After the Fog

by Kathleen Shoop

  Mrs. Sebastian raised her glass and shook the ice, drawing the cook’s attention. “You’ve lost a child, haven’t you, nurse?”

  Rose’s throat felt as though it were shrinking, as though she were the one with asthma. She pulled her gloves from her coat pocket and wiggled her fingers into them.

  She couldn’t meet Mrs. Sebastian’s gaze. “I’ll phone tomorrow with the time of my next visit.” And, as Rose bolted onto the porch she could hear that Mrs. Sebastian and her minions had already collapsed into the drudgery of housekeeping conversation.

  * * *

  Outside Rose saw small, ghostly footprints scattered across the porch and remembered Leo had been with her that morning. Rose was too unnerved from seeing the birthmark to be angry with Leo for disappearing. Her gaze followed the footprints that trailed off the side of the wooden planks.

  One of the maids poked her head out the kitchen door. “Your hat.” Rose took it and adjusted it on her head.

  The maid clasped her hands at her waist. “The wee-one went around the bend to the front porch. Takin’ in the sights of the great zinc works, he said, to watch the cars travel below on Meldon. Not that he can see them today, no siree, not with all this fog. “

  Rose nodded and went down the steps. She wended along the cement path that hugged the side of the house. Out of sight of anyone in the kitchen she stopped and fell back against the blackened brick of the hulking house. The church bells—dozens of them were ringing, and melded with the cacophony of the mills. Her head felt as if it would split open. Rose wished the moist, ugly air would kill off her pain, the sensation that someone had grabbed her heart and twisted it inside her chest. She dropped her bag to her feet and rubbed her temples hoping she didn’t buckle.

  Her skin tingled as she tried to line up the facts. All she could do was feel the effects of knowing nothing would be the same again. Rose wrapped her coat close to her throat. Leo’s voice, his singing, came from around the corner. She opened her eyes, but her sight barely penetrated the thick fog. Were these facts about Theresa a coincidence? Had the events of the last couple of days been too unnerving?

  Rose crossed herself and asked God for guidance. Was it possible? Had He brought her daughter back? She vowed to do everything to ensure Theresa’s safety, whatever that meant after twenty years apart. Apart. A flutter contracted Rose’s stomach, the kind she felt the first time a pregnancy quickened. She pressed her hand into her belly, trying to make it stop. It couldn’t be true.

  Rose needed to carry on with her day and complete the expected tasks, but her mind plunged back to the day her first daughter was born. She closed her eyes and let the images envelop her like the fog. She saw the baby’s face, her eyes clenched, her mouth somehow almost shaped into a smile. As though the girl knew Rose was her mother and it didn’t matter that Rose had nothing, and was an orphan, only fifteen.

  “It’s time. Rose,” Bennett had said trying to peel Rose’s hands from the baby. Rose wouldn’t let go. In those last moments she memorized every inch of her; the way an abundance of hair stood on her head and flipped over at the ends, her thick curled eyelashes, her feet drawn up into her bottom, her fingers balled into fists and the birthmark, the brown amoeba-shaped splotch. She traced it with her finger as Bennett grew impatient and pulled the baby away one last time.

  Rose had believed this man. He had promised to protect her, that they would have more children once he finished college, that they would have a home together. And, she ignored the feeling that if she let the baby go she was letting go of something much bigger than Bennett suggested.

  She remembered the woman in a wool coat who eased the baby from Bennett’s arms.

  “I promise,” Bennett had told Rose. “You will have all the things you want. But this baby needs a home now with parents who can give her real things right now. She’ll probably have brothers and sisters close in age. She’ll have everything we can’t give her.”

  Rose reached upward, begging for the baby. He gave her to the woman and turned back to Rose and sat on the bed with her. “Let me take care of you before I try to take care of a family. No one will ever know she existed. We’ll put this behind us. No one will ever have to know the shame we feel right now.”

  He pulled Rose toward him, smoothing her hair, loving her the way she had needed love her whole life. She couldn’t speak. Bennett knew about Helen, the girl who was adopted from the orphanage. The family had returned her, beaten, her face collapsed on one side.

