After the Fog

by Kathleen Shoop

  Rose turned back to Henry and saw the yellow paper sticking out from his pocket. She tugged on it. “Is this part of the poetic question of the day?”

  “Hey,” he took the paper from her and set it on the side-table. “A moment of weakness is all. Nothing you ever…”

  Rose put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows. She motioned to the yellow paper.

  “It’s nothing Rose. Just a little crisis of conscious is all. Nothing you’ve ever struggled with, I know.”

  Rose bit the inside of her mouth. She was choosing to let this pass. She had plenty of clock-time to get to the Lipinski home, but she needed to gather her thoughts and Henry’s nonsense wasn’t helping her do that.

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Henry. Do what you know is right. Neither of us has the time for horseshit. I’ll take this little conversation as your apology for not telling me our daughter was dabbling in a vat of stupidity in her off-hours.” Rose took his face in her hands and gave him a quick smack on the lips. “She’s a scientist not a seamstress. Talk to her. Magdalena likes you better, after all. And, I’m operating on the notion that this is the end of your clandestine affairs, right?”

  Henry nodded and tamped his cigarette into the ashtray. He stretched out in the middle of the bed, pulled the covers up to his chin and fell, it seemed to Rose, instantly asleep. She stared at the yellow paper he’d put on his side-table, the top half of the fold bouncing up as the radiator pushed heat into the air. Rose picked it up, but the clock caught her eye. She shoved the paper back onto the table and kissed Henry’s cheek before closing the door on the tiny, stale room.

  * * *

  Many believed a community nurse was essential to small town healthcare. She was the bridge between families and the ever-changing world of health and hygiene. Rose and Dr. Bonaroti had discussed the matter for years, but because the town of about fourteen-thousand citizens had eight doctors and several nurses at the mill hospital, it took extensive time and energy to raise the initial funding for Rose and their clinic—the place that offered care for women, children and non-mill employees. She and Bonaroti had only managed to implement their plan in the past year. And, their work had yielded results.

  Across the country strategies mounted in how to win the war on communicable diseases. Rose was a voracious researcher, both borrowing and writing her own plans to best deliver pre-natal and postnatal care for mothers and their babies. She encouraged the thrust to assimilate immigrants into the American way of post-war life as the practice grew sharper and more prominent in large cities and small towns.

  Nurses were charged with everything from showing a family how to manage their money, clean their home and sew clothing, to making regular visits to polio patients and treating acute viruses and infections like tuberculosis. This work inspired Rose more than her hospital job in a neighboring town had ever done. Even before she was a community nurse she’d always been available to help this person or that back to health, but that wasn’t the same as having a structured clinic and services available to an entire town.

  She didn’t dislike nursing at the hospital, but it was inside this community network of delivering services to people whose needs were subterranean and wide-ranging that Rose found her true love and security. In the face of other people’s weaknesses, Rose brought strength. She could help anyone with anything, whether they wanted the help or not. She showed them what they didn’t know and why and how they needed her.

  Rose headed down the hall from her bedroom and turned off the still-spinning Victrola. She found Leo seated on the chair by the front door, the top of his head just under her hanging nurse’s bag. His eyes were closed as though he’d dozed off.

  “What are you doing?” Rose said.

  Leo’s eyes snapped open. “Why hello there Sweetie! Mum and Dad said to go with you for today.”

  Rose couldn’t help but be charmed by Leo’s pet name for her. Still, she didn’t want to schlep him around town. She was not a babysitter.

  “Mummy went shopping. And Daddy’s sleeping.”

  Rose sighed and dragged Leo into the kitchen where she sat him in a chair. She brushed the crumbs from the tabletop into her hand. “Dammit. Can’t anyone else in this house clean anything?”

  Rose averted her gaze from the grease stained stove that Sara Clara must have overlooked as she attempted to redd-up the mess. The breakfast dishes teetered in the sink; dirty as when Rose had charged out of the kitchen. Rose would have to simply walk out the door and forget that no one cared enough to clean up after themselves.

