Pinkerton's Sister (47 page)

“The female has difficulties with tears. Note the dryness of the eyes …”

Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster pointed with a histrionically angled forefinger, allowing ample time for Thomas Eakins to register the play of light and shadow across his noble features. There was a distinct sensation of strain in holding that slight compassionate smile for long periods.

She had made a note of the title – thank you, Oh Bearded One – in these words.
Difficulties With Tears
. This ought to be a novel, like
The Life Class
.

At first, as it had been with Dr. Severance, it had been like working on some weakness of her body, building up the strength of some frail consumptive, an Elizabeth Barrett Browning of the wall bars, curls dangling upside down as she hung suspended. “How do I love thee?”
–
three forward rolls on the mats – “Let me count the ways”
–
backward somersault on the beam – “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height”
–
long forward swoop on the rings, gentler glide back – “My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight”
–
vigorous run up to the vaulting horse, a thump of the feet on the boards, a spring into the air – “For the ends of Being and ideal Grace” – “Pant, pant, pant!” A struggle for breath. Perhaps being ill was the only way she had to show that she was a woman – frail, delicate, well-bred, too gentle for the rough world – when her body failed to illustrate the acceptable criteria for ticking. That moustache certainly gave pause for thought, pencil points hovering indecisively in the pretick posture.

Cough.

Sigh.

Look pale.

Be submissive.

Be reticent.

Be modest.

Be polite.

Be
grateful
.

Up into the air, out to the side, up into the air, out to the side: she swung the Indian clubs, synchronized with the other gymnasts stretching out in front of her, behind her, either side of her, stretching to infinity, like the floorboards, the wall bars, the gasoliers – not thinking, not seeing: there was no need to think, no need to see – part of a symmetrical pattern like the shapes viewed through a kaleidoscope, its end twisted in the hand, not a human being at all, really.

After (briefly) following in the footsteps of Dr. Severance, Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster had decided – he declared it like an Arctic explorer about to cross a white untracked wilderness – to enter the inner self. Long had he labored on the conscious – this was the impression he liked to give – and now it was time to take a deep breath, and plunge into the sub-conscious, the hidden chaos beneath. Instead of travelling to Poughkeepsie for short stays at the clinic, Alice now traveled the short distance across Longfellow Park to his consulting room at 11 Park Place. Every week, on Wednesday – she thought of it as Ash Wednesday – she arrived at ten o'clock in the morning, and stayed for fifty-five minutes. The House of the Interpreter. That was what she thought to herself, Christian pausing on his journey to the Celestial City. Sunday mornings were for the Reverend Goodchild, and Wednesday mornings were for Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster. It was as if Wednesday had become another day of worship, the day on which she bowed down and worshiped her God, confessing her sins with most Catholic-like humility. Humiliation certainly came into it. Would fifty-five minutes give her enough time?
Forgive me, Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster
… He probably relied upon her fees to pay the – considerable – cost of his brandy and cigars. He looked at Alice, and saw candlelight glinting on cut glass, a slight unsteadiness in his walk, smoke curling toward the ceiling.

He wore – it was his uniform for work – a black business suit, a shirt with a stiffly starched collar, and a black bow tie. It was like being treated by a waiter or a department-store floorwalker temporarily corralled behind a counter. He should be standing behind his desk as she entered, leaning slightly forward, his weight upon the tips of his fingers and thumbs.

“Might I recommend?” he should be saying. “This is proving to be
very
popular with our more discriminating customers,” “Might I have the pleasure?” or “It is no trouble at all, Madam.” She should have a list in her hand, knowing precisely what it was she had come to buy, drawing a firm line through each product as she bought it.

It had started with hypnotism. This was the product on offer, and – although it was not on her list – she had bought it. It was Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster's first enthusiasm – the first
new
enthusiasm of which she was aware: electrotherapy, the baths (hot), the baths (cold), and the massage had probably all once been enthusiasms – and her initial thoughts, as he sat her so that she was facing him, their knees almost touching, enveloped in a fish-smelling miasma, were that he was going to try phrenology after all. It seemed to be the only thing he had not tried, and would have been a logical next stage: the inner self read from the outer manifestations. The cold skull would be warmed again, the undulations traced and interpreted.

When he produced the pocket-watch from his vest pocket – it was done with a consciously elegant little professional flourish, the surgeon producing his scalpel – she thought, for just a few seconds, that it was her dead father's watch, and it spun and glittered as if in the hands of the Reverend Goodchild.

She would sit motionless, with her hair held away from her forehead, as if feeling for the impression left by a watch-chain, by a coin: the word
CÆSAR
, worn smooth like one of the half-erased words on the phrenology head, the profile of Venus facing right, the slumped, defeated figures of the enslaved man and woman. She became a piece of melted wax, a sealed document enclosed within her body by the pressure of his signet ring, pressed upon her by his fisted hand. Well-flexed fingertips would start to push their way through her hair, feeling for her scalp, as she held her breath, her eyes blind, like her face as a small girl in the statue in the park, gazing out and seeing nothing.
Spirituality
,
Faith
,
Trust
,
Wonder
,
Hope
,
Expectancy
,
Thoughtfulness
,
Grief
. Each emotion would fleetingly blossom upon her face – flickering and dying – as his fingers moved across the hidden areas of her mind, the contours of her head caressingly fondled in intense silence as he played upon her head as upon a piano. This would be how he would think of it. The instruction book –
How to Learn Phrenology
by L. N. Fowler – would be propped up with its lower edge on the back of her bowed neck, a book of sheet music propped up on a music rack.

