Balm (11 page)

He moved closer as they rode into the North Division. She looked up at his face again, saw that he had momentarily lost his pale color and taken on the slightly flushed look of a man captured by a woman. His hand rested on hers. How different this would be from her marriage to
Samuel. Here was a man who would never curtail her freedom, who inspired her to follow her own mind.

Yet when he looked over at her, wearing the expression she easily recognized as his most genuine, she had an uneasy feeling that she was making a terrible mistake.

S
ADIE COVERED HER MOUTH WITH A HANDKERCHIEF
, looked upward at a slice of sky between the buildings, stepped down and then up and then down again on the uneven boards. A man burned trash in a barrel, and the heat passed over his face in a wet bath. A dray rumbled by carrying stacks of freshly sawed lumber. A red-haired dog, its dark tongue hanging like a piece of rotten flesh, sat beside its owner. Somewhere, she believed, were the wives of these men, waiting for the pittance that would allow them to buy one more bag of meal, a sack of potatoes, an extra bolt of cloth.

At one time, she believed black protected her from the worst of the place, the stares of the indecent driven off by the color's solemnity. But now that her father had written to say that he was coming for a visit, she would shed the black dress, wear fanciful hats, puffed sleeves, gauntlet cuffs. She would order an entirely new wardrobe. She would indulge, wear color again, order a dress in a brilliant shade of orange.
She was ready to move on from this illusion of grief. She marched the block, searching for Michael's apartment. There was a relief, she realized, that came with clarity of vision, an assured certitude. Spiritualism had nurtured her, opened up a new way of thinking. Once, she had lived as a bird who does not know what wings can do. Now she would do things her way. The thought propelled her.

She had no idea what the doctor would think of her proposition. Obviously, he was captivated by her, but marriage was a much more serious topic. Her opinions of most men had been formed during her travels. Men proved themselves to be just as fanciful as women. Hopefully, the doctor would understand that she proposed rationality over romance.

His apartment sat just above a smoking lounge. An open door revealed a steep set of stairs. She climbed them, her skirts brushing both walls of the narrow corridor. He opened the door for her with a surprised look on his face. The rooms smelled of smoke. He had prepared hot water for tea, and the thought of him taking tea alone saddened her.

He did not look at her as he poured for the two of them. She studied the apartment. For a man who lived alone, the place was comfortable. There was even a piano. Of course, he played. He was the kind of man with hidden talents. She sat in a faded armchair, its coils digging into her backside.

“It isn't mine. The rooms came furnished.”

“What?”

“The piano.”

“Oh.” She sipped, stalling. “I want to be honest with you, Dr. Heil. Surely you agree that honesty is the best course.”

“Yes. There is never a bad time for sincerity.”

He was speaking in that measured way she found maddening. For a moment, she met his serious tone with a similar humorlessness. “We
live in an era where the call for earnestness is most urgent. The war has reminded us of the brevity of our time.”

“As a doctor, I was not trained to believe in the broadness of truth,” he said.

“And you think differently now, yes?”

He paused. “I would say, yes. You have taught me otherwise.”

“I realize this visit is unorthodox.” She cleared her throat, hardly believing what she was about to say. “I apologize for intruding upon you.”

“Your company is never an intrusion, Mrs. Walker.” He looked at her expectantly.

“Please call me Sadie.”

“Very well.”

“You see, I want to be completely clear with you.”

“Of course,” he said.

He was so earnest. It struck her that the man never smiled. He walked the streets as if doomed. Still, he was one of the few people she trusted. She needed him.

“I have something to say,” she said.

“It would seem so.”

Her cup clattered into her plate, tea spilling over its sides.

“Forgive me,” she whispered.

“I'll get something to clean it up,” he said, hurrying out of the room.

When he returned with a cloth, his hand shook as he wiped up the tea. Their partnership had subverted more than one societal rule, and she was aware how much the subterranean quality of their dealings simulated the thrill of criminality. Perhaps she had momentarily confused that feeling with fondness. The truth was that the doctor barely seemed to feel anything outside of his love for his brother. He was more corpse than man.

Say it. Say it.

He tilted his head down, the light catching the red in his hair.
When he looked up, there was a pained seriousness in the way he looked at her.