  “Last time you came with me,” Rose patted Leo on the shoulder. “I could have strung you by the toes by the end of the day. I’d have let you swing in the wind for decades if I wasn’t so, well you said, it, Sweet.” Rose grabbed the washcloth that was drying over the faucet and smelled it. Fairly clean. She turned the water on to hot and waited for it to heat.

  “Remember, don’t make a peep while we’re at these homes. If need be, I’ll put you to work and you’ll pretend that you help me locate people who need our services. Like that girl in McKeesport who’s famous for bringing indigent and lazy people to their clinic that we read about…well, you’re no dummy. Just follow my cue and first and foremost, be quiet.”

  Rose wet the towel, grabbed Leo’s cheeks with one hand and scraped at the crusted eggs and toast at the corners of his mouth. Naturally, he didn’t brush his teeth that morning. She yanked his mouth open and scrubbed his teeth with the cloth. He giggled even as he cringed, making Rose fall even more in love with him than she already was.

  “You’ll sit on the porch while I do my exams and I might even have to send you walking ahead of me if someone is infectious, but I don’t see the infectious crowd until the end of the day, so to not spread disease.” She grabbed his arms and squeezed them. “You do what I say or I’ll smack your ass.”

  He looked up at Rose, eyes wide. His lips parted as though Rose’s words had stolen his breath, and pulled her into a hug, nodding agreement.

  “Well, okay then.” Rose wormed out of Leo’s grip. “Let’s go. Being late is unforgivable, you know. I have told you that before, hmm?”

  She flicked her hand toward the hallway, sending Leo in that direction. Rose passed the family pictures in the hallway as she headed toward the door. Johnny’s photos revealed different expressions—an open-mouthed guffaw, an angry scowl, a pensive wonder whether taken seconds apart or years revealed yet another part of who Johnny was.

  Magdalena wore the same dark, knowing expression in each of hers. She wasn’t joyless in the photos, but she wasn’t grinning either. Rose couldn’t really say what Magdalena might have been feeling in any of them and that made Rose wonder if she knew Magdalena at all. Rose touched one photo, traced Magdalena’s perfect jaw line grateful that Henry would set their daughter back on the proper path to college.

  The last picture she passed was of Rose at fifteen, sitting in a room full to bursting with people. The blurry background blotted the fact she was in an orphanage but somehow it gave off a glow as though it was a mansion peopled with folks who loved her rather than exploited her.

  Henry loved her in the photo, her appearance—her utter contentment; he insisted it stay there. Rose felt a chill as she pushed away the memory of the day the photo was taken, as the soul shadow that had haunted her for decades showed itself in that hallway.

  She shuddered and crossed herself, asking God to forgive her, and she reminded herself to get to confession by late afternoon. Leo craned around the doorjamb. His hat perched on his head. He held Rose’s nurse’s cap out to her. “Here, Sweetie.”

  Rose drew back, surprised at the sight of Leo’s dirty fingers, his oval fingerprints dotting her pristine, white and navy nurse’s cap. She would have scolded anyone else. She took the cap and fitted it to her head then squatted down to Leo’s eye-level.

  “Jesus, Leo. That’s really thoughtful. I don’t think there’s another person in this house who would bring me my hat. You’re
a definite doll, you are.” I wish you were mine, she almost said.

  “Now, don’t touch my cap again. Look at what you’ve done. Your teeny fingers smudged up my whites.”

  He stuck out his bottom lip.

  “Not to worry, it’ll be every hue of grey by the time we get around the corner.” She tussled his hair and ordered him to wait by the door while she scrubbed her hands then loaded her bag with fresh pledgets, sterilized brushes, urine cups, green soap, the sanitary pads she’d made from old flannel, in all—more than seven pounds of weight across Rose’s arm for her trek around town attempting to create a healthy living environment for all who lived in Donora.

  * * *

  Rose stood on the porch, chest rising with calming breaths, running the data through her mind. Twenty-five hundred bedside visits, one and a half hours per work day in Bonaroti’s clinic, one hour per week for new mother conferences. And that only began to cover the town’s needs. Rose took another deep breath. The woman will fund the clinic; Rose said to herself and pulled out her map of Donora.

