The Virgin Cure (27 page)

T
he private rooms of Rose, Missouri and Emily were located on the second floor of the house. Late nights, upon returning from an evening at the theatre, they’d lead their gentlemen up the stairs, giggling and cooing the whole way. They were, as Mae liked to say, “about to play Cupid’s game.”

One night, after we’d changed into our dressing gowns, Mae coaxed me into eavesdropping on Rose with Mr. Chief of Detectives, directing me to put my ear to the vent in the hallway of the third floor, warning me not to make a sound. “How else are you going to learn how the game should go?” she teased.

Remembering Mr. Cowan in bed with Mama, I figured hearing had to be better than seeing.

I’d spent a fair bit of time with Rose, helping her don her evening attire and mending her petticoats. Seeing to her needs was much like the work I’d done for Mrs. Wentworth, but far more enjoyable. She was the sweetest of Miss Everett’s full-time girls. Tugging gently at my hair while I was adjusting her clothes, she’d measure its length between her fingers and say, “It’s only a matter of time until you’re a full-fledged minx like me.”

From the sounds that came through the vent, Rose was far more cordial and free with Mr. Chief of Detectives than Mama had ever been with Mr. Cowan. Her every movement, translated through the strained creaks of her bed, brought about a response from her lover. “Yes, Rose,” he said repeatedly, his voice growing ever more like a growl. Rose’s replies were mixed with moans of
lover, baby, child, mister, please, more, now
. Putting my hands over my ears, I regretted saying yes to Mae.

Mae grinned at me, amused by my distress over the lover’s play below.

She was well on her way to becoming more beautiful than Rose, Missouri and Emily put together, and made no secret of her desire to surpass them all. “I intend on having ten times their lovers and becoming ten times richer than them as well.”

My dreams of owning a house like Miss Keteltas’, with the softest bed money could buy, a pair of lovebirds in my parlour, and two pug dogs at my feet, seemed woefully ordinary compared to Mae’s. Still, I was determined to do whatever it might take not to go the way of poor Eliza Adler—or Miss Nellie Lynch, a girl who let Chrystie Street roughs take her into dark cellars for a nickel.

Hearing footsteps on the stairs, Mae and I ran into our room and shut the door. Alice was at her dressing table, rolling rags in her hair before bed.

“Tie the back for me, won’t you, Ada?” she asked, waving a piece of flannel in the air.

I took the rag and began twirling a strand of her wet hair with my finger.

“I always have trouble with the last bit,” Alice said.

Mae sprawled on her bed and flipped through the pages of the
Evening Star
. “Anyone up for blind man’s bluff?” she asked, raising an eyebrow over the edge of the paper.

“What—you’re not sneaking out?” Alice asked.

Ignoring her, Mae proposed, “I say we play in the dark.”

I knew from watching children play the game in the streets that it called for at least three players, or “the more the merrier.” I had never been asked to play, even when Eliza was part of the group. I didn’t blame her for leaving me out. The one thing the mothers of Chrystie Street seemed to agree upon (all except dear Mrs. Riordan) was how they felt about Mama. They’d go on and on, saying she was nothing but a deceiver, a seller of false hopes. Even those who believed in her magic (when they needed it), the ones who came to our door begging for charms and advice, would sneer behind her back and call her witch if it served them to do so. Mrs. Kunkle, as wide as she was tall, was the worst of the lot, often serving out her judgment of Mama on me. “The child of a Gypsy is the Devil’s child too,” she’d hiss, squinting at me through the space where her sheet dipped between two clothes pegs. “Stay away from me, girl. You’re bad luck.” She’d set her son Thomas on me, and laugh as he chased me down the street.

“I’ll be It first,” Alice volunteered, taking a scarf that was hanging off the side of her mirror and tying it over her eyes.

Lamp smoke drifting through the room, Mae began to spin Alice around in circles. “No hands,” she commanded, before setting Alice free.

