After Marie had hung up the phone the day she had seen the mermaid, Sadie stood in the exact same position she had been in when she had picked up the receiver. The finality of what Marie had said was ruthless. She was usually enraged after engaging with Marie, but now she was numb. Marie was gone from her life and had left a great void. She was shocked by the sense of absence. She didn’t know how she was supposed to do anything. It was as though she had lost both her arms and she was told she had to pick up something heavy.
Sadie was depressed for several weeks. She looked around herself and everything seemed drab. She was sitting on a chair that many, many cats had taken their frustrations out on. She was in a whorehouse. There was a Danish on a cracked plate covered in flowers and it was surrounded by flies.
She decided she had to finish her book. When she finished the book, she would be able to start a new chapter in her life. She would be able to stop thinking about Marie. She would be a published writer. She would be a renowned author. Or even if she wasn’t a renowned author, she would be much closer to being a renowned author than she was before. She would have something in her life that completely usurped her feelings about Marie.
* * *
Sadie was sitting at the kitchen table in the brothel several months later in the fall. There were three other prostitutes, dressed in their bloomers and undershirts, lounging in their chairs like a group of wilting white flowers that needed to be watered. They began speaking about the bag of sugar in the center of the table.
“Ugh. I can’t stand that face,” a prostitute said.
Sadie looked at the bag of sugar and did a double take. She had been used to Marie’s face on the side of sugar bags growing up. She thought Marie would always be young and adorable and sweet-looking on the sides of sugar bags. She would appear there the way she had in Sadie’s memory in the time before the murder of Agatha. But suddenly the image on the bag had grown up. The new silhouette was mature and stately. It was more beautiful than the previous one. Sadie wanted the silhouette to turn her head and explain herself.
She leaned forward and pulled the bag to her. It was as though she were holding Marie’s head in her hands, but Marie refused to look her in the eye.
“My whole family works at that factory,” a prostitute said. “Marie Antoine is a nightmare. She is a monster. She’s so greedy. She’s buying up all the sugar factories. She wants to be the most powerful woman in the country. I don’t know what makes a person like that.”
“She’s in love with herself,” another prostitute said. “She can’t spend all the money she has in this lifetime. She spent more on a painting than my family earned in a year.”
“I worked at her factory before coming here,” the first prostitute said. “She almost doubled her profit by making us all work twice as hard. She only cares about herself. She’s worse than any man really.”
Sadie hadn’t been following Marie’s journey. As is often the case when we leave someone, we expect they have stayed in the same spot we left them, as though they are statues frozen in time. She imagined Marie still at the embroidery circle making rose after rose. She hadn’t envisioned her taking over the factory and becoming a ruthless employer.
The more the women insulted Marie, the more Sadie felt proud of her old friend. This was the Marie she had been expecting when she returned to Montreal.
She allowed her brain to accept Marie’s new social position. She laughed to herself. She decided she couldn’t help but be pleased. It was quite incredible that a woman had acquired this status. Marie could have simply acted how her father had, accepting the wealth and being a socialite. But instead she had opted to expand her company, take the reins in her own hands, and become a business mogul. Marie was breaking barriers in the same way she was. Sadie felt that Marie had moved further ahead of her. She hadn’t expected that. She left the table feeling an urge to work on her novel. She wanted it to be out in the world upsetting and provoking people the way Marie was.
Sadie felt distinctly like she had when she was waiting to go up for her recital of Goblin Market all those years before. Sadie knew back then she could not win by imitating Marie, but she had to be as extravagantly and fearlessly herself as Marie had been. It was as though she were standing on the edge of a pool of her own personality and Marie had pushed her in. Even then Marie had caused her to raise her game. Now she would too.
How could you not love someone who you secretly feared was better than you? And naturally their success terrified you because it meant they were going to move off to somewhere in the universe far, far above you. So, yes, occasionally you struck out against the love of your life.
Marie had moved up in the world. But Sadie would move down, so far down it would be spectacular.
A group of bats flew past the window of the brothel, as though they were shadow puppets who had escaped a child’s wall.
* * *
Sadie announced to George and Madame that she was quite prepared to earn a living as a whore now. She didn’t have any reservations about prostituting herself. She was ready to take her research to a whole other level. In any case, Sadie’s money from selling her dresses had more or less evaporated.
“You don’t have to work,” George told Sadie. “You can stay in my room. I will support you.”
“I don’t want to be dependent on anyone. You know that, George; that last pamphlet you were handing out said as much. I’m not afraid of doing this for a living. I want to see what revelations lie in store for me. There are things you can only know through experimentation and not observation.”
“You should have a specialization,” Madame told her. “Then you can charge more money. And you don’t have to turn as many tricks.”
“Yes, I’ve been considering what exactly I want to do.”
* * *
Sadie dressed in a black corset. She wore black boots that went up to her knees and had a black mask she tied over her eyes. And she had a series of whips and canes. She became a specialist in sexual torture. Men came to visit her from all over the city to be subjugated by her specifically.
When she entered the brothel, she did not enter as a blushing, ignorant bride to the bridal chamber. She had read up on erotica. She knew all the positions and obscene acts that were hidden in the minds of people of the time. She had so penetrated the lusts of the girls at the boarding school that nothing could surprise her. She had learned that within the mind of any single girl lay the greatest pornographic works. The fantasies of any girl could compete with the greatest pornographic works written by men.
She could tame a man the way she could tame a horse. And the man was much less of a monstrous beast. And so, in comparison, was frightfully easy to subdue. In fact, she had to hold herself back sometimes in order not to permanently damage or kill a man.
It was true that a woman was weaker than a man in physical strength. But a woman was filled with rage. And like any animal or prey, she had learned to be more manipulative and cunning in order to survive.
* * *