Compromise with Sin Page 14

  When the boy grabbed for the gingham skirt, the nurse pushed him back onto the bench. “Leave Sissie be.”

  He strained to get away, but the nurse snatched him up by one arm. “Stop crying, Vinnie. Nobody wants a crybaby.”

  “Oh, my God,” Louise said to Dovie. “How can they split them up?”

  The stoic woman in front of Louise turned to her companion. “I heard them say no one wants him because he’s practically blind. Not much point taking in a young-un and paying for food and clothes if you can’t put him to work in a few years.”

  An angry knot gripped Louise’s stomach. “We must go. This is heartbreaking.”

  When she and Dovie passed the little boy, the knot tightened. He sat bound to the bench with a length of pink ribbon. He had dutifully stopped crying but his nose was running, and he gave it a swipe with his corduroy sleeve. Now it became clear why no one would adopt him—scarring on one eye, like fried egg white streaked with red. Identical to Marie’s scars.

  Needlessly blind.

  “Dovie, may we go home? I haven’t the heart to shop.”

  Louise said little on the way home. “Needlessly blind,” Dr. Vandegrift had said. Children like Marie and now this little boy were needlessly blind because babies’ sore eyes was preventable. It had been nearly eleven years since Marie was infected at birth, and babies were still being blinded. What had he said? Something about how courageous people must demand a law to require drops in babies’ eyes.

  14

  January 1905

  A mild December had many locals warning of a wintry blast come the new year, and January had rewarded them. On one of the colder days, Louise was waiting impatiently in the back parlor for Frank to drive her to the Tuesday Bibliophiles meeting. Amplifying her annoyance was the collar of her wool coat chafing her neck, and she shifted her scarf. Finally she peeked into the den where her husband was in animated conversation on the telephone. When he looked in her direction, she raised her eyebrows in a question.

  Frank waved her away and whispered, “Get Yonder to take you.”

  The wind in her face, she walked with her head down to the carriage house and knocked on Yonder’s door.

  “Happy to oblige,” Yonder said in answer to her request. “Glad to have a chance to drive the new car.”

  When Cadillac introduced the first closed-body car, the Osceola, Frank had bought one and sold the beautiful but impractical open-air Buick.

  The new car lurched a few times as Yonder and Louise drove along the driveway. “My apologies.” Yonder shouted over the engine noise. “First time.”

  The ride didn’t get any better going down the hill as Yonder shifted forward, back, and forward again attempting to find the right gear.

  When they neared the intersection at the base of the hill, Louise said, “Turn around.”

  “Was that so much fun you want to do it over again?” Yonder’s grin faded when he looked at her face.

  “No.” Louise pointed to houses on her right. “In the alley there’s an old woman scavenging through a trash bin. Go back. I’m going to get her a coat.”

  Upon returning home, Louise got a coat from her closet, and after getting settled in the car again she took five dollars from her handbag and tucked it in a pocket of the coat.

  Before putting the car in gear, Yonder looked at her and said, “You have a good heart, Louise.”

  At the alley they turned in and searched its length and back again, but the old woman was gone.

  “I’ll get you to your meeting, then I’ll drive around and look for her.”

  “I want to look with you.”

  They drove up and down streets and alleys until it finally became obvious they would not find the woman.

  Louise tried in vain to hold back tears. “She could have been my mother.” Louise remembered a coat from years past, one she’d worn not against the cold but in eager anticipation of it.

  It was the year before Louise ran away from home, so she must have been eleven. One day late in the summer, Ma brought home a beautiful fitted green coat given to her by a lady she cleaned house for. Louise tried to imagine being a lady so rich that she could discard a coat only slightly worn at the elbows.

  In private moments Louise would slip the coat from its peg, inhale its smell of rich lady’s perfume, and run her hand over the silky lining. She’d slide one arm, then the other into the sleeves and finger the black braid trim on the cuffs and collar. At first her hands were awkward on the frog closures, but she practiced until she could manipulate them gracefully.

