center of it had risen despite the humidity. Elizabeth’s husband, Oramel, had an extra slice and said he thought cake like that was probably what spirits ate in heaven, which meant something to her then, since he was a deacon of the First Trinitarian Church.
She was foolish, Jane realized as Auntie held out the fifty dollars to her on her own birthday that fall—cloth bills with no envelope, no calling card, no letter, no ceremony—to expect anything more than the minimum. Jane’s face hardened in acceptance as Auntie said, more than asked, “Do you expect you will stay on in our household, now that your indenture has ended?”
Jane held more money in her hand now than she ever had in her life, since Mrs. Toppan never trusted her to pay bills for her. The first time Jane had come home from errands empty-handed after a store had asked her for payment, Auntie had said, “When a child knocks over a glass of milk, you don’t blame the child. You blame yourself for leaving the milk within her reach. What kind of fool would I be if I left a Catholic in charge of my money?” It was this that Jane remembered, and the days of vomiting after Elizabeth’s cake turned everyone’s stomach, as she held the bills in her hand.
Even as Auntie had brought the paddle down on her, despite her near adulthood, Jane maintained she did not know that wisteria was poisonous. She had only known that it was Elizabeth’s favorite flower, and that she seldom got to enjoy it because it was so seldom in bloom, and she wanted to make her sister happy. That had not gone well, either. “She is not your sister,” Auntie had screamed, and then turned and retched. After that beating, Jane had cleaned up the vomit, too. The cake made everyone sick. Except for Jane. Jane, of course, was not allowed to have any of the cake because dessert was for guests. She was sore for days afterward, even though Auntie was elderly, and even though she was sick.
Jane folded the bills in her fist and tucked them into the band of her apron.
“Well?” Auntie said, her face solid.
“I expect so,” Jane said. “I expect I’ll stay on.”
“Very well. You’ll continue in the same capacity. You may take your walk once your afternoon chores are completed,” she said, and left.
It was very little solace that when Elizabeth woke she insisted that she and Jane have their coffee together in the parlor. Elizabeth flipped slowly through the scrapbooks of criminals that she had clipped from the papers to entertain her many frilly acquaintances who stopped by on their walks in the afternoons. Jane did not enjoy watching Elizabeth raise one eyebrow and read the crimes aloud. She instead noticed the way that the skin rippled above that eyebrow, her face so placid until Elizabeth expressed emotion. When she smiled after the litany of euphemisms, Jane watched the creases sprout from beside her eyes, the parentheses open around her mouth, and she said politely that she still had, after all, so much to do that day. And every other day.
Nonetheless, after Jane helped her dress, Elizabeth begged to accompany Jane on her walk, despite Jane wanting to be alone—she was so seldom alone. Auntie entrusted her to do everything, but trusted her to do nothing well, and so she was constantly hovered over by the other maids, the neighbors’ laundresses, anyone who could tattle on Jane if she cut a corner or did anything out of the order in which Mrs. Toppan would prefer. They walked together, taking the front road as Elizabeth insisted, so that they may run into some of her friends, not the paths through the backyards, as Jane would have liked. They passed her fellow servants as they hung sheets on lines or tended plants alone while their mistresses reclined on fainting couches after braving a set of stairs in the heat, or dried their hands on old handkerchiefs to keep the needle from slipping through their fingers as they embroidered new ones.
Elizabeth prattled about herself, about the children of her schoolmates, as they took baby steps around the neighborhood, Elizabeth under a new parasol, Jane under an old parasol that Elizabeth had tatted the edges of, indiscreetly, during her parlor visits. It felt ridiculous to hold the umbrella overhead when she regularly did errands without one, her skin darkening in the sun with no consequence, but she followed Elizabeth’s instructions as she always did because she must.
It wasn’t until that night, after the house was cleaned, after she had served dinner and everyone was in bed, when Jane mounted the stairs to her attic apartment and undressed for bed, that the bills she was paid from her indenture fell from where she had stashed them. Their neat folds unraveled as Jane knelt in her short corset and drawers to retrieve them. How could she have forgotten that payment? The first she had ever received for any work. She thought of how smooth Auntie’s brow was, though her thin-plucked eyebrows rested low over her hooded eyes. Jane knew that her chin was wrinkled, and that Auntie tucked the folds of loose skin into the high neck of her dress. She thought of how old Auntie was, how she alone knew this because she was the one who tended her laundry.
How much she knew about everyone by tending their laundry. She could tell anything about anyone by washing their clothes. She thought about how little good that knowledge was doing her and, even so, how she might put it to use.
Every season a different color or pattern grew insufferable to Auntie, and she claimed her tastes changed based on what her friends liked best. When the deacon’s wife found pinks too saccharine, Auntie weeded them from her house, or when the mayor’s daughter decided white was too simple and plain, that it reminded her of the bleakness of a winter sun, nothing could keep its starkness, and the remodeling was added to Jane’s chore list. Jane liked such projects because even though Auntie took total credit for the ideas in front of her club, it was truly Jane’s handiwork, her frugality spun into decadence that they complimented, when they noticed. Jane liked the recognition, even if it was only Auntie who knew to whom it belonged, and she liked even better that she knew the reason Auntie craved such drastic change so often: she was sick—Auntie gave herself a to-do list because if she still had unfinished plans, she could not die. Jane knew this because she did Auntie’s laundry. Jane liked being the only one with this knowledge. She liked that she could see the way Auntie’s mind worked, and that she was so nervous. She liked that she alone could help Auntie, and that Auntie could no longer force her to do anything at all. Of course, Jane followed through her every command, but she smiled to herself at the knowledge that if she decided not to obey, she could simply do as she pleased.
After she hosted the women’s group on the first Sunday in August, Auntie announced to Jane that the draperies had to go—they were too simple, the pattern too loose and unwieldy, the colors too flashy for good women to abide—and Jane planned a trip to the textile store the following morning. After clearing the breakfast dishes to soak tepid in the kitchen sink, she walked downtown, and because she knew the clerk so well by these years of redecorating, Jane walked straight in without ringing the bell. She looked up after latching the door behind her and saw not her friend but a man instead—and not a man like Oramel, with his intelligently concave cheeks and graceful long fingers, but a man with a broad, suntanned face and upturned nose and wide palms. He laughed when he saw her expression and said in a lilt she had not heard since the Boston Female Asylum, “I guess you were expecting Katy, not me!” He stood and said, “You must be Jane Toppan. Katy told me to expect you this week, said you always ordered new upholstery at the beginning of the seasons but she didn’t know what you’d want—oh, where are my manners. I’m Tom Higgins. I’m just filling in for Katy till she stops feeling ill. I normally keep stock of the inventory, but I’m doing both. She had her doubts that I could, but I insisted. She needed rest. She’s a good girl, but every pregnant woman needs more rest than not. She told me what you looked like, but I didn’t expect…well, anyway, Miss Jane, how are you this morning?”
“I’m fine, thank you—”
“Oh,
