Letters on the Table

by Pattie Howse-Duncan

  Katherine was exactly eleven years and one month old the day the Kingston Daily’s headline read “War Ends – Japanese Surrender,” and by day’s end every light pole down Main Street was decorated in long red, white, and blue crepe paper streamers dancing in the breeze. Within weeks, Kingston’s soldiers and sailors began arriving home to a hero’s welcome. The railroad depot had a huge banner hanging alongside the largest American flag the town had ever seen. The banner read, “God Bless America and Kingston’s Bravest.” The American Legion Drum and Bugle Corps gathered each day for the arrival of the 7:00 p.m. train, playing their small repertoire of patriotic music and igniting the crowd into jubilant hysteria.

  Night after night after night, Katherine was there among all the townspeople anxiously gathered to welcome them home. Whistles, cheers, and horns erupted as they stepped onto the platform and embraced his sweetheart or wife or family, grabbing hold like there would be no tomorrow. Those boys had spent years fighting for tomorrow, and now they were home. No question, Kingston was proud of her boys.

  Katherine recognized the man the second he stepped off the train, the one who had arrived late one Thanksgiving Eve to pick up the McGregor pie order a few years earlier. She’d secretly been watching for him every night, hoping he would be one of the lucky ones who came home. The crowd roared a thunderous cheer when he stepped off the train, and Katherine was surprised by the energy of the crowd. She wasn’t at all sure why he evoked such a frenzied reaction, more hysteric than most, but she enjoyed feeling the pulse of the crowd as it warmed her body. The man removed his military cap and waved to the crowd, which intensified the roar. Immediately his mother and father were at his side, engulfing him in cries of relief, and the crowd seemed to lasso the cluster into an even tighter embrace. Katherine wove her way through the thick crowd, anxious for a closer look just to be sure he was who she thought he was. Angling her body this way and that, she finally made it to the perimeter of the huddled three. He turned and saw her and searched her face, asking himself if she was anyone he recognized. And when he bent low to bow, keeping his eyes steadfast on hers just as he had a few years before, she knew he remembered her. Then the crowd engulfed him and she never caught another glimpse, but she was satisfied in knowing, unlike her father, this man left and came back home.

  It wasn’t just Murphy McGregor’s parents and friends who welcomed him when he stepped foot on the depot platform. Standing in the crowd was Marianne Winter, one of Kingston’s most beautiful debutantes. She was also Murphy’s on-again, off-again girl through high school and college before he left for war. They never dated each other exclusively, but by the time they arrived on the campus of Cooper-Lee University, they were an item at many of the biggest social events. Not the prettiest or the smartest of the six or seven ingenues Murphy dated in college, but Marianne was the most loyal of all his special girls while he was away. She sent him a letter each week and even sent an occasional letter to his crew members who didn’t have girls back home. Unbeknownst to him, while he was away fighting the enemy, their mothers were already planning the wedding and numbering the grandchildren they were hoping for one day soon. Murphy and Marianne became betrothed five months after his return.

  Doc Bishop had known the soon-to-be bride and groom since they took their first breaths of life. He doctored them through the typical childhood illnesses, broken bones, and minor accidents.

  He had suspected for years the bride had a tendency to feign injuries or illnesses. She was inclined to maintain an on-going ailment of one type or another that needed his attention, even as a girl in her single digits of life. Over the years, he conversed with her parents in hopes they would reflect on her frequent visits to the clinic, but no matter how blunt his approach, he failed. The direct and undivided attention she received from him during her innumerable visits filled her heart like a hand pump on a bicycle tire. Her chart was as thick as an old family Bible, and he made certain her parents saw the stark difference between the size of her chart and those of other patients her age. They barely noticed, and they didn’t care. Her visits to Doc made her happy, and that was exactly how her parents liked her. No matter the cost.

  Doc watched her need for attention slowly convert to her need for a stash of pills. With only one physician in town, she was limited to the number of illnesses and accidents she could feign. And besides, Doc seemed to begin to question her more and more and prescribe less and less.

