Walking with Susannah back through the woods had become a nightly ritual. At first they had seemed to meet accidentally, leaving at the same time only occasionally, for many times Susannah left with the other nurses—especially during Wolfgang’s early days at Waverly Hills, when he and Susannah first met. However, both had somehow settled on the same unspoken schedule each evening. The fresh, untainted air of the wilderness, mixed with the crickets and the wind, seemed to ease the tensions of the solarium behind them. They’d discuss the new patients, the children, or the funny incidents; any talk of death on this walk home was taboo.
But tonight Wolfgang walked with a quicker pace, his eyes on alert. They’d dropped Abel off at the children’s pavilion, where several of the kids were already asleep on their little screened porch. Susannah had walked him inside and returned looking a bit sad. She’d see him in the morning, but of course there was always her greatest fear: that one morning he wouldn’t wake up, that he’d become one of the growing, unstoppable statistics that had long ago made the sanatorium the talk of the city.
Wolfgang normally stood a careful pace aside from her, keeping a respectful distance. But tonight, if there was someone prowling about who was willing to throw bricks through windows, they were probably capable of more. So he walked closer by her side. Susannah seemed preoccupied with her thoughts too, and to Wolfgang, the woods around them had never appeared so ominous.
Come
after
me
if
you
must,
he thought,
but
leave
my
friends
in
peace.
“Wolf, what’s eating you?”
Wolfgang hesitated. “McVain. He was a pianist.”
“You said so earlier.”
“I don’t just mean he plays the piano, Susannah. Didn’t you see him?”
She folded her arms against the cold wind. “I saw him the same as you did.”
“His arm movements, how his fingers moved. Even the nubs. Piano wasn’t just a hobby for him.”
She smirked. “The real McCoy, huh?”
They stopped outside the nurses’ dormitory, a two-story rectangular brick building that housed thirteen women, including nurses, laundry women, and cooks. The nurses split the two daily shifts, seven days a week. Susannah was a veteran of the crew and was fortunate enough to have her own room on the second floor. Wolfgang had overheard tales among the nurses of life in the dormitory: drinking after hours, smoking and playing cards, laughing, pillow fights, chatter about men half the night—but of course Susannah would not discuss such matters with him.
Wolfgang shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the dormitory. “I need to get to McVain.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know yet.” Wolfgang stared at the ground, thinking of his plan for tomorrow night. He hoped Susannah wouldn’t back out. He could have asked Lincoln, but he couldn’t trust Lincoln to keep his mouth closed.
“There’s…something I’d like to show you,” said Susannah.
Wolfgang looked up. “Show me? Where?”
“Inside,” she said.
“Susannah… I can’t—”
“It’s something I’ve been working on for a long time. Two years, in fact. I’d like you to see it.”
“What is it?”
“It’s kind of a surprise. Not a gift, but…it’s something I’m proud of. You’ll see. It’s no big deal, really…”
Wolfgang watched the silhouette of a nurse pass by an upstairs window. “Um, can’t you bring whatever it is out here?”
“Well, I guess I could.”
His instincts told him to run. “You know, I wouldn’t want rumors getting started, Susannah.”
She seemed amused by this comment. Or was it something else? “It’ll only take a minute. And then you can get back home to your work. I’ll be right back.”
He waited outside as Susannah hurried toward the small porch. When she opened the door, a wave of giggling came forth from the nurses inside. Wolfgang glanced up toward the second-floor windows again. A form that could have been Susannah moved behind a drawn shade and then disappeared. But there was no way she could’ve made it upstairs so quickly.
What happened next was so sudden he didn’t have time to cover his eyes. The dormitory’s door burst open and an auburn-haired nurse stumbled out onto the porch, giggling, a white towel over the mounds of her breasts. The flesh of her exposed shoulders was pink from the heat of a recent shower and still slightly wet by the glistening look of it. The bottom of the towel barely covered the opening between her thighs. Wolfgang turned and covered his eyes. But then she screamed, surely not expecting a man to be standing out in the middle of the woods, let alone a budding priest. And so because of the scream he looked up again. She slipped on her way back inside and the towel shifted, exposing her right breast. Another burst of laughter followed.
“Oh, dear God,” he whispered, moving away from the dorm.
“Wolf,” Susannah called after him from the porch, struggling to contain her amusement.
