“We begged off last time, remember? Besides, he’s got a script I want to look at.”
Mirielle sighed. Mrs. Gleeson was a first-rate bore. The idea of spending the evening in her moldering parlor with imitation pâté and watered-down gin rekindled yesterday’s headache.
“Choose a short cigar when he offers, will you? I don’t want to sit there all night grasping at things to say while you men puff away.”
Charlie pulled out his watch again. “Say, nurse?”
No answer.
“All this because of a burn?” he asked her.
“And this.” She showed him the patch of pale skin on the back of her hand.
Charlie removed his gloves. He brushed his thumb over the spot, sweeping down and along the thin scar hidden beneath her silver bracelet. Then he drew her finger closer to his face and examined the burn. “You didn’t—er—burn yourself on purpose, did you?”
Mirielle yanked her hand away. “Of course not.”
Silence yawned between them. Charlie picked up the paper, perused the front page, then flapped it open to the sports section. Mirielle didn’t care which horse had won in the Excelsior or how the U.C.L.A. freshmen fared at the latest track competition. Her gaze drifted to the window instead. But the cloudless blue sky reminded her of summer. Of picnics on the beach and lawn parties and children splashing in the pool. Splashing until they didn’t. She turned her attention back to the dingy room, crossing her arms over her chest to still the tremble.
“There’s a leper here at the hospital,” Charlie said some while later.
“A leper? That’s ridiculous. People like that exist only in the cinema.”
He tapped the paper and held it wide for her to see. WOMAN LEPER ADMITTED TO COUNTY GENERAL the headline read. “Says she’s here until they can arrange transport to some leper home in Louisiana.”
“Good God,” Mirielle said. “Does it give a name?”
“A Mrs. Martin, I believe. Do we know any Martins?”
“No, I don’t think—” She grabbed the paper from Charlie and scanned the article. Not Martin. Marvin. A Mrs. Pauline Marvin. Mirielle’s entire body went cold. She dropped the paper. The pages fluttered apart, landing on her lap and across the floor. “Charlie, that’s me.”
CHAPTER 3
They said their goodbyes at the hospital. Too risky for Charlie to be seen at the train station with her. The nurse secreted her down an empty stairway and out the back, snapping, “Don’t touch anything,” when Mirielle reached for the handrail. Outside, the early morning air was cold and pregnant with mist. Beneath the thin silk of her dress, Mirielle’s skin prickled with gooseflesh. But at least she was out of that quarantine cell. Charlie waited in the alleyway beside his shiny roadster, the seat piled high with her wardrobe trunks and hatboxes, as if they were spiriting away on some delightful holiday. It made the truth all the more bitter.
He kissed her quickly on the cheek, then shrank away, out of reach. It was the sort of distance her grandmother would have called chaste. But Mirielle wasn’t some blushing debutante and he a bashful stag. They’d never been those things—blushing and bashful. When, in their ten years of marriage, had they come to stand so painfully far apart? She wanted to blame the disease—a disease she didn’t have no matter what the doctors said—but she remembered months back sitting beside him in the front pew at the funeral. Their knees had brushed, a whisper of a touch, and she recoiled like he were a stranger. Maybe that had been the beginning.
She caught the scent of smoke carried on the heavy air and saw an orderly with his cigarette at the end of the alley watching them. Charlie saw him too and angled his hat down to obscure his face. The hospital and its ancillary buildings crowded around them, keeping them shadowed in the fledgling dawn. But soon, the sun would rise, revealing them to whoever looked out their window.
Charlie checked his watch and cleared his throat. They’d already worked out the details of her departure—what excuse he’d make to family and friends, where she might secretly send him letters, which of her hats and dresses and shoes she needed for the journey. What else was there to say?
“And the girls?” she asked at last. Part of her wished he’d brought them, despite the doctor’s warning. She needn’t touch them, only blow kisses and tell them goodbye. A final look to imprint their faces on her memory.
“They’re with the nanny,” he said, tugging on the cuff of his suit jacket and surreptitiously glancing at his watch again. “Evie misses you. Helen, too, I’m sure.”
Hearing their names made every part of her ache. She hadn’t nursed Helen in months, not since the accident, but even her nipples tingled with pain. Perhaps it was best he hadn’t brought them.
