After the Fog (44 page)

“Because
you
are.”

“I’m not crying,” Rose said, placing her mug back on the table.

Mrs. Saltz pointed at her chest. “I can feel you weeping here.”

Rose’s eyes filled, and she wiped her teardrops.

Rose was oddly comforted by Mrs. Saltz. She had never thought of her as very capable, yet there she was. In Rose’s silence, Mrs. Saltz yammered on, detailing her plans to use the money she’d socked away, to move her family, without Mr. Saltz, of course, to the warm, healing springs in Georgia.

Normally Rose would have been excited, agreeing Georgia would be far enough south that Mr. Saltz would never suspect, but she didn’t have the energy. The concern was gone, as though it’d never been there. Had Rose faked her entire existence, not really caring for anyone at all? Rose listened to her heart. No, she did have concern; she just didn’t have anything left to give.

Forgive yourself.

Rose pushed herself up from the table, opened the hutch door and fished out a fresh bottle of vodka. She unscrewed the lid and took a swig.

Henry entered the kitchen. Maybe he’d find a way to forgive her.

Rose turned to face him; he looked stricken, his eyes shot with hate.

Henry took a shot glass from the hutch. “Bonaroti stopped by, thinks Unk died because he lived in this town. Says he can tell a guy from the valley just by eyeballin’ them. Some fella, Stadler, a chemist is up here, trying to find fluoride or fluorine, of all the damned things, in the lungs of the bodies who haven’t been buried. A byproduct of the zinc mill.”

Henry’s voice was monotone, like he was talking in order to buy time or gauge Rose’s mood. “Bonaroti said the government will be in here in a day and a half and the mills are going to have to answer for this. They should have shut things down before Sunday morning. But they kept ratcheting away, collecting their cash while good people met their demise. Including John. Goddammit. The mills are full-blast running again, people working like nothing happened.”

Rose turned back to her tea and pushed the vodka across the table with the back of her hand, a silent offering to Henry. She snuck a glance at Mrs. Saltz at the stove, stirring.

Henry filled the shot glass and threw it back, not looking at Rose. “Bonaroti said you could actually do something to help people when the Feds get here, do something more than just care for people after they become ill, you could actually stop people from getting ill. Said he’ll need your help over the next few weeks…interviews, surveys…”

A head nod was all Rose could muster. She was so ashamed. “Hen?” Rose said, hoping he’d understand that for once she needed to hear the words that went along with how he felt about her. She needed to hear that he understood her and loved her and forgave her, but she could not ask for it.

He looked up and when she stayed mute, he shrugged and left the house, slamming the door.

Rose jumped at the sound then sighed into her tea. No person was strong enough to force anything to happen in the world. Rose sat there for hours, parsing the combination of events that occurred in the past few days wishing she could change any one of them. She tried to say a prayer but none came to mind. Her rosary wasn’t in her pocket. She looked around the kitchen for something that reminded her of her life before the accident. Nothing did. Not even Mrs. Saltz, stirring soup, seeming like the most reasonable woman God had ever crafted. Rose smirked at the thought; there was no God.

H
enry had slipped out of the house when Rose had caught five minutes of sleep, and didn’t come back, proving to her what she had feared her entire life.

Rumor had it he had picked up a shift at the Duquesne Works, pulling overtime every shot he had, living there with a cousin. Magdalena was living with Henry now, sharing a bedroom with three cousins, twice removed, under the age of four and was, according to neighbors who spoke loud enough in front of the house for her to overhear, doing very well.

Sara Clara, Buzzy and Leo headed down south and took the fragile Auntie Anna with them. They went with the groups of fellow Donorans who’d been invited to North Carolina to cleanse their lungs. The reports coming back were that all were responding to the clean, salty breezes. Thoughts of Johnny in a rehabilitation facility in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, accompanied Rose as she went about her day.

