In the Field

by Rachel Pastan

  Kate did like that. “Am I part of an organized trial?” She pictured herself as a plant among many plants in an experimental field, tagged and watched.

  “No. But you’re one of the first patients we’ve treated with it at this hospital.”

  “Prontosil.” Kate’s mouth wrapped itself around the syllables.

  “It was discovered in Germany. It’s a kind of dye. In fact, I’ve been wondering if it would turn your skin red. It does that in some people, but I don’t see it.” Her gaze traveled along Kate’s arms, which rested on top of the white sheets. It moved up her throat and across her face. “They say there’s going to be a revolution in treating infections. A whole generation of new miracle drugs.” Dr. Sonnenfeld had an interesting smile, genial and skeptical.

  “You sound like you don’t believe it.”

  The doctor shrugged. “I haven’t seen a lot of miracles.” She was standing by the window. The light, streaming in, hurt Kate’s eyes. The sky behind her was very pale, as though the blue had been spread infinitely thinly over something white and glaring.

  Kate let her lids droop. “It must have seemed like a miracle the first time van Leeuwenhoek looked into a microscope.”

  Dr. Sonnenfeld laughed. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Just think about all the scientists in their laboratories all over the world,” Kate said dreamily. “Thousands of them at their benches, busy as bees. Or is it beavers?” Either way she could picture them—buzzing and crawling, gnawing and dragging—but the picture made her tired. She yawned. The light dimmed. The doctor must have pulled the curtains.

  “I’ll let you rest.”

  But Kate didn’t want to rest. She opened her eyes and looked up into the doctor’s face: tiny starbursts of wrinkles around the mouth and eyes, thick dark arched eyebrows. “I’m not tired,” she said, yawning again.

  The doctor laid her hand on Kate’s forehead, feeling for fever. A shiver ran from Kate’s skull all the way down. “Are you cold?” Dr. Sonnenfeld asked. She pulled the sheet up higher.

  Dr. Sonnenfeld was interested that Kate was a scientist. She asked her informed questions about corn; about the laws of heredity; about the culture of the botany department. She herself had gone to Vassar. “Where that female astronomer taught,” she said. “The one who discovered the comet.” After medical school she’d returned to Ithaca, where she’d grown up, to be close to her mother after her father died.

  So they both had dead fathers.

  “I would have stayed far away if I were you,” Kate said.

  “My mother is a kind of magnet,” Dr. Sonnenfeld said. “People are drawn to her. Children, dogs. Guests are always coming to stay temporarily, and then they don’t move out for months.”

  Kate tried to imagine that. “What did she think about you becoming a doctor?” She wondered, too, what Mr. Sonnenfeld thought. If there was a Mr. Sonnenfeld. The doctor didn’t wear a ring, but that could have been because she worked so much with her hands.

  “She would have liked me to be a musician. I used to play the flute. She was a wonderful pianist, my mother, until the arthritis hit her. I think she could have been a professional. Instead she became a nurse, for a while, before she was married. I like to think of myself as having followed in her footsteps.”

  It was odd to have a doctor who talked about her mother. It made her seem almost not like a doctor at all.

  The stethoscope made its cool circles on her chest. Ripples undulated out from the place where the drum rested—here, then here.

  “You’re much better,” Dr. Sonnenfeld said. “We’ll discharge you soon.”

  “Discharge me.” For a moment Kate couldn’t remember what that meant. It had to do with electricity, didn’t it? With letting energy out, producing a spark.

  “Do you have someone who can help look after you for a while, until you’re stronger?”

  Kate gaped at her: her pale tired face with its dark, steady eyes.

  “When you go home, I mean. Perhaps a relative who could come and stay with you.”

  “Oh, no,” Kate said. “That’s out of the question.”

  Dr. Sonnenfeld smiled her interesting smile. “It’s what people do, you know. A sister, perhaps.”

  Kate thought of Laura in her jewel-toned silk dresses, heating up soup in Kate’s tiny apartment. “She has two small children to look after.”

  “Perhaps you could move back to your parents’ home for a few weeks.”

