Woman 99 Read online

  Dedication

  For those who speak

  For those who can’t

  Epigraph

  The Brain—is wider than the Sky—

  For—put them side by side—

  The one the other will contain

  With ease—and You—beside—

  —Emily Dickinson

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Author’s Note

  Reading Group Guide

  A Conversation with the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Also by Greer Macallister

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Goldengrove devoured my sister every time I closed my eyes. I saw the angle of her neck as she bobbed her head shyly, ducking it low, even as the high Moorish arch of the door soared far above her. The shift from day-bright sunshine to shrouded darkness as she passed inside. Figures in white all around her, pale as angels, menacing as demons. I hadn’t seen her pass through the majestic front door, yet there the image was, clear as day. I had thought of my vivid imagination as a gift once.

  Phoebe’s form I knew by heart, of course, never having known a world without my older sister in it; Goldengrove I knew because of our next-door neighbors, the Sidwells, who owned a majority interest. They proudly displayed the literature: elegant brochures with watercolors of a brick building as broad and strong as a castle, wide-open blue skies above. They called it a Progressive Home for the Curable Insane. I used to sense hope echoing in the syllables of progressive and curable, but once Phoebe was sent there, I could hear only the bitter, final punctuation of insane. Whatever else that building might be, it was a house of cheek-by-jowl madwomen, and I couldn’t stand the thought of my poor sister inside it, among them. Swallowed up.

  We had never called her mad. She was a girl like any other, at least in my earlier memories. I knew her voice in all its music: merry, teasing, petulant, sweet. It was in her teenage years that her dark moods grew more forceful, more frightening, until her despair seemed bottomless. My mother insisted on smoothing it all over, pretending nothing was wrong. For a while, nothing really was. Incidents at home, we could keep secret. No one needed to know how she wept silently under the bedcovers on the dark days, nor how she burned with a false, brittle gaiety on the light ones. There were many days when she was like anyone else. The other days, we kept private as best we could.

  But after she strode down the luncheon table at Maddie Palmer’s house in a giddy fit, turquoise silk slippers punting teacup after teacup to the floor, there was nowhere to hide. Father tucked her away for a fortnight in a San Rafael health house and spun a story about a passing flu. She came back all right, as far as I could tell. My mother forbade me to ask Phoebe what had happened there, but of course, I asked many times. Either to protect me or herself, she would not say.

  Two years later, at twenty-two, there was another incident, much worse. Shouting in the night. Screaming, howling. I’d fallen asleep long after midnight in a tangle of thick blankets with a pillow halfway over my head, yet I could still hear her. She was a Fury, her voice a righteous trumpet blast. More voices followed, less angry but fierce. A lower one and a higher one. Father. Mother.

  My body was heavy as lead in the darkness. I couldn’t lift myself from the bed to follow the sounds. As the first slivers of dawn peeked through the shutters, my fatigue finally overcame me, and I slept. When I rose in full day, the house was silent. The maids would tell me nothing. I didn’t know until evening that my parents had delivered Phoebe to Goldengrove and that this time, her commitment would not be temporary.

  My sleeplessness the night my sister was carted off to the asylum did not improve the first week of her absence. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her entering that dark maw, crouching, devoured. I had always been an early riser, happy to greet the dawn, but no more. Long after I put out the lamp, I was still awake; long after the sun rose, I still slept.

  There was nothing to rise for, I found quickly. Phoebe was not there to talk to, walk with, hear from. While I’d been acquainted with dozens of young women at Miss Buckingham’s, none of them could truly be considered friends—what did I need to make friends for when I had Phoebe? Alone, I had no desire to pay social calls, to set myself adrift on a river of empty chatter, hollow words. The effort seemed insurmountable.

  The only reason to leave the house would be to escape my mother. She was eager to talk but only to instruct me in the finer points of how a betrothed young lady should behave, listing my new responsibilities and my new privileges, the former of which seemed to far outweigh the latter. She was in her element, spiraling upward in a frenzy of delight even as I spiraled down. But I had realized that my image of my family, the one I’d always held, had been a lie. I’d pictured us all in a carriage together, good company, headed toward the same destination. That was wrong. Phoebe and I were passengers. Our parents sat in the driver’s seat. And my father had handed the reins to my mother, who would take every one of us wherever she most wanted to go.

  After two weeks without Phoebe, I tried my best to go through the motions. I rose for breakfast, dressed, went downstairs. Though I had no interest in speaking with my parents, I took an egg and toast from the sideboard and joined them at the table. I only wanted to make the time go faster, to get through another day; instead, what struck me there was inspiration.

  “Oh good. Charlotte, read this,” Mother said, her voice as smooth as her elegant porcelain teacup. She held out a notecard on heavy cream stationery, already opened. I assumed it was just another note of congratulations, but I took it from her fingers with a show of curiosity. Even before I could unfold it, she said, “Aunt Helen would like you to pay her a visit in Newport.”

