by Anbara Salam
I shook a tablet onto her palm and poured her a glass of water, but she had swallowed it dry.
“I should tell Elena or Donna Maria,” I said, gripping the water glass with both hands.
“Tell them it’s the flu. I don’t want the grief. I’ll be fine soon, I swear.”
“OK,” I said, putting the glass down on the edge of the table. I went toward the door but turned back to her. Surely the nuns must know how to nurse? I pictured Sister Teresa sitting at a bedside, spooning pea soup into a baby’s mouth. “I’ll get Sister Teresa,” I said. “She’ll know what to do.”
Isabella sat up with such sudden energy her face blanched. “No,” she said. Her hair was wild. She looked so fierce I was almost afraid of her. “I don’t want her here,” she said, and slumped back on the bed.
“OK,” I said, “I won’t tell her.”
“Promise?” She blinked.
“I won’t say anything, I promise,” I said. A strange emotion passed through me. Isabella only wanted me there. She needed me. I was the only person she trusted. I would take care of her, by myself. The responsibility of her care nestled in my arms like a sleeping cat. I would look after Isabella. I would make her well again. I would be her private nurse. She would be so grateful.
“Do you want something to eat?”
“No,” Isabella said, rolling away from me.
“Come on, maybe bread and butter?” I wondered if we could get carrots for her.
“Sure,” she said, although her voice was flat.
“OK. And anything else?”
“Can you find me a bottle of Coke?” she said, turning into the pillow. “Those pills taste like shit.”
“Of course,” I said, certainty radiating through me. I would look after her until she was all better.
* * *
It took only a few days before Isabella’s temperature dropped. I told all the girls Isabella had food poisoning—that prevented any questions, and it meant I had her all to myself. I wiped her brow and sent her nightdress out to the laundry. I taped a bandage to her arm so she wouldn’t scratch at a rash in the crook of her elbow. I bought bottles of Coke from the post office in La Pentola and balanced them on the windowsill to keep them cool. Between classes I walked her down the corridor to the bathroom. I braided her hair and piled her with blankets and forced her to drink water and take aspirin. And eventually she was sleeping less and said she felt better.
I was feeling better, too. I made lavish plans for all the things Isabella and I would do together, once she was well. A trip to Pisa! A boat trip on the lake! I murmured suggestions as I wiped her forehead and neck with a wet flannel, as I folded her sweaters and arranged her earrings. I was bribing myself as much as her with the promise of new adventures. Soon it would be Halloween, I told her. We could have a fancy-dress party, hand out candy to the kids in La Pentola.
And true fall had arrived with a sudden flourish of claret and mustard and gold. Swirling mists rose from the lake and got tangled in the orchard so the trees slit the sunlight in columns. I started closing my windows, or else the smoke from burning leaves crept in and left my clothes smelling bitter as embers.
The term had been generous with butter, and I had noticed the waistband of my kilts getting tight. Courtesy of one of Greta’s magazines, I was practicing some calisthenic exercises in my bedroom. The maneuvers seemed somehow easier than they ever had been before. My kicks swung in high arcs; I spun around in effortless circles. I bounced on my toes and felt my heart lifting, as if I could bounce out of the window and straight into the sky. As I bent at the waist there was a series of raps on my door. This was Donna Maria’s characteristic knock, and I pulled on my robe so she wouldn’t be scandalized by my shorts.
“Entra,” I said.
Donna Maria peered around the door. “Telephone,” she said, miming the receiver. “Telephone, telephone.” She looked so frazzled I smiled and put my hand on her birdlike arm.
She shook me off. “Now, now.” She pointed down the corridor.
So I ran down the stairs two at a time. Barbie stuck her head out of her room. “Where’s the fire?”
As I ran down the steps I thought—Granny. What if she’d died? What if she was dying and it was too late? I picked up the phone. It was Granny’s voice.
“It’s your grandmother,” she said, rather formally, as if I wouldn’t recognize her unless she used her full title.
“Oh.” I was so relieved. “But, Granny, what is it?”
