CHAPTER THIRTY
The date was August 16, 1947, around noon. It was a Saturday. Ruby and Henry were at home, sitting on the front porch, gazing at Main Street and not at all surprised there wasn’t much of the usual Saturday traffic. Connie sat on the porch with them in her wheelchair. She had been home for almost two months. From the time the sun’s first rays ran across the roof tops and through the trees, everyone knew the day would be another scorcher, another day of unbearable heat accentuated by high humidity.
That’s what these hot, hot, muggy days of August were called in Wisconsin: scorchers—a term that applied whenever the temperature got as high as eighty. There were only a few of them every summer, but they were memorable in their debilitating ability to stop everyone from doing much of anything that required any physical activity. People in Wisconsin just weren’t used to that kind of heat. Connie didn’t really mind the heat, even though just about every conversation carried with it complaints about it. It felt good to Connie. The heat and humidity seemed to lessen the pain in her hips and legs.
Her recovery was going pretty well, according to most people she spoke with. She had regained some of the weight she had lost at the hospital, thanks mostly to Ruby’s cooking, which included a lot of pies, cakes, and cookies. She ate well enough, but her interest in food hadn’t returned. The strength in her arms had improved, and she could actually see some muscles returning as a consequence of her daily exercise with a very small pair of weights she had been given by the rehab nurse at St. Agnes at her first return visit to the hospital in late June for a checkup along with some minor cosmetic surgery. She had been going to Appleton more than Fond du Lac lately—almost weekly—to see the oral and eye specialists there. The work on her mouth seemed endless, but the progress was real, and that made her feel better about it.
Her left eye socket had also made some great progress with the placement of a glass eye into what she, to herself, described as the “hole in her head.” No one could possibly understand the effect that losing her eye had had on her or how she felt about it, and the impact it had had on her physically, of course. The greatest pain was the pain she was experiencing at the emotional level. What had happened to her eye had a profound impact on her self-image. Connie thought she was hideous, despite all the good work and progress that had been done on her face since she had left the hospital.
Many of the cuts on her face had been superficial. The natural healing powers of her body took care of them, and they had disappeared without leaving any scars. However, there were a couple of big ugly scars that wouldn’t go away. One, in particular, ran five inches across her left check, from her upper check bone down to the edge of the left side of her lips. It wasn’t pretty, and she didn’t think of herself as pretty anymore. And, worse, she thought probably no one else would either. She barely recognized herself in the mirror and cried almost every night, wondering how all of this could have happened to her.
When Connie looked in the mirror, she often recalled that eerie, unsettling moment at the apartment in Appleton on December 15, 1945 when she and Carl were about to leave for the big Christmas party at Schrinsky’s, when the reflection in the mirror said, “You will never see me again.” Now she understood the comment, but it was totally perplexing. She asked herself again and again, “What was that? Some kind of omen? How could that have happened? How can something like that be?”
Henry, who was seated next to her on the biggest wicker chair on the porch, broke into her thoughts. “Connie,” he said, “are you looking forward to the drive up to Rochester tomorrow?”
“Not really, Henry. It’s a long drive to Minnesota.”
“We’ll leave early in the morning but take our time and enjoy the ride, honey. It will be nice to get out of the house and go see some other part of the country.”
Henry said this as if Minnesota was adjacent to California and, for him, it was far enough. In his whole life, he had never ever been out of Wisconsin, so this would be an adventure for him. No one should be surprised at the news of his lack of worldliness. In those days, most people, especially in the Midwest, lived their entire lives without leaving the state they were born in, except the soldiers who fought in either World War, of course. Henry was too young to fight in WWI and too old to go overseas in WWII. He was involved in WWII, but his age kept him in Wisconsin doing administrative work for Wisconsin’s famed 32nd Infantry Division, a unit of the Army National Guard.
Henry was about one day and two hundred miles from leaving Wisconsin for the first time in his life, although Rochester was a full 260 miles away, a bit further into Minnesota’s heartland. It wasn’t the travel that excited him so much. What excited him was the appointment with the specialists at The Mayo Clinic. Henry had heard that the doctors there were the smartest in the world. The clinic’s reputation was world renown. Maybe they could do something for Connie to get her back up and about and walking around again, which is what Ruby and Henry hoped for—and so did Connie, despite her low spirits.
