They resented my bullying them, and they wanted it to be an accidental drowning, and so it was labeled. But child, that is not the point of my story.” “What then?”
“Gabby, this poor woman condemned herself for a sense of weakness drilled into her. In fact, we both shared the myth of feminine weakness”—she held up a hand to stop Gabby’s protest—“and, and shared I daresay with half the female population, even those young women who fall into the abyss of prostitution.” “Now you’re speaking of Ransom’s Polly Pete?”
“Yes, I suppose her too. Polly, and my dear friend to whom I so often give a prayer, and myself. . . . None of us ever saw that how we lived—inside our feelings—was power. A positive rather than a negative.” “Women are constantly told this. It’s one reason we’re uniting. What else are we to do?” Gabby replied, hands flailing like a pair of diving birds.
“We . . . all of us . . . are told feelings are a weakness, something we must struggle to combat . . . to contain if we’re to fit into the world—and for how long were we wrong? How horribly wrong in our perceptions?” “And the other two, dead now, took it into eternity with them.”
“So sad . . . only one of three learning the lesson of it.”
“I see . . . I think.”
“Think how in our day, our generation, child, women were taught to believe every step taken, every dream held was foolish, weak, silly, a woman’s ranting, a woman’s lot, a woman’s hysterics.”
244
ROBERT W. WALKER
“It has not changed so much. I get the same attitude at university!”
“The weaker of the sexes, the highly emotional and volcanic of the sexes, making us out as given more to the animal nature of our evolutionary ancestors. Should we voice an opinion, medical men call it hysteria femalia. And only now am I finally getting it—” “Getting what, Mother?”
“That I live with foreign, strange, unfamiliar people around me, like some creature out of one of those mad outer space stories of Jules Verne’s, simple as that!”
“You mean as Byron felt . . . not of this world, born into the wrong place and time perhaps?”
“No, this euphoric epiphany is just the opposite.”
“But how do you mean, Mother?”
She threw her hands up and shouted, “I am right for this world! It is the rest of the population that is strange and odd and foreign.”
“Really?”
“Indeed! Look at everyone around you—all the city!”
“I have many times over.”
“Look deeper then—it is made up of—of—”
“—of Martian men? Is that what you’re saying?” Gabby genuinely wanted to know.
“Men! Men like Chief Kohler, Christian Fenger, Thomas Carmichael, Mayor Carter Harrison, the governor, Philo Keane, Marshall Field, Alastair Ransom! We are simply not like them.” “Whataya mean to say?” Gabby asked, confused.
“They will stop at nothing to get what they want, to gain what they perceive are their entitlements!”
“Perhaps it’s part of the character of a Chicagoan.”
“The character of a man,” Jane countered.
“And you believe, Mother, that you’re not at all like them?
Frankly, going about as Dr. Tewes . . . well how like them do you think is Tewes?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. There’s no way we are like CITY FOR RANSOM
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them under our clothes, under our skin! They are takers, pickpockets, boodlers, and Machiavellians.”
“But we’re all human, Mother, and—”
“Tewes, for all his faults or due to them, he is accepted by Chicagoans—isn’t he? Still, you miss my point.”
“It all sounds so very cynical, Mother.”
Jane became thoughtful, speaking in a near whisper. “No, no child, it’s not cynicism I feel. My father alone understood the truth about me, but he could not tell me; he knew I had to learn for myself, and I did today.” “Learned what?”
“Behavior I’ve thought of as defective— brainwashed to think so by men! Behavior that in fact keeps me sane . . .
and Alicia and Polly, and so many trapped women in our society.”
“So does this mean you’ll support our suffrage march?”
Jane gritted her teeth. “I fear for your safety.”
“Oh, come! Who’s gonna throw stones and bottles at women standing in their knickers with a brass band playing?”
“I just want you to know how I feel now. This is so important.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt, but the vote’s important to me!”
“I pray it’s not wasted energy, like the senseless self-loathing that is spoon-fed to women. Imagine, a lifetime of apology for being different—but no more.”
Seeing her mother’s tears come freely, Gabrielle again wrapped her arms about Jane, saying nothing, just listening.
“All the lost opportunity. But never again will I hide.”
“Hide?”
“Within myself yes . . . Sadly, it’s taken all these years to come to an accounting of just how bloody distorted my self-perceptions have been.”
“Mother! You never curse!”
“Forget about the cursing and concentrate, child, on what I’m saying. It’s so important that you understand early. You mustn’t waste your most precious commodity— time.”
246
ROBERT W. WALKER
“Per-perhaps this is what we’re here for; to find ourselves, and maybe shake things up . . . change things a little!”
“Yes . . . that’s exactly what I’m feeling, but look closer, more deeply.”
“Sounds like . . . an epiphany.”
“A threshold . . . yes, a portal of mind that—”
A rapping noise like a gunshot came at the door. Through the sash, they made out Ransom’s silhouette with cane.
Gabby said, “Here is your favorite Martian now.”
Jane erupted in laughter. “That man! Why doesn’t he ring the bell?”
“I rather think he uses that cane for everything.”
“So right, including interrogations.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“I’d like to but . . .”
“Surely he suspects by now. After all, he’s a detective!”
“It would throw him a good shock!”
Gabby’s evil smile shadowed Jane’s. “Serve him right after what he did at the train station.”
“You’ve heard?”
“It’s all over.”
Again Ransom rapped at the door.
“God,” Jane wondered aloud, “what do you do with a bear at the door?”
“The truth, now!”
“But it could destroy any chance I might have of—”
“You’re attracted to him?”
“Yes!”
“Oh, dear.”
Jane secretly feared doing any harm to Alastair’s sense of self-worth and professional acumen. She grabbed ascot and mustache. “Gabby, stall him!”
“What? No!” As Jane rushed for mirror and glue, Gabby yelled through her locked door. “But you’re finished with masquerades!”
“Not like this . . . it’s too sudden. Go, do as I say. Answer CITY FOR RANSOM
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the door. I shall pop out the back and come around the front door as though Dr. Tewes is home from an appointment.”
“But what of that wonderful speech?”
“Just do it!”
“But your true sentiment?”
“It’ll happen when it happens, not before.”