Cate Campbell (12 page)

The twins shared a long, narrow room on the third floor, with a slanted ceiling. A gable-fronted dormer looked down into the tall camellia, abloom now with white, waxy flowers. The morning light shone on the spotless white coverlets of two single beds and reflected from the mirrored tops of the matching bureaus. A rocking chair was drawn into the dormer, and in it sat Loena with some needlework in her lap. Her hair was fiery in the sunlight, but when she turned her surprised face to the visitors, Margot was shocked by the pallor behind her freckles.

“Loena?” Margot made an effort to speak gently. “Leona says you’re not feeling well. You should have sent for me.”

“Oh, no, Miss Margot,” Loena said in a trembling voice. “It was just a little stomach upset. I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

Margot started across the room toward her, but Leona, in a gesture Margot was sure took all her courage, stepped into her path. “I can take care of her,” she said.

Margot stopped. “I’m sure you can. But why not let me have a look, now that I’ve climbed the stairs?”

Leona started to demur, but Loena said softly, “Never mind, Leona.” The rocker’s runners clacked as she stood up. She laid her sewing on the window seat and turned to face Margot with the air of one facing an executioner. She wore a loose cotton dress, and no apron. “They’re all going to know soon enough.”

Spring in Seattle, Frank found, was a fragile season. It crept shyly on the heels of winter, opening tentative buds, uncurling reluctant leaves, offering its flowers one by one—pale hellebore, vivid tulips, yellow and white daffodils. At last, as if the season were gaining confidence, azaleas blazed forth in white and pink and red. The flower beds bloomed with color around Building 105, a structure everyone fondly referred to as the Red Barn, where Frank worked at one of the long drafting tables beneath tall mullioned windows. The rains of spring were warmer and softer, though still frequent. Frank acquired an umbrella to protect his new camel’s hair overcoat and the Stetson dress hat he had carefully chosen at Frederick’s.

He felt a little like the spring himself, beginning to bloom in his new life. His mother had asked if he couldn’t take a few days to come home, and he had responded by inviting his parents to Seattle instead. He explained that he didn’t want to take time off from work so early in his new position. What he didn’t tell them was that he knew, if he went home to Missoula, he would be sure to meet Elizabeth. He didn’t want to see her. Didn’t want to remember.

His rooming house, recommended by the Benedicts’ butler, was on Cherry Street, just down the hill from the twin bell towers of St. James Cathedral. His room was modest but comfortable, a bedroom and a little sitting room, where he could lay his papers out on a round table and sit in an aged but comfortable chintz-covered chair. He shared a bath, an odd space tiled in mauve and brown with a door at either end, with another tenant. His landlady, a widow of about sixty, was pleasant enough, if a bit strict about things like visitors and alcohol on the premises.

Luckily, Frank thought wryly, he was a quiet drunk. He had found his source. He never bought more than he needed, and he smuggled his supply into his room under his coat. Mrs. Volger never needed to know.

It had become a ritual. Every evening, when he got off the streetcar, he walked to the diner where he had a bowl of chowder or a sandwich, and the proprietor slipped him a little tin flask under his bill. Frank walked up Cherry, greeted Mrs. Volger if she was there, and went up to his room to drink until the pain in his arm subsided. The pain seemed to lie in wait, dormant through the workday, coming to life once he left the Red Barn and started into the city. It would flicker during his supper, as if to make sure he didn’t forget its existence. By the time he started his walk up First Avenue to Cherry, it began to burn in earnest, making him hurry his steps.

On this night, when the azaleas lining Mrs. Volger’s front walk were in full bloom, he had a copy of the
Times
under his arm, and his flask secure in the inner pocket of his coat. He climbed the stairs two at a time. He spread the newspaper on the table and fetched his tooth glass from the bathroom before he locked his door, kicked off his brogues, and sat back in the chair.

The first sip was bliss, promising relief in the next few moments. He savored the bitter taste of the liquor, knowing it was going to quench the fire in his arm. A second sip, and a third, and the pain began to die down, to flicker out as if it, too, were done for the day. He poured a bit more whisky into the tooth glass, recapped the flask, and began to turn the pages of the paper.

He stopped when he saw the picture at the head of “Seattle Razz,” Preston Benedict’s weekly column.

Frank had read Benedict’s column once or twice, but he had no interest in the latest fashions or who was marrying whom in Seattle society. It seemed strange that a man like Preston would be writing about such things, but he supposed even a Benedict scion needed to work.

