by Anita Shreve
I try to picture your life in Nova Scotia. I have a bad sense of geography, but I think it’s part of the Maritimes, yes? Can you see the water? Is it beautiful? Are you all living in one house, or have you and Tim managed to find your own? Please tell me about the kids—they grow so fast. You wouldn’t recognize Tom, and Claire is already a string bean. My mother makes long hems in her dresses so that she can let them out.
Thank God for my mother. I can’t imagine what I’d have done without her.
Do you ever think about our former life, how safe it seemed? With the war ended, we thought all danger was behind us. Nothing ahead but prosperity and children growing older. I have never been so afraid in my life as I was the night of the fire. When they came to rescue us, my arms and legs wouldn’t move, and they had to slip Claire and Tom from under my arms. Please tell Tim that I don’t begrudge the fire department rescuing you first. Not one bit!!
If I know you, you are focused on only one sentence in this entire letter, and that if you were here, you’d be asking, Which one? All I can tell you is that the music was sublime.
Love and kisses,
Grace
Dear Grace,
You know me so well. Have you really never heard from the musician again? You will, you will, I am sure of it. But it would be best for you if it happened after Gene was declared dead—what a horrible thing to hope for.
But I’m happy for you. When you come to visit, a fantasy I persist in believing, you will tell me everything. Every tiny detail!
Winters in Nova Scotia are harsh, what can I say. You and I used to complain about the wind off the water in Maine! This winter, you could magnify that by ten. Our hats have to be buttoned under the chin, our coats belted. I dare not take the children out unless they’re tied to me. Tim is now part owner of a Ford dealership, thanks to a gift of money from my parents. We had to decide between the down payment on a house or the business. We chose the business, reasoning that Tim could make enough money so that in a year’s time we could put down our own deposit. But I have to tell you, he entered the business at the wrong time of year. There have been no sales since Christmas, and, truthfully, there aren’t a whole lot of cars in Nova Scotia. Tim is hoping that when spring comes, business will pick up and be strong over the summer. I can’t wait for spring, Grace. I think of last year, how we complained about all the rain. But at least it was better than this terrible moaning and whistling weather. I don’t know how the fishermen do it, but they are out on the water all the time. I hear of men dying more often than I should. Tim takes us for outings on Sundays, his day off, if the skies aren’t spitting sleet. Fortunately Tim’s mother has a washer and dryer, which I could hardly believe when I entered her house. (How we are relying on our mothers now!) Since the kids are a little older, I usually have a couple of hours to myself. I’m reading books and not just magazines, mainly because Tim’s mother doesn’t get magazines and she has a lot of books. Children’s books, too. I enjoy reading them to Ian and Eddie. I can’t wait for spring, for their sakes, too. They need to run! But then I’ll be terrified that one of them will fall into the water. It’s a very rocky shoreline.
I envy you your job. (I think even without the clue at the end of your letter, I would not have guessed the doctor. Too hazardous with a boss.) How I would like to have a new dress and be able to go into a store each day and sell…what?…gloves maybe. But I’d make it into work only half the time, since the snow piles in drifts here and the cars can’t get through. Grace, I have never been so cold in all my life!
I guess now we will always live in Nova Scotia. Tim’s business will tie him here for years. And now that our parents have got us back, I doubt they’ll let us leave without a fight. And truth to tell, there’s something in this way of life that appeals to me. It’s slow and though I sometimes long to go into Halifax, to a movie or to a nightclub, I feel in my bones that we were meant to be here. For one thing, my carrot top doesn’t stand out! I’ll have to join some kind of organization in the spring to meet people.
Some of my best times were when we were out in the yard with the kids.
Love from your Rosie.
Dr. Lighthart
“How was the skiing?” Grace asks, shrugging off her coat at the office. It’s Monday, nearly noon.
“Spectacular. How did you do on your driver’s test?”
“I can drive your car legally,” she answers.
“Good for you. You’d better put your coat back on then. Here are the keys. You’ve made a list? Stupid question. Of course you have.”
—
“Are you happy here running the clinic?” the doctor asks the next day in the kitchen.
“I don’t run it, you do.”
“Nonsense,” he says. “Amy would agree with me.”
Amy and Dr. Lighthart can’t take their lunch breaks together. Ideally, none of them should, but Grace was already in the kitchen when Dr. Lighthart entered, washed his hands for a long time, and dried them on a clean dish towel. “I don’t want to sound like a parent, but do you wash your hands thoroughly before you eat here and when you leave for the day?”
She smiles. “I, too, have heard of the germ theory.”
“I deserved that.”
“Who makes your lunches?” she asks.
“I’ve hired a woman to provide food for the clinic when needed. She prepares my lunch and dinner, and I put my own breakfast together. Today it’s…drumroll…roast beef!”
