“There ain’t no river monster,” Jean said.
Frank’s expression turned grave. “There is. He’s cousin of the Rougarou. Prowls the Mississippi from Vicksburg all the way to New Orleans. All the serious boaters know about him.”
“I’ve never seen him,” the older boy said.
“Ya don’t see him unless he wants ya to. And by then it’s usually too late.” Frank held up his hands. “One swipe of his claws can cleave a boat in two.”
Toby’s legs stopped swinging. “Really?”
Frank nodded. “But ya don’t gotta worry about him here. He never comes on land.”
“What about the swamps?” the older boy asked.
“Nah, he leaves that to the Rougarou and the gators.” Frank turned to Mirielle and winked. “And the possums.”
She smirked and twisted around to gaze at the river. The boat had left the water choppy, and sunlight glinted off the waves. The river reeds trembled. An egret took flight from the shore. Despite the warm, still air, a chill skittered over her skin.
“You wanna help us look for worms, Jean?” Toby asked. “Frank’s taking us fishing tomorrow.”
“Only if I can come along,” Jean said.
Mirielle turned from the river to see the boy squirm.
“Dunno.” He glanced at Frank. “Can girls fish?”
“ ’Course we can, stupid,” Jean said before Frank could respond. “Race you to the bottom.”
Jean took off running toward the stairs. The boys followed, their feet thundering atop the soft wood.
“Well?” Mirielle said when the noise had died down.
Frank came and sat beside her. “Well what?”
“Can girls fish?”
He scratched his chin in mock contemplation. “If frog hunting’s any indication, I’d say they can.”
“Glad I’ve done something to advance the rights of my sex.”
“What makes ya think I was referring to you? As I remember it, ya about toppled the boat.”
She laughed, but with little breath behind it, as if even her lungs were tired.
“How’s the fever therapy going?” he asked after a moment.
“Super.”
“That so?”
They’d avoided talking about the trial ever since their conversation at the picture show, and it was clear from Frank’s voice his skepticism hadn’t waned. Mirielle turned away, her gaze crawling over the weathered bench and railing as the silence stretched on.
“What’s this?” She ran her fingers over an etching in the wood, noticing similar marks and gouges farther along the bench and up and down the rails. S.M. & A.H., the etching beneath her fingertips read. “Are these initials?”
Frank nodded.
“Lovers’ initials?”
He nodded again. The edges of the cuts were smooth and worn. “How long ago were these carved?”
“Hard to say. The tower’s been around since the early days, back when it wasn’t no marine hospital, just the Louisiana Leper Home.”
“But I thought men and women were kept separated back then.”
“We was. But you’d be surprised how wily folks can be when they’re in love.”
He said it as if she didn’t know what it was to be in love. Mirielle’s father and grandmother had hated the idea of her going around with an actor. For months, she and Charlie had to contrive ways to slip the watchful gaze of her chaperone and meet. She remembered how the mere sight of him set her pulse aflutter. How his touch electrified her skin. How his kiss stole every thought and hesitation from her mind.
“Maybe they’re the initials of loved ones back home,” she said.
“I suspect some are.”
“Are your initials up here?” She looked around. “Surely you’ve broken your share of hearts here.” She said it teasingly, but he didn’t chuckle or smile. Instead, he clasped his hands between his knees—no, not clasped, but pressed them together palm to palm—and looked down.
“I didn’t mean to be nosy.”
“It’s okay. I did have a gal once. Before I came to Carville. We started going together in school. She wrote me every week during the war. We were going to marry as soon as I got back and could save enough to buy a house and some land.” He paused.
Mirielle hugged her arms around her chest. The sun shone upon them, just beginning its evening descent, but she still felt chilled. “This girl, she changed her mind? Found another beau?”
It wasn’t an uncommon story. Boy goes off to war only to come home and find his girl’s been untrue. It happened the other way around too. Mirielle knew of many relationships that had ended on account of the war and counted herself lucky that Charlie had been assigned to the reserves and was only gone for three months’ training in Washington.
