“Ya volunteering to arrange all that?” he asked between chuckles.
“Well, no. I’m more of an ideas woman. But I’m happy to weigh in on color choice and fabric.”
“That sounds right lovely, Mrs. Marvin, but I’m afraid the club don’t have the money or the manpower for that kind of a party.”
“What about asking the Hot Rocks to play?” a woman two seats over from Mirielle said.
“Yeah,” echoed another.
Frank leaned forward. “Ya know, that ain’t a bad idea. Summer’s a busy time for the canteen. I bet we could even throw a little scratch their way for their trouble.”
“Who are the Hot Rocks?” Mirielle whispered to Irene, imagining some newly famous jazz band from New Orleans or Baton Rouge.
“A couple of fellows from the colony who got instruments and get together to play sometimes. They’re good.”
Mirielle doubted that. But even bad music was better than nothing.
“We could ask the materials office if they’ve got any old sheets that we could dye and use for decoration,” another woman said.
“Great idea, Norma. I’m gonna put ya in charge of that,” Frank said, then with a glance at Mirielle, “I’m sure some of the other club ladies would be happy to help.”
“I don’t sew. One of those things I just never could set my mind to. Better to ring a tailor.” She looked around and, seeing no one else in agreement, added, “Or stop by the department store . . . or just tighten your belt.”
“Stop talking, baby,” Irene whispered.
Mirielle nodded.
“How about ya plan a couple of games for the youngsters then,” Frank said to her. “Maybe a treasure hunt or frog race.”
“Why that’s perfect,” Irene said, just as Mirielle began to shake her head. “You got two girls. Must’a been to dozens of kiddie parties with them.”
A stab of panic seized her. The breeze had died down and the hall was hotter than ever, but her hands and feet went cold. She hadn’t gone to such a party in months. Not even Evie’s seventh birthday. The thought of balloons and laughter and children running about made her stomach sour. Where was the nanny, that’s what everyone had asked. But Mirielle should have been watching too. Should have heard the splash. Should have seen him fall.
She blinked, and the balloons were gone. The laughter. The sunlight glinting off the pool.
Frank took up his pen. It was specially constructed with an extra-wide grip so he could hold it in his crippled hands. “Mrs. Marvin in charge of children’s games.”
Before Mirielle could find her voice, the meeting was adjourned and people were standing to leave. She wiped the sweat from her hairline with a clammy hand and approached Frank. “Put me in charge of something else,” she managed after a deep breath. “I’ll write to my husband and have him send us an entire crate of fireworks.”
Several of the remaining club members looked over with interest.
“That’d sure be swell,” one of them said.
“I ain’t seen a firework in fifteen years,” said another.
“See,” Mirielle said, “that’d be more help than some silly kiddie games.”
“Unless your husband’s Mr. Coolidge himself, fireworks may be a tall order. And, as I recall, the kiddie games was your idea.” Frank stacked his papers into a tidy pile and stood. When he looked at her again, his gaze softened. “Tell ya what, why don’t ya ask your husband to send us some treats for the kids’ treasure hunt. Lollipops. Baseball cards. Maybe a few seashells. I’ll help ya with the rest.”
“And fireworks!” one of the club members called as he was leaving.
“And fireworks,” Mirielle muttered, turning to leave herself. Charlie had to know someone who could get them fireworks. All the best parties in the Hills had them these days. But the games. She shouldn’t have even mentioned it. She hadn’t been thinking of Felix at the time but Jean, and how some simple, old-fashioned fun might do her good. Her heart banged as loud as her shoes as she crossed the room. Loud as the door when it again slammed shut behind her. Were she at home, she’d be on her second drink by now. Maybe her third. That always seemed to quiet the pounding. Here, her only hope was to wait it out.
CHAPTER 20
That night, Mirielle skipped supper, blaming the chaulmoogra pills she’d taken with lunch for an unsettled stomach when Irene came to fetch her. House eighteen was quiet, with everyone off at the dining hall, and Mirielle opened her window and cracked her door to let the air drift through her room. If it were this hot in early June, what would July and August be like? She’d ordered an electric fan like some of her housemates had, but it had yet to arrive. And even the catalog’s very best model couldn’t turn the swampy Louisiana air into the fresh, crisp air she remembered from home, no matter how quickly its blades whirled.
