Frank took her hand, and tucked it under his elbow again, pressing it tightly against his side. She glanced at him sideways, and gave him a small smile. It was uncomfortable, meeting Elizabeth, but they had expected that. She could see he didn’t know how to ease the situation.
“Well,” Elizabeth said unexpectedly, “I have to say you don’t look like a lady doctor.”
At this Margot laughed aloud. “You must tell me what a lady doctor looks like!”
Elizabeth broke into a grin, and Margot felt an odd sense of relief. She could understand, she thought, why Frank had once cared for this woman. Elizabeth said, “You know. Spectacles. Gray hair, maybe.”
“I’m sure I’ll have those one day,” Margot said easily, feeling comfortable now. “Not yet, thank goodness.”
“No, I see that.”
Someone hailed Frank, and he waved. Margot said, “Go ahead, Frank. I’m fine here.”
Elizabeth said, “We’ll get some lemonade, and sit over there in the shade.” She indicated a wide-limbed tree of some type Margot didn’t recognize. It had wooden chairs beneath it, and a little table that sat crookedly on the bare ground.
“That sounds nice,” Margot said. Frank nodded, and walked away across the yard. Margot and Elizabeth poured themselves glasses of lemonade, and carried them to the chairs, settling in the welcome coolness of the tree’s shade.
Elizabeth said, “You operated on Frank’s arm, Jenny says.”
“Yes.”
“I saw it before that, when he was in the hospital in Virginia.”
“I know you did. Frank told me.”
“I’m ashamed of that time,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t behave well at all.”
Margot was struck again by her lack of dissembling. She couldn’t be sorry Elizabeth and Frank had broken off their engagement, but she felt a wave of sympathy. “To someone who’s not a medical professional, his amputation must have looked awful,” she said gently. “It was disturbing even to me, and I’ve seen a good many disturbing things.”
“I hurt him, and I sure didn’t mean to.”
“Perhaps you couldn’t help it, Elizabeth.”
The other woman shrugged, and sipped at her lemonade. “Guess I wouldn’t have made him much of a wife, if I couldn’t handle that.” Her eyes met Margot’s over the rim of her glass. “You’re the perfect woman for him, it seems.”
Margot drank, too, finding the lemonade more tart than Hattie’s, and full of lemon pulp. It was perfect for the hot, dry day. The glass was slippery with condensation, and she set it carefully on the rickety table. “If I’m the right woman for Frank,” she said carefully, “I hope it’s not because I was able to repair his arm. I hope it’s because—” She broke off, not sure how to express herself. It didn’t seem right to discuss her emotional life with this woman she didn’t really know, and who had shared an emotional life with her husband long before they had met.
“Oh, no,” Elizabeth said. She didn’t seem in the least embarrassed. “That’s not it at all. No, Jenny tells me the two of you are a love match.” She put her own glass down. “Frank and I weren’t, really. Our parents wanted to merge the ranches, and we liked each other well enough.”
“You’re very plainspoken,” Margot said.
Elizabeth made an apologetic gesture with one hand. “Hope I’m not offending you.”
“Not at all. Quite the opposite.”
Elizabeth’s fair eyebrows rose. “Really?”
Margot chuckled. “Really. I have no talent for small talk. I would always prefer just to be able to speak my mind.”
“Does that come from being a doctor?”
It was Margot’s turn to shrug. “Perhaps. It could be that I don’t have the patience to be polite.”
“You’d like it out here, then,” Elizabeth said with assurance. “We’re plainspoken people.”
“I can see that. And I do like it out here.”
“Good. Good. Jenny and Robert are fine folks, and they miss their son.”
Margot had no answer for this. She was saved by Grandma calling, “Come and get it, everyone!” Two other ladies, also in aprons, shooed people toward the laden table, and Margot glanced up to see Frank coming to fetch her. She smiled at Elizabeth, and went to join him.
