Jenny Parrish’s work-worn hands and sunburned cheeks gave testament to the never-ending labor that was her life. Margot never saw her idle. She was either cooking, or weeding her garden, or, at night when she and Robert settled down in their back room to listen to the wireless, working on a pile of mending.
Margot was no cook or seamstress, and she ruefully explained to Jenny that she couldn’t tell a weed from a vegetable. Jenny had waved that off, saying she hadn’t expected her to come to do chores. Margot learned there was a shopping list, though, and suggested she and Frank drive into Missoula to get what was needed. On a breathless day, with heat shimmering in transparent waves over the hay fields, the two of them piled into the Model T and drove the dusty, rutted road into town.
Missoula was nothing like Seattle, but the setting was beautiful. It lay in a circle of blue, distant mountains. The Blackfoot River threaded right through the town, edged with blackberry bushes and willows with branches that drooped right to the water. Fishermen stood in the shallows near the banks, their fly rods catching the sunlight as they flicked back and forth.
The town boasted a single skyscraper, the Wilma Building. Frank pointed it out as they drove past. The rest of the buildings were one- and two-story structures, some of them unchanged since the previous century. Frank parked the Model T in front of the Mercantile. Its shady interior smelled of grain and coffee and, somehow, hay. In fact, Margot thought, everything in this sunbaked state smelled like hay. She wondered what it smelled like in the wintertime, when the hay crop was stored away and the fields were buried in snow.
Frank wandered the aisles of the Mercantile with Jenny’s list in his hand, while Margot took a seat at the soda fountain counter. The soda jerk greeted her, and suggested a root beer. She watched him pour syrup into a tall frosted glass and then fill the glass with soda water until it was crowned with foam. He put a straw in the glass, and served the drink on a napkin, watching as she took her first sip. The bubbles stung her nose, and when she sneezed, the soda jerk grinned at her.
Margot couldn’t remember the last time she had been to a soda fountain. In the summers, Blake sometimes made sassafras root beer on the back porch, but his brew wasn’t nearly as strong as this one. When Frank joined her, she made him have a root beer himself. Feeling as carefree as a girl on an outing with her young man, Margot drank a second one. It made her burp as they left the store. Frank cast her a surprised look, and both of them were laughing as they climbed back into the Model T.
They drove back late in the day, arriving just as the haying crew was assembling for supper. Margot and Frank ferried the supplies in, cans of Maxwell House Coffee, enormous cans of Monarch Baked Beans, and a big sack of flour. Jenny, her lined face damp with perspiration from laboring over the stove, nodded toward the pantry. “Just put everything in there, will you? Frank knows where things go.”
Frank opened the door to a cool, dim room lined with fragrant cedar shelves. Margot, with the flour sack in her arms, followed him in. When she had wriggled the sack onto one of the shelves, she straightened, and gazed around her with a little exclamation of pleasure. “Why, Frank! What is all this?”
He grinned at her, and put an arm around her shoulders. “I meant to show you this. These are my mother’s remedies.” He pointed to an overhead pole. It ran the length of the room, and was festooned with bundles of dried herbs. “Let’s see, that’s mustard, I think. That’s coneflower, and there’s a bunch of marigolds. These dry all summer, and then in the winter she makes ointments and things. ‘Simples,’ she calls them, like her grandmother did.”
Margot ran a finger over a row of jars filled with preparations of various colors. They were clearly labeled in Jenny’s small handwriting—lemon balm tea, eucalyptus powder, chamomile, mint leaves. There was a dark glass jar with a warning cross on its label. It read Foxglove.
“Foxglove—that’s digitalis,” Margot marveled. “It looks as if she understands the risks.”
“She has a book she refers to all the time,” Frank said. “Doctor can’t always get out here, so people come to her for help.”
“I’d love to have a look at that book.”
“I’m sure she’d be happy to show you. The pages are all stuck full of cards and papers with recipes collected by her mother, her grandmother, a few friends. Even some she got from the Flatheads.”