Wolfgang stopped. “Did you set that up?”
“No, of course not.” She shushed the girls and closed the door. “Don’t be silly. I didn’t even make it up to my room.”
Wolfgang felt his face burning. “I’d better be going. Another night maybe.”
She nodded. “Well, sure. Okay.”
“Good night, Susannah.”
Wolfgang heard laughter again, but it faded as he penetrated deeper into the woods. He felt like a fool. He’d seen breasts before. The art world was full of naked women and bare breasts—paintings, murals, statues. And he was a doctor; he had studied anatomy for years. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before.
And after all, he was once married for five years.
***
Wolfgang moved as briskly as his limp would allow down the rest of the hillside to his cottage and locked the front door behind him. His heart raced, partly from the walk but mostly from the lingering images of Marlene’s right breast. That was her name. It had come to him halfway home.
Not that it mattered.
But it did matter. He couldn’t get the image of her lone nipple from his head, and the way the breast slipped from the confines of her towel. Lincoln had told him on several occasions about the shower room in the nurses’ dormitory. He’d joke about the hole in the wall on the back of the building that stood several feet off the ground, just high enough that Lincoln needed to stand on a log to get eye level with it.
Lincoln seemed to delight especially in sharing such details with, of all men, a future priest. “Just make sure Nurse Beverly ain’t the one naked,” he’d say, as if Wolfgang had any intention of sneaking over to the nurses’ dormitory in the middle of the night to spy. “Marlene’s the one you want to catch.”
Little did Lincoln know, Wolfgang had plenty of experience. He’d spent his childhood looking through such a peephole—spying, curious, frightened—and what he’d seen through that hole one night had changed everything.
Marlene’s the one you want to catch…
Wolfgang moved from candle to sconce and back to candle, lighting the wicks until his cottage was aglow. He lit the candle atop the piano and then the one beside his bed. More light. That’s what he needed. More light. He removed his lab coat and loosened a few buttons on his cassock.
He grabbed his rosary beads from his bedside table, knelt beside his bed, and prayed. He would channel his thoughts—to the Lord first and then to his music. He imagined he was back in the seminary, the abbey at Saint Meinrad, hearing the bells every morning for the wake-up call. Five o’clock. They had a half hour to get to the abbey church for matins, and then Mass. A plain breakfast of milk, oatmeal, and Meinrad’s brown bread would follow. Then class from 7:30 until noon, where they studied Latin, Greek, theology and some science. Lunch in the refectory and then afternoon classes. Vespers before dinner. They were allowed some free time after dinner until lights out at ten, when the Grand Silence would begin. No talking. It was during this time that Wolfgang did his best thinking. Oftentimes he missed the schedule of his days at Saint Meinrad. The peace and tranquility without the fears of Waverly Hills: of illness and blood and disease. He missed the clanking of the radiators as the steam revved up every morning, what Wolfgang told his mother—on a rare visit home—was “the abbey’s bang-clank symphony.”
Wolfgang sometimes wondered if he’d made a mistake coming back to Waverly when his heart often longed to return to Saint Meinrad, to officially return and complete the studies needed to become ordained. Training from afar had proved to be more taxing than he’d imagined. But he just couldn’t leave with how widespread the tuberculosis was becoming, and so what he originally thought would have been several months had by now turned into years.
Wolfgang prayed for ten minutes before dropping the rosary beads on the bed. He still felt unsettled, like he needed a night of meditation in the crypt chapel of the abbey church, or an afternoon chanting from his
Liber
Usualis
. He pulled the black box from under the bed, removed the pages, and put them atop the piano. He poured a glass of wine, swirled it repeatedly, the meniscus sloshing expertly to the rim of the glass but no higher. He never spilled a drop. He let it breathe, swirling, smelling, and then he took a sip. He savored the warmth as it barreled down his throat and spread out through his stomach.
The window next to the piano had been repaired during the day. The new panes were still smudged with remnants of fresh putty, but they fit well enough to keep the cool air out. Wolfgang sipped his wine again and placed it on the piano bench. His right foot throbbed as it did near the end of every day, so he dragged it across the room to the fireplace. There was no shame in dragging it while he was alone. A few more glasses of wine would help numb the pain, and then he would hardly care.
