Return to Harmony (18 page)

Jodie remained absolutely still. She had no desire to trade comments about the weather with this lady. It was hard to maintain her control, but she refused to give the older woman the satisfaction of seeing how upset she was.

The woman stuffed the handkerchief back out of sight and gave Jodie a patently false smile. “Your records would certainly earn you a place in our English program. Or languages. French, perhaps. Or even Greek, if you are so inclined. There are several church organizations which offer partial scholarships for young ladies such as yourself who wish to become teachers.”

“No, thank you,” Jodie said coolly, taking great satisfaction in the steadiness of her voice.

Mrs. Roland gave her a sharp look. “And why not, might I ask?”

“Because,” Jodie replied. “I am going to study biochemistry.”

Although how she was going to accomplish that now, without a college enrollment, much less the scholarship, she could not afford to think about. Not now. Not until she was out of here and away from this woman.

The woman examined her for a long moment, then returned to the folder. Her chair complained as she shifted position again.

“Biochemistry,” she said slowly, penciling something in the margin of Jodie’s application. “You realize, of course, that you would be the only young lady within our entire chemistry department.” When Jodie did not respond, Mrs. Roland raised her head once more.

“And just what is it about biochemistry that appeals to you so?”

“It is the best initial degree I can obtain,” Jodie answered, “to go into bacteriology.”

The woman and her pencil became utterly still. Then she said, “So what can you tell me about bacteriology as a field?”

Jodie wasn’t sure if the woman really wanted an answer, but she decided to seize the opportunity before she was brushed aside with another offhand comment. “It began in the middle of the last century,” Jodie began slowly, cautiously, watching her listener. “Louis Pasteur demonstrated that fermentation was not an instantaneous process, but rather was a natural result of bacteria multiplying when granted access to air. His research led to the development of a vaccine against rabies, and the treatment of milk to prevent it from carrying disease.”

Mrs. Roland leaned forward in her chair. When she did not speak, Jodie continued, “Robert Koch, working in Germany, used Pasteur’s methods to study anthrax. He was the first to develop systems for staining, fixing, and culture, which allowed bacteria to be seen and studied. He went on to identify the tuberculosis bacillus.

In this country, Howard Taylor Rickets studied typhus.”

Jodie was warming to her subject, and her voice grew animated in spite of her tension. “Joseph Lister is using his work and Welch’s study of gas gangrene to revolutionize surgery. In Russia, Elie Metchnikoff has successfully shown how white blood cells are the body’s defense against infection. That is where my primary interest lies.”

There was a moment’s silence before Mrs. Roland murmured, “How remarkable.”

“Yes.” Jodie’s enthusiasm carried her on, her voice now impassioned over the enormous advances in her chosen field. “Metchnikoff demonstrated how polymorphonuclear leucocytes can be seen under the microscope to actually ingest bacteria into their cytoplasm. Not only that, but it has now been proven that some bacteria actually produce toxins, to which the body develops natural antitoxins. This means that the body defends itself both in a cellular and humoral—or chemical—fashion. Emil von Behring has taken a child suffering from diphtheria and treated it with the antitoxin from another patient. The child recovered. This is revolutionary. It means that a lot of other diseases might be treatable with natural antitoxins.”

Jodie stopped herself then. But her mind had been awakened and leapt off in a dozen different directions. Just as it always did when she started discussing what she had been reading and studying. But if she kept talking, she knew her disappointment at being rejected would only be worse. She would be even more exposed than she already was. Because the next thing would be to talk about how desperately she wanted access to a laboratory. And to other people who shared her interests. She might even reach the brink of confessing just how lonely she was here, how cut off she felt from the world and all that was happening. Especially now—now that she did not have a friend with whom she could share her hopes and dreams and hungers. But Jodie did not want to speak of that. So she clasped her hands together and waited as the woman’s pencil scratched across the paper.

Finally the woman looked up once more, and Jodie realized that the hostility was replaced with genuine interest. “The scholarship board is scheduled to meet only once more this spring, Miss Harland, and that shall take place in one week’s time. I would strongly urge you to come to Raleigh and allow them to meet with you personally. Can that be arranged?”

“Yes,” Jodie said, suddenly having difficulty finding air to draw into her lungs. “Oh yes.”

FOURTEEN

BETHAN HESITATED OUTSIDE
the apothecary entrance.

She always had to stop at this point, catch her breath, and pull herself together. Here it was, already the end of the summer, and still she had not accustomed herself to this rift with Jodie, her absence from Bethan’s life.

Some nights she woke up, her pillow wet with tears she had shed while dreaming, and wondered how she would ever manage without her best friend. She had run the scenes with Dylan and Jodie through her mind a thousand times. She never found a satisfactory answer as to how she might have done it differently. Better, yes—no doubt she could have said it better. But would it still have turned out the same? Such nights always ended with the wish that once, just that once, she had been smarter, had possessed some of Jodie’s intelligence, and had known how to do things just right.

It had been a difficult summer all around. Dylan had alternated between needing her comfort and support and withdrawing into icy silence. Her father had been caught up in some big statewide project to teach farmers new methods and was gone almost all week long.

And her mother’s health had not improved; if anything, the heat had seemed to worsen her ailment. Moira’s joints had continued to ache, her fingers and elbows and ankles and knees swelling up at times to nearly twice their normal size.