“Sure could use a drink.”
Charlie frowned, but withdrew a flask from the inside pocket of his suit, handing it to Mirielle after a quick look around. Pigeons roosted on the eaves above them. Rats rustled in the nearby trash cans. The orderly smoked his cigarette. Otherwise they were alone.
She unscrewed the cap and took a long pull. This was the good stuff, smuggled down from Canada, and the fire it lit in her empty stomach a welcome friend. Another sip and soon enough her pain would dull.
She handed the open flask back to Charlie. He brought it to his lips, but stopped short of drinking, replacing the cap and tucking it back into his pocket with an almost imperceptible wince.
“Good grief! I’m not sick. These doctors are buffoons.”
“I know,” he said, even as he wiped his gloves on his trousers. So much for being a great actor.
Nearby, a motor growled to life, and a moment later the ambulance appeared.
Mirielle’s gut clenched. She took a step closer to her husband. To Charlie’s credit, he didn’t back away. Suddenly there were a million things she wanted to tell him. I love you. I’m sorry. I know it was my fault. But the words remained on her tongue, souring with the aftertaste of booze. At last she said, “Help the orderlies with my luggage, won’t you? I’d hate for them to break anything.”
She was swept up into the back of the ambulance as soon as the last bag was loaded. She pressed a gloved hand to the window and mouthed goodbye. Charlie mouthed something in return, but she couldn’t make it out.
Tears building in her eyes, she turned away and didn’t look back as the ambulance carted her over the river toward Central Station. The HOLLYWOODLAND sign and distant hills reflected the burnt glow of sunrise. They passed Little Tokyo and the gaping lot where construction was set to begin on the new city hall. Charlie had boasted it would be the tallest building in all of California, though she hadn’t cared a wink at the time. Now, the idea of the city changing in her absence made the alcohol in her stomach roil. Or maybe it was the layered smell of sweat, vomit, and disinfectant that clung to the ambulance walls. Regardless, she needn’t worry. A little luck and she’d be back before they broke ground.
A train whistle sounded over the wheezing of the engine, and Central Station came into view. The ambulance rolled past the depot and onto the tracks, rattling Mirielle like a shaker of salt. It stopped beside an open boxcar. The orderly got out and began tossing her luggage into a careless heap on the ground.
“Hey!” Mirielle said, clambering out of the ambulance when it was clear no one was coming to help her down. “Careful.” She picked her way over to the orderly, trying to keep the dirt from spilling into her calfskin slippers. “I’ll need a few of these with me in my sleeper car. This one and . . . that one.” She pointed to a leather and silk valise still in the back of the ambulance.
The man grunted and threw the bag atop of the rest. He wiped his hands on a rag, then gestured grandly to the open boxcar. “Your sleeper awaits, madame.”
Mirielle turned around and peered into what she’d thought was a luggage car. Light penetrated only a portion of the inside, leaving the rest in shadow. A few empty crates and a wooden barrel were all she could see.
“There must be some mistake,” she said, turning back
to the orderly. But he was already climbing into the ambulance. She waved to get his attention. “Excuse me!”
A cloud of dust bloomed in answer as the ambulance drove away. Some gall! She swatted the dust from her dress. Clearly, that loafer had no appreciation for crêpe-de-chine silk.
“Hurry now, and see to your luggage, ma’am,” a voice said from behind her.
Mirielle turned back to the train. A stout, older woman in a white nurse’s uniform had come to the lip of the boxcar and was squinting down at her through thick glasses. “We depart in five minutes.”
She looked past the woman into the car again. There weren’t any cushioned benches or polished card tables or private sleeping berths. There weren’t any seats at all.
“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. I’m meant to—”
“Oh dear, you’re not the leper from County Hospital?”
“Well, I came from County Hospital but I’m not . . . my diagnosis hasn’t been confirmed. I’m only—”
The nurse gave a relieved smile. “No mistake. Best get your things aboard.”
“You cannot mean for me to ride like a hobo the entire way to Louisiana.”
The nurse cocked her head, as if traveling across the country in a dirty boxcar were completely natural.
