1910
The Tuttle estate smelled of oranges and floor wax.
Opal’s boots squeaked as she walked. Charles Tuttle had been called away to Pittsburgh for a meeting with Reginald Goodman, who’d come back to the table, according to the Inquisitor.
Since Betsy’s death, the strike had failed to gain momentum.
Some girls were urging Maria to accept Tuttle’s new terms and end the strike completely.
Despite Bertie Tuttle’s sensational appearance at the picket line, even the papers were beginning to lose interest in the story.
From the foyer, Opal could see into the drawing room: a conversation settee, a piano, a metal stand that held a potted plant with tendrils long enough to reach the floor. A portrait of a young woman hung on the wall: Tuttle’s first wife.
The house girl offered to take Opal’s coat, but she refused. The two of them had ridden over together, in the back of Bertie’s Franklin, the girl insisting that Bertie needed to speak with her, but she wouldn’t say why.
The house girl pointed her up the stairwell. Inside Bertie’s bedroom, the shades were drawn. The radiators hummed. The fireplace burned to embers. Atop her bed rested Bertie at a peculiar angle, a rag to her forehead. Even in the dark, she looked pale.
Opal approached the bedside and realized why Bertie lay strangely. A bedpan was beneath her; her back was twisted in pain. Opal understood now why Bertie had called for her.
“No magic pill for this?” Bertie said. She inhaled deeply and let out a rush of breath. When she moved, Opal could see dark spots on the rags under her.
Opal sat next to her. She didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry” seemed hardly enough. She understood.
She thought of when she’d lost her own baby those dozen years ago.
The spark inside her extinguished; a living thing was now dead.
Some might suspect she grieved after that, but she did not.
Inside her grew something else in place of what she had lost. “How long has this gone on?” Opal asked.
“Long enough.”
“You should call a doctor,” Opal said.
In the dark, Opal studied the shape of Bertie’s mouth, the way her whole face looked squeezed. “I was a fool to think…” Her voice caught. “I did what I could, didn’t I? But that’s the trouble. It’s never enough.”
“It’s not your fault,” Opal said, but the words fell flat. Charles would eventually sell the factory, and Bertie was right: With no child to tether them together, he’d leave her. She thought of Amanda Mahooney and that ring with a gemstone the color of sea glass.
“I sent my lawyer to Dowd’s.”
“I know,” Opal said.
A wave of pain passed through Bertie, but then she recovered herself.
“I was trying to protect you. You’ve made something special—they’ll just try to take it away from you.
That’s what they do. That’s what they always do.
Dixie Ellison’s a powerful woman, you know.
She has connections. But you and I, we could work together.
We could build something. A partnership. ”
Perhaps the woman had been protecting her all along, looking out for her interests. A partner. A real partner. “The formula needs reworking,” Opal started to explain. “I’ve miscalculated something.
Bertie continued as though she hadn’t heard Opal.
“Dowd’s could hardly keep it on the shelves.
Think of the women you’re helping—of the women you’ve already saved.
You don’t need Dowd’s. We can create our own brand—our own business.
I have the resources, but first, I need your help.
” Her tone changed. She shifted uncomfortably on the bed.
On her table was a call bell, but she didn’t ring it.
“Please. I’m willing to pay. Whatever the cost.”
Now Opal leaned closer. She smelled Bertie’s perfume, and that undid her, the thought of a woman suffering so much yet still dabbing herself with oil.
Opal understood pain, but she was no magician. No doctor, either.
“I need something to give to Charles. Before he sells it—before he can go through—”
Opal knew what she was asking before she finished the sentence. Men have weapons, hands strong enough to squeeze the breath out of another, should they choose. Without weapons or strong hands, a woman must find other means.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Opal said.
“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Bertie said. “Charles will take everything from me. I’ll have nothing.”
Imagination is the first step toward freedom.
In the laboratory, she had let herself imagine a life without her baby, then a feeling rose up in her chest that she tried to suppress because this was the life she’d chosen for herself when she’d handed Jagr that drink.
She couldn’t do it—she couldn’t swallow the capsule. Save her, that voice had said.
But a partnership. They could save each other.
For a time after, Opal would ponder this moment with a series of agonizing questions.
What if she’d helped Bertie Tuttle poison her husband?
Would it have ended differently? She’d considered her options for a moment.
She knew there were simple methods. Cyanide.
Morphine. A toxic cocktail drawn from Jagr’s formulary.
“Do you know what it’s like to want something so badly? To see it so clearly, but to be unable to grasp it?” Bertie asked.
“Yes,” Opal whispered. “I do.”
“I’ll give you anything you want. Beyond my allowance, I don’t have access to money, but I do have means. I do have standing and influence. What do you want more than anything?” Bertie began to cry.
Opal froze, stiff through the middle, her arms stiff, too.
She was turning into stone, she believed, right there at the edge of Bertie’s bed.
She couldn’t move her hands or her feet.
She’d seen paralysis come on suddenly in Jagr’s stroke patients, and for a flash of a moment, terror washed over her.
Someone might have to carry her away, stiffened like a dead thing after rigor mortis set in.
What possessed Opal in this moment? Madame de Fleur?
Another voice? She would think of it again and again.
She felt tingling throughout her body, deadened limbs awakening.
The body knows things before the brain can register what that might be.
A primal instinct. She still had choices. She’d had them all along.
Then: The awkwardness of her fingers. The give of her fabric as she unbuttoned her blouse. The clock struck a new hour and chimed three times, and Opal took this as a sign. Every woman must divide herself into three parts, like those three gifts from the three wise men.
Root.
Flower.
Seed.
Darkness provides for certain allowances.
That’s why séances take place at night. What happens there, in the dark, remains unprovable.
It was afternoon, but the windows were shuttered.
Bertie watched as Opal unfastened each button on her blouse.
Opal watched Bertie watch her. She felt powerful in this moment, but nervous, too.
One button. Two. Three. Bit by bit she came undone.
Her shirt went slack. She undid the stays on her maternity corset. She loosened it.
There it was, her secret, for Bertie to see: her belly, low and round, a half-moon of smooth, hard flesh.
Bertie didn’t appear to know what she was observing aside from exposed skin.
Her first reaction was to turn away. Then she looked back, her eyes startled wide.
There was something grotesque about it: Opal’s round belly, like skin stretched over a smooth boulder.
She reached for Bertie’s hand and pressed it to her stomach.
Her confused expression told Opal she’d done well hiding her form.
Bertie’s hand unmoored Opal from some invisible anchor. A touch she hadn’t known she’d wanted. Warmth from the contact point spread over her body, until she was set aglow, until her feet and hands buzzed with anticipation and relief. She waited for Bertie to speak.
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
That voice had said Save her—and she was doing that, wasn’t she?
The voice hadn’t said how. Opal imagined her girl in the bassinet in Bertie’s room.
She imagined her daughter drinking from bottles held by Bertie’s nurse, her girl in white bloomers, a white shirt, a white cap.
White everything, for the rich never got dirty and so did not have to dress for the possibility.
Wouldn’t this be a better life than the one Opal could provide?
This is what she told herself—what she’d continue to tell herself.
“When?”
“Two months.”
When it was time to give birth, they’d travel to Bertie’s country home in New Richmond, twenty miles outside of the city. Charles would never know the truth. The house girl would help. Domestics can be counted on for such confidential affairs. And then, France.
Soon the details would be sorted out, plans made, agreements uttered, futures imagined. But for now, Bertie slid off the bed and knelt before Opal’s belly. She held it like a globe, like the whole wide world fit in her hands. Bertie kissed her bare skin. She kissed it again and again.