Compromise with Sin Read online

  When she had said the night before that he had been crazed with passion, a hint of recognition had come over his face suggesting he might believe her, but today he hid behind his newspaper, and that set Louise on edge.

  Henryetta brought in a platter of hot biscuits, flanked by a mound of butter and pitcher of molasses. On the pudgy hand that held the plate, two fingers had strings tied around them. Although Henryetta had learned to read and write after Louise urged her to attend the Riverbend Ladies Lending Library’s literacy classes, she was not inclined to surrender her habitual method for remembering things.

  Frank reached for a biscuit and thanked her without looking up. Henryetta glanced at Louise with a little scowl and shook her head.

  Normally Frank’s energy filled the breakfast room as his head fairly exploded with random ideas that fomented while he slept. He might announce a design to make crutches more comfortable, or a promotion to entice tourists to Nebraska, or a device for clearing snow from brick walks and streets. Henryetta would shake a finger at him and scold him for letting his breakfast get cold. He would pause long enough to tease her about the strings on her fingers, then he would be back to reciting his schemes. But not this morning.

  Riverview Inn, a handsome H-shaped building, sat atop a bluff. It might have looked imposing, except its brown-shingled façade and landscaping gave it a cozy lodge feeling. The spacious front lawn held maple and blue spruce trees and flower gardens with stone paths. A comic feeling emanated from Frank’s grand lawn ornament, a sunken Missouri River paddlewheeler he had lovingly restored. River traffic was all but gone, overtaken by the railroad, a circumstance that made Frank’s paddlewheeler even dearer to him. He often said that Riverbend had become a river town that didn’t know it had a river except in name─Riverview Inn, Steamboat Café, River Rat Saloon, Barge Inn─and in the rusty recollections of old codgers. As names went, his paddlewheeler’s christened name, The Blanchard, had been all but forgotten the first time someone called her “Morrissey’s Folly.”

  The hotel entrance and east-facing rooms had a view of the gray, untamed river. A drive on the south side led to a porte cochère and a second hotel entrance. Spring would bring the fragrance of honeysuckle growing along the drive, which continued to a parking area and carriage house. Beyond the honeysuckle the bluff became a wooded plateau, its paths popular with Inn guests for their morning and evening constitutionals. At the north edge of the Inn property, the land dropped like an apron toward town and in winter provided a popular sledding hill for youngsters from the houses below.

  Frank had become an indifferent innkeeper. It was Louise, behind the scenes, who tended to essential details. At the time she met and married Frank, he was a more-or-less aspiring banker, a career for which he was equally ill-suited. His father had made the banking career a condition of Frank’s considerable inheritance. Frank’s brother, Aidan, had inherited the Inn, but upon his sudden death, thrown drunk from a horse, the Inn passed to Frank.

  The Morrisseys’ apartment occupied the entire southwest wing of the second floor and was relatively private. Frank had been born in that apartment, and Louise feared, in spite of his promises to build their dream house, it was where they both would die, as his parents had, of old age in their sleep. Probably one of the last things she would lay her eyes on would be her mother-in-law’s knickknack shelf, framed cross-stitch sampler, and reproduction of Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy.” She’d have removed them years ago, hiding the faded rectangles they’d leave on the wallpaper, but to do so would feel like her dream house would ever remain a dream. Or so she had thought until the day she began checking her sanitary pad for stains that never materialized.

  In the afternoon Louise stood at the kitchen sink polishing silver and taking in the view outside her window. Icicles on the neighbors’ pasture fence sparkled in the sun, and the horses’ breath fogged the air.

  Gunter Dietz owned the riding stable, where he boarded those horses, gave riding lessons, and bred American Paint horses. He also operated the town’s coach service, which transported visitors to and from the Burlington depot to Riverview Inn and other destinations. In a longstanding agreement, the Morrissey family boarded their horses and kept their carriages and wagons at Dietz’s.

