An Entrepreneuse in September

Ann Summers, twenty-six, ex-seamstress, hardly noticed the cooler days of September, or the glances that the stranger (she called him, with a smirk, the Scorcher) still shot at her over the babble at Mrs. Simpson's table. She was preoccupied by her young daughter Carrie (a fussy eater), by the fools around her, and above all by her new position as pill compounder for Dr. William Evans of Chatham Street.

The new job had dropped in her lap. One of the girls at Mrs. Simpson's was giving it up to get married; she urged Ann to apply for it:

"It's easy, you just mix medicines. He won't paw you--he's almost seventy."

Her luck had changed; she jumped at the chance. Going round to 100 Chatham Street, she found Evans a quaint old quack with a ruddy nose with a wart on it and a beard like God or Moses. They hit it off; he hired her on the spot:

"I handle the mail orders; you mix the stuff and sell it at the counter. Use the same ingredients for everything: dyspepsia and consumption pills, powders for ague, gout, worms, and catarrh. Also the maladies of Venus," he added with a smile and a wink.

"The same for all of them?"

"Of course, my dear. The customers feel better the instant they part with their cash."

Yellow-vested with a crinkly grin, he'd been at it for decades, had agents in seven states.

Ann Summers' hands, so deft with snips and stitches, took nimbly to mating gray pastes with milky fluids, green powders, jots of red dust. At the counter she glibbed and glowed, assuring ladies that the doctor's medicines relived convulsive headaches, stomach derangements, languors, and other complaints peculiar to females. When new customers flocked, Evans noticed and gave her a raise; she bought scarves she had dreamed of for months.

One day a freckled servant girl slipped in and asked in a murmur if she had monthly regulating pills; Ann didn't understand. "Pills to remove stoppage or obstruction," the girl whispered, her tiny fists clenched tight. Abortion, Ann grasped with a jolt; she had nothing to offer her.

"I'll lose my situation!" gasped the girl. She sobbed, left.

Then others came--matrons with tight-bunned hair, ladies fingering soft lilac gloves, and ringletted schoolgirls, their puffed eyes red from weeping--all asking, begging for regulating pills or preventive powders. Getting none, they wept. "Don't be soft," Ann told herself afterward; their anguish haunted her.

"Abortion?" said Evans. "I haven't done that in years."

"There's a market for it--a big one. They're desperate."

He puckered his face, scratched his wart. "Emetics. Often enough that does the trick."

Drops, grains, pastes: she learned quickly. Word got round: see Mrs. Summers at 100 Chatham Street for relief from female disorders.

"God bless you," confided a customer. "It was horrid, but you did bring it off."

She marveled: the stuff really worked! But a banker's daughter wrapped in taffeta came back in a spate of frenzy:

"It didn't work. He's deserted me! For God's sake, what shall I do?"

She consulted Evans.

"Poor girl. That means the instruments."

"Can you do it?"

"I used to, but my hand's not so steady."

She nudged him into it, promising to help.

Ann Summers' hands, so deft with pastes and powders, took nimbly to pliars and wire. Was it wrong? They pleaded for it, thanked her through their pain, paid well. Grateful for a cool head and a strong stomach, she began buying bonnets and lace.

One day the Scorcher appeared at the counter: talk, pleasantries. He bought some liver pills, then announced:

"I know what you're doing and approve. There's only one sin--poverty."

Tight-lipped, she tried not to watch him as he left. He'd be back, she might have to squash him.

Ann Summers' hands, so deft with pliars and wire, fingered satins in shops and homed into snug kid gloves. Taking care not to drop aitches, at Mrs. Simpson's she perceived with annoyance the smell of boiled onions, the hint of damp in her room, and on a spotted wall George Washington in a cracked frame. All over the city seamstresses with needle-pricked fingers sat hunched in rooms just like it, squinting by candlelight.

The Scorcher was back the next morning.

"More liver pills, Mr. Lohman?"

"It's illegal, you know."

"Compounding pills? Nonsense."

"Certain pills and certain operations. There's a risk."

"I'll take it."

"Then advertise--like this."

He thrust a paper at her; she read: "Mrs. Restell, female physician--" She frowned: "Restell?"

"Things French are in vogue. Go on."

"--Informs the ladies that her French Lunar Pills remove irregularity by whatever cause produced." She pursed her lips: "I don't know why you've bothered."

"It would double, triple your sales."

A customer entered; he left.

Ann Summers' thoughts smoothed into silk bodices and tasseled shoes. In a dream she saw herself in a green velvet hat with black feathers, and a swan-fur scarf, cleaving a throng of factory girls, housewives, and belles who parted to let her pass. Reaching the foot of a steep flight of stairs, she began climbing. Far below her the women, distraught, stretched out their arms in appeal. She smiled, kept on climbing.

He was back the next day at noon.

"Have you thought about it?"

"I afraid I 'aven't."

"Haven't," he articulated.

Anger--she squelched it. "Haven't."

"Another thought: learn Evans' technique, then dump him. You'll be far better off on your own."

She looked ice at him: "Why are you meddling?"

"Three reasons. First, your hair. Second, your scarves. Third, printer's ink--I'm sick of it."

He left.

The man was an enigma. Worse still, a crag of insolence, a mountain of presumption. Not at all like her first husband, Henry--quiet, tame, a rag. A strange exhilaration bubbled up. "Mrs."--no, "Madame Restell": it rang. He's useful, she conceded, a doer--and not bad looking. Her fingers drummed the counter. She was about to make the turn of her life.

Clifford Browder