Clairey let out a little sob. “Oh, no. No, please…”
“I think it might be best if you waited outside. This is not for the faint of heart,” he said rather sternly. “I must be able to work without distractions.”
She waited in the parlor with Gilda Fielding, nervously twisting the hem of her old dress while the older woman watched over her. She occasionally glanced over to the closed doors where the examination room was, wondering what was transpiring in that place that was off limits to her. The anxiety and the helplessness of waiting idly were eating her up inside.
“Doctor Fielding knows what he’s doing. Your young man will be just fine,” Gilda reassured her.
“Thank you, ma’am,” she answered.
“What’s your name?”
“Clairey, ma’am.”
“Well, Clairey, I’ve known Ellis all his life. I was there when Doctor Fielding delivered him,” she confided. “And Doctor Fielding has a special fondness for that boy. He’ll take good care of him. I promise you that.”
“I tole him I wouldn’t leave him.”
“You’re still here, aren’t you?” Gilda Fielding pointed out. “And when he comes around, you’ll be there right beside him. We’ll see to it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Gilda paused for a moment and then spoke with a soft entreating voice. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, child, but it looks as if you could benefit from a bath.”
Clairey observed her own appearance for the first time since arriving and became painfully aware of how she looked. “I’m right sorry, ma’am,” she replied sheepishly, for she knew she must have appeared lowly indeed to this fine woman who smelled of lavender and lemons, with her silver hair pulled back in a neat and tidy bun. She hadn’t had a chance to wash before she and Ellis had left the farm, and she still wore Ellis’s blood, dried out and dark brown, a smear on her cheek, covering her hands, all over her dress. The doctor’s wife must be feeling such pity for the poor mountain girl, she thought.
“There’s nothing to be sorry over,” Gilda assured. “Perhaps you would allow me to draw a bath for you? Might pass the time.”
“Do what now?”
“Come along with me, and I’ll run some bath water for you,” Gilda offered. She showed Clairey up the stairs into her bathroom.
Clairey was slightly in awe when Gilda reached over and twisted the knobs, and water began to pour from the spout. While she knew of running water, she had never witnessed it for herself before, a miracle that seemed an impossibility. She reached across and felt the warm water running over her fingertips with a slight smile upon her lips.
Gilda took a glass bottle of scented Epsom salts from her medicine cabinet and sprinkled some in the tub, watching them disappear as they melted away into the water. “If you’ll take off your dress, I’ll wash it for you.”
Clairey seemed somewhat uneasy, but she unbuttoned the dress.
“Is that your good dress?” she asked.
“It’s my only dress, ma’am,” she admitted, taking the dress off and handing it over.
If Gilda was surprised by this she didn’t show it, but she certainly seemed taken aback by what she saw next. She scrutinized the wool long underwear that Clairey wore with obvious disapproval. “What’s this?”
Clairey looked down at herself, feeling her face burn, realizing again what she must look like from Gilda’s perspective, and she was ashamed. “Them’s my underwears.” Her explanation was nearly inaudible.
“Is that all you have?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, they simply won’t do,” she said, shaking her head. “You use my robe on the back of the door here when you’re through, and then we’ll figure what to do next,” Gilda instructed. She left with Clairey’s raggedy old dress, shutting the door behind her.
Once Gilda was gone, Clairey slipped into the warm water, feeling immediate relief to her stressed and frayed nerves, the calming effects much appreciated as she took a sponge and rubbed it up and down her limbs. She had never in her life had a real bath before, always bathing from the water in a wash basin. It was a luxury that left her drowsy, completely sated, and detesting the thought of having to ever end it.
She washed her hair, letting it float in the depths of the bathtub like a cloud drifting around her, running her fingers through the strands that swayed to and fro in the current her body made as it moved in the water. She stayed in until the water grew cold and she was shivering. Then, she did as directed and slipped Gilda Fielding’s silky robe over her body, holding it shut tight with her crossed arms. She opened the bathroom door a crack and peeked from one side to the other down the long hallway, searching for Gilda, seeing no one.
