Compromise with Sin

by Leanna Englert

  Once her mind took this dark direction, it was as though floodgates had opened, spewing forth all her sins of commission and omission. Placing her hand on the cool forearm, she heard an echo from the past, the day Marie wanted her to touch the cold silver bowl, reached for her hand, and said, “Don’t cry, Mother. It’s not your fault.”

  A lump in her throat, she stepped back, looked at the faces of Marie and Frank, and summoned the will to say to them aloud, “It was my fault.” The tears flowed in cathartic abundance.

  On a mid-July afternoon with storm clouds moving in from the west, Louise made her usual trip down to the lobby to collect her mail and the weekly newspaper. The only sound was wind rattling the windows. Sensing she was being watched, she turned in time to see the blue-haired ladies lose themselves in their puzzle.

  Upon returning to her apartment she dropped the mail and newspaper on the breakfast room table, made a cup of tea, and carried it to the table. She sat and wrapped her hands around the cup, enjoying its warmth. Leafing through the mail, she set it aside and picked up the newspaper. Not much was happening in Riverbend. The town council voted to pave High School Road as development was moving in that direction. The Riverbend Garden Club donated another bench to be placed downtown for the comfort of older folks who get weary as they go about their errands.

  Louise folded back the newspaper to read the inside pages and smiled to see an advertisement for the Whirlwind Maid. Frank would be proud.

  She looked at J.D.’s editorial, wondering what had stuck in his craw lately. She did not have to read far before discovering she was it. Without naming her or the Nebraska Committee to Save Babies’ Sight, J.D. wrote about how a tiny minority of citizens had sullied the town’s wholesome reputation.

  Riverbend is home to upstanding, God-fearing citizens. Look upon Riverbend, and you will see seven steeples, each representative of a flourishing congregation. Look upon Riverbend, and you will see honest, hard-working shopkeepers who provide all that one could need and want, and at a fair price. Look upon Riverbend, and you will see neighbors helping neighbors without expectation of anything in return. I dare any man to show me a more salubrious town in which to rear his family.

  But who outside our fair city knows the Riverbend I describe? Riverbend is becoming known, all right, not for its plethora of virtues, but for a band of once-righteous citizens whose do-good impulses have led them to rabble rousing. They speak the unspeakable and challenge our sense of moral decency, all in the name of a cause that is a condition of the lowest classes, most of whom live in squalid city slums, and bring it on themselves with their filth and immorality.

  The consequences for Riverbend are grave. The Reverend Garnet Horton has announced that he will not appear in this ‘den of iniquity,’ thus the Great Revival of 1909 will be relocated from Riverbend across the river to Glendale Junction. Not only are we inflicted with the knowledge that souls who might have been saved remain lost, but we are also burdened with the loss of a stellar opportunity to bolster the local economy. This is a blight on Riverbend’s reputation.

  The next day Louise entered the library at closing time. Dovie, who was dusting a windowsill, turned, saw Louise, and set down her feather duster. Against the window’s backlighting she appeared in silhouette, her features obscured. Her voice was somber. “The editorial.”

  Louise nodded.

  Dovie came over to the reading table where Louise was standing. She was wearing a most becoming gray and violet tweed suit with a crisp, white blouse ruffled at the cuffs. Attire that was most impractical for a dusty library. But more fitting than bloomers for a woman whose husband planned another bid for state senate.

  The newspaper, the issue with the offensive editorial inside, lay folded on the table. Dovie swept it aside as though it was of little consequence.

  “I don’t understand. Why?” Louise grabbed the newspaper and shook it at Dovie. “Why would J.D. want to ruin me?”

  “It’s not you. It’s complicated. Do you know what it will cost Riverbend to lose the revival meeting? And poor Gertrude, she put her heart and soul into it. She almost single-handedly convinced Rev. Horton to come to Riverbend. J.D. can’t bear to see his little sister hurt.”