Grace would die for a roast beef sandwich. With mustard. “You’re still living here.”
“I haven’t had a minute to look for a place. I think I’ll be stuck here forever.”
She likes the way he crosses his long legs. He has an elegance to his masculine frame that was either learned or inherited. “You must be making money,” she says.
“Well, I appear to be, now that you’ve uncovered a treasure trove in cash and checks in all that mess out front. Most of that will have to go back into the clinic, for supplies and so on. Amy’s salary.”
“Anything left over for you?”
“I hope so.”
“Maybe I could get the newspaper in the morning and look through the classifieds for you, call the landlords and ask them some questions.”
He takes a sip of water. “You’d do that for me?”
“What sort of place are you looking for?”
“A one-bedroom, not too far from here so that I could walk to work if I had to. I like a lot of windows. And all the regular things—heat, good hot water, electricity, some privacy, a bathroom to myself, a kitchen.”
“Furnished or unfurnished?”
“Furnished.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she says as she finishes her sandwich.
“The Soviet Union has begun to jam broadcasts of the Voice of America,” he says, frowning.
Grace is startled by the abrupt change in subject. “Is it serious?”
“The VOA was the hope of freedom for thousands of people. Now there’s only silence.”
“Can the government do anything to override the jamming?”
“I think we’d have heard about it if they could. Do you listen to the radio?” he asks.
“I listened to the radio in your car when I went to get supplies.”
She doesn’t tell him that she was hoping for classical music. Instead, a soap opera was playing, and she became so involved in the plot that she missed the stationery store the first time she passed it. “That picture on your desk,” she says, spreading out the waxed paper to save, “is that your girlfriend?”
“No, she’s my brother’s wife, Elaine. He’s taking the picture. I sometimes go skiing with them and their kids. My nephews. Impossible to get a picture of all of us, since the kids are long gone the moment they hop off the J-bar.”
“Where do you ski?”
“Gunstock or Abenaki. They’re both about two and a half hours away,” he says, balling his waxed paper and trying for the basket, which he makes.
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“Five hours driving. That’s a lot.”
“My brother has a place near Gunstock. If I have the time, I stay overnight with them.”
On clear days, Grace can see Mt. Washington in New Hampshire to the west from the top floor of Merle’s house. Majestic when the sun sets, lighting the snow ablaze.
“Someday you’ll go skiing with me,” he declares.
“I highly doubt that.”
“I keep the photo on my desk to discourage patients I see in my office from trying to fix me up. When they ask if it’s my girlfriend, I say yes, and the conversation usually ends there.”
“Why didn’t you do that with me?”
“Were you planning on fixing me up?” he teases. “We seem to have begun our conversation months ago by not lying to each other, which was why I told you the truth about the picture. Do you know how rare that is?”
“Telling the truth? Yes.”
—
“It’s interesting. We didn’t have these pneumonia patients in the beginning. We had burns in the throats and lungs and a lot of coughing up blood, but that was different, those were emergencies. Why the pneumonia cases now?”
“Do you think that the stuff the men inhaled stayed in their lungs and has only recently grown infectious?”
“Possibly,” he muses, “but the infections should have happened sooner. The body reacts to an unwanted foreign substance by trying to get rid of it—hence infections. That’s why, for instance, you have to get a bullet out of a person as soon as you possibly can.”
She wonders about all the men involved in fighting the fire. To be laid low by pneumonia after having exhibited such bravery seems cruel. Though Grace knows, at least as well as anyone, how cruel nature can be. “You could put up signs,” she says.
“How do you mean?”
“Something like, WERE YOU FIGHTING ON THE FRONT LINE OF THE FIRE? DO YOU COUGH A LOT? IF SO, SEE YOUR PHYSICIAN AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.”
“And put them where?”
“Here for one. Post offices, grocery stores, gas stations, churches, anywhere men go.”
“Anywhere women go, too, since they’re often the ones who get their husbands to a doctor.”
—
In the waiting room, Grace has the task of telling each patient that Dr. Lighthart will be at least forty minutes with his current case and that he has another waiting for him in an adjacent room. If they would like to leave, she’ll book them first thing in the morning.
“I already took one afternoon off. I can’t get another.”
“My mother’s babysitting the kids. I’ll have to wait.”
“Okay,” says a man, coughing badly. “But it won’t be tomorrow. I can’t get time off until next Friday.”
Grace asks the coughing man, who must have come in while she was in the back, to wait a minute. She explores the examining rooms and finds a clean, empty one near the kitchen. “Come with me,” she says when she returns.
She walks him down the corridor and into the room. “Why don’t you lie down here and rest,” she suggests.
“Can’t lie down. Just cough more. Can’t sleep at night less I’m sitting up, and I can’t sleep sitting up.”
“Does the cough hurt?” she asks.
