Hannah, used to having the house all to herself, her time during the day her own, was irked by the interruption, especially as much of her day was now dedicated to doing her husband’s errands and bidding. He could now use the loo but needed help getting there. She wasn’t as strong as she used to be. She had to nag him to keep himself tidy and presentable for visitors. “You can’t be lookin’ like a hobo if you’re expectin’ your friends from Headquarters comin’ here!” It was a trial finding a time to go to the grocers or druggists what with all that he needed done, and all the visitors. Worse were the unexpected drop-ins. As the days, then weeks went by, these occurred multiple times a day at the most inconvenient hours. Her lunch or dinner had gone cold one too many times. He hollered from whatever room he occupied when she made too much noise. She couldn’t even put to proper use the carpet sweeper. He was irritated by all the racket from outside, the ironworks, the river traffic, her banging pots and pans as she cooked or washed them. She wasn’t sure she could survive it. Normally she’d have her confidante Ruth McGowan to go to for a measure of relief. Even if Jim were amenable to Ruth’s visits, which he scorned, Hannah still could not find the time to pour her heart out.
That first morning after Jim’s cast came off and he’d left the house for work she crawled back into bed after David left for school and slept the sleep of the dead until three in the afternoon. Then she got dressed, took a clean handkerchief from the top drawer of her dresser and purposely walked around the corner, then down South Street to Ruth’s house just to try to feel human again.
Cracked
◆◆◆
Jim’s leg had healed well. He’d been back at work a week when Hannah arranged a shopping excursion with her friend. In her desire to deepen her friendship with Ruth McGowan she suggested they go together to the sprawling Elk Street market. Ordinarily every kind of foodstuff could be had there; in addition there were sellers of books, second hand clothing, knitted goods, cooking utensils and such. Being midwinter the variety of fruits and vegetables was limited to put-up peaches and pears in Ball glass jars and fresh root cellar vegetables like potatoes, beets, onions and carrots, looking more than a bit pekid by this time of year.
As they left Ruth’s cottage together Ruth slipped on the ice and whacked the back of her skull. She lay there stunned. Hannah was horrified. Mrs. O’Brien had seen the accident from her parlor window and rushed out without a coat to help. “Please, don’t,” Ruth implored as they tried to raise her. “Call an ambulance please. I believe I’ve been seriously injured.”
Hannah rode with her to the General Hospital. Ruth slipped in and out of consciousness. “Please don’t drive so rough!” Hannah hollered at the ambulance conductor. Upon arrival the doctors examined her. Hannah described the accident to them and demonstrated with her own head the way Ruth had landed. The doctors were very concerned. “She might have fractured her skull,” said one. “I believe she has suffered a serious concussion,” diagnosed the other. They commiserated. The hospital had newly installed an X-ray machine. There was as yet some fear about this apparatus. When President McKinley was shot at the Pan American Exposition, one of the new X-ray machines was on exhibit there as a curiosity. Some people waited in line well over an hour just to see a demonstration of its power. It was like a miracle, seeing inside another human without having to cut them open. The doctors attending the President decided not to put it to use due to their fear of its unknown effects. Whatever those effects might have been, in the end they lost the patient regardless. Many wondered if its use might have allowed them to save the President. Worried about Ruth’s condition, the doctors, knowing little still about what adverse effects X-rays might have on the human brain in the scheme of things, decided to take a chance.
They were mesmerized by the results.
No cracks in the skull appeared where Ruth’s head had hit the icy sidewalk. There was no sign of an accumulation of blood. But from the front of her skull in the upper forehead to the top center of her cranium were a spiderweb of hairline fractures long since healed.
“We would like to keep her at least overnight,” stated the doctor. “I will remain with her,” responded Hannah. “Very well,” the doctor said, much to the nurse’s annoyance; Hannah’s presence would mean that much more bother for her, as well as a witness.
