My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira Read Free Book Online

published, resplendent with illustrations, and Notes on Nursing by the celebrity Florence Nightingale. For Jenny, there was a party and dancing. Amelia enjoyed both equally, though perhaps, if pressed, would confess to having liked Jenny’s more, for the frivolity of dancing past midnight. And though in her daughters, their mother had cleaved—Jenny had adopted Amelia’s charm, Mary her persistence—no one could say that Amelia Sutter was not proud of each of them.
    Mary turned twenty years old the day her father died in September of 1860. Her first delivery had been nothing compared to the utter helplessness of watching death stalk her father. Even the memory of the woman’s dreadful house, the hard work, the boiling of water, the jack towel tied at the head of the bed for the mother to pull on, the screams, the fatigue, paled in her mind as her father suffered. In the face of her own ignorance, she peppered the doctors with questions. Why are you bleeding him more? What is the matter with him? But they could not answer her. She studied the Gray’s at his bedside, employed every tenet of Miss Nightingale’s, seeking to alleviate his pain, but he died in an agony that not even copious doses of whiskey and laudanum could dull. The day after her father’s funeral, Mary wrote her first letter to Dr. Marsh. It was the day that the Fall family moved into the new home next door, and a then young and diffident Thomas Fall, not yet having suffered his own great grief, tipped his hat to Mary as she went out to post the letter. The new neighbors did not go to Nathaniel Sutter’s funeral, not wanting to press the burden of hospitality on their newly bereaved neighbors.
    It was Mary and Thomas who met first, at a show at Tweddle Hall, two weeks after Nathaniel died. Amelia had insisted that Mary get out of the house. Go somewhere, do something, you’ll shrivel up if you stay inside a moment longer. Gas leaked from the chandelier; the smell was very strong, and everyone had covered their mouths and noses with handkerchiefs. Thomas arrived late, and chose a seat next to Mary, whom he did not at first recognize because of the makeshift veil. But it was impossible to mistake her for anyone else; he had watched her comings and goings from the window of his house and had admired the dignified way she carried herself, the resolute set of her shoulders, the graceful neck that stood out from her otherwise plain appearance. The simple act of walking down the street seemed to communicate that she knew who she was. That he did not completely know yet who he was or what he wanted was a discomfort he kept at bay with industrious endeavors toward happiness that daily seemed, in light of Mary’s apparent self-possession, an insignificant enterprise. He was pleased to find her here, though a little surprised to see her at entertainment so soon after her bereavement, though Thomas decided he admired even this break with convention. He noticed, too, that Mary did not wear the traditional black, but a shimmering deep navy, and that the rich color suited her dark brown eyes, which he decided were the most remarkable feature of her face. From time to time during the performance he glanced her way, but Mary kept her gaze fixed on the dozen jugglers from Boston who first lobbed balls and oranges, then plates and cups, followed by chairs and stools, and finally knives and swords, but decided against lighting their flaming batons because of the gas.
    Absorbed as she was by the spectacle, Mary blinked back tears. She was not usually so vulnerable a person. She knew that it was said of her that she was odd and difficult, and this did not bother her, for she never thought about what people usually spent time thinking of. The idle talk of other people always perplexed her; her mind was usually occupied by things that no one else thought of: the structure of the pelvis, the fast beat of a healthy fetus heart, or the slow meander of an unhealthy one, or a