Compromise with Sin Page 22

  Dovie’s eyes misted.

  “What’s wrong?” Louise asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong.” Dovie sniffed, taking the handkerchief Louise offered. “Do you know what happened today?”

  Louise mentally ran through the day’s activities.

  “Look at you, excited about the future. Don’t you see, you have something to live for. You even laughed today!”

  Before going up to her apartment, Louise stopped at the Inn’s front desk to collect her mail. A small, flimsy package caught her attention. It was wrapped in wrinkled brown paper and tied with a dirty length of string, actually several pieces of unmatched string tied together. The sender had printed the address in pencil. It looked like a child’s hand.

  She set the mail on the breakfast room table and removed the string and paper from the strange package. From outside came the clunk-clunk sound of the ladder being moved as Harley, the building superintendent, hung storm windows.

  The package held two ugly woven placemats in adversarial shades of orange and green. She checked the postmark. Lincoln. Lars, the thief, captured and imprisoned after attacking her.

  She went weak, feeling his putrid breath on her neck again as he reached from the state penitentiary. Was it a warning? Lars was in prison, but his brother lived in town.

  That night after finally falling asleep, Louise awakened to a sound like metal striking metal. Instantly alert, she kicked off the bed covers, sat up, and picked up the loaded pistol. That noise again, followed by a hiss. Recognizing the familiar clank and hiss of a radiator, she breathed with relief. On any other night the sound would be a friendly signal of the cozy warmth inside. Tonight it had conspired with the creaking rafters, rattling windowpanes, ticking grandfather clock, and her own breath and heartbeat to torment her. She set down the pistol and lay back down with one ear against her pillow and covered the other with a second pillow. It muffled the noises, but the fear simply changed forms, like a worm to moth. If Lars’ brother or someone else wanted to attack her, she would not hear him enter.

  Thinking about being in the bedroom with nowhere to escape made her skin prickle. Going to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, she carried the pistol and moved stealthily so she might hear any unusual sound. The noisy act of running water into the kettle seemed both foolhardy and heroic. She took her tea and the pistol into the back parlor but could not make herself sit down. She paced. Glared at the grandfather clock, ticking quietly. Looked outside, but there was nothing but the blackness of night. Finally she sat and tried to read a magazine, but she could read the same paragraph over and over and not grasp the meaning; her mind played tricks so she saw the word will as kill, and deal as dead.

  She got up, turned on lights and checked the locks on the kitchen and front doors. The balcony! If Lars had been watching her comings and goings before he attacked her, he might have gone behind the Inn and seen her on the balcony. An agile man could scale its support, just as Dovie’s son John had done at Marie’s birthday party, and breach the flimsy French doors. She went to the French doors, jiggled the key to make sure they were locked, removed it, and set it on a table. Then she turned off the lights and sat stiffly in her chair, all her senses laid raw. Occasionally she would slump drowsily in the comfortable chair for a time but then jerk to attention.

  Oh how she missed Frank. She had taken his protection for granted. Was he watching over her now? Why had they never discussed their views on death? They should have come up with signals to try to communicate from the other side. “Frank,” she said out loud. “You’d know what to do. Tell me what to do.”

  Then reality seized her. She remembered the visceral, drunken rage of a madman in the hours before his death. He probably hated her. How could he not? He was wrong about Yonder, but he was right about her infidelity. Was he watching her suffer, glad to see her getting her just reward? Was God still punishing her?

  The line she’d carried since childhood came to her: “They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.” She knew why, of all the lines in the long poem, this one stuck with her. It shrieked a warning. There had been no escaping the curse of Pa’s evil. It lived in her.

  26

  November 1905

  Was it grief that played tricks with Louise’s mind? That disabled her rational brain? She had taken for granted her financial security only to find it a myth. In putting her affairs in order she had discovered that Frank’s investments were worthless. Riverview Inn receipts scarcely covered operating and living expenses. She would have to accept Bernard’s offer to buy the Whirlwind Maid.

  “Hip, hip, hooray, hip, hip, hooray.” Feigning enthusiasm, Louise joined in the cheer that erupted in the Henklemans’ dining room after J. D. announced he would be a candidate for state senate.

  The Thanksgiving supper ended with fruitcake, coffee, and sherry, and J.D.’s story of a holiday when he traveled home by train from military academy and he and other passengers had to help clear snow from the railroad tracks.

  “In his wool uniform he smelled like a wet sheep,” his mother said.

  They were laughing again, and it grated on Louise. Her hope that sharing the holiday with friends would provide some comfort had been dashed the moment she stepped through the door. The laughter that filled the house left her an outcast. It seemed to mock her state of bereavement and alienation from family, branding her as that most pitiable of creatures—a woman alone.

  Louise almost envied Dovie, who seemed in her element. With Gertrude’s help, Dovie orchestrated a memorable meal for extended family, tried to tame her rowdy sons and their cousins, and cajoled J.D. from one of his rants into a grudgingly affable mood—in general, she had taken responsibility for everyone having a pleasant holiday. Dovie’s life had purpose.

  J.D.’s mother dabbed her mouth with her napkin and set it on the table. “Let’s all retire to the parlor for a songfest.”

