In Need of a Good Wife (13 page)

Amos stood in the doorway watching.
I’m going to charge
that son of a bitch double for this job
, Daniel thought, breathing through his nose. He gripped the knife in his right hand, so tightly he could feel the skin stretching over his knuckles, then pulled the rope taut so that the goat was looking straight up at the sky. The white slope of its neck waited. Daniel hadn’t killed anything, not a chicken, not a rabbit, since the spring. Even his own children had been eating beans, thin soups of vegetables and rock-hard salt pork at least a year old. Here was the work he had been trained to do—take the animal a man raised and help that man make it into food. There was nothing nobler, nothing more essential. The world had shifted under Daniel’s feet with Greta gone, had changed forever; still, there were things to be done that only he could do. Daniel took a breath. With a steady hand, he pushed the blade against the goat’s flesh, and he nearly laughed because it was so easy, the way the vein split open and the blood rushed out, hot on the frozen ground. It was so easy.

He had a bride coming in the spring. Eight of the men did, even Amos. Things would change again, this time for the better. Now all he had to do was wait.

Clara sat down on a bench and pressed her fingertips into her eyes, trying to get at the pain that crackled in the center of her skull like a wick. In three days, she and her flock of brides would board the New York Central to begin the long trip west, and a few things remained unresolved, to say the least.

Among her myriad concerns, chief was the matter of the ladies’ health. Clara had insisted on medical evaluations for each one of them, and with good reason. They would be spending the next several days in very close quarters, and if even one of them was ill, the whole lot could arrive in Destination green and feverish. It wasn’t a recipe for getting these grooms to fall in love. But a doctor’s examination was costly, Clara knew, and a good portion of these girls didn’t have a penny. When the letters certifying their good health trickled in, it was clear some of them were forged. Many of the women had seen Dr. Calumet, a man who by default had become physician to the downtrodden women south of Houston Street. He had cared for Clara herself in her darkest time after the baby’s death, though she scarcely remembered anything from those days.

She decided to pay him a visit and try to discern whether his opinion of the girls’ good health should be trusted. His examination room was on the first floor of a building everyone knew around the neighborhood as Libby’s.

Dr. Calumet, it seemed, owned the building and leased it to Libby and her employees. Though he claimed never to climb the stairs to the satin-strewn chambers of the nighttime ladies, he did, out of pity, he told Clara, help them with the ailments common in their line of work—poxes and sores and the occasional bruise, not to mention the unwanted reminder, nine months delayed, of nature’s actual purpose for the couples’ secret collisions.

Clara stood on Dr. Calumet’s doorstep now, knocking on the door with her gloved hand. After a moment he came to the door wearing a woman’s apron soaked with a red liquid. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows.

Clara gasped. “My
God
, sir.”

Dr. Calumet glanced down at his torso, then laughed. “Ah, no—it’s paint, my dear. I am working on a series of battlefield images. Come have a look.”

Clara let out a breath and felt the rancid foam in the back of her throat recede. On a second glance at his apron she saw three paintbrushes poking from the pocket, bristles up. She remained planted on the doorstep. “No, thank you. I am late to an appointment. I’ve come to talk with you about a few women you have examined on my behalf, brides planning to travel west for marriage.”

“Maidens, all, miss—I assure you.”

Clara felt the pain in her head surge hard this time, and she placed her palm on the door frame for support. After a moment passed, she opened her eyes. “That is not my concern, for I take them at their word.”
Knowing full well
, Clara thought,
that at least a few of them are lying
.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Bixby? You seem to be in pain.”

Clara waved his comment away. “Just one of those headaches, brought on, as you know, during times of distress, and I am distressed, indeed, sir, today. It is very important that I should know whether any of these women are showing signs of illness. The journey to Nebraska is a long one, and we do not have the time or funds to procure medical care along the route.” She closed her eyes again as another wave of pain washed over her.

“Please, come at least into the anteroom and sit down for a moment. You should have a drink of water.”

Clara nodded and followed him inside. In the corner was a bench and she sank down onto it and leaned her head back against the wall.