“Please know, Mrs. Walker, that by bringing my brother's voice to me, you have provided so much. I am forever grate—”

“I wish you'd call me Sadie.”

“Oh yes. Then call me Michael.”

“I came here to propose marriage, Dr. Heil. A marriage of convenience, of course. An arrangement between you and me. We could just draw up the necessary documents.”

She heard the desperation in her tone, and it shamed her. “You don't have to answer right away,” she whispered as she stood up. She looked around for the door.

“Marriage?”

The sound of her skirts muffled his voice.

She moved down the narrow stairwell so quickly that she nearly tripped and tumbled.

M
ICHAEL
H
EIL LAY IN BED
, missing his brother. The widow had announced her strange marriage proposal just the day before, but before he could seriously consider it, the gloom had returned. So he searched, as he did each morning, for a way to shake it. Get out of bed, that was first. Pull on trousers, that was second. A shirt. Adjust the socks until they were level. Shoes. Put on the frock coat before leaving the bedroom. He clasped his hands together and shook his head to clear it. After he'd straightened his necktie, he picked up the empty medical bag.

Outside, he walked past the open door of a butcher where the carcasses of lambs hung by their feet, past buildings covered in sign-boards, a closed saloon, a lawyer's office, a furniture factory with the name E. P. Huntington painted directly above the entrance. It was
the time between breakfast and the midday meal, when work still carried its cheerful notes, and he, a doctor without a single patient, dusty medical satchel at his side, walked one direction and then the next. He paused to take a small cigar from his pocket, lit it with a match, continuing on, smoking and walking, exhaling the smoke until the foot of it burned his finger. He threw the stub into the street, a glowing eye. He came upon a row of women selling fruit out of wooden carts. Behind them, a gang of dogs awaited an opportunity, eyed a hill of plums. One of the women had a large growth on her cheek—darker than a birthmark, fleshy as a mole. Michael squeezed a tomato, threw it up and caught it, drawing a frown from the marked woman. He turned from her, shaded his eyes with the side of his hand.

Farther on, another woman, frail, leaning on a wooden cane, beckoned to him. He sat at a table near her stall. She cooked over an open fire, her cane in one hand, long metal pincers in the other. Grease sizzled in a large skillet set over a fiery pit in a circle of mud bricks. She dropped four white circles into the pan and opened the lid of a deep pot resting on the fire beside it. He waited, listening to the jocularity around him. Three men sitting nearby exploded with laughter. He looked out at them from a dark hole. Everything bright appeared on a horizon. She served him a boneless piece of meat in a watery broth. The meat broke up at the first onslaught of his spoon. The smell of salt stung his eyes. He was as tender as the meat. She placed two biscuits on his plate and pointed. He bit into one, frowned, turned it over, exposing the blackened bottom.

“Do you have more?”

She did not answer.

“Haben sie mehrere dieser?”
he said.

She squinted at his mouth. She was German, but she was also deaf, he realized. She smiled, and he saw beauty in her wrinkled cheeks, a goodness in the way she pointed at the food again, urging him to eat.
He obeyed, thinking gratefully that his eyes had not lost the ability to see such things. He dipped the burned biscuits into the soup and took a bite. He could not taste. He reached for the meat with his spoon, but it swam away from him. When he was finished, he paid her and she patted him on the arm.

He strolled down Franklin Street. It was an unusually warm spring day, and the air shimmered. Trash stirred into funnels. He walked through a hazy underworld, his lashes brushed with dirt, his sweat-moistened neck rubbing a stain into the collar of his shirt. Men walked past, stalwart backs in wrinkled pants, whitened dickeys under soiled jackets. One exited a coupe and hurried through the door of a building where, upstairs, two women on a balcony waved at any man who happened to look up, their breasts heaving over the tight necklines of their dresses as they fanned the air in tiny desperate motions with paper fans. He stopped to buy a newspaper before turning back to the street, a city drunk with profit, industry, the dizzying rise of lumber, grain, cattle, while faraway, men had died and their corpses lay rotted in fields.

A touter approached with a bill stretched in a wooden frame, selling tickets to the theater. Michael ignored him, taking off in a different direction.

