“You’re crying,” Henry said.
Rose shook her head and wiped her eyes.
“Is it John?” Magdalena said.
Rose shook her head. “Oh, Jesus, who’s crying? Not old me, you know better than that.” Rose had never hesitated in showing Magdalena affection or withholding it, but right then, knowing all she wanted to do was hold her daughter, she was for the first time, not sure she should.
As though Magdalena could read Rose’s thoughts, she broke away from Henry and stepped toward Rose, making the first move back into her life.
Rose had never felt such a precious hug. She inhaled Magdalena’s freshly shampooed hair and opened her eyes to see Henry open his arms and take both women into them, holding tight. Months earlier, a public gesture like this would have put her in the grave, but now she didn’t care if they looked foolish. Her family was back with her and that was all that mattered.
Chapter 25
Wednesday, May 18, 1949
It was like old times; Henry and Buzzy, Sara Clara and Leo huddled around the breakfast table, swapping news. Magdalena waddled into the room, still in her bathrobe.
Rose watched her daughter, warmed by the sweet glow of her pregnant daughter. She no longer allowed herself to linger in regret, thinking that Magdalena’s life might not be perfect in the way she hoped it would. Rose crossed herself so thankful she and Henry had returned regularly to make deposits in their bank account, that she could stage her running into them on McKean. Rose kissed Magdalena’s cheek, the sound of her daughter saying her name filling her with love.
Magdalena ran her hand over her pregnant belly. “I want to talk to you about the baby.”
“Let’s go to the bedroom for privacy,” Rose said.
“No, I’ll say what I have to with everyone here. No secrets.”
Rose and Henry’s eyes met before she glanced at Buzzy and Sara Clara. Rose locked gazes with Magdalena.
“I want to go to University of Pittsburgh,” Magdalena said.
“You’re about to be a mother.”
“I know. But, that doesn’t mean I can’t go to school. I know I made my bed and now I have to lie in it. But I was wondering. What if I went to college and you help raise the baby? I mean, when I think of who it is I want to be, it’s someone like you, Mum. And I can’t do that alone, with a baby.”
Rose set the spatula down on the counter and looked to Henry then back to Magdalena.
Buzzy lowered his paper, but was remarkably speechless on the matter. Sara Clara stirred sugar into her tea.
“What,” Rose said. “Like the Murphy kid who thinks his grandmother’s his mother? And his real mother walks around town with her “real” children and everyone knows it, but the boy who knows something is amiss but not what?”
Rose sat beside Henry and took a sip of his coffee. “That poor kid’s mixed up and I think you could trace his confusion directly back to that one error in judgment.” Rose cocked her head. “And I know a lot about errors in judgment.”
“I don’t mean that, Mum. I’ll study while the baby naps.”
“What makes you think the Tucharoni boy will agree to all of this?”
“We’ve already discussed it. He’ll live here, too.”
Rose thought of the upcoming wedding ceremony Father Tom would preside over in just a few days. “I don’t know if it’s possible to do what you want.”
“Yes you do. I do, too. Sara Clara does.” Magdalena motioned to Sara Clara who nodded back.
“Sara Clara’s going to watch the baby while I’m at class and you’re working. I know people will talk, Mum. They’ll talk any which way you slice this up. I was meant to do this, be a scientist. And, I can do both—be a mom and be educated. “
Henry sipped his coffee. “I don’t know. I understand you want to do this, but it’s just not done. Women have a hard enough time in college, to have to…”
Rose shook her head. She worried it would be too hard for Magdalena, too.
Magdalena tapped her foot and lifted her chin. “Even if you say no, I’m telling you right now, I’m going to college. I’ll find a way. I’m going.”
Henry reached across the table and took Rose’s hand.
Magdalena covered her parents’ hands with hers. “You see Mum, who you are, is part of me. I know I can handle this because everything you’ve taught me. I can do this because of you. And, isn’t that what you wanted in the first place?”
Rose looked at Henry and the others.
“We’ll all help, Rose,” Buzzy said over his paper.
Rose cleared her throat, swallowing her reaction to Buzzy’s sincerity. “If this is going to work,” Rose said, “with my nursing and the mill shifts and Leo, we’ll all have to pitch in. And the only way to do that is to stay in this house.”
Magdalena let out a squeal and crushed Rose in a hug. Rose squeezed back as her daughter patted the back of her head and smoothed her hair, like a mother would a child, and in that small gesture, Rose felt loved.
* * *
Rose pulled her stockings and underwear from her drawer and began to dress for work. Henry came into the bedroom, but averted his gaze from Rose’s naked body. A month had gone by since Henry and Magdalena returned home and neither Rose nor Henry had discussed their marriage, the lies, the way each had treated the other.