“This is preposterous,” Mirielle said. “Who’s in charge here?”
“Well, I suppose at the moment the railroad police. Shall I fetch them?”
Mirielle glared up at the woman. The sun, fully risen now, flooded the rail yard in light. Voices sounded from the nearby platform, just visible between the cars. Workers loaded and unloaded freight from neighboring trains. The longer she stood here, the greater the chance someone would recognize her.
Starting with her hatboxes and traveling bags, Mirielle loaded her luggage into the boxcar, stowing it just inside the door. She expected to stay only a few days in Louisiana—how long could it take to straighten out her diagnosis, after all?—and had instructed Charlie to pack only the barest necessities. A dozen or so day dresses with shoes to match. A few of her cotton tennis dresses and an evening gown or two. One of her tweed coats and a worsted wool sweater in case the Louisiana climate was unfavorable. Her red-squirrel-fur coat just for good measure. Then there were her bust flatteners and brassieres, girdles and petticoats, stockings and chemises. Twenty or so pairs of stockings and her satin kimono. Hats, handbags, stoles, scarves. And then, of course, the items from her vanity: cold cream, whitening cream, vanishing cream, eyebrow cream, talcum powder, toilet water, perfume, hair curling fluid, rouge, lipstick, and face powder.
Really, she’d been quite modest in her requests. But as she dragged the first of her three trunks toward the car, she wondered if perhaps she could have done without her parasol, riding cap, and ten sets of silk pajamas. The train whistle blared, hurrying Mirielle along. She tried to hoist the trunk into the car, but only managed to raise it a few inches off the ground before the handle slipped from her grasp.
“Let me help you, señora.”
“Thank you, I—” She looked up and caught sight of the man who’d offered his assistance. He was an older man with dark brown skin and graying black hair. Dark, eyebrowless eyes peeked from a puffy, deeply creased face. When he reached out and grabbed the handle of her trunk, she saw an outcropping of ghastly lumps covering his forearm.
Mirielle shrank back and stifled a scream with her hand. This was a pest car. He was . . . a leper. How many others were aboard, hiding in the shadows?
The man jumped down and grabbed her other two trunks, hauling them into the car before Mirielle could regain her wits enough to protest. It was as if she were living out a scene from Ben-Hur. She’d read the book as a girl, and just last month Charlie had dragged her to the theater to watch Mr. Niblo’s version of the film. The train car was like the awful dungeon where Ben-Hur’s mother and sister had been locked up, wasting away for years. Their hair turned white. Their fingernails loosened from their flesh. Their skin was overtaken with scales while their lips and eyelids were eaten away by the disease. Was that what awaited her in Louisiana?
She shuffled back. Her heel caught on a train rail and she fell.
The Mexican man came over to her and held out his hand. Mirielle shook her head, but he grabbed her forearm and hauled her up anyway. “Here’s not the place to run, señora,” he whispered to her.
Run? What was he talking about? She followed his nervous eyes around the crowded yard. At least half a dozen railroad police milled about.
“But I’m not—”
Their train’s whistle shrieked again. The man climbed back inside the car. He’d touched her coat sleeve when helping her up. Now it was covered with germs. The entire train car must be teeming with them. Maybe she should run.
Another look about, and it seemed as if the police were drawing nearer. If she caused a scene, someone would surely recognize her. Her and Charlie’s names would end up splashed across every newspaper and gossip rag in the city again. Never mind that she didn’t have the disease. Those blockhead journalists never let the truth get in the way of a good scoop.
The train’s wheels whined, and it lurched into motion. A backward glance at Los Angeles, and Mirielle hurried to the boxcar, grabbing the iron rail beside the opening, and scrambling inside.
CHAPTER 4
Mirielle was only just aboard when a rail worker jogging beside the train slammed closed the boxcar door, plunging her into darkness. She felt along the splintery wall until her foot struck something soft.
“Oy!” a woman’s voice said.
Mirielle stumbled backward. “Excuse me.”
The train listed, and she lost purchase on the wall, tripping over her feet and nearly falling.
“You really should sit down before you hurt yourself, ma’am.”
