Authors: Myla Goldberg
Wickett's Remedy (9 page)
She remained on the post office bench, observing the various comings and goings of strangers until the fact of her husband’s absence was no longer paralyzing. Then she retreated outside, mechanically retracing her steps. Intent on returning home, she became blind to the flags and newspaper boys, but when she reached the Somerset the prospect of the empty flat offered no comfort. She continued to walk.
On Blossom Street she entered a small, strange bakery that smelled comfortingly of dough. Because there was no tea she ordered coffee and received a tiny ceramic cup with no handle, which contained the darkest, most bitter coffee she had ever tasted. The bakery was occupied by older women dressed in black, their gray-streaked hair wound into bulky buns behind their heads. The flesh of their faces and arms had gone soft. Fingers swollen with age immobilized rings planted by long-dead husbands. These women called and gestured to one another like children in a playground, their voices commanding the room. Lydia did not recognize the language but she was certain they spoke of the war—today the entire city was engaged in the same simultaneous conversation.
The café was not strange, only Italian; and Vincent Iannacone thinks the young lady ungrateful for not remembering that her espresso that day was fee.
Lydia finished her coffee. She would need a glass of water to drive the taste from her mouth, but rather than approach the counter she found herself tapping a neighboring shoulder. The woman who turned wore an expression more curious than friendly, as if Lydia were a stray cat with unusual markings who might or might not scratch when stroked.
Lucia Petronelli does not remember what she and her friends were discussing the day the young sconoscuita came to their café, but she knows they were not discussing the war. Ignoring men’s foolishness was one great pleasure of widowhood.
“My husband has joined the army,” she confessed, surprising herself. It seemed unlikely she would be
understood and even if she was, she did not know what comfort a stranger could offer.
The woman’s face spread into a broad, wide grin, revealing a gold tooth. “That is good,” she laughed, clapping her hands. The other women turned to look. “Very good,” the woman continued, nodding. “Army need strong men.”
The other women began to nod as well, a chorus of moving heads.
“Good!” one repeated.
“Very good!” echoed another.
“Strong men!” cackled a third, causing the entire room to burst into laughter.
“But you don’t understand,” Lydia protested, her eyes filling with tears. “My husband isn’t strong at all; he’s small and frail.” She did not know which was more absurd: that Henry had joined the army or that this had become a topic of discussion among the widows of this odd café. She wished she had not spoken. She ought to have left as soon as she learned there was no tea.
“Army make him strong,” the smiling woman pronounced. When she turned from Lydia the other women turned away as well, resuming their previous conversation as though they had never been interrupted. When Lydia staggered up from her table and stumbled outside, no one noticed. When she looked back through the window, her coffee cup had already been cleared away. There was no sign she had been there at all.
If the young lady had ever returned she would have thought differently. Soon after her visit, tea graced Signore Iannacone’s menu.
Because she was crying the streets blurred, but she knew she could trust her feet to lead her to Saint Joseph’s. She felt strange passing over the church
threshold: she had always pitied women who frequented churches when there was no scheduled service. She knelt uncertainly in a back pew, head bowed and eyes closed. She did not know if there was a saint of war. She seemed to remember a saint for soldiers but could not remember his name. She scanned the church interior until her eyes fell on a small statue of Sebastian. She remembered Father O’Brian once describing Saint Sebastian’s days as a soldier. The thought that Sebastian, like Henry, had been neither large nor powerfully built was only briefly heartening. Sebastian, after all, had been pierced to death by arrows. Doing her best to overlook the saint’s dire end, Lydia tendered a brief prayer to Sebastian in her husband’s name.
Father O’Brian recalls that saints were never Liddie Kilkenny’s strong suit. The primary patron saint of soldiers is Saint George.
It was a cold day but clear. On quitting the church she walked east to the Charles. A group of girls in modest uniforms walked the path along the river’s edge, led by a nun encouraging them to take in the brisk air. Lydia watched the progress of a pleasure boat filled with women and children, many of whom waved as they passed. Behind the ferry, a scull stroked its way southward. Before coming to the West end she had never seen such boats. The harbor was too rough for them. She did not like sculls—they reminded her of D Street water striders, which laid claim to the backyard laundry basin after a good rain.
To further postpone her return home she decided to visit the Bowdoin. As she hopped the Cambridge trolley she smiled bitterly to think of the money she was wasting—a nickel for coffee, a nickel for the streetcar, and now a nickel for the matinee—all weekend luxuries and it was only Monday. She had never attended a
picture on a weekday afternoon. She blushed to think of the breakfast things she had left in the parlor. One of the worst things her mother could say about a woman was that she kept an unclean home.
As manager of the Bowdoin for forty years, Mr. Chester Crowley cannot imagine how anyone could conflate the Imperial’s vulgar red curtain with the Bowdoin’s regal violet one.
