I suddenly saw him and myself as we really were, cheaply flirting for the excitement of it. My face burned.
“I think you’ve made a mistake,” I said stonily. “I’m sorry I wasted your time, but I’m not available, you see.”
He peered into my face in the uncertain light of the fireworks, then grinned. “Well, you can’t fault me for trying, now can you? No hard feelings?”
He had taken it very gracefully, it seemed to me, when he would have had every right to make a scene. I certainly had done nothing to discourage him and in fact in a way had led him on as I basked in his open admiration. “Thank you, Frank. I deserved worse of you, I know. You’ve given me the happiest day I’ve had in a long time, and I won’t soon forget it.”
“You win a few, you lose a few.” He laughed. “All I can say is that your husband is a horse’s ass, if you’ll pardon the expression.” And with a wink he was off, possibly looking for a more acquiescent female before the fireworks were over. I almost felt guilty that I had taken up his time. He was a rascal, granted, but a charming one all the same.
Rob was waiting for us all with Hippocrates and the buggy. We trotted back in the moonlight, the children falling asleep and Esperanza singing ballads softly in Spanish. He let me and the children off first and then trotted off with hardly a goodnight to the children and none to me, to take Esperanza and the boys home to Old Town before going home himself. I had put the children to bed, undressed, and braided my hair for the night and was making myself a cup of tea to take to bed when I heard a horse and buggy come to a stop by our gate.
I opened the front door to see who it was and to my astonishment saw Hippocrates and Rob. “What’s the matter?” I asked in alarm. “Is something wrong?”
As he climbed slowly down from the buggy and stood swaying very slightly, I saw that he was at least a little drunk. I had never seen him like that before. No doubt he drank his lunch at the picnic and went on from there.
“I forgot to say goodnight to you,” he said thickly, each word carefully enunciated.
“Oh, Rob,” I exclaimed, “you can’t go home this way, you’ll never get there. You can sleep in Double’s room. Come on, let’s unhitch Hippocrates. He can stay in the front yard for tonight and drink out of the fishpond.”
We settled the horse in silence, and I lit a candle for him to take to his room. I went with him to turn down the bed and bring a pitcher of water. With a sigh he tumbled face down onto the bed fully dressed.
“You can’t go to bed like that.” I was exasperated. “For heaven’s sake take off your pants and shirt at least.”
When he made no move, I took off his shoes, and wrestled him out of his pants and jacket, then horsed him under the covers. As I was about to blow out the candle, he opened his eyes.
“Sorry I behaved so badly,” he muttered. “It was just seeing you making up to that Lothario —”
“I wasn’t making up to him!” I exclaimed indignantly. “He was a perfect gentleman, and if I’d depended on you for company —”
“Hush,” he interrupted. “You know I love you, don’t you?”
I nodded miserably. “Yes, Rob, I know. Sleep well.”
What he couldn’t know was that the hardest thing I ever did was to turn around and walk out that door instead of falling into his arms as I so desperately wanted to do.
Chapter IV
AUGUST 8, 1900
It is hot tonight, with no breeze, and the aroma of the wild oats and the oak trees hangs like a perfume in the air. There is a den of foxes nearby, and on nights like this they come out and dance in the moonlight. They are delicate, misty-gray little creatures, not much larger than cats, and so very graceful as they prance and caracol in the pale light, fey, unsubstantial beings that make me believe in woods spirits. I leave food out for them, and they repay me with these enchanting performances.
The deer and rabbits are another matter. Between them they have all but demolished Esperanza’s vegetable garden. Catarino, one of her older boys, set some rabbit snares, and it was the first I knew that rabbits whistled and screamed. I knew Esperanza’s family was benefiting from the meat, but I got so I couldn’t stand the all but human sounds the rabbits made when caught. I was about to tell Esperanza that the snares would have to go when it seemed that the rabbits caught on and stopped coming. I hope they don’t return.
