by Helen Wells
“How to turn a liability into an asset,” Cherry mused. “Or, The Straphanger’s Reward.”
But on one bus she caught regularly, Cherry had difficulty concentrating on her newspaper. The driver was always so cross that Cherry listened in a kind of horrified fascination.
“Step lively, I ain’t got all day!”
“Naw, no transfers to Northern Drive! Whatcha want for a nickel?”
“I told ya I can’t let ya off over there! A bus can’t go anywheres!”
Passengers trembled at his gibes. Cherry shied away from him herself. The bus stopped and started apparently at the cranky driver’s whim, while regular bus stops went shooting by. The driver jolted the bus to a stop in a way that set the passengers’ teeth on edge. It was so awful it was rather interesting. Cherry decided he probably had stomach ulcers or an unhappy married life, to make him behave so ferociously. His name was Smith and she was sufficiently impressed to write home to Hilton about him.
“Whatcha think this is, yer private taxi?”
“If ya don’t like it, get out an’ walk!”
Driver Smith, although an unavoidable evil, had a sort of showmanship. Riding with him might be hair-raising but it was never dull.
At the center Cherry felt that she had belonged there for years. Bobbie and Miss Davis looked as familiar to her by now as first cousins. Mrs. Berkey, the assistant supervisor who appeared somewhat forbidding at first, turned out to be as friendly and helpful as the rest of the office. Sitting next to Mary Cornish at one of the long tables, with witty Dolly Click on her other side, Cherry felt warmly at home, though she was still only a floater. She did want her own district. Especially when the morning mail from patients was distributed, and there were no letters for the floaters, did Cherry long to have a district and families of her very own.
The day finally came. Miss Davis said:
“It’s one of our most difficult neighborhoods, Miss Ames, because it’s spread out and there’s no transportation out there.”
“I’m a good walker,” Cherry said stoutly.
“Also,” the young supervisor hesitated, “it’s quite poor and you’ll have to use your wits more than once.”
Cherry was puzzled but not dismayed. She wanted to hurry right out to her district and see what it was like. But Dorothy Davis advised her to read the district’s case records first. She added:
“A very good nurse handled the area for several years, until she became ill and resigned. You’ll find that she has done a lot of good teaching, and also paved the way for you in good will.”
Cherry was grateful to hear that.
It was noon before she had hastily studied case records and confided the good news to Gwen—Bertha and Josie had left for the field. Then she started out for—triumph!—her own district.
Half an hour later, after a roundabout route and consulting her pocket map, Cherry stood at the street where her district began.
“Well, this is a pleasant surprise!”
Although an isolated tenement building rose up here and there, mostly there were rows of modest, frame houses. Wide stretches of ground or vacant lots separated these. Cherry strolled down the central street, passing garages, a grocery, a school, trees blowing in the October wind. Not many people were about. How peaceful it was!
Cherry had to tramp for a long time, searching many blocks of small cottages for the address of her first call of the day. Some of the side streets were only dirt roads and so lonely as to seem in the depths of the country. Cherry could recall she was in New York City only by glancing at the pale, distant silhouettes of skyscrapers and bridges, or hearing frequent planes overhead. Then a stretch of two or three citified blocks would crop up again.
Suddenly, as she turned a corner, she came to something that caught her attention. It was a once-elegant Victorian house, almost a mansion, fenced in and half hidden behind thickly overgrown trees. The few windows which were visible had concealing lace curtains. On some windows, shutters were tightly closed. In the deep stillness surrounding the place, there was no sign of life.
“How odd,” Cherry thought. “That old house is still beautiful and—well, mysterious.”
She wondered for a moment whether, in her excitement over having her own district, she was romanticizing. But the Victorian house, fenced off and some distance from any neighbors, did have a distinct atmosphere of its own.
“I’ll ask a tradesman about it,” Cherry noted mentally, and hurried along to locate the family who had sent out an emergency call for the nurse.
