After the Fog (46 page)

The Stewart home was on Sycamore. Tiny, bent Mrs. Stewart answered the door and smiled, accustomed to Rose’s home-care visits for her husband’s chronic bronchitis. But as soon as Rose said she was there only to interview her and to gain her help interviewing other citizens of Donora, the woman slammed the door.

Rose drew back and shuddered. Rose glanced around to see Mr. Bratchy watching her from his door. He narrowed his eyes and threw his hand into the air at her. She buttoned the collar of her coat tight and started down the sidewalk, glad the clanging mill, train, and boat chorus drowned out Mrs. Stewart’s words and the slamming of the door for anyone other than Mr. Bratchy.

Rose stood at the corner staring at her list of homes to visit. She ran her finger down the names, shaking. Her breathing quickened, coming in shallow bursts. She couldn’t do this. She loosened her collar. She’d had plenty of doors slammed in her face before, but everything had changed. She could not try to behave as if no one in town knew her family were frauds, that no one had heard she had failed everyone in every way she had once imagined to be successful. She wrapped her coat tight against the wind, and moved half jogging, half shuffling through the cold, back to the safety of her home.

Once inside the house, she went to the kitchen and sat having coffee with vodka mixed in, waiting for the alcohol to calm her. She couldn’t sit still, but yet, wanted to hide. She went to her bed and burrowed under the covers without even removing her uniform. Her bed had once been her sanctuary, but no longer held peace or refuge.

She threw back the bedspread and reached into her pocket for the list Bonaroti had given her. She stared at it, crumpled it then smoothed it as straight as possible. She made a deal with herself to do just two homes on the list today. She wanted not to care, but something would not let her give up completely.

She redid her hair, brushed her teeth and smoothed out her uniform, telling herself she could do what was required of her. So, back out into the late morning, now clear of fog, Rose went.

At the Horvat home, Alma allowed Rose inside the door. Rose cleared her throat, but nearly left when she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to say. She unfolded her paper and scanned the backside of it for the information she was supposed to convey.

Alma Horvat stared past Rose at first, giving her the impression that she agreed that talking about the events surrounding the five days of fog would benefit everyone in town including the Horvats. But, Rose wasn’t far into her mechanical spiel when Mrs. Horvat threw her hands into the air.

“No, no. I thought you come to discuss baby. My baby. We don’t talk about mills.”

Rose’s eyes widened. “Oh.” Rose looked down at her paper as though there would be something there to help her through this. “I didn’t know you were—”

Mrs. Horvath began shoving Rose out the door. “We can’t talk. I promise not to talk about mills.” Rose stepped through the doorway as the belt of her coat caught in Mrs. Horvat’s closing door.

Rose opened the door and pulled back her belt, securing it around her waist. She felt the shallow breathing return and shoved the paper into her pocket, wanting to run back home. Two homes that day were plenty. But, as Rose headed back home, she began to pass some of the homes she had promised to visit, feeling a heaviness grow in her gut with every step. Rose stopped. She turned back to the Miller home and stared at it.

If she didn’t do it now, she would have to do it later. She promised herself that after helping Bonaroti she never had to leave her home again if she didn’t want to. But, putting off what needed to be done wouldn’t make that come faster. So Rose trudged back to the Millers, talking to herself, reminding herself that she’d been yelled at, pushed out of homes and cursed at before. What difference did it make that now the insults seemed to penetrate her?

And so she went, and at the twenty-third house on her list someone actually took the time to talk to her. A burly, unshaven, unkempt man raised his hands to grasp the doorjamb, his sweat ringing his underarms. Rose cringed at the odor.

“No one’s making yunz stay here, Rosie. Yunz don’t like the mills, leave.”

Rose pushed her shoulders back and raised her chin to make full eye contact. Part of her wanted to move away, but not because of the mills. “I know the mills afforded plenty of people a good life—”

The man leaned forward, smothering Rose with his breath. “Exactly,” he said.

Rose stood tall, refusing to be intimidated. The man smirked. “Rosie, yunz and those government blowhards can get the hell out of town.”

