by Helen Wells
Mama firmly took the sandwich away from Cherry. “I have raised two good sons and a good daughter on chicken broth—not cheese sandwiches. You will eat chicken broth.”
As she strode away for the broth, Mr. Jonas twinkled at Cherry. “With our people, one obeys the mama and the papa. My wife’s mother is still alive and believe me, darling, she rules both Mama and me with an iron hand.”
Cherry chuckled. “And do you rule your children with an iron hand?”
“Why, certainly! Even though they are grown and Jack is a doctor, Ben is a musician, and Ruthie has a millinery shop, still—! They are still our children, aren’t they? Mama and I see to it that they behave themselves. Or else.”
“They behave themselves or else they should drop dead!” Mama had returned with a plate of steaming broth. “Now, little Miss Nurse, eat this. On such a day, cheese already!”
There was nothing for it but to “obey the elders.” Cherry ate obediently and the broth did warm her through. She had never before met such strict, energetic, sharp-tongued, warmhearted, and unabashedly sentimental people as the Jonases. Now, she remembered, she must ask about that old mansion.
Mr. Jonas nodded. “A corner house. The only one in such an old-fashioned style around here.”
“Oh, you know it, then!”
“Yes. That’s the Gregory place.”
“Can you tell me about it, Mr. Jonas?”
The old man blinked his blue eyes. “For eighteen years I have known that house…. You are quick, to notice something strange there. Many people pass by and think it is just another old house.”
“But I—I—felt something,” Cherry confessed. “There’s an atmosphere—”
“Of sadness. Of secrets. Yes, one can feel it. Well,” Mr. Jonas cleared his throat, “I will tell you what little I know.”
Eighteen years ago, when he first opened this grocery, a pretty young woman came in alone late one night. She ordered a great many supplies, paid by check, and arranged to have regular weekly orders delivered to her house. The check was signed “Mary Gregory” and the bank honored it.
“She would not talk about herself, or about anything,” Mr. Jonas said, recalling that long-ago visit. “Very nice but very reserved. Shy, I think. And so young, so pretty! But there was something sad about her that made me feel sorry for her even then.”
No one in the neighborhood had known anything about her, Mr. Jonas continued. The house was rumored to belong to a wealthy family named Gregory. But they had long since moved to mid-town New York, and the house had been closed up for many years. Then this young woman had come, all alone, opened the house, and started living there.
“For about a month Miss Gregory—I say ‘miss’ because she wore no wedding ring,” Mr. Jonas went on to Cherry, “traded with me by leaving a note on her doorstep with the order, and a check. I thought nothing of this, I thought she was busy moving in and getting her house in order, I thought soon she would come into my grocery again.” The old man shrugged. “Then, in one note, Miss Gregory asked me to buy meat for her from the butcher. And to send it along with the rest of her regular weekly order. This I did, never suspecting what it meant.”
“And what did it mean?” Cherry breathed.
“That I was never to see her again. Every week for eighteen years my errand boy goes on Thursday to pick up the basket on her doorstep. In it is a check for last week’s order and a note telling what she needs. Friday I pack up the food and my boy goes back to leave it on her step. For eighteen years no one has seen Mary Gregory.”
She was never seen to set foot outside her door. She was not even seen on the porches or in the garden, although some neighborhood people said they had glimpsed a white, ghostly figure on an upstairs balcony on summer evenings. No visitors were ever seen to enter or leave. The postman reported that the only mail which came for her was from a bank, utility and coal companies, and department stores. If neighbors rang her doorbell, no one answered.
Cherry leaned against a wall lined with canned goods and blinked in her own turn.
“But why—?”
“Who knows why?”
“Wouldn’t Officer O’Brien know?”
“Even he does not go in there. He says, ‘Leave her in peace, that is what she wants.’ ”
“But suppose she fell sick, or had an accident, all alone in there!” Cherry cried.
Mr. Jonas shook his head. “We all think of that. The whole neighborhood feels bad about Mary Gregory. Or used to. Not so many people know, any more. The old ones have moved away or forgotten, many others pay no attention. She is like a legend.”
Cherry sputtered. “No one at all ever sees her?”