Her activities were no longer shaped by nursing or the immediate demands of family. Rose hid herself away from the world, safely ensconced at home. She thought of her family every minute of the day, thinking that people and families were like the nails made in the mill down below. Each gripper left marks on its nails so unique they could be used to solve crimes.

And Rose thought, families were marked that way, too. If it were possible to see inside Henry or Rose and Buzzy, Sara Clara, Magdalena or Johnny—their souls would all bear distinct gripper marks of their shared misery.

Rose didn’t clean the house or bathe or even eat very much. She stayed in bed mostly, not even rain slashing at her windows made her stir. Twice a week Father Tom gave her a lift to visit Johnny.

Once in a while, she braved it and opened the front door to fetch the newspaper. She could only bring herself to read the headlines and then she couldn’t focus enough to leave her gaze on the page.

The November election of Truman over Dewey had come and gone, shocking the nation as most people had gone to bed thinking Dewey won and woke to find Truman the president. The weather had returned to normal in Donora with colder winter temperatures and typical fog that didn’t seem to be killing anyone as the killing smog had done just weeks before.

Rose wandered her house, always having wanted a home of her own, with her own rules, no one to mess up what she fixed up, but she never knew what that might actually feel like. Until now.

She remembered that feeling she’d had the week of the fog, the sense of being with family members yet struck how alone she felt. She hadn’t realized that whatever she had been feeling that day was nothing like what she felt since everyone left. She was still angry at them, but she began to miss the opportunity to tell them she was.

Alone in the house, Rose moved Johnny’s instruments, the footballs, baseball gloves, basketballs, and athletic shoes from room to room every time she noticed them. Rose fully understood her part in Johnny’s accident and inflicted punishment upon herself. If Johnny could not pursue his dreams—or those Rose had for him—then she would not pursue hers either.

After Mrs. Saltz left on Tuesday, November
^2nd
, Rose climbed into what felt like her own death as she marveled at her lack of desire to do anything. She’d stare at the walls, letting the stinky dog Rags into the house after seeing that he belonged to the Johnsons at the funeral, pulling and tugging on his rope. She felt obligated to take him in, knowing he had a home, and owners who didn’t care for him.

Rose now allowed him to press up against her, follow her around the house, and drink from a cereal bowl. In bed, she’d watch the dust settling on itself, darkening the sills. She wasn’t moved to wipe anything down in the least. She enjoyed the nights when the fog swirled around her ceiling at night giving her mind something to do instead of mulling over the fact Henry was no longer sleeping beside her.

She kept waiting to get bored, to rush out of bed, determined to open her own clinic, secure funding, put her family back together, but nothing happened. On the days she didn’t go to visit John, she wrapped herself in smelly sheets and laid there as though the world had clamped an invisible seal over her, squelching her desire to live.

Rose ratcheted her bedside table drawer open. The flask was empty. She went to the kitchen, found nothing. Rose clawed at her cheeks, feeling dizzy. How had she come to be a person rummaging through her own house for booze, like a common beggar?

Because. That was who she’d always been.

The closet. Her secret stash of, well, everything. She shambled back to the bedroom and went straight to her closet. She got on her knees and popped open the secret panel that hid the space in the wall where her salvation lay.

She ferreted through the cans, trying for a moment to keep things neat. But then she began tossing the cans, corn, beans, Spam, baby food, cloth diapers, bottles, where was the booze?

If she could just have one little drink she could think clearly. She hit the back wall, the space now empty of its contents, but continued to feel around, convinced she’d hidden several bottles there. She pounded on the wall with both fists.

They had to be there. She put it there herself. She fell to all fours and heaved for air. Beads of sweat formed at her hairline. She bent forward, head on her knees, disoriented. She didn’t know what aspect of recent life events had her most upset. Finding and losing Theresa? Johnny’s accident?

Or was it Magdalena’s pregnancy, or her family or losing Henry?

Rose bucked up and screamed at the air. “Haven’t I paid enough?”

A voice came from nowhere. “You have.”