  The whistle of a freight train passing through town meant that Gunter’s wife, Alice, would soon emerge from the house to feed her two dogs. She appeared, bundled in a heavy coat, a scarf wrapped around her face, and food bowls in her hand. She dodged the dogs’ excited leaps, teetering to keep her balance until she set their bowls down. It amused Louise that her good friend, whose life revolved around her husband’s horses, had never sat in a saddle and never intended to.

  Watching a colt frolic, a brown and white patchwork on four legs, Louise recalled a fond childhood memory of sitting on a tall Arabian with Pa, who had worked as a trainer on a private estate. That memory, so fleeting─if only she could isolate it and stop the images that would follow.

  The sound of the front door opening and closing heightened her senses. Then silence. Frank usually called out to her when he came in. Moreover, when he was wearing work clothes his practice was to enter the apartment from the back stairs which led into the kitchen, rather than walk through the lobby and up the front stairs. Louise stood perfectly still, listening. After hearing soft footfalls apparently heading toward the hallway to the bedrooms, she waited another moment, then inched down the hallway toward the master bedroom. She stopped outside the bedroom door. Her eyes lingered on the small of his back where in happier times she had placed her hands to pull him close. Frank eased open the top drawer of her chest of drawers. He lifted the sapphire blue nightgown.

  Not that one. Louise dared not breathe. She pushed back the image that had haunted her for days, that of living alone in some garret, stuffing newspaper in cracks around windows against the cold, the pitiful “widow” alone in her confinement. Her deception had to work.

  He turned the gown over and over in his hands. Dropping the nightgown, he rummaged in the drawer. This time he picked up the baby-blue nightgown. After a close examination he nodded and let out a sigh that relaxed his whole body. Louise exhaled. Frank had almost certainly seen the stitching, which she had taken care to make obvious.

  Louise retreated down the hall, then turned. “Frank, where are you? Did you come in?” She heard a drawer close, then, unexpectedly, another slide open and slam shut.

  Frank rushed from the bedroom and waved a pair of work gloves. “Had to get these. Got a crew weather-stripping storm windows.” He threw his arms around Louise, pressed his cold cheek against hers, and rocked her from side to side. “How’s the little mother?”

  3

  June 1895

  Frank traced the rim of his coffee cup and watched the early morning sunlight play on its now-cold contents. In recent months he had tried to stay out of the way as Dovie Henkleman led the other “biddies,” as he called them, who took over his home in frenzied preparation for the baby. They bustled about making curtains, rag rugs, blankets, and lord knew what else.

  Now he had reached the height of redundancy. A new life was coming into the world, but he was barred from the inner sanctum, a man of action condemned to sit in the breakfast room and twiddle his thumbs. To his fatigue-addled mind, the moans coming from the bedroom were escalating to guttural wails that could only issue from the depths of hell. Finally silence suggested that his all-night vigil was about to end. He went weak with the realization that silence could mean good news or bad.

  Hearing heavy footfalls, he went to meet the midwife, who carried a tiny bundle from which protruded a mop of black hair.

  “You got yourself a fine baby girl, Mr. Morrissey.”

  In that instant Francis Joseph Morrissey Jr. vanished, and in his place was a creature Frank was at a loss to fathom. He could only stare.

  “You can go to your wife,” the midwife said.

  Entering the bedroom he caught a whiff of blood from the pile of stained bed linen
s sitting next to the door. He kissed Louise’s forehead, wet with perspiration, and fingered the damp tendrils that curled around her face. She had never looked more beautiful.

  “Thought of a girl’s name?” Louise’s voice was weak.

  Frank was taken aback by her weak voice. He shook his head. He looked at the four-poster bed in which he had been born. The very place he’d pictured his son being born.

  “I do believe you’re sulking.”

  Off the top of his head he linked the month of the baby’s birth and Louise’s middle name. “June Elizabeth.”

  Louise’s grimace told him it would not do.

  He pondered it. Finally a name presented itself from a forgotten corner of his mind. He and Louise had honeymooned in Kansas City, a time when he took his masculine prowess for granted, never imagining he would lose his virility a few years later. Louise was the properly modest bride, but to his surprise and delight, on the third night of their honeymoon she responded with passion. He suspected her awakening was no accident, for that night they had attended a risqué operetta in which a woman, scorned by her suitor, seduces his brother. Later that night, basking in the afterglow of lovemaking, Frank had determined that his first daughter should be named for the actress.