  “I promise,” Bennett said. “The baby won’t be mistreated, she won’t be like Helen. This is a kind family. And, we will be together.”

  Rose clung to Bennett, marveling at his confidence. Tears streaked her cheeks and mucus clogged her nose. But she was grateful for this hero who would change her life. Bennett would give her love more than anything.

  Now, the memory chilled Rose. Her throat itched, forcing her to cough. Her glove was blackened far quicker than normally was the case. She squinted into the fog. It seemed to be getting darker, lower, with no sign of lifting. Rose leaned her head back against the brick wall, displacing her hat. She pushed it back into place.

  How had she been so stupid to believe Bennett? How could she have given up her daughter? She had trusted him. Rose covered her mouth. She should have been stronger. From the moment she let go of her baby, something in Rose told her not to trust Bennett, that she was on her own and would have to take care of herself. And, here at the Sebastian’s, Rose long grown up, her life changed completely, all over again.

  Chapter 8

  Rose edged along the wall, following the sounds of Leo on the front porch. Around the corner she found him bouncing like a ball, his hair flopping over his eye. He had removed his coat, his white shirt grayed in the two hours he’d been outside.

  Rose stuck her thumb in the direction of the steps. “This way, little rabbit.” She waited while Leo leapt from one riser to the next. Rose squeezed Leo’s hand.

  “It is ugly today, Auntie Rosie. Mama will have some words over this fog today. You know the sun shines every day in Wilmington. I remember it. Even when it rains, the sun peeks through the clouds.” Leo wiggled his fingers near his eyes. “Lemon yellow. Not silvery like here.”

  Rose stopped and looked toward the mills then into the sky. The sun should have been dousing the land with its rays. By now, she should have had to shield her eyes from the brightness even if it were slightly overcast. It was as if the sun hadn’t even risen that day.

  The pair stomped down the sidewalk, spreading the thick soot with each step. Maybe the reason Rose tolerated Donora, even liked it was that it suited her life-long string of bad luck. Maybe poor Sara Clara had simply never suffered imperfection before and living in this dark, grey world made her feel she was missing something she was used to having—bright yellow happiness.

  “It’s okay, Leo. Fog’ll pass then today will be like all the rest.”

  “That’s what Mama’s afraid of.”

  Rose felt as though she’d taken on a suit of dread, strong enough to hold an elephant above ground.

  “Take my hand. I don’t want you to fall,” she said as they stepped onto the sidewalk that would take them to Tenth Street and back up to McKean. Rose wanted to fit some grocery shopping in between stopping at Dr. Bonaroti’s and forcing her life, as much as she could, back to the normal she knew two days before.

  * * *

  On McKean, Rose stopped and coughed so hard it bent her forward. “We need to stop at Isaly’s before we hit Doc’s office so let’s pick up the snail’s pace, how ‘bout it?”

  Rose couldn’t wait to get to Dr. Bonaroti’s. She still would not believe Theresa was her daughter. She’d been talking herself into the idea that coincidences like this do happen—that it’s possible Theresa was some other baby girl adopted on the day Rose’s was born, to a Pittsburgh family who’d gone to Mayview, and had a birthmark that looked exactly like Rose remembered. The coincidental confirmation, Rose thought was in The
resa’s records. She hoped it wouldn’t seem strange for Rose to request Theresa’s entire file when she was merely doing a follow-up exam.

  If questioned, she could make a case for wanting to read the file from beginning to end since Theresa had a respiratory event when Rose was caring for her. Cathy, the receptionist, knew Rose was meticulous. Community nurses often did dig into a patient’s file, writing dissertations on their visits.

  Rose and Leo stopped at Sixth and McKean where she would normally see the street bursting with people, and the G.C. Murphy, grocery stores, fine clothing stores, and pharmacies would host a steady stream of noontime patrons.

  But Wednesday, the fog obscured the massive glass windows that fronted brick, stone and wood plank buildings. Rose could see shocks of orange and black decorations through the murkiness, announcing the coming Halloween parade, something that always inflated Rose’s and the town’s spirits.

  “Can’t see,” Leo said, covering his eyes as though shading them from scorching sun.

