The Second Life of Mirielle West

by Amanda Skenandore

  What would Charlie think of this place? Had their telephone conversation felt as strained to him as it had to her? How long would it take them to fall back into step together when she returned?

  She followed Frank to the bar, grateful he hadn’t chosen a table by the dance floor. He sat down on the stool closest to the wall and ordered them both a drink. Mirielle sat beside him.

  “Salut,” he said to her after the bartender set two highballs before them.

  The liquor wasn’t as strong as Frank’s home brew. But a hefty slug more potent than the gin or champagne she favored at home. She leaned her forearms on the bar and curled her hands around the glass. Evie’s voice returned to her as she drank. Helen’s cooing. Charlie’s silence at the end. Tears smarted in her eyes again.

  How dare he spread such lies about her! If she were free, she’d catch the first train home and finish giving him a piece of her mind. She took another gulp of her drink. As the bright liquid spread across her tongue and down her throat, it occurred to her she was free. There wasn’t any barbwire fence here. No orderly counting heads. No watchman.

  “I—er—I’m gonna freshen up my face.” It was a silly thing to say, considering she hadn’t brought anything with her. But Frank nodded, perhaps thinking she had a powder puff tucked beneath the strap of her brassiere.

  The washroom was a tiny, filthy room with newsprint on the walls and a cracked enamel sink. She splashed water on her face, building up the courage to run. She wasn’t sure how to make it back to the train station or how—without any money—she’d manage to book a ticket. But she’d figure those things out as she went. Back home, everyone would see how perfectly sane she was and leave her daughters alone. Charlie could set the record straight with those pesky reporters. Well, not straight exactly, but crooked in a different direction. One that didn’t make her out to be a madwoman. Or a leper.

  She dried her face on the hem of her skirt rather than the grimy hand towel and reached for the door. Her pulse thudded in her ears. Her limbs tingled with exhilaration and a touch of fear. She need only peek around the corner to ensure Frank wasn’t looking and then—

  Frank. Undoubtedly he’d worry for her and come looking. Miss his ride back to Carville. Spend a month or more in that mice-infested jail when he returned. All because he’d tried to help her. And Irene. If Dr. Ross learned Irene knew about the plot, she might get in trouble too.

  Mirielle’s hand hovered over the doorknob. No, she couldn’t run. Not tonight. Not when her friends would suffer for it. Besides, if there was one thing that could be said of Hollywood, it was that nothing remained a scandal for long. She straightened her dress and swallowed the sorrow building in her throat.

  The band had taken a break between sets, so the club was quieter when she returned. Voices rose and fell. Laughter. The occasional grunt or shout. The musicians stood beside the stage, smoking and guzzling down drinks. Dancers crowded the bar. Mirielle threaded her way back to her seat. She’d grown so accustomed to Carville with its endless walkways and wide-open lawns that the thick of sweaty bodies made her jumpy.

  As she neared Frank, she saw a group of young men drift toward him.

  “What kind of freak do we got here?” one of the fellows said.

  Mirielle pushed through them and sat down beside Frank. The men’s eyes were glassy, their breath heavy with alcohol.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “Not you, doll.” The man jutted his chin in Frank’s direction. “Him.”

  Frank’s gnarled hands were curled around his glass. A rush of fear traveled through Mirielle like a shudder. Her limbs went cold, and her heart sped.

  Frank raised his highball, took a long sip, then set down his drink. He turned from the bar to face the men. “I reckon ya mean my hands?”

  “Damned right, I do.”

  The air grew heavy and electric while the noise of the crowd faded into the background.

  “Tell ya what,” Frank said, his steady voice drawing Mirielle’s eyes back to him. He sat with his back straight and shoulders square. Formidable, if it weren’t for his ruined hands. “I’ll tell y’all two stories about how come my hands look like this. Ya gotta pick which is the lie and which is the truth.”

  The men glanced between one another. Finally, the one with a crooked nose and thin, wormlike lips who’d spoken before said, “All right. Spill it.”

