Compromise with Sin Read online

  “Yes,” Louise said. “A bacterial infection. I’ve been told that many women harbor bacteria, but it doesn’t usually infect the baby.”

  “Several organisms, such as pneumococcus, bacillus coli, and Koch-Weeks bacillus can cause mild ophthalmia and even scar the corneas sufficiently to impair sight.”

  “Pneumococcus? I once had pneumonia. Might the germ have remained in my body?”

  “None of the micro-organisms I mentioned is likely to result in the extreme damage I’m seeing in Marie’s eyes. She has gonococcal ophthalmia neonatorum, or ‘babies’ sore eyes.’ That’s the work of Neisseria gonorrheae, a germ transmitted when the baby passes through the birth canal of a mother who has—there’s no way to put this delicately—gonorrhea.”

  Louise jumped to her feet. “You have your nerve speaking such filth to a lady. Just because you’re a big city doctor gives you no right . . . Where I come from your kind would get run out of town on a rail.”

  She whirled about. She would collect Marie and they would return to the safety of Riverbend. Philadelphia had been a nightmare. But as she reached for the doorknob, the door opened and sent her staggering backward.

  The nurse caught Louise’s arm and kept her from falling. “I am so sorry.”

  “Miss Hitchcock,” Dr. Vandegrift said, “I think Mrs. Morrissey would be more at ease if you remained here.”

  Louise reached for the door. “I have heard quite enough,”

  “Please, Mrs. Morrissey,” the doctor said. “You made a long journey here on your daughter’s behalf, and I am truly sorry that I’ve not only disappointed you but made matters worse.” He gestured toward the chair.

  She hesitated, her mind reeling. Finally, she realized the only way to convince him he was wrong was to stand her ground. She sat. “There must have been another source of infection.”

  The nurse, who had begun gathering instruments, lifted the lid from a metal tray, and Louise caught the scent of alcohol.

  “Next to impossible,” Dr. Vandegrift said. “Transmission sometimes occurs in a hospital setting when a nurse fails to use proper hygiene after handling an infected baby. But even then the germ cannot thrive for long in air. Modern medicine has yet to unravel the mysterious workings of most germs and infections, but I can tell you with certainty that the link between gonorrhea and your daughter’s blindness is irrefutable.”

  Louise jumped at the clatter of the tray full of instruments hitting the floor.

  The nurse clasped a hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry.” She grabbed a towel, squatted down, and began placing the instruments in the tray and wiping up the alcohol.

  “Not to worry, Miss Hitchcock,” the doctor said. “Mrs. Morrissey, I don’t want you to leave here without understanding what almost certainly happened to you and your daughter. The unfortunate truth is that most men contract gonorrhea at some point in their lives. You’re a proper lady, and to learn that your husband gave you gonorrhea is unthinkable. In his defense, he probably contracted it before marriage, went to a doctor and got relief for the symptoms, thought he was cured, and didn’t realize he was still a carrier. I saw one case in which a man carried the germ for fifteen years.”

  Louise buried her face in her hands and shook her head. Impossible.

  “Your husband will be as devastated as you by this news,” Dr. Vandegrift said.

  Now Louise understood why the nurse had raised her eyebrows when she first saw Marie. It had nothing to do with Louise’s attire. “How widely known is this type of blindness?”

  “Unfortunately it’s almost unknown outside the medical community.”

  “Why unfortunately?”

  “We know that one-fourth to one-third of all children admitted to schools for the blind are needlessly blind because of babies’ sore eyes. We have statistical evidence—some of it going back twenty-five years—from lying-in hospitals in the British Isles, France, Boston, New York City, and here in Philadelphia, where universal application of dilute silver nitrate drops almost totally eradicated the disease. Yet, as much as I am loath to speak against my medical colleagues, it is shameful that babies are being blinded because physicians fail to act on what they know. In fairness to them, part of the problem is that medicine is a culture of healing, not preventing.”

  As he spoke, Louise only half listened. Why believe him? No other doctor had told her about gonorrhea. What if gonorrhea had been the true cause of her pelvic inflammatory disease? If so, who was the carrier, Frank or Doc?