Without so much as a glance, he passed the hospital on Clark and Randolph Streets, the swinging bridges, lorry men calling out to one another. He thought of what it would be like if he accepted the widow's proposal. He would have access to his brother any time he chose. It would be as if his brother had never died. What if . . . what if . . . she were able to . . . eventually . . . make his brother materialize? If he married her, he could cultivate her talents. Then he could be with his brother all the time!

He stepped off a wooden walkway into a hole. The ankle twisted, and he went down with the newspaper still tucked beneath his arm.

“Are you all right, sir?”

A stranger extended a hand. Michael stood, looking back at the offending hole as he cursed the rapid changes in the city, the incessant building and rebuilding.

“I'm fine.” He brushed the dirt from his pants. One step and he knew he could not make it. He dragged his leg into the street, summoned a hack. The twisted ankle slowed him, and he viewed it as a sign. He would accept the widow's proposal, but first he had to admit everything to his brother. There was no going forward without truth.

An omnibus passed, the driver's whip crying in the air. A hawk dipped into the street and landed on an electric telegraph wire. A wagon loaded with dirty children, a stern-faced woman among them, pulled up beside him, and the children stared at him with knowing eyes. He saw a horse race by chasing another, glittering Spanish spurs on high jackboots, a pistol, a lean frame suspended over a saddle. The chase thrilled him, and he felt bound to this great city and its promises of the miracular.

A
S
M
ADGE ORGANIZED THE KITCHEN CLOSET
, running her fingers over all that she had put together, she found herself wishing that there was a tonic for memory. The city rang with possibility, yet Madge's feet were still weighed down by two men who'd left a trail of hurt behind, a trio of sisters who refused to believe in anything outside the narrow pocket of their own lives, a mother who turned her back. She could not outrun the past, so she pressed it down instead, concentrating with all her might on making up a valerian tea to help the widow sleep. She heard a knock at the kitchen door and opened it to find an unfamiliar face.

“I'm here to call on Mrs. Walker, see if she needs any medicines or healing aids.”

He passed a card to her, and Madge nodded before closing the door. She climbed the back stairs to the widow's room, silently handing over the visitor's card.

“Ah,” the widow said. “The apothecarist. There is nothing I need at the moment.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Madge walked back down to the kitchen, thinking of him all at once—the wooden box, derby hat, impossible-to-repeat word. She asked him inside and pointed to a chair at the pockmarked kitchen table.

“What you got in that box?”

He looked around, as if waiting for the widow to emerge. “Does Mrs. Walker need something specific?”

“She tell me to look and see what you got.”

“Is the cook here?” he asked.

“No, she ain't come today. You want some tea?”

She did not wait for a response. The water was already heated. She shook dried lavender leaves into a cup. The aroma sweetened the air, and after the first sip his face relaxed.

“You got some medicines and such?” she asked quietly.

He opened his case, clearly weighing the possibility of a sale with a colored servant as he took out several glass bottles, lining them up on the table. They were filled with white, brown, and black pills that looked like seeds. She picked up one of the tall, thin bottles and opened it. He continued to present things from his bag as she inspected. She poured a drop of something into her palm, touched the tip of her tongue to it, listening carefully as he explained: this one cured cough, that one stopped a toothache, this one cleared a rash, that one moved the bowels, this one cooled a fever. Encouraged by her interest and becoming anxious at the prospect of a sale, the man brought out everything. When he finished, Madge sat quietly. The door to a new world stood wide open.

“Is there something Mrs. Walker needs? Is she ill?”

“No, but come here. Give me your hand.”

“What?”

She took the man's hand in hers, roughly turning it over and squeezing. He pulled it back from her, but it only took a few seconds to feel something. The man's toe pained him. The nail would fall off soon. Madge disappeared into her closet.

“What is it?” he asked, turning over the glass container of oil she'd placed before him.

“Turn a brown nail white.” The results would take a while, but she assured him the pungent oil would heal his left toenail.

He looked down at his shoes. “How did you know about my toe? Have I met you somewhere before?”

“Use some and sell the rest. Your people gone be hollering for it.” She sat at the end of the table and waited. He carefully placed the offering in his bag along with the rest of his things.

