THE LONG, COLD, FALL RAINS HAD STARTED. THE TREES stood bare now on Cherry’s district, lashed by heavy winds. Bundled into her heavy overcoat and overshoes, Cherry tramped the quiet streets, going from patient to patient. Sometimes it was lonely, out alone in the pouring rain day after day, entering strangers’ homes and working hard to make friends of them, stopping for lunch at any counter or diner that was near.
Today, at least, she was going to see a family she already knew, the Perssons. Cherry started off, black bag swinging, to check up on Uncle Gustave. The card of invitation to the Craft Shop still was tucked in her purse: there had been so many urgent sick calls recently that this had had to wait.
“I could walk to the Perssons’ by passing Miss Gregory’s house. It’s only a little out of my way.”
The Victorian mansion loomed up in the pouring rain. Because its protective trees were stripped of leaves now, Cherry could see the house more clearly. The windows were richly curtained in lace, in an old-fashioned style. They all seemed to be tightly closed. The heavy, oak door on the porch had swollen from the rain: it might be almost impossible to pry open. Probably it had not been opened in years. Cherry went along the fence to the back of the house, and peered at the back steps.
“Wish I could just go inside the kitchen and call out to ask if she’s all right,” she thought. Yet she had no right of entry. Mary Gregory had not summoned the nurse. Still—
Impulsively Cherry unlatched the gate and walked across the wet back yard. She was surprised at how hard her heart started to beat. She mounted the steps and raised her fist to knock. But some curious respect for the recluse restrained her. Or was it pity? Whatever it was, Cherry slowly withdrew her hand, turned, and went away.
It was a long walk to the Perssons’. Cherry got thoroughly drenched.
When Ingrid Persson opened the door and saw the dripping nurse, she exclaimed: “I will make you hot coffee!”
Cherry giggled. “Do I look that drowned? How are you, Mrs. Persson? No coffee, really, thanks.”
Both of them avoided mentioning the incident of the bus and Driver Smith. Mrs. Persson led Cherry in to see Uncle Gustave.
“Another nosebleed yesterday, Miss Ames.”
“What he needs,” Cherry said softly, “is not medicine but psychology.”
They came into his orderly room. The little man sat up weakly on his bed. He was fully dressed but downcast, his beloved tools untouched.
Cherry checked him over, asked a few questions, then came to the real point of her visit.
“How would you like to build as much as you like, with all the tools and materials supplied to you?”
His eyes turned bluer than ever with delight. Then he scoffed, “There is no such chance.”
“But there is! Laurel House—”
“No. Charity I do not take.”
“This isn’t charity. You join and become a member.” Cherry carefully explained. Hope crept back into Uncle Gustave’s pinched face. “And here is the membership card Miss Stanley sent you.”
Mrs. Persson beamed with approval. The little man reached for the card, then let his hand fall limp. “Now I remember. Constant told me. It is for children. For learners. To learn to hammer nails. Bah! I am no child, I am a master craftsman.”
Cherry had not foreseen this valid objection. “Maybe—maybe you could become an instructor,” she groped, and hoped that she was not encroaching on Miss Stanley’s jurisdiction. “Or—ah—Laurel House wants to build a Music School. They need help, advice, an experienced builder. I told them about you and they wish you would help.”
“Go once,” Mrs. Persson urged. “Only once, Uncle Gustave. See how it is.”
Uncle Gustave was sitting up straight now. “If they need me, yes. Yes, I will go and help them.”
Cherry and Ingrid Persson exchanged grins. Cherry left some vitamin tablets, but she did not think Uncle Gustave would need them now.
“Will you stay for coffee and kondis, Miss Ames?”
Cherry hesitated. She did not like to refuse this woman who was so starved for friends. But work pressed her, Cherry regretfully explained, and she took her leave.
Her calls led her again past the lonely old mansion. Cherry stood for a moment beside the fence, wondering about Mary Gregory, wondering what that house held. Perhaps she would never find out.
“This isn’t getting my calls made!” Determinedly Cherry started out again on her round of healing.
