Brookland (19 page)

Pearl could scarcely communicate when far away from people, but she nodded her head yes.

“Of course she likes it,” Matty said. “She's an eye for beauty, don't you, Pearlie?”

But Pearl was off toward the great open windows, watching the traffic on the river go by and whistling one of the tunes she'd heard the French laborers sing up by the ferry. Prue wondered how Pearl could never have seen the cooling floor before, but, of course, Pearl was no more allowed to wander the distillery than the streets. It was too dangerous for a girl who couldn't be heard if any ill befell her.

After showing them the works, Matty kissed his wife and small daughter good-bye, and Roxana led Pearl up the Shore Road to fetch Dr. de Bouton. When Tem and Prue came home from the distillery that
evening, they found their mother in Johanna's chair, with her hands in her hair. “What's wrong?” Prue asked.

“De Bouton was insensible with drink,” she said.

Tem went up the stairs as if she hadn't heard this.

“Did you go for Philpot?” Prue asked.

“He's not really a doctor,” Roxana said.

“But he's better than none.” As her mother did not reply, Prue walked back outdoors and up toward the Jamaica Turnpike to fetch him. As she skirted Simon Dufresne's wagon and another bearing the day's last load of lumber down from the van Vechten sawmill, she thought how odd it must feel to give way to extreme old age. She had watched Domine Syrtis dodder until one day he could do so no more; a similar anticlimax had punctuated the life of old Mrs. Joralemon. This natural death, in which the organism simply wore out, struck Prue as stranger than the scourge of disease. The typhus had borne off Mrs. Horsfield two years after Maggie had been born, a death the whole village had mourned. Her demise had been swift, and painful because unexpected; but Prue could not understand why people hoped to be overtaken by some creeping deformity of body or mind. True, there would be no great surprise, as in suddenly finding oneself stricken with a fatal ailment. Yet the knowledge of one's own imminent decease seemed more frightening to Prue. Then again, she had felt certain all day Johanna was no longer cognizant; and hoped she would remain so when Dr. Philpot came, for otherwise she would berate him with charges of quackery. Johanna's mother, Elsa de Peyster, was said to have been a wise woman of even greater skill than Mrs. Friedlander; and when she'd still had her wits partway about her, Johanna had always condescended to anyone who'd claimed knowledge of healing.

Dr. Tobias Philpot, in addition to keeping the Twin Tankards with his brother, Antony, was a purveyor of patent medicine. He seemed a nocturnal creature, with a sleepy gaze and an eternal growth of purplish stubble on his cheeks and chin. At that hour of the afternoon, he was in the quiet barroom, wiping down the tables with a rag. The only customer was a well-dressed Negro Prue didn't recognize—perhaps a traveler, staying upstairs—who barely looked up from his schnitzel when she entered. Dr. Philpot did, and said, “Prue Winship,” as if she was a pleasant surprise. “We never see you, except when the singers come.”

“Good afternoon.”

“Tony was just saying he wished we'd see more of your father.” Dr. Philpot had a low, pleasant voice, and took his time choosing his words. Though everyone said his medical training had been of the most perfunctory kind, she imagined his calm manner provided comfort in times of distress. “Such a jolly man. He understands there's no enmity, on our side? If we had a license for hard liquor, his gin would be our first choice. Or your gin, I should say.”

Prue said, “You're kind; but I think he knows. It's simply that Joe is one of his dearest friends. He drinks there, when he isn't drinking at home.” Joe Loosely exerted the same monetary influence over the state regulators Matty Winship had when his business had been beholden to the Crown; Joe paid them off handsomely, and in return, his was the only establishment selling gin and brandy anywhere near the ferry. Brooklyn was not yet an incorporated village, and with no elected officials of its own, there was nobody to whom an alehouse-keeper like Tony Philpot might apply for redress. Winship gin could be had in Midwood and Bush-wick, but it was the Philpots' ill fortune to be too close to Joe. “I'll tell him to stop in soon.”

The customer took a long pull at his ale. Prue knew he was listening.

Tobias Philpot dunked the rag in his bucket and wrung it out with care. “Anything I can do for you this afternoon? Tone's made some coffee, and if you like, we've some of Peg Dufresne's jam and biscuits.”