She lay down on her bed, the springs whining and the quilt bunching beneath her. More than an hour had passed since the What Cheer Club meeting and still her heart raced as if she’d just climbed a dozen flights of stairs, or danced the Charleston for three songs straight, or jumped headlong into the swimming pool to save her drowning son. Of course, she hadn’t paid attention to the thud of her heart then or the weight of her waterlogged clothes. She’d realized only after. The commotion of voices. Charlie and another person now in the pool with her. A few squeals of laughter across the yard from an ongoing game of pin the tail on the donkey. An orange balloon, somehow cut loose, drifting heavenward.
Her hands trembled now like they had her first days dry at County General. She drew her knees to her breast and folded in her arms. Her eyes closed against the waning sunset. She clutched her left wrist so tightly the grooves of her bracelet bit into her skin, into her scar.
* * *
Mirielle didn’t remember falling asleep, but when she woke, daylight had drained completely from the sky outside her window. Her hands no longer trembled, and her heart beat slow and steady against her breastbone. Panic’s seizing grip had loosened, leaving sorrow to fill the deep imprints left behind.
She got up and turned on her light. Footfalls pattered throughout the house. Soft voices sounded. A faucet turned on and off in the bathroom. She glanced at the small silver clock at her bedside. Only eight o’clock. She’d never passed so quickly in and out of the darkness before. Was she starting to heal, or had she simply grown callused?
Without bothering a glance in her handheld mirror, she grabbed her stationery set and headed for the living room. Two of her housemates chatted on the front porch. The others were still out or readying for bed, leaving the living room all to her. When she turned on the lamp, she found a plate of potato salad and a ham sandwich resting on the side table. The scrap of paper beside it bore her name, Polly, written in Irene’s large, curling script.
She sank down onto the sofa, legs curled under her, and set aside her stationery. She could eat a few bites at least, just to show her gratitude. Her first mouthfuls went down easier than expected, so she tried a few more. Hardly five minutes passed before she’d eaten the entire sandwich and forked down all the potato salad. She even ran her finger over the plate and licked clean the mayonnaise.
After Felix’s death, friends had sent expensive gifts of fruit and cheese and sweets, as opulent as they were impersonal. Surely someone had eaten all that food. Maybe Mirielle had choked down a bite of Camembert or candied pineapple herself. Or had it gone to waste? Thrown out with the withered flowers and condolence letters.
She set aside the plate and took her stationery to the wobbly writing desk in the corner of the room. A month’s time was plenty for Charlie to procure and send a crate of fireworks. She’d ask him to send noisemakers for the children too. And bonbons. And a dozen of those lollipops you could get at Ocean Park Pier that were the size of a bread plate. Felix had loved those lollipops. Evie too, though Mirielle hadn’t bought her one in ages. The first thing she would do once she was home and settled was take the girls to the pier. Never mind the crowds. Never m
ind that the sun would spoil Mirielle’s makeup and bring out Evie’s freckles. Never mind that Felix’s ghost would be there with them too. Charlie had written about second chances. Mirielle’s homecoming would be their second chance, and this time she wouldn’t mess it up.
No sooner had Mirielle uncapped her pen, than she felt a tap on her shoulder. Jean stood behind her, holding a copy of Picture-Play. She waved the magazine and nodded to the couch.
“I can’t read to you right now,” Mirielle said, turning back to the desk. “I’m writing an important letter.”
Jean stomped her foot and threw the magazine atop Mirielle’s gold-edged stationery paper. The corners of the magazine were furled, and the color photograph on the cover beginning to fade. But at least it was a newer issue than the last one they’d read. Only two months behind the times instead of six.
“Maybe when I’ve finished with my letter,” she said, turning back the cover to peek at the contents. Producer’s Wife Caught in Leading Man’s Love Nest, the title of one article read. That was hardly news. The affair had been going on for years. Prohibition Agent Interrogates Celebrities in Connection with Bootlegging Racket, another read. That was true too, but hardly suitable for a nine-year-old girl.