“Oh, she changed all right. But not on account of another fella. I was already having troubles, signs of the disease by the time I got back. I thought it was from the gas and figured it would go away in time. Whatever it was, she said it didn’t matter, but that I ought to see a doctor. We had a family friend who was a doctor in New Orleans. He diagnosed me. I was still in the early stages, and he was gonna treat me on the sly. I told my girl and the next thing I know, the sheriff’s at my door saying I best get along to Carville or he’ll take me there himself. In chains.” He sighed, then straightened his shoulders. “Could’ve been worse.”
“Worse?”
“The sheriff kept things quiet. No one in town found out. Spared my family the shame.”
“How do you know it was your gal who squealed?”
“The sheriff was her father.”
“Oh . . . and that’s why he kept it quiet.”
Frank nodded. “The whole town knew we’d been sweet on each other. People would assume she had the disease too.”
“Did she ever write? Explain herself ?”
“Not a word.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, but she could tell from the glassiness of his eyes it still wounded him. “I don’t blame her for not wanting to marry a leper. But at least she could’ve said goodbye . . . No offense, but I don’t much trust women after that.”
“We’re not all that way.”
He gave a rueful smile. “I’m sure you’re to blame for a broken heart or two yourself.”
She started to say that wasn’t true but stopped herself. She’d gone with a few boys before Charlie who might accuse her of that. Those days seemed like a lifetime ago. No, like someone else’s life altogether. She rubbed the pale spot below her thumb. What would that silly, carefree girl think of the woman she’d become?
She shivered, and her teeth began to chatter. The supper bell couldn’t be far off, but she hadn’t a wink of appetite. Maybe she’d turn in early. When she stood, the tower swayed again like one of its supports had suddenly gone missing.
“Polly, ya all right?” Frank asked. His voice sounded far away.
“Fine,” she heard herself say, and took a step. Her legs felt heavy, her knees soft as Chef’s butterscotch pudding. The deck listed, rising suddenly to meet her face. She heard a loud thwack, then drifted into darkness.
CHAPTER 39
Mirielle awoke wrapped in a scratchy cotton blanket. Lysol and liniment choked the air. The infirmary. Beneath the blanket, her hospital gown clung to her sweaty skin. Her head throbbed, and body ached. She tried to sit up, but dizziness forced her head back to the pillow.
“There, there, dearie. Don’t try to sit up,” someone said. Through bleary eyes, Mirielle could make out the winged hat and white overdress the sisters wore. Sister Verena? No, this woman’s voice was too gentle. She sat down beside Mirielle and drew a wet cloth across her forehead.
“Sister Loretta?”
“I’m here, dearie.”
What had happened? How long had she been asleep? She was supposed to take Jean and the boys fishing tomorrow. Or today. Or yesterday. Or maybe Frank was taking them. He knew oodles more about fishing than she did.
&nbs
p; Before Mirielle settled upon an answer to any of this, she drifted back to sleep. When she woke again, her head was clearer. She managed to rise onto her elbows without the world spinning. Twilight lit the whitewashed buildings and mossy trees visible through the infirmary windows. Other patients occupied the narrow metal-framed beds around her. One woman tossed and moaned in her sleep. Another lay utterly still, the erratic rise and fall of her chest the only sign she was alive. To her other side sat a blind patient—Agatha, wasn’t that her name?—whom Mirielle had cared for many times. Bandages covered Agatha’s hands like mittens. Likely her lesions had ulcerated again. Or maybe the surgeon had operated on her fingers in an attempt to stave off bone absorption. Whatever her ailment, neither it nor the bandages stopped the deft motions of her knitting needles. The rose-colored blanket she’d begun when Mirielle last saw her was now nearly complete.
With slow, labored movements, Mirielle propped her pillow against the bed’s headrail and sat up. Her mouth was dry and sticky. The spot beneath her thumb was red and raised. A new lesion marred her opposite forearm. Was this because of the fever therapy? No one else in the trial had fallen ill. If anything, their symptoms were improving.