Darkness crept slowly over the Bitterroot Valley, bringing the welcome coolness of a breeze from the river. Tiny white moths fluttered around the oil lamps someone had set out, and the friends and neighbors sat on into the evening, chatting about children and grandchildren, about the government, about the prices of hay and grain and gasoline. Margot and Frank returned to the chairs beneath the big tree, and sat side by side, not speaking much, but listening to the conversation. Someone had brought a banjo, and plunked quiet melodies from the porch of the ranch house. Stephen Foster, Margot thought. She recognized “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” and “Camptown Races.” Her mind was peaceful, and her heart was full as she tipped her head back to watch stars flicker to life in the wide sky. Frank’s hand found hers in the darkness, and their fingers interlaced as if that were their natural position.
When people began to stir, to find their hats, and look for their emptied bowls and casseroles and baskets, Margot sighed. It had been a marvelous day. She was sorry to see it come to an end. Frank rose, and extended a hand to pull her to her feet. They turned in search of Jenny and Robert, and Margot found Jenny at her side.
“Frank, someone would like to see Margot before we go.”
“See me?” Margot said.
“Do you have your bag?”
“It’s in the motorcar.”
Frank said, “Do you mind, sweetheart? I’ll get it for you.”
“No, it’s fine,” Margot said. In truth, she did mind, but she would never let Jenny see that. Or Frank. She had been relaxed, growing drowsy, feeling at ease in the knowledge that she would have a good long sleep, and not rise until she was ready. This sudden summons was jarring.
She didn’t speak about any of this. She followed Jenny across the yard and up onto the porch. Inside the ranch house, a lamp burned in the front window. Frank appeared with her medical bag, and handed it to her with a little shrug of apology. She shook her head, took the bag, and went on into the house.
Jenny said, as they passed through the front room and on into a long, low-ceilinged kitchen, “It’s Cissie Borders. She’s the wife of one of the ranch hands at the Connolly place.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s in here.” Jenny opened a door at the end of the kitchen, and waved Margot through.
Margot found herself in a small bedroom lit only by a candle on a battered-looking bureau. It was the sort of room a cook might have used. Hattie had one like it, though hers was twice the size, well furnished and well lighted. In this one there was a narrow bed with what looked like a handmade quilt on it, and an ancient washstand with a basin and ewer. A young woman—a girl, really—rose from the bed when the door opened. Margot went in, and Jenny came after her, closing the door and standing near it.
Margot felt the shift in herself, the change from relaxed wife and daughter-in-law. She forgot about the interruption of her evening. The girl looked miserable, her eyes too wide in a small face, her skin sallow in the shifting light from the candle. Margot was touched, as always, by the thought that she might be able to ease her unhappiness in some way.
She put out her hand. “Hello, Mrs. Borders,” she said. “I’m Dr. Benedict. I understand you wanted to see me.”
“Yes,” the girl said. Her voice trembled. “I thought you were Dr. Parrish.”
“When I’m working, I use my maiden name. I am Margot Parrish, though.”
“Jenny said you wouldn’t mind if I asked you about—about something. I can’t afford to go to Missoula, and I’d rather not talk to a man.” She dropped her gaze. “I got woman trouble, Doctor. I don’t know what happened.”
“Maybe nothing happened,” Margot said. “Sometimes we just get sick.”
“But I was fi
ne, even after Eldon—that’s my husband—even after he came home from France. I know some of the others brought disease with them, but not my Eldon.”
“You’re thinking of venereal disease?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
Crisply, to reduce the girl’s embarrassment, Margot said, “It’s a disease transmitted through sexual intercourse.”
The girl’s face turned scarlet, a furious blush visible even in the candlelight. “Oh,” she mumbled. “I didn’t know the right name, I guess. I think that’s what’s wrong with me, though.”
“Let’s sit down, Mrs. Borders. Tell me what you’re feeling, and then I’d better have a look at you.” She glanced back at Jenny, who stood with her hands linked before her, a look on her face of both sympathy and interest. “Jenny, do you think you could find a better light? A lamp, perhaps?”
“I’ll do that, Margot. You go ahead.”
It didn’t take long for Margot to elicit Cissie Borders’s symptoms and their duration. It was the sort of thing she had heard a dozen times at the Women and Infants Clinic, young women mystified by what they were feeling, by what was happening in their bodies. Jenny returned with a lamp, and Margot took rubber gloves from her medical bag and put them on. She helped Mrs. Borders to lie back, and covered her with a blanket.
