The Truth of the Matter (28 page)

“In fact, most people, when they get sick, they simply fail to appreciate God’s design,” he said to Betts, settling back in the chair beside her bed to get comfortable. “I used to hear preachers and such talk about the ‘intricacy of God’s design’ when I was young . . . oh, when I was studying medicine. I thought they were making excuses. But over all the years I’ve practiced, I’ve thought about it a great deal. I do think that the relief of pain . . . making my patients as comfortable as I can . . . I think that’s a reasonable pursuit. Why shouldn’t we consider those gifts we’ve developed to
be
God’s design? But I’ve never believed in fighting a fever, you know. The body is a subtle creation. I’ve always thought that for almost every illness the symptoms are generally a means of healing. . . .” And as he talked on, Betts drifted off to her first sound sleep in more than four days.

In the days following that first visit, though, when her cough nearly exhausted her and she felt no better at all, Betts took a teaspoon of the codeine syrup day or night. And one night Agnes took a teaspoon herself, desperate to get some sleep of her own. None of her regular methods of seducing herself into sleep were at all effective with Betts so sick right across the hall, because Betts had never been bedridden by an illness in her life. Not even by chicken pox, not even measles. Perhaps for one day, or a half day, she would stay in bed not feeling well, but she had been far more resilient than her brothers.

Sometimes it had nearly driven Agnes to despair when she and the other children were all sick and needing sleep except Betts, who required her mother’s attention although Agnes could hardly stay awake. There had been days when Agnes had felt so miserable that she had been reduced to silently weeping while forcing herself to stay awake in order to keep an eye on Betts, who was playing contentedly. But now that Betts was so sick that she slept almost all the time, Agnes was wretchedly alert. She only realized that she had fallen into sleep when she was jolted awake by the sensation of falling. It seemed reasonable to Agnes that she had brought this terrible luck down upon her daughter by having now and then resented Betts’s energetic healthiness when she was just a little girl.

Dr. Caldwell came every day for a week, and Will was in and out inquiring about her. Betts refused to let him come upstairs. “Mama, I haven’t even washed my hair!” But he kept the house full of flowers and fresh fruit. During the next week, when Betts started to improve, Dr. Caldwell came every other day, and Betts pulled herself together and allowed Will to sit with her in the evenings. By the middle of April, Dr. Caldwell believed she was well enough to be up and about as long as she came to his office once a week so he could listen to her lungs and check her progress.

Agnes was elated; when she had come upon Betts at the point when she was so ill that she didn’t even realize she was only whispering—that she could scarcely be understood—Agnes had honestly entertained the idea that Betts might not survive. It had brought her brother Edson right into the room. Just as Agnes had come upon him only a day or so before he died. She had been thoroughly alarmed by Betts’s gray pallor and the striking difference in her when she lacked animation—as opposed to the natural state of drama that radiated from and energized Betts, that made her lovely and magnetic and that Agnes understood, now, in fact, to be an essential quality of her daughter’s personality. What Agnes had often considered Betts’s overwrought sense of drama, out-of-proportion enthusiasm, turned out to be the foundation of Betts’s nature.

Betts was well enough for Agnes to do the final fittings of the clothes for her trousseau, and with the wedding no more than three weeks away, Agnes was filled with the urgency of things to get finished, including the cream-colored linen suit Betts would wear instead of a standard veil and gown. The Sunday back in February when she and Betts had shown Will the sketches while they sat over coffee at the Monument Restaurant, Betts had laughed at the idea of a traditional white satin gown when Will seemed disappointed that she wasn’t planning to wear one.

“For goodness sakes! There’s nothing more likely to make a girl look like she’s being served up for human sacrifice,” Betts told him, and Agnes had silently agreed with her. Besides, that sort of romantic, draping gown—not to mention any kind of gossamerlike veil—would undermine what was the strength of Betts’s beauty. Her good looks were glamorous as opposed to sweet, and nothing set her off better than a beautifully made suit and a wide-brimmed, face-framing hat. That was one of the few useful things Betts had discovered during the time she worked in Washington.

