All Waiting Is Long

by Barbara J. Taylor

  “Muriel’s run off!” Violet shouted, disregarding the late hour.

  Still dressed in full garb, Mother Mary Joseph’s brow furrowed. “Hush.” She pressed an index finger against her lips and glanced toward the nursery. “Yes.” The nun looked down the hallway, then back at Violet. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

  “Nothing we can do? We can send for the police,” Violet said, wondering if she should wake Sister Immaculata, or Sadie, or one of the other nuns. “We can go out and find her ourselves.” When the Reverend Mother didn’t respond, Violet added, “It’s only been nine days since she had the baby.” Her voice dropped. “Since she lost her baby. She’s not strong enough.”

  The Reverend Mother reached for the rosary beads at her waist. “We’ll pray on it.”

  Violet searched for what she could say to convince the woman something had to be done immediately. “Her father will be here soon,” she remembered. “What’ll we tell him?”

  “We’ll tell him nothing.” Mother Mary Joseph’s needle-sharp tone seemed to surprise even herself.

  “He may not be the kindest man, but no one deserves . . .”

  The nun took a breath and started again: “You don’t know the whole story. This was Muriel’s choice. All we can do now is pray for her safety.”

  A door creaked open on the second floor, and someone poked her nose over the banister. The Reverend Mother looked up with her jaw set, and the girl retreated.

  “She’ll never survive,” Violet said once she heard the upstairs door close. “She has no food, no money.”

  “We can’t be sure of that.”

  Violet’s eyes narrowed. “You knew.” She said the words slowly, trying to make sense of them. “How could you . . .” Her voice trailed off. “She’s all alone,” she finally said. “We have to help her.”

  “We’re never alone,” the nun said, “when we have God in our hearts.”

  “Well, if you’re not going after her,” Violet started toward the steps to get her coat, “I will.”

  Mother Mary Joseph took Violet’s arm. “If you go looking for her,” she paused as if to consider her words, “you’ll lead him right to her.”

  “Him?”

  “She doesn’t want to be found. I don’t want her to be found. Not by that monster.”

  Violet thought about Muriel’s pregnancy, the made-up husband. “Her father?” Bile rose up from her stomach and burned her throat.

  “Her father,” the nun repeated, and she patted Violet’s damp brow with a fan of sleeve.

  Chapter twelve

  STANLEY KNEADED THE SCARRED STUMP at the end of his left forearm. Pressure sometimes relieved the ache that accompanied a storm. Though no one could see the rain through the heavily curtained windows, the sound of it competed with the convivial atmosphere inside the Fin and Feather, a speakeasy at the back of a downtown taxidermy shop. It had been a month or so since he’d spoken to the proprietor of Widenor’s Hats, six weeks since Violet’s last letter. Stanley had started frequenting the speakeasy after a fellow Socialist Club member vouched for him. The first time Stanley stopped by, he was surprised to see both men and women inside. Decent women too. Mostly. Not decent by Scranton’s standards, but what did that matter to him? Stanley had lived in Philadelphia long enough to broaden his thinking beyond the borders of his hometown.

  “Another whiskey,” Stanley said, pulling out a few coins, carefully avoiding Violet’s medallion, which weighed like an anchor in his pocket.

  Mounted above the bar, a large-mouthed bass and a good-sized walleye bookended a fish hawk frozen in flight. Stanley sat on his stool, eyeing the stuffed bird, its wings spanning at least five feet, its talons gripping a reinforced branch that jutted out from a beam. On the opposite wall, a brook trout taunted the impotent hawk, daring it to swoop in for the kill. Stanley closed his eyes to summon the bird’s distinctive chip, chip, chip whistle. As a boy, he’d studied all the winged species indigenous to Pennsylvania, and his only real regret after his accident was that he was no longer able to do two-handed bird calls.

  “A fresh whiskey,” the barkeep said, setting a drink in front of Stanley and scooping the coins into his palm before moving on to the next customer.