And Jodie…

As long as she could remember, Jodie had always been there for her. Whenever there was bad talk or unpleasant news or struggles which threatened to overwhelm her, Jodie had always managed to be the strength Bethan never felt she had enough of, the one to whom she could always turn. And now she was alone. Bethan’s body felt wounded by the pain of her heart. It was as though she had lost a limb. And the only solace she knew came during her times of prayer.

Bethan gathered her courage and pushed open the apothecary door. Her nostrils instantly recognized all the smells she associated with Jodie and her questing spirit. She gave as brilliant a smile as her quaking heart would permit and said brightly, “Good afternoon, Mr. Harland. It’s me again.”

Nowadays Parker Harland wore the same gray sweater summer and winter, as though he had somehow managed to draw away from the seasons as well as most everything else. He peered over the top of his half-moon spectacles and mumbled, “Afternoon, Bethan.” His words were not slurred, rather just poorly put together, as though there wasn’t enough emotion behind them to give them proper shape. “Your mother doing any better?”

“Afraid not.” She doubted that he cared much one way or the other. But the usual exchange helped ease her own nerves. “The only thing that seems to help any these days is when I rub her with that liniment of yours. Can I have another bottle, please?”

He was already reaching behind the counter. He put down the bottle, rolled it up in brown wrapping paper, twisted the top into a tight curl, then said, “That will be seventy-two cents.”

“I am much obliged,” Bethan said. She peered into the back room, as she had every visit over the past five months. Jodie was not to be seen. Bethan took a steadying breath. This time she would simply have to ask. “Could I have a word with Jodie?”

For an instant the indefinite fog which surrounded Parker Harland disappeared. A sharp gaze reached out from the years before his wife’s illness and pierced her. “You mean to tell me that Jodie did not tell you?”

“About what?”

“If I told her once, I told her a thousand times. This silly quarrel has gone on far too long.” Parker Harland shook his grizzled head. “That girl thinks I don’t notice anything. But I notice plenty. It’s just some things don’t seem important since…” He allowed the sentence to fade away, as though the thought was simply too hard to finish.

Normally Bethan would have tried to say something in consolation. But just then she did not have the strength. Gripping the shelf, she kept her body erect and repeated softly, “Tell me what, Mr. Harland?”

Parker hesitated, then said as gently as his permanent gruffness allowed, “Jodie left this morning for college up Raleigh way.”

Bethan managed to stop the gasp in her throat. Jodie was gone. “She did? Of course she did.” Bethan kept speaking because it was the only way she could keep from coming to pieces right then and there. “College. In Raleigh. Of course.”

She picked up the liniment bottle and began to make for the door. She was determined to hold on, though the goal seemed at the top of a steep rise. “Well, it’s my own fault for leaving it until the last minute. I should have come sooner. I’ll not bother you any further, Mr. Harland.” Her numb fingers found the door and managed to open it. Sunlight washed over her. “Isn’t it just a lovely, lovely…”

Bethan let the door close behind her, the little notice-bell sounding shrill and mocking. She forced her legs to carry her down the length of the building to where the dirt alleyway opened up at the corner. Bethan stopped there because she could not go a step farther. She leaned her back against the brick wall and turned her face to the sun. She tried to catch her breath but could not. The air was too full of her sorrow. It was like drawing shards of glass into her lungs, each breath hurt her so.

“What’s that you’re telling me?” The strange woman named Netty Taskins squinted down from the top stoop in nearsighted hostility. “You’re aimin’ on doing what?”

“I’m not aiming,” Jodie replied, holding on to politeness only because she needed a room. And a bed. The long train ride and the heat and the heavy satchels and the uncertainties were all weighing her down. “I’ve already been accepted. I am going to study chemistry at the university.”

“Well, if that don’t beat all, I don’t know what does.” The woman turned, pulled open the screen door, stepped through, and held it open for Jodie. “A lady chemist. You a suffragette as well?”

“I’m not really much of anything,” Jodie replied, following her into the coolness. “Yet.”

“My Harry, he didn’t hold with women having the vote. Called them suffragettes a bunch of Yankee troublemakers. But he passed on, must be seven years now if it’s a day. He probably wouldn’t have held with a lady chemist neither, but he’s beyond caring now, bless his cranky old soul.” The woman had features so pinched they looked pickled. She inspected Jodie with eyes glimmering from within deep folds. “Who’s your folks, missie?”

“Parker Harland, up Harmony way. He runs the town apothecary.”

“And your momma, what does she think of this chemistry business?”

“Momma passed on when I was fourteen,” Jodie replied, fighting off an attack of the old familiar ache. “But I think she’d be pleased. It’s Daddy who’s the hard one to get around.”

“Yeah, them men, they do surely take some convincing.” The wrinkles creased into deeper folds as she gave a quick smile. “Reminds me of what my mammy used to say. Best way to convince a stubborn man is to apply a skillet judiciously between his eyes.”

Jodie smiled back, liking this curious old woman. “The college said you might have a room for me, Mrs. Taskins.”

“Sure do, missie. I surely do.” She reached over and took one of the satchels, then stumped toward the stairs. “Always had a wish for education, myself. Nice to see somebody with the gumption to go where I couldn’t. Gives me hope for the future. I’m glad the Lord sent you my way.”