The address led her to a two-family wooden house, well-kept but colorless on the outside. “Persson,” her call list read. Cherry rang a doorbell, righted her hat on her curls, hoped she would be even half as welcome and useful as Mary Cornish was on her district, and started expectantly up the stairs.
The door flew open and a plump, blue-eyed woman in a house dress beamed at her.
“Oh, the nurse is here! We are so glad! Come in!”
“I’m Miss Ames,” Cherry smiled. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” and she stepped into the Persson household.
She found herself in a home she never could have guessed at, looking at this ordinary house from the street. This Swedish-American household was one of the most inviting, shipshape interiors she had ever been in: simple, handmade furniture of bleached wood, hand-loomed fabrics in serene, cool blues and greens, an air of calm and spaciousness. Over the homemade brick fireplace hung six glass squares, beautifully decorated in red and gold, and printed in Swedish with family names, cities, and birth dates.
Mrs. Persson—it was pronounced Pierson, she said—smiled at Cherry’s interest.
“Those are all the members of our family. It is an old custom with us. See, one for my husband Seth, one for Ingrid—that’s me—our children Jon, Constant, and Inga—and one for Uncle Gustave.”
Cherry, charmed by such birth certificates, fished her family forms out of her black bag and wrote down the list of family members, since this was a new case.
“Who is ill, Mrs. Persson?”
“Uncle Gustave. I think—sit down, ssh, I tell you something”—she lowered her voice and Cherry thought Mrs. Persson had the bluest eyes she had ever seen—“I think Uncle Gustave is not really sick.”
“Then what—?”
“I think Uncle Gustave is unhappy. So unhappy he gets sick from it.”
She talked on, and Cherry tactfully interpolated the required questions needed to take the family history. Cherry’s pencil flew as the story came out.
Uncle Gustave had come to the United States when he was a young man, bringing his small nephew Seth with him. Good builders were needed to help young American towns grow into cities, and people from other nations were invited to bring their effort and their skills, and become Americans. Mrs. Persson’s parents had arrived earlier, to build ships for American trading. She had been born and raised and educated here. Only the sea-blue of her eyes, a faint singsong in her voice and a demureness of manner showed that her parents had been transplanted Americans.
“It was not easy for my people to leave Sweden,” Mrs. Persson told Cherry earnestly. “They were substantial, prosperous people there. They had to leave behind parents and home and learn a new language, and start life all over again. But they believed in this new country and”—she smiled—“immigrants, too, were pioneers.”
Mr. Persson was a master carpenter, their eldest son Jon was training to be a shipbuilder, Constant and Inga attended high school. Uncle Gustave, who had been a “carpetect”—an architect who built houses with his own hands—now was too old to work. Mrs. Persson led the way in to see him, murmuring that close to a hundred of Uncle Gustave’s stone houses sheltered families all through New York State and Connecticut, and that he was heartbroken because he was too old to build any more.
Uncle Gustave’s room was another surprise for Cherry. In the midst of worktables, tools, blueprints, and neat rows of gadgets sat a small, brown-haired man
, with the same very blue eyes. He rose politely from his cot to greet Cherry and his niece, then wearily sat down again.
“Well, now, Mr. Persson,” said Cherry cheerfully, “let’s see what we can do to make you stronger. From the looks of you,” she fibbed, “I’m sure we can do a great deal.”
The doctor’s report said: secondary anemia, heart murmur, recurrent nosebleeds. Cherry knew that these physical symptoms could have emotional causes. “Distress signals?” she wondered.
She checked Uncle Gustave over, with Mrs. Persson’s help. Then she gently changed the awkward, cotton dressing with which Mrs. Persson had checked his nosebleed this morning. Cherry showed them both how to stop a nosebleed, instructed Uncle Gustave to drink lemon juice, hold his head back, use ice, and rest. She left a packet of medicated cotton for them. After this first visit, Cherry would do as little nursing as possible, for she wanted the family to be self-reliant.
“How long did Uncle Gustave’s nose bleed this morning?”
“Almost an hour,” the little man said angrily. “Now I feel weak as a cat. Bah.”