“Wait. Excuse me. I told you one thing wrong, darling. She does let the furnace man in. He does repairs, too. But the furnace man never sees her. It is always by notes, like with me. The same way with the plumber, and when a man went to put in a new stove. Once a year, a man, dressed very well, goes in. He stays a few hours. I guess he is her lawyer or banker or something. But never, never, does anyone else see her.”
Cherry murmured, “And you still send her food every week?”
“Yes. For eighteen solitary years, the poor soul. And she was so young, so pretty!”
Why had Mary Gregory retired from life? Cherry went out of Mr. Jonas’s grocery-delicatessen shaken.
This was not the time to think about the mysterious recluse, though. Her lunch period was over and Cherry had sick calls awaiting her, including a child ill of scarlet fever. That was a communicable disease and could easily start an epidemic!
“I’ll have to do some pretty sound teaching,” Cherry realized and quickened her pace.
The Terrell cottage was spick-and-span outside and in. Mrs. Terrell, an anxious-eyed young woman, had three small children tugging on her skirts. Jimmy, aged nine, lay sick in one of the bedrooms.
“The doctor says we’re in quarantine, nurse,” the mother said anxiously, “but I’m not sure about what it means nor all the things to do.”
“I’ll show you, Mrs. Terrell,” Cherry calmed her. “I know you have your hands awfully full. I’ll keep coming to help you until you and I get this thing under control.”
“Thank goodness!” Mrs. Terrell said. “I certainly wouldn’t want anybody else’s children to get scarlet fever. Mrs. Kramer upstairs says my three youngest ones are sure to catch it, living in the same house with Jimmy.” She looked at Cherry in helpless appeal.
“Now, don’t you believe such old wives’ tales. There’s no reason why these other three”—Cherry stopped to grin down at the round-eyed toddlers—“shouldn’t be safe, provided you’re careful.”
“Oh, I’ll do anything you say, nurse, anything!”
“Well, let’s start, shall we? Will you get some clean newspapers, please? And I’d like to wash my hands.”
Cherry scrubbed up, tied on her apron, and peeked into the bedroom at the patient. Small Jimmy was hunched up in bed, asleep. His cheeks and forehead were pebbly with rash, and he breathed with difficulty. Cherry decided not to waken him: the first step was to teach his mother safety methods.
Back in the kitchen with Mrs. Terrell, Cherry began asking questions. (Cherry, like the rest of the visiting nurses, had routinely received various antitoxins so that she could nurse contagious disease without becoming ill herself.) The doctor had told Mrs. Terrell that Jimmy must be kept isolated. His father and the other children were to be kept away from him. The children were not to go to kindergarten nor to leave the house, until the quarantine was lifted. However, Mr. Terrell was permitted to go out of the house to work.
“But how do I keep Jim isolated?” the young mother asked the nurse in bewilderment. “The doctor told me some, but I’m all confused—”
Cherry told her how to arrange Jimmy’s room so Mrs. Terrell could take care of him without spreading the disease. First, take away the pictures and rugs, to simplify the problem of cleaning when the illness was over. The curtains were washable, so
Cherry said these could remain. The closet was contaminated because, Mrs. Terrell reported, Jimmy had hung his clothes with those of the other children; Cherry said to leave the closet undisturbed, and not to use anything in it. She asked Mrs. Terrell to bring into Jimmy’s room any extra, small table she had, to hold a pitcher and basin for the mother’s own use in washing her hands. Then she lined a waste-basket with newspaper, showing Mrs. Terrell how to do it. Cherry advised her to buy or borrow a bedpan, to keep the bathroom safe for the rest of the family. A dishpan of soapy water, placed on newspapers, would have to be left outside Jimmy’s door to receive soiled dishes, and a wash boiler to receive soiled linen.
“It isn’t as bad as it sounds,” Cherry encouraged. “But you must remember that everything that comes out of Jimmy’s room is a possible germ carrier. When it leaves the room it must be boiled or disinfected before it touches anything else.”
“I’m going to write all of this down,” the young mother said nervously. “I’ll just get pencil and paper from Jimmy’s schoolbooks—” She started to go into the sickroom, with the obvious intention of bringing the pencil and paper back into the living room. Cherry gasped and stopped her. Then she carefully explained all over again.
