The Sculptress

was a stupid, girlish, thing to do. Can’t you understand? I loved you, needed you. . . .” Emma looked at the swirling brown water, frothy after a recent spate of rain, and thought how easy it would be to sink into its murky depths. One slip on a mossy rock and the nightmare of the pregnancy would be over. There would be no confrontation with her mother, nor a child to rear in a lonely home. How quickly the horror would end. She turned toward the river and tears filled her eyes.
He withdrew behind her, like a skulking animal.
“This is useless. You haven’t answered my question. What can I possibly give you?”
“Nothing. If not love, nothing.” She laughed, turned to face him, and looked into his eyes, their color transformed to a hard, icy blue—a shade so frigid it froze her to the spot.
“First tears, now laughter,” he said and reached for her.
She slapped his hands away. “I’m laughing at the absurdity of the situation. For a moment, I actually considered throwing myself into the river—maybe not here in front of you—I suppose any body of water would do. If there’s no love between us, there’s nothing. ‘Think of your reputation,’ you said the last time I saw you. You should have thought of the consequences to your reputation as well; after all, your life would be ruined by a child you couldn’t possibly love.”
“Emma, stop. Don’t be cruel.”
“Cruel? I’m only thinking of what’s best for both of us. Why bring a child into the world if it would negate the opportunity to further my career and my art? Why bring an unloved baby into the world if it would destroy his father’s chance at law school? Yes, we’re better off without such a hindrance to our reputations.”
He stared at her.
“I can see behind your cruel eyes,” she said. “If the eyes are the window of the soul, I’ve looked into hell.”
He glared at her and then reached into his pocket. “Here’s fifty dollars. It’s all I have to give you—more than I should—but I knew it would come to this. Use it as you see fit, but never call upon me again. Perhaps, someday you’ll understand the trouble you’ve caused.”
He turned and walked away, leaving Emma shivering by the river.
“I will see you again,” she yelled after him, “and it will be on my terms.”
He looked back, scowled, and then continued up the sloping bank to the street. At the top he shouted, “How you get home is your affair.”
Emma collapsed on the bank, lifted a rock, and smashed it against the earth. Mud splattered her hands and arms and she wiped away the dirt, a finger grazing the silvery scar left by the scissors in Vermont.
She found her way back to the station and, catching the last train west, found a vacant berth near the back of the car. She cried quietly, and cursed the man whom she thought she had loved, knowing that she would never see him again.
* * *
Her father’s automobile arrived in early October and she now had a driver’s license despite her mother’s objections to the vehicle. As she had surmised, her mother hated it and would have sold it immediately if not for Emma’s assertion that she would now be able to drive her about the countryside in one of the few, if not the only, Model Ts in the county. Helen quickly adopted it as a symbol of their wealth, despite their diminishing funds. The car was stylish in its way, a deep forest green with a black convertible top and spoke wheels. Everything about it conveyed the modern, as if the excitement of a new age and century had borne fruit, but there was more to the automobile than style.
Secretly, Emma had visited Dr. Henry Morton in Pittsfield before the car was delivered.
Now, her mother’s trip to Boston, and the new vehicle, made a return trip to the bustling town easier. The day had arrived when Kurt’s money would be put to use. She cranked the car. It sputtered before the engine kicked in with force, dust rising from the rumble.
She arrived after a short trip and parked a safe distance from the doctor’s office. She stretched, stifling a yawn that verged upon a shiver. How often her mind had brought her to this point, picturing an outcome she neither wanted nor desired.
Now that she was here, she hoped only to sit in the sun and daydream rather than leave her father’s new automobile and enter the office of Dr. Morton, a purveyor of services to women. She had heard about the infamous physician through whisperings at school. He was rumored to be a man with a reputation—a secret practice obscured by an otherwise legitimate office and sterling credentials: a degree from Columbia College in New York City, medical studies completed at Harvard. She wondered why such an esteemed doctor had taken up practice in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on the far western fringe of the Commonwealth between the Berkshires and the Taconics.
Had he done something wrong to impede his career or, perhaps, been ostracized from New York or Boston, seeking refuge in a town of thirty thousand people? Was he paying off those who might have him arrested for violating the law of “procuring a miscarriage”? Whatever his background, he was the doctor Emma sought, after making a prior appointment and examination at her own risk. The earlier trip to Pittsfield to arrange the procedure had filled her with terror, but her options were few—either have the baby and, most assuredly, be tossed out penniless from her home, or end the life that grew inside her. Both choices filled her with despair.
She looked at the brick buildings with similar façades lining the street, but each one so different inside, filled with the trappings of an energetic community: an apothecary with glass vials of colored water shimmering in the window, a millinery shop sporting hats adorned with egret and pheasant feathers,