Weeks later, the apothecarist returned and confirmed that the liquid had performed as promised, asking if she could do it again.

“Do what again?”

“Take my hand.”

She did it, lingering over his fingers this time. She touched each one, then lifted her eyes to his. “You been having some mighty bad headaches. I got some tea for you. I can't stop them, but I can help you feel better.”

“Remarkable,” he whispered.

“First, give me what you owe me.”

“Owe?”

“Pony up,” she said.

He glanced around the well-stocked kitchen: the clean floor, the hanging pots. Finally, he placed two medicine bottles on the table. She fished a pouch from behind the stove.

“What's that?”

“Your tea.”

“You're some kind of southern root doctor, aren't you?” He paused before taking the pouch from her.

“Now why on earth would you say that.”

She went to the closet and returned with three bottles.

“This,” she said, pointing to a small jar filled with black paste, “open up the chest.” She pointed to the second jar. “This right here keep a cut from leaving its mark. And this right here is for a mouth sore.”

He stared. “You made these?”

She didn't answer.

“They're all, more or less, the same color. How will I tell them apart?”

She stared at him, more closely than she had before, the gaunt cheeks beneath an uneven beard. It did not take healing hands to read the greed in his eyes.

“Don't you label them?” he asked.

“I label with my eyes.”

“Once I sell these, I'll bring you more.”

She hesitated, then nodded.

After he left, she had a rush of thoughts. This apothecarist could offer her something. She picked up the bottle he'd left. It glinted in the light. In that bottle she saw a life of her own making. Real freedom from the sisters. She had already been developing her reputation in the city selling her potions. The steady flow of women visiting the widow's parlor had provided a ready customer base. When she took their coats, she touched their hands, seeing if she could pick up something. During the sittings, she prepared potions and offered them as they were leaving out the door. That first time was free, but they always came back for more. Between her herbs and the apothecarist's funny-smelling mixtures, she would be able to attend to most anything. The widow would not like it if she knew, but Madge didn't care. She fingered the jar between her fingers. It contained some kind of
root she had never seen. Next time, she would demand more from the apothecarist, building and building, until, before he knew it, the man was in business with her.

T
HE DOCTOR LEANED FORWARD
as Madge took his coat, his stance so off balance she thought his cane might slip right out from under him.

She waved her fingers toward the kitchen. “She ain't here yet. Come on back and let me take a look at that leg.”

In the kitchen, she pointed to a chair close to her stool so he could lift his foot onto her lap. She rubbed along the anklebone, feeling for the doughy softness that should have been there. She pulled off the sock, examined the coloring. She paused, looking at the doctor curiously.

Once the water had warmed in the reservoir on the back of the stove, she mixed red pepper in a bowl. She unscrewed the cap of a bottle, put it to her nose, and recapped it before placing it in the middle of the pot. After a few minutes, she took it out and poured its oily contents into the pepper liquid. The doctor sneezed. While she waited for it to dissolve, she poured the remaining hot water from the pot into a mug and dropped a piece of willow bark in it. She sat down and returned the foot to her lap.

He watched as she rubbed the pepper oil onto his foot, her hands moving from the ends of his crooked toes, down the bones onto the meat and hair of his leg. Although his mind reacted against him sitting in the kitchen with his foot in a colored woman's lap, he felt an overwhelming sense of relief. He was so taken by the pleasure of her touch that he did not ask what she used. His medical mind faded beneath her hands. The woman's superstitious remedy would do nothing to heal him, but her touch left him with little will to protest.

Her finger bumped a knot and the pronouncement came to her:
this pain was not physical. The ankle was barely injured, but the man limped like a shot dog. She could see how stiffly he held his neck. This was a man who did not speak about what went on inside, and the evidence was written in his body. If she could move her hands across his shoulders, she knew she would find more of the unspoken.

Madge wiped off the excess oil with a rag and patted him to signal she was finished.

“Can you wrap some of that up for me to take?”

“You pay me.”

She could tell what he was thinking: if he told the widow, Madge would lose her place in the house. She sensed the threat in his eyes.

He looked around the kitchen for signs of commerce, suddenly convinced she was selling these homemade remedies out of Sadie's kitchen. He had been around Madge long enough to sense the woman's ambition. She could not hide the intelligence in her eyes. He wondered if Sadie knew about this little kitchen enterprise.

