16
The weather changed, turned rainy and cold with skiffs of snow melting on the mosses that blanketed shake roofs. Thanksgiving gave them pumpkins and squash from rich black earth. Her employment had begun the week after Mr. Parrish visited. Jennie stayed at the Parrishes’ through the week, visiting Douglas on the weekends while Mr. Parrish—Josiah—took over Elizabeth’s care. Douglas thrived. Perhaps his rash behaviors had been a consequence of the strain of his parents’ rash behaviors.
Several children from the orphanage that Elizabeth had helped found came by and sang to her in December. Jennie had bundled her up with a hot stone at her feet and quilts warmed at the fire while she sat in the parlor on her beloved settee. Members of the Ladies Christian Commission for Marion County visited. Elizabeth had been chairman of the organization for five years before her health began to fail. Their efforts at getting passage of the liquor reform bill continued on without her. They rallied to protect children working in dangerous places or women enslaved to long hours in poor ventilation, leaving children untended and given no rest periods in the factories; rules that put women’s health at risk. Elizabeth and Jennie had spoken often of such issues, when her strength allowed it. Jennie could tell that her passion for these causes brought meaning to her life, even as it seemed her life was slipping away.
Old friends brought Christmas cakes, marveled at the garlands of greens that decorated the parlor and draped the hearth. Mr. Chen baked nonstop, the smells of cinnamon and spices permeating the halls. They all prepared for a grand gathering of the Parrish clan on Christmas Day: Norman and Henrietta, Samuel, and his brother and his new wife. It turned out Charles Winn was but a year older than Jennie.
Josiah and Jennie had worked out that half of her salary would go against the debt and the other half she could use to support herself and Douglas. Josiah had resisted putting any toward the debt, but Jennie had insisted, wishing she could put all her earnings toward relieving that weight. But she also wanted to reimburse her parents for her son’s care, though they insisted they would simply put the money aside for when—or if—she might need it later.
“Perhaps you’ll go to school, become that doctor you always wanted to be,” her mother said on Christmas morning when Jennie gave her the latest allotment.
“I’m a mother now. That’s not a dream to nurture.” Jennie stuffed an orange into Douglas’s stocking. It pained her to say that, but it was true, and Jennie was much better now about seeing the world the way it really was, not the way she wanted it to be. The dream of medical school that she rarely admitted even to herself had departed with Charles, along with the wish for a happy marriage, a big family. She’d prayed that her healing gifts would be used, and today, caring for an elderly woman appeared to be the answer.
As the new year came, making way for spring with Elizabeth not improving, Jennie began to question what healing gifts she really had. Josiah had spent a few weeks at a church convention in Chicago, leaving Jennie in charge. His trust in her both encouraged and alarmed.
Jennie thought Elizabeth’s lack of energy might be due to the bleeding Dr. Wells insisted on doing. With diplomacy she proposed to the doctor one morning that there were new articles in medical journals that suggested bleeding weakened already compromised bodies.
“Nonsense. Where did you read such scuttle?”
“There’s a new journal published right here in Salem by Dr. Shelton. He was trained by the Physio College of Medicine in Cincinnati.”
“Jefferson College in Pennsylvania where I studied is highly regarded and bloodletting is a proven method. If anything, I should do it more, to remove the impurities in her blood.”
She’d brought the subject up in the hallway, outside of Elizabeth’s hearing. She felt guilty speaking about Elizabeth without her present, but she didn’t want her to lose confidence in Dr. Wells. He was her chosen doctor and Jennie barely a self-trained aide. “I’ve given her burdock to help purify the blood. She especially likes the roots Mr. Chen stir-fries.”
“Parrish lets that Chinaman fix her special food? No wonder she’s not improving. You should be preparing her meals. And watching for skin irritations. That’s your role.”
“She responded well to the flaxseed poultices on her one sore. There are no open wounds. I help her walk several times a day, which is how I’ve come to notice her weaknesses after bleeding. As for her meals, we prepare them together. And burdock is an important treatment. She does seem stronger when she eats it, her face less flushed and she—” Jennie stopped, the delicacy of women’s functions always gave her pause when speaking to a man. “Her urinary output is much better after she’s consumed burdock. I’ve been—” She cleared her throat. “I’ve been keeping a graph.”
“You’re monitoring my practice?”
“I’m keeping track of my own efforts and incidentally, yours. Would you like to see my notes?”
“No. What does Parrish say?”
“Reverend Parrish? Why, I haven’t discussed it with him. He’s just returned from his convention.” Josiah had been busy with public events too, including pounding the first stake into the new California Oregon Railroad south of Portland. “Elizabeth knows, of course,” Jennie continued, “that I’m making note of when she has the energy to walk versus when she needs to lie in bed and rest more. There’s always a risk of bed sores then, when she’s less active.”
