61
A FRANK DISCUSSION
When he went to the Geigers’ house next morning, she answered the door wearing a new-looking blue housedress. Her hair was neatly combed. He smelled her light, spicy fragrance as she took his hands.
“Hello, Rachel.”
“… Thank you, Shaman.”
Her eyes were unchanged, wonderful and deep, but he noticed they were still raw with fatigue. “How is my patient?”
“He appears to be better. His cough isn’t as frightening as before.” She led him up the stairs. Lillian sat next to her grandson’s bed with a pencil and some sheets of brown paper, entertaining him by drawing stick figures and telling stories. The patient, whom Shaman had seen only as an afflicted human being the night before, this morning was a small dark-eyed boy with brown hair and freckles that stood out in his pale face. He looked about two years old. A girl, several years older but with a remarkable resemblance to her brother, sat at the foot of his bed.
“These are my children,” Rachel said, “Joshua and Hattie Regensberg. And this is Dr. Cole.”
“How do you do,” Shaman said.
“Ha do.” The boy regarded him warily.
“How do you do,” Hattie Regensberg said. “Mama says you don’t hear us, and we must look at you when we speak, and say our words stinctly.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Why don’t you hear us?”
“I’m deaf because I was sick when I was a little boy,” Shaman said easily.
“Is Joshua going to be deaf?”
“No, Joshua definitely isn’t going to be deaf.”
In a few minutes he was able to assure them that Joshua was much better. The baths and steam had broken his fever, his pulse was strong and steady, and when Shaman positioned the stethoscope bell and told Rachel what to listen for, she could hear no rales. Shaman placed the earpieces in Joshua’s ears and let him hear his own heart beating, and then Hattie took a turn with the stethoscope and placed the bell on her brother’s stomach, announcing that all she heard was “guggles.”
“That’s because he’s hungry,” Shaman said, and advised Rachel to put the boy on a light but nourishing diet for a day or two.
He told Joshua and Hattie their mother knew some very good fishing spots along the river, and he invited them to visit the Cole farm and play with the lambs. Then he said good-bye to them, and to their grandmother. Rachel walked him to the door.
“You have beautiful children.”
“They are, aren’t they!”
“I’m sorry about your husband, Rachel.”
“Thank you, Shaman.”
“And I wish you good luck in your impending marriage.”
Rachel appeared startled. “What impending marriage?” she asked, just as her mother came down the stairway.
Lillian passed through the foyer quietly, but the high color in her face was like an advertisement.
“You have been misinformed, I have no marriage plans,” Rachel said crisply, loud enough for her mother to hear, and her face was pale when she said good-bye to Shaman.
That afternoon as he was riding Boss toward home, he overtook a solitary female figure trudging along, and when he drew closer he recognized the blue housedress. Rachel wore stout walking shoes and an old bonnet to guard her face from the sun. He called out to her, and she turned and greeted him quietly.
“Please do.”
So he swung down from the saddle and led the horse.
“I don’t know what got into my mother, to tell you I was to be married. Joe’s cousin has shown some interest, but we won’t marry. I think my mother is pushing me toward him because she’s so anxious for the children to have a proper father again.”
“There seems to be a conspiracy of mothers. Mine neglected to tell me you were back, purposely, I’m sure.”
“It’s so insulting of them,” she said, and he saw tears in her eyes. “They assume that we’re fools. I’m aware I have a son and a daughter who need a Jewish father. And certainly the last thing you’re interested in is a Jewish woman who has two children and is in mourning.”
He smiled at her. “They’re very nice children. With a very nice mother. But it’s true, I’m not an infatuated fifteen-year-old anymore.”
“I thought of you often, after I was married. I so regretted that you’d been hurt.”
“I got over it very quickly.”
“We were children, thrown together during difficult times. I dreaded marriage so, and you were such a good friend.” She smiled at him. “When you were a little boy you said you’d kill to protect me. And now we’re adults, and you’ve saved my son.” She placed her hand on his arm. “I hope we’ll remain steadfast friends forever. As long as we live, Shaman.”
He cleared his throat. “Oh, I know we will,” he said awkwardly. For a moment they walked in silence, and then Shaman asked if she would like to ride the horse.
“No, I prefer to continue my walk.”
“Well, then, I’ll ride him myself, because I have a good deal to do before I can eat my supper. Good afternoon, Rachel.”
“Good afternoon, Shaman,” she said, and he remounted and rode away, leaving her walking purposefully down the road behind him.