The examination revealed what she had expected. Swelling, the classic yellowish discharge, and a badly infected cervix. The girl was long overdue for treatment. She was in danger of becoming infertile if her infection wasn’t reined in swiftly.
As she stripped off her gloves, and washed her hands in the basin Jenny had thought to bring, she said, “You have gonorrhea, Mrs. Borders. It’s not unusual for symptoms to appear quite some time after the initial infection.”
“Gonorrhea. Is that the—” The girl’s voice broke, and she swallowed noisily. “Is that the clap?”
“In the vernacular, yes.”
“I was afraid of that. So that means my Eldon . . .” She drew a shaky breath, and Margot steeled herself for tears, but the girl didn’t weep. “It was awful over there,” the girl said.
“Yes,” Margot said. “My husband, Mrs. Parrish’s son, was injured in the war. I think it was about as awful as we can imagine.”
“I don’t blame him,” Mrs. Borders said.
Margot sat next to her on the bed. “Then your husband is a lucky man,” she said. She pushed back the girl’s hair with her hand, and felt her brow. Her eyes were bright, as if with fever, but she felt cool to the touch.
“Can you fix me?” the girl asked. “Will I be okay?”
“I believe so, but it takes time,” Margot said. “We have fairly good success with silver solutions. I’ll give you a wash that you can use yourself. I should start it for you, to be thorough.”
“Will you?”
“Yes, of course. We need to treat the infection in your husband, too.”
Cissie Borders’s eyes went wide, and she sat bolt upright. “Oh, no! I’m not supposed to be seeing a doctor.”
“Why ever not? You’re ill, Mrs. Borders. This is a serious infection, and if you don’t—”
“You can’t tell him! Jenny, you have to explain to her—Eldon won’t have it. He’ll kill me if he finds out!”
Jenny said, “Cissie, you’d best listen to Dr. Parr—I mean, Benedict.”
Margot cast her mother-in-law a swift look, then turned back to Cissie. “I understand this is difficult. I can treat you with Protargol, and leave you enough to go on with the treatment yourself. But you and your husband have to avoid intercourse until you’re both well. If you have sexual relations while he’s still infected, you’ll simply reinfect yourself. The long-term implications are quite grave, Mrs. Borders.”
“I can’t—I just don’t know what to do,” Cissie said, her voice rising. “He told me it would go away, that I’d get over it. He had it, he said, and it went away.”
“No, it didn’t,” Margot said wearily. “I know people hope that’s true, but they’re wrong. The disease goes dormant, but unfortunately, it doesn’t go away. That’s why you’re ill now.”
“But if I—”
Margot said, “Do you plan on a family? Does your husband plan to keep working as a ranch hand? All of these are at risk if you let this illness go untreated.”
Cissie slumped forward, her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands. “He’ll kill me,” she groaned. “He told me not to tell anyone, that they’d think he—that he shouldn’t have—”
“Well, he shouldn’t,” Jenny said flatly. “That’s the truth of the matter, Cissie.”
Margot said, “I could speak to him for you, Mrs. Borders.” “Oh, no! He wouldn’t talk to you!”
Margot didn’t know whether to laugh or scold at that. When she could trust her voice she said, “He needs to see another physician, then, Mrs. Borders. I have enough Protargol to treat you, for now, though someone will have to acquire more. You’ll need to keep up the irrigation until long after your symptoms are gone.”
The girl didn’t answer.
Margot met Jenny’s glance above the girl’s head, and shook her head helplessly. Jenny’s lips tightened, and after a moment she said, “Cissie. We could ask Mr. Connolly to speak to Eldon, tell him he needs to see a doctor whether he wants to or not. The Connollys don’t want the clap in their bunkhouse.”
Cissie wiped her nose on her sleeve and chewed on her lip, considering. “He don’t like talking about such things.”
“That’s too bad,” Margot said. “But sometimes we have to deal with things we would rather not think about.”
Cissie said, “I guess.”
