency.

—Poor young Susan, I said, and pulled her to me. —Mrs. Rider will be here tomorrow after supper, if your mind is made up. And after that we’ll stop your milk.

I did not sleep. Catharine Rider came at six. She was bursting her dress buttons. It was a comfort to think little Davey would have plenty of nourishment. We went up the stairs where Susan clung to her little boy. —My son, she whispered and wept so tears fell on his face. She took a silver chain off her neck and put it over his head. —Remember me your mother who loved you.

—Are you certain? I asked.

—Take him, she said. —Take him now. Fast. Before I lose heart. Take him now I’m begging you.

She thrust the child in my direction and turned her face away, so I did it. I took him from his own mother and trembled as much as she did, sick in the gut with this project. It was what she wanted. I did not SNATCH the child. I did not
wrest
him. She gave him over to me. I gave him to Catharine who took him as natural as if he was hers, and she fussed over him and called him a big handsome fella, wasn’t he? yes he was, yessirree, sir. —Don’t you worry, ma’am, she told Susan. —I’ll love Davey good as my own. She bundled him into the night, and after she left I went up to wind a sheet across Susan’s chest to stop her milk, if not her bitter weeping.

In the morning, young Miss Applegate kissed me, sober but no longer tearful. —Thank you Madame. For everything. For your kindness.

—Where will you go, child?

She would go home. Her father and mother would take her back. Nobody would know, except the family, and the beast Doc Benjamin. She was so glad she would not have to marry him. I embraced her and wished her well. Then Susan Applegate was gone, and as I watched her depart again the question came over me, would I speak to Charlie about Mrs. Rider, and little Davey, and whether, when he was weaned, we might take him? In truth, I had lost the stomach for it, as all I could picture was a child torn from a mother’s breast once more, and this picture did not rest easy on my spirit.

*  *  *

Because of Susan now I seen in a raw new light the sorrows of my Mam, and the fingers of Mr. C. L. Brace brushed the back of my neck. I had brokered the surrender of a child to another mother, and I could feel the part not just of the child, and of the poor mother who lost him, but now also the part of Mr. Brace who had said all’s he wanted was to do good. Such thoughts put me in mind to write to him again:

Dear Mr. Brace, have you any new information about my brother Joseph Muldoon? He is a lad 17 years of age and despite your good intentions he has been deprived of his sisters and his birthright. As I am now a wealthy woman you can be sure I will pay any sum at all for some news of his whereabouts.

I mailed off my note, but, with little faith it would make a difference, the next day I proposed to Charlie to try hiring another detective. —Not a Snope, I said. And so Charlie agreed he would inquire at the police department for a reputable man, and this time we’d offer a reward. That night I dreamt that Mr. Brace himself came to the door. —
Here he is, your little wayfarer,
said he, holding the hand of my small brother, as if all these years, Joe had remained a child.

*  *  *

Four months later, at my door instead was Susan Applegate again. Two gentlemen waited in her carriage as she knocked. —I’ve come to get my boy, she said.

I invited her in, noticing an altogether new kind of pink in Susan’s cheeks that day. She was an Apple Blossom for sure, and sporting a diamond on her finger, so excited to tell me that her father had coerced the bounder Adolphus Edwards home from the Antilles, and he had done the honorable thing by her. She was Mrs. Edwards now.

—We will raise our son, she told me, tearful, —little Adolphus Edwards.

—Well that’s a fine thing, I said, smiling bravely at her Happy Ending.

So I would not have the boy I plotted for. It was a disappointment, sure, but just as fast, it was a relief, for I was not the one who now would have to surrender him. Catharine Rider was. And I knew that would’ve proved too grim for me, to hand him over once I’d claimed him. I was spared that grief, at least.

Susan went off smiling to Mrs. Rider’s address to fetch her baby and I watched at the window as she drove away. I imagined a Sweet Reunion. You can imagine my dismay not an hour later to find Susan, along with the two gentlemen now, returned to the office in a lather.

—The thief Catharine Rider is not to be found, announced the older man, —and neither is the infant.

The speaker was Susan’s father, Dr. Samuel Applegate, a florid old fruit who brandished his finger at me while Susan wept. The other cove, who I correctly guessed to be the redeemed scoundrel Adolphus Edwards, picked at a piece of lint on his cuff.

—You, Madame, Dr. Applegate said, —produce the child.

—It was not I who produced the child, but these two, I reminded him.

—I want my son back, squawked Adolphus, a young genteel. —If you don’t return him at once I shall haul you down to the precinct and have you thrown in prison.

It was the first time I was threatened with prison but it was not the last.

—I don’t have the child, but I’ll find him, I said, and went to comfort poor Susan.

—Don’t come near her, you monster, said her father, and snatched the girl away from my arms. —I know all about you. Your terrible Satanic practices. Your life of crime. It is well known you sell the corpses to resurrectionists! You are the horror of all of us in the medical establishment.

—Oh ho, I said. —Do you think so, Mister? I run a respectable clinic.

—You are not qualified to run a chicken coop, madam, Mr. Applegate said. —If you do not find my grandson, you will rue the day you first drew breath.

*  *  *

It must be said that my desperation to get the boy back was nearly the equal of Susan’s, as I had suffered spasms and nightmares and guilt, separating mother and child, questioning, was my own motives selfish? And while I did not take the Doctor’s threats lightly, it was Susan’s tears that motivated me. I did not yet know she was in the claws of gargoyles, ready to fly down off their cornices and pounce. We set out to find the boy. The Riders’ neighbors on Delancey Street told me that Catharine and her family had moved to a place called Sleepy Hollow, on the Hudson, but left no address. Charlie set out up the river to find them. He was gone for weeks.

—Where’s Papa? Annabelle asked. —Has he found a baby for us?

I had to explain it was not for us he was looking and felt more sharply the loss of the children we did not have. But it was on this very mission to find the Edwards baby that Charlie took a fancy to the village of Sleepy Hollow, where the finer classes had their castles. Knocking on doors, Charlie happened upon the riverfront mansions of robber barons such as Jay Gould, and the playhouse of Washington Irving, called Sunnyside. He did not find Davey or Mrs. Rider. Was it because he spent more time ogling real estate than searching?

—Why did you take two weeks away?

—Annie, I tell you we’ll build ourselves a castle above the Hudson that’s the equal of Lyndhurst, he said. —Turrets. Arches. The long carriage drive. We’ll retire there at Sleepy Hollow in country splendor one day. You should see the gardens at Sunnyside.

—What of Mrs. Rider?

—I tramped the whole area, and nobody knew a Rider. Nobody’d heard of this wet nurse. She isn’t to be found.

*  *  *

—The trail is cold, I told Susan Applegate very sad.

The poor girl lost her senses then. I don’t blame her for that. What I do blame her for is how she returned in short order and sat there with her father, telling him lies. —Madame DeBeausacq stole my baby! She took him against my will! She locked me in a room. Oh Papa I heard him crying for me! It was terrible. Ladies were bleeding and begging for mercy all night, and that woman, Madame, told them to go to the Devil.