I moved on tiptoe, put my back against the wall and held my breath. The sounds of the house came up the stairwell—creaking floorboards, muffled laughter, the ticking of a clock.

Alice stumbled around, her hands clasped in front of her like she was praying. Feeling her way with her elbows, she bumped into one of the beds and nearly tripped headfirst over a pair of Mae’s shoes.

“Trying to kill me?” she asked, hoping to fetch laughter.

Mae called to her, “Right behind you in the corner, by the window,” then scurried across the room in the other direction.

“Gotcha!” Alice trapped me against the wall with her arms. Nuzzling my neck, she took the ribbon from my fan between her teeth and said, “Eeee-dah.” As she lifted the scarf from her eyes she exclaimed, “I knew it was you!”

“Ada’s It,” Mae sang out.

“Help me get Mae,” I whispered to Alice as she tied the scarf around my eyes.

Mae insisted on spinning me several times more than she had Alice. By the time she was through, I was so dizzy I thought I’d fall over. Forgetting the rules, I reached out, fingers spread to find my way.

“No hands,” Alice scolded from somewhere across the room.

I heard footsteps, both heavy and soft. Voices whispered all around me.

Ada
Ada
Ada
Ada

Stumbling towards where I thought I’d heard Mae, I ran straight into someone else.

“No hands,” Mae’s voice warned from behind me.

Rubbing my cheek along the person’s front like a cat, I felt the scratch of a wool waistcoat, smelled the distinct scent of bootblack. Cadet.

“Let me kiss you,” he whispered, taking hold of my arms so I couldn’t get away.

I’d dreamed it, secretly planned how I might go about making it happen, even picturing myself alone with him in the kitchen, or sneaking into his room at night to steal a kiss while he was asleep. But those were only the brave notions of a girl’s imagination. In my dream world, I was Miss Ada Fenwick, fully formed, with beautiful breasts and long flowing hair. Standing here in the dark with Cadet so near, I was only Moth, my mother in one ear telling me to stay away from boys, my father in the other asking, “How could you let them take your name?”

Cadet leaned in close and then his lips pressed to mine for what seemed a lifetime, our breathing shallow and warm, nose to cheek.

Laughter came from opposite corners of the room, breaking the spell.

Mae pulled the scarf off my head. Alice lit a lamp. Cadet was gone.

The salt-sweet taste of him still on my lips, I didn’t hear a word Mae or Alice had to say the rest of the night. For the first time in my life, I understood what hips, thighs, breasts, sighs, touches and thoughts were meant for.

“No man is allowed through these doors unless he’s a gentleman through and through,” Miss Everett reassured me the morning I was to make my first appearance in her “quiet room.” “He must have an honourable pedigree and an upstanding reputation. He must come with references in hand.”

Gentleman callers weren’t allowed in the house before noon, except on Sundays. On Sunday mornings, at half past eleven, a handful of invited men filed through the doors to see Miss Everett’s near-whores take off their clothes.

The idea was to raise a gentleman’s interest. If all went well, he’d request an invitation to meet. Chaperoned luncheons were then followed by an evening at the theatre, and after that, an offer for a private engagement. Miss Everett assured me it was an orderly process and that I’d be watched over every step of the way.

There were two parlours in the house. The main parlour was the one at the front where Emily played the harp or the piano while Missouri and Rose read to each other from magazines and story-papers. Their gentlemen callers waited for them there, bearing flowers or a box of chocolates or some other gift. If they came empty-handed, Miss Everett sent them away.

The second parlour—the one Miss Everett called her “quiet room”—could only be gotten to through a pocket door in the panelling on the far wall of the front parlour. Comfortable-looking chairs were lined up in a row, their seats and backs covered in deep red velvet.

The chairs were placed up close to a latticework screen that ran the length of the space, dividing the room in half. On the other side of the screen was a low stage that had been set back a ways so that all the men could have a full view of it. It was wide enough to move about on without feeling confined. To the right of the stage was a large music box that worked by setting brass discs to spinning with a wind-up crank. It would
plink, plink, plink
out tunes, chiming along like rain on a roof.