“Thank you,” Prue said, “no.” Tony and Tobias had no womenfolk; but while the Hicks brothers had gone greedy and mean after a few decades in each other's company, the Philpots, like the Schermerhorns, had become solicitous of women and children. “I've actually come to ask you to examine our serving woman. She's doing poorly.”

“Your slave, Johanna?”

Prue nodded.

“Had quite a tongue on her, in her day. When your father bought her of old Mr. Remsen, the whole village said only a stranger would be so gullible.”

“She would still have the tongue, could she speak.”

“Well, it served all of us right, for minding other people's business.” He winced as he finished wiping down the table. “Lived with her all your life; you must be quite fond.” Prue tried to think up a reply, but he wasn't
looking at her. “De Bouton has told me she's a cancer on her brow. Is it for this you've come?”

Prue nodded again. He pulled out a chair at the damp table, inviting her to sit, but she said, “Thank you, but I really should get back.”

“Why didn't you go for de Bouton?” he asked, without malice.

Prue said, “He's stone drunk, sir.”

Dr. Philpot shook his great, jowly head. “Sometimes I think, when I reach my end, there'll be payment to be made for this business I'm in. Will there be anything more?” he asked his lone customer.

As the man was chewing, he simply shook his head no.

Dr. Philpot walked out of the barroom and into the hall, and craned his head up the stairs. “Tone? Can you see to the customer? I've a medical visit to pay.”

“Coming,” Tony said from somewhere upstairs.

Dr. Philpot returned, Prue thought nearly as slowly as if he were walking through water. “I'll do what I can,” he said. “Of course I can make no promises.”

Prue said, “We're grateful you can come at all.”

From behind the counter he brought forth two of his brown bottles, with wax seals over the stoppers, and testimonials in small type. With his usual languor he placed them on the counter, then held an empty jug under one of his taps. “Some ale for your father,” he said.

“Thank you. He'll like that.”

He stoppered it and pushed all three bottles forward on the counter. Prue reached for her pocket, but he held forth his stubby hand and said, “Please. We'll see what I can do.”

He took his time packing his wooden case, and ran his hand across his jaw, already shadowed with his evening beard, before heaving the box aloft. Prue hurried to open the door for him. Out in the barn, he took great care in saddling his fat black horse, and he secured the medical box to her back. Prue wanted to exhort him to make haste, but also remembered there was likely little he could do for Johanna. “Will you ride?” he asked Prue, still holding the horse by the reins.

The horse, Bonnie, shook her head, but Prue didn't take it amiss. “Won't you?”

“I often walk her,” he said. “I think she finds me a bit heavy; but you'll suit her fine.”

He held the gentle mare still while Prue mounted, and he led the horse by the reins as they ambled downriver together. Mrs. Livingston's roses were blooming, and perfumed the evening air.

At the Winship house, Dr. Philpot spoke in soothing tones to Johanna, despite that she could not hear him. He drew his breath in across his teeth when he saw the tumor—it had grown large and solid as an egg, its tentacles more numerous and as sturdy as twigs—and at the sound of his dismay, Roxana left the room and walked out into the dooryard. Prue and Pearl remained in Johanna's cramped chamber with Dr. Philpot and Johanna, who had not even opened her eyes upon examination.

“It must pain her,” he said. Prue thought he was speaking to himself. “Does she still take liquids?” he asked Prue.

“From time to time.”

He nodded and bent down to unhitch his case. “Give her hourly a spoonful of my Eugenic Water. I doubt she'll be with you long; but this will help ease her pain.” He put the bottles on the night table and handed her the jug of ale. “As I said, for your father.”

“Thank you. How much do we owe you?”

“Never mind for now. Send him in when he's the time.”

Prue led him to the door, and saw that the sun was setting in great rolls of pink clouds over Manhattan. Bonnie, tethered to the post, was eating clover. Prue's mother was pacing, out by the well, and wringing her hands in her apron. The scent of the ripening berries on the juniper bushes was pungent and sweet. Prue had no idea what was keeping her father. She went back into the house and found Pearl reading the label on one of the bottles.

“What's in Eugenic Water?” Prue asked.

