The Spirit Room (20 page)

Not owning a night robe, she had nothing to throw over her shimmy. Under the bed linens, she felt her bare hip. The feel of her skin brought back the long night to her. Mac had been naked just hours before, on top of her, underneath her, next to her, his curly-haired chest pressing against her bosom. A surge of warmth flooded through her.

She slid toward his side of the bed, dove into his pillow and breathed in. There he was all over again, the plain soap smell of his skin and his lovely sweat. How happy she would be if she could carry that feather pillow around all day strapped to her front, endlessly breathing him in.

His pushing inside her had hurt a little, but not much. She was surprised how playful he had been and how eager to know if she was experiencing passion as he was.

“
I’d like to know what hurts you and what gives you pleasure,” he’d said.

She was shocked that he spoke at all, much less about their love-making. He’d touched her gently, firmly, gently again. Once in a while, he’d ask her, “Pleasure or not?” She was so flustered at first, she kept nodding yes, but after a while she told him, “The other was nicer. Go back to that place before.”

“
Which? This?”

“
Yes. That.”

It was outrageous and yet he seemed so kind and eager to please her. And that sheath he put on himself! Explaining that it was a new invention made of India rubber, a new sort of French Male Safe, which had always been made from animal intestines, he slid it on himself. Giggling at the memory of it, she rolled over on her stomach and buried her face.
Lawks
, that was horribly embarrassing. There were going to be things about being married to a modern physician she hadn’t expected or even considered in her wildest imaginings.

Dressed in a white night shirt to below his knees, Mac appeared in the door looking sleepy and disheveled with a tray in his hands.

“
It’s our one day honeymoon. No Niagara Falls, I’m afraid. But I made you coffee. I broke the rules and entered into your woman’s sphere first thing.”

“
I broke the rules and let you. I heard you down there tearing things up, but I didn’t rush down to stop you.”

He looked around for somewhere to put the tray, but there wasn’t any furniture yet except the bed and the armoire. Squatting, he balanced the tray as he sank down and laid it on the bare wood floor.

“
I’m sorry, but I have to get out to the building site today. Construction on my Water-Cure Institute starts this week. Maybe in a few months we could go up to Niagara Falls.”

He poured a cup of coffee and held it up. “A few basic items on loan from the neighbors across the street. You’ll like them. Very kind, the Meads, a man and wife and three children.”

After he poured a second cup, he brought it to her. The aroma was delicious. She started to sit up, to lean against the brass frame, but stopped when she remembered she was naked. She grasped the bed sheet and started to pull it up over her.

“
Don’t be modest for me, unless you want to.”

“
Have you no inhibitions at all?”

“
I lost them long ago. It’s much more interesting without them, I find.”

“
What about in your work? Are you polite during your examinations?” she asked.

“
Oh, yes, yes,” he laughed. “My Lord, of course.”

This seemed the best moment to end the modesty discussion. Just now, she was afraid to know more. She’d have time to find out about Mac and, after last night, their wedding night, she had a looming sense there was a lot more to know.

As she drank her coffee, he told her how excited he was about his new water-cure establishment. Setting his cup and saucer on the floor, he stood close. The place would be small to start, nothing like Geneva, he told her. There would be private rooms for twenty-five at first, but there was plenty of acreage and plans for another wing and a gymnasium if he could get more investors. Currently, he only had one man, a Fox Holland, backing him. There would be four different bathing rooms and enough equipment to perform all the latest techniques.

A dining room and kitchen would serve mostly vegetarian meals and there would be a lovely big parlor for quiet social activities or reading, a kitchen garden, a flower garden, and paths to walk along—a true retreat from the bustle of the city.

He was nearly breathless, talking rapidly, his thin hands flying about in the air. Then all at once his hands came to rest. He picked up his coffee, then looked intently into his cup. One of the two windows opposite the bed was wide open and a slight breeze sent a cool waft of air over Izzie’s naked shoulders. When she shivered, Mac noticed, and without saying anything, he walked to the window and closed it.

When he came back to the bed, he stood again at her side looking down at her. “I should tell you something about my work that I haven’t told you before. You could be surprised if you hear about me in town or when we are at social occasions and I don’t wish you to learn about my medical practice from people who may not appreciate my efforts.”

She didn’t know what was more intriguing, that he had some dimension to his work that he had held back from her or that there was the presumption of social occasions. She imagined these occasions to be different from what she had known as a girl in Homer—barn raisings, picnics at the town square, and dances accompanied by three or four fiddlers.

He sat by her. “I’ve lied to you, or at least held something back.”

The sheet still tucked under her neck, Izzie slid down into the bed. Oh no. A rotten cruel thing was coming. He had won her heart, married her, taken her from her sisters and brother, bed her in the most delightful way, and here, on their first morning together he was going to confess something dreadful. She groaned.

“
Go on then, tell me.”

“
Recently I have been developing an expertise, besides the water-cure, that I should have told you about.”

“
Are you going to try surgery like Charles Bovary and ruin some poor fellow’s foot?”

He didn’t laugh, or even smile. She should keep her mouth shut. That was a silly thing to say. He had a confession to make. Maybe he did want to become a surgeon.