Maybe she just needed more rest between sessions. Sister Verena had cut back her work in the infirmary to one day a week and taken her off shot clinic rotation as well. She could stop helping out in the dressing clinic. It had always been her least favorite shift. The smell of sweaty feet. The gooeyness of the ointment. But Hector came to mind. How his legs had improved even as his kidneys failed. He’d been able to dance again, one last time before he died. It wasn’t much, but it was something. And Mirielle had been part of making that possible.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked around the thermometer when Sister Loretta came to check her temperature.
“Keep your mouth closed, dearie.” She felt along Mirielle’s wrist, her soft fingers probing beneath Mirielle’s bracelet. If she noticed the raised scar, her weathered face made no show of it.
“Doc Jack was worried it might be related to the fever therapy,” she said finally, after taking Mirielle’s pulse. “But then he ran some blood tests and learned that it wasn’t.”
Mirielle exhaled with such relief the thermometer nearly dropped from her mouth. There was still hope the fever therapy could work then. Still hope it could cure her.
“It’s not often we see malaria this late in the year,” the sister said.
“Malaria?”
Sister Loretta tapped the bottom of Mirielle’s chin. “Mouth closed. A few more doses of quinine, and you’ll be good as new.” She smiled, waited a few more seconds, and then plucked the thermometer from Mirielle’s mouth. After fumbling through her pocket for her thick glasses, she held the thermometer up and examined the silver line. “Your fever’s already broken.”
“I can still participate in the trial, though, right?”
“Don’t trouble yourself about that now, dearie. Doc Jack will decide when you’re well again.”
The quinine gave Mirielle strange, vivid dreams. Making love with Charlie only to devour him afterward like a black widow spider. Building sandcastles with Felix at the beach, then watching as the tide dragged him and the castles into the roiling sea. Dancing with Frank atop the observation tower as a funeral dirge played.
Jean came each day after school to visit with her. She climbed onto the narrow, creaky bed and told Mirielle about the possum they’d seen beneath the house, the raspberry custard Chef made for lunch, the two new patients who arrived from New York, one of whom, Jean insisted, looked just like the cinema starlet Clara Bow.
Irene stopped by every evening after supper to fill Mirielle in on whatever bits of house news Jean had left out. Madge had routed everyone at poker again. Mr. Li had replaced the dull needle, so the phonograph was playing right again.
Mirielle looked forward to their visits and the reprieve they brought from her otherwise monotonous day. She slept, worked her way from broth to toast to lukewarm chicken and rice, and listened to the clickety-clack of Agatha’s knitting needles. Without these distractions, Mirielle had nothing to do but obsess over the new lesion on her forearm and worry about others she couldn’t see.
With her body fighting off malaria, it had fewer defenses to spare against leprosy, Doc Jack had told her. She imagined tiny rod-shaped monsters multiplying inside her. It made her itch and squirm and want to turn her skin inside out so she could scrub the underside clean. The longer she lay in the lumpy hospital bed, the worse these imaginings became until every cell in her body was infected and she welcomed sleep, no matter how troubling her dreams.
On her fourth day in the infirmary, Doc Jack pulled up a stool beside her bed. The quinine had worked its magic and she was feeling nearly as well as she had before that afternoon in the observation tower. She hoped he’d let her take another treatment in the fever cabinet today, so she wouldn’t miss a week of the therapy. But when she asked, his gray eyes retreated from her gaze.
“I’ve consulted with a few other doctors, and I’m afraid you cannot return to the trial.”
“Ever?” she managed to ask.
“If we do another trial in the spring, you could volunteer again.”
“But I’m feeling fine.”
“Your illness with malaria would confound the results of the therapy.” Doc Jack must have read her confusion, for he added, “We wouldn’t be able to say whether it was the fever chamber or the illness that affected your disease.”
“But I . . .” Her voice faltered. She’d done everything they’d asked. Rested. Ate well. Arrived on time for her treatments and endured the cabinet’s terrific heat. She didn’t want to wait for the next round of trials. That meant more months away from her family. More missed holidays and birthdays and Sunday picnics at the beach.