  “But you find it acceptable for him to destroy me.” Louise’s voice trembled. “I give people a friendly greeting and they look away or whisper to one another. It’s all I can do to hold my head up.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Dovie yanked the newspaper from Louise’s hand and slammed it on the table. “Don’t blame J.D. You go around talking in public about things you and I don’t even discuss—”

  “But should discuss. Dovie, gonorrhea is rampant. It’s not a respecter of class. Every woman should consider the possibility her husband could infect her, even you.”

  Dovie’s face bore the unmistakable look of a wife who knows her husband. “What are you trying to imply?”

  “No more than what I stated.”

  “You’ve let your cause corrupt your sense of decency. For your own sake, for the sake of Riverbend, quit this campaign.”

  “I came here hoping J.D. wrote his editorial without your blessing. Now it seems . . . what’s really going on?”

  “Riverbend is my home, Louise. We suffered a blow when we lost rail passenger service, and the prospect of the revival meeting helped restore our pride, but now it won’t happen because of your campaign. You’ve embarrassed us. That’s hard to swallow.”

  “You know what I think? I think J.D. is scapegoating the Committee. I think your Rev. Horton figured his revival could draw more people in a town that has passenger train service. This is about money, not morality. And J.D.’s political ambitions. And yours.”

  “I care about you, but for your own good I have to tell you that you’re alienating everyone.”

  “So be it. So we become outcasts. If nothing else, it will strengthen the Committee’s determination.”

  “Not the Committee. You. You’re the easy target, the voice and face of the campaign, the reason for Riverbend’s notoriety. And Louise, it’s hard for me to tell you this, but people are starting to talk . . . about Marie’s blindness.”

  A flush crept up from Louise’s neck to her cheeks. “Marie’s blindness was caused by pneumococcus. It’s bacteria a woman’s body can harbor without any symptoms. Had her blindness been caused by gonorrhea, do you really think I’d risk public exposure?” It was the rehearsed explanation Louise used whenever an audience member asked the cause of her daughter’s blindness. But face-to-face with her friend─or rather the woman who was withdrawing her friendship as they spoke─she could not keep her eyelids from fluttering shut.

  “Don’t lie to me. Your secret is safe.”

  “My secret?”

  “I overheard you and Doc.”

  “You overheard what?”

  “Here in the library. One cold winter day years ago. I knew you’d be working in the library so I stopped by to drop off some books and take you down to Rich’s for hot chocolate. But I left when I heard Doc call you a terrible name.”

  Dovie was the one who left books outside the library. The room was closing in. Louise’s body stiffened and she practically snarled her next words. “Whatever you think you heard, I resent the inference.” She strode toward the door. Resolute. Eyes straight ahead. Determined not to see the sofa. Which meant it intruded anyway, large and green in her mind’s eye.

  38

  September 1908

  By now a seasoned speaker, Louise nevertheless couldn’t ignore a queasy feeling as she sat amid a dozen charter members at the organizational meeting of the National Society to Save Babies’ Sight in Washington, D.C. Being surrounded by doctors, professors, and big-city society matrons made her acutely aware she was merely Louise Elizabeth Caldwell Morrissey of Riverbend, Nebraska.

  But what mostly agitated the butterflies was her embarrassment at having to report the Nebraska campaign’s slow progress to this august body assembled around a table in a meet
ing room of the Corinthian Hotel. The only solid efforts Louise could point to were the Riverbend Hospital demonstration project and training program for nurses and midwives. She had hoped to report that the Health and Welfare Committee would hear a bill before the Christmas recess requiring doctors, midwives, and hospitals to report all cases of babies’ sore eyes. But in talking with Dr. Weil before she left home, she learned that Senator Nordstrom had not yet agreed to sponsor the bill.

  Smoke hung heavily, the most noxious wafting toward Louise from a cigar smoker seated across the table. An elderly woman wearing a handsome pin-stripe suit and heirloom jewelry sat at Louise’s left and chatted with a woman similarly bejeweled next to her. At Louise’s right was Helen, who was inclined toward Annie signing in her hand. With nothing else to do, Louise opened her new leather portfolio, which she’d bought for the occasion, and perused her notes as the people around her engaged in chit-chat.

