My Notorious Life (49 page)

—I am just back from two years in Paris, she said. —I’ll be here a month before returning to Chicago. Mother’s gone on ahead there without me, so
I took this chance to find you at last. The Childrens Aid Society gave me your new address.

—Oh my dear darling, sweet lovely Dutchie, I said, and embraced her again.

—My own sister. It’s quite strange.

Anyone looking at our lace collars and elaborate skirts, our rings and bracelets and tortoiseshell combs, would never imagine how once we curled up like a litter of cats in the bed, how I pulled her hair and bit her, how she scratched when we argued so red stripes and claw marks crosshatched my cheeks. Long ago we two was wild savages crawling with dirt and holes in our shoes. Now you’d think the both of us was just Mrs. Fifth Avenue and Mrs. Park Avenue about to have tea and pastry, except for how fast our hearts beat, how tied our tongues.

Dutch gazed around her. I was proud for her to see what had become of me. The fireplace big enough to park a carriage, the marble of the mantel swirled and carved. She tipped her head back to the ceiling, with its panels of walnut and that chandelier sparkling, and I saw the approval in her eyes, how she smiled at me. Surely neither the Ambrose house, nor the VanDerWeil one, was grand as this.

—Please forgive me for not warning you of my arrival, she said. —Eliot and I were staying at the Marble House, and since he has gone to London for several weeks . . .

—How many times I dreamed of this day.

—Strange, how your maid kept mistaking me for someone in the trades! As if I was a shopgirl delivering something. She insisted that I should go downstairs to the side entrance. Forgive me, but she said—

And here my sister leaned in to whisper, giggling —I could swear she said that
Madame DeBeausacq’s
office was downstairs. I can’t believe she would think I was looking for that horrible woman.

—Horrible woman?

—Surely you have heard of her wicked practice? Madame—ahem, is a foul murderess.

—Is that so?

—We have news of her even in Chicago. Even in Paris they call it . . . DeBeausacquisme. You must’ve heard?! Is she at work so nearby? She killed a poor cigar store girl and dumped her corpse in the river.

—Ha.

—She’s quite the scandal. Thousands of innocents have died at her hands.

—That’s just a pile of c**p, I said. Dutch winced, and I felt myself to be no more than a fishwife in her estimation, cursing and common.

—Would you care for coffee? I asked.

—Yes please. My sister nodded, quite cordial, but something was off. We stood about not knowing what was next or how to be. Our smiles were uneasy. Still, just to gaze at her was like a long draught of water to a fevered patient. As we sat by the window overlooking the gardens, we talked over each other, about Mam, and Mrs. Ambrose, and her husband Eliot, about my Charlie and Annabelle.

—Dutchie, wait till my little girl meets you, I said. —You’ll be Auntie Dutch!

—Ann, said my sister, most uncomfortable, —just as I am sure you are no longer called by your childhood name Axie, I must tell you that nobody calls me Dutch or knows me by that name.

—Our mother named me Ann. I don’t know who named you Lily.

My sister flinched. —I was only requesting that you—I have been Lily for so long now.

—If you would prefer that name, I’ll call you it.

—Thank you.

Lily to me was the name of a funeral flower, and it sat alongside a thorn-bush of silence between us, for I found my sister to be a stranger in cobalt silk.

—I meant to come to Chicago to find you, I said. —I swore to Mam I would.

—It’s good you didn’t. It’s a secret that I am . . . adopted. Even now . . . I must beg you not to reveal me.

—Your secrets are safe with me. I am quite practiced at keeping them.

—Please tell no one you ever saw me. Say I am a friend from your school days.

—Presenting Mrs. Lily Reardon, I said, —an old friend from my school days.

—Ha! Dutch laughed. —Mrs. Reardon! I remember you called her Mrs.—

—Mrs. Rump!

Dutch clapped her hand over her mouth. Mrs. Rump, Mrs. Rump. She was convulsed in giggles same as ever, but something came over her and she straightened herself back into a proper society madam as if she’d noticed all the low-class tics that remained in me, no matter how I strived to rid myself of the bad grammar I was born to. Perhaps Mrs. Lillian VanDerWeil would not care that I had Swarovski crystal and a bust of George Washington or that the pearls at my neck was genuine. The queerness between us was the wasted years we spent apart, and all the ways we didn’t know each other like sisters should.