  Rose bent down. “Jesus, Leo, it’s actually clearer at your eye level. Quit trying to make a salami out of the back end of nothing. A little fog never hurt anyone.”

  Rose squeezed Leo’s hand and continued walking south on McKean.

  She silently recited her list: chipped ham, jumbo lunchmeat and Klondike ice creams. Normally she would roast a chicken on Wednesday, but Rose didn’t have enough time to head to the butcher, and get to Isaly’s. The thought of feeding her family lunchmeat for dinner was abominable, but that day, she was lucky to still be upright.

  Inside the Isaly’s, Rose’s eyes flicked over her fellow patrons—Pete Scarsboro, Donna Katz, Mike Hanratty—who said hello with a raised hand or nod. They couldn’t seem to stop talking about the fog long enough to utter their greetings aloud.

  Some said the fog was highly unusual, and called it smog. They insisted it was as though a lid was over the valley, trapping more mill-smoke and fumes than usual. Others argued that it was no different than any other day; the air was simply still on the river and its overall calm was allowing the regular fog to hover. Nothing to worry about.

  Pete Scarsboro slapped his grocery list on the glass counter for the butcher and talked over his shoulder. “The fellas at the mill in Monessen got smoke, too, but they ain’t got none of this kind of fog. Fellas say it’s the zinc mill.”

  “Yunz guys are just alarmists.”

  Rose jumped at the raspy voice and turned to see Meany Collins behind her.

  “Tell ‘em Rose, nothin’ wrong with a smidge of smoke and fog. Live inside a horseshoe at the foot of mountaintops and yunz’ll get a little fog in town. Stop yer bellyaching. Tell em’ Rosie.”

  Rose smiled then noticed what he was cradling. “What the hell, Meanie? Have you lost your ever-loving mind with that sugar? Powdered sugar? Donuts, cookies? Sweet Christmas Eve, have you gone around the bend?” She ripped the boxes from his hands and tossed them onto the deli-counter. “Forget having your leg chopped off, you’ll be dead if you eat all that. Now get on home.” Rose ordered Martin the deli-man to re-shelve the items. “I’ll have Johnny bring you a pound of Kielbasa and some green beans, but I don’t have the time to stand here until you leave so just get on and I’ll send the meat over later.”

  Meanie slumped.

  “Don’t pout!” Rose said to his back. “I just saved your life.”

  “Ayeya,” Meanie said as he waved Rose’s words from the air with a curled, leathery hand. He shuffled out of the store, mumbling.

  “Ah, git off the fella’s back, Rosie,” Gary Adamchek’s unmistakable growl came from the soda fountain counter.

  She spun around.

  “Dolly doom is what I’ve started calling yunz—you and Doc Bonaroti. Now Henry, too. If not for the ray of sunshine Johnny, the football star, why yunz would have nothing but dark clouds and angst at yer heels. Lucky for you, you gave birth to the golden boy of the century.”

  Rose froze at Henry’s name. It made sense that people would have heard Henry got the hack-saw at work, but Rose had been so shaken by the events of the last day and a half that until that moment she hadn’t the time to worry that people might find out why he was fired. She stalked over to the soda fountain where Adamchek sat, his meaty paws wrapped around a black coffee. I know your wife wasn’t singing that tune when I eased her pain in her final days, Rose thought. She winced at the image of his wife, shriveled up, trying hard to live.

  “I’ll disregard your snide remarks and take a charitable view of your sorry existence since your wildly better half passed away,” she said. “If Henry thought he was doing the right thing then you better believe he was. And, yes, Johnny is a star. Your son could be, too if you had him buckle down and apply himself. It’s just hard work. Don’t hold it against us.” Rose had never been more irritated with her family, but she needed to defend them in public. She was grateful she actually wanted to.

  He grunted while the other men at the counter looked away. “Yeah, well, don’t be so high and mighty, Nursie. You think your life is so perfect. You think your Johnny is so perfect? Your little Mag-da-lena?” The way Adamchek said Magdalena’s name ran chills up Rose’s spine.

  Rose was familiar with Adamchek’s jealousy; this time it seemed to sting a little more.

  “I have my own private nurse who happens to know your life is not perfect,” Adamchek said.

