Freud's Mistress by Karen Mack Page B

course not,” Martha interrupted. “My dear, I have a beastly headache. Didn’t sleep a wink last night. Could you hand me my medicine? Top drawer on the right.”
    Minna picked up the cobalt-blue bottle of Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup, one of the most popular laudanum pain relievers and, as she had learned in a former place of employment, as easy to obtain as salt. Anyone with a whit of a brain knew it was liquid opium, and it would cure whatever ailed you in a minute flat—hiccups, syphilis, bronchitis, a wretched existence. One of the governesses she knew downed it like gin every night after supper and then jabbered on until oblivion about her troubles. Minna wished Martha wouldn’t use it, and it vexed her to no end that she was giving it to the children. You just had to look at the label on the bottle to see the insidious evil of it all. A Medici-like portrait of a mother dressed in flowing white gown and her cherub-faced baby. The woman wore an enigmatic smile as she held a syringe in her outstretched hand. It was as if she were about to administer a soothing, warm bottle of milk, and not poison.
    â€œYou should be careful with that,” Minna said. “Why don’t you take a bit of whiskey? It works just as well.”
    â€œNonsense. You know that’s not true. And, besides,
everyone
takes it,” Martha snapped, placing the damp cloth back over her forehead.
    Martha was right. Everyone
did
take it. Artists and literary lions from as far back as the turn of the century—Lord Byron, Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They all wrote of it. Some died from it. Even the altruist Florence Nightingale regaled on its soothing properties. Minna wasn’t going to get Martha to dump it down the drain, but at least she could try to limit its use.
    â€œBut you shouldn’t take it in the daytime.”
    â€œI told you, I didn’t sleep a wink. Now hand it to me.”
    â€œAll right. But I’ve stopped giving it to Sophie.”
    â€œReally. That child hasn’t slept through the night for months.”
    â€œShe doesn’t need it anymore.”
    â€œWell, I do.”
    â€œWhat does Sigmund think?”
    â€œWho knows? All he does is work . . . and he’s so irritable.”
    Minna studied Martha’s face as she took another dose. Her skin had the grayish tinge of an invalid, her hair lifeless and stuck to her scalp. Damn it to hell, she looks terrible, Minna thought. Why doesn’t she care? Martha seemed twice as alive before all the children. Now everything she did seemed strenuous, too much effort. Sometimes she was all bustle and precision and other times it was almost as if someone had knocked the wind out of her and killed her, but she wasn’t dead. Martha leaned her head back on the pillow and laughed dryly.
    â€œI’d like to help him but he doesn’t confide in me anymore. Walks around in foul moods. You’ve seen it.”
    â€œNot really, Martha. Have you tried talking to him?”
    â€œWhenever I do, he gets annoyed. Also . . . his research. Truthfully, I can’t abide it.” Martha pulled the cloth off her forehead, leaned forward, and lowered her voice, “It all seems like pornography. . . .”
    â€œIn what sense?”
    â€œIn every sense,” she replied, compressing her lips. “Everything’s sexual. No one in polite society discusses these things. Sometimes I wish he were just an old-fashioned family practitioner. So much more dignified.”
    Minna thought back to the days of their childhood when her mother, like most women, pointedly avoided any discussions of sex or even reproduction, and how traumatized Martha was when she first got her menses. Her sister thought she was dying and ran downstairs screaming for their mother, who calmly told her it was the women’s monthly