“He’s supposed to be in bed!” I exclaimed. “He’s sick!”
“Ya no está enfermo,” she said placidly and paid no more attention.
“But it’s not proper for him to have no clothes on,” I persisted.
“Mejor without clothes,” and that was that.
Heaven only knows where all of this will lead, but I wonder already how I ever did without her. The children love her, the beans were delicious, and I suddenly had the time this afternoon to do some mending and even to bake some cookies in addition to the usual bread. When I insisted that Esperanza take home most of the cookies and a loaf of bread, I thought she would cry. Dr. Connors was right, she saved me five times her salary, and that pot of beans will do us for lunches for several days. In fact, Francis insisted upon having them for supper, too.
OCTOBER 17,1899
Dr. Connors appeared suddenly again and this time said he wanted me to go with him to see one of his patients.
“I have an ulterior motive,” he said. “Now that Esperanza has taken hold, you would have time to give an hour or so a day to a worthwhile project, wouldn’t you?”
“It would depend on what it was,” I said reluctantly, far from eager to give up one minute of my newfound relative leisure.
“You’ll see,” and he put Hippocrates into a trot with a flick of the buggy whip.
We stopped at last at the gates of a mansion so decorated with Victorian furbelows that it looked like some kind of monstrous wedding cake. A little Mexican boy opened the ornate wrought-iron gates to allow us to proceed up the drive lined with rose bushes. The door was wood with insets of colored glass, and panels of more colored glass flanked it on either side.
A cadaverous butler dressed formally in tails answered the door, recognized Dr. Connors, and bowed stiffly. “This way, sir.” Even his voice sounded stiff and creaky. “Madame is expecting you.”
We entered a drawing room so exotic that I drew in my breath. The floor blazed with a gorgeous oriental carpet in glowing colors, the walls were hung with burgundy-colored velvet, and amid silk tassels and tigerskin pillows, a corner that would have done justice to a sultan’s harem drew the eye. Sitting in a wheelchair gazing out of a window sat a young and very beautiful woman. Her face lit up as she saw Dr. Connors, then fell into a scowl of pure malice as she noted that he was not alone. Her braided hair was jet black, her long eyes startlingly green, and she had that translucently white skin that women with really black hair sometimes have. She made me feel a complete frump.
“How’s my girl today?” Connors said rather heartily, as if he were talking to a twelve-year-old.
“How should I be? But you don’t care, do you? It isn’t you who can’t walk.”
“Ah, but that’s not true. If you would only try, you would be walking in no time.”
“With these?” she snarled and raised her dressing gown to show two pitifully thin legs.
“Yes, with those. I’ve seen worse cases than yours finally walk even without the aid of crutches or a cane. You’ll probably never play lawn tennis, but then you didn’t before, either. I’ve brought Mrs. Hand, who is going to be massaging and exercising you for a while every day.”
I stared at him, openmouthed.
“Oh no she isn’t!” the perverse creature snapped. “I’m far too delicate for exercise.”
“Let me tell you something, young lady. If you persist in sitting on your bottom in that wheelchair, not only will you never walk again, but the muscles may shorten so much that they separate your pelvis, a very painful experience indeed, I may say. If I find that you aren’t cooperating with Mrs. Hand, I’ll have to arrange for a far more unpleasant companion who will force you to exercise. By next March I expect to find you walking on the beach. Now how is that for a prophecy?”
“Alex would never allow you to force me to do anything!”
“I’ve explained to him in detail what will happen if you don’t, and he indeed is allowing me.” Connors was inexorable.
She buried her face in her hands then and began to weep. “I hate you! I hate you!”
Connors pretended as if her storm of tears had never happened. With no comment he showed me what he wanted me to do. All of the horseback riding I did when I was growing up gave me very strong hands or I doubt I could have done it.
“I’ve asked her husband to build a special pool for her, but until it’s finished, massage will have to do. The poor have to do without pools,” he added grimly, “so it’s as well they seldom seem to get the disease.”
I allowed the charade to continue rather than argue with him in the presence of this child-woman who looked no older than sixteen and acted more like eight. As busy as I was and with time at last to do some of the things I’d wanted to for so long, I had no intention of giving up a part of every day to this spoiled brat.
“Remember, Mrs. Hand, a full hour. I think you’ll find that sitting her on the floor will prove easier than trying to work with her in the wheelchair. Houston, the butler, will bring in a gymnasium mat for you.”
“I won’t I won’t I won’t!” the spoiled creature screamed. “I’ll die first!”
“No, you won’t,” he said, not unsympathetically. “Don’t you ever want to dance again? I remember you at your engagement party — you were lovely.”
Her demeanor changed at once. “I was, wasn’t I?” she agreed complacently.
“When you can stay on your feet for a whole dance, I’ll see that Alex gives you a full-dress ball,” he coaxed.
Her eyes began to shine. “I want a masquerade ball! I’ve never been to one, they must be such fun. Shall I go as Marie Antoinette?”
“How about Cleopatra? You may as well be exotic. Or Scheherazade?”
