A Perfectly Worldly Poison by Maddie Bowen-Smyth
Photo by Elīna Arāja for Pexels
TW: Addiction, suicide attempt
“It’s a classic case of neurasthenia.” The diagnosis is decisive. “A common malady for young girls, particularly in the city.”
Dad’s eyebrows knit. “What is that, exactly?”
“Those in a state of nervous perturbation,” the doctor explains, “may find they experience restlessness, irritability, lethargy, insomnia, low appetite…”
Doc expounds the value of regaining one’s nervous energy, suggesting sea baths, light horse-riding, and rest-cure; he laments that emotional disturbances and depressive episodes are especially common in the fairer sex, and isn’t it a father’s duty to prevent his daughter from encountering toxic or disturbing social conditions?
Evie’s mind wanders. Her gaze catches on a painting behind the doctor’s head. It’s an agricultural scene; a farmer’s wife placing a pie on the windowsill while her husband toils in the field. She supposes it’s meant to project an aura of calm and normalcy—whatever that means.
“Now.” The doctor scrawls looping, illegible cursive across a sheaf of paper. “These should all be available from your local druggist. Bromide of morphia, or hydrate of chloral—or, if you would prefer a milder remedy, barbiturates. Let’s see how that goes, shall we?”
Dad’s hand finds hers, squeezing. “Well,” he says afterwards, as they stand on the pavement outside the gleaming marble-floored office. “I believe that man was a quack. And, if you’ll excuse my indelicacy, a gobshite.”
“Dad,” Evie laughs. “Wash your mouth out!”
Later, the little blue bottle of Veronal looms threateningly at her from the medicine cabinet. The label dryly informs her: 10 to 15 grain therapeutic dose. Excess of 55 grains is a lethal dose. Funny, she thinks, that it ends up reading as instructional rather than dissuading.
Evie takes the 10 grains, rolling the capsule between her fingers until the crystals burst and she’s forced to lick the remainder from her hand. It tastes like shit.
The usual nightmares subside into a stagnant, grey gloom. She guesses she must’ve slept, even if it feels like her soul unmoored itself from her body. Everything is slower, jutting and jolting with unnatural delay. The streetcar to Broadway crawls at a glacial pace; Evie’s feet send shockwaves where they touch the pavement; the school bell echoes like an elongated death knell.
“Miss Hastings.” The teacher raps Evie’s knuckles when she walks past. “Eyes on your notebook, if you please. Save your daydreaming for lunch hour.”
“Terribly sorry,” Evie bites back. It comes out all sluggish and wrong. The words in front of her jumble unhelpfully. Either it’s still her English notes or it’s indecipherable alien code. Sure, that seems more likely.
Tamara Prescott is absolutely unsympathetic to her plight. She leans across the aisle and whispers imperiously, “Evie, you never RSVP’d to the Musical Tea for Girls’ Club Mothers.”
Evie shrugs. The motion throws everything off-kilter. “That might be because my mother’s dead.”
“There’s no need for such a poor attitude,” Tamara sniffs. “You can still come, of course.”
She imagines having to sit next to Tamara Prescott and Tamara Prescott’s mother, who she envisions to be exactly like Tamara but with a couple of extra decades for the meanness to ferment. Well, Doc wants her to avoid toxic and disturbing social conditions, so—“Wow, that’s very generous, but no thank you.”
The other girl is pitying. “I’m only trying to throw you a bone, Evie, after that whole fiasco with Tristan Eldstrom. As the Girls’ Club motto says, help yourself—”
Help one another, help others. The bell rings mid-diatribe. Evie grimaces. “I’ve gotta blouse.”
She escapes before Tamara launches into any further speculation about why Evie’s so immensely unpopular. Is it her unfashionable haircut? Her churlish attitude? Her ‘depressing and weird’ pieces in Art class? Getting Tristan Eldstrom, the most popular boy in school, expelled and his father arrested for bribery and blackmail? All manner of social peculiarities in between?
“Yowza,” Tobias Leibowitz narrowly avoids her determined getaway. “Where’s the fire, Hastings?”