The picture was of Margot Benedict, Dr. Benedict, posing for a photographer at a benefit. He had not seen her for months, but he remembered her as a tall woman with a commanding presence. She had, as his mother would have said, a face that would age well, being strong featured and finely cut, a face he had liked. The
Times
photograph made her look merely plain. Even to his untutored eye, the gown she wore didn’t suit her, hanging too loosely about her narrow waist and hips. Its hem drooped to the toes of her shoes, hiding what he recalled were excellent ankles. She looked like someone’s image of a lady doctor. He wondered if she cared.

He leafed through the rest of the paper as he finished his whisky. When the glass was empty, he was ready to take off his vest and shirt. He hung them carefully in the wardrobe before he went to stand before the small oval mirror above his bureau, and face the ruin of his arm.

Would he ever, he wondered, be able to look at that red, swollen flesh without remembering Elizabeth’s horrified face?

 

He had tried to warn her in a letter. He didn’t know how he could have explained it any better. In the event, it was obvious he had failed to prepare her.

When Elizabeth first arrived at the hospital in Virginia, she met him in the lounge, where other wounded soldiers were receiving friends and family. He spotted her from across the room, and made his way through little knots of people, soldiers in hospital-issue dressing gowns, women in straw hats and long, drifting summer dresses, men in boaters standing awkwardly beside them. Elizabeth, her cheeks very pink, came in through the door, led by one of the nurses. Her clothes looked too warm for the Virginia summer, a long skirt and pleated shirtwaist with a high-collared jacket. Her fair hair was gathered into a thick twist at the nape of her neck beneath her wide-brimmed hat. Even from across the room, she looked apprehensive.

He hurried to her, wishing they had let him dress. The dressing gown was embarrassing, with its empty sleeve dangling. People gave him sympathetic glances as he passed them, the same ones they gave the one-legged men hobbling on crutches, slightly less grieved than the sorrowful looks bent on the men who had no legs at all, being pushed in wheeled chairs. He tried not to notice, mustering his most cheerful smile for his boyhood sweetheart.

Four years had changed her face. He remembered it round cheeked and full lipped, soft with youth. Now, at twenty-four, there were faint lines around her mouth and under her chin. Her cheeks were thinner, her mouth harder.

She kissed him gingerly, avoiding his left side. They sat in the lounge and talked, or tried to. He asked after her family, and the wheat crop, and the grazing. She asked him about the hospital food, and the voyage home. After a painfully short time, they ran out of things to say. He had never been much of a conversationalist, but they had been sweethearts. They needed time, he thought, to recapture the feeling between them, but he couldn’t deny that it was a relief when she said good-bye, and went back to her hotel with a promise to return in the morning.

Rosa Gregorio came to him early the next day. She was his favorite among the nurses at the Soldiers’ Home. He liked her direct manner, her Brooklyn accent, her unflinching way with his dressings.

She helped him sit up against his pillow. She poured out his whisky, watched as he drank it, queried him matter-of-factly about the level of his pain. She wrote in his chart, then hung it from the iron frame of the bed. When everything was done, she pulled a chair up beside him, sat in it, and gave him a level glance from beneath her starched cap.

“Looks like you have something to say, Nurse Gregorio.”

“You’re getting out next week, Major.”

“Hope so.” He shifted a little in the bed, pinned by her gaze.

“I saw your young lady in the lounge yesterday.”

“Yes?”

“Nice-looking girl.”

“Yes. Elizabeth.”

“She come to get you, then?”

“My family sent her to keep me company.”

“You’re engaged.”

He shrugged. “I think they call it an understanding.”

The nurse folded her hands together in her lap. “Major Parrish, I seen a lot of you boys come through here. I been here two years already.”

He waited. Rosa Gregorio, of everyone here, had been the most honest with him. It was from her he learned the surgeons had given up trying to repair the neuroma that caused him such anguish. It was she who tried to fit him with a prosthetic while he writhed in agony. She had told him, with a few straightforward words spoken in her Eastern twang, that there was nothing more the hospital could do.

She said, “You gotta show her now, Major. Don’t wait till you’re married.”

“It’s that bad?”

“Yes. It’s gonna be a shock. It don’t bother me, but I’m a nurse. I seen it all.” She leaned back and folded her arms. “Be glad it’s just your arm, Major. Some got it worse.”

“I know.” A heaviness settled around his heart then, and he had to look away from her kind, homely face.

“Want me to talk to her first?”

He set his teeth, thinking. After a moment, he shook his head. “I’ll do it.”

