Beth Sherman

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Tea at Brigham Hall is always a stressful affair. I try to concentrate on the view out the tall, arched windows, on lawns sloping down to the Hudson River, which shimmers in sunlight like a blue taffeta ribbon. The trees are lush in summer and I imagine how they’ll look come fall – russet, magenta, saffron colored leaves – a death spiral into the current.  

Mother signals the waitress to bring another cup. 

Lucy, dear, she says to me. You’re looking rather wan. 

It was a two-hour train trip from the city and when I disembarked at the station, there were no coaches for hire. I had to sit in the back of a farmer’s wagon, dropped off unceremoniously at the front gate in exchange for my last two quarters.

The place is grand, styled after a Victorian Gothic castle, built of cheery red brick with gables and a turret. Mother says the grounds were designed by Olmstead and Vaux. But she’s not to be trusted. 

Look what I found, she says slyly.

Her hand darts into her pocket and she pulls out a shard of glass. Possibly from a broken milk bottle. The staff can be careless.

Do you think the Queen will approve? Mother whispers, fingering her treasure. 

I remember a different Mother, a woman who played nine pins and hosted dinner parties and left calling cards on silver trays, who fashioned my hair into plaits and said, Lucy, how I love my darling girl. Before the accident and the quinine and everything that came after. 

 In the visitor’s parlor, nurses glide in and out like tired ghosts. 

Mother sits very straight – she is a lady, after all – smoothing the skirt of her plain, grey dress. She thinks she’s in Buckingham Palace, not the Hudson River State Hospital for the Insane.  

Miss, Mother calls, pointing imperiously at nothing. My tea is ice cold. 

There is no tea. The waitress doesn’t exist. 

I comb my mind for something reassuring to say. But she has shed the world she left behind as easily as she used to shrug off her cloak when she entered our foyer after a night spent dancing or playing cards or flirting with men who weren’t my father. I could tell her I’m marrying her second husband. Would that make her angry or relieved, I wonder. I could tell her how much I miss her. 

Instead, I say, you are next in line to be Her Majesty’s lady in waiting.

Really? 

Her lashless eyes widen and she strokes the piece of glass in anticipation. When I leave, she’ll put it in a hatbox with her other relics. I should tell the Matron. If I don’t, Mother may press the edge of the glass into her porcelain skin, writing her history in blood.

You know, I say, smiling. I think I will have another cup. Miss, if you please. We’re both quite thirsty. 

Beth’s prompts were: at an institution, a member of wait staff, broken glass

Beth Sherman is the author of How to Get There from Here, a novella-in-flash published by Ad Hoc Fiction. She has had more than 250 stories featured in literary journals, including Ghost Parachute, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres and Smokelong Quarterly, where she’s a Submissions Editor. Her work appears in Best Microfiction 2024 and 2026 and Best Small Fictions 2025 and she is the author of five mystery novels.

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