  At the end of the table, Dr. Vandegrift stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray, stood, and welcomed the group. He had dark circles under his eyes and looked to Louise to be ten years older than when she and Marie had visited him four years earlier.

  He thanked everyone for their dedication to the cause, then took a few minutes to introduce each member, after which he said, “I have sobering news. Your attendance here might be in vain. Our fledgling organization may not get off the ground.”

  People looked at one another and frowned, as though they didn’t want to be alone when the bad news came down.

  Dr. Vandegrift continued, “When we determined the time was right to begin our campaign, we knew there would be obstacles. We identified three obstacles: one, society’s taboo against speaking of venereal disease; two, prejudice against our poor and immigrant populations, erroneously believed to be the only groups carrying gonorrhea; and three, an entrenched culture in the medical community reluctant to recognize the value of preventing disease. Formidable obstacles, to be sure. What we did not anticipate was that another obstacle─perhaps the greatest─would come from our own ranks.” His voice grew thin and bordered on trembling. “It has been reported to us that in three of our hospital demonstration programs─in New York City, Baltimore, and in Philadelphia, the latter being under my own watch─careless nurses accidentally administered insufficiently dilute silver nitrate, resulting in blinding of otherwise healthy babies.”

  Louise gasped, as did others. She gripped Helen’s left hand while Annie, her face contorted in anguish, continued signing in her right. Helen shrieked, and the room went silent. Louise squeezed her hand and fought back tears.

  Finally the man with the cigar said, “Were these babies blinded in both eyes?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Vandegrift said.

  “Wouldn’t a baby’s reaction to drops in the first eye alert the nurse that something was wrong?”

  “Your point is well taken,” Dr. Vandegrift said, “but even properly diluted drops are caustic, such that a healthy baby lets out a cry that usually alarms the mother.”

  “Those poor little darlings,” a woman said.

  “We must look at this statistically,” a man said. “How many babies are saved from blindness versus how many might be accidentally blinded?”

  Amid the uproar that followed, a woman said, “That’s an outrage. One simply can’t let accidents occur on the basis of statistics.”

  There was much nodding in agreement.

  “She is right,” Dr. Vandegrift said. “To put healthy babies in jeopardy of being blinded is unconscionable. Besides we’ll never get the public support we need to bring about legislation when word gets out. We must figure out how to prevent accidental blinding.”

  Louise spoke up. “We have developed a training program in Nebraska for nurses and midwives. In our demonstration programs, we provide silver nitrate only to be administered by personnel who have completed our training. Granted our program is relatively new, but we conduct stringent audits, and we’ve had no accidents or close calls.”

  There was some agreement, although no consensus, that training was the key to preventing accidents. The meeting that had begun with lively chatter ended with funereal murmurs.

  When Louise arrived home from Washington, she took off her coat and went straight to the den to place a phone call to Dr. Weil’s office to find out if Senator Nordstrom had agreed to sponsor the bill requiring reporting of babies’ sore eyes. Given what had transpired at the meeting, that some programs had lax safety practices that allowed healthy babies to be accidentally blinded, Louise found it most urgent to move the bill forward. Daisy answered her call.

  “Daisy, I’ve just arrived home, and I’m so eager to find out about the bill that I haven’t even removed my coat yet.”

  “Dr. Weil is gone for the day.” Daisy’s matter-of-fact voice suggested she was speaking to a stranger.

  “What can you tell me?”

  “Louise, I think Dr. Weil should tell you himself.”

  The frost in Daisy’s voice, the fact that she said “Louise,” not “Lulu,” alarmed Louise. Have I played the fool thinking my childhood nemesis had become a true friend? “Senator Nordstrom has refused to sponsor the bill, hasn’t he?”

  “Oh, Lulu.” Daisy’s voice cracked. “No one will support a bill now.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  “There’s been a tragic accident at Riverbend Hospital. A baby was accidentally blinded by drops.”