But he was there to accept the widow's marriage proposal, and he did not want to make enemies with her favored maid. He held out a coin.

“Tell me something,” he said as she pocketed the money. “Has the widow ever spoken to my . . . to the dead for you?”

She did not let him see her surprise. The widow's business was not her business. Besides, there were no dead people she wished to reach.

“No, sir.”

He settled into the chair again. The musky scent of herbs had a relaxing effect, and she had seen this reaction before. If she approached a subject with just the right amount of quiet, the perfect tone, absent presumption, she might be able to get something out of him. Like pulling a root holding steadfastly to the ground without damaging it. The right yank and it emerged intact.

“But your driver Hemp Harrison is looking for a wife.”

“What's that? My driver lost his wife?” He remembered how the other driver's leg had escaped his notice. He was still ashamed of that.

“He ain't lose her in the way you thinking. He believe she living. The widow look for her, but can't find her. He think it's 'cause she still alive.”

The house shifted. The stove warmed the kitchen too much. The colored woman smelled ripe, but it was a changing smell. One moment it was earthy, the next, acrid. Emotion struggled beneath the maid's face; he wondered about her motives.

“Did you know her?”

“Know who?”

“His wife.”

“Naw, I didn't know her. I wasn't no slave.” She could not keep the annoyance out of her voice. All northern white folks thought all southern colored folks came from the same plantation. She slowed. If she was not careful, she would anger him.

That explained the imperious manner. She was a freeborn. He thought of this new driver, a face so blank as if the man had no emotions whatsoever, though surely an entire life lurked behind those dark eyes. Michael's mind snapped to this: I had an arm. A finger with a ring. That colored coachman had none of that, had even less than families whose sons never returned from the battlefield. At least those grieving families had the comfort of likelihood. The driver had no corpse, letter, news of where his wife might have ended up. Michael thought of the detached look of him, the dark hands that calmed the flanks of horses.

“Kentucky, you say?”

She nodded.

Here was his chance. He would reach across the country, pick through masses of coloreds to find the man's wife. Some of them had ventured to Chicago, but there were millions, by God. The Schneider
plantation had claimed over a hundred, though Katie's father reported that not a single one remained. From a hill on the eve of his brother's wedding, Michael had seen their dark bodies moving in the distance. He had never dreamed one of those people would offer him a chance like this. His brother had sacrificed first, and Michael would finish the work. He would participate in the war effort without ever firing a weapon. Michael thought of something he had read about in the news on the eve of the war: the trial of John Hossack, a white man who'd been audacious enough to rescue an escaped slave from a federal courtroom and successfully sneak him off to Canada. Michael would be like this Hossack fellow. All of his turmoil of the past four years distilled into a single, undeniably just cause: reuniting a man with his wife. Momentarily, he forgot the purpose of his visit. Madge brought him his overcoat, and he slipped his arms into it.

She saw it in his eyes. She had overheard his conversations with the widow, and she knew about his brother. The sisters had always taught her to seek out the valuable, and she knew she had offered the doctor something he could use: redemption. In return, this would be the thing to cleanse Madge of her stain. If the doctor found Annie, Hemp would be healed, restored to his rightful state, and she would be able to relieve herself of the guilt of taking advantage of a sick man. She never should have lain with him that night. It was wrong. Beyond wrong. But Annie and Hemp's reunion would settle everything, and Madge could finally rid herself of these useless feelings.

Michael looked into the dark empty parlor, the small round table. His fingers trembled as he buttoned his coat. White crowded the edges of his eyes. Someone placed a hat on his head. His shoes squeezed his toes and turned his feet toward the door.

“Kentucky, you say?”

Hemp waited atop the open driver's seat. Michael saw the man tuck a bottle under the seat.

“Take me home, Mr. Harrison,” he whispered.

The carriage lurched through the street. Michael stared straight ahead, his eyes lit anew. Here was his opportunity. The man had lost a wife, yet he did not complain. He still worked and made a life for himself. Michael was the stuck one, the one who had lost hope. But if he could help this man he would finally be able to redeem himself.