“Son of a bitch, it does. Sorry, miss.”
His color is bad; Grace would say gray if asked. He strains for breath. Another case of pneumonia.
“What’s your name?”
“Busby,” he says with a harsh rasp. “Harry Busby.”
She’ll have to have another conversation with Dr. Lighthart about posting signs.
—
In the evening, Grace leans against the doorframe in her coat, waiting while Dr. Lighthart writes out a check for her. When she opened a bank account, she put in ten dollars. He hands her the check but seems to want her to stay. For the first time since she started working at the clinic, two weeks ago, the waiting room is empty. “Hell of a day,” he says. “Thanks for your help.”
“The man you saw after Mrs. McPeek has pneumonia, doesn’t he?”
“I think we may have a statewide epidemic, or rather a state-long epidemic. If we could just get the men to come in sooner, before they’re so compromised…”
“That man will die?” she asks.
“I’d be surprised if he didn’t. He could hardly breathe when I saw him. He’ll get closer observation at the hospital, and they have better equipment. We need an X-ray machine for the clinic. Listen, let me drive you home.”
“I couldn’t let you do that.”
“Why not?”
She can’t think of a good answer.
—
Grace wills herself to enjoy the ride in the Packard with Dr. Lighthart beside her. She knows now why he bought it—the room between the driver’s seat and the pedals is ample. She has never seen him in his suit coat, since he always wears the white coat at the clinic. When she gets to the office in the mornings, he’s already there; he’s there when she leaves for the day.
“This is much more luxurious than the bus,” she says.
“I should hope so. You strike me as someone who’s philosophically opposed to luxury.”
“Yes,” she says, “when it’s luxury I haven’t earned. Though I have to warn you, when you drop me off, it will be in front of a large Victorian house on a wealthy street. That’s my mother-in-law’s house.”
“She must be waiting, too, for her son to come home.”
“She died before the fire. I took my family there because we were homeless.”
“That’s not unearned luxury. That’s necessity.”
“That’s how I’ve chosen to see it. The mink hat isn’t mine either. I got it from her closet. It keeps me warm.”
“Again, a necessity.”
“Well, I could have knit myself a hat.”
He laughs. The car seems to float over the road. He tunes the radio to a station he must like. In the darkness, with only the lights from the dashboard and the seductive notes of the jazz ensemble, she can’t believe the pleasure of a simple ride home. In the morning, she’ll take the bus into Biddeford and buy her own car, but it won’t be anything like the vehicle she’s in now. The warmth from the heater coddles them. Will her car even have a heater?
She tries to savor every minute. She wants to close her eyes, but she can’t risk drifting off. Somehow that would be insulting.
“I loved driving your car,” she says.
“I forgot to show you where the controls are to bring the seat forward. I hope you found them.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to leave the parking lot if I hadn’t,” she says. “I put them back to where they were when I first got into the car. It purrs.”
“Listen, Grace, I mean it when I say you’ve improved my life. And Amy’s. And certainly those of the patients who were turned away by the chaos of the waiting room. Or the ones who just got sicker and sicker as they waited. I should never have let it get out of hand like that.”
Grace leans her head back against the soft upholstery.
—
A hand squeezes hers, and she comes awake. Dr. Lighthart is in the driver’s seat next to her, and her mother-in-law’s house is up the hill outside the window. Damn, she thinks, she did fall asleep.
“I’m sorry,” she says. He withdraws his hand. “It’s just so comfortable in here.”
“That’s a compliment.”
“Thanks for the ride,” she adds as she turns to get out of the car.
“Anytime.”
She watches the taillights for as far as she can see.
—
“You’re home early,” her mother comments. As usual on Fridays, Marjorie’s hair is in pin curls under a red bandanna. She washes her hair on Fridays and always has, which Grace thinks stems from the days when her mother and father were courting: a fresh set for going out.
“I got a ride.”
“From whom?”
“From the doctor. He had a patient out this
way.”
Grace doesn’t think she could utter a lie to Dr. Lighthart, yet it’s so easy to do to her mother, who is undeserving of any lie. Who, without the slightest complaint, has taken over the care of her grandchildren and the enormous house they are living in. Whenever Grace and Marjorie have words, it’s because her mother is worried about her, trying to keep the marriage, which threatens to roll down the hill and out to sea, intact. Grace can hardly blame her for that.
She gives her mother a peck on the cheek.
“What’s that for?”
“No good reason,” Grace says.
—
After Grace has cooked teddy-bear pancakes for Claire and Tom the next morning (Claire annoyed that her bear is misshapen), Grace’s mother comes down late. “I hope you didn’t mind my not being up to cook.”
“Mind?” says Grace. “On weekends, you should sleep all you want. I’ll bring you a tray for breakfast. I’ll do it tomorrow in fact. I’ve been thinking I might go look for a car today.”