Lucinda's Solution

by Nancy Roman

  “I’ve known for weeks,” said Frank, not raising his head. “I hadn’t been able to find a way to tell Sofia. But she was going on and on tonight, so happy that I was better, and making plans for the future, and I couldn’t bear it. I told her.”

  Sofia! I ran from the bedroom and out the door and up the stairs. I did not have to go far. She was sitting halfway up the steps. Just staring into the darkness.

  I sat by her side and put my arms around her. She did not cry. She just continued to stare at nothing. At the empty world she was facing. We sat for a long time, perhaps an hour.

  Finally, she said, “I am cold. Do you have a shawl?”

  I took her hand and led her down the stairs. Frank and Martin were still seated at the table, a bottle of homemade wine between them, nearly empty. There were no glasses.

  I found a nice goblet in the cabinet, and poured the remainder of the wine and handed it to Sofia. She held it with both hands but did not put it to her lips. I’m not sure she was even aware she was holding it. I fetched a blanket and put it around her shoulders.

  Frank watched her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I could be well. I don’t want to die and I don’t want to hurt you and leave you.”

  Sofia turned to him. “It was the war. The war has killed you. I knew it from the moment you went away. I knew you had already died. War ruins everything. I told you that, but you went anyway.” She sobbed and made an angry animal sound. “You would have been better off dying in France. I wouldn’t have to watch you die.”

  It was a terrible thing to say, but it was grief that had taken hold, not hatred. Frank rose and knelt by her chair and she stroked his hair, and finally let herself cry.

  Martin turned to me. “Frank has told me that his new medicine is to control the pain only. It was never a cure. And now he is going blind, which the doctor tells him is inevitable.”

  I nodded. I was complicit in this horrible knowledge, but Frank, even in his agony, had kept my role a secret. So I feigned ignorance and hated myself for doing so.

  “We will do everything we can for both of you,” I said. “Anything.”

  And we sat in silence until the sun rose.

  Sofia rose, saying, “I must go to work. Things will be all right if I go to work.”

  I took her hand. “No,” she said. “Let me go. I need to go.”

  Frank nodded and I released her. Martin had fallen asleep at the table just a short while before. I woke him gently.

  “Martin, dear, it’s morning. You should get to work.”

  “Morning?” he muttered. And when he realized he was still at the kitchen table and remembered all that transpired, he asked, “Should I stay?”

  “No,” I said. “Go. I will stay with Frank. We will be fine.”

  The children were waking, the baby was crying, and my breasts were aching and heavy. Frank offered to go back upstairs, but I told him he should stay. He tried to lie down on the settee in the parlor but the smallish piece of furniture had been uncomfortable even for my much smaller frame, and I ended up encouraging him to lie down on my own bed. At first he demurred, but his exhaustion finally got the better of him, and he acquiesced. I told the children, still in their nightclothes, to sit on the bed with Frank and play a game where they had to be statues and not move. Then I gathered wailing Annie to my breast, raced up the stairs with the baby latched hard onto me, and found Frank’s pain pills. I rushed back down, rather amazed that the baby seemed oblivious, as famished as she was. I reentered the bedroom to find the children safely in giggles as they struck their statue poses, one on either side of Frank, who lay very still with the strain showing on his face.

  I handed him a pill. He took it from me, and grinned, which confused me at first and then I realized that I still had the baby at my bare breast.

  “I thought you were supposed to be blind!” I said.

  “Not yet, Lucinda,” he laughed. That laugh was as sweet a sound as I had heard in years.

  Frank slept for hours. The children begged to go out to play, but I was fearful of leaving Frank. About two, Frank finally came out of the bedroom, a little sheepish.

  “I had so much wine last night,” he said. “And then the pill on top of that. I’m sorry to have ruined your day. I will go home now, and leave you alone.”

  “Stop that,” I said. “All the pretense is over now. You are sick and you are allowed to be sick.”

  “I was capable of caring for myself yesterday, and I can still,” he said. “I will tell you when I cannot.”

  I realized that he was angry. Well, he had a right if anyone did. And he did not need me to turn him into an invalid before his time. Or take away his pride.

  “You’re right,” I said. “And you smell of old wine and slept-in clothes. Go clean up. I’m going to take the children to the park. Perhaps you can find something to eat - I didn’t wait on luncheon for a man who sleeps during the day.”

  “That’s better,” he said. “Have fun, kids!” And he smiled when putting the emphasis on the word ‘kids,’ which he knew my parents had never allowed me to utter. He straightened and I heard him stride purposefully and rather loudly up the stairs. It may have been pretense, but it was a pretense that we needed to hold to for a while.

  “Get your new sailboat, Jonny,” I said. I went to the park with a much lighter heart, although I left the door to our apartment unlocked, and Frank’s pills on the table where he could find them easily.

  And so we went on for the next few weeks. We measured the days by hours, the hours by minutes - and the minutes alert to the slightest change or deterioration. If we broke it down into the smallest increments, then there was less change to see. Frank looked the same as he did five minutes before; it was only when you compared him to the week before that his condition worsened. So we tried desperately not to look at the larger picture. We all became inured to the fact of Frank’s impending death in some way or another. Frank and I had a head start on Martin and Sofia - that was the only difference. We sometimes even made light of it.

