Kate said the first thing that came to her head. “Wouldn’t a strong corset be more to the point?”
Julia raised her flask to her. “Touché. In any event, that summer I was hanging about because I needed to persuade Aunt Cora to front me the money for medical school. Horrible old fraud. Big ideas, big plans, big speeches, but I don’t think she’d know a good deed if it bit her. She gives speeches about women’s education, but when it comes down to it—it’s like squeezing blood from a stone.”
“But a scholarship—”
“Do you think anyone was going to give me a scholarship? You must be joking. The worthy poor, yes”—Julia gestured elaborately in Kate’s direction—“but never Livingston Van Alden’s niece.”
“Oh, thanks a lot.”
“I would trade in a heartbeat.” With a shock, Kate realized she meant it. “I had to beg for the money to go to Smith. The only reason my uncle gave it—and it was he, not Aunt Cora—was because he wanted to annoy my mother. They’ve always hated each other, my mother and my uncle. Since they were children. It’s because they’re too much alike. And because my uncle actually managed to marry money and my mother will never forgive him for it.”
All the feuds were making Kate’s head spin. Whatever her own family was, however apart from them she felt, they all liked each other. They might not always understand each other, but they liked each other. And they meant well. “You make me feel like my own family is relatively uncomplicated.”
“Everyone’s family is complicated. But some of them are nicer than others. My family are vipers. Emmie excepted. But that’s probably why she’s quite so holy. It had to balance out somehow. I’m a viper. I’ve had to be. It’s bite or be bitten.”
“I always thought you had the world handed to you.”
“That’s what everyone thinks. That’s what they’re meant to think. It’s miserable being proud. We’re all rotten with it, though.”
“Even Emmie?”
“In her own sweet way. In her case, it takes the form of noble self-abnegation. Emmie’s odor of sanctity always makes me feel like a louse,” added Julia frankly. “But she does mean it, you know. It’s not a put-on, like Aunt Cora.”
“I know.” That was what was so miserable about it. When Emmie said she meant it for the best, she did. She genuinely felt she was helping Kate. But what if Kate didn’t want to be helped?
As if she could read what Kate was thinking, Julia said, “She can’t help herself, you know. She just likes to give things to people. She thinks it will make them like her.”
“I wish she wouldn’t.”
Julia turned her flask this way and that, admiring the sheen. “Maybe that’s why she likes you. Because you’re not looking for anything from her.”
But she’d been given it all the same. “All right. How would you feel if you found out someone was paying your way?”
“You dear, innocent child. How did you think I got here? My mother disowned me. I’m a medical student. It’s all I can do to keep myself in stockings and shirtwaists.”
Kate sat up a little straighter, feeling her head throb with the movement. “Is Emmie paying for you too?”
“No. Dr. Stringfellow is. One Smith doctor to another.”
“And you don’t mind?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” There was silence for a moment, as laughter and music filtered from the next room. Kate could barely hear Julia’s voice when she spoke. “Do you know what I’ve learned? You take what you can get and you don’t ask too many questions. Scruples are for people who can afford them. When you want something, you do what you have to do.”
“You mean like ask your aunt for money?” asked Kate skeptically.
“Do you know how I paid for medical school when Aunt Cora said no? I sold my pearls. My mother raised the biggest fit, but there was nothing she could do. Other than disown me, that was. Best day of my life. I took that money and I paid my tuition and I worked hard, so hard. I lived on bread and milk. I studied harder than any of the boys. But none of them will ever, ever admit that I might be a real doctor.”
Our doctors may be all right delivering babies . . .
“I’m sure they don’t all think that,” Kate said, because it was the sort of thing one said.
“When we went to the hospital at Neuilly, Dr. Blake stroked my arm,” said Julia flatly. “They all think that way, all of them. To them, I’m just a piece of flesh. Because an educated woman must be a whore—just a whore they don’t have to pay for.”