No wonder, Cherry thought, after losing all that blood. Moreover, an anemic person could not afford any loss of blood.
“What made the nosebleed start? Do you know?”
“Nothing made it start,” Uncle Gustave said in even greater disgust.
“Yah, I think there was a reason,” Mrs. Persson murmured thoughtfully. “He was making a—a something, and he needed a special kind of screws. They are very expensive and there was no money to get them. Our boy Constant said he would sell his ice skates, but Uncle Gustave—”
“I do not take away the boy’s skates!” the little old man snapped. “He is the star of the ice carnival at the high school last winter. But it’s like this, nurse. For three days now I build this little machine, and over and over, for no screws, it falls apart in my hands. It is enough to make one cry.”
There was a silence. Cherry sympathized with this craftsman, his intelligent hands threatened by age and lack of funds. Why, the whole point of his life was being taken away from him!
“What are you making?” she asked.
Brightening, he showed her the tableful of his inventions, which ranged from the extremely ingenious to a hilarious device for washing dishes—a chore which Uncle Gustave apparently detested. Then, suddenly tired, he admitted he had better lie down.
In the other room Cherry worked out a diet for him and explained to Mrs. Persson how to plan and vary it, within the family’s limited means. As Cherry prepared to go, Mrs. Persson said shyly:
“Please, won’t you stay and have coffee and kondis with me?”
“Why, thank you! But—but—you know, it’s a policy of our service not to accept gifts, unless they are for the Visiting Nurse Service itself. Thank you just the same for your hospitality,” Cherry smiled.
Mrs. Persson flushed. “I cannot pay you very much. Fifty cents, perhaps.”
Then Cherry understood. This family of six, with only one earner, could not afford to pay at all. Mrs. Persson’s offer of refreshments was her way of saying “thank you” to the nurse. It might be ungracious not to accept.
“But there is no charge, Mrs. Persson,” Cherry tried to reassure her.
“But I should like you to stay! Please. Uncle Gustave will come in, too. We will have a little party,” Mrs. Persson said eagerly. Then she hesitated and looked lonesomely into Cherry’s eyes. “You see, except for the minister, when he can come from Brooklyn, we have almost no company. There are no other Swedish-American families in this neighborhood.”
“But why,” Cherry asked in amazement, “shouldn’t you be friends with people who didn’t originally come from Sweden?”
Mrs. Persson knit her brows. “We would like to. Only I think we are shy and the French family downstairs are shy. And the people across the street, with the German name, maybe they think we don’t want to be friends.” Suddenly she laughed. “Isn’t it foolish? But all our children go to school together, they are friends.”
Cherry, who came from the friendly Midwest, was puzzled at people living as next-door neighbors and not knowing one another. She said as warmly as she could:
“Well, I should like very much to stay for your coffee party! What is kondis?”
“Pastry. Uncle Gustave! Come in! Miss Ames is staying and we are having a party!”
Mrs. Persson’s cheeks were pink with excitement. She bustled about, brewing fragrant coffee, setting the table with elaborate care. Cherry helped her bring in little cakes and a crimson sauce made of lingonberries. Uncle Gustave was already at the table.
Cherry thoroughly enjoyed their party. She was surprised and touched to find Mrs. Persson hungry for news of other families, and how they lived. So Cherry told about Hilton, described their house, and talked of her brother Charlie who was studying to become an engineer.
Uncle Gustave nodded approval. “Constant and Inga, both of them, they want to be engineers. But Inga should stay home and cook.”
“Ah, Uncle Gustave, you and your old-country ideas!” Mrs. Persson cried. “Inga shall be an engineer, and a good one. Miss Ames, don’t you say so, too?”
Cherry was reluctant to take sides but her dark eyes sparkled with sympathy for Inga. There was no need to take sides, however. They heard a running on the stairs, muffled laughter, and two tall, nice-looking youngsters came bursting into the room. These were Inga and Constant, school pins on their lapels, arms full of textbooks.
