The Art Student's War (43 page)

And Grace had seized delightedly upon this ludicrous slip, never permitting him to abandon it—until, in time, Dennis, too, cherished its quiet poetry, its lofty and rooted rightness: Grace was indeed his palm tree.

Dennis had later told her, which wasn’t quite accurate, that what he’d meant to say was that he wished someday to take her to a land where palm trees grew. In any event, he’d done precisely that, in various spectacular locales. Hadn’t he strolled with his beautiful wife along a beach in Key West, Florida, the southernmost tip of the United States?

He picked up Route 6 west of Cleveland and settled his powerful Packard at just under 50 miles per hour. It was 165 miles from his home on Brock Street to Inquiry Street, give or take a few miles. He found an open gas station at Lorain and filled his tank. The poor boy who pumped the gas had a harelip and a stammer. This was something Dennis had observed before: a disproportionate number of stammerers working the night shifts. Coincidence? Or was there, statistically, something to this? Stammerers might naturally gravitate toward lonelier hours and less talk.

Or, alternatively, the bosses might routinely assign the loneliest shifts to those least prepared to protest.

Though Dennis wasn’t very hungry, he was feeling extremely nervous, and he had polished off the cookie, the cake, and one of the sandwiches even before reaching Toledo. The car hummed along. In Vico’s heart of hearts he must have known Dennis would insist on coming, though perhaps Vico didn’t quite realize Dennis had no choice. He simply
couldn’t
have stayed home—pacing the floor, awaiting another call. At a time like this, his only comfort was located in the low roar of the engine, the steadily falling mile markers. No, much harder than driving to Detroit in the middle of the night was doing what Grace was doing: waiting at home for news. Once again, she was the strong one.

It was an hour or so later, having just crossed the Michigan state line, when the flashing red light of a police car exploded behind him. Dennis felt very little fear—almost exhilaration, actually. Dennis liked policemen. He’d very rarely met the copper who couldn’t be outmaneuvered. The fact was—policemen liked
him
. They seemed instinctively to recognize him as just the sort of person they were put on Earth to aid and protect. Yes, the police car’s lights were almost welcome. Though mostly an uncompetitive man, Dennis relished this opportunity to get the better of a cop.

“You Ohio people can’t read traffic signs?” the officer began. Dennis had rolled down his window, here on the shoulder of a lightless, flat, totally deserted road. The police lights bled across empty acres and acres of frosty black farmland.

“I’m a Michigan man myself, Officer, despite the license plate. And I’m a doctor.”

Dennis handed the officer his driver’s license and his hospital ID card.

“Says here Cleveland. Last time I checked, Cleveland was in Ohio.”

“The wife and I just moved. But trust me, we’re Michiganders through and through.”

“You were speeding. I say nearly fifteen over.”

“I never argue with a policeman,” Dennis said. A pause followed. “Never have, never will.” Another pause. Dennis went on: “You see, I’m off to examine a patient in Detroit. My own niece. She’s very ill. I got the long-distance telephone call a couple of hours ago and jumped right into my car.”

“You say you’re a doctor?”

“It’s there on the card.”

“I can read.”

This was a young cop, with much to prove about himself. He wasn’t going to bend easily.

“Long night?” Dennis asked.

“Too many speeders,” the cop said dryly.

“Deserted roads.”

“It’s still speeding.”

“No argument there. No argument there. Dr. Dennis Poppleton, by the way,” Dennis introduced himself, and extended his hand through the open window.

The officer, clearly nonplussed, stared at this hand extended out into the darkness of the night. Finally, reluctantly, he clasped and shook the doctor’s hand. “Officer Frank Santovetti.”

“Sounds Italian to me. My niece is Italian. Her name is Paradiso. Bianca Paradiso. She has a fever of a hundred and four point two. She’s a beautiful girl, and the apple of my eye, incidentally. I don’t have any kids myself, but the wife and I think of her as our own.”

“You were nearly fifteen over.”

“Officer Santovetti, I’m sure you’re quite right. You see, it’s the girl I’m worried about. She’s only eighteen. Younger even than you. She could be your kid sister.”

In the shocking oscillating red light thrown by his patrol car, Officer Santovetti looked more puzzled still—as though he didn’t quite comprehend how, in these patchily lit negotiations, Dennis and his feverish Italian niece had acquired the upper hand. For there was no chance of a speeding ticket now.