“Those are the Indians?”
He nodded. “There’s a bark they use, if I recall. And bear fat, but it smells so awful Pop and I won’t let her bring it into the house.”
Margot smiled, and turned to go back to the kitchen. “I’m no cook, but I can at least help your mother serve,” she said. “Maybe after supper she’ll show me the book.”
Jenny, she had learned, never sat down when the hired hands were eating. She bustled back and forth, her hands full of bowls and dishes and plates, while her husband, the regular hired hand, and the four extra men of the haying crew ate at the oilcloth-covered table. Margot found an extra apron, and started rinsing the used bowls as they came back from the table. Jenny didn’t argue. “That’s a big help,” she said. “Thanks.”
Frank joined Margot at the big double sink. By the time the crew finished, said their good nights, and went off to the bunkhouse, the dishes were done. He and Margot and Jenny went to sit at the table with their own supper while Robert drank coffee and made notes in a ledger with a fountain pen. “Good crop,” he said to his wife. “Half again as big as last year.”
Jenny said, “Now if we could just have an easy winter, we’ll get ahead a bit.”
Margot felt Frank shift restlessly beside her, and she cast him a surreptitious glance. He was frowning as he cut his pot roast into slices and drenched them with Jenny’s dark gravy. She knew he felt guilty about leaving his parents to work the ranch without him. She had heard Robert comment on how well the Carnes arm worked, and she didn’t think she had imagined the longing in his voice, though he gruffly went on to a different subject a moment later.
She started on her own meal, beef from the ranch, sweet corn, a platter of fresh vegetables from Jenny’s kitchen garden. She couldn’t imagine how her mother-in-law managed it all. She had no help, either inside the house or out. “Mother Parrish,” she said warmly, “this is the best pot roast I’ve ever had.”
“Now, now,” Jenny said, smiling. “I’m sure that cook of yours—Hattie, isn’t it?—I’m sure her pot roast is wonderful.”
Frank laughed. “No, unfortunately. It’s not.”
Margot said, “Frank’s right, I’m afraid. We love Hattie, but—”
“She’s getting better,” Frank said loyally. “You have to admit that.”
Margot touched his hand. “That’s because you like simple food. It’s what she’s best at.”
“I know. Margot’s right, though, Mother. Wonderful supper.”
“Well, I’m sure you two are just real hungry. I’m always worn out after a drive up to the city.”
Margot hadn’t really thought of Missoula as a city. There had been none of the hurry and bustle of Seattle. Frank had pointed out to her, as they flew over the mountains and dropped down toward the valley, the other towns lying along the course of the Bitterroot River. They were far smaller even than Missoula, hardly more than villages. It was no wonder, she thought, that the Parrishes and their neighbors had to be self-sufficient. She could only imagine how hard it all must have been without an automobile. The trip into town with a horse and wagon must have taken hours each way.
In fact, the remoteness of the Parrish ranch, and their distance from the others, surprised her. This visit was her first experience of rural life. She loved the great silence of the nights, the wide spaces that met her eyes when she stepped outside. She didn’t know if she could tolerate the isolation for any great length of time, but it was a pleasure for the moment.
As Jenny sliced thick pieces of apple pie and served them, Margot said, “Mother Parrish, Frank tells me you’re the woman people turn to when the
re’s no doctor available. Your pantry is full of wonderful things. Did you collect them all yourself?”
Jenny smiled across the table. “Most,” she said, a little shyly. “They probably seem primitive to you, but—”
“Quite the opposite! One of my favorite professors emphasized the roots of contemporary medicines in folk remedies. I expect you know far more about those than I do, but the foxglove you have, for example—”
“Oh, yes,” Jenny said, with more confidence. “Digitalis is made from foxglove.”
“I know that one. I don’t know the uses for a lot of what you have, though. I’d love to learn.”
Jenny made a small gesture with her sunburned hand. “Oh, I’m sure you don’t want to put up with a lecture from someone like me,” she said.