“Look here,” said Cherry. She saw a piece of the children’s chalk on the living-room floor. With it she drew a thick, white line outside Jimmy’s door. “This line will remind you.”
Mrs. Terrell smiled weakly. “It certainly will,” and she was calmer after that.
“Soap and water, lots and lots of it for everything, especially your hands, Mrs. Terrell,” Cherry instructed. “A tray for toilet articles. A tray for medicines. A clean smock to put on when you enter Jimmy’s room, and to leave on a hook beside his door, so you won’t carry out germs on your clothes. When you’re carrying anything out of his room, leave the smock on but—don’t touch anything! If you must touch, for dumping something, for instance, use squares of newspaper. Remember your hands are contaminated. Tie all garbage and waste in clean newspapers, and burn it. Now, is it all clear? Can you remember to do all this?”
Jimmy’s mother nodded, furiously scribbling down these instructions. Then, at Cherry’s request, she brought a covered pitcher of water, a glass, and a glass of fruit juice. They shooed the three toddlers away and went in to see Jimmy.
Poor Jimmy’s freckles scarcely showed under the rash. He woke up to stare at Cherry and say gratingly, “Sore throat.”
“Hello, Jimmy,” Cherry said. “Your mother and I are going to get you well quickly, you’ll see! Now here’s a pitcher of water, right where you can reach it. Doctor wants you to drink all the water you can, Jim. But wait, please, until I’ve taken your temperature.”
She counted the little boy’s temperature, pulse, and respiration, and wrote them down. She showed Mrs. Terrell how to keep Jimmy clean and comfortable in bed.
“I don’t feel very sick,” Jimmy said.
“No, you’re not very sick,” Cherry told him. “You won’t be, because your mother will follow instructions exactly. Better get some paper handkerchiefs, too, Mrs. Terrell; they can be burned. Then, when Jimmy is well again, you’ll clean everything—furniture, floor, curtains, shades, blankets, clothes—with soap and water. You’ll air his room for a couple of days. And you’ll take his mattress, and any clothes that can’t be washed, outdoors and give them a thorough sunning.”
“No fumigation?” Mrs. Terrell said in relief.
Cherry explained that soap and water, sun and air are the best disinfectants. She did sympathize with this overworked mother. Combating contagious disease was a great nuisance—or any disease, for that matter.
“It’s a lot simpler to stay well,” Cherry reflected as, at last, thoroughly scrubbed herself, she left the Terrell cottage. “Oh, yes, must remember to send a report to the Department of Health on this case.”
She stopped at the corner drugstore to catch her breath and phone back to the center. No, Bobbie said, there were no new calls for her.
“And a good thing! Today’s call list is long enough.”
She sat down at the counter for a quick coke. The sixteen-year-old soda fountain boy eyed her curiously as she sipped it.
“Excuse me, but aren’t you the new district nurse?”
Cherry smiled, admitted it, and told him her name.
“My name’s Joe Baxter. What do you think of our neighborhood?”
“I like it a lot. Lots of nice people living around here.”
Joe Baxter looked pleased. “Sure, lots of okay people in most neighborhoods, I guess. But our neighborhood has something special.”
“The view of the Manhattan skyline?”
“No. We have a mystery around here.”
“A mystery?” Cherry half smiled. “In this quiet neighborhood? You’re joking. You’re trying to play a trick on me, I’ll bet.”
“No, I’m not.” Joe Baxter looked at her soberly. “Say, haven’t you seen that mysterious old house?”
Cherry stiffened. “You mean the Gregory house? Yes.”
The boy leaned toward her on the counter. “Well, there’s a lady living in there but nobody ever sees her. It’s the craziest thing. Everybody says she’s a witch or something. I saw her, though, when I was a little shaver.”
“You saw her? You talked to her?” Cherry breathed.
Joe Baxter wiped the marble of the soda fountain.
“Yeah, years ago. Miss Gregory used to let us neighborhood kids play in her yard. She’d smile at us through the window. Sometimes she’d even talk to us, a little.” There was a faraway look in the boy’s eyes. “I guess she’d still let the children nowadays come. But for the last couple of years, they haven’t gone near her.”
“Why not?”