  “Forgive my lecture,” Dr. Vandegrift said, “but greater public awareness will bring pressure to bear on lawmakers to mandate prophylactic drops in every newborn baby’s eyes. Getting that legislation will come about through grassroots movements in each state. We need courageous people to educate the public and their legislators plainly about what causes babies’ sore eyes and how it can be prevented. Respected people, like yourself.”

  “Me?” Louise asked. “What respectable woman talks about an unspeakable disease?”

  “One with courage and determination.” He looked at her as if she were that woman. “One willing to risk her reputation to save the sight of innocent babies.”

  “I beg your pardon, but you cannot know what it means to be a mother. No mother would publicly expose her daughter to the ridicule that would follow if it were believed she had been blinded by . . . “ She couldn’t bring herself to say the word. “Besides, you are wrong. My husband and I do not have what you said we have.”

  “I know this is difficult for you.” His expression and voice seemed sincere. “But please consider this: imagine that ten or twenty years ago, a courageous mother had pressed your state legislature to mandate drops, and a law was passed. Because that didn’t happen, Marie is needlessly blind.”

  No, it wasn’t for lack of a law that Marie was needlessly blinded. It was my own selfish compromise with sin.

  Louise was shaking when she and Marie left Dr. Vandegrift’s office. They walked to the Olde English House where they ate in the courtyard. She allowed Marie to order dessert even though she had not finished her meal.

  Marie mashed her vanilla ice cream against the sides of the silver bowl with her spoon. “This bowl is very cold. Touch it.”

  Louise touched the bowl, an object that was just one more topic in a stream of chatter in which Marie flitted from the fragrance of roses to the sounds of birds at their feet searching for crumbs to anything else that struck her fancy.

  Marie held her spoon suspended. “Listen.”

  “What is it? I don’t hear anything.”

  “Music.”

  “I hear it now. It’s coming closer.”

  “Accordian music. It would be fun to play the accordion. What’s your favorite instrument?”

  Louise could wait no longer. “Marie, I don’t know how to—I’m afraid Dr. Vandegrift can’t help you.” Her voice broke and the tears flowed.

  Marie pawed the table until she touched her mother’s hand. She grasped it tightly. “Don’t cry, Mother. I knew he would say that.”

  “But I wanted so much . . .” What Louise had wanted was to be a good mother, to give her daughter the comforts and advantages she never had, yet what she had given her was eternal darkness. “I am so sorry!”

  Marie appeared to be holding back tears herself. She patted Louise’s hand. “It’s not your fault.”

  The flickering hope Louise had brought to Philadelphia had been extinguished. One more expert had decreed that Marie would be permanently, irrevocably blind.

  Nothing had changed, except that in place of the flickering hope was a new horror. What if he were correct, that public attention was being called to the condition he said Marie had, “babies’ sore eyes?” What if it became common knowledge that children whose eyes looked like Marie’s were infected by gonorrhea? Would Frank suspect that she had betrayed him? On the other hand, was it he who had infected her or had Doc? Marie must never know. God, heap all the punishment you want on me, but spare Marie the shame.


  Through the train’s window Louise saw Frank waiting on the platform. Her body ached from sitting too many hours, and her head throbbed from the Pullman car’s smoke-filled air, but she almost wished she and Marie could stay on the train, escape to a new life where she would no longer have to worry about a husband finding out her secret.

  Frank helped first Marie, then Louise off the train. They went inside the depot to await a porter with their bags. Frank gave Marie a penny to buy French roasted peanuts, her usual treat when they went to the depot.

  Marie walked assuredly with her cane to the row of candy dispensers, located the one on the far left, and counted over three to her right.

  “No, Marie,” Louise called. “Your peanuts have been moved to the dispenser on your left.” Such was Marie’s reality today, tomorrow, and forever.