Frank swallowed a huge bite of pie. “Trust me, Ma. If she says it, she means it.”
“Well.” Jenny smiled again, looking pleased and embarrassed at the same time. “If you really are interested, I’ll just do up these dishes, and we can—”
“Pop and I will do them,” Frank said. He made a shooing motion with his right hand. “You ladies run and play.”
So it was that Margot found herself again in the dim pantry, breathing the fragrance of drying herbs and flowers, and following her mother-in-law’s pointing finger as she explained the uses for the herbs and powders and tinctures. She had made every one of them in her own kitchen and stored them against a time they might be necessary.
“Those are marigolds. I dry the flowers and add them to mustard plasters. Worked well on Robert when he had the pneumonia. Also good for bee stings, without the mustard. There’s dandelion, and fennel, and over there is burdock. Good in an infusion of bitters, though it needs ginger, and I haven’t been able to grow that. The old recipe calls for angelica, as well, but I leave it out. Bad for pregnant women, and bitters are what I give them for stomach upset.”
She turned, gesturing toward the labeled jars, listing the contents and their usage without hesitation. Margot listened with increasing respect. When Jenny fell silent, she said, “Frank tells me you inherited a book.”
“Oh, yes, from my grandmother. It’s old, but the advice is still good. Based on Culpeper, but updated, of course. A little hard to read now. I could use a new edition.”
“I’ll write down the title. Maybe I can find you one.”
Jenny glanced up at her. “Mighty kind of you,” she said. “Of course, it’s not like I’ve been to medical school. But what I do can only help. I take care to never hurt anyone.”
“ ‘First, do no harm,’ ” Margot quoted. “That’s the first dictum we learn, but there are lots of doctors who can’t make the same claim.”
“I’ll show you the book,” Jenny said. She led the way out through the kitchen, where the dishes were dried and put away, and the pots were clean, resting on the top of the wood stove to dry. She went into the front room, which was small and rather dark, curtains drawn against the sun. A thick book with a cover gone brown with age rested on an old-fashioned bookstand, the kind meant for a family Bible. When Jenny began to turn the pages, she did so with the same reverence another woman might have used for a holy book, and when it was Margot’s turn, she was careful to do the same. The pages were yellowing and the typeface was archaic, but she could see they held a treasury of information.
“Who comes to you, then, Mother Parrish?” Margot asked, as she traced a drawing of eucalyptus leaves with her finger. Beneath the drawing were instructions for making a tea.
Jenny, shy again, shrugged. “Not a lot, you know. Folks who don’t want to have to drive into Missoula, or can’t afford to. Mostly women with female troubles.”
Margot glanced up at her. “Like what?” She had spoken more sharply than she intended, but it was something that deeply interested her.
Jenny didn’t flinch. “Pregnancy sickness. Pain with their monthlies. Things they don’t want to talk to a man about.”
“There’s no woman doctor?”
“No. We’ve been asking, writing to some of the medical schools. There aren’t enough of you to go around.”
Margot sighed, and turned back to the book. “It’s not easy, being a woman physician. And it’s harder than ever for a woman to get into one of those schools.”
“Why?”
“Have you heard of the Flexner Report?” She turned a page, and then another.
Jenny said, “No. I don’t know what that is.”
“It was an assessment of American medical schools that came out in 1910.” Margot carefully pulled out one of the loose sheets that bristled from the pages of the book. She held it to the light in order to see it better. “Flexner concluded there were too many medical colleges, and they weren’t rigid enough. The consequence was that about half the schools either closed or merged, and reduced the number of students accordingly. First to go were the women.” She carefully replaced the handwritten sheet. “There’s a hospital in Missoula, though, isn’t there?”
“St. Patrick’s, yes. Some can’t go because they don’t have the money. Others are too embarrassed. They’ll talk to me, but they won’t tell a male doctor what troubles them.”
“I know how that is.” It was the reason for Margot’s devotion to the Women and Infants Clinic, the same reason Sarah Church labored so hard in it, every day and many nights as well.