“Mrs. Fielding?” she whispered loudly.
Gilda popped her head out of one of the bedroom doors. “I’m in here,” she replied. “Come along now. I have something to show you.”
Clairey did as she was told, padding quietly down the hall, self-conscious of the fact that she was in nothing but a robe. Gilda let her into a bedroom with a pretty little vanity scattered with powder and perfume and lovely trinkets. There was a heavy, black camelback trunk open next to the bed, and Gilda guided Clairey over to it.
“These were Millie’s. My daughter’s. They might be a smidge too big on you, and they’re a bit out of date, but I think they’d be a sight better than the dress you wore before,” she told Clairey, pulling a few of the dresses out and holding them up to examine them.
Clairey watched as Gilda laid a dress out across the bed. She marveled that it was the same color blue as the dress the woman in the grocery store had worn months earlier. It immediately caught her eye as she let out a little gasp, and she touched it tentatively, not willing to believe that it might be hers. “Them’s awful purty,” she murmured.
“Millie married a doctor out of Chicago. He practices out of a proper hospital there. When they were promised to one another, we got her a brand new trousseau, with all the bells and whistles. You should have seen all of the lovely things. Some of it all the way from Paris, France, if you can imagine. And, well, she didn’t have much need for all of this anymore—her old belongings. She’s got herself three beautiful children and a fine home just outside of Chicago now.” As she talked, she plucked underwear and hosiery from the depths of the old trunk and sorted them in piles on the floor.
“Now, I don’t want to make you feel badly, but it’s just disgraceful that you’re wearing men’s underwear. You should be wearing something like this.” She held up a pair of one-piece, white, soft-knit underwear trimmed with hand tatted lace, cinched around the neck line with a pale pink ribbon, and a flap that buttoned closed on the bottom. “And then, over that you wear a slip,” she tutored, displaying a finely woven, delicate cotton slip that was dainty, to say the least. “Why don’t you go and try these on with one of the dresses?”
“I can’t take your fine things,” Clairey protested.
“Now, shush. I’m giving them to you. They aren’t of any use to anyone else. Been sitting here for seven years. May as well throw them out if you won’t take them off my hands.” She leaned in toward Clairey and picked up a lock of her damp hair. “What to do with this. That’s the next question.”
Clairey took the underwear and slip from her, chose the blue dress from the bed, and dressed as she had been told to. Then Gilda wrapped a towel around her shoulders and took a pair of shears to her dark brown locks.
When she was done and showed her handy work to Clairey in a full-length mirror, Clairey just stood there dumbly, not recognizing the girl who stared back. Gilda had clipped her hair into a popular bob style just below her jaw line, showing her how to put bobby pins in to create a wave that framed her face. She wore the blue dress and thin stockings with a pair of Millie Fielding’s discarded fancy shoes. They were just a bit too large, but Gilda had stuffed the toes with tissue paper to make them fit.
“Don’t you look just charming?” Gilda obse
rved from over her shoulder.
“I never had me such a fine dress,” Clairey confessed. “I sure am grateful to you, Mrs. Fielding,” she squeaked as she ran her eyes over the dress with pleasure.
When Gilda presented Clairey to the doctor, he tried to hide his surprise over her transformation, but Clairey recognized it. She noted, too, when Gilda winked at her husband. This seemed to humor him. He gave his wife a half smile and shook his head just slightly, their unspoken language saying volumes to Clairey. Perhaps she should have felt foolish with the two of them carrying on so, but she was so pleased with the way she looked that she couldn’t make herself care.
“What have the two of you been up to, Mrs. Fielding?” he asked.
“Girl things,” she replied. “Just girl things.”
“Well, Mrs. Hooper. I suppose you can go on in to your husband now. He’s still out, but he’ll come around soon, I’d guess.”
