My Notorious Life (46 page)

The doctor stood and pointed his white finger at me again. My lawyer Morrill leaped to his feet shouting his objection. The judge rapped and barked. I was in an apoplexy. All the indignities and squalor of the last months in the Tombs was because of this man Dr. Gunning. He started it. It was not enough he had sicked the press on me and began a riot at my home. No, he must now put me in the pen on Blackwell’s Island where I would pick oakum till my fingers bled to stumps. Without confessing his own miserable motives of revenge, Dr. Gunning blathered on and the judge allowed him to go on till adjournment.

*  *  *

The next day, the courthouse was packed more than ever with black-coated men.

—The defense calls Miss Cordelia Shackford, please, Morrill said.

There was a craning of necks, a holding of breath. But again Cordelia did not stand. She did not walk forward. Again she was missing. A police detail was sent to find her. —A hoor likes to sleep in, said one of the hacks under his breath, and the gallery cackled.

Four o’clock arrived but Cordelia did not. Morrill and Tallmadge conferred at the bench.

At last, at five p.m., very frustrated, Justice Merritt gave his gavel a rap. —Counsel for the accused has applied for dismissal, on the grounds he is
not able to cross-examine the principal witness. While I maintain that said witness Miss Shackford has come under the influence of the accused and has in fact been PAID a goodly sum by her to DISAPPEAR, there is not sufficient evidence to PROVE it. Unless it can be ascertained that Miss Shackford has left New York by the persuasion of Mrs. Ann Jones, alias Madame DeBeausacq, and unless Miss Shackford can be produced for the purposes of cross-examination by the defense, at this time I must declare the charges dismissed and the prisoner . . . released.

With no Cordelia in sight, Judge Merritt’s gavel rapped the bench again with special fury. Thus was I freed.

*  *  *

Twenty minutes later Charlie and me was sweeping home in the phaeton to Liberty Street. He had a fat grin on his face.

—What’s your secret? I asked him.

—Which one of my secrets are you talking about?

—The one you’re so pleased with yourself over.

—I paid her, he said, whispering behind his cupped hand. —Gave her four thousand dollars to move to Philadelphia. I had tried to pay her off earlier but I couldn’t find her anywhere till yesterday when I had the bright idea of appealing to your friend Officer Corrigan who’s so sweet on our Maggie. For a fee he discovered where they had Cordelia hiding, and
voilà
!

—Four thousand? Four THOUSAND?

—Would you rather I had not spent it? Should I fetch her now from Pennsylvania so you can head back to the quod?

—I’m never going back. Not as long as I live.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have tempted fate so boldly with those words, but I meant it and was happy in that moment, with the yellow sun on my face, the wind off the Hudson blowing through the window of the carriage, and my husband whispering in my ear how glad he was to see me, and just how he planned to welcome me home.

*  *  *

My daughter greeted me laughing and jumping, with a bouquet of dahlias. —Mam! she cried, and rushed to clap her arms around my knees.

—
Macushla machree,
I said, as I lifted her.

She opened her mouth to show me the pale shoots of new teeth growing through her gums. —Look.

—Is it those fangs you’re showing your Mam, young Miss Jones? said Charlie to our daughter.

—Father! Stop! She shook her finger at him.

—It’s fearsome, Mrs. Jones, Charlie said, winking. —How a girl six years of age has grown fangs like a mountain lion. Look there, see the sharp points in her mouth? Maybe they’re fox teeth!

—Stop, Father! It’s not true! My daughter jumped down to scold him, then ran back to me. I held the good sweet weight of her while she kissed my face and patted my cheeks. —Mama, Father is all the time pretending I have fangs to tease me when I do NOT have fangs.

—He’s an old wicked livermush, I said, —and what will we do with him?

—String him up! my daughter cried. —Away with him to jail!

Annabelle marched her father off to the prison, which was behind the balusters of the staircase. Charlie clung to the spindles like iron bars and peered between them scowling and rattling. How she laughed and clapped her hands and mocked him. —Father’s in jail! He’s a jailbird!

I laughed but the sound was hollow. Your Mother’s a Jailbird was the words the other children used to tease my daughter. Them little hair ribbon girls was SNAKES and I wished St. Patrick would come and drive them off the face of the earth the way he done in Ireland. No one would hurt my daughter again if I was alive to shield her.

That night against all Mrs. Child’s Advice to Mothers we two, Father and Mother, slept with our daughter in the bed between us, where the soft sound of my own small family breathing was medicine to me, a draught so strong I did not wake till noontime the next day, when the sun rose up over Liberty Street, and I was Home at last.

T
he papers ranted how I was a Murderess who had Got Off Scot Free, but soon they lost interest. The rabid Dr. Gunning published one small letter saying it was Just a Matter of Time before my practice was closed, giving forth about dangerous female physiologists and how the medical profession would soon replace me and my ilk. “Modern Woman,” he wrote, “will no longer seek out the ignorant midwife, and turn to men of science instead.”

—Ha. No matter, I said. —I am not a midwife anymore.

With Charlie’s evident relief and approval, I stayed home and enjoyed riding out in the landau with him and with Annabelle, buying her trinkets and licorice and ribbons. —You’re my own sweet Mamma back home, said she. —You’ll never go away again, right?

—Never, I swore to her. —You have my word. And as she nestled under my wing, her warm head smelling of tea roses and her little paws playing with my bracelets, I asked, —What would you most like to have in the world?

—A baby brother. Or, no, wait, a grand piano.