  “Oh?” I read the note, which said little I hadn’t just heard.

  Mother said, “For an entire month! What a generous offer. I absolutely think you should go.”

  Whether Aunt Helen truly wished to see me or whether it was my mother’s idea in the first place, I saw the invitation for what it was. Mother hoped that the novelty of a journey across the continent and back could jar me back into my usual good humor. And if it did not, she would at least enjoy six weeks of respite from my moody silence: four for the visit and two while I traveled, one week there, one week back.

  “Perhaps,” I said. Matilda swept in to pour my tea. I stirred it, leaning into the heat of the steam, and while I waited for it to cool enough to drink, sat in silence.

  Mother tried again. “I meant to tell you. The new French laces have come in at Feninger’s. Sarah Walsh mentioned that there’s an especially lovely Chantilly.”


  Before, Phoebe and I would have squealed at the news, cheerfully tussling over who would lay claim to which lace, who most coveted the ecru trim and who the ivory. Instead, I nudged the yellow puddle of egg on my plate without looking up. Now, the chair next to mine was empty.

  “You might prefer the Alençon, I suppose, to be married in?” Mother prodded.

  Nearly two decades of etiquette lessons had dyed me polite. I could not ignore her a second time. I said, “Perhaps.”

  “We should arrange a visit this afternoon to Feninger’s to have a look for ourselves.”

  “As you wish, Mother.”

  “If the craftsmanship is up to snuff, you won’t object to the cost, will you, Phineas?” she said, her voice pitched a note higher, no doubt hoping my father would involve himself in the conversation more than I had. Her gambit would not succeed; he was utterly indifferent to laces. His appetite for the finer things was limited to the coffees and teas his fleet imported, little luxuries that funded all the other luxuries we had: house, staff, gowns, flowers, all painstakingly chosen by Mother alone.

  “Nothing’s too good for my girls,” he replied automatically and then, awfully, glanced over at Phoebe’s empty seat.

  I dragged my fork through the wet yolk of my egg, drawing a line across the plate, watching the deep yellow turn pale. Phoebe had taught me to see color in new ways, its depth and saturation, the ways it clashed and complemented and transformed. Once, when Mother punished Phoebe by confiscating her paintbrushes, my sister turned her bedroom wall into a mural out of spite. In my mind’s eye, I could still see the thick spreading purple clouds she’d slapped onto the wall with her palms, laced through with delicate veins of pale green and sky blue, barely visible, applied with the edge of a fingernail. Birds on the wing dotted the clouds, soaring figures of motion and light. It was the loveliest thing I’d ever seen. The next day, the wall was white once more.

  “Well, honestly,” Mother said. “Who wouldn’t be thrilled? The most beautiful bride, the most impressive groom. A wonderful match for both families. It’s meant to be.”

  She looked at me pointedly, and I nodded, pretending agreement. Meant to be. Such a funny construction. What was fate, and what was accident? God could not act in everyone’s best interests at the same time. Someone always suffered. My father’s first ship was given to him as an outright gift by his cousin’s widow, who couldn’t bear to be reminded of her husband’s death at sea. Without it, he might have built a fleet and a fortune some other way, but what if he hadn’t? Had my father’s first wife died in childbirth with their third son simply to clear the way for my mother and therefore Phoebe and me? Was that meant to be?

  Barreling through my silence, falsely chipper, Mother refused to be swayed from her subject. “As a matter of fact, I think Mrs. Larkin’s atelier is the best place for us to arrange to have the dress made. That’s where Millie Chase had hers done, and if it’s good enough for the Chase family, I rather think it will suffice for us.”

  I looked at my father, head bent over his newspaper, coffee cup almost empty at his right hand. A shaft of morning sun turned his gray-gold hair stark white, reminding me that if his sons, my older brothers, had lived and had children, he could have been a grandfather many times over by now. Fate—or God—closed some doors as others opened.

  As I watched, he stood, dropping his napkin onto the seat of his chair. “Well, a lovely day to you both. Whatever you choose, I know Charlotte will be the envy of every unmarried girl in San Francisco.”

  “Only the unmarried ones?” scoffed Mother.

  “Every girl, then. In San Francisco and beyond.” He kissed me on the head and was gone, leaving just me and Mother at the long wooden table, empty chairs all around us.

  We sipped our tea in silence. I wanted nothing more than to bolt from the room. No, that wasn’t true. One thing I wanted more. One person. Phoebe. What hunger, thirst, or pain was she suffering in that awful place? How could my mother carry on as if our lives weren’t changed forever?

  “Charlotte, please! Don’t look so glum. Girls would give their right arm to have your opportunity.”

  I crammed a toast soldier into my mouth and busied myself chewing. What I wanted to say was that a girl without a right arm would greatly disappoint a fiancé to whom a two-armed girl had been promised. Silence was a better answer. I was used to swallowing the words that came to mind instead of speaking them aloud, though sometimes I would murmur them to Phoebe later, in the privacy of our rooms. Like the etiquette lessons, the training in comportment and conversation had been thorough. There was no chance I would say something so rude, no matter the company. No carriage horse on Nob Hill was as well-trained nor likely as comfortable in harness.

