• 46 •

“I STILL THINK you ought to go see your Meemaw,” Nurse Cartwright said from her reclining chair, her feet up on her desk and a cigarette between her fingers. She wouldn’t allow Beulah to have one of her own, but she did pass it over so Beulah could take a draw now and then. “Your granny must be — what, eighty-five by now?”

“But what if I go back and she’s dead?” Beulah said. “I couldn’t bear it. Besides, she might not want to see me.”

“You don’t know that,” the nurse said. “She had no way of getting a letter to you.”

“You know who I do wonder about,” Beulah said, taking a lazy kind of pleasure in meandering through her own story like this, “is my mother. When I was a little girl, she was the wicked one in the family. But what did she do? She kept a job most of the time, and went with a few men, and got into some liquor. It’s nothing I haven’t done myself. What’s so awful about that?”

Nurse Cartwright said, “Quite a bit, according to a man like your grandfather.”

“That’s right. He put her out, and that’s what drove her to those little brown bottles.”

“It might’ve been more than that,” the nurse said.

“Oh, I’m sure it was,” Beulah said. “She had her troubles. But what I’m trying to say is that I’ve been every bit as wicked as she has. The only difference between us is that the whole country knows what I did. Nobody’s heard of her.”

Nurse Cartwright nodded thoughtfully at that. “I do see what you mean. Maybe you and your mama would understand each other better now.”

Beulah considered that. “I wouldn’t mind trying. I don’t suppose she’s still alive.”

“I can’t imagine how she could be, from what you’ve told me,” the nurse said. Beulah appreciated the frank and straightforward way Nurse Cartwright addressed any subject connected with medicine. “People don’t come back from a drug habit like that. It kills them if they try to quit, and it kills them if they don’t.”

“I just don’t know what drove her to it. What was so awful?”

“Must’ve been something, for her to run out on you and your sister,” Nurse Cartwright said.

“I can’t judge her for that. I gave my little boy away. Then those people let him die. What I did was worse.”

“Don’t ever think that way. I’ve nursed some babies through cholera. At least half of them die no matter what you do.”

“I did not know that. I always thought they just didn’t send for a doctor in time.”

“Not at all. I’m sure the doctor was there every day.”

Beulah did feel a half-measure better, having heard that from a trustworthy source. She’d always carried a heavy knot of guilt, down in the pit of her stomach, over little Henry Clay Jr. She couldn’t even remember his face anymore, although that could’ve been from lack of effort. She didn’t dare try too hard to summon him up.

It wasn’t at all unpleasant, talking like this. Beulah had never had much of a chance to ruminate over her misfortunes in such a leisurely, even friendly, way. Nurse Cartwright exhibited an open-minded curiosity about the events in Beulah’s life, going all the way back to that day when she stood on Meemaw’s front porch and asked to be let in.

“I’ll wager you were starved and small for your age, and eaten up with nits, too,” the nurse speculated, sounding as if she regretted not having a chance to get after little Beulah with her nit comb.

“Oh, I was,” Beulah said, happy to let her be right. “Claudia and me both could’ve used some nursing back then.”

What a comfort it was, to imagine Nurse Cartwright with her comb, making things right for little Beulah and Claudia. Over those last few weeks in the camp, Beulah’s past had leapt out at her like a panther coming at her in a dark jungle. It tore at her and pulled her back down to a place she never wanted to go again. When she went for that gun and pointed it at Freeman, it wasn’t really Freeman she wanted to shoot. It was the shadowy, fanged monster of her own ruined past.

But now, after a few peaceful days in the infirmary, with Nurse Cartwright changing her bandages and washing her hair (what a pleasing sensation, to have another person’s hands in one’s hair), not to mention a smuggled box of chocolate wafers and a shared cigarette now and again as a reward for good behavior, Beulah felt entirely revived. She’d been going through life like a chipped teacup, broken in places and threatening to shatter at any moment if she wasn’t handled right, but she felt restored now, or at least glued solidly back together.

It came as some disappointment, then, when Constance arrived to check on her, and Nurse Cartwright announced that she was ready to return to duty.

Beulah’s hand flew up to her face. “Oh, but they’re all going to ask about my nose.”

“You fell down in the commotion the other night,” Constance said. “Everyone knows that already. They haven’t missed the fact that you’re living in the infirmary.”

“I saw the soldiers come in yesterday,” Beulah said. “Are they really closing the camp down?”

“Not yet,” Constance said. “I had a telegram from Maude Miner this morning. She and General Murray will be back in a week’s time to give us something like a graduation ceremony and to officially close the camp. The families have all been notified.”

“Are the soldiers still here?” Beulah said, rising gingerly from her comfortable hospital bed, as if her injured nose might prevent her from walking upright.

“They’ve gone back to Washington. They’ll return after we leave to put the camp together the way they like it.”

“All right, then.” Beulah went behind a screen to dress. When she was ready, Nurse Cartwright put her hands on Beulah’s forehead as if to take her temperature one last time and declared her well. “Come back once a day and let me look at that nose,” she said. “If it starts to bleed again, I’ll take care of it.”

“It won’t,” Beulah said. “I’ve never been much of a bleeder.”

“Well, then, you have that in your favor.”

Constance looked at Beulah and the nurse, puzzled over the easy manner they had between them. After they left, she whispered, “Did you tell her?”

“Nurse Cartwright? Oh, I told her everything. You have to, if you’re staying in her infirmary.”

“I can’t keep your secret if you go around telling it to other people.”

“She’s a nurse! She won’t tell anyone.” Beulah knew perfectly well that Nurse Cartwright would never say a thing. She’d never felt so safe around another person in her life. There was something so staunch and reliable about a gray-haired nurse who had seen everything. She couldn’t be surprised or shocked. How she managed to be so kind, and to keep a good humor, after all the malaise she must’ve witnessed over the years, was something Beulah couldn’t fathom, but she did marvel at it.

“I hope you’ve had some time to think about what you might do next,” Constance said, “because we only have a week to go. I don’t want to just take you to the train station and drop you off.”

“Oh, you won’t have to,” Beulah said. “I’ve decided to stay here in Washington for a while.”

“But where will you go?”

“I have a friend who wants me to come,” Beulah said. She wasn’t ready yet to tell Constance who that friend might be. She wanted to keep it to herself, for just a little longer.

Constance studied her for a minute and said, “I have a word of advice for you. I think you ought to change your name.”

“I’ve changed my name a hundred times! I won’t be Roxie Collins again. I was thinking —”

“I mean that you ought to change it at the courthouse. Legally. So you don’t have to lie anymore.”

“You mean like how married ladies change their names?”

“Something like that,” Constance said. “You’d have to go before a judge, and they won’t all be sympathetic.”

Beulah wrung her fingers together as she thought it over. “I wouldn’t know how to do a thing like that.”

“I can help you with it if you’d like. I know my way around a courthouse. I’m acquainted with a lawyer or two.”

“Well, then, I’ll think on it. My old name doesn’t belong to me anyway. It belongs to a murder trial. I can’t ever have it back.”

“I’m sorry it has to be that way, but I do believe it’s the best thing you could do for yourself,” Constance said. “If you don’t find a judge here, I might know one in Hackensack.”

“Is that where you’re going? Back to Hackensack?”

“I’m still thinking about it.”

Constance sounded like she knew more than she was willing to say, too. Let her have her secrets, Beulah thought.

“Well, Miss Matron, what are we going to do in our last week of camp?” she asked.

They were on the edge of the training field, looking down at the rows of tents. Constance put her hands on her hips and took a deep breath.

“It’s my camp. We’re going to train for war.”