“Hi, Mother! Better, Uncle Gussie?” They grinned at Cherry, waiting to be introduced. “Who’s this you’re feeding kondis to? You must like her!” they teased.
“She deserves kondis,” their mother twinkled back at them. She performed the introductions and invited them to “my party.” Cherry stayed on a while longer, chuckling at Inga’s groans over algebra, and Connie’s funny description of three neighborhood boys running their jalopy on eighteen cents’ worth of gasoline and a cupful of mouthwash.
“The mouthwash works fine,” Connie declared, reaching for his sixth cake. “But we expect the jalopy to turn around any day and deliver a toothpaste commercial.”
Cherry had to leave. Other people were waiting for her. As she got her hat, and the party broke up, she saw Uncle Gustave’s face grow clouded again. He trudged back into his own small room.
“Have to give Uncle Gustave a new lease on life,” Cherry thought. “Not medicine but psychology. Have to find a solution for him, somehow.”
She took Connie aside and said she would like to present his uncle with the special screws he needed. The boy shook his head.
“They’re really expensive,” he explained. “Thanks a lot, anyhow.”
“I’ll figure out some way,” Cherry muttered.
She thanked Mrs. Persson cordially, promised to get in touch with them soon again, and left.
During the rest of the afternoon, Cherry visited six more homes and talked to dozens of new people. Her head whirled with impressions. Each home was different, and interesting. She was so excited at exploring her district, and worked so hard giving nursing care and teaching, that it was long past five o’clock—six-ten, in fact—when Cherry hiked the long way back to the bus line.
Only then, as the Victorian mansion loomed up ahead in the shadows, did Cherry remember she had omitted to ask about the place. Passing it now, the only sound was the night wind. The house was dark, in its tangle of blowing, autumn garden. No, there was a light in one window. Cherry stood on tiptoe beside the fence but could make out nothing.
“Mustn’t forget to ask someone,” she thought, starting on again. “Heavens, but I’m going to be late for supper! And, oh, how tired I am. But what a day, what a day this has been!”
CHAPTER VII
The Mysterious Mansion
MR. JONAS’S GROCERY AND DELICATESSEN, CHERRY discovered, was the place to learn anything she wanted to know about her district. Housewives shopped here in the morning for bread and baby foods. Working people d
ropped in at six for the hasty makings of a supper. The policeman of Cherry’s district, Officer O’Brien, and the high school crowd would come by as late as eleven at night for sandwiches. So Mr. Jonas saw everyone, knew everyone, and—since he was a kindly soul—listened to everybody’s life history and troubles.
The old man was willing to confide to Cherry, because she was district nurse, why the Bennett boy was in disgrace and what was really wrong with Mrs. Castillo’s baby. He was just as likely to discourse to her on literature, the history of the Jews, and the moral writings of Spinoza, if she had time. Learned books lay on top of pickle barrels and she found a music score fallen into the dried-prune bin.
The only thing that kept his mind on business was Mama Jonas’s matriarchal form and deep, deliberate voice calling from the back of the long, narrow shop where she made dill pickles and potato salad—
“Papa! That’s enough philosophy for today! The hot pastrami and corned beef are scorching!”
“Ah, Mama. We do not live by bread alone.”
“You won’t even live by pastrami alone if you don’t stop your talking.”
“Liebchen, I am only explaining to Miss Ames the grammar of classical Hebrew—”
“Miss Ames needs grammar like she needs a hole in the head. Don’t you know she’s busy? And what did you give her for her lunch?”
Mama, roly-poly but commanding, marched up the aisle between shelves and counter to confront tall, thin Papa.
“Abraham! You only gave her a cheese sandwich? On this cold, rainy day, cheese he gives her yet! Have you no judgment? Come, child, I’ll give you hot chicken broth and dumplings.”
Cherry, amused and enjoying this, protested: “But I like this sandwich just fine, Mrs. Jonas. I ordered it!”
Mr. Jonas peered at her out of dreamy blue eyes. “It is not nice to contradict your elders, darling.”