  A day before her departure for college, she made an appointment and asked Doc to give her a bottle of something to settle her nerves. She was anxious about leaving home and was sure he could help her.

  Doc tapped his pen on his desk pad. “I don’t have anything to prescribe, Marianne, other than plenty of rest and exercise. Both of those will ease your anxiousness, and they are much better remedies than anything the pharmacist can compound for you.”

  “You don’t understand.” There was pleading in her voice and eyes. “I’ll get plenty of rest and exercise, but I need something else, something to calm my nerves while I’m adjusting to a new place.” There were certain medicines she favored because she liked the way they made her feel. Just a slight buzz, not sloppy and loud like when she drank too much. Her penchant for pills gave her no hangover and no calorie consumption. She kept a stash hidden in a half dozen places at home, and no one seemed to notice.

  Doc responded with a look of refusal, which ignited her brashness. She was not at all accustomed to being denied. She attempted to smother it with admonishment; “I only want you to give me enough until I return at Thanksgiving, not for the entire semester.”

  Firmly, he said, “Not anymore, Marianne. Not now, not later, not if your mother or your father ask for you. The answer will still be no. Pills are not the panacea for your unhappiness.”

  The anger in her voice was heard by everyone in the clinic. “Why are you so difficult? My parents will have your license revoked because of your incompetence, and we’ll make sure the entire town knows it, too.”

  Doc calmly closed her chart, folded his eyeglasses and dropped them into the breast pocket of his lab coat. “My job is to understand the human body and how it responds to the treatments I prescribe. It is not in your best interest for me to prescribe anything for you. I know you’re angry with me, but I’ll be angry with myself if I continue to placate your need for prescriptions. You have an opportunity to leave Kingston and attend one of the finest universities in the country. Use this time to discover who you can become and…” Doc stopped when she slammed the door in his face. But he knew she wouldn’t do it, and he also knew if he tried again to raise his concerns with her parents they would ignore him, so he refrained.

  But, as addicts are, she was resourceful. Once she established herself and her wealth on the campus of Cooper-Lee, she often went home with friends for the weekend and finagled a way to search their medicine cabinets. She learned to befriend the girls whose fathers practiced medicine, knowing their bathrooms would be bulging with the divine little round pills that helped her get through each day.

  And now the ugly war had ended, and she was betrothed. Her days of having to pretend she was doing well in college were over, and she assumed her life as Mrs. Murphy McGregor would be grander than anyone had ever dreamed for her.

  Murphy’s Inheritance

  Southern Express Telegram

  SEPTEMBER 1, 1945

  MR MURPHY MCGREGOR

  THE BLANSETT BUILDING

  DALLAS, TEXAS

  FATHER DIED IN HEAD ON COLLISION I NEED YOU HOME PLEASE ARRANGE TO RETURN TO BEECHWOOD ON EARLIEST TRAIN OUR WORLD HAS CRUMBLED

  MOTHER

  Murphy returned from the war just two weeks prior and was visiting a fellow B-24 crew member in Dallas when he received the telegram. The luxury of a slow transition from father to son of the family’s timber dynasty ceased upon Conor McGregor’s instant death.

  The task of trying to fill h
is father’s shoes was daunting for Murphy. The brokenness he saw in his mother gave him more reason to prove his worthiness of managing all that the McGregors before him had built and nurtured. And he did it well. He brought renewed vigor, insight, and expertise to the business and immediately increased productivity and profits.

  But Helene didn’t notice anything Murphy did with the timber business because that sort of thing brought her no joy. The only thing that seemed to bring light to his mother’s heartbroken eyes was the flurry of bridal activities leading up to his wedding and the anticipation of another generation of McGregors underfoot at Beechwood.

  He wanted to tell her, he tried to, several times actually, but his mother wouldn’t hear of it. She convinced him that all grooms were susceptible to cold feet and brushed it off as a case of wedding jitters.