“I can’t read you this, Jean. Sister Verena would have my head. Besides, this magazine’s for grown-ups. Half of what’s printed is lies anyway. Don’t you have any children’s stories?”
Jean shook her head.
Mirielle glanced at the wall clock, then capped her pen. “All right, come on. I think we have enough time before curfew.” She took Jean’s hand and started for the door.
Outside, crickets sang in the surrounding darkness, and moths beat against the walkway screens. The air had cooled and smelled of night jasmine.
She’d expected Jean to pull away the minute she touched her. But Jean held fast to her hand as they walked, refusing to let go even when a bike or wheelchair rolled past, pushing them to the side. Mirielle had all but forgotten what it was like to feel a smaller hand in her own.
A building little bigger than a shed sat between the two chapels at the east end of the colony. Frank had called it the reading room when they’d passed by on their tour of the grounds. In the three months since, Mirielle had never ventured inside. The dilapidated, slanting exterior offered little hope that it housed anything more than moldering newspapers and maybe a few mice.
A gust of musty air struck them as Mirielle opened the door, but when she switched on the light, a tidy room with several shelves of books appeared. Jean let go of her hand and ran her fingers over the spines of the books.
Mirielle sat down in one of the two mismatched armchairs. “Go ahead, pick one.”
Jean surveyed the books for several minutes, taking out a few and flipping through their yellowed pages, before sliding them back into place on the shelf. Mirielle knew there was a small schoolhouse in the colony. One of the patients taught class for the children during the day, and another taught night school for adults who’d never learned to read or write. Jean attended day school, but sporadically. Mirielle often saw her rummaging through Irene’s garden or building Lincoln Log towers in the living room when she ought to be at class.
“Can you read?” Mirielle asked, rising from the chair.
Jean only shrugged.
“Here, let me help you pick one.” She perused the titles, finally settling on a book with scrolling rose canes and a little girl pictured on the cover. “The Secret Garden. Have you read it?”
When Jean shook her head, Mirielle tucked the book under her arm and turned out the light. A mouse’s squeak sounded, and she hurried to close the door behind them.
Back at house eighteen, Mirielle read aloud two chapters before closing the book and handing it to Jean. “That’s enough for tonight.”
Jean gave a squeak not unlike the mouse they’d heard earlier and thrust the book back into Mirielle’s hand.
“If you pout or throw a tantrum, I won’t read to you again for a week.”
Jean snatched the book and rose from the sofa. Mirielle stood too and returned to the writing desk. She penned a few lines—the first, as always, asking after the girls, then trumpeting her grand, if not heroic, efforts to turn the piddling Fourth of July picnic into a roaring party befitting the day. She was working her way to asking for fireworks when the stroke of a hand through her hair startled her.
She spun around to see Jean standing again behind her chair. “You about scared my stockings off. Why aren’t you in bed?”
Jean stroked her hair again. “You’re never gonna get out of here, you know.”
Mirielle’s spine prickled. “So you can talk?”
“Only their favorites get to leave. They’s the ones that get all the good medicine.”
Mirielle recoiled from Jean’s touch and rattled her head. “All this time you’ve been quiet as death when you speak perfectly well?”
Jean shrugged. “I only talk when I want to.”
“Who’s picking favorites? Everyone around here I see is getting the same stinky chaulmoogra pills.”
“Sister Verena and them others. Iodide’s the best. But only a few patients get it. The sisters don’t like you, so you’re never gonna.” She reached out to touch Mirielle’s hair again, but Mirielle caught hold of her hand.
She gave Jean’s fingers a gentle squeeze and then let go. “That’s not true. The sisters want us all to get better.”
“Everyone thinks that in the beginnin’. By the time you learn, it’ll be too late.” She stared at Mirielle, her muddy-blue eyes strangely calm. Then she gave a quick shrug, said in a more childish voice, “Night,” and skipped from the room.
Mirielle watched her go, rubbing the gooseflesh from her arms.
