“Let’s go,” said Charlie. He took my hand and pulled me up, out of my chair.
“I want to ask you something,” I said to Charlie once we were inside the safe square of the elevator.
“They’re not dangerous women,” he said. “Just misguided. Their lives disappointed them. They want someone to blame. The PR firm says it’s best to ignore them. Eventually they’ll go away.” He took out a handkerchief and began blotting his forehead.
“Who is Opal Doucet?” I asked.
He folded his handkerchief into a square and placed it back in his pocket. He pulled a loose thread from his sleeve. “A Jane Doe?”
“No. Someone else.”
“Give me a clue.”
“Her name is the clue,” I said.
The elevator dinged, and we stepped out into the quiet lobby. A car waited in the covered driveway, the cold turning its exhaust into a chemical fog. Charlie hugged me again. “I’ll have Carol set up another lunch—somewhere we can talk privately. And don’t forget,” he said, “that event at the observatory. My mother is speaking. They say if the skies are clear, we may be able to see the comet. Carol sent out the invitations. Please. It’d mean so much to have you there. And bring Wyatt.”
“Of course,” I said.
He stepped toward the car and then, like in so many dramatic scenes, he stopped, paused, turned around. “Opal Doucet,” he said. He tapped his lips. “One of the women who died in the factory fire. That’s it.”
Later that day, I went there, back to the factory to see for myself. I touched the bronze plate affixed to the wall near the front of the entrance. It’s supposed to be a historical marker, but Halley used to call it a gravestone. The plaque commemorated the date the Earthshine Factory was nearly destroyed by a fire: May 19, 1910. I studied the list of the Earthshine workers who died there until I found her name.
Opal Doucet. I ran my finger along the raised bronze letters, feeling each curve and line, like I had on the page of that notebook. Of course I’d seen her name before. Right here.
The fixtures in our lives become the static, unexamined facts of it. A pie chest used to sit against the wall in my kitchen. I used to eat dinner every night at this table, across from my husband. I was a friend. I was an actress. I was a wife.
But even facts can come undone.
1910
Opal waited to see if the woman might go away. She didn’t dare move, not even to peer through the peephole. When the woman knocked a third time, Opal relented. There Bertie Tuttle stood, umbrella aloft, a gasp of yellow against the morning gray. Her expression was pleasantly inscrutable. She wore honeysuckle perfume, like the coming of spring.
It was only the first of March. Rain bore down, making Opal feel lightheaded, far away from her body. When she felt this way, Jagr would give her a tonic to ensure the weather didn’t trigger an unusual episode. “Bottom to the top,” he’d say, tipping her glass until she nearly choked on the liquid. Now, she reminded herself to breathe.
“I found your address in your employment file. I hope you don’t mind,” Bertie said. Behind her, a bright yellow Franklin with gleaming chrome attracted the attention of neighborhood children. She motioned to the driver, and he pulled away, up the street and around the corner, out of sight.
“Mrs. Tuttle,” Opal said. “How unexpected.” She tried to focus, to anticipate why Charles Tuttle’s wife would be here, at her home. It couldn’t be good. Hadn’t she always been taught to never bring attention to herself? Isn’t that why her mother brought her to Jagr in the first place?
Bertie extended her hand to be shaken. Her nails were manicured, filed to a point. How could she manage the most basic tasks with nails so long? Then she remembered: domestics.
“Please, Bertie.”
Bertie.Informal. Familiar. Not the way she’d imagine the woman might speak to her help. Her voice held a musical quality—years of enunciation training from the finishing school she’d attended in New England. She remembered how when she saw Bertie a month ago, the woman had walked right up to her and touched her necklace, as though they were already intimate.
Opal motioned Bertie inside.
Opal’s rented rooms were shotgun style, no hallways. The door opened directly into the front parlor, and Opal gestured toward the chair near the window. Bertie set her umbrella in the stand. She registered the table, the muslin window coverings, the unlit hearth, the wallpaper the color of weak tea. She removed her coat and unpinned her hat, then, looking about for a place to hang them, finally handed the items to Opal.
“My husband would be in a fit of pique if he knew I was here,” she said. “I don’t need to be the further subject of gossip in theInquisitor. Dixie Ellison, the classic quidnunc, now really. She’d twist any story into a sordid tale, make it about the depravity of human nature, the undoing of mankind.” She stopped and turned toward Opal. This was a woman accustomed to an audience, but now she recognized the two women were finally alone. She softened some more. “Well, you know what I mean, I’m sure, since she’s recently made you a subject of her writing.”
Opal did know. Two days ago, at the beginning of her shift, the Earthshine Girls had crowded around her station. Betsy produced the newspaper and spread it out. “You’re famous, Madame Doucet,” she said. “I bet they’ll want your picture.”
Her picture in the paper was the last thing she wanted.
Now Bertie produced a cutout of Dixie About Town, as thoughevidence of a crime she’d committed. “I’ve come to talk to you about this.” She set the paper square on the table between them.
An Earthshine Girl who goes by Madame Doucet claims to be a medical spiritualist who can divine ethereal cures from “the other side” and is treating the Earthshine Factory Girls for a variety of mystery ailments with Comet Pills. Such quackery, as has been seen in other cities, makes a mockery of Christianity and modern science alike. Pity the girl ensnared by such fleecing.