A blush spread across Clairey’s face when he called her “Mrs. Hooper.” He patted her shoulder and then led her to his examination room. Doctor Fielding had done his work, but so had Mrs. Fielding. She had given a gift to Clairey that was priceless beyond measure: the ability to flourish.
Ellis was lying on a metal table in the middle of the room, his jaw slack, his appendages sprawled, his leg bared to the knee and wrapped tightly with gauze bandaging. She thought he looked dead.
“He’s gonna be all right?” she wondered, seeking his assurance.
Doctor Fielding pulled a straight back chair up next to Ellis for her to sit in. “I believe he will. He’ll have to take it easy for a while, mind you. But I did the best I could, and barring infection, I believe it will heal.”
“When can I take him home?”
“Not for another couple of days. I plan on keeping him on something for the pain and watching him to see he doesn’t get gangrene before I let him go off.”
“I got the farm to see to,” was her mild protest. There were animals that needed feeding, a garden that needed tending, and the tobacco would be ready for setting soon. If she wasn’t there to do it, what would happen to the place?
“Don’t you worry about that. I’ll send for Fergus Bayard. He’ll go up and care for things for a few days,” the doctor promised. “Seems like Mrs. Fielding has taken to you. I don’t think she would mind having you as a guest until Ellis here can be moved.”
“That’s right good of you, Doctor. It means an awful lot. Don’t know what’d become of us if you wasn’t here for him.”
“Well, Mrs. Hooper, I’m glad I was here.”
“Mrs. Fielding says you was there when Ellis was born.” She said it as if it were some amusing little piece of information, light and inconsequential.
The doctor hesitated, becoming visibly uncomfortable, perhaps not expecting her random flashback into the past. “Did she now?”
“Yessir.” Clairey waited expectantly for some elaboration. She had thought the story Mrs. Fielding had told was strangely inconsistent with the one Ellis had told her, and she was hoping that the doctor would shed some light on the matter.
“Then I suppose I was. I’ve birthed a lot of babies in my day. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of them all,” he said with the slightest hesitation in his voice.
Clairey sensed he was not being totally honest with her. “Ellis’s mama, she died when he was born, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” the doctor answered as he turned away from her and tidied up his tools, putting them carefully back into his black bag one at a time. She thought he might be trying to dodge her questions. “I never knowed her. How was she?”
“Ellis’s mother? She was a fine woman. She was kind and friendly. She was a strong lady, so it was a shock. I don’t know anyone who didn’t like her, though.” The doctor finished his task and turned to look at her with something she couldn’t read in his eyes. “If there was anything I could have done to save her, I would have done it.”
“And Ellis’s daddy brung him up?”
“That’s right.”
“Why didn’t he never murry again?” she wondered.
“I couldn’t answer that. I don’t really know.”
“Well, it don’t make no sense. He had a child to raise and a farm to run. Seems like he woulda wanted a woman to hep him and such,” she pressed.
“Jim Hooper was a good man. He had his faults, to be sure, but a good man. If things had been different…well, maybe…”
“Different how?” She was still struggling to understand, to put the pieces together. Just as she had felt something amiss when she had overheard the clerk talking to the woman in the store those months ago, she knew now that there was something more going on there as well.
Their conversation was interrupted when Ellis stirred, his eyelids appearing heavy, and it was with great effort he focused his eyes as he glanced around the room. He looked confused, most likely not remembering where he was. He shifted slightly, and then his gaze fell upon Clairey who sat next to him, eager to hear him speak.
Ellis looked at her for a long while, studying her intently, and then he said to the doctor, his speech slightly slurred, “Who’s that purty girl with the blue dress on?”
Clairey was embarrassed, but the doctor grinned at her pleasantly. “Why, that’s your wife, Ellis.”
“My wife?” he muttered. He seemed to be thinking hard, searching his brain for the memory of such a wife.
Doctor Fielding spoke to Clairey conspiratorially. “Don’t mind anything he might say. He’s been given morphine. His head isn’t right.”