“Her husband should be made aware of what you’re doing. I’ll speak to him myself.”
Jennie bowed to his upset, lifting the edges of her apron-covered dress, then turned, swishing her skirts down the hall back to Elizabeth.
“I shall speak to him this very day,” Dr. Wells shouted to her back.
Jennie waved to him without turning around. Her heart pounded. Speaking up to authority wasn’t easy.
“What’s that about?” Elizabeth said as Jennie entered and opened the curtains to let in the April light. Pink blooms broke through the mass of green, promising a spring and summer of color.
“A little conversation I had with Dr. Wells. About the value of burdock versus bleeding.”
“I hate the bleeding.” She sighed. “Do you think I’m getting better, Jennie?” She reached for Jennie’s hand.
“On many days, yes. When you can be up and walking in the hallway or sitting in the parlor when your sons come by, those days seem hopeful, don’t they?” Her fingers were fragile as a child’s.
“And you think those days might be related to the bleeding?”
“Dr. Wells is a fine physician, but there are newer practices in every area of medicine. Cobwebs are no longer the only way to stop a cut from bleeding, and carbolizing wounds now shows great promise in reducing infections. Some physicians seem to think looking at options challenges their expertise. If I ever became a doctor I would vow to keep open to new ideas.”
That last she said more to herself than to Elizabeth, whose pillow she now fluffed so she could sit up. Josiah had brought home a small red-and-white dog he called a King Charles spaniel. The dog hopped up onto Elizabeth’s bed and curled his tail around himself, looking up at Elizabeth with adoring eyes. She stroked his small head. She’d named him Van Dyck after the Flemish painter who placed such a little dog in one of the paintings the Parrishes had hanging in the hall. On labored breathing days, he was simply “Van.”
“Have you thought of that, being a doctor?”
“As a child. But not now. No. I’m a mother. I’m a divorced woman. Who would allow me to treat them once they learned about my marital status? You are more than generous to allow me to nurse you, but how would you feel if I was your doctor?”
“The divorce part does not offend me, don’t you know? For many women, it is the only option to protect themselves, the laws being as they are.” She wore a nightcap and Jennie helped her sit forward to remove it so Jennie could brush her hair and braid it in a twist at the top of her head. Thin. Is she losing hair? She liked a lemon powder for her face that Jennie brushed on lightly, handed her lip color. She looked at herself in the mirror Jennie held for her. “All these wrinkles and blotches. And still he says he loves me.” She put the mirror down. “He calls me beautiful.”
“And so you are. Besides, love has nothing to do with how we look, does it?”
“Not real love fired from years of sharing life and loss, no. Still,” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “Josiah has always had an eye for lovely women. Not that he has ever strayed, I know that. But he likes me to look my best. He does so much for me, it’s little enough to put a little powder and lip rouge on my cheeks, don’t you know?”
“You two still flirt with each other.”
She grinned and nodded. “I hope when I’m gone he marries again. He says he’s too old now, but I know he’d be happier having someone to love and pamper. It’s in his very bones to love like that. I’ve been so fortunate.”
“We’re going to get you well so you won’t have to think of such things.”
“So you say,” she said and laughed. For a moment, she heard Charles in the room with his “you say” and felt a wistfulness of longing she’d thought she’d put to rest.
While Elizabeth slept one afternoon, Jennie visited with Ariyah, took her some brews that might assist with Ariyah’s hope to become pregnant.
“Being a nurse becomes you.” Ariyah took the tin from Jennie and returned to her cross-stitch as the women spoke.
“It’s stability that’s wiped away some of my wrinkles.”
“The latest in women’s cosmetics. Too bad it can’t be bottled.”
They laughed together and Ariyah spoke of the continued honeymoon she lived in.
“I’m so happy for you,” Jennie said. “I suspect that’s how the Parrishes began, and they’ve sustained their love even through the loss of a child.” Elizabeth had told her of their son Lamberson’s death and how Josiah and she had sustained each other rather than been torn apart by the grief. “That’s what Charles and I didn’t manage to do—care for each other.”
“Jennie, you did the best you could and Charles likely did too. He chose a different way and not a good one. But you, you’ve landed on your feet. I’m proud of you.”
Jennie fidgeted and changed the subject. Accepting the help of others hardly deserved praise.
While Dr. Wells did not speak to Jennie again of using the bleeding, Josiah asked her about the procedure and her concerns. Jennie explained and showed him the records of walking days versus days when Elizabeth was simply too weak to rise. Josiah held her notes of big block lettering. “I can see how it corresponds to Wells’s procedure.”
“I offered to share this with him, and the article was in the Oregon Physio-Medical Journal that Dr. Shelton, right here in Salem, writes and edits. He included an entire issue on the treatment of ague. He attacked bloodletting and gave reasons.” She took a deep breath. “Now that we have a Willamette Medical Department, Dr. Wells could check with instructors there if he doesn’t like Dr. Shelton’s advice. I’m sure they’d have the latest information.”
