My Name Is Mary Sutter Read online

  “This was my favorite place as a boy. In the winter, my father shoveled snow from the frozen surface, and we ice-skated until our toes and fingers were numb. I caught round-fish and chased bullfrogs here in the summers. It seems smaller now, though.” He looked about wistfully (as former children do), nostalgic for the irretrievable past. “Did your family ever come here?” he asked.

  The Sutters hadn’t. The small lake was unimpressive, as lakes went, better considered a pond, and certainly nothing like Lake George, where Mary and her family had once taken a summer excursion.

  Thomas brought a horse blanket from the carriage and spread it on the grass near a small outcrop of dying bulrushes. They had very little time before the sun’s warmth faded and they would have to leave. Mary forced herself to focus on a series of ripples emanating from a shallow spot in the middle of the pond.

  “Are you always so long at a lying-in?” Thomas asked.

  The question accelerated Mary’s already high regard for Thomas. Most men could hardly bring themselves to say lying-in, let alone brought to bed, and certainly never pregnant. “Actually, that stay was very brief. I usually stay a week.”

  He whistled and said, “What a life you have set for yourself.”

  “My mother was able to marry.”

  Thomas did not answer, and Mary flushed and hurried to her feet, cursing herself for having leapt to the ultimate question, which had sprung from some buried place to betray her. “Forgive me. I must be exhausted.” She could not look at him, but compelled herself to, to thwart awkwardness. “Please, could you take me home?”

  Thomas rose and folded the blanket, his expression a combination of concern and something else she could not discern. Disdain, probably.

  “I’m not usually so outspoken,” she said. “You must forgive me.”

  A bemused, tender smile crossed his face. He drew close, out of mercy or desire, the air between them suddenly turning.

  Mary thought, He might kiss me; she had to fight to keep still, to not lean in and invite the intimacy.

  Thomas thought, She requires forgiveness for candor; is vulnerable, but only in love. A contradiction that intrigued. Her mind had already voyaged to the frontier and was unafraid. But all he had anticipated so far was the leisure of time, entertaining but not yet subscribing to the possibility of a mutually interesting life.

  He thought, She is near enough to kiss (would allow it, he believed), but he was not ready to decide.

  “If I may,” Thomas said. “I want to tell you with what respect I regard you. You are someone extraordinary, someone exceptional.”

  It was a gift, this compliment, but even in her pleasure Mary could only think that worship was dangerous, for it established irrevocable boundaries.

  He helped her into the carriage. They followed the road down to the river and then the canal towpath that offered an unobstructed view of the river, with the river schooners’ sails like clouds, and the distant hills aflame in orange and scarlet, but nothing could dislodge Mary’s sense that something had changed. On the towpath, Thomas had to maneuver around the tethered mule teams crowding the approach to the locks before the Albany Basin. From the barges wafted the scents of stagnant water and the acrid smell of anthracite carried in their hulls; the high bank to the west only partially obscured the ugliness of Arbor Hill and Broadway.

  At the Lumber District, Thomas turned off the path and onto Quay Street and then veered up Maiden Lane, avoiding the parade that was State Street. As they crested the top of the hill, the shadows of evening had already encroached, and glimmers of candlelight and whale oil broke from the windows of the medical school. The park where they had sat on a bench only a week before was a mere silhouette.

  When they arrived in the alley behind the house, the homely approach signaled familiarity, neighbors having had an outing. In the mullioned window of the Sutter house, a curtain slipped aside, revealing Jenny’s blonde hair. A wedge of light spilled out the back door, followed by the door slamming and Jenny appearing at the gate.

  “Mother says you are to invite our neighbor in for a meal.”

  Thomas’s gaze alighted on Jenny and lingered.

  There was nothing else for Mary to do. She said, “Thomas Fall, may I present my twin sister, Jenny.”