But Cherry could not stop speculating about the mysterious recluse, even though some colorful people filled her afternoon. The Sergeyevskys were among today’s patients, with their high-necked blouses, tea, and strangled English. Cherry called on a couple who kept twelve cats. She found a woman living in a damp cellar, and coughing, and promised to help find more healthful quarters.
She showed a nervous young father how to bathe his brand-new baby: the baby stood the ordeal better than the young man. Cherry went back to the Terrell cottage, where Jimmy was all but well now, and gave weary little Mrs. Terrell final instructions on cleaning up after the contagious illness.
All these people seemed so lonesome. They were so glad to have a visitor. And Cherry was touched by the respect and affection her uniform called forth.
Miss Culver was last on today’s list, because Cherry had to go to the settlement house and pick up the painting kit for her. Cherry wished she could be doing something for Mary Gregory, too. That woman must be far lonelier than all the rest.
Laurel House was full of lights and people and activity. It was a cheering, sociable place to come to on a rainy day. Cherry asked for the social worker, Evelyn Stanley, and waited, peering in at the pottery studio meanwhile.
“Hello, Miss Ames! The painting set is all ready.” Miss Stanley came running lightly down the stairs. Today she wore emerald green, and looked as thoroughly alive as Laurel House itself. “Why, Miss Ames. What are you looking so pensive about?”
Cherry pushed her curls off her red cheeks. “Ohhh—maybe it’s the rain, Miss Stanley. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been seeing so many lonesome people today. You know, I come from the Middle West where everybody knows everybody else. If you don’t know ’em, you say hello anyway and pretty soon you get acquainted. I just can’t understand it, here in the city, where neighbors live side by side and don’t have a real friend outside of their own families.”
“I know. It worries me, too,” Evelyn Stanley said. “And a settlement house simply can’t reach everyone. Big cities are lonely.”
“I worry about lonesome people like my Perssons and my Miss Culver.” And Mary Gregory, Cherry added silently.
“Me, too,” the social worker said. “I wake up at night sometimes, wondering who’s all alone, only a few blocks away.”
“The pity of it is, they’d like one another if only they could get acquainted.”
The two young women sat down on a bench together, brooding.
“I did have a piece of an idea,” Cherry said cautiously.
Miss Stanley brightly glanced up. “Mm? Let’s hear it.”
“You don’t know about me and my ideas,” Cherry warned.
“Oh, you too? I’m another dangerous idea woman.”
They laughed and liked each other. Cherry said:
“Well, it’s this. Everybody’s interested in good things to eat. No matter how little people may have in common, even if they came originally from different countries, they’d enjoy sampling one another’s cooking. They’d have food to talk about, for a start. Maybe if we had—oh, call it neighbors’ dinners—people could get acquainted that way.”
Evelyn Stanley’s eyes had an absorbed, glazed look which Cherry suspected spelled action. “You have something there! Matter of fact, I think it was tried in another section of New York City, and people ended up being friends. They went into one another’s homes—it’s nicest at home—each family took a turn playing host—”
“I’m afraid people around here haven’t the means or facilities,” Cherry said. “Is there any chance that Laurel House could lend a hand? I’m sure lots of my people would like to be invited—bring their pet foods as the price of admission—” She could ask Josie and Bertha and Gwen, whose districts adjoined and were served by Laurel House, to invite their patients too.
“—and invite not only your patients. Everybody! Dishes of all nationalities, all regions,” Evelyn Stanley was planning aloud. “I’ll ask our head caseworker right away.”
The two of them looked at each other like conspirators.
“We’re nearly forgetting Miss Culver’s paints!”
Cherry’s head was full of all these possible doings when she trotted back through her district, went upstairs, and knocked on Miss Culver’s door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s the nurse, Miss Culver—with a surprise for you!”
The door opened onto the gracious, shabby room and some of the weariness went out of Miss Culver’s face. “Something for me?”
“Open it and tell me if you like it,” Cherry said eagerly. “If you don’t, we’ll figure out something else—”
Miss Culver’s hands shook as she undid the big, bulky package. Cherry suspected it was a long time since anyone had given this gentle lady a present.