Her work-chapped hand gripped his shoulder briefly before she walked out of the ward and on to her other duties. He was glad she hadn’t said any more. He had the same feeling of premonition he had experienced that day on the battlefield of Megiddo.

Elizabeth returned just after breakfast. She looked pretty and old-fashioned, there among the other visitors in the lounge. He didn’t think she had changed her hairstyle at all during his absence. She sat on his right side, and he took her left hand in his right one. Her eyes were wary, and her tentative smile trembled on her lips.

“Are you feeling well today, Frank?”

He nodded. “Fine.” Her fingers were hot and restless in his, and he swallowed. No point in putting it off.

“They’ll let you go soon,” she said.

“Listen, Lizzie,” he began.

Her eyes skittered away. “No one calls me that anymore.”

“No?” He released her hand, pretending to adjust the collar of his dressing gown.

“Everyone calls me Elizabeth now.”

“Elizabeth, then. Listen to me.”

She raised her eyes to his. He had fallen in love with those eyes, blue as the wide Montana sky, perfect with her fair hair and rosy cheeks. “What is it?” she asked.

In as few words as he could manage, he told her what Nurse Gregorio had said.

She was silent for a long minute. Then, faintly, “I don’t want to look at it.”

For answer, he stood, taking her hand again to pull her to her feet. He led her out of the lounge, down the corridor to the ward where he had spent the last weeks. She protested once, weakly, but he gave a faint shake of his head, and pressed her into a chair beside the neatly made hospital bed. He sat down on the edge of it, and shrugged out of his dressing gown. He didn’t look at her as he peeled away the dressing.

He felt, as the gauze and tape fell away, that this time he was seeing his disfigured arm through Elizabeth’s eyes. He had grown used to its red, ragged appearance, the seeping scars left by the field surgeon, the raw skin where the stateside doctors tried, and failed, to repair the nerves. He had not quite become accustomed to the swellings at the end of it. He only hoped they wouldn’t grow larger.

Now, with Elizabeth staring at the ruined flesh, he saw how ghastly it really was, how ugly and offensive. She made a slight sound in her throat, and turned her head away.

He bound his arm up again, as best he could with one hand. He pulled the sleeve of his dressing gown over it, wincing as the fabric caught on the bandages. She didn’t watch any of this. “I’ve covered it,” he said. Despair made his voice hard. “It’s over.”

Slowly, she turned her head again to face him. Her eyes had darkened, and her cheeks were mottled pink and white, the color of grief. She smoothed her hair with trembling hands, and fidgeted with the placket of her shirtwaist. “Frank,” she began, and stopped.

“Nurse Gregorio was right,” he grated. He made his neck stiff and his jaw hard. He didn’t want to hurt Elizabeth, but if he broke down, if he showed his weakness, shed a single tear in her presence, he would never get over the shame of it. He glared at her, taking refuge in anger. “It’s better you know, Liz—Elizabeth.”

“It’s so—” Her eyes filled suddenly with tears that gleamed in the bright light of the ward.

“Yes. It is.”

“Frank, I don’t know if I can—I just—”

“Stop. It’s perfectly clear.”

Her tears spilled over her cheeks, and she pressed a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice breaking on a sob. “I’m so sorry.” She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking as she wept. Frank sat in stony silence, willing himself to endure until she was gone.

Rosa Gregorio appeared as if from nowhere. She put an arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders, urged her up from her chair, and guided her out of the ward. Frank watched them go, then kicked off his slippers and leaned back against the frame of the bed, the iron cold and hard against his neck. He gazed out the window at the sunny Virginia day, but in his mind he saw it again, Elizabeth’s mouth crumpling, her face mottled by shock and disgust. He told himself he would forget it, in time. He would get used to it, as he was getting used to working with just one hand. But it hardly seemed possible just now.

Nurse Gregorio came back a few minutes later, carrying a tray with an extra shot of whisky on it. “Good job, Major,” she said bracingly. “Got that out of the way. Now drink up.”

He drank the shot, and set the glass down on his bed stand. “She left?”

“Yes.” The nurse pulled the chair closer, and sat down. She put her fingers on his wrist, but he knew that taking his pulse was a pretext. She was steadying him. “There will be someone else, Frank.”

“Sure.”

“You don’t believe me, but I seen that, too. There will be someone.”

He didn’t answer. The likelihood that another woman could tolerate his disfigurement seemed as remote as the chance of his growing a new arm.

“It’s a shame.” Rosa gave a click of her tongue as she released his wrist. “Country girl like that. She oughtta know better.”