Hannah used the public telephone in the vestibule to call Annie. She explained the situation and asked her if she might bring David over to her house when he returned from school and keep him there overnight. “Of course, Hannah,” said Annie. Do you want me to call Jim at Headquarters to tell him?”
No,” she sighed. “I’ll call him now and explain things.”
Hannah had a very restless night despite the reclining chair brought to Ruth’s bedside being surprisingly comfortable. Ruth shared a room with five other females. Their snoring and shouts of pain awoke Hannah many times. In between these interruptions she worried about David for no good reason other than she had in recent years become a ceaseless worrier.
The following morning, Ruth awoke as if nothing had ever happened. She looked at Hannah snoring gently in the chair. Her eyes blinked away tears brought forth by feelings of gratitude and affection. She didn’t have many friends anymore. In her darkest hours she had pictured herself dying alone.
Hannah awoke with a start as the meal wagon with its squeaky wheels entered the room pushed by an old lady with a hump and a limp. The meal tray held Cream of Wheat, a banana and a pot of tea. Ruth offered Hannah some of her breakfast. Hannah declined just as the doctor entered to examine her. Hannah was banished and the curtain drawn. The tray went even colder than it had been as the physician tested her reflexes, peered into her eyes, asked her to count how many fingers he was holding up, scraped the bottom of her foot with a letter opener and pronounced her essentially cured.
“You can return home Mrs. McGuire, the doctor said. “if...”
“It’s McGowan. Mrs. McGowan,” she corrected.
“All right, but you mustn’t be alone. You’ll need someone with you for the next 48 hours in any case. We must be alerted to any change in your condition. No head injury is a minor injury.”
Ruth protested. “Oh, I’ll be fine, doctor.”
“Just the same Mrs., unless you have someone to watch over you, we will not discharge you.”
“I’ll watch over her, doctor,” promised Hannah.
Ruth rolled her eyes. Her clothes were brought in and with Hannah’s help she dressed.
“You’ll be comin’ home to stay with me. No arguments,” commanded Hannah,
“But…”
“No buts. At least for a day or two, so I can keep an eye on you.
“It will be inconvenient…”
“Ruth, the number of family, friends, strangers and boarders who have stayed with us in that house over the years I could at this point not possibly count. I don’t want to hear another word on the subject.”
Ruth looked at her lovingly.
“All right, Hannah. Thank you, dear.”
◆◆◆
Jim walked in from work and poked his head in Nellie’s room which had been taken over for the care of the patient.
“It’s like a snowball rolling downhill…” Ruth was in the middle of her conversation.
“Hello there. How’s our patient doing this afternoon?” asked Jim.
“Oh, very well, Detective. Your wonderful wife is taking exquisite care of me.”
“And of me too,” he said as he winked and smiled at Hannah. “I’ll be runnin’ over to the clubhouse for a few minutes, Hannah.”
“All right. Supper’s at 5:30 tonight Jim. I’m running a little late.”
“That’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be back here before then. So long.”
Ruth continued. “As I was saying, it’s like a snowball rolling downhill. That’s why people can act as poorly as they do. Our reaction in regards to our initial injury influences our entire lives from that point forward. It’s true of
everyone. If you nearly get run over by a train you become fearful of trains and try to avoid proximity to them in the future. If one of your little friends steals your candy, you immediately learn to be on your guard around her because she has demonstrated plainly who she is. You’ve learned not to eat candy in front of her, and perhaps you learn not to eat candy in front of anybody at all in a worst case example. That injury has made you wary and untrusting of others in general. Then you go forward to apply that same lesson to other situations and before you know it you become untrusting of people overall without ever wanting or meaning to. This is self-protection. Perhaps you are not even aware of it. It becomes second nature. That injury causes you as you grow up to have distant relationships in which you are robbed of the closeness of others to the point where you might end up finding yourself lacking in friends all through your life. All because of that single early injury of having candy stolen from you, and the accumulation of new injuries due to the unfortunate lesson it taught our immature unformed minds, in this case, wariness and keeping your distance from people. If more people would only examine their pasts and stop making excuses for their parents’ poor methods, they would recognize the damage they are doing to their own spouses and children in the present due to their unwillingness to make responsible their own mother and father.”