“Clairey, that you?”
“Yes, Ellis,” she confirmed.
He reached his hand out and touched her hair. “I ain’t never seen you this a-way before. What’d you go and do?”
“Mrs. Fielding done it for me,” she explained.
He looked down over his body and beamed. “Looks like my leg’s still attached. That’s good, ain’t it?”
“Sure it is, Ellis. The doctor says he figures you’re gonna live so long as you keep away from them pigs. How is it with you?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “But I feel wrung out.”
“Why don’t you go on and rest some?”
“Just might.” His eyes closed again, and he slept.
Late in the evening, Fergus showed up with Elvira after Doctor Fielding had gotten word to them about what had happened. Clairey had never met either of them before, which made her feel nervous and shy around them. It was not in her nature to ask for help. But it was even more difficult to ask help from strangers.
Doctor Fielding took it upon himself to mediate. “Clairey, this is Fergus Bayard and his wife, Elvira. Fergus here took his schooling with Ellis when they were boys.”
“How do,” Fergus said with a nod.
“How do,” she replied, her eyes looking down and to the side, anywhere but on him.
“How’s Ellis fairin’?” he asked.
“He’s comin’ ’long.”
“He acceptin’ comp’ny?”
“We’ve moved him to the bedroom down the hall. He isn’t all himself yet, but you can see him if you’d like,” the doctor said.
“You-uns go on and sit with Ellis a spell. She and me’ll wait here in the parlor and visit some,” Elvira informed the two men. “Prob’ly ain’t room ’nough for all of us anyhow.”
Clairey followed her into the parlor and sat on the edge of the settee.
Elvira took the rocking chair, smiling sweetly as she focused her attention on Clairey. “Ain’t this a nice room?”
“Yes, I s’pose it is,” Clairey agreed, stroking the velvet settee thoughtfully. She finally got the courage to meet Elvira’s eyes and was struck by how beautiful she was—dark, exotic looking, very striking. She felt out of place in such a beautiful room with the beautiful girl. She felt completely inadequate in comparison.
“We was real sorry to hear of your woes.”
“Thank you,” Clairey responded.
“N
ow, Fergus, he don’t mind none hepin’ y’all out.”
“It’s right good of you. I know it’s an awful lot for you. Don’t know what we’d a-done without you.”
“I been to your place afore. Fergus took me there right close to the time after we was murried, you know. It’s a fine place.”
“Yes, real fine,” Clairey concurred.
“Fergus done promised me a right nice place such as that, a place of my own. So it ain’t gonna be much longer now.”
Clairey didn’t know what an appropriate reply to that would be so she kept quiet.
“We’s livin’ at his mama’s place now, me and him.”
“When do you aim to get your own place then?”
Elvira’s expression changed. She grew serious, maybe a little troubled. She looked around as if she were making sure no one was around, as if what she was about to say was of a sensitive nature. “Don’t rightly know. Truth is Fergus done promised me that for nigh on a year now. It ortta be soon though. ’Least I hope so. Don’t know how I can stomach that ole woman much more.”
Clairey felt uncomfortable. She hardly knew the girl, and she felt that the information she was sharing was a little more than she maybe wanted to know. “What ole woman?”
“Fergus’s mama, of course.”
“Oh.”
“She’s a mean ole sow.” Elvira dropped her voice, perhaps afraid that someone might overhear. “Never can do no right by her.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“I wouldn’t tell it to nobody but you,” she went on in a rushed undertone, although Clairey was sure she would have told anyone that would have lent an ear. “But she listens to all that’s said. Why, we ain’t got nothin’ but a little ole curtain for privacy, and she listens through it. Can’t get nothin’ by her.”
Clairey grew wide-eyed at that new bit of information. “She ort not to do that.”
“And she says I’s worth nothin’, and she tells Fergus he ortta put me in my place or put me away. That’s what she tells him. But it’s none of her business. None of it. She ortta mind her own affairs. That’s what she ortta do.”
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