  The Henkleman twins pushed past Louise, punching each other on their way to the parlor. Louise feared for Dovie’s coveted Wedgwood display.

  Dovie must have, too, for she yelled, “Settle down, you hooligans, before you break something!”

  The boys ignored her but halted in their tracks when they saw their father.

  As the group was taking seats in the parlor, J.D. stopped Louise. “I have something to speak with you about in private.”

  She followed him out to the hall and heard the strains of “Oh! Susanna” coming from the parlor organ.

  “I want to talk to you about the Inn. Operating a hotel is no job for a woman.” J.D. tilted his head back so Louise had to look up at him. “Look what happened when Frank left and that gypsy stole your receipts.”

  The hair on the back of her neck bristled. “He wasn’t a gypsy, and I managed to hold onto the satchel.”

  “I’m only thinking of your welfare. I happen to know that Burlington plans to suspend passenger service to Riverbend—”

  It seemed the floor was moving, and Louise had to place a hand on the hall table to steady herself. “What did you say?”

  The boisterous singing in the parlor stopped, and Gertrude could be heard saying, “’O God, Our Help in Ages Past,’” followed by a few voices taking up the hymn.

  “Burlington will suspend passenger service to Riverbend,” J.D. repeated, “leaving the nearest depot in Smithville. It’s a grievous state of affairs for our economy, the only salvation being that they’ll continue freight service. But this places you in an untenable position. There won’t be enough business to support the Inn.”

  “This is so sudden. I don’t know what—” She had sold the Whirlwind Maid to Bernard and would eventually receive a share of its profits, but for now she was still dependent on income from the Inn.

  “But to get to the point, you don’t need to worry your pretty head. I’ll take the Inn off your hands, give you a fair price. Riverbend needs an old folks home. Young people today don’t want to take in their elders. I even plan to do some of the renovati
on myself, get my hands dirty, use some of the skills my grandfather taught me. You can remain in your apartment. Nothing has to change except you won’t have the burden of running the Inn. You’ll be set for life.”

  His certainty that he would own the property set her heart racing and riled her to the point she wanted to say, “It’s not for sale.” But she caught herself and said, “I need time to think.”

  Another loss. Now that it was in jeopardy, the Inn she had always wanted to escape for a dream house became something dear. But if what J.D. said was true, she had no choice but to accept his offer.

  27

  March 1906

  Louise closed the breakfast room curtains to block sunlight streaming through the window, but there was nothing she could do to muffle the joyful squeals of children sledding on the hill adjacent to the Inn, now Riverview Old Folks Home. The sounds reminded her of watching a terrified Marie try to hold onto Frank’s back the one and only time he took her on the sled he’d owned since he was a boy.

  The fall and winter months had become especially bleak after Yonder’s departure. Louise noted that if things were going according to Giovanna’s plan, today, March twenty-fourth, was their wedding day. Louise tried to brush aside her feelings, tried to be happy for Yonder, but in truth she wanted him for herself.

  Two things had sustained her. One was helping to set Henryetta up in business baking kolaches, a project that had occupied her for several months. She had informed J.D. when she accepted his offer to buy the Inn that she owned the kolache recipe, and if he wanted to serve them to residents he should buy them from Henryetta.

  The second was Dovie’s determination to keep her busy. She was grateful for Dovie’s friendship and her “activity plans,” because left idle, she often retreated under the covers wanting only to be left alone. On days that they didn’t have plans together, Dovie always made it a point to telephone to see how Louise was doing.

  This afternoon as she leafed through her mail, Louise came to a wrinkled envelope with crude lettering that made her skin crawl. Lars? On closer examination she noticed the stamps were foreign. Opening the curious envelope, she removed a note and photograph. Mrs. Jelinek, stout and frumpy, stood with a gangly boy, about the same height. There was a vacant look in the eyes of the boy, too tall for the suit that hung on his thin frame.

  Louise read the note through tears. “Mrs Morisey. You a good woman. Boy need me. Thank you. Mrs. Jelinek.”

  Louise went to the den at the sound of the telephone’s three short rings. The caller was Dovie.

  “Louise, have you been crying?”

  Louise wiped her nose with her handkerchief. “Bittersweet tears.” She told Dovie about the letter and described the picture.

  “Why is she writing to you?”

  “You’ll think I’m crazy. When her family arrived at Ellis Island, Miklos was sent back to Bohemia for being a mental defective. I caught Mrs. Jelinek pilfering food and petty cash from the Inn, saving up to go back home to him.”

  “That’s why you fired her?”

  “I didn’t fire her. I gave her the money to make the trip. I said it was payment for her kolache recipe.”

  “Gave her money. Why?”

  Louise smiled at the absurdity. “Your question shines light on my logic and exposes the flaws. I didn’t have a good reason. Just an overpowering urge. One mother helping another. Consider what she risked to get home to her son, a boy no one wanted. I was in awe of that mother’s love. I could never measure up.”