Rose flew to the back of the closet, startled. She calmed herself; she knew that voice. She pushed aside the dresses that hid her view. Standing outside the closet was Father Tom, carrying a bag as though he might be staying somewhere for the night.

She threw her fists into the wall. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” She hit the wall so hard it gave under her weight. She paused and hit it again, exposing another hollow space in the closet. Drywall instead of plaster in this part of the closet? Unk would not have stood for such shoddy building materials.

Father Tom joined her on the closet floor, pulled her hands into his and turned them back and forth, assessing the scrapes and bruises. Rose had expelled all the energy she might have used to push him away and shove him out the door.

“I’ll be staying here until your family returns,” he said.

Rose shook her head. They weren’t coming back. They hated each other, why would they come back?

“Well, then, until one of your friends comes to stay.”

She shook her head again.

“Well, then, see, that’s the problem. I’ll be your friend, then. I can’t have you killing yourself. People need you Rose. You’re not the kind who can just disappear and not be missed.”

Rose pulled her hands from his and balled up against the wall, her head resting on her knees. She couldn’t believe the priest had casually mentioned killing herself.

“Suit yourself,” Rose said. “But, I won’t kill myself. Don’t mind if death shows up and takes me. I’d like that, actually. To just be done with it all. And just so we’re clear, I don’t want you here. You can’t bring God back into my life just because you want to.”

He nodded and examined the hole she’d made with her fists.

“Flashlight?” he said.

“Kitchen drawer.”

Father Tom tripped over the canned goods, and headed into the kitchen leaving Rose to stare at the wall. What the hell was in there? How could there be another secret place? Had she been so good at hiding things that she hadn’t even realized what she’d done? Who the hell built a second hidey-hole? Had she done it and forgotten?

Father Tom returned, brandishing the flashlight and shined it into the hole. “Looks like something’s here.”

That didn’t make sense. A person couldn’t forget something like that—building a false wall for Christ sakes. Was she mentally ill instead of just a liar? Stupid? She stabbed at the wall with the butt of the flashlight, piercing the wall with each blow.

The hole grew big enough for them to tunnel their fingers into and tear hunks away. Three big sections gave way and she flashed the light into the hole again. The light bounced back, reflecting off something shiny. She reached inside. Vodka. She felt crazy, how could she forget? She unscrewed the lid and took a swig, feeling it course through every inch of her, warming, numbing, calming her like magic, the way the simple act of saying the rosary used to do.

Father Tom declined her offer for a swig.

She shook her head at the wall. “I didn’t build this, you know. It had to be Unk.” The master bedroom was his before Rose and Henry moved in seventeen years before.

He was a hoarder, like Rose, but not a hider. He hoarded right where everyone could see him with his jars of bolts and nails and screws. But still. Rose put the vodka aside and stuck her head in the hole, the flashlight sending a sliver of light through the space between her chin and plaster hole.

Rose’s vision adjusted. More whiskey and bourbon. She pulled the bottles out and set them behind her. It wasn’t long before she stared uncovering cases of beer. Iron City beer. Rose cursed him silently. Why the hell would he hide that of all things? Rose had to widen the hole to maneuver the case of beer out. It didn’t feel right in her arms. Too light, but not light enough to be empties.

She lifted both sides of the case, and stared down at bottles. What the hell? She closed the box, pushing it behind her. She lifted three more cases out, shaking her head, almost smiling at Unk. He’d always been a strange man, and if he’d been rich, he’d have been deemed eccentric. But, hell, he was interesting enough that half the town thought he’d buried money in the house.

Rose dove back into the hole in the wall and rooted around. Nothing else. Just the outside wall. Nothing. She sat back on one of the cases of beer. Buried money? Why would Unk tease people so? Probably to make people spend the rest of their lives wondering. What would Rose do if she found money? Five days before she had an answer. Buy a new home, pay for everyone’s school. Be secure, happy. Five days before, everything had been clear.