Compromise with Sin Read online

  “No,” Madge said.

  “Louise is related to a prodigy,” Alice said. “Her progeny is a piano prodigy.”

  “Thank you.” Louise appreciated Alice’s remark, especially given that she knew the reason Alice’s daughter quit taking piano lessons was because Mrs. Henkleman had told Alice not to waste her money.

  “That’s clever,” Dovie said, twirling a lock of hair on the back of her head. “Not gloomy like Madge’s sentence. And it’s true, Marie is a prodigy.”

  Louise could not have asked for a more perfect opening. “Thank you. I don’t know if Marie is a prodigy, but I’ve just been bursting to tell you that J.D. asked her to play the piano for The Twister anniversary.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Alice said. “Now let’s have refreshments.”

  While the others adjourned to seats at the large reading table, Louise went to the kitchen and returned with hot tea and kolaches and took the seat next to Dovie.

  Dovie took a bite of her apricot-filled kolache and licked her fingers. “Positively sinful.”

  Gertrude scowled. “I’ll tell you what’s sinful. It’s the latest Ladies’ Home Journal . . .”

  Madge interrupted. “I thought you cancelled your subscription long ago.”

  “I did, but Mother bought a copy on the newsstand. Anyway, you’d think that magazine would know women won’t tolerate such filth in their homes. Whatever you do, don’t leave that magazine lying about where children might see it.”

  “My copy of the Journal has not arrived yet,” Madge said. “What makes it unsuitable for children?”

  Gertrude’s black eyebrows arched over eyes that flashed in anger. “An article about venereal disease. My church circle was fit to be tied yesterday.”

  “I saw it,” Dovie said.

  Louise had received the magazine but hadn’t read it yet. As Dovie began to speak, Louise wondered if she’d express her own opinion or channel one of J.D.’s self-righteous rants.

  Dovie said, “The editor says the magazine will continue to educate women about an epidemic that threatens to destroy the home, that wives need to know they might unwittingly become infected with gonorrhea that can make them sterile or even kill them. He goes on to say that seventy percent of special surgeries on women are for complications of gonorrhea.”

  Louise recalled the surgery she had required the year after Marie was born. “Pelvic inflammatory disease,” the gynecologist had called it, a complication of childbed fever.

  “They can’t be talking about respectable women,” Gertrude said. “It’s those immigrants.”

  Madge chastised Gertrude with the practiced look of a woman who had taught high school for many years. “Let me give you a bit of advice. You’re sadly mistaken if you think respectable women don’t get gonorrhea. They get it from husbands who have visited brothels. The article makes the point that some men can carry the germ for years after they were afflicted.”

  “I liked the magazine better when they stuck to housekeeping matters and recipes and raising children,” Dovie said.

  Louise noticed Gertrude’s neck and cheeks had turned bright red. “Gertrude, are you all right? Do you need to lie down?”

  “No, I’m fine.” Gertrude fanned herself with a napkin. “It’s the world that isn’t fine. When good people allow that godforsaken magazine into their homes.” Her mouth tensed, and her voice grew strident. “There’s a breakdown of morality in this country. Satan has a hold.”

  Louise took the teapot to the kitchen, refilled it, and returned. She sat down next to Dovie, who was fanning herself.

  “No more tea for me, please. It’s way too hot.”

  “Let me give you a bit of advice,” Madge said.

  Louise anticipated─and received─a light kick directed at her ankle by Dovie. She managed to hold a stoic expression even while thinking of what Frank had to say about Madge: “If she were in a burning building, instead of yelling ‘Fire,’ she would command, ‘Render aid forthwith as this structure is being immolated by a conflagration.’“

  “Hot tea, without sugar of course,” Madge said, “is more conducive to a healthy constitution than iced drinks, which are a shock to the system.”

  “Speaking of a healthy constitution,” Louise said, “Gertrude, did you find your visit to the hot springs revitalizing?”