“It’s Rhona,” she said. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Bridget—but she’s had a heart attack.”
III
Connecticut
15.
October 1957
On the train to St. Cyrus, I was restless at every grade crossing, uncomfortable in my coat, itchy. Even the idea of going straight to the hospital was making my skin prickle. My mind began to travel down the white corridors to the overheated rooms, the radio tuned so low it was like a humming mosquito. Rhona’s room was ahead, doors swinging, an alarm somewhere buzzing. I snapped out of my dream. The zipper of my slacks was digging into my stomach and I discreetly reached down and released it an inch. In the panic of leaving, I’d stuffed my case with an impractical assortment of clothes, some of them not even mine. There hadn’t been time to say a proper good-bye to anyone except Isabella, but at least she could cover for me until things were back to normal. Which wouldn’t be long. Maybe I’d even be back before Halloween. I readjusted my seat, rubbed the beads of my rosary. A woman in a plum coat sat opposite me, and she glanced at me from behind her novel. I saw myself as she must: a glamorous, melancholy stranger. I felt her eyes working over my outfit and my suitcase, with its stickers from the airport in Milan. I thought, She must know I’ve traveled by airplane, and I sat up straighter. If she spoke to me, I decided I would tell her I’d rushed back from Europe for a family emergency. Her face would wrinkle in concern. “What an ordeal,” she’d say. “Your family is lucky to have you.” But she didn’t speak to me, and I leaned my head against the glass and fell into a half sleep. I decided I would be the one to talk sense into Rhona. I’d be so helpful they would make me an honorary nurse. I would wear a white apron and pin my hair in practical waves. And Rhona would sit up and open her mouth meekly, her eyes lustrous and willing. Dr. Callahan would shake his head. “A miracle.” And Mama would rush to me and say, “Thank God you’re here,” and I would pat her shoulder and say, “It’s OK, Mama, I’m here now.”
But Mama didn’t rush to me. She hugged me loosely and smiled in a fixed sort of way, like she was remembering an old movie. I’d been working myself up over how relieved she would be to have me back home—me, the sensible one.
But she just smiled and said, “Thank you, Rhona.”
I flinched and opened my mouth to correct her, but she still had a faraway expression, as if she were peering at the ocean over the railing of a ship. She turned to my father and asked him about some paperwork he had to sign. And as she turned, I swallowed my correction so it landed in my stomach and curdled.
* * *
It was peculiar to be suddenly back in St. Cyrus. My bedroom was dusty, airless. The house was so quiet. No girls playing golf along the corridors with umbrellas and crab apples. No rattling pipes, no chapel bells. No Isabella. No Rhona. I kept the door to Rhona’s room closed, since the breeze kept clicking the latch and I kept doubting myself, calling out to her. Each morning I almost ran up the drive when Granny’s car pulled up. We most often went to the tearoom of the Greene Hotel and drank cocoa. The atmosphere at home was so heavy with misery that we had a tacit sort of understanding we shouldn’t make it worse by talking about it. And so Granny and I chatted only about conspicuously bright things. We made deliberate remarks about the people sitting near us: “Look at that darling dog,” and then later, “Wasn’t that dog just a darling?” We talked about the beauty of European architecture an
d the glories of Italian food. I told her all about the academy, about the silent sisters and the old spa, about patronage and sculpture and mosaics. And once I started talking about the academy, I found it hard to stop. It made my life there become alive, luminous, like holding a pebble underwater.
We drove to New Haven and hopped from store to store, buying jars of coffee, tiny sachets of fancy English tea. I asked Granny to take me to an Italian delicatessen, where I bought slices of mortadella and bags of risotto rice. We strolled around department stores sourcing gifts for Mama—peep-toe slippers and face cream and bath oil. We shopped with the frantic concentration of storing up for a long winter, and something about the process lent the season a Christmasy spirit that sugared the edges of the horribleness.
When we had wrung out as much of the day as we could, we went home, exchanging fewer and fewer words as the car rolled closer to the house, until we sat in total silence. When the car pulled up in the front yard, Granny turned to me with an artificially sunny smile.