There are times when I know exactly how the rabbits feel. I am caught and can go neither forward nor back as long as David is away. Since the night of the picnic Rob has said nothing more but now does come often to see us, and has apparently decided to let whatever will happen, happen if it will. His visits are very good for the children, since in a quite real way he fills the vacancy left by their father. I know how much self-control and patience this exacts of him, for I know how difficult it is for me to laugh and jest and go on pretending that he is just a family friend. Esperanza says she is worried about me, for I have become quite thin, but for all of our sakes I must not give in to my feelings.
Double seems to be doing fine. She and Rob and I often go together to the meetings of the antiwar group that calls itself by the unlikely name the Third Dove, after Noah’s bird that finally returned to the ark with the olive branch to let them know the flood had receded. I write letters for them when I can, but Double thinks that the group is far too timid and conservative, that they should do something really dramatic. She gets a kind of fanatic light in her eye, and I fear for what form her drama will take. It’s been a year now since Stephen died, and except for Rob and her employer, she has no gentlemen friends and doesn’t look as if she is likely to. I can only hope that time will soften her.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1900
David’s letters have taken on a kind of sameness, though at least he apparently has met one man of whom he seems fond, with the outlandish nickname Wee Willie. He is looking forward to the ending of the rains this month or early October and seems less than enthusiastic about what he is doing. However, I notice he does not speak of coming home. I am getting more and more unsure as to whether I want him to come home or not, for when he does I shall have some hard decisions to make.
OCTOBER 3, 1900
Spurred on no doubt by the news of the war in southern Africa, which sounds if anything even worse than ours, Double really tore it. She and six other ladies she managed to inveigle into her scheme flagged down the first-class passenger train from Los Angeles well outside of town and held it up for over an hour by lying on the tracks and refusing to move. It took the better part of an hour for the exasperated train crew and passengers to get up the nerve to lay hands on them, and as fast as they were picked up off the tracks, they simply lay down again farther on. The train only finally got moving again by forcibly taking the recalcitrant ladies aboard, where they proceeded to harangue the passengers about the waste and injustice of the war. On the train happened to be Edward Scripps, owner of the San Diego Sun, which guaranteed even better coverage than Double could have hoped for.
I didn’t even know about it until Rob brought me a copy of the paper today. Great heavenly days, what will she do next? Fortunately she doesn’t try to include me in her plans; I suppose she realizes that I am more conservative by nature than she and, far from joining in her schemes, would probably argue against them. I can’t help having a sneaking admiration for her, however. Needless to say, I am not sending a clipping of this latest exploit to Christian and Kate.
Double did manage recently to get me to read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Women and Economics, in which the author advocates that only by complete economic independence from the nearest male relative by birth or marriage can women become important members of society instead of mere kitchen slaves. For some reason I resisted her arguments, though I had to admit that they were presented by an intelligent, witty woman. I suppose I thought that she went too far.
“I don’t know why you’re so scornful of the book,” Rob said surprisingly. “Your life changed when you became economically indepen
dent, didn’t it?”
“But that’s only temporary. When I’ve done what I can for Melanie, it will all be over, and I must say I dread that.”
He seemed amused. “Why should it be over? As a matter of fact, I was about to ask you how you would feel about taking on another case. This one is a man with a wife and six children, whose legs were crushed when he was unloading bricks from a freight wagon. He’s been in casts for months — his employers are surprisingly willing to see to his medical expenses — but he will need a course of exercises and water therapy much like what you are doing with Melanie. Matson and Sons, the employers, are willing to pay what you’ve been getting from Alex Winters.”
“But why me? Wouldn’t it be better to obtain the services of a trained nurse?”
“No, it wouldn’t. They all have preconceived ideas it’s hard to shake them from, and why should I have to train someone all over again when I already have you?”