  “Back in October—nah—November of eighteen, my unit and I were holed up along the Fritzes’ right flank somewhere in the armpit of France. Two dozen of us. The rest had been pulled to the main line. It’d rained for days, washing shit and mud into our trench. The bodies we’d buried in the stretch of field behind us filled the air with rot. Better than gas, my buddy said. I wasn’t so sure.” Frank described rows upon rows of barbed wire. The leafless, poisoned trees. The sporadic pop of gunfire. They’d run out of cooking oil but didn’t dare leave their foxhole to cut wood, so they ate their rations cold.

  The drunken men’s restless shuffling stilled. They listened wide-eyed and slack-jawed. They were too young to have fought in the Great War but old enough to remember meatless Tuesdays, and newspaper headlines, and posters of brave doughboys.

  “One of my buddies, a real cutup, was fooling around, doing a little parody of Kaiser Billy, when he accidentally pulled the pin on his grenade.”

  The men had drifted closer to her and Frank, so close she could hear the sudden arrest of their breathing.

  “They say that time slows down at times like that and damned if that ain’t true,” Frank continued. “My buddy, he dropped the grenade, him. It rolled through the mud, stopping right at my boots.”

  “What did you do?” one of them sputtered.

  “What could I do? It’d explode and kill us all if I left it there. So I picked it up. You only got a good five seconds before they go boom, and I figured I had at least one or two left. I hurled it like a baseball over the bags toward the enemy line.” He held up his rough, mangled hands. “It exploded just after I let go.”

  “It didn’t kill you?” the crooked-nosed one asked, even though the answer sat plainly before him.

  “I was lucky. Damned lucky. Some of the rainwater must have gotten inside when it rolled through the mud. Dampened the explosion. The sound was enough to spook those Fritzes, though. They charged out of their foxholes into the sights of our gunners. Battle lasted less than an hour. Or so I’m told. I woke the next day in the field hospital in bandages up to my armpits, no memory after the grenade went bam!”

  Mirielle gasped when he said the last word.

  “By golly!” one of the young men said, and then, after a pause, “What’s your other story?”

  Frank shrugged and picked up his glass again. “I’m a leper.”

  The amazement in the men’s faces turned to confusion. Then Crooked Nose laughed. The others did too. Deep, raucous laughter that filled the heavy silence of a moment before. They slapped Frank on the back and hollered at the bartender for another round of drinks for the war hero and his gal.

  They badgered Frank with several more questions about the war before stumbling off to another juice joint.

  “War hero, huh?” Mirielle asked when they’d left.

  “It wasn’t all a lie,” he said, flashing her a smile. “But I was the stupid one playing around with the grenade. Five days in a muddy foxhole is enough to make any man stupid. I threw it as soon as I realized what I done, so no one was hurt. And damned if it didn’t spook the Krauts outta their holes. That’s the only reason I wasn’t court-martialed.”

  He laughed.

  “How’d you know those men would believe it?”

  His eyes darkened, and he took another drink. “A good lie’s always easier to stomach than the truth.”

  Mirielle looked down at her glass. Nearly all the ice had melted. So too had her anger. Right or wrong, the rumor Charlie had started was something people could choke down. The truth would never be palatable.

  She turned to Fr
ank and held up her highball. “To lies, then.”

  He clanked his glass against hers, and they drank.

  The music had started up again, a jazzy rhythm that spread through her limbs like a hot toddy on a cold day. Beside her, Frank tapped his foot in time with the beat.

  “You—er—wanna dance?” she asked.

  Judging from the way his foot flagged, she’d surprised them both with her words. His gaze cut to the tangle of dancing bodies, then drifted back to her. He held out his hand.

  Mirielle took hold before her nerves failed her.

  At first, the feel of his uneven skin and curled fingers consumed her attention. On the dance floor, she moved right when he guided her left and stumbled through the easy steps. His other hand felt like a bumpy rock against the small of her back. The song rolled without pause into the next, and after a few swinging bars, she felt herself relaxing. Her hand settled into the hollow of his palm. She was careful not to squeeze too hard, but otherwise soon forgot her awkwardness. He was a good dancer—nearly as good as Charlie—and she couldn’t help but imagine what a hot ticket he must have been in the war years. Handsome blue eyes, dark wavy hair, neatly pressed uniform. How the French girls must have swooned.