“OK, Budgie, let’s go.”
And we struggled in with sacks of groceries, unpacking nets of pumpkins and slices of cheese and decanting flour and arranging gerbera daisies in vases.
Granny and I took care of the house with precise determination. She washed the net curtains and ironed all the bed linens. I scrubbed the upstairs bathroom, cleaning the grout between the tiles with a toothbrush. While Granny arranged Mama’s closet, I tipped out the cabinet in the guest bathroom downstairs and wiped the dust from all the half-used bottles of cologne. Under the sink, I found a ball of soap Mama had pressed together from odds and ends to make a monster. I turned the mutant soap over and over, struck with an acute pang that Mama refused herself the pleasure of using the scented soap because it had to be saved for visitors. Granny dusted the trophies in Rhona’s room, and I rubbed the two silver coins from her spelling bees to a gleam with a paste of salt and baking powder. Granny wanted to go through Rhona’s drawers, but I wouldn’t let her open them. Instead we pulled out the bed and vacuumed underneath it, throwing out boxes of tissues, spent ballpoints, gum wrappers.
We didn’t know what else to do. We couldn’t make Rhona better again.
* * *
She looked like a bird. Her skin was a gray-yellow color and under the hospital lights I could see downy hair covering the hollows of her cheeks. She looked so dreadful I was afraid to get too close. Like if I were to touch her, she would be cold and damp and leave an ashy residue on my fingertips. I stood by the edge of the curtain, ashamed. Ashamed of myself and ashamed of Rhona. She had harmed herself, and worse, she had harmed Mama.
Mama had aged since I left for Italy. Her clothes were wrinkled and the skin on her forehead was dry and flaking. Granny routinely marched her to the visitors’ restroom and made her apply lipstick that was far too pink and made her sad, creased face look like a horrible worn doll’s in a yard sale. Mama barely left the hospital, driving back with Dad late at night when he joined them after work.
The nurses at St. Christopher’s were very good with Mama. I guess because Mama had been a nurse too, after all. They sat with her on their breaks and brought her cups of burned coffee from the cafeteria and boxes of saltwater taffy they’d been given by grateful patients.
Sometimes Dr. Callahan visited to check over Rhona’s charts and consult with Dr. Porter, who was Rhona’s main doctor at St. Christopher’s. I was so happy to see Dr. Callahan in the ward, it surprised even me.
“Bridget, you look sensational. Italy’s agreeing with you?”
I nodded gratefully. A grubby, lumpy bit of me wanted my normality to be appreciated. As if I could easily be as sick as Rhona if I tried, but instead I was carrying on. I wanted attention for not drawing attention to myself.
When Dr. Callahan came in to talk to the other doctors about Rhona, everyone treated him as if he was a celebrity. It surprised me, because the nurses hadn’t made a fuss over Dr. Callahan the last time Rhona was in the hospital. No one had stopped to whisper with him behind the vending machines or trailed him around as he checked Rhona’s chart. But then I understood. Rhona was the celebrity. The cardiac ward didn’t normally have young women like Rhona there; the other five beds were occupied by overweight older men.
Rhona slept a lot, or else she pretended to sleep. Lying down so much was rough on her skin, and sometimes when she was awake, Mama would roll her onto her side and rub lotion on her hips and back. It was my job to support Rhona from the other side. Mama showed me how to prop her against a rolled-up towel to help her balance. Lying on her side like that was hard on her lungs, making her breath shallow. I pulled my sleeves over my knuckles so her cold fingers didn’t touch mine. As Rhona coughed, her eyes watering, I looked up, away. I stared at the grooves in the vent in the corner of the room. I tried to conjure promises to make her, enticements, like I had done with Isabella. But I had nothing to offer.
On Friday morning, I couldn’t bear being witness to another lotioning. When Mama began to turn Rhona, I made an excuse and went to the restroom, even though I didn’t need to go. I perched on the lid of the seat and covered my face with my hands, waves of tiredness rolling over me. I flushed the toilet anyway, and washed my hands carefully three times. The mere scent of hospital air gave me a creepy-crawling feeling over my skin, as if I would never scrub it all away. My scalp was raw because I religiously shampooed whenever I came home from visiting Rhona.