  A flash of red drew her gaze to the gauzy fog. A cardinal hopped over and flew from one porch roof to another. A good omen, Rose thought, and spread her map out on the porch. She ordered Leo onto the floor to go over the path she was about to take.

  She had five minutes to spare before heading toward the Lipinski’s. She’d been showing Leo the maps each time he went with her. If he was going to traipse all over town, he needed to know where he was and where he wasn’t in case he needed to head home alone.

  Rose pointed to a spot on the map, the Lipinski’s, and several others she was due to see that day. She had Leo recite the path they’d take, street names and all.

  Leo scratched his nose. “Where’re the hills?”

  Rose squatted down with Leo and pulled his hand from his face. Impetigo spreads like news of a new floozy in town when kids start scratching and picking and rubbing around the nasal passages.

  “There ain’t no hills on that map,” Leo said.

  “Aren’t any hills, Leo. Not ain’t. Never ain’t.” Rose ran her finger from the Lipinski to the Nemoroski home—a place she’d never been to—on the very edge of the north end of town. Leo traced the same path with his tiny finger on top of Rose’s. Leo was right. The map, a one-dimensional version of town, was misleading to say the least.

  On paper, Donora mostly appeared to be broken into neat squares and rectangles, with roads forming odd polygon shapes in the middle of town. But, overall the map’s layout gave the impression that the land hugging the horseshoe-shaped river was flat and easy to navigate. In reality, it was as though God had seized a section of the perfectly plotted land and lifted it up, shifting everything so roads that appeared parallel weren’t. The natural landscape forced homes to curve into hillsides, butt against stone walls, and dangle from plateaus, creating tiers of town, as if tightly knitted homes were fixed into the mountainside with glue and a prayer.

  Steep sets of stairs acted as sidewalks up arrow-straight avenues, paved in cobblestone, cement, dirt, gravel or coal depending what was available at a given time. The steep landscape made Donora the perfect place for fog to inhabit on a daily basis, and added to the darkness the mills contributed on a round the clock basis.

  “Don’t smudge up the bag,” Rose said. “Did you make bubbles? You can’t traipse around other people’s home, using their bathrooms.”

  “I can use a tree,” Leo said.

  “Not on the last day of your life, young man. This isn’t bumpkinville like where your…oh forget it. Let’s get going. You’re young. Your bladder’s good.”

  * * *

  Rose and Leo headed off the porch and a voice cut through the dense fog. Mrs. Saltz crossed the street and started up the steps. If Rose hadn’t known the voice, she’d recognize the shape of the woman—the cat always sitting on her shoulder made her look deformed.

  The stout German neighbor woman spoke broken English and refused to leave her hot-tempered husband despite his actions putting their family in repeated, but varied types of peril. Rose blew out frustrated air. She could not be late for Mrs. Sebastian.

  “I have Joey on my list for therapy tomorrow,” Rose said to Mrs. Saltz as she started down the stairs. Rose noted Mrs. Saltz’s red, swollen cheeks. The cat was licking her face. Rose cringed. Could there be a filthier animal? Worse than dogs.

  Mrs. Saltz’s eyes were bruised and a small cut had crusted to black blood at the corner of her mouth. Rose hardened against the pity she felt for the woman. She had tried to help her, dozens of times—at least forty documented nursing visits for all manner of things, but the success of a community nurse required the family to be committed to change.

  Mrs. Saltz wept into her hands, then balled them up and covered her eyes. Rose wondered if that was the stance she must have taken each time Mr. Saltz hit her.

  “There’s a family in Lancaster that would happily take you in. I can’t help you if you don’t let me. You said you had family in Ohio…”

  Mrs. Saltz stood, crying, curling up like a dying flower, not saying anything. Rose sighed impatiently and the cat leaped onto her shoulder and clung to her back. Rose whapped at the cat over her shoulder and spun and spun around.

  Mrs. Saltz reached up toward Rose and with a sudden burst of energy ripped the cat from Rose’s shoulder and put it back on her own. The cat meowed, showing its teeth then hissed at Rose while Mrs. Saltz continued wailing.