Lydia liked the Bowdoin because it reminded her of the Imperial: both had high, gold ceilings illuminated with electric stars; both commanded luxurious red curtains fringed with gold tassel, which whisked away with an impressive whoosh as the lights dimmed; and both were redolent of roasted peanuts. Accustomed as she was to weekend crowds, Lydia felt a flush of excitement at finding the theater only partially filled. She could choose practically any seat she liked. This freedom was magnified by Henry’s absence. He favored the balcony: any closer and the looming shapes of the screen actors gave him headaches. Without even a glance to the balcony stairs, she strode to the theater’s front rows. A few seats were occupied by women with young children, old ladies—Lydia had never thought to wonder where they went after Mass—and a smattering of men of various ages. Lydia doubted that any proper sort of man would allow himself to be seen inside a movie theater in the middle of the day and made sure to give these loafers a wide berth.
A large flag, which hung down the center of the curtain, remained in place once the curtains had been pulled aside, and Lydia wondered if she would be expected to watch the movie against a background of stars and stripes. When the piano man asked them to rise for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the theater stood like this was the most customary thing in the world, as though flags in theaters were commonplace and movies had always begun with a recitation of patriotic tunes
and not with songs like “Me and My Girl,” or “Dancing on a Cloud.” The flag remained in place for “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and “America the Beautiful,” making it difficult for Lydia to read the projected lyrics, and so she hummed, hoping no one would think less of her for it. It ought to have been perfectly acceptable to sit back down, but no one reclaimed their seat. It felt silly to remain standing, but Lydia was not sure whether her embarrassment stemmed from being influenced by the others or because it seemed that only she had not known that the rules had changed. Thankfully the flag rose high into the rafters after the songs finished, and people resumed their seats, allowing her an uncompromised view of the first two-reeler and the feature that followed.
As war had just been declared, Mr. Crowley is certain the Bowdoin’s feature that day was of some other type.
Mr. Fairbanks adds that he did not appear in any war pictures in 1917. He suspects the young woman is remembering a comedy called A Modern Musketeer.
The feature turned out to be a war picture. Lydia could not watch the screen soldiers for more than a few seconds before each one changed into Henry. Soon the screen became filled with drably uniformed Henrys clutching guns and staring into the distance, and when even Douglas Fairbanks himself acquired her husband’s pale features she knew she had to leave. From the lobby she could hear the muted strains of the piano, which now sounded like it was being played by a ghost.
Back on the street she remembered that she had not returned for the morning delivery. In her prolonged absence the afternoon correspondence had certainly arrived as well. This was the first time since Wickett’s beginning that she had not collected the mail promptly, a realization that transformed the day’s distress into panic. She began to run.
At the sight of the Somerset, she pictured the flat with utter clarity: the dirty breakfast dishes in the
parlor, the unswept floors, the unmade bed with Henry’s note still pinned to the pillow. She would walk straight to the bedroom to pack whatever bare essentials would be necessary for a night’s stay on D Street. Afterward she could return to the flat with her mother or Michael to collect any additional things. When Henry returned from the war—if Henry returned from the war—he would have to come across the bridge to get her.
To avoid facing the darkness, she reached her arm along the wall just inside the front door until she found the switch and with a relieved sigh depressed it. Though she had meant to go straight to the bedroom, she realized she could not quit an apartment that contained dirty dishes. To combat the surrounding silence she began to hum. This, at least, would do until she reached the kitchen, where the business of dishwashing would allay her panic long enough to allow her to finish the job.
Nearing the parlor and humming “America the Beautiful” under her breath—the song had been repeating mercilessly inside her head ever since she had quit the Bowdoin—she felt that something was not quite right. Then she saw it: a dark shape on the divan. Her stomach leapt into her throat. She thrust her arm into the sitting room and began fumbling for the light, but before she could manage the switch, the shape rose from its chair. She shrieked and fell backward. The shape rushed at her into the light.
“Liddie—” the shape snuffled. “Liddie.” It fell to its knees and buried its head in her dress. “They wouldn’t take me,” Henry sobbed into her skirt, his shoulders quaking. “They took one look and sent me home.”
TELLS OF MORAL PERIL TO SOLDIERS
Capt. Ralph M. Harrison, marshal of the provost guard, with headquarters in the South armory, called the attention of the Twentieth Century Club yesterday to the large number of young girls who accost soldiers and sailors in Boston, indicating the corner of Tremont and Boylston streets as “the worst place” and “between 11 and 12 p.m.” as “the worst time.”
“I have referred before to this place,” he added, “as ‘the happy hunting ground’ because everybody seems to be so industrious down there.”
The speaker told of being himself accosted, and cited experiences of the same kind by officers and men of the guard.
“I was appalled,” he went on to say, “at the huge number of young girls for whom the uniform seems to have a particular attraction. I have seen in Tremont and Boylston street and on the Common soldiers and sailors passing a couple of these little girls and have heard the girls say, ‘Hello! Why in such a hurry?’
“I have given orders to immediately arrest any soldier or sailor who addresses or endeavors to approach any girl in the street, but it is impossible for the guard to do the same with the young girls and women who accost the soldiers and sailors. As far as the men from Boston are concerned I think it is of primary importance for the people of Boston to correct this.”
Ladies and gentlemen, we live in miraculous times. Thanks to advances in modern medicine, we no longer
live in fear of typhus, smallpox, or yellow fever, diseases which only a generation ago wielded deadly power over young and old. A generation ago, one of every four children died before their second birthday. Now, with the help of such innovations as pasteurization, our children are thriving in numbers as never before.