“Well, things began to change. In the last year or two, some of the kids”—Joe frowned—“said they saw strange goings-on at night. Shadows of witches dancing against the blinds, or something. It gave them the shivers.”
“Did you ever see them?” Cherry challenged.
“No’m. But all the kids say it’s so. Anyhow, their parents began telling them to stay away. So they stopped playing in her yard.”
Cherry listened to this with pity for Mary Gregory. The recluse must have needed the children around her, if she had encouraged them to come. Now even that small solace was lost to her. In the last year or two, Joe Baxter said. That was odd …
“In fact,” Joe said, his eyes round, “lots of mothers tell their children if they don’t behave, Mary Gregory will do something awful to them. The kids are plenty scared of her and that scary house. They say you really can see witches’ shadows. I’m not joking. There must be something spooky in there. They say it—well, it looks like a gallows.”
“A gallows?”
“Yes, a hangman’s gallows.”
Cherry was impressed but outraged all the same. Using that lonely creature as a bogeyman! She vowed to herself that she would find out more about it all.
“But not today. Heavens, what a list of calls I have. I mustn’t even think about Mary Gregory this afternoon. Have to get myself in a more cheerful frame of mind, too, so I can cheer up my patients.”
Nurse Ames had a lively afternoon. In a dimly lit apartment, she found tall, lean Boris Sergeyevsky and his very blonde wife, both coming down with influenza, both in long, black kimonos, gesturing with long cigarette holders and offering her tea with lemon, from their samovar. “Everybody wants to feed me,” Cherry chuckled to herself. Grateful, all these people wanted to give her something; having nothing else to give, they wanted to share their limited food with her.
Next came a visit to a Greek-American family in a kitchen strewn with confetti and wilting white roses. For two years they had saved to give their Phoebe a glorious wedding. Yesterday Phoebe was wed, there was a feast, and the entire family now had an acute stomachache. Cherry proffered congratulations and remedies. They gratefully pressed roses and Grecian wine on her—“more refreshments! I must look hungry”
—but she wriggled out of accepting.
Cherry thought, though, what fun it would be to spread this wine, Mrs. Persson’s kondis and lingonberries, the Russians’ lemon tshay, Mama Jonas’s chicken broth and dumplings, and Mama Mediterraneo’s pasta all on one huge table, and invite them all to partake.
“Say, that really is a thought!” But she had to hurry along to many more calls.
The last case of the afternoon Cherry found the most appealing. She had treated Miss Culver only once before. The all-day rain had stopped and, though it was dusk now, a silver afterglow hung in the sky.
A slight woman opened the door to Cherry. Against the second-story windows that gleamed with the curious light she stood silhouetted.
“Come look here!” the woman said eagerly, after the briefest of greetings. She led Cherry to the windows, to look down at the shabby street. People, houses, cars were bathed in shadowy silver, like figures in a dream. “Just look!”
Cherry smiled at this imaginative woman. “Yes, it’s beautiful,” and she thought, “Not many people would see beauty on an everyday street. Especially one they have to look at every day.”
“It’s different every hour of the day,” Miss Culver said thoughtfully. “And from week to week, as the earth moves around the sun and the seasons change, my street changes into something new and different.”
Cherry looked at Miss Culver with sympathy. The daughter of an old family who had fallen on evil times, she had not bemoaned her fate but quietly had become a private secretary. She had devoted her life to taking care of her parents. Now that they were dead, she was alone. Recently her frail body had broken down, exhausted after years of work.
But nothing could quench her spirit. Living on a pittance, Cherry knew that Miss Culver limited herself to the most Spartan diet, so that she would have a few pennies left to put in the collection plate at church on Sundays. She was fighting to hold on to her standards. Her shabby one-room apartment might have been pitiful in another owner’s hands, but Miss Culver had made it a gracious home. A Duncan Phyfe antique sofa told of better days; its carefully mended upholstery mutely testified to her determination. Well-chosen books, borrowed without cost from the public library, lay on her table, beside a lovingly polished, old silver teapot. A chair and footstool were drawn up to the window, a tray-table held a few odd pieces of fragile china and a tiny radio—“so that I can have music and a view with my meals,” Miss Culver had explained.