Wickett's Remedy (3 page)

The man behind the grease-stained apron pretended not to recognize them as they reclaimed the same window table. Though Henry’s shyness and Lydia’s limited time made conversation difficult, she learned her companion was the only son of a
West Roxbury businessman, his medical school career the family’s first chance at claiming a doctor. Henry had few friends, as his studies and uncertain health occupied most of his time. His mother had despaired of his eligibility as a bachelor and hoped his becoming a doctor would compensate for his other failings. Though Henry Wickett tended to keep his eyes downcast, when he spoke he gazed at her with a forthrightness much more common to children than to adults. His openness and gentleness—qualities she was unaccustomed to seeing in young men—convinced her that his motives for seeking her company, while mysterious, were almost certainly not dishonorable. Perhaps Henry Wickett wanted to improve his conversational skills preparatory to whatever future courtship he planned to undertake; perhaps he simply did not like to eat alone. Whatever the reason, she was happy to oblige him. In poignant tones she described to her brothers the poor fellow she had begun accompanying to lunch each Friday, her depiction so woeful that all save Michael assumed an act of charity for a man greatly advanced in age.

The first letter arrived by courier on a Wednesday afternoon. She was certain some mistake had been made, but the messenger’s docket read: “To Miss Lydia Kilkenny, Who Works Behind the Shirt Counter in the Gilchrist Department Store.” On D Street very occasional letters arrived from a distant cousin in County Cork and Michael had once written to Babe Ruth for an autographed photo, but never in her life had Lydia received an envelope bearing her name. Before an audience of gawking counter girls, she signed for the post with a pale, trembling hand; she was certain only bad news traveled with such pomp. From his pouch the
courier withdrew an elegant envelope of cream-colored linen, embossed with a wax seal depicting the silhouette of a bird in flight. The nearest thing to it that Lydia had ever seen was the certificate she had received confirming her successful graduation from the eighth grade. To avoid breaking the wax seal, which seemed too fine a thing to corrupt, she slit the side of the envelope with a hatpin. The words were penned in a clear, elegant hand, in even lines of dark blue ink across a single, powder blue page:

Dearest Lydia,

I am certain you did not expect to hear from me so soon after yet another lunch in which you valiantly carried the day while I sat frozen like some awkward creature made of sticks. Oh Lydia, forgive me, but I have always felt so much more myself on paper. I have ceased to seek reasons for this odd truth: I accept I am a man of letters, my heart filled with ink. If I am to hold any hope of winning you, this is something you must know.

Lydia, I am changed from the poor wretch you took in hand in the Gilchrist’s Men’s Department six short weeks ago. That man was a trembling creature too overwhelmed by the world to think he might ever carve his own bit of happiness from it, a man resigned to a solitary life lit only by the lamp of his studies. His desire to help others did not extend to the belief he could help himself—but Lydia, you have changed that. You have revealed a world in which some measure of shared happiness is reserved even for life’s humblest creatures, so long as they have the courage to lay claim to it when it comes.

You are my happiness, Lydia. The joy with which you move through the world is infectious, reminding me of the pleasure to be found in even life’s smallest facets. Please know as I sit mute and uncompanionable by your side I am silently praising your person and all its fine attributes: even as I write this I am gathering strength for a day when I might speak aloud the thoughts and feelings presently prisoned by the narrow chamber of my pen.

Yours in heart and mind,

Henry Wickett

Her hand began to tremble, forcing her to place the letter on the counter in order to read it again. In demeanor Henry was unchanged from the fellow who had, with such difficulty, first requested her company. And yet the idea of a courtship filled her with a sense of imminence, as if she housed an embryonic chick pecking with its egg tooth against the inner surface of its shell. Henry was different from the D Street boys who took her to the Imperial for the Sunday matinee, or to Castle Island for doughnuts and fried clams—boys with rough hands and loud voices for whom a table was only ever a table and never a tree.

