After the Fog (9 page)

Rose grimaced. Henry was always spouting philosophic “what ifs” that at one time Rose used to entertain. They’d become background noise to her, well, she wasn’t sure when, but they floated through the air, entering her ears, but not sparking any intellectual interest.

“You just tell the truth, Henry. That seems to be the best way to avoid stepping into dog-shit, don’t you think?”

He shrugged, tapping his pencil on the yellow pad. “Like when there’s information you’re supposed to know and facts you’re not…”

Rose laughed and went to the closet. “Like when our daughter confided in you that she plans to toss away her future like dirty toilet paper?” She removed her uniform from her closet.

“Don’t ever do that again. Keep a secret,” Rose said, wishing she could wrench the words back into her mouth, knowing that she’d kept secrets from Henry she would never want to have to make up for. But still, this was different.

“Rose.” Henry appeared to feel all the guilt Rose thought he ought to, having kept such a secret. “I didn’t—”

A knock on the door stopped Henry from finishing his thought.

Sara Clara’s voice was muffled behind the wood door. “Doc Bonaroti said, Mrs. Sebastian confirmed, Rose. Don’t be late.”

Rose groaned. As if she’d ever been late for anything.

“The Doc said that, not me. Don’t be mad at me,” Sara Clara said.

“Oh I’m mad, Sara Clara,” Rose said.

Rose pulled her blue uniform over her fresh, white slip, its delicate lace, immaculate from Rose’s laundry skill as she did not let Sara Clara near her clothes. “So, spill it, what were you going to say?”

She glanced at Henry who was back to scribbling.

“Later,” he said, his voice conveyed that he was pouting. “Sounds like you have to run.”

She straightened the white, crisp collar and slipped into her best black, pumps—she had to show Mrs. Sebastian that in the work of a community nurse, the uniform was as important as what she did.

Rose turned back to Henry and saw the yellow paper sticking out from his pocket. She tugged on it. “Is this part of the poetic question of the day?”

“Hey,” he took the paper from her and set it on the side-table. “A moment of weakness is all. Nothing you ever…”

Rose put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows. She motioned to the yellow paper.

“It’s nothing Rose. Just a little crisis of conscious is all. Nothing you’ve ever struggled with, I know.”

Rose bit the inside of her mouth. She was choosing to let this pass. She had plenty of clock-time to get to the Lipinski home, but she needed to gather her thoughts and Henry’s nonsense wasn’t helping her do that.

“Don’t be sarcastic, Henry. Do what you know is right. Neither of us has the time for horseshit. I’ll take this little conversation as your apology for not telling me our daughter was dabbling in a vat of stupidity in her off-hours.” Rose took his face in her hands and gave him a quick smack on the lips. “She’s a scientist not a seamstress. Talk to her. Magdalena likes you better, after all. And, I’m operating on the notion that this is the end of your clandestine affairs, right?”

Henry nodded and tamped his cigarette into the ashtray. He stretched out in the middle of the bed, pulled the covers up to his chin and fell, it seemed to Rose, instantly asleep. She stared at the yellow paper he’d put on his side-table, the top half of the fold bouncing up as the radiator pushed heat into the air. Rose picked it up, but the clock caught her eye. She shoved the paper back onto the table and kissed Henry’s cheek before closing the door on the tiny, stale room.

* * *

Many believed a community nurse was essential to small town healthcare. She was the bridge between families and the ever-changing world of health and hygiene. Rose and Dr. Bonaroti had discussed the matter for years, but because the town of about fourteen-thousand citizens had eight doctors and several nurses at the mill hospital, it took extensive time and energy to raise the initial funding for Rose and their clinic—the place that offered care for women, children and non-mill employees. She and Bonaroti had only managed to implement their plan in the past year. And, their work had yielded results.

Across the country strategies mounted in how to win the war on communicable diseases. Rose was a voracious researcher, both borrowing and writing her own plans to best deliver pre-natal and postnatal care for mothers and their babies. She encouraged the thrust to assimilate immigrants into the American way of post-war life as the practice grew sharper and more prominent in large cities and small towns.