  Posing without benefit of a mirror, which Pa called the devil’s contrivance, she dreamed of wearing the coat to school where the snooty girls who made fun of her ragged clothes would admire and envy her. Winter could not come too soon.

  At last, wearing the magical coat, Louise practically strutted into the schoolyard. Daisy Friend, a girl with big, wide-set calf eyes, the first girl in her class to sprout breasts, pointed and said, “Look at Lulu all gussied up in my Aunt Mamie’s coat.”

  Her cheeks burning, Louise fled into the schoolhouse, hung the coat on a peg, sat at her desk, and slouched behind a book. She whispered a prayer for deliverance.

  Over the next few days the taunts subsided. But then someone spied Ma downtown wearing the coat. Word spread throughout the school like contagion that she and Ma had but one coat between them.

  Humiliation was to be her constant companion, rarely far from her consciousness. She accepted that she had brought it on herself. Accepted and repented. God was punishing her for worshipping the coat. But what God let happen to Ma was not fair.

  One gray, cold morning Louise dressed for school in the lean-to where she slept. As she carefully removed the coat from its peg, she could hear geese migrating south, their calls signaling urgency. She could also hear Ma and Pa arguing about a trip to town.

  Ma begged off going. “It’s too cold . . . the rheumatism―”

  “Get your coat, woman, ‘cuz you’re going anyways,” Pa said.

  Louise rushed to Ma, removed the green coat, and held it out. But she could see on Pa’s face that she’d made a mistake, that he knew she and Ma shared the coat. When Ma reached for it Pa slapped her face, knocking her off balance. She grabbed a chair to keep from falling.

  “Think I ain’t a good enough provider?” he shouted.

  Please, Ma, don’t let him do that to you.

  But Ma cringed and backed away. He lunged, grabbed her hands away from her face, and struck her again.

  “Wicked woman!” He shoved Ma out the door and climbed into the wagon.

  Louise watched from the doorway. Ma hobbled toward the buckboard wagon. She gripped the handle with one hand and lifted her leg with the other but could not make her foot reach the step. Pa had no patience for stiff knees, and he was mean enough to set the wagon in motion just to teach Ma a lesson.

  Louise ran out. She placed Ma’s foot on the step, supported her arms, and lifted her into the wagon. She thrust the coat in her lap. “I’ll stay home today, Ma.”

  Pa cracked the whip, and the wagon lurched forward.

  When Yonder parked the car, Louise dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief before getting out. She was able to hold back the tears but not the images of the old woman and Ma. Once she walked up the steps to the boardwalk, the wet snow scrunching underfoot, she was jolted back to reality. A black-bordered card was posted on the door of Rich’s Ice Cream Parlour. Someone had died.

  “Mrs. Benjamin DeWitt Foster has been summoned to her Great Reward,” read the first line of the printed notice. Louise clasped a hand over her heart and stepped back, as if putting distance between herself and the words might make them less real. Doc’s wife? She could not shake the ludicrous thought that in some way she was responsible. I wanted her out of the picture. But I never wished her dead.

  She faced the notice again on the door of Anderson’s Seed and Feed. Impatient for details, she hastened up the stairs to the library.

 
The others were already assembled, and they interrupted their conversation to greet Louise. She went to the workroom where she removed her coat and hung it on a peg and set her hat and handbag on a shelf. When she returned to the library, she took a seat on the sofa next to Dovie.

  Alice was saying, “I hear it was bladder cancer.” It was one of the rare days she could speak without wheezing.

  “What a dreadful way to go.” Gertrude sat with her Bible in her lap. “How old was she?”

  “Forty-two or forty-three,” Dovie said. “She was in my sister’s class. Teacher’s pet.”

  “Poor Dr. Foster,” Gertrude said. “Such a nice man. I remember after The Twister how he set up a hospital in the high school gymnasium and didn’t so much as sit a spell until every soul was tended to.”

  “By the way,” Madge said, “did you notice the funeral will be held at Ludwig’s Undertaking Parlor?”