  But then came the disease.

  She chased the thought from her brain before it could sour the moment. And soon everything but the music, the sway of their bodies, and the tapping of their feet fell away. They danced two more songs before they had to leave. For those few minutes, she wasn’t Polly the leper or Mirielle the cuckoo mother. She was just a body in motion.

  CHAPTER 36

  Two days later, Mirielle sat on the edge of the hospital bed waiting for Doc Jack to return with the results of her skin test. Each month, this hour or two while her slides sat beneath the lens of a microscope were the longest she endured. Now, after New Orleans, her determination to rid herself of this disease had turned so sharp she could taste it on her tongue.

  She tried to read a magazine while she waited, but the words wouldn’t stay put on the page. At last, she got up and began rolling bandages at the back counter, even though it was her day off.

  When Doc Jack returned, he pulled up a stool beside her. Mirielle set aside the length of gauze she’d been wrangling and tried to read his expression. It tottered somewhere between serious and ominous. Mirielle groped for her stool and sat before her legs grew too soft to stand upon.

  “Is it bad? Were they positive? Maybe you should test again.”

  “Your slides were negative.”

  Three in a row! Air flooded her lungs, and the tautness of her muscles eased. “Thank God.”

  “It’s quite remarkable, really. Last month after your reactive episode, I was surprised at your negative test and worried the bacteria would rebound if given time. But it appears they have not.”

  “Does that mean I’m in the clear?”

  “It’s certainly promising.”

  “Then why the straight face?”

  “There’s still a lot we don’t know about how the disease proliferates. Perhaps the fever you experienced during your reaction helped destroy many of the bacilli in your body. But what remains can still replicate and spread.”

  Mirielle leaned forward on her stool. “Why not induce another reaction then? I could take more iodide pills and—”

  “More pills?”

  “Er—I mean some pills. I could take some iodide pills for the first time. You said they can trigger a reaction.”

  His expression—that of paternal disapproval—was no longer hard to read. “Leave the dosing of medicine to the doctors, Mrs. Marvin.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Potassium of iodide has been tried in the past to disappointing results. But, I will tell you a new trial has already been approved. We’re just waiting on the equipment to arrive.”

  “A new drug?”

  “I cannot say any more, but be on the lookout for a call for volunteers. I think you’d be a prime candidate.”

  * * *

  Mirielle held tight to the secret of the upcoming trial all afternoon and through supper. Afterward she joined her housemates and the rest of the residents in the rec hall for a picture show. The What Cheer Club sponsored the weekly event and maintained the projector—a bulky contraption that whirred loudly as it ran.

  During her first months at Carville, Mirielle seldom attended the shows. New was a relative term at Carville, and that extended to the pictures, most of which were two- and three-reelers filmed a decade ago. The motley furnishings of the rec hall didn’t help. The uneven rows of rockers, straight-back chairs, stools, and wheelchairs crammed in front of the screen couldn’t begin to compare to the coffered ceiling, twinkling chandelier, and velvet-upholstered seats of the Million Dollar Theater.

  But as the long sticky nights of summer stretched on, Mirielle had given in. If she ignored the out-of-tune accompaniment and the cockroaches that skittered back to their hidey-holes whenever the lights went up for a reel change, it was like being home again. Almost anyway.

  Tonight Judith of Bethulia was playing. It was strange to see people she knew—Henry, Blanche, the Gish sisters—projected onto a screen here at Carville. It had never felt that way at home. Thank heavens they hadn’t played any of Charlie’s films. Even though she was still a little cross with him, it would break her to see him like a stranger in shades of gray upon the screen.

  During the second reel change, she slipped to the back of the room where Frank was selling candy bars and roasted peanuts. She bought a Baby Ruth, breaking off half for Irene when she sauntered over.

  “Doc Jack told me they’re going to be trialing a new cure soon,” she whispered to Irene and Frank when the line at the candy stand dwindled.