  “Marie Alouette,” he said. “It has a musical ring, don’t you think?”

  Before Louise could answer, the midwife entered and placed the baby in her arms. Looking at the baby, stroking her black hair and silky skin, nearly took her breath away.

  The midwife said, “Looks like a little papoose.”

  Louise’s hand stopped on a rosy cheek, the tender moment broken. The black hair had come as no surprise, something Louise was prepared to explain. Still, the midwife’s remark caught her off guard. Before her fluttering eyelids could betray her, she lifted the baby and held her in front of her face. She spoke to no one in particular. “Whenever you lift her, you must support her head with your hand.” She closed her eyes, kissed the baby’s head, and breathed deeply. Except for the baby’s fair skin, there was nothing to suggest she would ever look like Frank with his sandy hair, blue eyes, and crooked grin.

  Frank said, “There’s no black hair in my family.”

  The midwife was gathering up her supplies, preparing to leave. “She could end up a little towhead. I seen a baby’s hair go from black to spun gold.”

  Her eyes still closed and nuzzling the baby’s neck, Louise said, “Black hair like my Indian grandmother. She was part Sioux, belonged to the Ioway tribe.” She cuddled her daughter against her breast, and looked at Frank. “That’s the Morrissey complexion if I ever saw it. Ivory skin, once the pink goes away. And she has your nose.” Louise touched Marie’s chin. “And where did you get that dimple, Miss Marie Alouette Morrissey?”

  As she unwrapped the receiving blanket, Louise swelled with maternal relief to see the perfect little body, ten toes, ten long fingers. But into the midst of the joyful first moments with her daughter came the fears that had dogged her for nine months. Fear that Frank would discover her infidelity. Fear that her infidelity would become public, she and her daughter would be shunned and Frank, the cuckolded husband, ridiculed.

  Frank dropped into bed at the end of the day, exhausted as though he, not Henryetta, had bustled about all day caring for Louise and Marie. He kissed Louise on the cheek, inhaled the fragrance of clothesline-fresh sheets, and fell into a deep sleep.

  Marie’s cries awakened him from a dream about duck hunting with Francis Joseph Morrissey Jr. He got up, turned on a light, roused Louise, and propped pillows behind her before bringing her the baby.

  Louise bared her breast, gleaming white in the lamplight, and guided the nipple into Marie’s little mouth. Frank wondered at the strangeness of it. How his own mouth used to delight in Louise’s breasts and her undulating response. Now little more than a bystander, he turned away from mother and babe, black hair against white breast. Complete unto themselves.

  The next day, Frank felt like a visitor, popping into the bedroom now and then to see how the little mother was doing.

  On the third morning, he entered the bedroom as Louise was nursing Marie. They were sitting in the oak rocker that Frank had built the first time Louise was with child.

  “Can I bring you anything?” he asked, knowing full well that Henryetta supplied everything Louise might need.

  The baby finished suckling and appeared to be drifting to sleep. Louise settled Marie in her lap.

  “Yes. Bring me a clean washrag.”

  Frank returned with the washrag and handed it to Louise. He could not take his eyes off the breast that was still fully exposed.

  Then Louise wiped Marie’s right eye with the washrag, lifted the eyelid, and squirted milk from her nipple into the eye. “See how red the lids are? Henryetta says Marie has a cold in her eye.” She wiped the baby’s cheek. “The remedy is mother’s milk.”

  That night Frank was awakened by a blow to his cheek. Louise was thrashing about, heat radiating from her body. He got a basin of cold water and a washrag and bathed her face and neck. In just a few moments the rag became warm. He wet it again and wiped her face, actions he repeated until the water itself grew warm, and he replaced it with cold. He persisted until at last the fever subsided. The emergency over, he went weak thinking his beloved wife could have succumbed to one of the deadly consequences of childbirth.