  Stanley picked up the glass, touched it to his lips, and set it back on the bar. He had no business being in a speakeasy, that night or any other, and it had little to do with Prohibition. He knew Violet’s opinion on the matter of alcohol, and understood her reasons. She’d seen what drink had done to her father for the year or so following Daisy’s death and had no intention of living that life with her own husband. Assuming she still wanted him for a husband. Stanley wasn’t sure of anything anymore. He slipped his hand into his pocket and fished out the medallion.

  Scranton Central High School

  Valedictorian

  Class of 1923

  “A present for her sister,” the man had said. But why was Violet in Philadelphia buying something for Lily, and why had she run away? He took a sip of his whiskey. And what about Buffalo? Had that been a ruse all along? He tipped the drink back, draining it this time. There had to be a good explanation. He started to push the empty glass forward, but changed his mind. This was Violet, after all. His Violet. As true as the day was long. He stood to leave, resolving not to return to the Fin and Feather and not to pass judgment on Violet until he had a chance to hear her out. Or the widow. She knew something about all this, Stanley was sure of it. Her response to him had been uncharacteristically vague, easy to do in a letter, but he’d be home in a month and a half, and then he’d get his answers.

  As Stanley fingered the medallion, a voice behind him said, “Well, it’s official. These eyes have seen everything.” Lorraine Day, a blond pixie of a girl, pulled out the stool next to Stanley but remained standing. “Stanley Adamski in a gin mill.” Looking at the ground, she added, “Don’t mind me. I’m just waiting for hell to freeze over.” She laughed and sat down.

  Stanley put the medallion back in his pocket and remained silent. No matter how worldly he’d become, the idea of a woman willingly sitting at a bar startled him.

  “Cat got your tongue?” She squeezed his forearm and smiled.

  “How long has it been?” Stanley finally managed, trying to remember what year he’d taken her to the St. Valentine’s dance.

  “Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you,” Lorraine teased.

  As Stanley leaned in to flag down the barkeep, he caught a heady whiff of Lorraine’s perfume.

  “And get another for yourself,” she said, patting his empty stool. “In Philadelphia, it’s considered un-gent-le-man-ly,” she stretched each syllable as if to emphasize the offense, “to allow a woman to drink alone.”

  After two hours and twice as many whiskeys, enough time and alcohol for Stanley to lay bare his troubles, he concluded, “I should have married Violet long before now.” He shook his head and stood to leave, weaving as if on the prow of a ship.

  “She’s a lucky girl. I’ll say that for her. Any other man would have flown the coop by now.” Lorraine rose and took Stanley’s arm. “A lucky girl,” she said again as they staggered out to find the rain had stopped.

  Stanley paused for a wave of dizziness to pass. “How is it I can say things to you I can’t say to anyone else?”

  “I understand, is all. I’ve been double-crossed myself.” She tipped her head up at him. “I’ve had my heart broke a few times.”

  Stanley looked at Lorraine, really looked at her for the first time. Here she stood, not a foot away, the streetlight bouncing off her painted lips. He slid his hand behind her neck, pulled her in, and kissed her. She looked surprised at first, then pleased by this development. She answered him with kisses unlike any Violet had ever bestowed upon him. Lorraine’s mouth was hot, moist, deliberate.

  “Take it somewhere else, pal,” a voice called out from the doorway. “We don’t need nobody calling attention to the joint.”

  Stanley blushed, but Lorra
ine simply took his hand and led him down the street to a two-story house covered in green asbestos shingles. “Around back,” she said, leading him to what appeared to be an added-on room with its own entrance. “What do you think?” she asked as she stepped inside. Stanley remained at the door. “Don’t tell me you want to be carried over the threshold,” she laughed.

  “I’m not sure . . .” Stanley tried to think of what came next, but all his words melted to the floor. “I . . .”

  “At least have a drink with me.” Lorraine walked past the spindle bed and pulled a bottle out of an open dresser drawer.

  Stanley pocketed his handless arm, and followed her to the other side of the room. He ran his tongue across his lower lip, tasting the last trace of her.