“If anyone is unfit for travel, it is you, Mrs. Bixby,” Dr. Calumet said. “Are you sleeping? Do the headaches still come on very often?”

Clara shook her head. “I am not here to talk about me. Would you please just do something to assure me of the health of my brides?”

Dr. Calumet sighed. “First, you must try a dose of this headache tonic.” He went to a cabinet and removed a narrow vial and a glass tumbler. He held the brown liquid up to the light, swirled it around, then filled the glass to the brim.

“Drink this down,” he said. “I’ll bring you some water.”

Clara considered the potion for a moment, then decided to take it to appease the doctor. Nothing she had tried for her headaches—cold compresses, vegetable mash, steam treatments, citric acid—had ever worked to alleviate the pain, and she didn’t expect this tonic to work either. Calumet had once offered her the brown glass bottle of laudanum, but she had refused, though Clara felt sure the tincture would work. She had seen plenty of women at Mrs. Ferguson’s who made liberal use of the “twenty drops” dosage until their desire for it took them over completely. Clara never wanted to fall under its spell. She tossed back Calumet’s newest concoction; the sludge tasted terrible, like coffee grounds and pickle brine, and when the doctor handed her a mug of water she drank it down in three long gulps, then concentrated on trying not to vomit.

Dr. Calumet nodded his approval. “Now to your brides—lovely ladies, Mrs. Bixby, and I congratulate you on that fact. I saw no signs of illness in any I examined. Of course, there are some who could benefit from an improved diet and more fresh air. Others have taken the fear of warm-water baths to an extreme, for I am of the opinion that bathing does the body more good than harm. But on the whole these women are as healthy as any other in Manhattan and will be all the healthier when they get to the clean open air of the western territory.”

Clara put her palms on the bench on either side of her hips and pushed herself to a standing position. It was torturous not knowing when the headaches would come on. Clara felt she should have known they would reappear at the least convenient time. All winter long she could have endured them in her bedroom, blankets over the window to block out the spearing daylight; but no, they would come on now, when she had a list as long as her arm of things to do before departing.
But
this is how the world replies
, she thought,
if a woman has the
gall to assert her existence and upset its plan
.

“I thank you for your time, sir,” she said, “and for the tonic.”

“I sincerely hope it helps you, Mrs. Bixby. Please take care to get plenty of rest before your journey.”

She stepped into the street, her jaw clamped down like a vise against the pain. Rest did not have priority at the moment. She pulled the list of brides from her pocket, determined to visit each one and confirm that she was packed and ready to leave. This proved difficult. Kathleen Connolly’s father told Clara his daughter was not in, though when Clara glanced up at the second floor from the street, she saw a flash of red hair, then heard the house-shaking thump of a sturdy Irish hip attempting to knock down a locked door. He might not want her to go, Clara thought as she walked away, but heaven help the man who stood in that girl’s way. Deborah Peale, Rowena Moore, and Bethany Mint did not answer their respective doors.

At the Channing mansion, Clara took the footpath that ran along the east side of the house to the elevated back garden and the steps that led to the scrubby yard outside the laundry. Two sets of windows were open wide, connecting the dark work space inside with the open air of the yard. A few women in gray uniforms and white aprons were hanging bedding on long stretches of clothesline. The late morning air still held a chill and Clara’s knuckles ached when she thought of how cold the wet linens must have been.

She glanced around for—she checked the list again—Miss Elsa Traugott. Though Clara had only a vague memory to go on, she knew this was the plump, quiet woman from the meeting above the tavern. Curiously, Miss Traugott had given only the address of the nearby post office on her application, but the postmaster had told Clara that she worked in the Channing laundry. Two women nearby were beating a rug as fiercely as if they suspected it had Confederate sympathies; when one of them stopped for breath she looked up and spotted Clara, then whispered something to her companion. They seemed to recognize her.

Clara approached them. “Do you know where I might find Miss Traugott?”