Well, despite our recent vigorous efforts, the baby brother was still not on the horizon, and how would we adopt one if mothers like Susan would only come to accuse us of cradle-robbing and put me in jail? So off me and Belle went to Steinway & Sons on Park Ave. and purchased a baby grand instead. How marvelous it was to hear such flights of music coming off
the fingers of a child. —Mother and Father, said our girl, only six years old, —I now will play you Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Musette Number Fifteen.

Tears gathered on my lashes. It seemed she had become as fine a young lady as anyone could wish. I was content to hear her play all day and night and remained content as long as I was with her, learning the featherstitch as we sewed side by side, trading riddles, such as What walks all day on its head? A nail in a horseshoe. What is it that you can keep after giving it to someone else? Your word. I had given her mine and would keep it.

*  *  *

—When WILL you return to the office? asked Greta, visiting with Willi one day.

—Never, says I. —Haven’t you heard me say that Madame is RETIRED?

She looked at me in a fine German Humph. —You are not retire, Axie. I heff told Charlie you are chust resting. I know you Axie. You soon are growink bored.

—You’re wrong, I said, but Greta would not stop asking every day for my return, no matter how I ignored her.

Charlie was pleased to hear my refusals though he himself continued to go to the offices and sell medicines and other preventatives under the name of Dr. Desomieux. Madame DeBeausacq’s advertisements had stopped as per my request. I was done with her. Amen.

But the ladies of Gotham was not done with me. After the publicity of my trial, there was more patients knocking on the door of the Liberty Street clinic than ever, of the most exclusive sort. Mrs. Landon Comfort and Miss Hope Hathaway &c. Were these ladies disgusted by the notoriety of Madame or put off by her time in the quod? No they was not. They besieged Greta with calling cards and requests for appointments.

For weeks I passed happy hours basking in freedom to do what I pleased, playing cribbage with the Wickendens, and attending the Academy of Music, where we saw a performance of Marcella Sembrich singing
Lucia di Lammermoor
which (except for the excitement of the Lunatic Scene) was three hours of horrible screeching and I did not need to pay money for that. Afterwards we dined at Delmonico’s. Charlie and me had managed
to plaster over our bickery days by talking of our new house, now breaking ground on Fifth Ave.

—The stables will hold four horses, he said one morning at breakfast.

—Why not six?

—Six, then. And stone pillars either side of a carriage drive.

—And a garden with a pony! cried Annabelle. —And a little puppy dog for me.

—Yes, my love, said her father.

—Do not spoil her, I says.

—Why not let’s spoil ourselves, he said. —And have statuary indoors and out.

—And those French tapestries in all the bedrooms.

—Like at Versailles.

—And the physician’s offices, I said, —on the basement level.

—I thought you retired, he said, wary.

—What if I should change my mind?

—I thought you were happy to be home again, in the bosom of your family.

—BOSOM, said Annabelle, who fell over laughing.

—Belle! I said. —Don’t be naughty.

—Axie, my husband said warning me like I was the other child. —No offices.

I bit my tongue for a change. I took his heavy paw in mine and kissed it very sweet and dutiful. And thus with my own tricks I distracted him, and learnt to starve an argument rather than feeding it. Instead I fed Charlie a breakfast chocolate spiked with brandy. —Have another bite of truffle, dear, I says.

*  *  *

Well, it was truffles and honey, caviar and wine for us in those early days of my freedom. It was my genuine intention to carry on carefree, for now at last, Mrs. Charles G. Jones, shed of her connection to the Notorious Madame X, seemed poised for her entry into the finer drawing rooms of Manhattan.

Viz., very exciting, one morning at home the bell rang, and Maggie
brought me the card of Mrs. James Albert Parkhurst, who was known to me as a prominent biddy of the Women’s Municipal League. She was wife to the Very Rev. Parkhurst and mother of three little girls at Mrs. Lyle’s school. I received her in the parlor. She was decked in such velvet I assumed she was arrived to invite me to luncheon with her refined friends. My future from now on appeared as an uppercrust one indeed.

—Mrs. Jones! said she, brightly, when we were alone.

—Yes, my dear Mrs. Parkhurst? I says, expectant to be anointed.

But the cheer on her face crumbled immediately. —Oh oh oh, she sobbed.

—What is it? I cried. But already with a sinking heart I knew.

—I never thought . . . she stammered. —Me of all people . . . would . . . I am a member of the Female Moral Reform Society. Never did I think to find myself . . . at your mercy.

—It’s all right, dear, I says, sighing. —It happens to the finest.

—I have had seven children, but with only three girls born live. And now, I am with child again. Already I am deathly sick. I nearly died last year when our poor infant boy did not survive. Yet Reverend Parkhurst wants a son so terribly and insists for me to carry on trying, despite I have lost four of them and will likely fail altogether in my own health if I do. And it is a sin and I know it is a sin! But oh, Mrs. Jones, can you help me?

—I cannot. I am retired.

At this she sobbed so bitter she was a picture of despair.

—It is a danger to me to practice as a female physician any longer.

—I will not breathe a word. I can pay anything. Whatever your price. I have my own little inheritance. Please, Madame. I love my girls and only ask to live long enough in health to see them grown.

—Poor Mrs. Parkhurst, dear. There, there now.

Hers was not the worst story I had heard. It was only the most ordinary. Looking at her yellow pallor, her thin wrists, her anguished phiz, I considered the threat of Mrs. Hideous Maltby at the Tombs and Judge B*ll*cks Merritt and the Dungbeetle Tallmadge and those other oranga-tangs of the law. I considered my family. My girl. Then I said what came natural to me when I met a woman in Tabitha Parkhurst’s shoes.