Rose took offense to being lumped in with government officials. She’d nursed nearly half the town at one time or another and seeing her as the enemy was not acceptable. “You can’t just tell people to leave town because you don’t like what you’re hearing,” Rose said.

“Then why don’t yunz mind yer own beeswax and start minding yer own family. Maybe yunz daughter wouldn’t be knocked up and Johnny a cripple.”

Rose flinched. “Johnny’s not a cripple.”

The man leaned close and Rose smelled the booze, kielbasa and his perspiration all at once. “Yunz are snobby, Nurse Pavlesic and it’s finally come back to bite you in the ass. Yunz ain’t no better than any of us, with all that education and shit. Everything always has to be yer way, doesn’t it? I don’t know how your people put up with yunz.”

Each word he spoke pierced Rose’s heart. She’d heard a different version from her own family. But it never hit her so hard.

Three small children ran up behind the man and hugged his legs, grinning as though their father was the greatest man.

He patted one child’s head. “When’s the last time one of yunz guy’s kids did this to you? Go on, mind yer own ass and get away from us and the mills.”

Rose watched the man lift the three kids up at once, and swept them into an embrace. “We’re happy. Steady checks, roast beef, mashed potatoes every night. That’s good enough.”

Rose backed away from the door, and walked in a daze to the sidewalk.

Rose stood there, heaving for breath. Neighbors crossed the street as soon as they saw her. News must have traveled she was attempting to coax people to be truthful about their experiences with the smog. She felt lightheaded, dizzy. Black and silver dots formed in front of her eyes. She rubbed her temples. She would not let herself pass out.

A voice inside her head. Forgive yourself.

She clasped her hands over her ears. “Shut up!” She looked at the house she’d just left, the crumbling stoop, the rotting eaves and rafters, such disrepair. Inside the doorway, she could still see the man with his children, their laughter reaching Rose’s ears. Even though the house was shabby, the home was alive with love. The opposite of Rose’s.

And, she realized for the first time, she’d neglected the children who lived with her for seventeen years for the one that’d only lived inside her for nine months. Rose understood exactly what she needed to do to make her life whole.

She could do it. She’d been a nurse, stitched enough flesh to know that even the deadliest wounds can heal.

A family was the same, Rose told herself heading back home. Surely she could make amends. And not like she did in the past. She would do it a new way.

When Rose reached the side door of her home she could hear an argument between the Saltz’s. The cries escalated to screams. Rose dashed across the street to find Mr. Saltz dragging Mrs. Saltz down the block by the hair.

Rose could see her scalp pulling from her skull. Rose yelled for him to stop, and took Mr. Saltz by the shoulders and hit him in the kneecaps with her foot, throwing him off balance and he dropped onto his back.

Rose kicked the man until he let go of Mrs. Saltz’s hair. “If you ever touch her again, Mr. Saltz, I swear to God I will kill you. Understand? I will kill you.”

He struggled to his feet and Rose thought he would rail on her. But he stumbled away, as much from being drunk as from being shocked.

In Mrs. Saltz’s kitchen, Rose examined her. Remarkably, the woman was no longer crying. She was shaken, but mostly, she was disappointed her husband had discovered the money she’d hidden for Joey’s warm springs therapy, money that would get them away from him.

Mrs. Saltz shook her head in disbelief, “That man been in washroom only five times in twenty-two years. Of course, I think money is safe in laundry box.” She raised her hand and let it fall back into her lap. “One time he decides he need detergent to wash himself in face. Stupid Kraut. Don’t even know what soap is.”

She winced as Rose dabbed at her bloody cheek. “But money now gone. Kaput. He drink it. Then he tell me he find it. He show me it gone. He no believe my lie about money, say it was gift for him, for us, for a house. He know better.”

Mrs. Saltz shifted her feet. “All these people die, my boy he lay helpless in bed with the polio. In God’s sweet name, is this the way life should be?”

Rose felt the weight of Mrs. Saltz’s words, the sensation of a woman who’d given up hope.