  “Seems to me the undertaking parlor should be for folks who don’t have a decent parlor in which to hold a service,” Gertrude said.

  “I understand that back East the practice is gaining currency with the upper class,” Madge said.

  “Well, I don’t care what’s fashionable, I want to be laid out in my own parlor,” Alice said.

  “Did you notice The Ladies’ Home Journal doesn’t call it the parlor anymore?” Dovie said. “It’s the ‘living room.’”

  “I do declare,” Alice said, “it exhausts a person trying to keep up with all the changes today.”

  When it was time to start the meeting, Louise opened the discussion of Jane Addams’ Newer Ideals of Peace. “Miss Addams advocates giving women the franchise and wants women represented in government so as to bring about humanitarian reforms. What do you think?”

  “Women should do what they’ve always done—influence their husbands’ vote,” Gertrude said.

  Dovie scowled. “But you’re a widow so your influence isn’t felt at all.”

  Gertrude straightened the antimacassar on the arm of the sofa. “I happen to think the church is more important to the quality of community life than any government, and I have plenty of say in what happens at my church.”

  “The vote is one change I would welcome,” Alice said. “The mister is so contrary that if he thought I wanted him to vote one way he’d be sure to vote the other. And I agree with Miss Addams that running a city government is a lot like housekeeping. If we women were in charge, we would see to it that the streets were kept clean, children wouldn’t go hungry, and young boys wouldn’t drink and gamble at the livery stable.”

  Aware she was injecting her own bias, Louise asked, “What do you think, is the housekeeping analogy silly or does it suggest women doing what we’ve always done, clean up the messes that men make?”

  All except Gertrude nodded and chuckled.

  “Your thoughts, Gertrude?” Louise asked.

  “Men make messes because of their sinful nature. Our place as women is to be helpmates who lead them to righteousness.”

  “Let me give you a bit of advice,” Madge said. “Women will serve in government at the pleasure of men, doing the jobs eschewed by men. I taught high school for twenty-six years, worked as hard as any man, got paid half as much, and never had a say in the school’s governance. We are like women from time immemorial. We do what we can with what we have.”

  “Such as our library and literacy classes,” Alice said. “Has it occurred to you that while we women are here on Saturday mornings doing something to enrich the community, our menfolk are out at the town dump shooting rats for sport?”

  “Maybe that’s their idea of civic duty,” Louise said.

  Everyone laughed.

  “I was talking to J.D. about Miss Adams’ book, and he thinks small towns like Riverbend will benefit from Chicago’s problems,” Dovie said. “He says Chicago has been ruined by industries that brought in a criminal element from Poland and Italy and such to get cheap labor. Now some industries are looking to locate where they can get cheap labor and a wholesome environment at the same time.”

  “That’s our Riverbend,” Alice said.

  Watching the clock, Louise interrupted the chuckles that followed Alice’s comment by asking Madge to present the word of the day.”

  “The word is revelation. It means something revealed or the act of revealing, especially a dramatic disclosure of something not previously known. Used in a sentence, one might say, ‘The revelation that Stephen Ambrose sometimes used the writings of others in his own works did not adversely affect his career.’ Also,” she looked at Gertrude, “for those who are spiritually inclined, the word can mean a message of divine will or truth. Used in a sentence, ‘Having been spared by the fire that destroyed her family was a divine revelation that led her to become a nun.’ Synonyms for revelation include ‘discovery,’ ‘exposure,’ and ‘manifestation.’“

  Watching the others shifting in their seats or fumbling in their pocketbooks, Louise knew the signs they were eager for refreshments. “Alice?”

  Louise helped Alice set out cinnamon coffeecake and hot tea.

  Dovie pressed her finger into bits of streusel that had fallen on her plate, then licked her finger. “I would give my eye teeth to have this recipe.”

  “I’ll bring it next week,” Alice said. “I’ll never again give out a recipe over the telephone. My sauerbraten recipe, the one I got from Gunter’s mother, has ended up in the St. Paul’s cookbook. It had to be somebody on the party line who stole it.”