  Gertrude dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “Truth to tell, I only go for Mother’s benefit. I’m not particularly fond of the springs myself. Well, as you all know, Mother is always chatting up strangers, and she got to talking to an eye doctor from Philadelphia. Mother is convinced he took a shine to me.” A hint of a self-conscious smile appeared, then Gertrude looked at Louise. “Mother told him about Marie’s eyes, and he said he might could help her.”

  “Thank you, Gertrude,” Louise said, “but we’ve been to the best ophthalmologists in the Midwest—Omaha, Chicago, Rochester. They all say the same thing, that there’s nothing that can be done to restore her sight.”

  “Oh, but this doctor isn’t an ophthalmologist. His specialty is natural vision correction. When Mother told him Marie can tell night from day and not much else, he said he could teach her to do eye exercises to strengthen muscles that focus images on the brain or some such thing.”

  “You’re so kind,” Louise said. “But I’m skeptical. I just can’t get Marie’s hopes up again only to see them dashed.”

  6

  May 1904

  In Philadelphia Louise carried Marie’s satchel and helped her daughter board a streetcar outside their hotel. Then she followed Marie, who used her cane to get down the aisle until Louise indicated two available seats.

  Marie wore her navy blue sailor dress and straw hat. In the barren years before Marie’s birth, Louise had dreamed of having a daughter to dress up, one whose beauty, manners, and fine apparel would bring approving looks from the matrons of society’s highest echelons. Every garment in Marie’s wardrobe was top quality, and her raven braids shone like her patent leather boots. But it was her eyes that commanded attention.

  A little boy and his mother got on the streetcar. The boy pointed to Marie and said, “Lookity. What’s wrong with her eyes?”

  Louise gave the mother a look that said, “Teach that little savage some manners.”

  The woman slapped the boy’s pointing hand.

  Marie whimpered. “I want to go home. I miss Father.”

  Louise patted her arm. If only Frank had come along, he would have handled the situation. Originally Frank had planned to accompany them, but a “pressing business matter” came up. She knew better than to ask for particulars. He urged Louise to postpone the trip, not wanting her to travel alone, but she explained it had been fortunate that Dr. Mayhew, the eye doctor Gertrude had told her about, had had an immediate opening. No telling how long it could take to secure another appointment.

  Frank had been skeptical. Louise argued that the fact Marie’s left eye registered images as faint shadows in strong light could mean there would be something Dr. Mayhew could work with. This would be the last time she would chase a cure. She meant it. Most likely, nothing could be done. She had steeled herself against that outcome but didn’t know how she’d react if he said, “I could have restored her sight had you brought her to me sooner.”

  “This won’t hurt, will it?” Marie asked.

  “No. We hope that Dr. Mayhew might be able to help you see some things that you can only feel now.”

  “Like Braille dots?”

  “No, sighted people don’t read raised dots.”

  “Will I be like other children?”

  “No matter what happens, you will always be your own, special self.”

  “If I could be like other children, that would be the best birthday present in the world.”

  Louise so wanted to promise her daughter a miracle, wanted to believe it herself. A lump formed in her throat. Better to say nothing,

  The streetcar left the city’s bustling commercial center, w
here sidewalks swarmed with purposeful men and women who seemingly had no time to waste, and passed into a grimy district where men idled on street corners, and women toted bundles and children. Louise double-checked the address. It would be in the vicinity of the next stop.

  The foolishness of her expedition gripped her. A woman alone in a strange city trying to safeguard a blind child. She should have waited for Frank.

  But she had not come this far to quit. With all the bravado she could muster, she guided Marie off the streetcar, around the street’s loose bricks and potholes and, wishing she and her daughter were not so conspicuously well dressed, past characters she suspected of being pickpockets or worse. At the place where Dr. Mayhew’s office should have been was a boarded-up storefront flanked by a barbershop and dentist’s office. Louise stopped and scanned the buildings on both sides of the block.

  “What’s wrong?” Marie asked.

  “I’m not finding the doctor’s office. Perhaps the dentist can direct us.”