  The parlor door swung open, and Matilda swept in again, quiet as a mouse, to clear my father’s plate and cup. She was a pretty girl, modest, quick with a smile. For a moment, I envied her. I’d never seen her unhappy. Would it be better to be the servant of a shipper’s family than one of the shipper’s daughters? Only an accident of birth made the difference between us. Had that been, in my mother’s vision of the world, meant to be? Matilda and I were nearly the same age, not unalike in appearance, both fair-haired and fair-skinned, but our worlds were like the opposite sides of a mirror. Her entire life was spent cleaning up the messes my family and I left behind.

  In that moment, my idea was born. This time, I would clean up the mess.

  * * *

  It took so little to lay the works and set them running. Had it been more difficult, perhaps I would have thought twice. But I simply penned a few words on a card, feeling clever. When I laid a sealed envelope on the mail tray and told my mother I’d accepted Aunt Helen’s invitation to Newport, the claim raised no one’s suspicions. Only I knew what was really inside.

  Phoebe had always been the spitfire between us two, a role she relished. Perhaps because of that, I’d always been the one who listened, nodded, obeyed. Through all my years of school, I’d been praised for my obedience and rarely scolded for my shyness, my reserve. Now, we would see how much time a reputation for acquiescence bought me. Six weeks would pass before I was expected back, far more time than I thought I needed. I was giddy with the idea.

  The morning after his proposal, my fiancé had left San Francisco to address some family business, and I did not know when he would return. I asked my mother to convey my whereabouts to his mother the next time they talked; I knew she would relish the excuse to pay a call and stay for a long conversation. She was eager for the world to see our two families as one; I could not imagine going through with the union. Even when I thought those words—my fiancé—I substituted a blank face where his should have been. I allowed myself to see his role as something apart from his name, and as long as my mind permitted that separation, that self-deception, I would take advantage of it.

  With just a pinch more gall, I would have paid one last visit to the Sidwells to pry out useful information about Goldengrove. But it was a needless risk. I knew a great deal already. The patriarch, Mr. Sidwell, talked about it nearly every time we met, his tenor voice ringing with pride. His oldest son, John, a physician, had founded the institution as a charitable endeavor in 1880, establishing therapies and treatments to soothe troubled women’s minds. When John died of yellow fever, another son, George, had been tasked with managing the facility from his home in Sacramento. The patriarch never missed an opportunity to crow about its noble mission. How they mixed the indigent women and the well-off, since illnesses of the mind did not discriminate between classes. How the beauty of the lush, open Napa Valley had instant healing effects. How even certain families of Philadelphia and New York sent their daughters, wives, sisters to Goldengrove now, so powerful was its reputation. How the poor unfortunates down the hill on Superior Wharf must have thought themselves in heaven to be plucked from the dank rim of the ocean and conveyed up the coast to the loveliest corner of the world. Though of course, he chuckled, the only women taken were the ins
ane, who were in no frame of mind to appreciate their good fortune.

  I would be different.

  So I set myself to a task of deceit and trickery, though it went against everything I’d been taught, for the sake of my sister. After all, I had a duty to rescue Phoebe from the asylum.

  It was my fault she was there.

  Chapter Two

  On the narrow, cobbled streets between the train station and the wharf, I walked with the lightest of steps. I was not generally allowed out unaccompanied in public without a chaperone, let alone a corset. Mother ordered in corsets for all three of us from Madame Mora’s, an extravagance she saw as a necessity. The streets of San Francisco were not as wild as they’d been thirty years before, when the Committee of Vigilance hanged and shanghaied criminals by the dozens, but neither were they entirely safe. Especially not for a girl who looked like she had money—or a rarer treasure—to steal. I felt illicit, naughty, free.

  I took a deep, long breath of warm September air and felt the cage of my ribs expand unchecked within the rust-red cotton dress I’d nicked from the laundry room. I’d apologize to Matilda when this was all over. In the meantime, I reveled in the freedom. I carried no bag, no satchel, no trunks. It had been easier than I thought to convince my parents to let me go to the train station with only a hired driver. Father had the monthly invoices to settle, and Mother was preparing a gala for the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Surely, I’d be back before they realized I’d never arrived in Newport. In honeyed tones, I’d feigned second thoughts to Mother before I left, begging her not to write me in Newport so as not to make me terribly homesick; with an indulgent nod and a pat, she’d agreed. If I could get home before my six weeks ran out, it need never be known that I’d set foot in Goldengrove. We could keep up appearances, and of course, I knew that was what mattered to her above all else. I’d be back on my parents’ doorstep in a week or two, maybe even mere days, and Phoebe would be with me.

  So far, everything was going perfectly to plan.