CHAPTER 21
Jean had to be wrong about the iodide. During her hours in the dressing clinic, infirmary, and pharmacy Mirielle had come across dozens of treatments beyond the awful chaulmoogra pills. Ointments of mercury and trichloracetic acid, solutions of arsenic, injections of carbolic acid for particularly large and stubborn nodules. But she’d never seen anyone receive iodide.
Perhaps it was the shock of hearing Jean speak that kept the idea swirling in Mirielle’s mind. She’d never questioned which patient got what medicine. It always seemed appropriately correlated to the degree of their disease. The sisters did show particular fondness for the Catholic patients, especially those who attended the myriad of masses and rosary recitations and other ceremonial nonsense that kept the little chapel busy all hours of the day. And it was plain as a hat on a rack that Sister Verena disliked her. Was Mirielle naïve to think all patients received the same care?
To settle the issue in her mind, she snuck into the pharmacy a few days later before her shift in the infirmary. The door was unlocked, but the room empty. Shelves of medicine bottles lined the far wall. Most were pills and solutions she knew: aspirin, morphine, castor oil, codeine elixir, quinine, licorice root. Others had strange, scientific names like sodium sozoiodolate or pyrogallic acid. One shelf, stocked with boric acid, Lysol, and witch hazel, wasn’t medicines at all but antiseptics.
She’d scanned most of the labels when a small bottle on the top shelf caught her eye: Iodide of Potassium. Mirielle dragged over a footstool and was just about to climb atop it when the clap of boots and rustle of starched skirts sounded behind her.
“Mrs. Marvin? What are you doing here?” Sister Beatrice asked as Mirielle spun around. “You’re not scheduled to help out in the pharmacy until Friday.”
Mirielle flashed an innocent smile even as a trickle of sweat dampened her brassiere. “It isn’t Friday? I must have gotten my days mixed up.”
The Bunsen burner in the corner hissed, and Sister Beatrice scuttled over to check the flame. “It can happen easy enough around here,” she said over her shoulder. “Just be sure you don’t mistake Friday for Saturday and forget to come back.”
“I won’t.”
While Sister Beatrice’s back was
turned, Mirielle climbed on the stool and reached for the bottle of iodide. She had to stand on her tiptoes and coax the bottle forward with her fingertips before she succeeded in grabbing it. She pocketed the bottle and jumped down just as Sister Beatrice turned back to her.
The trickle of sweat felt now like a river, pooling between her breasts. But she managed another smile and said, “See you Friday then,” before hurrying from the room.
* * *
“You’re late again,” Sister Verena said when Mirielle arrived at the infirmary.
The bottle of iodide in Mirielle’s pocket felt like one of those hideous bullfrogs that appeared on the lawn after it rained. The soft rattle of pills like the bullfrog’s tremulous croak. Any moment it might jump free of her pocket and expose her.
“I . . . er . . . thought it was Friday and went to the pharmacy instead.”
“Perhaps you ought to invest in a calendar then.”
“Yes, that’s an excellent idea,” she said.
Sister Verena’s eyes narrowed.
The pills seemed to rustle and croak even though Mirielle stood completely still. She dropped her arm to her side to cover the bulge of her pocket.
“Well, don’t just stand there and waste more time. Put an apron on and get to work.”
Mirielle nodded and walked as smoothly and steadily as possible to where the aprons hung on a wall. With each step, the pills jangled.
But Sister Verena had already crossed to the opposite end of the infirmary to suction the secretions bubbling out of a patient’s tracheostomy tube when Mirielle turned around with her apron on. She got to work taking patients’ temperatures and refilling their water glasses, doing her best to avoid both Sister Verena and Sister Loretta as they bustled to and fro.
It couldn’t hurt to take the pills, Mirielle decided, as she progressed from bedside to bedside with the thermometer and pitcher of water. The doctors wouldn’t stock medicine if it were dangerous. At worst, it would do nothing. At best, her lesions—the loathsome one on her neck in particular—would disappear. Maybe then they’d release her home early without having to wait out twelve negative skin tests or the discovery of a cure.
The Second Life of Mirielle West Page 11