Pearl opened her case and wrote,
Lanidanum & Moonshine
. She sighed, and Prue thought she understood more than Maggie Horsfield, for all Maggie's pretensions of superiority. It was clear from the set of her shoulders and the steadiness of her gaze she knew the bottle contained no cure.

Prue administered the first dose of the nostrum but felt her stomach lurch when she did so; there was something awful in the greedy way Johanna's tongue sought out the medicine when the rest of her was letting go by degrees. Pearl agreed to give the medicine from then on. She did not seem to flinch at either death's proximity or the stench in the room.

When Johanna passed a week later, Roxana wept as if she'd lost a child. Matty comforted her and put her to bed, then came down to find his three daughters sitting in the parlor, wide awake but doing nothing. The windows were open, admitting gnats and a warm breeze. Pearl was curled up on the divan with her cat in her arms; Tem looked as if she understood something somber had occurred but wasn't certain exactly what. Prue simply held still, afraid if she moved she might explode with guilt. “No,” her father told her, as he sat on the arm of her chair and reached up to rub her scalp, “don't look so low. It's a great sadness Johanna will no longer be with us, but you girls loved her well, and did your best to help her in her last days. You brought Dr. Philpot, don't forget.”

Prue wanted to accept his benediction, but as usual thought he understood little of what troubled her. At a gross level, she felt responsible for the existence of Johanna's tumor in the first place, as it had been Prue who'd first made Johanna's head ache with worry over Pearl, and in exactly that spot. Underlying this, she felt some relief no longer to have to watch the poor woman dying; and beneath it all lay that which she could tell no one: the solace of knowing Johanna would now take her secret with her into the dirt of the Reformed Dutch churchyard, if indeed she had kept it all these years. Prue knew that even to think this was a betrayal of the same order as having cursed her sister in the first place; nevertheless, she breathed more easily than she had in all her days. In the eyes of the rest of her family, she was a sober, diligent, hardworking girl; only Johanna had seen the depths of her vileness. And to know such a person was gone from this world—vanished as surely as if her body had been taken up into the clouds—was freeing. To whom could she confess such a confidence? Not her sisters, nor her parents, nor even Ben and Isaiah. She wanted none of them to know she thought such reprehensible thoughts. She was a grown woman of eighteen, trained to run a distillery; she ought to have been more practical-minded.

There were no specific customs in Brooklyn regarding the funerals of slaves. Many of the inhabitants kept slaves for kitchen work if not for the fields, but there was talk in the barrooms of a gradual manumission; and though Prue could not see how her father could run his manufactory at profit entirely on paid labor, she knew he planned to do so someday. When one of the Rapaljes' slaves had died, they'd buried her decently but without show, and in a similar act of conscience had hired paid help to
replace her. Roxana insisted that Johanna had been as much a member of their family as anyone and deserved a full funeral. “I'd sooner lie down in the grave beside her than allow her to be buried with no more dignity than a pet dog,” she said with a vehemence that unsettled Prue. Roxana had the new domine, who hadn't known Johanna by name, conduct a service, and afterward invited all the neighbors and the distillery's workers back to the house for cider and seed cake. Prue put on her one brown dress for this occasion, and it constricted and chafed against her, though not nearly so much as did her discomfort about her sin. Then, too, she noticed she was not the only sinner in the room. There was Dr. de Bouton, reeking of liquor in the afternoon, and Henry Hicks and Mr. Patchen, neither of whom had a kind word for anyone. The neighbors were gluttonous in their consumption, and the men went out of the house, seriatim, to spit tobacco. Maggie Horsfield must have been as displeasing to God's sight as Prue, for the way she stepped aside to admire the curtains when Pearl drew near her. Isaiah and Ben closed ranks in front of Maggie, as if to shield her from Pearl's view. Though they had long since reached their full height, they hadn't filled out at all; and their narrow faces, the image of their father's, clearly showed their shame. Ben tossed Pearl a sugared nut, which she caught and popped sheepishly into her mouth. Prue wondered if this was sufficient apology for Maggie, who now stood with her back to the room, examining the still life Pearl had embroidered using cast-off strands of the family's hair. It was a weird object—less because of the hair than because of the lifelike accuracy with which she'd depicted twigs and dried leaves—and Prue could imagine Maggie giving an unflattering account of it to whomever she counted among her friends.