  “But how do I know?” He looked at her with pleading eyes, reminding her of the young boy he was not so many years before. She was unaccustomed to seeing him so serious, so frightened. He tried to explain, “I think I know jitters from my time in the Air Corps. This isn’t jitters. This is me wondering how on earth this all happened so fast.”

  Hoping the laugh in her voice would mask how unsettling it was for her to see Murphy’s agitation, she said, “Sweetheart, you have too much on you. First the war, and then your father, and trying to step into his shoes so quickly. You’ve had no time to rest and relax. Stop pushing yourself so hard. Just enjoy this time. Marianne certainly is.”

  He wasn’t buying it. “Did you ever question yourself when you and Father were about to marry?”

  Patting the space next to her on the sofa, she motioned for him to sit near her. In a hushed tone, she haltingly revealed a secret. “I’ve never told this to a single soul, but your father got cold feet a week before we were to marry. I had to remind him he could travel the world and back, but he would never find a woman who loved him more. We both knew that if he decided to go, I would wait as long as it took for his return.”

  Murphy had never before heard any mention of the story. He marveled at his mother’s poise, her insistence, her patience in knowing she would wait as long as she had to for his father’s feet to thaw.

  “And from a son’s eyes, you and Father had the kind of marriage anyone would envy. You really did, didn’t you?”

  “We hid nothing from you, Murphy. Some days were easier than others, and I did little things that drove him a little batty and Lord knows he did the same to me. But in the end neither of us would have changed a single minute of any day we had together.

  Murphy turned away and allowed his eyes to focus on nothing but the thin air. He sighed deeply, searching for the courage to tell her he was going to postpone the wedding, knowing it would be a second blow that would cause her tremendous pain.

  Helene reached for him and rested her hands on his cheeks. She whispered, “Let’s stop all this. We have three parties this week and a wedding in six weeks. No more talk of cold feet! I know if your father were here he would know just the right words to erase that fear in your eyes.”

  And he knew then he was not going to disappoint her.

  It was the most glamorous wedding Kingston had ever seen and for decades to come it held its rank, but not every guest saw the glamour and magic. There were two men at the Winter-McGregor wedding who had to work hard to at least appear they were enjoying themselves. The doctor and the groom.

  Part Two

  1966 – 1975

  Trouble at Beechwood

  Katherine was two months shy of her thirty-second birthday when she walked into Doc’s private office to find him sitting, shoulders sagging, one hand still holding the telephone receiver and the other one limp in his lap. In the eleven years since becoming his registered nurse, she’d witnessed this pained look in his eyes many times. It was a look he kept hidden from most, but he knew he didn’t have to shield her from life’s tragedies because she could speak of them in first person.

  “I’m expecting Murphy McGregor to bring his wife, Marianne, through the back entrance. Listen for them and do what you can to help him get her inside without any fanfare and put them in Room 3. I’ll continue seeing patients until they arrive. They’re headed our way now so it should be about another fifteen minutes from Beechwood. But I’m sure he will be driving like a bat out of hell, so look for him in about eight.”

  “Should I stay in the room once we get her settled?”

  “Not sure. You’ll know how to handle it. Just use that level head of yours.” Doc trusted Katherine’s intuition more than he trusted his own these days. “I think this is going to be rough. Prepare yourself.”

  Doc was frequently called to Beechwood Manor. He often headed there after a long day’s work, always with his medical bag in tow. Katherine scanned Mrs. McGregor’s chart. Marianne had seen Doc a total of eighteen times in the past fourteen months alone. Eleven of those entries were prefaced with an underscored capital H, Doc’s code for a home visit. It was not unusual for Doc to visit some of his patients in their homes, but the frequency for this patient was baffling. The Roman Numeral IV beside Mrs. McGregor’s name on the chart’s tab was another flag. A red one. No one else in his practice had ever seen Doc enough times to warrant four charts.