She clapped her hands childishly. “Of course! And I’ll have one of those dear little Mexican boys in a turban with a peacock fan to accompany me. I can’t wait to see Mary Lou Albrand’s expression when she hears.”
Soon after, we took our leave while she was still excitedly planning the masquerade, chattering away to herself like mad.
“I’m curious,” I said after we had left the house. “What makes you think I’ll go along with this idiotic scheme?”
“First of all,” the wretch said, grinning, “you’ll be well paid, which means that you can hire Esperanza full-time if you want to, and give the children some extra toys and clothes besides. I’ve shamelessly told Alex that you are an expert.”
“But I’m not! What if I should harm her? You’re mad to give such responsibility to someone like me.”
“Well,” he said reasonably, “to tell you the truth, there are no experts in this field. I met some Scandinavian doctors at a medical conference a few years back, and they told me what little I know about it. I have a nasty suspicion that we’ll be seeing more and more of this paralysis in the United States. There is no cure — the disease simply has to run its course. What often does make a difference, the Scandinavians told me, is the rehabilitation that goes on afterward, and for some reason exercising in water seems to help.” He turned and looked at me good-naturedly. “Well? Are you going to do it?”
“The money would be welcome,” I mused. “How am I going to get there every day?”
“Alex has agreed to furnish a horse and tack that you can keep in John Sheldon’s barn just down the road from you.”
“You had it all figured out before you even asked me,” I accused him.
He grinned again. “If I’d asked you first, you would have said no right away, wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose I would,” I grumbled. “I still think there is something fishy about all of this. You wouldn’t be thinking of rehabilitating me as well, would you?”
“You must admit that getting you out of the house should surely help your morale. If you and Melanie can do each other some good, why not?”
“Why not indeed?” I laughed suddenly, excited by the idea of doing something useful for once instead of scrubbing the same floors every da
y.
NOVEMBER 20, 1899
There hasn’t been much cause for laughter since then, and if I don’t blow off steam, I’ll burst. That miserable little girl has managed to make things as difficult and unpleasant as she possibly can. I am finding it easier and easier to forget about her disability and come to hate her as thoroughly as she detests me. The only way I can get her to do anything is to threaten her with Dr. Connors by telling her that if she won’t try to get better, he won’t come to see her anymore.
She certainly has one of the most advanced cases of calf love for him I’ve seen since I was in grammar school. Her poor husband, Alex (whom I call Mr. Winters to his face, of course), is in his forties, one of those beefy, high-colored men who overindulge in food and drink both. He dotes on her and gives her whatever she wants. Though the age difference between them isn’t quite as bad as I thought, she being actually twenty-six instead of sixteen, it is bad enough, and I wonder why she ever married him — she certainly doesn’t love him. Probably flattered by the attentions of a mature, very rich man.
His first wife was dead in childbirth back when Melanie was still in diapers, and I suppose he thought it was time he considered working on another family. As promised, he built the pool for Melanie in the greenhouse, which was clever, since it is always warm in there, and he even installed a hot-water system. How I wish we had that in our house! She shrieked and carried on the first time I tried to get her in. Happily Dr. Connors was there to see how it went, and he finally lost his temper, I’m afraid, and picked her up and threw her in. I do believe I caught out Houston in a wintry smile, the first time I’ve ever seen a crack in his chilly facade.
Dr. Connors puzzles me. Though I am grateful to him, I can’t think why he has taken so much trouble to help us. Francis, whom he sees all too often in his office, loathes him and makes no bones about it, but he only says that most children dislike going to the doctor’s, where they know a variety of unpleasant experiences awaits them. He actually talked Alex Winters into giving me twenty dollars a week for the little I am doing, enough to buy our food and pay the rent and Esperanza too, leaving the navy allotment free and clear. I still feel like a fraud for taking the money, but it has made Esperanza so happy and the children too that I haven’t the courage to turn it down. Francis has actually become housebroken at last, which has cut the diaper problem in half. He has even stopped wetting the bed at night!
Yesterday I found out Dr. Connors’s first name. He always used the initials R.B., but since I heard Alex call him Rob, I assumed that his name was Robert. He confessed somewhat shamefacedly that it was in truth Robin because his mother was very taken with the exploits of Robin Hood. When I said I thought it a nice name, he snorted.
“Nice maybe for a boy under twelve. I ask you, how precious can you get!”
“What’s the B stand for?” I asked, thinking that perhaps he could have used that instead.
“Burleigh,” he replied disgustedly, “after my maternal grandfather. Burleigh Connors is even worse than Robin Connors.”
“Well, I still think it’s a nice name,” I laughed.
“Do you indeed?” he said with a strange look on his face. “Would you call me by it then?”
I stopped laughing. “I’m not sure that would be proper.”
“You don’t have to do it in front of other people,” he countered, suddenly putting our relationship on a completely different footing. Would this be practicing some unpardonable kind of deception?
“We’ll see,” I answered noncommittally, but I knew I would.