“You were fifteen over.”

“It’s the girl,” Dennis said. “It’s the girl. She’s the apple of my eye.” “Now listen, Doc,” Officer Santovetti said sternly. “I want you to slow down.”

“Yes sir,” Dennis said. “I plan to do just that.”

This note of ready compliance visibly placated the young officer. It allowed him to hold his dignity intact. He patted the top of Dennis’s lowered window and said, “You know what? I think I’m going to give you a break.”

“I take that as a good omen,” Dennis said.

Another pause. The officer seemed younger than ever as he said, “Hey, I hope your niece gets better.”

“Yes. I’m going to see to that,” Dennis said, and feeling much better himself, he added, “Officer Santovetti, I’ll pass along your best wishes.”

A moment later, behind him, the red light extinguished itself and Dennis accelerated into the darkness. “I’m the last card,” he said aloud, and giggled into the darkness.

Soon he was traveling the same speed as before: fifteen or so over. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but Dennis thought he saw a glow to the northwest, out where the bomber factories of Willow Run lay. Twenty-four hours a day, day in and day out, the rivers of molten steel were flowing. Out on the front lines, military errors were being made all the time, and American boys were dying unnecessarily—it was the nature of war—but here in Michigan it was nothing but pure glory, a technological breakthrough without precedent. Dennis had thought about this and thought about this. No city on earth had ever fought a war the way this city was fighting: it had become democracy’s true arsenal. It was bearing the burden of a dream born perhaps in ancient Greece: the governed shall govern. And future historians would recognize that the War’s authentic center had lain not in London, or even in Washington, but here in the Midwest, in Michigan, in Detroit. This was where the War’s bloodied and beaten victims, the French and the Dutch, the Poles and the Czechs, the Chinese and the Burmese, would be redeemed.

The city’s skyline defined the horizon at last, the crowning ball of the Penobscot Building serving as a sort of lighthouse. Detroit as the world’s true harbor. The city’s familiar stone lineaments inspired such eager impatient nervousness that, though he wasn’t at all hungry, Dennis bolted down another ham-and-cheese sandwich and swigged another cup of coffee. He was nearly there …

Inquiry Street still lay in darkness when he pulled up before the Paradisos. Back when the city had first begun ordering occasional blackouts, Dennis had paid $1.49 to have the hands of his watch tipped in fluorescent paint—a wise investment. It was now six-ten in the morning.

Vico appeared in the doorway even before Dennis was out of the car.

After the long drive, Dennis was feeling so worried, and so weary, that as he mounted the front steps he forgetfully extended his hand in greeting. Of course Vico would have none of that. He tugged Dennis to him, chest to chest. You felt the man’s muscles when he held you.

They whispered to each other in the front hall.

“You didn’t have to come, Dennis.”

“I had to come, Vico.”

“I didn’t call asking you to come.”

“I had to come, damn it, now enough of that—how’s our patient?”

“Sleeping, mostly.”

“And her fever?”

“It is about the same.”

“And Sylvia?”

“Finally she went to sleep. She was up almost all night.”

“And you’re up all night too? No sleep at all?”

“It’s just sleep,” Vico said. “Sleep doesn’t matter.”

“Now you wait here, Vico. I better go check up on our girl.”

Twenty-plus years of visiting the ailing in sickrooms had taught Dennis a solid unflappability. He could usually meet the worst with a professional steadiness. But in Bea’s flickery bedroom, illuminated only by a candle on the desk, the pale stripped-away face in the bottom bunk—peaked as a death’s head—wrung a loud shivery groan from his chest. On wobbly legs Dennis stumbled to her bedside and lowered his face toward the girl’s beloved face. Her eyes were closed.

What he beheld was scarcely the consequence of a few days of fever. Bea had been burning herself up for weeks and weeks now, and a surge of righteous anger welled up inside him:
Why wasn’t I called before?
This precious girl—the apple of his eye—was nothing but bones. He laid a palm upon her forehead and felt from deep within her skull the emanations of a dry, angry, indurate heat. He lifted her arm—a mere stick.

“Bea,” he said. “Bea, it’s Uncle Dennis, honey. Now I’m going to take your temperature.”