  Louise opened the door to a small, dimly lit room, which smelled unmistakably of cloves. The dentist, his jacket spattered with blood, and a patient stood shouting at each other, the patient disputing the fee for a simple extraction.

  “Pardon me,” Louise said, “but will you please tell me where I might find Dr. Mayhew?”

  “No idea.” The dentist glanced at Marie and looked away. “You just missed him. Got evicted last week.”

  Her hopes dashed, she felt weak. What now? Frank would have known what to do.

  “You’re not looking well, ma’am,” the dentist said. “I’ll fetch you some water.”

  Louise took a deep breath and straightened. “No thank you. But we came all the way from Nebraska just to see Dr. Mayhew.”

  “Would’ve been a waste of your time either way,” the dentist said. “He was a quack.”

  The patient nodded toward Marie. His jaw was swollen and his speech slurred. “You might could take her to see Dr. Vandegrift. Don’t know the man personally, but he’s famous.”

  “That’s true,” the dentist said.

  That afternoon Louise and Marie joined other patients in the tastefully appointed parlor of Dr. Durwood Vandegrift’s home, located in a leafy neighborhood of grand estates with vast, manicured lawns and ornate wrought iron fences. Normally it would have taken several months to get an appointment, but when Louise had appeared and pleaded her case, the doctor agreed to see Marie on short notice.

  Louise guided her daughter to an overstuffed sofa where they could avoid the curious glances of other patients in the waiting room. Even the woman with a badly aligned glass eye, no doubt the object of rude looks herself, craned her neck to see Marie’s affliction.

  Once seated, Louise patted Marie. “You’re quite the little trooper. It’s been a hard day, and I know you must be hungry, but you haven’t complained one bit. After we see Dr.Vandegrift, we’ll go to the restaurant I saw nearby.”

  Marie pulled a cumbersome Braille book from her satchel, an installment of Swiss Family Robinson. She turned to the middle of the book, glided her fingers over a line of raised dots, flipped some more pages, and stopped, visibly distressed. “I’ve lost my place. I already read this part. I forgot the page number.”

  It was not like Marie to forget or give up. Louise felt her frustration. “I can help. What was happening?”

  “The family had just made it onto the lifeboat.”

  Able to read Braille by sight, Louise scanned pages until she found the word “lifeboat,” then looked ahead to the part Marie had indicated. “Here it is, the middle of this page.”

  She handed the book to Marie, thinking how unfair it was that Marie’s fingers could never glance at a book or a page and know what it’s about. At the same time she admired Marie’s capacity to read with her fingers and to “write” Braille using a slate and stylus.

  The woman who beckoned them from a doorway looked from Marie to Louise with raised eyebrows. Louise’s neck and shoulders tightened. Perhaps her attire, modish by Midwestern standards, did not measure up.

  When they entered the drab windowless room, Dr. Vandegrift stood to greet them. Louise had envisioned him to be a portly man with graying hair, but he was young, perhaps thirty-five.

  He invited Louise and Marie to sit, then took a seat on a low, rolling stool across from them. Instead of immediately beginning his examination, he said, “Miss Marie, I understand you traveled a great distance to Philadelphia. What did you like best about your trip?”

  “I can’t decide. Maybe eating beer cheese soup for the first time. No, wait, my most favorite thing was getting to sleep in a berth with my mother and having the train rock me to sleep.”

  As he listened to Marie’s response, he did not act preoccupied or bury himself in note-taking but gave her his full attention. Louise liked his manner, but her heart raced as she waited to learn what, if anything, he could do for her daughter.

  “What a wonderful trip.” When he pushed his stool back the casters squealed, and Louise flinched. He gave her a sympathetic look. “I understand you’ve had a trying day, Mrs. Morrissey.”

  He moved the stool until he sat about five feet from Marie. He reached for a glass jar, removed a lemon candy straw, and held it at Marie’s eye-level. “I have something for you in my right hand. Can you point to it?”

  Marie started towards him.

  “Stop there, please. Can you point to it without coming closer?”