He told himself she was a strong and practical woman who had the courage to face things as they were, and he determined to learn from her. He needed the company of a woman. He made a house call to Roberta Williams, who was suffering from “women’s troubles” and had begun to drink to excess. Averting his eyes from the dressmaker’s dummy with the ivory buttocks, he asked after her daughter and was told that Lucille had married a postal worker three years before, and lived in Davenport. “Has a youngun every year. Never comes to see me unless she needs money, that one,” Roberta told him. Shaman left her a bottle of tonic.
At just the moment of his deepest discontent, he was hailed on Main Street by Tobias Barr, who sat in his buggy with two women. One of them was his diminutive blond wife, Frances, and the other was Frances’ niece, who was visiting from St. Louis. Evelyn Flagg was eighteen years old, taller than Frances Barr but blond like her, and she had the most perfect female profile Shaman had ever seen.
“We’re showing Evie about, thought she’d like to see Holden’s Crossing,” Dr. Barr said. “Have you read Romeo and Juliet, Shaman?”
“Why, yes, I have.”
“Well, you’ve mentioned that when you know a play, you enjoy attending a performance. A touring company is in Rock Island this week, and we’re getting up a theater party. Will you join us?”
“I would like that,” Shaman said, and smiled at Evelyn, whose answering smile was dazzling.
“A light supper at our house first, then, at five o’clock,” Frances Barr said.
He bought a new white shirt and a black string tie, and reread the play. The Barrs also had invited Julius Barton and his wife, Rose. Evelyn wore a blue gown that suited her blondness. For a few moments Shaman struggled, trying to remember where he’d seen that shade of blue recently, and then he realized it had been in Rachel Geiger’s housedress.
Frances Barr’s idea of a light supper was six courses. Shaman found it difficult to carry on a conversation with Evelyn. When he asked her a question, she was inclined to answer with a quick, nervous smile and a nod or a shake of her head. She spoke twice of her own volition, once to tell her aunt that the roast was excellent, and a second time during dessert, to confide in Shaman that she doted on both peaches and pears and was very grateful they ripened in different seasons so she wasn’t forced to choose between them.
The theater was crowded, and the evening was hot as only the end of summer can be. They arrived just before the curtain rose, because the six courses had taken time. Tobias Barr had bought the tickets with Shaman in mind. They sat in the center section of the third row, and they were scarcely settled before the actors were speaking their lines. Shaman watched the play through opera glasses that allowed him to lip-read quite well, and he enjoyed it. During the first intermission he accompanied Dr. Barr and Dr. Barton outside, and while waiting in line to use the privy behind the theater, they agreed the production was interesting. Dr. Barton thought that perhaps the actress playing Juliet was pregnant. Dr. Barr said Romeo was wearing a truss beneath his tights.
Shaman had been concentrating on their mouths, but during Act Two he studied Juliet and saw no basis for Dr. Barton’s supposition. There was no doubt about the fact that Romeo wore a truss, however.
At the end of Act Two the doors were opened to a welcome breeze, and the lamps were lit. He and Evelyn remained in their seats and tried to talk. She said she often went to the theater in St. Louis. “I find it inspiring to attend the plays, don’t you?”
“Yes. But I seldom go,” he said absently. Curiously, Shaman felt he was being watched. With his opera glasses he studied the people in the balconies on the left side of the stage, and then on the right. In the second balcony, on the right, he saw Lillian Geiger and Rachel. Lillian wore a brown linen dress with great bell-like sleeves of lace. Rachel sat just beneath a lamp, which caused her to brush at the moths that swooped about the light, but it gave Shaman a chance to examine her closely. Her hair was carefully done, brushed up behind her in a gleaming knot. She wore a black dress that appeared to be made of silk; he wondered when she would stop wearing mourning in public. The dress was collarless against the heat, with short puff sleeves. He studied her round arms and full bosom, and always came back to her face. While he was still looking, she turned from her mother and glanced down at where he was sitting. For a full moment she observed him looking up at her through his glasses, and then she glanced away as ushers turned down the lamps.
Act Three seemed unending. Just as Romeo said to Mercutio, Courage, man. The hurt cannot be much, he became aware that Evelyn Flagg was trying to say something to him. He felt her slight warm breath on his ear as she whispered, while Mercutio replied, No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.
He took the glasses from his eyes and turned toward the girl who sat next to him in the dark, mystified because small children like Joshua and Hattie Regensberg could remember the principles of lip-reading, while she wasn’t able to.
“I cannot hear you.”
He was unaccustomed to whispering. Doubtless his voice was too loud, because the man directly in front of him in the second row turned and stared.
“I beg your pardon,” Shaman whispered. It was his earnest hope that his words were softer this time, and he put the glasses back up to his eyes.