Evie collapses into a seat beside him. The school paper’s newsroom is bustling; her least favourite time of afternoon. “I could just feel in my bones that you were busy writing awful copy, Leibowitz.”
“Oof.” He holds a hand to his chest. “My young protégé is cruel to me!”
“A journalist must be committed to truth-telling,” Evie replies solemnly.
“Say,” Tobias changes tack, pointing a pencil at her. “Aren’t you playing Edith in Pirates of Penzance? We need an article about the dress rehearsals.”
“Edith, seriously?” One of the other boys snorts. “She’d be more suited to Frederic, right?”
“Ginny’s playing Mabel, too,” his friend snickers. “Bet Hastings would love that.”
“I can hear you, you know,” Evie points out. “If you have something to say—”
“It’s just what everyone’s been saying.” The first boy arches an eyebrow. Evie can’t remember if he’s a John or a Jim or a Jeremy; she also doesn’t give a fuck. “That you snitched on Tristan because he wouldn’t date you, but considering you’re sapphic—”
“Knock it off,” Tobias interrupts sharply. “None of that, lads.”
Evie gets to her feet. “It’s fine. I’ll write that article at home.”
“Ah, Hastings,” Tobias frowns. “Are you sure? Don’t worry about them, they’re just…”
She bites her lip hard enough to taste blood. “See you tomorrow.”
The sluggishness abates, but Evie sort of misses it. At least it was difficult to care when everything was moving three times slower.
When she gets home, Dad’s at work and her brother’s at baseball practice; she has the dubious honour of having the apartment to herself. Evie pages through the morning edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer with distracted fascination. She daydreams about catching the streetcar uptown, walking through the big double doors of the P-I offices and sinking into the chaos of the newsroom. Breaking stories of crime and corruption, uncovering scandal and injustice, getting any kind of thanks for it rather than derision and disbelief and rude comments about how she’d like to kiss girls. (Who wouldn’t, anyway?)
She’ll be the Eccentric Spinster Journalist, renowned nationwide, and then she’ll buy a ranch in Canada where she’ll live out her days with her pet dogs and snakes. “She’s just like Nellie Bly,” people will say, “but with more snakes.” And once she’s old and doddery, she’ll take up something appropriate like knitting and make a life-sized Ouroboros to be buried with—
Evie’s disturbed by the glint of the blue bottle from where the bathroom door hangs ajar. She folds the newspaper and swallows, feeling its accusation lodge in her throat.
She finds herself at the sink, turning the bottle over in her hands. She meets green eyes in the mirror. Distantly, Evie counts out five tablets. 25 grains. Roughly half a deadly dose, surely that should make the out-of-body feeling last longer? Floating above the stratosphere, leaving all earthly concerns behind. She leans her head back and lets the capsules dissolve on her tongue until the crystals fizz bitterly.
The haze of grey descends much faster this time. Evie stumbles towards her bedroom and sinks into the depths of her duvet. Flashes of nightmares try to break through, but they’re disjointed and improbable. Shards of a scream, the memory of smoke, the imprint of hands gripped tightly around her arms.
The next day, Evie can barely keep her head raised. She scrubs at her eyes until they sting, until spidery black spots splinter across her vision. Her teacher raps her knuckles several times.
“If you refuse to cooperate, Miss Hastings,” she scolds, “perhaps you could use the extra time for schoolwork in detention.”
Tamara glances sidelong at her. “What is your problem?” She seems disappointed when Evie can’t quite manage to answer; it takes extraordinary effort to stay awake, so like hell is she wasting any of it on Tamara Prescott.
It continues like this throughout term. By the late afternoon, the effects wear down to nothing, and her energy returns in fits and starts. Evie writes her articles for the school paper, takes and develops photos to go with them, cooks dinner for her dad and brother. She half-finishes her homework, half-finishes her conversations, and endures the chastisement and detention for the things she doesn’t finish. Before bed, she roulettes how many tablets she’ll take. One or three or five. Sometimes she holds six more in her hand as five settle on her tongue. Excess of 55 grains is a lethal dose. One more swallow, and then.