  “What kind of cure?” Irene asked.

  “He wouldn’t say. But I’m signing up.”

  “Don’t get your hopes too high, chère.”

  “Doc Jack seemed very optimistic. Said I was a prime candidate.”

  Frank shook his head. Their conversation paused as another resident shuffled up to buy a cone of peanuts. When he was gone, Frank turned back to them. “I’ve been here seven years. Irene, you’re what, going on five?”

  She nodded.

  “They’ve experimented with dozens of things in my time here—vaccines, oxygen therapy, snake venom, blood plasma, calf serum. Two or three, I’ve been part of myself.”

  “And?” Mirielle asked.

  “And I’m still here. So is nearly everyone else who let them doctors poke and prod them.”

  “But if no one volunteers, we’ll never find a cure.”

  “Oh, people will volunteer. Dozens of ’em. You’ll be lucky just to make the cut from among so many eager beavers.” The lights went out, and the new reel began to whirl. Frank lowered his voice. “Likely as not, y’all will be disappointed.”

  “That’s not a very optimistic attitude.” She turned to Irene, who gave a shrug.

  “Frank just don’t want to see you get your hopes dashed, baby.”

  “So you’re not going to volunteer either?”

  “I’m five negative tests away from my diploma. So close I can almost smell that sweet Texas air. I ain’t doing anything to mess that up.”

  “Sweet?” Frank said. “Pardon my French, but I heard it smells like cow shit there.”

  They laughed, even Mirielle, until someone from the back row shushed them. She and Irene crept back to their seats, but Mirielle found it impossible to get back into the film. Frank could keep his concern. She hadn’t forgone her chance to escape in New Orleans just to come back and sit around idle.

  * * *

  A week later, a new piece of equipment was lugged into the women’s infirmary. Sister Verena ordered it placed at the far end of the room, then left to supervise the installation of two identical cabinets in the men’s infirmary. Mirielle finished scratching down the pulse rate and temperature of a new patient admitted for pneumonia, then snuck over to inspect the contrapti
on. It looked like an oversized coffin raised to table level on four narrow legs. Shiny metal brackets held it together at the seams. At one end of the cabinet was a dinner plate–shaped hole with a narrow shelf just below the opening. Horizontal doors the size of a breadbox were built into the longer sides. When she slid one of the doors open, it revealed an empty chamber with a thin mattress. After walking all the way around it, Mirielle realized it must be designed for a person to lie inside with their head jutting out the hole at the end. Twin gauges sat atop the cabinet like bulging eyes. Standing on her tiptoes, Mirielle saw that one measured temperature and the other humidity. She stepped back and examined the contraption from afar before returning to her duties. An ominous machine to be sure. Half casket, half monster. But wonderfully modern and perhaps just the ticket to finding a cure.

  CHAPTER 37

  A notice was pinned to the bulletin board in the dining hall the following day. Volunteers wanted for a trial of artificial fever therapy. Mirielle signed up straightaway.

  Conjecture about the trial buzzed through the dining hall and beyond. Mr. Li had read about the success of fever therapy in syphilis patients in a recent medical journal. Others had seen similar articles in the newspaper. Naysayers and curmudgeons said volunteers were just as likely to be cooked alive as cured. But that didn’t stop sixty others from signing their names alongside Mirielle’s.

  During her next shift in the infirmary, Mirielle assisted Sister Verena in examining and questioning each of the female volunteers. A new record book had been procured for the purpose and, as each woman slipped behind the privacy screen and undressed, Mirielle recorded their patient number, age, marital status, birthplace, and any family history of the disease. Then Sister Verena would dictate to Mirielle her examination.

  “An active advanced case of mixed type, the nodular form predominant,” she would say. Or, “An early case of nerve-type leprosy.” Then she would go on to describe the location and characteristics of the woman’s disease. “Faded macule on the left buttock. Reddish patches scattered over torso. Diffuse thickening of skin over the face. Discrete nodules scattered over arms and legs. Anesthesia of the feet and hands.”