Maude Brown's Baby (18 page)

Donald yielded to yet another urge to scratch his arm.

Clara noticed.

“Roll up your sleeve.”

“What?”

“Just roll up your sleeve.”

He unbuttoned his cuff and rolled his shirt sleeve to the elbow, folding the last of it back over his light summer jacket. Clara took his wrist in both hands and rotated his forearm until it was flat on the table, inside facing up. She moved his arm closer to the window light.

“Poison ivy.”

Donald looked. A pink rash had spread from his wrist to the crook of his arm. Tiny blisters were already forming in spots.

“Roll up your other sleeve.”

“But…”

“Roll up your sleeve.”

Donald complied, revealing a matching
set of blisters on his left arm.

“You got it this morning, clearing the weeds from my back patio.”

She rotated both forearms for a better look. “I’m so sorry. Does your back itch?”

“Yes, a little.” Now that she mentioned it, his back itched a lot.

“How about around your waist?”

Yes, there, too, Donald thought. “No,” is what he said to Clara.

“You’ve got a good dose. We need to get something on this soon.” Now in full nursing mode, she looked clinically at Donald’s face. Without asking permission, she lightly touched his chin to move his head right to left. Satisfied, she then pushed his chin back until all Donald could see was the rotating electric fan above their table.

“Good, no rash on your face or neck.”

“Excuse me,” the waiter said, balancing a tray with two steaming plates of food on one arm.

Donald couldn’t recall when the conversations around them stopped. Now he was painfully aware that he was sitting in the quiet restaurant with his sleeves rolled above his elbows, and that the woman across from him was holding his chin in the air as if she were examining a fresh avocado. The moment seemed longer than it could have possibly been.

Clara released his
chin, leaned back and began clearing space on the table. Donald fumbled with the buttons on his cuffs. Something made him look to the far end of the room, where Blanca stood between the swinging doors. Their eyes met. She retreated quickly into her kitchen.

Enchiladas were different from what Jake had described. Still, the warm aroma of soft flour tortillas, beef, o
nions and melted cheese made Donald’s mouth water. He watched Clara use her knife and fork to cut a bite, which she dabbed in chili sauce before eating. Donald did the same.

“Delicious!” he said as he chewed.

“Really?”

“Best enchiladas I’ve ever had.”

“Save room for sopapillas,” Clara said. “You like them, don’t you?”

“Of course,
” Donald said, hoping that sopapillas were some sort of dessert.

“Do your arms still itch?” Clara asked as they walked back from the restaurant toward her house. Donald had been trying to forget, thinking instead of the warm afternoon light and the weight of Clara’s arm on his.

Yes, he itched. His forearms itched, his back itched, and now, in the last half hour, a wide band around his waist. He was beginning to itch from the inside out.

“Oh, it’s not bad,” he said.

“Well, I have something that will make you feel better; another of Mama’s remedies. My brother used to get poison ivy all the time.”

“Maybe we could do that first when we get home.”

“Of course,” she said, smiling and momentarily squeezing his arm to her side. He noticed they were naturally in step, their heels landing as one on the concrete sidewalk, making sounds that filled the open space under the canopy of young trees.

“This is a great time of day to photograph,” he said. “Evenings and mornings have the best light.”

Clara sidestepped a small stone. “So it makes a difference, the time of day?”

“Oh yes, just look at the light!”

The sun was at a low angle to their right. Shafts of gold filtered through the leaves, like hundreds of small spotlights on the wide porches of the homes to their left.

“Let me take your picture.”
             

“Here?”

“No better place. Do you mind?”

“No, but
…”

“Stand by this fence,” Donald said before Clara changed her mind. He pulled his folding camera from his jacket pocket. He pressed a small silver button near the hand strap on one end, allowing the bellows and lens to fold out smartly. He snapped them in place and rotated the viewfinder for a vertical shot, then noted the number 6 in the small round window on the camera’s back.

Clara squared off, facing Donald, with one hand resting on the low picket fence to her right.

“No, turn your back to me, as if you were walking away.”

She gave a quizzical look, but did as he directed.

“Now turn back to me a little bit. There. A bit more. Look over your right shoulder, as if you had just stopped walking and turned to look back at me. Yes, keep your left hand on the fence.”

“Where shall I look?”

“Into this little hole,” he said, pointing to the camera lens.

Clara laughed as Donald became someone else. Now she could only see the top of his cap, with his elbows straight out from his sides. He peered down, squinting into what he'd called the “viewfinder,” looking, she supposed, until he found the view he wanted.

This went on for a while, Donald dancing back and forth on the sidewalk, momentarily lifting his head, looking at her then beyond, and finally down into the camera again. She heard a click.

“One more!” he said without looking up. He turned a knob several turns to advance the film, then glanced at the back of the camera before returning to the viewfinder. Another click.

“Now look that way,” he said, pointing across the street. Clara did as she was told, a smile forming dimples on her cheeks.

“Just one more. Look toward the tops of the trees across the street.” Another click and Donald advanced the film to the number 8.

“You took so many!” she said after he announced the end of the roll.

“Only five,” he said. “This camera gets ten shots to a roll.”

As he talked, Donald turned the film advance knob several times more until he heard, and his fingers felt, that he had wound the full roll on its spool. Pulling the same knob out from the camera body allowed the back of the camera to pop open. He removed the exposed spool of film, which looked to Clara like a tight yellow roll about three inches wide. The end of the roll had an adhesive tab th
at Donald licked and pressed to the paper, holding it a few seconds to give the glue time to stick. He then slipped the spool into his left pants pocket, and from his right, produced a fresh roll of film.