  “I just could not bear to see women get the vote,” he declared one day.

  “Oh, I think it may have been prohibition that has done you in,” I said.

  “No reason to go on,” Frank agreed.

  Frank and I made another trip to Dr. Crane. Ostensibly - for Sofia’s sake - Frank explained that since I was his daytime companion, it made sense that I should meet the doctor and receive some guidance as to the best method of care. But for Frank and I, our real purpose was to understand better the timetable of his demise. How bad would it be? What could we expect?

  For this trip, we did not go by train, but rather hired a car. As before, Constance took the older children, but no secrecy was needed. Dr. Crane greeted us with affection, commenting politely on how Annie had grown and looked the picture of health. Frank’s health, however, was not a sunny picture.

  “A few months, I’m afraid,” said Dr. Crane. “Perhaps four. Maybe only one before your sight is completely gone. You may find yourself hard of hearing, but often it is just the opposite, with small sounds being magnified. You may hear voices. Hallucinations are not uncommon. There will be days when walking is difficult, or your hands may tremble uncontrollably. I know it sounds frightful, because it is. But on the positive side, you may have some wonderfully clear days - where your mind is sharp and your body steady. Enjoy them. Take all the pleasure you can whenever those moments appear. And for the bad times, I will give you more medication.”

  “Tell me honestly,” said Frank. “Am I better off taking all the medication now, and ending it immediately?”

  For a moment, I thought the doctor would be appalled, perhaps refuse to give Frank the drugs, maybe even refuse to see him. But then I recalled overhearing the doctor on that first visit, when he appeared to offer to give Frank eno
ugh pills to end his life.

  “Mr. Giametti, the time may come when the pain is too much to bear. But I have found - and this is the truth - that the other soldiers with your condition have found it not so bad at all. With the pain under control, they chose to live as long as they could manage. For you never know when there may be a sunrise that you glimpse through you failing vision, or a song that you had never heard before. Or maybe a child’s laughter or embrace. You may not want to miss the possibility for one good day.” He paused. … “But I do not judge,” he added.

  Dr. Crane instructed Frank to sit in the anteroom for a moment while he spoke with me privately. But I refused. “Whatever you tell me, you will need to say in front of Frank,” I said. “I can’t live with any more secrets.”

  And so Frank listened while the doctor instructed me as to Frank’s care when blind, and how to handle hallucinations, and when he might soil himself. We listened stone-faced. As if hearing about how to light a new stove or tune a violin. It was just techniques. It was not us.

  “You may want to buy some tin cups and plates,” he said, as he walked us back to our hired car. “It will save the expense of broken china.”

  CHAPTER 54

  Three days after was my birthday. I was nineteen.

  I felt the responsibility, not only for the three children, but for the other three adults with me as well. Neither Sofia nor Martin had asked any details of Frank’s medical appointment. They concentrated on their working day, and at night attempted to keep the atmosphere cheerful. I do not think they were trying to avoid the burden. I believe they knew that the burden would grow larger with sharing.

  The night before my birthday, I was awakened by a soft knocking on my door.

  It was Sofia.

  “Please, Lucinda, I need some help. Frank is in such pain, and he will not take a pill from me. I do not think he knows who I am.”

  And I flew up the stairs to find Frank standing at the foot of the bed, looking as if he was standing on a rock in the middle of the ocean, afraid to take a step for being crushed by the waves.

  “Can you see?” I asked.

  “Oh, Lucie!” he cried. “For a few moments I could not. And there seemed to be so much noise. I fear I have frightened Sofia near to death!”

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “I see you now. I became so confused. But my head is clearing now. Please don’t be angry.”

  “I’m not angry,” said Sofia. “But you knocked the pill out of my hand, and I don’t know where it is.”

  We all searched the floor on our hands and knees, and it was Frank who came up with the missing pill.

  “Isn’t that something?” he said. “My vision may have gone to hell, but my fingertips are working.”

  “Well, feel your way back to bed, and stay there,” I said. “I can hear the baby crying right through the floorboards.” Sofia and I helped him back to bed. It was no harder than assisting a man who had gotten a little tipsy and a little giddy.

  And now we sat over dinner celebrating my birthday with a bit more of the Giametti’s homemade wine.

  “Prohibition hasn’t made much of an impact on 30 Pearl Street,” remarked Martin. “We certainly found the right neighbors.”

  I was comfortable enough with our makeshift family that I was nursing the baby at the table. Charlotte and Jonathan were singing, some type of Italian birthday song that Sofia had taught them.

  “One of these days,” said Martin, “it will be surprising to us that these children know any English at all.” He hugged them to him and said, “Ti amo, figli!”

  “Oh my God!” I said laughing. “Will I be the only one left whose only Italian is ‘gelato!’”

  “Speaking of which, it is time for cake!” said Sofia.

  And we all gathered around and feasted on Sofia’s delicious cake - with gelato on the top, of course. It felt as if we had turned the clock back a year, and everything was right again. I could taste the hope baked into the cake, and I knew I had made the right decision.