Nurses were charged with everything from showing a family how to manage their money, clean their home and sew clothing, to making regular visits to polio patients and treating acute viruses and infections like tuberculosis. This work inspired Rose more than her hospital job in a neighboring town had ever done. Even before she was a community nurse she’d always been available to help this person or that back to health, but that wasn’t the same as having a structured clinic and services available to an entire town.

She didn’t dislike nursing at the hospital, but it was inside this community network of delivering services to people whose needs were subterranean and wide-ranging that Rose found her true love and security. In the face of other people’s weaknesses, Rose brought strength. She could help anyone with anything, whether they wanted the help or not. She showed them what they didn’t know and why and how they needed her.

Rose headed down the hall from her bedroom and turned off the still-spinning Victrola. She found Leo seated on the chair by the front door, the top of his head just under her hanging nurse’s bag. His eyes were closed as though he’d dozed off.

“What are you doing?” Rose said.

Leo’s eyes snapped open. “Why hello there Sweetie! Mum and Dad said to go with you for today.”

Rose couldn’t help but be charmed by Leo’s pet name for her. Still, she didn’t want to schlep him around town. She was not a babysitter.

“Mummy went shopping. And Daddy’s sleeping.”

Rose sighed and dragged Leo into the kitchen where she sat him in a chair. She brushed the crumbs from the tabletop into her hand. “Dammit. Can’t anyone else in this house clean anything?”

Rose averted her gaze from the grease stained stove that Sara Clara must have overlooked as she attempted to redd-up the mess. The breakfast dishes teetered in the sink; dirty as when Rose had charged out of the kitchen. Rose would have to simply walk out the door and forget that no one cared enough to clean up after themselves.

“Last time you came with me,” Rose patted Leo on the shoulder. “I could have strung you by the toes by the end of the day. I’d have let you swing in the wind for decades if I wasn’t so, well you said, it, Sweet.” Rose grabbed the washcloth that was drying over the faucet and smelled it. Fairly clean. She turned the water on to hot and waited for it to heat.

“Remember, don’t make a peep while we’re at these homes. If need be, I’ll put you to work and you’ll pretend that you help me locate people who need our services. Like that girl in McKeesport who’s famous for bringing indigent and lazy people to their clinic that we read about…well, you’re no dummy. Just follow my cue and first and foremost, be quiet.”

Rose wet the towel, grabbed Leo’s cheeks with one hand and scraped at the crusted eggs and toast at the corners of his mouth. Naturally, he didn’t brush his teeth that morning. She yanked his mouth open and scrubbed his teeth with the cloth. He giggled even as he cringed, making Rose fall even more in love with him than she already was.

“You’ll sit on the porch while I do my exams and I might even have to send you walking ahead of me if someone is infectious, but I don’t see the infectious crowd until the end of the day, so to not spread disease.” She grabbed his arms and squeezed them. “You do what I say or I’ll smack your ass.”

He looked up at Rose, eyes wide. His lips parted as though Rose’s words had stolen his breath, and pulled her into a hug, nodding agreement.

“Well, okay then.” Rose wormed out of Leo’s grip. “Let’s go. Being late is unforgivable, you know. I have told you that before, hmm?”

She flicked her hand toward the hallway, sending Leo in that direction. Rose passed the family pictures in the hallway as she headed toward the door. Johnny’s photos revealed different expressions—an open-mouthed guffaw, an angry scowl, a pensive wonder whether taken seconds apart or years revealed yet another part of who Johnny was.

Magdalena wore the same dark, knowing expression in each of hers. She wasn’t joyless in the photos, but she wasn’t grinning either. Rose couldn’t really say what Magdalena might have been feeling in any of them and that made Rose wonder if she knew Magdalena at all. Rose touched one photo, traced Magdalena’s perfect jaw line grateful that Henry would set their daughter back on the proper path to college.