Mirielle recognized that as the nurse’s voice. Somewhere nearby she also heard a rasping noise, measured and guttural, like the surf after a storm. She backed away until she ran into the sharp, solid edge of a trunk—hopefully her trunk—and sat down atop it.
A whisper of light stole through cracks in the siding. After a minute or two, her eyes adjusted to the dim. The trunk beneath her was her own, and the rest of her luggage nestled nearby. The rasping noise came from a man laid out on a cot against the far wall. Each breath he drew seemed a struggle. The nurse perched beside him on a low, three-legged stool—the only proper piece of furniture in the entire boxcar. The Mexican man sat on the floor in the far corner, and the woman Mirielle had run into squatted atop her tattered valise. She looked older than Mirielle, though not by much, stocky and puffy-faced with a rag tied about her head. Her hands were marked with lesions. Not pale and innocuous like the one beneath Mirielle’s thumb, but scaly and raised, as if lumps of red clay had dried and crusted on her skin.
Though no one’s limbs were missing nor their fingernails peeling from their flesh like in Ben-Hur, Mirielle couldn’t help but shudder. She pulled a handkerchief from her handbag and wiped her sleeve and the toe of her shoe before tossing it to the ground. When the Mexican man’s eyes met hers, she looked away, focusing instead on the woodgrain maze of the floorboards.
The train sped along, and Mirielle felt her insides tear, as if only part of her had climbed into the boxcar and the rest remained firmly planted in Los Angeles. A few weeks and she’d be home again, she reminded herself. The girls would hardly miss her. She clasped her hands. They still trembled a bit, but the worst of drying out was over. When she returned home, maybe she’d go easy on the hooch.
The train stopped in the late afternoon, and the boxcar’s door rolled open. Mirielle squinted and shielded her eyes from the sudden onslaught of light. Her backside ached, and her neck was stiff from keeping her head turned away from the others. She had to pee, and her stomach churned with hunger.
“Ya got fifteen minutes,” a gruff voice called from outside. “Get out and do your business.”
The Mexican man jumped out and stretched. The woman and th
e nurse descended next and Mirielle behind them. Sand spilled into her shoes as her feet sank into the ground.
A few detached train cars sat scattered about the yard. Beyond them, desert: wiry sagebrush, towering saguaros, and far-off mountains. She started toward the depot, its pitched roof visible above the train. YUMA, read a hanging shingle. Even from here at the tail end of the train, she could hear the bustle of the platform—hurried footfalls and dragging luggage, cheerful hellos and choked goodbyes.
Before she’d waded but a few sinking steps beyond the boxcar, the nurse stopped her. “Don’t stray too far now.”
“I’m just dashing off to the dining car. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
“I’m afraid that area’s off-limits. Your supper’s right here.” The nurse held out a plate of beans and a slice of bread.
Mirielle hadn’t expected caviar, but this disappointed even her low expectations. “Don’t be a cluck. I haven’t even got a fork.”
“That’s what the bread’s for.”
She waved away the plate. “Never mind supper. I’ve got to use the ladies’ room.”
But they—the lepers—weren’t allowed in the lavatories either, according to the nurse. She gestured toward an uncoupled boxcar some distance off and suggested Mirielle might relieve herself behind it.
Mirielle gaped at her. Surely she wasn’t suggesting Mirielle pee in the uncivilized open. They weren’t animals, after all. But the nurse’s solemn expression didn’t falter.
A wistful glance at the depot and Mirielle stomped toward the uncoupled boxcar. With her bladder about to burst, she had no choice but to hike up her dress and squat behind the rusty wheels. On the way home, she’d insist on a private sleeper. That was, once the doctors at the Marine Hospital figured out she didn’t have leprosy, and this whole awful mess was behind her.
With a few minutes left before departure, she wandered to the last set of tracks. More sand spilled into her shoes. A bur snagged in her stocking, poking her through the silk. But after so many days locked in that dingy hospital room and then the suffocating boxcar, the sun’s warmth felt good on her skin. The sky above was blue as the topaz cocktail ring Charlie had given her on their third anniversary. Beyond the cactus and sagebrush, a streak of dust appeared in the distance, smudging with the dull brown of the horizon. Was that a man? Running?
The Second Life of Mirielle West Page 2