I had always felt something of an impostor concerning Melanie’s rehabilitation, but knowing that Rob wanted me for future cases made me see it all in a new light, and I find that I am proud of myself and of what I am doing for the first time in my life! Today I met Mr. Bartoli, my new patient, a man forty-one years old who looks sixty. I am afraid that his legs are only a part of the problem, for he sits in a wheelchair and stares out the window while tears slide slowly down his face. He reminds me of Double when she came west. When Rob introduced him to me, he gave me a lackluster stare and then went back to looking out the window.
“Why is he so depressed?” I asked Rob later. “After all, he could be in a charity ward and his family starving.”
“He thinks he will never walk again. He saw his legs all white and shriveled after the casts came off and it terrified him. Worse, he thinks his, er, male equipment has been irremediably injured, which it hasn’t. But he claims that it, uh, doesn’t work anymore. Not surprising, considering the amount of injury he sustained.”
Rob certainly doesn’t pick easy ones for me. First that spoiled brat Melanie and now a full-fledged mental disaster case. I haven’t a clue as to where to begin, so I’ll just have to plunge in. At least I have a horse of my own now. When I tried to buy Nefertiti from Alex Winters, he insisted on giving her to me complete with a bill of sale. He was feeling particularly generous, I suppose, because the day before on her birthday, Melanie actually walked haltingly across their drawing room without even her brace. I thought her husband might bed her down right there and then in the drawing room he was so excited and pleased. It was a wonderful moment for me as well, seeing all that work and patience come to something after all.
OCTOBER 30, 1900
Much to my dismay, Double has quit her job. Her employer, even though he is against the war himself, told her she mustn’t involve herself in any more pranks like stopping the train, that it didn’t look well in the press to have it stated that she was an employee of Halting Grains. He could have added that most of the Third Dove was scandalized by the action as well, and felt that no one would ever take them seriously again. So she left our group, too. I have no idea where she will get another job, but then she can always apply to Christian for funds even though Charlotte Perkins Gilman would never approve.
Mr. Bartoli is proving every bit as difficult as I anticipated and then some. I was surprised to find that the hospital has a heated pool in one part of the basement. It seems that Rob and another doctor went first to the same Edward Scripps who owns the San Diego Sun and is a millionaire besides and talked him into donating the pool, then persuaded the hospital board to accept it.
Mr. Bartoli will do what I tell him to, I’ve found, but so listlessly that he might as well not bother. When I remonstrate with him, he says that it hurts to exert himself and what is the use anyway? Even Rob can’t seem to light a fire under him.
DECEMBER 11, 1900
I’m not sure I know how to chronicle what happened this afternoon, even in a place as private as a journal. I was with Mr. Bartoli at the basement pool in the hospital, and for once Rob was with us. My patient’s legs were getting a little stronger, no thanks to any real efforts of his, but he has become painfully thin, thinner even than when we started several months ago. His nurses told me that it was a chore to get him to eat anything.
The usual January hot spell arrived a month early this year, and I was wearing above my long skirt only a lightweight cotton shirtwaist over a thin shift underneath, for massaging Mr. Bartoli’s legs was strenuous work, and I found wearing a corset an impossibility. Rob and I were standing on the edge of the pool exhorting Mr. Bartoli to greater efforts in kicking his legs in the water.
“Mrs. Hand, kneel down in front of him and count. Now, Mr. Bartoli, as Mrs. Hand counts, you are to kick, you understand?”
I never found out whether Mr. Bartoli understood or not. He was lying on his back in the water with his arms outstretched holding the gutter of the pool. I had leaned far over to be sure he could hear me over the splashing, and somehow I overbalanced and fell in. The water was shallow enough, only up to my waist as I got to my feet, but I felt a perfect fool as I stood there in the pool with the water streaming off me and my drenched hair down on my shoulders. It didn’t help any that Rob and Mr. Bartoli both had burst into an instinctive and uncontrollable guffaw of laughter.
Then suddenly they stopped laughing and stared instead, a strangely identical expression on both their faces. Automatically I looked down to see what they were staring at, and discovered to my embarrassment and chagrin that the water had not only plastered my shirtwaist and shift to my skin, but had made them partly transparent as well! A tide of red spread over my face as I saw that my breasts were revealed almost as if I were naked, the nipples clearly visible. I blush even as I write this.
