Chapter 19
Rose Marie
A
n island of sanity in a sea of craziness. That was how each weekend was for her, uninterrupted quiet, just right for letting her thoughts tumble against each other as they sorted themselves into some kind of sense. Today was a good day to be Friday. She would be ready for a break tomorrow.
Only three kids came today, an easygoing transition to the weekend. Poor little Eddie was still in the hospital. Even after talking with Anna, she couldn’t imagine what he looked like, too sick to eat, needed a machine to breathe. Chris was at home with Anna’s parents; he’d soon drive them nuts with a hundred questions and a million schemes.
And, now, Amanda was sick.
Last night, after she returned home from a run to the grocery store for peanut butter and Swiss cheese, the message light on the answering machine was blinking.
“She has a fever and vomited her dinner.” Amanda’s mother had sounded tired, or exasperated, on the recording. “I’ll stay home from work in the morning to take her to the doctor.” Rose Marie replayed the answering machine message twice to be sure she heard it right, that Amanda had been vomiting.
Food poisoning? Had she fed something bad to Amanda? She reviewed the menu from yesterday. Chili. It didn’t fizz when the can opener broke through the lid. Had she sliced hot dogs into the chili? No. The Oreo cookies were from a freshly opened package and the apple juice was pasteurized and only two days old. She herself had drunk a glassful and it was fine. Even the milk had been from a new carton. The other kids weren’t ill, so whatever made Amanda sick must not have come from her house.
The idea hit her like a splash of ice water. What about meningitis? Could Amanda have that? Jake told her meningitis wasn’t catching. At least, he thought it wasn’t. She checked Roger’s dictionary again and the description of “meningitis” was as she remembered. Nothing about vomiting. It talked about fever and headache and stiff neck, but not vomiting. She decided Amanda must have some kind of stomach flu.
She tried to call Amanda’s mother earlier this morning, but no one answered. Maybe they were at the doctor’s.
Now Davey was working on a construction project in the sandbox. He liked to build sand cities, with towers and roads and little escape tunnels. Sawyer was running a toy dump truck up and down the sand hills Davey built. Meghan was tying leaves into Beefeater’s collar. She got the wet ones to stay under his chain but the dry ones crumbled in her hands. Soon enough the grass would be green as Ireland and Meghan could string a dandelion necklace for the dog. Maybe, later this summer, they could make hollyhock dolls, as her daughters had when they were little girls. She didn’t remember exactly how, except that she would need a fully opened flower and a bulging bud and then somehow would attach them together. It would come to her again when she had the flowers in her hands. In August.
She was still bothered by Amanda. But the other kids, romping around her backyard, were healthy as could be. Should she call the mothers of the other children? What would she tell them? She had no idea what was wrong with Amanda. She’d try to call Amanda’s mother again in another hour or so to see how she was doing.
Now Sawyer was driving the dump truck up the bark of the maple tree. The toes of his sneakers dug into the dirt and he held the truck as far above his head as his three-year-old arms would reach. He was murmuring, “Brrrr,” his version of motor noise.
She picked at the loose webbing on the lawn chair and surveyed the sky. Giant clouds, almost pewter in the middle and fading to light gray on the edges, tracked from west to east. Looked like rain. The chimelike calls of the blue jays and the twitters of the house sparrows broke the muggy morning air. They seemed more urgent than usual, as if the birds were spreading bad news from treetop to treetop. What could they be nervous about? There were plenty of worms and seeds in the world, no mortgage payments on nests.
Lunch was easy with only three kids. Today would be tuna sandwiches and, for color and vitamins, carrot sticks. For dessert, they’d have leftover Oreo cookies.
While the kids ate, she called Amanda’s mother again. Still no answer. It couldn’t be too bad if she hadn’t heard anything yet.
She set a plate of Oreos on the table. The kids scrambled for the cookies as if they hadn’t eaten in a month.
“Hey, use your polite manners,” she said with a giggle.
They were good children, safe in her care and yet free to explore her backyard, at least the area inside the fence. She still had the playhouse Roger had built for Sarah and Julie. On the hot summer days to come, she’d drag the plastic wading pool out from the garage. In the fall, she’d have the kids rake the dead maple leaves into a big pile and then let them jump off a lawn chair into the crispy, tobacco-colored heap.
She didn’t believe in propping children in front of the television set all day. That would lead to brain rot. She wanted the kids to play outside, to stretch their imaginations, to follow their curiosities, to figure out for themselves how to get along. Her grandmother had it right when, in rapid-fire Ukrainian, she had waved the hem of her apron at Rose Marie and her cousins, calling, “Shoo. Shoo. Go outside. Get the stink blown off you.”
The phone rang. She hoped it was Amanda’s mother. Or, maybe Sarah. She needed more information about meningitis. The conversation the other night with Sarah’s friend—Barbara was her name—hadn’t completely settled her worries about the other children.
She picked up the phone.
Instead of Sarah’s businesswoman voice or Amanda’s mother’s high-pitched, pixy chirp, she heard words that soon became lost in the roar of the cement mixer rolling past her house. The sounds toppled together as if spoken by a chorus of mumblers.
Then the voice—a man—said, clear as day, “I understand Edward Campbell and Amanda Goodman attend your day care center. Is that correct?”
She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “Who’s calling?” she finally asked.
“As I said, Mrs. Lustov, I’m David Morris from the
Detroit News
. I’m writing a story about the cases of meningitis. These kids attend your day care center, right?”
Detroit News
. Why was he calling? Cases of meningitis? Plural? More than one? She perched against the edge of a kitchen chair. “Why do you want to know?” she said.