  Mary could see him making the comparison, not unlike everyone else who ever heard the word twin in the presence of the two of them. The envy she thought she had mastered years ago opened inside her, swelling and pressing against her diaphragm, making it hard to breathe while she tallied which of her inadequacies stood out the most: her posture, her bone structure, her chin, or her hair. Thomas bowed slightly, a courtly gesture, and then said, “Forgive me. This is very kind of your mother, but my mother and father expect me at home tonight. However, please thank your mother for the invitation, as it would be my deepest pleasure to accept it for another time.” And then he smiled at them both and raised his hat, but there was something magnetic about the way he ignored Jenny as he led his horse into the carriage house.

  Less than a week later, Thomas Fall knocked at the Sutter door. He was clutching his hat in his hands, a look of pain and despair on his face.

  “Is your sister here?”

  “Mary is away,” Jenny said. Having been summoned to the door by the maid, she was at first delighted to see him, then disappointed when she understood it was Mary he wanted. “Is something the matter?”

  He cupped his hand to his mouth.

  “Oh. Please. Are you all right? What is the matter?”

  “My parents.” His voice broke and he doubled over, placing his palms on his knees.

  Jenny coaxed Thomas into the parlor and called for a maid to send for the Episcopal priest. Then she poured Thomas a glass of whiskey, which he could not hold steady in his hands. She took the glass from him and set it on the table. Outside, the day was burgeoning. Inside, the clock’s pendulum struck ten. A maid brought a tray of tea, spied the whiskey, and quickly retreated. Only when the Episcopal priest arrived did Jenny learn that a constable had knocked on Thomas’s door to report that his parents, on their way to Ireland’s Corners for the day, had collided with a runaway rig on Broadway. After the priest had prayed and left, she sat beside him on the divan, her hands in her lap, waiting, reliving her own grief, remembering what it was to feel the firmament slide away from you.

  When Mary and Amelia returned at noon, they found Jenny and Thomas still huddled in the parlor. They had passed the scene on the way home and spared Thomas the details of the tangled carriages, the broken axle, the chestnut horse suffering in the street, and the drunken carriage driver sitting stunned in the gutter as the coroner’s black-draped wagon swayed past with its burden. Mary, exhausted from the delivery they had just attended—unlike the ease of the Aspinwall delivery, the child had died at birth—had nonetheless wanted to leap from their carriage to run up State Street. But here in the parlor, Thomas’s grief had already found comfort. Mary, usurped, lowered herself to the couch, a hand to her heart, but no one noticed.

  This time, Thomas was made to stay to dinner.

  Amelia probed over the soup. “Of course, your parents made plans?”

  “I don’t know.”

  What child listens? Amelia thought. Or what spouse? The end is unimaginable, therefore not to be imagined.

  “You will allow me to help you.” Amelia was past asking questions. She had another child now; in Thomas’s eyes she saw the same helplessness as she had in Jenny’s when Mary had descended the stairs, saying, Father has died, and she, Amelia, had looked into Jenny’s eyes and seen the searing likeness of her own anguish.

  “I will host the reception. And you must eat with us every day. You cannot be alone in that house.”

  Alone in that house. Jenny sprang from the table to retrieve a handkerchief. All that was left for Mary to do was to whisper to the maid to pour their guest another glass of whiskey.

  The Falls had not made plans, it turned out. At the funeral, the Sutters
sat with Thomas. He was young, at twenty-two, to be left alone without uncle or aunt or cousin to help him. St. Peter’s echoed with the sounds of the organist’s mistakes. Amelia apologized for the false notes, but Thomas did not seem to notice. Amelia had chosen the Albany Rural Cemetery and arranged for a hearse to ferry the caskets up the Menands Road, with its restorative view of the Hudson River. The Falls’ graves adjoined Nathaniel’s; neighbors forever now. At the reception afterwards, the servants laid hams, cheeses, breads, and nuts on the Sutter dining-room table; black crepe draped every picture, balustrade, and door handle of the two houses. Thomas Fall drifted from one grieving circle of his parents’ friends to another.

  But it was to Jenny, with her calm demeanor and ease with his distress, to whom he turned in the days afterwards.