—Ann, she said, —where is our brother Joe?

—I thought you might have the answer to that question.

—I know nothing of him. His family—the Trows? Was that their name? Moved to Philadelphia, I think. I was discouraged from discussing him. Mother said he wouldn’t come looking for me because he was too young to remember.

—He’s twenty now. —Twenty one!

—He must be quite tall, she said. —His voice will have broken.

It was as if Joe stood there in the silence between us, a stranger with scraps of beard. I played with a fold of fabric in my skirt. Dutch gazed out the window, with elegant posture, and dabbed her rosette mouth with the corner of her napkin. She examined the backs of her fingernails. The ring on her left hand held diamonds and a pearl the size of a hailstone. She is a pearl herself, I thought, white and smooth and cultured.

—Your home is lovely, she said. —Your husband must be quite successful.

—He is a businessman.

—Ah. No longer a newspaperman? In what line of work is Charles now?

—Medicinals.

She nodded and raised her eyebrows. Her husband was also in business, she said. —He manages his family’s finances. You know, they are the VanDerWeils of the Chicago Northern Railways.

—How nice. What a good match you have made.

—And you as well, she said, but now the smile had froze on her lips, and she pressed her fist to her mouth, her face crumpled into misery.

—Eliot and I . . . , she said, quite flustered. —Something is not right
with me. I am unable . . . We have no children. She looked up at me like she was sure I’d be appalled. —Eliot says he must have heirs. He wants to know what is wrong with me.

—Och
mavourneen,
perhaps nothing is wrong.

—He will not speak to me during the day, and then at night— She looked away, scarlet with embarrassment. —Every night he goes to his gentlemen’s clubs. He arrives home—

—Is he—? Intoxicated?

—It’s because he can no longer bear the sight of me.

—But you’re so beautiful. He could not find anyone prettier.

—My doctor in Chicago said that I have brought this state of affairs upon myself. The doctors in London and Paris cannot help me. It’s my own fault.

—Malarkey.

—But it IS my fault! she cried. —I . . . attended college. If only I hadn’t. It wasn’t for long, really. It was only the study of musical annotation and theory, and a little bit of Latin and French. But Dr. Gundy says even that much is enough to drain the . . . to cause . . . My sister blushed and stammered. —He says those women who engage in taxing mental pursuits sap their generative functions.

—If French was bad for you, there wouldn’t be no more Frenchmen. Did your fancy doctors tell you that spirits of alcohol in the male are an obstacle to generative function?

She blushed to the roots of her hair.

—Dutch—Lily, there are tablets you can take.

She stood up and went to the window. —I wouldn’t know where to procure them.

—I can get them for you.

—You?

—Easily. They’ll help you conceive a child in no time. Stay here and let me get the remedy for you. I’ll only be a minute.

—Wait, she said, with a perplexed look gathering steam on her face.

—I’ll just be a moment. I have them among my personal medicines.

She stared at me, her expression filled with a growing horror. —You’re going to the office downstairs. That office
is
downstairs! Your maid told the truth!

—Maggie does not lie unless I ask her to.

—How could you? she cried. —How could you allow that woman, that Madame—to have an office here?

—Madame DeBeausacq is a fine lady, the most celebrated in New York. Just a bitty little thing. Quite wise and kind. She would not hurt a flea.

—She’s a murderer! She’s a felon! I’ve read how she—

—Mrs. DeBeausacq is only a midwife. She has delivered many ladies of healthy children and will never hesitate to help with any problems of female physiology or marriage questions or private matters of an intimate nature.

—She’s a demon.

—She’s an angel of mercy, I said.

My sister gaped at me.

—She would help you, too, I said, quietly, —if you let her.

Now she was alarmed, her eyes wide. —Is it you? Are you—?

I held her gaze.

—It’s YOU, isn’t it? YOU are Madame DeBeausacq herself!

—So what if I was?

—But that’s . . . inconceivable.

—Nothing’s inconceivable if you can think of it, right? Not even a baby if you want one. A little VanDerWeil.

She hiccuped and covered her mouth.

—Dutchie, you was always a squeamish kit, I said, sighing mightily. —Madame DeBeausacq is a lovely person, if I do say so myself, whose vocation is to assist mothers to bring their sweet babies into the world and ease the afflictions of poor suppressed ladies with no other recourse. She’s only a midwife, is all. The oldest profession, save one. And it’s the other one, you know, the oldest trade, awaiting many a young girl with no other recourses. Unless I help her.