Hannah nodded and agreed and was well aware that Ruth may have been using the pronoun “you” but was in fact explaining her own situation in life. Hannah used Ruth’s introspection to turn specific.
“The doctor said that you had many small cracks in the fore-skull that happened long ago. It’s none of my business…”
“Is your youngest in the house right now Hannah? Can he hear?” Ruth interjected.
“Uh, no. He’s next door playing with his cousins.”
Hannah leaned over and parted the curtain to have a look. The kids were having a grand time kicking apart a snowman in front of the Alderman’s house.
“David’s out front. No one can hear. What is it Ruth?”
“I have to tell you something, Hannah,” said Ruth matter-of-factly. “My mother, well...she...she was...my mother was a prostitute.”
The Murphy Clan
◆◆◆
“What yous always heard ‘bout the way Fingy Conners’ firstborn died ain’t at all true, Mary Ann. Not one bit of it. The story you kept hearin’ repeated these past years? The one all the newspapers printed and that Conners likes to tell? That ain’t really the way it happened a-tall. What people got to know is this; I… I had me family to protect. People got to understand that. So I did what I had to do and said what I had to say.”
Mary Ann just looked at him mournfully. Old Paddy Murphy hadn’t been making much sense these past few days. The end was nearing. She had nursed many a dying First Warder in her years. She knew the signs.
Murphy’s weak voice was accompanied by the high-pitched wail of gale force winds off Lake Erie. The storm was driving snow perpendicularly against the house so forcefully that flakes shot right through the cracks around the windows and into the kitchen. Murphy sat in a creaky rocking chair next to the wood stove, wrapped in a scratchy blanket against the chill draft, his gnarled feet soaking in a blue enameled pan of steaming water.
“Would ye go check on Blackie, Mary Ann? Make sure his blanket’s stayin’ put?”
Mary Ann dutifully stepped into her galoshes and slipped on her heavy woolen coat. She tied a scarf around her head. Then she trudged into the back yard to the shed and opened the creaky door.
Blackie snorted.
A damp dank odor accompanied the steam created by the horse’s frantic breathing as he suffered in the freezing cold. The shed was of tighter construction than even many of the humans’ houses surrounding it. Patrick Murphy had made sure of that, so endeared he was of Blackie, but it was of minimal comfort in such a storm. Blackie was a good boy and had served the family well.
The old horse’s eyes pleaded with her for relief. She checked his double blanket. It yet held secure, cinched firmly under his belly. Mary Ann looked around. The waning light of a dead winter’s late afternoon fighting its way through the single small single-paned window afforded little illumination, but she spotted a pile of burlap bags. She pulled half a dozen out and began tucking them under Blackie’s blanket, providing another layer of insulation, allowing them to drape over Blackie’s exposed flanks and hind end. The open weave wouldn’t hold in much heat or keep out the cruel draft, but it was better than nothing.
As she left she felt sorry for the beast, but such was his lot. She was grateful for the warmth that met her ruddy face when she returned back inside.
Patrick Murphy weighed less than a hundred pounds, the cancer having already consumed the greater part of him. Mrs. Mary Ann O’Rourke, hired by Murphy’s sons to care for him during the day while they worked the docks, was no picture of health herself. Paddy Murphy noticed the wincing pain on Mary Ann’s wrinkled face whenever she bent her arthritic spine to clean him. The widower Murphy and the widow O’Rourke had grown close during the past two months, ever since she took on the often unpleasant job of caretaking. Widower Patrick’s wife Margaret had passed on, and what limited affection the Murphys had once held for his late wife’s relatives, Police Chief Michael Regan’s extended family, had evaporated.
“Say, Mary Ann, kin yous rub some o’ that there medicine on me?”
Mary Ann stopped in her tracks and gave him a withering look.