Rose rehearsed the conversation repeatedly. She and Henry would sit holding hands, looking at each other dead-on, calmly discussing their mistakes instead screaming them out the way they had at the cemetery. Now that she understood what had happened with Dottie, she needed to apologize. They both knew the facts of their pasts, but Rose wasn’t sure he understood that she hadn’t meant to lie so much. She forgave Henry for his lies, for pushing her aside. But, still she could not bring herself to tell him how she felt as the events of that week in October had unfolded, how it felt to lose her family, her work, herself.
He went to the bedside table and wound the clock. Rose stepped into her underpants, garter belt and hooked her bra. Henry fussed with the drawer where he kept his cigarettes.
“There’s a new pack in the kitchen,” Rose said.
Henry turned. Rose met his gaze in the mirror.
“Nah. I quit smoking. Figured if it was unhealthy to breathe in the smoke from the mills then inhaling smoke from flaming tobacco directly into my lungs wasn’t too bright.”
“Oh,” Rose said. “That makes good sense.”
She pulled her underwear drawer back open and lifted a small green book from underneath her stockings. She handed it to Henry and sat beside him on the bed. While he turned the book back and forth, she rolled on one stocking and snapped the suspenders to the stocking.
Henry patted her leg. “What’s this?”
Rose lifted her other leg and rolled on the second stocking. “Look inside.”
She attached the stocking and put her slip on while Henry cracked open the book. She smiled as his eyes registered what he was holding.
She went to the closet and took a uniform from its hanger, slipping it over her head.
When she turned to face her husband, he was already there, taking her into an embrace.
“Where did you ever get that?”
Rose drew back and ran her hand down his stubbly face. “I have my ways. You like it?”
He nodded. “It’s amazing. Is it real?”
“What, you think I forged the inscription from the great W.H. Auden?”
“Did you read it?”
Rose laid her head on Henry’s shoulder and latched her arms around him, feeling protected and content. “Why yes, instead of documenting the country’s worst industrial disaster I sat on my ass and read a little Auden.”
Henry laughed and squeezed Rose harder into his chest. “It’s just incredible.”
“I’m glad it suits you.”
“Rose.” Henry pushed Rose away and looked into her eyes.
“Henry,” she glanced away.
He took her chin and lifted
it so she had to look directly at him.
“I love you,” he said.
Rose smiled and moved Henry’s hand from her chin, nestling back into his chest. “I love you, too, Hen. I love you more than I can ever fully say.”
Henry pulled back again. “What do you say we move out? They’re building these new homes. They’re sturdy, small brick houses. We’ll have enough money to build—”
“Shush.” Rose put her finger to Henry’s lips and shook her head. “We’re home. Just like this, here, like this.” Rose shrugged. “And, so we’ll stay.”
Henry nodded. “I sort of feel like this is new. All of it. Us.”
Rose slipped on her shoes and began to tie her hair into a bun. “New. Yeah, me too. I like that thought.”
And so Rose headed into her day knowing that although she would never know exactly what might happen next in her life, she could live like that. She was finally becoming the person she had pretended to be all along.
More Notes…
I’ve written a companion piece that goes with After the Fog for those who are interested in learning more about Donora, its people, the historical five days of fog, and post-war America. For those who need just a bit more information regarding what was “real” in this novel, here are some notes:
1. Dr. Bonaroti tells Buzzy and Sara Clara that he doesn’t believe the report the federal employees are writing will see the light of day. A report did come out and is referenced in the resource section. However, the surveys that were conducted and other data collected are lost in some cases and in others it’s reported that US Steel will not release information they collected, even decades after the incident.
2. While residents were proud of their mills and the tonnage they churned out, Dr. Charles Stacey was clear about the fact that “Parents realized their kids should go to college if possible. In the years of 1944 and 1945 nineteen football players went to college. Playing sports was the ticket into something better.”
3. Donora was nationally known as “Home of the Champions.” The town was considered part of the “Arsenal of Democracy.” The phrase is attributed to FDR and was widely used to garner support to ready for the possibility of war. The phrase is also said to have first been used by others before it became well known in FDR’s famous speech and beyond.
4. Although Harry Loftus related a story to me about the way he guided a car through the fog by walking with it, no real person that we know of was injured in that way as the character of Johnny was in After the Fog.
5. The character of Dr. Bonaroti is very, very loosely based on information available to me about Dr. Rongaus—the chairman of the board of health in Donora. Dr. Rongaus crusaded against the pollution emitted from the mills and fought to have them shut down during the smog. “Murder in the Mills,” was reported to be his characterization of the situation during the deadly week. Interviews with Donora residents reveal Dr. Rongaus was direct, generous, and extremely well regarded by fellow citizens, but he did not worry about offending people if he believed in a cause. Other than drawing from the obvious, well-known aspects related to the actions of Dr. Rongaus during the fog, the character of Dr. Bonaroti is fiction.
