The Virgin Cure (31 page)

The third time they met, he told her that he knew of a situation where she might be brought on as help for a party in a private residence. He said she would earn a dollar for her efforts and that she need only sign an agreement of employment and he would take care of the rest.

“What did the agreement say?” I asked her.

“I don’t exactly know. I don’t read so well.”

They travelled by carriage to a fine house in a nice part of town. The man kept the curtains drawn on the windows, so she wasn’t sure of where they ended up. She could only say that they were in the cab for what seemed like a long time.

When they arrived, there was no one there to greet them except the man of the house. She was escorted to the parlour and told to sit down. She recalled that there was a pianoforte in the room and when she told the man how pretty she thought it was, he sat down and played a song. After he was finished, he came after her.

She hid in the draperies and cried, begging him to leave her alone, but he grabbed her from where she was hiding and forced himself on her.

“Do you know the name of your seducer?”

“No.”

“What is the name of the man who arranged it all?”

“He said his name is Mr. Jones.”

No doubt an alias
.

“Was there anything special or unusual about Mr. Jones that you recall?”

“He was a tall man with dark hair, and he had a handsome smile. He wore a nice suit, fashionable and bright. He didn’t have a beard or moustache, only sideburns. He seemed respectable enough.”

Upon showing me a painful chancre that had since appeared after the incident, she asked, “Is there something you can do to make it go away?”

A mercurial ointment will dry it up in a few days’ time, but I’m certain the sore is a sign of a greater disease.

S.F.

15. How many lovers shall I have?

16. The one that I love, what does he really think of me?

17. Ought I believe the tender vows that are breathed to me?

18. The person that I am thinking of, does he love me?

19. The person that I am thinking of, does he think that I love him?

20. What ought I do, to make him (that I love) love me?

—from
The Ancient and Modern Ladies’ Oracle
by Mr. Cornelius Agrippa

(Infallible Prophet of the Male Sex)

M
ae came to my side and put her chin on my shoulder to see what I was looking at through the window of our room. “Why don’t you go keep him company,” she teased, pointing to Cadet, who was standing sentry on the roof. “Maybe he’ll give you another kiss.”

Lantern at his feet, he was standing guard as usual, waiting for Mae to try to escape.

Shrugging her away, I said, “He only kissed me because you told him to. The whole game was just a ruse so I wouldn’t see it coming.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But I never told him to enjoy it. He did that on his own.”

I blushed at the memory of his lips against mine but didn’t move from my spot at the window.

“If you don’t go out there, I’ll send Alice instead,” Mae warned.

Giggling, Alice fetched my wool cloak and put it around my shoulders. “He’d rather see you than me,” she said, giving me a little push.

More and more, things weren’t as they’d seemed when I first came to the house. Alice had gotten into the habit of praying every night, begging God to bring her a husband rather than a seducer. Rose had grown short with everyone, impatient to leave. Three mornings in a row, I’d heard Emily crying in her room. When Missouri caught me listening at the door, she said, “It’s nothing that concerns you. She’ll be fine.”

Miss Everett hadn’t seen fit to return Mrs. Riordan’s tear-catcher to me, but I was sure the tears I’d managed to trap within the pretty vial hadn’t dwindled in the least. My dream of Mama’s ghost had been false, and I’d not had any sign that she was truly near. I’d been waiting to smell the scent of Dr. Godfrey’s on her breath when there was no one in the room, or to feel her fingers tug the hairs at the back of my neck, but nothing had come. Her passing had brought me more sadness than any lie she’d ever told. Betrayals can be forgiven and forgotten. Nothing changes death.

Only daydreams of Cadet relieved the anxious knot I often had in my stomach, and although I would’ve preferred to keep my longing for him to myself, there was no way I could fool Mae, or even gentle Alice.

“All right,” I said, giving her a playful scowl. “I’m going. Help me out the window.”

Pulling on the window frame, Alice and I got it open wide enough for her to help me scramble through.

It was cold on the roof, and the wind sliced through my cloak, making me shiver. Cadet smiled when he saw me coming; Alice had been right to send me out.

Taking a flask from his pocket, he twisted off the lid and held it out to me. “To take the chill off,” he said.

The liquor had a far more agreeable odour than the stale beer Mama used to drink to chase down her Dr. Godfrey’s, but my memories of her stumbling around and crying drunken tears on my shoulder kept me from accepting.

“No thank you,” I replied with a frown.

“Suit yourself,” Cadet said, then tipped back the flask and took a long draw from it. Seeing the distaste on my face, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and said, “It’s a bad habit, you’re right. It’s what took my pa’s life. I guess I got used to sharing drink with the boys I lived with when I worked for Dick the Ratter. We slept in a cellar underneath a store on Third Avenue, in nothing more than a pick-and shovel-scarred cave. It got cold down there at night.”

Spotting Mae and Alice still at the window, he said, “There’s a sheltered spot behind the chimney stack over there—come on, let’s get out of the wind.”

I followed him to where he’d pointed and found he’d made a private place for himself with a box to sit on, out of sight. Once we were settled together, neither of us knew what to say or do, and our silence stretched awkwardly between us.