  Hearing a vehicle approaching the clinic’s private entrance, Katherine stepped out on the small back stoop to open the screen door. Murphy struggled to support his wife upright as she attempted to walk. He gently picked up her limp body, just as he would a napping child, and carried her up the steps, following Katherine into Room 3.

  Together they laid her on the examining table. While Katherine began taking her vitals, Murphy removed her house slippers and covered his wife with a soft blanket. Katherine’s face never conveyed what her mind had already determined. Mrs. McGregor had overdosed and was barely alive.

  Doc came in immediately and began prodding her stomach. While Katherine recited the vitals, she also began preparing for what she knew would happen next. Without saying a word, they prepped Marianne McGregor and began forcing her to swallow a massive dose of a charcoal solution to absorb the poison she had ingested. Katherine knew the liver and kidneys could possibly shut down. She could only assume what the other two in the room were thinking: one was probably incredulous his wife had found more pills, and the other was probably wondering if they could do enough to save her.

  The first words spoken by Doc came twenty-seven minutes from the time Murphy McGregor pulled his wife out of the passenger side of his car. “She’s going to make it,” Doc uttered. And then he added, “This time.”

  Doc’s addendum was powerful. Katherine glanced at Murphy McGregor, realizing Doc’s words hit him like a punch in the gut. Wrapping his arms around his stomach with his back against the wall, he crumbled when he hit his haunches, trying to conceal his pain by cradling his face with both hands.

  “Murph, I don’t know what else to do. She’s on a spiral and neither of us is powerful enough to quell it. I’ve exhausted my list of medical experts and then some. You’ve tried the best clinics in the country for this sort of thing. Your only other choice is to hire someone to watch over her twenty-four hours a day and to get her set up with regular appointments with the new psychiatrist I mentioned over in Sulphur Springs.”

  Murphy cleared his throat before speaking. The pulsing of Marianne’s monitor seemed to silence its own rattle as if waiting to hear his thoughts.

  “I thought she had it licked this time. She sure knows how to play me though. She had the back door open this morning to let in some fresh air and was even humming while she put on a pot of coffee. She’d gone so far as to cut a handful of flowers from the east garden and was arranging those when I came into the kitchen.” He closed his eyes and shook his head from side to side. With a voice drenched in sadness, he asked, “How? How does she find the stuff?”

  “I don’t even know what it was she used this time, son. But this
I do know, she started this path as a young woman, and it had nothing to do with you. Every time I’ve driven away from Beechwood after one of these episodes, I’ve beaten myself up for not telling you I knew she had this propensity before you married her.”

  Murphy was riled. “Propensity? Really, Doc?” His voice was thick with hurt and betrayal, “Just say it the way it’s written in your medical journals. Addiction. She loves pills and booze more than she loves life itself. She’s addicted. My love, my attention, my name, my forgiveness – none of that is what she lives for now. She lives for something round and something wet to chase it with. I’ve fought it every single day of every single year we’ve been married. My God, I’m glad we couldn’t have children. I knew there was a reason, and I guess now I know what it is.” And then tears began again.

  Doc held out his hand to pull Murphy from the floor and held him in an embrace for as long as the tears flowed. Katherine stood almost invisible, taking vitals and listening. She was holding back tears, realizing again how fragile life could be for some, while others seem to burst through life with the speed and vigor that would almost make the earth tremble.

  The next time Katherine saw Murphy McGregor was two weeks later when he stopped by the clinic with a dog and a rick of wood in the back of his pickup. She and Doc were turning on lights and preparing for the start of their day. He stuck his head in the back door and yelled with a booming voice, “I’m taking a rick of wood to your house, Doc. Want it in the same place as usual?”

  “Step in for a minute and have a quick cup of coffee with us, Murph.” Doc’s tone was more telling than asking.

  “You’ve never known me to turn down a good cup of coffee.” Murphy stepped inside, doffing his cap as he crossed the threshold. Good manners.