  Louise told Frank about discovering that Dr. Mayhew was a quack and about meeting with Dr. Vandegrift. “Frank, he can’t—”

  “I know. I saw it in your face when you stepped off the train. Now you’ve heard it from a big specialist in the East. You’re not a quitter, but it’s time to give up. You’ve done everything humanly possible.”

  “He said she was blinded by pneumococcus.” Louise buried her head in his shoulder to hide her fluttering eyelids.

  7

  May 1904

  Louise sat stiffly in the assigned wooden folding chair on the stage of the high school gymnasium, which doubled as an auditorium. The large mother-of-pearl buttons on her new dress dug into her back. Doc sat just a whisper away on her right, looking smart as ever in a handsome suit. Seeing the man who had wronged her, called her a “Jezebel,” accused her of consorting with “that halfbreed,” and, even worse, probably carried the gonorrhea that caused Marie’s blindness, roused loathing like she’d never felt for another living soul. Yet she could not help remembering the power of his velvety voice and sweet, smoky aroma.

  She had come to the ceremony with an agenda. Not the full agenda she desired. That would have meant facing Doc and demanding answers. Did he have gonorrhea? Why had he not warned her that her baby might be blinded? Why had he not intervened and instilled sight-saving drops when Marie was born, not when it was too late? Demanding answers was not possible in this public setting. The most she could hope for was to wound him with words that would indicate she knew the cause of Marie’s blindness─not that she had fully admitted it to herself─and, if he had any conscience at all, perhaps he would suffer.

  In front of the stage, Marie sat on the piano stool, swinging her legs and waiting for the signal to begin playing. Looking angelic in her new dress, she ran her fingers over the peplum’s ribbon embroidery flowers and leaves whose colors she had memorized. The embroidery served more than a decorative function. To a bystander, Marie’s actions would seem pointless, but Louise knew she was calming herself.

  As people were taking their seats, J.D. approached Marie and touched her shoulder. Marie extended her hands to find the ends of the keyboard, then her fingers found the keys, and she began to play Sinding’s “Rustles of Spring.” She swayed with the music’s rhythm, a habit Louise hoped she would eventually overcome.

  Curly Ambrose was bent over, his head under the hood covering his camera. He lifted the hood, stood, and limped as he moved the tripod a couple of feet forward. The photos he was taking today would appear in a commemorative book that would include his pictures of the actual tornado. He had gotten so caught up in photographing the storm that he hadn’t seen a flying board headed his direction, hence the limp. Now his camera was positioned to get a picture of Marie.

  The piano was set at an angle so that Marie’s face was visible to people on stage but not to the audience. Louise sensed that Doc was watching Marie. Did he see himself in her, the raven hair and dimpled chin? So undeniably his child. Was he consumed with guilt? Louise shifted in her seat, took a handkerchief from her pocket, and blotted her perspiring forehead.

  Doc’s attention was on Mrs. Graves, seated to his right, the civic leader Louise had once hoped to succeed. The matriarch kept him engaged in conversation, or more accurately, riveted him in place with a relentless monologue.

  Louise scanned the audience, wondering if she would recognize anyone she had aided after The Twister. But other thoughts kept intruding. Doc wasn’t the one who shielded Marie from thoughtless and downright cruel people. Doc wasn’t the one who worried about her future, a day when, as a blind, disfigured spinster, she would have no one to shield her. Doc was the one for whom a handful of Wednesday afternoons were a lark and nothing more.

  A woman’s voice said, “Mrs. Morrissey.”

  Louise had to incline her body in Doc’s direction to look at Irina Taylor seated behind him. She held her breath as though to numb herself against Doc’s closeness, but the moment was heavy with the sense that in another lifetime she would have quivered in anticipation of his lips on her neck.

  “Your daughter is a brilliant pianist.”

  “Thank you.” Feeling the enchantment of Irina’s misty blue-violet eyes, Louise wondered how such a beauty was still single at what must be nearly thirty years of age. She was employed as a visiting nurse, and no doubt her path and Doc’s sometimes crossed. She was far more attractive than Dr. Foster’s wife who, according to rumor, had been reduced to a brooding homebody by the “change of life.” Had Irina known him as well?

