Wickett's Remedy (24 page)

The serenity of the streets beyond Carney was unsettling. Such stillness should not have coexisted beside such tumult without a rift in the paving stones. Lydia’s body ought not to have passed from one state
to the other without suffering some sort of change, as when one stands up too quickly or is thrust into freezing water; and yet here she was, returned unscathed to a world where people ate sitting down, where masks did not cover mouths, and where the sounds and smells of the sick did not create a separate climate. She had returned to a world where she served as a conduit for cuffs and fancy buttons, a flesh extension of the baskets that traveled the length of Gorin’s delivering receipts and change. Once again she inhabited a world where human intimacy was as fleeting and rarely sighted as an obscure comet.

As she returned home, she considered how to reconcile her newfound vocation with her old life. Once Gorin’s reopened, her work schedule would grant her three days a week to give to Carney. It was both not enough and more than she could hope for. In the unlikely event she was permitted to remain once the Red Cross nurses arrived, she doubtless would be relegated to tasks that kept her away from sickbeds. No matter how astute her powers of observation, she would not learn nursing in the hospital laundry or in its kitchen.

Had she been questioned on returning home, she would have admitted that she had avoided Thomas’s sickbed by attending countless others. She would have done her best to temper her family’s dismay by describing the imperative to volunteer and the nobility and purpose of her labor, but hiding the truth—no matter how distressing—would not have
been a possibility. But her arrival was not met with questions. The Lydia who had left that morning appeared no different from the Lydia who returned. Michael might have been able to detect the change, but Michael was gone. With no outward sign of her internal revelation, her family had no cause to ask anything.

Thomas’s fever was down and his cough no worse. Though Lydia and her father were still barred from sleeping in the bedroom, the kitchen was no longer a no-man’s-land between health and sickness. Thomas’s improved condition was the day’s only good news. John had arrived at school to learn that class had been canceled due to his teacher falling ill. James was one of four metal punchers who had reported to Gillette healthy enough to work.

Lydia considered mentioning Carney over dinner, but was deterred by the sight of the table’s two empty chairs. She remarked only that Gorin’s had been closed. She did not describe nurses ferrying aspirin between tents or the small room toward the rear entrance where the bodies lay stacked. Neither did she share the comforting sound the wind made as it whistled through a tent or the warmth that filled her chest when a patient’s eyes met hers. She would explain Carney to them tomorrow. And if, by chance, she arrived to Carney tomorrow only to be turned away, she could postpone the topic for less troubled times.

She was leafing through her father’s newspaper when she saw the notice. Mr. H. G. Cory of the Public Health Service was seeking experienced nurses to aid in a government test concerning the flu, to be conducted on Gallups Island. Lydia looked up from the newspaper, feeling as if she had been caught reading a dime-store romance, but her mother was tending Thomas in the bedroom, her brothers were talking in low voices on the front stoop, and her father was dozing
at the other end of the divan. She carefully tore the ad from the page. She was a more experienced nurse than she had been when she woke up this morning, and this morning her lack of experience at Carney had been counteracted by their need and her ardor. Three times that evening she verged on throwing the notice away. She fell asleep certain that tomorrow morning she would disregard the notice she still held in her hand.

VOLUME II, ISSUE
4

JULY 1993

QD and Me: A Sodaman’s Journey By Ralph Finnister

Chapter 14 Sad Ascension

It seems fitting that 1968, such a tumultuous year for our country, was also a season of change for QD Soda. After those grueling months fending off the soda consortium, the great Sodaman announced his intention to retire. It should not have come as a shock. By that time Quentin Driscoll was in his seventy-second year and the battle against the consortium—though successful—had taken its toll. But still, when Quentin Driscoll called me to his office and told me that the time had come, my first reaction was disbelief. Though the features of the Sodaman’s face had softened, a fierce light still shone from his eyes. Quentin Driscoll may have no longer been as proud and tall as he had once been, but I still saw in him a Sodaman strong of figure and fearless in thought and deed.

For thirty-five years I had been groomed to lead QD Soda into the future. Now this future had arrived. The soda Quentin Driscoll had created still looked and tasted the same after fifty years—but he had become an old man.

Many parallels exist between the world of soda and the world of man, and many paradoxes as well. Man, like soda, is well over fifty percent water and yet the differences from soda to soda and man to man are striking. Some sodas are bland and undistinguished. Others are sickly sweet, while others have a flavor that becomes tiresome. The
same is true for man who, like soda, is created by a manufacturing process that renders him different from the way he begins.

An empty bottle is filled with plain water, to which carbonation and flavorings are added. Like most men, I began life as something plain, and like most men I might have ended that way, had I not encountered Quentin Driscoll. The great Sodaman flavored the contents of my humble bottle to create something much better than would have otherwise been. And on the eve of his retirement, the full meaning of this truth was revealed.

Soon before he was to hand me the reins to the empire he had single-handedly created, Quentin Driscoll called me into his office. It was very common for the two of us to remain at work long after everyone else had gone home. This evening, the sun had long set and the Sodaman’s office was lit by a lamp that graced his desk’s broad surface. The gold initials that fronted the desk glowed dimly. In such light, Quentin Driscoll’s face looked to have been carved from ancient stone.

“You first came to me at a very dark time,” he began. “Life had lost its savor and I felt hopelessly adrift. If you and my dead son had not shared a name, you would have passed from my office that day without leaving so much as a ripple behind you.”

How strange it was to hear this truth spoken aloud! This thought had haunted my nights and spurred me to prove—to myself and to the world—that I was worthy of all that chance had bestowed! I had thought of Ralph Driscoll countless times over the years, but not since my first visit to the great Sodaman’s office had he mentioned his son. I had been certain I would not hear that name
pass those lips again. Never was I so happy to be wrong.

“Though I will continue to miss my son with every breath I take, until I breathe no more,” Quentin Driscoll continued, “even had my own son lived I cannot imagine a more loyal and able partner than you. Dear boy, I am proud of you and of the Sodaman you have become.”

My own father could not have inspired the joy I felt on hearing those words.
“Thank you, Sir,” I replied.
“That is all I ever wished for.”

But while Quentin Driscoll was not a man to deny life’s happy moments, neither was he a man who could dwell in them.

“Do you remember what you said the first time you stood before me thirty-five years ago?” he asked.

I blushed. I remembered it all too well.

“I was young,” I apologized, thirty-five years too late. “When I said I wasn’t sure if Ralph was the name of a great man, I was speaking of myself, not your son.”

“What Ralph Driscoll may or may not have become is a question whose time is long past,” Quentin Driscoll said. “Thirty-five years ago I asked you whether it was better to be good or to be great and you answered that it was better to be good.”

“But that it was best to be both,” I gently reminded him.

“But if only one was possible—” he began.

“I chose goodness over greatness,” I agreed. “But only because, of the two, it is the one quality an average man can ever hope to achieve. It has been my great privilege to work with one of the few notable exceptions to that rule.”

The great Sodaman shook his head. To my surprise, pride had been replaced by deepest regret.

“There is something I would like to tell you,” he
said, his voice strangely quiet. “Something I have never told anyone.”

For the first time in thirty-five years, I saw something close to fear enter the great Sodaman’s face. To imagine Quentin Driscoll might think he had anything to fear from me! I was overwhelmed by the desire to reassure my mentor, my master—my friend.

“You don’t need to tell me a thing,” I cried as my emotions overtook me. “Nothing you could say would erase my profound regard for you. Sir, you have filled my little bottle with everything that you have, and I am all the richer for it.”