  Before I could announce what I had been considering since seeing Dr. Crane, Martin announced, “It is time for the children to go to bed. We are in need of some adult conversation.”

  So Sofia and I took the children to their room, and prayers were said and kisses were plentiful. They were asleep before Sofia finished her third lullaby. I took Annie to the bedroom and laid her in the crib. She had been asleep through most of the festivities. She had become so sweet-natured in the past two months. As if being included in the most horrible of medical issues had induced her to support us with her calm and loving demeanor. Holding her helped me from collapsing.

  Back at the kitchen table, the second bottle of wine had been opened. Reminded that I still had birthday gifts to open, I picked up the small box from Martin. In the box was an elegant bottle of perfume.

  “Tabac Blond,” explained Martin. “It is what all the emancipated women are wearing.”

  “Well, that is perfect for me then,” I said.

  “You can wear it when you vote in November!” said Sofia.

  “Not all the states have passed that amendment yet,” Martin warned with a laugh.

  “They will,” I said. “And I will be voting - except of course, I will have to wait until I am twenty-one.”

  “Ah, yes, we forget you are yet a child,” said Frank softly. He took from his shirt pocket a small piece of fabric that had been sewn into a little bag with a drawstring. Sofia’s work, I was sure, and I was already thinking about how Charlotte would love that to hold the little pebbles she was always picking up.

  “From Sofia and I,” he said. “With more love than we can ever say.”

  It was a bracelet made from tiny beach shells.

  “It’s lovely! Thank you so much.”

  Martin looked around the table, and his eyes were wet. “I have some important news,” he said. “Connecticut Aviation is closing. I have known for some time that things were not well within the company. The owners were too focused on military uses for aircraft, and especially with military dirigibles. I could see that demand for that product was diminishing. Commercial aircraft is the future, but they would not listen.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Frank. “You will have to find other work right away.”

  “Yes,” Martin agreed. “But it is only terrible in part. Because I knew this was coming, I had written to Wright’s Company quite some time ago. They are operating a large plant in Ohio. They have reviewed some of my ideas and designs and they want me to come and work for them immediately.”

  “Ohio?” Frank gasped. “You will move to Ohio?”

  Martin avoided looking at Frank. He spoke directly to me.

  “I should have told you first. At any other time, this would be the best news in the world. This is the job I have always wanted, and the pay is very good. We can have a house and a motorcar. I am told that the area around Dayton is beautiful.” He paused. “But I know with what is happening now…I know how difficult it will be to leave. I’m sorry for that. I don’t know what else to do. How to make it work…”

  I did. I knew. This was what I had been planning for the last several days. The idea had been in my head for at least a month prior. The only difference was the location. Ohio. Why not?

  “Listen to me,” I said. “I have been tormented with the awfulness of our circumstances. But I have a solution. It is completely untoward, as irrational and shocking and terrible as the situation is itself. But I believe it would be best. That of all the horrid things that could happen now, taking this step might be the least horrid. We may even be happy.”

  I looked at the three people at this table - the people I loved as much as a person could love. I took a deep breath.

  “Martin, I love you very much and I believe you love me. Bu
t we do not love each other as husband and wife. I have come to the conclusion that we never will. You were meant to be my brother. Not my husband. You cannot love me as a man should love his wife.” He started to protest. He picked up his hand as if to brush my words away, but he let it fall again, and he looked away.

  I continued, “But I think you deserve a loving wife. Sofia could be that wife. I have seen that you love her. You could love her as more than a friend. And Sofia deserves a healthy husband and a family. She deserves sweet and beautiful children. She loves Charlotte and Jonathan already. She would be a wonderful mother to them. I truly think that Martin and Sofia should go to Ohio as husband and wife.”

  “My God, Lucinda,” said Martin. “What in hell are you saying?”

  “It is hell,” I agreed. “But I am trying to find a way back to salvation. And here is the rest of it. Although I cannot love Martin as my husband, not as a woman should love a man - I have that love for Frank. I love Frank with all my heart.” At this I began to cry, but I kept going. I looked at Frank, and I hoped that he could see me clearly. “I can’t bear the thought of losing you. I know you don’t have much time, and so I want to spend every second with you.

  Is it sinful? Maybe it is. But I don’t think so. I think we were all of us thrown together in this house so that we could find each other. So that we could set the world right. So that we could set ourselves right.”

  There was a silence through the room that felt like the air before a strong thunderstorm. But sometimes thunderstorms are exactly what the air, the ground, the animals of the earth, need.

  After several minutes where I sat motionless - waiting - the first to speak was Sofia.

  “I would say yes,” she said. “If Frank would release me from my vows.”

  Frank cried out. “God help me,” he said. “I would release you now with all the love in my heart. You will be free of me soon enough, but I would rather you go with love now. I would be content knowing that a man as fine as Martin was your husband. That you could be a mother as you always wished.” He stopped and found my face. I am sure he saw me. “But as much - as much as I want the best for Sofia - I want to spend the rest of my life, how much or how little of it there is, with Lucinda. If she can bear to see me die, it is in her arms that I would choose at the end.”