“Always take several pictures,” Donald explained, barely looking down as he loaded the new roll into the camera and advanced it to the number 1. “If you take more shots, one is bound to be better than the
rest.”

He refolded the little camera and tucked it back into his jacket. Normally, he’d write the subject, date and time in his journal, but this time he knew he wouldn’t forget.

“Don, let’s move Elton to the carriage house,” Jake said as soon as Donald and Clara returned home. He was in the kitchen, making sandwiches from items he’d found in the icebox and pantry.

“Elton can wait,” Clara said, shaking her head at the mess Jake had made of the bread. “Donald, if you’d care to wash up, I’ll make a poultice. Scrub the affected areas with soap and warm water. There are clean towels and wash cloths in the hall closet next door. Leave your shirt off when you finish. Wait in your room and I’ll be over in half an hour.”

Jake watched Donald go, looked back to Clara, but asked no questions. Clara fished under the counter until she found a battered pot that was clearly no longer for cooking. She took a box of
Arm and Hammer
baking soda from the shelf next to the pantry and set it next to the sink.

“Poison ivy,” Clara explained to Jake. She slipped her apron over her head and tied it behind her back, then started water heating on the stove. She took the paring knife from Jake’s hand and laid it on the counter, then pulled a long knife from the drawer and cut four even slices from what remained of the loaf of bread. After trading the bread knife for the smaller paring knife, Clara took a small basket she kept by the back door and went into the garden to cut some aloe vera leaves. She returned with tomatoes, a late-season cucumber and fresh leaf lettuce.
             

“Elton might like this in his sandwich,” she told Jake, setting the butter beside him.

“Thanks.”

Jake watched Clara rinse the tomatoes and cucumber. She cut them into neat slices and left them along with several leaves of lettuce on a small plate.

“Elton is much better today,” he said. “I think we can take him home tomorrow or Thursday.”

“A business man from Dallas has the room next week, but Elton is welcome to stay until then. He should be strong enough to travel on his own by the weekend.”

“How about Don?”

“This poultice I’m making will keep him comfortable and make the rash heal faster. He’ll be fine in a week or so, but he can leave any time.”

In the washroom of the carriage house, Donald stripped off his shirt, leaving it to hang upside down from his pants, sleeves brushing the floor. He surveyed the damage to his body, using the wall mirror and a hand mirror to check his back, then scrubbed his skin as Clara prescribed. He was surprised that the sink had two valves. Mrs. Carhart’s home had hot running water, of course, but not many others he knew.

The rash was more pronounced now than it had been in Blanca’s
restaurant. A fresh wave of embarrassment swept over him when he recalled the look on her face as she watched from across the room.

“That’s done,” Mrs. Carhart said in Donald’s mind. “You can’t do anything now, so put it out of your mind.”

“You weren’t there to see it,” Donald said aloud.

“Ye
s, but I have been there, dear boy. Believe me, I have been there myself.”

“What do you think of this mess?” Donald asked, turning back to face the wall mirror.

“Not all bad things come to harm.”

“What does that mean?” he asked, but Mrs. Carhart didn’t reply.

“Donald, are you alone?” Clara called from down the hall.

“Oh! Ah! Hello, Clara, I didn’t know you were there. I’ll be right out.”

“I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

“Just myself,” Donald said.

“You might as well stay there when you finish. The washroom is as good a place as any to apply this poultice.”

Donald dried himself with a clean towel and opened the door. Clara glanced around the small space, but didn’t ask again about
the one-sided conversation she had heard through the door.

“Stand here,” she said, “this is best applied while it’s still warm.”

Clara dipped her bare hand into the pasty green poultice in the pan.              

“This should stop the itching right away,” she said, spreading the warm goo evenly around his waist.

“Raise your arms and turn around.” Donald did as he was told, and she continued rubbing the soothing paste on his back.

“Now your arms.”

He held his arms out toward Clara, the affected side of his forearms facing up.

“There,” she said at last, wiping her hands on a towel. “Leave your shirt off and don’t lie down or sit back on the furniture until this dries. Give it half an hour to soak into your skin. Just stay in your room if you like. I’ll mix another batch tomorrow, but this is enough to reduce the itching and make the rash heal faster.”

Clara’s touch had already done more for Donald than any poultice. She smiled and returned to her kitchen, leaving him alone in the carriage house, except for Jennifer and Rebecca who were still sleeping in their rooms upstairs.

“You might as well wash your shirt,” Mrs. Carhart said.

“Right,” Donald mumbled to the mirror. “Make good use of time, there’s never enough of it to go around.”

He filled the sink with warm water and used bar soap to create suds. He pulled the shirt from where it hung around his waist, dipped it in the sudsy water, then squeezed with his fingers over and over to force water through the fabric. A minute later he drained the sink, refilled it with fresh water and repeated the process until suds no longer appeared. He wrung out as much water as possible, then hung the shirt on the towel rack to dry.

Back in his room, Donald pondered his next move. Thirty minutes, Clara said, before the poultice soaked in. Half an hour before he could lie down or even put on a clean shirt. He looked toward the bookcase for something to read.

The number of textbooks and medical journals did not surprise him. What did was the variety on the other shelves: a collection of John Ruskin’s political essays, three Jules Verne novels, even a theatre play,
Cyrano de Bergerac
by Edmond Rostand. The bright red cover caught his eye.
Cyrano
sounded familiar. He remembered it was something Mrs. Carhart said he should read. That would be a first for him, reading a play instead of one of her history texts.