Authors: Noelle Carle
“Where is he now?”
“Over at Gilman’s.
Chester is very sick. They think he’s dying.”
“Oh, no!” Alison
exclaimed.
Pearl nodded. “One
of the Ouellette girls died two days ago…the one Chester was sweet on. You
remember she went to France to be a telephone interpreter? She must have come
back with it. Everyone’s pretty much staying home right now. School was
closed for three days.”
“So, does Mrs. Reid
know…what really happened?”
Pearl straightened
and shook her head. “No one does, but your father and me. I told your
brothers you were sick, so they and everyone else think that. In a way you
have been sick. You gave us quite a scare.”
Alison looked away.
“Why did it happen? Did I do something wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
Picking up one of her
braids, Alison toyed with it. She moved restlessly. She didn’t want to tell
Aunt Pearl about what Sam’s father had said. Nor that she’d run so far. “I
mean, can the things we do, or maybe really strong feelings, make everything go
wrong?”
Again Pearl drew
near, stroking Alison’s arm. “Not usually. Babies are incredibly hearty.
This baby, well…it wasn’t right. It’s nature’s way.”
Her blue eyes
filling, Alison grasped her aunt’s hand tightly. “Are you sure? Can I have
other babies someday?”
“I am sure. There’s
nothing to worry about. You will have fine children one day.”
Then as if realizing
what she’d heard, Alison questioned, “It wasn’t right?”
Pearl’s hand loosened. She shook her head. “These things happen,”
was all she would say, looking away. “It worked out for the best this way.”
Alison closed her
eyes as sorrow enveloped her. She couldn’t understand her feelings. Days ago
she wanted to be an innocent and pure girl again. Now she cried for a lost
baby who wasn’t right from the start.
The residents of the
village felt lucky to have so few fatalities from the influenza. The large
cities from Boston to New York and on down the coast, across the country to
Chicago and San Francisco suffered huge losses and had to prohibit public
gatherings. In Little Cove, Annette Ouellette and Chester Gilman died, while
another Ouellette sister lived through the flu, very weakened but alive.
Alison’s father was astonished by the swiftness and severity of the illness.
It swept around the globe killing hundreds of thousands until finally as summer
settled in, the illness left.
Alison recovered her
strength and disabused no one of the assumption she’d had influenza. After
many days, when she could no longer avoid her, she finally told Mary Reid the
truth, that she no longer carried the child.
Mary took the news
with silent resignation that was frightening. Her eyelids fluttered for a
moment, then she folded her arms across her middle and shrugged. She shook her
head and walked away from Alison.
“Mrs. Reid? I’m
sorry,” Alison mouthed to her teacher’s retreating back. “I really am.”
Alison refused to
admit to her father the name of her attacker, even when he rightly guessed who
it was. He telegraphed everyone he could think of in an effort to find out
where Aubrey had gone, but there were no answers. Alison still felt a strange
complicity in the whole event and preferred to hope instead that Aubrey Newell
would die in France, in some horrible way. She was grateful for her own life,
and felt awe over the clear answer to her prayers when she lay dying, but she
could not forgive him. She would do her best to forget him.
She Can Do No Other
Mary Reid spent the
summer of 1918 considering whether she would leave Little Cove. She loved the
children in her school, and she’d grown to love the three girls in her care as
if they were her own. She had a good job, a home provided for her and a fairly
secure future. But this latest disappointment was a constant reminder to her
of her childlessness. Alison’s tragedy was, in Mary’s mind, going to be
redeemed by filling a need in her life. She had allowed herself to anticipate
so many things; the weight of a sleeping baby in her arms, the smile of
recognition, or ownership, someone to call her “mamma”. In a few brief weeks
she had knit sweaters and blankets enough for several babies, telling Gladie
Cooper at the store that the wool she bought was for a friend who was
expecting.
The day Alison told
her the truth was a day almost as black as the day she lost Ian. Coldness
filled her that refused to thaw. She felt angry at Alison, at God, at fate;
whatever malignant power had taken away her hope.
With three weeks left
until the beginning of school, Mary had made up her mind. She was to meet with
the school board members to inform them of her decision on Monday evening. In
fact that whole day she spent wrestling with the finality of it. She had
neither a job nor a place to go.
Even as she walked
across the road to the school, she regretted asking for the meeting. The air
was pungent with the tang of the ocean and the small breeze provided a respite
from the heat of the day. The long shadows of the sun were tinged with purple
haze. Mary ached with the beauty of this place. Her steps slowed as she
absorbed the sounds and sights around her.
“A lovely evening,
isn’t it?”
Mary started, then
laughed lightly at her inattentiveness. “Doctor Granger! You startled me.
Yes, yes. It’s a glorious evening.”
He moved to walk
beside her. “I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to speak with you. May we
stop here a moment?” They stood on the playground near the swing set. Mary
smiled and sat down in one of the swings.
“Have a swing,
Doctor?”
He shook his head.
Standing closely in front of her, his face became serious. With her back to
the sun, it shone in his face and he squinted. He was dark-haired like Alison,
with graying strands over his ears. She noted that his eyes were a green blue
in the light. He had a long, rather serious face that transformed when he
smiled into childlike impishness, complete with dimples. He toyed with his
pocket watch, thoughtfully turning it over and over as he started to speak,
then hesitated again.
“You wanted to speak
with me?” she said.
“Yes. Yes I do. But
now that it comes down to it I find it rather a delicate matter.” He cleared
his throat then met her eyes. “I want to thank you.”