The laundress’s eyes widened. “You’re here for
Elsa
?” She glanced at a cluster of women working at the long table inside. “Are you certain?”

“Why wouldn’t I be here for her?” Clara asked, her eyes challenging the girl to give voice to her thoughts.

The laundress dropped her gaze to the ground, stalling. “I, ah, I thought she was already married. That’s all, miss.”

Clara nodded. “Well, she isn’t. Not that it’s any of
your
concern. If you know her, please point her out. My time is worth something to me, and I shouldn’t like to waste it in talking with you.”

“That’s her over there.” The laundress pointed rudely. “With the gray hair.”

Clara held her gaze and opened her mouth to reprimand the girl, then thought better of it.
Let her be her own undoing.
She started toward the door to the laundry room.

Elsa looked up from her mending and froze, then set it down carefully and glanced around. She rose from her chair and walked toward Clara.

“Miss Bixby,” Elsa whispered. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to confirm that you are prepared for the departure on Saturday. Are you trying to hide from me?”

Elsa shook her head. “No, miss, but please—let me come to you later this afternoon. I can’t talk here.”

“Well, why ever not?” Clara felt the sparkle of pain behind her eyes, stars in a dark sky.

“My employer does not approve of the Nebraska venture.”

“But why should you care what she thinks, when you will leave soon anyway?”

“Because I want my last week’s pay, and she will withhold it if she knows why I’m leaving. And any one of these girls might tell her if they need to earn her favor.”

Clara nodded and remembered that Mr. Rathbone had been a kinder employer than most. “Forgive me for intruding,” she whispered. “I will be in my room at Mrs. Ferguson’s this afternoon.” Clara raised her voice then and said dramatically, “My apologies. I can see I am looking for a
different
Miss Traugott. Good day.” She strode across the yard and back down the footpath to the street.

Her final stop before returning home was the dressmaker’s shop. Mr. Rathbone, out of equal parts kindness and guilt, had arranged for the woman to make new collars for each of Clara’s dresses, along with a new fur-trimmed cloak and traveling dress. She was grateful for this gesture. Her wardrobe was in a terrible state, and it was foolish to go west without the proper attire. But she hadn’t wanted to spend any of what little she had collected from the men so far. She had intentions for her profits.

The headache had subsided and she left the shop with the new case full of clothes feeling refreshed. But the feeling would not last.

“Why, hello,
Mrs.
Bixby,” a voice said. Clara turned to see a familiar man poke the brim of his stovepipe hat with his umbrella. “You sure are looking lovely today.”

Clara could scarcely get her tongue to work. “George? I thought you were in Buffalo.”

“I was for a time,” he said. “Breaking my back firing bricks in a kiln. But then I ran into Mac Stanley, visiting relatives there, and he mentioned how well my Clara was faring back in Manhattan City. Starting some kind of travel business. So I came to see for myself.”

Clara’s mind snagged on
my Clara
; the rest of George’s words slid by like raindrops on a window. And there it was again, the flowering pain.

George appraised her dress, charcoal gray gabardine with white piping and a high collar, just right for a middle-aged woman traveling unaccompanied by a man, but still very finely made. The price of one yard of the gabardine alone had been higher than what she had usually spent on entire dresses in the past. “I see that Mac was right—it seems you are faring very well indeed.”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Clara said. He had left without a word and never sent so much as a letter in all these months, leading her to wonder if he had ever existed at all. And yet here he was. She waited for her surprise to harden to anger, but it didn’t come. Her headaches were nothing compared with the chronic illness that was her love for this man. She wanted so much to muster hatred for him, to turn haughty and give him a piece of her mind, then leave him standing in the middle of the street. But the mere sight of him, not to mention the sound of his voice, had drawn the fight right out of her. How
lonely
she had been, surrounded by his slippers and abandoned shaving kit. “What do you want, George?” she asked, weary.

He smiled. His cheeks were pink from his time working outdoors, and the ruddiness suited him, made his eyes seem brighter. “Why, what kind of a question is that for a wife to ask her husband? I want to come home. I’ve missed you, Clara.”