“Oh Paddy, ye know full well this so-called medicine’s nothin’ but bunk,” she said. “Pure bunk. Yer throwin’ away good money that’d be better spent on something that would truly make ye feel better, like a lovely pork roast or a frisky whore,” she winked.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t laugh. For a few moments he stared past her as if lost in thought, a helpless entreating visible in his old green eyes. There was no mistaking the fear in that distant gaze.
Mary Ann sighed quiescently and picked up the bottle. She squinted as she read.
“Carc-cin-o-phyll-eine,” she slowly pronounced. “What kind of malarkey is that?” she harrumphed. “Why, that Woodward quack is just stealin’ the last dollar poor sick folks like yerself have, Paddy. Tell me the truth now, do you feel any better since ye started havin’ this here elixir rubbed on yerself?”
He thought on it for a bit.
“A little, I’m guessin’. Hard to say. Haven’t been usin’ it all that long. But everybody agrees it’s the true cancer cure. The Express ran a whole page of true facts on it, and with testimonials too. They sayin’ that Woodward fella is a hero. Alderman Sullivan swears it cured his cancer. I saved that paper somewheres. It’s here in this here stack.”
He rustled under the messy pile of newspapers and back issues of Collier’s and Human Life and extracted a months-old Buffalo Express.
“Here it is. Have a look.”
She scoffed. “Alderman Sullivan indeed! That man’s a joke.”
“Here. See? In the rightmost column,” Murphy said pointing with a withered index finger. “Sullivan can’t say enough good things about it! Read it to me.”
“Oh Paddy, ye already read it yerself a dozen times!”
“Come on, Mary Ann. Read it aloud fer me. Ye know I can’t barely see no more.”
Mary Ann O’Rourke began patting herself all over looking for her spectacles.
“They’re on yer head, darlin’,” Paddy chuckled.
“Thought ye just said ye couldn’t see no more!” she snapped, irritated.
“I mayn’t see well enough to read, but I can still admire how pretty you are.”
As ill and pained as he was, a shy smile spread across his face. He was still able to charm her.
Mary Ann opened the paper fully to expose the entire length of the column.
“Sure has a lot to say, that one. As usual,” she scorned. Hesitatingly she began to read aloud slowly, as her old eyes struggled to clearly assemble the small print:
“With this expert te
stimony, with the testimony of patients and with his own observations and tests, Dr. C. H. Woodward is more than ever assured that he is making no claim he cannot substantiate when he positively asserts that he has met the great need of a cure for TB and cancer. And not only this, but he is equally positive that he can prevent the development of either disease in those who have been constantly exposed and that he has done so.”
“My Lord, Paddy! If indeed this snake oil peddler could cure both TB and cancer, don’t ye think he’d a-been eatin’ dinner there with Teddy Roosevelt at the White House, and maybe even thinkin’ about runnin’ for President hisself?”
Murphy interrupted.
“Get to the part about Sullivan.”
“All right, hold yer horses while I...”
She scanned the column until she found it.
“J.P. Sullivan, alderman from the 1st ward said, ‘Dr. Woodward has certainly got a most wonderful remedy. About ten years ago I was working at my ice house on the lakeshore when something fell on my left shin causing a severe contusion. It healed up all right then, but the next spring it broke out again and continued to break out every spring. Even when I went into a Turkish bath it would break out. Well, I kept on doctoring it myself and when I went to a sanitarium they bathed and cleaned the wound also. Of course, it healed up as usual, but it broke out again the following year. One day during the Pan-American Exposition, Mr. Horton came over to the house to see me. I was laid up with that same sore and this time I wasn’t able to stand. He said he would get to a doctor who would cure that up quickly. I told him to go ahead and get one, so he went to Dr. Woodward. Under his treatment that sore, for it was cancer, disappeared. Dr. Woodward is a wonderful doctor when it comes to cancers and I understand that he can cure tuberculosis. I know several people down my way that suffered from it and they say they were cured.”
Murderers, Scoundrels and Ragamuffins Page 41