“Shall we let Mrs. Parrish handle it, then, with the Connollys?”
Cissie only shrugged. Margot sighed, and reached into her bag for a fresh pair of gloves, and tugged them on. “Well, Mrs. Borders. Lie back again, please. Let’s get your treatment started, at least.”
It was midnight before Margot finished with her unexpected patient, and completed the cleanup required, making sure the blankets and sheets on the bed were soaking in Lysoform, cleaning her instruments in the same mixture, wrapping them to be boiled later. Jenny helped her, following her instructions, asking a question now and again.
They started back to the Parrish place under a sky so brilliant with stars the road was almost as clear as it might have been in daylight. Jenny turned around in the front seat to say, “Thank you, Margot dear. I know that was a lot to ask.”
“Don’t mention it,” Margot said. “It’s wasted effort if they’re not both treated, though.”
“I’ll drop in on Lettie Connolly tomorrow. I’ll be as discreet as I can, but make clear that Eldon needs medical care.”
Frank said, “Not the only doughboy to bring a disease home from France.”
“No,” his mother said. “Definitely not.”
“I can send you some pamphlets,” Margot said. She was tired now, her eyes scratchy from the dry air. Her face felt dry, too, and a little sunburned. “Seattle General keeps them in the lobby.”
“I’ll pass them around,” Jenny said, “though the church ladies won’t like it.”
Frank chuckled. “They’d rather have their daughters infected with the clap.” Robert laughed, too, and Margot smiled into the darkness. It was a relief to be with people who spoke plainly about things. She felt a rush of affection for her in-laws.
As she and Frank, hand in hand, climbed the narrow staircase to their bedroom, Jenny called after them. “Have a good sleepin,” she said. “No need to get up early.”
Margot gave her a grateful smile. Frank said, “Thanks, Mother. ’Night, Pop.”
“Good night, son.”
Jenny said, “Thank you again, Margot. I can’t tell you how much it means to have you here, however briefly. Sleep well.”
Margot raised a hand in acknowledgment, and she and Frank went up to bed.
CHAPTER 23
Margot meant to sleep in, as her mother-in-law had sugg
ested, but as the early summer sunshine spilled through the bedroom window, she woke to the rattle of a motor and the answering bark of the bunkhouse collie. Frank slept on, his cheek nestled deep in his pillow and a spill of black-and-silver hair falling across his forehead. Margot lay on her back for a moment, wondering who would drive up the long lane to the ranch house at this early hour.
She heard the door of an automobile open and close with a fearsome screech of metal, then hurried footsteps on the porch. Giving up on sleep, she slipped out of the bedclothes, trying not to disturb Frank, and reached for her dressing gown just as she heard a heavy knock on the kitchen door. She went to the window and looked out into the yard, where a dusty truck was parked just in front of the steps. The visitor must have gone around to the side, familiar with Jenny’s habits. Margot left the bedroom quietly, and went into the bathroom, where she could see Jenny and Robert had already taken their turns at the washbasin.
When she felt she was presentable enough, but still in her dressing gown, she started for the stairs. She met Jenny on her way up, already in her apron, her gray hair pinned into a roll and covered with a kerchief.
“Oh, Margot! I’m so sorry, but—there was a telephone call for you. At the general store in Florence. The manager drove out to tell you. I’m afraid it’s your father.”
Margot put a hand to her throat. “Father? Is he ill?”
“Oh, no, no, I’m sorry. I said that badly. I meant, it was your father calling, and he needs to speak to you.”
“Oh. Do you know anything more?”
“No, I don’t, dear. I’m sure if it was something really upsetting, he would have said so.”
He wouldn’t have made the call, though, Margot knew, unless it was urgent. She hadn’t realized he had a way to reach her, but she supposed he and Frank had worked that out together. “What do I need to do? I’ll need to drive to Florence, I suppose.”
“It’s the only telephone in the Valley, unless you go all the way to Hamilton.”
“I’ll dress.”
“Yes. I have coffee ready, and I’ll make you some sandwiches. Wake Frank. The two of you can take the Model T.”
The Benedict Bastard (A Benedict Hall Novel) Page 25