While I’m at it, I may as well talk about David. My rage at him for refusing to come home has subsided somewhat I realize now that in those dark days I was tottering on the edge of a kind of insanity. Heaven only knows what I would have been capable of had things gone on as they were. By volunteering to stay in the Philippines, David might as well have slapped my face, for I know that Stephen would never have stayed away from Double any longer than he was absolutely forced to. It seems ironic that — no, I won’t even put that down here. I love David, I do, and somehow when he returns we’ll work out something better between us. I am trying to work up the nerve to ask Dr. Connors — Rob — for his advice on David’s and my physical problem. After all, a doctor should know, shouldn’t he?
Now that I find myself with a little more leisure and money, I have subscribed to a San Diego newspaper and to Harper’s Magazine. The war distresses me increasingly, as it seems to distress Dr. Connors as well. It is too hard to call him Rob. Alex Winters says we’ll lick the gugus — a perfectly despicable name he picked up from some of his officer friends — in no time, but I notice that David’s account of his own activities, while hardly detailed, nonetheless assumes that the war could continue indefinitely. I love my country as well as anyone, but I can’t help thinking that we are in the wrong in this case in trying to impose our will on a helpless people so newly released from the Spanish despotism. Has Dr. Connors influenced me in this? To be honest, I don’t know. I was so depressed and harried before that I hardly thought about the war except as a means of keeping my husband away from home.
DECEMBER 11, 1899
I am still so outraged that I tremble as I think of it. That despicable little beast Melanie has accused me of having an affair with Rob! But I suppose I had best begin at the beginning if I am to work this out of my system.
For several weeks she has suddenly become quite tractable, doing her exercises without complaint and actually saying please and thank you when asking for favors. I found out that behind all that petulance was a mind begging to be used. I have always enjoyed reading — it is all that has kept me relatively sane since I had the children — and I have often thought that occupying one’s thoughts with another’s troubles, even fictional ones, not only lightens one’s own burden but perhaps even makes one more perceptive of the outlook and problems of others.
I had found among the Winters’s books a number of romances, and after the first one had no trouble urging them on Melanie, who is fascinated. I planned to wean her slowly onto more substantial fare, for the girl has a quick mind and I’m sure would benefit from having to think about something besides herself. We were discussing Jane Eyre when she suddenly said that most people had secrets even though they might not be of the dramatic quality of Mr. Rochester’s.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s true at all,” I said idly, actually at the moment worrying a bit about Rob’s plan to start Melanie walking the following week. She doesn’t take kindly to changes of routine.
“Ah, but I disagree,” she replied with a tone of malice. “My husband, for instance, is a very physical man, and I don’t for a moment believe he has been stinting himself because I am no longer capable of being his partner in the marriage bed.”
“Melanie!” I exclaimed, horrified. To be truthful, it had never occurred to me to so much as speculate about that particular situation, though I admit speculating about David, but a part of my shock now was that I instinctively found myself agreeing with her.
“Nor do I think the oh-so-righteous Dr. Connors does without, either,” she went on inexorably.
I was beyond speech.
“Nor even you,” she added, her green eyes bright with her malice.
“Your husband may pay me,” I told her, keeping my voice steady with an effort, “but I don’t have to listen to such insults from you or anyone else. You know perfectly well that there is nothing between Dr. Connors and myself.”
“Do I? I’ve seen the way he looks at you — his eyes are never off you when you are in the room with him. He used to look at me like that, but now be has eyes only for you.”
“That shows how foolish you are. He doesn’t care for you or me either. I shall have to stop giving you those idiotic romances — they are going to your head.”
I began to think she had brought up the whole subject merely to tease, but she surprised me then by bursting into tears.
“He loved me, I know he did, but
then I became a cripple and now it is you he loves. I wish I had died!”
I became really angry at that. “Melanie, for heaven’s sake get hold of yourself. You and I are both married women, and it is hardly seemly to be talking of a family doctor in regard to either of us. I have no idea of what Dr. Connors’s private life may be, nor do I want to know. What I do know is that it is none of my business or yours either. If you are really sad about being a cripple you’ll work harder at not being one.”
“It’s easy for you to talk!” she flashed back. “Your husband is thousands of miles away and hardly likely to come back very soon. I can feel how things are between you and Rob” — she took great delight in using his first name. “The air fairly drips with it. You may fool my silly husband, among others, but you don’t fool me. I can see right through that fake healthy outdoor look you have. And what is more, you are just as much in love with him as he is with you.”
We ended by glaring at each other in silence. I was all too aware of a heavy unpleasant pounding of my heart. I itched to take her across my knee and give her the spanking her parents evidently neglected to give her back when it might have done some good.
Now I’ll have to tell him that I can’t work there anymore. Blast that girl!
DECEMBER 12, 1899
“What do you mean, you’re not going to work with her anymore? Surely you haven’t allowed that twit of a spoiled brat to get to you after all this time? I gave you credit for more sense than that, Janice.”
His air of superiority was infuriating. “You may not care if she tells anyone who’ll listen that you and I are having an affair, but I have a husband and a reputation to protect.”
“She what?” His tone was incredulous, his expression one of exasperated disbelief.
“Refuse to believe me if you wish,” I said tartly, “but she came right out and said it. It won’t be long before the whole town knows.”
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