While Betts was sick, Agnes hadn’t been able to sew a stitch of Betts’s trousseau without feeling that she would be tempting fate, and she had steered clear of the sewing room entirely. But now that there was so little time before the wedding, Agnes was busy every minute. She knew she was going to be in a hurry until the moment Betts was standing at the altar, and she was delighted to be flying around with the inevitability of life going on.

On the last Saturday morning in April, Agnes gave up counting on the arrival from New York of the beautiful buttons she and Betts had selected for the linen suit; she would have to see what was available locally. She also needed a darker thread for the linen, buckram for interlining, and softer wool for the shoulder padding—which had turned out far too stiff and boxy.

The stores were surprisingly crowded, even for a Saturday, and as Agnes made her way from the post office to Phillips Department Store, she spotted Dr. Caldwell in the next block, heading her way. It went without saying—although, of course, she had said it—that she was extremely grateful to him, but she didn’t have time to stop and tell him so again. Besides, he was a tedious man, humorless, and given to long explanations and conversations of one kind or another. He was tall with bright white hair and a long, pinched face—like an exclamation point that didn’t agree with itself, Dwight had once said—and Dr. Caldwell generally seemed oblivious to his surroundings. Agnes saw him before he saw her. In fact, as Agnes withdrew a list from her purse and made a show of studying it as she moved along the sidewalk, Dr. Caldwell stepped off a curb and crossed against the light, although luckily no car was coming. But clearly he was preoccupied, and Agnes was hoping she could slip right by him.

Just as they passed each other, though, Dr. Caldwell wheeled around and said her name, and Agnes had no choice but to pause and greet him. She never looked forward to seeing him, even when she was well, but she was indebted to him, and she did respect him, and, in any case, she certainly would never be rude to him.

His manner was quite serious, however, when he bent to shake her hand, and he said to her that he had become more than a little worried about Betts. That he had been meaning to get in touch with Agnes, so wasn’t it fortunate that he had happened to run into her this morning. Agnes felt her heart sink when he said that. Why would he be worried about Betts? Doctors didn’t seem to realize the terror that accompanies parenthood, and yet who knew better than they what easy prey any parent’s child was to, say, an ear infection that overnight turns into meningitis? Or a simple insect bite that suddenly causes a child to break out in hives and gasp for breath as his throat swells closed?

“About Betts? But, why’s that? It’s just wonderful, really, to see her back to being her old self again,” she said. “She’s so much better. It’s like night and day. It seems to me—oh, the whole family is amazed! You simply seem to have worked a miracle!” Even as she shaped the words she was speaking, Agnes realized she was attempting to flatter this man into reinterpreting whatever it was that worried him about her daughter.

“Oh, yes. Certainly she’s better. She’s perfectly well right now. But bronchitis . . . It’s not a thing to take lightly,” he said to Agnes. “I’m afraid to say that your daughter . . . well, I don’t think she’s taking me seriously. Frankly, I don’t think she’s a very serious girl,” he added with an air of annoyance. Agnes almost replied, but she remembered that she was in a hurry and that it wouldn’t serve any purpose to argue with this man about Betts’s character.

“If your daughter keeps smoking, Mrs. Scofield, she’s likely to have one case of bronchitis after another. And it can turn into pneumonia in no time at all.”

Agnes regarded him for a moment, amazed at how much she resented this man who was only trying to be helpful. “Well, Dr. Caldwell, I hope you’ve made that clear to Betts herself and haven’t been waiting just to tell me. My daughter is a grown woman who’s about to get married. I hope you’ve warned her —”

“Oh, my! I should say so! Certainly I’ve told her that myself! I’ve told that to each and every patient time and again. All my patients. Other doctors’ patients. My wife and my two daughters and my stepson. It doesn’t do a thing. I no longer bother trying to explain it —”

“Oh, well then! Maybe if you did explain it . . .” Agnes tried to suppress her exasperation. “Tell her exactly what might happen. How sick she could get. About pneumonia . . . and whatever else —”

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “all the time I’ve been in medical practice, I’ve tried to
learn
from my patients. It was one of those pieces of advice that every instructor, every doctor—Well! I thought the idea was that since I was young, I’d learn . . . Oh! . . . Wisdom from just ordinary folks. That’s what that advice did mean. But what I
have
learned from my patients is that human beings aren’t logical creatures. They have the ability to act on their knowledge and save themselves a great deal of unhappiness. Misery. But will they do it? Even if it’s quite a simple thing?”