The last picture she passed was of Rose at fifteen, sitting in a room full to bursting with people. The blurry background blotted the fact she was in an orphanage but somehow it gave off a glow as though it was a mansion peopled with folks who loved her rather than exploited her.

Henry loved her in the photo, her appearance—her utter contentment; he insisted it stay there. Rose felt a chill as she pushed away the memory of the day the photo was taken, as the soul shadow that had haunted her for decades showed itself in that hallway.

She shuddered and crossed herself, asking God to forgive her, and she reminded herself to get to confession by late afternoon. Leo craned around the doorjamb. His hat perched on his head. He held Rose’s nurse’s cap out to her. “Here, Sweetie.”

Rose drew back, surprised at the sight of Leo’s dirty fingers, his oval fingerprints dotting her pristine, white and navy nurse’s cap. She would have scolded anyone else. She took the cap and fitted it to her head then squatted down to Leo’s eye-level.

“Jesus, Leo. That’s really thoughtful. I don’t think there’s another person in this house who would bring me my hat. You’re a definite doll, you are.” I wish you were mine, she almost said.

“Now, don’t touch my cap again. Look at what you’ve done. Your teeny fingers smudged up my whites.”

He stuck out his bottom lip.

“Not to worry, it’ll be every hue of grey by the time we get around the corner.” She tussled his hair and ordered him to wait by the door while she scrubbed her hands then loaded her bag with fresh pledgets, sterilized brushes, urine cups, green soap, the sanitary pads she’d made from old flannel, in all—more than seven pounds of weight across Rose’s arm for her trek around town attempting to create a healthy living environment for all who lived in Donora.

* * *

Rose stood on the porch, chest rising with calming breaths, running the data through her mind. Twenty-five hundred bedside visits, one and a half hours per work day in Bonaroti’s clinic, one hour per week for new mother conferences. And that only began to cover the town’s needs. Rose took another deep breath. The woman will fund the clinic; Rose said to herself and pulled out her map of Donora.

A flash of red drew her gaze to the gauzy fog. A cardinal hopped over and flew from one porch roof to another. A good omen, Rose thought, and spread her map out on the porch. She ordered Leo onto the floor to go over the path she was about to take.

She had five minutes to spare before heading toward the Lipinski’s. She’d been showing Leo the maps each time he went with her. If he was going to traipse all over town, he needed to know where he was and where he wasn’t in case he needed to head home alone.

Rose pointed to a spot on the map, the Lipinski’s, and several others she was due to see that day. She had Leo recite the path they’d take, street names and all.

Leo scratched his nose. “Where’re the hills?”

Rose squatted down with Leo and pulled his hand from his face. Impetigo spreads like news of a new floozy in town when kids start scratching and picking and rubbing around the nasal passages.

“There ain’t no hills on that map,” Leo said.

“
Aren’t any hills
, Leo. Not ain’t. Never ain’t.” Rose ran her finger from the Lipinski to the Nemoroski home—a place she’d never been to—on the very edge of the north end of town. Leo traced the same path with his tiny finger on top of Rose’s. Leo was right. The map, a one-dimensional version of town, was misleading to say the least.

On paper, Donora mostly appeared to be broken into neat squares and rectangles, with roads forming odd polygon shapes in the middle of town. But, overall the map’s layout gave the impression that the land hugging the horseshoe-shaped river was flat and easy to navigate. In reality, it was as though God had seized a section of the perfectly plotted land and lifted it up, shifting everything so roads that appeared parallel weren’t. The natural landscape forced homes to curve into hillsides, butt against stone walls, and dangle from plateaus, creating tiers of town, as if tightly knitted homes were fixed into the mountainside with glue and a prayer.

Steep sets of stairs acted as sidewalks up arrow-straight avenues, paved in cobblestone, cement, dirt, gravel or coal depending what was available at a given time. The steep landscape made Donora the perfect place for fog to inhabit on a daily basis, and added to the darkness the mills contributed on a round the clock basis.

“Don’t smudge up the bag,” Rose said. “Did you make bubbles? You can’t traipse around other people’s home, using their bathrooms.”