  Thomas Fall called often for Jenny after that. A smile for Mary, but an invitation for Jenny. He did not mean to be cruel; it was not so much a choice as it was affinity. In his grief, Jenny would not ask too much of him, while Mary, who had showed such courage after her father’s death, might expect similar strength of him.

  “Did you ask Thomas to dinner?” Mary asked her mother one day, lowering the curtain as Thomas once more escorted Jenny down Dove Street, having been both congenial and kind to Mary while he waited for Jenny to appear in the parlor. “The night I came back from the Aspinwalls’?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Did you send Jenny out to invite Thomas in?”

  “I don’t remember,” Amelia said, remembering very well. From labor to death, she thought, despite every moment at the breast, every reprimand, every tender tousle of hair, every fever fought, every night spent worrying, it came to this: you couldn’t protect your children from anything, not even from each other. “Mary, did anything happen between you and Thomas? Did he say something, insult you that day he offered you a ride home?”

  “No,” Mary said. “He was more than polite.”

  “You are certain?” Amelia asked.

  “When am I ever not certain, Mother?”

  “You know I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be, Mother. He never promised me a thing.”

  In the month following, Jenny and Thomas embarked upon walks, mostly heading west from Dove Street into the wilds that ran beyond the city. There was talk of making a park around a little lake between rocky outcroppings, like the great park Frederick Law Olmsted had designed for Manhattan. The Presbyterians might build a new church. Albany was expanding. The rumble of Southern discontent had provoked an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln to fight Stephen A. Douglas for the presidency. Even November’s cold did not turn Jenny and Thomas from their rambles. They stooped to gather fallen horse chestnuts and fingered the curved surfaces in their pockets. Their grief was a shared bond, and they spent as much time together as they could, finding a soothing happiness in one another’s company. Life seemed, suddenly, too brief for either reticence or formalities. They needed one another. Of Mary, Jenny was unconcerned. Why, Mary and Thomas had only spoken with one another two or three times—hardly an understanding. And if Thomas preferred her to Mary, then what was she to do about it?

  In December, Jenny persuaded Thomas to abandon the trails west of the city for the warmth and bustle of the quay and lower State Street. She drew Thomas with her along the granite pavers, dodging block-and-tackle loaders in the din of the thuds and whistles from the Lumber District. One afternoon, Thomas steered Jenny into the Delevan Hotel, where they settled into a pair of high-backed chairs next to the fireplace in the dining room. It was nearly four o’clock; Amelia and Mary had left that morning for East Albany to tend a birth, and Jenny and Thomas had spent the afternoon on the banks of the Hudson, watching sleds dash up and down the frozen river. Jenny pulled off her gloves, unwrapped her cream coat, and leaned back into her chair. The angles of her face were delicate, her skin so white she was nearly colorless. Even the blush the wind had brought out could not enliven her appearance of pale, cosseted beauty.

  “Don’t you want to be a midwife, too?” Thomas asked, as a waiter brought tea.

  Here, Jenny thought, is the question. Also, the end. He will tell me that he finds me high-spirited and pretty, but shallow. “Do you perceive a fault in my not wanting to?” (A question of her own, in defense.)

  “No. Not at all. But it seems the family occupation.”

  “I am not like Mary. I am not nearly as clever as she is.” She preferred the definite, rather than the indefinite; in this again she was different from her twin, whose intelligence could easily tolerate the undefined.

  “You are different from your sister, but it does not follow that you are less desirable.”

  Jenny flung him a look, trying to discern. She had not yet permitted courting; she wanted Thomas’s affection to blossom from joy, not sorrow. Passion won in the hours of grief was cheating. But was it still the hour of grief? It was two months now since his father had died, three since hers. Once he had asked her, Do you dream about your father? She had told him that once in a dream she had discovered her father reading by a fireplace in the house across the street. You’ve been here all this time? she’d asked.

  (She believed her father had loved her best, not knowing it was the clever parent’s trick to convince every child they were the most beloved.)