“
I mentioned a little something to you at the Falls that day. Women’s physiological systems.”

“
Midwifery?”

“
I mean the study of pregnancy, birth, female disease.”

“
Are you going to sell preventative pills through the mail like Madame Restelle?” She laughed nervously. “My husband is to be Monsieur Restelle?”

“
No, I think not. I am writing a book for women and men about preventing conception using water-cure and other methods.”

There wasn’t anything truly awful about his pronouncement. It was daring really. She was to be the wife of a sexual advice physician. She sighed. She’d have to learn to get used to that.

“
Something like Charles Knowlton’s
The Fruits of Philosophy
?” she asked.

“
How do you know about that book? Have you read it? Here I thought I plucked a young unripe peach from the tree.”

“
Some of it. My friend Julianna, back in Ohio, found a copy in her parents’ bedchamber when I was about twelve. We took it to her basement with a candle and read and read for hours. We scarcely understood it. It was a small paperbound thing, very tattered from use. Julianna’s mother came down and caught us, though, and scolded us, and we were never able to find where her parents kept it again.”

Mac laughed, then a grim cast veiled his face. “Are you angry that I delayed confiding in you?”

“
I wish you hadn’t delayed. You won’t again, will you?”

Smoothing down a sideburn, he blinked several times, then took her cup and his to the coffee tray on the floor and replenished them. He had something else to tell her. She could feel it in his silence.

“
There is more.” He handed her the white cup and saucer, fragrant and full of coffee. Then he sat near her. “I want to have the kind of marriage that is a sanctuary from the world…a place, a home, where there is love and quiet and rest and trust.” He leaned far over toward the floor, depositing his coffee cup with a rattle, then shifted himself on the bed near her and reclined against the headboard next to her.

“
Mac, if you tell me everything now on our first day, we can go ahead, man and wife, knowing the things we need to know about each other.”

“
Yes. That is what I hoped for.” He paused, staring out across the room toward the windows.

Her hands were trembling now, jiggling her cup. Was it the coffee making her shake, or his pronouncement?

“
Izzie, please don’t think I am evil.” He pinched back his shoulders. “I would like you to go along with my pregnancy prevention ideas as part of my study.”

The cup and saucer drooped in her hands, then settled at an angle. A small splotch of coffee spilled onto their new wedding quilt, her gift from Mrs. Purcell and the others.

Mac swooped up her cup and saucer, placed them on the tray on the floor, then came back to her.
Rot
. Her beautiful quilt was stained. She glanced around the room for something to absorb the coffee, but of course there was nothing.

“
I have a couple of towels in my trunk downstairs. Shall I?” He leaned forward, ready to go.

“
No, it’s too late. Too late.” She squeezed the square with the moist stain. How could she have done this on her first morning as a wife?”

“
I’m sure it can be saved.” He took her hand from the quilt and held it. “You’re shocked. I should have told you before we married.”

“
Once again, I am not sure whether you want a wife or someone to experiment on.”

He was silent a moment. “My work will be important to thousands of men and women all across the country. I believe my theories and their influence will be significantly greater than any children we may or may not have over the next few years. We have many years ahead for children. I want you to be by my side in this, perhaps even help me with the book.” He cracked an expectant smile.

She suddenly felt something stick in her throat. She coughed, then asked, “You don’t want children?”

“
Of course I want offspring, but I don’t want a dozen and I don’t want to see you worn out by having child after child after child. Let’s see how the prevention works for a year or two.”

In her whole life, there was never another notion in Izzie’s mind besides the fact that marriage meant children. She never thought about trying to control when she would have them or how many she would have. Married women had children and miscarriages and that was that. But this idea that she wouldn’t become pregnant right away, oddly, seemed a relief.

“
What do you want me to do?”

He bent over, kissed her lips quickly, then shot up from the bed and strode toward the armoire. “To start, I want you to use a pure water douche four times a day. I believe the water alone can prevent conception, no need for the elaborate mixtures, just the water.”

She chuckled. This was not how she had imagined her first morning with Mac. She should be horrified, embarrassed, but he was so enthusiastic, so dear, there was nothing to do but go along with him. She wasn’t entirely sure what water douching even was.

“
You mean water inside me like some kind of rinse?”

“
Exactly.”

“
And when the winter comes and it is freezing cold, you want me to press cold water into myself four times a day?”

“
Yes, they all complain of that. You could warm it on the stove if you like.”

“
They all?”

He opened a door on the armoire and reached for something on the upper shelf. “I have been prescribing this for over a year. We were offering it at the Geneva Hygienic Institute.”

Suddenly Izzie remembered two women who were Mac’s patients, the one who acknowledged Mac in the hall of the Geneva Hygienic Institute the day she had the tour and he proposed, and then there was another woman in the green and purple dress at the waterfall. That woman was so very uncomfortable and wanted to get away from them hurriedly. These two women had been his patients—his female patients—and it was likely they were experimenting with his methods.

“
Was it successful?”

He brought down a small wood box with a latch on it and set it on the foot of the bed. “No one pregnant so far. I am corresponding with six women who are using the water douche according to my prescription. A few of them may come to my new Water-Cure Institute for a stay when it is ready.”