But now comes the difficult part. We were all three frozen in a kind of horrifying tableau for a moment or so, and then Mr. Bartoli dropped his gaze to his own body. My eyes followed his, which caught Rob’s attention as well. There at the crotch of Mr. Bartoli’s close-fitting wool bathing suit was a slowly rising mound as he began to come erect. He had a look on his face of unforgettable joy and gladness that is seared into my mind.
“Dammit, Jan, drop your arms!” Rob shouted at me, for I had crossed my arms on my breasts to conceal them.
I obeyed him, furious but at the same time realizing why he had shouted. I must have stood all but bare-breasted for a minute before my sense of common decency brought me up out of the pool to wrap a towel around me. A minute is not long, but it was plenty long enough for Mr. Bartoli to break into a happy, excited spate of Italian while Rob grinned from ear to ear.
I managed to borrow a nurse’s uniform to go home in, but as I was squishing out the front door of the hospital in my wet shoes, Rob caught up, elated.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you did that on purpose,” he exulted. “You wouldn’t recognize Mr. Bartoli. The orderly wheeled him off clutching himself to make sure it was real, and if this does what I hope, our worries are over.”
And that was all the sympathy I received for a most uncomfortable and embarrassing accident. Rob insisted upon driving me home and walking back as far as the streetcar line to return to the hospital, where he still had rounds to make. Without looking at me as he clucked at Nefertiti, he said, “It was a good thing Mr. Bartoli was there or otherwise I might have joined you!”
The vision of Rob and me wallowing about in that pool makes me smile even now, though at the time I pretended to be shocked.
DECEMBER 24, 1900
Rob came by yesterday morning to take me up to where the fir trees begin, to cut a Christmas tree. We had been going to go last Sunday, but there was an emergency with one of his patients already in the hospital and we had to wait. The children weren’t coming with us, because I thought the drive would be too long for them, over two hours each way, so Esperanza had them at her house while we were gone and would keep them overnight there so that we could trim the tree without the interference
of curious little hands. They had managed to break five or six ornaments last year.
The balmy weather lasted, seeming very un-Christmassy, but it made the ride to the mountains enjoyable. Hippocrates had had a strenuous week, so we took Nefertiti and Sheldon’s old buggy. I was reminded of the day we had all gone on the picnic and Francis had gotten lost.
The first pines were large ones widely separated, but soon we came to a stand of second-growth trees of all sizes. We marked the chosen tree and then settled down on a blanket on the grass to have our lunch before cutting it. We ate the cold chicken and hard-boiled eggs and potato salad in a companionable silence, and afterward Rob, who had been up late with a difficult delivery the night before, took a nap.
Anticipating the possibility of his sleeping, I had brought mending, which I was now hard put to keep up with what with Melanie and Mr. Bartoli both. The way things are going now, however, I probably won’t have Mr. Bartoli for long. As it is, he has gained ten pounds already, can hobble along with two canes, and is going home for Christmas. Rob says that he will always be somewhat lame, but he is perfectly fit to be a wagon driver as long as he doesn’t have to carry heavy weights.
More than an hour went by, and I finished my sewing and sat watching Rob’s sleeping face, which looked young with the eyes closed and the lines smoothed out. As I watched, his eye movements stilled, and all at once I was looking into their sleep-dazed blueness that sharpened and focused on me. He smiled a slow, sensual smile and, reaching up, grasped my arms and drew me down to him. His kiss was slow and searching, and when it ended there was no doubt in either of us about how we felt. He smiled again and brushed a lock of stray hair back from my forehead.
“You know what is going to happen tonight.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes, I know. I can’t play coy anymore, Rob, I haven’t got it in me.”
He drew me to him hard for a moment and then held me away. “We’ve a long way still to go, my love, so let’s be about it. If I kiss you once more here, we’ll never leave.”
Kings of the Sea Page 55