Wickett's Remedy (22 page)
Authors: Myla Goldberg
Her mother emerged from behind the stove with the steaming tea kettle. “He always teased me about being stingy with food,” she whispered. “He said the food at Devens was no good. I was fixing to send him a package, only I hadn’t quite gotten around to it.” She sat down. “It might have saved him, that package.” She winced. “It might have helped to keep his strength up.”
“I was going to write him back,” Thomas whimpered. “I had started a letter, but it wasn’t done yet.” His eyes widened. “He was probably lying sick in hospital, just hoping for a letter to raise his spirits, and I hadn’t even written!”
Dan Kilkenny does not remember this. He wonders if Liddie is recalling the time they got the letter telling of Granny K’s death, which was troubling sad for everyone.
“There was nothing any of us could’ve done,” her father said. “Now let’s all sit. We’ll bring whatever’s left over to Malachy and the girls upstairs.”
Once they were seated, her father bowed his head. He usually only recited grace over dinner. Today, over breakfast, he bowed his head but did not speak. Lydia could not imagine words to fill the space. Yesterday she had pondered portents in streetlamps, as though the world’s transformation were a subtle thing. Today she needed to look no farther than the kitchen table.
Father O’Brian was the first person Lydia heard use the word “epidemic.” He arrived to the flat late that afternoon. In a haggard voice he explained that he had been at Carney, where the need for doctors was matched only by the need for clergy; nuns could offer solace but they could not perform Extreme Unction. Father O’Brian had been forced to cancel morning
mass: all the altar boys were sick and there was too much other work to be done. Today there were three funerals to perform, all of them young people. He did not want to think about tomorrow. He felt unwell himself but there was too much work to consider resting.
According to the telegram, they could visit the grave or arrange a transfer once the camp received a clean bill of health. Father O’Brian appeared visibly relieved to learn that Michael had been buried at Devens. He led them in the Lord’s Prayer and assured them that once the epidemic had passed, Michael would receive a funeral far grander than the truncated services the current circumstances permitted.
That night, she and her brother danced, his hand large and comforting at the small of her back. Saturated with their combined sweat, the fabric of her dress formed a second skin beneath his palm. As they moved she could smell her brother’s aftershave and the pomade he used in his hair. She had forgotten these scents and was overwhelmed with gratitude for their return. The other dancers were unfamiliar save for Alice Feeney O’Toole. Her hair was woven into two neat braids that lifted as she twirled.
“Mick, I knew it wasn’t true!” she murmured, leaning toward her brother’s ear. “I knew you weren’t really dead!” Her brother was smiling his usual crooked smile.
“Oh I’m dead all right, Liddie,” his voice whispered in her ear, so low it was more a vibration than words. She opened her eyes to a dark figure standing in the doorway. The sight almost made her scream.
Michael may or may not have contributed to his sister’s nightmare. We are powerless over all aspects of Our whisperings save their ceaseless production.
“There’s something wrong with Tom,” came James’s voice from the darkness. She heard the springs of her parents’ bed creak. Before she managed to pull back
her blankets her mother already had leapt from bed. For a moment Lydia was able to convince herself she was still dreaming but the trick did not last. Soon her mother’s voice called from the other room. The vibration of the floor as her father jumped from bed was too small and telling a detail to belong to a nightmare. She had just managed to stand when her father returned with Thomas in his arms—a large, awkward bundle that caused him to stagger with each step.
“Get out!” her mother shrieked, appearing in the doorway behind him. “Get out!” She squeezed around her husband, grasped her daughter by the arms and pulled her from the room.
Lydia found herself standing barefoot in the kitchen with James, the cold floor sending darts of alertness up through her legs.
“What happened?” she asked, her voice still thick with sleep.
“He got sicker,” James whispered. “I woke up feeling like I was stuck inside an oven and realized it was on account of Tom. When we went to bed he was feeling lousy but he made me promise not to tell. But I had to do it. Didn’t I have to do it, Liddie?”
She put her hand on James’s shoulder but this reminded her too much of the banished dream. She removed her hand. “You did right,” she promised.
“He’s sure to hate me,” James squeaked. “And now he’s the only older brother I’ve got.”
John had managed to sleep through the commotion of Thomas’s removal, but woke up on hearing his brother.
Jamie was awful scared. When he first learned about Mick, he and Tom had been fighting and he wished it had been Tom instead.
“Jamie, what’s wrong?” he called from the other room. “Where’s Tom?” John sat half upright on the
mattress in the front room, too sleep-muddled to progress any further.
“Tom’s sick,” Lydia called to him. “Ma’s got him now.”
“But I thought we weren’t going to worry her,” John said. “He said it were just a small fever.”
“It got bigger,” James replied.
“I dreamed I were floating on the sun,” John whispered.
Their father appeared from the bedroom. “We’re all to go to the front room. Liddie, you’re to sleep on the couch and I’m to sleep with the boys. On no account are you to go into the bedroom or your ma’s sure to kill me. You’re not even to go to the kitchen unless there’s nothing for it and tomorrow you’re to stay clear of the flat ’til supper.” He knelt on the floor so quickly Lydia thought he had fallen. “Oh Heavenly Father,” he whispered, “please look over your child Thomas this night and see that his fever lessens. Please keep your children Lydia, James, and John from slipping into illness. And please tell Mick, who is with you in Heaven, that we miss him—” He began to cry, the sound of the earth cracking open.