“Well, since Edward and Amanda are both in the hospital with meningitis, we thought you could tell us a bit about them.”
She grabbed the back of her chair to steady herself. Amanda in the hospital, too? With meningitis? What was going on?
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said and hung up.
She wanted to forget the phone call but it stuck in her head like a rat caught in a trap. The reporter said both Eddie and Amanda were in the hospital with meningitis. Was he right about that? Why wouldn’t he be? He had no reason to call her with a lie.
The children were napping. She decided she’d better call the other mothers to let them know what she had heard. Was it true that both had meningitis? How could she know? She pulled her directory of phone numbers from the desk drawer and began to dial Meghan’s mother at work.
A car door slammed from the direction of the driveway and then someone knocked at the breezeway door. She hung up the phone before she finished dialing and headed to the back entry. Maybe it was the meter reader. Maybe the UPS guy. Maybe it was Bill Gates or Senator Levin or Prince Charles of England. Such strange things were happening, the visitor could be anyone. She pulled aside the curtain over the window to the breezeway. Davey’s mother stood on the step.
“You’re early.” Rose Marie used her calmest voice, tried to hide the confusion inside her head.
“You bet.” His mother’s words were bullets, her voice harsh as lye. “I just heard from Amanda’s mother that Eddie and Amanda are both in the hospital. I think I’d better take Davey home.”
“Davey’s fine. He’s napping with the other kids.”
“Good,” she said, abruptly. Her eyes weren’t pearly blue and dancing as usual, but, now, were steel gray and deadly serious. “I’ll be more comfortable if he stays home for a few days, at least until this all gets settled.” She called Davey’s name. “Come on, honey. We’re leaving early today.”
Rose Marie followed them out the back door. By the time she reached the gate, Davey and his mother were already in the car. It backed out the driveway, turned into the street, and disappeared around the corner.
“Sarah, Amanda’s also in the hospital.” Rose Marie’s fingers clutched the phone receiver. “She has meningitis, too. Just like Eddie.”
“Oh, boy.”
“A reporter from the
Detroit News
called.”
“Mother.” Sarah’s voice was firm. “You shouldn’t talk to reporters about this.”
“Don’t worry, I hung up on him.”
“Umm . . . that might not have been so smart.” Then her daughter added, “Is Amanda okay?”
“I don’t know. She was a little out of sorts yesterday afternoon and last night her mother left a message that she had a fever and was vomiting.” The phone cord stretched out the sliding door, from the console in the kitchen to her hand as she sat in the lawn chair. Meghan and Sawyer were kicking a soccer ball at the target painted on the garage. “I’ve tried to call Amanda’s mother several times today and haven’t been able to reach her. I guess she’s at the hospital. Do you think I should bother her there?”
“Mom, you need to get accurate information about this. I still think you should call the health department.”
“Sarah, why would they know anything about two kids in the hospital? Besides—and I really hate to say this—they can shut down my day care, you know.”
Sarah was silent and then said, “Maybe so, but you need to have your questions answered.”
“I’ll keep calling Amanda’s mother. At least, the other kids are healthy as horses.”
She reached both Meghan’s and Sawyer’s mothers and told them about the call from the reporter.
“I still haven’t been able to contact anyone about Amanda yet, so I really don’t know what’s going on,” she said to both mothers.
Each asked about her child. “Both kids look terrific,” Rose Marie said. “Meghan is in the bathroom at the moment, washing glue off her hands,” and “Sawyer’s standing next to me. Want to talk to him?”
Now, Meghan and Sawyer had gone, and the kitchen floor was a mess. Rose Marie hauled out the cleaning gear. She had just dunked the mop head into a bucket of sudsy water that smelled of pine needles and lemon peel when the phone rang.
“Mrs. Lustov, it’s Gregory Watts from the LaSalle County Health Department. I’m calling to get some information about the children in your day care.”
She twirled the mop in the bucket, wondered what he wanted but knew it would be about the sick kids.
“As you know, two of the children who attend your center, Edward Campbell and Amanda Goodman, are in the hospital with meningitis. We’re required by law to be sure other children aren’t at risk.”
“The rest of the kids are fine.”
“Good. How many children are enrolled in your day care?”
The strings of the mop head writhed in the water like the tentacles of a jellyfish. Did she have to answer? What could happen if she didn’t? Finally she said, “Six, but two of them come only in the mornings.”
He asked their ages, asked which children had been at her home since the day before Eddie got sick.
“Are all the children up to date on their childhood immunizations?” he finally asked.
That question again. Rose Marie hated that question. “As far as I know. They were all up to date when they started coming here.” She had followed the state law on that, had the parents bring copies of their vaccine records when the kids started.
She sloshed the mop head up and down in the water. Maybe he could help her. “Are the other kids going to be okay?” she asked. “They won’t get sick, too, will they?”
“We certainly hope not. That’s why I’m calling, so we can work together to be sure no one else becomes ill.”
He told her that Eddie’s meningitis was caused by bacteria. “
Streptococcus pneumoniae
it’s called.” He then spelled the words for her. “We don’t know what kind of meningitis Amanda has yet. The laboratory results aren’t back. The kind of meningitis Eddie has isn’t thought to be contagious.”
“Good,” she said. “That’s what Dr. Campbell thought.”
“Dr. Campbell?”
“He’s Eddie’s father.”
“I see,” said the man from the health department. “Anyway, it’s curious that the two children in your day care both have meningitis. We’re waiting for more information from the state laboratory.”
“Curious,” he had said. She wouldn’t have used that word. She would have said “terrible.”