Next to the fireplace was his father’s Edison phonograph. It was the Gem, the smallest of the Thomas Edison models. Beside it was Wolfgang’s canned music collection, stacked ten rows wide and six high, some taken from his father’s collection when he’d left home, the rest acquired over the years. The music ranged from Mozart to ragtime, from Beethoven and Bach to Gregorian chants Wolfgang had been given by one of the Saint Meinrad monks, the chants recorded at a German monastery in the late 1890s. The cylinders were all protected and labeled in cardboard tubes. Wolfgang chose the Gregorian chants, popped the lid, and removed the cylindrical record. He was careful not to touch the outside surface as he fit it inside the phonograph. He touched the stylus down on the grooves of the rotating cylinder and, moments later, fighting through the static, male baritone voices burst forth from the arched horn.
At the piano, he warmed his fingers with Beethoven. Soon the wine took hold. Susannah, Dr. Waters, McVain, Marlene—the day was all fading into distant memory. He dipped his quill into the inkwell and scribbled notes, tested a few keys, and then scribbled some more.
Thirty minutes later, Wolfgang sat with elbows propped on the keys, his fingers interlocked around his drooping head. He could see the pages he’d crumpled into balls and tossed on the floor minutes ago.
They just were not right.
Five years and he’d yet to complete a simple requiem Mass.
Not that it could be so simple; the requiem had to be perfect. Rose’s memory demanded so, and if nothing else in this life, Wolfgang was a driven man. His mother told him when he was eight that he’d never walk again. He did. His father was convinced that he’d never learn the piano. He did. His mother said he’d never become a doctor. He’d never amount to anything without the King James Bible. And look at where he sat now.
Wolfgang saw that the rose atop his piano was wilting, the petals no longer bright red and flowering. They’d darkened to rust, hard and crisp. He limped across to the front door and stepped outside, where the cool temperatures made his arm hair stand on end.
Behind the cottage was a birdbath full of dirty leaves and water. Wolfgang knelt beside it. Spread before him, in the embrace of the candlelight, was a small rose garden. Dozens of red roses stood there, protected from the cold by heat lamps and metal mirrors that reflected the sun’s rays. Lincoln had put the contraption together, borrowing everything from the sanatorium without Dr. Barker’s knowing. Wolfgang had not believed it would work. Roses would not continue to grow in the winter. But Lincoln had been adamant. So Wolfgang had blessed the garden the day it was planted, even scattering some of Rose’s ashes behind the cottage. And voila—Lincoln, it turned out, had a bit of a green thumb.
Wolfgang perused the choices and found the rose he wanted. Its sturdy stem was upright and scattered with thorns and tiny green leaves. He clipped it, lifted the candlestick from the grass, and returned inside.
A fresh rose for the vase atop the piano. He felt better now.
He worked for another hour before his eyelids grew heavy. He finished his third glass of wine and blew out all the candles. At the side of his bed, he said a prayer for the patients. He prayed for McVain. Wolfgang lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to the night. Then he did what he always did when he couldn’t sleep.
He thought of Rose.
***
It had all started with a glance on the steps of the Cathedral of the Assumption in downtown Louisville. But in truth, his love for her had started weeks before, when Wolfgang took his seat in the back of the cathedral and spotted her arrival. Or, rather, heard her arrival. She was a few minutes late, and the clicking sound of her heels on the marble floor drew his attention. In that moment, a tug-of-war began in Wolfgang Pike: between Rose Chandler and the Lord.
He was twenty years old, with two years of major seminary under his belt and home for the summer from Saint Meinrad, where he’d been schooled for the past six years, through high school and into his college studies. That summer he couldn’t wait to go to the cathedral and listen to the choir. He loved listening to the monks chant at the abbey, but he missed the harmony of female voices. When her slender fingers and red nails dipped into the baptismal pool, he was mesmerized—but not by the choir this time. Instead, he followed her fingers as they touched her forehead, the shallow valley between her breasts, her left shoulder and then her right, motioning the sign of the cross. She wore a red dress that conformed to her figure and ended just above her knees. Her black hair had faint swirls of auburn, cut in a bob that hovered like a small black curtain around her neck. She hurried to the row in front of Wolfgang, genuflected, and then sat on the first seat. What had Brother Blackstone told them before they’d left for the summer? To just move along and go on your merry way if confronted by someone of the opposite sex. Wolfgang quietly removed himself from his row and relocated to the other side of the church. But that advice proved useless.