(Mama's piano was a Chickering, in memory of Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

(A single coin would not suffice as payment for his valuable time, the solitary clunk into the metal mug held thrustingly forward by the importunate beggar. A jingling pocket full of tin was more what he had in mind, and the coins would not bear the name
CÆSAR
. He'd be
very
keen on that pocket full of tin. That would definitely appeal. He'd doo-dah, doo-dah all day long if he had that. Crisp new notes would be even more acceptable.

(His face replaced the face on the front of the sheet music she had taken upstairs, the copperplate lettering of Mama's maiden name –
Lucinda Brouwer –
faded by sunlight, the ink become a barely legible pale brown, the words written centuries ago. If she tried to play music, his would be the face watching her, immediately in front of hers like a reflection with a beard. Alice's mother, like Mrs. Albert Comstock, like Mrs. Alexander Diddecott – like, for that matter, Mrs. Humphry Ward or Mrs. Henry Wood – was always known by her husband's name: she was Mrs. Lincoln Pinkerton. Alice was unaware that it had ever occurred to her – as a small girl – that her mother might actually have a first name. She never heard her father address her mother by her Christian name. She had come across the name
Lucinda Brouwer
in books, and on music, and had asked her mother who this person was.

(“That was me,” – even then Alice had noticed the use of the past tense – her mother had replied, and for the first time Alice had been confronted with the idea of her mother's being Lucinda Brouwer, this person in the past who had been entirely absorbed within Lincoln Pinkerton. She had once had a name, a girl's name, a name of her own.)

Almost, she had lowered her head in front of him, bowing, offering him her head for his hands, a patient inviting him to inspect her hair for infestation. She had a picture in her mind of phrenology charts and phrenology heads, and pictured her own head divided – for his convenience – into labeled sections, like the charts in butchers' shops illustrating the different cuts of meat on the carcass of a cow or a pig all ready for the knife. He would produce his sharp little knives, and, Hamlet-like, brood awhile above her skull, planning his first incision, holding his scalpel like a ravenous Sunday luncheon diner, sensually prolonging the moment before his first crammed mouthful. Her own hands remained decorously folded in her lap.

It was the first of her ten o'clock appointments, and then – as now – there had been snow upon the ground. She was facing the window, and glanced over Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster's shoulders, and across the road outside, taking a last, deep breath before submerging her head under water. The water would be frozen; she would see her own reflection moving up toward her from under the ice. She must have been very prompt – doubtless driven by her uncontrollable eagerness – because the clock in the waiting room started to chime the hour as she sat down.

One
…

First the hall.

Two
…

Then the waiting room.

Three
…

Then the consulting room.

In the park, snow lay upon the marble head and the marble shoulders of Albert Comstock (enough to bury a football team had accumulated in the cleavage of his buttocks), and she was conscious of averting her eyes from the ghastly sight. There might be incalculable and highly dangerous repercussions if you gazed upon such a sight in the presence of a trained alienist, one capable of discerning the secret, hidden things of the mind. Not to mention the increased pulse rate, the whimpers of desire, the drooling. There was snow upon the heads and shoulders of the statues of all the other Bearded Ones. She could see them clearly through the branches of the bare, leafless trees: Reynolds Templeton Seabright, John Randel, Jr. …

There was silence in the room. Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster did not choose to speak until he had a rapt and total stillness –
Five
…
Six
…
–
and measured his valuable time so exactly that she should not be given one second for which she had not paid.

To see statues in dreams, signifies estrangement from a loved one. Lack of energy will cause you disappointment in realizing wishes.

Nine
…

Ten
…

Then the pause, always that pause before the silence that followed. She was urging the hour onward, hoping to hear the chimes of eleven o'clock follow, and know that the fifty-five minutes were up, that she had – in fact – overrun her allocated time by five minutes, and should no longer be there. He'd be hurrying her out the door. Other loonies would be lined up, waiting. When G. G. Schiffendecken arrived in Longfellow Park, his waiting room was remarkably similar to that of Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster, and was probably modeled upon it, though – of course – you heard fewer screams of agony from the dentist's consulting room beyond, fewer sounds of metallic implements gouging and clattering.

Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster's hand was cold as he briefly touched her face. It was now ten o'clock. The treatment could commence. She could have her fifty-five minutes, starting
now
, on the last chime of ten, not the first. Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster was clearly a man capable of sharp practice, cutting corners when it suited him. Perhaps she should carry on counting, to ensure that he did not give short measure, count out all the three thousand, three hundred seconds – she'd worked this out the night before – for which she would be paying.

One
…

Two
…

Three
…

There was snow on his head, on his shoulders, in his beard. He was made of marble; all night the snow had fallen upon him in the darkness. She was in a Mozart opera where something unaccountable was occurring, and Donna Anna was about to be gripped by the icy-cold hand of the statue of her father, the Commendatore, and dragged down into the depths. When he – the Commendatore, the doctor – leaned forward to make a request (“
Rispondimi: verrai tu a cenar meco?
”) she expected his breath to be clouded white, and – concentrating so much upon this – she had not really heard what he was saying, at first. He repeated what he had said, and it was then that she understood she was to be hypnotized.