Jenny’s eyes were a lighter color than Frank’s, and made rheumy by years of working in rough weather, but glowed with both wisdom and sorrow, in equal measure. In fact, Margot thought, looking into them was like looking into her own eyes as they might be thirty years hence, though their color was so different. She said, as they gazed at each other in understanding, “I wish I could help.”
Jenny broke the moment, turning away, beginning to untie the apron she’d worn all day. “I wish you could, too, dear. Not your problem, of course.”
“It is, though,” Margot said softly. “Mine as much as yours.”
Over her shoulder, Jenny cast her a sympathetic glance. “We can’t heal everyone.”
“No.”
Jenny reached around the kitchen door to hang her apron on a peg, and turned back to Margot with her arms folded. “You would think, with airplanes and X-rays and telephones and so forth, that we might be able to do more for people. For women.” She blew out a breath. “My lands, I’m out on my feet. Didn’t mean to turn gloomy. I’ll say good night now.”
“Good night. If it’s all right with you, I’ll just spend a bit more time with your book.”
“Be my guest. Put out the lamp when you’re done, will you?”
“I will. Good night, Mother Parrish.”
The older woman hesitated a moment. “I’d be happier if you called me Jenny, dear. I’m used to it.”
Margot smiled in return. “Of course. But you have to call me Margot.”
Jenny smiled. “It’s a bargain. Good night, then, Margot.” A twinkle appeared in her tired eyes, and she added, “Dear.” Margot chuckled.
She watched Jenny walk upstairs, and a moment later, Robert followed her. Frank appeared from the back room, and crossed to stand beside her over the bookstand. “Interesting?” he asked.
“Fascinating.” Margot turned a page, and another. She took out another of the handwritten sheets, and held it close to the lamp. “Look at this, Frank. This is about honey as a treatment for allergies.”
“Hard to read.” He bent to squint at the page in the poor light. “This has always been Ma’s little sideline, people showing up once in a while asking her for help. I never thought much about it.”
“There’s a wealth of information here.”
He straightened, shaking his head. “Just country remedies, things folks use when they don’t have a doctor.”
“The thing is, Frank, many of our medicines are based on these same plants.” She smoothed the loose sheet and replaced it in the book. “That’s a recipe for making a tincture from eucalyptus leaves, for someone with asthma. We don’t hav
e a good drug-based therapy for asthma, but we do use something called eucalyptol for bronchitis. I wish I could observe that remedy in actual practice. It might be helpful.”
“Ask Ma.”
She nodded. “I will.”
“Are you finished for now?” He put an arm around her waist, and pulled her close. His body was warm and firm against her, and she smiled up at him.
“You’re trying to get me into bed.”
“Ah ha. Just can’t fool you.”
She laughed, but she bent to put out the lamp, and walked with him to the staircase. It was one of the great pleasures of this time in his old home, going to bed when she wasn’t exhausted, making love with the window open to the night breeze, waking only when she was ready, in a place where there was no telephone to command her. A woman of leisure.
She was pulling her nightdress over her head when she remembered. “Your mother tells me they’ve been asking for a woman physician.”
Frank had already removed his prosthesis and laid it ready on the bureau. He was sitting up in the bed, propped with pillows against the headboard. “Never been one around here that I know of.”
“The women—and the girls—there are things they don’t want to talk about with a man.”
“Not surprising, I guess.”
“Not at all.” She took a moment to run a brush through her hair, and to dash water on her face from the basin on the washstand, then went to sit on the edge of the bed beside him. He stroked her hair with his right hand. “It’s worrisome, though, Frank. Young women might not get the help they need. Some illnesses only get worse if they’re not treated.”
“You’re taking the world on your shoulders again,” he said softly. He reached out to extinguish the bedside lamp. “Come to bed, Mrs. Parrish. You can take on the problems of the world tomorrow.”
The Benedict Bastard (A Benedict Hall Novel) Page 21