Only now did she admit to herself that for several weeks, unexpected thoughts of Henry Wickett had been finding her. In the middle of a sale, her mind would recall his hopeful smile, or the quiet sincerity with which he spoke, or the mindfulness with which he attended her voice. With Henry’s letter, she acknowledged that her thoughts of him had become a melody in the back of her mind, present even when too soft to hear.

The next evening she took extra care with her Friday shirtwaist, pressing it a second time.

“Getting ready for tomorrow’s lunch?” Michael teased as she stood over the ironing board.

“He’s different from you or any of the other boys here in Southie,” she replied. She had not spoken this thought aloud before and the words, leaving her throat, felt like the beginning of a new season.

Friday morning, wanting to look fresh for her suitor, she conducted herself as if she were coated in a thin layer of slow-drying varnish. When five minutes past his customary arrival time he had yet to appear, she was seized by an odd constricture of her throat, and went so far as to risk a dress code violation by unbuttoning her collar. He had never been late before. Then, just as she stepped from behind her counter to join the other girls in the lunchroom, she looked down the center aisle to see him walking toward her with an odd, clipped pace, his face downturned and his neck thrust inside his collar like a sheltering turtle. On reaching her counter he froze, the cords of his neck standing out from his skin as if lifting his head had become a monumental task, achievable only with the aid of ropes and pulleys. Slowly, his face rose to meet hers. The heat of his blush was almost tangible. His eyes were small moons.

“Will you come to lunch?” he whispered, his lips trembling.

“I will,” she answered with a shy smile and then Henry blossomed: his spine unfurled, his shoulders broadened, and his smile burst into happy bloom.

In the letters that now arrived each Wednesday, Henry proved an effusive and poetic correspondent. She came to know of the lonely childhood spent in
sickbeds, the time taken up by reading; of Henry’s hope to curry his father’s favor by his successful study of medicine; and of his desire to prove to his mother he could succeed in the world. Lydia was uncertain she knew her own heart as well as she came to know Henry’s. His letters were the equivalent of personal maps, lovingly rendered and lush in detail. In her experience, self-reflection was not a quality widely cultivated, requiring as it did such dear resources of time. Her self-knowledge was a wordless creature of light and contour, whose movements she knew but could not always explain. Henry’s letters accomplished an act of transubstantiation, transforming Henry’s soul from an elusive chimera into a creature Lydia could know and feel. She collected his letters in a small purse she kept near her at all times to protect against their becoming misplaced. During her daily shifts she carried the most recent missive in her shirtwaist pocket so that she could, at any moment, brush her fingers against the smooth paper.

As conversation became easier, Henry graduated from chicken broth to chicken itself, and then to the daily special. His cheeks gained a discernible color, he stopped coughing so often, and a scarf he was inclined to wear both indoors and out disappeared. An entire week passed without Henry once feeling faint or feverish. To celebrate he engaged in the unprecedented act of ordering dessert.

Henry’s letters imbued even the banal particulars of Lydia’s day with magic. Passages would come to her at odd moments: while eating in the lunchroom, or while combing her hair. She would hear these words in a stronger, more assured version of Henry’s voice, as if a
second Henry, just as real, had taken residence inside her. This second Henry accompanied her to Southie: he was with her as she met her girlfriends for a soda, as she bantered with her brothers, and even as she sat at the Imperial beside the D Street boys, who were no longer permitted to hold her hand. Henry’s letters, now sometimes as long as ten pages, necessitated the purchase, on credit, of a larger purse from Handbags. On evenings when she verged on bursting with his admiration, she would quit the streetcar early and stand at the Channel’s western edge. “Lips like plums!” she would declaim to a gull pecking at a piece of detritus along the bank. “Sympathy and intelligence in rare proportion!” she would sing to the blurred, anonymous faces inside a passing train car. The constant hum of factories and the rattle and whistle of the northbound line provided Lydia rare shelter for her curious tryst—for here and only here did she allow herself to lend breath to her lover’s words, reciting from his letters as loudly as her proud, hopeful voice would allow.

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