Dan Kilkenny remembers Tom falling ill, but he is sure as taxes that Mick outlived him.
When her husband’s memory began to slip in his later years, he often assumed Michael still lived, a mistake Cora eventually stopped trying to correct.
BOARD ADJUDGES FLU NOT OF SPANISH VARIETY SUGGESTS SIMPLE STEPS TO AVOID THE DISEASE
The Department of Health assured the public last night that Boston has no reason to fear an epidemic of Spanish influenza. “While there have been reports of a limited outbreak of some
virulence,” officials said, “our findings, pending further investigation, suggest that pneumonia may be the culprit, accompanied by a flu of the normal and not Spanish type.”
To avoid infection health officials advised against kissing “except through a handkerchief.” Citizens are further advised to take the following simple steps to protect themselves:
Spray nose and throat daily with dichloramine.
Get plenty of rest in bed.
Keep windows wide open.
Eat meals regularly and do not curtail on quantity.
Beware of persons shaking their handkerchiefs.
Don’t use common towels, cups, or other articles which come into contact with face.
Don’t spit in public places.
How’re you holding up?
Pretty rough. They turned E Deck into another sick bay and so now I’m in H-8.
Christ! All the way down there?
It’s not very good. I feel lousy but I ain’t about to see the doctor.
I’m kinda shabby myself but I think it’s seasickness. Leastways that’s what I tell myself.
What’s the idea sending us out like this? We’re not even halfway to France!
It’s lousy, but we gotta make it.
It’s the ship that’s making it so bad. We’re all crammed together.
Do like I do and stay on deck. At least that way you get air. I been sleeping up there too.
Nobody stopped you?
Who’s gonna stop me? It’s all too big a mess.
It’ll be better once we hit Brest. As long as we’re on board we ain’t soldiers, we’re fish in a lousy barrel.
Tell me a story.
Nurse!
Water, can someone bring me water?
Oh God.
Please, any kind of story. Tell me about your girl.
Don’t got a girl.
Nurse!
It’s so hot.
Tell me about her. Is she pretty?
Ain’t there any water?
Can’t—breathe.
She’s pretty.
Does she have a nice smile?
She has a nice smile.
Where’s a nurse?
We’re all alone here! We’re gonna die here!
Shut up, you!
Does she sing to you at night?
Nurse!
She sings.
What does she sing?
Can’t—breathe.
I’ll do the cookin’, I’ll pay the rent—baby—I know I done you wrong.
Water!
You’re lucky, having a girl like that.
So hot.
Go to sleep.
Nurse!
Can’t. I’m afraid to close my eyes.
Harmon, Lewis, Cahill, Mahoney, take E Deck, Sections Three through Five, port side. You heard me! Move it!
No sir.
What did you just say?
I said, “No sir.”
Harmon, go down to E Deck and clean those compartments and bring up anyone you find down there. That’s a direct order.
Sir, if I go down there I’ll end up like them.
This is not open for discussion, Harmon.
Sir, it’s terrible down there. The bodies are beginning to smell and there’s blood and piss all over the floor.
Harmon, if those compartments aren’t cleaned every day they are only going to get worse. We are still three days from France and I won’t have this ship turning into a floating shit pile.
It’s already worse than that, sir.
Harmon, I expected better from you.
It’s a floating coffin.
I’m not going, sir.
Me neither, sir.
Court-martial us if you want, but we ain’t going down there. Sir.
My Dear Boy—
I am sure your mother would not have liked being old, especially not here, where they do not leave you alone and there is always somebody checking on you. Either the maid, or the fellow who comes to make sure I have taken my pills, or the girl who just comes to “chat.” She is the worst of them. She wants to ferret out if I am still up to the task of looking after myself in this little apartment that your mother would have hated. This girl can tell I am not my regular self lately, but the only answer she will get from me is that I have a lot on my mind.
The truth of the matter is that I am having trouble sleeping. The only bright side to this is that it gives us something in common. You never did sleep through the night. We tried everything—leaving a light on, not leaving a light on, feeding you extra, feeding you less. The doctor said you would outgrow it eventually, but you showed him. Sometimes you had to pee. You would wander into our room, your little eyes half closed and your little feet vanishing into the carpet your mother had special-ordered from Brussels. Then you would stand beside our bed, more asleep than awake, and let loose all over that nice, expensive, imported carpet. That was when we decided to stop giving you warm milk. I have started taking the same precautions. No liquids after six p.m. or I cannot be held responsible for the consequences. I am never so grateful to be living alone as when I wake up to find I have wet the bed.
What did you do when a bad dream woke you up? I suppose your mother would know the answer. I will
add it to the mile-long list of questions I would like to ask her. I have never been the sort to remember my dreams, so when one shoves me awake in the middle of the night, I am not prepared. Mostly I just stare at the ceiling and invite whatever cockamamy thought that wants a piece of me to help themselves. I cannot recommend it as a pastime, but it is better than the pills the doctor here gave me when I told him about it. Taking those things is like pouring syrup into my head. The next morning I feel like someone traded my tongue for a chunk of tire rubber.
Love,
Your Father