“Let me take a look at the burns.”
“No.” Ella held up her hand to prevent the doctor from moving any closer and setting Solly off again. “The spots aren’t blistering, and the starch had been cooling for over two hours. It wasn’t that hot. When he pulled the pan off the stove and the starch splashed on him, I think it frightened him more than anything.”
“It’s a good thing it wasn’t—”
Miss Pearl’s comment was stopped abruptly, probably when she got an elbow in the ribs from her more tactful sister. But Ella knew what Miss Pearl was thinking, what everyone including herself was thinking: It was a good thing Solly hadn’t pulled the stewing greens off the stove and onto himself.
Ella smoothed her hand over her son’s head, but he dodged the caress. The rejection pierced her heart, but she looked at the others and smiled bravely. “I think the crisis has passed.”
“I have some salve at the clinic,” the doctor said. “Even though the skin’s not blistered, it wouldn’t hurt to keep it lubricated for a day or two.”
Ella nodded and looked over at Mr. Rainwater, who was hovering near the stove, as though guarding against another accident. “The ice helped. Thank you.”
He nodded.
She said, “About the room—”
“See, I told you he was to be a new boarder.” Miss Pearl spoke to her sister in a whisper which everyone heard.
“We’ll excuse ourselves until lunch.” Miss Violet grasped her sister’s arm with enough pressure to make her wince and practically dragged her toward the staircase. Miss Pearl was still whispering excitedly as they made their way up. “He seems awfully nice, don’t you think, Sister? Very clean fingernails. I wonder who his people are.”
Ella eased Solly off her lap and into the chair in which she was seated. She made a futile attempt to smooth back strands of hair that had shaken loose from her bun. Responding to the humidity created by the cooking pot of greens, her hair had formed unruly spirals on both sides of her face.
“As I was saying, Mr. Rainwater, I haven’t had time to give the room a thorough cleaning. If you’re wanting to move in immediately—”
“I am.”
“You can’t.”
“Then when?”
“When the room meets my standards.”
The statement seemed to amuse him, and she wondered if his quick grin was mocking her standards or her pride in them.
In either case, she resented it. “In light of what the last quarter hour has been like, I’m surprised you’re still interested in securing a room in my house, especially if it’s peace and quiet you’re after. You haven’t even seen the room yet.”
“Then let’s take a look,” Dr. Kincaid said. “But I really must get back to the clinic soon.”
Mr. Rainwater said, “You don’t have to stay, Murdy.”
Dr. Kincaid’s first name was Murdock, but Ella had never heard him addressed as Murdy, not even by close acquaintances.
“No, no, I want to help any way I can.” The doctor turned to her. “Mrs. Barron?”
She glanced down at Solly, who had eaten half his candy stick. Margaret, sensing her hesitation, said, “You go on with the gentlemen. I’ll keep an eagle eye on this boy. I swear I won’t take my eyes off him.”
Reluctantly Ella led the two men from the kitchen and up the stairs, then down the hallway to the room at the end of it. Opening the door, she said, “It’s got a nice southern exposure. You can catch the breeze.”
The sheer curtains now catching the breeze were ruffled. The wallpaper had a yellow cabbage rose pattern, and the iron bed looked too short for Mr. Rainwater. In fact, even though he was slender, the room looked smaller with him standing in its center, much smaller than when Mrs. Morton had occupied it.
But he seemed either not to notice or not to care about the feminine decor or the limited size of the bed, the room, or the narrow closet. He looked out the window, nodded, then turned back to her and the doctor. “This will do.”
“You would share a bathroom with Mr. Hastings.”
“Chester Hastings,” Dr. Kincaid supplied. “Extremely nice man. He’s not in town much. Notions salesman. Travels all over.”
“I don’t have a problem with sharing a bathroom,” Mr. Rainwater said.
On the way downstairs, Ella told him the cost for room and board, and by the time they reached the ground floor he had agreed to it.
“Splendid,” Dr. Kincaid said. “I’ll let the two of you work out the particulars about moving in and so forth.”
Ella hesitated and glanced toward the kitchen. Margaret was softly humming a hymn, which usually soothed Solly. Comforting him would also help alleviate Margaret’s guilt, so Ella decided she could spare another few minutes.