  Kate turned away and looked out the window where the top of a spindly hemlock swayed under the weight of a crow that had suddenly landed there. She had only been back to the house in Brooklyn a handful of times since she went away to college. The chilly relationship she maintained with her mother was only a step or two away from a breach. “I’m very self-sufficient,” she said.

  “You’re making things difficult, Dr. Croft.”

  Kate liked that Dr. Sonnenfeld called her Dr. Croft. The horrible nurses all called her Kathleen.

  “I can’t keep you here much longer. And you’re not strong enough to be on your own.”

  The crow smoothed its glossy wings with its beak.

  “If you gave me your family’s address, I could write to them. They are your family, after all.”

  But why was that supposed to matter? In every way that counted, Kate had made herself.

  CHAPTER 19

  The knock was so quiet, so tentative, it sounded like someone knocking on the door across the hall. But then a face appeared, thin and dark and smiling shyly.

  “Cynthia,” Kate said.

  “Is it all right if I come in?”

  “Of course.” Kate pushed herself upright, pulled the sheets around her, and smoothed them, while Cynthia stood just inside the doorway. “Are you feeling better?” Kate asked after what felt like a long time.

  Cynthia blushed. “I should be asking you that.” She held a jam jar with a few stalks of purplish joe-pye weed, which she set down on the little table beside Whitaker’s fiery gladiolas. “They can’t compete, can they? But I thought they were pretty.”

  “I like wildflowers,” Kate said.

  “Weeds,” Cynthia said.

  “Butterflies like them, too.” The air between them felt thin and brittle, like a scrim of ice. Kate wondered if she could pretend to be tired and need to sleep. Perhaps a nurse would barge in with a thermometer or a medicine bottle. Kate didn’t think she and Cynthia had ever been alone in a room together before. Mostly she didn’t bother trying to make small talk with people, but this was Thatch’s wife. “Little glassywings,” she offered. “American ladies. Vanessa virginiensis.” Perhaps naming butterflies wasn’t exactly small talk, but it was the best she could manage.

  “I love the Latin binomial names,” Cynthia said. “Don’t you? Eutrochium dubium.” Gently she touched the untidy flower head.

  “I always forget you’re a botanist.”

  Cynthia’s doe eyes turned to her. “Was.”

  “You could always change your mind and go back to it.”

  “No. I like plants, but I’m not disciplined.”

  Kate knew lots of scientists who weren’t disciplined. But she thought it was probably time to change the subject. “I was sorry to hear about the honeymoon,” she said. “The flooding, I mean.”

  “And I was sorry to hear about your plants.” Cynthia’s big eyes were full of pity, which was unbearable. “John has told me how they’re everything to you.”

  Were, Kate thought. So Thatch talked about her with Cynthia. Well, why wouldn’t he? They were married, after all.

  “But he said there were a few left. Perhaps you can salvage something.”

  “When do you leave for New York?” Kate asked. “You must be excited.”

  Cynthia touched the flower again, very gently, with her thin olive forefinger. “The India
ns used Eutrochium to treat fevers,” she said.

  “Plants do have extraordinary properties,” Kate said. “Since they can’t escape their enemies by running, they have to be crafty.”

  Cynthia laughed, which made her look suddenly pretty, the way Kate remembered her looking. “That makes a person feel uncomfortable about eating a carrot,” she said.

  In fact, Kate often felt uncomfortable eating carrots. Fruit was one thing—the plant offered it to you of its own free will—but who could say that a carrot felt less pain than a cow? “How’s Thatch?” she asked.

  “John’s all right. Just a little anxious. So many changes.”

  “They’re going to love him at the Rockefeller.”

  Cynthia’s eyes fell to her lap, where her hands lay neatly folded as if she were in church. “Of course, not all the changes are professional.”

  Kate didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Do you mind if I tell you something?”

  “Go ahead,” Kate said, though she wanted no confidences.

  Cynthia raised her large dark soft eyes to Kate’s. “We’re going to have a child.”

  “A child!” Kate echoed, trying not to sound horrified. Her mind felt rubbery. How on earth could the girl know already? Or did that mean that before the wedding … ?