  Lorraine passed the bottle and two sticky glasses over to Stanley. “It’s ungentlemanly to let a woman pour.”

  Stanley’s hand trembled, but he managed.

  “Still want to talk about that girl of yours in Scranton?”

  He threw back his drink, poured another, and downed that one as well. He licked his lips again, and tasted Lorraine still. And what about that girl of his? Where was she tonight? Whose lips had she kissed?

  Lorraine smiled and fingered the bow at her neckline. She placed the two dangling ends in Stanley’s hand. “Pull,” she whispered into his ear. One loop disappeared and then the other. Stanley watched as the now-unfettered blouse slipped to the edges of her shoulders.

  Without speaking, Stanley kissed her neck, the tops of her arms, the tip of her nose. He unfastened one button, and then another. He pushed the blouse gently and watched it drift to the floor.

  A last drink for each of them, and then, somehow, he found himself on top of her, kissing her, liberating her corseted breasts, cupping them one at a time, taking turns with them, cursing his misfortune, his missing hand. He closed his eyes and kissed her again, her lips, her tongue, and uttered a single word: “Violet.”

  His eyes shot open, and he found Lorraine underneath him, half naked. He sprang up from the bed, picked up her blouse, and threw it over her. “I’m sorry,” he said, and ran out the door.

  * * *

  The rain started up again, soaking Stanley, hunched in a vacant lot, vomiting the last of the whiskey. He was no stranger to alcohol; he had cut back, even stopped for long stretches, first to win Violet over, and then to please her, but he hadn’t given it up entirely. Yet he was retching like a boy who’d just swilled his first few pints. Even with no one around to witness the scene, Stanley felt like a damn fool.

  Guilt, that’s what it was, he thought as he straightened up and started walking again. What had he been thinking? And when had Lorraine become that kind of girl? Like most fellows his age, he’d frequented “the Alleys” back home. He could spot a tart when he saw one. You never know, is all. But it wasn’t his place to judge Lorraine, and he knew it.

  Violet was his strength, his courage, his heart. His world. Nothing else mattered. He’d simply lost his mind for a moment, upset by his meeting with the milliner; upset that he could not put together the pieces of this strange puzzle. It was the drink. He would stop. No one needed to ever know about this.

  Drenched, he slipped into the boarding house and up the stairs to his room. Never again, he thought, peeling off his clothes and dropping them where he stood. He choked back a wave of nausea, stumbled to his bed, and lay down. In an instant, the room seemed to have set sail on choppy seas, so he pulled himself up and sat back against the headboard, searching for a single point of focus to calm the waters. He followed a sliver of moonlight to a hook on the opposite wall where his mechanical hand dangled from a canvas harness. He’d slung it there when he’d moved in, and there it had hung, unused.

  The widow, notoriously frugal when it came to her own needs, was generous to a fault with Stanley. He’d never had an interest in a prosthetic; he made do, even flourished, in spite of his missing hand, but that didn’t stop the widow. “You want a jury listening to your words, not looking for your hand,” she’d said, and she had a point. So she’d joined forces with Doc Rodham, who researched the matter and discovered that the Germans had made significant strides with artificial limbs after the Great War. Doc Rodham took the casts and measurements, and sent them to a company overseas. Two months later, the device arrived—an aluminum hand with jointed wooden fingers that could be closed and opened by means of a cable. The hand screwed into a metal sleeve that stopped halfway up Stanley’s forearm. Leather straps connected the sleeve to a cuff that buckled around the upper arm near the elbow. A canvas harness kept the apparatus in place. The maker recommended the use of gloves for a more “natural appearance.” He also included a hook that could be screwed into the sleeve instead of the hand for times when manual labor was required.

  Stanley had tried the hand for a month, but the pressure and friction against the stump never subsided and proved too painful. He hated to let the widow down, so he’d kept the thing, with the intention of trying again someday. Someday never came, and there it hung, reminding him that he was broken.