Although I knew I’d be far enough away from the screen that I wouldn’t fully see the men behind it, I was still nervous about them being there. Even if I could get past the notion that strangers were watching, I felt less than confident about the way I looked. I wasn’t nearly as developed (in the places that mattered) as Mae and Alice, and the traces of Mama’s Gypsy blood made me far less American-looking than them.

“It’s just a matter of pairing you with the right man,” Miss Everett told me. “There are plenty of gentlemen who are seeking more exotic fare.”

Alice had gone to the quiet room twice before and she could hardly bring herself to talk about it. “You might think if you can’t see them, it wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s … awful.”

Mae acted like it was merely an inconvenience. Her month of training was nearly up, and she had other thoughts on her mind. She’d soon be going to the theatre, and then on to Rose’s room.

“Ask Miss Everett to play ‘Beautiful Dreamer,’ ” Alice advised later that morning as she fixed a satin ribbon in her hair. “It’s the shortest of the songs. You can get away with making things go a bit faster that way, and then you’re done.”

“Not too fast, mind you,” Mae warned, “or you’ll be standing there in your pantaloons for what feels like eternity.”

I watched as Mae gazed at herself in the long mirror by the window, getting ready for her turn in the second parlour. Tending to a button on her waist that she’d missed, she was enviably calm about it all.
Easy for her
, I thought.

Alice came at me with a tin of rouge in her hand. “To make you look as if you’re always blushing,” she said as she went about dotting it on my lips and cheeks.

“To make you look more a whore and less a girl,” Mae added.

But I am a girl
.

“There are men who chase after children,” Alice said with a shudder. “I’ve seen them watch the schoolgirls of St. Patrick’s skip rope and play tag down Prince Street. It’s as if they think that if they stare at the girls long enough, they’ll find a way to steal their joy for themselves.”

Shaking her head, Mae said, “Emily had one of those. He brought her a schoolgirl’s dress to wear in her room for him so she’d look like she spent her days listening to nuns and carrying her books home in a leather strap.”

“Did you know he was a priest?” Alice asked, her voice hushed.

“Better Emily than a child,” Mae said.

“Yes.”

Yes
.

When Miss Everett gave the sign, I came into the parlour and took my place on the stage. After she started the music box spinning, she opened a curtain that was draped in front of the latticework. This was the sign that I was to take off my clothes. “Just like you would at the end of the day,” she whispered. “Very simple. Not too fast.”

I could smell the stale cigar smoke on the men’s breath. From the sound of a few scattered coughs and their movement in their chairs, I guessed there were four, five, six of them, maybe more. I tried not to think of them. I knew they couldn’t touch me, and that Cadet was standing just outside the door, but it brought little comfort.

My fingers numb with fear, I trembled as I began to undress.

Miss Everett had requested I wear my walking suit for the occasion, so it was gloves first, then my hat, then I let loose the clasps on my tunic, and unbuttoned the buttons on my waist, starting at the collar, allowing it to come away from my shoulders.

Shh, little sweetheart. Don’t be afraid
, one of the men hissed through the screen. The other men began to talk to me too, their voices low.
Take your time. Over here. That’s it. Good girl
.

I looked to Miss Everett, but her face was calm, as if she hadn’t heard a word of their rude coaxing. I couldn’t tell if she was standing too close to the music box to have noticed it, or if she was simply choosing to ignore it.

I saw one man’s fingers curve through a space in the lattice, a gold band circling his ring finger.

Tears in my eyes, I turned away.

“The door stays closed until you’re done, my dear,” Miss Everett whispered. “You must face them and continue.”

Your skirt should fall down to the floor in a frilly heap. Once untied and pushed past the hips, your petticoats will slide free to join the rest. All that should be left is your corset and pantaloons
.
I’ll be nearby to help if any tie has a stubborn knot or any clasps get caught
.