6. The Zinc Mill in Donora closed a few years after the five days of deadly fog, but there is disagreement regarding whether the closure was a result of fog/smog fallout or the result of technology making the decades old zinc works obsolete.
7. In researching for this book, I found references to women’s groups and wealthy individuals who funded visiting nurse clinics in the Pittsburgh area—that was where the idea came from for the funding issue in After the Fog. There was a women’s club in Donora that offered “baby clinics” up until WWII. The Donora Historical Society has a few photos of well-dressed women gathered at meetings, perhaps offering new, young, poorer mothers postnatal advice. Brian Charlton indicated the club would host baby contests as well, but the clinics do not appear to have offered medical care in the way we think of clinics today.
8. Brian Charlton indicated that Donora did have a Community Chest that helped people during the depression and operated up until WWII. A priest from St. Phillips also ran a welfare fund that faded out by WWII.
9. The deadly smog events in Donora helped push the Clean Air Act of 1955 into being. Donora’s Smog Museum tagline is “Clear Air Started Here.”
10. Visiting nurses were well established fixtures in Allegheny county and Pittsburgh, but did not come to Washington county until a few years after “the fog.” Donora did have nurses working in the mill hospital. Interviews with Donora residents reveal that those nurses were exceptionally generous with their time and expertise, helping fellow citizens when asked. I found some references to nurses who were conducting “clinics,” in the schools, but there aren’t details pertaining to who they were or where they were based. Many babies were still delivered in their homes in 1948. None of the nurses depicted in After the Fog are based on any specific person from Donora.
11. While many think of mothers working outside the home as a 1970’s/80’s development, I have spoken to women who did so well before that. Two of those ladies were my grandmothers. My Grandma Jane Arthur (a west coast gal) was a teacher who put herself through college during the depression. My Grandma Rose Jacobs (who lived in the mill-town of Etna) provided the anecdote that inspired the situation that had the character of Mrs. Sebastian visiting Rose’s home in order to help her decide whether to fund the clinic. When my grandmother applied for work at Bell Telephone, someone visited her home to be sure her son (my dad) and their home would be adequately cared for if she were to work for them. Like many people in post-war America, I had the Pavlesics live with extended family under the same roof and split chores, including the care of children during the day. Finally, the name Rose is taken from my gram, and yes, the real Rose is straightforward, a bit harsh, no-nonsense, and the hardest worker you could ever hope to hire. However, the only element of the fictional Rose’s backstory that is directly related to my grandmother is fact that both were orphaned (my gram and her siblings lived with relatives, not in an orphanage). Any other details related to Rose Pavlesic’s personal journey and the resemblance of any other family members to any characters in the book is completely coincidental.
Book Club Guide
1. Discuss the way Rose’s upbringing and the traumas she experienced colored the way she plotted her life and expected others to live. How were Rose’s defense mechanisms effective or not?
2. How would you characterize Rose’s relationships with Henry, Unk, Magdalena, Johnny, and others in the story?
3. What do you imagine the next phase of the Pavlesic family’s life will look like?
4. Discuss Rose’s ability to connect with patients of all walks of life, but her difficulty in being “intimate” with those closest to her.
5. How did religion influence Rose?
6. How is the Pavlesic family similar to yours?
7. Discuss the setting of Donora. How is it like places you’ve known?
8. Discuss the role of a community/public health nurse and how you see them fitting into society.
9. How was the way the citizens of Donora were reluctant to discuss the five days of fog with the survey-takers surprising to you?
10. Discuss the way people become so accustomed to a certain standard of living that they don’t recognize danger. For example, explore the fact that the football game and the parade went on as planned, with many people adamantly sure the fog was no worse those days than any other.
Resources
The characters, their actions, plotlines and personal journeys in After the Fog are fiction. I used the facts related to the documented timeline of the darkening fog/smog and the types of illnesses that were reflected in reports of the disaster as obstacles for the characters. I also used the odd back and forth between some people understanding the fog was different than normal and others not thinking the five days were unique at all until the weekend was over. In addition, I found th
at some sources disagree with certain aspects of what the days were like and who was to blame.
In other words there were conflicting reports on the fog and its impact on the citizens of Donora so I had to make artistic decisions when I chose to include or ignore certain elements pertaining to the five days of Donora smog. Brian Charlton offers an in-depth presentation of the fog events along with the myths and facts that have shaped the recollections of those who witnessed and reported on the killing smog. He can be reached through the Donora Historical Society—Donorasmog.com.
Interviews about Donora, life in the late 40’s, and making steel:
· Dr. Charles Stacey
· Brian Charlton
· Dave Lonich
· Mr. and Mrs. Harry Loftus
· Various attendees at 2008 Smog Museum opening and commemoration of 1948 smog disaster
· Rose Jacobs
· Jane Arthur
· Robert H. Kaltenhauser
Books, Articles, and Reports:
After the Fog Page 37