  Marie was nearing the end of a medley from Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Louise held her breath waiting for a passage where Marie’s fingers sometimes stumbled in practice. But Marie executed it flawlessly. Louise exhaled.

  The next song, a new ragtime composition by Debussy, would set folks to tapping their feet, the senior Mrs. Henkleman had said at Marie’s most recent piano lesson, a song perfectly suited to the tinny-sounding school upright. Indeed, when Marie began playing “Golliwogg’s Cakewalk” it so captivated the audience that they stopped talking.

  Louise closed her eyes and listened. Though not a musician herself, she had a good ear. She assisted Marie in daily practice, tending the Victrola when Marie was learning a new piece. Louise would set the needle on a recording and let it play through a phrase of music, then lift the needle. Marie would attempt the passage, then Louise would play the same passage on the recording and Marie would try it once again. Mother and daughter repeated this musical dialogue until both agreed Marie had it right. Then they moved to the next passage.

  Now with her eyes closed, just listening, Louise reveled in her daughter’s command of the difficult piece. Anticipating her favorite part, she opened her eyes to see Marie’s right and left hands play syncopated octaves. Good restraint, Marie, not overstating the rising volume. Just then Marie stumbled over the notes.

  Louise held her breath. Just keep going, Marie.

  Marie stopped, then went back to the bass octaves and attacked them with determination. She stumbled, but this time she kept going and played the rest of the song with joy that was contagious. Now she wasn’t just providing background music, she was an admired soloist who finished to a standing ovation. She rose, turned toward the audience, and responded with a curtsy, a move she had delighted in practicing over and over at home.

  As the applause continued, Doc said, “Remarkable how she recovered. Such poise. You must be very proud.” With his chin tilted up and eyebrows raised, his look felt like that of a master taking the trouble to compliment a servant.

  Louise wanted to spit words at him but instead affected a civil tone: “Remarkable, yes. One wonders what she might accomplish were she not needlessly blind.”

  His face sagged. Caught without words he shifted his eyes away from Louise’s determined gaze. She had expected to feel satisfied, but anger stiffened her neck and squeezed her head, signaling the onset of a headache.

  When the high school choir began to sing “Nearer My God to Thee,” Frank, as planned, appeared and guided Marie toward the seat he’d saved between him and Yonder, who had just arrived home hours earli
er, having cut short a trip to San Diego so he could see Marie’s performance. Louise watched as Frank and Marie walked past the rows of people in the audience. Seeing some people recoil at the sight of Marie’s eyes was an affront Louise had experienced often but never got used to. She covered her mouth with a balled fist. Her breaths came hard, and her head throbbed.

  A long, rambling prayer followed the music. No doubt the twenty-seven victims of The Twister had prayed, too, and for what? To no more avail than her prayers over her baby brothers or her prayers for deliverance from her father or her prayers that Marie’s sight be saved.

  J.D. presided as Master of Ceremonies. He looked the part, being a man who carried his ample corseted physique with an air of success. He gestured with pink, manicured hands that had never known the stain of printer’s ink. As publisher of The Riverbend Nonpareil he enjoyed the comfort of a private office where he spent as much time acquiring and managing real estate as running the newspaper.

  In the oratorical tones of the politician he aspired to be, J.D. began: “Welcome. There could be no more fitting location for The Twister Tenth Anniversary ceremony than this, the high school gymnasium. Where you are sitting now was the infirmary after The Twister of 1894, just as it was following the blizzard of 1888, the flood of 1892, and the train derailment of 1893.”

  Next he introduced the honorees seated on the stage and presented each with a plaque. The last of these he invited to come forward together: Dr. Benjamin DeWitt Foster, Mrs. Francis Joseph Morrissey, and Miss Irina Lee Taylor.

  Louise felt her face flush. With the eyes of several hundred people on her, she took self-conscious steps, as though walking were a new endeavor. Standing between Doc and Irina, she hoped the audience would not notice her trembling, or if they did they would attribute it to stage fright, which would be partially true. She strained to fix her attention on J.D.’s words.