“I’ll see you out.” She led the way to the front door, but when she got there, she discovered that only Dr. Kincaid had followed her. Behind them the hallway was empty. Presumably Mr. Rainwater had ducked into the parlor, waiting there to discuss the details of his occupancy.
“Can I have a word, Mrs. Barron?” the doctor asked. Only moments ago, he had seemed in such a hurry to leave that she looked at him curiously as he pushed open the screened door and ushered her out onto the porch.
The overhang formed by the second story of the house had trapped the heat as well as the heady fragrance of gardenia. The shrub, laden with creamy white blossoms, grew in a pot she kept at the end of the porch.
Two summers ago she’d had a boarder who complained of the fragrance being cloying and giving him headaches. Ella attributed his headaches less to the aromatic blossoms and more to the corn liquor he sipped from a silver flask when he thought no one was looking. When she reminded him that she didn’t allow spirits in the house, he’d been affronted.
“Are you referring to my cough remedy, Mrs. Barron?”
Short of calling him a liar, she couldn’t challenge him further, but he also never again complained about the gardenias. She’d been relieved when he’d moved out and the more genial Mr. Hastings had moved in.
Again the doctor dabbed his bald head with his handkerchief. “I wanted to speak to you in private.”
“About Solly?”
“Well, that, yes.”
They’d had this discussion many times before. Bracing for an argument, she clasped her hands at her waist. “I refuse to place him in an institution, Dr. Kincaid.”
“I haven’t suggested—”
“I also refuse to keep him medicated.”
“So you’ve told me. Many times.”
“Then please stop trying to persuade me otherwise.”
“What happened just now—”
“Could have happened to any child,” she said. “Remember when the Hinnegar boy turned that kerosene lamp over on himself last winter?”
“That boy is two years old, Mrs. Barron. Solly is ten.”
“His birthday is still months away.”
“Close enough.” Softening his tone, the doctor continued. “I’m well aware of the perils inherent to childhood. Based on what I’ve seen during my years of general practice, it’s amazing to me that any of us reaches adulthood.”
He paused, took a breath, then looked at her kindly. “But your boy is particularly susceptible to mishaps. Even at his age, Solly can’t understand the dangers associated with something like pulling a pan of hot starch off the stove. And then when there is an accident, his reaction is a violent outburst. As it was today.”
“He was burned, he was screaming in pain. Anyone would scream.”
“By my speaking to you plainly, please don’t think I’m being insensitive or unnecessarily cruel. It’s your situation that’s cruel. The fact is, without medication to suppress your son’s… impulses, he could harm himself and others, especially when he’s in the throes of one of his fits.”
“I keep careful watch over him to prevent that.”
“I don’t question how dutiful—”
“It’s not my duty, it’s my privilege. Only the running of this house prevents me from devoting every waking moment to Solly. This morning was an exception, not the rule. I was unexpectedly called away.”
That was a subtle reminder that he was responsible for her distraction, but the doctor ignored the rebuke.
“You bring me to the next point, Mrs. Barron. This constant vigilance is also detrimental to your health. How long can you keep it up?”
“For as long as Solly needs supervision.”
“Which in all likelihood will be for the rest of his life. What happens when he outgrows you and you can no longer physically restrain him?”
She forced herself to unclench her hands. In a slow and deliberate voice she said, “The medications you’re suggesting to suppress his impulses would also inhibit his ability to learn.”
Her saying that caused the doctor’s eyes to become even kinder, sadder, more pitying.
She took umbrage. “I know you doubt Solly’s capacity to learn, Dr. Kincaid. I do not. I won’t rob him of the opportunity just because it would make my life easier. I won’t have him drugged into a stupor, where he would be breathing but little else. What kind of life would he have?”
“What kind of life do you have?” he asked gently.
She drew herself up to her full height. Her face was hot with indignation. “I appreciate your professional opinion, Dr. Kincaid. But that’s all it is, an opinion. No one really knows what Solly is or isn’t capable of understanding and retaining. But as his mother, I have a better perception of his abilities than anyone. So I must do what I think is best for him.”
Yielding the battle if not the war, the doctor glanced away from her toward the clump of larkspur growing at the edge of her yard. Their blue spikes were wilting in the noon heat. “Send Margaret ’round for that salve,” he finally said.