Henry continued, “We got a meeting with the doctors there Monday morning. I think at eight in the morning. I’d have to look at the letter I got from them to be sure.”
“You think they can really help me, Henry?” asked Connie.
“You betcha, Connie,” Henry said, taking a puff on his cigar. “Doc von Hoerner said they were the best in the country. They did everything they could for you at St. Agnes, but the doc said the Mayo Clinic has the specialists, and according to him, they’ve treated hundreds of patients, some with worse legs than yours.” Henry knew that didn’t quite sound right, saying ‘worse legs than yours,’ but he knew Connie understood that he was taking her to the best doctors in the country.
“I hope so, Henry. I hope they can help me,” Connie said softly, belying her excitement over the possibilities. “I don’t want to think about spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair.” That thought really depressed her, and she slipped back into a silent world that was becoming pretty comfortable for her to live in. It was all so awful, and the worst part was the enormous swings in optimism and despair that she’d go through, although she never gave up hope. Connie believed, in the bottom of her heart, despite all of her fears, that she’d walk again; she just didn’t know how that would happen. That was the toughest part—not knowing—and she looked to the doctors at The Mayo Clinic to come up with the answers.
A couple of minutes passed in shared silence.
“Criminy,” Henry swore, “this scorcher might do me in!” and then drew another puff from his cigar. Connie didn’t mind the smoke at all. To her, it meant home, and she always felt safe at home. She never guessed she’d be living at home again, but then again, she never guessed that she’d be in that accident either. In the past couple weeks, a few of her friends had wanted to stop by, but Connie wasn’t up to seeing anyone yet. I’d be more honest to say that she didn’t want to see them at all. She wasn’t ready, she’d tell Ruby. She was unwilling to see the sympathy and maybe shock in their faces when they saw her for the first time since the accident. She just wasn’t ready to see anyone or be seen—it was that simple.
A month earlier, a few weeks after Connie had moved in with Ruby and Henry, Carl’s parents stopped by the house on Main Street. It was a Sunday, and they offered to take Connie to church at St. Mary’s in Chilton. Connie declined because she wasn’t ready to go out in public. Besides, it was very difficult meeting with Carl’s parents. It was painful for everyone—she could see that—and, on hindsight, it probably wasn’t a very good idea, even though it might have seemed so when the invitation was made.
She could see that they had aged a lot since she had last seen them in the early part of December last year. Even though everyone tried to be strong, tears ran throughout their visit, with emotions getting the better of everyone and finally cutting the visit short. A lot of people had a long way to go before they’d get beyond the impact of the accident. Connie wasn’t alone on that count.
The heat was o
ppressively still, like a sauna. There was no movement of air, not even on the open porch. It was stifling. Henry’s cigar smoke hung in mid-air, not sure what direction to go. “I’m going to lie down, Henry,” Connie said, putting her hands on the wheels of her wheelchair, pivoting it a full one-eighty on the painted wood floor and, with a little burst of energy, making it up the short ramp through the front door and disappearing into the house.
Ruby was out doing the grocery shopping, but Connie didn’t need help getting in or out of her wheelchair. She made it easily enough into her bedroom and rolled onto her bed, closed her eyes—although only one eye was real—and tried to remember what her life had been like before the accident. But for whatever reason, those memories didn’t come easily. Maybe they were too painful, since they were in such stark contrast to her current life. Her life was so different now. Thankfully, sleep was an escape, taking her into a blissful place, where there were no memories to make her sad. And with it, she became mindless of the heat, thus lessening her discomfort.
Men and women from Wisconsin and Michigan made up the units in the 32nd Infantry Division. During World War I, the 32nd Division was nicknamed “Les Terribles” by the French because of its fortitude in advancing over terrain that other units couldn’t get through. Its shoulder patch says it all: it shows a line shot through with a red arrow to signify its tenacity in piercing enemy lines and, ultimately, achieving victory. Whether it’s an entire infantry division or one solitary individual, there are countless cases in history where fortitude won the day in conquering what appeared to be the unconquerable. The 32nd Division wasn’t the only unit in Wisconsin that would exemplify this kind of fortitude.
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A Love Story with a Little Heartbreak Page 32