  Louise dropped into Frank’s chair. “Oh, no.”

  “The nurse was Irina Taylor.”

  After hanging up the phone, Louise sobbed, horrified to think of the poor baby, the caustic solution searing its eyes, needlessly blinded. She would notify Bernard, but not yet. It would surely be the end of the Feldman Brothers Foundation’s support. She would learn the details of the accident, and maybe given a little time she could think of a way to put a better face on it. She felt an old, self-protective reflex surfacing, the one that had led her to lie and manipulate. And look where that got me. No, she would call and tell him the truth.

  But he called her first. “Mrs. Morrissey, did you know a baby in Riverbend was blinded by silver nitrate?”

  Now her failure to call him felt worse than being irresponsible and instead smacked of cowardice. “I know. I—”

  “Why did I have to hear it from the Argent Labs salesman?”

  “I just arrived home, just found out about it myself. I planned to call you later.”

  “How could that nurse have been so careless?”

  “Fatigue. The hospital was short of staff because of a flu outbreak, and Miss Taylor had been on duty nearly twenty-four hours. She got distracted. It’s tragic—the baby, the poor mother.”

  “It tears my heart out to tell you this, but under the circumstances . . . this accident isn’t an isolated incident. Human beings make mistakes. It will happen again. We can’t continue to support drops. My brother never was keen on it, did it for me. Now we have a customer who’s been after us to sponsor a summer camp for crippled children. We can’t do it all. But if there’s anything else I can do for you . . .”

  Louise hung up the phone and stood staring at it. Should she press forward with the campaign? Abandon it? Irina, of all people, a woman who taught nurses and midwives how to administer drops. No one was more conscientious about safety. Bernard was right. Human beings make mistakes. It would happen again.

  In the month that followed the accident, Irina did not formally resign from the Committee. She simply vanished from Riverbend. Madge resigned. She had re-evaluated the Committee’s purpose in light of having a married step-daughter of child-bearing age. “She isn’t going to contract gonorrhea, Louise. I can no longer advocate a program in which a perfectly healthy baby might be blinded.”

  That left Doc, Jerrylyn, Alice, and herself. Louise wondered if the little Committee had the will to carry on. Do I have the will to carry on?

  39

  December 1908

  “Whirlwind Maid” read the block lett
ering on the pick-up truck that made a wide right turn from the road and proceeded through the iron gate toward the imposing, vine-covered Smithville State Asylum for the Blind. Louise had borrowed the truck from Tom’s factory so she could deliver Christmas presents the Committee had gathered and take groups of children shopping downtown. Tom’s business was thriving, thanks to a contract with Feldman Enterprises to manufacture the Whirlwind Maid’s rolling carts, and he was happy to loan Louise the truck.

  She desperately needed today’s outing. Irina’s accidental blinding of a baby had shaken her commitment to the campaign. Seeing the asylum’s children, especially those blinded by babies’ sore eyes, might restore her sense of purpose. And she anticipated the children’s delight on the shopping excursion she would help chaperone.

  Louise neared the asylum and remembered she’d always thought it looked like a poorhouse in a Charles Dickens novel. A parking area lay between the building and a playground, or what looked more like the ghost of a playground: a slide with missing steps, a little wooden glider covered in leaves, swings and a seesaw. No sign of children.

  When she reached the stone steps leading to tall, double doors, the past dropped over her like a shroud. She and Frank had climbed these steps, Marie between them, each holding a hand. Her chest tightened.

  She opened the front door and was assailed by the reeking smell of pine disinfectant. In the silent, high-ceilinged foyer, Jerrylynn was buttoning the coat of a girl who sat on a bench with other children bundled against the cold.

  Jerrylynn looked up. “Welcome. Did the odor about knock you down? Happens all the time. I’m sending two boys to unload your truck. We can’t thank you enough for the presents. You’re early, but the children are ready. They can scarcely contain themselves.”