  None of her business.

  “He must be thrilled!” she said loudly to blow those thoughts away.

  Cynthia leaned closer. “I haven’t told him yet.”

  A well of dread opened in Kate’s gut. “Why not?”

  “I want to wait till it’s more … I mean, in case anything happens. I’d hate for him to be disappointed.”

  “I’m sure everything will be fine,” Kate said. For the first time in a long time she thought longingly of her apartment: its cramped quiet rooms, its old soft pillows and smells of books and furniture wax. Its door that locked.

  Cynthia’s gaze seemed to pin Kate in place on the pillows. “I had to tell somebody,” she said. “He cares about you more than anybody. So in a way, that makes us almost like sisters.”

  Kate did her best to smile.

  “But what about you,” Cynthia said. “How are you feeling, really? When are they going to let you go home?”

  “Soon. I’m so much better! Only the doctor insists I can’t take care of myself.” Kate was still so indignant that she forgot to be cautious. “She suggested— As if I could possibly! But it doesn’t bear talking about.”

  Cynthia’s face lit up. “Of course you’ll come to us!” she said. “At least until we leave,” she added, remembering.

  “Oh, no!” Kate tried to sound firm rather than panic-stricken. “I couldn’t let you do that.”

  “But I’d like it,” Cynthia said. “It would take my mind off things. Which would be so good for me.”

  “You just got married!” Kate sat up straighter. Her short hair, grown shaggy now, stuck out every which way as though electrified. “It wouldn’t be right.”

  Cynthia scooted her chair closer and leaned over the bed. She smelled of heavy, oily hair and lily of the valley. “On the contrary. It’s the most right thing I can think of. I know John would say so, too.” Cynthia leaned down farther still and took Kate’s hand. Her hair fell forward like a veil, blocking out the air. There their hands lay on the beige hospital blanket: Cynthia’s thin and long, the nails perfect ovals, the skin smooth and dry. Kate’s hand looked small and pasty, the blue veins showing. “We have to take care of one another,” Cynthia said.

  When she was gone, Kate lay back on the sheets. The mauve flower head of the joe-pye weed seemed to watch her as though its hundred tiny florets concealed eyes. If she could show Dr. Sonnenfeld that she was strong enough, surely she would let her go home. Carefully, she pushed herself up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. One bare foot and then the other reached down toward the floor. The tile was cold. Slowly, she pushed herself upright. A distant ringing began inside her head. Out the window, the hemlock tree stood, its needles green and black, very peacefully, wanting nothing of her. She took a step toward the window. The tree—kind or indifferent—disregarded her clumsiness. Another step. Something was happening at the edges of her vision. A flickering darkness encroached from the sides until there was only the tree—its deep, impervious green. Then something struck her head. Oh—the window! She leaned against it for a long moment, the hard glass soothing in its coolness.

  “Dr. Croft,” someone said. “Dr. Croft! For heaven’s sake.”

  Kate looked up. Dark stern eyes under disapproving brows hovered over her as she lay sprawled on the floor. “I thought I’d just …” she said, or tried to say. How had she come to be here, sprawled on the cold floor?

  “Lie still,” the doctor said as Kate struggled to sit. “Do what I say, please. Now: can you move your arms? One at a time. Your legs? Good. All right. Let’s get you up.” She drew one of Kate’s arm around her shoulders, put her own firm arm under Kate’s back, and lifted. She was surprisingly strong, or else Kate had grown very light. She smelled of antiseptic and clean cotton and something else. Oranges? Kate’s head flopped back against the doctor’s chest as she bore Kate in her arms across the room in a few long strides and laid her on the bed—not gently, but adeptly, like a seamstress laying out a bolt of cloth. “If Nurse Johnson had found you, she would have been very cross.”

  Horrible thought! “Just send me home,” Kate said.

  “I’ve said that’s out of the question.”

  “I’m perfectly capable—”

  “Of collapsing into a heap on the floor,” the doctor said. “Yes, I know.”

  “I just got a little dizzy.”