“I appreciate your talking with him. I’ll tell him I’d prefer he use Shelton’s methods.”
His decision made Jennie pause. What if the doctor’s actions were the very best thing and the information she gathered coincidental to his practice? What if Jennie was wrong? Medicine wasn’t a science with perfect outcomes promised. Would she have harmed Elizabeth by speaking out? She didn’t always get things straight, even when she read them three or four times. Which she did, rereading Dr. Shelton’s article again. He suggested in his piece that baths with tepid water helped and recommended the use of spearmint along with “pure air, sunshine, bathing, sleep, exercise, rest and all the hygienic agencies and innocent vegetable medicines—for their recovery from disease when sick, and for the preservation of health.” Tomorrow, weather willing, she would take Elizabeth to the garden in the wheeled chair Josiah had had made. She’d do what she had the power to do and prayed it would be enough.
Ariyah lamented the passing of her first anniversary without the promise of a child.
“It’ll happen,” Jennie assured her. “Try thinking of other things. How are your music lessons coming?”
“My mother makes better progress,” Ariyah said. “Oh, I’m doing all right. I just wish that, well . . .”
“I know. What about doing something with children? Start a little choir or maybe Peleg would give lessons to children.”
“Would having them around make me miss babies more?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe they’ll send some sort of baby signal to your body.”
She laughed and Jennie said, “I’ve said something funny.”
“And I got it!” Ariyah said. Then more thoughtful, “I just might take up voice lessons. That’s a good idea.”
“It’s possible to find a happy life even in the midst of waiting for one.”
“Jennie Pickett, you’re becoming a philosopher.”
That really made the friends laugh.
Jennie’s monthly weekends with her parents and Douglas were like small respites when Douglas shared all his new skills. He could ride a pony on his own, had his own bow and arrow he could shoot at a target. He had learned to sound out words and did so with a small book her mother had given him to read. She blinked back tears as he read, so grateful he would not repeat her reading problem.
At each visit, her parents greeted Jennie as a long-lost relative, feeding her and telling her she needed as much rest as she insisted Elizabeth get. “I have a very fine employer,” Jennie told them. “I get plenty of rest. And my knitting, too, has improved. It’s something Elizabeth can do and she’s been guiding me.” Her mother’s eyes narrowed slightly at her comment. “But she’s not as fine a teacher as you, Mother.”
Her mother grinned and handed Jennie a taffy from her candy jar.
They didn’t chastise her indulging Dougie with candies and simple toys either, though at one point her father did say it wasn’t necessary to “purchase” her son’s affection.
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“It looks like that at times,” he said. “You’ve no reason to feel guilty, Janie.”
She pumped the handle for her father, thrusting clear water into the bucket while he used the calomel soap to scrub his arms and hands and face. On weekends he performed physical work to counter the mind-numbing and endless arguing as a new member of the legislature. He lifted the bucket over his head to rinse his hair. Jennie handed him a towel. “Ah, Janie. We’ve enjoyed the boy so much. Reminds us both of Mathias when he was a child. Good memories. And Douglas has adjusted well to all the changes, I’d say.”
“Sometimes. We tell him that Charles was ill and needed time to heal.”
“That’s one way of putting it. And of me? How do you explain my absence?”
Her father held the flannel to his nose, wiped his face, then looked over the towel’s edge. “He doesn’t ask,” he said when he lowered the towel from his face. “I think it’s because he knows you’re doing what you must, that you’ve arranged for a good place for him, and he knows he’ll see you soon. You don’t wonder out loud about what you think you know.”
Maybe she was no longer needed in her son’s life. Her parents adored him, were excellent teachers. Should she even imagine a time when Douglas and she would make their way alone?
“Does he blame me for Charles’s absence? He did once. That’s why I ask.” She washed her own hands beneath the rushing water while her father pumped for her.
“He makes comments not specific to you. That’s a greater worry in my book, Janie. That a child of a divorce will write a chapter about his own faults in all the pain and disappointment of his parents.”
A child of a divorce. The phrase jabbed like a hatpin.
Her father continued as he handed her a towel. “We work to help him see that hard things happen and it’s not always because of something we did or didn’t do, not a punishment or lack of faith. I think of Job—oh, not a story I tell Dougie at this point, but it’s a reminder that in all the trials, God is with us.”
She wasn’t comforted by her son’s never invoking her name. But her father’s words were a good reminder: the divorce wasn’t because of something she did or didn’t do on her own. It happened inside a relationship, that knot fraying from constant strains against it. And it was now her task to make her life with Douglas move forward as best she could, even if that meant for a time without them together quite as often as she might like.