He placed a thermometer in her mouth and her eyes fluttered open. For a moment she did not appear to see anything. Then a glimmer of recognition. What she seemed to say, however, her lips mumbling around the thermometer he was holding in place, was “Papa.”

“No, darling, it’s Uncle Dennis.”

“Papa,” she repeated, nodding her head, and closed her eyes once more. With his free hand Dennis brushed the hair from her face and gently probed the glands in her throat. He drew his face down to the side of her face and inhaled through his nose: that sour-milk smell of high fever.

Dennis carried the thermometer over to the flickering candle. He wasn’t about to turn on a light quite yet. It was an Italian touch that ought to be respected—Vico’s lighting a candle. The flame wasn’t merely illuminating the room; it was serving a vigil.

The girl’s temperature was 104.8°.

“Well my darling, you’ve got yourself quite a fever.”

Bea muttered something, though she did not seem to awaken.

“Now I’m going to listen to your heart and look down your throat.”

He peeled away the sweaty sheet from her body. She was wearing pajamas and socks. He unbuttoned her pajama top and set his stethoscope over her heart. The skin over her clavicle was stretched taut. His fingers probed at the glands of her stomach. She must be twenty pounds lighter than when he saw her last—and she had been a little too thin even then.

“Now I want you to open your mouth,” he said, but Bea didn’t seem to hear. His fingers eased open her jaw and he peered down her throat with his otoscope. Her throat was red, but still more telling was the way she winced at being moved, however gently—a deep-in-the-bone achiness he associated with influenza.

“I’m going to try to cool you down a bit, and then I think I’m going to take my girl to the hospital.”

He extracted four washcloths from his bag and tiptoed down the hall and into the bathroom, where he soaked them in cold water and, one by one, wrung them out. He carried them back to Bea’s room and again closed the door.

He peeled off her socks and began rubbing her feet with one of the cool washcloths. The girl recoiled but did not seem fully to waken. A moment later, she seemed at ease—completely asleep again. He ran a cloth over her bare stomach and shoulders. Her skin was burning. It hurt him to see how rawly her ribs showed, as if the bones longed to break free of the skin.

“I’m going to take you to the hospital and I’m not going to leave until I hear you say, ‘Uncle Dennis, bring me a great big breakfast.’” His heart was so sore, his fear so painfully magnified, he hardly knew what
he was saying. He repeated the words: “I’m not going to leave until you say, ‘Uncle Dennis, bring me a great big breakfast.’”

He ran the cool cloth over the girl’s burning forearms, her burning neck, her burning face. “Why didn’t they call me?” he asked her, pleadingly. “Was I so far away? Had you forgotten me, I’d moved so far away? Damn it all, why on earth didn’t you call me?”

He cradled the crown of her skull in one hand and tenderly wrapped his other hand under her jawbone, so that he was propping her up and leaning toward her, their faces no more than six inches apart. “Now listen carefully, Little One, because now I’m about to say the one most important thing I’ve ever said to you. Ever in your entire life. Are you listening to me, Bea?” He paused.

She did not stir.

“Bia?”

She did not stir.

“All right, then, here it is. Here it is: you must get better for me,” he ordered. Her eyes fluttered open.

Her skull was cradled in his hand: he was seeking through his fingertips to infuse some strength into the girl. Oh good Lord! He might have been some quack faith healer, rather than a true, medical doctor, as he intoned once more, “Bea, now listen, please, now
listen:
you must get better for me …”

He restored her socks to her feet and buttoned up her pajama top and stepped out into the hall. Vico was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. “I—” Vico said. He could not speak.

Dennis put a finger to his lips and walked past him, out into the kitchen. Vico followed.

“We’re going to take her to the hospital,” Dennis said. “In my car.”

“Yes, the hospital,” Vico said.

“I’m not sure how well she can walk.”

Vico’s eyes brightened. “Then I’ll carry her.” The man who prided himself on his arm wrestling had been preparing his whole life for this task … “She’ll be all right?”

“I think so. She’s very ill. She hasn’t been eating, has she? For quite some time now.”

A twitch rumpled Vico’s features. “I tell her all the time, you have to eat.”

“She’s still a child, Vico. Sometimes you have to make them eat.”

“But Bia—you can’t tell her. The others, they listen to me. Stevie,
Edith. Them I can tell things to …” Vico shrugged hopelessly. “You know how she is.”