  Mid-morning Louise shuddered with chills. Frank and Henryetta rounded up blankets which they piled on top of her. The day was turning out to be unseasonably hot, and Frank wiped sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve. “How can she be cold?”

  Henryetta rubbed Louise’s arm vigorously. “She needs a doctor.”

  Frank hastened to his den where he shoved past boxes to reach the phone. He shouted at the telephone operator to connect him to Doc Foster, who said he would come immediately. Frank dropped into his chair.

  He wanted to return to Louise’s bedside, but hearing Marie’s faint cries, he went instead to the nursery. Marie’s cry was feeble, not the hearty cry of a baby demanding to be fed. A thick discharge came from her reddened right eye, and now her left eyelid appeared red. With Henryetta tending Louise, he was left alone to comfort Marie.

  He lifted her and placed her on a shoulder, careful to support her head. He paced the length of the hall, back and forth, patting her little back until she settled down. Almost surprised at his ability to calm her, he placed her back in the bassinet and watched her sleep. “There, now. That’s my girl.”

  When Frank went back to the bedroom, Louise’s fever had returned. Curls, damp with perspiration, clung to her forehead, and she was writhing and becoming tangled in bedclothes.

  Frank answered the knock at the door. “Doc, you’re not a minute too soon.”

  Doc reached inside his leather bag for a handkerchief and blotted perspiration from his forehead. “I shall need to wash my hands first.”

  Frank led the way to the water closet and paced outside the door as he waited for the doctor to wash up. When Doc went to the bedroom to examine Louise, Frank stayed in the hallway, shifting from one foot to the other. He withdrew a pad and pencil from his shirt pocket, intending to sketch a schematic for his Whirlwind Maid cart, but his shaking hand drew scribbled lines instead. He jammed the pad and pencil back in his pocket.

  Eventually Doc emerged from the bedroom. “Puerperal sepsis. Whoever attended the delivery knows nothing about hygiene.”

  “What’s she got?”

  “Childbed fever. From dirty hands or instruments. Used to be much more prevalent, but the knowledgeable physician practices modern methods of sanitation.”

  “Will she get well?”

  “Who is caring for your wife? I have some instructions for her.”

  “Our housekeeper, Henryetta. She’s in the kitchen.”

  “Your wife will recover. I know you’re worried. She’s very sick now, but that’s her body fighting off the infection.” He was trying to latch his bag as he spoke. “Now,
if you’ll direct me to your housekeeper.”

  “The baby is doing poorly. I hope you can do something.”

  Doc stopped fumbling with the latch. He looked hard at Frank. “After I wash my hands.”

  When Doc returned from the water closet, Frank led him to the nursery.

  Doc leaned over the bassinet where Marie slept.

  “Henryetta says it’s a cold in her eyes,” Frank said, “but she gets weaker by the day.”

  With a trembling hand, Doc pried open one eye. It was red, and the pus was so profuse Frank had to look away. Marie whimpered, a pitiful little sound.

  The doctor’s voice was somber. “Babies’ sore eyes.”

  “Hurts a lot, I suppose,” Frank said.

  “This is a serious infection. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it has the potential to blind her. I shall put some drops in her eyes that might arrest the infection if it’s not too late.”

  “She could go blind?”

  Doc spoke with a catch in his voice. “Yes.”

  Frank shook his head and waved his hand as though he might whisk away the news. He felt the same sense of nowhere to turn he’d experienced after his brother died. He looked at Marie, realized how attached he’d become to this little creature, and rebuked himself for having felt cheated out of a son.

  At the doctor’s request, Frank had Henryetta bring some boiled water, a clean rag, and a small bowl. Doc wet the rag, let it cool, and wiped Marie’s eyes. Then he took a bottle and a glass rod from his bag. He opened the bottle and inserted the rod. “This will sting.” He held one of Marie’s lids open with his thumb, and with the other hand held the rod over her eye until a drop fell.

  She let out a faint, shrill cry and flailed her little arms.

  “Hold her, please,” Doc said.

  Frank’s heart ached to see his baby girl suffer, but he held her still while Doc instilled a drop in her other eye.