“Why—why, it’s paints!” Miss Culver shyly fingered the brushes, the bottles of pigment. “But, my dear Miss Ames, this will be wasted on me. Hadn’t you better give it to someone who can paint?”
“How do you know you can’t paint?” Cherry demanded, smiling at her.
A slow smile lit up Miss Culver’s face. “Do you know, I’ve wondered if I couldn’t paint—a little. I’ve sat here at my window and wished I could try—Oh, I’m going to enjoy this. Thank you very much indeed, Miss Ames.”
Cherry explained that the gift came from Laurel House, and that Miss Culver, when she grew stronger, would be welcome in their painting group. She showed Miss Culver how the easel opened, and stood it at the window, adjusted low so that the frail woman could paint sitting down.
Then Cherry attempted to check Miss Culver’s physical condition, but that lady was thinking too hard about her painting kit for Cherry to get any but sketchy answers. However, Cherry was satisfied with her improvement. She chuckled at Miss Culver’s parting comment:
“Twelve hours to wait for daylight. Or possibly I could paint at night—tonight—”
Cherry said good night and caught the bus, to go home.
Instantly her attention was riveted, for the driver was Driver Smith. And he did not yell, snarl, or glower at Cherry as she climbed aboard and handed him her fare.
“Hello,” she said tentatively.
“Hmph!” He stiffly handed her change.
Twin devils danced in Cherry’s dark eyes. “Can you tell me, please, if the Junction Avenue entrance to the subway is open at this hour?” This was not Driver Smith’s business, just general information. But Cherry itched to know if he would say, as usual: “Whyncha get off there and see?”
He said: “Yeah.”
Cherry was careful to respond, “Thanks a lot.” He looked incredulous, then embarrassed.
Cherry went back in the bus and sat down. Triumph! Driver Smith had actually been accommodating. Crossly, grudgingly, yes. But her needling him last time had helped. She sat there giggling to herself and wondering if his temper might further improve. Maybe if she nudged him every now and then—
The bus pulled, not yanked, to a stop at Mary Gregory’s street. As usual, Cherry pressed her face against the window and peered out. But the rain and the dark were too dense for her to see anything beyond street lights and puddles.
An hour later, Cherry tramped into the apartment, tired, hungry, soggy. A note was propped on the mantel, against Ann’s clock:
“Too gosh-darn tired to cook. Come one, come all to the Witch’s Cave. (signed) Bertha, Vivian, Mai Lee.”
That was their name for an orange-painted basement restaurant where their neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, often dined. The couple was there again tonight, and smiled at Cherry as she made her way to the girls’ table for six in a corner.
“You’re the last one in, Cherry,” they greeted her.
“I’m done in,” she groaned. “Have you kids eaten up everything in the Witch’s larder?”
“What keeps you so late on your district, anyhow?”
Cherry made a face at them. “Oh, making plans at Laurel House.”
“For what? We want in on this, too!”
Cherry turned away for a moment to order her meal. Then she repeated to the other nurses her conversation with Evelyn Stanley. Their faces glowed as the idea, of lonesome neighbors getting acquainted, caught on. Bedlam reigned at their table as various versions of dinners, festivals, and parties were sifted. Finally they agreed that—all factors considered—a Christmas party at Laurel House, for the entire area, would be the best choice.
“That is, if the head worker agrees. They probably have some sort of Christmas party, anyway.”
“But this one is going to be superspecial!”
Mai Lee said wistfully, “Vivi and I would have to be assigned miles away. But we’ll help you, won’t we, Vivi?”
In the midst of all this enthusiasm, Cherry retired into her thoughts.
“What’s on the Ames mind?” Gwen asked. “The mysterious recluse in your district?”
“Don’t joke, Gwen,” Vivian said. “It’s not funny. Poor creature!”
“Have you learned any more about her?” they all asked.
Cherry rose from the table. “No. I wish I could find out, and help her. I can’t stop thinking about her.”