Evie writes a letter to her childhood friend, Emelia, who now lives all the way in Rhode Island—out of reach, really, as though there’s galaxies between them rather than miles. She tries very hard not to sound final, but somehow it still sounds like a goodbye. (Well, just in case.) She thanks Tobias for being the most tolerable person at school; he gives her a strange look. “You don’t have consumption, do you?” He peers at her closely. “You are kinda pale.”
Her sister worries at Evie whenever she drops by the apartment. “I don’t think you’re eating enough.” That’s kind of the point, Evie doesn’t say, but it’s taking too long. “Do you think the medicine is helping?”
“Sure,” Evie replies.
She finds herself back in front of the mirror. Six plus five. The bitterness is almost overwhelming, this time.
But one more swallow, and then.
#
She regrets it, once it’s done. Knowing how to make herself puke comes in handy. (It’s wasteful, Evie knows, and not done very often—an empty stomach’s easier, but sometimes anything’s an option.) About a third of the 55 grains comes back up, and it’s just barely enough for her not to drop dead on the bathroom floor. Nice.
She stares up at the oscillating light, her cheek half-pressed against the tiles. Her gross and sour breath comes in stuttering gasps. Her uniform has a very unflattering smear of vomit across it. Evie hopes it comes out. Did she remember to buy more bleach?
She has to be alive, after all, because her stomach is killing her.
Later, Doc advises that she likely damaged her liver, and isn’t she so silly for not reading the label properly? “You have to be careful with the dosing of barbiturates.” He checks her temperature. “Even if you find the effect is waning, you must consult a professional before taking additional capsules.”
“Terribly sorry,” Evie mutters.
“You’re young, so I expect you’ll bounce back in a few weeks,” he says.
Evie doesn’t return to school. Maybe Tamara Prescott is in mourning for her. Maybe Tobias Leibowitz is letting all sorts of errors through to publication. Maybe no one gives a shit; maybe she’s already faded into complete obscurity. Evie who?
She writes a melodramatic letter to Emelia when she’s strong enough to hold a pen for any length of time. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, oh, prepare it! That is, I’m bedridden for the next few weeks, at least. Evie carefully doesn’t think about any worry it might inspire, nor why it possibly should. It wasn’t goodbye in the end, was it? So everything’s great, fine, terrific.
Dad and her siblings hover. Evie doesn’t mind it, except when she hates it. She takes to blocking out the sun and developing photos from the edge of her bed. She doesn’t sleep much. She eats, sort of. She rereads all the books on her shelf. She doesn’t climb up onto the roof, apart from the one time she does and sincerely regrets the stabbing pain it inspires in her abdomen. Most nights, she’s wracked with shivers and sweats, as if some otherworldly poison is being expelled from her body.
Well, she supposes it’s a perfectly worldly poison.
“Here,” Dad drops in some breakfast and the morning paper before he leaves for work. “I thought you might like this.”
Evie reads it idly, leafing through the city’s daily crime and intrigue. She yawns into her toast. Her imagination catches on the edges of the ink, filling the grey space in the air. She remembers the plan, as if it’s only just emerged from primordial sludge—the Eccentric Spinster Journalist, Evie Hastings, whose dead mother is not getting invites to Musical Tea.
Evie gets dressed, brushing her hair for the first time in weeks, probably. Her body aches; her soul is still unmoored, possibly forever; and, beneath the ache, a discomfiting emptiness beckons. Maybe she’s nobody anymore. Evie who?
Still, if she’s going to shuffle around on this mortal coil for a while longer, she might as well make her shuffling productive. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is almost always hiring, and school has been a categorical bust. Nobody understands the importance of uncovering corruption, that Tristan was a brute and his father a crook, that kissing girls is just as appealing as kissing boys.
Besides, one day she’ll be the next Nellie Bly. (But with more snakes.)
Maddie Bowen-Smyth
Maddie Bowen-Smyth (she/her) is perpetually, endlessly tired. Her writing explores mental health, trauma and embodiment, and is animated with a spirit of bull-headed hope. Born in Singapore, Maddie worked in Japan for several years; she now lives in Noongar Boodja with her wife and pets.
Visit Maddie’s website