“You have to leave,” Rose told her. “You have to do something for the sake of your children.”

Mrs. Saltz shrugged. “Do what? You think I have place to go? Go where? Beach like your Sara Clara from South always tell me? What I do there? Sell sea shells to sea gulls?”

Rose went to the sink and ran the tap, a corner of a towel under the water. She returned to Mrs. Saltz and wiped dirt from her chin and neck.

“Yes. That’s exactly what you do, Mrs. Saltz.”

With Mrs. Saltz cleaned up, Rose left the house. The police had called saying they had Mr. Saltz in jail for at least one night for public drunkenness and resisting arrest. They agreed to keep him as long as possible and Rose knew she might be able to help. She left the Saltz’s hearing Mrs. Saltz laughing at Rose’s suggestion to move away with her children. Like that would ever happen, she had said.

Rose crossed the street to her home and thought of the money she’d found in the house. She considered turning back and telling Mrs. Saltz that she had the answer to her problems. But she couldn’t. Deciding to give Mrs. Saltz the money, and put her on a train that night seemed like an easy one, but too much planning was needed. Joey couldn’t travel like a healthy child. There were so many reasons not to give Mrs. Saltz money.

Rose’s heels clomped across the front porch, drawing her attention to how alone she was now that it were only she who made any noise at the house. Rose entered the house, shedding her coat and bag right onto the floor near the door. Rose certainly did not want the money to go down the throat of Mr. Saltz. She stripped off her uniform as she headed to her bed. Nothing good would come of Rose giving Mrs. Saltz the money.

Rose pulled the bedspread over her head and curled into a ball. Exhaustion from having been active that day had settled in and Rose knew she could not properly decide how to help Mrs. Saltz right then. She crossed herself, but did not pray. Instead she hoped that somehow she would wake and find solutions for all that had happened.

A
fter her shower Rose put on the only clean clothes in the house—Magdalena’s fitted sweater and wool slacks and toweled off her hair as best she could. She decided to wear it down hoping it might dry before seeing her son. She ran into Johnny’s bedroom and grabbed his football. Maybe he would want it. Maybe he didn’t hate football as much as he claimed.

She tucked it under her arm and stopped as she passed Johnny’s bed. The crumbled photo she’d found in his drawer was on the floor, peeking out from under the hem of the bedspread. She stared at it from the doorway, tossing the football up and down in one hand. She ran to the side-door and punted the football out the door, watching it roll out of sight.

She grabbed her purse, the letter from Julliard and Johnny’s trumpet. She stood by the door waiting for Father Tom.

She tapped her foot as she rehearsed what she would say to her son. When she got to the part where she’d talk to him about his trumpet and the letter she realized the letter was in regard to his violin playing. Or was it strings in general? She ran back into the house and grabbed his violin and guitar. Father Tom pulled up to the house and she wrenched open the door, instruments under her arms.

Father Tom bustled from his car to help.

“Rose Pavlesic you look like you’re twenty dressed like that. Not that it matters, but something’s different. Care to discuss it?”

Rose didn’t answer and they tucked the instruments into the back seat of the car. She rolled down her window and stuck her arm outside, feeling the air hit her skin. She wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

Father Tom put the car in gear. “One change at a time,” he said, winking at Rose.

Rose relaxed back against the seat and thought for the first time in forever that things just might find their way to right. And, for once she didn’t pretend to know what exactly right was.

* * *

The sharp antiseptic smell of the rehabilitation hospital was familiar and made Rose comfortable. She could do this. She could.

Rose and Father Tom followed a nurse to Johnny’s room. The doctors on morning rounds were huddled around his bed. A nurse’s aide had Johnny’s foot in his hands, pulling his leg up and out to stretch his atrophied legs. Johnny screamed, his face in pain. The doctors were discussing the bruising in Johnny’s spinal column. Finally, the swelling was going down, and the nerves were once again sending messages of pain to his brain and making him scream. This was good news to Rose, from a clinical perspective—his incomplete spinal injury had a chance of being reversed. There was a good chance he would walk. He would be his old self.