She tilted her head
and asked curiously, “What for?”
He licked his lips,
quickly glanced about, then said quietly, “Alison told me how you had planned
to help her.”
“Oh.” Mary looked
down at her hands and shrugged slightly.
Dan hastened to add,
“I feel it was very noble of you, to be willing to protect her reputation at
the peril of your own.”
Shaking her head she
looked up at him. “There was nothing noble about it. It was pure
self-interest on my part, I assure you.”
His eyes narrowed.
He looked surprised but skeptical. “Self-interest maybe, but not only that.
It’s obvious that you care about our children; about my children.”
Mary felt a prickle
of tears beginning and hoped he couldn’t see with the sun in his eyes. “I do,
very much. I care for your Alison, and Owen and little Davey. All of the
children here.”
Dan reached out to
still the swing that she had nudged into motion with her foot. He stepped
closer. “Then may I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Why are you
leaving?”
Mary sighed. She
decided to be blunt and honest. “It hurts too much to be reminded of what I
can’t have. These are not my children, my very own.” Tears threatened then so
she stopped speaking, clamped her lips together and shook her head.
Gently the doctor
reached down and took her hand. It felt dry and warm, and Mary felt no urgency
to pull away. “There are sicknesses in the body that need rest to heal. And
others that need work to heal. It’s the same with the heart.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Where could you ever
go where there are no children? And where could you ever go where there are so
many who already love you?”
The other board
members were arriving at the school. They were looking curiously at the doctor
and the teacher at the swings.
Still gripping her
hand, with a searching gaze, Dan Granger implored her, “Please don’t go.”
In September, a
second bout of influenza spread rapidly from crowded military training camps
where hundreds died each day, to troop ships that carried the sickness across
the ocean and around the world. Scarcely a country was untouched by this
newer, if possible more virile, sickness. Yet Little Cove remained blessedly
unaffected. There was little contact with the rest of the world, set way out
on the tip of a point as they were. But the unfortunate death of Tim Cooper
brought it home relentlessly.
When they heard of
Tim’s death there was profound grieving, for he had been coming home after an
injury that disabled but did not kill him. However, the ship also carried
those who were diseased and Tim, in his weakened state, quickly succumbed. At
least, Gladie Cooper said, they would have the comfort of burying him at home.
She was brave in her grief, genuinely sorrowing, but trying not to make a show
for there were other sons still in danger. Vernon, his dad, closed the store
on a weekday for the first time in twenty-eight years and kept it closed for
three days. Tim’s sisters stayed home from school, awaiting the arrival of
their brother’s body.
It was a brilliant
and warm day in September. When the kids filed out of school that afternoon,
they saw, moving slowly towards the Cooper’s store, a wagon with a long
rectangular box in back. As it passed by the school, Alison saw the ravaged
face of Vernon Cooper as he listlessly held to the reins. She burst into tears
and she could hear others around her sniffing or sobbing aloud. Robbie’s death
and the events of the day of his funeral crowded in her mind as she slowly
reached for Davey’s hand to go home.
“What is it?”
Isabella Eliot asked, awed by the sudden silence of her classmates.
“Hush, Bella!” Cleo
clamped her hand across her sister’s mouth. She leaned over and whispered
loudly. “It’s Timmy Cooper’s body.”
“His body!” Richard
crowed. “I want to see!” He started running after the wagon.
Vernon Cooper turned
around in his seat, his face contorted with a fierceness that was foreign to
him. “Just go home now!” he bellowed. He waved his arm as if shooing them
away. “Just go home and quit gawking!”
Richard stopped
short. He turned around, his cheeks red and his eyes watering. He muttered to
his friends as he rejoined them, “Just wanted to see a dead body. I never got
to see one.”
They moved slowly on
their way to their homes. Only a few of the older kids remained to see Mr.
Cooper draw up to his home with the wagon. The kitchen door banged open and
Gladie Cooper flew down the steps. She rushed to the back of the wagon,
pulling on the coffin and sobbing wildly. They saw Mr. Cooper draw her away
from it, motion to some men that had gathered by the store, and gently lead his
wife back into the house.
Davey continued
staring as they passed by the store to the road that led out to their house.
“Get going,” Owen
muttered.
“I never got to see a
dead body neither,” he whispered loudly.
“There’s nothing so
special about a dead body,” Alison hissed loudly. “It just looks like someone
sleeping. It’s not exciting, it’s sad. Very sad!” And even as she said it
her eyes filled with tears again at the thought of Tim Cooper, gone forever.
Gladie felt a great
comfort in finally having Tim’s body here in their own home. She had wanted to
see him, to open the coffin and at least say good-bye, but Vernon said no.
What good would that do, he questioned. Their boy was home now and would rest
in the ground with their other family who had passed on. He said it gruffly
and she knew he was sorrowing in a way that he’d never done before. Their life
had been good - easy and carefree from the time they married. Their relatives
all died of old age, without a sickness or early death in one of them. They
were unacquainted with grief. She felt it best to grieve in private, and
except for her sudden reaction when she actually saw Vernon drive up with the
casket she had done so.
The coffin was sealed
by port authorities in Boston, so said a sheaf of papers that Vernon brought
home with him. It should be opened under no circumstances because of the
threat of contagion. Gladie didn’t even know what that meant, but she had her
suspicions that somehow the Army sent them an empty box. What if Tim’s body
wasn’t even inside? Even worse, what if it wasn’t Timmy in there, but someone
else.