“Do you like it here?” I finally thought to ask, even though I was fairly certain I already knew the answer. The opportunities for a strong, young man like him were many. Surely he was only biding his time until something better came along.

“It’s all right,” he said.

“If you could go anywhere you wanted, where would you go?”

“Out west,” he answered without hesitation.

“And leave New York?”

“In a heartbeat.” He took another swig from his flask. “People find their fortunes out west every day. When I get enough saved, I’m going to get on a train and make my way to California. I’m going to make a new life, maybe change my name.”

My heart fell at his words. I’d not guessed that his plans would take him so far away.

Putting a finger under my chin he lifted it until our eyes met. “Kiss me goodbye?” he said with a grin. “You never know when I’ll be gone.”

I closed my eyes and once again felt the softness of his lips. Reaching for his hand, I held it tight, wanting him to know how much I’d miss him.

He must have taken my affection as an invitation, because he slipped his hand out of mine and opened the clasp on my cloak. Sliding his fingers between the buttonholes of my shirtwaist he felt my breast where it met the top of my corset. His kisses growing more insistent, he became less like the Cadet of my daydreams and more like Mr. Goodwin, wanting to touch whatever he could in exchange for a few eggs or a half-loaf of bread. I’d wanted so badly to be alone with him, but I hadn’t imagined anything more than our sharing a kiss.

“Don’t,” I said, pushing him away.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I won’t tell. No one will know.”

Unsure of what he wanted, I stood up, ready to bolt.

“I thought you meant for me to,” Cadet said.

“I only meant for you to kiss me, not take advantage.”

“I’d never do that,” he insisted.

“How was I to know?”

“You shouldn’t play at things you’re not sure of.”

“You shouldn’t play with the hearts of girls.”

I waited for him to say something more, but he turned from me instead, and took out his flask for another drink. Feeling angry with myself and him, I crossed the roof and climbed back through the window for the night.

Alice was sitting on her bed, waiting. Mae was gone.

“She dared me to go steal us some biscuits from the kitchen,” Alice said. “When I came back, she had snuck out.”

“She’s tricked us both, Alice,” I sighed, realizing Mae’s deception.

“Should we go to Miss Everett?”

“No, we can’t tell on her—Cadet would lose his job, and you and I would be in our own share of trouble.”

“For the longest time I pitied her for the things she told me about her mother,” Alice said. “I even gave her the few pennies I still had to my name after she brought me here. But it doesn’t seem fair that she gets to be so thoughtless. I’d love to go dancing, to laugh and twirl in the arms of a gentleman at least once before I become a whore. It must be quite nice to never care for the consequences.”

Cadet caught Mae that night, sneaking back over the roofs after the house was dark and she thought he’d gone to his bed.

“You mustn’t tell Miss Everett,” she told him, her voice whiny with drink as she came through the window. “She needn’t know that I’m so very clever.”

“Conniving bitch,” Cadet muttered before Mae pulled the window shut.

The next day, he turned his face away from me as I passed him in the hall.

I stopped and whispered, “It’s not your fault Mae got away.”

“Don’t I know it,” he said, looking at me and frowning.

Realizing he thought I’d had some part in Mae’s plan, I said, “I didn’t know she meant to leave—”

“I see,” he said, then turned his back on me once again.

Another Sunday came and went, and although I didn’t fall apart during my turn in the second parlour, Miss Everett still wasn’t pleased with my performance.

“I don’t mind if you have sad eyes, or even tears in them—some men like that sort of thing. But you need to make more of an effort to appear willing. Be more like Mae.”

When Mae got dressed for Sunday mornings in the quiet room, she’d fix her hair into two long braids and pin them up beside her ears in two perfect loops. Tying bright blue bows to the top of her head, she’d make herself into the picture of sweetness and purity. “When I get in there, though,” she said to me once, “I don’t hesitate. I give the gentlemen what they’re after.”

I’d thought she was one of the most beautiful and clever girls I’d ever seen, but now that she’d put Cadet, Alice and me in the middle of her deceit, she didn’t seem half so lovely or smart. I didn’t want to be anything like her. And I wondered if the madam was as pleased with her now as she’d once been. Though a few gentlemen had shown interest in Mae, and met her in the parlour, only one of them, a Mr. Greely, had extended an invitation for her to accompany him to the theatre. After their first night out, he hadn’t called on her again.

“Mae was too bold for him,” Alice whispered that night as we were getting ready for bed. Then she confided that she’d met the man in passing in the hall, and that he’d asked Miss Everett if he could visit with Alice instead.

“But isn’t her time up?” I asked, wishing that Mae would soon be out of our room and on to being a full-time whore, where her boldness might serve her well without hurting us.

“Miss Everett must still be looking for the best offer,” Alice said.

“I suppose.”

As Alice knelt for her evening prayers on a pillow by her bed, she said, “I’m in no hurry for Mae to move on. The longer it takes for Miss Everett to find the right gentleman for her, the longer God will have to bring the right man to me.”