  Louise leaned forward and held her breath. If Marie demonstrated that she could make out his hand, perhaps this doctor could do what others could not.

  Marie shook her head.

  Louise hastened to justify Marie’s performance. “The light in here is too low. In bright light she sees people and large objects well enough to keep from bumping into them.”

  “What about now, Marie?” Dr. Vandegrift said. He waved the candy from side to side, then held it still.

  Marie pointed, and the doctor gave her the candy.

  Louise’s heart made a little leap. Marie had outdone herself.

  “You’re a clever little rascal.” He turned to Louise. “She detected the sound of my arm moving and the ‘acoustic shadow’ left by my arm where it stopped. In other words, my arm and hand blocked the background sound waves that you and I scarcely notice.”

  Louise scowled. It hardly seemed a fair test.

  Marie giggled. “Thank you. Lemon straws are my most favorite.”

  He moved closer to her, lifting her eyelids with his thumbs and giving each eye a cursory glance. “There, now. That didn’t hurt, did it? Come with me, and we’ll get one of my helpers to read you a story while I visit with your mother.”

  He took Marie’s hand and led her from the room.

  In his absence Louise reflected on his cursory examination of Marie, straining to recall anything hopeful in his voice or manner. But he had given no clues one way or the other.

  When he returned he moved the stool closer and sat across from her. “Mrs. Morrissey, I wish I could offer encouragement, but Marie’s corneas are too severely damaged. The best I can offer you is that she will not lose what little perception she has now. It may not seem like much, but it’s vastly preferable to total darkness. You can help her by providing ample lighting.”

  The words taxed Louise’s resolve to be strong, whatever the outcome. She covered her face. She had been foolish to make this trip. Dr. Vandegrift’s opinion echoed that of every other doctor who had looked at Marie.

  He tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. “Do you have any children other than Marie?”

  “No, she’s our only child.” A curious question.

  “Are you able to bear more children?”

  Such impertinence. He did not need to know of the female troubles that followed Marie’s birth and the complications that necessitated surgery. “I fail to see what this has to do with Marie’s eyesight.”

  “Please, bear with me. Now will you describe the condition of her eyes in inf
ancy?”

  “She was born with perfectly healthy eyes. But three days later, her right eyelid turned red, and a watery discharge appeared, which soon turned to pus. And the symptoms appeared in her left eye as well. She was very fretful.”

  “Did she receive treatment?”

  “At first our housekeeper said to treat her eyes with mother’s milk. By the time the doctor saw her, her eyes oozed copious amounts of pus. He put drops in them and advised us to bathe her eyes with a boric acid solution every hour and apply ice packs.” Louise bit her lower lip. Finally, she knew she must ask. “Could you have helped her if I had brought her to you before now?”

  The doctor shook his head. “No. Had treatment been administered at the first sign of infection, the damage could have been mitigated. It’s possible that mother’s milk, along with boric acid and ice packs, served to retard the damage in her left eye. But, and I know this will be difficult for you to hear, had a prophylactic been administered at birth, there would have been no infection.” He sighed. “Mrs. Morrissey, your daughter is needlessly blind.”

  It seemed the air had been sucked from the room and the walls were closing in. Louise could only look at him, her hand covering her mouth, and shake her head. When she was able to speak her words came out soft and measured. “Am I to understand that with proper medical care she would not have lost her sight?”

  “Almost certainly if the doctor had instilled drops of dilute silver nitrate in her eyes immediately after birth.”

  “She was delivered by a midwife. And her eyes appeared healthy at birth.”

  “Doctor, midwife, I don’t know about Nebraska, but here in the East we struggle in vain to make them understand the importance of instilling drops immediately after birth to prevent blindness. Unfortunately most fail to practice it. Should you give birth to another child, you must insist on prophylaxis. It’s a delicate subject that physicians don’t want to broach lest they turn wives against husbands.”

  This doctor made no sense.

  “Let me explain something to you that other doctors obviously have not. They see that you’re a lady, so they tell you the infection resulted from certain micro-organisms that entered Marie’s eyes during birth.”