  Dr. Sonnenfeld held up her hand. “Stop arguing for ten seconds and listen, please,” she said. “I came to tell you that I’ve solved your problem.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The trip from the hospital to the long room under the eaves wore Kate out. Dr. Sonnenfeld and her mother practically had to haul her up the two flights of stairs, one on each side. Collapsed at last in the soft bed under a quilt of orderly flowers, her bones ached and her head buzzed with pain. With an effort she drank water from the glass Mrs. Sonnenfeld held out to her. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll try not to be a difficult patient.”

  “And I will try not to be a difficult nurse,” Mrs. Sonnenfeld said. She bent over the bed and looked Kate over. “My daughter says you are a stubborn person. I, too, am stubborn. So: we should get along very well.”

  Kate was amused by this, but faintly, through blurred layers of exhaustion.

  The sun streamed in through the open window, and a light breeze carried the scent of roses into the room. Ever since the floods, the weather had been perfect, the most beautiful summer anyone could remember, everyone said. But for Kate, the passage from the hospital to the car and the car to the house had been nearly unbearable, the air so fresh it abraded her skin, the light too sharp, the smell of the mown grass rank and overripe.

  “Could you shut the window?” Kate asked. “And the curtains?”

  “Fresh air is good for you,” Mrs. Sonnenfeld said. “If you shut yourself up in the dark, you will shrivel like a grub.”

  But Dr. Sonnenfeld went over to the window and shut it. Mrs. Sonnenfeld snorted. The doctor came and stood over the bed. “Mutti will take good care of you,” she said. “And I’ll come and see you when I get home.”

  “Pardon?” Kate struggled to keep her eyes open.

  “My room is right under yours. But don’t worry. I don’t snore or play the gramophone, even when I’m here. Which is hardly ever.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Kate that Dr. Sonnenfeld actually lived with her mother. Her heart began to beat a little faster: ga-lump ga-lump ga-lump, like a rabbit bounding slowly across a field.

  Mrs. Sonnenfeld was a stout woman with a soft powdery face and a peremptory, mu
sical Bavarian voice. She wore dark wool coatdresses and sturdy buckled shoes, and trotted up and down the steps of the big three-story house with her white hair floating around her head like a cloud. From her perch at the top of the house, Kate listened to the sounds she made moving from room to room: the rumble of furniture pushed away so she could mop behind it, the hiss of steam as she attacked her ironing, the clatter of cooking pots on the polished range, the rise and fall of her melodious German as she talked to the dogs. There were three dogs, Irish setters with shiny, silky auburn fur and feathery tails waving like flags: Lily, Holly, and Rose. Their long nails clicked on the hardwood floors and scrabbled on the stairs, and sometimes, out in the yard, they goaded one another into howls when the paperboy whizzed by. They knew better than to chase him, but their passionate desire to charge his gleaming bicycle required some kind of outlet.

  Ten times a day Mrs. Sonnenfeld clomped up to Kate’s room—no hushed nurse in rubber-soled shoes but a solid competent dervish carrying trays and wielding thermometers, giving sponge baths and insisting that Kate change into a clean nightgown every day; that she finish the last tablespoon of broth; that she walk up and down the third-floor hall to build her strength but that she not under any circumstance try the stairs. And so, even as she lay mostly confined to bed, her days began to take on a shape: Mrs. Sonnenfeld’s visits with trays of soup and rice pudding; the movement of the sun across the braided rug; her own repetitive trek up and down the third floor hallway with its dark green wallpaper scattered with bright shapes that might have been meant to be leaves.

  And then, at the end of the day, Dr. Sonnenfeld’s appearance in the doorway of the convalescent room.

  Often, despite her best efforts, Kate would have fallen asleep by the time the doctor got home. She would awaken to the creak of the door swinging open, to the freshness of night air and the faint pungency of cigarette smoke the older woman carried in with her on her clothes and in her hair. Dr. Sonnenfeld would lean against the wall, lifting her chin and blowing smoke out through her red pursed lips. Or she would sit in the sturdy oak-and-leather chair by the bed, still in her white coat, a glass of whiskey balanced on the chair’s broad arm, peeling an orange in one long spiral with her slow deft hands.