“You can still be involved,” he said. “Since you know the process and have experience in the infirmary, Sister Verena agreed you could monitor the female patients during their treatments and help us keep the records in order.”
He smiled as if this would placate her. But she didn’t want to watch others get better; she wanted to get better herself.
“The good news is you’re well enough today to be discharged. Though you’ll have to keep taking the quinine for another three days and stop by every morning after breakfast for a quick checkup.”
He patted her hand and stood, lingering by her bedside until she managed a nod and fake smile. Beside her, Agatha’s knitting needles chattered away. Mirielle sank down in her bed, smothered her ears with her pillow, and wept.
CHAPTER 40
When Mirielle returned to house eighteen, she changed out of the chiffon dress she’d worn that afternoon at the observation tower. A few spots of blood stained the collar from when she’d passed out and hit her head on the deck. The short walk from the infirmary had tired her, so she sat a moment on her bed before going to the bathroom to shower.
With her housemates away at supper, Mirielle took her time, relishing the plink of water against her skin and soaping away the dried sweat from her body. If only the water could wash away her disease too.
She toweled off and wiped the fog from the bathroom mirror. The reflected woman looked wan and aged with skin the color of congealed chicken gravy. When had lines permanently formed around her mouth and bags settled beneath her eyes? When had her breasts slackened, and hair turned stringy? A thin line of stitches cut across her brow where she’d hit her head on the observation deck. Undoubtedly it would scar.
Mirielle raised her chin and saw the lesion on her neck had grown to the size of a quarter. She clapped a hand over the spot and squeezed her eyes shut to block the return of tears.
What would Charlie think of her when she returned home? Would he even recognize her? She remembered the way he’d hesitated to touch her when they’d parted at the hospital. He’d stood but two feet away and yet never felt so far.
Mirielle opened her eyes and returned to her room to dr
ess. The boatneck line of her collar wouldn’t come close to covering the lesion on her neck. She rummaged through her wardrobe, tossing out slips and stockings and girdles in search of a scarf.
At last, at the very back of the wardrobe, she found a silk print scarf and wound it several times around her neck. Her hand lingered on her collarbone, swept the hollow beneath, then lower to the crevice of her breasts. She lay on her bed amid the tangle of underclothes thrown from her wardrobe.
The last time she and Charlie had made love—three, maybe four months before her diagnosis—had been a quick, perfunctory encounter. Before that, three days after Felix’s death, they’d come together in a whirlwind of sorrow and desperation that left them sated but all the more broken. Further back though, they’d made love often, with equal measure fire and tenderness.
What she wouldn’t give to feel that fire now. For it to be his fingers trailing over her skin instead of her own. She slid her hand lower, beneath the hem of her dress along the inside of her thigh. She closed her eyes and thought of the softness of his lips, the tickle of his stubbly cheek, the smell of his cologne.
The woman in the mirror bullied into her mind. Her flat, wet hair and lusterless complexion. The giant red lesion on her neck. Mirielle’s hand stopped before reaching her sex. The image of Charlie wilted and faded. She buried her face in her mattress and screamed.
Not until her voice was scratchy and throat sore did Mirielle peel herself from the bed. She left the underclothes she’d flung around the room lying where they were and headed for the canteen. A soda and—if she were lucky—a letter would cheer her up.
* * *
The counter was deserted when she arrived at the canteen, but two of the tables were occupied. Half the women from her house crowded around one of the tables, including Jean and Irene. Mr. Li, his housemate Billy, and a woman Mirielle hadn’t seen before sat with them. Frank stood beside the table, recounting some hammy story.
There wasn’t space to squeeze another chair around the table. But Mirielle didn’t care for company anyway. She grabbed a Charleston Chew from the shelf and sat down at the empty counter with her back to the tables. Laughter erupted behind her at whatever Frank had said. Mirielle considered leaving her nickel on the counter and going back to her room, but she wanted to see if a letter had arrived. She glanced over her shoulder, hoping Frank would hurry up with his story.
The Second Life of Mirielle West Page 22