  Thomas had dreamed the same dream, and believed not in the universality of the dream but in its singularity.

  He leaned across the table and said, “Have I told you that you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen?”

  (Observed by other patrons in the high-ceilinged tearoom, Jenny’s grace and reticence forced admiration; Thomas’s youthfulness and ardor, an abundance of goodwill. The onlookers forgave them their lack of decorum because their preoccupation and beauty cheered them; they secretly feared they might never survive a future bereavement of their own.)

  “You prefer beauty to cleverness?” Jenny pressed the point, because it seemed to her that sisterly betrayal demanded a firm foundation. And if Thomas wanted her, she had to know the terms. Beauty and grief, over time, would fade. A memory of shared anguish would be no match for the persistent glory of Mary’s intelligence.

  Thomas Fall saw Jenny’s insecurity. He closed his hand around hers and said, “I prefer not beauty, but you.”

  Chapter Three

  After returning his horse and carriage to the livery on Pearl Street, James Blevens unlocked the door to his rented rooms in the Staats House and viewed his surroundings with eyes fresh from the ordered comfort of the Sutter home. His weekly maid despaired of his clutter. She flicked at his piles of books with her feather duster and suggested in her thick Irish accent that he might not want to ruin his eyes with so much reading. The memory of the old country was in her, as it was in him; these rooms were a step down. Coal dust and noise seeped in from the streets. But they were a step up from Manhattan, whose filth and cacophony James had fled for Albany. Good chairs, two of them, near the fireplace. A bedroom. Coved ceilings, wainscot, crown molding. Fine rooms, as hired rooms in Albany went. Enervated after his dinner with the Sutters, yet still alert, he laid his coat and hat on the bed to dry, lit a candle, and, after a brief toilette, set a microscope on the cluttered table.

  From the velvet grooves of a mahogany case, James plucked a pair of tweezers, a rectangle of glass, a blade with a tortoiseshell handle, and a dropper. He removed from the pocket of his coat a small portion of the baby’s placenta wrapped in cheesecloth that he had cut away when Mary Sutter had been preoccupied with Bonnie. With the blade, he carved a paper-thin slice and mounted it on the rectangle of glass. He lit the small candle under the microscope’s stage and affixed the slide with the brass appendages. Fiddling with the focus, he peered into the lens until the edges of the image sharpened.

  He was not unacquainted with cellular theory. In New York, he had studied Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck: “Every step which Nature takes when making her direct creations consists in organizing into cellular tissue the minute mas
ses of viscous or mucous substances that she finds at her disposal under favorable circumstances.” Recently, he had spent an entire week engrossed in Darwin’s Origin of Species. That he attended the Presbyterian church on Sundays, where he worshipped out of obligation, did not trouble him. He had learned to divide himself between what he could do and what he could not do, in addition to what he could believe and what he could not believe. He had almost stayed in Manhattan City to do research, but had found compromise instead in Albany, in these hermit-like rooms and in private practice. Less than orderly, his research was meant to satisfy longing and curiosity. He was not intending to publish.

  He bent over the microscope, taking in the faint outlines of life.

  It was late when he finished; the clock on the bank tower having struck three o’clock a while before. What had he learned? That though the placenta was wholly different than any other organ—a tumor supported by the mother, disposable yet indispensable—its unique function was nonetheless imperceptible in the cell, as undifferentiated from any other cell he had studied.

  Mary Sutter’s appeal: Please, it is all I want. Such an unusual request from so young a woman. How the extraordinary blossomed from the ordinary, though he suspected that Mary Sutter might have always been exceptional. He understood so little. If only one could take a microscope to a person in whole, not just in parts. What would he understand then? Perhaps his own life, with its peculiar introspective lens. His patients were puzzles to be solved, enigmas to be dissected. He could not look at a person without reading the curve of his spine, the meter of his breathing, without wondering about the condition of his internal organs. Before he knew it, his mind would race through the body’s systems, trying to detect just which deficiency hobbled them. He was, at all times, interested in life.