  “Changing the subject,” Madge said, “the school superintendent approached my husband to see if I might return to the classroom.”

  “Well, I, for one, think your influence is needed in the classroom,” Gertrude said. “Teachers today are far too permissive.”

  “But we depend on you to conduct our literacy classes,” Alice said.

  “Don’t leave us hanging,” Louise said. “Will you do it?”

  “I would. I am akin to a horse that was too long in the harness. But my husband told the board precisely what he told me before we married: ‘Over my dead body.’”

  Dovie, twirling a lock of hair, said, “Speaking of the dead, if you ask me, Dr. Foster could have treated his wife better than he did. That mousy little woman hardly ever left the house. I used to tell him after church that he needed to get her out more, to which he always said she was happy to be a homebody. But it didn’t look to me like there was one happy bone in that homebody.”

  Amid murmurs of agreement, Gertrude spoke up. “We should all be happy for Mrs. Foster now that she’s gone to be with our Lord.”

  After the meeting closed, Louise went to the kitchen where Dovie was stirring soap powder into the dishwashing pan. Louise retrieved a tea towel from a drawer.

  Dovie fixed her attention on washing and rinsing a cup and setting it on the drainboard. “There’s an indelicate matter I didn’t want to bring up in front of the others, about Mrs. Foster.”

  Louise stopped drying the cup she was holding. Her skin crawled with a sense that her hidden past was stirring there. Wanting Dovie to get on with her news and get it over with, she said, “It’s a pity she died, but do tell.” She opened the cupboard door, placed the cup on a hook, and rearranged the other cups so they all hung in the same direction.

  “J.D. knows the medical director at Immanuel Hospital in Omaha . . . saw him Saturday at his Stockton Military Academy reunion. Anyway Mrs. Foster had been there―in the hospital, that is―for several weeks. He told J.D. that years before the cancer got her she . . .” Dovie scrubbed a stubborn spot on the plate in her hand and studied it. “I can’t say it.”

  Louise sighed and put a hand on her hip. “You know what you tell me won’t leave this room.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Well?” Louise reached for a plate.

  “Some years ago, Mrs. Foster was hospitalized with . . . gonorrhea.”

  “Dovie Henkleman, did you say what I think you did?”

  “I have it on good
authority.”

  “Mrs. Foster? Virtue personified? I can’t imagine.” As soon as the words escaped, she realized the fallacy of her assumption.

  “Come now, Louise, surely you don’t think she was the promiscuous party in that marriage.”

  15

  February 1905

  Louise tried to prepare methodically for Frank and Marie’s impending departure, needing to learn aspects of running the Inn that were unfamiliar to her. But Frank was anything but methodical. Something would occur to him, such as the fact Louise had never overseen the shutting down of the heating system in the spring, and at that moment he would interrupt whatever she was doing to instruct her.

  One mild day he approached her in the back parlor. “Get your coat, Louise. Time for some target practice. “

  She sighed and set aside her mending. This will be fun.

  He helped her with her coat. “You’ll be safe with Yonder here, but I wouldn’t feel right leaving you without being able to defend yourself.”

  They followed the stone path behind the Inn that led past dead hollyhock stalks to the clotheslines where sheets flapped in the breeze. Frank guided her to a spot beyond the clotheslines, and she gave him her full attention as he demonstrated how to load, aim, and fire the thirty-eight revolver.

  “Don’t be afraid of it. Think you’re ready to give it a try?”

  She nodded. Taking the firearm, she turned it over in her hands, trying to get familiar with the feel of it. She was counting on past experience with Pa’s rifle to serve her.

  Frank walked to the fence that separated the Inn property from Dietz’s pasture, set a can on a post, and stepped far to one side, wearing his crooked grin. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Louise gripped the pistol with both hands, sighted on the target, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet grazed the can, which sent it flying in Frank’s direction. He dodged it and set up another can. “Beginner’s luck. Try again.”

  The gun’s report had set her ears ringing. “Speak up. I can’t hear you.”