I went down to the lobby, where there was a small store. It sold cans of root beer and magazines and sparkly balloons and teddy bears. And also “With Sympathy” cards, which, superstitiously, I tried not to look at. I bought myself a box of Junior Mints, one of the few things I had truly missed in Italy. As I stood by the register I picked up two packets of wintergreen gum for Rhona. Rhona went through gum at a ridiculous rate. I always brought a couple of packs home for her when I went out. Mama and Dad didn’t like her to have it because they assumed she chewed it to curb her appetite. But I knew Rhona was self-conscious about her breath, which was sweet and acidic—like pear juice. I’ll leave the gum by her bedside, I thought. It was the closest I could come to coaxing her recovery.
I stood for the elevator behind two medical students. One was blond, with hair that had gone too long without a cut. The other was a redhead with a pug nose and ginger eyelashes. They filed into the back of the elevator and I stood in front of them, absently reading the tattered poster about early polio detection that I had already read a hundred times.
“What’ve you got this week?” the redhead said.
The blond one yawned. “Nothing good. Case of the clap.”
“Shh,” the redhead said, giggling. I heard the rustle of fabric as they jostled each other, and the back of my neck tingled; I knew they had been pointing to me.
“Guess what I have.”
“What?”
“Nervosa.”
My body tensed.
“No? The cardiac case?”
“Yup. Come up tomorrow before rounds, have a look.”
When the door opened I walked straight ahead, although it was the wrong direction. I didn’t want to turn my face toward them in case they saw my expression. I felt singed, like they would be able to see through the top layer of my skin.
* * *
On Monday, Granny and I drove to the hospital to wait for Dad to arrive. We decided we were going to take Mama to the movies that night. Her misty preoccupation with Rhona made her unusually compliant, so she silently went along with whatever schemes Granny and I cooked up during the day to try to distract her.
When we arrived, Mama was strangely agitated. She gripped Granny’s wrist and handed her a sheaf of papers Dr. Porter had given her to sign. Dr. Porter had asked her for permission to write about Rhona’s case for a journal. Mama said in a moony voice that Dr. Porter suggested Rhona might have inherited a genetic disorder because of her mixed blood.
�
�What did you say?” Granny’s voice sharpened as she turned the papers over in her hands, scanning the words.
“I told him I would consult with Roger,” Mama said.
Something about the way Mama said “Roger” made me feel floaty and incorporeal, like she hadn’t noticed me standing there. She hardly ever used Dad’s first name, instead saying “your father” or, sometimes, “Daddy-O” if she was teasing him. Clearly, the conversation was far too adult for me, and one of them should have recognized and dismissed me so I wouldn’t be exposed to any horrible details. My body was rigid and I tried to hold the strangeness of it away from me so I wouldn’t be tainted by it.
“You didn’t sign anything, did you?” I had never heard Granny use such a harsh tone with Mama.
Mama shook her head.
“Good girl,” Granny said. She took a deep sigh and caught my eye. The look of adult collusion implied in that glance made my insides squirm. I felt hot and itchy and I wanted to cry.
Granny asked Mama to go out to the diner three streets down and pick us up a sandwich. It was clearly a ruse, since she hadn’t asked Mama to do a single thing since Rhona went back into the hospital.
But Mama trotted off anyway, saying, “Ham, Budgie?” with a genuine expression of panic on her face. Her anxiety over my sandwich, even a decoy sandwich, was too much to bear, and I nodded and swallowed against the pain in my throat.
Granny and I sat in the greasy chairs in the lobby. She put her glasses on and read through the pages, handing them to me one by one as she finished. I didn’t want to read them. I thought, She can’t make me read them. So I held them in front of my face for what seemed like an appropriate amount of time, then put them down in my lap. When Granny had finished the last page, she handed it to me and I could feel her watching me. I let my eyes trail over the paper, but I wouldn’t read a word.