He wasn’t making any attempt to curb his own exasperation, and Agnes snapped back at him instinctively. “Goodness! Have your patients made you that cynical? I believe you’re too pessimistic. I suppose it comes with the territory. But I expect a few people make every —,” Agnes said, but Dr. Caldwell held his hand up imperiously and continued.

“People won’t stop smoking for an abstract idea, Mrs. Scofield. They will not be motivated to give up alcohol either if the reward is too far down the road. Your daughter won’t stop smoking if the only reason is because she might get sick. . . . Now, if I said to her, ‘Miss Scofield, your right arm is going to shrink to half the length of your left arm if you don’t stop smoking!’ well, that’s about vanity, you see,” he explained to Agnes. “Now, that might stop her. But to say to her that she’s likely to get bronchitis again and maybe pneumonia . . .”

“Oh, yes! Oh, I see.” Agnes was eager to agree with this man about something so she could be on her way. “I see what you mean. Tell her that, then! Betts loves to play golf. Tennis. She’d hate to have her right arm get shorter. Well, even though she’s left-handed. . . .” Agnes had managed only to pause midstride, having come to a stop after she had passed him by. She had remained turned slightly away from him, and now she was able to smile and thank him for his concern as she edged away, holding up her list as an explanation. “The buttons haven’t come for the wedding dress. . . . I’m on a search. . . .” And she was off.

Dr. Caldwell stood in the center of the sidewalk like a tall boulder in a fairly shallow stream as people made their way around him on either side. He was taken aback a bit, and he looked after Agnes Scofield as she dashed through the Saturday crowd. She was a tidy, voluptuous little woman with the most remarkable hair. . . . Finally he remembered he was on his way home and that he was already late.

Agnes spent more time than she intended searching though the sewing department at Phillips Department Store, with no luck at all except to find the buckram. Phillips carried basic sewing supplies, but since they didn’t have anything else she needed, and since the store was crowded, she decided to buy the buckram elsewhere. By the time she entered Neate’s Fabrics and Notions, that unnerving conversation with Dr. Caldwell had slipped her mind entirely.

Chapter Eleven

W
ASHBURN, OHIO, was officially incorporated in 1800, and in December of 1949, the
Washburn Observer
ran an editorial asking point-blank if there would or would not be a sesquicentennial celebration. One way or another, Dwight Claytor, who was the newly elected president of the Washburn Historic Preservation Society, became the de facto director of the event, and he was wearied by the project within a few weeks. Eventually, in late February of 1950, after many separate and, finally, joint meetings with the two garden clubs, the Knights of the Eagle, the Knights of Fithian, the Masons and their sister lodge—which was planning the dedication of its newly built Home for the Elderly Women of the Eastern Star—as well as the Marshal County Chamber of Commerce, Dwight was able to announce that Washburn’s sesquicentennial celebration would extend to all of Marshal County and would also encompass Washburn’s Dan Emmett Days celebration, which hadn’t been observed since 1939.

Dwight had called upon every ounce of his patience and his burgeoning skill at diplomacy in order to extract an agreement from all concerned that the events would commence on Saturday, July first, encompassing the Fourth of July, and would come to a close at the Sesquicentennial Ball Saturday, July fifteenth. What had finally tipped the balance in a disagreement between the Chamber of Commerce and the Knights of the Eagle was Dwight’s reminding all concerned that the downtown merchants would have their stores stocked with back-to-school inventory and that the festivities were bound to bring a great many people to town. “I didn’t want the Eagles to be unhappy,” he said to Trudy, “but they really didn’t have a leg to stand on, since they don’t have a marching band. Now, the Knights of Fithian are another matter —”

“Dwight! You sound like . . . oh, I don’t know. Some small-town businessman engaged in boosterism. Like you’re a man in a bad suit with a big smile. How did you end up being in charge of all this?” Trudy wasn’t particularly interested in any of the local events; she had thrived in New York City, even though she had found her job tedious, and even though it meant trading off child care. After the war, though, she had been perfectly willing to come home to Scofields with Dwight, who had offers from several law firms elsewhere but who clearly, and increasingly as the war went on, had longed to be back in Washburn.