  “Now you listen to me,” Dovie was sounding like a scolding schoolteacher. “If that had been Marie sent back, you’d have walked on broken glass to get to her. I saw how you sacrificed for that girl. The hours you spent teaching her Braille and helping her with her piano lessons. She was the luckiest blind girl alive.” “I mean─”

  Dovie’s kind, if not well-chosen, words, were intended to comfort but instead aroused guilt which Louise was careful to mask. “I know what you mean. And thank you, Dovie. Your friendship means the world to me.”

  As much as Louise had wanted to pour out her feelings to her good friend, she could not. How to explain that helping Mrs. Jelinek atoned in some small measure for her own failure as a mother? How to explain that Marie wasn’t blinded by accident, but as punishment for her mother’s sin? How to explain that she could not look at Marie without feeling rebuked?

  But something Dovie had said lightened Louise’s burden of self-recrimination: yes, she would have walked across broken glass to get to Marie.

  The next morning Louise languished in bed, heartsick from a dream in which the little boy at Baby Giveaway Saturday was chasing after the woman taking his “Sissie.” When his small hand reached out to grab the woman’s skirt, it turned out to be Louise’s skirt.

  Still in the place between dreaming and awakening, she heard herself say, “Needlessly blind.” Those had been Dr. Vandegrift’s words the day he had examined Marie. Louise had been so shaken that she could scarcely remember what he said, but a few phrases stuck: “She would not have lost her sight if the doctor had instilled drops when she was born. . . . Doctors fail to act on what they know. . . . Courageous people must educate the public and legislators. Respected people like yourself.” Maybe he’d said, “Courageous people,” not “Respected.”

  It would certainly take courage to do what Dr. Vandegrift was suggesting, a willingness to risk respectability. But such courage paled against what Mrs. Jelinek had done. The woman had risked arrest and jail for her cause.

  In the kitchen, Louise whisked two eggs in a bowl while butter sizzled in a skillet. Most days she preferred to take breakfast alone, not in the dining room where residents padded around in slippers and robes.

  She tried to enjoy her scrambled eggs, but the little boy wouldn’t let go. When she could stand it no longer, she cast about in her mind for some action she might take. She wanted to scream at someone who could get results, but who?

  The state legislature, of course. Instead of washing up her dishes, she went to the den where she placed a long distance phone call to Lincoln and learned the name of the chairman of the Health and Welfare Committee and how to contact him.

  She sat at her secretary to draft a letter, but the words choked in her hand before reaching paper. More formidable than trying to write the perfect letter was knowing that setting herself up as an advocate might bring unwanted consequences. Thinking of something Frank used to say made her smile: “Don’t open the can of worms if you think the worms might win.” Admitting the worms stood a very good chance, she persisted nevertheless. Finally she wrote:

  Dear Sen. Bruegger:

  I am writing to you to request that you propose legislation that has been proposed in several other states that would prevent a leading cause of blindness.

  Wordy. Too blunt. Don’t use “that” three times in the same sentence, and “propose” twice.

  Finally satisfied after several attempts, she copied a draft on her embossed linen stationery.

  Dear Sen. Bruegger:

  I appreciate the efforts of the Health and Welfare Committee on behalf of the citizens of Nebraska. I am writing to bring to your attention a serious problem that afflicts the youngest, most vulnerable Nebraskans. Legislative action can protect them.

  This problem is unnecessary blindness caused by a condition known as “babies’ sore eyes.” It has been estimated that this preventable condition is responsible for one-fourth to one-third of all admissions to state asylums for the blind.

  This devastating disease can easily be prevented and completely eradicated with a public health program that requires doctors and midwives to instill dilute silver nitrate drops in all babies’ eyes at birth. You see, the condition is not immediately apparent at birth.

  The drops have been proven to work in England and France for many years. I beseech you to propose legislation that would prevent this leading cause of blindness. I urge you to act now.

  Respectfully yours,

&nbs
p; Mrs. Francis J. Morrissey

  Nearly two weeks passed before Louise received a reply to her letter. She read hurriedly past the senator’s “thank you for writing” paragraph, and as soon as she saw “After serious consideration,” she stopped reading and slumped in her chair. I was a fool to get my hopes up.

  After a time, her agitated heartbeat slowed, and she smoothed the wadded-up page. The letter went on to say that the state fulfills a plethora of obligations to ensure the health and welfare of its citizens, and that the Committee’s role is to review and act on public health matters brought to its attention by the state Bureau of Hygiene.

  His arrogance made her bristle. Apparently matters raised by mere citizens did not merit the Committee’s consideration.

  When she had written to him, all her worries had been about how she would present her case to the Legislature and at what risk to her reputation. Now it seemed the challenge was how to get in the door.

  After getting the name of the Bureau of Hygiene’s director, Dr. Milton Weil, she wrote another letter. When two weeks passed without a reply, she decided to wait no longer.

  28

  April 1906

  On the slow taxi ride from the train depot in Lincoln to the state offices, Louise willed herself to remain calm. But when she held her mirror to check her face and hair, her trembling hand betrayed her anxiety. If she succeeded in seeing Dr. Weil, it would mean having to talk to him face-to-face about an unspeakable disease. If she failed to see him, she would leave behind a letter summarizing her appeal. Then go home and wait. The worst outcome would be to meet with him without gaining his support. In that event, she knew nowhere else to turn.