  Rose shook off the ill feeling. Adamchek was disgusting, resentful, and mean, but harmless in any real way. He was just blowing smoke.

  “Private nurse, my ass.”

  The butcher brought Rose her grocery bag. She was grateful to have something to do with her hands.

  “You leave my Rosie, alone,” the butcher said. “Not an honest man or woman in town who wouldn’t admit to feeling relief just at the sight of this nurse.” Rose felt her insides settle though Adamchek didn’t seem to realize the butcher had entered the conversation.

  “Nurse Dottie’s my nurse. And you need to keep something in mind.” Adamchek scowled as he looked up at Rose from his stool. “Whatever shortfall you have after the Sebastians dole out some cash, keep in mind the community chest might not have any funds to make up the difference. The fellas who decide what to do with the money are looking to expand the mill hospital rather than funding your clinic.”

  Rose moved her grocery bag from one hip to the other hoping to cover up her panic at hearing that information.

  Adamchek smirked. “You and Bonaroti need to learn a thing or two about what Dottie and the other mill nurses already know about the location of Donora’s money tree. And that golden boy of yours, you better tell him to spend more time on the field and less in the bar tickling the ivories in the Hill District or whatever horseshit his band does there.”

  A crash at the back of the store startled Rose. There, on the floor, cans and boxes scattered around him, was Ian Greshecky, trying to right the display he’d knocked all to hell.

  The clerk groaned and started to scold Ian. Rose waved him away, saying she’d help clean up. She raced back there, set her bags down and began to stack the cans and boxes with him. Rose hoped she’d find the right words for a boy who lost his parents as a five year-old, and the day before, his aunt.

  When they were done, Rose stood, but he remained on the floor. Rose pulled him to his feet and several cans fell out of his coat, denting as they hit the ground. He was stealing, right there in front of Rose.

  “Ian. You can’t…” This boy knew right from wrong, but he was desperate. Isabella had been a second mother to him. Losing her must have pushed him over the edge.

  She wanted to scold him, tell him that all he had to do was ask for help and she’d find a way; she wanted to smack him on the ass like she would Leo or John, but seeing him, basically orphaned twice was too close to what she had experienced. She scooped up her grocery bag and shoved it into his arms. “Take these. I’ll be over—to help you get re-settled. Your uncle will shape up. I’ll make him. I know—”

&nb
sp; Rose stopped herself mid-lecture, not wanting to embarrass him further. “Just go on, I’ll be there in the next day, or Miss Fanny. She’ll be over by the day’s end, I’m sure.” He shoved the bag back at Rose, surprising her. She shoved it back and with that final movement he took off out of the store, hugging the groceries to his chest.

  Rose pushed the last can back into place, leaned her head on the shelf and crossed herself, lost in what she couldn’t control. She had no more room on the tab for groceries at Isaly’s and no time to get to another store before she was due at the clinic. She sighed and thought of all the ways she might be able to make plain chicken broth seem like filet mignon. She’d lived on less, payday was Friday—Henry would get most of his pay for the two weeks, wouldn’t he? She wouldn’t be paid until the middle of November.

  She took Leo’s hand, ignoring his questions regarding their now missing groceries, and the sneer that rode up on Adamchek’s mug.

  “Don’t be an asshole when you grow up, Leo. The one good thing about seeing one in person is knowing you never have to be like him.”

  Rose did not care that someone might call her Dolly Doom; her duties often required acknowledging truths people didn’t want to. Her position might be misunderstood or underappreciated. What mattered was that she did what was right.

  Leo squeezed Rose’s hand and smiled up at her between skips and hops. Sometimes the truth did hurt and no one knew that more than Rose.

  * * *

  Rose and Leo made a quick jag up to Thompson Avenue to Dr. Bonaroti’s office. He worked out of a storefront. Several families rented the rooms above the office, stuffed inside like Sunday’s pigs in a blanket. Though Rose was paid through a one-time donation by the outgoing superintendent and his wife, and spent most of her time visiting homes, she worked closely with all six doctors in town. She kept a few hours each week at the clinic in Bonaroti’s office, seeing patients and offering lessons for families who wanted more information than she could give in their home.