  Rose’s heart thumped and crushed her chest. “Keep that damn thing away from me.” Rose was about to say or she wouldn’t come see Joey. But Rose could never hold a crazy mother against a sick boy. Part of her job was to turn the family around, not judge them. But still. That cat was like a deadly weapon as far as Rose was concerned. “Damn cat,” Rose said quietly.

  Mrs. Saltz slid her fists under her loose jowls, eyes narrowing, her rectangular face quivering. “My husband, your husband. They the same. Buzzy. They the same. Men all the same. Gambling, women…” her voice cut out like radio static.

  Leo reached up and patted Mrs. Saltz on the elbow. The woman stopped wailing, stared down at Leo then made a break across the street. Gone, as though Leo’s touch had wakened her senses.

  Leo scrunched his face and shrugged. “Sweetie?”

  Rose felt the same confusion that she saw grip Leo’s expression.

  He pointed in the direction of the fleeing Mrs. Saltz. “Of course all men are the same. We all have penises, right?” Leo lifted his coat, thrust out his crotch area and looked downward as though checking to be sure he still had one.

  Rose sighed at Leo’s innocence. She knew what Mrs. Saltz meant except for her reference to Henry. He was not a gambler. And he certainly did not have women. Not since he married Rose 18 years before.

  “Leo my boy. All men are not the same. Penis, yes. The same, no. At least I pray that’s the case.” Rose had never distrusted Henry. Well, once or twice, but she’d always investigated and discerned her suspicions of adultery to be unfounded. No, Henry might not be perfect, he may have hid some information regarding Magdalena, but Henry Pavlesic was not a cheater.

  “Come on, Leo. Take a good lesson from Mrs. Saltz. You sure as shit better be able to take care of yourself because a person with no course of action planned, no education, and no money in his pocket is helpless and that’s no way to be.”

  Rose thought of Magdalena loosening the ties on her secure future by saying she might quit school. Perhaps she needed to give Magdalena a refresher in how many ways life can go bad.

  “Mrs. Saltz’s housekeeping habits allowed Polio to have a field day with her son,” Rose said. “Everything has its use, every person, too. So you better have some toughness about you or you’ll end up crying all day with a damn cat perched on your shoulder like a crazy.”

  They headed north to where the Lipinski home was located high above the zinc mill. Leo nodded and grasped Rose’s hand. Despite the fact his hand was joined with hers it was clear to Rose that
he could feel none of her concern about what had transpired since the moments she was called to the Greshecky home early that morning.

  He sensed none of her anxiety, that she was having trouble focusing on what lay ahead, even though she had never been able to leave the pain of what lay scattered behind. And for that, she smiled at Leo, wishing she was more like him.

  Chapter 5

  Life was slowly returning to prosperity by 1948. Rationing had ended in 1946, nylon stockings were available again and you could sell your fifteen year-old car for the same price you bought it for new. But, it only took one bad loss—a huge hospital bill, a broken appliance, or a job loss—and your account would be wiped out.

  Like many Donora families, the Pavlesics had money for food and clothing and some savings. And, while a budget still ruled the day, if they were careful they could soon build their own home. If they paid off the final chunk of Buzzy’s debt and he paid them back, that is.

  Things in the world were looking up, what the war took away from the newly unionized steel workers—pay-raises during the war—it tried to give back in benefit packages that helped people feel as though they were getting ahead. Donora was a boomtown—it had fueled the war and now every ounce of steel it turned out was wired into a bridge, nailed into a house or bolted onto a car driving down an elm-lined street somewhere in America.

  The endless stream of smoke was a good thing—a sign that everyone was working in the mills or in a job that supported the mills. Rose and Dr. Bonaroti were determined to make health care a part of that prosperity, and get their funding from all that profit.

  They thought they could persuade the Women’s Club and Easter Seals to fund and stock the clinic and thereby push city council to at least partly fund Rose’s position with community chest monies. With new mill benefits packages, Rose and Bonaroti figured approximately fifty-four percent of her visits could be funded by insurance. Some families could partially pay out of pocket and the rest would need assistance. Then there was the need to pay for instruments and materials. Rose couldn’t hand-make sanitary pads forever.