On my sister’s face then was a look like old fish was rotting in the room. My own sister with her lip curled. She squared her shoulders, stood and gathered her hat.

—I must be going. I must get back to the hotel.

—Dutch, Lily. Please. Listen.

—Good afternoon.

—You can’t leave now, Dutchie, after all this—

—Really, Ann. She stopped, trembling, in front of me, a terrible reproach cooking on her face. —What would Mam think of you?

When she said that a hot spike of anger provoked me and crossed my face when I spoke. —It was a puerperal hemorrhage that killed our Mam, a kind I prevent quite regular. If she had had a midwife she’d be alive in this room—

Dutch headed for the door, her face contorted.

—Dutchie, please, I’ve only just found you.

—I don’t see how I can stay, she said, so agitated.

—What about those tablets? Wouldn’t you—? Please. Dutch. They’ll help you.

—No thank you, she said on the way out.

I caught her arm. —You don’t have to stay with him, Dutchie. Your Eliot. If he’s unkind to you. You could come here and live with me. You could have your own apartment here. It’s all ready for you. And wouldn’t the gentlemen line up then to come calling? Just leave him. You’re a young beauty, Lily, you could—

—I could never, she said, her face pale as milk. —You have no idea. Never.

She veiled herself and fled past Maggie, out the door and into the street, where a beautiful green victoria waited. She climbed in it and drew the curtains. —Dutch! I cried. Nineteen years I had sought this day only to have her scared off by slander. —Dutchie! I called after her. But the traffic swept her away and I stood on the sidewalk, shivering, my hand raised in farewell.

I ran inside and found my coat, and then went down to the offices and took a package of Madame DeBeausacq’s Natal Pills (black cohosh plus raspberry leaves and false unicorn root to enhance the fecundating properties). I went not to the stables for my own carriage, but to the street, where I hailed a regular hansom cab, so that I would not be recognized. We drove downtown and I paid the driver to wait outside the Marble House, where, breathless in the lobby, I asked for Mrs. Eliot VanDerWeil.

—Your name? asked the pickle-nosed clerk.

—Mrs. Ann Jones, I said.

—Mrs. VanDerWeil’s no longer a guest here, he said, after a hesitation that revealed he was lying. Dutch was at the Marble House, but apparently
had left instructions for this adenoidal larrikin to turn me away. I went back out to my cab and waited by the curb. Every twenty minutes I paid the driver to wait longer. Five dollars. Then thirty. I’d wait her out. She couldn’t stay in there forever.

At last, toward evening, she emerged. My sister. Look at her. The graceful swan of her neck below her upswept hair. The cut of her gabardine dress. She clutched the arm of a gentleman. He was a fine swell type such as frequented Newport for the yacht races, with yellow hair and beard. He looked down into my sister’s eyes and I saw how she gazed back up at him, like he was a life ring flung into harsh waters. So this was her husband, Mr. VanDerWeil.

—Dutch! I cried, and hastened out of the cab toward her.

She kept walking though it was clear in the stiffening of her shoulders that she heard me.

—Dutch! Still she did not acknowledge me.

So that’s how it is with her then, I thought, the cat. She stabbed me to the core. I could not chase her. I had promised to keep her secret. Instead I went back in to talk to the desk boy.

—Mrs. VanDerWeil is a guest here after all, I said. —I just saw her leave.

—She left instructions that she will receive no visitors.

—It’s very sad, I told him, and brought the tears to my eyes. —She’s my long lost sister. Rummaging through my purse, I withdrew my handkerchief, and with it, the sum of fifty dollars. I dabbed at my eyes and wept a little and passed the money to the clerk. —Might you give her a package?

—I might, he said, smiling, and pocketed the bills.

—Thank you. Withdrawing to a bench in the lobby, I took a slip of paper and wrote:

Dear Dutchie,

You know that blood is blood and we are sisters sure as daylight. When all is said and done what else do we have? (Each Other.) I will not tell your secrets nor make you fraternize with me, if you don’t want. I am content to know you are well and happy (though I think you are not! my poor sister). Here in this package is the remedy. May it bring you the results you long for and don’t be sad
any more.