  But so was Violet, after the death of her sister. They’d known each other whole, and they’d known each other broken. That’s why it worked. That’s why Stanley would never hold another woman in his arms. And when he’d see Violet next, she’d tell him all about what brought her to Philadelphia that day and why she couldn’t tell him. And though he couldn’t imagine what it could be, she’d have a good reason because she was a good woman. The kind of woman who makes you a better man. The kind of woman you love for life. The kind of woman who makes you whole.

  Chapter thirteen

  IN THE TWO MONTHS following Muriel’s disappearance, daily life at the Good Shepherd took on a quieter tone for Lily. She’d become more serious about her situation, somehow indifferent to the frivolities of friendship. No longer interested in breaking the rules, Lily settled into the routine of Mass, meals, and classes in the domestic arts, and she’d slip into the nursery at least once a day to see her sister.

  Violet continued her own routine—up every morning no later than five and into the nursery by five forty-five. She worked well into the night, breaking sometimes for lunch or supper in the dining room, though she often stayed put and ate in with the babies.

  And while Violet could honestly say she loved all of the charges in her care, she took particular pride in Michael. In spite of his disfigurement, he grew stronger each day, and the Reverend Mother credited Violet with his progress. “You’re doing something right,” the nun would remark when she’d see Michael in Violet’s arms.

  * * *

  For the first time since arriving at the Good Shepherd, Violet slept until six thirty when Sister Immaculata came into the ward to wake the girls.

  “Why didn’t you come for me?” Violet asked when she finally made it to the nursery.

  Mother Mary Joseph sat in a rocker, trying to soothe a fussy Michael. “He’s all yours,” she said, handing him up to Violet. “You’re the only one who can do for him.” She watched as the baby settled quietly in Violet’s arms.

  “I’m so sorry.” Violet carried Michael over to a basin that had been prepared for his bath. She ran a damp cloth along his gums, over his face, and around the triangular cleft under his nose before unpinning his diaper and placing him in the water.

  “I rather enjoyed myself.” Smiling, the Reverend Mother walked up and down the rows of cribs, touching each infant briefly on the forehead. “And you haven’t had a wink of sleep since Muriel . . .” she waited for the right words to land on her tongue, “left us.”

  “Neither have you.” Violet wrapped Michael in a towel and carried him over to the table. “I’ve seen the light under your door when I go to bed.” Violet coaxed a lone tuft of hair on top of Michael’s head into a curl. “What’s to become of him?” she asked the nun who stood alongside her now, rubbing the baby’s legs.

  “If he’s still here next spring, St. Patrick’s Home for Boys.” She nodded toward the wind
ow. “Just down the road. A cheerful enough place.” She glanced around the cramped nursery. “Once they start walking, they need room to run.”

  Violet looked out the window but she couldn’t see any farther than the asylum’s side yard. By May, the yellow forsythia petals had long since fallen, and the peonies stood ready to bloom. The waiting seemed endless at the Good Shepherd, and yet, almost three months had passed since Violet and Lily had arrived, making Michael about four months old. If no one intervened, he was well on his way to spending his days in a boys’ home, and though Violet should have expected it, the realization stunned her. “And his face?” she asked, trying to smooth the tremor out of her voice.

  “God has a plan.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “He brought you here, didn’t He?” Mother Mary Joseph stroked the baby’s plump cheek with her index finger. “Look at the change in him. That’s your doing. God’s hand is in that.”

  “Lily’s indiscretion brought me here, and I’m certain God’s hand was not in that.” Violet finished dressing the boy and laid him in his crib. “So we just wait, and hope someone comes along to help him?” she finally said.

  “This is on God’s timetable.” The Reverend Mother pushed open the window and inhaled the spring day. “We wait. We pray.”

  “That’s it?”

  “And see what Dr. Peters says about the matter.”

  “Dr. Peters?”

  “I asked him to see if there was someone at the hospital experienced enough in matters like these.” She ran a finger across her own fully formed upper lip. “Someone willing to perform an operation for free.”