“Thank you.”
“No charge.”
“Thank you.”
The street was deserted except for a spotted brown and white dog that was trotting alongside a wagon driven by an elderly black man and pulled by a pair of plodding mules. The man tipped his hat to them as the wagon rolled past. They waved back at him. Ella didn’t know him, but the doctor addressed him by name and called out a greeting.
“If that’s all, Dr. Kincaid, I need to set out lunch.”
He turned back to her. “Actually, there is something else, Mrs. Barron. About Mr. Rainwater.”
Other than his name, and his willingness to pay her fee for room and board, she knew nothing about the man. She was taking him in as a boarder based solely upon Dr. Kincaid’s implied recommendation. “Is he a man of good character?”
“Impeccable character.”
“You’ve known him for a long time?”
“He’s my wife’s late cousin’s boy. I guess that makes him some sort of a second or third cousin by marriage.”
“I guessed he might be an old friend or family member. He called you Murdy.”
Absently he nodded. “Family nickname.”
“Is he in the medical profession, too?”
“No. He was a cotton broker.”
“Was?” Was Mr. Rainwater a victim of the Depression, one of the thousands of men in the nation who were out of work? “If he’s unemployed, how does he plan to pay his rent? I can’t afford—”
“He’s not without funds. He’s…” The doctor looked toward the retreating wagon and continued watching it as it rounded the corner. Coming back to her, he said, “The fact is, he won’t be needing the room in your house for long.”
She stared at him, waiting.
Softly he said, “He’s dying.”
THREE
“Please, Mr. Rainwater. Leave that.”
He was crouched, picking pieces of broken china off the kitchen linoleum. He glanced up at her but continued what he was doing. “I’m afraid the boy will hurt himself again.”
“Margaret and I will tend to the mess, and to Solly.”
Margaret was at the stove drizzling bacon grease from that morning’s breakfast into the greens. Solly was sitting in his customary chair at the kitchen table, rocking back and forth, fiddling with a yo-yo that Margaret must have given him from his box of toys. He wound the string around his index finger, unwound it. His concentration was fixed on the winding and rewinding.
The crisis had passed, and he didn’t appear to be suffering any lasting effects, but would she know if he were? She had to take his passivity as a good sign. Looking at his blond head bowed over the yo-yo, she felt the familiar pinching sensation deep within her heart, a mix of unqualified love and the fear that even that might not be sufficient to protect him.
Mr. Rainwater came to his feet and held out his hands. Ella took the dustpan off the nail from which it hung on the wall and extended it to him. He carefully placed the chips of broken dishware in it. “Those are the larger pieces. There are some slivers I couldn’t pick out of the starch.”
“We’ll watch for them when we clean up.”
He turned to the sink and washed the starch off his hands, then dried them on a dish towel. She would have felt awkward making herself so at home in someone else’s kitchen, especially a stranger’s. He seemed to suffer no such self-consciousness.
She set the dustpan on the floor in the corner. “Margaret, could you get out the lunch things while I speak with Mr. Rainwater?”
“Yes, ma’am. You want me to get this baby’s lunch, too?”
“Please. Peel an orange and section it. A butter and grape jelly sandwich, cut in half. Put them on the blue plate he likes.”
“Yes, ma’am. You tend to the gentleman here.” She smiled at Mr. Rainwater, obviously pleased that he was about to join the household. His willingness to help during an emergency situation had earned her hard-won approval. “Them sheets need hanging, but they can keep till after lunch.”
“Thank you, Margaret.” Ella turned and gestured the man toward the hallway. “Mr. Rainwater?”
“We can talk here.”
Ella preferred not to discuss business in the kitchen, where, as anticipated, the temperature had climbed. She was also worried about the sheets in the washtub that needed to be wrung through the wringer, probably twice, before being hung on the clothesline to dry. She was afraid that Margaret would get heavy-handed with the bacon grease, which she was prone to do. Margaret was also a gossip. On several occasions Ella had been forced to chide her for sharing personal information about their boarders and about Ella herself.
Her major concern, however, was Solly, although the red marks on his skin had faded so they were barely visible now, and the burns didn’t seem to be hurting him. For the moment he was pacified.